This is why those who have no apprehension or conception of the process, can see only mystery and miracle in the result.
If anyone cites the so-called “black magicians” of Egypt, and of antiquity, to refute the moral code as the essential condition of attainment, they will find that these priests and “magi climbing up some other way,” and whom Jesus designated as “thieves and robbers,” could never function or pass beyond the so-called “astral plane.” Here is where the Sibyl and the “virgin seer” came in.
This is clearly shown in that little book “The Idyll of the White Lotus,” as in several of Bulwer’s novels. Hypnotism and Ceremonial Magic, as revealed in the writings of Abbé Constant, represent ambition for knowledge and power without “living the life,” and at any cost to mankind. These Margraves have often existed, sealed their own fate, and “gone to their own place.” H. P. Blavatsky referred to them as “lost souls,” or “soulless individuals.” They are also graphically described in “The Strange Story of Arinzeman.”
There was always the “Right-hand Path,” and the “Left-hand Path.”
Even a slight familiarity with ancient literatures and philosophies reveals the fact, that all these things have been known for ages. The subtlety of the Hindoo mind has been such as to leave no phase of mental or psychic phenomena uninvestigated.
To the casual and uninstructed reader, it often seems like an endless and hopeless jungle, and he is unable to bring order out of the seemingly endless confusion.
There is not a single percept or concept in what is now called “New Thought,” that may not be found repeated with almost endless variations thousands of years ago.
Reference has already been made to the conditions imposed upon the student who aspires to know, and to become.
The obligations upon the teacher are no less stringent, for both are, from first to last, working under both natural and spiritual law to which they are bound to conform.
To be possessed of such knowledge the teacher must have abandoned worldly ambition, the love of wealth, and the applause of men. All motives of time-serving and self-seeking must assail him in vain. He becomes the almoner of the treasure-house of Light and Knowledge. He must exemplify what he teaches. If he can impart his knowledge, or assist an aspiring and worthy brother, it must be in the way he has himself received it, “without money and without price,” or any “hope of reward or fee,” and the brother so receiving, in his own degree, must be ready to pass it on under precisely the same terms and conditions.