ssion in
connection with such a sacred subject, "the cat out of the bag." Since,
however, the _arhats_, or illuminati, of the East, seem to have arrived
at the conclusion that the Western mind is at last sufficiently prepared
and advanced in spiritual knowledge to be capable of assimilating the
occult doctrines of Esoteric Buddhism, and have allowed their pupil to
burst them upon a thoughtless and frivolous society with the suddenness
of a bomb-shell, I feel released from the obligations to secrecy by which
I have hitherto felt bound, and will proceed to unfold a few arcana of a
far more extraordinary character than any which are to be found even in
the pages of the 'Theosophist' or of 'Esoteric Buddhism.'

Owing to certain conditions connected with my _linga sharira_, or "astral
body"--which it would be difficult for me to explain to those who are not
to some extent initiated--I passed through the various degrees of _chela_-
ship with remarkable rapidity. When I say that in less than fifteen
years of spiritual absorption and profound contemplation of esoteric
mysteries I became a _mahatma_, or adept, some idea may be formed by
_chelas_ who are now treading that path of severe ordeal, of the rapidity
of my progress: indeed, such extraordinary faculty did I manifest, that
at one time the Guru, my master, was inclined to think that I was one of
those exceptional cases which recur from time to time, where a child-body
is selected as the human tenement of a reincarnated adept; and that
though belonging by rights to the fourth round, I was actually born into
the fifth round of the human race in the planetary chain. "The adept,"
says an occult aphorism, "becomes; he is not made." That was exactly my
case. I attribute it principally to an overweening confidence in myself,
and to a blind faith in others. As Mr Sinnett very properly remarks--

"Very much further than people generally imagine, will mere confidence
carry the occult neophyte. How many European readers who would be
quite incredulous if told of some results which occult _chelas_ in the
most incipient stages of their training have to accomplish by sheer
force of confidence, hear constantly in church, nevertheless, the
familiar Biblical assurances of the power which resides in faith, and
let the words pass by like the wind, leaving no impression!"

It is true that I had some reason for this confidence--which arose from
the fact that prior t