it. It will be readily understood, after my long connection with the
Thibetan brotherhood, how painful it must be to me to be the instrument
chosen not merely of throwing a doubt upon "the absolute truth concerning
nature, man, the origin of the universe, and the destinies toward which
its inhabitants are tending," to use Mr Sinnett's own words, but actually
to demolish the whole structure of Esoteric Buddhism! Nor would I do
this now were it not that the publication of the book called by that name
has reluctantly compelled the sisterhood to break their long silence. If
the Thibetan Brothers had only held their tongues and kept their secret
as they have done hitherto, they would not now be so rudely disturbed by
the Thibetan Sisters.

* * * * *

"The Sisters of Thibet," writes Ushas, of course with an astral pen in
astral ink, "owe their origin to a circumstance which occurred in the
time of Sankaracharya, erroneously supposed by the initiated to be an
incarnation of Buddha. This teacher, who lived more than a century
before the Christian era, dwelt chiefly upon the necessity of pursuing
_gnyanam_ in order to obtain _moksha_--that is to say, the importance of
secret knowledge to spiritual progress, and the consummation thereof. And
he even went so far as to maintain that a man ought to keep all such
knowledge secret from his wife. Now the wife of Sankaracharya, whose
name was Nandana, 'she who rejoices,' was a woman of very profound occult
attainments; and when she found that her husband was acquiring knowledges
which he did not impart to her, she did not upbraid him, but laboured all
the more strenuously in her own sphere of esoteric science, and she even
discovered that all esoteric science had a twofold element in
it--masculine and feminine--and that all discoveries of occult mysteries
engaged in by man alone, were, so to speak, lop-sided, and therefore