ETHICS
lack even that relative autonomy from the external world
and their own psychological and physiological machinery,
belonging to a genuine full-grown person. This sub-
personal existence can be terminated at will. Anybody
who so desires and knows how to set about the task can
live his life entirely on the personal level and, from the
personal level, can pass, again if he so desires and knows
how, to a super-personal level. This super-personal level
is reached only during the mystical experience. There is,
however, a state of being, rarely attained, but described by
the greatest mystical writers of East and West, in which
it is possible for a man to have a kind of double conscious-
ness—to be both a full-grown person, having a complete
knowledge of, and control over, his sensations, emotions
and thoughts, and also, and at the same time, a more than
personal being, in continuous intuitive relation with the
impersonal principle of reality. (St. Teresa tells us that,
in 'the seventh mansion,* she could be conscious of the
mystical Light while giving her full attention to worldly
business. Indian writers say that the same is true of those
who have attained the highest degree of what they call
samadhi.}
It is clear, then, that if we would transcend personality,
we must first take the trouble to become persons. But we
cannot become persons unless we make ourselves self-
conscious. In one of the discourses attributed to the
Buddha, we read an interesting passage about the self-
possessed person. 'And how, brethren, is a brother self-
possessed? ... In looking forward and in looking back
he acts composedly (Le. with consciousness of what is
being done, of the self who is doing and of the reasons
for which die self is performing the act). In bending or
stretching arm or body he acts composedly. In eating,
drinking, chewing, swallowing, in relieving nature's needs,
in going, standing, sitting, sleeping, waking, speaking,1,
3*5