We say that the Spirit (the “Father in secret” of Jesus), or _Atman_, is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine essence which has no body, no form, which is imponderable, invisible and indivisible, that which does not _exist_ and yet _is_, as the Buddhists say of Nirvana. It only overshadows the mortal; that which enters into him and pervades the whole body being only its omnipresent rays, or light, radiated through _Buddhi_, its vehicle and direct emanation. This is the secret meaning of the assertions of almost all the ancient philosophers, when they said that “the _rational_ part of man’s soul”[25] never entered wholly into the man, but only overshadowed him more or less through the _irrational_ spiritual Soul or Buddhi.[26] ENQ. I laboured under the impression that the “Animal Soul” alone was irrational, not the Divine. THEO. You have to learn the difference between that which is negatively, or _passively_ “irrational,” because undifferentiated, and that which is irrational because too _active_ and positive. Man is a correlation of spiritual powers, as well as a correlation of chemical and physical forces, brought into function by what we call “principles.” ENQ. I have read a good deal upon the subject, and it seems to me that the notions of the older philosophers differed a great deal from those of the mediæval Kabalists, though they do agree in some particulars. THEO. The most substantial difference between them and us is this. While we believe with the Neo-Platonists and the Eastern teachings that the spirit (Atma) never descends hypostatically into the living man, but only showers more or less its radiance on the _inner_ man (the psychic and spiritual compound of the _astral_ principles), the Kabalists maintain that the human Spirit, detaching itself from the ocean of light and Universal Spirit, enters man’s Soul, where it remains throughout life imprisoned in the astral capsule. All Christian Kabalists still maintain the same, as they are unable to break quite loose from their anthropomorphic and Biblical doctrines. ENQ. And what do you say?