DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS: Page 28

accepts pleasurable ones and thus learning to identify impressions by repetition, develops memory. Thus sensation produced thought; for, "Mind, as we know it, is resolvable into states of consciousness, of varying duration, intensity, complexity, etc., all, in the ultimate, resting on Sensation" (Secret Doctrine). The repetition of vibrations, by attraction and repulsion to pleasurable and painful sensations developed memory. The contemplation of the images mirrored in the mind produced knowledge, discrimination and reason; the desire to change from one state to another led to the manifestation of Will or energy, the inter-play of thought and desire gave birth to emotion. Thus, however crudely put, we may for the nonce take it that the concrete mind with the physical brain as its organic base of operation is the passive intellect transmitting sensations to the thinker, who reasons upon same in his own sphere and who hence forms the centre of the Active Intellect. The passive mind is so much matter appropriated from the not-self, for certain purposes. It is alive or seems so because the ego works in and through it. Averros, the great commentator on Aristotle has made it all very clear: "The Passive Intellect aspires to unite with the Active Intellect as the potential calls for the Actual, as the matter calls for the form, or as the flame rushes for the combustible body. But the effect is not confined to the first degree of possession only, called the acquired intellect. The Soul can arrive at a much more intimate