hing in the narrow conceptions of
Western Religionists--a reductio ad absurdum. This is a gratuitous
insult even when applied to the pseudo-Christian or ecclesiastical
Jehovite idea of God.

Consequently, it will be seen that the common ideal conception of
"Immortality" is not only essentially wrong, but a physical and
metaphysical impossibility. The idea, whether cherished by Theosophists
or non-Theosophists, by Christians or Spiritualists, by Materialists or
Idealists, is a chimerical illusion. But the actual prolongation of
human life is possible for a time so long as to appear miraculous and
incredible to those who regard our span of existence as necessarily
limited to at most a couple of hundred years. We may break, as it were,
the shock of Death, and instead of dying, change a sudden plunge into
darkness to a transition into a brighter light. And this may be made so
gradual that the passage from one state of existence to another shall
have its friction minimized, so as to be practically imperceptible.
This is a very different matter, and quite within the reach of Occult
Science. In this, as in all other cases, means properly directed will
gain their ends, and causes produce effects. Of course, the only
question is, what are these causes, and how, in their turn, are they to
be produced. To lift, as far as may be allowed, the veil from this
aspect of Occultism, is the object of the present paper.

We must premise by reminding the reader of two Theosophic doctrines,
constantly inculcated in "Isis" and in other mystic works--namely, (a)
that ultimately the Kosmos is One--one under infinite variations and
manifestations, and (b) that the so-called man is a "compound being"--
composite not only in the exoteric scientific sense of being a congeries
of living so-called material Units, but also in the esoteric sense of
being a succession of seven forms or parts of itself, interblended with
each other. To put it more clearly we might say that the more ethereal
forms are but duplicates of the same aspect,--each finer one lying
within the inter-atomic spaces of the next grosser. We would have the
reader understand that these are no subtleties, no "spiritualities" at
all in the Christo-Spiritualistic sense. In the actual man reflected in
your mirror are really several men, or several parts of one composite
man; each the exact counterpart of the other, but the "atomic
conditions" (for want of a better word) of each o