own
progress by meddling with mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will
say: "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." ....But
let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world,
would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the
result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently
encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?

Now, in condemning the above passage as inculcating selfishness,
superficial critics neglect many profound truths. In the first place,
they forget the other extracts already quoted which impose self-denial
as a necessary condition of success, and which say that, with progress,
new senses and new powers are acquired with which infinitely more good
can be done than without them. The more spiritual the Adept becomes the
less can he meddle with mundane gross affairs and the more he has to
confine himself to spiritual work. It has been repeated, times out of
number, that the work on the spiritual plane is as superior to the work
on the intellectual plane as the latter is superior to that on the
physical plane. The very high Adepts, therefore, do help humanity, but
only spiritually: they are constitutionally incapable of meddling with
worldly affairs. But this applies only to very high Adepts. There are
various degrees of Adept-ship, and those of each degree work for
humanity on the planes to which they may have risen. It is only the
chelas that can live in the world, until they rise to a certain degree.
And it is because the Adepts do care for the world that they make their
chelas live in and work for it, as many of those who study the subject
are aware. Each cycle produces its own occultists capable of working
for the humanity of the time on all the different planes; but when the
Adepts foresee that at a particular period humanity will he incapable of
producing occultists for work on particular planes, for such occasions
they do provide by either voluntarily giving up their further progress
and waiting until humanity reaches that period, or by refusing to enter
into Nirvana and submitting to re-incarnation so as to be ready for work
when the time comes. And although the world may not be aware of the
fact, yet there are even now certain Adepts who have preferred to remain
in statu quo and refuse to take the higher degrees, for the benefit of
the future generations of humanity. In short, as the Adepts work
harmoniously, si