Reciprocal which, as we have seen, is necessary to its Enjoyment of a
certain Quality of Consciousness. Now, the fundamental consciousness of the
Spirit must be that of Self-sustaining Life, and for the full enjoyment of
this consciousness there must be a corresponding _individual_ consciousness
reciprocating it; and on the part of the individual such a consciousness
can only arise from the recognition that his own life is identical with
that of the Spirit--not something sent forth to wander away by itself, but
something included in and forming part of the Greater Life. Then by the
very conditions of the case, such a contemplation on the part of the
individual is nothing else than the Spirit contemplating itself from the
standpoint of the individual consciousness, and thus fulfilling the Law of
the Creative Process under such specialized conditions as must logically
result in the perpetuation of the individual life. It is the Law of the
Cosmic Creative Process transferred to the individual.

This, it seems to me, is the Divine Ideal: that of an Individuality which
recognizes its Source, and recognizes also the method by which it springs
from that Source, and which is therefore able to open up in itself a
channel by which that Source can flow in uninterruptedly; with the result
that from the moment of this recognition the individual lives directly from
the Originating Life, as being himself _a special direct creation_, and not
merely as being a member of a generic race. The individual who has reached
this stage of recognition thus finds a principle of enduring life _within
himself_; so then the next question is in what way this principle is likely
to manifest itself.