subjective conditions of _nirvana_ and _devachan_
were the result of one-sided male imaginings which had their origin in
male selfishness; and this conviction grew in him in the degree in which
the Parthivi Mutar, or 'Earth Mother,' became incarnated in Nandana. Thus
was revealed to him the astounding fact that the whole system of the
occult adepts had originated in the natural brains of men who had given
themselves up to egotistical transcendental speculation--in fact, I
cannot better describe the process than in the words of Mr Sinnett
himself, where he alludes to 'the highly cultivated devotees to be met
with occasionally in India, who build up a conception of nature, the
universe and God, entirely on a metaphysical basis, and who have evolved
their systems by sheer force of transcendental thinking--who will take
some established system of philosophy as its groundwork, and amplify on
this to an extent which only an oriental metaphysician could dream of.'

"This, Mr Sinnett chooses to assume, was not the fact with the Thibet
Brothers; but, in reality, this was just what they did. The fact that
they have outstripped other similar transcendentalists is due to the
circumstance that the original founders of the system were men of more
powerful will and higher attainments than any who have succeeded them.
And on their death they formed a compact spiritual society in the other
world, impregnating the wills and imaginations of their disciples still
on earth with their fantastic theories, which they still retain there, of
a planetary chain, and the spiral advance of the seven rounds, and the
septenary law, and all the rest of it. In order for human beings to come
into these occult knowledges, it is necessary, as Mr Sinnett admits, for
the adepts to go into trance-conditions--in other words, to lose all
control of their normal, or as they would probably call them, their
objective faculties. While in this condition, they are the sport of any
invisible intelligences that choose to play upon them; but fearing lest
they may be accused of this, they erroneously assert that no such
intelligences of a high order have cognisance of what happens in this
world. The fact that _mahatmas_ have powers which appear supernatural
proves nothing, as Mr Sinnett also admits that innumerable _fakirs_ and
_yojis_ possess these as well, whose authority on occultism he deems of
no account, when he says that 'careless inquirers are very apt to
con