offers itself as a substitute for
religious faith of the usual kind will be expected to yield some
tangible results in regard to the future spiritual well-being of those
who adopt it. Has occult philosophy nothing to give except to those who
are in a position and willing to make a sacrifice in its behalf of all
other objects in life? In that case it would indeed be useless to bring
it out into the world. In reality the esoteric doctrine affords an
almost infinite variety of opportunities for spiritual development, and
no greater mistake could be made in connection with the present movement
than to suppose the teaching of the Adepts merely addressed to persons
capable of heroic self-devotion. Assuredly it does not discourage
efforts in the direction of the highest achievement of occult progress,
if any Western occultists may feel disposed to make them; but it is
important for us all to keep clearly in view the lower range of
possibilities connected with humbler aspirations.

I believe it to be absolutely true that even the slightest attention
seriously paid to the instructions now emanating from the Indian Adepts
will generate results within the spiritual principles of those who
render it--causes capable of producing appreciable consequences in a
future state of existence. Any one who has sufficiently examined the
doctrine of Devachan will readily follow the idea, for the nature of the
spiritual existence which in the ordinary course of things must succeed
each physical life, provides for the very considerable expansion of any
aspirations towards real knowledge that may be set going on earth. I
will recur to this point directly, when I have made clearer the general
drift of the argument I am trying to unfold. At the one end of the scale
of possibilities connected with occult study lies the supreme
development of Adeptship; an achievement which means that the person
reaching it has so violently stimulated his spiritual growth within a
short period, as to have anticipated processes on which Nature, in her
own deliberate way, would have spent a great procession of ages. At the
other end of the scale lies the small result to which I have just
alluded--a result which may rather be said to establish a tendency in
the direction of spiritual achievement than to embody such achievement.
But between these two widely different results there is no hard and fast
line that can be drawn at any place to make a distinct separation