and hence all his exertions are directed to shorten its duration so as
to gradually come to a point when the passage from one state of
existence into another is almost imperceptible. This is his last
incarnation, as it were, for the shock of death no more stuns him. This
is the idea the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life means to
convey when he says:

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....

The process of the emission and attraction of atoms, which the occultist
controls, has been discussed at length in that article and in other
writings. It is by these means that he gets rid gradually of all the
old gross particles of his body, substituting for them finer and more
ethereal ones, till at last the former sthula sarira is completely dead
and disintegrated, and he lives in a body entirely of his own creation,
suited to his work. That body is essential to his purposes; as the
Elixir of Life says:--

To do good, as in every thing else, a man most have time and materials
to Work with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers