wed fellow aspirant. In this matter it is most true that
there is no royal road by which favourites may travel.

For centuries the selection of Chelas--outside the hereditary group
within the gon-pa (temple)--has been made by the Himalayan Mahatmas
themselves from among the class--in Tibet, a considerable one as to
number--of natural mystics. The only exceptions have been in the cases
of Western men like Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Paracelsus, Pico di
Mirandolo, Count St. Germain, &c., whose temperament affinity to this
celestial science, more or less forced the distant Adepts to come into
personal relations with them, and enabled them to get such small (or
large) proportion of the whole truth as was possible under their social
surroundings. From Book IV. of Kui-te, Chapter on "The Laws of
Upasanas," we learn that the qualifications expected in a Chela were:--

1. Perfect physical health;

2. Absolute mental and physical purity;

3. Unselfishness of purpose; universal charity; pity for all
animate beings;

4. Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the law of Karma, independent of
the intervention of any power in Nature: a law whose course is not to
be obstructed by any agency, not to be caused to deviate by prayer or
propitiatory exoteric ceremonies;

5. A courage undaunted in every emergency, even by peril to life;

6. An intuitional perception of one's being the vehicle of the
manifested Avalokiteswara or Divine Atma (Spirit);

7. Calm indifference for, but a just appreciation of, everything that
constitutes the objective and transitory world, in its relation with,
and to, the invisible regions.

Such, at the least, must have been the recommendations of one aspiring
to perfect Chelaship. With the sole exception of the first, which in
rare and exceptional cases might have been modified, each one of these
points has been invariably insisted upon, and all must have been more or
less developed in the inner nature by the Chela's unhelped exertions,
before he could be actually "put to the test."

When the self-evolving ascetic--whether in, or outside the active
world--has placed himself, according to his natural capacity, above,
hence made himself master of his (1) Sarira--body; (2) Indriya--senses;
(3) Dosha--faults; (4) Dukkha--pain; and is ready to become one with
his Manas--mind; Buddhi--intellection, or spiritual intelligence; and
Atma--highest soul, i.e., spirit; when he is ready for this, and,
furthe