triplets of lines can intersect each other at the same central point; that is to say, a pseudo-infinite number of straight lines can intersect each other at that point at angles of all possible degrees; and we can therefore justifiably speak of a pseudo-infinite number of dimensions of space. In any other sense,

all so-called new dimensions resolve themselves into cases of interpenetration in various ways; and interpenetration itself, it is clear, is but the co-existence of atoms, or molecules, or component particles, in special positions towards each other. The case would be exactly similar with dimensions and divisions of time and motion.

The question of how the consciousness of a Jiva expands so as to embrace more and more planes of matter is one of general evolution, or of practical yoga when endeavoured to be accomplished deliberately.

The nature itself of the process of expansion of consciousness is nothing particularly recondite or mysterious. All education is such expansion. A Jîva takes up a new subject of study, a new line of livelihood, a new department of life and mode of existence, and forthwith a new world is opened to him, and his consciousness flows out into, and becomes co-extensive with, and assimilates, that new

world. In its other aspect, of (comparatively) simultaneous communion, we find other illustrations. Take the case of an ordinary government. The consciousness of an officer in charge of the police-administration of a subdistrict is co-extensive with the police-affairs of that district; that of another in charge of its revenue-administration is similarly co-extensive with its revenue-affairs; and so with a number of other departments of administration, medical, educational, arboricultural, commercial, municipal, etc., side by side in the same sub-district. But there are larger districts made up of numbers of these sub-districts, and still larger divisions of country made up of numbers of these districts; and at each stage there are administrative officers in charge of each department, whose consciousness may be said to include the consciousnesses of their subordinates in that department, exclude those of their compeers, and be in turn included in those of their superiors. The more complicated the machinery of the government, the better the illustration will be of inclusions and exclusions and partial or complete coincidences and over-lappings and communions of consciousness. At last we come to the head of the government, whose consciousness may be said to include the consciousnesses, whose knowledge and power include the know

ledges and powers, of all the public servants of the land, whose consciousness is so expanded as to enable him to be in touch with them all and feel and act through them all constantly. An officer promoted through the grades of such an administration would clearly pass through expansions of consciousness. A more common illustration, which may appear to show out the so-called immediacy of consciousness better, is that of friends and relatives. Two friends may be so intimate with each other, husband and wife, and members of a joint family, may love and be in rapport with each other so much, that they have a 'common life,' a common feeling,' a 'common consciousness.' But it should be borne in mind that, strictly speaking, there is no more immediacy in the one case than in the other, but only quicker cognition. Consciousness of the particular, the limited, working unavoidably through an upâdhi, necessarily deals with time as with space, and the time-element is always a definite element, however infinitesimal it may be in any given case. The word 'immediate' in such cases has only a comparative significance, as is apparent from the fact that the time of transmission of a sensation, from the end of a nerve to the seat of consciousness, has been distinctly and definitely calculated in the case of living organisms.

Such expansion of consciousness, then, is not in its nature more mysterious and recondite than any other item in the world-process, but a thing of daily and hourly occurrence. In terms of metaphysic it is the coming of an individual self into relation with a larger and larger not-self. The processes of yoga are no more and no less methods of educationusing the word in its true significance of strengthening, developing, e-ducing or forthleading of faculties already existent but weak or latent-than the processes followed in the million schools and colleges of modern life, for developing the physical and mental powers of children and youth. Every act of attention, of concentration, of regulation and balancing, of deliberately 'joining' and directing the self to an object, or to itself, of con-jug-ating or en-gag-ing it to or in anything, is an act of yoga, in the strict sense of the word, and every such act is a help to the development and expansion of the individual consciousness.

CHAPTER XVI.

SUMMATION.

All the main facts connected with Jîvas and with atoms have, it seems, been generally brought out and summed up now. Only one more point deserves a word. It concerns the distinction between the universal and the singular, and the relation between them, which was mentioned before. This triplet, belonging equally to Jîvas and to atoms, and so part of the summation of the world-process, could not well be discussed before some general notion had been gained of the distinction between the ideal world and the real world, the former being, as it were, a complete and standing picture or plan of the stream of successive events which make up the latter, and so occupying, the one to the other, the position of universal to singular.

The aphorisms of Nyâya, as we now have them, classify and describe the constituents of samsâra in terms of cognition, in their subjective