ent
whereby a man can qualify himself without trouble to become a pupil in
that School--no royal road to the learning which has to be acquired in
it. At the present day, just as in the mists of antiquity, the man who
wishes to attract their notice must enter upon the slow and toilsome
path of self-development--must learn first of all to take himself in
hand and make himself all that he ought to be. The steps of that path
are no secret; I have given them in full detail in _Invisible
Helpers_, so I need not repeat them here. But it is no easy road to
follow, and yet sooner or later all must follow it, for the great law
of evolution sweeps mankind slowly but resistlessly towards its goal.

From those who are pressing into this path the great Masters select
their pupils, and it is only by qualifying himself to be taught that a
man can put himself in the way of getting the teaching. Without that
qualification, membership in any Lodge or Society, whether secret or
otherwise, will not advance his object in the slightest degree. It is
true, as we all know, that it was at the instance of some of these
Masters that our Theosophical Society was founded, and that from its
ranks some have been chosen to pass into closer relations with them.
But that choice depends upon the earnestness of the candidate, not
upon his mere membership of the Society or of any body within it.

That, then, is the only absolutely safe way of developing
clairvoyance--to enter with all one's energy upon the path of moral
and mental evolution, at one stage of which this and other of the
higher faculties will spontaneously begin to show themselves. Yet
there is one practice which is advised by all the religions
alike--which if adopted carefully and reverently can do no harm to any
human being, yet from which a very pure type of clairvoyance has
sometimes been developed; and that is the practice of meditation.

Let a man choose a certain time every day--a time when he can rely
upon being quiet and undisturbed, though preferably in the daytime
rather than at night--and set himself at that time to keep his mind
for a few minutes entirely free from all earthly thoughts of any kind
whatever and, when that is achieved, to direct the whole force of his
being towards the highest spiritual ideal that he happens to know. He
will find that to gain such perfect control of thought is enormously
more difficult than he supposes, but when he attains it it cannot but
be in