in those early days was Mr. A.P. Sinnett, the editor of _The Pioneer_, and
his keen intellect at once grasped the magnitude and the importance of the
teaching which she put before him. Although Madame Blavatsky herself had
previously written _Isis Unveiled_, it had attracted but little attention,
and it was Mr. Sinnett who first made the teaching really available for
western readers in his two books, _The Occult World_ and _Esoteric
Buddhism_.

It was through these works that I myself first came to know their author,
and afterwards Madame Blavatsky herself; from both of them I learned much.
When I asked Madame Blavatsky how one could learn still more, how one could
make definite progress along the Path which she pointed out to us, she told
me of the possibility that other students might be accepted as apprentices
by the great Masters, even as she herself had been accepted, and that the
only way to gain such acceptance was to show oneself worthy of it by
earnest and altruistic work. She told me that to reach that goal a man must
be absolutely one-pointed in his determination; that no one who tried to
serve both God and Mammon could ever hope to succeed. One of these Masters
Himself had said: "In order to succeed, a pupil must leave his own world
and come into ours."

This means that he must cease to be one of the majority who live for wealth
and power, and must join the tiny minority who care nothing for such
things, but live only in order to devote themselves selflessly to the good
of the world. She warned us clearly that the way was difficult to tread,
that we should be misunderstood and reviled by those who still lived in the
world, and that we had nothing to look forward to but the hardest of hard
work; and though the result was sure, no one could foretell how long it
would take to arrive at it. Some of us accepted these conditions joyfully,
and we have never for a moment regretted the decision.