e Sutras are here brief to obscurity; only a few words, for example,
are given to the great triune mystery and illusion of Time; a phrase or
two indicates the sweep of some universal law. Yet it is hoped that,
by keeping our eyes fixed on the spiritual man, remembering that he
is the hero of the story, and that all that is written concerns him and
his adventures, we may be able to find our way through this thicket of
tangled words, and keep in our hands the clue to the mystery.

The last part of the last book needs little introduction. In a sense, it is
the most important part of the whole treatise, since it unmasks the
nature of the personality, that psychical "mind," which is the wakeful
enemy of all who seek to tread the path. Even now, we can hear it
whispering the doubt whether that can be a good path, which thus sets
"mind" at defiance.

If this, then, be the most vital and fundamental part of the teaching,
should it not stand at the very beginning? It may seem so at first; but
had it stood there, we should not have comprehended it. For he who
would know the doctrine must lead the life, doing the will of his Father
which is in Heaven.

BOOK IV

1. Psychic and spiritual powers may be inborn, or they may be gained
by the use of drugs, or by incantations, or by fervour, or by
Meditation.

Spiritual powers have been enumerated and described in the preceding
sections. They are the normal powers of the spiritual man, the
antetype, the divine edition, of the powers of the natural man.
Through these powers, the spiritual man stands, sees, hears, speaks,
in the spiritual world, as the physical man stands, sees, hears, speaks
in the natural world.

There is a counterfeit presentment of the spiritual man, in the world
of dreams, a shadow lord of shadows, who has his own dreamy
powers of vision, of hearing, of movement; he has left the natural
without reaching the spiritual. He has set forth from the shore, but has
not gained the further verge of the river. He is borne along by the
stream, with no foothold on either shore. Leaving the actual, he has
fallen short of the real, caught in the limbo of vanities and delusions.
The cause of this aberrant phantasm is always the worship of a false,
vain self, the lord of dreams, within one's own breast. This is the
psychic man, lord of delusive and bewildering psychic powers.

Spiritual powers, like intellectual or artistic gifts, may be inborn: the
fruit, that is, of see