This external vision and attraction are the essence of the universal blinding force that is designated in Indian philosophy the Ignorance. Ancient Indian spirituality recognised that man lives in the ignorance and has to be led through its imperfect indications to a highest inmost knowledge…. The majority of men put the whole emphasis of life on the outward and live very strongly in their surface consciousness and very little in the inward existence.
Even the choice spirits raised from the grossness of the common vital and physical mould by the stress of thought and culture do not usually get farther than a strong dwelling on the things of the mind…. But spiritual knowledge perceives that there is a greater thing in us; our inmost self, our real being is not the intellect, not the aesthetic, ethical or thinking mind, but the divinity within, the Spirit, and these other things are only the instruments of the Spirit.