CHAPTER 11: THE ELDER BRETHREN OF HUMANITY.

Outstripping normal evolution — The necessity that some should do this — The magnitude of the achievement — The possibilities of selfish advancement — The range of the path of service — Its earliest disciples — The impulse of fifth race improvement — The motives for an upward struggle — Ordinary human suffering and Adept sympathy — The Divine government of the world and its ministers.

We should never have been in a position to acquire the knowledge we now possess of the great evolutionary schemes of this planetary system, had it not been possible for individual units of the human family to outstrip the normal course of evolution, and attain at a relatively early period the spiritual faculties belonging to the higher levels of progress to which the race, as a whole, can only ascend at a very remote period in the future. We must endeavour now to realise more clearly than before, what is meant by outstripping normal evolution, to work out in detail considerations which show that in doing this, those of us who may find it possible, are not setting the programme of normal evolution at defiance in any way, but, on the contrary, are endeavouring at the earliest possible moment to unite our individual efforts, however humble these may be in the beginning, with the purpose of nature on the grandest scale — to fulfil, so to speak, at the earliest possible moment as regards ourselves, the design which Providence has in view, and in doing this, to assist in the realisation of the whole programme as regards the majority in a way which really, when properly understood, will be seen to enter into the normal scheme. For the teaching which enables those, who are properly qualified to appreciate it, to accelerate the course of their evolution, is really accessible to all alike, and though with each single item of humanity it is a matter of choice whether his forces are trained into the work of promoting the spiritual evolution of the whole, or exerted to put impediments in the way, it is mathematically certain that amongst the enormous multitude of individualities which constitute humanity, some will take the loftiest view of their destinies and opportunities, and will play that part in the whole undertaking which it is absolutely necessary that some should play in order that the undertaking may prosper. For a long time now, looking back on the course which human history has taken for the last few hundred thousand years, some few have appreciated their opportunities, have availed themselves of the interior enlightenment which their own aspirations attracted, and have worked their way upward until they have come to occupy a place in Nature from which the ordinary course of human evolution, as it has been traced in preceding chapters, may be looked down upon as from a height. The potentialities of human faculty are such that at certain stages of human progress, incarnate man becomes invested with a sight, with a prospective vision which ranges all through these planes of Nature on which normal evolution is being accomplished, as the process has already been described, and, indeed, considerably beyond them to higher altitudes of spiritual condition, from which all the work that has been accomplished so far, can be surveyed as the glance is extended backward, and from which the future course and ultimate goal of human progress are no less plainly visible. Nothing concerning the past history of this earth, for example, not to speak of other globes connected with the planetary chain to which we belong, is obscure to the vision of a soul, whether in or out of the body, which can function on the Manasic plane, not to speak even of those still more exalted realms to which reference has just been made. There are methods by which it is possible so to stimulate spiritual growth, that incarnate man is enabled to exercise vision even on these, and by degrees, as I have prepared the way for making the situation intelligible by other explanations, it will be possible to indicate with a considerable degree of exactitude, the manner in which such heights are reached, and to show some of the responsibilities which attach themselves to the abnormal advancement in Nature thus accomplished. The situation could only be rendered intelligible with the help of such a comprehensive survey of the whole scheme of evolution on which we are launched, as the foregoing chapters of this book have already set forth. We are thus enabled at the same time to realise the magnitude of the work already accomplished up to date, and the equal magnitude, in another direction, of that which is still before us. We cannot properly appreciate the nature of accelerated spiritual evolution, nor understand the place in Nature occupied by the most advanced representatives of our humanity, without keeping the outline of the whole Manvantaric scheme in view.

There are men now living on earth who, belonging completely to our own human family, have already attained the maximum point of development and exaltation which I have just been endeavouring to describe as that belonging to the final culmination of the progress on which the whole family is launched. If one were merely to count, supposing that were possible, the number of lives which would have to be spent in the ordinary course of evolution between this and the close of the seventh round,— each of these lives separated from the other by long periods of spiritual rest, sometimes by intervening experiences that are not restful at all but sadly the reverse, — we should have to deal with numbers which again would hardly He within the grasp of imagination, and yet already, though we have got on past the middle point of the whole Manvantara by a period which is relatively a mere handful of years, we find some of the most determined climbers already on the topmost heights of the system to which we belong. That within a brief series of lives, even though each in turn is devoted with unremitting intensity to the great purpose in view, it may be possible to reach these heights, will be as I say a matter of marvel to those who really appreciate the magnitude of the task to be accomplished. Sometimes people who hear vaguely about abnormal capacities and powers possessed by those who have gone in advance of their kind are inclined, in their ignorance of what this advancement really implies, to expect that if they make an honest effort in that direction they ought to realise their aspirations at once; to take their degrees in occult science with as little difficulty as they might accomplish a similar process in connexion with the teaching of a university. The absurdity of this view will be appreciated by anyone who realises in his thinking the true meaning of high initiation, the true place occupied in Nature by those whom we speak of as the great Adepts. The evolutionary interval which separates ordinary humanity from them has to be measured, as I have described, by the whole of the second half of the Manvantara. The processes of initiation leading up to high Adeptship are in reality epitomes of the second half of the Manvantara, in which the acquisition of knowledge, moral dignity and faculty, for which Nature has assigned the immeasurable ages to come, will be condensed within the brief series of three or four or half a dozen lives. We shall come later on to examine more minutely the nature of the efforts by which the earlier progress along that road is accomplished; but we must have a general idea of the whole effort in mind before we can examine the details intelligently, and the foremost thought to be embraced in connexion with the general idea I have been endeavouring to convey is, that the summit levels of evolution have to do with the complete identity between the whole progress of the individual and that at which, as he ascends to lofty altitudes, he is enabled to appreciate in all its completeness, the Will of which this whole world and all the other worlds around us are the manifestation.

There are possibilities of accelerated evolution, let us recognise frankly, that lie within the reach of men who set themselves to compass their progress on purely selfish principles — whose spiritual aspirations have no infinite range, whose hope in connexion with ulterior progress is that it may in some fashion redound to their own power, who sometimes vainly imagine that the great possibilities they feel germinating within them will enable them to rob Divinity itself of its treasures, whatever they may be, and accomplish triumphs which may gratify their personal pride through a range of the future, which is all they care to think of as infinity. Whoever sets out on the path of occult progress with such motives as his actuating principles will, in all probability, do no more than plunge himself in agonising failure, which will render existence in one way or other a misery for him for a long portion of the normal road on to which he will be hurled violently back. But if across a thousand indescribable perils the candidate for merely selfish spiritual advancement succeeds, so far as success is possible, in attaining his object, it will be a success qualified from the beginning with interior conditions that can only be described as the reverse of beatitude, and it is impossible in the nature of things that spiritual progress of this evil character can transcend the limits of the world period in which it is undertaken. For those who prefer the path of service, the service of the Divine Ideal, to that of selfish aggrandisement the maximum heights of evolution even within this Manvantara are attainable, and they, when attained, instead of representing a finality, are found to be but the avenues of approach to beatitudes of spiritual existence within the universe the very nature of which it would be folly at this stage of our thinking to grapple with in thought. For to the vision of those who are already on the summit of the Manvantara the horizon that extends beyond is infinite again, and something of what they see can be communicated to us, so that without being able to realise the conditions of consciousness which would transcend our own system, we may realise, even with some assurance, the possibility of ulterior progress for perfected humanity into conditions of existence in which the individuality of the human being is merged into the governing hierarchy of the cosmos. But leaving considerations of that nature aside for the present, and also considerations in the other direction which have to do with the misdirection of great spiritual energies, let us concentrate our attention on the possibilities that lie before us in reference to that legitimately accelerated evolution to be accomplished by treading the path leading to Adeptship.

That path, we should always bear in mind, is a short cut across the enormous spirals of the regular highway, leading humanity upward during the second half of the Manvantara. It thus only became a possibility of nature after the first half of the Manvantara was concluded; for the complete undertaking included a double process — the involution of spirit in matter, and the evolution of spirit from matter. The first half of the Manvantara is the descent into manifestation: the second half the re-ascent therefrom. One gets lost in an ocean of metaphysical speculation if we go into the question as to what spirit can gain from material manifestation. It is ,the potentiality of all things, including material manifestation: how can it be enriched if it is everything to begin with? It will be worth while, perhaps, to deal with this problem when we are in a position to grapple with it from the point of view, let us say, of an exhaustive comprehension of the solar system. Then mysteries which have to do with that whole of which the solar system is an infinitesimal particle, will perhaps come within the range of our mental grasp. At present the attempts to work out schemes of thought relating to such mysteries are rather the outcome of ignorance concerning mysteries that are relatively near us than of aptitude for dealing with those still far off. The theory of our planetary system is, at all events, intelligible. Spiritual energies involve themselves in matter and evolve therefrom. They cannot begin to evolve slowly or rapidly till the process of involution is complete. Thus it is only after the middle point of the Manvantara that accelerated evolution becomes possible, simply because evolution itself, as far as the human family was concerned, only began then.

But even during the last Manvantara the already differentiated entities of the human family were in a position to fulfil the purpose of their existence at that stage more or less satisfactorily. Thus we have seen that the entities who had derived most from the experiences of that Manvantara were not required to make their appearance on this planetary chain till near the middle of this world period. They came into incarnation then as already the elder brethren of the race, and many of them at once began to fulfil the purpose of their existence in this Manvantara in turn in the most satisfactory manner. They kept thus ahead of the main body, and at once began to appreciate the teaching of those more advanced beings from another evolution who were the early guardians of this human family. They were ripe to enter on the path then opening before mankind, the course of which led them rapidly to the high levels of consciousness and capacity. There is nothing in their extraordinarily rapid progress to shock the understanding, if we pay attention to the simplicity of the predominant idea which is the allembracing motive of occult progress. The unity of spiritual consciousness is the primary thought to appreciate, the insignificance of differentiated sensation, the logical deduction. The first thought brings with it the anxiety to realise that unity in consciousness, which is equivalent to the anxiety to promote the Divine idea expressed in the system to which we belong: the second thought, if fully absorbed, extinguishes selfishness absolutely. With that characteristic abolished there is no room in the nature for evil; as soon as it is inaccessible to evil its capacity for infinite good, which embraces infinite knowledge, is established. The difficulty with most of us is that we fail to realise the unity of spiritual consciousness, and only to some extent dispel the contrary idea, — the actuality of separate consciousness. Let any one get himself absolutely saturated with the loftier conception so that he feels his own individualised sensation to be just as important, and no more important to him, than any other individualised manifestation of the spirit working within him, and he will find himself on Adept levels " to-morrdw " as compared with the duration of a Manvantara — as soon, that is to say, as in a life or two he may have dissipated the evil forces he has engendered in past lives, leaving the whole account of good and evil, so to speak — none the worse for his individualisation — as a preliminary measure before he goes on to make it much the better. If he does really express our fundamental idea in his consciousness, he will not want to manifest Adeptship in his own individuality till that preliminary work is accomplished.

Even from the midst of the stormy and ignoble period of the world's history represented by the civilisation of Atlantis, some of the best individualities of the race learned these lessons from their more advanced teachers, and began to supply the race with Adept guardians of " its own blood/ ' to use our physicalplane phrase. A little occult knowledge is enough to give the phrase an almost comic flavour, in view of the relatively small part in human evolution played by the physical organism that is habitually dealt with in our language as though it constituted the race. And thus from the mid-period of the Atlantean race onward there has never been a time when" the world has been unprovided with Adept leaders, for remember there is no death out of such a condition of existence as that. There may be a transfer of activity to the higher planes of Nature, but these are a part of the world — or are partly of the world, to put the idea more correctly — just as much as its physical aspect. But on the other hand, Re-incarnation itself, if voluntarily accepted by the Adept, who no longer needs it for himself, is no extinction of his Adeptship; and whether their work was carried on in or out of the body — with or without that accessory — the elder brethren who first attained Adeptship did not, we may be sure, pass on to other functions until others, coming up from mankind at large to join them, were ready to take their places at the head of human affairs. They or their successors have, from a far remoter time than any which commonplace historical research has penetrated, even in imagination, been in control of the great occult " Lodges " of initiation, the existence of which — the accessibility of which for persons willing to undergo the necessary training, and inspired by the necessary ideas — has been better known to humanity at large at former epochs in the world's history than during the last few hundred years.

During the predominance of the Atlantean race on earth, it was hardly to be expected that the elder brethren would obtain any great number of recruits. Not only were the Atlanteans pre-eminently a selfish race — it might almost be argued that it was their business in the scheme of evolution to be so. They may not have been much more culpable in being so than a community of animals would be under similar circumstances. Individualised to perfection, but nothing more, it was their business to deliver the innumerable hordes of the human family on the threshold of the fifth race intelligent enough to learn the first new lesson of the upward carve of the great cycle, the lesson of fraternal sympathy. Intellectually, keeping that term strictly to its limitations, and altogether excluding from it everything that appertains to spiritual intuition, the Atlanteans were giants of capacity. They possessed a great mass of knowledge, which the younger generations of the fifth race— ourselves and our immediate progenitors — have lost. They had even penetrated many of the secrets of Nature belonging to that Astral plane which transcends the more densely material realm of the physical senses. They could accomplish results which, to our own science, are as yet undreamed of. But be it remembered, that when we speak of the Atlanteans from the point of view of the information concerning them, which occult science enables us to procure, we are dealing with that race in its fullest maturity. Humanity has entered on the fifth of its present cycles, armed with all the intellectual capacities required for the recovery of the lost Atlantean knowledge, and that recovery is certain to be brought about in the progress of time. The Re-incarnation of a race precisely follows the analogy of individual Re-incarnation. Just as the fresh personality by the time it arrives at maturity is once more in possession of all the capacities engendered by its permanent Ego during the preceding life, so the race inherits capacity in a similar degree. Intellectual giants as the Atlanteans were, we are already not far short of their stature, and the rest will come to us in due course.

But with those gifts, something else will come to us if we are willing to receive it — the first beginnings of a general capacity to apprehend the spiritual possibilities of our Nature. The downward curve of the great cycle — considering the Manvantaric evolution as one process for the moment — may be regarded as the curve of preparation. The upward curve — from the nadir point of the fourth race in this round — the curve of fruition.

Now the nature of every evolutionary cycle — as understood by esoteric wisdom — involves, from one point of view, a return to the condition from which the circling procession set out. But that return does not mean a mere reversion to the status quo ante, without any result accomplished, It must always be a return freighted with something gained on the journey. And in the broad view of the whole evolutionary scheme that we are taking now, the all-important distinction between the spiritual existence out of which the human race emerged in the beginning, and the spiritual existence to which it will ultimately return, is to be discerned in the individualisation of consciousness combined with spirituality.

In dealing with these transcendent mysteries, every incarnate writer must be profoundly impressed with the impossibility of thinking them out completely in terms of the physical intellect. One would gladly refrain from the audacity of writing about them at all if it were not absolutely necessary for the elucidation of the spiritual evolution on which the human race is now entering, to take cognisance of ultimate ideas which it is quite certain we shall formulate in the mind but dimly and inaccurately. But somehow, within and beyond the immeasurable profundities of the spiritual consciousness which crown the edifice of a perfected humanity, it is certain that the stupendous prize of individual consciousness which Nature has gone through such infinite pains to evoke — will not be forfeited. A few misleading analogies, — and even the most graceful, about the dewdrop slipping into the shining sea, cannot but be misleading in this connexion, — are largely responsible for the comfortless belief so many people entertain, that the esoteric teaching of the East, at all events, preaches a kind of ecstatic annihilation as the supreme felicity to be struggled for through ages of suffering existence. It should be obvious that no epigrammatic phrase can sum up the unfathomable subtleties of a thought that reaches out towards a comprehension of the incomprehensible — of phases of consciousness utterly transcending the limitations of the brain that idly strives to define them. If we inverted the usual simile, and said that on attaining the condition of Nirvana, the dewdrop received into its bosom the whole shining sea, that would, perhaps, be a better way of presenting the figure to the mind, because it would not then suggest a falsehood, even if it failed tg be explanatory in any high degree. Without attempting so absurd a task as to explain the nature of the spiritual consciousness indicated in Oriental philosophy by the term Nirvana, I will be content to suggest a mode of approaching a conception rather less extravagantly imperfect than that generally entertained, by hinting, on the basis of the suggestion just made, that it may be much more like an absorption of all consciousness into the individuality, than an absorption of individuality into all consciousness.

However this may be, in one conclusion we may safely rest; that the purpose of Nature in evolving humanity is that of evoking individualities on the levels of Nature, so to speak, from which the whole creative spiritual impulse stooped down at the commencement of the undertaking.

It is necessary to insert an apology here for that last expression in dealing with a Nature that has no beginning and no end? Of all Nature we cannot assuredly predicate an end or a beginning; but one of the most narrow-minded blunders of exoteric thinking is that which carelessly identifies the human family to which we belong with the eternities generally of time and space. Esoteric science, in its coherent reasonableness, recognises this human family, its origin and fortunes, as a definite episode within the eternities — however protracted may be its duration.

The climax of the episode is reached when the creative power, which in some unimaginable manner sufficed to launch the planetary system, returns to itself focalised in individualities. But what is the nature of such individualities? By the hypo thesis they partake of the human nature in so far as they are individual; of the divine nature, in so far as they are once again identified with the creative power of the Spirit. They are no longer men — they are gods. Not God, which, as far as language can deal with such ideas, must be a designation assigned to Universal Omnipotent Spirit, but the agents of Divinity wielding its powers, pursuing its ideas. Esoteric teaching shows us in these perfected beings at once the purpose of humanity and the governing power of the next evolutionary undertaking in Nature which shall follow on after that out of which they themselves have arisen.

"The hosts of the Dhyan Chohans" is the expression by which Oriental philosophy endeavours to describe these sublime fruitions of the human race; and it is theoretically possible that any of the myriads of ordinary men and women on whom we look around at this stage of the world's progress, may so cultivate and expand their nascent individualities as to reach the condition foreshadowed. But there are many intervening grades in the spiritual hierarchy that culminate in the godlike condition of the Dyhan Chohan.

ong before the attainment of that pre-eminence the up-growing Egos struggling clear of the enthralments of material life, will begin to exercise powers and discharge responsibilities in Nature, in connexion with which they are already, in a measure, co-operative with the Divine' purpose.

The hosts of ordinary humanity, let us bear in mind, are conscious only — in their physical intellects, — of the material plane of Nature whereon they are manifesting. But the spiritual consciousness dominant within them, is working all the while in the "Higher Self." The attraction to matter, to material life, with its gratifications and sympathies, is at war with this dormant aspiration. As long as it remains the more powerful the Ego after death, and after the Devachanic period has expired, is drawn back to material manifestation by the Karma of its last life. But whenever the spiritual aspiration has made itself heard in that life, there will be in the circumstances of the new existence some improved opportunities for the culture of the spiritual consciousness. If these are duly employed, they will rapidly be developed into contact of some kind with the grand realities of the higher planes of being. The incarnate man will begin by finding new senses and powers of perception developing within him. Operating, as we shall see later on, as snares and false beacons sometimes when they have been acquired in a wrong way, these psychic faculties are none the less the avenues to sublime knowledge when rightly directed. For the genuine neophyte they constitute the first links of communication that consciously unite him with the Adept world, with those of his elder brethren who are already advanced in the scale of Nature far beyond the normal characteristics of ordinary mankind.

Thus illuminated he may enter on the path that leads upward to these levels of existence. His initiation has commenced, and with the thirst for spiritual progress becoming a more powerful force in his nature than the animal dinging to material life, the attractions that drag him back to normal incarnation cease to assert themselves. For several lives probably those attractions will continue to operate, after he has begun his higher evolution: and failure of one kind or another may constantly throw him back. But if he is resolute and persevering, the spiritual attractions conquer in the end, and his incarnations if they are then continued at all, will be voluntarily undertaken as affording him facilities for the better accomplishment of the work to which he will have dedicated himself — the cultivation of the spirituality of the race at large. On the level he will have attained he will be already a co-worker with the Divine purpose, a conscious exponent of the Divine Will.

Keeping still, for the present, on the level of generalities, and postponing the more exact examination of the steps on the path of initiation, I may remark that for any one who can even dimly discern the attributes of such existence as is attained to by the fully spiritualised man, there is little need to look beyond that condition in search of motives for an upward struggle. But let me interpolate here a few observations concerning the most ennobling of those motives before going on to speak of those which appeal to feelings of personal desire, however lofty in their character. It is not to be doubted that by the time the spiritual consciousness of a man on the upward path is fully developed he is already so far a participator in the Divine nature that the unselfish eagerness to acquire the power of benefiting others is really the most efficient motive for exertion that can appeal to him; and perhaps realising this great truth, more or less perfectly, in advance, there are many still incarnate human beings who proclaim this as already the only motive that really commands their zealous effort. We need not cast discredit on their early belief in their own interior nobility of purpose. But without claiming that men still on the normal levels of incarnation should be already infused by so lofty a sentiment, it is no degradation of their nature so far, if they recognise as the first motive that inspires them with the courage and physical self abnegation required for the cultivation of their spiritual natures, a longing to come into closer relations with beings so glorified as those who have broken the bondage of the flesh or have already taken their place in superior realms of existence. No unworthy pandering to selfishness is involved in the representation of spiritual exaltation as in itself a goal befitting the most enthusiastic aspiration — as regarded from the lower standpoint of material existence. Emotions and motives may follow one another in due order, but it would be a great mistake to add needlessly to the ordeals of the first steps in occult progress by depriving them of the encouragement to be derived from the reflection that even earlier the achievements of such progress carry with them rewards of an extremely elevated order.

So then we work back to the position that the career of initiation — the path of occult progress — is an enterprise not only worthy of being the pursuit of the loftiest human virtue; there is no other career of philanthropy or benevolence that is comparable with it, for the more the community of those who attain Adeptship is strengthened numerically and otherwise, the greater is the influence working on mankind at large for their spiritual advancement, and their elevation above the lamentable Karmic conditions that give rise to the physical miseries and suffering to which ordinary philanthropy, unable to look beyond the one life, is limited in choosing its spheres of activity. But lest this reflection should be misunderstood, let me point out that the career of occult progress is not one which has to be selected in preference, or as an alternative to other benevolent activities. Whatever these may be, for good men impelled to engage in them from beautiful and generous sympathy with their fellow creatures, their work in such directions, instead of impeding their occult progress, must be directly subservient thereto if they do but blend with the immediate emotions of sympathy which dictate their practical philanthropy the desire for spiritual knowledge, and the efforts to attain it that may be compatible with their duties and assumed responsibilities in life. One of the most common mistakes concerning this subject made by those who pick up a few imperfect ideas from Oriental literature and tales of Eastern "yogeeism," is the notion that the occult path means withdrawal from all human companionship, and absorption in a spiritual selfishness that seeks a personal beatitude by means of solitary meditation and austere practices. That which occult training does undoubtedly demand is self-denial in the sense of entire abstinence from the fruitless indulgence of self, and some time devoted if possible compatibly with altruistic duties to the interior cultivation of the spiritual consciousness. But there is no life of philanthropic activity so full that it would not include the necessary opportunities for this. On the contrary it is, broadly speaking, most assuredly true that the active philanthropist is by virtue of being so, in far more favourable conditions for the attainment of spiritual advancement than the man who is merely bent upon his advancement, however blameless his relative inactivity.

Here we may pause to consider some of the commonest among the foolish criticisms that have been aimed at the state and methods of activity of the Adepts, since something has been promulgated in reference to them in modern Theosophic literature. It has been suggested that in living very secluded lives (as far as their existence on the physical plane is concerned) they are selfishly neglecting the poignant sufferings of unhappy humanity, which they might do much to soften if they came down from their lofty towers to mingle with the human race. To have power over material nature and disease and not at once devote that power to the relief of poverty and sickness seems to some of our shortsighted moralists to imply a want of sympathy with suffering, and a "selfish" neglect of opportunities for doing good. The criticism springs from a comprehensive ignorance of Nature and the whole design of the world — from a curiously complete disregard of the hypothesis that, in spite of appearances, the progress of the world may be going on, under the law of justice, and that very much more important ends may really be in view than those which have to do with the alleviation of the painful consequences which, in the progress of their successive lives, most human beings may have brought upon themselves. Let me not be misunderstood. To the true Masters of Wisdom the spectacle of human suffering, however completely that suffering may have been earned by the sufferer's own action in the past, is one evoking acute and tender-hearted sympathy. But this sympathy cannot but, in their case, be associated with and qualified by the lofty powers of vision which may look back to the causes in the past, by which the suffering has been brought on, and forward to the results that may be hoped for as regards the future by the exhaustion of those causes. To us, who see merely the suffering, it is perfectly clear that we have only one simple duty in regard to it — to relieve it if we can, by the exercise of such very limited powers in that direction as we may possess. If we succeed in doing this we are not upsetting the design of Nature. We are in all probability merely playing a part unconsciously in that design, and the Karma of the sufferer whom we relieve, may be regarded as having been to that extent already fulfilled when the pressure of destiny brought us into contact with him. But the Adept, who has come already into conscious relations with the design of Nature, who is no longer drifted blindly about by that pressure of destiny just referred to, is very differently situated. He is not wanted as an instrument of Karma. The great law finds its own instruments ready to its hand among the humanity still on the same level of existence to which the sufferer belongs. If he intervenes, with a power and a knowledge on a level, so to speak, with that on which the design originates, he is distinctly upsetting the contemplated scheme of things. Such a violation of the appointed progress of events would quite possibly do no more than protract the suffering it might seem to relieve, for the unfulfilled law of Karma would exact its own measure of justice later on, — in another life, perhaps, which might have been clear of the old debt if things had been allowed to take their normal course.

Then again, while philanthropists of the lowlier type may fitly enough concern themselves with palliatives in dealing with human suffering, their justification for doing this is to be sought rather in the imperfection of their insight than in the merits of palliatives as such compared with remedies for evil which should go deeper than the surface, and attempt to grapple with fundamental causes. While the worldly philanthropist of the ordinary type seeks for the causes of misery and suffering in the external neglect of economical laws, and would endeavour to circumvent these evils by teaching thrift, temperance, and industry as habits dictated by an enlightened selfishness, we can readily appreciate the idea that a fuller comprehension of the laws of Karma may enable Adept vision to realise that even the practise of economical virtues would not suffice to root out from human society the suffering which in one shape or another must overtake Re-incarnating human creatures who have lived before for merely selfish objects, and have done evil, as judged by the spiritual standard, however enlightened, in the mere worldly sense, their selfishness may have been at the time. The Karmic retribution for sins against humanity, for cruelty to others, and hardness of heart in presence of sorrow, can never be circumvented, and the cunningest devices for warding off poverty and crime will never be successful in guarding future generations from these calamities until the people, who in the present time are creating the conditions in which they will live again, are taught to live with an eye to that inevitable destiny, and to starve out the forces that make for wretchedness and disease, so that there shall be no Karmic necessity for such penalites operative in the progress of the world any more.

The end, therefore, to which the Adept must primarily devote himself will always be the cultivation of spiritual knowledge and aspiration, which by weaning people from their supreme devotion to the objects of physical existence, will guide them into those paths of endeavour which will necessarily render them less likely to sacrifice the higher dictates of humanity on the altars of their individual worldly interests.

Of course, I am not professing to explain and account for the whole policy of the Adept Brotherhood in their dealings with uninitiated mankind. I am merely showing how, with the limited knowledge of their functions in Nature which we possess, it is easy to put aside the manifestly inapplicable criticisms suggested by an entire ignorance on that subject. It is with the spiritual interests of humanity almost exclusively that the Adepts must deal. And in dealing even with these it is obvious that at some periods of the world's history their influence may be much more restricted than at others. Human affairs advance through a great series of interlinked cycles, and each of these has its periods of spiritual and material ascendancy. Sometimes the exoteric religious ideas in vogue may favour, sometimes they may oppose the spread of true spiritual knowledge. Sometimes it may be possible for those who have outrun their contemporaries, and have attained to the power and beatitude of the Divine Kingdom, to do little more than concern themselves with the few who are toiling along after them across the dangers and ordeals of the upward path. Sometimes they may find it practicable to attempt the reform of popular religions, so as to bring these more into harmony with the eternal natural laws that govern spiritual evolution. But whether at any given moment they can do much or little, there is one thing they can always do, and do always accordingly, they can — to fall into the symbolical language that the subject suggests — keep the sacred flame alight. They can take care that there shall always be an Adept community on earth, ready to instruct and bring forward increasing numbers of those who, as the cyclic law grows more favourable in the future, may be prepared to undertake the task of self-development, and thus to co-operate with Nature in working out her grandest design — to which all preliminary stages of evolution are, indeed, but subservient. To those who have long attained the exaltation of the Divine Kingdom, it may be that some mysterious condition of supreme rest and beatitude beckons them onward, and without knowing much on that subject, we may reasonably conjecture that one by one, as the aspect of the great duty that presses upon them all permits, they do pass on, but never, we may be assured, until their places are fully supplied by other victors in the great struggle.

In this way the Adept Brotherhood is much more than a mere organisation of immensely advanced and spiritualised men. It is that of course, but it is a brotherhood so far advanced that it has grown up into being a part of the great hierarchy of superior beings constituting the spiritual government of the world. Some of those who become Adepts are, in turn, drawn up into this hierarchy, and may then be said to guide and direct the Will lying behind them again in its detailed manifestations. Rightly apprehended this idea is no more in conflict with the vague religious conception that assigns the " creation " of the world to God, than the fact that human devices may direct electricity to specific purposes, is in conflict with the profound truth that electricity itself is a mighty and ever-present force of Nature. The deeply impressive truth that the Will of God works through agencies of a character intermediate between God and man, is the scientific interpretation of Nature, not the deposition of vaguer beliefs which only seem more reverential to the uninstructed mind because that mind has never even sought to work out its beliefs with precision.

That from the beginning of humanity on earth in this great World Period through which we are passing, there has been a Being consciously presiding over its evolution is, as I say, a perfectly reasonable idea, in harmony, with the loftiest religious conceptions. That it is not merely an idea, but a fact, is ascertained by those who are themselves, in turn, intermediate between that Being and humanity at large. And from them some definite information on the subject filters down to those who from our own level are struggling upwards and already in contact with Adept instruction. Evidently it would be impossible to convey to incarnate intelligence — imprisoned in flesh and working within the limitations of consciousness as it functions on the material plane — very much concerning the attributes of such a Being. But the recognition of His existence is a step in the direction of a comprehension of the whole spiritual hierarchy.

People who make a hard and fast barrier in their imaginations between God and Man— treating humanity, as of a horde of final units, each with an eternal personality as limited in its scope, as compared with Deity, as the nine-pins a boy may play with compared to himself, — are not merely degrading the human personalities in question, but are making nonsense of the whole Natural design. It would have no ulterior purpose or meaning if the conventional view were in correspondence with the fact. On the other hand, when we not alone accept the principle that there must be higher destinies open to human creatures than those which are bounded by the mystery of physical death, but realise that those higher destinies may assimilate Man to God-like knowledge, wisdom and power, and elevate him at last — if he makes himself worthy — to play a part in the spiritual government of his race, then surely we must feel that we have grasped a really lofty conception of the design to which humanity belongs.

And in the light of that idea we may go considerably further, even, than the doctrine of Re-incarnation takes us in appreciating correctly the pathetic mistake which in conscious or unconscious submission to the dictates of a narrow and incomplete theology many people make in contemplating the brevity of each individual physical life. Especially do those aspiring lovers of Nature, who most reverently study her laws, — true men of science, — fall a prey to the gloomy delusion that when the brain they have trained so carefully shall dissolve in the earth, there is an end of the futile labour they have gone through. Conventional religion gives them a hope indeed of some sort of consciousness hereafter; but the heaven of crowns and harps and unintelligent rapture before "the throne" — the heaven of ignorant and empty-headed priests, good and goodhearted though they may som^imes be — affords a prospect of drivelling ennui to the man who is already in this life highly developed in knowledge and intellectual energy. Men of such a type turn from it with distaste if not with scorn, and forgetting that the priests may be echoing a great truth in promising future consciousness, though distorting it into nonsense by furnishing it forth with detail on a level with their own intelligence, — they, the true priests of Nature, her eager students and worshippers, fall back on a forlorn kind of altruism and try to take comfort in the thought that their successors will carry on the mighty quest when they themselves are dust and their thoughts as the light of yesterday that has faded into darkness and ceased to be.

The mere first steps in esoteric teaching should hold out a thrilling prospect in exchange for this dreary expectation. The persistence of individual consciousness — the Re-incarnation of each transient personality with the knowledge and training of each life stored as so much potentiality of further advancement, as so much intellectual faculty ready to spring once more into activity. — that is the first great law of spiritual evolution which rebukes the insult to Nature involved in the idea that his science is extinct when the man of science " dies." But there is really a far loftier possibility before him in the progress of ages, if he wakes to a perception of the higher science that may link his knowledge with that of Nature's great evolutionary plan, and summon him to the task of so exalting his own individuality that he may pass on into the ranks of those I have described as playing a ministerial part in the government of the world. He will not do this, of course, by the concentration of faculties on the phenomena of this one facet of many-sided Nature that we caU the physical plane. However ardent and intelligent that concentration may be, such an exercise of faculty can develop but one of the many potentialities of development which lurk in the nature of the Man who must be more than what we habitually mean by the phrase a man of science, before he can win a place in the Divine kingdom. Knowledge itself of the kind we chiefly deal with in this life, may be a splendid stimulant to spiritual evolution, but a diet consisting of stimulant entirely is not conducive to health. We must study other laws of Nature besides those that have to do with physics before we can utilise and control the forces of the spiritual plane. Man does not live by bread alone; the soul is not exalted by knowledge alone (in the sense in which knowledge is limited to the same natural plane as the bread). The man of science who would claim the inheritance that Nature has provided for him must appreciate her design before he can be appointed to assist in working it out, and must assimilate his aspirations to the spirit in which that design is conceived. When he has done this, though not till then, the Elder Brethren of humanity will be ready to receive him into their midst.

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