e so called accidents of Nature.

This consideration brings us to the question of those habits in life
which are more immediately associated in the popular views of the matter
with the pursuit of occult science. It will be quite plain that the
generation within his own nature by an occult student of affinities in
the direction of spiritual progress, is a matter which has little if
anything to do with the outer circumstances of his daily life. It
cannot be dissociated from what may be called the outer circumstances of
his moral life, for an occult student, whose moral nature is consciously
ignoble, and who combines the pursuit of knowledge with the practice of
wrong, becomes by that condition of things a student of sorcery rather
than of true occultism--a candidate for satanic evolution instead of
perfection. But at the same time the physical habits of life may be
quite the reverse of ascetic, while all the while the thinking processes
of the intellectual life are developing affinities which cannot fail in
the results just seen to produce large ulterior consequences. Some
misconception is very apt to arise here from the way in which frequent
reference is made to the ascetic habits of those who purpose to become
the regular chelas of Oriental Adepts. It is supposed that what is
practiced by the Master is necessarily recommended for all his pupils.
Now this is far from being the case as regards the miscellaneous pupils
who are gathering round the occult teachers lately become known to
public report. Certainly even in reference to their miscellaneous pupils
the Adepts would not discountenance asceticism. As we saw just now,
there is no hard line drawn across the scale on which are defined the
varying consequences of occult study in all its varying degrees of
intensity--so with ascetic practice, from the slightest habits of
self-denial, which may engender a preference for spiritual over material
gratification, up to the very largest developments of asceticism
required as a passport to chelaship, no such practices can be quite
without their consequences in the all-embracing records of Karma. But,
broadly speaking, asceticism belongs to that species of effort which
aims at personal chelaship, and that which contemplates the patient
development of spiritual growth along the slow track of natural
evolution claims no more, broadly speaking, than intellectual
application. All that is asserted in regard to the opening now of