I made that slight digression because otherwise I should have conveyed a slightly false impression by the phrase "all Founders of religions." We mean amongst ourselves by the word "Master," when used accurately, a very distinctly marked rank in the Occult Hierarchy; He is a being who has attained what is called "liberation" in the East, what is called "salvation" in the West; a being whose soul and Spirit have become unified, who lives consciously on the highest plane of our own universe--the fivefold universe--and whose centre of consciousness is on the âṭmic, sometimes called the nirvâṇic, plane. Living in full consciousness on that plane, He has no sense of bondage in any form with which He may ally Himself. He has passed during His Arhaṭship beyond all desire for life in form, or life out of form. He has thrown away those fetters; together with the limiting "I-making" faculty, the limit of individuality, that also has gone. His consciousness, then, working on this âṭmic plane, works indifferently up and down through all the five planes, and the whole of these together form to Him but a single plane, the plane of His waking consciousness. That is an important point to remember, for there is often a certain confusion of thought with regard to this term "waking consciousness." It ought not to mean simply the consciousness that you and I may have as waking consciousness, confined to the physical world; but the consciousness which--enlarging stage by stage as the active centre of consciousness rises through the planes inwards--is aware of all which is below that centre; and is aware thereof without it being necessary for the person to leave the physical body, in order that that consciousness may be in an active and working condition. The waking consciousness is the normal, daily consciousness, and may include the physical plane; or physical and astral; or physical, astral, mental; one more when you take in the buḍḍhic; one more when you take in the âṭmic; and provided that the person whose consciousness is spoken of does not need to leave his active body, his body of action, in using his consciousness on any of these planes, does not have to throw the body into trance in order to be conscious on any or on all of them, we speak always, then, of that consciousness as being "his waking consciousness." Some disciples, for instance, will often include in the waking consciousness the astral, mental, and even buḍḍhic planes; but it is characteristic of the Master alone that He unites in His waking consciousness the whole of the five planes on which our universe is gradually unfolding. So that we may define the position of the Master, for the moment, as that of a Person who has reached liberation; the meaning of that being that he is living in the Spirit consciously; that he is in conscious relation to the Monad, above the âṭmic plane; his centre of consciousness is there, and as the result of the