heir gods upon the high
mountains and upon the hills" is traced back to the unwillingness of
their ancient elders to allow people in most cases unfit for adeptship
to choose a life of celibacy and asceticism, or in other words, to
pursue adeptship. This prohibition had an esoteric meaning before it
became the prohibition, incomprehensible in its dead-letter sense: for
it is not India alone whose sons accorded divine honours to the Wise
Ones, but all nations regarded their adepts and initiates as divine.--
G.M.
---------

Nor must the beginner disdain the assistance of medicine and good
medical regimen. He is still an ordinary mortal, and he requires the
aid of an ordinary mortal.

"Suppose, however, all the conditions required, or which will be
understood as required (for the details and varieties of treatment
requisite, are too numerous to be detailed here), are fulfilled, what is
the next step?" the reader will ask. Well if there have been no
backslidings or remissness in the procedure indicated, the following
physical results will follow:--

First the neophyte will take more pleasure in things spiritual and pure.
Gradually gross and material occupations will become not only uncraved
for or forbidden, but simply and literally repulsive to him. He will
take more pleasure in the simple sensations of Nature--the sort of
feeling one can remember to have experienced as a child. He will feel
more light-hearted, confident, happy. Let him take care the sensation
of renewed youth does not mislead, or he will yet risk a fall into his
old baser life and even lower depths. "Action and Re-action are equal."

Now the desire for food will begin to cease. Let it be left off
gradually--no fasting is required. Take what you feel you require. The
food craved for will be the most innocent and simple. Fruit and milk
will usually be the best. Then as till now, you have been simplifying
the quality of your food, gradually--very gradually--as you feel capable
of it diminish the quantity. You will ask: "Can a man exist without
food?" No, but before you mock, consider the character of the process
alluded to. It is a notorious fact that many of the lowest and simplest
organisms have no excretions. The common guinea-worm is a very good
instance. It has rather a complicated organism, but it has no
ejaculatory duct. All it consumes--the poorest essences of the human
body--is applied to its growth and propagation. Living a