their appropriate sphere of development in _devachan_." Until you are
obliged to go to _devachan_--which, in ordinary parlance, is the place
good men go to when they die--my advice is, stick to your _rupa_; and
indeed it is the instinct of everybody who is not a _mahatma_ to do this.
I admit--though in making this confession I am aware that I shall incur
the contempt of all _mahatmas_--that on this occasion I found my _rupa_ a
distinct convenience, and was not sorry that it was still in existence.
In it I crossed the neutral zone still inhabited by ordinary Thibetans,
and after a few days' travel, found myself on the frontiers of "the
Sisters'" territory. The question which now presented itself was how to
get in. To my surprise, I found the entrances guarded not by women, as I
expected, but by men. These were for the most part young and handsome.

"So you imagined," said one, who advanced to meet me with an engaging
air, "that you could slip into our territory in your astral body; but
you found that all the entrances _in vacuo_"--I use this word for
convenience--"are as well guarded as those in space. See, here is the
Sister past whom you attempted to force your way: we look after the
physical frontier, and leave the astral or spiritual to the
ladies,"--saying which he politely drew back, and the apparition whose
astral form I knew so well, now approached in her substantial _rupa_--in
fact, she was a good deal stouter than I expected to find her; but I was
agreeably surprised by her complexion, which was much fairer than is
usual among Thibetans--indeed her whole type of countenance was
Caucasian, which was not to be wondered at, considering, as I afterwards
discovered, that she was by birth a Georgian. She greeted me, in the
language common to all Thibetan occultists, as an old acquaintance, and
one whose arrival was evidently expected--indeed she pointed laughingly
to a bevy of damsels whom I now saw trooping towards us, some carrying
garlands, some playing upon musical instruments, some dancing in lively