truth, than the one I have spoken of, but still
important and valuable to the faiths of the world; for Theosophy
brings back to men, living in tradition, testimony to the reality of
knowledge transcending the knowledge of the senses and the reasoning
powers of the lower mind. It comes with its hands full of proof,
modern proof, proof of to-day, living witnesses, of unseen worlds, of
subtler worlds than the physical. It comes, as the Founders and the
early Teachers of every religion have come, to testify again by
personal experience to the reality of the unseen worlds of which the
religions are the continual witnesses in the physical world. Have you
ever noticed in the histories of the great religions how they grow
feebler in their power over men as faith takes the place of knowledge,
and tradition the place of the living testimony of living men? That is
one of the values of Theosophy in the religious world, that it teaches
men to travel to worlds unseen, and to bring back the evidence of what
they have met and studied; that it so teaches men their own nature
that it enables them to separate soul and body, and travel without the
physical body in worlds long thought unattainable, save through the
gateway of death. I say "Long thought unattainable"; but the
scriptures of every religion bear witness that they are not
unattainable. The Hindu tells us that man should separate himself from
his body as you strip the sheath from the stem of the grass. The
Buddhist tells us that by deep thought and contemplation mind
may know itself as mind apart from the physical brain. Christianity
tells us many a story of the personal knowledge of its earlier
teachers, of a ministry of angels that remained in the Church, and of
angelic teachers training the neophytes in knowledge. Islam tells us
that its own great prophet himself passed into higher worlds, and
brought back the truths which civilised Arabia, and gave knowledge
which lit again the torch of learning in Europe when the Moors came to
Spain. And so religion after religion bears testimony to the
possibility of human knowledge outside the physical world; we only
re-proclaim the ancient truth--with this addition, which some
religions now shrink from making: that what man did in the past man
may do to-day; that the powers of the Spirit are not shackled, that
the knowledge of the other worlds is still attainable to man. And
outside that practical knowledge of other worlds it brings by th