CHAPTER XIV

INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY
IT will be obvious on reflection, if we correctly inter- pret 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, 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. 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 oppor- tunities 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 genera- tions 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
310
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 3 1 1
Karmic consequence in successive lives, those higher facul- ties 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 depart- ment of physical knowledge, the scientific era par excel- lence— assigning the word " science " to the limited mean- ing 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 direc- tion 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
3i2 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
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 guid- ance or encouragement, that progress may be quite likely to turn to channels in which it would be eminently in- jurious 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 pan 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
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 3 1 3,
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 mere 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 nine- teenth century, superinduce 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
THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
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 dis- covery, 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 con- cerning 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 sub- ordination 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 exist- ence 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 Nature's 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 observa- tion, are now once more slowly and by degrees becoming known to a generation which, at the first blush, may seem
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 3 1 5
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 con- tinue to be; but, at the same time, it has never been the ex- pectation 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 or 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 ex- pected or desired; but unless the possibilities of the situa- tion 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 remem- ber, 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 pro-
316 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
ducing 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 concern- ing 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
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 3 1 7
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 content- ment, with a pious platitude concerning the goodness of that power which rules the processes of vegetation as un- deniably 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 contem- poraries, those higher teachers or masters of esoteric wisdom. And now I approach the answer to that diffi- culty, although it is one which, from the nature of the
3i 8 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
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, com- prehensible 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 consti- tute 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
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 3 1 9
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 com- prehend 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 intellectu- ally, 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 en- forced with great enthusiasm in recent theosophic writ- ing, 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-
320 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
while to enjoin any other processes of effort on candidates for future initiation. In saying, however, that the matter much 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 com- prehension of the great design governing spiritual evolu- tion, 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 initiation 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 w'ill enable him, if his desire persists and his efforts con- tinue, to come into conscious relations with the higher teachers.
I do not know of any treatise on this subject, either in
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 321
the literature of mediaeval occultism, modern psychology, or Theosophy itself, which has dealt adequately with the circumstances under which those mysterious and some- times beautiful, sometimes rather terrible and painful developments of psychic faculty, which the experience of life exhibits, are actually developed. We all talk habitu- ally of such faculties as psychic gifts, roughly adopting the phraseology of a very unenlightened theory concern- ing 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 en- lightened observation it must really be regarded as involv- ing a slur on that Omnipotence, or at all events a reproach against that absolute justice with which the idea of omni- science 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 con- ceptions 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
22
322 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
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, intel- lectually, artistically, or in reference to his perceptions as to right and wrong, he is exactly what he has made him- self in former lives, working, of course, at each stage with the advantages or disadvantages of surrounding oppor- tunities which are themselves merely the physical and ex- ternal consequences of still earlier action on his part, — themselves, that is to say, the Karma of his still more remote existences. The always operative conditions of his own free will enable 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, stimu- lated 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 un- limited 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-incar- nation of that great musician. The student of languages in a former age may have forgotten, when he returns to
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 323
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 suc- ceed in gaining by the protracted labour of years. So with scientific aptitudes, so also with literary appre- ciation, 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 con- sequence 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 concern- ing 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 commonplace 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 —
22*
324 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
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 com- plex manifestations of what is called " mediumship " in connection with modern spiritualism. Whether the peculiarities of psychic constitution which such medium- ship 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 qualifica- tions 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 irregu- lar psychic progress are sufficiently intimate and interest- ing 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
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 325
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 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 physi- cal 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 com- prehended if for a moment we look at the whole evolu-
326 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
tionary 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 individu- ality without characteristics. It presses forward and out- wards, 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 neces- sarily 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
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 327
consisting of an all but formless germ on the higher spiritual plane, 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, con- stituting 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 ihe 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, so to speak, than it was before; it is a somewhat better channel for the withdrawal in-
328 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
ward 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 disinte- grated and disappeared long ago during the upward move- ment 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 develop- ments 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 image
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 329,
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 Lipika, coupled with an appreciation of the instrumental resources available for their use in the elemental king- dom, renders the aspect of the whole process clear, sym- metrical, and scientific. The Lipika, as already explained> 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 concep- tion 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.
The personalities of each existence may be imperma-
330 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
nent 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 appear- ance there. These recurrent processes continue, the per- sonality 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 depart- ments of activity as have given rise during former existences to some permanent attributes 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 advance- ment. Long 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
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 331
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. Accu- mulations 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
332 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
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 suffi- ciently successful to bring him into direct personal rela- tions with one of the more exalted Adepts qualified to sur- round 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 blame- less in its character to have left him tolerably free of un- happy 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 hypo- thesis, 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 spiritual 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 mani- festation 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
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 333
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 inter- vening 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 un- broken. 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 abnor- mal evolution. And thus it may ensue that in a period of time covered by a few centuries, if more than one im- mediate re-incarnation takes place in connection with his advancement, he may condense a progress which would otherwise have been protracted over twice as many mil- lenniums. 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 conscious- ness on the higher spiritual planes; each life as he came back to it would be one in which he would, by virtue of
334 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
the normal process of evolution, pick up again the ten- dency 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 connection with occult progress at these earlier stages — and before an even loftier feeling, con- nected 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 spiritual 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
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 335
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 inta account. The surrender of blissful 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 blissful 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 ignor- ance, of the useless waste of time which would be involved in going through the usual spiritual period. It is easy to be grandly indifferent to privileges which we do not appre- ciate. The conditions of existence for a fairly awakened soul on manasic planes are, however, so enriched, sub- lime, 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-incarna- tion— a gift that would never be allotted to him, without his choice constituting one of the features in the arrange- ment— unless he is previously put in a position to appre- ciate 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 higher level of 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 con-
336 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
sideration 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 higher plane life 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 surren- dering 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 accom- plish 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 tread the path of occult progress, and appre- ciate 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 imper- fect 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 conscious-
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 337
ness 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 bewildering mathe- matical 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 naturev 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 uncon- nected, as far as such observation goes, with anything ex- ternal to itself. Each atom is within its own enclosing surface a well-spring of energy which never fails. Com- parison with the atom does not explain the mystery con- nected 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 the manner described. Im- mediate 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 com- panions, and, further than this, puts him in a position
338 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
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 manasic region, which it is not his privilege to inhabit continuously, but which is nevertheless acces- sible 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, with- out 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 confusedlv accomplished that it is separated from whatever experi- ences 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 of 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 case of the occult pupil. He has arrived at the stage at which he may be entitled to the help of a Master, which is gfven him in this way. The whole life to which im-
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 339
mediate 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 occupy- ing a part of his time, at all events, a 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 him- self, 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 arc 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 indepen- dently 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 in loftier regions;
23*
340 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
he will be realising, so far as that is possible, within trie- physical brain, an infinitude of new states of conscious- ness on the astral 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 higher state of conscious- ness 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 evolu- tion of ordinary humanity, and put himself in touch with these glorious possibilities.
At the first blush of the matter students of modern occult literature, assuming them to have grasped and accepted its broad and grand ideas, are sometimes im- pressed with the belief that the next thing to do is to get introduced somehow to an occult fraternity and be initiated in some inaugural mysteries, or be confronted with some imposing ordeals at once. The door is open to all who knock — according to the familiar aphorism. The Kingdom of Heaven must be taken by storm, as the thought is expressed in another symbolical phrase, which people in want of intelligible guidance sometimes find to be very irritating. Where is the portal to be knocked at ? Where is the breach to be stormed ? The true answer may legitimately be distilled from all that has gone before, but the time has now come for putting it in plain and straightforward language, though in truth no such explanation can be comprehended until students thoroughly grasp the whole preliminary view of human progress opened up to the mind by theosophical teaching. It is not possible for an aspirant who contemplates
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 341
•effective progress on the path that leads to the higher initiations to get on more than a few stages on his way during the life in which he first addresses himself to the great undertaking. This is the foremost reason why it is premature for the candidate to expect to be put, from the very beginning of his effort, in direct personal relations with the Masters from whom he wishes to obtain guidance. The task before him, in the first instance, is the develop- ment of his own character along the lines that lead in the direction of the remote perfection aimed at. Eager beginners may find the prospect discouraging, but there is no short cut to the acquisition of the interior characteris- tics which constitute the only recognised claim to par- ticipation in the wisdom and power of the Adepts of the White Law. A fundamental mistake is made by any- one who imagines that the all-important qualifications have to do with the cultivation of psychic faculties. The custodians of the knowledge of which the occult student is in search, are engaged in the magnificent task of stimu- lating and promoting the spiritual growth of humanity, not its mere capacity to handle the finer forces of Nature without regard to the ultimate piirpose to which they are to be applied. The disciples they are in search of are such persons as may be qualified not merely to exercise power on the superior planes of Nature, but to join in the great unselfish work of raising humanity to a loftier level of thought and feeling than that on which the majority of mankind still move. Eagerness to penetrate the fas- cinating mysteries of the superphysical world, however well fortified by courage and strength, is no adequate qualification for the true occult initiation. The attributes which must belong to the accepted pupil, not to speak of the person fit to be presented by his own Master to
342 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
the occult hierarchy, and thus to be received into the community of those who have definitely entered on the path, must be such as promise to render him in process of time a co-worker with those whose duty it is in the scheme of the world's government, to foster and provide for the moral growth of all mankind. The impatience that would set a neophyte in antagonism with — as he might imagine it — this too exclusive programme would have no effect whatever in helping him to get on faster. Some of the powers and faculties, the charm of which may have inflamed his imagination, may have been acquired by some persons in whose possession he may see them, by irregular methods ill-calculated to promote real ulterior growth, but they will only be conferred by Hiero- phahts of the great White Brotherhood in the wake of those moral attributes on the part of a candidate which can alone afford those who are already Masters in the school of supreme benevolence no less than in that of wisdom, the assurance that he will not misuse the power and enlarged senses of perception, of which he is in search. Where would be the motive for endowing the public at large with information enabling anyone who desires to do so, with whatever motive, to enter into personal relations with the Higher Masters? The fact that there, is a path which the spiritual student may tread is made abundantly obvious for everyone who has common intel- ligence to apply to the matter by the recent revival of occult literature. The teaching, which in the course of that revival has been explicitly communicated to the world at large by Adept Masters — for the first time in coherent, intelligible language — will show new candidates for occult progress the principles on which such progress is alone possible. If they do the preliminary work of self-prepara-.
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 343
tion Karma must infallibly, in their next lives at furthest, give them an opportunity of taking the next steps under the direct help of the Master to whom, in the very act of that self-preparation, they will have made an uncon- scious appeal. He may not have been cognisable in the first instance by them, but they will assuredly, by the occult reactions of their endeavour, have made them- selves perceptible to him.
And now let us examine more closely into the nature of that self-preparation that would operate in the way described. There is no mystery or secret about the matter. The interior moral change required as a quali- fication for actual initiation, whether Eastern or Western neophytes are in question, is easily defined, and has been set forth in some Eastern writings which, in a Western shape, have filtered into current theosophical literature. But these have been often misunderstood by readers led to imagine that certain moral prescriptions must be obeyed to the letter by all who aim at entering on the Path. Much has been said, indeed, about the " Probationary Path " as a condition that has to be traversed before the first genuine initiation can be reached. In the earlier editions of this book, even, the phrase was used with that significance. But in truth there is no such probationary period marked out by the great spiritual powers who preside over human progress. Entrance on the Path — and there is only one great Path to be considered — is a rela- tively simple matter. In past ages different conditions may have prevailed, and with them for the moment it is needless to concern ourselves. At present, in this Western world, everyone who is seriously impressed with the dignity and importance of the spiritual flood of teaching that has been poured into the world in connection with the
344 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
Theosophical Movement — who can in some measure realise the constitution of the Divine Hierarchy to which those we speak of as Masters of Wisdom belong — all who in this way appreciate the Theosophical Movement are on •the Path, whether they know it in the physical waking life or not.
Of course, the moral attributes that used to be spoken •of as those of the probationary path are absolutely neces- sary to provide for progress on the Path. I do not want to belittle the efforts needed to secure successive initia- tions, but these, whatever they may be, will confront each person in turn, as previously acquired knowledge and strength will have prepared him for each new achievement.
But, keeping in mind the idea that the perfect realisa- tion in consciousness of the qualifications and accomplish- ments of the programme provided for the aspirant is not expected until an advanced stage of initiation, it may be worth while to survey them as indications of the interior condition to be desired by candidates for real advancement on the Path. That which is alone necessary for the beginner is that he should manifest an honest, Wealthy tendency in the direction of the various achieve- ments specified, or at all events if some of the qualifications to be described are fairly well defined in his character an imperfect attainment of others will suffice for the im- mediate object in view. With this comforting assurance in the foreground to guard the aspirant from the dis- couragement he might feel if he supposed that from the outset occult authorities claimed a complete realisation in his consciousness of principles that seemed at the first glance compatible only with an almost superhuman degree of moral exaltation, we may pass on to a review of the attributes towards which his efforts must be directed.
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 345
English phrases may be conveniently employed to describe these attributes, without necessarily falling back on such as would accurately translate the Sanscrit or Pali terms used in the East. The idea is the all-important essence of the phrase, whatever language is used to convey it. And the foremost attribute towards which the occult aspirant must endeavour to train his interior growth is one which seems to me best defined by the phrase render- ing Allegiance to the Higher Self.
To begin with, the aspirant must appreciate the signi- ficance, in its bearing on himself, of the occult teaching which shows us how the imperishable element in our consciousness is that " Higher Self " which grows and develops as it manifests in physical life through successive incarnations. Each descent into incarnation gives rise to the temporary aggregation round the Higher Self of emotions, desires, characteristics of various kinds which make up the personality or physical mask of the immortal soul — the earthly man as known to other earthly men. These do not constitute the permanent or true being — the " real " being, as some writers call it in contradistinc- tion to the " unreal " personality. Correctly apprehended, the distinction is a just one, though there is a flavour of absurdity in applying the term " unreal " to the earthly personality — so very solid and definite a manifestation while it lasts — which is irritating to people who endeavour to use language with nicety. Anyhow, it can be seen that the personality is impermanent as an aggregate of characteristics, though, of course, it is all the while infused with and animated by the permanent Higher Self. If the conception is found embarrassing it may be approached by dwelling first of all on the obvious truth that the physical body in which the personality is expressed is im-
346 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
permanent as far as that is concerned. A very little effort of imagination on the part of anyone in any sensible degree qualified to deal seriously with occult teaching will enable him to feel that he might still be himself in another incarnation with a new body and a different worldly environment. The experience of those who have progressed a little way on the path and are enabled to recover recollections of former lives will give us the assurance that in looking back on these such persons feel that their earlier incarnations were undoubtedly them- selves, in spite of the wide differences of bodily condition and environment they may have represented. From the stage of mental growth in which each bodily manifesta- tion of the permanent self is appreciated as a temporary phrase of being, no long step has to be made to the realisa- tion of the subtle truth that some conditions of conscious- ness attached to the personality are transitory and imper- manent, as well as the outward shape and appearance of the body. With that conception fairly grasped the student has got a good way on towards the acquisition of the first attribute of the series under consideration. That is to say, he has only (!) to appreciate the real insigni- ficance of those objects of pursuit in life which relate to the impermanent personality as compared with those which tend towards the growth and invigoration of the Higher Self — the real being whose progress, once achieved, is never lost in the course of future evolution. No doubt the complete appreciation of this great truth would make the incarnate man so sublime a philosopher that it seems absurd to claim the attribute from an aspirant just setting out on the path -of spiritual progress. But throughout this exposition the reader may bear one important reservation in mind. There will come a time in the course of the
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 347
disciple's progress when the qualifications under considera- tion must be realised in his consciousness with perfection; but in the beginning that which is required is a sound appreciation of the ideal condition of feeling aimed at, an honest endeavour to realise it in some measure. Total indifference to the usual objects of worldly ambition and desire seems hardly possible for a person actually living in the world, and as yet unconscious in his waking state of the higher spiritual world beyond. On the other hand, we can see that complete absorption in objects of worldly ambition and desire is on the face of things incompatible with even the first beginnings of aspiration in the direction of occult progress. No one to whom the thirst for ease and luxury, for wealth, or for the applause or considera- tion of competitors in the worldly race, is the mainspring of activity in this existence, is even planted with his foot on the first rung of the occult ladder, even if a certain intellectual appreciation of esoteric teaching as probably true may colour his thinking in leisure moments. From the very outset of any serious anxiety to ascend in the scale of creation, and approximate towards communion with those who represent its altitudes, there must come about a considerable loosening of the old ties to worldly objects. These may not fade away into entire insignificance, but they begin to be coloured by a sickly aspect of instability, and gradually the interior consciousness that conditions of existence relating to planes of Nature quite divorced from all physical necessities or enjoyments are the only objects worth energetic endeavour, will take hold of the mind. The change may be worked out by different aspirants with very different degrees of completeness, but it must set in, for the neophyte even, or for him the slow course of unhastened evolution will roll on through the ages, pass-
348 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
ing him through an all but interminable succession of lives, each at the best but a very little better than its predecessor, many of them involving bitter retrogression, as measured on the scale of worldly welfare, most of them gloomily vindicating the pessimist philosophy, that would indeed be justified by human experience if consciousness on the physical plane of life, with all the penalties of that condi- tion in constant operation, were the only kind to which the human family had access. While loftier motives are the allurement to occult endeavour, this thought should be its spur. The path may be hard to travel, but in the suffer- ings it can hardly fail to entail in the long run, the only alternative road — that which carries us through the tedious course of secular evolution — is a good deal more deterrent to the imagination.
And what is the next attribute to be incorporated with the character of the occult student ? He is aiming, be it remembered, at communion with those who have achieved a level of individual exaltation, which would enable them, if they thought fit, to enjoy an existence of beatitude which cannot be comprehended by persons on a far in- ferior level of spiritual development, but is supremely attractive for those by whom it can be approached. In foregoing this and remaining attached by incarnation to the plane of physical life, they are governed by no motive referring in any way to themselves. They are solely prompted by the desire to do good to others irrespective •of any possible advantage ensuing to themselves. In a minor degree, therefore, the aspirant who proposes ?o follow in their footsteps must cultivate the habit of mind which they exemplify in perfection. He has, that is to •say, to aim at spiritual exaltation not for the sake of its beatitude, but for that of its opportunities, in order that he
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 349.
may put himself in a position to join in the work of elevat- ing the condition of humanity en masse. As in the case of the characteristics concerned with rendering allegiance to the Higher Self, it would be extravagant to contend that the mere aspirant must definitely attain the moral condition in which the efforts he makes in the path of spiritual progress are wholly prompted by desire to benefit others, and completely exempt from even that lofty kind of spiritual ambition that impels him to seek the beati- tudes of the spiritual planes of being; but there must be even in his case a recognition of the nobler motive, and an application of it to the immediate problem of existence. He must wean himself from the notion that the attainment of spiritual beautitude for himself is the object of endea- vour. In doing right he must not allow the idea that he will ultimately be rewarded, in some way, on another plane of existence for so doing, to take hold of his imagina- tion. Perhaps a good many right-thinking people may habitually do right without paying much attention to the idea of any consequent reward. They do the right thing because that is the right thing to do, and in so far as they really act on that principle are perhaps further advanced on the road leading to fitness for definite initiation than they are actually aware of. But at the same time the ethics of Western civilsation, when resting on religious sanctions of any sort, are deeply infused with the expecta- tion of spiritual beatitude in a life to come. Occult teach- ing concerning the motives that should operate with the enlightened aspirant for advancement in the hierarchy of Nature, combines a loftier ideal with a comprehension of the laws regulating such advancement, as derived from the unity of all consciousness on certain exalted planes of being. The gain of one is in a certain sense the gain of
350 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
all; the advancing welfare of all in a certain sense neces- sary to the advancement of the one. The grasp of this idea invests unselfishness itself with the character of a scientific force, while at the same time showing that it can only become a force when the genuine outcome of true human sympathy.
Some reasonably sufficient assimilation of these ideas and the feelings to which they give rise constitutes the second attribute of the aspirant to initiation. It has some- times been described as indifference to the fruits of good action, but that is rather a cold and colourless definition. It is rather indifference to personal reward as a fruit of good action and might be summed up as devotion to right in the abstract. If the attainment of this attribute seems, as it probably will to many European readers, a lesser achievement than indifference to the usual objects of worldly desire, that will only be because of the extent to which so many of us are saturated with the conditional belief that if there is another state of existence beyond this, devotion to right here will give happiness there. Prob- ably there is an application of this doctrine — taking suffi- ciently long views of the future — in which it is true, but a future far beyond the space of the existence first tinged by devotion to right, may claim from the occult aspirant continued effort and continued sacrifice. He has to face that possibility with cheerful courage and to feel that it imposes no check upon his enthusiasm, before he can be entitled to consider that in the occult sense of the phrase he has attained devotion to right.
We may pass on now — in our survey of the interior growth which must go on concurrently with the earlier initiation of which the aspirant may be unconscious in waking life — to the consideration of a group of six quali-
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 351
fications or mental habits which the aspirant is called on to acquire.
The first of these is sometimes described as Regulation of Thought. Sometimes the qualification has been described as purity of thought or mastery over thought. Of course, absolute mastery over thought would make a man a magician at once; while, with thought so habitu- ally purified that no impulse of an evil, ignoble, or un- saintly order should ever cross the mind even to be hunted out, the personality so exalted would be almost ready for Nirvana on the strength of that condition of things alone. But however unlikely it may be that any mere aspirant to occult progress should realise the qualification entirely, no one can persevere in the effort to make progress if his thinking should remain entirely undisciplined, the sport of any breeze of circumstance that might eddy round him. The control and regulation of thought is an enormous task on which the energies of the occult student will be bent, in many various ways, for a long time, but he must make a beginning on it from the outset of his self-prepara- tion. In doing this he is beginning in a very subtle way that training of the will which is an all-important process as he advances further. Thought is under the control of the will to an extent that exoteric psychology does not always recognise, and there are manifold reasons why the aspirant to initiation must be able to hold his thoughts fairly well in hand before he is in a position to claim admittance to a fellowship in which thought is apt to be as manifest to those around, as the colour of the clothes A man might wear would be manifest to ordinary observa- tion.
And independently of this, regulation of thought in
352 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
the aspirant is regarded from the occult point of view as the prelude to the second qualification of the series before us — regulation of conduct. Taken thus, the first and second qualifications will perhaps seem to some readers presented in the wrong order. It may look like putting the cart before the horse to postpone the reform of one's action till after the reform of one's thinking on the sub- ject. And as applied to the grosser vices of common life — if these were the matters the occultist had to regulate, self-restraint in action would certainly have to be accom- plished before anyone could talk seriously about regulat- ing thought in such a way as to eliminate from his nature the desires that would have to be self-restrained. But the student who has already rendered allegiance to his Higher Self, and attained devotion to right, even in a degree that may be far from perfection in either respect, need hardly be thought of as a person under the dominion of the grosser vices. The conduct to be regulated is that which has to do with the finer problems of life and the subtler tempta- tions. Noblesse oblige. The conduct of an aspirant to initiations which will bring him into conscious relations with beings so exalted as those on the higher levels of the occult hierarchy, should clearly bear some fair correspon- dence with the character of his aspirations. Here there is- no question of rank weeds to be pulled up, but of in- fluences to be brought to bear on the aspirant's nature of such an order that conduct may not only be negatively but positively in creditable harmony with his ideals. With that idea to explain the arrangement it will seem reason- able enough that regulation of thought is treated as the first, and regulation of conduct as the second of the quali- fications.
The third has to do with a change of feeling in regard
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 353
to religious matters which has very different significance for different people. So many beautiful emotions are often interwoven around religious formulas and creeds, even after these have diverged a good deal from the pure teach- ing out of which they may have sprung, that the dis- entanglement of the truth from unfortunate accretions of thought gathered round it, is sometimes in such cases an almost painful process. And yet it must be recognised that the aspirant in search of real knowledge concerning the profound inner verities of spiritual science cannot expect to carry to the end of his undertaking the whole burden of the crude popular beliefs which make up the exoteric religion, whatever it may be, in which his devo- tional instincts have first been nurtured. For the tender- nesses of thought, so to speak, to which that nurture may have given rise, occult teaching in its turn is profoundly tender. Genuine Theosophy is far more interested in tracing the underlying truth through its various disguises in all the great religions of the world than in dissecting their several errors; and back through the symbology that he has been used to, until he reaches the fundamental truth, each student directed by a teacher who correctly gives effect to the spirit in which the Higher Masters of wisdom deal with religious attachments, would be encouraged to choose his course. But it is plain enough that advanced spiritual culture must eventually enable the initiate in occult knowledge to look on all external forms of religious belief with a grand and tolerant impartiality. That Higher Self to which the neophyte in occultism renders an allegi- ance belongs of its nature to a realm of consciousness far exalted above ecclesiastical systems, whether of Europe or Asia. The personality even of the occult student shares that exaltation as he advances in no inconsiderable degree.
24
354 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
The acquisition of this sublime sort of tolerance, which is something more than the mere converse of persecution, constitutes the third qualification of the series we are considering. It is that attitude of mind in which a man clings to the essence of spiritual truth, and is no longer in the mental fetters of any hard and fast dogma or creed. Of course, there are some among the candidates for occult initiation who have this qualification in pretty complete development to start with. The most intense agnosticism may be compatible with readiness to accept spiritual teaching which approaches us with adequate guarantees, and in such cases the growth of the mind, which is required at the stage of progress we are dealing with, is one which will rather invest the student with a newly developed respect for external religions, for the sake of the inner truths they embody, than oppose itself to a bigotry which, by the hypothesis, has no hold upon his thinking. But for others the old religious forms, phrases and terminology are not only dear for the sake of the spiritual truth they may endeavour to set forth; they are dear for their own sake, for that of innumerable associa- tions bound up with them, and thus for some persons they may be a stumbling-block rather than an aid to progress. No one whose mind is cast in a religious mould can ever have been asked by a truly qualified occult teacher to break away from the religion to which he is naturally attached. But he will purify it for himself as he proceeds, and find himself less and less enslaved to its outer husk, whether of form or doctrine, and the advance he may make in the direction of this manifestly higher view of the subject is the measure of the extent to which he invests himself with the third qualification, which may thus be described as freedom from bigotry — freedom
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 355
from any exaggerated attachment to any one body of doctrinal belief, whether it has its origin in the East or the West.
The fourth qualification towards which the candidate has to aspire, is that state of mind in which a man feels no resentment in respect of worldly wrong or ill-usage from which he may suffer. On the face of things, this qualification, in perfection, would be a very sublime attribute, and I need hardly stop to repeat that as regards the occult candidate attempting a preparatory self-culture, so divine a characteristic in entire perfection would hardly be expected. But, on the other hand, nothing can be more fatally incompatible with the aspirations of a person aiming at initiation than a tendency of character which would be the opposite of the qualification in question. For one thing it will be obvious that the guardians of humanity, who are themselves, above all things, the ex- ponents of compassion and unselfishness, can hardly be expected to extend a welcome to pupils who, however well qualified in other respects, might be capable of that worst of all selfishness — revenge. Before the powers that accrue to an initiate from the knowledge to which he is admitted, can safely be placed in his hands, it must be reasonably certain that he is not the kind of person to use them as the weapons of mundane anger. From the beginning he must lean towards the frame of mind in which he will not even feel the resentment to which he must, at all events, train himself not to give way. And for that matter, an honest development in the direction of the first qualifica- tion will go far towards simplifying the acquisition of that under notice. In proportion to the extent to which we really fix our aspirations on the things which concern the Higher Self/ and dissociate our longings from the com-
24*
356 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
mon objects of worldly ambition, we shall be less liable to brood over resentful feelings against those who may have come in the way of our attainment thereof. I need not expand the hint into a moral essay, but concentrating the thought instead of enlarging it, may suggest as a con- veniently concise description of the fourth qualification — Forbearance.
The fifth qualification, like the third, is a characteristic almost instinctive with some natures, extremely difficult of acquisition by others. It has been described as incapa- bility of being turned aside from one's path by temptation. With persons of constitutionally resolved and steadfast temperament, the motives for entering on the occult path, once appreciated, could never lose their weight. Others of more enthusiastic and impulsive character might be turned aside more easily without having been less sincere at the outset. But for all who have made any decided progress in the acquisition of the tendencies already reviewed, it must, to say the least, be growing probable that faithfulness to the lofty purpose in view will be strengthened into something like a constitutional attribute. It must clearly be assumed to have thus established itself as a predominant feature of the candidate's interior nature before the preparatory stage of the great process is over. The one word " Steadfastness " will sufficiently denote the phase of character in question.
And now we come to the last of the qualifications in the probationary series — confidence in the power of the occult Master to teach the truth; in that of the candidate himself to grasp it in all its vast complexity, and to wield the powers knowledge may bring in its train, as others have been able to do this before him.
The final qualification thus treated as among the pre-
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 357
paratory attributes to be acquired by the mere aspirant to initiation, is very significant. How does it come to pass that a " Master " appears suddenly on the scene ? Up to this moment all the efforts contemplated are in the nature of self-preparation, and by the whole hypothesis the process is one that the neophyte must undertake for him- self, before undertaking which it is not to be expected that he will be in conscious relations with any of the higher teachers. But, as already explained, it is quite certain that at a very early stage of the beginner's loyal effort to accom- plish the interior development which must precede his con- scious introduction to higher knowledge and fellowship, he will attract the attention of someone among the higher teachers. For a long while he himself may remain entirely unaware of this, but if he fairly well realises the two great inaugural attributes and trains himself with the earlier qualifications, he will make the acquaintance of the Master, to whom he naturally gravitates, before the time comes at which the sixth assumes practical importance for him.
Of course, it must always be remembered that nothing in connection with such a work as this is done in a hurry. The earlier attributes will not be acquired even in the degree sufficient for the beginner under the sudden im- pulse of a new emotion. Such interior changes ensue from long habits of thought by degrees, or even if some natures are so constituted that a suddenly acquired conviction of enthusiasm may also be held fast, the Master whose atten- tion was engaged would let time elapse, if only for the sake of testing its persistence, before he took any steps that would illuminate the understanding of the pupil concern- ing his own identity.
Indeed, there would be another motive for delaying
358 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
that illumination. By the time the habits of thought, the interior growth, manifest to the Master's observation, which were giving rise to the acquisition of the earlier attributes, were fairly developed, a state of things would have set in bringing the aspirant into new and very import- ant relations with the mighty powers in the background of the world's affairs, by whose conscious agency the law of Karma is applied to each individual of the human family. The desire to tread the Path of Holiness which is expressed by progress in initiation, must necessarily include, if it is intelligently entertained, a desire to close once for all the account of evil doing in the past which may stand as an impediment in the way. It is practically an appeal to the Lords of Karma that they may hasten the process by which the aspirant is — slowly in the ordinary course of things — expiating the mistakes or misdoings of past lives. As such an appeal might be made in ignorance of all it might mean, we may assume as probable that it would not be fully answered if the account of the past were so heavy a one that it could hardly be disposed of in one life. But the greater likelihood lies in the opposite direction. The aspirant for spiritual progress may, perhaps, have a good deal to answer for as regards Karma engendered in past lives, but still he is not likely to be among the most deeply besmirched of his race. So it is probable that some rearrangement of the programme of his life's destiny may enable him to go through at once whatever inevitable suffering awaits him, to the end that in the next following incarnation there may be no impediment in the way of his progress. So this is generally the result of a serious attempt to get upon the path of occult development. In one way or another the aspirant finds it unexpectedly thorny. The trouble he encounters may not necessarily seem a direct
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 359-
consequence of his spiritual efforts. More probably it takes the shape of mundane distress or suffering of some kind or another, loss of fortune, friends, or health, as the case may be. And such misfortunes then become the auto- matically established ordeals which constitute the reai trials of the aspirant's steadfastness. The imperfect accounts of initiation as carried out in more primitive ages of the world that have come down to our time, describe artificial ordeals and temptations put in the neophyte's way, and something of this kind may have actually been arranged for in Ancient Egypt, but even there the natural Karmic tests and trials of perseverance must have been the more important, and at all events it is to their by no means tender mercies that the modern aspirant must look forward to being confided. If the irritation and im- patience to which they may give rise have the effect of turning aside his thoughts and anxieties from the path of progress on which he has sought to enter, then he will have failed for that life, at all events, in accomplishing the fifth qualification, and his responsibility will not be unduly aggravated by such disclosures or interior illumination as- would bring the sixth into question.
Then in the fulness of time the aspirant — no longer to be described by that word alone — is conducted by the Master by whom his earlier progress has been watched over and guided, to a great result. He passes a threshold beyond which he finds himself in a certain sense a member of the great Fraternity of Holiness. It is true that from one point of view he has but then for the first time begun to tread the path of true occult development. Many lives may be spent in the efforts and acquirements which lead to Adeptship. From that level the horizons before him, v/hen he ultimately gains perception of them, will widen
360 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
in a manner which no one can expect to realise with exactitude beforehand; but at all events the aspirant who crosses the boundary of the first great initiation has gained something that can never be lost, whatever may happen to him in the future, whatever difficulties he may encounter as he proceeds. He can never in the nature of things slip back to be what he was before the all-important change was wrought in his nature first by his own persistent effort, and at last fixed by his acceptance at the hands of the governing hierarchy of the world.
The initiation which thus carries the aspirant once for all across the chasm dividing ordinary humanity from the occult world has hitherto been called, in theosophical literature, the " Sohan " initiation. That name will serve for the present. The attainment is not a question of psychic characteristics. It may frequently happen that it is taken on the higher planes of conscious- ness without the incarnate personality remembering or knowing anything about the matter. But at all events it is altogether a question of moral and ethical development and will not be hastened one day, in the absence of such development, by the possession of psychic senses which may be the Karmic fruit of efforts to penetrate the mysteries of Nature, undertaken (perhaps in past lives) from motives quite out of harmony with the lofty altruism of the genuine disciple of the Masters. Psychic faculties grown in this unhealthy way are far more likely to entangle their possessor with evil relationships on the occult planes of existence than to help him on the real upward path.
Not even on the attainment of the Sohan initiation does the development of psychic faculties, such as will put the waking incarnate man into possession of those keys
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 361
of knowledge confided to him at his initiation, become the foremost object of his appointed training. His work as regards his own training — though he will now, when actively functioning in the Higher Self, have plenty of other work to do under proper direction, the nature of which cannot easily be comprehended from the point of view of ordinary mundane thinking — will still be primarily concerned with the perfection of his moral attributes. For one thing, now he is on the true path of initiation, he will be required to attain with absolute completeness the characteris- tics which are but imperfectly realised during the earlier period. The result to be attained, indeed, is now approached in a somewhat different way. In the course of his progress through the various stages of initiation leading up to Adeptship, the disciple is not spoken of as acquiring such and such attributes, but is called on to cast off various "" fetters " which attach him to the lower levels of exist- ence. In some Eastern books these fetters are enumerated in a definite order, but I do not think the purposes of this explanation would be served by an examination of the series. From the point of view of ordinary life their exact significance in the occult world would probably be mis- apprehended. But it is none the less interesting to survey the stages of this higher path, which are better under- stood even in the outer world by those who are in any true sense occult students, than many Theosophists may be aware of.
Without suspecting what he is unconsciously dealing with, Prof. Max Muller mentions certain steps of initia- tion in one of his translations. In a note to Chapter xii. of his " Dammapada " he writes : " . . . Arhat being the highest degree of the four orders of Ariyas, viz., Srotaapanna, Sakridagamin, Anagamin and Arhat.''
362 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
It is quite unnecessary for the European student to burden his memory with Oriental terms of this kind.
Long intervals of time may separate the passage from one of these degrees to the next. But, provided the Karma of the past is favourable, progress may be very much more rapid.
To guard against a misunderstanding that would be fatal to the proper appreciation of the system I am describing, it is necessary here to remind readers familiar with certain frequently repeated statements in occult literature concerning the duration of the intervals between incarnate lives, that such statements relate to the normal progress of humanity along the majestic course of ordinary evolution. Once " entered on the stream " new condi- tions come into play, and the physical lives required for the training of the disciple may follow in rapid and un- broken succession. Again, in order that the whole position may be properly apprehended, it is necessary to explain that the course of initiation described so far is that which leads the aspirant directly up into the great " White Lodge," as it is sometimes called — into close and immediate relations with those spiritual beings more exalted in nature than even the full Adepts, who constitute what may be thought of as the governing hierarchy of this planet. There are other paths of occult initiation by which neophytes may be enabled to progress some distance along the avenues of advancement leading to power and knowledge. Concern- ing some of these the less said the better, except for the consideration that to comprehend good aright it may be necessary to bear in mind the existence of evil. A resolute and sufficiently reckless determination may enable the aspirant to knowledge concerning, and power over, the occult forces of Nature, even to acquire considerable
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 363,
control of them, without fitting himself by moral develop- ment to use them for the good of humanity at large. Under the guidance of purely selfish motives, the neophyte who is unfortunate enough to be able to purchase help from corresponding Masters may get on to levels of knowledge and power corresponding to some of the stages of pro- gress described above as the four steps on the true path. This paper is not concerned to trace the ultimate spiritual consequences of that sort of progress in what is technically called Black Magic; but the point to remember in this connection is that a good deal of psychic and astral develop- ment going on in the world under the guidance of various old schools, or relatively modern societies, of occultism, is not necessarily Black Magic, though it may lie apart from the path of initiation leading directly upward to the White Lodge. There was a time when the White Lodge itself claimed progress in psychic development from its candi- dates as the first qualification for entrance on the path. That system prevailed during the Atlantean period. But with the great spiritual impulse imparted to the Fifth Race by its naturally appointed Teacher when his time came, a change was introduced under his direction in the rules of initiation, and the ethical or moral qualifications were taken first, in accordance with the scheme set forth in the earlier part of the present statement.
The precise nature of the acquirements which lead to actual Adeptship cannot, as I have already said, be dealt with on the physical plane of consciousness alone. It would be as reasonable to attempt a treatise on meta- physics in words of one syllable. Splendid as the modern achievements of the human mind in many directions may seem when they are compared with its conditions at ruder periods, they are merely concerned with one aspect of
364 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
Nature, with one plane of consciousness, and the Adept has to concern himself with several. In terms of one plane it is impossible to describe the tasks of another. And this difficulty standing in our way before we even reach in imagination the Arhat level of progress, we are all the more debarred from attempting to analyse the functions and attributes ultimately exercised and acquired by some of the great Adepts who eventually enter into mysterious union with the fundamental laws of the cosmos, and become in a certain sense their expression — their radiant point, so to speak, through which the Divine idea thence- forth flows. Appreciating nothing more in this connec- tion than the broad principle that there is no limit to the upward progress of humanity towards perfection and the infinitudes of wisdom, we may leave the subject at the threshold of mysteries it would be irreverent to handle at this stage of the world's progress in a treatise designed for publication. Of one spiritual rank, higher even than that of the Arhat, it may, however, be possible to speak defi- nitely, because it represents a condition of evolution which, stupendous as its significance may be, is neverthe- less the theoretical goal of the whole human race in this Manvantara. All will certainly not attain it, and those who do so in the ordinary course of evolution will only reach it in the course of millions of ages and beyond an immeasurable vista of lives, in reference to which on their own merits the doctrines of pessimistic philosophy would but too generally apply; but for everyone who may read these pages it is theoretically attainable.
The rank in the hierarchy of Adeptship above that of the Arhat, which we may now endeavour in some measure to comprehend, is attained by the Arhat, after what periods of effort and delay we need not now attempt
INITIATION IN THE PRESENT DAY 365
to account for, when he casts off the final " fetter " which impedes him at that stage. The fetter in question is. simply " avidya " — ignorance — and the use of the word in such a connection may help to show how easily the ter- minology of the higher " Path " may be misunderstood. " Ignorance " for most of us has a meaning derived from comparison of certain states of mind with ordinary nine- teenth-century culture, taken as the standard of wisdom and knowledge. The " ignorance " of the Adept is measured against absolute knowledge of all that concerns the system of evolution and the chain of planets to which he belongs. When he has at last — probably through many protracted incarnations taken by his own will and choice — attained a complete mastery of all the wisdom and knowledge this scheme of evolution can afford, he is ready to pass on.
When he is in a position to survey the whole process on which the human family is launched, from its begin- ning in the remote past to its conclusion in the almost immeasurably distant future; when all the natural laws and forces which play round it lie within his comprehen- sion and grasp, whether they are operative on the physical plane with its wonderful complexity of molecules and forces, or on those other planes invisible to ordinary sight which interpenetrate it or surround it and are more bewildering in their complexity still; when all the myriad enigmas of good and evil, of sin and sorrow, and hope, are resolved into intelligible meaning, and neither the earth below, nor the heavens above, nor life, nor death, hold any riddles from his understanding, the Adept is qualified to attain the final rank in the vast concatenation of progress we have been surveying, and is then known to initiates as " Aseka." It is by virtue of some appreciation, as far as it
366 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
goes, of the place in Nature which the Aseka Adepts occupy, that their pupils, whether in a humble or advanced degree, entertain the assurance they always feel in refer- ence to occult teachings definitely received from such a source.