powerful will and higher attainments than any who have succeeded them.
And on their death they formed a compact spiritual society in the other
world, impregnating the wills and imaginations of their disciples still
on earth with their fantastic theories, which they still retain there, of
a planetary chain, and the spiral advance of the seven rounds, and the
septenary law, and all the rest of it. In order for human beings to come
into these occult knowledges, it is necessary, as Mr Sinnett admits, for
the adepts to go into trance-conditions--in other words, to lose all
control of their normal, or as they would probably call them, their
objective faculties. While in this condition, they are the sport of any
invisible intelligences that choose to play upon them; but fearing lest
they may be accused of this, they erroneously assert that no such
intelligences of a high order have cognisance of what happens in this
world. The fact that _mahatmas_ have powers which appear supernatural
proves nothing, as Mr Sinnett also admits that innumerable _fakirs_ and
_yojis_ possess these as well, whose authority on occultism he deems of
no account, when he says that 'careless inquirers are very apt to
confound such persons with the great adepts of whom they vaguely hear.'
There can be no better evidence of the falsity of the whole conception
than you are yourself. For to prove to you that you were the sport of a
delusion, although your own experience as a _mahatma_ in regard to the
secret processes of nature, and the sensations attendant upon subjective
conditions, exactly corresponded to those of all other _mahatmas_, you
have, under my tutelage, at various times allowed yourself to fall into
trance-conditions, when, owing to occult influences which we have brought
to bear, a totally different idea concerning 'nature, man, the origin of
the universe, and the destinies toward which its inhabitants are
tending,' was presented to your sixth sense, which appeared 'absolute
truth' at the time, and which would have continued to seem so, had I not
had the power of intromitting you through trance-conditions into a