Obediently, the disciple then asked: “What, then, is my own mind (or nature)? What is my inner self? What is ultimate reality?” For this is the question that had really been troubling the disciple.

The master said: “You must see into the secret working.”

“What is the secret working?” asked the disciple.

The master opened and closed his eyes. And this, we are told, opened the inquisitive monk’s mental eye to the secret working of ‘pure experience’.”

– D . T. Suzuki: ‘The Buddhist Conception of Reality’

Our inner evolutionary potential is that of “the primordial cosmic atom.” At “the first flutter of the manvantaric life breath,” – the outbreathing of the Great Divine Breath, so to speak, spoken of in “The Secret Doctrine” – i.e. at the very beginning of the Universe, the Primordial Cosmic Atom (the One Element) becomes differentiated.

– The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, Letter 15, 1882, Theosophical University Press Edition