THEO. During that time it is latent and potential, because first of all, the Spiritual Ego (the compound of Buddhi-Manas) is _not_ the Higher SELF, which being one with the Universal Soul or Mind is alone omniscient; and, secondly, because Devachan is the idealized continuation of the terrestrial life just left behind, a period of retributive adjustment, and a reward for unmerited wrongs and sufferings undergone in that special life. It is omniscient only _potentially_ in Devachan, and _de facto_ exclusively in Nirvana, when the Ego is merged in the Universal Mind-Soul. Yet it re-becomes _quasi_ omniscient during those hours on earth when certain abnormal conditions and physiological changes in the body make the _Ego_ free from the trammels of matter. Thus the examples cited above of somnambulists, a poor servant speaking Hebrew, and another playing the violin, give you an illustration of the case in point. This does not mean that the explanations of these two facts offered us by medical science have no truth in them, for one girl had, years before, heard her master, a clergyman, read Hebrew works aloud, and the other had heard an artist playing a violin at their farm. But neither could have done so as perfectly as they did had they not been ensouled by THAT which, owing to the sameness of its nature with the Universal Mind, is omniscient. Here the higher principle acted on the Skandhas and moved them; in the other, the personality being paralysed, the individuality manifested itself. Pray do not confuse the two. ON INDIVIDUALITY AND PERSONALITY.[36] ENQ. But what is the difference between the two? I confess that I am still in the dark. Indeed it is just that difference, then, that you cannot impress too much on our minds. THEO. I try to; but alas, it is harder with some than to make them feel a reverence for childish impossibilities, only because they are _orthodox_, and because orthodoxy is respectable. To understand the idea well, you have to first study the dual sets of “principles”; the _spiritual_, or those which belong to the imperishable Ego; and the _material_, or those principles which make up the ever-changing bodies or the series of personalities of that Ego. Let us fix permanent names to these, and say that:— I. Atma, the “Higher Self,” is neither your Spirit nor mine, but like sunlight shines on all. It is the universally diffused “_divine principle_,” and is inseparable from its one and absolute _Meta_-Spirit, as the sunbeam is inseparable from sunlight.