the darkness and silence, you will have conquered
the physical or animal self which dwells
in sensation only.

This statement, I feel, will appear involved;
but in reality it is quite simple. Man, when
he has reached his fruition, and civilization is
at its height, stands between two fires. Could
he but claim his great inheritance, the encumbrance
of the mere animal life would fall away
from him without difficulty. But he does not
do this, and so the races of men flower and
then droop and die and decay off the face of
the earth, however splendid the bloom may
have been. And it is left to the individual to
make this great effort; to refuse to be terrified
by his greater nature, to refuse to be drawn
back by his lesser or more material self. Every
individual who accomplishes this is a redeemer
of the race. He may not blazon forth his deeds,
he may dwell in secret and silence; but it is
a fact that he forms a link between man and
his divine part; between the known and the
unknown; between the stir of the marketplace
and the stillness of the snow-capped Himalayas.
He has not to go about among men in
order to form this link; in the astral he _is_ that
link, and this fact makes him a being of
another order from the rest of mankind. Even
so early on the road towards knowledge, when