part in connection with the mighty task of helping on

the race at large, will at the fitting time be guided by those into whose companionship his aspirations will have drawn him, to take the necessary steps which will engender the psychic faculties he will then require to fulfil the purposes of his loftier nature. But at the same time causes produce results, whether they are set in motion with lofty or ignoble purpose, and people who are filled with an ardent curiosity concerning the mysteries of Nature as such, and are constantly making whatever efforts lie within their range to penetrate these mysteries, will karmically engender an improved capacity to do this in the future, and will find themselves endowed in some life or other with the abnormal characteristics we may loosely describe as psychic faculty. They will begin to see visions that are invisible to those around them, and by thus bringing the astral plane to a certain extent within the range of their own cognisance, they will bring themselves within the cognisance of beings natural to the astral plane, and so will perhaps become mediums through which these beings exert forces on the physical plane, the effects of
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which become obvious to all bystanders in the shape of spiritualistic phenomena. Assuming these dawning attri- butes to be quite unaccompanied by moral or ethical development, to be animated solely by a thirst of know ledge as a personal acquisition to be highly enjoyed, then such an unhappy psychic may become serviceable to mis- chievous agencies functioning on the astral plane, who may be simply persons like himself, a good deal further advanced, who may have acquired the power not merely of cognising the astral plane with the astral senses, but of getting clear of the body and functioning on that plane in the appropriate vehicle, gathering there whatever they think they require for themselves. Such persons, com- monly spoken of in occult writings as Black Magicians, are ever on the look-out for those whom they may im- press into their service, and the wholly ignorant, untrained psychic, unprotected by affinity with spiritual influences from above, becomes their ready prey, with results, very often as regards the Karma of the person so entangled, that reach over terrible periods of time, and may entangle the victim for a long series of lives in succession, with grievous miseries of a complicated sort.
Just as often, indeed, the naturally-born psychic faculty may be due to aspirations which have been largely mingled with genuine, though often uncultivated spiritual long- ings. Then the possessor is, by the very purity of his or her nature, shielded from the Black Magician's attack, and ready, with a little help, even though up to that time such help may not have been earned, to get on to the right path of true occult development. It is necessary to be thus as much on our. guard against under-rating as against over-rating the naturally-born psychic capacity. It may be a blessing or a curse entirely in accordance with the
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circumstances just referred to; or if it may be regarded as in equilibrium between the two influences, then above all things it becomes desirable to shield its exer- cise by the earnest cultivation of a lofty purpose and by a specific intellectual appreciation of the course of evolution leading to the sublime heights of spiritual development.
I take it that cases are extremely rare in which the naturally-born psychic faculty can be thought of as func- tioning on any region above the astral plane. Of course the Higher Self of every human being is akin in its nature to the arupa level of the manasic plane, and in the infi- nite variety of human characteristics that we have to deal with, cases may arise in which by the continued feeding of the Higher Self with the essence, as it were, pf many good and spiritually inspired lives, the Higher Self may have become so individually conscious on its own natural plane as to be able in some measure to reflect that con- sciousness back to its physical manifestation during sleep, or, rather, when it has returned to the body after sleep. Such a person may thus have true touch with lofty planes of consciousness. Such an unusual condition of develop- ment might account for some of the more important pro- phetic dreams which sometimes constitute so curious an enigma for the psychic inquirer, but it could not often happen that such development as I am here thinking of would be unaccompanied altogether by occult knowledge, for no one who is qualified to assimilate that knowledge in a useful way is left by Karma wholly without any hints which may set him on the true path. The hints or oppor- tunities may come in one shape or another, but they come, we are assured, for all who are qualified to avail themselves of them, and though they may sometimes be uncultivated
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through a failure to appreciate their meaning correctly and thus quite blamelessly, it is not likely that they would be repeated in many successive lives without giving rise to the required enlightenment of the whole thinking soul. Leaving unusual possibilities out of account, however, the most interesting variety of psychic facility we have to deal with is that which is engendered as the fruit of some anterior attempts at occult development. In some past life the person in question may have had an opportunity of the particular kind I have just been referring to. He may have availed himself of that opportunity up to the limita- tions of his development, as it then stood, which may have been associated with such aspirations as would engender the growth of the astral senses, and then he gets launched on a life the Karma of which is probably favourable to his further progress, although in the beginning he fails to appreciate its significance. His dawning faculties are full of interest for him; there are spiritual forces in his nature which render such visions as he may have far more attrac- tive than alarming. As soon as opportunity serves he assimilates on the intellectual side with marvellous facility all teaching pointing in the true direction of occult pro- gress, and such a man may become, not merely a psychic, not merely an earnest devotee of theosophical philosophy, but one of those open-eyed disciples whose consciousness has been trained to work freely on the spiritual levels above the astral, and whose beautiful privilege it is to in- augurate their long career of higher usefulness in sub- sequent lives by constituting themselves a link between the great Masters and the awakening enthusiasm of the many students still on the ordinary plane of life, who are thus enabled, in advance of their own development, to acquire such specific knowledge concerning the occult
IRREGULAR PSYCHIC PROGRESS 375
world that their own evolution in the next life as open- eyed disciples in their turn becomes surely guaranteed.
For the correct appreciation, meanwhile, of the whole entangled problem which has to do with natural-born psychic faculty it is necessary to consider the vast stratum of intervening cases lying between those by which some inquisitive explorer of the astral plane falls into the clutches of the Black Magician, and those, on the other hatnd, where the loftily inspired aspirant gains, through the expansion of his psychic powers, conscious touch with those who may lead him to the sublimest heights. Ever since the human race has come of age, so to speak, since the middle period, that is to say, of the Atlantean Race during this present world period, there have been people governed by the desire for occult knowledge and progress in all possible varieties, so to speak, of purity, as regards their motives. I suppose it may be assumed that Karmic influences, in the very loftiest examples of such aspiration, would guide the inquirer into the path leading directly to the supreme Adept organisation which merges, as regards its higher levels, as I endeavoured to show in the chapter on the Path of Initiation, in the governing hierarchy of this stupendous system, and so in the immeasurable spiritual grandeur of the cosmic hierarchy. But at the same time it has come to pass, at various periods, that other associa- tions or lodges of occult inquirers have been founded, the character and purpose of which has been very admirable indeed, and with which great numbers of people have been associated, greatly to their own advantage and to that of others. The fact appears to be that all such subordinate lodges of occultism merge themselves sooner or later into the main stream, but following the bent of their own in- dividual characteristics some people, gravitating upwards,
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may move for a long time in the almost exclusive com- panionship of their own original associates, and may in this way attain to positions of influence on the super- physical planes of Nature, from which they will be doing their best to help on the spiritual progress of others by the light of their own convictions.