“Enq: The Egyptians revered Nature-Spirits, and deified even onions: your Hindus are idolaters, to this day; the Zoroastrians worshipped, and do still, worship, the Sun; and the best Greek philosophers were either dreamers or materialists – witness Plato and Democritus. How can you compare?
Theo: It may be so in your modern Christian and even Scientific catechism; it is not so for unbiased minds. The Egyptians revered the “One-Only-One”, as Nout; and it is from this world that Anaxagoras got his denomination Nous, or as he calls it, “the Mind or Spirit Self-potent”, the leading motor, or primum-mobile of all.
With him the Nous was God, and the logos was man, his emanation. The Nous is the spirit (whether in Kosmos or in man), and the logos, whether Universe or astral body, the emanation of the former, the physical body being merely the animal.
Our external powers perceive phenomena; our Nous alone is able to recognize their noumena. It is the logos alone, or the noumenon, that survives, because it is immortal in its very nature and essence, and the logos in man is the Eternal Ego, that which reincarnates and lasts for ever.
But how can the evanescent or external shadow, the temporary clothing of that divine Emanation which returns to the source whence it proceeded, be that which is raised in incorruptibility?”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 