... Be sure that you understand me right about the Black side. I mean this: that when men work along a good while, and really raise themselves up by that, they get the attention of the Black if they are of sufficient importance for it. I have their attention, and it makes a trouble now and then. What we all want to have, then, is the best armour for such a fight, and that is patience. Patience is a great thing, and will work in more ways than one, not only in personal life, but in wider concerns.
The difficulty of remembering the things you read, and the like, may be due to one or many causes. First, it indicates the need of mental discipline in the way of compelling yourself to serious reading and thinking, even though for a short time each day. If persisted in, this will gradually change the mental action, just as one can alter the taste for different sorts of food taken into the body. Again, if you have been dealing in what is known as Mind Cure or Metaphysical Healing, you should avoid it, because it will increase the difficulty you mention. It is different from good, ordinary, mental discipline. And also if you have been in any way following Spiritualism or indulging in psychic thoughts or visions or experiences, these would be a cause for the trouble, and should be abandoned.
There is no need for you to be a despairer. Reflect on that old verse, "What room is there for sorrow and what room for doubt in him who knows that the Self is one, and that all things are the Self, only differing in degree." This is a free rendering but is what it means. Now, it is true that a man cannot force himself at once into a new will and into a new belief but by thinking much on the same thing—such as this—he soon gets a new will and a new belief, and from it will come strength and also light. Try this plan. It is purely occult, simple, and powerful. I hope all will be well, and that as we are shaken up from time to time we shall grow strong.
----'s article strove to show that H. P. B. did not teach the doctrine of reincarnation in '77 as she did later, which is quite true so far as the public was then concerned, but she did to me and others teach it then as now, and further it seems clear what she meant, to wit, that there is no reincarnation for the astral monad, which is the astral man; and it being a theosophical doctrine that the astral man does not reincarnate save in exceptional cases, she taught then the same thing as she did later. Personally H. P. B. told me many times of the real doctrine of reincarnation, enforced by the case of the death of my own child, so I know what she thought and believed.
I am not able to give you the definition which you ask for, as it seems to me spirit cannot be defined except in this way, that the whole universe is made of spirit and matter, both constituting together the Absolute. What is not in matter is spirit, and what is not in spirit is matter; but there is no particle of matter without spirit, and no particle of spirit without matter. If this attempted definition is correct, you will see that it is impossible to define the things of the spirit, and that has always been said by the great teachers of the past.