Meantime, in order to enter upon the first stage of my new chela-ship, it became necessary for me to forget all the experiences which I had acquired during the last twenty years of my life, as she explained that it
would be impossible for my mind to receive the new truths which I had now to learn so long as I clung to what she called “the fantasies” of my mahatma-ship. I cannot describe the pang which this announcement produced. Still I felt that nothing must impede my search after truth; and I could not conceal from myself that, if in winning it I also won Ushas, I was not to be pitied. Nor to this day have I ever had reason to regret the determination at which I then arrived.
It would be impossible for me in the compass of this article to describe all my experiences in the new life to which I dedicated myself, nor indeed would it be proper to do so; suffice it to say, that I progressed beyond my Ushas’ most sanguine expectations. And here I would remark, that I found my chief stimulus to exertion to be one which had been completely wanting in my former experience. It consisted simply in this, that altruism had been substituted for egotism. Formerly, I made the most herculean spiritual effort to tide myself over the great period of danger—the middle of the fifth round. “That,” as Mr Sinnett correctly says, “is the stupendous achievement of the adept as regards
his own personal interests;” and of course our own interests were all that I or any of the other mahatmas ever thought of. “He has reached,” pursues our author, “the farther shore of the sea in which so many of mankind will perish. He waits there, in a contentment which people cannot even realise without some glimmering of spirituality—the sixth sense—themselves, for the arrival of his future companions.” This is perfectly true. I always found that the full enjoyment of this sixth sense among mahatmas was heightened just in proportion to the numbers of other people who perish, so long as you were safe yourself.
Here among the Sisters, on the other hand, the principle which was inculcated was, “Never mind if you perish yourself, so long as you can save others;” and indeed the whole effort was to elaborate such a system by means of the concentration of spiritual forces upon earth, as should be powerful enough to redeem it from its present dislocated and unhappy condition. To this end had the efforts of the Sisters been directed for so many centuries, and I had reason to believe that the time was not far distant
when we should emerge from our retirement to be the saviours and benefactors of the whole human race. It followed from this, of course, that I retained all the supernatural faculties which I had acquired as a mahatma, and which I now determined to use, not for my own benefit as formerly, but for that of my fellow-creatures, and was soon able—thanks to additional faculties, acquired under Ushas’ tutorship—to flit about the world in my astral body without inconvenience.
I happened to be in London on business the other day in this ethereal condition, when Mr Sinnett’s book appeared, and I at once projected it on the astral current to Thibet. I immediately received a communication from Ushas to the effect that it compelled some words of reply from the sisterhood, and a few days since I received them. I regret that it has been necessary to occupy so much of the reader’s time with personal details. They were called for in order that he should understand the source of my information, and my peculiar qualifications for imparting it. It will be readily understood, after my long connection with the Thibetan brotherhood, how painful it must be to me to be the
instrument chosen not merely of throwing a doubt upon “the absolute truth concerning nature, man, the origin of the universe, and the destinies toward which its inhabitants are tending,” to use Mr Sinnett’s own words, but actually to demolish the whole structure of Esoteric Buddhism! Nor would I do this now were it not that the publication of the book called by that name has reluctantly compelled the sisterhood to break their long silence. If the Thibetan Brothers had only held their tongues and kept their secret as they have done hitherto, they would not now be so rudely disturbed by the Thibetan Sisters.
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“The Sisters of Thibet,” writes Ushas, of course with an astral pen in astral ink, “owe their origin to a circumstance which occurred in the time of Sankaracharya, erroneously supposed by the initiated to be an incarnation of Buddha. This teacher, who lived more than a century before the Christian era, dwelt chiefly upon the necessity of pursuing gnyanam in order to obtain moksha—that is to say, the importance of secret knowledge to spiritual progress, and the consummation