BOOK I — THE PREPARATION OF MIND
Thoth, to André
I
André: You said that Fire, Air, Water and Earth act as one within Akasha. What is Akasha?
Thoth: Divine Mind at the threshold of manifestation.
André: Is it the source of the elements?
Thoth: Their common source before differentiation, the causal principle governing their manifestations, and the boundless medium in which their forms arise.
André: These seem to be three different things.
Thoth: Only after manifestation. At the threshold, source, cause and medium have not yet separated.
II
André: Does Akasha contain the four elements before they become active?
Thoth: If it contained them already formed, it would not precede their differentiation. It contains their causes and the possibility of their distinction.
André: Does Akasha itself act?
Thoth: It causes without becoming one more effect among those it causes. The elements manifest what in Akasha has not yet taken elemental form.
III
André: When I enter vacancy of mind, have I entered Akasha?
Thoth: You have made a mirror. Do not mistake the mirror for what it reflects.
André: What has vacancy removed?
Thoth: The forms your thought continues to produce and the claim each of them makes upon your attention.
André: Has it removed the elemental powers?
Thoth: No. Their equilibrium permits the mirror to remain clear; their removal would leave no human instrument through which Akasha could become perceptible.
IV
André: Does a vacant mind prove that what appears within it comes from Akasha?
Thoth: Vacancy proves only that room has been made.
André: What determines what occupies it?
Thoth: The quality established there, the form you give that quality, and the intelligence capable of answering through the form.
André: Then vacancy is receptive but not discerning.
Thoth: It permits the encounter. It does not identify the one encountered.
V
André: Why should I construct an image if Akasha is boundless and prior to form?
Thoth: Because you meet from a particular human centre. The boundless must acquire a definite relation to you if it is to become perceptible from where you are.
André: Do colour, tone, sensation and name create the divine being?
Thoth: They create a vessel of correspondence. You fashion the means of address, not necessarily the intelligence that may answer.
André: Can an empty vessel appear alive because I have formed it vividly?
Thoth: Vividness gives force to the form. It does not prove who, if anyone, inhabits it.
VI
André: Why do I erase the image after forming it?
Thoth: To discover if the quality depends upon the picture by which you first approached it.
André: What should remain when the picture is gone?
Thoth: The quality, without dependence upon face, colour or posture.
André: And if the same form returns from that quality?
Thoth: Then form has begun to answer from the quality instead of being sustained only by your effort.
VII
André: Is this return enough to make the image living?
Thoth: It establishes continuity between quality and form. Life requires that the elemental powers of the form awaken as Divine Qualities.
André: How does this occur?
Thoth: Fire becomes omnipotence; Air, omniscience; Water, eternal love and mercy; Earth, omnipresence. They do not remain four qualities placed beside one another. They act as one Godhead within Akasha.
André: How shall I know that I have not merely imagined their names?
Thoth: The form must act, know, love and sustain according to one nature.
VIII
André: What occurs when this nature awakens within the image?
Thoth: The image begins to act autonomously. An intelligence looks and responds through it.
André: Is autonomy proof that the intelligence is divine?
Thoth: It proves that the form no longer follows each of your intentions. It does not by itself establish the nature of what acts through it.
André: What further sign is required?
Thoth: It reveals knowledge you did not arrange, and that knowledge bears the quality by which the intelligence was called.
IX
André: Can any one of these signs establish a living vehicle?
Thoth: No. Continuity, awakened Divine Qualities, autonomous action and knowledge you did not arrange must agree. One sign alone may indicate a powerful image or partial contact, not completion.
X
André: When these signs are united, is the image itself the deity?
Thoth: The form makes the deity present from a particular place. It does not confine the deity to that form.
André: If I dissolve the image again, does the presence cease?
Thoth: What depends only upon the image ceases with it. What returned from the quality may be known without it and assume form again.
André: Then the living image is not an idol of the presence.
Thoth: It is the vehicle through which presence becomes capable of relation.
XI
André: If the living image is a vehicle before me, may I know from within it?
Thoth: To encounter a vehicle is not yet to inhabit it.
André: What must cross between my human centre and the divine form?
Thoth: You still imagine a distance between two objects. The next question is not what crosses the distance, but from which centre you know when the distance disappears.
André: What shall I ask, then?
Thoth: Ask what passes when consciousness enters a divine form.
