successively casts away in his flight those articles which incommode his
progress, beginning with the heaviest, so the aspirant eluding "Death"
abandons all on which the latter can take hold. In the progress of
Negation everything got rid of is a help. As we said before, the adept
does not become "immortal" as the word is ordinarily understood. By or
about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is actually
dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved himself of
all or nearly all such material particles as would have necessitated in
disruption the agony of dying. He has been dying gradually during the
whole period of his Initiation. The catastrophe cannot happen twice
over. He has only spread over a number of years the mild process of
dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a few hours. The
highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely unconscious of, the
world; he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless of its miseries, in
so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense of DUTY never leaves
him blind to its very existence. For the new ethereal senses opening to
wider spheres are to ours much in the relation of ours to the Infinitely
Little. New desires and enjoyments, new dangers and new hindrances
arise, with new sensations and new perceptions; and far away down in
the mist--both literally and metaphorically--is our dirty little earth
left below by those who have virtually "gone to join the gods."

And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for
people to ask the Theosophist to "procure for them communication with
the highest Adepts." It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two
can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own
progress by meddling with mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will
say: "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." .... But
let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world,
would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the