CHAPTER 14: INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY.

The avenues of initiation still open — Visible temples not necessary — Old secrecy broken down — Motives for a more open policy — Dangers of progress in knowledge unaccompanied by spiritual growth — Those who are ready — Understanding required as well as moral fitness —Mental powers and psychic gifts — The conservation of energy on the moral plane — Normal and abnormal Re-incarnation — Immediate Re-incarnation — Its sacrifices and advantages.

It will be obvious on reflection, if we correctly interpret the meaning of ancient Egyptian initiation, and graft that in a reasonable manner upon the general view of natural evolution which the esoteric teaching gives us, that the opportunities of ancient initiation must be with us still. Still with us in a certain sense, moreover, are those of our predecessors who, at an earlier stage of the world's progress, passed beyond the action of the laws governing the periodic incarnations of ordinary humanity. They will have attained a higher condition of being in which life for one thing is very much more persistent, and their power of functioning on the higher planes of Nature even more persistent than that. But they are none the less within our reach at this day, certainly not amongst the crowds of busy modern cities, but in secluded retreats where the physical instruments they now employ to keep up their relations with this phase of being are beyond the reach of that magnetic pestilence which emanates from the more densely peopled portions of the earth, and would render them incapable of exercising the higher spiritual functions to which their progress in Nature has now appointed them. Of course, such beings are under conditions of existence so widely unlike those of ordinary humanity that it would be almost better to describe them as great spirits maintaining a physical body on earth for use in occasional emergencies, than as physical men who have a peculiar power of rising into spiritual conditions of nature; and of course in the long interval that has elapsed since the ancient initiations of the Egyptian period many new recruits, besides those who entered on the path in that remote period, have joined the stream of the higher evolution. Nor have the opportunities of initiation been extinguished merely because after their last public flicker in Greece the world at large has lost sight of them. Gradually, no doubt, their character has changed in some important respects in accordance with the cyclic necessities of the time which left the race to concern itself chiefly with the advancement of physical knowledge, even at the expense, for the generations so engaged, of a temporary forgetfulness concerning higher things. But there has never been a time in the world's history during which the channels of initiation have been altogether blocked, and for those whose spiritual ardour has itself, in the first instance, developed as a Karmic consequence in successive lives, those higher faculties of vision and consciousness which are now spoken of as psychic, there has always been a possibility of access to the higher knowledge along the lines of those very faculties. It has ceased to be necessary that, in order to enter the path of occult progress, a man should present himself at some specific temple and become the acolyte of a Hierophant visible to all his fellows. There has been for him an inner temple to which his own psychic faculties, on the hypothesis we are dealing with, have given him access. And in this way the body of initiated Adepts has constantly been reinforced, although probably there has never been a time in the history of the present race at which this mere numerical strength would have been less than it is now. The cycle of great activity in the department of physical knowledge, the scientific era par excellence — assigning the word "science" to the limited meaning it has latterly enjoyed with ourselves — is necessarily a period of relative spiritual stagnation. The two phases of progress are by no means antagonistic to one another in reality; the highest scientific attainments may be, and in the end, before they reach their perfect efflorescence, must be united with great spiritual development also; but taken as a whole the forces of natural evolution press with greater intensity at one time than at another in the direction of physical knowledge, just as at other periods this impulse may be in abeyance, and spiritual aspiration be a more powerful incentive.

Now finally we reach the all-important fact that at the present moment as much as ever, although less than ever now by old world methods, the possibilities of attaining higher spiritual perfection in the sense in which we have been employing the phrase, chiefly as connoting knowledge, power, and voluntary advancement, are open to all those who have the necessary qualifications, and the all-important intensity of desire. Initiation in the higher mysteries which have to do with that region of natural law in reference to which all the little manifestations of abnormal wonder which attract attention at the present day in the departments of mesmerism, clairvoyance, thought-transference, and spiritualism, are but as the spray from a wave — those regions are still accessible to modern aspirants who strive to attain them in the right way.

In one sense I may say that they are more attainable than ever, because it has come to pass that the great authorities who direct the conditions of all such progress are fully alive to the necessity of making the whole situation more intelligible to the masses of mankind than they have been for the last dozen clouded centuries. A very great advance has been made without being so far in the least degree understood in this aspect by ordinary physical science in the direction of what may be called psychic mystery. Left to itself without any healthy guidance or encouragement, that progress may be quite likely to turn into channels in which it would be eminently injurious to the permanent welfare of the race. As I have indicated more than once, true occult progress is a dual achievement involving at the same time a development of a very exalted morality pari passu with the acquisition of a correspondingly penetrating knowledge. Nothing less than the two achievements would accomplish the evolution of the human being as we know him now into that higher kingdom of Nature, which, as compared with the human kingdom, may be spoken of as divine, and nothing short of such evolution brings with it a really complete development of the power and capacities for knowledge latent in mankind. But something very short of that may invest humanity with powers transcending those familiar to the physical senses. Just as the rain of heaven falls on the just and the unjust, so in a certain sense and in a certain degree, knowledge is obtainable by the evil-minded as well as by the good; and very disastrous results both to themselves and to others are bound to ensue from its acquisition by people who are not adequately alive to the loftiness of the responsibilities which its possession entails. In this way, to put the matter roughly, the me*e pursuit of knowledge along the paths of purely physical study may, by the time it is carried some distance beyond that as yet reached by the physical science of the nineteenth century, super-induce the condition of things in which the possessors of such knowledge would be what the mediaeval world called Black Magicians. The name we give does not matter, but at all events the fact is that knowledge concerning the deeper mysteries of Nature which have to do with spiritual and psychic forces may theoretically be attained by persons altogether without the exalted motives which govern those who attain it by what occultists call the right-hand path, and therefore a time comes in the progress of science when from all points of view the old policy of extreme reserve in regard to the mysteries with which initiation is concerned, becomes impossible of further maintenance. That is the state of things now coming on. For a long time it seemed best for the human race that during ages of very imperfect human development the tremendous forces which occult knowledge places within the reach of man should be kept back from him altogether. Now his advancing intelligence has enabled him to grasp some conception of what those forces are, even without the help of initiated teaching. It becomes the policy, therefore, of those who represent this teaching in the present age of the world to anticipate, if possible, this unhealthy development of psychic discovery, and guide it beforehand into channels prepared for its reception by the theoretical development of spiritual science, in such a way as shall enable the races at large to comprehend the lofty purposes for which Nature holds this superior wisdom in reserve. To acquire knowledge concerning the forces operative on the higher planes of Nature, and then to apply this knowledge to the pursuit of merely selfish and transitory objects of mundane desire, is to degrade and insult the highest attributes of our humanity. The legitimate and progressive method in which that humanity can be expanded involves the subordination of the physical life and its conditions to the service of higher spiritual objects. If the forces and powers having to do with higher spiritual phases of existence are, by reversing the natural current, directed to the service of ends having to do with the gratifications of temporary physical life, that reversal of Natures design constitutes a blasphemy against her highest intentions, which is not only evil and wrong, as minor sins altogether lying on the physical plane may be, but is in reality that supreme species of wickedness which early theological writers, little foreseeing the extent to which their words would be misunderstood, have called a sin against the Holy Ghost.

We may thus realise now the circumstances under which the methods and system of initiation, that have for so many centuries been concealed from popular observation, are now once more slowly and by degrees becoming known to a generation which, at the first blush, may seem to be curiously little ready for such teaching. Curiously little ready for a long time to come most certainly the majority of this and many succeeding generations will continue to be; but, at the same time, it has never been the expectation of those directing the course of initiation, whether in the ancient world or now, that people of the ordinary type will flock to them and become candidates for their guidance in any very large numbers. If those in whom the spirit of ardent enthusiasm for spiritual knowledge and experience is already strong enough to bear down their eagerness for the pleasures or pursuits of ordinary life, are alone their regular pupils, that is all that can be expected or desired; but unless the possibilities of the situation are generally known, even the few who are inspired in the way just described will waste their ardour and readiness for self-sacrifice in empty dreaming or futile endeavour, and the great purpose of Nature will not be advanced at all. That great purpose, let us always remember, as earlier chapters of this book have already, shown, has to do not merely with the perpetuation of the human race, but with its exaltation into the higher conditions of being. From one point of view the innumerable differentiated units of consciousness which we call men and women are cast by nature in enormous abundance on the surface of the earth, as so much seed from which spiritual beings of an immeasurably more important and dignified character may ultimately be grown. But while in dealing with its lower organic manifestations Nature is extraordinarily profuse in providing germs, the human germ is one of a very different order from an acorn. The unused acorn may resolve itself into its original elements without suffering by reason of not becoming an oak. Nothing is wasted in this case but, so to speak, the trouble of Nature in producing the acorn. But in the human being, however truly that human being may be regarded in his or her highest aspect as the germ of something immeasurably higher, there is, nevertheless, already the focus of divine consciousness which must continue through an immeasurable futurity a vibrating nucleus of suffering or enjoyment, and whether it unites itself consciously with the highest design of Nature so as to work that out, or not, its destinies differ very widely in character from those of the vegetable seed which disintegrates and is done with if its loftiest purpose remains unfulfilled. It has been already shown that the fulfilment by any given human being of the loftiest purposes of his existence can only be accomplished by the conscious union of his will and intention with the powers and forces of Nature operating through him, and it is thus the simple truth of the matter, that having attained that rank in existence identified with the present stage of the earth's progress, his further advancement in the whole scheme of existence, which embraces so much more than what is sometimes called the scheme of creation, depends on his acquisition of correct knowledge concerning the nature of the efforts he has to make to bring his will into the harmony spoken of; in other words, it depends on his attainment, sooner or later, of that initiation with which we are now concerned. This view of the matter, as apparently placing the destinies of man in the hands of other men, however far these other men may be advanced in knowledge and spiritual power, may seem at the first glance repugnant to the understanding of people who have been trained but too constantly in the belief that the wisest course to pursue concerning the future life is to regulate conduct in this with a reasonable regard to right and wrong, and for the rest, trust blindly in the gracious mercy of God. If the explanation just given, however, be analysed with reasonable intelligence, it will be seen to offend in no way against such trust, but on the contrary to bring the conclusions of experience in every department of life of which we have any knowledge to bear upon the great problem, as they are necessarily brought to bear on all of minor degree. No man who wants a crab apple tree to produce good fruit, sits down in apathetic contentment, with a pious platitude concerning the goodness of that power which rules the processes of vegetation as undeniably as those of human evolution. He knows that the powers of nature will work with him if he adapts his measures to their design. He learns all that he can learn of that design and of its requirements from other men who have studied the subject before him, and then applies his knowledge to the case with which he himself has to deal. Having thus united his will with the laws of vegetable growth, he acquires his improved fruit.

It seems to me there must be little difficulty in dispelling any distrust of the kind here referred to by the time the situation is appreciated with moderate precision. Clear thinkers will recognise that the existence within touch of the world of human beings immensely more advanced than their contemporaries along the paths of spiritual evolution is a metaphysical necessity of all thinking on the subject. A much graver difficulty and more serious embarrassment in the way of those who may get so far in the direction of realising the possibilities before them, has to do with the question how any given aspirant may succeed in putting himself into touch with those more advanced contemporaries, those higher teachers or masters of esoteric wisdom. And I now approach the answer to that difficulty, although it is one which, from the nature of the case, cannot be given in half a dozen words. There certainly is not now, nor has there been at any other time, any recognised official bureau at which people, however honestly desirous of efficient spiritual guidance, can obtain specific information; and though there is much talk in all mediaeval occult writing of doors, in the symbolical sense, which are always opened to those who knock, such phrases are extremely exasperating to Western thinkers who have got out of touch with those highly symbolical methods of expression, and who, though sometimes but too content with being left in ignorance, will claim that if they are to be told anything of what they may want to know they shall be told it in a straightforward, comprehensible way. The fact is that access to the masters of initiation is only to be attained in the first instance through the exercise of those higher faculties in man which it is the province of initiation to cultivate and expand. This will seem like reasoning in a circle. The candidate for spiritual knowledge will complain that it is just this he requires, in order that he may evoke from their mysterious recesses in his own nature the higher senses which constitute the channels of psychic perception, and that if he is told that he must employ those senses in order to get at the teachers, he is merely being mocked by a paradox, and left where he started. The elucidation of the paradox, however, merely claims that we should bear in mind that doctrine, already fully described in these pages, which describes the method which Nature employs in carrying on the evolution of the human soul. We must not forget that Re-incarnation is the lot of every human being, and we must apply that principle to every thought, and above all to every mystery which has to do with the study of spiritual progress. And here it is necessary to interpolate a caveat even before completing the explanation in view for the moment, which is to this effect, that here and there peculiar influences arising from the Karma of past lives may bring people within reach of the higher spiritual teachers, or rather may enable them themselves to comprehend the fact that they are within the reach of such teaching without either extraordinary efforts on their part, or without the advantage of psychic gifts already developed. But let me first deal with the operation of what may be regarded as the normal rule before handling such exceptions with regard to their details. And the normal rule certainly must be that the very first step in the direction of the higher initiation undertaken in that life, whichever it may be, of the long chain in which the person concerned first comprehends the matter intellectually, and sets himself to desire and earnestly to aim at the attainment of the higher spiritual wisdom, will have to deal with intellectual study and thought, directed to the problem in hand. The would-be candidate for psychic evolution of the kind which may anticipate that higher evolution which alone can truly be called spiritual, must set himself to understand and appreciate the nature of the task on which he will be engaged, and the attributes, so far as these can be ascertained by any testimony open to him, of those who control the resources and opportunities of initiation.

In stating the case this way I may possibly seem to be diverging from the doctrines which have often been enforced with great enthusiasm in recent Theosophic writing, and which would rather emphasise the importance of unselfishness, philanthropy, altruism, and moral purity as so much more important in their preparatory effect than any efforts of intellectual study, that it is hardly worth while to enjoin any other processes of effort on candidates for future initiation. In saying, however, that the matter must in the first instance be intellectually studied, I am including and not ignoring the preparatory effect of moral qualities. To understand that these constitute an essential factor in the conditions of interior feeling which lead up towards the realities of initiation, is an essential part of that understanding of the whole problem to which I refer. But we must not let our enthusiasm for moral beauty and goodness in the abstract obscure our perception of the great truth that in the normal operation of all the laws which govern spiritual evolution the ultimate effect of goodness, as worked out in successive lives, is happiness and not necessarily spiritual progress. The anterior causes of spiritual progress must be goodness united with a comprehension of the great design governing spiritual evolution, and of the purposes which Nature has in view in the cultivation of humanity. Again I say, therefore, that the first step for any candidate setting out absolutely from the beginning in the direction of that initiation which alone of all the methods of training his soul can encounter in this life or others can put it in the way of mounting in the scheme of existence — must be study and intellectual effort up to the limits, whatever they may be, to which his intellectual capacity may at that period have been developed. And if on the basis of a fair general comprehension of the principles guiding spiritual evolution he unites a really ardent desire to come into contact with their realities, to brave their ordeals, and penetrate their mysteries, that condition of mind during any one given life will, with infallible certainty, engender as its Karmic consequence in the next those psychic attributes which will enable him, if his desire persists and his efforts continue, to come into conscious relations with the higher teachers.

I do not know of any treatise on this subject, either in the literature of mediaeval occultism, modern psychology, or Theosophy itself, which has dealt adequately with the circumstances under which those mysterious and sometimes beautiful, sometimes rather terrible and painful developments of psychic faculty, which the experience of life exhibits, are actually developed. We all talk habitually of such faculties as psychic gifts, roughly adopting the phraseology of a very unenlightened theory concerning the attributes of man. The use of the phrase "gifts," whether applied to the faculties in question or to talents of any kind, seems to connote a reverential and grateful attitude of mind towards the unknown Omnipotence from which our existence has been derived; but to a more enlightened observation it must really be regarded as involving a slur on that Omnipotence, or at all events a reproach against that absolute justice with which the idea of omniscience should be united, if we assume that either class of faculties is given capriciously without having been earned fairly and honestly. One of the most illuminating conceptions connected with the study of spiritual evolution shows us, on the contrary, that mental powers and psychic gifts, together with all those talents which have to do with supremacy in art or in other departments of human activity, are in all cases the consequence of definite effort, definite action, or in the brief and more technical phrase, of the Karma, engendered in former lives. Students of physical science talk with rapture of the beauty involved in the great law which exhibits to us the conservation of energy as operative throughout the various realms of force within the purview of our physical senses. They are strangely oblivious to the still higher beauty of that same law in its association with the higher forces having to do with the cause and effect of spiritual action. So important is it to recognise the old familiar law in its bearing on such higher planes of existence, that one might almost adopt as a brief definition or motto associated with the study of Theosophy, — the conservation of energy on the moral plane. Whatever a man is at any given moment, intellectually, artistically, or in reference to his perceptions as to right and wrong, he is exactly what he has made himself in former lives, working, of course, at each stage with the advantages or disadvantages of surrounding opportunities which are themselves merely the physical and external consequences of still earlier action on his part, — themselves, that is to say, the Karma of his still more remote existences. The always operative condition of his own free will enables him at every .step of his progress to mould those conditions into a new shape for his own service at later stages of his long career through the ages; and .as regards the faculties with which he will find himself endowed at later stages of his existence, these are, in the simplest and most direct fashion, the consequences of his own anterior efforts and aspirations. Illustrations have been already employed, in examining the doctrine of Re-incarnation as a branch of this subject, which have to do with the growth, for example, of great musical or linguistic acquirements. The capacities of the interior Ego, stimulated by the exertions along any one particular line of evolution during one life, reappear with the return of the same individuality to Re-incarnation next time, and if continuously exerted expand and develop in almost unlimited degree. The child who is a musical genius at six is the Karmic offspring of some great musician in a former age, or rather constitutes in his own person the Re-incarnation of that great musician. The student of languages in a former age may have forgotten, when he returns to life, the specific vocabularies and grammatical rules with which he was once acquainted, but he has filled his nature with such ready affinity for knowledge of that kind that the application in his case of a scarcely perceptible effort enables him to accomplish more than another would succeed in gaining by the protracted labour of years. So with scientific aptitudes, so also with literary appreciation, so also with the evolution of psychic faculties. Let a man in one life be filled with a persistent longing to penetrate the mysteries of the psychic plane, with the sympathetic watchfulness of faculties enabling others to do this already, with the fruits of study relating to the whole subject as far as such study has been possible for him, and the result will blossom out as a Karmic consequence in the shape of psychic faculties within his own control on his next appearance on this plane of existence — always supposing that no independent Karmic causes are set up in an antagonistic direction. And this simple law, so obvious in view of what we know at present concerning the principles of Karma and spiritual evolution, will be seen on reflection to cover the whole ground of the inquiry into all those diverse and incoherent varieties of psychic faculty which meet our observation. Sometimes these take the shape of a beautiful spiritual clairvoyance, bringing their happy possessors into direct relations with superior planes of being and the inhabitants thereof. Sometimes they simply render some eyes perceptive of astral phenomena, belonging in no way to any exalted plane of Nature,' but yet shut out from the observation of the perfectly common-place physical sight. Sometimes they are united with great loftiness of character and nobility of aim; sometimes they are associated with a grovelling and sordid nature, and again, in other cases — happily rarer than these last — they are associated with positive malevolence and tendencies of an altogether evil kind. But the faculties themselves have in all cases equally been the product of a desire to possess such faculties, and of efforts in that direction. The character with which they may be united is nothing more than on its plane the logical outcome of the efforts and tendencies having to do with the cultivation of character distinguishing the person in question during former lives. So surely as a bullet fired from a gun progresses through the air, so surely is desire or effort no abortive force. The effect of the bullet when it strikes its object has to do with the direction in which the gun was pointed, which is quite another matter. These reflections, if people will only follow them out fully, will be found to account for all the complex manifestations of what is called "mediumship" in connexion with modern spiritualism. Whether the peculiarities of psychic constitution which such mediumship represents are held to be beautiful or pernicious gifts, they are effects which could not have been produced without a cause, and we have seen that whatever effects are discernible in character or mental or moral qualifications are effects the causes of which are to be sought for in the efforts made by their possessors at an earlier stage of their career.

The conditions however of what may be called irregular psychic progress are sufficiently intimate and interesting to be studied by themselves independently of the general line of inquiry with which we are now concerned, — the conditions under which an approach is to be made in the present day to the portals of initiation.

To understand these rightly it will be well at this stage to review the normal course of Re-incarnation, so as the better to appreciate the way in which at certain stages of the soul's growth the intervention of Adept help may hasten the process for those who are ready to make some sacrifices in the hope of getting on the faster.

Let us realise, first of all, the exact purpose in the economy of Nature of the usually protracted Devachanic experiences intervening between two lives. The growth of the soul is the result to be accomplished and that growth arises from the experiences and activities of responsible life. In the case of those in whom the work is chiefly being done during physical life, — in the case of the ordinary humanity with which we are surrounded, — the doings of physical life may be thought of as accumulating a large mass of ill-digested material out of which that which is qualified to contribute to the growth of the permanent Ego must be distilled and sublimated. The entity plunges into the astral world with all his accumulated aspirations, desires, habits of life and tendencies of character thickly gathered round him; he is altogether a being of the physical plane of life; the activities of his thought have not qualified him to take advantage, to anything like their full extent, of the opportunities afforded by astral existence, still less to pass into conditions of a more purely spiritual nature. He has, as it were, to grow accustomed to the higher planes of existence, and to expand his consciousness on these so far as the efforts he has been making up to that time in this direction render the achievement possible.

Perhaps this gradual indrawing into the permanent Ego of whatever experiences of life and fruit of endeavour may be susceptible of such indrawing, will be best comprehended if for a moment we look at the whole evolutionary progress from another point of view. The actual centre of consciousness, destined to grow and expand,— the Soul in the noblest and deepest sense of the term, — is of course engendered on a loftier spiritual plane, but at first it is a centre of consciousness wholly uncharacterised by specific attributes. It is an individuality, but an individuality without characteristics. It presses forward and outward, as it were, following the stream of manifestation through the various planes, but finding no resting place until it reaches the bottom of the great descent of spirit into matter, and opens its eyes to the consciousness of objective creation on the physical plane of life. Here for the first time it begins to experience the sensation of life. The whole objective universe lies around it, and its own first conception of things — an illusive plane from the point of view of the higher spiritual consciousness — leads it to commence its long and gradual development by working with an idea which is often spoken of as the fundamental heresy of metaphysics, — the sense of separateness. The awakening soul on the physical plane of life feels itself one thing and the universe another, and however this idea may be destined to qualification at a much later date, it is the first aspect of individuality which necessarily presents itself to the germinating Ego. In the language of the nursery, so applicable in many ways to the lower earth life as compared with the higher, the first thing the Ego does in beginning to feel its capacities of reflection is to " take notice." It takes notice of the physical world around it, of the other creatures therein on its own level, of the opportunities it may enjoy for acquiring sensations, — the pleasurable character of some, the painful character of others.

We may picture the soul to ourselves at this stage as consisting of an all but formless germ on the higher spiritual plane, the Arupa plane of Devachan, connected by a fine colourless thread with the lower earth life, and beginning to throw out roots and expand in contact with that lowest stratum it can touch. Of all the knowledge, experiences, emotions, constituting this expansion on the physical plane, how much is capable of being withdrawn along the thread passing through the various intervening planes of Nature into the spiritual germ above? Very little for the most part, but that little is drawn back by the contraction of the thread, so to speak, after the life is spent, drawn back through the various intervening planes of Nature, slowly enough, by reason of the fact that the accumulation, however much or little it may be, cannot be drawn upward till it has been cleansed and purified of all which only belongs to and is only capable of existence on the lowest plane. By the time the thread is entirely contracted, by the time the whole astral experience following the life has been worked out, and the minute fragments of thought and feeling capable of being drawn higher up through the spiritual planes into the true Ego — by the time all these processes have been accomplished, the permanent spiritual germ is fed with very little, but with something. It is a little more capable of consciousness on its own region, or rather, as it is always theoretically conscious and capable there, it is a little more capable of endowing that consciousness with variegated aspects than it was at first. To that extent, however little that extent may be, the thread, when it again extends itself downwards from the higher planes of Nature, seeking re-manifestation in the region where the sensations of life are most possible for it, is a little thicker, to to speak, than it was before; it is a somewhat better channel for the withdrawal inward of whatever it may come in contact with in the course of its second batch of experiences. And its previous expression, the first personality, which has itself disintegrated and disappeared long ago during the upward movement of consciousness after the last life, is in a great measure re-created as the root fibre descends through the planes of Nature, by its re-absorption on these various planes of matter appropriate to the expression of such characteristics as it developed before. There is no recovery, as some imperfectly expressed description of this process may have led earlier students to imagine, of the actual astral or lower manasic principles which belong to the previous life, but the Ego gathers similar principles around it afresh from the appropriate material of the various planes through which it passes, or through which it sends its root. All similes of this kind must necessarily be inapplicable at some point; but at all events, when the physical plane of life is again reached, the personality is, so to speak, once more built up of materials resembling the materials which its own activities in the former life engendered.

Here, to make the whole process more intelligible, we may study the esoteric teaching which relates to the methods, so to speak, by means of which the returning soul is brought into renewed relations with its old Karma. All the causes which it had set in motion in the former life (the Karma which it had engendered), were built — if we may so contemplate the idea (under the guidance of lofty spiritual agencies controlling these great developments of the world's affairs) — into an image appropriate to express that personality in another life. This was done at the conclusion of the earth life, when the Karmic causes set in motion were complete, and the astral image awaits the returning personality and the activities of the powers in Nature concerned with the guidance of its re-birth. In the process of re-birth the Etheric Double is actually created in advance of the physical body; it is the Etheric Double which is in turn the agency guiding the deposition of physical molecules as the body grows, and which thus ensures the production of a form which shall accurately express the necessities of the personality, and accurately involve the rewards or penalties which may be due to his past doings. The explanation of this point is difficult because it involves so much that it has not been necessary in this volume to deal with in detail, but a fuller knowledge concerning the place in Nature occupied by the stupendous beings known in occult writings as the Ivipika, coupled with an appreciation of the instrumental resources available for their use in the elemental kingdom, renders the aspect of the whole process clear, symmetrical, and scientific. The Lipika are sometimes described as the Lords of Karma, and in the minute delicacy with which they govern the destinies of man they realise with reference to his merit or desert as he returns to earth, life after life, the popular conception of Providence. Many popular conceptions in this way connected with religion will often be found as the occult student advances, vindicated rather than refuted by the more accurate knowledge he may be able to acquire — vindicated not as regards their materialistic outlines, but as to the inner significance of the idea. It is in this way then that the entity is launched at re-birth on the physical plane of existence in very much the same condition as regards his attributes, character, desires, tendencies, as when he left the earth plane last.

It is said truly that the personalities of each existence are impermanent and transient manifestations of the Ego, vanishing into nothingness with the physical body and the astral material of which they were composed; but in the way just described each new personality in turn is built so exactly on the lines of its predecessor, that except for the varying external circumstances of its life, determined by Karma, it is to all intents and purposes a repetition of the previous personality, not the same but inspired by the same individual centre of consciousness, and in regard to its attributes and characteristics, created afresh from the storehouses of Nature and standing on the plane of earth once more very much the same being as on its last appearance there. These recurrent processes continue, the personality blundering about rather wildly at first, impressed, very imperfectly, with the voice of conscience, which is the expression on the physical plane of its own Higher Self, hardly even feeling this voice of conscience at all at the earlier stages of its career, except in regard to such departments of activity as have given rise during former existences to some permanent attribute absorbed into the Higher Self. But as we have been looking at the process we have been looking at it at a very early stage of human advancement. I^ong before humanity has attained the limits on which our contemporaries for the most part stand, many hundred successive lives have each contributed their little gift to the permanent consciousness of the true Ego, and in this way the area over which its influence is extended in later lives has been expanded to a corresponding degree. The voice of conscience and the inner intuition, which may sometimes be a guide to action, even in matters where no definite problems of right and wrong are concerned, may have become active within the personality which represents the Ego on the physical plane of life, and in many ways its physical life is thus guided in a manner which contributes more and more abundantly to the development of the Ego, — to the growth of the soul. By this time a much more traversible channel, to use that metaphor, extends from the physical life to the spiritual plane in which the consciousness of the permanent Ego is seated, and through this more and more experience of life can be drawn when the in-drawing process recommences. As before, the personality may be born with much which it shed as it moved backward to itself through the higher planes of Nature, but there is more and more of it qualified to exist on the higher planes, and to express on the lower the characteristics of the individual Ego.

In the very beginning, as I endeavoured to describe, the Ego has little or nothing to say to the doings of the permanent personality on this plane of life. A time comes when the two influences, those of the objective world around, and the interior consciousness within, are in equilibrium. A time comes beyond that when the interior consciousness is distinctly predominant, and when the relations of its personality with the external world become in this way coloured by the interests and loftier purposes for which it exists. Then the indrawing of itself after death is a far grander undertaking. Accumulations gathered round the personality in physical life are readily shed on the astral planes, the real entity feels itself to be that which is capable of activity on the spiritual regions of Nature. It eagerly returns to these and feels its true existence to be centred there. This condition of things is the case of the growing soul which has attained that period of its evolution when abnormal possibilities of more rapid growth begin to set in.

What shape does this abnormal possibility take? That is a view of things I have now to endeavour to make intelligible. The Ego, assuming his progress along the steps of the path leading to initiation to have been sufficiently successful to bring him into direct personal relations with one of the more exalted Adepts qualified to surround his ulterior progress with new conditions, may be regarded as a candidate for that treatment which is known to the occultist as immediate Re-incarnation. Supposing his last life to have been sufficiently dignified and blameless in its character to have left him tolerably free of unhappy responsibilities in his great account with the Lords of Karma, it is possible that the Master, in his case, may be permitted to fulfil, as regards him, for the next great stage of his career, the functions, if the phrase may be permitted, of Providence. The Master has, by the hypothesis, become so entirely blended with the Divine idea ruling the world, as regards his own will, that the union has brought with it powers which are, in their nature, divine. It is possible for the Master to guide the soul of the neophyte into his next incarnation, and it is possible for him to do this without waiting for the neophyte to pass through the usual Devachanic interlude. The soul can be arrested on the astral plane, where, of course, it has but little to shed, and turned back at once into renewed manifestation in the physical world, so that it may continue the unbroken series of efforts in the direction of its own purification which have been the leading characteristics of the life just spent. When it has attained the second life, which may follow at the interval of a few years — conceivably, if circumstances happen to be favourable, of a few weeks after the close of the last — this second life is thus a complete continuation of the last, as regards all phases of interior consciousness, and the person so artificially Re-incarnated will, as soon as the new body with which he is associated has grown to be a mature instrument, be able within his waking consciousness to remember every detail of his former life, In the intervening period, before the new body has acquired maturity, he continues to function on the astral plane in complete consciousness in the appropriate vehicle bequeathed to him from his last life. The two existences are blended in a very wonderful way, but there is no solution of continuity in the process. The old astral vehicle is not discarded until the new body has been sufficiently developed to have grown, so to speak, or gathered around it a new astral vehicle, which the entity can then make use of. The occult relationships he will have established remain unbroken. His intercourse with the Masters and with those surrounding him will never have been intermitted, and he will recover touch in the course of the new life on which he may be launched with others on his own level of progress, themselves the subjects, like himself, of abnormal evolution. And thus it may ensue that in a period of time covered by a few centuries, if more than one immediate Re-incarnation takes place in connexion with his advancement, he may condense a progress which would otherwise have been protracted over twice as many millenniums. The mere economy of time, indeed, is not a matter of so much importance, from one point of view. If we leave certain considerations out of account, it might be argued that the normal course of evolution would suit the neophyte just as well, and be in many respects more agreeable. He would then enjoy the intensely blissful and refreshing conditions of existence in very full consciousness on the higher spiritual planes; each life as he came back to it would be one in which he would, by virtue of the normal process of evolution, pick up again the tendency to make further progress, with which he was animated at the close of the preceding life.

What then after all — at the first glance an inquirer might ask — does the Neophyte gain by immediate Re-incarnation?

The answer is two-fold, intelligible enough in one of its aspects, highly recondite in another. In the intelligible aspect, the main point turns upon the relationship between the Neophyte and the Master to whom he is attached. Words derived from the ordinary friendships and relations of life fail to define the ardour of affection with which the pupil, arrived at the condition in which he is able to have personal touch with a Being so exalted in nature as one of the higher Adepts, will come to regard this Being as the supreme influence in his life. One of his most intense aspirations in connexion with occult progress at these earlier stages — and before an even loftier feeling, connected with the unification of his own will with that which rules all Nature, has come into play — will be his aspiration in the direction of freer intercourse, and, so to speak, companionship, with the Master. He wishes with an intense longing for the time when his own advance may enable him to stand at something like the level of Nature on which the guiding light of his destiny resides, and if he were to await the progress of normal evolution and spend many thousands of years in Devachanic felicity, that lapse of time might have operated in regard to the Master, towards whom he aspires, in some way which would have removed him to still loftier functions in Nature, where he would then again be inaccessible to his slowly advancing pupil. Though the foremost motive, however, with which the pupil who understands the whole situation desires immediate Re-incarnation, has to do with his easily intelligible love for the Master, a very much more intricate consideration must also be taken into account. The surrender of Devachanic existence between the two lives may not be one which presents itself from the point of view of the unenlightened physical intelligence as of such very great significance. While the necessities of progress attach themselves in a large measure to ideas connected with the present life, the person who is imbued with the thought of immediate Re-incarnation, with the idea that it would be possible to forego the Devachanic period, and so get on faster, will suppose that an eminently desirable thing to do from all possible points of view. He may even speak with contempt, arising from ignorance, of the useless waste of time which would be involved in going through the usual Devachanic period. It is easy to be grandly indifferent to privileges which we do not appreciate. The conditions of existence for a fairly awakened soul on Devachanic planes are, however, so enriched, sublime, and blissful, that no one who once tastes them can resign them by an act of will without a very vivid sense of the reality involved in such a renunciation. And no disciple will be allowed to choose immediate Re-incarnation, — a gift that would never be allotted to him, without his choice constituting one of the features in the arrangement, — unless he is previously put in a position to appreciate with exactitude the nature of the sacrifice he was making. Before the expiration of his previous physical life, he would have been enabled, while out of the body, to pass on to the level of Devachanic existence. He would thus come to know all that it meant, and if he made the choice for immediate Re-incarnation, would be making it with his eyes open. So much for the countervailing consideration against the choice, but now let me turn to what I spoke of as the second aspect in favour of it, which cannot be very completely defined, but may still be partially appreciated.

The renunciation of Devachan by the neophyte — when made in the only way in which it can be made, with eyes fully open to the true character of the sacrifice — is in the nature of an offering of immediate personal beatitude on the altar of Duty. The disciple is surrendering individual happiness to which he has a claim in order to be the sooner able to take his place among those whose energies are wholly spent in the promotion of the well being of the race at large. In doing this he is doubly loyal to the Great Cause, for the sacrifice he makes has a complicated reaction in a way that can only be fully understood at the stages of progress when it becomes possible. But at that stage the altruistic desire to accomplish the sacrifice becomes a more potent motive than any which appeal even to the most purified and exalted considerations related entirely to self. At some future date, when the world is more widely peopled with persons qualified to read the path of occult progress, and appreciate its loftier mysteries, the force of such considerations as these will be more readily apprehended. Meanwhile we all feel in a general way that selfishness is ignoble and altruism beautiful, and that perception is a mere imperfect forecast of a mighty moral law which arms the disciple, by virtue of every sacrifice he is enabled, as he advances, to make, with an ever increasing power to fulfil the ever expanding tasks of unselfish usefulness as they devolve upon him in constantly augmenting volume.

For the more from any individual centre of consciousness a good influence is radiated, the more abundantly does this well up in the interior of such an individuality. Such phrases can hardly be recast into more specific and exact language. We are trying to handle in thought a condition of things analogous to the bewilder* ing mathematical enigma described as a fourth dimension. How can a perpetual well-spring, ever flowing with new material, emerge, as it were, from an interior centre in any given individuality? And yet to the astral sight of persons who are enabled to dive more deeply than the most powerful microscope will carry us, into minute nature, and to discern the constitution of the atoms of physical matter, it is directly perceptible that each of these atoms — itself a complicated organism, constructed of matter belonging to a higher plane — is continually bubbling up with forces which emerge from an interior centre unconnected, as far as such observation goes, with anything external to itself. Bach atom is within its own enclosing surface a well-spring of energy which never fails. Comparison with the atom does not explain the mystery connected with that spiritual fountain of ever-flowing force within the individuality, which must be ever giving out from itself in order that its flow may proceed unchecked, but at the same time the analogy is a little helpful towards the comprehension of the idea.

There are some qualifications, moreover, which have to be recognised as mitigating for the disciple the severity of the sacrifice he makes in foregoing Devachanic existence. Immediate Re-incarnation will link his consciousness, not merely with the life which he last spent, but with the intervening conditions of existence, spent in the partial companionship of his Master and of other advanced companions, and, further than this, puts him in a position to exercise consciously on the physical plane of life when he returns to incarnation the senses belonging to the higher regions, so that his nature will have been unified all the way up to the Devachanic region, which it is not his privilege to inhabit continuously, but which is nevertheless accessible to him whenever the circumstances of physical life enable him to quit the body for a time. All the links which connect the different planes have been fully developed. For the person so immediately Re-incarnated, as indeed for some others who attain in a different way the corresponding pitch of development, the act of quitting the body is as easy and simple as that of putting off your hat. Consciousness is in no way broken by the process, either as the true entity leaves or as he returns to his body. For that matter, most human beings leave the body, without knowing it, when they are asleep, and their emergence therefrom can be seen by observers who are sufficiently clairvoyant, but the outward passage is so confusedly accomplished that it is separated from whatever experiences are incurred out of the body by a non-conducting interval of unconsciousness, and in the same way the return to the body is again broken by the non-conducting interval, so that the activities of the brain are enabled to reflect in only a very imperfect degree the experiences which such persons may encounter out oi the body. And the probabilities are, their experiences in such conditions are of very little moment. They may not be sufficiently developed to have any real activity of consciousness even on the astral plane, not to speak of those above. But the non-conducting interval has been suppressed in the ease of the occult pupil. He has arrived at the stage at which he may be entitled to the help of a Master, which is given him in this way. The whole life to which immediate Re-incarnation is a prelude, is qualified by full consciousness concerning the other planes of Nature, and by ability to reach the Master, whoever he may be. For, remember, while the most important work of any great Adept is performed on lofty spiritual planes of Nature, it is a necessity connected with his work that he should keep in touch with humanity by virtue of occupying a part of his time, at all events, in the physical body, so that the Master must also have a physical existence, however secluded it may be, or however remote the country in which it is to be found. To this the pupil in his astral body has already access, he may be there at any time that the Master can receive him a second after he has put his body to sleep and quitted it. He is there for all purposes of consciousness, of thought, of study, of activity, of objectivity to others equally qualified with himself, as though he were there in the physical body itself, so that the life he leads as soon as the physical instrument is mature in his immediate Re-incarnation is one which is glorified in a hundred ways, which only those who are saturated with occult teaching can be in a position even dimly to appreciate.

The curious stage, indeed, has now been reached in which the activities of the physical life of the disciple, though still full of importance, and of more significance than could have attached to those of any former existences, are nevertheless dropping back to a subordinate place as compared with spiritual activities. These he is now in a position to carry on on higher planes of Nature independently of the physical body and physical existence altogether. The physical consciousness, in the case I am imagining, will reflect his progress; he will know while he is awake all that he has been doing on loftier regions; he will be realising, so far as that is possible, within the physical brain, an infinitude of new states of consciousness on the Devachanic plane and others to which he has now free access. Free access in spite of that renunciation of which I speak, because once re-established on the physical plane of life he can pass into the Devachanic state of consciousness and pass out of it again in obedience to the call of duty elsewhere.

Now let us turn to a consideration of the first steps which have to be taken practically by the occult student seeking for the first time to emerge from the normal evolution of ordinary humanity, and put himself in touch with these glorious possibilities.

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