# Letters That Have Helped Me

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> LETTERS
>                                  THAT
>                             HAVE HELPED ME
> 
>                               COMPILED BY
>                            _JASPER NIEMAND_
> 
>                        Reprinted from "The Path"
> 
>                             SEVENTH EDITION
> 
>                                   THE
>                      UNITED LODGE OF THEOSOPHISTS
>                         Los Angeles, California
>                                  1920
> 
>                                   To
>                                Z. L. Z.
>                             the Greatest of
>                         the Exiles, and Friend
>                       of all Creatures, from his
>                     Younger Brother, the Compiler.
>                             JASPER NIEMAND
>                                  1891
> 
> PREFACE
> 
>     "_Seeking for freedom I go to that God who is the light of his own
>     thoughts. A man who knows him truly passes over death; there is no
>     other path to go_"
> 
>   --UPANISHADS.
> 
> In the _Path_ for May, 1887, we find these words: "We need a
> literature, not solely for highly intellectual persons, but of a more
> simple character, which attempts to appeal to ordinary common-sense
> minds who are really fainting for such moral and mental assistance as
> is not reached by the more pretentious works."
> 
> The experience of one student is, on the whole, the experience of all.
> Details differ, however. Some are made more instantly rich than others:
> they are those who put forth more vigorous and generous effort; or they
> have a Karmic store which brings aid. What Theosophists know as Karma,
> or the law of spiritual action and reaction, decides this, as it works
> on all the planes, physical, moral, mental, psychical, and spiritual
> alike. Our Karma may be worked out on any one of these planes when our
> life is chiefly concentrated upon it, no matter upon what other plane
> any special initiative impulse or branch of it originated.
> 
> The writer, when first he became a Theosophical student, had the aid
> of an advanced occultist in his studies. This friend sent him, among
> others, the letters which, in the hope that they may assist others as
> they have the original recipient, are here published. They are not
> exhaustive treatises; they are hints given by one who knew that the
> first need of a student is to learn _how to think_. The true direction
> is pointed out, and the student is left to clarify his own perceptions,
> to draw upon and enlarge his own intuitions, and to develop, as every
> created thing must at last develop, by his own inward exertions. Such
> students have passed the point where their external environment can
> affect their growth favorably. They may learn from it, but the time has
> also come to resist it and turn to the internal adjustment to higher
> relations only.
> 
> The brevity of these letters should not mislead the reader. Every
> statement in them is a statement of law. They point to causes of which
> life is an effect; that life arising from the action of Spirit in
> Nature, and which we must understand as it is manifested within us
> before we can advance on the Path. There is a scientific meaning within
> all these devotional or ethical injunctions, for the Wisdom-Religion
> never relaxes her hold upon Science or attempts to dissever an effect
> from its cause. Most of these admonitions have their base in the
> constitution of the Archæus, or World-Soul, and the correlation of its
> energies; others, still, adhere in the Eternal.
> 
> No less should the reader guard himself against a slight estimate
> arising from the exquisite modesty of Z. An occultist is never so truly
> a man of power as when he has wholly learned and exhibits this truth:
> 
> "And the power the disciple shall desire is that which shall make him
> appear as nothing _in the eyes of men_."
> 
> The inner eye, the _power of seeing_, looks deeper into the source
> of a man's knowledge and takes it at its true value. Those men who
> are sharers in the Divine, whose first office is to give, are often
> protected from the demands and curiosity of the careless by a simple
> exterior which deceives the worldly sense. Some men are great because
> of the Power which stands behind them, the divine energies which flow
> through them; they are great through having learned how to receive this
> celestial influx from higher spheres of Being; they are the appointed
> ministrants, the true servitors of the Law and pupils of Masters whose
> office is humanitarian and universal.
> 
> Such aid is never volunteered; it follows the Karmic behest, and, when
> given, leaves the student free to follow it or not, as his intuitions
> may direct. There is not a shadow or vestige of _authority_ in the
> matter, as the world understands the word _authority_. Those who travel
> the unknown way send messages back, and he who can receives them. Only
> a few of the first steps are here recorded and the first impediments
> surmounted. No hints of magic lore are to be found; no formulas
> of creed or occult powers; the questions of an awakening soul are
> answered, and the pilgrim is shown where lies the entrance to the Path.
> The world at large seeks the facts of occult science, but the student
> who has resolved to attain desires to find the true road. What may seem
> to others as mere ethics is to him practical instruction, for as he
> follows it he soon perceives its relation to facts and laws which he
> is enabled to verify, and what seemed to him the language of devotion
> merely, is found to be that of science; but the science is spiritual,
> for the Great Cause is pure Spirit.
> 
> Many students must at some time stand where the writer then stood, at
> the beginning of the way. For all these this correspondence is made
> public, and they are urged to look within the printed words for their
> imperishable meaning. They may be cheered to find the footprints of
> a comrade upon the rugged Path, above which the light of Truth ever
> shines. Yet even this light is not always a clear splendor. It may
> seem "in the daytime a cloud, and by night a pillar of fire." We must
> question every external aspect, even that of Faith itself, for the
> secret and germ of things lies at their core. Let us purify even our
> Faith; let us seek Truth herself, and not our preconceptions of Truth.
> In her mirror we shall never see our own familiar face: that which we
> see is still ourselves, because our real self is truth.
> 
> As the Theosophical movement gathers new momentum, fresh recruits may
> be aided by those letters which so greatly sustained me, or encouraged
> by some copartnership of thought, and that, too, in the real issue
> confronting them. We first take this issue to be the acquirement of
> occult knowledge. Soon we find that the meaning of all really informed
> occult writers eludes us. We find that books only serve to remind us of
> what we knew in the long past, perhaps when "journeying with Deity",
> and the echoes awakened within us are so faint that they are rarely to
> be caught. Whether we study philosophies, metaphysics, physics, ethics,
> harmony, astrology, natural sciences, astralism, magnetism or what not,
> we meet with endless contradiction and differentiation; we forever
> require to strike the balance of our own intuition. We discover that
> the final word has not yet been _written down_ upon any of the higher
> subjects (unless it be on mathematics, and scarcely on that), and that
> all our learning is but a finger-post to that supreme knowledge of
> Truth which is only found and closely guarded within the human heart.
> Thrown back upon our inner perceptions for continual readjustment, on
> every side of experience this warning confronts us: _Stand ready to
> abandon all thou hast learned!_ Not knowing the one center, we cannot
> thoroughly know any sub-center. The cause unknown, effects mislead us.
> Then we turn to that mysterious center whereby the One is manifest in
> man, and we begin the study of the heart, both in itself and in the
> life it has instituted about us.
> 
> To be put into more direct communication with the world of cause
> is now the student's most pressing need. One thing alone prevents
> this,--himself. He is of such gross fibre that he cannot be "porous
> to thought, bibulous of the sea of light". To the refinement and
> dispersal of this lower self--of the man he now takes himself to be--he
> then directs his will. Each man has a different mode of doing this, but
> each who advances at all finds that with every new period of his inner
> life a new self rises before him. Looking back over a group of weeks or
> months, he is amazed to see what manner of man he was then, and smiles
> that pitying smile which we bestow upon the faded letters of our youth.
> 
> Yet some there be who ossify there in their rut; let them struggle
> mightily to break up the mass which has resisted all environment, all
> change, all the conditions of progressive life. They have done for
> themselves what the enemy strives to do for others; they are the rock
> in their own path.
> 
> What our Eastern brothers call "the sheaths of the heart" fall away
> one by one; when the last bursts open there is a silence, the silence
> of the mystic death. But "the dead shall arise," and from that death
> springs up the first tender growth of eternal life.
> 
> Up to this point we shall not travel in the ensuing pages. Yet having
> realized the real issue so forcibly that his whole strength was at the
> start directed towards self-knowledge and the right use of Thought, the
> writer offers a part of his first instructions to those of his comrades
> who, single-hearted and of royal Faith, hold Truth to be dearer than
> all material life and seek it on the hidden way. There is no tie in
> the universe equal to that which binds such comrades together. It has
> been forged in the fires of unspeakable anguish; it has been rivetted
> by a dauntless purpose and a unique, because Divine, Love. The fierce
> hatred of seen and unseen worlds cannot tamper with it so long as a
> man remains true to himself, for this larger life is himself, and as
> he grows towards it his self-imposed fetters fall away and he stands,
> at last, a free soul, in the celestial Light which is Freedom itself,
> obedient only to the Law of its own divine Being. To reach it, let us
> obey the law of our own Being, for, truly, _Being is One_.
> 
> My comrades, wherever you are, I salute you.
> 
>   JASPER NIEMAND, F. T. S.
> 
> LETTERS THAT HAVE HELPED ME
> 
> I.
> 
>   MY DEAR JASPER:
> 
> Now let me elevate a signal. Do not think much of me, please. Think
> kindly of me; but oh, my friend, direct your thoughts to the Eternal
> Truth. I am, like you, struggling on the road. Perhaps a veil might
> in an instant fall down from your spirit, and you would be long ahead
> of us all. The reason you have had help is that in other lives you
> gave it to others. In every effort you made to lighten another mind
> and open it to Truth, you were helped yourself. Those pearls you found
> for another and gave to him, you really retained for yourself in the
> act of benevolence. For when one lives thus to help others, he is
> thereby putting in practice the rule to try and "kill out all sense of
> separateness," and thus gets little by little in possession of the true
> light.
> 
> Never lose, then, that attitude of mind. Hold fast in silence to all
> that is your own, for you will need it in the fight; but never, _never_
> desire to get knowledge or power for any other purpose than to give it
> on the altar, for thus alone can it be saved to you.
> 
> So many are there around me who are ardent desirers and seekers,
> devotees; but they are doing it because the possession seems valuable.
> Perhaps I see in you--I hope I mistake not--a pure desire to seek
> Knowledge for its own sake, and that all others may be benefitted. So
> I would point out to you the only royal road, the one vehicle. Do all
> those acts, physical, mental, moral, for the reason that they must be
> done, instantly resigning all interest in them, offering them up upon
> the altar. What altar? Why, the great spiritual altar, which is, if
> one desires it, in the heart. Yet still use earthly discrimination,
> prudence, and wisdom.
> 
> It is not that you must rush madly or boldly out _to do_, _to do_. Do
> what you find to do. Desire ardently to do it, and even when you shall
> not have succeeded in carrying anything out but some small duties,
> some words of warning, your strong desire will strike like Vulcan upon
> other hearts in the world, and suddenly you will find that done which
> you had longed to be the doer of. Then rejoice that another had been so
> fortunate as to make such a meritorious Karma. Thus, like the rivers
> running into the unswelling, passive ocean, will your desires enter
> into your heart.
> 
> I find all your remarks just; and besides, there seems to be a real
> spirit behind them. Do not fear nor fail because you feel dark and
> heavy. The very rage you feel will break the shrine that covers the
> mystery after a while. No one can really help you. No one can open your
> doors. You locked them up, and only you can open them. When you open
> any door, beyond it you find others standing there who had passed you
> long ago, but now, unable to proceed, they are there waiting; others
> are there waiting for you. Then you come, and, opening a door, those
> waiting disciples perhaps may pass on; thus on and on. What a privilege
> this, to reflect that we may perhaps be able to help those who seemed
> greater than ourselves!
> 
> O, what a groan Nature gives to see the heavy Karma which man has piled
> upon himself and all the creatures of the three worlds! That deep sigh
> pierces through my heart. How can the load be lifted? Am I to stand for
> myself, while the few strong hands of Blessed Masters and Their friends
> hold back the awful cloud? Such a vow I registered ages ago to help
> them, and I must. Would to great Karma I could do more! And you! do
> what you can.
> 
> Place your only faith, reliance, and trust on Karma.
> 
>   Z.
> 
> II.
> 
>   MY DEAR BROTHER:
> 
> Your last long letter came duly to hand and has been read with much
> pleasure. It is quite rare to find one willing to enter this movement
> on the basis you have laid down for yourself, and my previous letter
> was written in order to see what your attitude really was, and also
> because I then felt from your writing that you were really in earnest.
> And before yours of to-day, I fell to thinking about you and wondering
> whether a future of power, a brilliancy of knowledge, was not your
> aspiration, and what effect certain occurrences would have upon that.
> 
> Judge, then, my pleasure in reading your words exactly answering my
> mental inquiries of yesterday and placing you in the right position.
> 
> It is true, we must aspire ardently, and blessed is the one who, after
> the first aspiration, is wise enough to see the Truth.
> 
> Three qualities forever encompass us: _Satwa_ (truth and stability),
> _Rajas_ (action, war, aspiration, ambition), _Tamas_ (indifference,
> ignorance, darkness).
> 
> None may be ignored. So the path lies from Tamas, up through war,
> ambition, and aspiration, to Satwa, or truth and stability. We are now
> in Rajasika regions, sometimes lifting our fingers up to the hem of the
> garment of Satwa, ever aspiring, ever trying to purify our thoughts
> and free ourselves from the attachment to actions and objects. So, of
> course, the ardent student naturally aspires for power. This is wise.
> But he must soon begin to see what he must do for real progress. For
> continual aspiration for power merely is sure to sow for us the giant
> weed of self, which is the giant spoken of in _Light on the Path_.
> 
> As to the Theosophical Society, all should be admitted, for we can
> refuse _no one_. If this is a Universal Brotherhood, we can make no
> distinctions; but we can put ourselves right in the beginning by seeing
> that people do not enter with mistaken notions of what we have. And
> yet with all our precautions, how often we find persons who are not
> really sincere themselves judging us by their standard, unbelieving in
> our sincerity. They enter; they find that each must study for himself
> and that no guides are told off to each one; then they are disgusted.
> They forget that "the kingdom of heaven must be taken by violence." We
> have also had to suffer from our friends. People who have joined us in
> secret like Nicodemus; they have stood idly by, waiting for the Cause
> to get strong or to get fashionable, and leaving all the hard fighting
> to be done by a few earnest men who defied the hosts of Materialism
> and of Conventionality. Had they spoken for their Cause, more earnest
> people would long ago have heard of the movement, instead of being kept
> away until now, like yourself, for want of knowledge that it existed.
> 
> You will find that other members care for nothing but Theosophy, and
> are yet forced by circumstances to work in other fields as well. What
> moments they have left are devoted to the Cause, and in consequence
> they have no unoccupied hours; each moment, day and evening, is filled
> up, and therefore they are happy. Yet they are unhappy that they
> cannot give their entire working time to the Cause in which some have
> been from the beginning. They feel, like Claude St. Martin, a burning
> desire within them to get these truths to the ears of all men. They
> are truths, and you are in the right path. In America it is as easy
> to find the Light of Lights as in India, but all around you are those
> who do not know these things, who never heard of them, and yet many
> of our fellow members are only anxious to study for their own benefit.
> Sometimes, if it were not for my reliance on those Great Beings
> who beckon me ever on, I would faint, and, leaving these people to
> themselves, rush off into the forest. So many people like Theosophy,
> and yet they at once wish to make it select and of high tone. It is for
> all men. It is for the common people, who are ever with us. Others,
> again, come in and wait like young birds for food to be put into them:
> they _will not think_, and ages must pass before they will progress.
> 
> You misunderstood a little the words "Do not think much of me."
> Underline "much," but not "think." You will please think all the
> thoughts you will of me, but do not place me on any pinnacle: that's
> all I meant.
> 
> A constant endeavor towards perfecting the mere mortal machine is folly.
> Thereby we sometimes fail to live up to our own intuitions. This habit
> goes on for some time, but will get weaker as other senses (inner ones)
> begin to appear. Yet know the new fully before being off with the old.
> 
> Inasmuch as we learn almost solely from each other--as we are all here
> for each other--the question of the effect of affinities upon our acts
> and thoughts is enormous and wide. It anon saves us, and anon damns.
> For we may meet in our lives a person who has a remarkable effect,
> either for good or ill, because of the affinities engendered in past
> lives. And now our eyes are open, we act to-day for the future.
> 
> That you may pass beyond the sea of darkness, I offer you my life and
> help.
> 
>   Z.
> 
> III.
> 
> Say, Brother Jasper, are you tired? I am. Not tired of fate or of the
> great "Leaders of the World," but with all these people who gape and
> gape and are (excuse me) so Americanly "independent," as if men were
> ever independent of each other.
> 
> You ask about the "moment of choice." It is made up of all moments.
> It is not in space or time, but is the aggregation of those moments
> flying by us each instant. It is referred to in _Esoteric Buddhism_
> as a period not yet arrived for the race, when it will as a whole be
> compelled to make choice for good or evil. But any single individual
> can bring on the period for himself. When it will or has come, the
> uninstructed cannot tell. For the student of occultism it may come in
> the next instant, or it may come one hundred lives after. But it cannot
> come this instant unless all the previous lives have led up to it. Yet
> as regards the student, even if it be presented to him and he refuse,
> he will be brought to the choice in future existences, with the whole
> body of his race. Race influences are insidious and powerful. For
> instance, my race has its peculiarities deeply seated and inherited
> from an extraordinary past. I must be under their influence in this
> body as a necessary part of my experience. In another life I might
> have been a prosaic Hottentot, or an Englishman, and in a succeeding
> one I might be under the influence of other race peculiarities. Those
> influences are, then, guiding me every moment, and each thought I have
> adds to them now, for either my own future use or for some other person
> who will come under the power of part of the force generated now by me.
> 
> As to the sub-conscious mind. It is difficult to explain. I find
> constantly that I have ideas that internally I thoroughly understand,
> and yet can find no language for them. Call it sub-conscious if you
> like. It is there and can be affected; indeed, it is affected every
> moment. It is a nearness to the universal mind. So if I desire to
> influence--say your mind--I do not formulate your sub-conscious plane,
> but firmly and kindly think of you and think of the subject I wish you
> to think of. This must reach you. If I am selfish, then it has more
> difficulty to get there; but if it be brotherly, then it gets there
> more easily, being in harmony with the universal mind and the Law. The
> Psychical Society speaks of it, and says that the influence "emerges
> into the lower mind" by one or more of the channels. But they do not
> know what those "channels" are, or even if they do exist. In fact, the
> whole subject of mind is only faintly understood in the West. They say
> "mind," meaning the vast range and departments of that which they call
> mind, whereas there must be a need for the names of those departments.
> When the true ideas are grasped, the names will follow. Meanwhile we
> must be satisfied with "mind" as including the whole thing. But it does
> not. Certainly it is not ordinary mental motion--ratiocination--to
> grasp in an instant a whole subject, premises and conclusions, without
> stopping to reason. It cannot be called a _picture_, for with some
> it comes as an idea, and not as a picture. Memory. What is that? Is
> it brain-impression; or similarity of vibration, recognized upon
> being repeated and then producing a picture? If so, then the power to
> recognize the vibration as the same as before is separate from the
> matter which vibrates. And if the power inhere in the brain cells,
> how is it possible, when we know they are constantly being changed?
> Yet memory is perfect, no matter what happens. That it is above brain
> is clear, because a man may be killed by having his brain blown to
> atoms, and yet his "shell" can give all the incidents of his life, and
> they are not taken from the brain, for that is dead. Where, then, is
> the sub-conscious mind? And where are the channels, and how are they
> connected? I think through the heart, and that the heart is the key to
> it all, and that the brain is only the servant of the heart,[A] for
> remember that there is in it the "small dwarf who sits at the centre."
> Think it out on that line now for yourself--or any other line that you
> may choose, but _think_.
> 
>   As ever,
>   Z.
> 
> [Footnote A: Not the physical heart, but the real centre of life in
> man.--J. N.]
> 
> IV.
> 
>   DEAR SIR AND BROTHER:
> 
> In cogitating lately I thought of you in respect to some of my own
> thoughts. I was reading a book and looking around within myself to see
> how I could enlarge my idea of brotherhood. Practice in benevolence
> will not give it its full growth. I had to find some means of reaching
> further, and struck on this, which is as old as old age.
> 
> I am not separate from anything. "I am that which is." That is, I am
> Brahma, and Brahma is everything. But being in an illusionary world,
> I am surrounded by certain appearances that seem to make me separate.
> So I will proceed to mentally state and accept that I am all these
> illusions. I am my friends,--and then I went to them in general and in
> particular. I am my enemies; then I felt them all. I am the poor and
> the wicked; I am the ignorant. Those moments of intellectual gloom are
> the moments when I am influenced by those ignorant ones who are myself.
> All this in my nation. But there are many nations, and to those I go in
> mind; I feel and I am them all, with what they hold of superstition or
> of wisdom or evil. All, all is myself. Unwisely, I was then about to
> stop, but the whole is Brahma, so I went to the Devas and Asuras;[B]
> the elemental world, that too is myself. After pursuing this course
> awhile I found it easier to return to a contemplation of all men as
> myself. It is a good method and ought to be pursued, for it is a step
> toward getting into contemplation of the All. I tried last night to
> reach up to Brahma, but darkness is about his pavilion.
> 
> Now what does all this insanity sound like? I'll tell you what: if it
> were not for this insanity I would go insane. But shall I not take
> heart, even when a dear friend deserts me and stabs me deep, when I
> know that he is myself?
> 
>   NAMASTAE!
> 
>   Z.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> I found the above letter still more valuable when I remembered that
> Brahma is "the universal expansive force of Nature"--from _Brih_, to
> expand; and so stated in an article by H. P. Blavatsky in _Five Years
> of Theosophy_. In the _Dhammapada_ we are told to think ourselves to be
> the sun and stars, the wet and dry, heat and cold; in short, to feel
> all experience, for we can live all out in the mind.
> 
>   J. N.
> 
> [Footnote B: Gods and demons.--J. N.]
> 
> V.
> 
>   DEAR JASPER:
> 
> I wish I could answer your letter as you ought to have it done. But I
> feel my inability. However, our duty is to never consider our ability,
> but to do what comes to be done in whatever way we can, no matter how
> inadequate the work appears to others. When we stop to consider our
> weakness, we think, by comparison, of how another would do it. Our
> _only right is in the act itself_. The consequences are in the great
> Brahm. So I will just say what comes.
> 
> I feel the sadness in your letter, but know that you will rebound from
> that. Do not let the sadness of knowledge create despair; that sadness
> is less than the joy of Truth. Abstract Truth, even, has necessarily
> in it all the mercy there is in the whole. Its sternness is only a
> reflection from our own imperfections, which make us recognize the
> stern aspect alone. We are not the only ones to suffer upon the Path.
> Like ourselves, Masters have wept, though They do not now weep. One of
> them wrote some years ago: "Do you suppose we have not passed through
> many times worse trials than you now think you are in?" The Master
> often seems to reject and to hide his (spiritual) face, in order that
> the disciple may try. On the doors and walls of the temple the word
> "TRY" is written. ("The Brothers" is a better designation than Mahâtmas
> or Masters.)
> 
> Along the path of the true student is sadness, but also there is
> great joy and hope. Sadness comes from a more just appreciation of
> the difficulties in one's way, and of the great wickedness of the
> individual and collective heart of man. But look at the great fountain
> of hope and of joy in the consideration that the Brothers exist,
> that They were men too; They had to fight the fight; They triumphed,
> and They work for those left after Them. Then beyond Them are "the
> Fathers," that is, the spirits of "just men made perfect," those Who
> lived and worked for humanity ages ago and Who are now out of our
> sphere, but Who nevertheless still influence us in that Their spiritual
> forces flow down upon this earth for all pure souls. Their immediate
> influence is felt by Masters, and by us through the latter.
> 
> Now, as you say, it is all Faith; but what is Faith? It is the
> intuitional feeling--"_that is true_." So formulate to yourself certain
> things as true that you feel to be true, and then increase your faith
> in them.
> 
> Don't be anxious. Don't get "maddened." Because in the fact that you
> are "maddened" (of course in the metaphorical sense) is found the
> proof that you are anxious. In a worldly sense it is perhaps well to
> be anxious about a highly important matter, but in occultism it is
> different, for the Law takes no account of our projects and objects,
> or our desire to be ahead or behind. So, if we are anxious, we raise a
> barrier against progress, by perturbation and straining harshly. You
> wrote to B. that what is his, is his. Then the converse is true; what
> is not, is not. Why don't you take your own medicine?
> 
>   Yours,
>   Z.
> 
> VI.
> 
>   DEAR JASPER:
> 
> It is a great advance that you hear the bells, which few hear, and
> evidence that you are where you can hear them; that is a great deal
> indeed. Do not look for the voice of the bells, but regard the _ideas_
> which thereupon come into the head, and apply to them the touchstone of
> your own Soul, just as you advised B. The fact that you feel "dead" is
> something you should not worry about. It is likely that you are under
> the operation of a law which prevails in nature, that you will find
> referred to in an article in _Path_ Magazine for April, '86, page 14.
> It is that the soul goes to a new place or new surroundings and becomes
> silent there awhile--what you call "dead"--and draws strength there,
> begins to get accustomed to its new surroundings, after which it begins
> to move about. This is seen in ordinary life in the bashfulness of a
> boy. That is, the bashfulness is the shyness felt in new surroundings,
> and is just what happens when the soul goes to a new place or into new
> surroundings. There can be no loss or detriment to our efforts. Every
> aspiration higher brightens up the road connecting the higher and lower
> self. No doubt of that. It is not _what_ is done, but the spirit in
> which the least thing is done that is counted. Hear the word of the
> Master.
> 
> "He who does the best he knows how and that he can do, does enough for
> us."
> 
> The mere fact that a man appreciates these truths and feels these
> aspirations is proof that he is on the right road. It is well to tread
> it _now_. We will not always live. Death must come. How much better,
> then, to embrace death while thus at work than to swerve off only to
> be brought up with suddenness in after lives. Immediate rebirth is for
> those who are always working with their hearts on Master's work and
> free from self interest.
> 
> The one Spirit is in all, is the property of each, therefore It is
> always there, always with us, and, by reflecting on that, little room
> is left for sorrow or delusion. If we believe that the soul of all is
> measured by the whole of Time and not by a part, then we care not for
> these moments which relate alone to our body. If we live in our hearts
> we soon prove that space and time exist not. Nothing foreign to Master
> enters there; our faults are not there. The heart reaches Him always,
> and no doubt He replies. He does I know. He helps us while He leaves us
> to ourselves. He needs not to stoop to see our devotion, for that is of
> a supernal quality and reaches anywhere.
> 
> No, I do not say nor have I said that you ought to do something other
> than you do. We each do what we can. None of us can be the judge of
> any creature existing; so I do not judge you in the least respect.
> Your life may in the great sum total be greater than any life I ever
> led or that any one has led. Whether you are in America, Europe, or
> India makes no difference. This is seeking conditions. I have come
> to understand that Masters themselves must have worked themselves up
> out of much worse conditions than we are in. No matter where we are,
> the same spirit pervades all and is accessible. What need, then, to
> change places? We do not change ourselves by moving the body to another
> _locus_. We only put it under a different influence. And in order to
> change we must have got to dislike the place we moved from. That is
> _attachment by opposites_, and that will produce detriment, as does all
> that disturbs the equilibrium of the soul. You know the same result is
> produced by two exact opposites, and thus extremes meet.
> 
> That hot flame you speak of is one of the experiences, as are also the
> sounds. There are so many, many of these things. Often they result
> from extreme tension or vibration in the aura of an aspirant of pure
> devotion. They are himself, and he should be on his guard against
> taking them for wonders. Often they are "apparitions in Brahm." They
> are like new lights and sights to a mariner on an unfamiliar coast.
> They will go on, or alter, or stop. You are only to carefully note
> them, and "do not exhibit wonder nor form association."
> 
> I cannot say more. All help you extend to any other soul is help to
> yourself. It is our duty to help all, and we must begin on those
> nearest to us, for to run abroad to souls we might possibly help we
> again forsake our present duty. It is better to die in our own duty,
> however mean, than to try another one. So lift your head and look
> around upon the hulks of past imagined faults. They were means and
> teachers. Cast all doubt, all fear, all regret aside, and freely take
> of truth what you may contain right on every step. It will thus be
> well. Eternal Truth is one and indivisible, and we may get from the
> Fathers (Pitris) flashes now and then of what is true.
> 
> Words are things. With me and in fact. Upon the lower plane of social
> intercourse they are things, but soulless and dead because that
> convention in which they have their birth has made abortions of them.
> But when we step away from that conventionality they become alive in
> proportion to the reality of the thought--and its purity--that is
> behind them. So in communication between two students they are things,
> and those students must be careful that the ground of intercourse is
> fully understood. Let us use with care those living messengers called
> words.
> 
> Where I see you mistaken I will speak, to warn my Brother who
> temporarily knows not. For did I not call on the bugle, perhaps other
> things might switch him off to where perhaps for the time he would be
> pleased, but would again be sorry, and then when his mistake was plain
> he would justly sigh to me across dark centuries of separation that I
> had been false to my duty of warning.
> 
>   As ever,
>   Z.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> The new plane to which the soul may go, referred to in this letter,
> is the astral plane. It is the plane next above the material one,
> and consists of a subtile order of matter. When a student turns his
> attention to the higher life and desires intensely to find the way,
> his soul has begun to awaken and to speak. It has heard the voice of
> the spirit. Then the inner senses begin to unfold, at first ever so
> gently, so tenderly, we scarce hear their report. But the soul has
> then turned its attention to the astral plane, that being the next one
> to be learned on the way upward; its energy is transferred from the
> material plane to this one, and we have an influx of many confused
> dreams and strange experiences, awake and asleep. These may or may not
> continue; all depends upon the individual soul and upon Karma. It is a
> most confusing plane, and, generally speaking, we may say that those
> students are more fortunate who make a marked degree of progress in
> spiritual things without having any conscious experience of the astral
> plane. For then they can later on learn it _from above_, instead of
> from below, and with far less danger to themselves. The whole must
> be known, but we may progress in various ways, even by discontinuous
> degrees, only then we must go back later on, to what we passed by.
> Such a going back does not imply detriment or loss of degree, for such
> cannot be lost when once gained in reality.
> 
> With regard to the astral plane being a more subtile order of matter,
> this truth is often denied by clairvoyants and untrained seers. They do
> not distinguish between the psychic senses and the spiritual. They can
> see through gross matter, such as a wall, the human body, and so forth,
> as if it were glass, but they cannot see through astral substance, and
> hence they believe its forms and all the pictures and shapes in the
> astral light to be real. Only the adept sees through these illusions,
> which are far more powerful because composed of a subtile order of
> matter: subtile energies, fine forces have a highly increased rate
> of power over grosser ones. The adept has at his command the rate of
> vibration which dispels them or drives them asunder. In speaking of
> the astral plane, I mean the lower soul plane, and not that higher and
> purified quality which the author of _Light on the Path_ calls the
> "divine astral."
> 
> By anxiety we exert the constrictive power of egoism, which densifies
> and perturbs our magnetic sphere, rendering us less permeable to the
> efflux from above.
> 
>   J. N.
> 
> VII.
> 
>   DEAR JASPER:
> 
> I have your letter, Comrade, in which you say how much you wish there
> were some Adepts sent to the United States to help all true students.
> Yet you know well They do not need to come here in person, in order
> to help. By going carefully over your letter there appears to be the
> possibility of the seed of doubt in your heart as to the wise ordering
> of all things, for all are under the Law, and Masters first of all.
> Mind, I only say the "_possibility of the seed of doubt_." For I judge
> from my own experience. Well do I remember when I thought as you say,
> how much better 'twould be if some one were there.
> 
> If that is allowed to remain it will metamorphose itself into a seed
> and afterward a plant of doubt. Cast it right out! It does not now
> show as seed of doubt, but it will be a case of metamorphosis, and the
> change would be so great as to deceive you into thinking it were never
> from the same root. The best stand to take is that it is all right
> as it is now, and when the time comes for it to be better it will be
> so. Meanwhile we have a duty to see that we do all we can _in our own
> place_ as we see best, undisturbed and undismayed by aught.
> 
> How much I have in years gone away said and thought those very words of
> yours and to no profit! Why do you care what becomes of a million human
> beings? Are not millions going to death daily with no one to tell them
> of all this? But did you suppose that all this was not provided for?
> "And heavenly death itself is also well provided for." Now, then, you
> and I must learn to look on the deaths or the famishing of millions of
> beings with unfaltering heart. Else we had better give it all up now.
> Consider that at this moment are so many persons in various far distant
> places who cannot ever hear these truths. Do you grieve for them? Do
> you realize their state? No; you realize only partially the same thing
> among those with whom it was your present lot to be born--I mean the
> nation. Do you want to do more than your best? Do you covet the work of
> another? No; you do not. You will sit calmly where you are, then, and,
> with an unaffected heart, picture to yourself the moral and physical
> deaths and famines which are now without the possibility of prevention
> or amelioration. Your faith will know that _all_ is provided for.
> 
> I do not say that you must attain to that calm _now_ or give up seeking
> the Way; but I do say that you must admit that such an attainment must
> be absolutely tried for. For of such is the trial, and why should we
> care? _We must some day be able to stand any shock_, and to get ready
> for that time we must be now triumphant over some smaller things. Among
> others is the very position you and I are now in; that is, standing
> our ground and feeling ourselves so much and so awfully alone. But
> we know that They have left us a commandment. That we keep, although
> now and then objects, senses, men, and time conspire to show us that
> Masters laugh at us. It is all a delusion. It is only one consequence
> of our past Karma now burning itself out before our eyes. The whole
> phantasmagoria is only a picture thrown up against the Screen of Time
> by the mighty magic of Prakriti (Nature). But you and I are superior
> to Nature. Why, then, mind these pictures? Part of that very screen,
> however, being our own mortal bodies, we can't help the _sensation_
> derived therefrom through our connection with the body. It is only
> another form of cold or heat; and what are they? They are vibrations;
> they are _felt_; they do not really exist in themselves. So we can
> calmly look on the picture as it passes fragmentarily through those
> few square feet contained within the superficial boundaries of our
> elementary frame. We _must_ do so, for it is a copy of the greater, of
> the universal form. For we otherwise will never be able to understand
> the greater picture. Now, then, is there not many a cubic inch of your
> own body which is entitled to know and to be the Truth in greater
> measure than now? And yet you grieve for the ignorance of so many other
> human beings! Grieve on; and I grieve too. Do not imagine that I _am_
> what is there written. Not so. I am grieving just the same outwardly,
> but inwardly trying what I have just told you. And what a dream all
> this is. Here I am writing you so seriously, and now I see that you
> know it all quite well and much better than I do.
> 
> Yet, my dear Jasper, now and then I feel--not Doubt of Masters who
> hear any heartbeat in the right direction, but--a terrible Despair of
> these people. Oh, my God! The age is black as hell, hard as iron. It
> is iron, it is Kali Yuga. Kali is always painted black. Yet Kali Yuga
> by its very nature, and terrible, swift momentum, permits one to do
> more with his energies in a shorter time than in any other Yuga. But
> heavens, what a combat! Demons from all the spheres; waving clouds of
> smoky Karma; dreadful shapes; stupefying exhalations from every side.
> Exposed at each turn to new dangers. Imagine a friend walking with you
> who you see is in the same road, but all at once he is permeated by
> these things of death and shows a disposition to obstruct your path,
> the path of himself. Yes; the gods are asleep for awhile. But noble
> hearts still walk here, fighting over again the ancient fight. They
> seek each other, so as to be of mutual help. We will not fail them. To
> fail would be nothing, but to stop working for Humanity and Brotherhood
> would be awful. We cannot: we will not. Yet we have not a clear road.
> No, it is not clear. I am content if I can see the next step in advance
> only. You seek _The Warrior_. He is here, somewhere. No one can find
> him for you. You must do that. Still He fights on. No doubt He sees you
> and tries to make you see Him. Still He fights on and on.
> 
> How plainly the lines are drawn, how easily the bands are seen. Some
> want a certificate, or an uttered pledge, or a secret meeting, or
> a declaration, but without any of that I see those who--up to this
> hour--I find are my "companions." They need no such folly. They are
> there; they hear and understand the battle-cry, they recognize the
> sign. Now where are the rest? Many have I halted, and spoken the exact
> words to them, have exposed to them my real heart, and they heard
> nothing: they thought that heart was something else. I sigh to think
> how many. Perhaps I overlooked some; perhaps some did not belong to me.
> There are some who partly understood the words and the sign, but they
> are not sure of themselves; they know that they partake of the nature,
> but are still held back.
> 
> Do you not see, Jasper, that your place in the ranks is well known? You
> need no assurances because they are _within_ you. Now what a dreadful
> letter; but it is all true.
> 
> A student of occultism after a while gets into what we may call a
> psychic whirl, or a vortex of occultism. At first he is affected by the
> feelings and influences of those about him. That begins to be pushed
> off and he passes into the whirl caused by the mighty effort of his
> Higher Self to make him remember his past lives. Then those past lives
> affect him. They become like clouds throwing shadows on his path. Now
> they seem tangible and then fade away, only a cloud. Then they begin to
> affect his impulse to action in many various ways. To-day he has vague
> calling longings to do something, and, critically regarding himself,
> he cannot see in this life any cause. It is the bugle note of a past
> life blown almost in his face. It startles him; it may throw him down.
> Then it starts before him, a phantom, or, like a person behind you
> as you look at a mirror, it looks over his shoulder. Although dead
> and past they yet have a power. He gets too a power and a choice. If
> all his previous past lives were full of good, then irresistible is
> the force for his benefit. But all alike marshal up in front, and he
> hastens their coming by his effort. Into this vortex about him others
> are drawn, and their germs for good or ill ripen with activity. This is
> a phase of the operation of Karmic stamina. The choice is this. These
> events arrive one after the other and, as it were, offer themselves.
> If he chooses wrong, then hard is the fight. The one chosen attracts
> old ones like itself perhaps, for all have a life of their own. Do you
> wonder that sometimes in the case of those who rush unprepared into the
> "circle of ascetics" and before the ripe moment, insanity sometimes
> results? But then that insanity is their safety for the next life, or
> for their return to sanity.
> 
> Receive my brotherly assurances, my constant desire to help you.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> In respect to Karmic action it is well to recall the statement of
> Patanjali that "works exist only in the shape of mental deposits."
> (Book 2, Aph. 12, A.) By "works" is here meant Karma, the stock of
> works, or Action. Its results remain as mental deposits or potential
> energies in the higher part of the fifth principle, and when it
> reïncarnates those seeds are there to "ripen on the tablets of the
> mind" whenever they are exposed to favoring circumstances. Sometimes
> they remain dormant for want of something to arouse them, as in the
> case of children. "The mental deposits of works, collected from time
> without beginning in the ground of the mind, as they by degrees arrive
> at maturation, so do they, existing in lesser or greater measure (the
> sum of merit being less than that of demerit, or conversely) lead
> to their effects in the shape of rank, raised or lowered, ... or
> experience of good or ill." (Book 2, Aph. 13, B.) The mind energizes
> and impels us to fresh action. The impulse lies within, in germ, and
> may be ripened by interior or exterior suggestion. Can we, then, be
> too careful to guard the ground of the mind, to keep close watch over
> our thoughts? These thoughts are dynamic. Each one as it leaves the
> mind has a _vis viva_ of its own, proportionate to the intensity with
> which it was propelled. As the force or work done, of a moving body, is
> proportionate to the square of its velocity, so we may say that the
> force of thoughts is to be measured by the square or quadrupled power
> of their spirituality, so greatly do these finer forces increase by
> activity. The spiritual force, being impersonal, fluidic, not bound to
> any constricting center, acts with unimaginable swiftness. A thought,
> on its departure from the mind, is said to associate itself with an
> elemental; it is attracted wherever there is a similar vibration, or,
> let us say, a suitable soil, just as the winged thistle-seed floats
> off and sows itself in this spot and not in that, in the soil of its
> natural selection. Thus the man of virtue, by admitting a material or
> sensual thought into his mind, even though he expel it, sends it forth
> to swell the evil impulses of the man of vice from whom he imagines
> himself separated by a wide gulf, and to whom he may have just given a
> fresh impulse to sin. Many men are like sponges, porous and bibulous,
> ready to suck up every element of the order preferred by their nature.
> We all have more or less of this quality: we attract what we love, and
> we may derive a greater strength from the vitality of thoughts infused
> from without than from those self-reproduced within us at a time when
> our nervous vitality is exhausted. It is a solemn thought, this, of our
> responsibility for the impulse of another. We live in one another, and
> our widely different deeds have often a common source. The occultist
> cannot go far upon his way without realizing to what a great extent he
> is "his brother's keeper." Our affinities are ourselves, in whatever
> ground they may live and ripen.
> 
>   J. N.
> 
> VIII.
> 
>   DEAR JASPER:
> 
> I seize a few moments to acknowledge your letter. This is a period of
> waiting, of silence. Nothing seems alive. All oracles are silent. But
> the great clock of the Universe still goes on, unheeding. On Sunday I
> engaged in Meditation and received some benefit. I wished I could see
> you to speak of it. Yet these things are too high for words, and when
> we approach the subjects we are not able to give expression to our
> thoughts. We do not live up to our highest soul possibilities. All that
> prevents our reaching up to the high thoughts of the far past is our
> own weakness, and not the work of any other. How petty seem the cares
> of this earth when we indulge in deep reflection; they are then seen
> for what they are, and later on they are obliterated. It is true that
> the road to the gods is dark and difficult, and, as you say, we get
> nothing from them at first call; we have to call often. But we can on
> the way stop to look ahead, for no matter how sombre or howsoever weak
> ourselves, the Spectator sees it all and beckons to us, and whispers,
> "Be of good courage, for I have prepared a place for you where you will
> be with me forever." He is the Great Self; He is ourselves.
> 
> The Leaders of the world are always trying to aid us. May we pass the
> clouds and see them ever. All our obstructions are of our own making.
> All our power is the storage of the past. That store we all must have;
> who in this life feels it near is he who has in this life directed his
> thoughts to the proper channel. That others do not feel it is because
> they have lived but blindly. That you do not feel it and see it more is
> because you have not yet directed all your mental energies to it. This
> great root of Karmic energy can be drawn upon by directing the fire
> of our minds in that direction. Towards Love of course is the right
> way; the Love of the Divine and of all beings. If we feel that after
> all we are not yet "Great Souls" who participate in the totality of
> those "Souls who wait upon the gods," it need not cast us down: we are
> waiting our hour in hope. Let us wait patiently, in the silence which
> follows all effort, knowing that thus Nature works, for in her periods
> of obscuration she does naught where that obscuration lies, while
> doubtless she and we too are then at work on other spheres.
> 
> That described by you is not the soul; it is only a partial experience.
> Did you know the Soul, then could you yourself reply to all those
> questions, for all knowledge is there. In the soul is every creature
> and every thought alike. That sinking down of your thoughts to the
> center is practice. It can be done and we cannot explain it; we can
> only say "do it." Still do not hunger to do these things. The first
> step in _becoming_ is Resignation. Resignation is the sure, true, and
> royal road. Our subtle motives, ever changing, elude us when we seek
> it. You are near to it; it needs a great care. But while the body may
> be requiring time to feel its full results, we can instantly change the
> attitude of the mind. After Resignation, follow (in their own order)
> Satisfaction, Contentment, Knowledge. Anxiety to do these things is
> an obscurant and deterrent. So try to acquire patient Resignation.
> The lesson intended by the Karma of your present life is _the higher
> patience_. I can tell you nothing on this head; it is a matter for self
> and practice. Throw away every wish to get the power, and seek only for
> understanding of thyself. Insist on carelessness. Assert to yourself
> that it is not of the slightest consequence what you were yesterday,
> but in every moment strive for that moment; the results will follow of
> themselves.
> 
> The Past! What is it? Nothing. Gone! Dismiss it. You are the past of
> yourself. Therefore it concerns you not as such. It only concerns you
> as you now are. In you, as now you exist, lies _all_ the past. So
> follow the Hindu maxim: "Regret nothing; never be sorry; and cut all
> doubts with the sword of spiritual knowledge." Regret is productive
> only of error. I care not what I _was_, or what any one _was_. I only
> look for what I am each moment. For as each moment is and at once is
> not, it must follow that if we think of the past we forget the present,
> and while we forget, the moments fly by us, making more past. Then
> regret nothing, not even the greatest follies of your life, for they
> are gone, and you are to work in the present which is both past and
> future at once. So then, with that absolute knowledge that all your
> limitations are due to Karma, past or in this life, and with a firm
> reliance ever now upon Karma as the only judge, who will be good or
> bad as you make it yourself, you can stand anything that may happen
> and feel serene despite the occasional despondencies which all feel,
> but which the light of Truth always dispels. This verse always settles
> everything:
> 
> "In him who knows that all spiritual beings are the same in kind with
> the Supreme Being, what room can there be for delusion and what room
> for sorrow when he reflects upon the unity of spirit?"
> 
> In all these inner experiences there are tides as well as in the ocean.
> We rise and fall. Anon the gods descend, and then they return to
> heaven. Do not _think_ of getting them to descend, but strive to raise
> _yourself_ higher on the road down which they periodically return,
> and thus get nearer to them, so that you shall in fact receive their
> influences sooner than before.
> 
> Adios. May you ever feel the surge of the vast deeps that lie beyond
> the heart's small ebb. Perhaps our comrades are coming nearer. Who
> knows? But even if not, then we will wait; the sun must burst some day
> from the clouds. This will keep us strong while, in the company of the
> Dweller of the Threshold, we have perforce to stare and sham awhile.
> 
>   Z.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> The "higher patience" alluded to also requires a care. It is the fine
> line between pride and humility. Both are extremes and mistakes;
> oscillations from one to the other are only a trifle better. How shall
> we be proud when we are so small? How dare we be humble when we are so
> great? In both we blaspheme. But there is that firm spot between the
> two which is the place "neither too high nor too low" on which Krishna
> told Arjuna to sit; a spot _of his own_. It is the firm place which our
> faith has won from the world. On it we are always to stand calmly, not
> overshadowed by any man however great, because each of us contains the
> potentialities of every other. "Not overshadowed" does not mean that
> we are not to show reverence to those through whom the soul speaks.
> It is the great soul we reverence, and not the mortal clay. We are to
> examine thoughtfully all that comes to us from such persons, and all
> that comes to us from any source wearing the aspect of truth, and try
> faithfully to see wherein it may be true, laying it aside, if we fail,
> as fruit not ripe for us yet. We are not to yield up our intuitions to
> any being, while we may largely doubt our judgment at all times. We
> are not to act without the inner asseveration, but we must not remain
> ignorant of the serious difficulty of separating this intuitive voice
> from the babble and prattle of fancy, desire, or pride. If we are just
> to ourselves we shall hold the balance evenly. How can we be just to
> any other who are not just to ourselves? In the Law a man suffers as
> much from injustice to himself as to another; it matters not in whose
> interests he has opposed the universal currents; the Law only knows
> that he has tried to deflect them by an injustice. It takes no account
> of persons nor even of ignorance of the Law. It is an impartial,
> impersonal force, only to be understood by the aid of the higher
> patience, which at once dares all and endures all.
> 
> "Never regret anything." Regret is a thought, hence an energy. If we
> turn its tide upon the past, it plays upon the seeds of that past and
> vivifies them; it causes them to sprout and grow in the ground of the
> mind: from thence to expression in action is but a step. A child once
> said to me when I used the word "Ghosts," "Hush! Don't think of them.
> What we think of always happens." There are no impartial observers like
> children when they think away from themselves.
> 
>   J. N.
> 
> IX.
> 
>   DEAR SIR AND BROTHER:
> 
> Tell your friend and inquirer this: No one was ever converted into
> Theosophy. Each one who _really_ comes into it does so because it is
> only "an extension of previous beliefs." This will show you that Karma
> is a true thing. For no idea we get is any more than an extension
> of previous ones. That is, they are cause and effect in endless
> succession. Each one is the producer of the next and inheres in that
> successor. Thus we are all different and some similar. My ideas of
> to-day and yours are tinged with those of youth, and we will thus
> forever proceed on the inevitable line we have marked out in the
> beginning. We of course alter a little always, but never until our old
> ideas are extended. Those _false_ ideas now and then discarded are
> not to be counted; yet they give a shadow here and there. But through
> Brotherhood we receive the knowledge of others, which we consider
> until (if it fits us) it is ours. As far as your private conclusions
> are concerned, use your discrimination always. Do not adopt any
> conclusions merely because they are uttered by one in whom you have
> confidence, but adopt them when they coincide with your intuition. To
> be even unconsciously deluded by the influence of another is to have a
> counterfeit faith.
> 
> Spiritual knowledge includes every action. Inquirers ought to read the
> _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_. It will give them food for centuries if they read with
> spiritual eyes at all. Underneath its shell is the living spirit that
> will light us all. I read it ten times before I saw things that I did
> not see at first. In the night the ideas contained in it are digested
> and returned partly next day to the mind. It is the study of adepts.
> 
> Let no man be unaware that while there is a great joy in this belief
> there is also a great sorrow. Being true, being _the Law_, all the
> great forces are set in motion by the student. He now thinks he has
> given up ambition and comfort. The ambition and comfort he has given
> up are those of the lower plane, the mere reflections of the great
> ambitions and comforts of a larger life. The rays of truth burn up the
> covers time has placed upon those seeds, and then the seeds begin to
> sprout and cause new struggles. Do not leave any earnest inquirer in
> ignorance of this. It has cost others many years and tears of blood to
> self-learn it.
> 
> How difficult the path of action is! I see the future dimly, and
> unconsciously in such case one makes efforts either for or against it.
> Then Karma results. I could almost wish I did not hear these whispers.
> But he who conquers himself is greater than the conquerors of worlds.
> 
> Perhaps you see more clearly now how Karma operates. If one directs
> himself to eliminating all old Karma, the struggle very often becomes
> tremendous, for the whole load of ancient sin rushes to the front on a
> man and the events succeed each other rapidly; the strain is terrific,
> and the whole life fabric groans and rocks. As is said in the East, you
> may go through the appointed course in 700 births, in seven years, or
> in seven minutes.
> 
> The sentence in _Light on the Path_ referred to by so many students is
> not so difficult as some others. One answer will do for all. The book
> is written on the basis of Reïncarnation, and when it says the soiled
> garment will fall again on you, it means that this will happen in some
> other life, not necessarily in this, though that may be too. To "turn
> away in horror" is _not_ detachment. Before we can hope to prevent any
> particular state of mind or events reaching us in this or in another
> life, _we_ must in fact be detached from these things. Now _we_ are
> not our bodies or mere minds, but the _real_ part of us in which
> Karma inheres. Karma brings everything about. It attaches to our real
> inner selves by attachment and repulsion. That is, if we love vice or
> anything, it seizes on us by attachment thereto; if we hate anything,
> it seizes on our inner selves by reason of the strong horror we feel
> for it. In order to prevent a thing we must understand it; we cannot
> understand while we fear or hate it. We are not to love vice, but are
> to recognize that it is a part of the whole, and, trying to understand
> it, we thus get above it. This is the "doctrine of opposites" spoken
> of in _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_. So if we turn in horror now (we may feel sad
> and charitable, though) from the bad, the future life will feel that
> horror and develop it by reaction into a reïncarnation in a body and
> place where we must in material life go through the very thing we hate
> now. As we are striving to reach God, we must learn to be as near like
> Him as possible. He loves and hates not; so we must strive to regard
> the greatest vice as being something we must not hate while we will not
> engage in it, and then we may approach that state where we will know
> the greater love that takes in good and evil men and things alike.
> 
> Good and Evil are only the two poles of the one thing. In the Absolute,
> Evil is the same thing in this way. One with absolute knowledge can
> _see_ both Good and Evil, but he does not _feel_ Evil to be a thing to
> flee from, and thus he has to call it merely the other pole. We say
> Good or Evil as certain events seem pleasant or unpleasant to us or
> our present civilization. And so we have coined those two words. They
> are bad words to use. For in the Absolute one is just as necessary
> as the other, and often what seem evil and "pain" are not absolutely
> so, but only necessary adjustments in the progress of the soul. Read
> _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_ as to how the self seems to suffer pain. What is Evil
> now? Loss of friends? No; if you are self-centered. Slander? Not if
> you rely on Karma. There is only evil when you rebel against immutable
> decrees that must be worked out. You know that there must be these
> balancings which we call Good and Evil. Just imagine one man who really
> was a high soul, now living as a miser and enjoying it. You call it an
> evil; he a good. Who is right? You say "Evil" because you are speaking
> out of the True; but the True did know that he could never have passed
> some one certain point unless he had that experience, and so we see
> him now in an evil state. Experience we must have, and if we accept it
> at our own hands we are wise. That is, while striving to do our whole
> duty to the world and ourselves, we will not live the past over again
> by vain and hurtful regrets, nor condemn any man, whatever his deeds,
> since we cannot know their true cause. We are not Karma, we are not the
> Law, and it is a species of that hypocrisy so deeply condemned by It
> for us to condemn any man. That the Law lets a man live is proof that
> he is not yet judged by that higher power. Still we must and will keep
> our discriminating power at all times.
> 
> As to rising above Good and Evil, that does not mean to do evil, of
> course. But, in fact, there can be no _real_ Evil or Good; if our aim
> is right our acts cannot be evil. Now all acts are dead when done; it
> is in the heart that they are conceived and are already there done; the
> mere bodily carrying out of them is a dead thing in itself. So we may
> do a supposed good act and that shall outwardly appear good, and yet as
> our motive perhaps is wrong the act is naught, but the motive counts.
> 
> The great God did all, good and bad alike. Among the rest are what
> appear Evil things, yet he must be unaffected. So if we follow
> _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, second chapter, we must do only those acts we believe
> right for the sake of God and not for ourselves, and if we are
> regardless of the consequences we are not concerned if they _appear_ to
> be Good or Evil. As the heart and mind are the real planes of error,
> it follows that we must look to it that we do all acts merely because
> they are there to be done. It then becomes difficult only to separate
> ourselves from the act.
> 
> We can never as human beings rise above being the instruments through
> which that which is called Good and Evil comes to pass, but as that
> Good and Evil are the result of comparison and are not in themselves
> absolute, it must follow that we (the real "_we_") must learn to rise
> internally to a place where these occurrences appear to us merely as
> changes in a life of change. Even in the worldly man this sometimes
> happens.
> 
> As, say Bismarck, used to moving large bodies of men and perhaps for
> a good end, can easily rise above the transient Evil, looking to a
> greater result. Or the physician is able to rise above pain to a
> patient, and only consider the good, or rather the result, that is to
> follow from a painful operation. The patient himself does the same.
> 
> So the student comes to see that he is not to do either "Good" or
> "Evil," but to do any certain number of acts set before him, and
> meanwhile not ever to regard much his line of conduct, but rather his
> line of motive, for his conduct follows necessarily from his motive.
> Take the soldier. For him there is nothing better than lawful war.
> Query. Does he do wrong in warring or not, even if war is unlawful? He
> does not unless he mixes his motive. They who go into war for gain or
> revenge do wrong, but not he who goes at his superior's order, because
> it is his present duty.
> 
> Let us, then, extend help to all who come our way. This will be true
> progress; the veils that come over our souls fall away when we work for
> others. Let that be the real motive, and the _quality_ of work done
> makes no difference.
> 
>   Z.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> It would seem that Good and Evil are not inherent in things themselves,
> but in the uses to which those things are put by us. They are
> conditions of manifestation. Many things commonly called immoral
> are consequences of the unjust laws of man, of egotistic social
> institutions: such things are not immoral _per se_, but relatively so.
> They are only immoral in point of time. There are others whose evil
> consists in the base use to which higher forces are put, or to which
> Life--which is sacred--is put, so that here also evil does not inhere
> in them, but in ourselves; in our misuse of noble instruments in lower
> work. Nor does evil inhere in us, but in our ignorance; it is one of
> the great illusions of Nature. All these illusions cause the soul to
> experience in matter until it has consciously learned every part: then
> it must learn to know the whole and all at once, which it can only do
> by and through reunion with Spirit; or with the Supreme, with the Deity.
> 
> If we take, with all due reverence, so much of the standpoint of the
> Supreme as our finite minds or our dawning intuition may permit, we
> feel that he stands above unmoved by either Good or Evil. Our good
> is relative, and evil is only the limitation of the soul by matter.
> From the material essence of the Deity all the myriad differentiations
> of Nature (Prakriti, cosmic substance), all the worlds and their
> correlations are evolved. They assist the cyclic experience of the
> soul as it passes from state to state. How, then, shall we say
> that any state is evil in an absolute sense? Take murder. It seems
> an evil. True, we cannot _really_ take life, but we can destroy a
> vehicle of the divine Principle of Life and impede the course of a
> soul using that vehicle. But we are more injured by the deed than any
> other. It is the fruit of a certain unhealthy state of the soul. The
> deed sends us to hell, as it were, for one or more incarnations; to
> a condition of misery. The shock, the natural retribution, our own
> resultant Karma, both the penalties imposed by man and that exacted by
> occult law, chasten and soften the soul. It is passed through a most
> solemn experience which had become necessary to its growth and which
> in the end is the cause of its additional purification. In view of
> this result, was the deed evil? It was a necessary consequence of the
> limitations of matter; for had the soul remained celestial and in free
> Being, it could not have committed murder. Nor has the immortal soul,
> the spectator, any share in the wrong; it is only the personality, the
> elementary part of the soul, which has sinned. All that keeps the soul
> confined to material existence is evil, and so we cannot discriminate
> either. The only ultimate good is Unity, and in reality nothing but
> that exists. Hence our judgments are in time only. Nor have we the
> right to exact a life for a life. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord
> (Law); I will repay." We become abetters of murder in making such human
> laws. I do not say that every experience must be gone through bodily,
> because some are lived out in the mind. Nor do I seek to justify any.
> The only justification is in the Law.
> 
> The innocent man unjustly murdered is rewarded by Karma in a future
> life. Indeed, any man murdered is reimbursed, so to say; for while that
> misfortune sprang from his Karma, occult law does not admit of the
> taking of life. Some men are the weapons of Karma in their wrong-doing,
> but they themselves have appointed this place to themselves in their
> past.
> 
> The Great Soul needed just that body, whatever the errors of its
> nature, or its physical environment, and to disappoint the soul is
> a fearful deed for a man. For it is only man, only the lower nature
> under the influence of Tamas (the quality of darkness), which feels
> the impulse to take life, whether in human justice, for revenge, for
> protection, or so on. "The soul neither kills nor is killed." What we
> know as ourselves is only the natural man, the lower principles and
> mind, presided over by the false consciousness. Of the soul we have but
> brief and partial glimpses--in conscience or intuition--in our ordinary
> state. There are, of course, psychic and spiritual states in which
> more is known. Thus nature wars against nature, always for the purpose
> of bringing about the purification and evolution of the soul. Nature
> exists only for the purpose of the soul. If we think out the subject
> upon these lines, we can at least see how rash we should be to conclude
> that any deed was unmixed evil, or that these distinctions exist in the
> Absolute. It alone is; all else is phenomenal and transitory; these
> differences disappear as we proceed upward. Meanwhile we are to avoid
> all these immoral things and many others not so regarded by the crowd
> at all, but which are just as much so because we know to what increased
> ignorance and darkness they give rise through the ferment which they
> cause in the nature, and that this impedes the entrance of the clear
> rays of Truth.
> 
> I doubt that the soul knows the moral or immoral. For just consider for
> a moment the case of a disembodied soul. What is sin to it when freed
> from that shell--the body? What does it know then of human laws or
> moralities, or the rules and forms of matter? Does it even see them?
> What lewdness can it commit? So I say that these moralities are of this
> plane only, to be heeded and obeyed there, but not to be postulated
> as final or used as a balance to weigh the soul which has other laws.
> The free soul has to do with essences and powers all impersonal; the
> strife of matter is left behind. Still higher and above as within all,
> the passionless, deathless spirit looks down, knowing well that, when
> the natural has once again subsided into its spiritual source, all
> this struggle and play of force and will, this waxing and waning of
> forms, this progression of consciousness which throw up coming clouds
> and fumes of illusion before the eye of the soul, will have come to an
> end. Even now, while we cannot master these high themes, we can have a
> patient trust in the processes of evolution and the Law, blaming and
> judging no man, but living up to our highest intuitions ourselves. _The
> real test of a man is his motive_, which we do not see, nor do his acts
> always represent it.
> 
> X.
> 
>   DEAR JASPER:
> 
> You ask me about the "three qualities sprung from Nature," mentioned
> in the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_. They exist potentially (latent) in _Purush_
> (Spirit), and during that time spoken of in the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_ as the
> time when He produces all things after having devoured them (which is
> the same thing as Saturn devouring his children), they come forth into
> activity, and therefore are found _implicating_ all beings, who are
> said not to be free from their influence.
> 
> "Being" here must refer to formed beings in all worlds. Therefore
> in these forms the qualities _exist_ [for _form_ is derived from
> Nature=Prakriti=Cosmic Substance.--J. N.], and at the same time
> _implicate_ the spectator (soul) who is in the form. The Devas are
> gods--that is, a sort of spiritual power who are lower than the Ishwara
> in man. They are influenced by the quality of Satwa, or Truth. They
> enjoy a period of immense felicity of enormous duration, but which
> having _duration_ is not an eternity.
> 
> It is written: "Goodness, badness, and indifference--the qualities thus
> called--sprung from Nature, influence the imperishable soul within the
> body."
> 
> This imperishable soul is thus separated from the body in which the
> qualities influence it, and also from the qualities which are not it.
> It is Ishwara. The Ishwara is thus implicated by the qualities.
> 
> The first or highest quality is Satwa, which is in its nature pure and
> pleasant, and implicates Ishwara by connection with pleasant things and
> with knowledge. Thus even by dwelling in Satwa the soul is implicated.
> 
> The second quality is Raja and causes action; it implicates the soul
> because it partakes of avidity and propensity, and causing actions thus
> implicates the soul.
> 
> The third, Tamo quality, is of the nature of indifference and is the
> deluder of all mortals. It is fed by ignorance.
> 
> Here, then, are two great opposers to the soul, _ignorance_ and
> _action_. For action proceeding from Raja assisted by Satwa does not
> lead to the highest place; while ignorance causes destruction. Yet when
> one knows that he is ignorant, he has to perform actions in order to
> destroy that ignorance. How to do that without always revolving in the
> whirl of action [Karma, causing rebirths.--J. N.] is the question.
> 
> He must first get rid of the idea that he himself really does anything,
> knowing that the actions all take place in these three natural
> qualities, and not in the soul at all. The word "qualities" must be
> considered in a larger sense than that word is generally given.
> 
> Then he must place all his actions on devotion. That is, sacrifice all
> his actions to the Supreme and not to himself. He must either (leaving
> out indifference) set himself up as the God to whom he sacrifices, or
> the other real God--Krishna, and all his acts and aspirations are done
> either for himself or for the All. Here comes in the importance of
> motive. For if he performs great deeds of valor, or of benefit to man,
> or acquires knowledge so as to assist man, and is moved to that merely
> because he thinks _he_ will attain salvation, he is only acting for his
> own benefit and is therefore sacrificing to himself. Therefore he must
> be devoted inwardly to the All; that is, he places all his actions on
> the Supreme, knowing that he is not the doer of the actions, but is the
> mere witness of them.
> 
> As he is in a mortal body, he is affected by doubts which will spring
> up. When they do arise, it is because he is ignorant about something.
> He should therefore be able to disperse doubt "by the sword of
> knowledge." For if he has a ready answer to some doubt, he disperses
> that much. All doubts come from the lower nature, and _never_ in any
> case from higher nature. Therefore as he becomes more and more devoted
> he is able to know more and more clearly the knowledge residing in his
> Satwa part. For it says:
> 
> "A man who, perfected in devotion (or who persists in its cultivation)
> finds spiritual knowledge spontaneously in himself in progress of
> time." Also: "The man of doubtful mind enjoys neither this world nor
> the other (the Deva world), nor final beatitude."
> 
> The last sentence is to destroy the idea that if there is in us this
> higher self it will, even if we are indolent and doubtful, triumph over
> the necessity for knowledge, and lead us to final beatitude in common
> with the whole stream of man.
> 
> The three qualities are lower than a state called Turya, which is a
> high state capable of being enjoyed even while in this body. Therefore
> in that state, there exists none of the three qualities, but there the
> soul sees the three qualities moving in the ocean of Being beneath.
> This experience is not only met with after death, but, as I said, it
> may be enjoyed in the present life, though of course consciously very
> seldom. But even consciously there are those high Yogees who can and
> do rise up to Nirvana, or Spirit, while on the earth. This state is
> the fourth state, called Turya. There is no word in English which will
> express it. In that state the body is alive though in deep catalepsy.
> [Self-induced by the Adept.--J. N.] When the Adept returns from it
> he brings back _whatever he can_ of the vast experiences of that
> Turya state. Of course they are far beyond any expression, and their
> possibilities can be only dimly perceived by us. I cannot give any
> description thereof because I have not known it, but I perceive the
> possibilities, and you probably can do the same.
> 
> It is well to pursue some kind of practice, and pursue it either in a
> fixed place, or in a mental place which cannot be seen, or at night.
> The fact that what is called Dharana, Dhyana, and Samádhi may be
> performed should be known. (See Patanjali's yoga system.)
> 
> Dharana is selecting a thing, a spot, or an idea, to fix the mind on.
> 
> Dhyana is contemplation of it.
> 
> Samâdhi is meditating on it.
> 
> When attempted, they of course are all one act.
> 
> Now, then, take what is called the well of the throat or pit of the
> throat.
> 
> 1st. Select it.--Dharana.
> 
> 2d. Hold the mind on it.--Dhyana.
> 
> 3d. Meditate on it.--Samádhi.
> 
> This gives firmness of mind.
> 
> Then select the spot in the head where the Shushumna nerve goes. Never
> mind the location; call it the top of the head. Then pursue the same
> course. This will give some insight into spiritual minds. At first it
> is difficult, but it will grow easy by practice. If done at all, the
> same hour of each day should be selected, as creating a habit, not
> only in the body, but also in the mind. Always keep the direction of
> Krishna in mind: namely, that it is done for the whole body corporate
> of humanity, and not for one's self.
> 
> As regards the passions: Anger seems to be the _force_ of Nature; there
> is more in it, though.
> 
> Lust (so-called) is the gross symbol of love and desire to create. It
> is the perversion of the True in love and desire.
> 
> Vanity, I think, represents in one aspect the illusion--power of
> Nature; Maya, that which we mistake for the reality. It is nearest
> always to us and most insidious, just as Nature's illusion is ever
> present and difficult to overcome.
> 
> Anger and Lust have some of the Rajasika quality; but it seems to me
> that Vanity is almost wholly of the Tamogunam.
> 
> May you cross over to the fearless shore.
> 
>   Z.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> As regards the practices of concentration suggested in this letter,
> they are only stages in a life-long contemplation; they are means to
> an end, means of a certain order among means of other orders, all
> necessary, the highest path being that of constant devotion and entire
> resignation to the Law. The above means have a physiological value
> because the spots suggested for contemplation are, like others, vital
> centers. Excitation of these centers, and of the magnetic residue of
> breath always found in them, strengthens and arouses the faculties of
> the inner man, the magnetic vehicle of the soul and the link between
> matter and spirit. This is a form of words necessary for clearness,
> because in reality matter and spirit are one. We may better imagine an
> infinite series of force correlations which extend from pure Spirit to
> its grossest vehicle, and we may say that the magnetic inner vehicle,
> or astral man, stands at the halfway point of the scale. The secret
> of the circulation of the nervous fluid is hidden in these vital
> centers, and he who discovers it can use the body at will. Moreover,
> this practice trains the mind to remain in its own principle, without
> energizing, and without exercising its tangential force, which is so
> hard to overcome. Thought has a self-reproductive power, and when the
> mind is held steadily to one idea it becomes colored by it, and, as
> we may say, all the correlates of that thought arise within the mind.
> Hence the mystic obtains knowledge about any object of which he thinks
> constantly in fixed contemplation. Here is the rationale of Krishna's
> words: "Think constantly of me; depend on me alone; and thou shalt
> surely come unto me."
> 
> The pure instincts of children often reveal occult truths. I heard a
> girl of fifteen say recently: "When I was a small child I was always
> supposin'. I used to sit on the window seat and stare, stare, at the
> moon, and I was supposin' that, if I only stared long enough, I'd get
> there and know all about it."
> 
> Spiritual culture is attained through concentration. It must be
> continued daily and every moment to be of use. The "Elixir of Life"
> (_Five Years of Theosophy_) gives us some of the reasons for this
> truth. Meditation has been defined as "the cessation of active,
> external thought." Concentration is the entire life-tendency to a given
> end. For example, a devoted mother is one who consults the interests
> of her children and all branches of their interests in and before
> all things; not one who sits down to think fixedly about one branch
> of their interests all the day. Life is the great teacher; it is the
> great manifestation of Soul, and Soul manifests the Supreme. Hence all
> methods are good, and all are but parts of the great aim, which is
> Devotion. "Devotion is success in actions," says the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_.
> We must use higher and lower faculties alike, and beyond those of mind
> are those of the Spirit, unknown but discoverable. The psychic powers,
> as they come, must also be used, for they reveal laws. But their value
> must not be exaggerated, nor must their danger be ignored. They are
> more subtle intoxicants than the gross physical energies. He who relies
> upon them is like a man who gives way to pride and triumph because he
> has reached the first wayside station on the peaks he has set out to
> climb. Like despondency, like doubt, like fear, like vanity, pride,
> and self-satisfaction, these powers too are used by Nature as traps to
> detain us. Every occurrence, every object, every energy may be used for
> or against the great end: in each Nature strives to contain Spirit, and
> Spirit strives to be free. Shall the substance paralyze the motion, or
> shall the motion control the substance? The interrelation of these two
> is manifestation. The ratio of activity governs spiritual development;
> when the great Force has gained its full momentum, It carries us to the
> borders of the Unknown. It is a Force intelligent, self-conscious, and
> spiritual: its lower forms, or vehicles, or correlates may be evoked by
> us, but Itself comes only of Its own volition. We can only prepare a
> vehicle for It, in which, as Behmen says, "the Holy Ghost may ride in
> Its own chariot."
> 
> "The Self cannot be known by the _Vedas_, nor by the understanding,
> nor by much learning. He whom the Self chooses, by him alone the Self
> can be gained."
> 
> "The Self chooses him as his own. But the man who has not first turned
> aside from his wickedness, who is not calm and subdued, _or whose mind
> is not at rest_, he can never obtain the Self, even by knowledge."
> 
> The italics are mine; they indicate the value of that stage of
> contemplation hitherto referred to as that in which the mind has ceased
> to energize, and when the pure energies of Nature go to swell the
> fountain of Spirit.
> 
> In regard to the phrase in the above letter that the Adept "brings back
> _what he can_" from Turya, it is to be understood as referring to the
> fact that all depends upon the coördination of the various principles
> in man. He who has attained perfection or Mahâtmaship has assumed
> complete control of the body and informs it at will. But, of course,
> while in the body he is still, to some extent, as a soul of power,
> limited by that body or vehicle. That is to say, there are experiences
> not to be shared by that organ of the soul called by us "the body," and
> beyond a certain point its brain cannot reflect or recall them. This
> point varies according to the degree of attainment of individual souls,
> and while in some it may be a high point of great knowledge and power,
> still it must be considered as limited compared with those spiritual
> experiences of the freed soul.
> 
> The work upon which all disciples are employed is that of rendering
> the body more porous, more fluidic, more responsive to all spiritual
> influences which arise in the inner center, in the soul which is an
> undivided part of the great Soul of all, and less receptive of the
> outside material influences which are generated by the unthinking world
> and by those qualities which are in nature. Abstract thought is said
> to be "the power of thinking of a thing apart from its qualities;" but
> these qualities are the phenomenal, the evident, and they make the most
> impression upon our senses. They bewilder us, and they form a part of
> that trap which Nature sets for us lest we discover her inmost secret
> and rule her. More than this: our detention as individual components
> of a race provides time for that and other races to go through
> evolutionary experience slowly, provides long and repeated chances for
> every soul to amend, to return, to round the curve of evolution. In
> this Nature is most merciful, and even in the darkness of the eighth
> sphere to which souls of _spiritual_ wickedness descend, her impulses
> provide opportunities of return if a single responsive energy is left
> in the self-condemned soul.
> 
> Many persons insist upon a perfect moral code tempered by social
> amenities, forgetting that these vary with climate, nationalities, and
> dates. Virtue is a noble offering to the Lord. But insomuch as it is
> mere bodily uprightness and mere mental uprightness, it is insufficient
> and stands apart from uprightness of the psychic nature or the virtue
> of soul. The virtue of the soul is true Being; its virtue is, to be
> free. The body and the mind are not sharers in such experiences,
> though they may afterward reflect them, and this reflection may inform
> them with light and power of their own kind. Spirituality is not
> virtue. It is impersonality, in one aspect. It is as possible to be
> spiritually "wicked" as to be spiritually "good." These attributes are
> only conferred upon spirituality by reason of its use for or against
> the great evolutionary Law, which must finally prevail because it is
> the Law of the Deity, an expression of the nature and Being of the
> Unknown, which nature is towards manifestation, self-realization, and
> reäbsorption. All that clashes with this Law by striving for separate
> existence must in the long run fail, and any differentiation which
> is in itself incapable of reäbsorption is reduced to its original
> elements, in which shape, so to say, it can be reabsorbed.
> 
> Spirituality is, then, a condition of Being which is beyond expression
> in language. Call it a rate of vibration, far beyond our cognizance.
> Its language is the language of motion, in its incipiency, and its
> perfection is beyond words and even thought.
> 
> "The knowledge of the Supreme Principle is a divine silence, and the
> quiescence of all the senses."--(_Clavis of Hermes._)
> 
> "Likes and dislikes, good and evil, do not in the least affect the
> knower of Brahm, who is bodiless and always existing."--(_Crest Jewel
> of Wisdom._)
> 
> "Of that nature which is beyond intellect many things are asserted
> according to intellection, but it is contemplated by a cessation of
> intellectual energy better than with it."--(_Porphyrios._)
> 
> Thought is bounded, and we seek to enter the boundless. The intellect
> is the first production of Nature which energizes for the experience
> of the soul, as I said. When we recognize this truth we make use of
> that natural energy called Thought for comparison, instruction, and the
> removal of doubt, and so reach a point where we restrain the outward
> tendencies of Nature, for, when these are resolved into their cause and
> Nature is wholly conquered and restrained, that cause manifests itself
> both in and beyond Nature.
> 
> "The incorporeal substances in descending are divided and multiplied
> about individuals with a diminution of power; but when they ascend by
> their energies beyond bodies, they become united and exist as a whole
> by and through exuberance of power."--(_Porphyrios._)
> 
> These hints may suffice for such minds as are already upon the way.
> Others will be closed to them. Language only expresses the experiences
> of a race, and since ours has not reached the upper levels of Being
> we have as yet no words for these things. The East has ever been the
> home of spiritual research; she has given all the great religions
> to the world. The Sanscrit has thus terms for some of these states
> and conditions, but even in the East it is well understood that the
> formless cannot be expressed by form, or the Illimitable by the limits
> of words or signs. The only way to know these states is to _be_ them:
> we never can _really_ know anything which we are not.
> 
>   J. N.
> 
> XI.
> 
> It has been with regret that I hear of your serious illness, Jasper.
> While life hangs in the balance, as it would seem yours does and for
> some time will, you will feel much depression.
> 
> Now it is not usual to thus calmly talk to a person of his death, but
> you do not mind, so I talk. I do not agree with you that death is well.
> Yours is not a case like that of ---- who _was_ to die and decided to
> accept life from Great Powers and work on for Humanity amid all the
> throes and anguish of that body. Why should you not live now as long as
> you can in the present body, so that in it you may make all the advance
> possible and by your life do as much good as you can to the Cause and
> man? For you have not yet as Jasper Niemand had a chance to entitle
> you to _extraordinary_ help after death in getting back again soon, so
> that you would die and run the chance of a long Devachan and miss much
> that you might do for _Them_. Such are my views. Life is better than
> death, for death again disappoints the Self. Death is _not_ the great
> informer or producer of knowledge. It is only the great curtain on the
> stage to be rung up next instant. Complete knowledge must be attained
> in the triune man: body, soul, and spirit. When that is obtained, then
> he passes on to other spheres, which to us are unknown and are endless.
> By living as long as one can, one gives the Self that longer chance.
> 
> "Atmanam atmana pashya" (Raise the Self by the self--_Gîtâ_) does not
> seem to be effective after the threshold of death is passed. The union
> of the trinity is only to be accomplished on earth in a body, and
> _then_ release is desirable.
> 
> It is not for myself that I speak, Brother, but for thee, because in
> death I can lose no one. The living have a greater part in the dead
> than the dead have in the living.
> 
> The doubt which you now feel as to success is morbid. Please destroy
> it. Better a false hope with no doubt, than much knowledge with doubts
> of your own chances. "He that doubteth is like the waves of the sea,
> driven by the wind and tossed." Doubt is not to be solely guarded
> against when applied to Masters (whom I know you doubt not). It is most
> to be guarded and repelled in relation to oneself. Any idea that one
> cannot succeed, or had better die than live because an injured body
> seems to make success unattainable, is _doubt_.
> 
> We dare not hope, but we _dare_ try to live on and on that we may serve
> Them as They serve the Law. We are not to try to be chelas or to do any
> one thing in this incarnation, but only to know and to be just as much
> as we can, and the possibility is not measured. Reflect, then, that it
> is only a question of being overcome--by what? By something outside.
> But if you accuse or doubt yourself, you then give the enemy a rest; he
> has nothing to do, for you do it all yourself for him, and, leaving you
> to your fate, he seeks other victims. Rise, then, from this despondency
> and seize the sword of knowledge. With it, and with Love, the universe
> is conquerable. Not that I see thee too despondent, Jasper, but I fain
> would give thee my ideas, even did something kill thee against our will
> next day.
> 
> Am glad that although the body is painful, you yourself are all right.
> We have in various ways to suffer, and I do not doubt it is a great
> advance if we can in the midst of physical suffering grasp and hold
> ourselves calm and away from it. Yet also the body must be rested.
> Rest, and let the anxieties to do lie still and dormant. By that they
> are not killed, and when the body gets stronger more is known.
> 
> You have been in storms enough. A few moments' reflection will show you
> that we make our own storms. The power of any and all circumstances is
> a fixed, unvarying quality, but as _we_ vary in our reception of these,
> it appears to us that our difficulties vary in intensity. They do not
> at all. We are the variants.
> 
> If we admit that we are in the stream of evolution, then each
> circumstance must be to us quite right. And in our failures to perform
> set acts should be our greatest helps, for we can in no other way learn
> that calmness which Krishna insists upon. If all our plans succeeded,
> then no contrasts would appear to us. Also those plans we make may
> all be made ignorantly and thus wrongly, and kind Nature will not
> permit us to carry them out. We get no blame for the plan, but we may
> acquire Karmic demerit by not accepting the impossibility of achieving.
> Ignorance of the law cannot be pleaded among men, but ignorance of fact
> may. In occultism, even if you are ignorant of some facts of importance
> you are not passed over by _The Law_, for It has regard for no man, and
> pursues Its adjustments without regard to what we know or are ignorant
> of.
> 
> If you are at all cast down, or if any of us is, then by just that
> much are our thoughts lessened in power. One could be confined in a
> prison and yet be a worker for the Cause. So I pray you to remove from
> your mind any distaste for present circumstances. If you can succeed in
> looking at it all as _just what you in fact desired_, then it will act
> not only as a strengthener of your good thoughts, but will reflexly act
> on your body and make it stronger.
> 
> All this reminds me of H., of whose failure you now know. And in this
> be not disappointed. It could hardly be otherwise. Unwisely he made
> his demands upon the Law before being quite ready. That is, unwisely
> in certain senses, for in the greater view naught can be unwise. His
> apparent defeat, at the very beginning of the battle, is for him quite
> of course. He went where the fire is hottest and made it hotter by
> his aspirations. All others have and all will suffer the same. For it
> makes no difference that his is a bodily affection; as all these things
> proceed from mental disturbances, we can easily see the same cause
> under a physical ailment as under a mental divagation. Strangely, too,
> I wrote you of the few who really do stay, and soon after this news
> came and threw a light--a red one, so to say--upon the information of
> H's retreat. See how thought interlinks with thought on all planes when
> the True is the aim.
> 
> We ourselves are not wholly exempt, inasmuch as we daily and hourly
> feel the strain. Accept the words of a fellow traveller; these: Keep
> up the aspiration and the search, but do not maintain the attitude
> of despair or the slightest repining. Not that you do. I cannot find
> the right words; but surely you would know all, were it not that some
> defects hold you back.
> 
> The darkness and the desolation are sure to be ours, but it is only
> illusionary. Is not the Self pure, bright, bodiless, and free,--and art
> thou not that? The daily waking life is but a penance and the trial of
> the body, so that _it_ too may thereby acquire the right condition. In
> dreams we see the truth and taste the joys of heaven. In waking life it
> is ours to gradually distill that dew into our normal consciousness.
> 
> Then, too, remember that the influences of this present age are
> powerful for producing these feelings. What despair and agony of doubt
> exist to-day in all places. In this time of upturning, the wise man
> _waits_. He bends himself, like the reed, to the blast, so that it
> may blow over his head. Rising, as you do, into the plane where these
> currents are rushing while you try to travel higher still, you feel
> these inimical influences, although unknown to you. It is an age of
> iron. A forest of iron trees, black and forbidding, with branches of
> iron and brilliant leaves of steel. The winds blow through its arches
> and we hear a dreadful grinding and crashing sound that silences the
> still small voice of Love. And its inhabitants mistake this for the
> voice of God; they imitate it and add to its terrors. Faint not, be not
> self-condemned. We both are that soundless OM; we rest together upon
> the bosom of Master. You are not tired; it is that body, now weak, and
> not only weak but shaken by the force of your own powers, physical and
> psychical. But the wise man learns to assume in the body an attitude of
> carelessness that is more careful really than any other. Let that be
> yours. You are judge. Who accepts you, who dares judge but yourself?
> Let us wait, then, for natural changes, knowing that if the eye is
> fixed where the light shines, we shall presently know what to do. This
> hour is not ripe. But unripe fruit gets ripe, and falls or is plucked.
> The day must surely strike when you will pluck it down. You are no
> longer troubled by vain fears or compromises. When the great thought
> comes near enough, you will go. We must all be servants before we can
> hope to be masters in the least.
> 
> I have been re-reading the life of Buddha, and it fills me with
> a longing desire to give myself for humanity, to devote myself to
> a fierce, determined effort to plant myself nearer the altar of
> sacrifice. As I do not always know just what ought to be done, I must
> stand on what Master says: "Do what you _can_, if you ever expect to
> see Them." This being true, and another Adept saying, "Follow the Path
> They and I show, but do not follow _my_ path," why then, all we can do,
> whether great or small, is to do just what we can, each in his proper
> place. It is sure that if we have an immense devotion and do our best,
> the result will be right for Them and us, even though we would have
> done otherwise had we known more when we were standing on a course of
> action. A devoted Chela once said: "I do not mind all these efforts at
> explanation and all this trouble, for I always have found that that
> which was done in Master's name was right and came out right." What is
> done in those names is done without thought of self, and motive is the
> essential test.
> 
> So I am sad and not sad. Not sad when I reflect on the great Ishwar,
> the Lord, permitting all these antics and shows before our eyes. Sad
> when I see our weakness and disabilities. We must be serene and do what
> we can. Ramaswamier rushed off into Sikkhim to try and find Master, and
> met someone who told him to go back _and do his duty_. That is all any
> of us can do; often we do not know our duty, but that too is our own
> fault; it is a Karmic disability.
> 
> You ask me how you shall advise your fellow student. The best advice is
> found in your own letter to me in which you say that the true monitor
> is within. That is so. Ten thousand Adepts can do one no great good
> unless we ourselves are ready, and They only act as suggestors to us
> of what possibilities there are in every human heart. If we dwell
> within ourselves, and must live and die by ourselves, it must follow
> that running here and there to see any thing or person does not in
> itself give progress. Mind, I do not oppose consorting with those
> who read holy books and are engaged in dwelling on high themes. I am
> only trying to illustrate my idea that this should not be dwelt on
> as an end; it is only a means and one of many. There is no help like
> association with those who think as we do, or like the reading of good
> books. The best advice I ever saw was to read holy books or whatever
> books tend to elevate yourself, as you have found by experience.
> There must be some. Once I found some abstruse theological writings
> of Plotinus to have that effect on me--very ennobling, and also an
> explanation of the wanderings of Ulysses. Then there is the _Gîtâ_.
> All these _are instinct with a life of their own_ which changes the
> vibrations. Vibration is the key to it all. The different states are
> only differences of vibration, and we do not recognize the astral or
> other planes because we are out of tune with their vibrations. This is
> why we now and then dimly feel that others are peering at us, or as if
> a host of people rushed by us with great things on hand, not seeing us
> and we not seeing them. It was an instant of synchronous vibration. But
> the important thing is to develop the Self in the self, and then the
> possessions of wisdom belonging to all wise men at once belong to us.
> 
> Each one would see the Self differently and would yet never see it,
> for to see it is to _be_ it. But for making words we say, "See it." It
> might be a flash, a blazing wheel, or what not. Then there is the lower
> self, great in its way, and which must first be known. When first we
> see it, it is like looking into a glove, and for how many incarnations
> may it not be so? We look inside the glove and there is darkness; then
> we have to _go inside_ and see that, and so on and on.
> 
> The mystery of the ages is man; each one of us. Patience is needed in
> order that the passage of time required for the bodily instrument to
> be altered or controlled is complete. Violent control is not as good as
> gentle control continuous and firmly unrelaxed. The Seeress of Prevorst
> found that a gentle current did her more good than a violent one would.
> Gentleness is better because an opposition current is always provoked,
> and of course if that which produces it is gentle, it will also be the
> same. This gives the unaccustomed student more time and gradual strength.
> 
> I think your fellow-student will be a good instrument, but we must not
> break the silence of the future lest we raise up unknown and difficult
> tribes who will not be easy to deal with.
> 
> Every situation ought to be used as a means. This is better than
> philosophy, for it enables us to know philosophy. You do not progress
> by studying other people's philosophies, for then you do but get their
> crude ideas. Do not crowd yourself, nor ache to puzzle your brains with
> another's notions. You have the key to self and that is all; take it
> and drag out the lurker inside. You are great in generosity and love,
> strong in faith, and straight in perception. Generosity and love are
> the abandonment of self. That is your staff. Increase your confidence,
> not in your abilities, but in the great All being thyself.
> 
> I would to God you and all the rest might find peace.
> 
>   Z.
> 
> XII.
> 
>   DEAR JASPER:
> 
> There are so many questioners who ask about Chelaship[C] that your
> letter comes quite apropos to experiences of my own. You say that
> these applicants must have some answer, and in that I agree with you.
> And whether they are ready or unready, we must be able to tell them
> something. But generally they are not ready, nor, indeed, are they
> willing to take the first simple step which is demanded. I will talk
> the matter over with you for your future guidance in replying to such
> questions; perhaps also to clear up my own mind.
> 
> The first question a man should ask himself (and by "man" we mean
> postulants of either sex) is: "When and how did I get a desire to know
> about chelaship and to become a chela?"; and secondly, "What is a
> chela, and what chelaship?"
> 
> There are many sorts of chelas. There are lay chelas and probationary
> ones; accepted chelas and those who are trying to fit themselves to be
> even lay chelas. Any person can constitute himself a lay chela, feeling
> sure that he may never in this life consciously hear from his guide.
> Then as to probationary chelas, there is an _invariable_ rule that
> they go upon seven years' trial. These "trials" do not refer to fixed
> and stated tests, but to all the events of life and the bearing of the
> probationer in them. There is no _place_ to which applicants can be
> referred where their request could be made, because these matters do
> not relate to places and to officials: this is an affair of the inner
> nature. We _become_ chelas; we obtain that position in reality because
> our inner nature is to that extent opened that it can and will take
> knowledge: we receive the guerdon at the hands of the Law.
> 
> In a certain sense every sincere member of the Theosophical Society is
> in the way of becoming a chela, because the Masters do some of Their
> work with and for humanity through this Society, selected by Them as
> Their agent. And as _all_ Their work and aspiration are to the end of
> helping the race, no one of Their chelas can hope to remain (or become)
> such, if any selfish desire for personal possessions of spiritual
> wealth constitutes the motive for trying to be a chela. Such a motive,
> in the case of one already a chela, acts instantly to throw him out of
> the ranks, whether he be aware of his loss or not, and in the case of
> one trying to become a chela it acts as _a bar_. Nor does a real chela
> spread the fact that he is such. For this Lodge is not like exoteric
> societies which depend upon favor or mere outward appearances. It is
> a real thing with living Spirit-men at its head, governed by laws
> that contain within themselves their own executioners, and that do
> not require a tribunal, nor accusations, nor verdicts, nor any notice
> whatever.
> 
> As a general thing a person of European or American birth has extreme
> difficulty to contend with. He has no heredity of psychical development
> to call upon; no known assembly of Masters or Their chelas within
> reach. His racial difficulties prevent him from easily seeing within
> himself; he is not introspective by nature. But even he can do much if
> he purifies his motive, and either naturally possesses or cultivates
> an ardent and unshakeable faith and devotion. A faith that keeps him
> a firm believer in the existence of Masters even through years of
> non-intercourse. They are generous and honest debtors and always repay.
> How They repay, and when, is not for us to ask. Men may say that this
> requires as blind devotion as was ever asked by any Church. _It does_,
> but it is a blind devotion to Masters who are Truth itself; to Humanity
> and to yourself, to your own intuitions and ideals. This devotion to
> an ideal is also founded upon another thing, and that is that a man
> is hardly ready to be a chela unless he is able to stand _alone_ and
> uninfluenced by other men or events, _for he must stand alone_, and he
> might as well know this at the beginning as at the end.
> 
> There are also certain qualifications which he must possess. These are
> to be found in _Man, a Fragment of Forgotten History_ towards the
> close of the book, so we will not dwell upon them here.
> 
> The question of the general fitness of applicants being disposed of,
> we come to the still more serious point of the relations of Guru and
> Chela, or Master and Disciple. We want to know what it really is to be
> a pupil of such a Teacher.
> 
> The relation of Guru and Chela is nothing if it is not a spiritual one.
> Whatever is merely outward, or formal, as the relation established by
> mere asking and acceptance, is not spiritual, but formal, and is that
> which arises between _teacher_ and _pupil_. Yet even this latter is
> not in any way despicable, because the teacher stands to his pupil,
> in so far forth as the relation permits, in the same way as the Guru
> to his Chela. It is a difference of degree; but this difference of
> degree is what constitutes the distinction between the spiritual and
> the material, for, passing along the different shadings from the
> grossest materiality to as far as we can go, we find at last that
> matter merges into spirit. (We are now speaking, of course, about what
> is commonly called _matter_, while we well know that in truth the thing
> thus designated is not really matter, but an enormous illusion which
> in itself has no existence. The real matter, called _mulaprakriti_ by
> the Hindus, is an invisible thing or substance of which our matter
> is a representation. The real matter is what the Hermetists called
> _primordial earth_; a, for us, intangible phase of matter. We can
> easily come to believe that what is really called _matter_ is not
> really such, inasmuch as we find clairvoyants and nervous people seeing
> through thick walls and closed doors. Were this _matter_, then they
> could not see through it. But when an ordinary clairvoyant comes face
> to face with _primordial matter_, he or she cannot see beyond, but is
> met by a dead wall more dense than any wall ever built by human hands.)
> 
> So from earliest times, among all but the modern western people, the
> teacher was given great reverence by the pupil, and the latter was
> taught from youth to look upon his preceptor as only second to his
> father and mother in dignity. It was among these people a great sin, a
> thing that did one actual harm in his moral being, to be disrespectful
> to his teacher even in thought. The reason for this lay then, and no
> less to-day does also lie, in the fact that a long chain of influence
> extends from the highest spiritual guide who may belong to any man,
> down through vast numbers of spiritual chiefs, ending at last even in
> the mere teacher of our youth. Or, to restate it in modern reversion
> of thought, a chain extends up from our teacher or preceptors to the
> highest spiritual chief in whose ray or descending line one may happen
> to be. And it makes no difference whatever, in this occult relation,
> that neither pupil nor final guide may be aware, or admit, that this is
> the case.
> 
> Thus it happens that the child who holds his teacher in reverence and
> diligently applies himself accordingly with faith, does no violence
> to this intangible but mighty chain, and is benefited accordingly,
> whether he knows it or not. Nor again does it matter that a child has
> a teacher who evidently gives him a bad system. This is his Karma, and
> by his reverent and diligent attitude he works it out, and transcends
> erstwhile that teacher.
> 
> This chain of influence is called the _Guruparampara chain_.
> 
> The Guru is the _guide or readjuster_, and may not always combine the
> function of teacher with it.
> 
>   Z.
> 
> [Footnote C: Chela means disciple. It is a Sanscrit word.--J. N.]
> 
> XIII.
> 
>   DEAR JASPER:
> 
> We now have passed from the mere usual and worldly relations of teacher
> and pupil to that which we will call the _Lodge_ for the nonce.
> 
> This Lodge is not to be taken up in the pincers of criticism and
> analyzed or fixed. It is at once everywhere and nowhere. It contains
> within its boundaries all real Masters, students, guides, and Gurus, of
> whatever race or creed or no creed. Of it has been said:
> 
> "Beyond the Hall of Learning is the Lodge. It is the whole body of
> Sages in all the world. It cannot be described even by those who are in
> it, but the student is not prohibited from imagining what it is like."
> 
> So therefore at any time any one of its real teachers or disciples will
> gladly help any other teacher or disciple. But we are not to conclude
> that, because all are trying to spread truth and to teach the world,
> we, who call ourselves chela-aspirants or known chelas of any certain
> person whom we call Guru, can place ourselves at the same moment under
> the _direct_ tutelage of more than one Guru.
> 
> Each man who determines in himself that he will enter the Path, has a
> Guru. But the time between that determination and the hour when he will
> really know The Master may be long indeed; in some cases it is very
> short.
> 
> We must now occupy a moment in some consideration of divisions.
> 
> Just as the merest private in the army has a general who guides the
> whole but whom he cannot reach except through the others who are
> officers, so in this order we find divisions of Gurus as well as
> divisions of disciples.
> 
> There is the Great Guru, who is such to many who never know Him or see
> Him. Then there are others who know Him, and who are Gurus to a number
> of chelas, and so on until we may imagine a chela who may be a known
> Guru to another chela below him.
> 
> Then, again, there may be chelas who are acting as
> Guru--unacknowledged, because _pro tempore_ in function--to one or more
> other chelas.
> 
> Now he who makes the resolution above-mentioned, does thereby make a
> bond that rests in the highest Law. It is not a thing to be lightly
> done, because its consequences are of a serious nature. Not serious in
> the way of disasters or awful torments or such, but serious in respect
> to the clearness and brilliancy of those rays of Truth which we wish to
> reach us.
> 
> We have thereby in a sense--its degree determined by the sincerity and
> power of our motive--taken ourselves out of the common, vast, moving
> herd of men who are living--as to this--like dumb animals, and have
> knocked at a door. If we have reverenced our teacher we will now revere
> our unknown Guru. We must stand interiorly in a faithful attitude. We
> must have an abiding, settled faith that nothing may shake. For it is
> to mighty Karma we have appealed, and as the Guru _is Karma_ in the
> sense that He never acts against Karma, we must not lose faith for an
> instant. For it is this faith that clears up the air there, and that
> enables us to get help from all quarters.
> 
> Then perhaps this determinant or postulant or neophyte decides for
> himself that he will for the time take as teacher or guide some other
> chela whose teachings commend themselves. It is not necessary that any
> out-spoken words should pass between these two.
> 
> But having done this, even in thought, he should then apply himself
> diligently _to the doctrine of that teacher_, not changing until he
> really finds he has another teacher or has gone to another class. For
> if he takes up one merely to dispute and disagree--whether outwardly or
> mentally, he is thereby in danger of totally obscuring his own mind.
> 
> If he finds himself not clearly understanding, then he should with
> faith try to understand, for if he by love and faith vibrates into the
> higher meaning of his teacher, his mind is thereby raised, and thus
> greater progress is gained.
> 
> We now come to the possible case of an aspirant of that royal and
> kingly faith who in some way has really found a person who has advanced
> far upon _the Path_. To this person he has applied and said: "May I be
> accepted, and may I be a chela of either thee or some other?"
> 
> That person applied to then perhaps says: "Not to me; but I refer you
> to some other of the same class as yourself, and give you to him to
> be his chela: serve him." With this the aspirant goes, say to the one
> designated, and deliberately both agree to it.
> 
> Here is a case where the real Master has recommended the aspirant to
> a co-worker who perchance is some grade higher than our neophyte, and
> the latter is now in a different position from the many others who are
> silently striving and working, and learning from any and all teachers,
> but having no specialized Guru for themselves. This neophyte and his
> "little guru" are connected by a clear and sacred bond, or else both
> are mere lying children, playing and unworthy of attention. If the
> "little guru" is true to his trust, he occupies his mind and heart with
> it, and is to consider that the chela represents Humanity to him for
> the time.
> 
> We postulated that this "little guru" was in advance of the chela. It
> must then happen that he says that which is sometimes not clear to
> his chela. This will all the more be so if his chela is new to the
> matter. But the chela has deliberately taken that guru, and must try to
> understand _the doctrine of that teacher_.
> 
> The proper function of the Guru is to readjust, and not to pour in vast
> masses of knowledge expressed in clear and easily comprehended terms.
> The latter would be a piece of nonsense, however agreeable, and not any
> whit above what any well-written book would do for its reader.
> 
> The faith and love which exist between them act as a stimulus to both,
> and as a purifier to the mind of the chela.
> 
> But if the chela, after a while, meets another person who seems to know
> as much as his "little guru," and to express it in very easy terms, and
> the chela determines to take him as a teacher, he commits an error.
> He may listen to his teaching and admire and profit by it, but the
> moment he mentally determines and then in words asks the other to be
> his teacher, he begins to rupture the bond that was just established,
> and possibly may lose altogether the benefit of both. Not necessarily,
> however; but certainly, if he acquaints not his "little guru" with the
> fact of the new adoption of teacher, there will be much confusion in
> that realm of being wherein both do their real "work"; and when he does
> acquaint his "little guru" with the fact of the newly-acquired teacher,
> that older guru will retire.
> 
> None of this is meant for those minds which do not regard these matters
> as sacred. A Guru is a sacred being in that sense. Not, of course, in a
> general sense--yet even if so regarded _when worthy_ it is better for
> the chela,--but in all that pertains to the spiritual and real life. To
> the high-strung soul this is a matter of _adoption_; a most sacred and
> valuable thing, not lightly taken up or lightly dropped. For the Guru
> becomes for the time the spiritual _Father_ of the chela; that one who is
> destined to bring him into life or to pass him on to Him who will do so.
> 
> So as the Guru is the _adjuster_ in reality, the chela does not--except
> where the Guru is known to be a great Sage or where the chela does it
> by nature--give slavish attention to every word. He hears the word
> and endeavors to assimilate the meaning underneath; and if he cannot
> understand he lays it aside for a better time, while he presently
> endeavors to understand what he can. And if even--as is often so in
> India--he cannot understand at all, he is satisfied to be near the
> Guru and do what may properly be done for him; for even then his
> abiding faith will eventually clear his mind, of which there are many
> examples, and regarding which how appropriate is the line:
> 
> "They also serve who only stand and wait."
> 
>   Z.
> 
> XIV.
> 
>   DEAR JASPER:
> 
> What I wrote in my last is what may be properly said to earnest
> inquirers who show by their perseverance that they are not mere idle
> curiosity-seekers, desirous of beguiling the tedium of life with new
> experiments and sensations. It is not _what_ is done, but the spirit in
> which the least thing is done for Them who are all, that is counted.
> 
> You ask the names of the seven rays or lodges. The names could not be
> given if known to me. In these matters names are always realities, and
> consequently to give the name would be to reveal the thing itself.
> Besides, if the names were given, the ordinary person hearing them
> would not understand them. Just as if I should say that the name of
> the first is X, which expresses nothing at all to the mind of the
> hearing person. All that can be said is that there exist those seven
> rays, districts, or divisions, just as we say that in a town there are
> legislators, merchants, teachers, and servants. The difference is that
> in this case we know all about the town, and know just what those names
> mean. The name only directs the mind to the idea or essential quality.
> 
> Again I must go. But Brothers are never parted while they live for the
> True alone.
> 
>   Z.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> The foregoing letters point clearly to one conclusion concerning
> that great Theosophist, Madame Blavatsky, though she is unnamed and
> perhaps unthought of there. Since she sacrificed--not so calling it
> herself--all that mankind holds dear to bring the glad tidings of
> Theosophy to the West, that West, and especially the Theosophical
> Society, thereby stands to her as a chela to his Guru, in so far as it
> accepts Theosophy. Her relation to these Theosophists has its being
> in the highest Law, and cannot be expunged or ignored. So those who
> regard her personality, and, finding it discordant from theirs, try to
> reach The Masters by other means _while disregarding or underrating
> scornfully her high services_, violate a rule which, because it is
> not made of man, cannot be broken with impunity. Gratitude and the
> common sentiment of man for man should have taught them this, without
> occult teaching at all. Such persons have not reached that stage of
> evolution where they can learn the higher truths. She who accepts the
> pains of the rack in the torments of a body sapped of its life force
> by superb torrents of energy lavished on her high Cause; she who has
> braved the laughter and anger of two continents, and all the hosts of
> darkness seen and unseen; she who now lives on, only that she may take
> to herself the Karma of the Society and so ensure its well being, has
> no need of any man's praise; but even she has need of justice, because,
> without that impulse in our hearts and souls toward her, she knows
> that we must fail for this incarnation. As the babe to the mother, as
> harvest to the earth, so are all those bound to her who enjoy the fruit
> of her life. May we try, then, to understand these occult connections
> brought about by the workings of Karma, and bring them to bear upon our
> diurnal, as well as our theosophical, life. Madame Blavatsky is for
> us the next higher link in that great chain, of which no link can be
> passed over or missed.
> 
> In further illustration of this letter, I might cite the case of a
> friend of mine who was at once fired with Theosophy on first hearing
> of it and ardently desired to become a chela. Certainly he had
> known these truths in other lives, for all seemed familiar to him,
> and, though he was what is called "a man of the world," he accepted
> the philosophy, measured some of its possibilities intuitively, and
> while careful to do his duty and cause no jars, he ranged his life,
> especially his inner life, to suit these views. The question of
> chelaship assumed great prominence in his mind. He knew of no chelas;
> knew not where to knock or whom to ask. Reflection convinced him that
> real chelaship consisted in the inner attitude of the postulant; he
> remembered magnetic and energetic laws, and he said to himself that he
> could at will constitute himself a chela to the Law, at least so far as
> his own attitude went, and if this did not satisfy him, it was a proof
> that he desired some personal reward, satisfaction, or powers in the
> matter, and that his motive was not pure. He was slow to formulate his
> desires, even to his own mind, for he would not lightly make demands
> upon the Law; but he at last determined to put his own motives to the
> test; to try himself and see if he could stand in the attitude of a
> faithful chela, unrecognized and apparently unheard. He then recorded
> in his own mind an obligation to serve Truth and the Law as a chela
> should, always seeking for light and for further aid if possible,
> recognizing meanwhile that the obligation was on his side only, and
> that he had no claims on Masters, and only such as he himself could by
> the strength of his own purpose institute upon the Law. Wherever he
> could hear of chelas and their duties he listened or read; he tried to
> imagine himself in the position of an accepted chela, and to fill, so
> far as in him lay, the duties of that place, living up to all the light
> he had. For he held that a disciple should always think and act towards
> the highest possibilities, whether or not he had yet attained these,
> and not merely confine himself to that course of action which might be
> considered suited to his lower class or spiritual estate. He believed
> that the heart is the creator of all real ties, and it alone. To raise
> himself by himself was then his task. This attitude he resolved to
> maintain life after life, if needs were, until at last his birthright
> should be assured, his claim recognized by the Law.
> 
> He met with trials, with coldness from those who felt rather than saw
> his changed attitude; he met with all the nameless shocks that others
> meet when they turn against the whirlpool of existence and try to
> find their way back into the true currents of life. Great sorrows and
> loneliness were not slow to challenge his indomitable will. But he
> found work to do; and in this he was most fortunate, for to work for
> others is the disciple's joy, his share in the Divine life, his first
> accolade by which he may know that his service is accepted. This man
> had called upon the Law in faith supreme, and he was answered. Karma
> sent him a friend, and soon he began to get new knowledge, and after a
> time information reached him of a place or person where he might apply
> to become a chela on probation. It was not given him as information
> usually is; nothing of the sort was told him; but with his extending
> knowledge and opening faculties a conviction dawned upon him that he
> might pursue such and such a course. He did so, and his prayer was
> heard. He said to me afterwards that he never knew whether he would not
> have shown greater strength of mind by relying wholly upon the reality
> of his unseen, unacknowledged claim, until the moment should come when
> Masters should accept and call him. For of course he held the ideal of
> Masters clearly before his mind all this while. Perhaps his application
> showed him to be weaker than he supposed, in so far as it might
> evidence a need on his part for tangible proof of a fact in which his
> higher nature prompted him to believe without such proof. Perhaps it
> was but natural and right, on the other hand, that after silent service
> for some time he should put himself on record at the first opportunity
> granted him by Karma.
> 
> He applied, then. I am permitted to give a portion of the answer he
> received, and which made clear to him the fact that he was already
> accepted in some measure before his application, as his intuition had
> told him. The answer may be of untold value to others, both as clearly
> setting forth the dangers of forcing one's way ahead of one's race, and
> also by its advice, admonitions, and evidence that the Great Beings
> of the Orient deal most frankly and gently with applicants. Also it
> may mark out a course for those who take the wise plan of testing
> themselves in silence before pushing their demands upon the Law. For
> this at once heightens their magnetic vibrations, their evolutionary
> ratio; their flame burns more brilliantly and attracts all kinds of
> shapes and influences within its radius, so that the fire is hot
> about him. And not for him alone: other lives coming in contact with
> his feel this fierce energy; they develop more rapidly, and, if they
> have a false or weak place in their nature, it is soon discovered and
> overthrows them for a time. This is the danger of coming into "the
> circle of ascetics"; a man must be strong indeed who thus thrusts
> himself in; it is better as a rule to place oneself in the attitude of
> a disciple and impose the tests oneself: less opposition is provoked.
> For forces that are foiled by the Adept may hurl themselves on the
> neophyte who cannot be protected unless his Karma permits it, and there
> are always those opposing forces of darkness waiting to thin the ranks
> of the servitors of the Good Law.
> 
> Up to this point, then, we may follow this student, and then we lose
> sight of him; not knowing whether he progressed or failed, or still
> serves and waits, because such things are not made known. To tell so
> much as this is rare, and, since it is permitted, it must be because
> there are many earnest students in this country who need some such
> support and information. To these I can say that, if they constitute
> themselves faithful, unselfish disciples, they are such in the
> knowledge of the Great Law, so long as they are true, in inmost thought
> and smallest deed, to the pledges of their heart.
> 
> ANSWER TO Y. Says Master:
> 
>     "_Is Y. fully prepared for the uphill work? The way to the goal
>     he strives to reach is full of thorns and leads through miry
>     quagmires. Many are the sufferings the chela has to encounter;
>     still more numerous the dangers to face and conquer._
> 
>     "_May he think over it and choose only after due reflection. No
>     Master appealed to by a sincere soul who thirsts for light and
>     knowledge, has ever turned his face away from the supplicant. But
>     it is the duty of those who call for laborers and need them in
>     their fields, to point out to those who offer themselves in truth
>     and trust for the arduous work, the pitfalls in the soil as the
>     hardship of the task._
> 
>     "_If undaunted by this warning Y. persists in his determination,
>     he may regard himself as accepted as----. Let him place himself
>     in such case under the guidance of an older chela. By helping him
>     sincerely and devotedly to carry on his heavy burden, he shall
>     prepare the way for being helped in his turn._"
> 
> (Here follow private instructions.)
> 
>     "_Verily if the candidate relies upon the Law, if he has patience,
>     trust, and intuition, he will not have to wait too long. Through
>     the great shadow of bitterness and sorrow that the opposing powers
>     delight in throwing over the pilgrim on his way to the Gates of
>     Light, the candidate perceives that shining Light very soon in his
>     own soul, and he has but to follow it. Let him beware, however,
>     lest he mistake the occasional will-o'-the-wisp of the psychic
>     senses for the reflex of the great spiritual Light; that Light
>     which dieth not, yet never lives, nor can it shine elsewhere than
>     on the pure mirror of Spirit...._
> 
>     "_But Y. has to use his own intuitions. One has to dissipate
>     and conquer the inner darkness before attempting to see into
>     the darkness without; to know one's self before knowing things
>     extraneous to one's senses._"
> 
> And now, may the Powers to which my friend Y. has appealed _be
> permitted by still greater and much higher Powers_ to help him. This is
> the sincere and earnest wish of his truly and fraternally,
> 
>   [Symbol: Triangle]
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> This letter also shows incidentally how one Adept may serve another
> still higher by reporting or conveying His reply.
> 
> TO ASPIRANTS FOR CHELASHIP
> 
> Sincere interest in Theosophic truth is often followed by sincere
> aspiration after Theosophic life, and the question continually recurs,
> What are the conditions and the steps to chelaship; to whom should
> applications be made; how is the aspirant to know that it has been
> granted?
> 
> As to the conditions and the discipline of chelaship, not a little
> has been disclosed in _The Theosophist_, _Man_, _Esoteric Buddhism_,
> and other works upon Theosophy; and some of the qualifications,
> difficulties, and dangers have been very explicitly set forth by Madame
> Blavatsky in her article upon "Theosophical Mahatmas" in the _Path_ of
> December, 1886. To everyone cherishing even a vague desire for closer
> relations to the system of development through which Masters are
> produced, the thoughtful study of this article is earnestly commended.
> It will clear the ground of several misconceptions, deepen the sense of
> the seriousness of such an effort, and excite a healthy self-distrust
> which is better before than after the gate has been passed.
> 
> It is entirely possible, however, that the searching of desire and
> strength incited by that article may only convince more strongly
> of sincerity, and that not a few readers may emerge from it with
> a richer purpose and a deeper resolve. Even where there is not a
> distinct intention to reach chelaship, there may be an eager yearning
> for greater nearness to the Masters, for some definite assurance of
> guidance and of help. In either of these cases the question at once
> arises before the aspirant, Who is to receive the application, and how
> is its acceptance to be signified?
> 
> The very natural, indeed the instinctive, step of such an aspirant
> is to write to an officer of a Theosophical Society. None the less
> is this a mistake. For a Theosophical Society is an _exoteric_ body,
> the Lodge of Masters wholly _esoteric_. The former is a voluntary
> group of inquirers and philanthropists, with avowed aims, a printed
> Constitution, and published officers, and, moreover, expressly
> disavowing any power, as a Society, to communicate with Masters; the
> latter is an Occult Lodge, of whose address, members, processes,
> functions, nothing is known. It follows, therefore, that there is no
> person, no place, no address to which an aspirant may appeal.
> 
> Let it be supposed, however, that such an inquiry is preferred to a
> person advanced in Occult study, versed in its methods and tests and
> qualifications. Assuredly his reply would be directly to this effect:--
> 
> "If you were now fitted to be an accepted chela, you would of yourself
> know how, where, and to whom to apply. For the becoming a chela _in
> reality_ consists in the evolution or development of certain spiritual
> principles latent in every man, and in great measure unknown to your
> present consciousness. Until these principles are to some degree
> consciously evolved by you, you are not in practical possession of the
> means of acquiring the first rudiments of that knowledge which now
> seems to you so desirable. Whether it is desired by your mind or by
> your heart is still another important question, not to be solved by any
> one who has not yet the clew to Self.
> 
> "It is true that these qualities can be developed (or forced) by the
> aid of an Adept. And most applicants for chelaship are actuated by a
> desire to receive instructions directly from the Masters. They do not
> ask themselves what they have done to merit a privilege so rare. Nor
> do they consider that, all Adepts being servants of the Law of Karma,
> it must follow that, did the applicant now merit Their visible aid,
> he would already possess it and could not be in search of it. The
> indications of the fulfilment of the Law are, in fact, the partial
> unfolding of those faculties above referred to.
> 
> "You must, then, reach a point other than that where you now stand,
> before you can even ask to be taken as a chela on probation. All
> candidates enter the unseen Lodge in this manner, and it is governed
> by Laws containing within themselves their own fulfilment and not
> requiring any officers whatever. Nor must you imagine that such a
> probationer is one who works under constant and known direction of
> either an Adept or another chela. On the contrary, he is tried and
> tested for at least seven years, and perhaps many more, before the
> point is reached when he is either accepted (and prepared for the first
> of a series of initiations often covering several incarnations), or
> rejected. And this rejection is not by any body of men just as they
> incline, but is the natural rejection by Nature. The probationer
> may or may not hear from his Teacher during this preliminary period;
> more often he does not hear. He may be finally rejected and not know
> it, just as some men have been on probation and have not known it
> until they suddenly found themselves accepted. Such men are those
> self-developed persons who have reached that point in the natural order
> after many incarnations, where their expanded faculties have entitled
> them to an entrance into the Hall of Learning or the spiritual Lodge
> beyond. And all I say of men applies equally to women.
> 
> "When anyone is regularly accepted as a chela on probation, the first
> and only order he receives (for the present) is to work unselfishly
> for humanity--sometimes aiding and aided by some older chela--_while
> striving to get rid of the strength of the personal idea_. The ways
> of doing this are left to his own intuition entirely, inasmuch
> as the object is to develop that _intuition_ and to bring him to
> _self-knowledge_. It is his having these powers in some degree that
> leads to his acceptance as a probationer, so that it is more than
> probable that you have them not yet save as latent possibilities. In
> order to have in his turn any title to help, he must work for others,
> but that must not be his motive for working. He who does not feel
> irresistibly impelled to serve the Race, whether he himself fails or
> not, is bound fast by his own personality and cannot progress until he
> has learned that _the race is himself_ and not that body which he now
> occupies. The ground of this necessity for a pure motive was recently
> stated in _Lucifer_ to be that 'unless the intention is entirely
> unalloyed, the spiritual will transform itself into the psychic, act
> on the astral plane, and dire results may be produced by it. The
> powers and forces of animal nature can be equally used by the selfish
> and revengeful as by the unselfish and all-forgiving; forgiving; the
> powers and forces of spirit lend themselves only to the perfectly pure
> in heart.'
> 
> "It may be stated, however, that even those natural forces cannot be
> discovered by any man who has not obtained the power of getting rid of
> his personality in some degree. That an emotional desire to help others
> does not imply this freedom from personality may be seen by the fact
> that, if you were now perfected in unselfishness in the _real_ sense,
> you would have a conscious existence separate from that of the body
> and would be able to quit the body at will: in other words, to be free
> from all sense of self is to be an Adept, for the limitations of self
> inhibit progress.
> 
> "Hear also the words of the Master, taken from Sinnett's _The Occult
> World_. 'Perhaps you will better appreciate our meaning when told that
> in our view the highest aspirations for the welfare of humanity become
> tainted with selfishness if, in the mind of the philanthropist, there
> lurks the shadow of a desire for self-benefit or a tendency to do
> injustice, even when these exist unconsciously to himself.'
> 
> "While setting forth these facts, as well as the dangers and
> difficulties--both those set ones appointed by the laws of the Lodge
> and the more innumerable ones adjudged by Karma and hastened by the
> efforts of the neophyte, it should also be stated that the Masters
> desire to deter no man from entering the path. They are well aware,
> however, from the repeated trials and records of centuries, and from
> their knowledge of our racial difficulties, how few are the persons who
> have any clew to their own real nature, which is the foe they attempt
> to conquer the moment they become pupils of the occult. Hence They
> endeavor, so far as Karma permits, to hold unfit individuals back from
> rash ventures, the results of which would recoil upon their unbalanced
> lives and drive them to despair. The powers of evil, inadequately
> defied by the ignorant man, revenge themselves upon him as well as upon
> his friends, and not upon those who are above their reach. Although
> these powers are not hideous objective shapes coming in tangible ways,
> they are none the less real and dangerous. Their descent in such
> instances cannot be prevented; _it is Karma_.
> 
> "To lose all sense of self, then, implies the loss of all that ordinary
> men must value in themselves. It therefore behooves you to seriously
> consider these points:
> 
> "1st. What is your motive in desiring to be a chela? You think that
> motive is well known to you, whereas it is hidden deep within you,
> and by that hidden motive you will be judged. It has flared up from
> unseen regions upon men sure of themselves, has belched out in some
> lurid thought or deed of which they esteemed themselves incapable, and
> has overthrown their life or reason. Therefore test yourself ere Karma
> tests you.
> 
> "2d. What the place and duties of a true neophyte are.
> 
> "When you have seriously considered both for twenty-one days, you may,
> if your desire remains firm, take a certain course open to you. It is
> this.
> 
> "Although you do not now know where you can offer yourself to Masters
> themselves as a chela on probation, yet, in forming that desire in
> your heart and in re-affirming it (if you do) after due consideration
> of these points, you have then to some extent called upon the Law,
> and it is within your power to constitute yourself a disciple, so far
> as in you lies, through the purity of your motive and effort _if both
> are sufficiently sustained_. No one can fix a period when this effort
> will bear fruit, and, if your patience and faith are not strong enough
> to bear you through an _unlimited_ (so far as you know) period of
> unselfish work for humanity, you had better resign your present fancy,
> for it is then no more than that. But if otherwise, you are to work for
> the spiritual enlightenment of Humanity in and through the Theosophical
> Society (which much needs such laborers), and in all other modes and
> planes as you best can, remembering the word of Masters: 'He who does
> what he can and all that he can, and all that he knows how to do, does
> enough for us.' This task includes that of divesting yourself of all
> personality through interior effort, because that work, if done in the
> right spirit, is even more important to the race than any outward work
> we can do. Living as you now are, on the outward plane chiefly, your
> work is due there and is to be done there until your growth shall fit
> you to pass away from it altogether.
> 
> "In following this course you work towards a fixed point under
> observation,--as is, indeed, the whole Theosophic body, which is now,
> _as a body_, a chela of Masters, but specialized from other members in
> the sense that your definite aim and trust are understood and taken
> into consideration by the unseen Founders and the Law. The Theosophical
> Society then stands to you, for the time being, as any older chela
> might who was appointed for you to aid and to work under. _You are
> not_, understand, a chela on probation, since no one without authority
> can confer or announce such a privilege. But if you succeed in lifting
> yourself and others spiritually, it will be known, _no matter what the
> external silence may seem to be_, and you will receive your full dues
> from Those who are honest debtors and ministers of the Just and Perfect
> Law. You must be ready to work, to wait, and to aspire in _silence_,
> just as all do who have fixed their eyes on this goal. Remember that
> your truest adviser is to be found, and constantly sought, _within
> yourself_. Only by experience can you learn to know its voice from
> that of natural instinct or mere logic, and strengthen this power, by
> virtue of which the Masters have become what They are.
> 
> "Your choice or rejection of this course is the first test of yourself.
> Others will follow, whether you are aware of them or not, for the first
> and only right of the neophyte is--_to be tried_. Hence silence and
> sorrow follow his acceptance instead of the offer of prompt aid for
> which he looks. Yet even that shall not be wanting; those trials and
> reverses will come only from the Law to which you have appealed."
> 
>   J. N.
> 
> XV.
> 
>   DEAR JASPER:
> 
> I gave your letter to a distressed soul: she returned thanks, saying it
> was a cooling draught to one athirst. The thanks of course are yours.
> Now this lady says it was refreshment to the weary, that letter. True,
> or she would not say it. But it was not so to me nor to you.
> 
> We needed it not. But she illustrates a certain state of progress.
> She is not yet where we are; but which is happier? She is happier,
> but poorer in hope. We are not all too happy, but are rich in hope,
> knowing the prize at the end of time, and not deterred by the clouds,
> the storms, the miasms and dreadful beasts of prey that line the road.
> Let us, then, at the very outset wash out of our souls all desire for
> reward, all hope that we may attain. For so long as we thus hope and
> desire, we shall be separated from the Self. If in the Self all things
> _are_, then we cannot wish to be something which we can only compass by
> excluding something else.
> 
> So being beyond this lady so grateful, we find that everything we
> meet on this illusory plane of existence is a lure that in one way or
> another has power to draw us out of our path. That is the point we are
> at, and we may call it the point where lures of Maya have omnipresent
> power. Therefore we must beware of the illusions of matter.
> 
> Before we got to this stage we knew well the fateful lure, the dazzling
> mirror of the elemental Self, here and there in well-defined places,
> and intrenched as it was, so to say, in strongly-marked defenses. Those
> we assaulted; and that was what it desired, for it did think that it
> then had no need to exercise the enchantment which is hard because so
> subtle, and so distributed here and there that we find no citadels
> to take, no battalions in array. But now our dearest friends are
> unconsciously in league with the deceptive in nature. How strongly do
> I realize the dejection of Arjuna as he let his bow drop from his hand
> and sat down on his chariot in despair. But he had a sure spot to rest
> upon. He used his own. He had Krishna near, and he might fight on.
> 
> So in passing along those stages where the grateful lady and others
> are, we may perhaps have found one spot we may call our own and possess
> no other qualification for the task. That spot is enough. It is our
> belief in the Self, in Masters: it is the little flame of intuition we
> have allowed to burn, that we have fostered with care.
> 
> Then come these dreadful lures. They are, in fact, but mere carcasses,
> shells of monsters from past existences, offering themselves that we
> may give them life to terrify us as soon as we have entered them either
> by fear or love. No matter which way we enter, whether by attachment or
> by repugnant horror, it is all one: they are in one case vivified by a
> lover; in the other by a slave who would be free but cannot.
> 
> Here it is the lure of enjoyment of natural pleasures, growing out of
> life's physical basis; there it is self-praise, anger, vanity, what
> not? Even these beautiful hills and river, they mock one, for they live
> on untrammelled. Perhaps they do not speak to us because they know the
> superiority of silence. They laugh with each other at us in the night,
> amused at the wild struggle of this petty man who would pull the sky
> down. Ach! God of Heaven! And all the sucklings of Theosophy wish that
> some great, well-diplomæd Adept would come and open the secret box;
> but they do not imagine that other students have stepped on the spikes
> that defend the entrance to the way that leads to the gate of the Path.
> But we will not blame them, nor yet wish for the things--the special
> lots--that some of them have abstracted, because now that we know the
> dreadful power that despair and doubt and violated conscience have,
> we prefer to prepare wisely and carefully, and not rush in like fools
> where angels do not pass uninvited.
> 
> But, Companion, I remind you of the power of the lure. This Path passes
> along under a sky and in a clime where every weed grows a yard in the
> night. It has no discrimination. Thus even after weeks or months of
> devotion, or years of work, we are surprised at small seeds of vanity
> or any other thing which would be easily conquered in other years of
> inattentive life, but which seem now to arise as if helped by some
> damnable intelligence. This great power of self-illusion is strong
> enough to create a roaring torrent or a mountain of ice between us and
> our Masters.
> 
> In respect to the question of sex. It is, as you know, given much
> prominence by both women and men to the detriment of the one sex or the
> other, or of any supposed sex. There are those who say that the female
> sex is not to be thought of in the spirit; that all is male. Others say
> the same for the female. Now both are wrong. In the True there is no
> sex, and when I said "There all men are women and all women are men,"
> I was only using rhetoric to accentuate the idea that neither one nor
> the other was predominant, but that the two were coalesced, so to say,
> into _one_. In the same way you might say, "men are animals there and
> _vice versa_." Mind, this is in regard to Spirit, and not in regard
> to the psychical states. For in the psychical states there are still
> distinctions, as the psychical, though higher than the material, is not
> as high as Spirit, for it still partakes of matter. For in the Spirit
> or Atma _all_ experiences of _all_ forms of life and death are found
> at once, and he who is one with the Atma knows the whole manifested
> Universe at once. I have spoken of this condition before as the Turya
> or fourth state.
> 
> When I say that the female _principle_ represents matter, I do not mean
> _women_, for they in any one or more cases may be full of the masculine
> principle, and _vice versa_.
> 
> Matter is illusionary and vain, and so the female element is
> illusionary and vain, as well as tending to the _established order_.[D]
> So in the _Kaballa_ it is said that the woman is a wall about the man.
> A balance is necessary, and that balance is found in women, or the
> woman element. You can easily see that the general tendency of women
> is to keep things as they are and not to have change. Woman--not here
> and there women--has never been the pioneer in great reforms. Of course
> many single individual women have been, but the tendency of the great
> mass of the women has always been to keep things as they are until
> the men have brought about the great change. This is why women always
> support any established religion, no matter what,--Christian, Jewish,
> Buddhist, or Brahmin. The Buddhist women are as much believers in their
> religion and averse from changing it as are their Christian sisters
> opposed in the mass to changing theirs.
> 
> Now as to telling which element predominates in any single person,
> it is hard to give a general test rule. But perhaps it might be
> found in whether a person is given to abstract or concrete thought,
> and similarly whether given to mere superficial things or to deep
> fundamental matters. But you must work that out, I think, for yourself.
> 
> Of course in the spiritual life no organ _disappears_, but we must find
> out what would be the mode of operation of any organ in its spiritual
> counterpart. As I understand, the spiritual counterparts of the organs
> are _powers_, and not organs, as the eye is the power to see, the ear
> the power to hear, and so on. The generative organs would then become
> the creative power and perhaps the Will. You must not suppose that in
> the spirit life the organs are reproduced as we see them.
> 
> One instance will suffice. One may see pictures in the astral light
> through the back of the head or the stomach. In neither place is there
> any eye, yet we see. It must be by the power of seeing, which in the
> material body needs the specialized place or specializing organ known
> as the eye. We hear often through the head without the aid of the
> auricular apparatus, which shows us that there is the power of hearing
> and of transmitting and receiving sounds without the aid of an external
> ear or its inside cerebral apparatus. So of course all these things
> survive in that way. Any other view is grossly material, leading to a
> deification of this unreal body, which is only an image of the reality,
> and a poor one at that.
> 
> In thinking over these matters you ought always to keep in mind the
> three plain distinctions of _physical, psychical, and spiritual, always
> remembering that the last includes the other two_. All the astral
> things are of the psychical nature, which is partly material and
> therefore very deceptive. But all are necessary, for they are, they
> exist.
> 
> The Deity is subject to this law, or rather it is the law of the Deity.
> The Deity desires experience or self-knowledge, which is only to be
> attained by stepping, so to say, aside from self. So the Deity produces
> the manifested universes consisting of matter, psychical nature, and
> spirit. In the Spirit alone resides the great consciousness of the
> whole; and so it goes on ever producing and drawing into Itself,
> accumulating such vast and enormous experiences that the pen falls down
> at the thought. How can that be put into language? It is impossible,
> for we at once are met with the thought that the Deity must know all
> at all times. Yet there is a vastness and an awe-inspiring influence
> in this thought of the Day and Night of Brahman. It is a thing to
> be thought over in the secret recesses of the heart, and not for
> discussion. _It is the All._
> 
> And now, my Brother, for the present I leave you. May your restored
> health enable you to do more work for the world.
> 
> I salute you, my Brother, and wish you to reach the terrace of
> enlightenment.
> 
>   Z.
> 
> [Footnote D: Through its negative or passive quality.--J. N.]
> 
>   _Letters That Have Helped Me_
> 
>   Volume II
> 
>                                 LETTERS
>                                  THAT
>                             HAVE HELPED ME
> 
>                                 VOL. II
> 
>                               COMPILED BY
>                    _THOMAS GREEN and JASPER NIEMAND_
> 
>                              THIRD EDITION
> 
>                                   THE
>                      UNITED LODGE OF THEOSOPHISTS
>                         Los Angeles, California
>                                  1920
> 
>                               In Devotion
>                            TO THE IMMORTALS
>                                 and in
>                         The Service of Humanity
>                            This little book
>                                 is laid
>                             Upon the Altar
> 
>                                            _June, 1905_
> 
>     THE MASTER'S LOVE IS BOUNTIFUL; ITS LIGHT SHINES UPON THY FACE AND
>     SHALL MAKE ALL THE CROOKED WAYS STRAIGHT FOR THEE.
> 
>   _Farewell Book._
> 
>     HITHERTO I HAVE BEEN AN EXILE FROM MY TRUE COUNTRY; NOW I RETURN
>     THITHER. DO NOT WEEP FOR ME; I RETURN TO THAT CELESTIAL LAND WHERE
>     EACH GOES IN HIS TURN.
> 
>   _Hermes Trismegistos._
> 
> CONTENTS.
> 
>                              PAGE
> 
>   FOREWORD                      7
> 
>   LETTERS                      11
> 
>   EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS        59
> 
>   AN OCCULT NOVEL              89
> 
>   WILLIAM Q. JUDGE            105
> 
> FOREWORD
> 
> One marked difference will be noticed between this, the second volume
> of LETTERS THAT HAVE HELPED ME, and the earlier volume. That first
> volume had a unity of purpose and development, setting forth, as it
> did, in due sequence, the salient points of the eastern teaching. This
> unity palpably arose from the fact that the series of letters was
> written to one individual, and thus followed along a line suited to the
> unfolding needs and the studies of that individual, as to those of all
> fellow students pursuing an identical line of thought.
> 
> The present volume, on the contrary, consists of letters, and extracts
> from letters, written to a number of people in different parts of the
> world. In many instances, an extract only was sent to the compilers
> by individuals appealed to, that of their store something might be
> given to their fellow-men. In other instances, the entire letter
> was sent, but contained personal or other matter, which could not
> be published. In still other instances, the entire letter is given.
> It has been thought best to omit all headings and endings to these
> letters, in order that no discrimination shall be made in respect of
> the recipients, thus leaving the truths which the letters embody to
> stand out in their own relief, unmarred by a label and a name. Many
> of the extracts were published in _The Irish Theosophist_, and others
> still in the "Tea-Table" of _The Path_, where "Quickly" stood for Mr.
> Judge. It was the wish of Mr. Judge, expressed in writing to one of the
> compilers, that the series should be republished (with the addition of
> other matter) as a second volume of the earlier work. The compilers
> are thus carrying out the direct wishes of Mr. Judge.
> 
> During the lifetime of Mr. Judge, it was possible to rearrange, to
> suggest excision or amplification, or the grouping of various extracts
> as one letter; and it was possible as well to annotate, since Mr. Judge
> read all proof, and was always ready to consider any suggestions,
> while he was also pleased to see that his annotator had grasped his
> meaning, or to correct errors in this respect. It is evident that such
> rearrangement, adding as it would to the completeness and the unity
> of a series, is much to be desired. It was hoped to continue this
> method with the present volume; but the death of the writer has made it
> impossible. We can only publish some letters completely, as they stand,
> and group together such extracts as remain.
> 
> One point more. A great number of letters have thus come up. One
> compiler alone has many score, all written since the publication of
> the first volume, and ranging over that period of years in which the
> trials of Mr. Judge became increasingly heavy, a period to which his
> unexpected death set a term. How great were these trials, none well
> knew except the Master Whom he so devotedly served. The last letter of
> all was written but a very short while before his death. In no single
> letter out of all these numbers--in no letter that the compilers have
> seen--is there a harsh or condemnatory word said of the authors of his
> trials. He accepts the bitter, the profound injustice done him without
> one word which could impugn the faith he held, the teachings he gave
> out. Surprise there is; annoyance once or twice at the waste of time,
> the irrational deeds and words. And then he turns him to that wise
> compassion which knows that it is not he who is wronged who is in truth
> the sufferer, but he who inflicts a wrong.
> 
> Mr. Judge always taught the truest Occultism, the highest path. When
> his hour of trial struck, step by step he followed along that path. In
> the destiny of the crucified, whether Christs, or Christ-disciples, it
> is always seen that the loudest denial comes from those most helped,
> most served. It is he who sits "at meat" with them who betrays them.
> And of all the long time of martyrs, never one has been exonerated to
> his era, justified to his age. This fact alone should make thinking men
> pause, remembering further that the crowd always prefers that Barabbas
> should be released unto them.
> 
> The great drama ever follows the same lines. The initiate, be he
> disciple or be he adept, cannot defend himself; this is the inexorable
> law. But he has all the tenderest support that his great predecessors
> along the path of thorns can bestow; all the joy of a battle nobly
> fought; all the gratitude of those among his fellows whose intuition
> can follow him behind the veil which screens the initiate from our
> sight.
> 
> So it comes about that these letters breathe the compassion, the
> patience, the brotherliness their author lived to inculcate. Sorrow,
> indeed, he felt; but he put it bravely by. His great and kind heart
> remained sound to the core. He sweetened the hours of bitterness by
> profound resignation to The Law. He was one of those of whom it is
> written: "He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it."
> 
> For the helping of mankind we publish these letters. To the judgment of
> posterity we commit them, knowing well that in the eternal spaces the
> Truth alone prevails. He who is here seen sustaining and consoling his
> fellows during the saddest hours of his life and down to the doors of
> the tomb, was in his turn upheld--not alone by a great faith and by an
> All-Compassionate Hand--but also by the Love enshrined in his own quiet
> heart. To The Master he left the rest.
> 
>   THE COMPILERS.
> 
> LETTERS
> 
> I.
> 
>   DEAR BROTHERS AND SISTERS:
> 
> I do not think that you will take it amiss that I again intrude myself
> before you. I am so far off, and the place where my old friend and
> teacher--the one who pointed out to me the way that must bring us, if
> followed, to the light and peace and power of truth--is so dear to me,
> I would fain speak with those, my fellow-workers, who now live where
> she worked, and where her mighty soul left the body she used for our
> advantage. This is surely sufficient reason.
> 
> Refer to the Master's letter in _The Occult World_ and you will find
> him saying that the Masters are philanthropists and care only for
> that. Hence, the very oldest F.T.S. who has been selfish, and not
> philanthropic, has never come under the notice of the Masters, has
> never done anything, in fact, toward the development of the soul in his
> possession, nothing for the race of man. It is not membership in the
> T.S., or any other mystical body, that brings us near the Masters, but
> just such philanthropic work with just the pure motive.
> 
> Then I know, and say plainly--for as so close to each other we should
> plainly speak--that some of us, maybe all, have waited and wondered,
> and wished and hoped, for what? Variously expressed thus: one wants to
> go to the Master, not knowing even if it be fitting; another wants to
> know what is the vague longing inside; another says that if the inner
> senses were but developed and hopes the Master would develop them, and
> so on; all, however, expressed by what the Master has himself written,
> "You want to find out about us, of our methods of work, and for that
> you seek along the line of occultism." Well, it is right for us to seek
> and to try and to want to reach to Them, for otherwise we never will in
> any age get where such Beings are. But as wise thinkers we should act
> and think wisely. I know many of you and what I am saying should help
> some as it does me also.
> 
> You are all on the road to Masters, but as we are now, with the weak
> and hereditarily diseased bodies we have, we could not live an hour
> with Masters did we jump suddenly past space to Them. Some too have
> doubt and darkness, the doubt mostly as to themselves. This should not
> be harboured, for it is a wile of the lower man striving to keep you
> back among the mediocre of the race. When you have lifted yourself up
> over that level of the race, the enemy of man strikes and strives at
> all times to bring clouds of doubt and despair. You should know that
> all, everyone, down to the most obscure, who are working steadily,
> are as steadily creeping on to a change, and yet on and on to other
> changes, and all steps to the Master. Do not allow discouragement
> to come in. Time is needed for all growth, and all change, and all
> development. Let time have her perfect work and do not stop it.
> 
> How may it be stopped? How many have thought of this I do not know, but
> here is a fact. As a sincere student works on, his work makes him come
> every day nearer to a step, and if it be an advance then it is certain
> there is a sort of silence or loneliness all around in the forest of
> his nature. Then he may stop all by allowing despair to come in with
> various reasons and pretexts; he may thus throw himself to where he
> began. This is not arbitrary law but Nature's. It is a law of mind, and
> the enemies of man take advantage of it for the undoing of the unwary
> disciple. I would never let the least fear or despair come before me,
> but if I cannot see the road, nor the goal for the fog, I would simply
> sit down and wait; I would not allow the fog to make me think no road
> was there, and that I was not to pass it. The fogs must lift.
> 
> What then is the panacea finally, the royal talisman? It is DUTY,
> Selflessness. Duty persistently followed is the highest yoga, and is
> better than mantrams or any posture, or any other thing. If you can do
> no more than duty it will bring you to the goal. And, my dear friends,
> I can swear it, the Masters are watching us all, and that without fail
> when we come to the right point and really deserve They manifest to us.
> At all times I know They help and try to aid us as far as we will let
> Them.
> 
> Why, the Masters are anxious (to use a word of our own) that as many
> as possible may reach to the state of power and love They are in. Why,
> then, suppose they help not? As they are Atman and therefore the very
> law of Karma itself, They are in everything in life, and every phase of
> our changing days and years. If you will arouse your faith on this line
> you come nearer to help from Them than you will recognise.
> 
> I send you my love and hope, and best thoughts that you may all find
> the great light shining around you every day. It is there.
> 
>   Your brother,
>   WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.
> 
> II.
> 
> Once more in the absence of ---- I send you a word of brotherly
> greeting. I would ask you to read it impersonally in every part, as I
> have no reserved thoughts and no ulterior aim in it, and have not had
> any letters or news from anyone to lead me to write. We are so far away
> from each other that now and then such a greeting is well, and should
> be taken in the spirit it is sent. It is not possible to send to any
> other household as none other exists in the Society, you being unique
> in this, that you are the only one. Here we have no such thing, all
> nearly living at other places, and this being merely a centre for work.
> 
> Many times have co-operative households been tried and failed. One was
> tried here and is famous. It was called the Brook Farm, but it had
> no such high aim and philosophy behind it as you have, and thus the
> personal frictions developed at any place of close intimacy broke it
> up. That should be a guide to you to enable you to watch and avoid.
> Yours may alter in number and in _personnel_, but can never really
> be broken up if the aim is high and the self-judgment is strict and
> not self-righteous. I am not accusing you of this, but only stating
> a common human danger, from which the Theosophist is not at any time
> exempt. Indeed, he is in danger in your centre from the fact that
> strong force revolves around it. Hence all must be ever careful, for
> the personal element is one that ever has a tendency to delude us as it
> hides behind various walls and clothes itself in the faults, real or
> imaginary, of _others_.
> 
> Your centre being the only one as yet of such size, it is useful to
> think how you may best all act as to make it truly international. Each
> one has a right to his or her particular "crank," of course, but no one
> ought to think that anyone else is to be judged from not being of the
> same stripe of "crank." One eats meat, another does not. Neither is
> universally right, for the kingdom of heaven does not come from meat,
> or from its absence. Another smokes and another does not; these are
> neither universally right nor wrong, as smoke for one is good and for
> another is bad; the true cosmopolitan allows each to do in such matters
> as he likes. Essentials are the only things on which true occultism
> and Theosophy require an agreement, and such temporary matters as food
> and other habitual daily things are not essentials. One may make
> a mistake, too, of parading too much his or her particular line of
> life or act. When this is done the whole world is bored, and nothing
> effective or lasting is gained except a cranky impression.
> 
> In a place like yours, where so many of all sorts of nature are
> together, there is a unique opportunity for gain and good in the
> chance it gives one for self-discipline. There friction of personality
> is inevitable, and if each one learns the great "give and take," and
> looks not for the faults of the others but for the faults he sees in
> himself, because of the friction, then great progress can be made. The
> Masters have said that the great step is to learn how to get out of
> the rut each one has by nature and by training, and to fill up the old
> grooves. This has been misconstrued by some who have applied it to mere
> outer habits of life, and forgotten that its real application is to the
> mental grooves and the astral ones also. Each mind has a groove, and
> is not naturally willing to run in the natural groove of another mind.
> Hence comes often friction and wrangle. Illustrate it by the flanged
> wheel of the steam-engine running on a track. It cannot run off nor
> on a track of broader or narrower gauge, and so is confined to one.
> Take off the flange and make the face of the wheel broader, and then
> it can run on any road that is at all possible. General human nature
> is like the engine, it is flanged and run for a certain size of track,
> but the occultist or the would-be one should take off the flange and
> have a broad-faced wheel that will accommodate itself to the other
> mind and nature. Thus in one life even we might have the benefit of
> many, for the lives of other men are lived beside us unnoticed and
> unused because we are too broad and flanged in wheel, or too narrow and
> flanged also. This is not easy, it is true, to change, but there is no
> better opportunity than is hourly presented to you in the whole world,
> to make the alteration. I would gladly have such a chance, which Karma
> has denied me, and I see the loss I incur each day by not having it
> there or here. You have it, and from there should go out to all the
> earth soon or late, men and women who are broad and free and strong for
> the work of helping the world. My reminding you of all this is not a
> criticism, but is due to my own want of such an opportunity, and being
> at a distance I can get a clearer view of the case, and what you have
> for your own benefit and also for all others.
> 
> It is natural for one to ask: "What of the future, and what of the
> defined object, if any, for our work?" That can be answered in many ways.
> 
> There is, first, our own work, in and on ourselves, each one. That has
> for its object the enlightenment of oneself for the good of others.
> If that is pursued selfishly some enlightenment comes, but not the
> amount needed for the whole work. We have to watch ourselves so as to
> make of each a centre from which, in our measure, may flow out the
> potentialities for good that from the adept come in large and affluent
> streams. The future then, for each, will come from each present moment.
> As we use the moment so we shift the future up or down for good or ill;
> for the future being only a word for the present--not yet come--we have
> to see to the present more than all. If the present is full of doubt or
> vacillation, so will be the future; if full of confidence, calmness,
> hope, courage and intelligence, thus also will be the future.
> 
> As to the broader scope of the work, that comes from united effort of
> the whole mass of units. It embraces the race, and as we cannot escape
> from the destiny of the race we have to dismiss doubt and continue at
> work. The race is, as a whole, in a transition state, and many of its
> units are kept back by the condition of the whole. We find the path
> difficult because, being of the race, the general race tendencies very
> strongly affect us. This we cannot do away with in a moment. It is
> useless to groan over it; it is also selfish, since we, in the distant
> past, had a hand in making it what it now is. The only way we can alter
> it is by such action now as makes of each one a centre for good, a
> force that makes "for righteousness," and that is guided by wisdom.
> From the great power of the general badness we each one have a greater
> fight to wage the moment we force our inner nature up beyond the dead
> level of the world. So before we attempt that forcing we should, on the
> lower plane, accumulate all that we can of merit by unselfish acts,
> by kind thoughts, by detaching our minds from the allurements of the
> world. This will not throw us out of the world, but will make us free
> from the great force which is called by Bœhme the "Turba," by which he
> meant the immense power of the unconscious and material basis of our
> nature. That material base being devoid of soul is more inclined on
> this plane to the lower things of life than to the higher.
> 
> Hence, until we have in some degree conquered that, it is useless for
> us to be wishing, as so many of us do, to see the Masters and to be
> with Them. They could not help us unless we furnish the conditions, and
> a mere desire is not the needed condition. The new condition calls for
> a change in thought and nature.
> 
> So the Masters have said this is a transition age, and he who has ears
> to hear will hear what has thus been said. We are working for the new
> cycles and centuries. What we do now in this transition age will be
> like what the great Dhyan Chohans did in the transition point--the
> midway point--in evolution at the time when all matter and all types
> were in a transition and fluid state. They then gave the new impulse
> for the new types, which resulted later in the vast varieties of
> nature. In the mental development we are now at the same point and what
> we now do in faith and hope for others and for ourselves will result
> similarly on the plane to which it is all directed. Thus in other
> centuries we will come out again and go on with it. If we neglect it
> now, so much the worse for us then. Hence we are not working for some
> definite organisation of the new years to come, but for a change in the
> Manas and Buddhi of the Race. That is why it may seem indefinite, but
> it is, nevertheless, very defined and very great in scope. Let me refer
> you to that part of _The Secret Doctrine_, penned by Master Himself,
> where the midway point of evolution is explained in reference to the
> ungulate mammals. It should give you a glimpse of what we have to do,
> and remove all vain longings for a present sojourn with our unseen
> guides and brothers. The world is not free from superstition, and
> we, a part of it, must have some traces left of the same thing. They
> have said that a great shadow follows all innovations in the life of
> humanity; the wise one will not bring on that shadow too soon and not
> until some light is ready to fall at the same time for breaking up the
> darkness.
> 
> Masters could give now all the light and knowledge needed, but there
> is too much darkness that would swallow up all the light, except for a
> few bright souls, and then a greater darkness would come on. Many of us
> could not grasp nor understand all that might be given, and to us would
> result a danger and new difficulty for other lives, to be worked out in
> pain and sorrow. It is from kindness and love that Masters do not blind
> us with the electric flash of truth complete.
> 
> But concretely there is a certain object for our general work. It is
> to start up a new force, a new current in the world, whereby great and
> long-gone Gnanis, or wise ones, will be attracted back to incarnate
> among men here and there, and thus bring back the true life and the
> true practices. Just now a pall of darkness is over all that no Gnani
> will be attracted by. Here and there a few beams strike through this.
> Even in India it is dark, for there, where the truth is hid, the thick
> veil of theological dogma hides all; and though there is a great hope
> in it the Masters cannot pierce through to minds below. We have to
> educate the West so that it may appreciate the possibilities of the
> East, and thus on the waiting structure in the East may be built up a
> new order of things for the benefit of the whole. We have, each one of
> us, to make ourselves a centre of light; a picture gallery from which
> shall be projected on the astral light such scenes, such influences,
> such thoughts, as may influence many for good, shall thus arouse a new
> current, and then finally result in drawing back the great and the good
> from other spheres from beyond the earth. This is not spiritualism at
> all, for it has no reference to the denizens of spook-land in any way.
> 
> Let us then have great faith and confidence. See how many have gone
> out from time to time from your centre to many and distant parts of
> the world, and how many will continue to go for the good and the gain
> of man of all places. They have gone to all parts, and it must be that
> even if the centre should be disrupted from causes outside of you, its
> power and reality will not be destroyed at all, but will ever remain,
> even after all of it may have gone as far as bricks and mortar are
> concerned.
> 
> I give you my best wishes and brotherly greeting for the new year and
> for every year that is to come.
> 
>   Affectionately yours,
>   WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.
> 
> III.
> 
> I send you this, and you will keep it, using it later on when I give
> the word. It is to be headed by me later.
> 
> The Theosophical movement was begun as a work of the Brotherhood of
> which H. P. B. is a member, and in which the great Initiate, who was by
> her called Master, is one of the Chiefs.
> 
> It was started among Western people by Western people, the two chief
> agents being H. P. B., a Russian, and H. S. Olcott, an American. The
> place where it was started was also Western--the City of New York.
> 
> But notwithstanding that the Brotherhood thus had it begun, it must, as
> a Society, be kept with a free platform, while, at the same time, its
> members are individually free to take and hold what belief they find
> approved by conscience, provided that belief does not militate against
> Universal Brotherhood. Hence they are at perfect liberty to believe in
> the Lodge of that Brotherhood and in its messengers, and also to accept
> their doctrines as to man, his nature, powers and destiny as given out
> by the messengers on behalf of the Lodge.
> 
> The fact is significant that the Theosophical movement was thus, as
> said, begun in the Western world, in the country where the preparations
> for the new root race are going on, and where that new root is to
> appear. This was not to give precedence to any one race or country over
> another, or to reduce any race or country, but was and is according to
> the law of cycles, which is a part of evolution. In the eye of that
> great Law no country is first or last, new or old, high or low, but
> each at the right time is appropriate for whatever the work is that
> must be performed. Each country is bound up with all the others and
> must assist them.
> 
> This movement has, among others, an object which should be borne in
> mind. It is the union of the West with the East, the revival in the
> East of those greatnesses which once were hers, the development in the
> West of that Occultism which is appropriate for it, so that it may, in
> its turn, hold out a helping hand to those of older blood who may have
> become fixed in one idea, or degraded in spirituality.
> 
> For many centuries this union has been worked towards and workers have
> been sent out through the West to lay the foundations. But not until
> 1875 could a wide public effort be made, and then the Theosophical
> Society came into existence because the times were ripe and the workers
> ready.
> 
> Organisations, like men, may fall into ruts or grooves of mental and
> psychic action, which, once established, are difficult to obliterate.
> To prevent those ruts or grooves in the Theosophical movement, its
> guardians provided that necessary shocks should now and then interpose
> so as to conduce to solidarity, to give strength such as the oak
> obtains from buffetting the storm, and in order that all grooves of
> mind, act, or thought, might be filled up.
> 
> It is not the desire of the Brotherhood that those members of the
> Theosophical movement who have, under their rights, taken up a belief
> in the messengers and the message should become pilgrims to India. To
> arouse that thought was not the work nor the wish of H. P. B. Nor is
> it the desire of the Lodge to have members think that Eastern methods
> are to be followed, Eastern habits adopted, or the present East made
> the model or the goal. The West has its own work and its duty, its own
> life and development. Those it should perform, aspire to and follow,
> and not try to run to other fields where the duties of other men are
> to be performed. If the task of raising the spirituality of India, now
> degraded and almost suffocated, were easy, and if thus easily raised
> could it shine into and enlighten the whole world of the West, then,
> indeed, were the time wasted in beginning in the West, when a shorter
> and quicker way existed in the older land. But in fact it is more
> difficult to make an entry into the hearts and minds of people who,
> through much lapse of time in fixed metaphysical dogmatism, have built,
> in the psychic and psycho-mental planes, a hard impervious shell around
> themselves, than it is to make that entry with Westerners who, although
> they may be meat eaters, yet have no fixed opinions deep laid in a
> foundation of mysticism and buttressed with a pride inherited from the
> past.
> 
> The new era of Western Occultism definitely began in 1875 with the
> efforts of that noble woman who abandoned the body of that day not long
> ago. This does not mean that the Western Occultism is to be something
> wholly different from and opposed to what so many know, or think they
> know, as Eastern Occultism. It is to be the Western side of the one
> great whole of which the true Eastern is the other half. It has, as its
> mission, largely entrusted to the hands of the Theosophical Society, to
> furnish to the West that which it can never get from the East; to push
> forward and raise high on the circular path of evolution now rolling
> West, the light that lighteth every man who cometh into the world--the
> light of the true self, who is the one true Master for every human
> being; all other Masters are but servants of that true One; in it all
> real Lodges have their union.
> 
> Woe is set apart--not by Masters but by Nature's laws--for those who,
> having started in the path with the aid of H. P. B. shall in any way
> try to belittle her and her work, still, as yet not understood and
> by many misunderstood. This does not mean that a mere person is to
> be slavishly followed. But to explain her away, to belittle her, to
> imagine vain explanations with which to do away with what is not liked
> in that which she said, is to violate the ideal, is to spit back in
> the face of the teacher through whom the knowledge and the opportunity
> came, to befoul the river which brought you sweet waters. She was and
> is one of those servants of the universal Lodge sent to the West to
> take up the work, well knowing of the pain and obloquy and the insult
> to the very soul--worst of all insults--which were certain from the
> first to be hers. "Those who cannot understand her had best not try to
> explain her: those who do not find themselves strong enough for the
> task she plainly outlined from the beginning had best not attempt it."
> She knew, and you have been told before, that high and wise servants
> of the Lodge have remained with the West since many centuries for the
> purpose of helping it on to its mission and destiny. That work it
> would be well for the members of the Theosophical movement to continue
> without deviating, without excitement, without running to extremes,
> without imagining that Truth is a matter of either longitude or
> latitude: the truth of the soul's life is in no special quarter of the
> compass, it is everywhere round the whole circle, and those who look in
> one quarter will not find it.
> 
> (This letter is marked in red pencil, by the hand of Mr. Judge,
> "unfinished." In fact, it ends with the word "will," as above, but in
> publishing earlier some extracts from this letter, the owner had the
> permission of the writer to supply the last three words, which he had
> intended to place there when called away, and in his haste for the
> post, in returning, had omitted to add.)
> 
> IV.
> 
> TO THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLICATION SOCIETY:
> 
> It is with great regret that I learn from recent London advices that
> the Managers of the Society there think that the Tract, "Epitome of
> Theosophy," which appeared in _The Path_, is "too advanced to be
> reprinted now, and that what is needed is 'a stepping-stone from
> fiction to philosophy.'"
> 
> Permit me to say that I cannot agree with this opinion, nor with the
> policy which is outlined by it. The opinion is erroneous, and the
> policy is weak as well as being out of accord with that of the Masters.
> Those Masters have approved the project of the new Society and are
> watching the unfolding of its policy.
> 
> If I had made up that Epitome wholly myself I might have some
> hesitation in speaking in this way, but I did not. The general idea of
> such a series of tracts was given to me some two years ago, and this
> one was prepared by several students who know what the people need.
> It is at once comprehensive and fundamental. It covers most of the
> ground, and if any sincere reader grasps it he will have food for his
> reflection of the sort needed.
> 
> If, however, we are to proceed by a mollified passage from folly (which
> is fiction) to philosophy, then we at once diverge from the path
> marked out for us by the Masters; and for this statement I can refer
> to letters from Them in my hands. I need only draw your attention to
> the fact that when those Masters began to cause Their servants to give
> out matter in India, They did not begin with fiction, but with stern
> facts such as are to be found in the _Fragments of Occult Truth_, which
> afterwards became Mr. Sinnett's _Esoteric Buddhism_. We are not seeking
> to cater to a lot of fiction readers and curiosity hunters, but to the
> pressing needs of earnest minds. Fiction readers never influenced a
> nation's progress. And these earnest minds do not desire, and ought not
> to be treated to a gruel which the sentence just quoted would seem to
> indicate as their fate.
> 
> Then again, I beg to remind my English brothers in this enterprise that
> they should remember that the United States contain more theosophists
> and possible subscribers and readers than the whole of Europe. They
> do not want fiction. They want no padding in their search for truth.
> They are perfectly able to grasp that which you call "too advanced."
> The Master some years ago said that the U. S. needed the help of the
> English body of theosophists. That they did not get, and now do not
> require it so much, and their ideas and needs must be considered by us.
> We have twenty-one Branches to your three in Great Britain, and each
> month, nearly, sees a new Branch. Several have written me that they
> understand the T.P.S. is to give them _good_ and _valuable_ reprints
> and not weak matters of fiction.
> 
> I therefore respectfully urge upon you that the weak and erroneous
> policy to which I have referred shall not be followed, but that strong
> lines of action be taken, and that we leave fiction to the writers who
> profit by it or who think that thus people's minds can be turned to the
> Truth. If a contrary line be adopted then we will not only disappoint
> the Master (if that be possible) but we will in a very large sense be
> guilty of making false representations to a growing body of subscribers
> here as well as elsewhere.
> 
>   I am, Fraternally Yours,
>   WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.
> 
> V.
> 
> It is a relief to turn from these eternal legal quibbles (of my
> business) to say a word or two on eternal matters.
> 
> Now and then there are underlined sentences occurring in _The Path_.
> These ought to be studied. One about one yogee not doing anything not
> seen in another yogee's mind will open up a subject. Reticence does not
> always mean ignorance: if we dig out the knowledge we drag down at the
> same time rocks and debris of other sorts, whereas, if a miner hands us
> the nugget, that is all we get at the time. So a slight reticence often
> results in our going at the digging ourselves.
> 
> In September _Path_ is another. Getting back the memory of other lives
> is really the whole of the process, and if some people don't understand
> certain things it is either because they have not got to that point in
> their other lives or because no glimmer of memory has yet come.
> 
> The communion of saints is a reality, and it often happens that those
> brought up in the same school speak the same language. While not
> being one, such are very like co-scholars no matter when or where.
> Furthermore, there are some peculiar natures in this world who, while
> they are like mirrors or sponges that reflect and absorb from others
> certain information, still retain a very strong individuality of their
> own. So it is with this gentleman whose letter you enclose. There is
> scarcely any doubt that he, if he tells true tales, sees in the astral
> light. The description of things "moving about like fishes in the sea"
> is a real description of one of the manners in which many of these
> elemental forms are seen. So it may, as premised above, be settled that
> he sees in the astral light.
> 
> He should know that that astral light exists in all places and
> interpenetrates everything, and is not simply in the free air alone.
> Further should he know that to be able to see as he sees in the light
> is not _all_ of the seeing thus. That is, there are many sorts of
> such sight, _e.g._, he may see now certain airy shapes and yet not
> see many others which at the same time are as really present there
> as those he now sees. So it would seem that there are "layers" or
> differences of states in the astral light. Another way to state it is
> that elementals are constantly moving in the astral light--that is,
> everywhere. They, so to say, show pictures to him who looks, and the
> pictures they show will depend in great part upon the seer's thoughts,
> motives and development. These differences are very numerous. It
> therefore follows that in this study _pride_ must be eliminated. That
> pride has disappeared from ordinary life does not prove that it has
> done any more than retreat a little further within. So one must be
> careful of becoming even inwardly vain of being able to see any such
> things; for if that happens it will follow that the one limited plane
> in which one may be a seer will be accepted as the whole. That, then,
> will be falsity. But if recognized as delusive because partial, then
> it remains true--so far as it goes. All true things must be total,
> and all totalities exist at once, each in all, while these partial
> forms exist partially in those that are total. So it follows that only
> those that are total reveal entire truth, and those that partake of
> lower nature--or are partial--receive but a limited view of truth. The
> elementals are partial forms, while the man's individual soul is total,
> and according to the power and purity of that form which it inhabits
> "waits upon the Gods."
> 
> Now our bodies, and all "false I" powers up to the individual soul, are
> "partial forms" in common with the energic centres in astral light. So
> that it must follow that no matter how much we and they participate
> in each other the resulting view of the one Truth is partial in its
> nature because the two partial forms mingling together do not produce
> totality. But it intoxicates. And herein lies the danger of the
> teaching of such men as P. B. Randolph, who advocates participation
> with these partial beings by means of sensual excesses glorified with a
> name and gilded with the pretence of a high purpose--_viz._, knowledge:
> KNOWLEDGE MUST BE CAREFULLY OBTAINED WITH A PURE MOTIVE.
> 
> This motive is the point for this gentleman to study. He says that he
> "will know," and that he "desires to escape from present limitations of
> this personality, which is all loneliness."
> 
> As he did go forward on the path of knowledge, he would find that this
> imaginary loneliness of which he speaks is by comparison with the utter
> loneliness of that path, a howling mob, a tramping regiment.
> 
> As he is fighting alone his own fight let him carefully note his
> motive in seeking to know more, and in seeking to escape from his
> present "loneliness." Must it not be true that loneliness cannot be
> escaped from by abhorrence of it or even by its acceptance, but by its
> recognition? What next? Well, this; and perhaps it is too simple. He
> ought to assure himself that his motive in knowing and being is that he
> may help all creatures. I do not say that this is not now his motive,
> but for fear it should not be I refer to it. For as he appears to be on
> the borderland of fearful sights and sounds he ought to know the magic
> amulet which alone can protect him while he is ignorant. It is that
> boundless charity of love which led Buddha to say: "Let the sins of
> this dark age fall on me that the world may be saved," and not a desire
> for escape or for knowledge. It is expressed in the words: "THE FIRST
> STEP IN TRUE MAGIC IS DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF OTHERS." It was
> expressed by Krishna when he said: "Near to Renunciation is salvation"
> (or the state of a Jivanmukta).
> 
> But he naturally will ask if he should cultivate his powers. Well,
> of course he should at some time or other; but he ought to begin at
> motives and purification of thought. He may, if he chooses, abandon
> the ideas of this large-hearted charity and yet make great progress in
> "powers," but surely then death and ashes will be the result. That does
> not concern me.
> 
> Why did he have a "horror" when he merely succeeded in going away from
> his body; in being for a moment free? That is an important question.
> Its solution may be found in many ways. I will mention one. If the
> place, or person he wished to go to was one to which he then ought
> not to have gone--or if his motive in desiring to go there was not
> pure--then a horror might result that drove him back. But if even with
> a bad motive he had attempted to go to a place where a similar motive
> existed, then no horror would have come. If he will tell himself, or
> me, just where he was wanting to go, I may say why he had a horror. But
> I do not want to know.
> 
> For it is not necessarily a horror-producing thing to leave the body.
> Only lately I know of a friend of mine who went out of his body a
> distance of 10,000 miles and had no horror. In that case he desired to
> see a friend on a common purpose which had in view the amelioration
> of this dark age; and again, who left his body in the country and saw
> the surrounding sweeps of wood and vale and had no horror whatever in
> either case.
> 
> If one is sure of motive, and that is pure, then going out of the body
> is not detrimental.
> 
> An illustration will show the dangers. Take the case of one who is able
> to leave the body and who determines to go to one who is sympathetic.
> The second one, however, is protected by high motive and great purity:
> the first is mixed in motive in waking life, which, as soon as the
> other disengaged state comes on, changes into a mere curiosity to
> see the second, and perhaps with more or less sensuality, _e.g._, a
> desire to see a woman much admired and to pour into her unwilling ear
> pretended or real human love. The elementals (and so on) of the second
> protect that soul and hurl vague horrors at the first who, if he is not
> a skilled black magician is:
> 
> 1. Either merely pushed back into the body: Or
> 
> 2. Is assailed with fears that prevent him finding his body, and that
> may be occupied by an elementary, good, bad or indifferent--and his
> friends may say that he waked up insane!
> 
> Well; enough!
> 
> VI.
> 
> The letters proposed by your friend are a device of the enemy, as you
> may have supposed, and which you were warned to expect in unexpected
> quarters and ways. Therefore they should not be written. It is the
> small rift in the lute that destroys it; in human history small and
> unexpected events alter the destiny of nations.
> 
> On this plane the dark powers rely upon their ability to create a
> maya. They have seen that you are not to be trapped in the prominent
> lines of work and so try their hands where your currents exist in a
> prominent place but with a very small matter. Let me point out.
> 
> If you issue these letters they would be an endorsement of all that
> your friend might think to do, and neither you nor Y. are free from
> mistakes yet. They would amount to a declaration, to the perception of
> others, that you were guiding Y. in everything and were at all times
> conscious of it. Do you or Y. know where this would end? Do you see
> the possibilities flowing from the acceptance in full of those letters
> by the others? And what would their action be? Are they free from the
> curse of superstition; are they clear in the co-ordination of psychic
> with brain thought? No. The result would not only be different from
> what you and Y. can see, but worse. Now further.
> 
> It is true--and humanly natural--that the others (like you and _your_
> friends) indulged in some slight critiques on your friend, but they
> were small and coupled with sincere and kind thoughts up to their
> lights, no matter how large and bitter all this was made by maya to
> appear. The dark powers seized on them, enlarged them, dressed them
> up, assumed the images of the thinkers, enlivened the thoughts with
> elementals, all with an object, _viz._, to make your friend think it
> all came from the others. Why, if that were so then those others (poor
> weak mortals) are friends. But are they? No. It was wished by the dark
> ones to irritate your friend, and you, so as, by the irritation, to
> split a breach forever unhealable. In Y.'s very weak state they found
> it easy, and hoped by distance to make you blind.
> 
> Tell your friend to remember what was long ago said; that the Master
> would manage results. You must not manage, precipitate, nor force.
> Beware. Let Y. assume that the others do not think harshly nor
> critically, but put it all against the dark powers, and the results
> will be managed by Master. As chelâs and students conceal rather than
> give out your inner psychic life, for by telling of it your proper
> progress is hindered. There must be silence in heaven for a time or
> the dark ones rejoice to so easily get good, malleable images for
> annoying you. It will be tried again either that way or some other. By
> gentleness, detachment, strict attention to duty, and retiring now and
> then to the quiet place bring up good currents and keep back all evil
> ones. Remember it is the little things the work is done through, for they
> are not noticed, while the larger ones draw the eyes and minds of all.
> 
> I think of you always as the brave soldier, made not of mud and soft
> things, but made of long pieces of steel and strips of diamond and
> flashes of long light that has no harshness, and a big, big spring
> all the way through. That is you. And your eyes laugh now and then,
> even if you do have a pain in your head. Inside you are all right, as
> you know very well, don't you? Then if you are that soldier, it means
> that he will spring back as soon as the body has had time to get some
> better. The body is like the heart; it has to have time to get to some
> other condition. But you will get there. A steady mind and heart stands
> still and quiet until the muddy stream rolls clear. Now sleep, I say;
> I command you to sleep. I have tried to help you to sleep, and I wish
> you to sleep, for sleep will do you good as nothing else can. I hope to
> see you drop all when ---- comes, and go to sleep for awhile, and far
> enough from the row to be quiet. It is sleep your tired nature on the
> outside wants, for sleep knits up the ravelled thread of life and makes
> us young again. You have been so awake, that the power of equilibrium
> between life and the body is disturbed and needs a chance. This is
> fact. One can get wrought up, and then Prana is too strong; so little
> children sleep much. _Be a child once._
> 
> Well, I'm near home, or rather the centre spot, for pilgrims like you
> and I have no real house and don't want it; it's too dull and usual for
> such to want a home. And perhaps the little brother is good and well?
> He shall be ever present, as he always has been, in those little songs
> and tales told to oneself in the dark, and is, too, the lone warrior
> seen on the plain of stupid infantry, and he rides a horse whose blood
> is electricity. Au revoir. Tell ---- I can stand alone; it is the best
> way to stand, and what I always was and shall be. Let the ripples and
> the foam go on coming and going; the old river and the bed of the river
> do not move for all that is on the top. Is it not so? Well, good-bye,
> and good luck, and may the devas help you and also karma. Love to all,
> as usual.
> 
>   As forevermore,
> 
> VII.
> 
> I was very glad indeed to get your letter, but sorry to read of your
> troubles. Strangely, too, a similar trouble with a very dear friend of
> mine is now uppermost in my mind, and I would like to crave the favour
> from you that you would tell me what kind of place the asylum is you
> speak of. The only accessible one here is a mere prison, where men do
> nothing, and where I do not think the influence would be other than
> depressing. Do you think at the one you have in mind a man of active
> mind, who merely wishes to get rid of his present trouble, would be
> able to occupy himself?
> 
> I am indeed sorry that you have to tell me such matters, but they
> will rest in my confidence; and I thank you and ---- for your renewed
> invitation.
> 
> It is best not to inquire into some of the mysteries of life, but
> surely a full reliance upon the Spirit within and upon the law that
> the hands that smite us are our own, will relieve the pressure of
> some events that seem mysteries. I find the greatest consolation in
> these reflections, and then I see that each moment is mine, and that
> when gone it is passed and merged into the sum of my being: and so I
> must strive to Be. Thus I may hope to become in time the conscious
> possessor of the whole of Being. So I do not strive after mystery. The
> great struggle must be to open up my outer self, that my higher being
> may shine through, for I know that in my heart the God sits patient,
> and that his pure rays are merely veiled from me by the many strivings
> and illusions that I bring on outwardly. This being so, I can only look
> at the Society and its work (under my lights) as the best available
> channel for my actions in the effort to help others. Its methods, then,
> as far as I am concerned, will be only mine, and thus I cannot attach
> to it the methods of any other person.
> 
>   Believe me sincerely yours.
> 
> VIII.
> 
> As for me, all that is the matter is my health, not yet full and good.
> If that were all right, I would have nothing. What do I care for all
> the row? It will soon be over; some will be dead; the sooner the
> better, and then we shall have other fun. I look at it all as so much
> fun and variety, sure; I am not joking. It is variety, and without
> that what would life be? As all these asses bray we learn new notes of
> the scale not known before. A heap of letters I got; but I am O.K.,
> fragile, perhaps, but not brittle. I would like to be with you both and
> have some sweet fun without tears or spite, but we have to be apart,
> to meet now and then. Poor ----! Don't be hard on him. He had to be
> silent, you know. A small matter, but more important than he knew for
> him. Let up on him, and don't jeer. He has a hard time enough with
> himself, to have any added by massage from others.
> 
> C----'s illusion to "suffering" opens up a vein of thought which I have
> had. I have examined myself for the "uses" of this rumpus, to see if I
> am properly "suffering." Well, I can't find it. Down in the deeps I may
> be; but I find myself cheerful, happy, and anything but morose or sad.
> Ergo: can I be suffering? Do you know? Positively, I do not know. Ought
> I? Am I a wretch because I do not suffer, or because, being in actual
> suffering, I am insensate and do not perceive it? But, on the other
> hand, I feel no anger and no resentment. Really, it puzzleth me. Many
> nights I do not sleep, and have used the hours (as I now do), when all
> is still, in looking over all, and yet I feel all right--everywhere.
> Of course, I have committed my human faults and sins, but I mean, on
> the Grand Round-Up, I find nothing to "suffer me"; nothing that I shall
> rush out to amend by taking the ridiculous and nasty world to my bosom
> in confidence upon.
> 
> As for myself. Well. What? Nothing. I know not and care not. I am
> joyful and glorious that the work thus goes. My desires are not here,
> and all the racket sounds to me far off, as if miles from my ear. I am
> acting as a pump-engine, and trying to force a lot on. This is not for
> myself. I must find myself alone, as we all are, and then the Law will
> say: "Next!" But what next I do not care and don't want to know, for
> when "Next" is said I will see what it is to do. Just now the best and
> biggest work by us poor children is on this plane with the great aid
> of Master, Whose simple single will keeps the whole organisation, and
> acts as its support and shield. We are not big enough yet to handle the
> Akasa, but we may help Them to, and that is all I want to do. I have
> used the present affairs to be as a lesson to me, for it may be used
> as a test to me as to pride and ambition; and I find that, no matter
> how I turn it, the same result comes. I am seeking other things while
> working in this. Try as I may to raise an ambition for power, and to
> raise a desire to change a supposed case (non-existent in fact), I
> can't do it. So you see, my dear Comrade, I am all right.
> 
> These questions you ask me:
> 
> When the Self is first seen it is like looking into a glove; and for
> how many incarnations may it not be so? The material envelope throws up
> before the eye of the Soul waving fumes and clouds of illusion.
> 
> The brain is only the focus through which the forces and thoughts are
> centralised that are continually coming in through the solar plexus of
> the heart. Many such thoughts, therefore, are lost, just as millions of
> seeds in nature are lost. It behoves to study them and to guard them
> when there; but can we call them our own? Or weep over them? Let us
> be as wide as great Nature concerning them, and let each go on to its
> own place without colouring them with our own colour and acceptance or
> adhesion.
> 
> The spiral movement is the double movement of the astral light, one
> spiral inside the other. The diastole and systole of the heart are
> caused by that double movement of the Akasa. But do not presumptuously
> grasp the movement too soon, for often even the heart moving too
> rapidly destroys the life.
> 
> The brutes unconsciously are aware of the general human opposition,
> which in each human being they see focalised.
> 
> It is easier to sink back into the Eternal than to dive. The diver
> must needs have the power to retain breath against the rush caused by
> diving, while to sink gives time to get and keep the breath.
> 
> Nothing else greatly new. Am waiting to hear of your completer health.
> Sustained on the wave you will come in with the tide in time. Best love
> to ---- and to ---- and to thee. May you all be well sustained. I
> think I have now given you all there is. Salute most noble, brave, and
> diamond-hearted! May we meet after the dust settles, and we will meet
> forever in the long, long manvantaras before us all. Peace! Peace! the
> path of peace and not of war: such are the words.
> 
>   As forevermore.
> 
> IX.
> 
> I do not know what to write, for I've been so occupied with people.
> I am anxious about my lectures; still unprepared. I cannot naturally
> reply to many of your points, because I have a retiring feeling, and
> so shall not reply. Indeed, I often think how nice it would be not to
> speak or write. I am no hand at those nice phrases that people like. Of
> course, that does not alter my real feelings, but chickens are chickens
> and often think nonsense. I want to forget and forgive all those
> children and childish acts. Let us do it, and try as much as possible
> to be real brothers, and thus get nearer the truth. And by work we will
> defeat the enemy of Master: by still silently working.
> 
> I hope still you will emerge sooner or later all the better and the
> stronger. I know you will and I do not see you dead by any means. You
> are less hopeful for yourself than for others. But you have the will
> and the fire to fight on to the last bone and the last moment. I only
> wish I could see you all to hearten you up a little more: that is, to
> talk with you, for you do not need much of the grit....
> 
> I often hear from Him now. That terrible racket cleared me up. He says
> that much haste must be avoided. And that I must not let the flood
> carry me off. He asks me to say to you that you have a natural rapidity
> that must be guided by yourself and the best way is to wait after a
> letter and to sleep on a plan. He also says that ... (I am not aware of
> this, but He must be right), that you have a subtle desire to be the
> first to make or propose a good plan or act. Do not let this carry
> you off, but be slower as to that. It is good advice, I think, for the
> additional reason that one can now and then take a plan from the head
> of another.
> 
> I see the clans have been gathering. Keep it up and see to it as far as
> possible that partisanship is at a low ebb and that only good, steady
> loyalty and work are the main motive. _And cast no one out of your
> heart._
> 
> I must ask for a calmer motion at this time. It is absolutely necessary.
> 
> A word of love to ----? I sent it. I sent many. I not only sent it
> visible but also the other way. What could I say? I do not know. In
> what I sent my whole heart was put. Does not ---- forever stand for
> me and with me? How can I use words when the fibres of my heart are
> involved? And what good is my philosophy if, when the actual taking of
> ---- off seemed so near, I indulged in mere words? I cannot do it. If
> I try, then the words are mere rubbish, lies and unreal, as I am not
> able to do this, no matter how much others can. Our real life is not in
> words of love or hate or coldness but in the fiery depths of the heart.
> And in those depths ---- is and was. Could I say more? No; impossible.
> And even that is small and badly said.
> 
> It is true that day by day the effect of my philosophy is more apparent
> on me, as yours is and will be on you, and so with us all. I see it
> myself, let alone all I hear of it from others. What a world and what
> a life! Yet we are born alone and must die alone, except that in the
> Eternal Space all are one, and the One Reality never dies.
> 
> If ambition creeps up slowly higher and higher it will destroy all
> things, for the foundations will be weak. In the end, the Master will
> win, so let us breathe deep and hold fast there, as we are. And let us
> hurry nothing. Eternity is here all the time. I cannot tell you how my
> heart turns to you all. You know this, but a single word will do it.
> _Trust!_ That was what H. P. B. said. Did she not know? Who is greater
> than our old and valiant "old Lady"? Ah, were she here, what a carnage!
> Wonder, anyhow, how she, or he, or it, looks at the matter? Smiling, I
> suppose, at all our struggles.
> 
> Again, in storm and shine, in heat and cold, near or afar, among
> friends or foes, the same in One Work.
> 
> X.
> 
>   MY DEAR COMPANION (CAMPANERO),
> 
> Your long letter and message received. All I can say is that it is
> gigantically splendid, marvelously accurate. And let me then return
> to you this message ... that this must prove to you that you are not
> standing still.... It's all well enough to be out in the rapids as you
> say I am, but what of it when I don't hear such a message as yours
> myself? Thank you. It is a bugle blast from the past. Perhaps in some
> other age I taught you that and now you give it to me again. When I
> said in mine that in Kali Yuga more could be done than in any other
> age in the same period, I stated all you say but I didn't know it. Now
> your clear light falls upon it and I see it well. But fear not. You
> got so familiar to me that I permitted myself to let out some of the
> things that I now and then feel. But I swear to you that I do not let
> them always so rush before me. Truly you have proved that your place is
> "where the long roll finds you standing."
> 
> Now don't you begin to see more and more things? Don't you feel things
> that you know without anyone to tell you?
> 
> My friend Urban has shown me a letter from ---- in which the latter,
> feeling dark in consequence of various causes, sees no light. This is
> merely the slough of despond, I tell him. We know the light is ahead,
> and the experience of others shows that the darkest hour is just before
> the dawn. I tell him also that strong souls are thus tried inevitably
> because they rush ahead along the road to the light. In the _Finnish
> Epic_ it is said that guarding a certain place are hideous serpents and
> glittering spears. And so it really is.
> 
> But although such is the truth, I have also to tell him that he ought,
> as far as possible, to try to ameliorate the circumstances. I will make
> my meaning clear. He is living now, as you know, among people of an
> opposite faith. Around them are elementals who would, if they could,
> implant suspicion and distrust about those whom he reveres, or, if they
> fail there, will try to cause physical ills or aggravate present ones.
> In his case these have succeeded in part in causing darkness.... Now
> ----, while not just in that case, is surrounded, while not strong, by
> those who inwardly deplore his beliefs ... and hence the elementals
> are there and they quarrel with those of ---- and bring on despair,
> reduce strength, and so on. I tell ---- those circumstances ought to be
> ameliorated every now and then: for I know he would at once, if changed
> to a better place, get better. And so I have written to him to make a
> change as soon as he can.
> 
> It is highly important that no replies should be made to attacks. Get
> the people to devote themselves to work and to ignoring attacks. The
> opposing forces strain every nerve to irritate some or all of us so
> that we may reply in irritation and precipitate more follies. Consider
> solely how to improve old work, get up new work and infuse energy into
> work. Otherwise the beneficent influences intended for all F.T.S. will
> be nullified.
> 
> Cheer up ----, and from your standpoint tell him how to know the
> distinction between the intellect and spiritual mind. Tell him how to
> find out his spirit-will and to ignore a little the mental attitude
> he takes. Do not point to particular instances of his own failure but
> detail your own inner experience. It will do him good.
> 
> Upanishads. "Subsisting" here means, not that the self _exists_ by
> reason of food, but that as a manifestation, as one causing the body to
> be visible and to act, the self subsists in that state by means of the
> food which is used. It is really a reversed translation, and ought to
> read--as I think--"The self exists in close proximity to the heart and
> causes the body to exist by reason of the food which it takes in for
> its subsistence." That is, continual reference is had to the doctrine
> that if the self were not there the body would not exist. Yes: it also
> means that the self procures vital airs from the food which the one
> life causes to be digested. For note that which you know, that did
> we not take food the material unit of the trinity would die and the
> self be disappointed, and then would get another body to try in again.
> For is it not permitted to each one to try and set up a habit in that
> material unit whereby we may as incarnated beings know the self? Then
> when that is done we do not live as others; but all the same, even
> then, the self must subsist, so to say, while in manifestation, by
> means of food, no matter if that food be of a different character,
> corresponding to the new state. Even the Devas subsist by food.
> You know "they enter into that colour, or sound, or savour, at the
> sacrifice, they rise in that colour, etc., and by it they live." Watch
> words, ---- dear; they are traps. Catch ideas and I will understand you
> by the context that you are not confined to the ordinary meanings.
> 
> I am swamped in work, but my courage is up, and I feel the help sent
> from the right place.
> 
> Let us go on from place to place and from year to year; no matter who
> or what claims us outwardly, we are each the property of the self.
> 
>   As forevermore and after.
> 
> XI.
> 
>   To ----.
> 
> There is a sentence in your letter not explained by J. Niemand, which,
> however, needs explaining, for it is the outgrowth of an erroneous idea
> in you. You say: "Can I help these ignorant elementals with mental
> instruction? I tried it, but not successfully."
> 
> In all those cases where it is caused by the elementals you _cannot_.
> Elementals are not ignorant. They know just as little and just as
> much as you do. Most generally more. Do you not know that they are
> reflectors? They merely mirror to you either your own mind, or that
> mental strata caused by the age, the race, and the nation you may be
> in. Their action is invariably automatic and unconscious. They care not
> for what is called by you "mental instruction." They hear you not.
> 
> Do you know how they hear, or what language they understand? Not human
> speech; nor ordinary human thought clothed in mental speech. That is a
> dead letter to them altogether.
> 
> They can only be communicated with through correlations of colours and
> sounds. But while you address yourself to them, those thoughts assume
> life from elementals rushing in and attaching themselves to those
> thoughts.
> 
> Do not, then, try to speak to them too much, because did you make
> them know they might demand of you some boon or privilege, or become
> attached to you, since in order to make them understand they must
> _know_ you, and a photographic plate forgets not.
> 
> Fear them not, nor recoil in horror nor repulsion. The time of trial
> must be fulfilled. Job had to wait his period until all his troubles
> and diseases passed away. _Before_ that time he could do naught.
> 
> But we are not to idly sit and repine; we are to bear these trials,
> meanwhile drawing new and good elementals so as to have--in western
> phrase--a capital on which to draw when the time of trial has fully
> passed away.
> 
> On all other points Niemand has well explained. Read both together.
> 
> Lastly; know this law, written on the walls of the temple of learning.
> 
> "Having received, freely give; having once devoted your life in
> thought, to the great stream of energy in which elementals and souls
> alike are carried--and which causes the pulse beat of our hearts--you
> can never claim it back again. Seek, then, that mental devotion which
> strains to give. For in the law it is written that we must give away
> all or we lose it: as you need mental help, so do others who are
> wandering in darkness seeking for light."
> 
> XII.
> 
> To-day I got your wire, "---- very low." This is a shock to me. I
> hardly believe it is the end at all. I cannot believe it, there is so
> much fire there. But I wired you to ask if I was to tell ----. Also
> to read 2nd ch. _Bhag. Gîtâ_. That, my dear fellow, solves all these
> troubles for me though it don't kill out immediate pain. Besides, it is
> Karma just and wise. Defects are in us all, and if this is the taking
> off why it means that a lot of obstructive Karma is thus at once and
> forever worked off, and has left ---- free for greater work in better
> places. I would I were there with you. Tell him how much I love him
> and that in this era of Kali Yuga no sincere one, such as he, remains
> long away from the work there is to do. Words are of no use. I have
> sent thoughts, and those are useful, whether we are in the body or out
> of it. I sent every night lately all the help I could and continued
> through the day, not only to ----, but also you. It reached there, I
> know, but I can't overcome Karma if it is too strong.
> 
> Tell ---- if it should come to the worst, that no regrets about
> the work are needed. What has already been accomplished there will
> last, and seethe and do its work for several years to come. So in
> that direction there could be nothing to regret. I cannot write ----
> directly: but if able to hear this--or maybe when it arrives--then head
> it as if it were to him, and not to you.
> 
> So, dear ----, in the presence of your wire this is all I can write.
> You know my feelings, and I need not say any more
> 
>   As Ever.
> 
> XIII.
> 
> You did right to send me that letter. Of course, I am sorry to hear
> from you in that way, but am glad that you wrote. Let me tell you
> something--will you believe it? You are not in nearly such a bad way
> as you think, and your letter, which you sent me unreservedly, shews
> it. Can you not, from the ordinary standpoint of worldly wisdom, see
> it so? For your letter shews this; a mind and lower nature in a whirl,
> not in the ordinary sense, but as though, figuratively speaking, it
> were whirling in a narrow circle, seemingly dead, kept alive by its own
> motion. And above it a human soul, not in any hurry, but waiting for
> its hour to strike. And I tell you that I know it will strike.
> 
> If so far as your personal consciousness goes you have lost all desire
> for progress, for service, for the inner life--what has that to do
> with it? Do you not think that others have had to go through with
> all of that and worse; a positive aversion, may be, with everything
> connected with Theosophy? Do you not know that it takes a nature with
> some strength in it to sink very low, and that the mere fact of having
> the power to sink low may mean that the same person in time may rise to
> a proportionately greater height? That is not the highest path to go
> but it is one that many have to tread. The highest is that which goes
> with little variation, but few are strong enough to keep up the never
> ceasing strain. Time alone can give them that strength and many ages of
> service. But meanwhile there is that other to be travelled. Travel it
> bravely.
> 
> You have got the ----, which of the hells do you think you are in? Try
> to find out and look at the corresponding heaven. It is very near. And
> I do not say this to bolster you up artificially, for that would be of
> no use and would not last, even if I were to succeed in doing it. I
> write of facts and I think that somewhere in your nature you are quite
> well aware that I do so.
> 
> Now what is to be done: * * * * In my opinion you should deliberately
> give yourself a year's trial. Write and tell me at the end of that year
> (and meantime as often as you feel called upon to do so, which will
> not be very often) how you then feel, and if you do not feel inclined
> to go on and stick to it I will help you all I can. But you must do it
> yourself, in spite of not wanting to do it. You can.
> 
> Make up your mind that in some part of your nature somewhere there is
> that which desires to be of use to the world. Intellectually realise
> that that world is not too well off and probably wants a helping hand.
> Recognise mentally that you should try to work for it sooner or later.
> Admit to yourself that another part of your nature--and if possible see
> that it is the lower part--does not care in the least about the world
> or its future, but that such care and interest should be cultivated.
> This cultivation will of course take time: all cultivation does. Begin
> by degrees. Assert constantly to yourself that you intend to work and
> that you will do so. Keep that up all the time. Do not put any time
> limit to it, but take up the attitude that you are working towards that
> end. Begin by doing ten minutes' work every day of any sort, study,
> or the addressing of envelopes, or anything, so long as it be done
> deliberately and with that object in view. If a day comes when this is
> too irksome, knock it off for that day. Give yourself three or four
> days' rest and do it deliberately. Then go back to your ten minutes'
> work. At the end of six or seven weeks you will know what to add to
> that practice: but go slowly, do nothing in a hurry, be deliberate.
> 
> Don't try to feel more friendly to this or that person--more actively
> friendly I should have said. Such things must spring up of their own
> accord and will do so in time. But do not feel surprised that you
> feel _all_ compassion die out of you in some ways. That too is an old
> story. It is all right because it does not last. Do not be too anxious
> to get results from the practice I have outlined above. Do not look
> for any: you have no concern with them if you do all that as a duty.
> And finally, do not forget, my dear fellow, that the dead do come to
> life and that the coldest thing in the world may be made hot by gentle
> friction. So I wish you luck, and wish I could do more for you. But I
> will do what I can.
> 
> XIV.
> 
> Now this is, as I said, an era. I called it that of Western Occultism,
> but you may give it any name you like. But it is western. The symbol
> is the well-intended American Republic, which was seen by Tom Paine
> beforehand "as a new era in the affairs of the world." It was meant as
> near as possible to be a brotherhood of nations, and that is the drift
> of its declaration and constitution. The T.S. is meant to be the same,
> but has for many years been in a state of friction. It has now, if
> possible, to come out of that. It cannot be a brotherhood unless each,
> or some, of its units becomes a brother in truth. And _brother_ was the
> noble name given in 1875 to the Masters. Hence you and I and all of us
> must cultivate that. We must forgive our enemies and those who assail
> us, for only thus can the great brothers properly help by working
> through us. There seems to be a good deal to forgive, but it is easily
> done inasmuch as in fifty years we'll all be gone and forgot.
> 
> Cut off, then, thoughts about those "foolish children" until harmonious
> vibrations ensue to some extent. That absurdity ... let go. I have
> deliberately refrained from jumping at such a grand chance. So you see
> forgive, forgive and largely forget. Come along, then, and with me get
> up as fast as possible the feeling of brotherhood.
> 
> Now then, you want more light, and this is what you must do. You will
> have to "give up" something. To wit: have yourself called half an
> hour earlier than is usual and devote it _before_ breakfast to silent
> meditation, in which brood upon all great and high ideas. Half an hour!
> Surely that you can spare. And don't eat first. If you can take another
> half _before_ you go to bed and without any preliminaries of undressing
> and making things agreeable or more comfortable, meditate again.
> Now don't fail me in this. This is much to give up, but give it up,
> recollecting that you are not to make all those preparations indulged
> in by people.... "The best and most important teacher is one's seventh
> principle centered in the sixth. The more you divest yourself of the
> illusionary sense of personal isolation, and the more you are devoted
> to the service of others, the more Maya disappears and the nearer you
> approach to Divinity." Good-bye, then, and may you find that peace that
> comes from the self.
> 
> XV.
> 
> In answer to your questions:
> 
> (1) Clothes and astral form.
> 
> Answer.--You are incorrect in assuming that clothes have no astral
> form. Everything in nature has its double on other planes, the facts
> being that nothing visible in matter or space could be produced without
> such a basis. The clothes are seen as well as the person because they
> exist on the astral plane as well as he. Besides this, the reason why
> people are seen on the astral plane with clothes of various cut and
> colour, is because of the thought and desire of the person, which
> clothes him thus. Hence a person may be seen in the astral light
> wearing there a suit of clothes utterly unlike what he has on, because
> his thought and desire were on another suit, more comfortable, more
> appropriate, or what not.
> 
> (2) What can true and earnest Theosophists do against the Black Age or
> Kali Yuga?
> 
> Answer.--Nothing _against_ it but a great deal _in_ it; for it is to
> be remembered that the very fact of its being the iron or foundation
> age gives opportunities obtained in no other. It is only a quarter as
> long as the longest of the other ages, and it is therefore crammed
> four times as full of life and activity. Hence the rapidity with which
> all things come to pass in it. A very slight cause produces gigantic
> effects. To aspire ever so little now will bring about greater and more
> lasting effects for good than at any other time. And similarly evil
> intent has greater powers for evil. These great forces are visibly
> increased at the close of certain cycles in the Kali Yuga. The present
> cycle, which closes Nov. 17th, 1897-Feb. 18th, 1898, is one of the most
> important of any that have been. Opportunities for producing permanent
> effects for good in themselves and in the world as a whole, are given
> to Theosophists at the present time, which they may never have again if
> these are scattered.
> 
> XVI.
> 
> The Masters have written that we are all bound together in one living
> whole. Hence the thoughts and acts of one react upon all.
> 
> Experience has shewn that it is true, as said by Masters, that any
> sincere member in any town can help the T.S. and benefit his fellow
> townsmen. It is not high learning that is needed, but solely devotion
> to humanity, faith in Masters, in the Higher Self, a comprehension
> of the fundamental truths of Theosophy and a little, only a little,
> sincere attempt to present those fundamental truths to a people who are
> in desperate need of them. That attempt should be continuous. No vain
> striving to preach or prove phenomena will be of any value, for, as
> again Masters have written, one phenomenon demands another and another.
> 
> What the people want is a practical solution of the troubles besetting
> us, and that solution you have in Theosophy. Will you not try to give
> it to them more and more and save ---- from the slough it is in?
> 
> I would distinctly draw your attention to Brother ----. There is not
> that complete sympathy and toleration between him and you there ought
> to be, and for the sake of the work it should be otherwise. You may say
> that it is his fault. It is not wholly, for you must also be somewhat
> to blame, if not in this life then from another past one. Can you deny
> that for a long period he has held up the Branch there? for if he had
> not it would have died out, even though you also were necessary agents.
> 
> Have any of you had unkind or revengeful feelings to him? If so, ought
> you not to at once drive them out of your hearts. For I swear to you
> on my life that if you have been troubled or unfortunate it is by the
> reaction from such or similar thoughts about him or others. Drive them
> all out of your hearts, and present such kindliness and brotherliness
> to him that he shall, by the force of your living kindness, be drawn
> into full unity and co-operation with you.
> 
> Discussion or proofs to shew that you are all right and he wrong avail
> nothing. We are none of us ever in the right, there is always that in
> us that causes another to offend. The only discussion should be to the
> end that you may find out how to present to the world in your district,
> one simple, solid, united front.
> 
> As to the expression "seeing sounds," this you understand, of course,
> so far as the statement goes. It records the fact that at one time
> the vibrations which cause a sound now were then capable of making a
> picture, and this they do yet on the astral plane.
> 
> XVII.
> 
>   In reply to your question:
> 
> Neither the general law nor the Lodge interferes to neutralise the
> effect of strain upon the disciple's physical energies when caused by
> undue exertion or want of regularity, except in certain cases. Hence
> the Theosophist is bound to see that his arrangement of hours for
> sleep, work and recreation are properly arranged and adjusted, as he
> has no right to so live as to break himself down, and thus deprive the
> cause he works for of a useful and necessary instrument.
> 
> Your friend's energies have been disarranged and somewhat exhausted by
> irregularities as to rest and recreation, since work has been hard and
> required rest--whether asleep or awake--has not been had. This causes
> excitement, which will (or has) react in many different ways in the
> system and upon the organs. It causes mental excitement which again
> raises other disturbance. He, like anyone else, should take measures
> so as to insure regularity as to rest, so that what work he does shall
> be better and the present excitement subside in the system. It is not
> wise to remain up late unless for good purposes, and it is not that to
> merely remain with others to late hours when nothing good or necessary
> can be accomplished. Besides other reasons, that is a good one.
> 
> Excitement is heat; if heat be applied to heat, more is produced.
> Coolness must be applied so as to create an equilibrium. This applies
> in that case, and the establishment of regularity in the matter of
> rest is the application of coolness. Second, the various exciting and
> "wrongful" acts or thoughts of others are heat; coolness is to be
> produced by discharging the mind of those and ceasing to refer to them
> in words, otherwise the engendered heat will continue. It is needless
> to refer to reasons resting on the points of conduct and example, for
> those anyone is capable of finding and applying.
> 
> As there is no hurry, it is easy to divest the mind of anxiety and the
> irritation arising from hurry. Again, comparison of one's own work or
> ways of doing things better than others is wrong and also productive of
> the heat above spoken of.
> 
> XVIII.
> 
> You are right in thinking that the essential principles of Theosophy
> are often stated without the use of that name, for it is the only
> universal fundamental system which underlies the religions of every
> age. The New Testament, rightly understood, teaches Theosophy, and
> we know that both Jesus and St. Paul were initiates. Of course, in
> Theosophy, as in any other Science, one understands more as one reads
> more, and I recommend you to read and digest such of our books as you
> can conveniently procure.
> 
> Now in respect to the questions you ask, let me say that Theosophy
> requires no man to abandon a mode of life which is not in itself wrong.
> The use of meat diet is not a sin; it is not even an offence; it is
> a habit which the race has now largely conformed to, and is not a
> question of morals or right. At a certain stage of advance as a chela
> or disciple, the use of meat food has to be abandoned because of its
> psychical and physiological effects. But you have not reached that
> stage, nor is it likely that you will for a long time. As the use of
> meat is not an offence, so neither can be the supply of it to others,
> so that your assisting in killing hogs for market is in no way opposed
> to your duty as a man or as a Theosophist. That being your duty in
> present circumstances, I should recommend you to perform it without
> hesitation.
> 
> Men and women are complementary in character, and therefore adapted
> to each other. It is natural that each sex should enjoy the company
> of the other, and what is natural cannot be wrong. Moreover, it is
> perfectly proper that when a suitable mate is found a man should marry
> and settle down as a householder, bringing up a family with right views
> and high purposes. He contributes a service to humanity, who puts
> to take his place after his death, children who reproduce his true
> and altruistic life. Consequently, if you find a suitable match and
> desire matrimony, there can be no possible reason why you should not
> carry out such a purpose. Like the abstention from meat, celibacy is
> essential to advance after a certain stage, but that stage has not yet
> been reached by you, and you cannot, therefore, be subjected to its
> conditions. There can be no one rule laid down for all human beings,
> inasmuch as the temperaments and desires are so different. Each must
> work out the problem of life in his own way. If your aspirations are so
> set on higher things that you find the lower a hindrance, it is evident
> that you should not indulge in the latter; but if you are not so
> hindered, then no less a duty is yours. You are right in thinking that
> the essential to all true progress is a wish to conform utterly to the
> Divine Will, we being certain that we shall be helped in proportion, as
> is our need.
> 
> XIX.
> 
> Yes, you are right. I am in danger, but that danger is not on the
> outside, although it is on the outside that attempts are brought
> forward. And in some sense all those with me are in danger too. It is a
> danger from ---- which ever tries to forestall the steps of those who
> travel forward. So too, my Dear, you are in the same sort of danger.
> But while the danger is there, yet there is encouragement in the fact
> itself. For we would not be so placed if we had not been so fortunate
> as to have progressed through work and patience to the point where ----
> sees enough in us to try and stop progress and hinder our work. Hence,
> if they see they cannot stop us, they try all plans to get up strife,
> so as to nullify our work. But we will win, for knowing the danger we
> take measures against it. I am determined not to fail. Others may; but
> ---- and I will not. Let us then await all suffering with confidence
> and hope. The very fact that you suffer so much is objective evidence
> of progress, even though so painful, not only to you but to those who
> love you. So while I do not say "suffer on," I am comforted by the
> knowledge that it will be for great good in the future. So I am writing
> this, instead of machining it, in order that you may feel the force of
> my love and comradeship.
> 
> Let us all draw closer together in mind and heart, soul and act,
> and try thus to make that true brotherhood through which alone our
> universal and particular progress can come.
> 
> To thee, oh holder of the flame, my love I send. Well, I go again, but
> never do I forget. My best love and blessing to thee. I cannot speak of
> these things, but thou knowest.
> 
> And now, as formerly, and as now, and as forever and forevermore.
> 
> XX.
> 
> Doubts and questions have arisen as to some things since the present
> cloud gathered. Among others it has been said that it were better that
> ---- had left the chair: it would be well for him to go, and so on.
> These views should not be held. If held, they should be dismissed.
> There are two forces at work in the T.S., as well as in the world and
> in man. These are the good and the bad. We cannot help this: it is
> the Law. But we have rules, and we have preached of love and truth
> and kindness; and above all, we have spoken of gratitude, not only
> of Masters, but among us. Now this applies to this question of ----.
> Again, he may be incompetent ... and yet be competent for the little he
> has to do.... Now let me tell you: the work must not fail because here
> and there personalities fall, and sin, and are unwise. TRUTH remains,
> and IT IS, whoever falls: but the multitude look to the visible leader.
> If he falls apart like an unjointed puzzle, at once they say, "there
> is no truth there, nothing which is": and the work of a century is
> ruined and must be rebuilt again from its foundations, and years of
> backward tendency must come between the wreck of one undertaking and
> the beginning of another. Let me say one thing I KNOW: only the feeling
> of true brotherhood, of true love towards humanity aroused in the soul
> of someone strong enough to stem this tide, can carry us through.
> For LOVE and TRUST are the only weapons that can overcome the REAL
> enemies against which the true theosophist must fight. If I, or you,
> go into this battle from pride, from self-will, from desire to hold
> our position in the face of the world, from anything but the purest
> motives, we shall fail. Let us search ourselves well and look at it
> as we never looked before: see if there is in us the reality of the
> brotherhood which we preach and which we are supposed to represent.
> 
> Let us remember those famous words: "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless
> as doves." Let us remember the teaching of the Sages that death in the
> performance of our duty is preferable to the doing by us of the duty of
> another, however well we may do the latter: the duty of another is full
> of danger. Let us be of and for peace, and not for war alone.
> 
> XXI.
> 
> It is true ---- suffered through my cold and hard feelings. But it was
> her fault, for I say now as then to ---- that she, absorbed in ----,
> neglected my members, who are my children, and for whom I wanted her
> best and got her worst. That made me cold, of course, and I had to
> fight it, and didn't care if ---- did not like it: I have no time to
> care. I am glad she has gone to ----. It is her trial and her chance
> and when she sets back she can see for herself if she is able to
> prevent the "big head" from coming on as has happened with others. If
> she does, then she will have stood the reaction and I have faith she
> will stand; but still it has to be met. Time comes on sure, and with it
> trial. H. P. B. was her preparer and comfort, but men are not made into
> steel by comfort, and note that H. P. B. then died off.
> 
> My trip all over this country shows me that it is of more consequence
> that I should now work up the U. S., where the Masters first worked in
> this century. It needs all I can do.... So when I have fulfilled my
> engagement on the English stage I shall skip back here quickly and do
> this work. The field is even greater than I thought, although I had a
> big idea of it. From the United States we can affect the world and they
> will come to us from all places either for solid work or for help in
> their need....
> 
> Well now, of you: I feel it all. It is up, and down. It is well you
> are courageous, and to endure you are able. Indeed endure is the best
> word, for that is what the oak does when the storms rage, for it is
> better to endure when we can do nothing than to faint and fall. The
> facts are to be faced. I hope they may turn out otherwise, but if not,
> it is Karma. Aside from pain, it is the same as anything else. If it
> comes, it will not last long. Still, I hope it cometh not. I think much
> of it, but know the bravery of you and the high soul that dwells there.
> All the time of pain and dogged fighting I know your real self sits up
> above it all unaffected, and so does mine, and from that let us take
> comfort. All things in this age move like lightning and so with all
> our Karma, though mine has so often seemed slow, so far as concerns
> me. Well, I cannot go on with this: I feel as you do: I stand by you
> in heart and have often of late sent you messages of hope and power to
> help you.
> 
> I advised ---- to do her part to lessening the constant bringing
> forward of the name of H. P. B., instead of independent thought on
> Theosophy. We have too much of it and it is no proof of loyalty, and
> it gives rise to much of the foolish talk of our dogmatism. You will
> understand, and may be able to influence some to a more moderate though
> firm attitude that will not lessen their loyalty and devotion. One good
> point is that the true chêla does not talk much of his Master and often
> does not refer to that Master's existence. It has almost become the
> same as unnecessarily waving the red flag to a bull. Those of us who
> have experience do not do it; but the younger ones do. X ---- does it
> here in his speeches and I am going to speak to him of it. If it be not
> avoided the first thing we know there will be a split between the H. P.
> B.'ers and the theosophists _pur sang_, the latter claiming to be the
> real thing because devoid of any personal element. You and I and ----
> do not find it necessary all the time to be flinging her (H. P. B.) in
> the faces of others, and it is well now to take the warning offered
> from the outside. Besides, I have had a very strong inside warning on
> it. My best love now that we are near Christmas and New Year, and may
> there be some sunshine to light the path. I send you my love unsullied
> by a mere gift.
> 
> I hope ---- will be firm and proceed as indicated, but she, like us
> all, must meet her own old enemies in herself.
> 
> Again I go, as for evermore.
> 
> XXII.
> 
> Great excitement last night. It was the regular night of ---- T.S. and
> ---- was to speak. We got there at 8:15, and it was full. He began and
> had just been fifteen minutes when it was discovered that the building
> was on fire. We stopped and let 1,000 people in the various halls get
> out, then quietly went and none were hurt, only two, ---- and ----,
> getting a few quarts of water from a burst hose.
> 
> It was a queer exit, for we went downstairs beside the elevator, and
> glass, bricks and water were falling down the light well, while the
> fire on the top stories of it roared and made a fine light, and streams
> of fire ran down the oily elevator pipes on the other side; and firemen
> pulled up hose neck or nothing as we got away. It was ----'s own
> meeting, and it ended in fire! None of the great psychics present had
> had the remotest premonition, but one invented afterwards an _ex post
> facto_ sense of terror.
> 
> Tell ---- the time has passed for him to vacillate; he knows his guru:
> she was and is H. P. B.; let him reflect ere he does that which, in
> wrecking her life and fame, will wreck his own life by leaving him
> where nothing that is true may be seen.... Silence is useful now and
> then, but silence sometimes is a thing that speaks too loud. I am his
> friend and will help. No one can hurt him but himself; his work and
> sacrifice were noble and none can point at him.
> 
> See what I said in the opening vol. of _The Path_: that the study of
> what is now called "practical occultism" was not the object of that
> journal. "We regard it as incidental to the journey along the path.
> The traveller, in going from one city to another, has perhaps to cross
> several rivers; maybe his conveyance fails him and he is obliged to
> swim, or he must, in order to pass a great mountain, know engineering
> in order to tunnel through it, or is compelled to exercise the art of
> locating his exact position by observation of the sun: but all that
> is only incidental to his main object of reaching his destination. We
> admit the existence of hidden, powerful forces in nature, and believe
> that every day greater progress is made towards an understanding of
> them. Astral body formation, clairvoyance, looking into the astral
> light, and controlling elementals is all possible, but not all
> profitable. The electrical current, which when resisted in the carbon
> produces intense light, may be brought into existence by any ignoramus
> who has the key to the engine-room and can turn the crank that starts
> the dynamo, but is unable to prevent his fellow man or himself from
> being instantly killed, should that current accidentally be diverted
> through his body. The control of these hidden forces is not easily
> obtained, nor can phenomena be produced without danger, and in our view
> the attainment of true wisdom is not by means of phenomena, but through
> the development which begins within. True occultism is clearly set
> forth in the _Bhagavat Gita_ and _Light on the Path_, where sufficient
> stress is laid upon practical occultism, but after all, Krishna says,
> the kingly science and the kingly mystery is devotion to and study
> of the light which comes from within. The very first step in true
> mysticism and true occultism is to try and apprehend the meaning of
> Universal Brotherhood, without which the very highest progress in the
> practise of magic turns to ashes in the mouth.
> 
> "We appeal, therefore, to all who wish to raise themselves and their
> fellow creatures--man and beast--out of the thoughtless jog-trot of
> selfish everyday life. It is not thought that Utopia can be established
> in a day: but through the spreading of the idea of Universal
> Brotherhood, the truth in all things may be discovered. What is wanted
> is true knowledge of the spiritual condition of man, his aim and
> destiny. Such a study leads us to accept the utterance of Prajapati to
> his sons: 'Be restrained, be liberal, be merciful,' it is the death of
> selfishness."
> 
> This is the line for us to take and to persevere in, that all may in
> time obtain the true light.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
>     THE LIGHT OF THE EYE FADETH, THE HEARING LEAVETH THE EAR, BUT THE
>     POWER TO SEE AND TO HEAR NEVER DESERTETH THE IMMORTAL BEING, WHICH
>     LIVETH FOREVER UNTOUCHED AND UNDIMINISHED.--
> 
>   _Book of Items._
> 
> EXTRACTS
> 
> XXIII.
> 
> ON THEOSOPHY AND THE T.S.
> 
> All the work that any of us do anywhere redounds to the interest and
> benefit of the whole T.S., and for that reason we know that we are
> united.
> 
> The Self is one and all-powerful, but it must happen to the seeker
> from time to time that he or she shall feel the strangeness of new
> conditions; this is not a cause for fear. If the mind is kept intent
> on the Self and not diverted from it, and comes to see the Self in all
> things, no matter what, then fear should pass away in time. I would
> therefore advise you to study and meditate over the _Bhagavat Gita_,
> which is a book that has done me more good than all others in the whole
> range of books, and is the one that can be studied all the time.
> 
> This will do more good than anything, if the great teachings are
> silently assimilated and put into action, for it goes to the very root
> of things and gives the true philosophy of life.
> 
> If you try to put into practice what in your inner life you hold to be
> right, you will be more ready to receive helpful thoughts and the inner
> life will grow more real. I hope with you that your home may become a
> strong centre of work for Theosophy.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> You want to know the inner situation of the T.S., well, it is just
> this: we have all worked along for eighteen years, and the T.S. as a
> body has its karma as well as each one in it. Those in it who have
> worked hard, of course, have their own karma, and have brought
> themselves to a point ahead of the T.S. Now, if the branches are
> weak in their knowledge of Theosophy, and in their practise of its
> precepts and their understanding of the whole thing, the body is in the
> situation of the child who has been growing too fast for its strength,
> and if that be the case it is bound to have a check. For my part I do
> not want any great rush, since I too well know how weak even those
> long in it are. As to individuals, say you, ... and so on. By reason
> of hard and independent work you have got yourselves in the inner
> realm just where you may soon begin to get the attention of the Black
> Magicians, who then begin to try to knock you out, so beware. Attempts
> will be silently made to arouse irritation, and to increase it where
> it now exists. So the only thing to do is to live as much as possible
> in the higher nature, and each one to crush out the small and trifling
> ebullitions of the lower nature which ordinarily are overlooked, and
> thus strength is gained in the whole nature, and the efforts of the
> enemy made nil. This is of the highest importance, and if not attended
> to it will be sad. This is what I had in view in all the letters I have
> sent to you and others. I hope you will be able to catch hold of men,
> here and there, who will take the right, true, solid view, and be left
> thus behind you as good men and good agents.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> When I was in ---- I broached to you and others the plan of getting
> Theosophy to the working people. Has anything been done? It must be
> simply put. It can be understood. It is important. Let us see if this
> thing cannot be done; you all promised to go to work at it. Why not
> turn, like the Bible man, to the byways and hedges from all these
> people who will not come? Then I feel sure that, if managed right, a
> lot of people who believe in Theosophy but don't want to come out for
> it, would help such a movement, seeing that it would involve talking
> to the poor and giving them sensible stuff. If need be, I'd hold a
> meeting every night, and not give them abstractions. Add music, if
> possible, etc. Now let me hear your ideas. Time rolls on and many queer
> social changes are on the way.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> I have your long letter from ---- and you are right as to conduct of
> Branches. No Branch should depend on one person, for, if so, it will
> slump, sure; nor on two or three either. Here they depended on me for
> a long time, and my bad health in voice for a year was a good thing as
> it made the others come forward. ---- is right enough in his way, but
> certainly he ought to be fitting himself for something in addition to
> speaking, as the T.S. has to have a head as well as a tongue; and if a
> man knows he is bad at business, he should mortify himself by making
> himself learn it, and thus get good discipline. We sadly need at all
> places some true enthusiasts. But all that will come in time. The main
> thing is for the members to study and know Theosophy, for if they do
> not know it how can they give any of it to others? Of course, at all
> times most of the work falls upon the few, as is always the case, but
> effort should be made, as you say, to bring out other material.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> ... I am abundantly sure that you are quite correct in saying that it
> is the Branches which work that flourish, and that those addicted to
> "Parlour Talks" soon squabble and dwindle. You have gone right to the
> root of the matter. So, also, I agree with you, heart and soul, in
> what you say as to the policy of a timid holding and setting forth of
> Theosophy. Nothing can be gained by such a policy, and all experience
> points to energy and decision as essential to any real advance.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> You are, I think, quite right to attempt to get all members to work
> for their individual advance, by working for their Branches. By
> doing things in this way, they provide an additional safeguard for
> themselves, while forming a centre from which Theosophical thought can
> radiate out to help and encourage others who are only beginning their
> upward way.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> I find that you state my view exactly. That view is that the A B C of
> Theosophy should be taught all the time, and this not only for the
> sake of outsiders, but also for the sake of the members who are, I
> very well know, not so far along as to need the elaborate work all the
> time. And it is just because the members are not well grounded that
> they are not able themselves to get in more inquirers. Just as you say,
> if the simple truths practically applied as found in Theosophy are
> presented, you will catch at last some of the best people, real workers
> and valuable members. And Theosophy can best be presented in a simple
> form by one who has mastered the elements as well as "the nature of
> the Absolute." It is just this floating in the clouds which sometimes
> prevents a Branch from getting on. And I fully agree, also, that if
> the policy I have referred to should result temporarily in throwing
> off some few persons it would be a benefit, for you would find others
> coming to take their places. And I can agree with you, furthermore, out
> of actual experience.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> You by no means need to apologise for asking my attention to the matter
> of your joining the Theosophical Society. It is my great desire and
> privilege to give to all sincere enquirers whatever information I may
> possess, and certainly there can be no greater pleasure than to further
> the internal progress of any real student and aspirant. I think you
> quite right in wishing to identify yourself with the Theosophical
> Society, not only because that is the natural and obvious step for
> anyone sincerely interested; but also because each additional member
> with right spirit strengthens the body for its career and work.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> In taking advantage of an opportunity to introduce Theosophy into the
> secular press you are doing exactly the work which is so invaluable to
> the Society, and which I so constantly urge upon our members. It is
> in this way that so very many persons are reached who would otherwise
> be quite inaccessible, and the amount of good which seed thus sown
> can accomplish is beyond our comprehension. You have my very hearty
> approval of and encouragement in your work and I am very sure that that
> work will not be without fruit.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> NEW YORK, _October 11th, 1892_.--This is the era of _Western
> Occultism_. We are now to stand shoulder to shoulder in the U.S. to
> present it and enlarge it in view of coming cussedness, attacks which
> will be in the line of trying to impose solely Eastern disciples on us.
> The Masters are not Eastern or Western, but universal.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> I shall be glad to give you any information possible respecting
> Theosophy and the Theosophical Society, but I think you err in
> supposing that the purpose of either is to encourage the study of
> what is known as the Occult Arts. Knowledge concerning, and control
> of, the finer forces of nature are not things which should be sought
> after at our elementary stage of progress, nor would such attainment
> be appropriate, even if possible, to anyone who had not thoroughly
> mastered the principles of Theosophy itself.
> 
> Mere desire for powers is a form of selfishness, and receives no
> encouragement from our Teachers. Mme. Blavatsky stated this matter
> very clearly indeed in an article published in _Lucifer_, entitled
> "Occultism _versus_ the Occult Arts." When persons without a large
> preliminary training in the real Wisdom-Religion seek knowledge on
> the Occult plane they are very apt, from inexperience and inadequate
> culture, to drift into black magic. I have no power to put you into
> communication with any adept to guide you in a course of Occult study,
> nor would it be of service to you if the thing was possible. The
> Theosophical Society was not established for any such purpose, nor
> could anyone receive instructions from an adept until he was ripe for
> it. In other words, he must undergo a long preliminary training in
> knowledge, self-control, and the subjugation of the lower nature before
> he would be in any way fit for instruction on the higher planes. What I
> recommend you to do is to study the elementary principles of Theosophy
> and gain some idea of your own nature as a human being and as an
> individual, but drop entirely all ambition for knowledge or power which
> would be inappropriate to your present stage, and to correct your whole
> conception of Theosophy and Occultism.
> 
> XXIV.
> 
> ON MASTERS.
> 
> I think the way for all western theosophists is through H. P. B. I
> mean that as she is the T.S. incarnate, its mother and guardian, its
> creator, the Karmic laws would naturally provide that all who drew this
> life through her belonged to her, and if they denied her, they need not
> hope to reach ...: for how can they deny her who gave this doctrine
> to the western world? They share her Karma to little purpose, if they
> think they can get round this identification and benefit, and ... want
> no better proof that a man does not comprehend their philosophy. This
> would, of course, bar him from ... by natural laws (of growth). I do
> not mean that in the ordinary business sense she must forward their
> applications or their merits; I mean that they who do not understand
> the basic mutual relation, who under value _her_ gift and _her_
> creation, have not imbibed the teaching and cannot assimilate its
> benefits.
> 
> She must be understood as being what she is to the T.S., or Karma (the
> law of compensation, or of cause and effect) is not understood, or the
> first laws of occultism. People ought to _think_ of this: we are too
> much given to supposing that events are chances, or have no connection
> with ourselves: each event is an effect of the Law.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> What should be done is to realise that "the Master-Soul is one" with
> all that that implies; to know the meaning of the old teaching,
> "Thou art That." When this is done we may with impunity identify our
> consciousness with that of anything in nature; not before. But to do
> this is a lifetime's work, and beforehand we have to exhaust all Karma,
> which means duty; we must live for others and then we will find out all
> we _should_ know, not what we would _like_ to know.
> 
> Devotion and aspiration will, and do, help to bring about a proper
> attitude of mind, and to raise the student to a higher plane, and
> also they secure for the student help which is unseen by him, for
> devotion and aspiration put the student into a condition in which aid
> can be given to him, though he may, as yet, be unconscious of it. But
> conscious communication with one's Master can only be accomplished
> after _long_ training and study. What a student has to do, and is able
> to do, is to fit himself to receive this training.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> The recognition from a Guru will come when you are ready, and my advice
> to you is that, if possible, you put away from yourself the desire for
> such recognition; for such desire will hinder you. If you will read
> the _Bhagavat Gîtâ_, especially chapters ii. and iii., I think you
> will find much to help you. There it says: "Let, then, the motive for
> action be in the action itself, not in the event. Do not be incited
> to actions by the hope of their reward ... perform thy duty ... and
> laying aside all desire for any benefit to thyself from action, make
> the event equal to thee, whether it be success or failure." It is but
> natural that a student should hope for recognition from a Master, but
> this desire is to be put aside, and that work is to be done which lies
> before each. At the same time each one knows that the effect follows
> the cause, hence whatever our due, we shall receive it at the right
> time.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Every Chêla (and we are all that once we determine to be) has these
> same difficulties. Patience and fortitude! For an easy birth is not
> always a good one. The kingdom of heaven is only taken by violence,
> and not by weakness of attack. Your constant aspiration persevered in
> secret has led you to that point where just these troubles come to all.
> Console yourself with the thought that others have been in the same
> place and have lived through it by patience and fortitude.... Fix your
> thoughts again on Those Elder Brothers, work for Them, serve Them, and
> They will help through the right appropriate means and no other. To
> meditate on the Higher Self is difficult. Seek then, the bridge, the
> Masters. "Seek the truth by strong search," by doing service, and by
> enquiry, and Those who know the Truth will teach it. Give up doubt, and
> arise in your place with patience and fortitude. Let the warrior fight,
> the gentle yet fierce Krishna, who, when he finds thee as his disciple
> and his friend, will tell thee the truth and lighten up the darkness
> with the lamp of spiritual knowledge.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Attacks cannot hurt, they must needs come, but all we have to do is to
> keep right on, working steadily, and Masters will see after the rest.
> For, that which is done in Their name will come right; and this whole
> thing has arisen because I have chosen to proclaim my personal belief
> in the existence of these beings of grandeur. So, let us shake again
> with the confidence born from the knowledge of the wisdom of the Unseen
> Leaders, and we go forth separately once more, again to the work, if
> even not to meet until another incarnation is ours. But meeting then,
> we shall be all the stronger for having kept faith now.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> I am glad that you have such a faith in the Great Workers who are
> behind us. They _are_ behind us, to my personal knowledge, and not
> behind me only, but behind all sincere workers. I know that their
> desire is that each should listen to the voice of his inner self and
> not depend too much on outside people, whether they be Masters, Eastern
> disciples or what not. By a dependence of that kind you become at last
> thoroughly independent, and then the unseen helpers are able to help
> all the more.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> We are all human and thus weak and sinful. In that respect in which
> we are better than others, they are better than we are in some other
> way. We would be self-righteous to judge others by our own standard....
> Are we so wise as never to act foolishly? Not at all.... Indeed I have
> come to the conclusion that in this nineteenth century a pledge is no
> good, because everyone reserves to himself the right to break it if he
> finds after a while that it is galling, or that it puts him in some
> inconsistent attitude with something he may have said or done at some
> other time.... In ----'s case, ... everyone should never think but the
> very best, no matter what the evidences are. Why, if the Masters were
> to judge us exactly as They must know we are, then good-bye at once.
> We would all be sent packing. But Masters deal kindly with us in the
> face of greater knowledge of our thoughts and evil thoughts from which
> none are yet exempt. This is my view, and you will please me much if
> you will be able to turn into the same, and to spread it among those
> on the inside who have it not. It is easy to do well by those we like,
> it is our duty to make ourselves do and think well by those we do not
> like. Masters say we think in grooves, and but few have the courage to
> fill those up and go on other lines. Let us who are willing to make the
> attempt try to fill up these grooves, and make new and better ones.
> 
> ... Keep up your courage, faith and charity. _Those who can to
> any extent assimilate the Master, to that extent they are the
> representatives of the Master, and have the help of the Lodge in its
> work...._ Bear up, firm heart, be strong, be bold and kind, and spread
> your strength and boldness.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> H. P. B. then said that it is by falling and by failing that we learn,
> and we cannot hope at once to be great and wise and wholly strong.
> She and the Masters behind expected this from all of us; she and They
> never desired any of us to work blindly, but only desired that we work
> unitedly.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> H. P. B. wrote me in 1890: "Be more charitable for others than for
> yourself, and more severe on yourself than on others." This is good
> advice. A strain always weakens the fibres and produces friction. I
> hope all misunderstandings will fly away.
> 
> XXV.
> 
> ON OCCULT PHILOSOPHY.
> 
> Begin by trying to conquer the habit, almost universal, of pushing
> yourself forward. This arises from personality. Do not monopolise the
> conversation. Keep in the background. If someone begins to tell you
> about himself and his doings, do not take first chance to tell him
> about yourself, but listen to him and talk solely to bring him out.
> And when he has finished suppress in yourself the desire to tell about
> yourself, your opinions and experiences. Do not ask a question unless
> you intend to listen to the answer and inquire into its value. Try
> to recollect that you are a very small affair in the world, and that
> the people around do not value you at all and grieve not when you are
> absent. Your only true greatness lies in your inner true self and it is
> not desirous of obtaining the applause of others. If you will follow
> these directions for one week you will find they will take considerable
> effort, and you will begin to discover a part of the meaning of the
> saying, "Man, know thyself."
> 
> It is not necessary to be conscious of the progress one has made.
> Nor is the date in any sense an extinguisher, as some have styled
> it. In these days we are too prone to wish to know everything all at
> once, especially in relation to ourselves. It may be desirable and
> encouraging to be thus conscious, but it is not necessary. We make a
> good deal of progress in our inner, hidden life of which we are not at
> all conscious. We do not know of it until some later life. So in this
> case many may be quite beyond the obstacles and not be conscious of
> it. It is best to go on with duty, and to refrain from this trying to
> take stock and measuring of progress. All of our progress is in the
> inner nature, and not in the physical where lives the brain, and from
> which the present question comes. The apparent physical progress is
> evanescent. It is ended when the body dies, at which time, if the inner
> man has not been allowed to guide us, the natural record against us
> will be a cipher, or "failure." Now, as the great Adepts live in the
> plane of our inner nature, it must follow that they might be actively
> helping every one of us after the date referred to, and we, as physical
> brain men, not be conscious of it on this plane.
> 
> ... I strongly advise you to give up all yoga practices, which in
> almost all cases have disastrous results unless guided by a competent
> teacher. The concussions and explosions in your head are evidences that
> you are in no fit condition to try yoga practices, for they result
> from lesions of the brain, _i.e._, from the bursting of the very
> minute brain cells. I am glad you have written to me upon this matter,
> that I may have an opportunity of warning you. Also I advise you to
> discontinue concentration on the vital centres, which again may prove
> dangerous unless under the guidance of a teacher. You have learnt, to a
> certain degree, the power of concentration, and the greatest help will
> now come to you from concentration upon the Higher Self, and aspiration
> toward the Higher Self. Also if you will take some subject or sentence
> from the _Bhagavat Gîtâ_, and concentrate your mind upon that and
> meditate upon it, you will find much good result from it, and there is
> no danger in such concentration.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> As to the question about the disintegration of the astral body and
> the length of time beforehand when it could be seen. My answer was
> not meant to be definite as to years, except that I gave a period
> of two years as a long one before the death of the physical body.
> There are cases--perhaps rare--in which five years before the death
> of the physical, a clairvoyant has seen the disintegration of the
> astral beginning. The idea intended to be conveyed is, that regardless
> of periods of time, if the man is going to die naturally (and that
> includes by disease), the corruption, disintegrating or breaking up of
> the astral body may be perceived by those who can see that way. Hence
> the question of years is not involved. Violent deaths are not included
> in this, because the astral in such cases does not disintegrate
> beforehand. And the way of seeing such a death in advance is by another
> method altogether. Death from old age--which is the natural close of a
> cycle--is included in the answer as to death by disease, which might be
> called the disease of inability to fight off the ordinary breaking up
> of the cohesive forces.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> You cannot develop the third eye. It is too difficult, and until you
> have cleared up a good deal more on philosophy it would be useless, and
> a useless sacrifice is a crime of folly. But here is advice given by
> many Adepts: every day and as often as you can, and on going to sleep
> and as you wake, think, think, think, on the truth that you are not
> body, brain, or astral man, but that you are THAT, and "THAT" is the
> Supreme Soul. For by this practice you will gradually kill the false
> notion which lurks inside that the false is the true, and the true is
> the false. By persistence in this, by submitting your daily thoughts
> each night to the judgment of your Higher Self, you will at last gain
> light.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Now as to _The Voice of the Silence_ and the cycles of woe (undergone
> by the Arhan who remains to help mankind) it is easy to understand. You
> must always remember when reading such things, that terms must be used
> that the reader will understand. Hence speaking thus, it must be said
> that there are such cycles of woe--from our standpoint--just as the
> fact that I have no amusements but nothing but work in the T.S. seems
> a great penance to those who like their pleasures. I, on the contrary,
> take pleasure and peace in the "self-denial" as they call it. Therefore
> it must follow that he who enters the secret Path finds his peace and
> pleasure in endless work for ages for Humanity. But, of course, with
> his added sight and knowledge, he must always be seeing the miseries
> of men self-inflicted. The mistake you make is to give the person thus
> "sacrificed" the same small qualities and longings as we now have,
> whereas the wider sweep and power of soul make what we call sacrifice
> and woe seem something different. Is not this clear, then? If it were
> stated otherwise than as the _Voice_ has it, you would find many making
> the vow and then breaking it; but he who makes the vow with the full
> idea of its misery will keep it.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> ... If we can all accumulate a fund of good for all the others we will
> thus dissipate many clouds. The follies and the so-called sins of
> people are really things that are sure to come to nothing if we treat
> them right. We must not be so prone as the people of the day are, of
> whom we are some, to criticise others and forget the beam in our own
> eye. The _Bhagavad Gîtâ_ and Jesus are right in that they both shew
> us how to do our own duty and not go into that of others. Every time
> we think that someone else has done wrong we should ask ourselves two
> questions:
> 
> (1) Am I the judge in this matter who is entitled to try this person?
> 
> (2) Am I any better in my way, do I or do I not offend in some other
> way just as much as they do in this?
> 
> This will settle the matter I think. And in ... there ought to be no
> judgments and no criticism. If some offend then let us ask what is
> to be done, but only when the offence is against the whole. When an
> offence is against _us_, then let it go. This is thought by some to be
> "goody-goody," but I tell you the heart, the soul, and the bowels of
> compassion are of more consequence than intellectuality. The latter
> will take us all sure to hell if we let it govern only. Be sure of this
> and try as much as you can to spread the true spirit in all directions,
> or else not only will there be individual failure, but also the circle
> H. P. B. made as a nucleus for possible growth will die, rot, fail, and
> come to nothing.
> 
> It is not possible to evade the law of evolution, but that law need
> not always be carried out in _one_ way. If the same result is produced
> it is enough. Hence in any one hour or minute the being attaining
> adeptship could pass through countless experiences _in effect_. But,
> as a fact, no one becomes an adept until he has in some previous time
> gone through the exact steps needed. If you and I, for instance, miss
> adeptship in this _Manvantara_, we will emerge again to take up the
> work at a corresponding point in the much higher development of the
> next, although then we may seem low down in the scale, viewing us from
> the standard then to prevail.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> The law is this. No man can rush on and fail to escape the counter
> current, and in proportion as he rushes so will be the force of the
> current. All members who work hard come at last to the notice of the
> Lodge, and the moment they do so, the Black Lodge also takes notice,
> and hence questions arise, and we are tried in subtle ways that surpass
> sight, but are strong for the undoing of him who is not prepared by
> right thought and sacrifice to the higher nature for the fight. I tell
> you this. It may sound mysterious, but it is the truth, and at this
> time we are all bound to feel the forces at work, for as we grow, so
> the other side gets ready to oppose.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> ... Be sure that you understand me right about the Black side. I
> mean this: that when men work along a good while, and really raise
> themselves up by that, they get the attention of the Black if they are
> of sufficient importance for it. I have their attention, and it makes
> a trouble now and then. What we all want to have, then, is the best
> armour for such a fight, and that is patience. Patience is a great
> thing, and will work in more ways than one, not only in personal life,
> but in wider concerns.
> 
> The difficulty of remembering the things you read, and the like, may
> be due to one or many causes. First, it indicates the need of mental
> discipline in the way of compelling yourself to serious reading and
> thinking, even though for a short time each day. If persisted in,
> this will gradually change the mental action, just as one can alter
> the taste for different sorts of food taken into the body. Again, if
> you have been dealing in what is known as Mind Cure or Metaphysical
> Healing, you should avoid it, because it will increase the difficulty
> you mention. It is different from good, ordinary, mental discipline.
> And also if you have been in any way following Spiritualism or
> indulging in psychic thoughts or visions or experiences, these would be
> a cause for the trouble, and should be abandoned.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> There is no need for you to be a despairer. Reflect on that old verse,
> "What room is there for sorrow and what room for doubt in him who knows
> that the Self is one, and that all things are the Self, only differing
> in degree." This is a free rendering but is what it means. Now, it is
> true that a man cannot force himself at once into a new will and into
> a new belief but by thinking much on the same thing--such as this--he
> soon gets a new will and a new belief, and from it will come strength
> and also light. Try this plan. It is purely occult, simple, and
> powerful. I hope all will be well, and that as we are shaken up from
> time to time we shall grow strong.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> ----'s article strove to show that H. P. B. did not teach the doctrine
> of reincarnation in '77 as she did later, which is quite true so far as
> the public was then concerned, but she did to me and others teach it
> then as now, and further it seems clear what she meant, to wit, that
> there is no reincarnation for the astral monad, which is the astral
> man; and it being a theosophical doctrine that the astral man does not
> reincarnate save in exceptional cases, she taught then the same thing
> as she did later. Personally H. P. B. told me many times of the real
> doctrine of reincarnation, enforced by the case of the death of my own
> child, so I know what she thought and believed.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> I am not able to give you the definition which you ask for, as it seems
> to me spirit cannot be defined except in this way, that the whole
> universe is made of spirit and matter, both constituting together the
> Absolute. What is not in matter is spirit, and what is not in spirit
> is matter; but there is no particle of matter without spirit, and no
> particle of spirit without matter. If this attempted definition is
> correct, you will see that it is impossible to define the things of the
> spirit, and that has always been said by the great teachers of the past.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> What a petty lot of matter we spend time on, when so much is
> transitory. After a hundred years what will be the use of all this?
> Better that a hundred years hence a principle of freedom and an impulse
> of work should have been established. The small errors of a life are
> nothing, but the general sum of thought is much.... I care everything
> for the unsectarianism that H. P. B. died to start, and now threatened
> in its own house. Is it not true that Masters have forbidden Their
> chelâs to tell under what orders they act for fear of the black shadow
> that follows innovations? Yes....
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Am very sorry to hear that your health is not good. In reply to your
> question: A sound body is not expected, because our race is unsound
> everywhere. It is Karma. Of course a correct mental and moral position
> will at last bring a sound body, but the process may, and often does,
> involve sickness. Hence sickness may be a blessing on two planes: (1)
> the mental and moral by opening the nature, and (2) on the physical as
> being the discharge into this plane of an inner sickness of the inner
> being.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> The question of sex is not the most difficult. The personal one is
> still harder. I mean the purely personal, that relating to "me." The
> sexual relates really only to a low plane gratification. If Nature can
> beat you there, then she need not try the other, and _vice versa_; if
> she fails on the personal she may attempt the other, but then with
> small chance of success.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> We all differ and must agree to disagree, for it is only by balancing
> contrary things that equilibrium (harmony) is obtained. Harmony does
> not come through likeness. If people will only let each other alone and
> go about their own business quietly all will be well.... It is one's
> duty to try and find one's own duty and not to get into the duty of
> another. And in this it is of the highest importance that we should
> detach our _minds_ (as well as our tongues) from the duties and acts of
> others whenever those are outside of our own. If you can find this fine
> line of action and inaction you will have made great progress.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Do not stop to consider your progress at all, because that is the way
> to stop it; but take your mind off the question of your progress and do
> the best you can. I hope you will be able to acquire in no long time
> that frame of mind which you so much desire. I think you will acquire
> that if you will take your mind off yourself as much as possible, and
> throw it into something for someone else, which would, in course of
> time, destroy the self impression.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> I regret exceedingly all your troubles and difficulties. They are all,
> it goes without saying, matters of Karma, and must right themselves
> in process of time. Meantime, your work and duty lie in continuing
> patient and persevering throughout. The troubles of your friends and
> relatives are not your Karma, though intimately associated with it by
> reason of the very friendship and relation. In the lives of all who
> aspire to higher things there is a more or less rapid precipitation
> of old Karma, and it is this which is affecting you. It will go off
> shortly, and you will have gained greatly in having gotten rid of a
> troublesome piece of business.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> As it will take many a life for one to overcome the personal nature,
> there is no good in imagining what things and thoughts would then
> be like. It is certain that, in that long journey, the whole nature
> changing, it is adjusted to all conditions. Many of those matters which
> we call the woes of others are really nothing at all, and only "skin
> deep"; the real woe of the race is not that.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> By setting apart a _particular_ time for meditation a habit is formed,
> and as the time comes round the mind will, after a while, become
> trained, so that meditation at the particular time will become natural.
> Hence, as far as possible, it will be well for you to keep to the same
> hour.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> You ask if I was at ---- where you saw me. Let me tell you something
> in confidence. I am around at all places, but, of course, most at such
> as where you ... and others like that are, but it is not necessary for
> me to remember it at all, as it is done without that since this brain
> has enough to do here. To remember I should have to retire and devote
> myself to that, and it would make things no better.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> A college course is not necessary for occultism. One of the best
> occultists I know was never in college. But if a man adds good learning
> to intuition and high aspiration he is naturally better off than
> another. I am constantly in the habit of consulting the dictionary
> and of thinking out the meanings and the correlations of words. Do the
> same. It is good.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> The old mission of the Rosicrucians, though dead on the outside, is not
> dead, for the Masters were in that as They are in this, and it may be
> possible to usher in a new era of western occultism devoid of folly. We
> should all be ready for that if it be possible.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> In regard to the pictures which you see, observe them with
> indifference, relying always on the Higher Self, and looking to it for
> knowledge and light, pictures or no pictures.
> 
> XXVI.
> 
> ON WORK.
> 
> Yes, that business is already a "back number," stale and unprofitable.
> I have found that work tells. While others fume and fret and sleep, and
> now and then start up to criticise, if you go right on and work, and
> let time, the great devourer, do the other work, you will see that in
> a little while that others will wake up once more to find themselves
> "left," as they say in the land of slang. Do, then, that way. Your own
> duty is hard enough to find out, and by attending to that you gain,
> no matter how small the duty may be. The duty of another is full of
> danger. May you have the light to see and to do! Tell ---- to work to
> the end to make himself an instrument for good work. Times change, men
> go here and there, and places need to be filled by those who can do the
> best sort of work and who are full of the fire of devotion and who have
> the right basis and a sure and solid one for themselves. My love to all.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> I am very sorry that so many efforts on your part to influence the
> public press have been unsuccessful, but I feel sure that you will
> ultimately be successful. I am inclined to think that you will almost
> certainly find that articles written by Theosophists on the spot will
> obtain more ready admission than if you send them articles which have
> already been printed.
> 
> They have a more local colouring, and therefore a greater local
> interest.... I feel sure that by persistent and steady work, such
> as you are doing, you will win your way, and that even the most
> conservative papers will find it to their interest to insert articles.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Both ---- and ---- are two weak, half-corroded spots. It is due to
> (_a_) gossip about others, including me and others in the three lands;
> (_b_) to the personal element; (_c_) most of all to the absence of real
> faith in the Masters, for wherever that is not strong the work goes
> down; (_d_) to a sort of fear of public opinion; (_e_) to incomplete
> grasp of the elementary truths; and so on.
> 
> Stick to it that the way is to do all you can and let the results go.
> You have nothing to do with results; the other side will look out
> for that. This is really the culmination of the work of ages, and it
> would be a poor thing, indeed, if the Lodge had to depend alone on our
> puny efforts. Hence, go on and keep the spirit that you have only to
> proceed, and leave the rest to time and the Lodge. If all the other
> members had the same idea, it would be better for the old T.S. But let
> us hope on, for we have some any way, and that is more than none.
> 
> You are right, too, about _The Secret Doctrine_, it is a mine, and is
> the magazine for the warrior Theosophists, which is the description of
> you and me and some others.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Let us all be as silent as we may be, and work, work; for as the enemy
> rages, they waste time, while work shines forth after all is over, and
> we will see that as they fought we were building. Let that be our
> watchword.... I hope no weak souls will be shaken off their base. If
> they get on their _own_ base they will not be shaken off.
> 
> XXVII.
> 
> ON WISDOM IN ACTION.
> 
> This is the right conclusion, to let all talk and other people's
> concerns slip by and not meddle. No one should be taking information to
> another, for it fans a flame, and now we have to ignore everything and
> just work on, be good and kind and, like St. Paul's charity, overlook
> all things. Retire into your own silence and let all others be in the
> hands of Karma, as we all are. "Karma takes care of its own." It is
> better to have no side, for it is all for the Master and He will look
> out for all if each does just right, even if, to their view, another
> seems not to do so. By our not looking at their errors too closely the
> Master will be able to clear it all off and make it work well. The plan
> of quiet passive resistance, or rather, laying under the wind, is good
> and ought to work in all attacks. Retreat within your own heart and
> there keep firmly still. Resist without resisting. It is possible and
> should be attained. Once more, _au revoir_ only, no matter what may
> happen, even irresistible Death itself. Earthquakes here yesterday:
> these signify some souls of use have come into the world somewhere;
> but where?
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Well, now, just at this minute I do not know exactly what to say. Why
> not take up an easy and fluidic position in the matter? An occultist
> is never fixed to any particular mortal plan. Wait. All things come to
> him who waits in the right way. Make yourself in every way as good an
> instrument for any sort of work as you can. Every little thing I ever
> learned I have now found out to be of use to me in this work of ours.
> Ease of manner and of speech are of the best to have. Ease of mind
> and confidence are better than all in this work of dealing with other
> men--that is, with the human heart. The more wise one is the better
> he can help his fellows, and the more cosmopolitan he is the better,
> too.... When the hour strikes it will then find you ready; no man knows
> when the hour will strike. But he has to be ready. You see Jesus was
> in fact an occultist, and in the parable of the foolish virgins gave a
> real occult ordinance. It is a good one to follow. Nothing is gained,
> but a good deal is lost by impatience--not only strength, but also
> sight and intuition. So decide nothing hastily. Wait; make no set plan.
> Wait for the hour to make the decision, for if you decide in advance
> of the time you tend to raise a confusion. So have courage, patience,
> hope, faith, and cheerfulness.
> 
> The very first step towards being positive and self-centered is in the
> cheerful performance of duty. Try to take pleasure in doing what is
> your duty, and especially in the _little_ duties of life. When doing
> any duty put your whole heart into it. There is much in this life that
> is bright if we would open our eyes to it. If we recognize this then we
> can bear the troubles that come to us calmly and patiently, for we know
> that they will pass away.
> 
> ... You can solidify your character by attending to small things. By
> attacking small faults, and on every small occasion, one by one. This
> will arouse the inner attitude of attention and caution. The small
> faults and small occasions being conquered, the character grows strong.
> Feelings and desires are not wholly of the body. If the _mind_ is
> deliberately taken off such subjects and placed on other and better
> ones, then the whole body will follow the mind and grow tractable. This
> struggle must be kept up, and after awhile it will be easier. Old age
> only makes this difference--the machine of body is less strong; for in
> old age the thoughts are the same if we let them grow without pruning.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> There is never any need to worry. The good law looks out for all
> things, and all we have to do is our duty as it comes along from day
> to day. Nothing is gained by worrying about matters and about the way
> people do not respond. In the first place you do not alter people,
> and in the second, by being anxious as to things, you put an occult
> obstacle in the way of what you want done. It is better to acquire a
> lot of what is called carelessness by the world, but is in reality a
> calm reliance on the law, and a doing of one's own duty, satisfied
> that the results must be right, no matter what they may be. Think that
> over, and try to make it a part of your inner mind that it is no use to
> worry; that things will be all right, no matter what comes, and that
> you are resolved to do what you see before you, and trust to Karma for
> all the rest.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> I am sorry to hear that you are passing through what you mention. Yet
> you knew it would have to come, and one learns, and the purpose of life
> is to learn. It is all made up of learning. So though it is hard it is
> well to accept it as you say.
> 
> Do you know what it is to resist without resistance?
> 
> That means, among other things, that too great an expenditure of
> strength, of "fortitude," is not wise. If one fights one is drawn into
> the swirl of events and thoughts instead of leaning back on the great
> ocean of the Self which is never moved. Now you see that, so lean
> back and look on at the ebb and flow of life that washes to our feet
> and away again many things that are not easy to lose or pleasant to
> welcome. Yet they all belong to Life, to the Self. The wise man has no
> personal possessions.
> 
> Anyway you are right that struggling is wrong. Do it quietly, that is
> the way the Masters do it. The reaction the other way is just as you
> say, but the Master has so much wisdom He is seldom if ever, the prey
> of reactions. That is why He goes slowly. But it is sure.... I know how
> the cloud comes and goes. That is all right; just wait, as the song
> says, till they roll by.
> 
> Arouse, arouse in you the meaning of "Thou art That." Thou art the
> Self. This is the thing to think of in meditation, and if you believe
> it then tell others the same. You have read it before, but now try
> to realise it more and more each day and you will have the light you
> want.... If you will look for wisdom you will get it sure, and that is
> all you want or need. Am glad all looks well. It would always look well
> if each and all minded their own things and kept the mind free from all
> else.
> 
> Patience is really the best and most important thing, for it includes
> many. You cannot have it if you are not calm and ready for the
> emergency, and as calmness is the one thing necessary for the spirit to
> be heard, it is evident how important patience is. It also prevents one
> from precipitating a thing, for by precipitation we may smash a good
> egg or a good plan, and throw the Karma, for the time, off and prevent
> certain good effects flowing. So, keep right on and try for patience in
> all the very smallest things of life every day, and you will find it
> growing very soon, and with it will come greater strength and influence
> on and for others, as well as greater and clearer help from the inner
> side of things.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> For the love of heaven do not take any tales or informations from any
> person to any other. The man who brought news to the king was sometimes
> killed. The surest way to make trouble out of nothing is to tell about
> it from one to another. Construe the words of the _Gîtâ_ about one's
> own duty to mean that you have nothing to do in the smallest particular
> with other people's fancies, tales, facts, or other matters, as you
> will have enough to do to look out for your own duty.... Too much,
> too much, trying to force harmony. Harmony comes from a balancing of
> diversities, and discord from any effort to make harmony by force....
> In all such things I never meddle, but say to myself it is none of my
> affair at all, and wait till it _comes to me_--and thank God if it
> never arrives! And that is a good rule for you.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Think of these points:
> 
> (_a_) Criticism should be abandoned. It is no good. Co-operation is
> better than criticism. The duty of another is dangerous for one whose
> duty it is not. The insidious coming of unbrotherly criticism should be
> warned against, prevented, stopped. By example you can do much, as also
> by word in due season.
> 
> (_b_) Calmness is now a thing to be had, to be preserved. No irritation
> should be let dwell inside. It is a deadly foe. Sit on all the small
> occasions that evoke it and the greater ones will never arise to
> trouble you.
> 
> (_c_) Solidarity.
> 
> (_d_) Acceptation of others.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> It is not wise to be always analysing our faults and failures; to
> regret is waste of energy: if we endeavour to use all our energy in the
> service of the Cause, we shall find ourselves rising above our faults
> and failures, and though these must perhaps occur, they will lose their
> power to drag us down. Of course we do have to face our faults and
> fight them, but our strength for such a struggle will increase with
> our devotion and unselfishness. This does not mean that vigilance over
> one's thoughts and acts is ever to be relaxed.
> 
> If you will rely upon the truth that your inner self is a part of the
> great Spirit, you will be able to conquer these things that annoy, and
> if you will add to that a proper care of your bodily health, you will
> get strength in every department. Do not look at things as failures,
> but regard every apparent failure after real effort as a success, for
> the real test is in the effort and motive, and not in the result. If
> you will think over this idea on the lines of _The Bhagavat Gîtâ_ you
> will gain strength from it.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> As before so now I will do all I can for you, which is not much, as
> each must do for himself. Just stay loyal and true, and look for the
> indications of your own duty from day to day, not meddling with others,
> and you will find the road easier. It is better to die in one's own
> duty than to do that of another, no matter how well you do it. Look for
> peace that comes from a realisation of the true unity of all and the
> littleness of oneself. Give up in mind and heart all to the Self and
> you will find peace.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> The deadening dullness you speak of is one of the trials of the age,
> but we have some good and earnest people, and they may act as the
> righteous men in the cities of old, for our ideas are more mighty
> than all the materialism of the age, which is sure to die out and be
> replaced by the truth. You will have to take care that the spirit of
> the time, and the wickedness and apathy of the people, do not engender
> in you a bitter spirit. This is always to be found in the beginning,
> but now, being forewarned, you are forearmed.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Do not allow bitterness to come up; keep off all personalities all
> the time; let the fight be for a cause and not against anyone. Let no
> stones be thrown. Be charitable. Do not let people be asked to step
> out, no matter what they do; when they want to go they may go, but
> don't have threats nor discipline, it does no good but a lot of harm.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Say, look here, never growl at anything you have to do. If you have
> to go, just take it as a good thing you have to do, and then it will
> redound to the good of them and yourself, but if it is a constant cross
> then it does no good and you get nothing. Apply your theories thus....
> It is a contest of smiles if we really know our business.... Never be
> afraid, never be sorry, and cut all doubts with the sword of knowledge.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> I think that you will be helped if you will try to aid some poor,
> distressed person by merely talking and expressing your sympathy if
> you are not able to help in money, though the very fact of giving five
> cents to someone who needs it is an act which, if done in the right
> spirit, that of true brotherliness, will help the one who gives. I
> suggest this because you will, by doing so, set up fresh bonds of
> sympathy between you and others, and by trying to alleviate the sorrows
> or sufferings of others, you will find strength come to you when you
> most need it.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Let them croak, and if we keep silent it will have no effect and as
> there has been trouble enough it is better not to make it any worse by
> referring to it. The only strength it has is when we take notice. It is
> better policy for all of us who are in earnest and united to keep still
> in any matter that has any personal bearing.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> _Silentio_, my dear, is almost as good as patience. He laughs best who
> does it last, and time is a devil for grinding things.... Use the time
> in getting calmness and solid strength, for a deep river is not so
> because it has a deep bed, but because it has _volume_.
> 
> Rely within yourself on your Higher Self always, and that gives
> strength, as the Self uses whom it will. Persevere, and little by
> little _new ideals_ and thought-forms will drive out of you the old
> ones. This is the eternal process.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Troubles are ahead, of course, but I rather think that the old
> war-horse of the past will not be easily frightened or prevented from
> the road. Do your best to make and keep good thought and feeling of
> solidarity.... Our old lion of the Punjab is not so far off, but all
> the same is not in the place some think, or in the condition either.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> The way gets clearer as we go on, but as we get clearer we get less
> anxious as to the way ahead.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> There is service objective and its counterpart within, which being
> stronger will at last manifest without.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Do not judge in anger, for though the anger passes the judgment remains.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> The promises I made to myself are just as binding as any others.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> Be true lovers, but of God, and not of each other. Love each the other
> in that to one another ye mirror God, for that God is in you each.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> We all are; I too. We never _were_ anything, but only continually are.
> What we are now determines what we will be.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> In order to off-set the terribly cold effect of perceiving the
> littleness of human affairs, one must inculcate in oneself a great
> compassion which will include oneself also. If this is not done,
> contempt comes on, and the result is dry, cold, hard, repellent and
> obstructive to all good work.
> 
> I know that his absence is a loss to you, but I think if you will
> regard all things and events as being in the Self and It in them,
> making yourself a part of the whole, you will see there is no real
> cause for sorrow or fear. Try to realise this and thus go in confidence
> and even joy.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> There are valleys in which the greatest shadows are due to old lives in
> other bodies, and yet the intensity of universal love and of aspiration
> will dissipate those in an instant of time.
> 
> AN OCCULT NOVEL
> 
> A tireless worker, Mr. Judge, was always proposing new modes of
> activity. One never knew what fresh idea would not emanate from his
> indefatigable mind. One idea with which he occupied some of his lighter
> moments, was that of an occult novel. It was his idea that a friend
> of his should write this, from incidents and material to be furnished
> by himself, and to this idea he adhered, even having the title
> copyrighted, with the name of his author, despite the laughing protests
> of this friend, to whose outcries and statements that she never could,
> and never should, write a novel, Mr. Judge would smilingly reply: "Oh,
> yes! You will do it when the time comes." From time to time he sent to
> this friend suggestions, incidents and other material for this novel,
> the same being on odds and ends of paper, often rough wrapping paper,
> and being jotted down under a lamp-post at night while he waited for
> his tram, or in court while he waited for the case in which he was
> engaged to come up. On these scraps are also marginal notes, as he
> accepted or rejected the ideas of his own prolific mind. These notes
> are given here as such. It has been suggested that the recipient of
> these materials should still write the novel as proposed, but setting
> aside the fact that she could not be sure of properly rendering the
> real ideas of Mr. Judge, it is also thought that readers will much
> prefer to have the notes precisely as Mr. Judge set them down.
> 
> The printed title-page runs as follows:
> 
>        IN A BORROWED BODY.
>      _The Journey of a Soul._
>                BY
>   J. CAMPBELL VER-PLANCK, F.T.S.
>               1891.
> 
> The name is filled in in the writing of Mr. Judge, and there is this
> marginal note. "Copyright gone to Washngn."
> 
> (All "Notes" are to be understood as being marginal ones made by Mr.
> Judge unless otherwise stated.)
> 
> MEMO. ABOUT _Borrowed Body_.
> 
> The point on which it should all turn is not so much reincarnation as
> the use of a borrowed body, which is a different kind of reincarnation
> from that of Arnold's _Phra the Phœnician_.
> 
> This will also give chance to show the other two sorts of
> reincarnation, _e.g._:--
> 
> (_a_) Ordinary reincarnation in which there is no memory of the old
> personality, as the astral body is new; and:
> 
> (_b_) Exception as to astral body; but similarity of conception to that
> of ordinary cases, where the child retains the old astral body and
> hence memory of old personality and acquaintance with old knowledge and
> dexterity.
> 
> A CHAPTER.
> 
> _The Assembling of the Skandhas._
> 
> On the death of body the Kama principle collects the Skandhas in space,
> or at the rebirth of the Ego the Skandhas rush together and assemble
> about it to go with it in the new life.
> 
> ANOTHER.
> 
> _The Unveiling of the Sun._
> 
> There is the real and unreal sun. The real one is hidden by a golden
> vase, and the devotee prays:
> 
> "Unveil, O Pushan, the true Sun's face," etc. A voice (or other) says
> "thou art that vase" and then he knows that he alone hides the true Sun
> from himself.
> 
> Pushan is the guide and watches on the path to the Sun.
> 
> The eulogy of the Sun and the Soul are enshrined in a golden rose or
> lotus in the heart which is impregnable.
> 
> The theme of the book is not always teacher and pupil.
> 
> He first strives for some lives ordinarily and then in one he grows old
> and wise, and sitting before a temple one day in Madura he dies slowly,
> and like a dissolving view he sees the adepts round him aiding him;
> also a small child which seems to be himself, and then thick darkness.
> He is born then in the usual way.
> 
> Twice this is repeated, each time going through the womb but with the
> same astral body.
> 
> Then he lives the third life to forty-nine, and comes again to die and
> with same aid he selects a foreign child who is dying.
> 
> Child dying. Skandhas collecting, child's Ego going--left, spark of
> life low: relatives about bed.
> 
> He enters by the way the mind went out and revivifies the body.
> Recovery, youth, etc., etc.
> 
> This is his borrowed body.
> 
> MEMO. NO. 2
> 
> _A couple of Incidents for the Book._
> 
> A round tower used by the fire worshippers in Ireland and other isles
> in early ages. A temple is attached to it; quaint structure--one priest
> and one neophyte.
> 
> People below the tower coming into the temple grounds as the religion
> is in its decadence.
> 
> On the top of the tower is the neophyte, who in the face of the
> prevailing scepticism clings to the dead faith and to the great priest.
> His duty is to keep a fire on the tower burning with aromatic woods.
> He leans over the fire; it burns badly; the wood seems green; he blows
> it up; it burns slightly; he hears the voices of the disputers and
> sellers below; goes to the tower and gazes over while the fire goes
> slowly out. He is a young man of singular expression, not beautiful
> but powerful face; intense eyes, long dark hair, and far gazing eyes
> of a greyish colour unusual for such hair. Skin clear with a shifting
> light flowing from it. Sensitive face; blushes easily but now and then
> stern. As he still gazes the fire goes out. Just then a tall old man
> comes up the stairs and stands upon the tower top at opposite side,
> looking at the fire and then at the young man and withdraws not his
> gaze for an instant. It is a sternly powerful drawing look. He is very
> tall, dark brown eyes, grey hair, long beard. The young man feels his
> look and turns about and sees the fire out completely, while its last
> small cloud of smoke is floating off beyond the tower. They look at
> each other. In the young man's face you see the desperate first impulse
> to excuse, and then the sudden thought that excuses are useless because
> childish, for he knew his duty--to keep the small spiral of smoke ever
> connecting heaven with earth, in the hope, however vain, that thus the
> old age might be charmed to return. The old man raises his hand, points
> away from the tower and says "go." Young man descends.
> 
> _II. A battle._--In the hottest a young soldier armed to the teeth,
> fighting as if it made no matter whether he win or lose, die or live.
> Strange weapons, sounds and clouds.
> 
> Wounded, blood flowing. It is the young man of the tower. He sinks
> down taken prisoner. In a cell condemned, for they fear his spiritual
> power. Conflict between the last remnant of the old religion and the
> new, selfish faith.
> 
> Taken to his execution. Two executioners. They bind him standing and
> stand behind and at side; each holds a long straight weapon with a
> curved blunt blade, curved to (fit?) about the neck. They stand at
> opposite sides, place those curved blunt blades holding his neck like
> two crooks. They pull--a sickening sound: his head violently pulled out
> close to the shoulder leaves a jagged edge. The body sways and falls.
> It was the way they made such a violent exit for a noble soul as they
> thought would keep it bound in the astral earth sphere for ages.
> 
> III. That young man again. He approaches an old man (of the tower).
> Young one holds parchments and flowers in his hand, points to
> parchments and asks explanation. Old one says, "Not now; when I come
> again I will tell you."
> 
> _Note._--Keep this, Julius.
> 
>   W. Q. J.
>   Z. L. Z.
> 
> The next batch of notes is headed by the single word: "_Book_." Then
> follow four lines of shorthand. After these the words:
> 
> "Incidents showing by picture his life in other ages; the towers; the
> battle; the death; the search for knowledge and the sentiment expressed
> in the flowers."
> 
> Eusebio Rodigues de Undiano was a notary in Spain who found among
> the effects of his father many old parchments written in a language
> which was unknown to him. He discovered it was Arabic, and in order to
> decipher them learned that tongue. They contained the story.
> 
> _Note._--No initiates; Lytton only.
> 
> Eusebio de Undiano is only one of the old comrades reborn in Spain who
> searches like Nicodemus for the light.
> 
> _Note._--Yes.
> 
> Eusebio de Undiano finds in his father's parchments confirmation of
> what the possession of the body has often told him.
> 
> _Note._--Yes.
> 
> This person in the body never gave his name to anyone and has no name.
> 
> An autobiographical story? No? _Yes!_ Related by one who was struck;
> by an admirer who suspected something? No; because that is hearsay
> evidence; the proof is incomplete, whereas he relating it himself is
> either true, or a mere insane fancy. It is better to be insane than be
> another's tool.
> 
> Stick to the tower and the head-chopping business. Let him be that
> young man and after the head loss he wanders in Kama Loca and there he
> sees the old man who was killed on the tower soon after the fire went
> out. The old man tells him that he will tell all when they return to
> earth.
> 
> He wanders about the tower vicinity seeking a birth, until one day he
> sees vague shapes suddenly appearing and disappearing. They are not
> dressed like his countrymen down below on the earth. This goes on. They
> seem friendly and familiar, the one requesting him to go with them,
> he refuses. They are more powerful than he is yet they do not compel
> him but show him their power. One day one was talking to him; he again
> refuses unless something might show him that he ought to go. Just then
> he hears a bell sound, such as he never heard before. It vibrates
> through him and seems to open up vistas of a strange past and in a
> moment he consents to go.
> 
> They reach Southern India and there he sees the old man of the tower,
> whom he addresses, and again asks the burning question about the
> parchment. The old man says again the same as before and adds that he
> had better come again into the world in that place.
> 
> The darkness and silence. The clear, hot day. The absence of rain.
> After listening to the old man he consents inwardly to assume life
> there and soon a heavy storm arises, the rain beats, he feels himself
> carried to the earth and in deep darkness. A resounding noise about
> him. It is the noise of the growing plants. This is a rice field with
> some sesamum in it. The moisture descends and causes the expanding;
> sees around, all is motion and life. Inclosed in the sphere of some
> rice, he bemoans his fate. He is born in a Brahmin's house.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> _Note._--Shall the question of reincarnation through cloud and rain and
> seed and thus from the seed of the man, be gone into?
> 
> He is the young man. He knows much. He dies at nineteen. Strange forms
> around his bed who hold him. They carry him back to the land of the
> towers. He recognizes it again and sees that ages have passed since
> the fire went out, and in the air he perceives strange shapes and sees
> incessantly a hand as of Fate, pointing to that Island. The towers are
> gone, the temples and the monuments. All is altered. They take him to
> a populous city and as he approaches he sees over one house a great
> commotion in the air. Shapes moving. Bright flashes, and puffs as of
> smoke. They enter the room, and on the bed is the form of a young boy
> given up to die, with relatives weeping. His guides ask him if he will
> borrow that body about to be deserted and use it for the good of their
> Lodge. He consents. They warn him of the risks and dangers.
> 
> The boy's breathing ceases and his eyes close, and a bright flash is
> seen to go off from it (the body). He sees the blood slowing down. THEY
> push him, and he feels dark again. Boy revives. Physician takes hope.
> "Yes; he will recover, with care." He recovers easily. Change in his
> character. Feels strange in his surroundings, etc.
> 
> The place in India where he went after death which was again sudden
> (how?). A large white building. Gleaming marble. Steps. Pillars. A hole
> that has yellowish glow that looks like water. Instruction as to the
> work to be done, and the journey to the land of the tower, in search
> of a body to borrow. As to bodies being deserted by the tenant that
> might live if well understood and well connected with a new soul. The
> difference between such a birth and an ordinary birth where the soul
> really owns the body, and between those bodies of insane people which
> are not deserted, but where the owner really lives outside. Bodies of
> insane are not used because the machine itself is out of order, and
> would be useless to the soul of a sane person.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> _Note._--Julius; keep these. I will send them now and then. But before
> you go away, return to me so I can keep the run of it. May change the
> scheme. The motive is in the title I gave you.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> _Note._--No one who has not consciously lived the double life of a man
> who is in the use and possession of a body not his own can know the
> agony that so often falls to one in such a case. I am not the original
> owner of this body that I now use. It was made for another, and for
> some little time used by him, but in the storm of sickness he left it
> here to be buried, and it would have been laid away in the earth if
> I had not taken it up, vivified its failing energies and carried it
> through some years of trial by sickness and accident. But the first
> owner had not been in it long enough to sow any troublesome seeds
> of disease; he left a heritage of good family blood and wonderful
> endurance. That he should have left this form so well adapted for
> living, at least seems inconceivable, unless it was that he could not
> use it, sick or well, for any of his own purposes. At any rate it is
> mine now, but while at first I thought it quite an acquisition there
> are often times when I wish I had not thus taken another man's frame,
> but had come into life in the ordinary way.
> 
> A COUPLE OF INCIDENTS FOR THE BOOK.
> 
> Incident of the letter and picture.
> 
> There was a very curious old man (sufficient description to add).
> 
> Sent a small cardboard in which was a picture, a head, and over it
> appeared to be placed a thin sheet of paper, gummed over the sides
> to the back. He asked if I could tell him anything of the picture
> which was visible through the thin paper. Having great curiosity, I
> lifted up the thin paper, and at once there seemed to be printed off
> from its underside a red circle surrounding the head on the board. In
> one instance this circle turned black and so did the entire inside
> space including the head which was then obliterated. In the other the
> red circle seemed to get on fire inward, and then the whole included
> portion burned up. On examining the thin paper on underside there were
> traces of a circle, as if with paste.
> 
> He laughed and said that curiosity was not always rewarded.
> 
> Took it to several chemists in Paris, who said that they knew of no
> substance that would do this. The old chemist in Ireland said a very
> destructive thing called Flourine might be liberated thus and do it,
> but that it was only a thing with chemists and analysts.
> 
> (_Note by the compiler._--In his travels Mr. Judge met many strange
> people and saw some extraordinary sights. Now and again he would tell
> one of these to be included in the novel, but just in this unfinished
> and vague way. When asked to tell more, he would smile and shake his
> head, saying: "No, No; little brothers must finish it.")
> 
> _Another Incident._
> 
> The temple on the site of the present city of Conjeveram was about to
> be consecrated and the regular priests were all ready for the ceremony.
> Minor ceremonies had taken place at the laying of the cornerstone,
> but this was to exceed that occasion in importance. A large body of
> worshippers were gathered not for the gratification of curiosity, but
> in order to receive the spiritual benefits of the occasion and they
> filled the edifice so that I could not get inside. I was thus compelled
> to stand just at the edge of the door, and that was, as I afterwards
> found out, the best place I could have selected if I had known in
> advance what was to take place. A few days before a large number of
> wandering ascetics had arrived and camped on a spot near the temple,
> but no one thought much of it because used to seeing such people.
> There was nothing unnatural about these men, and all that could be
> said was that a sort of mysterious air hung about them, and one or two
> children declared that on one evening none of the visitors could be
> found at their camp nor any evidence that men had been there, but they
> were not believed, because the ascetics were there as usual the next
> morning. Two old men in the city said that the visitors were Devas in
> their "illusionary form," but there was too much excitement about the
> dedication to allow of much thought on the subject. The event, however,
> proved the old men right.
> 
> At the moment when the people in the temple were expecting the priests
> to arrive, the entire body of ascetics appeared at the door with
> a wonderful looking sage-like man at their head, and they entered
> the edifice in the usual formal way of the priests and the latter
> on arriving made no disturbance, but took what places they could,
> simply saying: "they are the Devas." The strangers went on with the
> ceremonies, and all the while a light filled the building and music
> from the air floated over the awestruck worshippers.
> 
> When the time came for them to go they all followed the leader in
> silence to the door. I could see inside, and as I was at the door
> could also see outside. All the ascetics came to the entrance but not
> one was seen to go beyond it, and none were ever perceived by any man
> in the city again. They melted away at the threshold. It was their
> last appearance, for the shadow of the dark age was upon the people,
> preventing such sights for the future. The occurrence was the topic of
> conversation for years, and it was all recorded in the archives of the
> city.
> 
> IN A BORROWED BODY.
> 
> I MUST tell you first what happened to me in this present life since it
> is in this one that I am relating to you about many other lives of mine.
> 
> I was a simple student of our high Philosophy for many lives on earth
> in various countries, and then at last developed in myself a desire for
> action. So I died once more as so often before and was again reborn in
> the family of a Rajah, and in time came to sit on his throne after his
> death.
> 
> Two years after that sad event one day an old wandering Brahmin came to
> me and asked if I was ready to follow my vows of long lives before, and
> go to do some work for my old master in a foreign land. Thinking this
> meant a journey only I said I was.
> 
> "Yes," said he, "but it is not only a journey. It will cause you to be
> here and there all days and years. To-day here, to-night there."
> 
> "Well," I replied, "I will do even that, for my vows had no conditions
> and master orders."
> 
> I knew of the order, for the old Brahmin gave me the sign marked on my
> forehead. He had taken my hand, and covering it with his waist-cloth,
> traced the sign in my palm under the cloth so that it stood out in
> lines of light before my eyes.
> 
> He went away with no other word, as you know they so often do, leaving
> me in my palace. I fell asleep in the heat, with only faithful Gopal
> beside me. I dreamed and thought I was at the bedside of a mere child,
> a boy, in a foreign land unfamiliar to me only that the people looked
> like what I knew of the Europeans. The boy was lying as if dying, and
> relatives were all about the bed.
> 
> A strange and irresistible feeling drew me nearer to the child, and for
> a moment I felt in this dream as if I were about to lose consciousness.
> With a start I awoke in my own palace--on the mat where I had fallen
> asleep, with no one but Gopal near and no noise but the howling of
> jackals near the edge of the compound.
> 
> "Gopal," I said, "how long have I slept?'
> 
> "Five hours, master, since an Old Brahmin went away, and the night is
> nearly gone, master."
> 
> I was about to ask him something else when again sleepiness fell upon
> my senses, and once more I dreamed of the small dying foreign child.
> 
> The scene had changed a little, other people had come in, there was
> a doctor there, and the boy looked to me, dreaming so vividly, as if
> dead. The people were weeping, and his mother knelt by the bedside. The
> doctor laid his head on the child's breast a moment. As for myself I
> was drawn again nearer to the body and thought surely the people were
> strange not to notice me at all. They acted as if no stranger were
> there, and I looked at my clothes and saw they were eastern and bizarre
> to them. A magnetic line seemed to pull me to the form of the child.
> 
> And now beside me I saw the old Brahmin standing. He smiled.
> 
> "This is the child," he said, "and here must you fulfil a part of your
> vows. Quick now! There is no time to lose, the child is almost dead.
> These people think him already a corpse. You see the doctor has told
> them the fatal words, 'he is dead!'"
> 
> Yes, they were weeping. But the old Brahmin put his hands on my head,
> and submitting to his touch, I felt myself in my dream falling asleep.
> A dream in a dream. But I woke in my dream, but not on my mat with
> Gopal near me. I was that boy I thought. I looked out through his eyes,
> and near me I heard, as if his soul had slipped off to the ether with a
> sigh of relief. The doctor turned once more and I opened my eyes--his
> eyes--on him.
> 
> The physician started and turned pale. To another I heard him whisper
> "automatic nerve action." He drew near, and the intelligence in that
> eye startled him to paleness. He did not see the old Brahmin making
> passes over this body I was in and from which I felt great waves of
> heat and life rolling over me--or the boy.
> 
> And yet this all now seemed real as if my identity was merged in the boy.
> 
> I was that boy and still confused, vague dreams seemed to flit through
> my brain of some other plane where I thought I was again, and had a
> faithful servant named Gopal; but that must be dream, this the reality.
> For did I not see my mother and father, the old doctor and the nurse so
> long in our house with the children. Yes; of course this is the reality.
> 
> And then I feebly smiled, whereon the doctor said:
> 
> "Most marvellous. He has revived. He may live."
> 
> He was feeling the slow moving pulse and noting that breathing began
> and that vitality seemed once more to return to the child, but he did
> not see the old Brahmin in his illusionary body sending air currents of
> life over the body of this boy, who dreamed he had been a Rajah with a
> faithful servant named Gopal. Then in the dream sleep seemed to fall
> upon me. A sensation of falling; falling came to my brain, and with a
> start I awoke in my palace on my own mat. Turning to see if my servant
> was there I saw him standing as if full of sorrow or fear for me.
> 
> "Gopal, how long have I slept again?"
> 
> "It is just morning, master, and I feared you had gone to Yamâ's
> dominions and left your own Gopal behind."
> 
> No, I was not sleeping. This was reality, these my own dominions. So
> this day passed as all days had except that the dream of the small boy
> in a foreign land came to my mind all day until the night when I felt
> more drowsy than usual. Once more I slept and dreamed.
> 
> The same place and the same house, only now it was morning there. What
> a strange dream I thought I had had; as the doctor came in with my
> mother and bent over me, I heard him say softly:
> 
> "Yes, he will recover. The night sleep has done good. Take him, when he
> can go, to the country, where he may see and walk on the grass."
> 
> As he spoke behind him I saw the form of a foreign looking man with a
> turban on. He looked like the pictures of Brahmins I saw in the books
> before I fell sick. Then I grew very vague and told my mother: "I had
> had two dreams for two nights, the same in each. I dreamed I was a king
> and had one faithful servant for whom I was sorry as I liked him very
> much, and it was only a dream, and both were gone."
> 
> My mother soothed me, and said: "Yes, yes, my dear."
> 
> And so that day went as days go with sick boys, and early in the
> evening I fell fast asleep as a boy in a foreign land, in my dream,
> but did no more dream of being a king, and as before I seemed to fall
> until I woke again on my mat in my own palace with Gopal sitting near.
> Before I could rise the old Brahmin, who had gone away, came in and I
> sent Gopal off.
> 
> "Rama," said he, "as boy you will not dream of being Rajah but now
> you must know that every night as sleeping king you are waking boy in
> foreign land. Do well your duty and fail not. It will be some years,
> but Time's never-stopping car rolls on. Remember my words," and then he
> passed through the open door.
> 
> So I knew those dreams about a sick foreign boy were not mere dreams
> but that they were recollections, and I condemned each night to animate
> that small child just risen from the grave, as his relations thought,
> but I knew that his mind for many years would not know itself, but
> would ever feel strange in its surroundings, for, indeed, that boy
> would be myself inside and him without, his friends not seeing that he
> had fled away and another taken his place. Each night I, as sleeping
> Rajah who had listened to the words of sages, would be an ignorant
> foreign boy, until through lapse of years and effort unremittingly
> continued I learned how to live two lives at once. Yet horrible at
> first seemed the thought that although my life in that foreign land as
> a growing youth would be undisturbed by vague dreams of independent
> power as Rajah, I would always, when I woke on my mat, have a clear
> remembrance of what at first seemed only dreams of being a king, with
> vivid knowledge that while my faithful servant watched my sleeping form
> I would be masquerading in a borrowed body, unruly as the wind. Thus as
> a boy I might be happy, but as a king miserable maybe. And then after I
> should become accustomed to this double life, perhaps my foreign mind
> and habits would so dominate the body of the boy that existence there
> would grow full of pain from the struggle with an environment wholly at
> war with the thinker within.
> 
> But a vow once made is to be fulfilled, and Father Time eats up all
> things and ever the centuries.
> 
> WILLIAM QUAN JUDGE
> 
> William Quan Judge, son of Alice Mary Quan and Frederick H. Judge,
> was born at Dublin, Ireland, on April 13th, 1851. His mother died in
> early life at the birth of her seventh child. The lad was brought up
> in Dublin until his thirteenth year, when the father removed to the
> United States with his motherless children, taking passage on the
> Inman Liner, "City of Limerick," which arrived in New York harbour
> on July 14th, 1864. Of the years of his childhood there is little to
> be said, though we hear of a memorable illness of his seventh year;
> an illness supposed to be mortal. The physician declared the small
> sufferer to be dying, then dead; but in the outburst of grief which
> followed the announcement, it was discovered that the child had
> revived, and that all was well with him. During convalescence the
> boy shewed aptitudes and knowledge never before displayed, exciting
> wonderment and questioning among his elders as to when and how he had
> learned all these new things. He seemed the same, and yet not the
> same; had to be studied anew by his family, and while no one knew that
> he had ever learned to read, from his recovery in his eighth year we
> find him devouring the contents of all the books he could obtain,
> relating to Mesmerism, Phrenology, Character-Reading, Religion, Magic,
> Rosicrucianism, and deeply absorbed in the Book of Revelation, trying
> to discover its real meaning. The elder Judge, with his children, lived
> for a brief period at the old Merchants' Hotel, in Cortland Street,
> New York: then in Tenth Street, and afterward settled in Brooklyn.
> William began work in New York as a clerk, afterwards entering the
> Law Office of George P. Andrews, who afterwards became Judge of the
> Supreme Court of New York. There the lad studied law, living with his
> father, who died soon after. On coming of age, William Q. Judge was
> naturalised a citizen of the United States, in April, 1872. In May
> of that year he was admitted to the Bar of New York. His conspicuous
> traits as a lawyer, in the practice of Commercial Law, which became his
> specialty, were his thoroughness, his inflexible persistence, and his
> industry, which won the respect of employers and clients alike. As was
> said of him, then and later: "Judge would walk over hot ploughshares
> from here to India to do his duty." In 1874 he married Ella M. Smith,
> of Brooklyn, by whom he had one child, a daughter, whose death in early
> childhood was long a source of deep, though quiet, sorrow to both.
> Mr. Judge in especial was a great lover of children, and had the gift
> of attracting them around him, whether in public--as on the steamer
> deck--or in private, and this without any apparent notice or effort on
> his part. Wherever he went, one would see the children begin to sidle
> up to him, soon absorbed in the new friend.
> 
> Living in Brooklyn until 1893, Mr. and Mrs. Judge then removed to New
> York in order to be nearer to the Theosophical Headquarters, Mr. Judge
> at that date, and for the first time, giving up his arduous labours at
> the law, in order to devote himself wholly to Theosophical work.
> 
> Soon after his marriage Mr. Judge heard of Madame Blavatsky in this
> wise. He came across a book which greatly interested him. This was
> _People from the Other World_, by H. S. Olcott. Mr. Judge wrote to
> Colonel Olcott, asking for the address of a good medium, for at this
> time the tide of occult inquiry and speculation had just set in,
> and the experiences of numbers of people, including those of Madame
> Blavatsky, at the "Eddy Homestead," were the talk of all the world.
> Mr. Judge was invited to call upon H. P. B. while no medium was
> forthcoming, and thus the conjunction was formed, in this incarnation,
> which H. P. B. later on declared to have existed "for æons past."
> Henceforward, Mr. Judge spent much of his time with H. P. B. at Irving
> Place, New York: he was one of a number of people present at her rooms
> one evening when she turned to him, saying: "Ask Col. Olcott to form
> a Society." This was done at once. Mr. Judge was called to the Chair,
> nominating Col. Olcott as permanent Chairman, and was himself nominated
> as Secretary. This was the beginning of the Theosophical Society, on
> the date of 7th September, 1875.
> 
> When Madame Blavatsky went to India, Mr. Judge was left to carry on
> the T.S. in New York as best he could; a difficult task indeed when
> she who was then the one great exponent had left the field, and the
> curiosity and interest excited by her original and striking mission
> had died down. The T.S. was henceforth to subsist on its philosophical
> basis, and this, after long years of toil and unyielding persistence,
> was the point attained by Mr. Judge. From his twenty-third year until
> his death, his best efforts and all the fiery energies of his undaunted
> soul were given to this Work. We have a word picture of him, opening
> meetings, reading a chapter of the _Bhagavat Gîtâ_, entering the
> Minutes, and carrying on all the details of the same, as if he were not
> the only person present; and this he did time after time, determined
> to have a Society. Little by little he gathered about him a number of
> earnest seekers, some of whom still work in the New York and other
> Branches, and through his unremitting labour he built up the T.S. in
> America, aiding the Movement as well in all parts of the world, and
> winning from The Master the name of "Resuscitator of Theosophy in
> America." His motto in those days was, "Promulgation, not Speculation."
> "Theosophy," said he, "is a cry of the Soul."
> 
> The Work went slowly at first, and the eager disciple passed through
> even more than the usual suffering, sense of loneliness and desolation,
> as we see H. P. B. pointing out in regard to him that "he of all
> chelas, suffers most, and asks, or even expects, the least." But the
> shadow lifted, and in 1888 we find H. P. B. writing of him as being
> then "a chela of thirteen years' standing," with "trust reposed in
> him"; and as "the chief and sole Agent of The Dzyan in America." (This
> is the Thibetan name of what we call The Lodge.)
> 
> Mr. Judge also went to South America, where he saw many strange things,
> and contracted Chagres fever, that terrible scourge whose effects dog
> the victim through a lifetime. To India as well, where he was for some
> time with H. P. B. Later on he was with her in France and in England,
> always intent on the Work of the T.S. He lectured in both countries;
> instituted _The Path_ magazine, meeting all its deficits and carrying
> on its various activities, as well as those of the T.S. He wrote
> incessantly; opened the doors of the Press at length to a serious
> consideration of Theosophy; he lectured all over the States and did
> the work of several men. His health was frail; a day free from pain
> was a very rare thing with him. He had his sorrows too, of which the
> death of his only child was the deepest. But the cheerfulness of his
> aspect, his undaunted energy, never failed him, and he was the cause
> of activity among all his fellow members. To those who would ask his
> advice in the crises which were wont to shake the tree of the T.S. he
> would make answer: "Work! Work! Work for Theosophy!" And when at last
> the Great Betrayal came to him, and some of those whom he had lifted
> and served and taught _how_ to work, strove to cast him down and out of
> the Society, in their ignorance of their own limitations, he kept the
> due silence of the Initiate; he bowed his defenceless head to The Will
> and The Law, and passing with sweet and serene heart through the waters
> of bitterness, consoled by the respect and trust of the Community in
> which his life had been spent, and by the thousands of students who
> knew and loved him: he exhorted all to forgiveness and renewed effort:
> he reminded us that there were many committed by the unbrotherliness of
> his opponents who would in time come themselves to see and comprehend
> the wrong done to the Work by action taken which they did not at the
> time understand in all its bearings; he begged us to be ready to meet
> that day and to take the extended hands which would then be held out to
> us by those who ignorantly shared the wrong done to him, and through
> him, to us all. In this trust he passed behind the veil. On the 21st of
> March, 1896, he encountered "Eloquent, Just and Mighty Death."
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> So much for the open and material facts of his life. There is much more
> that must be left unsaid. His claim upon us was that of The Work. The
> Work was his Ideal. He valued men and women only by their theosophical
> Work, and the right spirit in which that Work was done. He held Right
> Thought to be of the best Work. He worked with anyone who was willing
> to do Work in the real sense, careless whether such were personal
> friends, strangers, or active or secret foes. Many a time he was known
> to be energetically working with those who were attacking him, or
> planning attack in supposed concealment, and his smile, as this was
> commented upon, was a thing to be always remembered; that whimsical and
> quaint smile, followed by some Irish drollery. But in order to leave
> behind us some adequate idea of the broadness and the catholicity of
> his nature, it seems best to append to this brief and unworthy sketch,
> some few of the thoughts of his life-long friends, nearly all published
> soon after he had left us.
> 
>        *       *       *       *       *
> 
> On page 75 of the first volume of _Letters_ is a letter from an Adept,
> from which a certain portion ("private instruction") is omitted. That
> omitted portion runs as follows:
> 
>     "_Is the choice made? Then Y. will do well to see W. Q. J. and to
>     acquaint him with this letter. For the first year or two no better
>     guide can be had._ For when the 'PRESENCE' _is upon him, he knows
>     well that which others only suspect and 'divine.' ... is useful to
>     'Path,' but greater services may be rendered to him, who, of all
>     chêlas, suffers most and demands, or even expects the least._"
> 
> (If this extract be fitted into the original letter its immense
> importance in respect to Mr. Judge may be realised by the intuitive
> student.)
> 
> "In answer to your letter I can only say as follows: If W. Q. Judge,
> the man who has done most for Theosophy in America, who has worked most
> unselfishly in your country, and has ever done the biddings of Master,
> the best he knew how, is left alone in ... and if the ... Society in
> general and its Esotericists especially leave him alone, without their
> unanimous _moral support_, which is much more than their money--then I
> say--let them go! They are no theosophists;--and if such a thing should
> happen, and Judge be left to fight his battles alone, then shall I
> bid all of them an eternal good-bye. I swear on MASTER'S holy name to
> shake off the dust of my feet from everyone of them.... I am unable to
> realise that at the hour of trouble and supreme fight ... any _true_
> theosophist should hesitate for one moment to back W. Q. J. _publicly_
> and lodge in his or her protest. Let them read Master's letter in the
> preliminary----. All that which I said about W. Q. J. was from HIS
> words in HIS letter to me.... Do with this letter what you like. Show
> it to anyone you please as my firm determination...."--H. P. B.
> 
> "It is necessary that just those souls in whom we have felt most of
> reality should disappear from us into the darkness, in order that we
> may learn that not seeing, but inwardly touching, is the true proof
> that our friend is there; in order that we may learn that the vanishing
> and dissipation of the outward, visible part, is no impairing or
> detriment to the real part, which is invisible. This knowledge, and the
> realising of it in our wills, are gained with the utmost difficulty,
> at a cost not less than the loss of the best of our friends; yet if
> the cost be great, the gain is great and beyond estimating, for it is
> nothing less than a first victory over the whole universe, wherein
> we come to know that there is that in us which can face and conquer
> and outlast anything in the universe, and come forth radiant and
> triumphant from the contest. Yet neither the universe nor death are
> real antagonists, for they are but only Life everywhere, and we are
> Life."--C. J.
> 
> "He was never narrow, never selfish, never conceited. He would drop
> his own plan in a moment if a better were suggested, and was delighted
> if someone would carry on the work he had devised, and immediately
> inaugurate other lines of work. To get on with the work and forward
> the movement seemed to be his only aim in life.... For myself, knowing
> Mr. Judge as I did, and associating with him day after day, at home,
> in the rush of work, in long days of travel over desert wastes or over
> the trackless ocean, having travelled with him a distance equal to
> twice around the globe, ... there is not the slightest doubt of his
> connection with and service of the Great Lodge. He did the Master's
> work to the best of his ability, and thus carried out the injunction of
> H. P. B. to "keep the link unbroken."--J. D. BUCK.
> 
> "There is not one act in the life of William Q. Judge that has come
> under my observation, that savours of selfishness or of a desire to
> further any personal end.... Perhaps I am not qualified to pass on the
> merits as an occultist, of the man whose memory I hold in such grateful
> esteem; but I can, at least, speak of what passed before my eyes in the
> ordinary affairs of life, and in these affairs I have invariably found
> him to be the soul of unselfishness, honour, generosity, and all the
> other virtues that men hold so dear in other men."--E. B. PAGE.
> 
> "In the summer of 1894 we were privileged to have him stay at our
> house for several weeks, and since then he spent at least one evening
> a week with us until his illness forced him to leave New York.... Day
> after day he would come back from the office utterly exhausted in
> mind and body, and night after night he would lie awake fighting the
> arrows of suspicion and doubt that would come at him from all over the
> world. He said they were like shafts of fire piercing him, and in the
> morning he would come down stairs wan and pale and unrested, and one
> step nearer the limit of his strength, but still with the same gentle
> and forgiving spirit.... Perhaps the most striking evidence of his
> greatness was the wisdom with which he treated different people, and
> the infinite knowledge of character shown by him in his guidance of his
> pupils. I do not believe he was the same to any two people.... His most
> lovable trait was his exquisite sympathy and gentleness. It has been
> said of him that no one ever touched a sore spot with such infinite
> tenderness, and I know many that would rather have been scolded and
> corrected by Mr. Judge than praised by anyone else. It was the good
> fortune of a few of us to know something of the real Ego who used
> the body known as Wm. Q. Judge. He once spent some hours describing
> to my wife and me the experience the Ego had in assuming control of
> the instrument it was to use for so many years. The process was not a
> quick nor an easy one and indeed was never absolutely perfected, for
> to Mr. Judge's dying day, the physical tendencies and heredity of the
> body he used would crop up and interfere with the full expression of
> the inner man's thoughts and feelings. An occasional abruptness and
> coldness of manner was attributable to this lack of co-ordination. Of
> course Mr. Judge was perfectly aware of this and it would trouble him
> for fear his real friends would be deceived as to his real feeling. He
> was always in absolute control of his thoughts and actions, but his
> body would sometimes slightly modify their expression.... Mr. Judge
> told me in December, 1894, that the Judge body was due by its Karma to
> die the next year and that it would have to be tided over this period
> by extraordinary means. He then expected this process to be entirely
> successful, and that he would be able to use that body for many years,
> but he did not count upon the assaults from without, and the strain and
> exhaustion.... This, and the body's heredity, proved too much for even
> his will and power. Two months before his death he knew he was to die,
> but even then the indomitable will was hard to conquer and the poor
> exhausted, pain-racked body was dragged through a miserable two months
> in one final and supreme effort to stay with his friends. And when he
> did decide to go, those who loved him most were the most willing for
> the parting. I thank the Gods that I was privileged to know him. It was
> a benediction to call him friend."--G. HIJO.
> 
> "To a greater extent than I have ever realised I know he entered into
> my life and I am equally sure into the lives of thousands, and this
> fact I see we are to acknowledge as time passes more and more.... He
> swore no one to allegiance, he asked for no one's love or loyalty; but
> his disciples came to him of their own free will and accord, and then
> he never deserted them, but gave more freely than they asked and often
> in greater measure than they could or would use. He was always a little
> ahead of the occasion, and so was truly a leader."--E. B. RAMBO.
> 
> "Judge was the best and truest friend a man ever had. H. P. B. told
> me I should find this to be so, and so it was of him whom she, too,
> trusted and loved as she did no other. And as I think of what those
> missed who persecuted him, of the loss in their lives, of the great
> jewel so near to them which they passed by, I turn sick with a sense
> of their loss: the immense mystery that Life is, presses home to me.
> In him his foes lost their truest friend out of this life of ours in
> the body, and though it was their limitations which hid him from them,
> as our limitations do hide from us so much Spiritual Good, yet we must
> remember, too, that these limitations have afforded to us and to the
> world this wonderful example of unselfishness and forgiveness. Judge
> made the life portrayed by Jesus realisable to me."--A. KEIGHTLEY.
> 
> "William Q. Judge was the nearest approach to my ideal of a MAN that
> I have known. He was what I want to be. H. P. B. was something more
> than human: She was a cosmic power. W. Q. J. was splendidly human:
> and he manifested in a way delightfully refreshing and all his own
> that most rare of human characteristics--genuineness. His influence is
> continuingly present and powerful, an influence tending steadily, as
> ever, in one direction--work for the Masters' Cause."--THOS. GREEN.
> 
> "His last message to us was this 'There should be calmness. Hold fast.
> Go slow.' And if you take down those words and remember them, you
> will find that they contain an epitome of his whole life struggle. He
> believed in Theosophy and lived it. He believed because he knew that
> the great Self of which he so often spoke was the eternal Self, was
> himself. Therefore he was always calm. He held fast with unwavering
> tenacity to his purpose and to his ideal. He went slow, and never
> allowed himself to act hastily. He made time his own, and he was
> justice itself on that account. And he had the power to act with the
> rapidity of lightning when the time for action came. We can now afford
> to console ourselves because of the life he lived, and should also
> remember that this man, William Quan Judge, had more devoted friends,
> I believe, than any other living man; more friends who would literally
> have died for him at a moment's notice; would have gone to any part of
> the world on the strength of a hint from him. And never once did he use
> that power and influence for his own personal ends;--never once did he
> use that power, great as it was, not only in America, but in Europe,
> Australasia and elsewhere as well, for anything but the good of the
> Theosophical movement.
> 
> "Poor Judge. It was not the charges that stung him, they were too
> untrue to hurt. It was the fact that those who had once most loudly
> proclaimed themselves his debtors and his friends were among the
> first to turn against him. He had the heart of a little child and
> his tenderness was only equalled by his strength.... He never cared
> what people thought of him or his work so long as they would work for
> brotherhood.... His wife has said that she never knew him to tell a
> lie, and those most closely connected with him theosophically agree
> that he was the most truthful man they ever knew."--E. T. H.
> 
> "I knew him with some degree of intimacy for the past eight years,
> meeting him often and under varied conditions, and never for one moment
> did he fail to command my respect and affection, and that I should have
> had the privilege of his acquaintance I hold a debt to Karma. A good
> homely face and unpretentious manner, a loving disposition, full of
> kindliness and honest friendship, went with such strong common sense
> and knowledge of affairs that his coming was always a pleasure and his
> stay a delight. The children hung about him fondly as he would sit
> after dinner and draw them pictures."--A. H. SPENCER.
> 
> "His life was an example of the possibility of presenting new ideas
> with emphasis, persistence and effect, without becoming eccentric or
> one-sided, without losing touch with our fellows, in short, without
> becoming a 'crank.'... The quality of 'common sense' was Mr. Judge's.
> Those who have heard him speak, know the singular directness with which
> his mind went to the marrow of a subject, the unaffected selflessness
> that radiated from the man. The quality of 'common sense' was Mr.
> Judge's pre-eminent characteristic."--WILLIAM MAIN.
> 
> "For to the mystical element in the personality of Mr. Judge was united
> the shrewdness of the practised lawyer, the organising faculty of a
> great leader, and that admirable common sense, which is so uncommon
> a thing with enthusiasts.... In his teaching was embodied most
> emphatically that received by the prophet Ezekiel when the Voice said
> to him: 'Stand upon thy feet and I will speak to thee.' He was the
> best of friends, for he held you firmly, yet apart. He realised the
> beautiful description Emerson gives of the ideal friend, in whom meet
> the two most essential elements of friendship, tenderness and truth.
> 'I am arrived at last,' says Emerson, 'in the presence of a man so
> real and equal ... that I may deal with him with the simplicity and
> wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.... To a great
> heart he will still be a stranger in a thousand particulars, that he
> may come near in the holiest ground.' And upon that 'holiest ground' of
> devotion to the highest aim, of desire alone for the welfare of others,
> the Chief was always to be approached. And blended with the undaunted
> courage, the keen insight, the swift judgment, the endless patience,
> that made his personality so powerful, were the warm affections, the
> ready wit, the almost boyish gaiety that made it so lovable.... One
> of the Chief's last messages to us said: 'They must aim to develop
> themselves in daily life in small duties.'... There was a beautiful
> story of Rhoecus, who could not recognise in the bee that buzzed about
> his head the messenger of the Dryad, and so lost her love."
> 
>   KATHERINE HILLARD.
> 
> "If my memory serves me rightly, we met first upon an occasion when H.
> P. Blavatsky was induced to try, in the presence of some reporters,
> if she could open up communication with the diaphanous remainder of
> a night watchman who had been drowned in an East River dock. Olcott
> was present, in command, prominent and authoritative, and Judge, in
> attendance, reserved and quiet. The spook was shy and the reporters
> sarcastic. The only one apparently annoyed by their humour was the
> Colonel. Mr. Judge's placidity and good nature commended him to the
> liking of the reporters, and made a particularly favourable impression
> upon me, which was deepened by the experiences of an acquaintance that
> continued while he lived. In all that time, though I have seen him
> upon a good many occasions when he would have had excellent excuse for
> wrath, his demeanour was uniformly the same--kindly, considerate and
> self-restrained, not merely in such measure of self-control as might
> be expected of a gentleman, but as if inspired by much higher regards
> than mere respect for the convenances of good society. He always seemed
> to look for mitigating circumstances in even the pure cussedness of
> others, seeking to credit them with, at least, honesty of purpose and
> good intentions, however treacherous and malicious their acts toward
> him might have been. He did not appear willing to believe that people
> did evil through preference for it, but only because they were ignorant
> of the good, and its superior advantages; consequently he was very
> tolerant."--J. H. CONNELLY.
> 
> "What he was to one of his pupils, I believe he was to all, ... so wide
> reaching was his sympathy, so deep his understanding of each heart; ...
> and I but voice the feeling of hundreds all over the world when I say
> that we mourn the tenderest of friends, the wisest of counsellors, the
> bravest and noblest of leaders. What a man was this, to have been such,
> to people of so widely varying nationalities, opinions and beliefs
> ... to have drawn them all to him by the power of his love, ... and
> in so doing, to have brought them closer to each other. There was no
> difficulty he would not take infinite pains to unravel, no sore spot in
> the heart he did not sense and strive to heal."--G. L. G.
> 
> In truth, we might pile up these evidences from the hearts of those
> who knew him best and longest, and who were well fitted to judge of
> the solidity and the truth of any character. But of this there is no
> need. It is for those to say who were influenced by their bugbear of
> "authority" whether they have not exchanged the substance for the
> shadow; have not retained the dogmatism and lost the free and noble
> spirit which W. Q. Judge ever exercised, and which he strove to retain
> in the T.S. Summing up his life, one must still say what was written
> soon after his departure: "In thinking of this helper and teacher of
> ours, I find myself thinking almost wholly of the future. He was
> one who never looked back; he looked forward always.... We think of
> him not as of a man departed from our midst, but as a soul set free
> to work its mighty mission, rejoicing in that freedom, resplendent
> in compassion and power. His was a nature that knew no trammels, but
> acknowledged the divine laws in all things. He was, as he himself said,
> 'rich in hope.'... That future as he saw and sees it is majestic in
> its harmonious proportions. It presaged the liberation of the race.
> It struck the shackles from the self-imprisoned and bade the souls of
> men be free. It evokes now, to-day, the powers of the inner man....
> Death, the magician, opened a door to show us these things. If we are
> faithful, that door shall never close. If we are faithful; only that
> proviso. Close up the ranks, and let Fidelity be the agent of heavenly
> powers. To see America, the cradle of the new race, fit herself to help
> and uplift that race and to prepare here a haven and a home for Egos
> yet to appear ... for this he worked; for this will work those who came
> after him. And he works with them."
> 
>   JULIA W. L. KEIGHTLEY.
> 
>     "A STRONG LIGHT SURROUNDED BY DARKNESS; THOUGH REACHING FAR AND
>     MAKING CLEAR THE NIGHT, WILL ATTRACT THE THINGS THAT DWELL IN
>     DARKNESS. A PURE SOUL BROUGHT TO THE NOTICE OF MEN WILL ILLUMINE
>     THE HEARTS OF THOUSANDS; BUT WILL ALSO CALL FORTH FROM THE CORNERS
>     OF THE EARTH THE HOSTILITY OF THOSE WHO LOVE EVIL." (_Book of
>     Items._)
> 
> The United Lodge of Theosophists
> 
> DECLARATION
> 
> The policy of this Lodge is independent devotion to the cause
> of Theosophy, without professing attachment to any Theosophical
> organization. It is loyal to the great Founders of the Theosophical
> Movement, but does not concern itself with dissensions or differences
> of individual opinion.
> 
> The work it has on hand and the end it keeps in view are too absorbing
> and too lofty to leave it the time or inclination to take part in side
> issues. That work and that end is the dissemination of the Fundamental
> Principles of the philosophy of Theosophy, and the exemplification in
> practice of those principles, through a truer realization of the SELF;
> a profounder conviction of Universal Brotherhood.
> 
> It holds that the unassailable _Basis for Union_ among Theosophists,
> wherever and however situated, is "_similarity of aim, purpose and
> teaching_," and therefore has neither Constitution, By-laws nor
> Officers, the sole bond between its Associates being that _basis_. And
> it aims to disseminate this idea among Theosophists in the furtherance
> of Unity.
> 
> It regards as Theosophists all who are engaged in the true service
> of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, condition or
> organization, and
> 
> It welcomes to its association all those who are in accord with its
> declared purposes and who desire to fit themselves, by study and
> otherwise, to be the better able to help and teach others.
> 
> "_The true Theosophist belongs to no cult or sect, yet belongs to each
> and all._"
> 
>     Being in sympathy with the purposes of this Lodge, as set forth in
>     its "Declaration," I hereby record my desire to be enrolled as an
>     Associate; it being understood that such association calls for no
>     obligation on my part other than that which I, myself, determine.
> 
> The foregoing is the Form signed by Associates of the United Lodge of
> Theosophists.
> 
> Inquiries are Invited from all persons to whom this Movement may
> appeal. Cards for signature will be sent upon request, and every
> possible assistance furnished Associates in their studies and In
> efforts to form local Lodges. There are no dues of any kind, and no
> formalities to be complied with.
> 
>   _Correspondence should be addressed to_
>   General Registrar, United Lodge of Theosophists
>   LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
>   504 Metropolitan Building, Broadway at Fifth Street
> 
>     "_To Spread Broadcast the Teachings of Theosophy, as Recorded in
>     the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky and Wm. Q. Judge._"
> 
> THEOSOPHY
> 
>     _A Magazine Devoted to the Theosophical Movement, the Brotherhood
>     of Humanity, the Study of Occult Science and Philosophy, and Aryan
>     Literature._
> 
>     THEOSOPHY is a Monthly Magazine devoted to the promulgation of
>     Theosophy as it was given by those who brought it. Established in
>     1912 by the United Lodge of Theosophists, the magazine is now in
>     the front rank of Theosophical publications and its circulation
>     extends to every civilized country. The first eight volumes of
>     the magazine contain reprints of the numerous original articles
>     written by H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge in explanation,
>     exemplification and application of the philosophy recorded in their
>     published books. These precious articles, replete with Occult
>     instruction, were first published in _The Theosophist_, _Lucifer_,
>     and _The Path_, now for many years out of print, so that their
>     surpassing value was lost and inaccessible to Students of the
>     present generation. THEOSOPHY has made them once more available.
>     In addition to these reprints the magazine contains many original
>     articles written by Robert Crosbie and other devoted Pupils and
>     Students of the Messengers of the Theosophical Movement of the
>     nineteenth century. Not the least of the contents of the magazine
>     are the Studies of the Teachings, the historical articles relating
>     to the Theosophical Movement, the Parent Theosophical Society, and
>     the many allied and related organizations and societies of the
>     present day. The entire contents of the magazine are universal
>     in scope and application, unbiased in treatment, and free from
>     sectarian or partisan influence. In order to preserve at all times
>     the impersonality of its tone, and that readers may form their
>     judgment from the inherent value perceived in the articles and not
>     from the names signed to them, the Editors and Contributors remain
>     anonymous, no living person's name being mentioned in connection
>     with the authorship of any article published.
> 
>     Back Volumes and Back Numbers can be supplied at $5.00 per Volume
>     and 50 cents per Number.
> 
>     Subscriptions can begin with any desired Number of the current
>     Volume. Subscription price, $2.00 per annum; single copies 25 cents
>     each.
> 
>     _Address all communications and remittances to_
> 
>   METROPOLITAN      THEOSOPHY      LOS ANGELES,
>   BUILDING                         CALIFORNIA
> 
> Students interested in obtaining a clear and correct understanding of
> the actual Teachings of THEOSOPHY, as recorded in the writings of the
> Messengers of the Theosophical Movement of the nineteenth century or in
> writings recommended by Them, should have the following books:
> 
>   KEY TO THEOSOPHY, _By_ H. P. BLAVATSKY,                          $2.50
>       An Exposition in the form of question and answer. The
>       best Manual for daily study and reference. A _verbatim_
>       reprint  of the Original Edition. Large type, durably and
>       artistically bound in Buckram.
> 
>   THE OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY, _By_ WILLIAM Q. JUDGE, $1.25
>       A succinct presentation of the philosophy free from
>       technical expressions; a perfect condensation of the
>       Secret Doctrines of Man and Nature. Cloth.
> 
>   THE OCCULT WORLD ESOTERIC BUDDHISM _By_ A. P. SINNETT, _Each_    $2.00
>       The two earliest popular presentations of Theosophical
>       Teachings, containing extracts from Letters written by
>       the _Mahatma_ K. H. From the Plates of the Original
>       American Editions. Cloth.
> 
>   ISIS UNVEILED, Two Volumes, _By_ H. P. BLAVATSKY,               $10.00
>       Volume I, Science; Volume II. Theology. A reprint of the
>       Original Edition of 1877. This, the first great work of
>       H. P. B., contains a vast wealth of information and
>       instruction not to be had elsewhere. Cloth.
> 
>   THE SECRET DOCTRINE, Two Volumes, _By_ H. P. BLAVATSKY,         $15.00
>       Volume I, Cosmogenesis; Volume II, Anthropogenesis. The
>       Original Edition, published in 1888, is now out of
>       print. This Edition, published in London, contains some
>       unwarrantable changes, but is in the main accurate and
>       is the only one available. Written "_for the instruction
>       of students of Occultism_," it is _sui generis_ and
>       absolutely invaluable to the true student of the
>       mysteries of Life and Being. Cloth.
> 
>   ABRIDGMENT OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE, _By_ KATHERINE HILLARD,       $3.00
>       A very good condensation of the major teachings of
>       Madame Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine" in the language of
>       the Author. Cloth.
> 
>   THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY, _By_ H. P. BLAVATSKY,                     $5.00
>       A reprint of the Original Edition, containing an
>       exhaustive and scholarly treatment of the Sanskrit
>       and other technical terms employed in Theosophical
>       literature. Cloth.
> 
> Those who find the Teachings of Theosophy to be comprehensive,
> self-explanatory, and a complete solution of all the problems of Life
> from a philosophical, logical and scientific standpoint, and who
> may desire to follow the Path shown in order to realize in and for
> themselves the noble Ideal of Brotherhood exemplified by the MASTERS OF
> WISDOM, are urged to read, ponder and assimilate to the utmost extent
> possible to them, the following Treatises on the _Heart Doctrine_:
> 
>   THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE. Chosen Fragments from The
>       Book of the Golden Precepts. Translated and
>       annotated by H. P. Blavatsky.
> 
>                                                          Leather,  $1.50
>                                                            Cloth,   1.25
> 
>   THE BHAGAVAD-GITA, The Book of Devotion. Containing
>       the Dialogue between _Krishna_, the Supreme
>       Master of Devotion, and _Arjuna_, his Disciple.
>       Rendered into exquisite parallel terms  in the
>       English tongue by William Q. Judge.
> 
>                                                          Leather,   1.50
>                                                            Cloth,   1.25
> 
>   NOTES ON THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. Commentaries
>       of the greatest service to sincere students
>       of to-day. The first Seven Chapters by
>       W. Q. Judge; the remainder by his friend and
>       colleague Robert Crosbie.
> 
>                                                          Leather,   1.50
> 
>   YOGA APHORISMS OF PATAJALI. The _Thought_ of this
>       Ancient Master, whose Aphorisms have been the
>       guide of Disciples in the East for untold
>       thousands of years. Done into English terms
>       with Notes, by William Q. Judge.
> 
>                                                          Leather,   1.50
>                                                            Cloth,   1.25
> 
>   LIGHT ON THE PATH. A treatise for the personal use
>       of those who are ignorant of the Eastern Wisdom,
>       and who desire to enter within its influence. An
>       exact reprint of the Original Edition of 1885,
>       together with the Comments originally published
>       in _Lucifer_. Written down by M. C.
> 
>                                                          Leather,   1.50
>                                                            Cloth,   1.25
> 
>   LETTERS THAT HAVE HELPED ME. Actual Letters,
>       by  William Q. Judge, embodying Lessons
>       and  Guidance of direct personal value to
>       every  Student and  Disciple.
> 
>                                                  Volume I, Cloth,   1.00
>                                                  Volume II, Cloth,  1.00
> 
>       The Two Volumes bound in One,                        Cloth,   1.50
> 
>   THE VOICE of the SILENCE, THE BHAGAVAD-GITA,
>       And PATAJALI'S YOGA APHORISMS, Bound in
>       One  Volume.
> 
>                                                          Leather,   3.00
> 
> Parents and others interested in the Spiritual and Moral welfare of
> Children and averse to the sectarian dogmas and false ideas prevalent
> under the name of religious teachings, have long felt the necessity
> for literature which should impart true fundamental conceptions of
> Nature, of Life and of Duty to the growing generation. As a portion
> of its Fraternal activities the United Lodge of Theosophists has
> long maintained a _Children's School of Theosophy_. To this School
> come children of all ages, Theosophists and Non-Theosophists as to
> Parentage. There are taught the primary truths common to all religions
> and philosophies, dealing with Birth, Life, Death, Law, Action and
> Duty. The Eternal Verities thus inculcated make for clean, sturdy,
> wholesome physical, mental, as well as moral and spiritual happiness
> and well-being. The experience thus gained in actual practice has been
> embodied in two books, wherein the lessons and instructions found
> helpful and formative to the highest character are plainly and clearly
> outlined, with all necessary suggestions and directions to enable
> Parents, Teachers and others to fit themselves to be the better able to
> help and guide the plastic minds of the Children to true perceptions of
> Life and Action.
> 
>   BECAUSE--FOR THE CHILDREN WHO ASK WHY. Interesting,
>       comprehensible and assimilable, in clear and
>       reverent fashion this Book presents to Children
>       the answers to those questions of Self that
>       Parents  find it most difficult to meet, and
>       affords a common basis of understanding to
>       Parent and Child.
> 
>                                                            Cloth,  $1.25
> 
>   THE ETERNAL VERITIES. A Series of Lessons in basic
>       truths and ideas, with complete chart and
>       programme so that its full value may be availed
>       of in the instruction of Children of all ages,
>       whether in the School or the Home. Original
>       Songs, Chants, Music, Allegories and Tales of
>       Symbolism, in a manner not only to interest but
>       to carry the Lessons into the Hearts and Minds
>       of the Learners.
> 
>                                                            Cloth,  $1.50
> 
> In order, further, to afford the maximum possible assistance to Parents
> and others interested in the proper education of Children, The United
> Lodge of Theosophists maintains a Bureau of Correspondence to which
> particular problems connected with the bringing-up of Children may be
> addressed. Replies to enquiries are in all cases by Women Associates
> of the Lodge who are themselves Mothers and Teachers and gladly give
> their time and experience to benefit their perplexed Sisters. There are
> no fees or charges of any description in connection with this labor
> of love, and all Mothers and Teachers are invited to benefit by it.
> Address,
> 
>   CHILDREN'S SCHOOL OF THEOSOPHY
>   LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
>   504 Metropolitan Building, Broadway at Fifth Street
> 
> No more important work exists for the Theosophical Student than to be
> in a position to direct inquirers to channels where they may inform
> themselves of the leading Principles of the teachings of THEOSOPHY in
> their philosophical, ethical and scientific bearings. The following are
> recommended for their exact accuracy, their simplicity and clarity in
> the presentation of the Wisdom-Religion.
> 
>   ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT, _By_ WILLIAM Q. JUDGE. A Series
>       of Chapters written in the most admirable style,
>       giving an outline of Theosophy and the Theosophical
>       Movement, and treating of the great Subject of
>       Masters, Karma, Reincarnation and Evolution.
> 
>                                                            Cloth,  $0.60
>                                                            Paper,    .35
> 
>   CONVERSATIONS ON THEOSOPHY. A Pamphlet
>       giving the fundamental teachings of the Secret
>       Doctrine. From the writings of H. P. Blavatsky
>       and William Q. Judge.
> 
>       Paper, envelope size,                                          .10
> 
>       In quantities for propaganda purposes, 50 copies
>       for                                                           2.50
> 
>   KARMA AND REINCARNATION. A large and attractively
>       bound pamphlet, envelope size, containing the
>       famous _Aphorisms on Karma_, and a notably
>       clear and comprehensive treatment of the
>       subjects of Karma and Reincarnation.                           .15
> 
>       In quantities for propaganda purposes, 50 copies
>       for                                                           4.00
> 
>   CULTURE OF CONCENTRATION, And OF OCCULT POWERS. Two
>       related Essays by William Q. Judge on subjects
>       of supreme importance.                                         .10
> 
>   EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER THAT HAS
>       HELPED ME. Being a statement of the _Gospel of
>       Hope and Responsibility_. This Letter has brought
>       consolation and the comfort of understanding to
>       many regarding the Great Mystery.                              .10
> 
>   THOUGHTS FOR THINKERS. A Pamphlet designed for the
>       "man in the street," who is often an open-minded
>       practical philosopher and thinker of the first
>       rank. These THOUGHTS are undogmatic,
>       non-argumentative and very suggestive.                         .10
> 
> The foregoing and other Books advertised in the preceding pages may all
> be obtained on order through your local Bookseller, or orders may be
> sent direct to the undersigned.
> 
> Inquiries are invited regarding any Theosophical Books and Publications
> not specifically mentioned herein. Correspondence and questions are
> also invited on Theosophical problems and subjects from all interested.
> 
>   _Address all orders and inquiries and make all remittances
>   payable to_
> 
>   UNITED LODGE OF THEOSOPHISTS
>   LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
>   504 Metropolitan Building, Broadway at Fifth Street
> 
> Transcriber's Note
> 
>   This is a "2-volume-in-1" ebook. Each volume has been paginated
>   separately.
> 
>   Footnotes have been placed at end of their respective chapter.
> 
>   Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been repaired.
> 
>   Pg. 76: Removed extraneous word "relates" from "The sexual relates
>   relates really only...."
>
> — *Letters That Have Helped Me (Public Domain (Project Gutenberg))*