Mind upon itself the only consciousness must be that of Present Absolute
Being, because no external points exist from which to measure extension
either in time or space. Hence we must eliminate the ideas of time and
space from our conception of Spirit's _initial_ Self-contemplation.

This being so, Spirit's primary contemplation of itself as simply Being
necessarily makes its presence universal and eternal, and consequently,
paradoxical as it may seem, its independence of Time and Space makes it
present throughout all Time and Space. It is the old esoteric maxim that
the point expands to infinitude and that infinitude is concentrated in the
point. We start, then, with Spirit contemplating itself simply as Being.
But to realize your being you must have consciousness, and consciousness
can only come by the recognition of your relation to something else. The
something else may be an external fact or a mental image; but even in the
latter case to conceive the image at all you must mentally stand back from
it and look at it--something like the man who was run in by the police at
Gravesend for walking behind himself to see how his new coat fitted. It
stands thus: if you are not conscious of something you are conscious of
nothing, and if you are conscious of nothing, then you are unconscious, so
that to be conscious at all you must have something to be conscious of.

This may seem like an extract from "Paddy's Philosophy," but it makes it
clear that consciousness can only be attained by the recognition of
something which is not the recognizing _ego_ itself--in other words
consciousness is the realization of some particular sort of _relation_
between the cognizing subject and the cognized object; but I want to get
away from academical terms into the speech of human beings, so let us take
the illustration of a broom and its handle--the two together make a broom;
that is one sort of relation; but take the same stick and put a rake-iron
at the end of it and you have an altogether different implement. The stick