Title: Invisible helpers
Author: Leadbeater, C. W. (Charles Webster)
Language: English
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  INVISIBLE HELPERS

  BY
  C. W. LEADBEATER


  AMERICAN REVISED EDITION
  WITH INDEX


  CHICAGO:
  THE THEOSOPHICAL BOOK CONCERN
  “Krotona,” Hollywood,
  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  LONDON:
  THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY, 3 LANGHAM PLACE
  BENARES: THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY
  MADRAS, THE “THEOSOPHIST” OFFICE, ADYAR.

  1915



  CONTENTS.


                                                        PAGE.

  CHAPTER    I.--THE UNIVERSAL BELIEF IN THEM               5

  CHAPTER   II.--SOME MODERN INSTANCES                      9

  CHAPTER  III.--A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE                     18

  CHAPTER   IV.--THE HELPERS                               25

  CHAPTER    V.--THE REALITY OF SUPERPHYSICAL LIFE         34

  CHAPTER   VI.--A TIMELY INTERVENTION                     39

  CHAPTER  VII.--THE “ANGEL” STORY                         42

  CHAPTER VIII.--THE STORY OF A FIRE                       50

  CHAPTER   IX.--MATERIALIZATION AND REPERCUSSION          56

  CHAPTER    X.--THE TWO BROTHERS                          63

  CHAPTER   XI.--WRECKS AND CATASTROPHES                   72

  CHAPTER  XII.--WORK AMONG THE DEAD                       78

  CHAPTER XIII.--OTHER BRANCHES OF THE WORK                92

  CHAPTER  XIV.--THE QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED               97

  CHAPTER   XV.--THE PROBATIONARY PATH                    108

  CHAPTER  XVI.--THE PATH PROPER                          118

  CHAPTER XVII.--WHAT LIES BEYOND                         129

  INDEX                                                   135



INVISIBLE HELPERS



CHAPTER I.

THE UNIVERSAL BELIEF IN THEM.


It is one of the most beautiful characteristics of Theosophy that it
gives back to people in a more rational form everything which was
really useful and helpful to them in the religions which they have
outgrown. Many who have broken through the chrysalis of blind faith,
and mounted on the wings of reason and intuition to the freer, nobler
mental life of more exalted levels, nevertheless feel that in the
process of this glorious gain a something has been lost--that in giving
up the beliefs of their childhood they have also cast aside much of the
beauty and the poetry of life.

If, however, their lives in the past have been sufficiently good to
earn for them the opportunity of coming under the benign influence of
Theosophy, they very soon discover that even in this particular there
has been no loss at all, but an exceeding great gain--that the glory
and the beauty and the poetry are there in fuller measure than they had
ever hoped before, and no longer as a mere pleasant dream from which
the cold light of common-sense may at any time rudely awaken them,
but as truths of nature which will bear investigation--which become
only brighter, fuller and more perfect as they are more accurately
understood.

A marked instance of this beneficent action of Theosophy is the way in
which the invisible world (which, before the great wave of materialism
engulfed us, used to be regarded as the source of all living help) has
been restored by it to modern life. All the charming folk-lore of the
elf, the brownie and the gnome, of the spirits of air and water, of
the forest, the mountain and the mine, is shown by it to be no more
meaningless superstition, but to have a basis of actual and scientific
fact behind it. Its answer to the great fundamental question “If a man
die, shall he live again?” is equally definite and scientific, and its
teaching on the nature and conditions of the life after death throws
a flood of light upon much that, for the Western world at least, was
previously wrapped in impenetrable darkness.

It cannot be too often repeated that in this teaching as to the
immortality of the soul and the life after death, Theosophy stands
in a position totally different from that of ordinary religion. It
does not put forward these great truths merely on the authority of
some sacred book of long ago; in speaking of these subjects it is not
dealing with pious opinions, or metaphysical speculations, but with
solid, definite facts, as real and as close to us as the air we breathe
or the houses we live in--facts of which many among us have constant
experience--facts among which lies the daily work of some of our
students, as will presently be seen.

Among the beautiful conceptions which Theosophy has restored to us
stands pre-eminent that of the great helpful agencies of nature. The
belief in these has been world-wide from the earliest dawn of history,
and is universal even now outside the narrow domains of protestantism,
which has emptied and darkened the world for its votaries by its
attempt to do away with the natural and perfectly true idea of
intermediate agents, and reduce everything to the two factors of man
and deity--a device whereby the conception of deity has been infinitely
degraded, and man has remained unhelped.

A moment’s thought will show that the ordinary view of providence--the
conception of an erratic interference by the central power of
the universe with the result of his own decrees--would imply the
introduction of partiality into the scheme, and therefore of the
whole train of evils which must necessarily follow upon its heels. The
Theosophical teaching, that a man can be thus specially helped only
when his past actions have been such as to deserve this assistance,
and that even then the help will be given through those who are
comparatively near his own level, is free from this serious objection;
and it furthermore brings back to us the older and far grander
conception of an unbroken ladder of living beings extending down from
the Logos Himself to the very dust beneath our feet.

In the East the existence of the invisible helpers has always been
recognized, though the names given and the characteristics attributed
to them naturally vary in different countries; and even in Europe we
have had the old Greek stories of the constant interference of the
gods in human affairs, and the Roman legend that Castor and Pollux led
the legions of the infant republic in the battle of Lake Regillus. Nor
did such a conception die out when the classical period ended, for
these stories have their legitimate successors in mediæval tales of
saints who appeared at critical moments and turned the fortune of war
in favour of the Christian hosts, or of guardian angels who sometimes
stepped in and saved a pious traveller from what would otherwise have
been certain destruction.



CHAPTER II.

SOME MODERN INSTANCES.


Even in this incredulous age, and amidst the full whirl of our
nineteenth-century civilization, in spite of the dogmatism of our
science and the deadly dullness of our protestantism, instances of
intervention inexplicable from the materialistic standpoint may still
be found by any one who will take the trouble to look for them; and in
order to demonstrate this to the reader I will briefly epitomize a few
of the examples given in one or other of the recent collections of such
stories, adding thereto one or two that have come within my own notice.

One very remarkable feature of these more recent examples is that the
intervention seems nearly always to have been directed towards the
helping or saving of children.

An interesting case which occurred in London only a few years ago was
connected with the preservation of a child’s life in the midst of a
terrible fire, which broke out in a street near Holborn, and entirely
destroyed two of the houses there. The flames had obtained such hold
before they were discovered that the firemen were unable to save the
houses, but they succeeded in rescuing all the inmates except two--an
old woman who was suffocated by the smoke before they could reach her,
and a child about five years old, whose presence in the house had been
forgotten in the hurry and excitement of the moment.

The mother of the child, it seems, was a friend or relative of the
landlady of the house, and had left the little creature in her charge
for the night, because she was herself obliged to go down to Colchester
on business. It was not until everyone else had been rescued, and the
whole house was wrapped in flame, that the landlady remembered with
a terrible pang the trust that had been confided to her. It seemed
hopeless then to attempt to get at the garret where the child had been
put to bed, but one of the firemen heroically resolved to make the
desperate effort, and, after receiving minute directions as to the
exact situation of the room, plunged in among the smoke and flame.

He found the child, and brought him forth entirely unharmed; but when
he rejoined his comrades he had a very singular story to tell. He
declared that when he reached the room he found it in flames, and most
of the floor already fallen; but the fire had curved round the room
towards the window in an unnatural and unaccountable manner, the like
of which in all his experience he had never seen before, so that the
corner in which the child lay was wholly untouched, although the very
rafters of the fragment of floor on which his little crib stood were
half burnt away. The child was naturally very much terrified, but the
fireman distinctly and repeatedly declared that as at great risk he
made his way towards him he saw a form like an angel--here his exact
words are given--a something “all gloriously white and silvery, bending
over the bed and smoothing down the counterpane.” He could not possibly
have been mistaken about it, he said, for it was visible in a glare of
light for some moments, and in fact disappeared only when he was within
a few feet of it.

Another curious feature of this story is that the child’s mother
found herself unable to sleep that night down at Colchester, but was
constantly harrassed by a strong feeling that something was wrong with
her child, insomuch that at last she was compelled to rise and spend
some time in earnest prayer that the little one might be protected from
the danger which she instinctively felt to be hanging over him. The
intervention was thus evidently what a Christian would call an answer
to prayer; a Theosophist, putting the same idea in more scientific
phraseology, would say that her intense outpouring of love constituted
a force which one of our invisible helpers was able to use for the
rescue of her child from a terrible death.

A remarkable case in which children were abnormally protected occurred
on the banks of the Thames near Maidenhead a few years earlier than our
last example. This time the danger from which they were saved arose not
from fire but from water. Three little ones, who lived, if I recollect
rightly, in or near the village of Shottesbrook, were taken out for a
walk along the towing-path by their nurse. They rushed suddenly round a
corner upon a horse which was drawing a barge, and in the confusion two
of them got on the wrong side of the tow-rope and were thrown into the
water.

The boatman, who saw the accident, sprang forward to try to save them,
and he noticed that they were floating high in the water “in quite an
unnatural way, like,” as he said, and moving quietly towards the bank.
This was all that he and the nurse saw, but the children each declared
that “a beautiful person, all white and shining,” stood beside them in
the water, held them up and guided them to the shore. Nor was their
story without corroboration, for the bargeman’s little daughter, who
ran up from the cabin when she heard the screams of the nurse, also
affirmed that she saw a lovely lady in the water dragging the two
children to the bank.

Without fuller particulars than the story gives us, it is impossible to
say with certainty from what class of helpers this “angel” was drawn;
but the probabilities are in favour of its having been a developed
human being functioning in the astral body, as will be seen when later
on we deal with this subject from the other side, as it were--from the
point of view of the helpers rather than the helped.

A case in which the agency is somewhat more definitely distinguishable
is related by the well-known clergyman, Dr. John Mason Neale. He
states that a man who had recently lost his wife was on a visit with
his little children at the country house of a friend. It was an old,
rambling mansion, and in the lower part of it there were long, dark
passages, in which the children played about with great delight. But
presently they came upstairs very gravely, and two of them related
that as they were running down one of these passages they were met by
their mother, who told them to go back again, and then disappeared.
Investigation revealed the fact that if the children had run but a few
steps farther they would have fallen down a deep uncovered well which
yawned full in their path, so that the apparition of their mother had
saved them from almost certain death.

In this instance there seems no reason to doubt that the mother herself
was still keeping a loving watch over her children from the astral
plane, and that (as has happened in some other cases) her intense
desire to warn them of the danger into which they were so heedlessly
rushing gave her the power to make herself visible and audible to them
for the moment--or perhaps merely to impress their minds with the
idea that they saw and heard her. It is possible, of course, that the
helper may have been some one else, who took the familiar form of the
mother in order not to alarm the children; but the simplest hypothesis
is to attribute the intervention to the action of the ever-wakeful
mother-love itself, undimmed by the passage through the gates of death.

This mother-love, being one of the holiest and most unselfish of human
feelings, is also one of the most persistent on higher planes. Not only
does the mother who finds herself upon the lower levels of the astral
plane, and consequently still within touch of the earth, maintain her
interest in and her care for her children as long as she is able to see
them; even after her entry into the heaven-world these little ones are
still the most prominent objects in her thought, and the wealth of love
that she lavishes upon the images which she there makes of them is a
great outpouring of spiritual force which flows down upon her offspring
who are still struggling in this lower world, and surrounds them with
living centres of beneficent energy which may not inaptly be described
as veritable guardian angels. An illustration of this will be found in
the sixth of our Theosophical manuals, p. 38.

Not long ago the little daughter of one of our English bishops was out
walking with her mother in the town where they lived, and in running
heedlessly across a street the child was knocked down by the horses of
a carriage which came quickly upon her round a corner. Seeing her among
the horses’ feet, the mother rushed forward, expecting to find her very
badly injured, but she sprang up quite merrily, saying, “Oh, mamma, I
am not at all hurt, for something all in white kept the horses from
treading upon me, and told me not to be afraid.”

A case which occurred in Buckinghamshire, somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Burnham Beeches, is remarkable on account of the
length of time through which the physical manifestation of the
succouring agency seems to have maintained itself. It will have been
seen that in the instances hitherto given the intervention was a matter
of but a few moments, whereas in this a phenomenon was produced which
appears to have persisted for more than half an hour.

Two of the little children of a small farmer were left to amuse
themselves while their parents and their entire household were engaged
in the work of harvesting. The little ones started for a walk in the
woods, wandered far from home, and then managed to lose their way. When
the weary parents returned at dusk it was discovered that the children
were missing, and after enquiring at some of the neighbours’ houses the
father sent servants and labourers in various directions to seek for
them.

Their efforts were, however, unsuccessful, and their shouts unanswered;
and they had reassembled at the farm in a somewhat despondent frame
of mind, when they all saw a curious light some distance away moving
slowly across some fields towards the road. It was described as a large
globular mass of rich golden glow, quite unlike ordinary lamplight;
and as it drew nearer it was seen that the two missing children were
walking steadily along in the midst of it. The father and some others
immediately set off running towards it; the appearance persisted
until they were close to it, but just as they grasped the children it
vanished, leaving them in the darkness.

The children’s story was that after night came on they had wandered
about crying in the woods for some time, and had at last lain down
under a tree to sleep. They had been roused, they said, by a beautiful
lady with a lamp, who took them by the hand and led them home; when
they questioned her she smiled at them, but never spoke a word. To this
strange tale they both steadily adhered, nor was it possible in any way
to shake their faith in what they had seen. It is noteworthy, however,
that though all present saw the light, and noticed that it lit up the
trees and hedges which came within its sphere precisely as an ordinary
light would, yet the form of the lady was visible to none but the
children.



CHAPTER III.

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.


All the above stories are comparatively well-known, and may be found
in some of the books which contain collections of such accounts--most
of them in Dr. Lee’s _More Glimpses of the World Unseen_; but the
two instances which I am now about to give have never been in print
before, and both occurred within the last ten years--one to myself,
and the other to a very dear friend of mine, a prominent member of
the Theosophical Society, whose accuracy of observation is beyond all
shadow of doubt.

My own story is a simple one enough, though not unimportant to me,
since the interposition undoubtedly saved my life. I was walking
one exceedingly wet and stormy night down a quiet back street near
Westbourne Grove, struggling with scant success to hold up an umbrella
against the savage gusts of wind that threatened every moment to tear
it from my grasp, and trying as I laboured along to think out the
details of some work upon which I was just then engaged.

With startling suddenness a voice which I know well--the voice of
an Indian teacher--cried in my ear “Spring back!” and in mechanical
obedience I started violently backwards almost before I had time to
think. As I did so my umbrella, which had swung forward with the sudden
movement, was struck from my hand, and a huge metal chimney-pot crashed
upon the pavement less than a yard in front of my face. The great
weight of this article, and the tremendous force with which it fell,
make it absolutely certain that but for the warning voice I should have
been killed on the spot; yet the street was empty, and the voice was
that of one whom I knew to be seven thousand miles away from me, as far
as the physical body was concerned.

Nor was this the only occasion upon which I received assistance of
this supernormal kind, for in early life, long before the foundation
of the Theosophical Society, the apparition of a dear one who had
recently died prevented me from committing what I now see would have
been a serious crime, although by the light of such knowledge as I
then had it appeared not only a justifiable but even a laudable act of
retaliation. Again, at a later date, though still before the foundation
of this Society, a warning conveyed to me from a higher plane amid
most impressive surroundings enabled me to prevent another man from
entering upon a course which I now know would have ended disastrously,
though I had no reason to suppose so at the time. So it will be seen
that I have a certain amount of personal experience to strengthen
my belief in the doctrine of invisible helpers, even apart from my
knowledge of the help that is constantly being given at the present
time.

The other case is a very much more striking one. One of our members,
who gives me permission to publish her story, but does not wish her
name mentioned, once found herself in very serious physical peril.
Owing to circumstances which need not be detailed here, she was in
the very centre of a dangerous street fracas, and seeing several men
struck down and evidently badly hurt close to her, was in momentary
expectation of a similar fate, since escape from the crush seemed quite
impossible.

Suddenly she experienced a curious sensation of being whirled out of
the crowd, and found herself standing quite uninjured and entirely
alone in a small bye-street parallel with the one in which the
disturbance had taken place. She still heard the noise of the struggle,
and while she stood wondering what on earth had happened to her, two or
three men who had escaped from the crowd came running round the corner
of the street, and on seeing her expressed great astonishment and
pleasure, saying that when the brave lady so suddenly disappeared from
the midst of the fight they had felt certain that she had been struck
down.

At the time no sort of explanation was forthcoming, and she returned
home in a very mystified condition; but when at a later period she
mentioned this strange occurrence to Madame Blavatsky she was informed
that, her karma being such as to enable her to be saved from her
exceedingly dangerous position, one of the Masters had specially sent
some one to protect her in view of the fact that her life was needed
for the work.

Nevertheless the case remains a very extraordinary one, both with
regard to the great amount of power exercised and the unusually
public nature of its manifestation. It is not difficult to imagine
the _modus operandi_; she must have been lifted bodily over the
intervening block of houses, and simply set down in the next street;
but since her physical body was not visible floating in the air, it is
also evident that a veil of some sort (probably of etheric matter) must
have been thrown round her while in transit.

If it be objected that whatever can hide physical matter must itself be
physical, and therefore visible, it may be replied that by a process
familiar to all occult students it is possible to bend rays of light
(which, under all conditions at present known to science, travel only
in straight lines unless refracted) so that after passing round an
object they may resume exactly their former course; and it will at once
be seen that if this were done such an object would to all physical
eyes be absolutely invisible until the rays were allowed to resume
their normal course. I am fully aware that this one statement alone is
sufficient to brand my remarks as nonsense in the eyes of the scientist
of the present day, but I cannot help that; I am merely stating a
possibility in nature which the science of the future will no doubt
one day discover, and for those who are not students of occultism the
remark must wait until then for its justification.

The process, as I say, is comprehensible enough to any one who
understands a little about the more occult forces of nature; but the
phenomenon still remains an exceedingly dramatic one, while the name
of the heroine of the story, were I permitted to give it, would be a
guarantee of its accuracy to all my readers.

Another recent instance of interposition, less striking, perhaps, but
entirely successful, has been reported to me since the publication of
the first edition of this book. A lady, being obliged to undertake a
long railway journey alone, had taken the precaution to secure an
empty compartment; but just as the train was leaving the station, a man
of forbidding and villainous appearance sprang in and seated himself at
the other end of the carriage. The lady was much alarmed, thus to be
left alone with so doubtful-looking a character, but it was too late to
call for help, so she sat still and commended herself earnestly to the
care of her patron saint.

Soon her fears were redoubled, for the man arose and turned toward her
with an evil grin, but he had hardly taken one step when he started
back with a look of the most intense astonishment and terror. Following
the direction of his glance, she was startled to see a gentleman seated
directly opposite to her, gazing quietly but firmly at the baffled
robber--a gentleman who certainly could not have entered the carriage
by any ordinary means. Too much awed to speak, she watched him as
though fascinated for a full half-hour; he uttered no word, and did
not even look at her, but kept his eyes steadily upon the villain, who
cowered trembling in the furthest corner of the compartment. The moment
that the train reached the next station, and even before it came to a
standstill, the would-be thief tore open the door and sprang hurriedly
out. The lady, deeply thankful to be rid of him, turned to express
her gratitude to the gentleman, but found only an empty seat, though
it would have been impossible for any physical body to have left the
carriage in the time.

The materialization was in this case maintained for a longer period
than usual, but on the other hand it expended no force in action of any
kind--nor indeed was it necessary that it should do so, as its mere
appearance was sufficient to effect its purpose.

But these stories, all referring as they do to what would commonly be
called angelic intervention, illustrate only one small part of the
activities of our invisible helpers. Before, however, we can profitably
consider the other departments of their work it will be well that we
should have clearly in our minds the various classes of entities to
which it is possible that these helpers may belong. Let that, then, be
the portion of our subject to be next treated.



CHAPTER IV.

THE HELPERS.


Help, then, may be given by several of the many classes of inhabitants
of the astral plane. It may come from devas, from nature-spirits,
or from those whom we call dead, as well as from those who function
consciously upon the astral plane during life--chiefly the adepts and
their pupils. But if we examine the matter a little more closely we
shall see that though all the classes mentioned may, and sometimes do,
take a part in this work, yet their shares in it are so unequal that it
is practically left almost entirely to one class.

The very fact that so much of this work of helping has to be done
either upon or from the astral plane goes far in itself towards
explaining this. To any one who has even a faint idea of what the powers
at the command of an adept really are, it will be at once obvious that
for him to work upon the astral plane would be a far greater waste of
energy than for our leading physicians or scientists to spend their
time in breaking stones upon the road.

The work of the adept lies in higher regions--chiefly upon the arupa
levels of the devachanic plane or heaven-world, where he may direct his
energies to the influencing of the true individuality of man, and not
the mere personality which is all that can be reached in the astral or
physical world. The strength which he puts forth in that more exalted
realm produces results greater, more far-reaching and more lasting
than any which can be attained by the expenditure of even ten times
the force down here; and the work up there is such as he alone can
fully accomplish, while that on lower planes may be at any rate to some
extent achieved by those whose feet are yet upon the earlier steps of
the great stairway which will one day lead them to the position where
he stands.

The same remarks apply also in the case of the devas. Belonging as they
do to a higher kingdom of nature than ours, their work seems for the
most part entirely unconnected with humanity; and even those of their
orders--and there are some such--which do sometimes respond to our
higher yearnings or appeals, do so on the mental plane rather than on
the physical or astral, and more frequently in the periods between our
incarnations than during our earthly lives.

It may be remembered that some instances of such help were observed in
the course of investigations into the subdivisions of the devachanic
plane which were undertaken when the Theosophical manual on the subject
was in preparation. In one case a deva was found teaching the most
wonderful celestial music to a chorister; and in another one of a
different class was giving instruction and guidance to an astronomer
who was seeking to comprehend the form and structure of the universe.

These two were but examples of many instances in which the great deva
kingdom was found to be helping onward the evolution and responding
to the higher aspirations of man after death; and there are methods
by which, even during earth-life, these great ones may be approached,
and an infinity of knowledge acquired from them, though even then such
intercourse is gained rather by rising to their plane than by invoking
them to descend to ours.

In the ordinary events of our physical life the deva very rarely
interferes--indeed, he is so fully occupied with the far grander work
of his own plane that he is probably scarcely conscious of this; and
though it may occasionally happen that he becomes aware of some human
sorrow or difficulty which excites his pity and moves him to endeavour
to help in some way, his wider vision undoubtedly recognizes that at
the present stage of evolution such interpositions would in the vast
majority of cases be productive of infinitely more harm than good.

There was indubitably a period in the past--in the infancy of the human
race--when it was much more largely assisted from outside than is at
present the case. At the time when all its Buddhas and Manus, and even
its more ordinary leaders and teachers, were drawn either from the
ranks of the deva evolution or from the perfected humanity of a more
advanced planet, any such assistance as we are considering in this
treatise must also have been given by these exalted beings. But as man
progresses he becomes himself qualified to act as a helper, first on
the physical plane and then on higher levels; and we have now reached a
stage at which humanity ought to be able to provide, and to some slight
extent does provide, invisible helpers for itself, thus setting free
for still more useful and elevated work those beings who are capable of
it.

It becomes obvious then that such assistance as that to which we are
here referring may most fitly be given by men and women at a particular
stage of their evolution; not by the adepts, since they are capable of
doing far grander and more widely useful work, and not by the ordinary
person of no special spiritual development, for he would be unable to
be of any use. Just as these considerations would lead us to expect,
we find that this work of helping on the astral and lower mental planes
is chiefly in the hands of the pupils of the Masters--men who, though
yet far from the attainment of adeptship, have evolved themselves to
the extent of being able to function consciously upon the planes in
question.

Some of these have taken the further step of completing the links
between the physical consciousness and that of the higher levels, and
they therefore have the undoubted advantage of recollecting in waking
life what they have done and what they have learnt in those other
worlds; but there are many others who, though as yet unable to carry
their consciousness through unbroken, are nevertheless by no means
wasting the hours when they think they are asleep, but spending them in
noble and unselfish labour for their fellow-men.

What this labour is we will proceed to consider, but before we enter
upon that part of the subject we will first refer to an objection which
is very frequently brought forward with regard to such work, and we
will also dispose of the comparatively rare cases in which the agents
are either nature-spirits or men who have cast off the physical body.

People whose grasp of Theosophical ideas is as yet imperfect are often
in doubt as to whether it is allowable for them to try to help some one
whom they find in sorrow or difficulty, lest they should interfere
with the fate which has been decreed for him by the absolute justice
of the eternal law of karma. “The man is in his present position,”
they say in effect, “because he has deserved it; he is now working out
the perfectly natural result of some evil which he has committed in
the past; what right have I to interfere with the action of the great
cosmic law by trying to ameliorate his condition, either on the astral
plane or the physical?”

Now the good people who make such suggestions are really, however
unconsciously to themselves, exhibiting the most colossal conceit, for
their position implies two astounding assumptions; first, that they
know exactly what another man’s karma has been, and how long it has
decreed that his sufferings shall last; and secondly, that they--the
insects of a day--could absolutely override the cosmic law and prevent
the due working-out of karma by any action of theirs. We may be well
assured that the great kârmic deities are perfectly well able to manage
their business without our assistance, and we need have no fear that
any steps we may take can by any possibility cause them the slightest
difficulty or uneasiness.

If a man’s karma is such that he cannot be helped, then all our
well-meant efforts in that direction will fail, though we shall
nevertheless have gained good karma for ourselves by making them. What
the man’s karma has been is no business of ours; our duty is to give
help to the utmost of our power, and our right is only to the act;
the result is in other and higher hands. How can we tell how a man’s
account stands? For all we know he may just have exhausted his evil
karma, and be at this moment at the very point where a helping hand is
needed to give relief and raise him out of his trouble or depression;
why should not we have the pleasure and privilege of doing that good
deed as well as another? If we _can_ help him, then that fact of
itself shows that he has deserved to be helped; but we can never know
unless we try. In any case the law of karma will take care of itself,
and we need not trouble ourselves about it.

The cases in which assistance is given to mankind by nature-spirits
are few. The majority of such creatures shun the haunts of man, and
retire before him, disliking his emanations and the perpetual bustle
and unrest which he creates all around him. Also, except some of their
higher orders, they are generally inconsequent and thoughtless--more
like happy children at play under exceedingly favourable physical
conditions than like grave and responsible entities. Still it sometimes
happens that one of them will become attached to a human being, and do
him many a good turn; but at the present stage of its evolution this
department of nature cannot be relied upon for anything like steady
co-operation in the work of invisible helpers. For a fuller account
of the nature-spirits the reader is referred to the fifth of our
Theosophical manuals.

Again, help is sometimes given by those recently departed--those who
are still lingering on the astral plane, and still in close touch
with earthly affairs, as (probably) in the above-mentioned case of
the mother who saved her children from falling down a well. But it
will readily be seen that the amount of such help available must
naturally be exceedingly limited. The more unselfish and helpful a
person is, the less likely is he to be found after death lingering
in full consciousness on the lower levels of the astral plane, from
which the earth is most readily accessible. In any case, unless he
were an exceptionally bad man, his stay within the realm whence alone
any interference would be possible would be comparatively short; and
although from the heaven-world he may still shed benign influence upon
those whom he has loved on earth, it will usually be rather of the
nature of a general benediction than a force capable of bringing about
definite results in a specific case, such as those which we have been
considering.

Again, many of the departed who wish to help those whom they left
behind, find themselves quite unable to influence them in any way,
since to work from one plane upon an entity on another requires either
very great sensitiveness on the part of that entity, or a certain
amount of knowledge and skill on the part of the operator. Therefore,
although instances of apparitions shortly after death are by no means
uncommon, it is rare to find one in which the departed person has
really done anything useful, or succeeded in impressing what he wished
upon the friend or relation whom he visited. There are such cases, of
course--a good many of them when we come to put them all together; but
they are not numerous compared to the great number of ghosts who have
succeeded in showing themselves. So that but little help is usually
given by the dead--indeed, as will presently be explained, it is far
more common for them to be themselves in need of assistance than to be
able to accord it to others.

At present, therefore, the main bulk of the work which has to be done
along these lines falls to the share of those living persons who are
able to function consciously on the astral plane.



CHAPTER V.

THE REALITY OF SUPERPHYSICAL LIFE.


It seems difficult for those who are accustomed only to the ordinary
and somewhat materialistic lines of thought of the nineteenth century,
to believe in and realize fully a condition of perfect consciousness
apart from the physical body. Every Christian, at any rate, is bound
by the very foundations of his creed to believe that he possesses a
soul; but if you suggest to him the possibility that that soul may be
a sufficiently real thing to become visible under certain conditions
apart from the body either during life or after death, the chances are
ten to one that he will scornfully tell you that he does not believe in
ghosts, and that such an idea is nothing but an anachronistic survival
of an exploded mediæval superstition.

If, therefore, we are at all to comprehend the work of the band of
invisible helpers, and perchance ourselves to learn to assist in
it, we must shake ourselves free from the trammels of contemporary
thought on these subjects, and endeavour to grasp the great truth
(now a demonstrated fact to many among us) that the physical body is
in simple truth nothing but a vehicle or vesture of the real man. It
is put off permanently at death, but it is also put off temporarily
every night when we go to sleep--indeed the process of falling asleep
consists in this very action of the real man in his astral vehicle
slipping out of the physical body.

Again I repeat, this is no mere hypothesis or ingenious supposition.
There are many among us who are able to perform (and _do_
perform every day of their lives) this elementary act of magic in
full consciousness--who pass from one plane to the other at will; and
if that is clearly realized, it will become apparent how grotesquely
absurd to them must appear the ordinary unreasoning assertion that such
a thing is utterly impossible. It is like telling a man that it is
impossible for him to fall asleep, and that if he thinks he has ever
done so he is under a hallucination.

Now the man who has not yet developed the link between the astral and
physical consciousness is unable to leave his denser body at will,
or to recollect most of what happens to him while away from it; but
the fact nevertheless remains that he leaves it every time he sleeps,
and may be seen by any trained clairvoyant either hovering over it or
wandering about at a greater or less distance from it, as the case may
be.

The entirely undeveloped person usually floats close above his physical
body, scarcely less asleep than it is, and comparatively shapeless
and inchoate, and it is found that he cannot be drawn away from the
immediate neighbourhood of that physical body without causing serious
discomfort which would in fact awaken it. As the man evolves, however,
his astral body grows more definite and more conscious, and so becomes
a fitter vehicle for him. In the case of the majority of intelligent
and cultured people the degree of consciousness is already very
considerable, and a man who is at all spiritually developed is as fully
himself in that vehicle as in this denser body.

But though he may be fully conscious on the astral plane during sleep,
and able to move about on it freely if he wishes to do so, it does not
yet follow that he is ready to join the band of helpers. Most people at
this stage are so wrapped up in their own train of thought--usually a
continuation of some line taken up in waking hours--that they are like
a man in a brown study, so much absorbed as to be practically entirely
heedless of all that is going on about them. And in many ways it is
well that this is so, for there is much upon the astral plane which
might be unnerving and terrifying to one who had not the courage born
of full knowledge as to the real nature of all that he would see.

Sometimes a man gradually rouses himself out of this condition--wakes
up to the astral world around him, as it were; but more often he
remains in that state until some one who is already active there takes
him in hand and wakens him. This is, however, not a responsibility to
be lightly undertaken, for while it is comparatively easy thus to wake
a man up on the astral plane, it is practically impossible, except by
a most undesirable exercise of mesmeric influence, to put him to sleep
again. So that before a member of the band of workers will thus awaken
a dreamer, he must fully satisfy himself that the man’s disposition is
such that he will make good use of the additional powers that will then
be put into his hands, and also that his knowledge and his courage are
sufficient to make it reasonably certain that no harm will come to him
as a result of the action.

Such awakening so performed will put a man in a position to join if
he will the band of those who help mankind. But it must be clearly
understood that this does not necessarily or even usually bring with it
the power of remembering in the waking consciousness anything which has
been done. That capacity has to be attained by the man for himself, and
in most cases it does not come for years afterwards--perhaps not even
in the same life. But happily this lack of memory in the body in no way
impedes the work out of the body; so that, except for the satisfaction
to a man of knowing during his waking hours upon what work he has been
engaged during his sleep, it is not a matter of importance. What really
matters is that the work should be done--not that we should remember
who did it.



CHAPTER VI.

A TIMELY INTERVENTION.


Varied as is this work on the astral plane, it is all directed to
one great end--the furtherance, in however humble a degree, of
the processes of evolution. Occasionally it is connected with the
development of the lower kingdoms, which it is possible slightly
to accelerate under certain conditions. A duty towards these lower
kingdoms, elemental as well as animal and vegetable, is distinctly
recognized by our adept leaders, since it is in some cases only through
connection with or use by man that their progress takes place.

But naturally by far the largest and most important part of the work is
connected with humanity in some way or other. The services rendered are
of many and various kinds, but chiefly concerned with man’s spiritual
development, such physical interventions as are recounted in the
earlier part of this book being exceedingly rare. They do, however,
occasionally take place, and though it is my wish to emphasize rather
the possibility of extending mental and moral help to our fellow-men,
it will perhaps be well to give two or three instances in which
friends personally known to me have rendered physical assistance to
those in sore need of it, in order that it may be seen how these
examples from the experience of the helpers gear in with the accounts
given by those who have received the supernormal aid--such stories, I
mean, as those which are to be found in the literature of so-called
“supernatural occurrences.”

In the course of the recent rebellion in Matabeleland one of our
members was sent upon an errand of mercy which may serve as an
illustration of the way in which help upon this lower plane has
occasionally been given. It seems that one night a certain farmer
and his family in that country were sleeping tranquilly in fancied
security, quite unaware that only a few miles away relentless hordes of
savage foes were lying in ambush maturing fiendish plots of murder and
rapine. Our member’s business was in some way or other to arouse the
sleeping family to a sense of the terrible danger which so unexpectedly
menaced them, and she found this by no means an easy matter.

An attempt to impress the idea of imminent peril upon the brain of
the farmer failed utterly, and as the urgency of the case seemed to
demand strong measures, our friend decided to materialize herself
sufficiently to shake the housewife by the shoulder and adjure her
to get up and look about her. The moment she saw that she had been
successful in attracting attention she vanished, and the farmer’s wife
has never from that day to this been able to find out _which_ of
her neighbours it was who roused her so opportunely, and thus saved the
lives of the entire family, who but for this mysterious intervention
would undoubtedly have been massacred in their beds half an hour later;
nor can she even now understand how this friend in need contrived to
make her way in, when all the windows and doors were found so securely
barred.

Being thus abruptly awakened, the housewife was half inclined to
consider the warning as a mere dream; however, she arose and looked
round just to see that all was right, and fortunate it was that she did
so, for though she found nothing amiss indoors she had no sooner thrown
open a shutter than she saw the sky red with a distant conflagration.
She at once roused her husband and the rest of her family, and owing to
this timely notice they were able to escape to a place of concealment
near at hand just before the arrival of the horde of savages,
who destroyed the house and ravaged the fields indeed, but were
disappointed of the human prey which they had expected. The feelings of
the rescuer may be imagined when she read in the newspaper some time
afterwards an account of the providential deliverance of this family.



CHAPTER VII.

THE “ANGEL STORY.”


Another instance of intervention on the physical plane which occurred
a short time ago makes a very beautiful little story, though this time
only one life was saved. It needs, however, a few words of preliminary
explanation. Among our band of helpers here in Europe are two who were
brothers long ago in ancient Egypt, and are still warmly attached to
one another. In this present incarnation there is a wide difference in
age between them, one being advanced in middle life, while the other
was at that time a mere child in the physical body, though an ego of
considerable advancement and promise. Naturally it falls to the lot
of the elder to train and guide the younger in the occult work to
which they are so heartily devoted, and as both are fully conscious
and active on the astral plane they spend most of the time during
which their grosser bodies are asleep in labouring together under the
direction of their common Master, and giving to both living and dead
such help as is within their power.

I will quote the story of the particular incident which I wish
to relate from a letter written by the elder of the two helpers
immediately after its occurrence, as the description there given is
more vivid and picturesque than any account in the third person could
possibly be.

“We were going about quite other business, when Cyril suddenly cried,
‘What’s that?’ for we heard a terrible scream of pain or fright. In a
moment we were on the spot, and found that a boy of about eleven or
twelve had fallen over a cliff on to some rocks below, and was very
badly hurt. He had broken a leg and an arm, poor fellow, but what was
still worse was a dreadful cut in the thigh, from which blood was
pouring in a torrent. Cyril cried, ‘Let us help him quick, or he’ll
die!’

“In emergencies of this kind one has to think quickly. There were
clearly two things to be done; that bleeding must be stopped, and
physical help must be procured. I was obliged to materialize either
Cyril or myself, for we wanted physical hands at once to tie a bandage,
and besides it seemed better that the poor boy should _see_
some one standing by him in his trouble. I felt that while undoubtedly
he would be more at home with Cyril than with me, I should probably be
more readily able to procure help than Cyril would, so the division of
labour was obvious.

“The plan worked capitally. I materialized Cyril instantly (he does
not know yet how to do it for himself), and told him to take the boy’s
neckerchief and tie it round the thigh, and twist a stick through it
‘Won’t it hurt him terribly?’ said Cyril; but he _did_ it, and
the blood stopped flowing. The injured boy seemed half unconscious,
and could scarcely speak, but he looked up at the shining little form
bending so anxiously over him, and asked, ‘Be you an angel, master?’
Cyril smiled so prettily, and replied, ‘No, I’m only a boy, but I’ve
come to help you;’ and then I left him to comfort the sufferer while I
rushed off for the boy’s mother, who lived about a mile away.

“The trouble I had to force into that woman’s head the conviction that
something was wrong, and that she must go and see about it, you would
never believe; but at last she threw down the pan she was cleaning, and
said aloud, ‘Well, I don’t know what’s come over me, but I must go and
find the boy.’ When she once started I was able to guide her without
much difficulty, though all the time I was holding Cyril together by
will-power, lest the poor child’s angel should suddenly vanish from
before his eyes.

“You see, when you materialize a form you are changing matter from its
natural state into another--temporarily opposing the cosmic will, as
it were; and if you take your mind off it for one half-second, back it
flies into its original condition like a flash of lightning. So I could
not give more than half my attention to that woman, but still I got her
along somehow, and as soon as she came round the corner of the cliff I
let Cyril disappear; but she had seen him, and now that village has one
of the best-attested stories of angelic intervention on record!

“The accident happened in the early morning, and the same evening I
looked in (astrally) upon the family to see how matters were going on.
The poor boy’s leg and arm had been set, and the great cut bandaged,
and he lay in bed looking very pale and weak, but evidently going to
recover in time. The mother had a couple of neighbours in, and was
telling them the story; and a curious tale it sounded to one who knew
the real facts.

“She explained, in very many words, how she couldn’t tell what it was,
but something came over her all in a minute like, making her feel
something had happened to the boy, and she _must_ go out and see
after him; how at first she thought it was nonsense, and tried to throw
off the feeling, ‘but it warn’t no use--she just had to go.’ She told
how she didn’t know what made her go round by that cliff more than any
other way, but it just happened so, and as she turned round the corner
there she saw him lying propped up against a rock, and kneeling beside
him was the ‘beautifullest child ever she saw, dressed all in white and
shining, with rosy cheeks and lovely brown eyes;’ and how he smiled at
her ‘so heavenly like,’ and then all in a moment he was not there, and
at first she was so startled she didn’t know what to think; and then
all at once she felt what it was, and fell on her knees and thanked God
for sending one of his angels to help her poor boy.

“Then she told how when she lifted him to carry him home she wanted to
take off the handkerchief that was cutting into his poor leg so, but he
would not let her, because he said the angel had tied it and said he
was not to touch it; and how when she told the doctor this afterwards
he explained to her that if she _had_ unfastened it the boy would
certainly have died.

“Then she repeated the boy’s part of the tale--how the moment after he
fell this lovely little angel came to him (he knew it _was_ an
angel because he knew there had been nobody in sight for half a mile
round when he was at the top of the cliff just before--only he could
not understand why it hadn’t any wings, and why it said it was only a
boy)--how it lifted him against the rock and tied up his leg, and then
began to talk to him and tell him he need not be frightened, because
somebody was gone to fetch mother, and she would be there directly;
how it kissed him and tried to make him comfortable, and how its soft,
warm, little hand held his all the time, while it told him strange,
beautiful stories which he could not clearly remember, but he knew they
were very good, because he had almost forgotten he was hurt until he
saw mother coming; and how then it assured him he would soon be well
again, and smiled and squeezed his hand, and then somehow it was gone.

“Since then there has been quite a religious revival in that village!
Their minister has told them that so signal an interposition of
divine providence must have been meant as a sign to them, to rebuke
scoffers and to prove the truth of holy scripture and of the Christian
religion--and nobody seems to see the colossal conceit involved in such
an astonishing proposition.

“But the effect on the boy has been undoubtedly good, morally as well
as physically; by all accounts he was a careless enough young scamp
before, but now he feels ‘his angel’ may be near him at any time, and
he will never do or say anything rough or coarse or angry, lest it
should see or hear. The one great desire of his life is that some day
he may see it again, and he knows that when he dies its lovely face
will be the first to greet him on the other side.”

A beautiful and pathetic little story, truly. The moral drawn from the
occurrence by the village and its minister is perhaps somewhat of a
_non sequitur_; yet the testimony to the existence of at least
something beyond this material plane must surely do the people more
good than harm, and after all the mother’s conclusion from what she
saw was a perfectly correct one, though more accurate knowledge would
probably have led her to express it a little differently.

An interesting fact afterwards discovered by the investigations of
the writer of the letter throws a curious side-light upon the reasons
underlying such incidents. It was found that the two boys had met
before, and that some thousands of years ago the one who fell from
the cliff had been the slave of the other, and had once saved his
young master’s life at the risk of his own, and had been liberated
in consequence; and now, long afterwards, the master not only repays
the debt in kind, but also gives his former slave a high ideal and an
inducement to morality of life which will probably change the whole
course of his future evolution. So true is it that no good deed ever
goes unrewarded by karma, however tardy it may seem in its action--that

    Though the mills of God grind slowly,
      Yet they grind exceeding small;
    Though with patience stands He waiting,
      With exactness grinds He all.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE STORY OF A FIRE.


Another piece of work done by the same boy Cyril furnishes an almost
exact parallel to some of the stories from the books which I have given
in earlier pages. He and his older friend, it seems, were passing along
in the prosecution of their usual work one night, when they noticed the
fierce glare of a big fire below them, and promptly dived down to see
if they could be of any use.

It was a great hotel which was in flames, a huge caravanserai on
the edge of a great lake. The house, many stories in height, formed
three sides of a square round a sort of garden, planted with trees
and flowers, while the lake formed the fourth side. The two wings ran
right down to the lake, the big bay windows which terminated them
almost projecting over the water, so as to leave only quite a narrow
passage-way under them at the two sides.

The front and wings were built round inside wells, which contained also
the lattice-work shafts of the lifts, so that when once the fire broke
out, it spread with almost incredible rapidity, and before our friends
saw it on their astral journey all the middle floors in each of the
three great blocks were in flames. Fortunately the inmates--except one
little boy--had already been rescued, though some of them had sustained
very serious burns and other injuries.

This little fellow had been forgotten in one of the upper rooms of the
left wing, for his parents were out at a ball, and knew nothing of
the fire, while naturally enough no one else thought of the lad till
it was far too late. The fire had gained such a hold on the middle
floors of that wing that nothing could have been done, even if any one
had remembered him, as his room faced on to the inner garden which has
been mentioned, so that he was completely cut off from all outside
help. Besides, he was not even aware of his danger, for the dense,
suffocating smoke had so gradually filled the room that his sleep had
grown deeper and deeper, till he was all but stupefied.

In this state he was discovered by Cyril, who seems to be specially
attracted towards children in need or danger. He first tried to make
some of the people remember the boy, but in vain; and in any case it
seemed scarcely possible that they could have helped him, so that it
was soon evident that this was merely a waste of time. The older
helper then materialized Cyril, as before, in the room, and set him to
work to awaken and rouse up the more than half-stupefied child. After a
good deal of difficulty this was accomplished to some extent, but the
boy remained in a half-dazed, semi-conscious condition through all that
followed, so that he needed to be pushed and pulled about, guided and
helped at every turn.

The two boys first crept out of the room into the central passage which
ran through the wing, and then, finding that the smoke and the flames
beginning to come through the floor made it impassable for a physical
body, Cyril got the other boy back into the room again and out of the
window on to a stone ledge, about a foot wide, which ran right along
the block just below the windows. Along this he managed to guide his
companion, half balancing himself on the extreme edge of the ledge, and
half floating on air, but always placing himself outside, of the other,
so as to keep him from dizziness and prevent him from feeling afraid of
a fall.

Towards the end of the block nearest the lake, in which direction the
fire seemed less developed, they climbed in through an open window and
again reached the passage, hoping to find the staircase at that end
still passable. But it, too, was full of flame and smoke; so they
crawled back along the passage, Cyril advising his companion to keep
his mouth close to the ground, till they reached the latticed cage of
the lift running down the long well in the centre of the block.

The lift of course was at the bottom, but they managed to clamber down
the lattice work inside the cage till they stood on the roof of the
elevator itself. Here they found themselves blocked, but luckily Cyril
discovered a doorway opening from the cage of the lift on to a sort of
_entresol_ just above the ground floor. Through this they reached
a passage, which they crossed, the little boy being half-stifled by the
smoke; then they made their way through one of the rooms opposite, and
finally, clambering out of the window, found themselves on the top of
the veranda which ran along in front of the ground floor, between it
and the garden.

Thence it was easy enough to swarm down one of the pillars and reach
the garden itself; but even there the heat was intense, and the
danger, when the walls should fall, very considerable. So Cyril tried
to conduct his charge round the end first of one, then of the other
wing; but in both cases the flames had burst through, and the narrow,
overhung passages were quite impassable. Finally they took refuge in
one of the pleasure boats which were moored to the steps of the quay
at the side of the garden next the lake, and, casting loose, rowed out
on to the water.

Cyril intended to row round past the burning wing and land the boy whom
he had saved; but when they got some little way out, they fell in with
a passing lake steamer, and were seen--for the whole scene was lit up
by the glare of the burning hotel, till everything was as plain as in
broad daylight. The steamer came alongside the boat to take them off;
but instead of the two boys they had seen, the crew found only one--for
his older friend had promptly allowed Cyril to slip back into his
astral form, dissipating the denser matter which had made for the time
a material body, and he was therefore now invisible.

A careful search was made, of course, but no trace of the second boy
could be found, and so it was concluded that he must have fallen
overboard and been drowned just as they came alongside. The child
who had been rescued fell into a dead faint as soon as he was safe
on board, so they could get no information from him, and when he did
recover, all he could say was that he had seen the other boy the moment
before they came alongside, and then knew nothing more.

The steamer was bound down the lake to a place some two days’ sail
distant, and it was a week or so before the rescued boy could be
restored to his parents, who of course thought that he had perished in
the flames, for though an effort was made to impress on their minds the
fact that their son had been saved, it was found impossible to convey
the idea to them, so it may be imagined how great was the joy of the
meeting.

The boy is still well and happy, and is never weary of relating his
wonderful adventure. Many a time he has regretted that the kind friend
who saved him should have perished so mysteriously at the very moment
when all the danger seemed over at last. Indeed, he has even ventured
to suggest that perhaps he _didn’t_ perish after all--that perhaps
he was a fairy prince; but of course this idea elicits nothing but
tolerant smiles of superiority from his elders. The kârmic link between
him and his preserver has not yet been traced, but no doubt there must
be one somewhere.



CHAPTER IX.

MATERIALIZATION AND REPERCUSSION.


On meeting with a story such as this, students often enquire whether
the invisible helper is perfectly safe amidst these scenes of deadly
peril--whether, for example, this boy who was materialized in
order to save another from a burning house was not himself in some
danger--whether his physical body would not have suffered in any
way by repercussion if his materialized form had passed through the
flames, or fallen from the high ledge on the edge of which he walked so
unconcernedly. In fact, since we know that in many cases the connection
between a materialized form and a physical body is sufficiently close
to produce repercussion, might it not have occurred in this case?

Now this subject of repercussion is an exceedingly abstruse and
difficult one, and we are by no means yet in a position fully to
explain its very remarkable phenomena; indeed, in order to understand
the matter perfectly, it would probably be necessary to comprehend the
laws of sympathetic vibration on more planes than one. Still, we do
know by observation some of the conditions which permit its action,
and some which definitely exclude it, and I think we are warranted in
saying that it was absolutely impossible here.

To see why this is so we must first remember that there are at least
three well-defined varieties of materialization, as any one who has at
all an extended experience of spiritualism will be aware. I am not
concerned at the moment to enter upon any explanation as to how these
three varieties are respectively produced, but am merely stating the
indubitable fact of their existence.

1. There is the materialization which, though tangible, is not visible
to ordinary physical sight. Of this nature are the unseen hands which
so often clasp one’s arm or stroke one’s face at a _séance_, which
sometimes carry physical objects through the air or make raps upon
the table--though of course both these latter phenomena may easily be
produced without a materialized hand at all.

2. There is the materialization which though visible is not
tangible--the spirit-form through which one’s hand passes as through
empty air. In some cases this variety is obviously misty and
impalpable, but in others its appearance is so entirely normal that
its solidity is never doubted until some one endeavours to grasp it.

3. There is the perfect materialization which is both visible and
tangible--which not only bears the outward semblance of your departed
friend, but shakes you cordially by the hand with the very clasp that
you know so well.

Now while there is a good deal of evidence to show that repercussion
takes place under certain conditions in the case of this third kind
of materialization, it is by no means so certain that it can occur
with the first or second class. In the case of the boy-helper it is
probable that the materialization would not be of the third type, since
the greatest care is always taken not to expend more force than is
absolutely necessary to produce whatever result may be required, and
it is obvious that less energy would be used in the production of the
more partial forms which we have called the first and second classes.
The probability is that only the arm with which the boy held his little
companion would be solid to the touch, and that the rest of his body,
though looking perfectly natural, would have proved far less palpable
if it had been tested.

But, apart from this probability, there is another point to be
considered. When a full materialization takes place, whether the
subject be living or dead, physical matter of some sort has to be
gathered together for the purpose. At a spiritualistic _séance_
this matter is obtained by drawing largely upon the etheric double of
the medium--and sometimes even upon his physical body also, since cases
are on record in which his weight has been very considerably decreased
while manifestations of this character were taking place.

This method is employed by the directing entities of the _séance_
simply because when an available medium is within reach it is very
much the easiest way in which a materialization can be brought
about; and the consequence is that the very closest connection is
thus set up between that medium and the materialized body, so that
the phenomenon which (although very imperfectly understanding it) we
call repercussion, occurs in its clearest form. If, for example, the
hands of the materialized body be rubbed with chalk, that chalk will
afterwards be found on the hands of the medium, even though he may have
been all the time carefully locked up in a cabinet under circumstances
which absolutely preclude any suspicion of fraud. If any injury be
inflicted upon the materialized form, that injury will be accurately
reproduced upon the corresponding part of the medium’s body; while
sometimes food of which the spirit-form has partaken will be found to
have passed into the body of the medium--at least that happened in one
case at any rate within my own experience.

It would be far otherwise, however, in the case which we have been
describing. Cyril was thousands of miles from his sleeping physical
body, and it would therefore be quite impossible for his friend to draw
etheric matter from it, while the regulations under which all pupils
of the great Masters of Wisdom perform their work of helping man would
assuredly prevent him, even for the noblest purpose, from putting
such a strain upon any one else’s body. Besides, it would be quite
unnecessary, for the far less dangerous method invariably employed by
the helpers when materialization seems desirable would be ready to
his hand--the condensation from the circumambient ether, or even from
the physical air, of such an amount of matter as may be requisite.
This feat, though no doubt beyond the power of the average entity
manifesting at a _séance_, presents no difficulty to a student of
occult chemistry.

But mark the difference in the result obtained. In the case of the
medium we have a materialized form in the closest possible connection
with the physical body, made out of its very substance, and therefore
capable of producing all the phenomena of repercussion. In the case of
the helper we have indeed an exact reproduction of the physical body,
but it is created by a mental effort out of matter entirely foreign
to that body, and is no more capable of acting upon it by repercussion
than an ordinary marble statue of the man would be.

Thus it is that a passage through the flames or a fall from a high
window-ledge would have had no terrors for the boy-helper, and that on
another occasion a member of the band, though materialized, was able
without any inconvenience to the physical body to go down in a sinking
vessel (see p. 77).

In both the incidents of his work that have been described above, it
will have been noticed that the boy Cyril was unable to materialize
himself, and that the operation had to be performed for him by an older
friend. One more of his experiences is worth relating, for it gives
us a case in which by intensity of pity and determination of will he
_was_ able to show himself--a case somewhat parallel to that
previously related of the mother whose love enabled her somehow to
manifest herself in order to save her children’s lives.

Inexplicable as it may seem, there is no doubt whatever of the
existence in nature of this stupendous power of will over matter of
all planes, so that if only the power be great enough, practically
_any_ result may be produced by its direct action, without any
knowledge or even thought on the part of the man exercising that will
as to _how_ it is to do its work. We have had plenty of evidence
that this power holds good in the case of materialization, although
ordinarily it is an art which must be learnt just like any other.
Assuredly an average man on the astral plane could no more materialize
himself without having previously learnt how to do it than the average
man on this plane could play the violin without having previously
learnt it; but there are exceptional cases, as will be seen from the
following narrative.



CHAPTER X.

THE TWO BROTHERS.


This story has been told by a pen of far greater dramatic capability
than mine, and with a wealth of detail for which I have here no space,
in _The Theosophical Review_ of November, 1897, p. 229. To that
account I would refer the reader, since my own description of the case
will be a mere outline, as brief as is consistent with clearness. The
names given are of course fictitious, but the incidents are related
with scrupulous accuracy.

Our _dramatis personae_ are two brothers, the sons of a country
gentleman--Lancelot, aged fourteen, and Walter, aged eleven--very good
boys of the ordinary healthy, manly type, like hundreds of others in
this fair realm, with no obvious psychic qualifications of any sort,
except the possession of a good deal of Celtic blood. Perhaps the most
remarkable feature about them was the intensity of the affection that
existed between them, for they were simply inseparable--neither would
go anywhere without the other, and the younger idolized the elder as
only a younger boy can.

One unlucky day Lancelot was thrown from his pony and killed, and
for Walter the world became empty. The child’s grief was so real and
terrible that he could neither eat nor sleep, and his mother and nurse
were at their wits’ end as to what to do for him. He seemed deaf alike
to persuasion and blame; when they told him that grief was wicked, and
that his brother was in heaven, he simply answered that he could not be
certain of that, and that even if it were true, he knew that Lancelot
could no more be happy in heaven without him than he could on earth
without Lancelot.

Incredible as it may sound, the poor child was actually dying of
grief, and what made the case even more pathetic was the fact that,
all unknown to him, his brother stood at his side all the time, fully
conscious of his misery, and himself half-distracted at the failure of
his repeated attempts to touch him or speak to him.

Affairs were still in this most pitiable condition on the third
evening after the accident, when Cyril’s attention was drawn to the
two brothers--he cannot tell how. “He just happened to be passing,”
he says; yet surely the will of the Lords of Compassion guided him
to the scene. Poor Walter lay exhausted yet sleepless--alone in his
desolation, so far as he knew, though all the time his sorrowing
brother stood beside him. Lancelot, free from the chains of the flesh,
could see and hear Cyril, so obviously the first thing to do was to
soothe his pain with a promise of friendship and help in communicating
with his brother.

As soon as the dead boy’s mind was thus cheered with hope, Cyril turned
to the living one, and tried with all his strength to impress upon his
brain the knowledge that his brother stood beside him, not dead, but
living and loving as of yore. But all his efforts were in vain; the
dull apathy of grief so filled poor Walter’s mind that no suggestion
from without could enter, and Cyril knew not what to do. Yet so deeply
was he moved by the sad sight, so intense was his sympathy and so firm
his determination to help in some way or other at any cost of strength
to himself, that somehow (even to this day he cannot tell how) he found
himself able to touch and speak to the heart-broken child.

Putting aside Walter’s questions as to who he was and how he came
there, he went straight to the point, telling him that his brother
stood beside him, trying hard to make him hear his constantly repeated
assurances that he was not dead, but living and yearning to help and
comfort him. Little Walter longed to believe, yet hardly dared to
hope; but Cyril’s eager insistence vanquished his doubts at last, and
he said,

“Oh! I do believe you, because you’re so kind; but if I could only see
him, then I should _know_, then I should be quite sure; and if I
could only hear his voice telling me he was happy, I shouldn’t mind a
bit his going away again afterwards.”

Young though he was at the work, Cyril knew enough to be aware that
Walter’s wish was one not ordinarily granted, and was beginning
regretfully to tell him so, when suddenly he felt a Presence that all
the helpers know, and though no word was spoken it was borne in upon
his mind that instead of what he had meant to say, he was to promise
Walter the boon his heart desired. “Wait till I come back,” he said,
“and you shall see him then.” And then--he vanished.

That one touch from the Master had shown him what to do and how to do
it, and he rushed to fetch the older friend who had so often helped
him before. This older man had not yet retired for the night, but on
hearing Cyril’s hurried summons, he lost no time in accompanying him,
and in a few minutes they were back at Walter’s bedside. The poor child
was just beginning to believe it all a lovely dream, and his delight
and relief when Cyril reappeared were beautiful to see. Yet how much
more beautiful was the scene a moment later, when, in obedience to a
word from the Master, the elder man materialized the eager Lancelot,
and the living and the dead stood hand in hand once more!

Now in very truth for both the brothers had sorrow been turned into
joy unspeakable, and again and again they both declared that now they
should never feel sad any more, because they knew that death had no
power to part them. Nor was their gladness damped even when Cyril
explained carefully to them, at his older friend’s suggestion, that
this strange physical reunion would not be repeated, but that all day
long Lancelot would be near Walter, even though the latter could not
see him, and every night Walter would slip out of his body and be
consciously with his brother once more.

Hearing this, poor weary Walter sank to sleep at once and proved its
truth, and was amazed to find with what hitherto unknown rapidity he
and his brother could fly together from one to another of their old
familiar haunts. Cyril thoughtfully warned him that he would probably
forget most of his freer life when he awoke next day; but by rare good
fortune he did _not_ forget, as so many of us do. Perhaps the
shock of the great joy had somewhat aroused the latent psychic faculty
which belongs to the Celtic blood; at any rate he forgot no single
detail of all that had happened, and next morning he burst upon the
house of mourning with a wondrous tale which suited it but ill.

His parents thought that grief had turned his brain, and, since he is
now the heir, they have been watching long and anxiously for further
symptoms of insanity, which happily they have not found. They still
think him a monomaniac on this point, though they fully recognize
that his “delusion” has saved his life; but his old nurse (who is a
Catholic) is firm in her belief that all he says is true--that the Lord
Jesus, who was once a child himself, took pity on that other child as
he lay dying of grief, and sent one of His angels to bring his brother
back to him from the dead as a reward for a love which was stronger
than death. Sometimes popular superstition gets a good deal nearer to
the heart of things than does educated scepticism!

Nor does the story end here, for the good work begun that night is
still progressing, and none can say how far the influence of that one
act may ramify. Walter’s astral consciousness, once having been thus
thoroughly awakened, remains in activity; every morning he brings
back into his physical brain the memory of his night’s adventures
with his brother; every night they meet their dear friend Cyril,
from whom they have learned so much about the wonderful new world
that has opened before them, and the other worlds to come that lie
higher yet. Under Cyril’s guidance they also--the living and the dead
alike--have become eager and earnest members of the band of helpers;
and probably for years to come--until Lancelot’s vigorous young astral
body disintegrates--many a dying child will have cause to be grateful
to these three who are trying to pass on to others something of the joy
that they have themselves received.

Nor is it to the dead alone that these new converts have been of use,
for they have sought and found some other living children who show
consciousness on the astral plane during sleep; and one at least
of those whom they have thus brought to Cyril has already proved a
valuable little recruit to the children’s band, as well as a very kind
little friend down here on the physical plane.

Those to whom all these ideas are new sometimes find it very difficult
to understand how children can be of any use in the astral world.
Seeing, they would say, that the astral body of a child must be
undeveloped, and the ego thus limited by childhood on the astral as
well as the physical plane, in what way could such an ego be of use, or
be able to help towards the spiritual, mental and moral evolution of
humanity, which we are told is the chief concern of the helpers?

When first such a question was asked, shortly after the publication of
one of these stories in our magazine, I sent it to Cyril himself, to
see what he would say to it, and his answer was this:

“It is quite true, as the writer says, that I am only a boy, and know
very little yet, and that I shall be much more useful when I have
learnt more. But I am able to do a little even now, because there are
so many people who have learnt nothing about Theosophy yet, though they
may know very much more than I do about everything else. And you see
when you want to get to a certain place, a little boy who knows the way
can do more for you than a hundred wise men who don’t know it.”

It may be added that when even a child had been awakened upon the
astral plane the development of the astral body would proceed so
rapidly that he would very soon be in a position upon that plane but
little inferior to that of the awakened adult, and would of course
be much in advance, so far as usefulness is concerned, of the wisest
man who was as yet unawakened. But unless the ego expressing himself
through that child-body possessed the necessary qualification of a
determined yet loving disposition, and had clearly manifested it in his
previous lives, no occultist would take the very serious responsibility
of awakening him upon the astral plane. When, however, their karma is
such that it is possible for them to be thus aroused, children often
prove most efficient helpers, and throw themselves into their work
with a whole-souled devotion which is very beautiful to see. And so is
fulfilled once more the ancient prophecy “a little child shall lead
them.”

Another question that suggests itself to one’s mind in reading this
last story of the two brothers is this: Since Cyril was somehow able
to materialize himself by sheer force of love and pity and strength
of will, is it not strange that Lancelot, who had been trying so much
longer to communicate, had not succeeded in doing the same thing?

Well, there is of course no difficulty in seeing why poor Lancelot was
unable to communicate with his brother, for that inability is simply
the normal condition of affairs; the wonder is that Cyril _was_
able to materialize himself, not that Lancelot was _not_. Not
only, however, was the feeling probably stronger in Cyril’s case, but
he also knew exactly what he wanted to do--knew that such a thing as
materialization was a possibility, and had some general idea as to how
it was done--while Lancelot naturally knew nothing of all this then,
though he does now.



CHAPTER XI.

WRECKS AND CATASTROPHES.


Sometimes it is possible for members of the band of helpers to avert
impending catastrophes of a somewhat larger order. In more than one
case when the captain of a vessel has been carried unsuspecting far
out of his course by some unknown current or through some mistaken
reckoning, and has thereby run into serious danger, it has been
possible to prevent shipwreck by repeatedly impressing upon his mind
a feeling that something was wrong; and although this generally comes
through into the captain’s brain merely as a vaguely warning intuition,
yet if it occurs again and again he is almost certain to give it some
attention and take such precautions as suggest themselves to him.

In one case, for example, in which the master of a barque was much
nearer in to the land than he supposed, he was again and again pressed
to heave the lead, and though he resisted this suggestion for some
time as being unnecessary and absurd, he at last gave the order in a
somewhat hesitating way. The result astounded him, and he at once
put his vessel about and stood off from the coast, though it was not
until morning came that he realized how very close he had been to an
appalling disaster.

Often, however, a catastrophe is kârmic in its nature, and consequently
cannot be averted; but it must not therefore be supposed that in such
cases no help can be given. It may be that the people concerned are
destined to die, and therefore cannot be saved from death; but in
many cases they may still be to some extent prepared for it, and may
certainly be helped upon the other side after it is over. Indeed, it
may be definitely stated that wherever a great catastrophe of any kind
takes place, there is also a special sending of help.

Two recent cases in which such help was given were the sinking of the
_Drummond Castle_ off Cape Ushant, and the terrible cyclone which
devastated the city of St. Louis in America. On both these occasions
a few minutes’ notice was given, and the helpers did their best to
calm and raise men’s minds, so that when the shock came upon them it
would be less disturbing than it might otherwise have been. Naturally,
however, the greater part of the work done with the victims in both
these calamities was done upon the astral plane after they had left
their physical bodies; but of this we shall speak later.

It is sad to relate how often when some catastrophe is impending the
helpers are hindered in their kindly offices by wild panic among those
whom the danger threatens--or sometimes, worse still, by a mad outburst
of drunkenness among those whom they are trying to assist. Many a ship
has gone to her doom with almost every soul on board mad with drink,
and therefore utterly incapable of profiting by any assistance offered
either before death or for a very long time afterwards.

If it should ever happen to any of us to find ourselves in a position
of imminent danger which we can do nothing to avert, we should try to
remember that help is certainly near us, and that it rests entirely
with ourselves to make the helper’s work easy or difficult. If we face
the danger calmly and bravely, recognizing that the true ego can in
no way be affected by it, our minds will then be open to receive the
guidance which the helpers are trying to give, and this cannot but be
best for us, whether its object be to save us from death or, when that
is impossible, to conduct us safely through it.

Assistance of this latter kind has not infrequently been given in cases
of accidents to individuals, as well as of more general catastrophes.
It will be sufficient to mention one example as an illustration of
what is meant. In one of the great storms which did so much damage
around our coasts a few years ago, it happened that a fishing boat was
capsized far out at sea. The only people on board were an old fisherman
and a boy, and the former contrived to cling for a few minutes to the
overturned boat. There was no physical help at hand, and even if there
had been in such a raging storm it would have been impossible for
anything to be done, so that the fisherman knew well enough that there
was no hope of escape, and that death could only be a question of a
few moments. He felt great terror at the prospect, being especially
impressed by the awful loneliness of that vast waste of waters, and he
was also much troubled with thoughts of his wife and family, and the
difficulties in which they would be left by his sudden decease.

A passing helper seeing all this endeavoured to comfort him, but
finding his mind too much disturbed to be impressionable, she thought
it advisable to show herself to him in order to assist him the better.
In relating the story afterwards she said that the change which came
over the fisherman’s face at sight of her was wonderful and beautiful
to see; with the shining form standing upon the boat above him he
could not but think that an angel had been sent to comfort him in
his trouble, and therefore he felt that not only would he himself
be carried safely through the gates of death, but his family would
assuredly be looked after also. So, when death came to him a few
moments later, he was in a frame of mind very different from the terror
and perplexity which had previously overcome him; and naturally when
he recovered consciousness upon the astral plane and found the “angel”
still beside him he felt himself at home with her, and was prepared to
accept her advice as regards the new life upon which he had entered.

Some time later the same helper was engaged in another piece of work
of very similar character, the story of which she has since told as
follows:

“You remember that steamer that went down in the cyclone at the end of
last November; I betook myself to the cabin where about a dozen women
had been shut in, and found them wailing in the most pitiful manner,
sobbing and moaning with fear. The ship had to founder--no aid was
possible--and to go out of the world in this state of frantic terror
is the worst possible way to enter the next. So in order to calm them
I materialized myself, and of course they thought I was an angel, poor
souls; they all fell on their knees and prayed me to save them, and one
poor mother pushed her baby into my arms imploring me to save that at
least. They soon grew quiet and composed as we talked, and the wee baby
went to sleep smiling, and presently they all fell asleep peacefully,
and I filled their minds with thoughts of the heaven-world, so that
they did not wake up when the ship made her final plunge downwards. I
went down with them to ensure their sleeping through the last moments,
and they never stirred as their sleep became death.”

Evidently in this case, too, those who were thus helped had not only
the enormous advantage of being enabled to meet death calmly and
reasonably, but also the still greater one of being received on its
farther shore by one whom they were already disposed to love and
trust--one who thoroughly understood the new world in which they found
themselves, and could not only reassure them as to their safety,
but advise them how to order their lives under these much altered
circumstances. And this brings us to the consideration of one of
the largest and most important departments of the work of invisible
helpers--the guidance and assistance which they are able to give to the
dead.



CHAPTER XII.

WORK AMONG THE DEAD.


It is one of the many evils resulting from the absurdly erroneous
teaching as to conditions after death which is unfortunately current in
our western world, that those who have recently shaken off this mortal
coil are usually much puzzled and often very seriously frightened at
finding everything so different from what their religion had led them
to expect. The mental attitude of a large number of such people was
pithily voiced the other day by an English general, who three days
after his death met one of the band of helpers whom he had known in
physical life. After expressing his great relief that he had at last
found some one with whom he was able to communicate, his first remark
was: “But if I am dead, where am I? For if this is heaven I don’t think
much of it; and if it is hell, it is better than I expected.”

But unfortunately a far greater number take things less philosophically.
They have been taught that all men are destined to eternal flames except
a favoured few who are superhumanly good; and since a very small amount
of self-examination convinces them that they do not belong to _that_
category, they are but too often in a condition of panic terror,
dreading every moment that the new world in which they find themselves
may dissolve and drop them into the clutches of the devil, in whom they
have been sedulously taught to believe. In many cases they spend long
periods of acute mental suffering before they can free themselves from
the fatal influence of this blasphemous doctrine of everlasting
punishment--before they can realize that the world is governed, not
according to the caprice of a hideous demon who gloats over human
anguish, but according to a benevolent and wonderfully patient law of
evolution, which is absolutely just indeed, but yet again and again
offers to man opportunities of progress, if he will but take them, at
every stage of his career.

It ought in fairness to be mentioned that it is only among what are
called protestant communities that this terrible evil assumes its most
aggravated form. The great Roman Catholic Church, with its doctrine of
purgatory, approaches much more nearly to a conception of the astral
plane, and its devout members at any rate realize that the state in
which they find themselves shortly after death is merely a temporary
one, and that it is their business to endeavour to raise themselves
out of it as soon as may be by intense spiritual aspiration, while
they accept any suffering which may come to them as necessary for the
wearing away of the imperfections in their character before they can
pass to higher and brighter regions.

It will thus be seen that there is plenty of work for the helpers to do
among the newly dead, for in the vast majority of cases they need to be
calmed and reassured, to be comforted and instructed. In the astral,
just as in the physical world, there are many who are but little
disposed to take advice from those who know better than they; yet the
very strangeness of the conditions surrounding them renders many of the
dead willing to accept the guidance of those to whom these conditions
are obviously familiar; and many a man’s stay on that plane has been
considerably shortened by the earnest efforts of this band of energetic
workers.

Not, be it understood, that the karma of the dead man can in any way be
interfered with; he has built for himself during life an astral body
of a certain degree of density, and until that body is sufficiently
dissolved he cannot pass on into the heaven-world beyond; but he need
not lengthen the period necessary for that process by adopting an
improper attitude.

All students ought clearly to grasp the truth that the length of
a man’s astral life after he has put off his physical body depends
mainly upon two factors--the nature of his past physical life, and
his attitude of mind after what we call death. During his earth-life
he is constantly influencing the building of matter into his astral
body. He affects it directly by the passions, emotions, and desires
which he allows to hold sway over him; he affects it indirectly by the
action upon it of his thoughts from above, and of the details of his
physical life--his continence or his debauchery, his cleanliness or his
uncleanliness, his food and his drink--from below.

If by persistence in perversity along any of these lines he is so
stupid as to build for himself a coarse and gross astral vehicle,
habituated to responding only to the lower vibrations of the plane, he
will find himself after death bound to that plane during a long and
slow process of that body’s disintegration. On the other hand if by
decent and careful living he gives himself a vehicle mainly composed of
finer material, he will have very much less _post-mortem_ trouble
and discomfort, and his evolution will proceed much more rapidly and
easily.

This much is generally understood, but the second great factor--his
attitude of mind after death--seems often to be forgotten. The
desirable thing is for him to realize his position on this particular
little arc of his evolution--to learn that he is at this stage
withdrawing steadily inward towards the plane of the true ego, and
that consequently it is his business to disengage his thoughts as far
as may be from things physical, and to fix his attention more and more
upon those spiritual matters which will occupy him during his life in
the heaven-world. By doing this he will greatly facilitate the natural
astral disintegration, and will avoid the sadly common mistake of
unnecessarily delaying himself upon the lower levels of what should be
so temporary a residence.

But many of the dead very considerably retard the process of
dissolution by clinging passionately to the earth which they have left;
they simply will not turn their thoughts and desires upward, but spend
their time in struggling with all their might to keep in full touch
with the physical plane, thus causing great trouble to any one who may
be trying to help them. Earthly matters are the only ones in which
they have ever had any living interest, and they cling to them with
desperate tenacity even after death. Naturally as time passes on they
find it increasingly difficult to keep hold of things down here, but
instead of welcoming and encouraging this process of gradual refinement
and spiritualization they resist it vigorously by every means in their
power.

Of course the mighty force of evolution is eventually too strong for
them, and they are swept on in its beneficent current, yet they fight
every step of the way, thereby not only causing themselves a vast
amount of entirely unnecessary pain and sorrow, but also very seriously
delaying their upward progress and prolonging their stay in astral
regions to an almost indefinite extent. In convincing them that this
ignorant and disastrous opposition to the cosmic will is contrary to
the laws of nature, and persuading them to adopt an attitude of mind
which is the exact reversal of it, lies a great part of the work of
those who are trying to help.

It happens occasionally that the dead are earth-bound by
anxiety--anxiety sometimes about duties unperformed or debts
undischarged, but more often on account of wife or children left
unprovided for. In such cases as this it has more than once been
necessary, before the dead man was satisfied to pursue his upward
path in peace, that the helper should to some extent act as his
representative upon the physical plane, and attend on his behalf to the
settlement of the business which was troubling him. An illustration
taken from our recent experience will perhaps make this clearer.

One of the band of pupils was trying to assist a poor man who had died
in one of our western cities, but found it impossible to withdraw
his mind from earthly things because of his anxiety about two young
children whom his death had left without means of support. He had been
a working man of some sort, and had been unable to lay by any money for
them; his wife had died some two years previously and his landlady,
though exceedingly kind-hearted and very willing to do anything in her
power for them, was herself far too poor to be able to adopt them, and
very reluctantly came to the conclusion that she would be obliged to
hand them over to the parish authorities. This was a great grief to the
dead father, though he could not blame the landlady, and was himself
unable to suggest any other course.

Our friend asked him whether he had no relative to whom he could
entrust them, but the father knew of none. He had a younger brother,
he said, who would certainly have done something for him in this
extremity, but he had lost sight of him for fifteen years, and did not
even know whether he was living or dead. When last heard of he had been
apprenticed to a carpenter in the north, and he was then described as a
steady young fellow who, if he lived, would surely get on.

The clues at hand were certainly very slight, but since there seemed no
other prospect of help for the children, our friend thought it worth
while to make a special effort to follow them up. Taking the dead
man with him he commenced a patient search after the brother in the
town indicated; and after a great deal of trouble they were actually
successful in finding him. He was now a master carpenter in a fairly
flourishing way of business--married, but without children though
earnestly desiring them, and therefore apparently just the man for the
emergency.

The question now was how the information could best be conveyed to
this brother. Fortunately he was found to be so far impressionable
that the circumstances of his brother’s death and the destitution of
his children could be put vividly before him in a dream, and this was
repeated three times, the place and even the name of the landlady
being clearly indicated to him. He was immensely impressed by this
recurring vision, and discussed it earnestly with his wife, who advised
him to write to the address given. This he did not like to do, but
was strongly inclined to travel down into the west country, find out
whether there was such a house as that which he had seen, and if so
make some excuse to call there. He was a busy man, however, and he
finally decided that he could not afford to lose a day’s work for what
after all might well prove to be nothing but the baseless fabric of a
dream.

The attempt along these lines having apparently failed, it was
determined to try another method, so one of the helpers wrote a letter
to the man detailing the circumstances of his brother’s death and the
position of the children, exactly as he had seen them in his dream. On
receipt of this confirmation he no longer hesitated, but set off the
very next day for the town indicated, and was received with open arms
by the kind-hearted landlady. It had been easy enough for the helpers
to persuade her, good soul that she was, to keep the children with her
for a few days on the chance that something or other would turn up for
them, and she has ever since congratulated herself that she did so. The
carpenter of course took the children back with him and provided them
with a happy home, and the dead father, now no longer anxious, passed
rejoicing on his upward way.

Since some Theosophical writers have felt it their duty to insist in
vigorous terms upon the evils so frequently attendant upon the holding
of spiritualistic séances, it is only fair to admit that on several
occasions good work similar to that of the helper in the case just
described has been done through the agency of a medium or of some one
present at a circle. Thus, though spiritualism has too often detained
souls who but for it would have attained speedier liberation, it must
be set to the credit of its account that it has also furnished the
means of escape to others, and thus opened up the path of advancement
for them. There have been instances in which the defunct has been
able to appear unassisted to his relatives or friends and explain his
wishes to them; but these are naturally rare, and most souls who are
earth-bound by anxieties of the kind indicated can satisfy themselves
only by means of the services of the medium or the conscious helper.

Another case very frequently encountered on the astral plane is that of
the man who cannot believe that he is dead at all. Indeed, most people
consider the very fact that they are still conscious to be an absolute
proof that they have not passed through the portals of death; somewhat
of a satire this, if one thinks of it, on the practical value of our
much-vaunted belief in the immortality of the soul! However they may
have labelled themselves during life, the great majority of those who
die, in this country at any rate, show themselves by their subsequent
attitude to have been to all intents and purposes materialists at
heart; and those who on earth have honestly called themselves so are
often no more difficult to deal with than others who would have been
shocked at the very name.

A very recent instance was that of a scientific man who, finding
himself fully conscious, and yet under conditions differing radically
from any that he had ever experienced before, had persuaded himself
that he was still alive, and merely the victim of a prolonged and
unpleasant dream. Fortunately for him there happened to be among the
band of those able to function upon the astral plane a son of an old
friend of his, a young man whose father had commissioned him to search
for the departed scientist and endeavour to render him some assistance.
When after some trouble the youth found and accosted him, he frankly
admitted that he was in a condition of great bewilderment and
discomfort, but still clung desperately to his dream hypothesis as on
the whole the most probable explanation of what he saw, and even went
so far as to suggest that his visitor was nothing but a dream-figure
himself!

At last, however, he so far gave way as to propose a kind of test, and
said to the young man, “If you are, as you assert, a living person, and
the son of my old friend, bring me from him some message that shall
prove to me your objective reality.” Now although under all ordinary
conditions of the physical plane the giving of any kind of phenomenal
proof is strictly forbidden to the pupils of the Masters, it seemed as
though a case of this kind hardly came under the rules; and therefore,
when it had been ascertained that there was no objection on the part
of higher authorities, an application was made to the father, who at
once sent a message referring to a series of events which had occurred
before the son’s birth. This convinced the dead man of the real
existence of his young friend, and therefore of the plane upon which
they were both functioning; and as soon as he felt this established,
his scientific training at once reasserted itself, and he became
exceeding eager to acquire all possible information about this new
region.

Of course the message which he so readily accepted as evidence was in
reality no proof at all, since the facts to which it referred might
have been read from his own mind or from the records of the past by
any creature possessed of astral senses! But his ignorance of these
possibilities enabled this definite impression to be made upon him,
and the Theosophical instruction which his young friend is now nightly
giving to him will undoubtedly have a stupendous effect upon his
future, for it cannot but greatly modify not only the heaven-state
which lies immediately before him, but also his next incarnation upon
earth.

The main work, then, done for the newly dead by our helpers is that of
soothing and comforting them--of delivering them when possible from
the terrible though unreasoning fear which but too often seizes them,
and not only causes them much unnecessary suffering, but retards their
progress to higher spheres--and of enabling them as far as may be to
comprehend the future that lies before them.

Others who have been longer on the astral plane may also receive much
help, if they will but accept it, from explanations and advice as to
their course through its different stages. They may, for example, be
warned of the danger and delay caused by attempting to communicate with
the living through a medium, and sometimes (though rarely) an entity
already drawn into a spiritualistic circle may be guided into higher
and healthier life. Teaching thus given to persons on this plane is by
no means lost, for though the memory of it cannot of course be directly
carried over to the next incarnation, there always remains the real
inner knowledge, and therefore the strong predisposition to accept it
immediately when heard again in the new life.

A rather remarkable instance of service rendered to the dead was the
first achievement of a very recent recruit to the band of helpers--one
who is hardly as yet a fully-fledged member. This young aspirant
had not long before lost an aged relation, for whom he had felt an
especially warm affection; and his earliest request was to be taken by
a more experienced friend to visit her in the hope that he might be of
some service to her. This was done and the effect of the meeting of the
living and the dead was very beautiful and touching. The older person’s
astral life was already approaching its end, but a condition of apathy,
dullness and uncertainty prevented her from making any immediate
progress.

But when the boy, who had been so much to her in earth-life, stood
once more before her and dissolved by the sunlight of his love the
grey mist of depression which had gathered around her, she was aroused
from her stupor; and soon she understood that he had come in order to
explain to her her situation, and to tell her of the glories of the
higher life toward which her thoughts and aspirations ought now to be
directed. But when this was fully realized, there was such an awakening
of dormant feeling in her and such an outrush of devoted affection
towards her earnest young helper, that the last fetters which bound her
to the astral life were broken, and that one great outburst of love
and gratitude swept her forthwith into the higher consciousness of the
heaven-world. Truly there is no greater and more beneficent power in
the universe than that of pure, unselfish love.



CHAPTER XIII.

OTHER BRANCHES OF THE WORK.


But turning back again now from the all-important work among the dead
to the consideration of the work among the living, we must briefly
indicate a great branch of it, without a notice of which our account
of the labours of our invisible helpers would indeed be incomplete,
and that is the immense amount which is done by suggestion--by simply
putting good thoughts into the minds of those who are ready to receive
them.

Let there be no mistake as to what is meant here. It would be perfectly
easy--easy to a degree which would be quite incredible to those who do
not understand the subject practically--for a helper to dominate the
mind of any average man, and make him think just as he pleased, and
that without arousing the faintest suspicion of any outside influence
in the mind of the subject. But, however admirable the result might
be, such a proceeding would be entirely inadmissible. All that may be
done is to throw the good thought into the person’s mind as one among
the hundreds that are constantly sweeping through it; whether the man
takes it up, makes it his own, and acts upon it, depends upon himself
entirely. Were it otherwise, it is obvious that all the good karma of
the action would accrue to the helper only, for the subject would have
been a mere tool, and not an actor--which is not what is desired.

The assistance given in this way is exceedingly varied in character.
The consolation of those who are suffering or in sorrow at once
suggests itself, as does also the endeavour to guide toward the truth
those who are earnestly seeking it. When a person is spending much
anxious thought upon some spiritual or metaphysical problem, it is
often possible to put the solution into his mind without his being at
all aware that it comes from external agency.

A pupil too may often be employed as an agent in what can hardly be
described otherwise than as the answering of prayer; for though it is
true that any earnest spiritual desire, such as might be supposed to
find its expression in prayer, is itself a force which automatically
brings about certain results, it is also a fact that such a spiritual
effort offers an opportunity of influence to the Powers of Good, of
which they are not slow to take advantage; and it is sometimes the
privilege of a willing helper to be made the channel through which
their energy is poured forth. What is said of prayers is true to
an even greater extent of meditation, for those to whom this higher
exercise is a possibility.

Besides these more general methods of help there are also special lines
open only to the few. Again and again such pupils as are fitted for
the work have been employed to suggest true and beautiful thoughts to
authors, poets, artists and musicians; but obviously it is not every
helper who is capable of being used in this way.

Sometimes, though more rarely, it is possible to warn persons of
the danger to their moral development of some course which they are
pursuing, to clear away evil influences from about some person or
place, or to counteract the machinations of black magicians. It is not
often that direct instruction in the great truths of nature can be
given to people outside the circle of occult students, but occasionally
it is possible to do something in that way by putting before the minds
of preachers and teachers a wider range of thought or a more liberal
view of some question than they would otherwise have taken.

Naturally as an occult student progresses on the Path he attains a
wider sphere of usefulness. Instead of assisting individuals only,
he learns how classes, nations and races are dealt with, and he is
entrusted with a gradually increasing share of the higher and more
important work done by the adepts themselves. As he acquires the
requisite power and knowledge he begins to wield the greater forces of
the mental and the astral planes and is shown how to make the utmost
possible use of each favourable cyclic influence. He is brought into
relation with those great Nirmânakâyas who are sometimes symbolized as
the Stones of the Guardian Wall, and he becomes--at first of course
in the very humblest capacity--one of the band of their almoners, and
learns how those forces are dispersed which are the fruit of their
sublime self-sacrifice. Thus he rises gradually higher and higher
until, blossoming at length into adeptship, he is able to take his full
share of the responsibility which lies upon the Masters of Wisdom, and
to help others along the road which he has trodden.

On the mental plane the work differs somewhat, since teaching can
be both given and received in a much more direct, rapid and perfect
manner, while the influences set in motion are infinitely more
powerful, because acting on so much higher a level. But (though it is
useless to speak of it in detail at present, since so few of us are
yet able to function consciously upon this plane during life) here
also--and even higher still--there is always plenty of work to be
done, as soon as ever we can make ourselves capable of doing it; and
there is certainly no fear that for countless æons we shall ever find
ourselves without a career of unselfish usefulness open before us.



CHAPTER XIV.

THE QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED.


How, it may be asked, are we to make ourselves capable of sharing in
this great work? Well, there is no mystery as to the qualifications
which are needed by one who aspires to be a helper; the difficulty
is not in learning what they are, but in developing them in oneself.
To some extent they have been already incidentally described, but
it is nevertheless as well that they should be set out fully and
categorically.

1. _Single-mindedness._ The first requisite is that we shall have
recognized the great work which the Masters would have us do, and
that it shall be for us the one great interest of our lives. We must
learn to distinguish not only between useful and useless work, but
between the different kinds of useful work, so that we may each devote
ourselves to the very highest of which we are capable, and not fritter
away our time in labouring at something which, however good it may
be for the man who cannot yet do anything better, is unworthy of the
knowledge and capacity which should be ours as Theosophists. A man who
wishes to be considered eligible for employment on higher planes must
begin by doing the utmost that lies in his power in the way of definite
work for Theosophy down here.

Of course I do not for a moment mean that we are to neglect the
ordinary duties of life. We should certainly do well to undertake no
new worldly duties of any sort, but those which we have already bound
upon our shoulders have become a kârmic obligation which we have no
right to neglect. Unless we have done to the full the duties which
karma has laid upon us we are not free for the higher work. But this
higher work must nevertheless be to us the one thing really worth
living for--the constant background of a life which is consecrated to
the service of the Masters of Compassion.

2. _Perfect self-control._ Before we can be safely trusted with
the wider powers of the astral life, we must have ourselves perfectly
in hand. Our temper, for example, must be thoroughly under control, so
that nothing that we may see or hear can cause real irritation in us,
for the consequences of such irritation would be far more serious on
that plane than on this. The force of thought is always an enormous
power, but down here it is reduced and deadened by the heavy physical
brain-particles which it has to set in motion. In the astral world it
is far freer and more potent, and for a man with fully-awakened faculty
to feel anger against a person there would be to do him serious and
perhaps even fatal injury.

Not only do we need control of temper, but control of nerve, so that
none of the fantastic or terrible sights that we may encounter may be
able to shake our dauntless courage. It must be remembered that the
pupil who awakens a man upon the astral plane incurs thereby a certain
amount of responsibility for his actions and for his safety, so that
unless his neophyte had courage to stand alone the whole of the older
worker’s time would be wasted in hovering round to protect him, which
it would be manifestly unreasonable to expect.

It is to make sure of this control of nerve, and to fit them for the
work that has to be done, that candidates are always made, now as in
days of old, to pass what are called the tests of earth, water, air and
fire.

In other words, they have to learn with that absolute certainty that
comes not by theory, but by practical experience, that in their astral
bodies none of these elements can by any possibility be hurtful to
them--that none can oppose any obstacle in the way of the work which
they have to do.

In this physical body we are fully convinced that fire will burn us,
that water will drown us, that the solid rock forms an impassable
barrier to our progress, that we cannot with safety launch ourselves
unsupported into the ambient air. So deeply is this conviction
engrained in us that it costs most men a good deal of effort to
overcome the instinctive action which follows from it, and to realize
that in the astral body the densest rock offers no impediment to their
freedom of motion, that they may leap with impunity from the highest
cliff, and plunge with the most absolute confidence into the heart of
the raging volcano or the deepest abysses of the fathomless ocean.

Yet until a man _knows_ this--knows it sufficiently to act upon
his knowledge instinctively and confidently--he is comparatively
useless for astral work, since in emergencies that are constantly
arising he would be perpetually paralyzed by imaginary disabilities.
So he has to go through his tests, and through many another strange
experience--to meet face to face with calm courage the most terrifying
apparitions amid the most loathsome surroundings--to show in fact that
his nerve may be thoroughly trusted under any and all of the varied
groups of circumstances in which he may at any moment find himself.

Further, we need control of mind and of desire; of mind, because
without the power of concentration it would be impossible to do good
work amid all the distracting currents of the astral plane; of desire,
because in that strange world to desire is very often to have, and
unless this part of our nature were well controlled we might perchance
find ourselves face to face with creations of our own of which we
should be heartily ashamed.

3. _Calmness._ This is another most important point--the absence
of all worry and depression. Much of the work consists in soothing
those who are disturbed, and cheering those who are in sorrow; and
how can a helper do that work if his own aura is vibrating with
constant fuss and worry, or grey with the deadly gloom that comes
from perpetual depression? Nothing is more hopelessly fatal to
occult progress or usefulness than our nineteenth-century habit of
ceaselessly worrying over trifles--of eternally making mountains out
of molehills. Many of us simply spend our lives in magnifying the most
absurd trivialities--in solemnly and elaborately going to work to make
ourselves miserable about nothing.

Surely we who are Theosophists ought, at any rate, to have got beyond
this stage of irrational worry and causeless depression; surely we,
who are trying to acquire some definite knowledge of the cosmic
order, ought by this time to have realized that the optimistic view of
everything is always nearest to the divine view, and therefore to the
truth, because only that in any person which is good and beautiful can
by any possibility be permanent, while the evil must by its very nature
be temporary. In fact, as Browning said, “the evil is null, is naught,
is silence implying sound,” while above and beyond it all “the soul of
things is sweet, the Heart of Being is celestial rest.” So They who
know maintain unruffled calm, and with Their perfect sympathy combine
the joyous serenity which comes from the certainty that all will at
last be well; and those who wish to help must learn to follow Their
example.

4. _Knowledge._ To be of use the man must at least have some
knowledge of the nature of the plane on which he has to work, and
the more knowledge he has in any and every direction the more useful
he will be. He must fit himself for this task by carefully studying
Theosophical literature; for he cannot expect those whose time is
already so fully occupied to waste some of it in explaining to him what
he might have learnt down here by taking the trouble to read the books.
No one who is not already as earnest a student as his capacities and
opportunities permit, need begin to think of himself as a candidate for
astral work.

5. _Unselfishness._ It would seem scarcely needful to insist
upon this as a qualification, for surely everyone who has made the
least study of Theosophy must know that while the slightest taint of
selfishness remains in a man, he is not yet fit to be entrusted with
higher powers, not yet fit to enter upon a work of whose very essence
it is that the worker should forget himself but to remember the good of
others. He who is still capable of selfish thought, whose personality
is still so strong in him that he can allow himself to be turned aside
from his work by feelings of petty pride or suggestions of wounded
dignity--that man is not yet ready to show the selfless devotion of the
helper.

6. _Love._ This, the last and greatest of the qualifications,
is also the most misunderstood. Most emphatically it is _not_
the cheap, namby-pamby backboneless sentimentalism which is always
overflowing into vague platitudes and gushing generalities, yet
fears to stand firm for the right lest it should be branded by the
ignorant as “unbrotherly.” What is wanted is the love which is
strong enough _not_ to boast itself, but to act without talking
about it--the intense desire for service which is ever on the watch
for an opportunity to render it, even though it prefers to do so
anonymously--the feeling which springs up in the heart of him who
has realized the great work of the Logos, and, having once seen it,
knows that for him there can be in the three worlds no other course
but to identify himself with it to the utmost limit of his power--to
become, in however humble a way, and at however great a distance, a
tiny channel of that wondrous love of God which, like the peace of God,
passeth man’s understanding.

These are the qualities toward the possession of which the helper must
ceaselessly strive, and of which some considerable measure at least
must be his before he can hope that the Great Ones who stand behind
will deem him fit for full awakening. The ideal is in truth a high
one, yet none need therefore turn away disheartened, nor think that
while he is still but struggling toward it he must necessarily remain
entirely useless on the astral plane, for short of the responsibilities
and dangers of that full awakening there is much that may safely and
usefully be done.

There is hardly one among us who would not be capable of performing
at least one definite act of mercy and good will each night while we
are away from our bodies. Our condition when asleep is usually one of
absorption in thought, be it remembered--a carrying on of the thoughts
that have principally occupied us during the day, and especially of
the last thought in the mind when sinking into sleep. Now if we make
that last thought a strong intention to go and give help to some one
whom we know to be in need of it, the soul when freed from the body
will undoubtedly carry out that intention, and the help will be given.
There are several cases on record in which, when this attempt has been
made, the person thought of has been fully conscious of the effort of
the would-be helper, and has even seen his astral body in the act of
carrying out the instructions impressed upon it.

Indeed, no one need sadden himself with the thought that he can have no
part nor lot in this glorious work. Such a feeling would be entirely
untrue, for everyone who can think can help. Nor need such useful
action be confined to our hours of sleep. If you know (and who does
not?) of some one who is in sorrow or suffering, though you may not
be able consciously to stand in astral form by their bedside, you can
nevertheless send them loving thoughts and earnest good wishes; and
be well assured that such thoughts and wishes are real and living and
strong--that when you so send them they do actually go and work your
will in proportion to the strength which you have put into them.
Thoughts are things, intensely real things, visible enough to those
whose eyes have been opened to see, and by their means the poorest
man may bear his part in the good work of the world as fully as the
richest. In this way at least, whether we can yet function consciously
upon the astral plane or not, we all can join, and we all ought to
join, the army of invisible helpers.

But the aspirant, who definitely desires to become one of the band
of astral helpers who are working under the direction of the great
Masters of Wisdom, will make his preparation part of a far wider scheme
of development. Instead of merely endeavouring to fit himself for
this particular branch of their service, he will undertake with high
resolution the far greater task of training himself to follow in their
footsteps, of bending all the energies of his soul to attain even as
they have attained, so that his power of helping the world may not be
confined to the astral plane, but may extend to those higher levels
which are the true home of the divine self of man.

For him the path has been marked out long ago by the wisdom of those
who have trodden it in days of old--a path of self-development which
sooner or later all must follow, whether they choose to adopt it of
their own free will, or to wait until, after many lives and an infinity
of suffering, the slow, resistless force of evolution drives them
along it among the laggards of the human family. But the wise man is
he who eagerly enters upon it immediately, setting his face resolutely
toward the goal of adeptship, in order that, being safe for ever from
all doubt and fear and sorrow himself, he may help others into safety
and happiness also. What are the steps of this Path of Holiness, as the
Buddhists call it, and in what order they are arranged, let us see in
our next chapter.



CHAPTER XV.

THE PROBATIONARY PATH.


Eastern books tell us that there are four means by which a man may
be brought to the beginning of the path of spiritual advancement: 1.
By the companionship of those who have already entered upon it. 2.
By the hearing or reading of definite teaching on occult philosophy.
3. By enlightened reflection; that is to say, that by sheer force of
hard thinking and close reasoning he may arrive at the truth, or some
portion of it, for himself. 4. By the practice of virtue, which means
that a long series of virtuous lives, though it does not necessarily
involve any increase of intellectuality, does eventually develop in
a man sufficient intuition to enable him to grasp the necessity of
entering upon the path, and show him in what direction it lies.

When, by one or another of these means, he has arrived at this point,
the way to the highest adeptship lies straight before him, if he
chooses to take it. In writing for students of occultism it is hardly
necessary to say that at our present stage of development we cannot
expect to learn all, or nearly all, about any but the lowest steps
of this path; whilst of the highest we know little but the names,
though we may get occasional glimpses of the indescribable glory which
surrounds them.

According to the esoteric teachings these steps are grouped in three
great divisions:

1. The probationary period, before any definite pledges are taken, or
initiations (in the full sense of the word) are given. This carries
a man to the level necessary to pass successfully through what in
Theosophical books is usually called the critical period of the fifth
round.

2. The period of pledged discipleship, or the path proper, whose four
stages are often spoken of in Oriental books as the four paths of
holiness. At the end of this the pupil obtains adeptship--the level
which humanity should reach at the close of the seventh round.

3. What we may venture to call the official period, in which the adept
takes a definite part (under the great Cosmic Law) in the government of
the world, and holds a special office connected therewith. Of course
every adept--every pupil even, when once definitely accepted, as we
have seen in the earlier chapters--takes a part in the great work of
helping forward the evolution of man; but those standing on the higher
levels take charge of special departments, and correspond in the cosmic
scheme to the ministers of the crown in a well-ordered earthly state.
It is not proposed to make any attempt in this book to treat of this
official period; no information about it has ever been made public, and
the whole subject is too far above our comprehension to be profitably
dealt with in print. We will confine ourselves therefore to the two
earlier divisions.

Before going into details of the probationary period it is well to
mention that in most of the Eastern sacred books this stage is regarded
as merely preliminary, and scarcely as part of the path at all, for
they consider that the latter is really entered upon only when definite
pledges have been given. Considerable confusion has been created by the
fact that the numbering of the stages occasionally commences at this
point, though more often at the beginning of the second great division;
sometimes the stages themselves are counted, and sometimes the
initiations leading into or out of them, so that in studying the books
one has to be perpetually on one’s guard to avoid misunderstanding.

This probationary period, however, differs considerably in character
from the others; the divisions between its stages are less decidedly
marked than are those of the higher groups, and the requirements are
not so definite or so exacting. But it will be easier to explain this
last point after giving a list of the five stages of this period,
with their respective qualifications. The first four were very ably
described by Mr. Mohini Mohun Chatterji in the first Transaction of the
London Lodge, to which readers may be referred for fuller definitions
of them than can be given here. Much exceedingly valuable information
about them is also given by Mrs. Besant in her books _The Path of
Discipleship_ and _In the Outer Court_.

The names given to the stages will differ somewhat, for in those
books the Hindu Sanskrit terminology was employed, whereas the Pâli
nomenclature used here is that of the Buddhist system; but although
the subject is thus approached from a different side, as it were,
the qualifications exacted will be found to be precisely the same in
effect even when the outward form varies. In the case of each word the
mere dictionary meaning will first be given in parentheses, and the
explanation of it which is usually given by the teacher will follow.
The first stage, then, is called among Buddhists:

1. Manodvâravajjana (the opening of the doors of the mind, or perhaps
escaping by the door of the mind)--and in it the candidate acquires a
firm intellectual conviction of the impermanence and worthlessness of
mere earthly aims. This is often described as learning the difference
between the real and the unreal; and to learn it often takes a long
time and many hard lessons. Yet it is obvious that it must be the
first step toward anything like real progress, for no man can enter
whole-heartedly upon the path until he has definitely decided to “set
his affection upon things above, not on things on the earth,” and that
decision comes from the certainty that nothing on earth has any value
as compared with the higher life. This step is called by the Hindus the
acquirement of Viveka or discrimination, and Mr. Sinnett speaks of it
as the giving allegiance to the higher self.

2. Parikamma (preparation for action)--the stage in which the candidate
learns to do the right merely because it is right, without considering
his own gain or loss either in this world or the future, and acquires,
as the Eastern books put it, perfect indifference to the enjoyment of
the fruit of his own actions. This indifference is the natural result
of the previous step; for when the neophyte has once grasped the unreal
and impermanent character of all earthly rewards, he ceases to crave
for them; when once the radiance of the real has shone upon the soul,
nothing below that can any longer be an object of desire. This higher
indifference is called by the Hindus Vairâgya.

3. Upachâro (attention or conduct)--the stage in which what are called
“the six qualifications” (the Shatsampatti of the Hindus) must be
acquired. These are called in Pâli:

(_a_) Samo (quietude)--that purity and calmness of thought which
comes from perfect control of the mind--a qualification exceedingly
difficult of attainment, and yet most necessary, for unless the
mind moves only in obedience to the guidance of the will it cannot
be a perfect instrument for the Master’s work in the future. This
qualification is a very comprehensive one, and includes within itself
both the self-control and the calmness which were described in chapter
xiv. as necessary for astral work.

(_b_) Damo (subjugation)--a similar mastery over, and therefore
purity in, one’s actions and words--a quality which again follows
necessarily from its predecessor.

(_c_) Uparati (cessation)--explained as cessation from bigotry or
from belief in the necessity of any act or ceremony prescribed by a
particular religion--so leading the aspirant to independence of thought
and to a wide and generous tolerance.

(_d_) Titikkhâ (endurance or forbearance)--by which is meant the
readiness to bear with cheerfulness whatever one’s karma may bring
upon one, and to part with anything and everything worldly whenever
it may be necessary. It also includes the idea of complete absence of
resentment for wrong, the man knowing that those who do him wrong are
but the instruments of his own karma.

(_e_) Samâdhâna (intentness)--one-pointedness involving the
incapability of being turned aside from one’s path by temptation. This
corresponds very closely with the single-mindness spoken of in the
previous chapter.

(_f_) Saddhâ (faith)--confidence in one’s Master and oneself:
confidence, that is, that the Master is a competent teacher, and that,
however diffident the pupil may feel as to his own powers, he has yet
within him that divine spark which when fanned into a flame will one
day enable him to achieve even as his Master has done.

4. Anuloma (direct order or succession, signifying that its attainment
follows as a natural consequence from the other three)--the stage in
which is acquired that intense desire for liberation from earthly
life, and for union with the highest, which is called by the Hindus
Mumukshatva.

5. Gotrabhû (the condition of fitness for initiation); in this stage
the candidate gathers up, as it were, his previous acquisitions, and
strengthens them to the degree necessary for the next great step,
which will set his feet upon the path proper as an accepted pupil.
The attainment of this level is followed very rapidly by initiation
into the next grade. In answer to the question, “Who is the Gotrabhû?”
Buddha says, “The man who is in possession of those conditions upon
which the commencement of sanctification immediately ensues--he is the
Gotrabhû.”

The wisdom necessary for the reception of the path of holiness is
called Gotrabhû-gñâna.

Now that we have hastily glanced at the steps of the probationary
period, we must emphasize the point to which reference was made
at the commencement--that the _perfect_ attainment of these
accomplishments and qualifications is not expected at this early
stage. As Mr. Mohini says, “If all these are equally strong, adeptship
is attained in the same incarnation.” But such a result is of course
extremely rare. It is in the direction of these acquirements that the
candidate must easelessly strive, but it would be an error to suppose
that no one has been admitted to the next step without possessing all
of them in the fullest possible degree. Nor do they necessarily follow
one another in the same definite order as the later steps; in fact, in
many cases a man would be developing the various qualifications all at
the same time--rather side by side than in regular succession.

It is obvious that a man might easily be working along a great part
of this path even though he was quite unaware of its very existence,
and no doubt many a good Christian, many an earnest freethinker is
already far on the road that will eventually lead him to initiation,
though he may never have heard the word occultism in his life. I
mention these two classes especially, because in every other religion
occult development is recognized as a possibility, and would certainly
therefore be intentionally sought by those who felt yearnings for
something more satisfactory than the exoteric faiths.

We must also note that the steps of this probationary period are not
separated by initiations in the full sense of the word, though they
will certainly be studded with tests and trials of all sorts and on all
planes, and may be relieved by encouraging experiences, and by hints
and help whenever these may safely be given. We are apt sometimes to
use the word initiation somewhat loosely, as for example when it is
applied to such tests as have just been mentioned; properly speaking
it refers only to the solemn ceremony at which a pupil is formally
admitted to a higher grade by an appointed official, who in the name of
the One Initiator receives his plighted vow, and puts into his hands
the new key of knowledge which he is to use on the level to which he
has now attained. Such an initiation is taken at the entrance to the
division which we shall next consider, and also at each passage from
any one of its steps to the next.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE PATH PROPER.


It is in the four stages of this division of the path that the ten
Saṃyojana, or fetters which bind man to the circle of rebirth and hold
him back from Nirvâṇa, must be cast off. And here comes the difference
between this period of pledged discipleship and the previous probation.
No partial success in getting rid of these fetters is sufficient now;
before a candidate can pass on from one of the steps to the next he
must be _entirely_ free from certain of these clogs; and when they
are enumerated it will be seen how far-reaching this requirement is,
and there will be little cause to wonder at the statement made in the
sacred books that seven incarnations are sometimes required to pass
through this division of the path.

Each of these four steps or stages is again divided into four: for each
has (1) its Maggo, or way, during which the student is striving to cast
off the fetters; (2) its Phala (result or fruit) when he finds the
results of his action in so doing showing themselves more and more;
(3) its Bhavagga or consummation, the period when, the result having
culminated, he is able to fulfill satisfactorily the work belonging to
the step on which he now firmly stands; and (4) its Gotrabhû, meaning,
as before, the time when he arrives at a fit state to receive the next
initiation. The first stage is:

I. Sotâpatti or Sohan. The pupil who has attained this level is
spoken of as the Sowani or Sotâpanna--“he who has entered the
stream,”--because from this period, though he may linger, though he
may succumb to more refined temptations and turn aside from his course
for a time, he can no longer fall back altogether from spirituality
and become a mere worldling. He has entered upon the stream of
definite higher human evolution, upon which all humanity must enter
by the middle of the next round, unless they are to be left behind as
temporary failures by the great life-wave, to wait for further progress
until the next chain of worlds.

The pupil who is able to take this initiation has therefore already
outstripped the majority of humanity to the extent of an entire round
of all our seven planets, and in doing so has definitely secured
himself against the possibility of falling out of the stream in the
fifth round. He is consequently sometimes spoken of as “the saved”
or “the safe one.” It is from a misunderstanding of this idea that
there arises the curious theory of salvation promulgated by a certain
section of the Christian community. The “æonian salvation” of which
some of its documents speak is not, as has been blasphemously supposed
by the ignorant, from eternal torture, but simply from wasting the rest
of this æon or dispensation by falling out of its line of progress.
This also is the meaning, naturally, of the celebrated clause in the
Athanasian Creed, “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is
necessary that he hold the catholic faith” (See _The Christian
Creed_, p. 91). The fetters which he must cast off before he can
pass into the next stage are:

1. Sakkâyadiṭṭhi--the delusion of self.

2. Vichikichchhâ--doubt or uncertainty.

3. Sîlabbataparâmâsa--superstition.

The first of these is the “I am I” consciousness, which as connected
with the _personality_ is nothing but an illusion, and must be
got rid of at the very first step of the real upward path. But to cast
off this fetter completely means even more than this, for it involves
the realization of the fact that the individuality also is in very
truth one with the All, that it can therefore never have any interests
opposed to those of its brethren, and that it is most truly progressing
when it most assists the progress of others.

For the very sign and seal of the attainment of the Sotâpatti level
is the first entrance of the pupil into the plane next above the
mental--that which we usually call the buddhic. It may be--nay, it
will be--the merest touch of the lowest sub-plane of that stupendously
exalted condition that the pupil can as yet experience, even with his
Master’s help; but even that touch is something that can never be
forgotten--something that opens a new world before him, and entirely
revolutionizes his feelings and conceptions. Then for the first time,
by means of the extended consciousness of that plane, he truly realizes
the underlying unity of all, not as an intellectual conception merely,
but as a definite fact that is patent to his opened eyes; then first he
really knows something of the world in which he lives--then first he
gets some slight glimpse of what the love and compassion of the great
Masters must be.

As to the second letter, a word of caution is necessary. We who have
been trained in European habits of thought are unhappily so familiar
with the idea that a blind unreasoning adhesion to certain dogmas may
be claimed from a disciple, that on hearing that occultism considers
_doubt_ as an obstacle to progress, we are likely to suppose that
it also requires the same unquestioning faith from its followers as
modern superstitions do. No idea could be more entirely false.

It is true that doubt (or rather uncertainty) on certain questions is a
bar to spiritual progress, but the antidote to that doubt is not blind
faith (which is itself considered as a fetter, as will presently be
seen) but the certainty of conviction founded on individual experiment
or mathematical reasoning. While a child doubted the accuracy of the
multiplication table he would hardly acquire proficiency in the higher
mathematics; but his doubts could be satisfactorily cleared up only by
his attaining a comprehension, founded on reasoning or experiment, that
the statements contained in the table are true. He believes that twice
two are four, not merely because he has been told so, but because it
has become to him a self-evident fact. And this is exactly the method,
and the only method, of resolving doubt known to occultism.

Vichikichchhâ has been defined as doubt of the doctrines of karma and
reincarnation, and of the efficacy of the method of attaining the
highest good by this path of holiness; and the casting off of this
Saṃyojana is the arriving at absolute certainty, based either upon
personal first-hand knowledge or upon reason, that the occult teaching
upon these points is true.

The third fetter to be got rid of comprehends all kinds of unreasoning
or mistaken belief, all dependence on the efficacy of outward rites and
ceremonies to purify the heart. He who would cast it off must learn to
depend upon himself alone, not upon others, nor upon the outer husk of
any religion.

The first three fetters are in a coherent series. The difference
between individuality and personality being fully realized, it is
then possible to some extent to appreciate the actual course of
reincarnation, and so as to dispel all doubt on that head. This done,
the knowledge of the spiritual permanence of the true ego gives rise to
reliance on one’s own spiritual strength, and so dispels superstition.

II. Sakadâgâmî. The pupil who has entered upon this second stage is
spoken of as a Sakridâgâmin--“the man who returns but once”--signifying
that a man who has reached this level should need but one more
incarnation before attaining arahatship. At this step no additional
fetters are cast off, but the pupil is occupied in reducing to a
minimum those which still enchain him. It is, however, usually a period
of considerable psychic and intellectual advancement.

If what are commonly called psychic faculties have not been previously
acquired, they must be developed at this stage, as without them it
would be impossible to assimilate the knowledge which must now be
given, or to do the higher work for humanity in which the pupil is
now privileged to assist. He must have the astral consciousness at
his command during his physical waking life, and during sleep the
heaven-world will be open before him--for the consciousness of a man
when away from his physical body is always one stage higher than it is
while he is still burdened with the house of flesh.

III. Anâgâmî. The Anâgâmin (he who does not return) is so called
because, having reached this stage, he ought to be able to attain
the next one in the life he is then living. He enjoys, while moving
through the round of his daily work, all the splendid possibilities
of progress given by the full possession of the priceless faculties
of the heaven-world, and when he leaves his physical vehicle at
night he enters once more into the wonderfully-widened consciousness
that belongs to the buddhi. In this step he finally gets rid of any
lingering remains of the two fetters of

4. Kâmarâga--attachment to the enjoyment of sensation, typified by
earthly love, and

5. Patigha--all possibility of anger or hatred.

The student who has cast off these fetters can no longer be swayed by
the influence of his senses either in the direction of love or hatred,
and is free from either attachment to or impatience of physical plane
conditions.

Here again we must guard against a possible misconception--one with
which we frequently meet. The purest and noblest human love _never_
dies away--is _never_ in any way diminished by occult training; on
the contrary, it is increased and widened until it embraces all with
the same fervor which at first was lavished on one or two. But the
student does in time rise above all considerations connected with the
mere _personality_ of those around him, and so is free from all the
injustice and partiality which ordinary love so often brings in its
train.

Nor should it for a moment be supposed that in gaining this wide
affection for all he loses the especial love for his closer friends.
The unusually perfect link between Ânanda and the Buddha, as between
S. John and Jesus, is on record to prove that on the contrary this is
enormously intensified; and the tie between a Master and his pupils is
stronger far than any earthly bond. For the affection which flourishes
upon the path of holiness is an affection between egos, and not merely
between personalities; therefore it is strong and permanent, without
fear of diminution or fluctuation, for it is that “perfect love which
casteth out fear.”

IV. Arahat (the venerable, the perfect). On attaining this level the
aspirant constantly enjoys the consciousness of the buddhic plane, and
is able to use its powers and faculties while still in the physical
body; and when he leaves that body in sleep or trance he passes at
once into the unutterable glory of the nirvâṇic plane. In this stage
the occultist must cast off the last remnants of the five remaining
fetters, which are:

6. Rûparâga--desire for beauty of form or for physical existence in a
form, even including that in the heaven-world.

7. Arûparâga--desire for formless life.

8. Mâno--pride.

9. Uddhachcha--agitation or irritability.

10. Avijjâ--ignorance.

On this we may remark that the casting off of Rûparâga involves not
only getting rid of desire for earthly life, however grand or noble
that life may be, and astral or devachanic life, however glorious,
but also of all liability to be unduly influenced or repelled by the
external beauty or ugliness of any person or thing.

Arûparâga--desire for life either in the highest and formless planes of
the heaven-world or in the still more exalted buddhic plane--would be
merely a higher and less sensual form of selfishness, and must be cast
off just as much as the lower. Uddhachcha really means “liability to
be disturbed in mind,” and a man who had finally cast off this fetter
would be absolutely unruffled by anything whatever that might happen
to him--perfectly impervious to any kind of attack upon his dignified
serenity.

The getting rid of ignorance of course implies the acquisition of
perfect knowledge--practical omniscience as regards our planetary
chain. When all the fetters are finally cast off the advancing ego
reaches the fifth stage--the stage of full adeptship--and becomes

V. Asekha, “the one who has no more to learn,” again as regards our
planetary chain. It is quite impossible for us to realize at our
present level what this attainment means. All the splendor of the
nirvâṇic plane lies open before the waking eyes of the adept, while
when he chooses to leave his body he has the power to enter upon
something higher still--a plane which to us is the merest name. As
Professor Rhys Davids explains, “He is now free from all sin; he sees
and values all things in this life at their true value; all evil
being rooted from his mind, he experiences only righteous desires for
himself, and tender pity and regard and exalted love for others.”

To show how little he has lost the sentiment of love, we read in the
Metta Sutta of the state of mind of one who stands at this level: “As
a mother loves, who even at the risk of her own life protects her only
son, such love let there be toward all beings. Let good will without
measure prevail in the whole world, above, below, around, unstinted,
unmixed with any feeling of differing or opposing interests. When a man
remains steadfastly in this state of mind all the while, whether he be
standing or walking, sitting or lying down, then is come to pass the
saying which is written, ‘Even in this life has holiness been found.’”



CHAPTER XVII.

WHAT LIES BEYOND.


Beyond this period it is obvious that we can know nothing of the new
qualifications required for the still higher levels which yet lie
before the perfect man. It is abundantly clear, however, that when a
man has become Asekha he has exhausted all the possibilities of moral
development, so that further advancement for him can only mean still
wider knowledge and still more wonderful spiritual powers. We are told
that when man has thus attained his spiritual majority, whether in the
slow course of evolution or by the shorter path of self-development, he
assumes the fullest control of his own destinies, and makes choice of
his future line of evolution among seven possible paths which he sees
opening before him.

Naturally at our present level we cannot expect to understand much
about these, and the faint outline of some of them which is all that
can be sketched in for us conveys very little to the mind, except that
most of them take the adept altogether away from our earth-chain,
which no longer affords sufficient scope for his evolution.

One path is that of those who, as the technical phrase goes, “accept
Nirvâṇa.” Through what incalculable æons they remain in that sublime
condition, for what work they are preparing themselves, what will
be their future line of evolution, are questions upon which we know
nothing; and indeed if information upon such points could be given it
is more than likely that it would prove quite incomprehensible to us at
our present stage.

But this much at least we may grasp--that the blessed state of Nirvâṇa
is not, as some have ignorantly supposed, a condition of blank
nothingness, but on the contrary of far more intense and beneficent
activity; and that ever as man rises higher in the scale of nature his
possibilities become greater, his work for others ever grander and more
far-reaching, and that infinite wisdom and infinite power mean for
him only infinite capacity for service, because they are directed by
infinite love.

Another class chooses a spiritual evolution not quite so far removed
from humanity, for though not directly connected with the next chain
of our system it extends through two long periods corresponding to its
first and second rounds, at the end of which time they also appear to
“accept Nirvâṇa,” but at a higher stage than those previously mentioned.

Others join the deva evolution, whose progress lies along a grand
chain consisting of seven chains like ours, each of which to them is
as one world. This line of evolution is spoken of as the most gradual
and therefore the least arduous of the seven courses; but though it
is sometimes referred to in the books as “yielding to the temptation
to become a god,” it is only in comparison with the sublime height
of renunciation of the Nirmânakâya that it can be spoken of in this
half-disparaging manner, for the adept who chooses this course has
indeed a glorious career before him, and though the path which he
selects is not the shortest, it is nevertheless a very noble one.

Yet another group are the Nirmânakâyas--those who, declining all these
easier methods, choose the shortest but steepest path to the heights
which still lie before them. They form what is poetically termed the
“guardian wall,” and, as _The Voice of the Silence_ tells us,
“protect the world from further and far greater misery and sorrow,” not
indeed by warding off from it external evil influences, but by devoting
all their strength to the work of pouring down upon it a flood of
spiritual force and assistance, without which it would assuredly be in
far more hopeless case than now.

Yet again there are those who remain even more directly in association
with humanity, and continue to incarnate among it, choosing the path
which leads through the four stages of what we have called above the
official period; and among these are the Masters of Wisdom--those from
whom we who study Theosophy have learnt such fragments as we know of
the mighty harmony of evolving Nature. But it would seem that only a
certain comparatively small number adopt this course--probably only so
many as are necessary for the carrying on of this physical side of the
work.

In hearing of these different possibilities, people sometimes exclaim
rashly that there could of course be no thought in a Master’s mind
of choosing any but that course which most helps humanity--a remark
which greater knowledge would have prevented them from making. We
should never forget that there are other evolutions in the solar system
besides our own, and no doubt it is necessary for the carrying out of
the vast plan of the Logos that there should be adepts working on all
the seven lines to which we have referred. Surely the choice of the
Master would be to go wherever his work was most needed--to place his
services with absolute selflessness at the disposal of the Powers in
charge of this part of the great scheme of evolution.

       *       *       *       *       *

This then is the path which lies before us, the path which each one of
us should be beginning to tread. Stupendous though its heights appear
we should remember that they are attained but gradually and step by
step, and that those who now stand near the summit once toiled in the
mire of the valleys, even as we are doing. Although this path may at
first seem hard and toilsome, yet ever as we rise our footing becomes
firmer and our outlook wider, and thus we find ourselves better able to
help those who are climbing beside us.

Because it is at first thus hard and toilsome to the lower self, it
has sometimes been called by the very misleading title of “the path of
woe;” but, as Mrs. Besant has beautifully written, “through all such
suffering there is a deep and abiding joy, for the suffering is of the
lower nature, and the joy of the higher. When the last shred of the
personality is gone all that can thus suffer has passed away, and in
the perfected Adept there is unruffled peace and everlasting joy. He
sees the end toward which all is working, and rejoices in that end,
knowing that earth’s sorrow is but a passing phase in human evolution.

“That of which little has been said is the profound content which comes
from being on the path, from realizing the goal and the way to it, from
knowing that the power to be useful is increasing, and that the lower
nature is being gradually extirpated. And little has been said of the
rays of joy which fall upon the path from loftier levels, the dazzling
glimpses of the glory to be revealed, the serenity which the storms of
earth cannot ruffle. To any one who has entered on the path all other
ways have lost their charm, and its sorrows have a deeper bliss than
the best joys of the lower world.” (Vâhan, vol. v., No. 12.)

Let no man therefore despair because he thinks the task too great for
him; what man has done man can do, and just in proportion as we extend
our aid to those whom we can help, so will those who have already
attained be able in their turn to help us. So from the lowest to the
highest we who are treading the steps of the path are bound together
by one long chain of mutual service, and none need feel neglected or
alone, for though sometimes the lower flights of the great staircase
may be wreathed in mist, we know that it leads up to happier regions
and purer air, where the light is always shining.



  INDEX.


  Adept, 26, 95, 109, 127, 129, 133

  Adeptship, 109, 115, 127

  Anâgâmî, 124

  Ânanda and the Buddha, 125

  Angels and Gods, Hierarchies of, 7, 8

  Angel Story, 42

  Anuloma, 114

  Arahat, consciousness of, 126

  Arûparâga, 126

  Asekha, 127, 129

  Astral body, 36, 37
    of children, 69
    after death, 81, 82
    active consciousness in, 37, 67
    physical elements, no obstacle to, 99, 100

  Astral world, power of thought in, 99

  Athanasian Creed, 120

  Avijjâ, 126

  Awakening pupils on the astral plane, tests for, 99-100


  Bhavagga, 119

  Black magicians, 94

  Bodies, effect of coarse ones, after death, 81

  Buddha and Ânanda, 125

  Buddhas, some in early races, from deva evolution, 28


  Calmness, a requirement on the Path, 101

  Children, useful as helpers, 69, 70

  Consciousness, apart from physical body, 29, 33-37, 124
    active astral, 37, 67, 68
    of the Arahat, 126
    buddhic, 121, 124, 126

  Cyril, Angel Story, 42-48
    Fire Story, 50-55
    Two Brothers, 63-71
    materialized form, 56, 58, 59, 60, 71


  Dead entity, not realizing his death, 87

  Devas, kinds of help given by, between incarnations, 26, 27
    help on the mental plane, 27
    supplied Buddhas in early races, 28
    evolution of, 131

  Discipleship, 109, 116, 118

  Dreams, impressed on living, 85


  Earthbound entitles, 83, 87
    Story of a father, 84

  Ego, 74, 82, 125

  Eternal punishment, belief in, after death, 79

  Evil, counteracting effects of black magicians, 94

  Evolution, accelerated in lower kingdoms, 39
    deva, 131
    current of, too strong to resist, 83, 103


  Faith, true meaning of, 122

  Fifth Round, critical period of, 109, 119


  Gotrabhû, 114, 119

  Guardian Wall, 95, 131


  Hell, effect of belief in, after death, 78

  Holiness, four paths of, 109


  Immortality of the Soul, 6, 7, 87

  Initiation, 109, 114, 116, 119

  Invisible Helpers, classes of, 25, 28
    pupils of the Masters, 29
    danger of repercussion, 58, 60, 61
    work with the dead, 73, 83, 89
    work hindered by fear, 74, 78, 80
    methods of impressing the living, 14, 40, 73, 75, 85, 86, 92, 93, 94
    spiritual instruction, given by, 89, 93, 94
    qualifications necessary for becoming, 97


  Jesus and S. John, 125


  Kamaloka, factors deciding length of stay in, 81, 83
    entity in, not realizing death, 87

  Kâmarâga, 124

  Knowledge, kind required on the Path, 100, 102

  Karma, interference with another’s, impossible, 30, 80
    illustrated by Angel Story, 48
    how carried out by Masters, 21
    determines possibilities of becoming helpers, 70
    inevitable catastrophes, 73
    ties of karma, in astral work, 48, 55
    after death, 81
    of the Invisible Helpers, 93, 98

  Kârmic obligations, 98


  Love, 103, 125, 128


  Maggo, 118

  Mâno, 126

  Manus, some from deva evolution, 28

  Manodvâravajjana, 111

  Materialists, after death, 87

  Materialization, three kinds of, 57
    production of, at séances, 59, 60
    matter for, where drawn from, 59
    economy in using force for, 58
    exceptional cases of, 61, 62, 65, 67, 71
    knowledge necessary for, 71
    in cabin of sinking ship, 76
    in railway carriage, 23

  Materialized body not injured by fire or water, 61, 77

  Masters training Helpers, 28, 60, 95, 97, 102, 106, 121, 125, 132
    guarding an advancing soul, 21
    Lords of Compassion, 64
    felt as a Presence, 66
    restrictions placed upon Helpers by, 88
    confidence in, 114
    and pupils, love between, 125

  Medium, possibilities of repercussion, 59, 60
    occasional good work done by, 86
    dangers of communication through, 87, 90

  Memory, waking, of night’s experience, 37
    waking, caused by great shock, 67, 68
    of teachings received after death, 90

  Mental plane, work upon, 111

  Mind, effect of attitude of, after death, 81, 82, 87, 89
    how easily influenced, 92
    helps in problems of study, 93

  Mother-love, value of, 14, 32, 128

  Mumukshatva, 114


  Nature-spirits, help to man, rare, 31

  Nirmânakâyas, 95, 131

  Nirvâṇa, 118, 126, 127, 130


  Parikamma, 112

  Path, The, 94, 97, 106, 107, 113
    four means of reaching, 108
    three divisions of, 109
    of holiness, four stages of, 109
    probationary, 110, 116
    official period of, 109, 132

  Patigha, 124

  Personality, 123, 125, 133

  Phala, 118

  Prayer, answer to, 11, 12, 93

  Proofs, phenomenal, forbidden, 88

  Psychic faculties, 123

  Purgatory, teaching of, helpful, after death, 79


  Qualifications for becoming Invisible Helpers, 97-106


  Repercussion, when possible, 56, 58, 59, 60

  Rounds, critical period of Fifth, 109, 119
    Seventh, 109

  Rûparâga, 126


  Saddhâ, 114

  Sakadâgâmî, 123

  Sakkâyadiṭṭhi, 120

  Salvation, origin of Christian idea, 120

  Samâdhâna, 114

  Samo, 113

  Saṃyojana, 118, 122

  Séances, 57, 59, 60, 86, 90

  Self-control, qualification required, 98

  Seventh Round, 109

  Shatsampatti, 113

  Sîlabbataparâmâsa, 120

  Single-mindedness, qualification required, 97

  Sotâpatti or Sohan, 119, 121

  Stories of Invisible Helpers, saved from fire, 9, 10, 11, 48
    saved from falling into a well, 14
    saved from drowning, 12
    saved from being injured by horses, 15
    saved from being lost in the woods, 16
    saved from massacre, 40
    help given in cabin of sinking ship, 76
    help given an earth-bound father, 84
    help given materialistic scientist, 88
    help given in catastrophes, 72, 73
    help given drowning man, 75
    rescue from a mob, 20
    rescue from falling over a cliff, 43
    warnings given the author, 19
    warnings to captain of a boat, 72
    the two brothers, 63
    protection in railway carriage, 23
    release from astral world, 90

  Suggestion, power of, 92-93


  Teachings given by Invisible Helpers after death, 82, 83, 89, 90, 91
    during life, 92, 93

  Tests of earth, water, air and fire, 99

  Thought, power of, on astral plane, 99

  Titikkhâ, 113


  Uddhachcha, 126

  Upachâro, 113

  Uparati, 113


  Vairâgya, 113

  Vichikichchhâ, 120, 122

  Viveka, 112


  Warnings given by Helpers, 19, 72, 90, 94

  Will, power of, over matter, 61
    man’s, never dominated by Helpers, 92
    cosmic, not to be overcome, 83, 103
    free, of the Asekha, 129



  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

  1. Original spellings were standardised only when a dominant version
  was found.
  2. Misspellings of words that occur only once have been corrected.
  3. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
  4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.



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