“Mr. B. Keightley: To go back to what Kingsland was saying. Intuition as we know it is defined in this way: the memory, the action or the reflection on our lower plane of the hierarchies. It is not the higher aspect of the hierarchies, nor does it exhaust the Manas.
Mme. Blavatsky: The incarnating principle simply. It is not something that is an individual or entity. It is simply the highest mind.
Mr. Old: The incarnating ego consists of what?
Mme. Blavatsky: What do you want it to consist of? Plums, or oranges, or what?
Mr. Old: How do you formulate it? Do you say it is Atma-Buddhi?
Mme. Blavatsky: I say it is Atma-Buddhi, certainly. Because, in every incarnation, it is under the direct ray of Buddhi, if he wants to assimilate. If he does not want to, it is his look out; his personality will drop out. It is only in the case which assimilates Buddhi that it really lives throughout, and will belong to that string of personality which forms consciousness after the Manvantara is at an end – the direct, immortal ray.
Mr. Old: I thought I was quite right in saying Buddhi was a ray from Atma; it is that vehicle.
Mme. Blavatsky: You would not call this lamp a ray of the flame that burns in it, would you?
Mr. Old: Certainly not.
Mme. Blavatsky: That is Buddhi, if you please – the vehicle. It is not a ray; it is only that through which that ray passes. It is the agent of that light that it throws on Buddhi.
How is it that we read in all those books about Nirvana and Atma, when they say: “Does Parabrahm exist? It does not. Then Parabrahm is not. Yes it is, but it does not exist.”
Mr. Old: You say the incarnating ego consists of Buddhi-Manas, or rather Atma-Buddhi.
Mme. Blavatsky: It consists only of itself.
Mr. Kingsland: In the aspect in which we are discussing, it is simply the assimilation of the higher Manas.
Mr. Old: What assimilates it?
Mme. Blavatsky: Consciousness. It is universal consciousness, which falling into matter becomes personal consciousness in its last manifestation on earth. And when it gets rid of all the matter that impedes it, when it becomes more and more pure, and finally it reaches its highest manifestation, or whatever you call it, then it gradually falls into the universal consciousness; it is again reabsorbed into universal consciousness. That is what Manas is.
But as it falls lower and lower, it would be nothing but a material entity – I don’t mean material physically, but material de facto, nothing but a bundle of nothing – if it were not under the ray of this Atma-Buddhi.
But Atma-Buddhi certainly does not follow the reincarnating ego. Simply, once it is reincarnated, they are again in the region of the universe in which there is Atma and Buddhi, therefore, we say that Atma and Buddhi exist in every man.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 