the subject has led to some painful discussions between myself and some of my mahatma brothers—that the extreme facility with which I was enabled to perceive at a glance “the complex anatomy of the planetary system,” and the rapid development of my “dormant sixth sense,” was due mainly to the fact that I was nothing more nor less than what spiritualists call a highly sensitive medium. Meantime this premature development of my sixth sense forced me right up through the obstacles which usually impede such an operation in the case of a fourth-round man, into that stage of evolution which awaits the rest of humanity—or rather, so much of humanity as may reach it in the ordinary course of nature—in the latter part of the fifth round. I merely mention this to give confidence to my readers, as I am about to describe a moral cataclysm which subsequently took place in my sixth sense, which would be of no importance in the case of an ordinary chela, but which was attended with the highest significance as occurring to a mahatma who had already attained the highest grade in the mystic brotherhood. It was not to be wondered at that when I arrived at this advanced
condition, Khatmandhu, though a pleasant town, was not altogether a convenient residence for an occultist of my eminence. In the first place, the streets were infested with dugpas, or red-caps, a heretical sect, some members of which have arhat pretensions of a very high order—indeed I am ready to admit that I have met with Shammar adepts, who, so far as supernatural powers were concerned, were second to none among ourselves. But this was only the result of that necromancy which Buddha in his sixth incarnation denounced in the person of Tsong-kha-pa, the great reformer. They even deny the spiritual supremacy of the Dalai Lama at Lhassa, and own allegiance to an impostor who lives at the monastery of Sakia Djong.
The presence of these men, and the presumption of their adepts, who maintained that through subjective or clairvoyant conditions, which they asserted were higher than ours, they had attained a more exalted degree of illumination which revealed a different cosmogony from that which has been handed down to us through countless generations of adepts, were a perpetual annoyance to me;
but perhaps not greater than the proximity of the English Resident and the officers attached to him, the impure exhalations from whose rupas, or material bodies, infected as they were with magnetic elements drawn from Western civilisation, whenever I met them, used to send me to bed for a week. I therefore strongly felt the necessity of withdrawal to that isolated and guarded region where the most advanced adepts can pursue their contemplative existence without fear of interruption, and prepare their karma, or, in other words, the molecules of their fifth principle, for the ineffable bliss of appropriate development in devachan—a place, or rather “state,” somewhat resembling Purgatory with a dash of heaven in it; or even for the still more exquisite sensation which arises from having no sensations at all, and which characterises nirvana, or a sublime condition of conscious rest in Omniscience.
That I am not drawing upon my imagination in alluding to this mysterious region, or imposing upon the credulity of my readers, I will support my assertion by the high authority of Mr Sinnett, or rather of his Guru; and here I may remark incidentally,
that after a long experience of Gurus, I have never yet met one who would consciously tell a lie.
“From time immemorial,” says Mr Sinnett’s Guru, “there has been a certain region in Thibet, which to this day is quite unknown to and unapproachable by any but initiated persons, and inaccessible to the ordinary people of the country, as to any others, in which adepts have always congregated. But the country generally was not in Buddha’s time, as it has since become, the chosen habitation of the great brotherhood. Much more than they are at present, were the mahatmas in former times distributed throughout the world.
“The progress of civilisation engendering the magnetism they find so trying, had, however, by the date with which we are now dealing—the fourteenth century—already given rise to a very general movement towards Thibet on the part of the previously dissociated occultists. Far more widely than was held to be consistent with the safety of mankind was occult knowledge and power then found to be disseminated. To the task of putting it under a rigid system of rule and law did Tsong-kha-pa address himself.”
Of course, before transferring my material body to this region, I was perfectly familiar with it by reason of the faculty which, as Mr Sinnett very truly tells us, is common to all adepts, of being able to flit about the world at will in your astral body; and here I would
remark parenthetically, that I shall use the term “astral body” to save confusion, though, as Mr Sinnett again properly says, it is not strictly accurate under the circumstances. In order to make this clear, I will quote his very lucid observations on the subject:—
“During the last year or two, while hints and scraps of occult science have been finding their way out into the world, the expression ‘astral body’ has been applied to a certain semblance of the human form, fully inhabited by its higher principles, which can migrate to any distance from the physical body—projected consciously and with exact intention by a living adept, or unintentionally by the accidental application of certain mental forces to his loosened principles by any person at the moment of death. For ordinary purposes, there is no practical inconvenience in using the expression ‘astral body’ for the appearance so projected—indeed any more strictly accurate expression, as will be seen directly, would be cumbersome, and we must go on using the phrase in both meanings. No confusion need arise; but strictly speaking, the linga sharira, or third principle, is the astral body, and that cannot be sent about as the vehicle of the higher principles.”