This is audio book of,
INVISIBLE HELPERS 


by C W Leadbeater.
American Revised Edition 1915.





CHAPTER 1.


The Universal Belief in Them.

It is one of the most beautiful characteristics of Theosophy that it gives back to 
people in a more rational form everything which was really useful and helpful to 
them in the religions which they have outgrown. Many who have broken through 
the chrysalis of blind faith, and mounted on the wings of reason and intuition to 
the freer, nobler mental life of more exalted levels, nevertheless feel that in the 
process of this glorious gain a something has been lost - that in giving up the 
beliefs of their childhood they have also cast aside much of the beauty and the 
poetry of life. 
If, however, their lives in the past have been sufficiently good to earn for them the 
opportunity of coming under the benign influence of Theosophy, they very soon 
discover that even in this particular there has been no loss at all, but an 
exceeding great gain - that the glory and the beauty and the poetry are there in 
fuller measure than they had ever hoped before, and no longer as a mere 
pleasant dream from which the cold light of common-sense may at any time 
rudely awaken them, but as truths of nature which will bear investigation - which 
become only brighter, fuller and more perfect as they are more accurately 
understood. 

A marked instance of this beneficent action of Theosophy is the way in which the 
invisible world (which, before the great wave of materialism engulfed us, used to 
be regarded as the source of all living help) has been restored by it to modern 
life. All the charming folk-lore of the elf, the brownie and the gnome, of the spirits 
of air and water, of the forest, the mountain and the mine, is shown by it to be no 
more meaningless superstition, but to have a basis of actual and scientific fact 
behind it. Its answer to the great fundamental question .If a man die, shall he live 
again?. is equally definite and scientific, and its teaching on the nature and 
conditions of the life after death throws a flood of light upon much that, for the 
Western world at least, was previously wrapped in impenetrable darkness. 

It cannot be too often repeated that in this teaching as to the immortality of the 
soul and the life after death, Theosophy stands in a position totally different from 
that of ordinary religion. It does not put forward these great truths merely on the 



authority of some sacred book of long ago; in speaking of these subjects it is not 
dealing with pious opinions , or metaphysical speculations, but with solid, definite 
facts, as real and as close to us as the air we breathe or the houses we live in - 
facts of which many among us have constant experience - facts among which 
lies the daily work of some of our students, as will presently be seen. 

Among the beautiful conceptions which Theosophy has restored to us stands 
pre-eminent that of the great helpful agencies of nature. The belief in these has 
been world-wide from the earliest dawn of history, and is universal even now 
outside the narrow domains of Protestantism, which has emptied and darkened 
the world for its votaries by its attempt to do away with the natural and perfectly 
true idea of intermediate agents, and reduce everything to two factors of man 
and deity - a device whereby the conception of deity has been infinitely 
degraded, and man has remained unhelped. 

A moment.s thought will show that the ordinary view of providence - the 
conception of an erratic interference by the central power of the universe with the 
result of his own decrees - would imply the introduction of partiality into the 
scheme, and therefore of the whole train of evils which must necessarily follow 
upon its heels. The Theosophical teaching, that a man can be thus specially 
helped only when his past actions have been such as to deserve this assistance, 
and that even then the help will be given through those who are comparatively 
near his own level, is free from this serious objection; and it furthermore brings 
back to us the older and far grander conception of an unbroken ladder of living 
beings extending down from the Logos Himself to the very dust beneath our feet. 

In the East the existence of the invisible helpers has always been recognized, 
though the names given and the characteristics attributed to them naturally vary 
in different countries; and even in Europe we have had the old Greek stories of 
the constant interference of the gods in human affairs, and the Roman legend 
that Castor and Pollux led the legions of the infant republic in the battle of Lake 
Regillus. Nor did such a conception die out when the classical period ended, for 
these stories have their legitimate successors in medieval tales of saints who 
appeared at critical moments and turned the fortune of war in favour of the 
Christian hosts, or of guardian angels who sometimes stepped in and saved a 
pious traveler from what would otherwise have been certain destruction. 



CHAPTER 2. 

Some Modern Instances.

EVEN in this incredulous age, and amidst the full whirl of our nineteenth-century 
civilization, in spite of the dogmatism of our science and the deadly dullness of 
our Protestantism, instances of intervention inexplicable from the materialistic 
standpoint may still be found by anyone who will take the trouble to look for them; 
and in order to demonstrate this to the reader I will briefly epitomize a few of the 
examples given in one or other of the recent collections of such stories, adding 
thereto one or two that have come within my own notice. 

One very remarkable feature of these more recent examples is that the 
intervention seems nearly always to have been directed towards the helping or 
saving of children. 

An interesting case which occurred in London only a few years ago was 
connected with the preservation of a childs life in the midst of a terrible fire, 
which broke out in a street near Holborn, and entirely destroyed two of the 
houses there. The flames had obtained such hold before they were discovered 
that the firemen were unable to save the houses, but they succeeded in rescuing 
all the inmates except two - an old woman who was suffocated by the smoke 
before they could reach her, and a child about five years old, whose presence in 
the house had been forgotten in the hurry and excitement of the moment. 

The mother of the child, it seems, was a friend or relative of the landlady of the 
house, and had left the little creature in her charge for the night, because she 
was herself obliged to go down to Colchester on business. It was not until 
everyone else had been rescued, and the whole house was wrapped in flame, 
that the landlady remembered with a terrible pang the trust that had been 
confided to her. It seemed hopeless then to attempt to get at the garret where the 
child had been put to bed, but one of the firemen heroically resolved to make the 
desperate effort, and, after receiving minute directions as to the exact situation of 
the room, plunged in among the smoke and flame. 



He found the child, and brought him forth entirely unharmed; but when he 
rejoined his comrades he had a very singular story to tell. He declared that when 
he reached the room he found it in flames, and most of the floor already fallen; 
but the fire had curved round the room towards the window in an unnatural and 
unaccountable manner, the like of which in all his experience he had never seen 
before, so that the corner in which the child lay was wholly untouched, although 
the very rafters of the fragment of floor on which his little crib stood were half 
burnt away. The child was naturally very much terrified, but the fireman distinctly 
and repeatedly declared that as at great risk he made his way towards him he 
saw a form like an angel - here his exact words are given - something .all 
gloriously white and silvery, bending over the bed and smoothing down the 
counterpane.. He could not possibly have been mistaken about it, he said, for it 
was visible in a glare of light for some moments, and in fact disappeared only 
when he was within a few feet of it. 

Another curious feature of this story is that the childs mother found herself 
unable to sleep that night down in Colchester, but was constantly harassed by a 
strong feeling that something was wrong with her child, insomuch that at last she 
was compelled to rise and spend some time in earnest prayer that the little one 
might be protected from the danger which she instinctively felt to be hanging over 
him. The intervention was thus evidently what a Christian would call an answer to 
a prayer; a Theosophist, putting the same idea in more scientific phraseology, 
would say that her intense outpouring of love constituted a force which one of our 
visible helpers was able to use for the rescue of her child from a terrible death. 

A remarkable case in which children were abnormally protected occurred on the 
banks of the Thames near Maidenhead a few years earlier than our last example. 
This time the danger from which they were saved arose not from fire but from 
water. Three little ones, who lived, if I recollect rightly, in or near the village of 
Shottesbrook, were taken out for a walk along the towing-path by their nurse. 
They rushed suddenly round a corner upon a horse which was drawing a barge, 
and in the confusion two of them got on the wrong side of the tow-rope and were 
thrown into the water. 

The boatman, who saw the accident, sprang forward to try to save them, and he 
noticed that they were floating high in the water .in quite an unnatural way, like,. 
as he said, and moving quietly towards the bank. This was all that he and the 
nurse saw, but the children each declared that .a beautiful person, all white and 
shining,. stood beside them in the water, held them up and guided them to the 
shore. Nor was their story without corroboration, for the bargemans little 
daughter, who ran up from the cabin when she heard the screams of the nurse, 
also affirmed that she saw a lovely lady in the water dragging the two children to 
the bank. 

Without fuller particulars than the story gives us, it is impossible to say with 
certainty from what class of helpers this .angel. was drawn; but the probabilities 



are in favour of its having been a developed human being functioning in the 
astral body, as will be seen when later on we deal with this subject from the other 
side, as it were - from the point of view of the helpers rather than the helped. 

A case in which the agency is somewhat more definitely distinguishable is related 
by the well-known clergyman, Dr John Mason Neale. He states that a man who 
had recently lost his wife was on a visit with his little children at the country house 
of a friend. It was an old, rambling mansion, and in the lower part of it there were 
long, dark passages, in which the children played about with great delight. But 
presently they came upstairs very gravely, and two of them related that as they 
were running down one of these passages they were met by their mother, who 
told them to go back again, and then disappeared. Investigation revealed the fact 
that if the children had run but a few steps farther they would have fallen down a 
deep uncovered well which yawned full in their path, so that the apparition of 
their mother had saved them from almost certain death. 

In this instance there seems no reason to doubt that the mother herself was still 
keeping a loving watch over her children from the astral plane, and that (as has 
happened in some other cases) her intense desire to warn them of the danger 
into which they were so heedlessly rushing gave her the power to make herself 
visible and audible to them for the moment - or perhaps merely to impress their 
minds with the idea that they saw and heard her. It is possible, of course, that the 
helper may have been someone else, who took the familiar form of the mother in 
order not to alarm the children; but the simplest hypothesis is to attribute the 
intervention to the action of the ever-wakeful mother-love itself, undimmed by the 
passage through the gates of death. 

This mother-love, being one of the holiest and most unselfish of human feelings, 
is also one of the most persistent on higher planes. Not only does the mother 
who finds herself upon the lower levels of the astral plane, and consequently still 
within touch of the earth, maintain her interest in and her care for her children as 
long as she is able to see them; even after her entry into the heaven-world these 
little ones are still the most prominent objects in her thought, and the wealth of 
love that she lavishes upon the images which she there makes of them is a great 
outpouring of spiritual force which flows down upon her offspring who are still 
struggling in this lower world, and surrounds them with living centres of 
beneficent energy which may not inaptly be described as veritable guardian 
angels. An illustration of this will be found in the sixth of our Theosophical 
manuals, page 38. 

Not long ago the little daughter of one of our English bishops was out walking 
with her mother in the town where they lived, and in running heedlessly across a 
street the child was knocked down by the horses of a carriage which came 
quickly upon her round a corner. Seeing her among the horses. feet, the mother 
rushed forward, expecting to find her very badly injured, but she sprang up quite 



merrily, saying, .Oh, mamma, I am not at all hurt, for something all in white kept 
the horses from treading upon me, and told me not to be afraid.. 

A case which occurred in Buckinghamshire, somewhere in the neighborhood of 
Burnham Beeches, is remarkable on account of the length of time through which 
the physical manifestation of the succouring agency seems to have maintained 
itself. It will have been seen that in the instances hitherto given the intervention 
was a matter of but a few moments, whereas in this a phenomenon was 
produced which appears to have persisted for more than half an hour. 

Two of the little children of a small farmer were left to amuse themselves while 
their parents and their entire household were engaged in the work of harvesting. 
The little ones started for a walk in the woods, wandered far from home, and then 
managed to lose their way. When the weary parents returned at dusk it was 
discovered that the children were missing, and after enquiring at some of the 
neighbours. houses the father sent servants and labourers in various directions 
to seek for them. 

Their efforts were, however, unsuccessful, and their shouts unanswered; and 
they had reassembled at the farm in a somewhat despondent frame of mind, 
when they all saw a curious light some distance away moving slowly across 
some fields towards the road. It was described as a large globular mass of rich 
golden glow, quite unlike ordinary lamplight; and as it drew nearer it was seen 
that the two missing children were walking steadily along in the midst of it. The 
father and some others immediately set off running towards it; the appearance 
persisted until they were close to it, but just as they grasped the children it 
vanished, leaving them in the darkness. 

The childrens story was that after night came on they had wandered about crying 
in the woods for some time, and had at last lain down under a tree to sleep. They 
had been roused, they said, by a beautiful lady with a lamp, who took them by 
the hand and led them home; when they questioned her she smiled at them, but 
never spoke a word. To this strange tale they both steadily adhered, nor was it 
possible in any way to shake their faith in what they had seen. It is noteworthy, 
however, that though all present saw the light, and noticed that it lit up the trees 
and hedges which came within its sphere precisely as an ordinary light would, yet 
the form of the lady was visible to none but the children. 



CHAPTER 3. 

A Personal Experience.

ALL the above stories are comparatively well known, and may be found in some 
of the books which contain collections of such accounts - most of them in Dr 
Lee.s More Glimpses of the World Unseen; but the two instances which I am now 
about to give have never been in print before, and both occurred within the last 
ten years - one to myself, and the other to a very dear friend of mine, a prominent 
member of the Theosophical Society, whose accuracy of observation is beyond 
all shadow of doubt. 

My own story is a simple one enough, though not unimportant to me, since the 
interposition undoubtedly saved my life. I was walking one exceedingly wet and 
stormy night down a quiet back street near Westbourne Grove, struggling with 
scant success to hold up an umbrella against the savage gusts of wind that 
threatened every moment to tear it from my grasp, and trying as I laboured along 
to think out the details of some work upon which I was just then engaged. 

With startling suddenness a voice which I know well - the voice of an Indian 
teacher - cried in my ear .Spring back!. and in mechanical obedience I started 
violently backwards almost before I had time to think. As I did so my umbrella, 
which had swung forward with the sudden movement, was struck from my hand 
and a huge metal chimney pot crashed upon the pavement less than a yard in 
front of my face. The great weight of this article, and the tremendous force with 
which it fell, make it absolutely certain that but for the warning voice I should 
have been killed on the spot; yet the street was empty, and the voice was that of 
one whom I knew to be seven thousand miles away from me, as far as the 
physical body was concerned. 

Nor was this the only occasion upon which I received assistance of this 
supernormal kind, for in early life, long before the foundation of the Theosophical 
Society, the apparition of a dear one who had recently died prevented me from 
committing what I now see would have been a serious crime, although by the 
light of such knowledge as I then had it appeared not only a justifiable but even a 



laudable act of retaliation. Again, at a later date, though still before the foundation 
of this Society, a warning conveyed to me from a higher plane amid most 
impressive surroundings enabled me to prevent another man from entering upon 
a course which I now know would have ended disastrously, though I had no 
reason to suppose so at the time. So it will be seen that I have a certain amount 
of personal experience to strengthen my belief in the doctrine of invisible helpers, 
even apart from my knowledge of the help that is constantly being given at the 
present time. 

The other case is a very much more striking one. One of our members, who 
gives me permission to publish her story, but does not wish her name mentioned, 
once found herself in very serious physical peril. Owing to circumstances which 
need not be detailed here, she was in the very centre of a dangerous street 
fracas, and seeing several men struck down and evidently badly hurt close to 
her, was in momentary expectation of a similar fate, since escape from the crush 
seemed quite impossible. 

Suddenly she experienced a curious sensation of being whirled out of the crowd, 
and found herself standing quite uninjured and entirely alone in a small bye-
street parallel with the one in which the disturbance had taken place. She still 
heard the noise of the struggle, and while she stood wondering what on earth 
had happened to her, two or three men who had escaped from the crowd came 
running round the corner of the street, and on seeing her expressed great 
astonishment and pleasure, saying that when the brave lady so suddenly 
disappeared from the midst of the fight they had felt certain that she had been 
struck down. 

At the time no sort of explanation was forthcoming, and she returned home in a 
very mystified condition; but when at a later period she mentioned this strange 
occurrence to Madame Blavatsky she was informed that, her karma being such 
as to enable her to be saved from her exceedingly dangerous position, one of the 
Masters had specially sent some one to protect her in view of the fact that her life 
was needed for the work. 

Nevertheless the case remains a very extraordinary one, both with regard to the 
great amount of power exercised and the unusually public nature of its 
manifestation. It is not difficult to imagine the modus operandi; she must have 
been lifted bodily over the intervening block of houses, and simply set down in 
the next street; but since her physical body was not visible floating in the air, it is 
also evident that a veil of some sort (probably of etheric matter) must have been 
thrown round her while in transit. 

If it be objected that whatever can hide physical matter must itself be physical, 
and therefore visible, it may be replied that by a process familiar to all occult 
students it is possible to bend rays of light (which, under all conditions at present 
known to science, travel only in straight lines unless refracted) so that after 



passing round an object they may resume exactly their former course; and it will 
at once be seen that if this were done such an object would to all physical eyes 
be absolutely invisible until the rays were allowed to resume their normal course. 
I am fully aware that this one statement alone is sufficient to brand any remarks 
as nonsense in the eyes of the scientist of the present day, but I cannot help that; 
I am merely stating a possibility in nature which the science of the future will no 
doubt one day discover, and for those who are not students of occultism the 
remark must wait until then for its justification. 

The process, as I say, is comprehensible enough to anyone who understands a 
little about the more occult forces of nature; but the phenomenon still remains an 
exceedingly dramatic one, while the name of the heroine of the story, were I 
permitted to give it, would be a guarantee of its accuracy to all my readers. 

Another recent instance of interposition, less striking, perhaps, but entirely 
successful, has been reported to me since the publication of the first edition of 
this book. A lady, being obliged 
to undertake a long railway journey alone, had taken the precaution to secure an 
empty compartment; but just as the train was leaving the station, a man of 
forbidding and villainous appearance sprang in and seated himself at the other 
end of the carriage. The lady was much alarmed, thus to be left alone with so 
doubtful a character, but it was too late to call for help, so she sat still and 
commended herself earnestly to the care of her patron saint. 

Soon her fears were redoubled, for the man arose and turned toward her with an 
evil grin, but he had hardly taken one step when he started back with a look of 
the most intense astonishment and terror. Following the direction of his glance, 
she was startled to see a gentleman seated directly opposite to her, gazing 
quietly but firmly at the baffled robber - a gentleman who certainly could not have 
entered the carriage by any ordinary means. Too much awed to speak, she 
watched him as though fascinated for a full half-hour; he uttered no word, and did 
not even look at her, but kept his eyes steadily upon the villain, who cowered 
trembling in the furthest corner of the compartment. The moment that the train 
reached the next station, and even before it came to a standstill, the would-be 
thief tore open the door and sprang hurriedly out. The lady, deeply thankful to be 
rid of him, turned to express her gratitude to the gentleman, but found only an 
empty seat, though it would have been impossible for any physical body to have 
left the carriage in the time. 

The materialization was in this case maintained for a longer period than usual, 
but on the other hand it expended no force in action of any kind - nor indeed was 
it necessary that it should do so, as its mere appearance was sufficient to effect 
its purpose. 

But these stories, all referring as they do to what would commonly be called 
angelic intervention, illustrate only one small part of the activities of our invisible 



helpers. Before, however, we can profitably consider the other departments of 
their work it will be well that we should have clearly in our minds the various 
classes of entities to which it is possible that these helpers may belong. Let that, 
then, be the portion of our subject to be next treated. 



CHAPTER 4. 

The Helpers.

HELP, then, may be given by several of the many classes of inhabitants of the 
astral plane. It may come from devas, from nature-spirits, or from those whom we 
call dead, as well as from those who function consciously upon the astral plane 
during life - chiefly the adepts and their pupils. But if we examine the matter a 
little more closely we shall see that though all the classes mentioned may, and 
sometimes do, take a part in this work, yet their shares in it are so unequal that it 
is practically left almost entirely to one class. 

The very fact that so much of this work of helping has to be done either upon or 
from the astral plane goes far in itself towards explaining this. To anyone who 
has even a faint idea of what the powers at the command of an adept really are, 
it will be at once obvious that for him to work upon the astral plane would be a far 
greater waste of energy than for our leading physicians or scientists to spend 
their time in breaking stones upon the road. 

The work of the adept lies in higher regions - chiefly upon the arpa levels of the 
devachanic plane or heaven-world, where he may direct his energies to the 
influencing of the true individuality of man, and not the mere personality which is 
all that can be reached in the astral or physical world. The strength which he puts 
forth in that more exalted realm produces results greater, more far-reaching and 
more lasting than any which can be attained by the expenditure of even ten times 
the force down here; and the work up there is such as he alone can fully 
accomplish, while that on lower planes may be at any rate to some extent 
achieved by whose feet are yet upon the earlier steps of the great stairway which 
will one day lead them to the position where he stands. 

The same remarks apply also in the case of the devas. Belonging as they do to a 
higher kingdom of nature than ours, their work seems for the most part entirely 
unconnected with humanity; and even those of their orders - and there are some 
such - which do sometimes respond to our higher yearnings or appeals, do so on 



the mental plane rather than on the physical or astral, and more frequently in the 
periods between our incarnations than during our earthly lives. 

It may be remembered that some instances of such help were observed in the 
course of investigations into the subdivisions of the devachanic plane which were 
undertaken when the Theosophical manual on the subject was in preparation. In 
one case a deva was found teaching the most wonderful celestial music to a 
chorister; and in another one of a different class was giving instruction and 
guidance to an astronomer who was seeking to comprehend the form and 
structure of the universe. 

These two were but examples of many instances in which the great deva 
kingdom was found to he helping onward the evolution and responding to the 
higher aspirations of man after death; and there are methods by which, even 
during earth-life, these great ones may be approached, and an infinity of 
knowledge acquired from them, though even then such intercourse is gained 
rather by rising to their plane than by invoking them to descend to ours. 

In the ordinary events of our physical life the deva very rarely interferes - indeed, 
he is so fully occupied with the far grander work of his own plane that he is 
probably scarcely conscious of this; and though it may occasionally happen that 
he becomes aware of some human sorrow or difficulty which excites his pity and 
moves him to endeavour to help in some way, his wider vision undoubtedly 
recognizes that at the present stage of evolution such interpositions would in the 
vast majority of cases be productive of infinitely more harm than good. 

There was indubitably a period in the past - in the infancy of the human race - 
when it was much more largely assisted from outside than is at present the case. 
At the time when all its Buddhas and Manus, and even its more ordinary leaders 
and teachers, were drawn either from the ranks of the deva evolution or from the 
perfected humanity of a more advanced planet, any such assistance as we are 
considering in this treatise must also have been given by these exalted beings. 
But as man progresses he becomes himself qualified to act as a helper, first on 
the physical plane and then on higher levels; and we have now reached a stage 
at which humanity ought to be able to provide, and to some slight extent does 
provide, invisible helpers for itself, thus setting free for still more useful and 
elevated work those beings who are capable of it. 

It becomes obvious then that such assistance as that to which we are here 
referring may most fitly be given by men and women at a particular stage of their 
evolution; not by the adepts, since they are capable of doing far grander and 
more widely useful work, and not by the ordinary person of no special spiritual 
development, for he would be unable to be of any use. Just as these 
considerations would lead us to expect, we find that this work of helping on the 
astral and lower mental planes is chiefly in the hands of the pupils of the Masters 

- men who, though yet far from the attainment of adeptship, have evolved 


themselves to the extent of being able to function consciously upon the planes in 
question. 

Some of these have taken the further step of completing the links between the 
physical consciousness and that of the higher levels, and they therefore have the 
undoubted advantage of recollecting in waking life what they have done and what 
they have learnt in those other worlds; but there are my others who, though as 
yet unable to carry their consciousness through unbroken, are nevertheless by 
no means wasting the hours when they think they are asleep, but spending them 
in noble and unselfish labour for their fellow-men. 

What this labour is we will proceed to consider, but before we enter upon that 
part of the subject we will refer to an objection which is very frequently brought 
forward with regard to such work, and we will also dispose of the comparatively 
rare cases in which the agents are either nature-spirits or men who have cast off 
the physical body. 

People whose grasp of Theosophical ideas is as yet imperfect are often in doubt 
as to whether it is allowable for them to try to help some one whom they find in 
sorrow or difficulty, lest they should interfere with the fate which has been 
decreed for him by the absolute justice of the eternal law of karma. .The man is 
in his present position,. they say in effect, .because he has deserved it; he is now 
working out the perfectly natural result of some evil which he has committed in 
the past; what right have I to interfere with the action of the great cosmic law by 
trying to ameliorate his condition, either on the astral plane or the physical. 

Now the good people who make such suggestions are really, however 
unconsciously to themselves, exhibiting the most colossal conceit, for their 
position implies two astounding assumptions; first, that they know exactly what 
another man.s karma has been, and how long it has decreed that his sufferings 
shall last; and secondly, that they - the insects of a day - could absolutely 
override the cosmic law and prevent the due working-out of karma by any action 
of theirs. We may be well assured that the great krmic deities are perfectly well 
able to manage their business without our assistance, and we need have no fear 
that any steps we may take can by any possibility cause them the slightest 
difficulty or uneasiness. 

If a man.s karma is such that he cannot be helped, then all our well-meant efforts 
in that direction will fail, though we shall nevertheless have gained good karma 
for ourselves by making them. What the man.s karma has been is no business of 
ours; our duty is to give help to the utmost of our power, and our right is only to 
the act; the result is in other and higher hands. How can we tell how a man.s 
account stands? For all we know he may just have exhausted his evil karma, and 
be at this moment at the very point where a helping hand is needed to give relief 
and raise him out of his trouble or depression; why should not we have the 
pleasure and privilege of doing that good deed as well as another? If we can help 



him, then that fact of itself shows that he has deserved to be helped; but we can 
never know unless we try. In any case the law of karma will take care of itself, 
and we need not trouble ourselves about it. 

The cases in which assistance is given to mankind by nature-spirits are few. The 
majority of such creatures shun the haunts of man, and retire before him, 
disliking his emanations and the perpetual bustle and unrest which he creates all 
around him. Also, except some of their higher orders, they are generally 
inconsequent and thoughtless - more like happy children at play under 
exceedingly favourable physical conditions than like grave and responsible 
entities. Still it sometimes happens that one of them will become attached to a 
human being, and do him many a good turn; but at the present stage of its 
evolution this department of nature cannot be relied upon for anything like steady 
co-operation in the work of invisible helpers. For a fuller account of the nature-
spirits the reader is referred to the fifth of our Theosophical manuals. 

Again, help is sometimes given by those recently departed - those who are still 
lingering on the astral plane, and still in close touch with earthly affairs, as 
(probably) in the above-mentioned case of the mother who saved her children 
from falling down a well. But it will readily be seen that the amount of such help 
available must naturally be exceedingly limited. The more unselfish and helpful a 
person is, the less likely is he to be found after death lingering in full 
consciousness on the lower levels of the astral plane, from which the earth is 
most readily accessible. In any case, unless he were an exceptionally bad man, 
his stay within the realm whence alone any interference would be possible would 
be comparatively short; and although from the heaven-world he may still shed 
benign influence upon those whom he has loved on earth, it will usually be rather 
of the nature of a general benediction than a force capable of bringing about 
definite results in a specific case, such as those which we have been 
considering. 

Again, many of the departed who wish to help those whom they left behind, find 
themselves quite unable to influence them in any way, since to work from one 
plane upon an entity on another requires either very great sensitiveness on the 
part of that entity, or a certain amount of knowledge and skill on the part of the 
operator. Therefore, although instances of apparitions shortly after death are by 
no means uncommon, it is rare to find one in which the departed person has 
really done anything useful, or succeeded in impressing what he wished upon the 
friend or relation whom he visited. There are such cases, of course - a good 
many of them when we come to put them all together; but they are not numerous 
compared to the great number of ghosts who have succeeded in showing 
themselves. So that but little help is usually given by the dead - indeed, as will 
presently be explained, it is far more common for them to be themselves in need 
of assistance than to be able to accord it to others. 



At present, therefore, the main bulk of the work which has to be done along these 
lines falls to the share of those living persons who are able to function 
consciously on the astral plane 



CHAPTER 5. 

The Reality of Superphysical Life.

IT seems difficult for those who are accustomed only to the ordinary and 
somewhat materialistic lines of thought of the nineteenth century, to believe in 
and realize fully a condition of perfect consciousness apart from the physical 
body. Every Christian, at any rate, is bound by the very foundations of his creed 
to believe that he possesses a soul; but if you suggest to him the possibility that 
that soul may be a sufficiently real thing to become visible under certain 
conditions apart from the body either during life or after death, the chances are 
ten to one that he will scornfully tell you that he does not believe in ghosts, and 
that such an idea is nothing but an anachronistic survival of an exploded 
medieval superstition. 

If, therefore, we are at all to comprehend the work of the band of invisible 
helpers, and perchance ourselves to learn to assist in it, we must shake 
ourselves free from the trammels of contemporary thought on these subjects, 
and endeavour to grasp the great truth (now a demonstrated fact to many among 
us) that the physical body is in simple truth nothing but a vehicle or vesture of the 
real man. It is put off permanently at death, but it is also put off temporarily every 
night when we go to sleep - indeed the process of falling asleep consists in this 
very action of the real man in his astral vehicle slipping out of the physical body. 

Again I repeat, this is no mere hypothesis or ingenious supposition. There are 
many among us who are able to perform (and do perform every day of their lives) 
this elementary act of magic in full consciousness - who pass from one plane to 
the other at will; and if that is clearly realized, it will become apparent how 
grotesquely absurd to them must appear the ordinary unreasoning assertion that 
such a thing is utterly impossible. It is like telling a man that it is impossible for 
him to fall asleep, and that if he thinks he has ever done so he is under a 
hallucination. 

Now the man who has not yet developed the link between the astral and physical 
consciousness is unable to leave his denser body at will, or to recollect most of 



what happens to him while away from it; but the fact nevertheless remains that 
he leaves it every time he sleeps, and may be seen by any trained clairvoyant 
either hovering over it or wandering about at a greater or less distance from it, as 
the case may be. 

The entirely undeveloped person usually floats close above his physical body, 
scarcely less asleep than it is, and comparatively shapeless and inchoate, and it 
is found that he cannot be drawn away from the immediate neighbourhood of that 
physical body without causing serious discomfort which would in fact awaken it. 
As the man evolves, however, his astral body grows more definite and more 
conscious, and so becomes a fitter vehicle for him. In the case of the majority of 
intelligent and cultured people the degree of consciousness is already very 
considerable, and a man who is at all spiritually developed is as fully himself in 
that vehicle as in this denser body. 

But though he may be fully conscious on the astral plane during sleep, and able 
to move about on it freely if he wishes to do so, it does not yet follow that he is 
ready to join the band of helpers. Most people at this stage are so wrapped up in 
their own train of thought - usually a continuation of some line taken up in waking 
hours - that they are like a man in a brown study, so much absorbed as to be 
practically entirely heedless of all that is going on about them. And in many ways 
it is well that this is so, for there is much upon the astral plane which might be 
unnerving and terrifying to one who had not the courage born of full knowledge 
as to the real nature of all that he would see. 

Sometimes a man gradually rouses himself out of this condition - wakes up to the 
astral world around him, as it were; but more often he remains in that state until 
someone who is already active there takes him in hand and wakens him. This is, 
however, not a responsibility to be lightly undertaken, for while it is comparatively 
easy thus to wake a man up on the astral plane, it is practically impossible, 
except by a most undesirable exercise of mesmeric influence, to put him to sleep 
again. So that before a member of the band of workers will thus awaken a 
dreamer, he must fully satisfy himself that the man.s disposition is such that he 
will make good use of the additional powers that will then be put into his hands, 
and also that his knowledge and his courage are sufficient to make it reasonably 
certain that no harm will come to him as a result of the action. 

Such awakening so performed will put a man in a position to join if he will the 
band of those who help mankind. But it must be clearly understood that this does 
not necessarily or even usually bring with it the power of remembering in the 
waking consciousness anything which has been done. That capacity has to be 
attained by the man for himself, and in most cases it does not come for years 
afterwards - perhaps not even in the same life. But happily this lack of memory in 
the body in no way impedes the work out of the body; so that, except for the 
satisfaction to a man of knowing during his waking hours upon what work he has 
been engaged during his sleep, it is not a matter of importance. What really 



matters is that the work should be done - not that we should remember who did 
it. 



CHAPTER 6. 

A Timely Intervention.

VARIED as is this work on the astral plane, it is all directed to one great end - the 
furtherance, in however humble a degree, of the processes of evolution. 
Occasionally it is connected with the development of the lower kingdoms, which it 
is possible slightly to accelerate under certain conditions. A duty towards these 
lower kingdoms, elemental as well as animal and vegetable, is distinctly 
recognized by our adept leaders, since it is in some cases only through 
connection with or use by man that their progress takes place. 

But naturally by far the largest and most important part of the work is connected 
with humanity in some way or other. The services rendered are of many and 
various kinds, but chiefly concerned with man.s spiritual development, such 
physical interventions as are recounted in the earlier part of this book being 
exceedingly rare. They do, however, occasionally take place, and though it is my 
wish to emphasize rather the possibility of extending mental and moral help to 
our fellow-men, it will perhaps be well to give two or three instances in which 
friends personally known to me have rendered physical assistance to those in 
sore need of it, in order that it may be seen how these examples from the 
experience of the helpers gear in with the accounts given by those who have 
received the supernormal aid - such stories, I mean, as those which are to be 
found in the literature of so-called .supernatural occurrences.. 

In the course of the recent rebellion in Matabeleland one of our members was 
sent upon an errand of mercy which may serve as an illustration of the way in 
which help upon this lower plane has occasionally been given. It seems that one 
night a certain farmer and his family in that country were sleeping tranquilly in 
fancied security, quite unaware that only a few miles away relentless hordes of 
savage foes were lying in ambush maturing fiendish plots of murder and rapine. 
Our member.s business was in some way or other to arouse the sleeping family 
to a sense of the terrible danger which so unexpectedly menaced them, and she 
found this by no means an easy matter. 



An attempt to impress the idea of imminent peril upon the brain of the farmer 
failed utterly, and as the urgency of the case seemed to demand strong 
measures, our friend decided to materialize herself sufficiently to shake the 
housewife by the shoulder and adjure her to get up and look about her. The 
moment she saw that she had been successful in attracting attention she 
vanished, and the farmer.s wife has never from that day to this been able to find 
out which of her neighbours it was who roused her so opportunely, and thus 
saved the lives of the entire family, who but for this mysterious intervention would 
undoubtedly have been massacred in their beds half an hour later; nor can she 
even now understand how this friend in need contrived to make her way in, when 
all the windows and doors were found so securely barred. 

Being this abruptly awakened, the housewife was half inclined to consider the 
warning a mere dream; however, she arose and looked around just to see that all 
was right, and fortunate it was that she did so, for though she found nothing 
amiss indoors she had no sooner thrown open a shutter than she saw the sky 
red with a distant conflagration. She at once roused her husband and the rest of 
the family, and owing to this timely notice they were able to escape to a place of 
concealment near at hand just before the arrival of the horde of savages, who 
destroyed the house and ravaged the fields indeed, but were disappointed of the 
human prey which they had expected. The feelings of the rescuer may be 
imagined when she read in the newspaper some time afterwards an account of 
the providential deliverance of this family. 



CHAPTER 7. 

The .Angel Story.

ANOTHER instance of intervention on the physical plane which occurred a short 
time ago makes a very beautiful little story, though this time only one life was 
saved. It needs, however, a few words of preliminary explanation. Among our 
band of helpers here in Europe are two who were brothers long ago in ancient 
Egypt, and are still warmly attached to one another. In this present incarnation 
there is a wide difference in age between them, one being advanced in middle 
life, while the other was at that time a mere child in the physical body, though an 
ego of considerable advancement and promise. Naturally it falls to the lot of the 
elder to train and guide the younger in the occult work to which they are so 
heartily devoted, and as both are fully conscious and active on the astral plane 
they spend most of the time during which their grosser bodies are asleep in 
labouring together under the direction of their common Master, and giving to both 
living and dead such help as is within their power. 

I will quote the story of the particular incident which I wish to relate from a letter 
written by the elder of the two helpers immediately after it occurrence, as the 
description there given is more vivid and picturesque than any account in the 
third person could possibly be. 

.We were going about quite other business, when Cyril suddenly cried, .What.s 
that?. for we heard a terrible scream of pain or fright. In a moment we were on 
the spot, and found that a boy of about eleven or twelve had fallen over a cliff on 
to some rocks below, and was very badly hurt. He had broken a leg and an arm, 
poor fellow, but what was still worse was a dreadful cut in the thigh, from which 
blood was pouring in a torrent. Cyril cried, .Let us help him quick, or he.ll die!. 

.In emergencies of this kind one has to think quickly. There were clearly two 
things to be done; that bleeding must be stopped, and physical help must be 
procured. I was obliged to materialize either Cyril or myself, for we wanted 
physical hands at once to tie a bandage, and besides it seemed better that the 
poor boy should see someone standing by him in his trouble. I felt that while 



undoubtedly he would be more at home with Cyril than with me, I should 
probably be more readily able to procure help than Cyril would, so the division of 
labour was obvious. 

.The plan worked capitally. I materialized Cyril instantly (he does not know yet 
how to do it for himself), and told him to take the boy.s neckerchief and tie it 
round the thigh, and twist a stick through it. .Won.t it hurt him terribly? said Cyril; 
but he did it, and the blood stopped flowing. The injured boy seemed half 
unconscious, and could scarcely speak, but he looked up at the shining little form 
bending so anxiously over him, and asked, .Be you an angel, master?. Cyril 
smiled so prettily, and replied, .No, I.m only a boy, but I.ve come to help you;. and 
then I left him to comfort the sufferer while I rushed off to the boy.s mother, who 
lived about a mile away. 

.The trouble I had to force into that womans head the conviction that something 
was wrong, and that she must go and see about it, you would never believe; but 
at last she threw down the pan she was cleaning, and said aloud, .Well, I don.t 
know what.s come over me, but I must go and find the boy.. When she once 
started I was able to guide her without much difficulty, though at the time I was 
holding Cyril together by will-power, lest the poor childs angel should suddenly 
vanish from before his eyes. 

.You see, when you materialize a form you are changing matter from its natural 
state into another - temporarily opposing the cosmic will, as it were; and if you 
take your mind off it for one half-second, back it flies into its original condition like 
a flash of lightning. So I could not give more than half my attention to that 
woman, but still I got her along somehow, and as soon as she came round the 
corner of the cliff I let Cyril disappear; but she had seen him, and now that village 
has one of the best-attested stories of angelic intervention on record! 

.The accident happened in the early morning, and the same evening I looked in 
(astrally) upon the family to see how matters were going on. The poor boy.s leg 
and arm had been set, and the great cut bandaged, and he lay in bed looking 
very pale and weak, but evidently going to recover in time. The mother had a 
couple of neighbours in, and was telling them the story; and a curious tale it 
sounded to one who knew the real facts. 

.She explained, in very many words, how she couldn.t tell what it was, but 
something came over her all in a minute like, making her feel something had 
happened to the boy, and she must go out and see after him; how at first she 
thought it was nonsense, and tried to throw off the feeling, .but it warn.t no use - 
she just had to go.. She told how she didn.t know what made her go round by 
that cliff more than any other way, but it just happened so, and as she turned 
round the corner there she saw him lying propped up against a rock, and 
kneeling beside him was the .beautifullest child ever she saw, dressed all in white 
and shining, with rosy cheeks and lovely brown eyes;. and how he smiled at her 



.so heavenly like,. and then all in a moment he was not there, and at first she was 
so startled she didn.t know what to think; and then all at once she felt what it was, 
and fell on her knees and thanked God for sending one of his angels to help her 
poor boy. 

.Then she told how when she lifted him to carry him home she wanted to take off 
the handkerchief that was cutting into his poor leg so, but he would not let her, 
because he said the angel had tied it and said he was not to touch it; and how 
when she told the doctor this afterwards he explained to her that if she had 
unfastened it the boy would certainly have died. 

.Then she repeated the boy.s part of the tale - how the moment after he fell this 
lovely little angel came to him (he knew it was an angel because he knew there 
had been nobody in sight for half a mile round when he was at the top of the cliff 
just before - only he could not understand why it hadn.t any wings, and why it 
said it was only a boy) - how it lifted him against the rock and tied up his leg, and 
then began to talk to him and tell him he need not be frightened, because 
somebody was gone to fetch mother, and she would be there directly; how it 
kissed him and tried to make him comfortable, and how its soft, warm, little hand 
held his all the time, while it told him strange, beautiful stories which he could not 
clearly remember, but he knew they were very good, because he had almost 
forgotten he was hurt until he saw his mother coming; and how then it assured 
him he would soon be well again, and smiled and squeezed his hand, and then 
somehow it was gone. 

.Since then there has been quite a religious revival in that village! Their minister 
has told them that so signal an interposition of divine providence must have been 
meant as a sign to them, to rebuke scoffers and to prove the truth of holy 
scripture and of the Christian religion - and nobody seems to see the colossal 
conceit involved in such an astonishing proposition. 

.But the effect on the boy had been undoubtedly good, morally as well as 
physically; by all accounts he was a careless enough young scamp before, but 
now he feels .his angel. may be near him at any time, and he will never do or say 
anything rough or coarse or angry, lest it should see or hear. The one great 
desire of his life is that some day he may see it again, and he knows that when 
he dies its lovely face will be the first to greet him on the other side.. 

A beautiful and pathetic little story, truly. The moral dawn from the occurrence by 
the village and its minister is perhaps somewhat of a non sequitur; yet the 
testimony to the existence of at least something beyond this material plane must 
surely do the people more good than harm, and after all the mother.s conclusion 
from what she saw was a perfectly correct one, though more accurate knowledge 
would probably have led her to express it a little differently. 



An interesting fact afterwards discovered by the investigations of the writer of the 
letter throws a curious side-light upon the reasons underlying such incidents. It 
was found that the two boys had met before, and that some thousands of years 
ago the one who fell from the cliff had been the slave of the other, and had once 
saved his young master.s life at the risk of his own, and had been liberated in 
consequence; and now, long afterwards, the master not only repays the debt in 
kind, but also gives his former slave a high ideal and an inducement to morality 
of life which will probably change the whole course of his future evolution. So true 
is it that no good deed ever goes unrewarded by karma, however tardy it may 
seem in its action - that 

Though the mills of God grind slowly 
Yet they grind exceeding small; 

Though with patience stands 
He waiting 
With exactness grinds He all. 



CHAPTER 8. 

The Story of a Fire. 

ANOTHER piece of work done by the same boy Cyril furnishes an almost exact 
parallel to some of the stories from the books which I have given in earlier pages. 
He and his older friend, it seems, were passing along in the prosecution of their 
usual work one night, when they noticed the fierce glare of a big fire below them, 
and promptly dived down to see if they could be of any use. 

It was a great hotel which was in flames, a huge caravanserai on the edge of a 
great lake. The house, many stories in height, formed three sides of a square 
round a sort of garden, planted with trees and flowers, while the lake formed the 
fourth side. The two wings ran right down to the lake, the big bay windows which 
terminated them almost projecting over the water, so as to leave only quite a 
narrow passage-way under them at the two sides. 

The front and wings were built round inside wells, which contained also the 
lattice-work shafts of the lifts, so that when once the fire broke out, it spread with 
almost incredible rapidity, and before our friends saw it on their astral journey all 
the middle floors in each of the three great blocks were in flames. Fortunately the 
inmates - except one little boy - had already been rescued, though some of them 
had sustained very serious burns and other injuries. 

This little fellow had been forgotten in one of the upper rooms of the left wing, for 
his parents were out at a ball, and knew nothing of the fire, while naturally 
enough no one else thought of the lad till it was far too late. The fire had gained 
such a hold on the middle floors of that wing that nothing could have been done, 
even if anyone had remembered him, as his room faced on to the inner garden 
which has been mentioned, so that he was completely cut off from all outside 
help. Besides, he was not even aware of his danger, for the dense, suffocating 
smoke had so gradually filled the room that his sleep had grown deeper and 
deeper, till he was all but stupefied. 

In this state he was discovered by Cyril, who seems to be specially attracted 
towards children in need or danger. He first tried to make some of the people 



remember the boy, but in vain; and in any case it seemed scarcely possible that 
they could have helped him, so that it was soon evident that this was merely a 
waste of time. The older helper then materialized, Cyril, as before, in the room, 
and set him to work to awaken and rouse up the more than half-stupefied child. 
After a good deal of difficulty this was accomplished to some extent, but the boy 
remained in a half-dazed, semi-conscious condition through all that followed, so 
that he needed to be pushed and pulled about, guided and helped at every turn. 

The two boys first crept out of the room into the central passage which ran 
through the wing, and then, finding that the smoke and the flames beginning to 
come through the floor made it impassable for a physical body, Cyril got the other 
boy back into the room again and out of the window on to a stone ledge, about a 
foot wide, which ran right along the block just below the windows. Along this he 
managed to guide his companion, half balancing himself on the extreme edge of 
the ledge, and half floating on air, but always placing himself outside of the other, 
so as to keep him from dizziness and prevent him from feeling afraid of a fall. 

Towards the end of the block nearest the lake, in which direction the fire seemed 
less developed, they climbed in through an open window and again reached the 
passage, hoping to find the staircase at that end still passable. But it, too, was full 
of flame and smoke; so they crawled back along the passage, Cyril advising his 
companion to keep his mouth close to the ground, till they reached the latticed 
cage of the lift running down the long well in the centre of the block. 

The lift of course was at the bottom, but they managed to clamber down the 
lattice work inside the cage till they stood on the roof of the elevator itself. Here 
they found themselves blocked, but luckily Cyril discovered a doorway opening 
from the cage of the lift on to a sort of entresol just above the ground floor. 
Through this they reached a passage, which they crossed, the little boy being 
half-stifled by the smoke; then they made their way through one of the rooms 
opposite, and finally, clambering out of the window, found themselves on the top 
of the veranda which ran along in front of the ground floor, between it and the 
garden. 

There it was easy enough to swarm down one of the pillars and reach the garden 
itself; but even there the heat was intense, and the danger, when the walls 
should fall, very considerable. So Cyril tried to conduct his charge round the end 
first of one, then of the other wing; but in both cases the flames had burst 
through, and the narrow, overhung passages were quite impassable. Finally they 
took refuge in one of the pleasure boats which were moored to the steps of the 
quay at the side of the garden next the lake, and, casting loose, rowed out on to 
the water. 

Cyril intended to row round past the burning wing and land the boy whom he had 
saved; but when they got some little way out, they fell in with a passing lake 
steamer, and were seen - for the whole scene was lit up by the glare of the 



burning hotel, till everything was as plain as in broad daylight. The steamer came 
alongside the boat to take them off; but instead of the two boys they had seen, 
the crew found only one - for his older friend had promptly allowed Cyril to slip 
back into his astral form, dissipating the denser matter which had made for the 
time a material body, and he was therefore now invisible. 

A careful search was made, of course, but no trace of the second boy could be 
found, and so it was concluded that he must have fallen overboard and been 
drowned just as they came alongside. The child who had been rescued fell into a 
dead faint as soon as he was safe on board, so they could get no information 
from him, and when he did recover, all he could say was that he had seen the 
other boy the moment before they came alongside, and then knew nothing more. 

The steamer was bound down the lake to a place some two days. sail distant, 
and it was a week or so before the rescued boy could be restored to his parents, 
who of course thought that he had perished in the flames, for though an effort 
was made to impress on their minds the fact that their son had been saved, it 
was found impossible to convey the idea to them, so it may be imagined how 
great was the joy of the meeting. 

The boy is still well and happy, and is never weary of relating his wonderful 
adventure. Many a time he has regretted that the kind friend who saved him 
should have perished so mysteriously at the very moment when all the danger 
seemed over at last. Indeed, he has even ventured to suggest that perhaps he 
didn.t perish after all - that perhaps he was a fairy prince; but of course this idea 
elicits nothing but tolerant smiles of superiority from his elders. The krmic link 
between him and his preserver has not yet been traced, but no doubt there must 
be one somewhere. 



CHAPTER 9. 

Materialization and Repercussion.

ON meeting with a story such as this, students often enquire whether the 
invisible helper is perfectly safe amidst these scenes of deadly peril - whether, for 
example, this boy who was materialized in order to save another from a burning 
house was not himself in some danger - whether his physical body would not 
have suffered in any way by repercussion if his materialized form had passed 
through the flames, or fallen from the high ledge on the edge of which he walked 
so unconcernedly. In fact, since we know that in many cases the connection 
between a materialized form and a physical body is sufficiently close to produce 
repercussion, might it not have occurred in this case? 

Now this subject of repercussion is an exceedingly abstruse and difficult one, and 
we are by no means yet in a position fully to explain its very remarkable 
phenomena; in order to understand the matter perfectly, it would probably be 
necessary to comprehend the laws of sympathetic vibration on more planes than 
one. Still, we do know by observation some of the conditions which permit its 
action, and some which definitely exclude it, and I think we are warranted in 
saying that it was absolutely impossible here. 

To see why this is so we must first remember that there are at least three well-
defined varieties of materialization, as anyone who has at all an extended 
experience of spiritualism will be aware. I am not concerned at the moment to 
enter upon any explanation as to how these three varieties are respectively 
produced, but am merely stating the indubitable fact of their existence. 

1. There is the materialization which, though tangible, is not visible to ordinary 
physical sight. Of this nature are the unseen hands which so often clasp one.s 
arm or stroke one.s face at a sance, which sometimes carry physical objects 
through the air or make raps upon the table - though of course both these latter 
phenomena may easily be produced without a materialized hand at all. 


2. There is the materialization which though visible is not tangible - the spirit-form 
through which one.s hand passed as through empty air. In some cases this 
variety is obviously misty and impalpable, but in others its appearance is so 
entirely normal that its solidity is never doubted until some one endeavours to 
grasp it. 
3. There is the perfect materialization which is both visible and tangible - which 
not only bears the outward semblance of your departed friend but shakes you 
cordially by the hand with the very clasp that you know so well. 
Now while there is a good deal of evidence to show that repercussion takes 
place under certain conditions in the case of this third kind of materialization., it is 
by no means so certain that it can occur with the first or second class. In the case 
of the boy-helper it is probable that the materialization would not be of the third 
type, since the greatest care is always taken not to expend more force than is 
absolutely necessary to produce whatever result may be required, and it is 
obvious that less energy would be used in the production of the more partial 
forms which we have called the first and second classes. The probability is that 
only the arm with which the boy held his little companion would be solid to the 
touch, and that the rest of his body, though looking perfectly natural, would have 
proved far less palpable if it had been tested. 

But, apart from this probability, there is another point to be considered. When a 
full materialization takes place, whether the subject be living or dead, physical 
matter of some sort has to be gathered together for the purpose. At a spiritualistic 
sance this matter is obtained by drawing largely upon the etheric double of the 
medium - and sometimes even upon his physical body also, since cases are on 
record in which his weight has been very considerably decreased while 
manifestations of this character were taking place. 

This method is employed by the directing entities of the sance simply because 
when an available medium is within reach it is very much the easiest way in 
which a materialization can be brought about; and the consequence is that the 
very closest connection is thus set up between that medium and the materialized 
body, so that the phenomenon which (although very imperfectly understanding it) 
we call repercussion, occurs in its clearest form. If, for example, the hands of the 
materialized body be rubbed with chalk, that chalk will afterwards be found on the 
hands of the medium, even though he may have been all the time carefully 
locked up in a cabinet under circumstances which absolutely preclude any 
suspicion of fraud. If any injury be inflicted upon the materialized form, that injury 
will be accurately reproduced upon the corresponding part of the medium.s body: 
while sometimes food of which the spirit-form has partaken will be found to have 
passed into the body of the medium - at least that happened in one case at any 
rate within my own experience. 



It would be far otherwise, however, in the case which we have been describing. 
Cyril was thousands of miles from his sleeping physical body, and it would 
therefore be quite impossible for his friend to draw etheric matter from it, while 
the regulations under which all pupils of the great Masters of Wisdom perform 
their work of helping man would assuredly prevent him, even for the noblest 
purpose, from putting such a strain upon any one else.s body. Besides, it would 
be quite unnecessary, for the far less dangerous method invariably employed by 
the helpers when materialization seems desirable would be ready to his hand - 
the condensation from the circumambient ether, or even from the physical air, of 
such an amount of matter as may be requisite. This feat, though no doubt 
beyond the power of the average entity manifesting at a sance, presents no 
difficulty to a student of occult chemistry. 

But mark the difference in the result obtained. In the case of the medium we have 
a materialized form in the closest possible connection with the physical body, 
made out of its very substance, and therefore capable of producing all the 
phenomena of repercussion. In the case of the helper we have indeed an exact 
reproduction of the physical body, but it is created by a mental effort out of matter 
entirely foreign to that body, and is no more capable of acting upon it by 
repercussion than an ordinary marble statue of the man would be. 

Thus it is that a passage through the flames or a fall from a high window-ledge 
would have had no terrors for the boy-helper, and that on another occasion a 
member of the band, though materialized, was able without any inconvenience to 
the physical body to go down in a sinking vessel (see page 77). 

In both the incidents of his work that have been described above, it will have 
been noticed that the boy Cyril was unable to materialize himself, and that the 
operation had to be performed for him by an older friend. One more of his 
experiences is worth relating, for it gives us a case in which by intensity of pity 
and determination of will he was able to show himself - a case somewhat parallel 
to that previously related of the mother whose love enabled her somehow to 
manifest herself in order to save her childrens lives. 

Inexplicable as it may seem, there is no doubt whatever of the existence in 
nature of this stupendous power of will over matter of all planes, so that if only 
the power be great enough, practically any result may be produced by its direct 
action, without any knowledge or even thought on the part of the man exercising 
that will as to how it is to do its work. We have had plenty of evidence that this 
power holds good in the case of materialization, although ordinarily it is an art 
which must be learnt just like any other. Assuredly an average man on the astral 
plane could no more materialize himself without having previously learnt how to 
do it than the average man on this plane could play the violin without having 
previously learnt it; but there are exceptional cases, as will be seen from the 
following narrative. 



CHAPTER 10. 

The Two Brothers.

This story has been told by a pen of far greater dramatic capability than mine, 
and with a wealth of detail for which I have here no space, in The Theosophical 
Review of November, 1897, page 229. To that account I would refer the reader, 
since my own description of the case will be a mere outline, as brief as is 
consistent with clearness. The names given are of course fictitious, but the 
incidents are related with scrupulous accuracy. 

Our dramatis personae are two brothers, the sons of a country gentleman - 
Lancelot, aged fourteen, and Walter, aged eleven - very good boys of the 
ordinary healthy, manly type, like hundreds of others in this fair realm, with no 
obvious psychic qualifications of any sort, except the possession of a good deal 
of Celtic blood. Perhaps the most remarkable feature about them was the 
intensity of the affection that existed between them, for they were simply 
inseparable - neither would go anywhere without the other, and the younger 
idolized the elder as only a younger boy can. 

One unlucky day Lancelot was thrown from his pony and killed, and for Walter 
the world became empty. The childs grief was so real and terrible that he could 
neither eat not sleep, and his mother and nurse were at their wits. end as to what 
to do for him. He seemed deaf alike to persuasion and blame; when they told him 
that grief was wicked, and that his brother was in heaven, he simply answered 
that he could not be certain of that, and that even if it were true, he knew that 
Lancelot could no more be happy in heaven without him than he could on earth 
without Lancelot. 

Incredible as it may sound, the poor child was actually dying of grief, and what 
made the case even more pathetic was the fact that, all unknown to him, his 
brother stood at his side all the time, fully conscious of his misery, and himself 
half-distracted at the failure of his repeated attempts to touch him or speak to 
him. 



Affairs were still in this most pitiable condition on the third evening after the 
accident, when Cyril.s attention was drawn to the two brothers - he cannot tell 
how. .He just happened to be passing,. he says; yet surely the will of the Lords of 
Compassion guided him to the scene. Poor Walter lay exhausted yet sleepless - 
alone in his desolation, so far as he knew, though all the time his sorrowing 
brother stood beside him. Lancelot, free from the chains of the flesh, could see 
and hear Cyril, so obviously the first thing to do was to soothe his pain with a 
promise of friendship and help in communicating with his brother. 

As soon as the dead boy.s mind was thus cheered with hope, Cyril turned to the 
living one, and tried with all his strength to impress upon his brain the knowledge 
that his brother stood beside him, not dead, but living and loving as of yore. But 
all his efforts were in vain; the dull apathy of grief so filled poor Walter.s mind that 
no suggestion from without could enter, and Cyril knew not what to do. Yet so 
deeply was he moved by the sad sight, so intense was his sympathy and so firm 
his determination to help in some way or other at any cost of strength to himself, 
that somehow (even to this day he cannot tell how) he found himself able to 
touch and speak to the heart-broken child. 

Putting aside Walter.s questions as to who he was and how he came there, he 
went straight to the point, telling him that his brother stood beside him, trying 
hard to make him hear his constantly repeated assurances that he was not dead, 
but living and yearning to help and comfort him. Little Walter longed to believe, 
yet hardly dared to hope; but Cyril.s eager insistence vanquished his doubts at 
last, and he said, .Oh! I do believe you, because you.re so kind; but if I could only 
see him, then I should know, then I should be quite sure; and if I could only hear 
his voice telling me he was happy, I shouldn.t mind a bit his going away again 
afterwards.. 

Young though he was at the work, Cyril knew enough to be aware that Walter.s 
wish was one not ordinarily granted, and was beginning regretfully to tell him so, 
when suddenly he felt a Presence that all the helpers know, and though no word 
was spoken it was borne in upon his mind that instead of what he had meant to 
say, he was to promise Walter the boon his heart desired. .Wait till I come back,. 
he said, .and you shall see him then.. And then - he vanished. 

That one touch from the Master had shown him what to do and how to do it, and 
he rushed to fetch the older friend who had so often helped him before. This 
older man had not yet retired for the night, but on hearing Cyril.s hurried 
summons, he lost no time in accompanying him, and in a few minutes they were 
back at Walter.s bedside. The poor child was just beginning to believe it all a 
lovely dream, and his delight and relief when Cyril reappeared were beautiful to 
see. Yet how much more beautiful was the scene a moment later, when, in 
obedience to a word from the Master, the elder man materialized the eager 
Lancelot, and the living and the dead stood hand in hand once more! 



Now in very truth for both the brothers had sorrow been turned into joy 
unspeakable, and again and again they both declared that now they should 
never feel sad any more, because they knew that death had no power to part 
them. Nor was their gladness damped even when Cyril explained carefully to 
them, at his older friend.s suggestion, that this strange physical reunion would 
not be repeated, but that all day long Lancelot would be near Walter, even 
though the latter could not see him, and every night Walter would slip out of his 
body and be consciously with his brother once more. 

Hearing this, poor weary Walter sank to sleep at once and proved its truth, and 
was amazed to find with what hitherto unknown rapidity he and his brother could 
fly together from one to another of their old familiar haunts. Cyril thoughtfully 
warned him that he would probably forget most of his freer life when he awoke 
next day; but by rare good fortune he did not forget, as so many of us do. 
Perhaps the shock of the great joy had somewhat aroused the latent psychic 
faculty which belongs to the Celtic blood; at any rate he forgot no single detail of 
all that had happened, and next morning he burst upon the house of mourning 
with a wondrous tale which suited it but ill. 

His parents thought that grief had turned his brain, and, since he is now the heir, 
they have been watching long and anxiously for further symptoms of insanity, 
which happily they have not found. They still think him a monomaniac on this 
point, though they fully recognize that his .delusion. has saved his life; but his old 
nurse (who is a Catholic) is firm in her belief that all he says is true - that the Lord 
Jesus, who was once a child himself, took pity on that other child as he lay dying 
of grief, and sent one of His angels to bring his brother back to him from the dead 
as a reward for a love which was stronger than death. Sometimes popular 
superstition gets a good deal nearer to the heart of things than does educated 
skepticism! 

Nor does the story end here, for the good work begun that night is still 
progressing, and none can say how far the influence of that one act may ramify. 
Walter.s astral consciousness, once having been thus thoroughly awakened, 
remains in activity; every morning he brings back into his physical brain the 
memory of his night.s adventures with his brother; every night they meet their 
dear friend Cyril, from whom they have learned so much about the wonderful 
new world that has opened before them, and the other worlds to come that lie 
higher yet. Under Cyril.s guidance they also - the living and the dead alike - have 
become eager and earnest members of the band of helpers; and probably for 
years to come - until Lancelot.s vigorous young astral body disintegrates - many 
a dying child will have cause to be grateful to these three who are trying to pass 
on to others something of the joy that they have themselves received. 

Nor is it to the dead alone that these new converts have been of use, for they 
have sought and found some other living children who show consciousness on 
the astral plane during sleep; and one at least of those whom they have thus 



brought to Cyril has already proved a valuable little recruit to the childrens band, 
as well as a very kind little friend down here on the physical plane. 

Those to whom all these ideas are new sometimes find it very difficult to 
understand how children can be of any use in the astral world. Seeing, they 
would say, that the astral body of a child must be undeveloped, and the ego thus 
limited by childhood on the astral as well as the physical plane, in what way could 
such an ego be of use, or be able to help towards the spiritual, mental and moral 
evolution of humanity, which we are told is the chief concern of the helpers? 

When first such a question was asked, shortly after the publication of one of 
these stories in our magazine, I sent it to Cyril himself, to see what he would say 
to it, and his answer was this: 
.It is quite true, as the writer says, that I am only a boy, and know very little yet, 
and that I shall be much more useful when I have learnt more. But I am able to 
do a little even now, because there are so many people who have learnt nothing 
about Theosophy yet, though they may know very much more than I do about 
everything else. And you see when you want to get to a certain place, a little boy 
who knows the way can do more for you than a hundred wise men who don.t 
know it.. 

It may be added that when a child had been awakened upon the astral plane the 
development of the astral body would proceed so rapidly that he would very soon 
be in a position upon that plane but little inferior to that of the awakened adult, 
and would of course be much in advance, so far as usefulness is concerned, of 
the wisest man who was as yet unawakened. But unless the ego expressing 
himself through the child-body possessed the necessary qualification of a 
determined yet loving disposition, and had clearly manifested it in his previous 
lives, no occultist would take the very serious responsibility of awakening him 
upon the astral plane. When, however their karma is such that it is possible for 
them to be thus aroused, children very often prove most efficient helpers, and 
throw themselves into their work with a whole-souled devotion which is very 
beautiful to see. And so is fulfilled once more the ancient prophecy .a little child 
shall lead them.. 

Another question that suggests itself to one.s mind in reading this last story of the 
two brothers is this: Since Cyril was somehow able to materialize himself by 
sheer force of love and pity and strength of will, is it not strange that Lancelot, 
who had been trying so much longer to communicate, had not succeeded in 
doing the same thing. 

Well, there is of course no difficulty in seeing why poor Lancelot was unable to 
communicate with his brother, for that inability is simply the normal condition of 
affairs, the wonder is that Cyril was able to materialize himself, not that Lancelot 
was not. Not only, however, was the feeling probably stronger in Cyril.s case, but 
he also knew exactly what he wanted to do - knew that such a thing as 



materialization was a possibility, and had some general idea as to how it was 
done - while Lancelot naturally knew nothing of all this then, though he does now. 



CHAPTER 11. 

Wrecks and Catastrophes.

SOMETIMES it is possible for members of the band of helpers to avert 
impending catastrophes of a somewhat larger order. In more than one case 
when the captain of a vessel has been carried unsuspecting far out of his course 
by some unknown current or through some mistaken reckoning, and has thereby 
run into serious danger, it has been possible to prevent shipwreck by repeatedly 
impressing upon his mind a feeling that something was wrong; and although this 
generally comes through into the captain.s brain merely as a vaguely warning 
intuition, yet if it occurs again and again he is almost certain to give it some 
attention and take such precautions as suggest themselves to him. 

In one case, for example, in which the master of a barque was much nearer in to 
the land than he supposed, he was again and again pressed to heave the lead, 
and though he resisted this suggestion for some time as being unnecessary and 
absurd, he at last gave the order in a somewhat hesitating way. The result 
astounded him, and he at once put his vessel about and stood off from the coast, 
though it was not until morning came that he realized how very close he had 
been to an appalling disaster. 

Often, however, a catastrophe is krmic in its nature, and consequently cannot 
be averted; but it must not therefore be supposed that in such cases no help can 
be given. It may be that the people concerned are destined to die, and therefore 
cannot be saved from death; but in many cases they may still be to some extent 
prepared for it, and may certainly be helped upon the other side after it is over. 
Indeed, it may be definitely stated that wherever a great catastrophe of any kind 
takes place, there is also a special sending of help. 

Two recent cases in which such help was given were the sinking of the 
Drummond Castle off Cape Ushant, and the terrible cyclone which devastated 
the city of St Louis in America. On both these occasions a few minutes. notice 
was given, and the helpers did their best to calm and raise mens minds, so that 
when the shock came upon them it would be less disturbing than it might 



otherwise have been. Naturally, however, the greater part of the work done with 
the victims in both these calamities was done upon the astral plane after they 
had left their physical bodies; but of this we shall speak later. 

It is sad to relate how often when some catastrophe is impending the helpers are 
hindered in their kindly offices by wild panic among those whom the danger 
threatens - or sometimes, worse still, by a mad outburst of drunkenness among 
those whom they are trying to assist. Many a ship has gone to her doom with 
almost every soul on board mad with drink, and therefore utterly incapable of 
profiting by any assistance offered either before death or for a very long time 
afterwards. 

If it should ever happen to any of us to find ourselves in a position of imminent 
danger which we can do nothing to avert, we should try to remember that help is 
certainly near us, and that it rests entirely with ourselves to make the helper.s 
work easy or difficult. If we face the danger calmly and bravely, recognizing that 
the true ego can in no way be affected by it, our minds will then be open to 
receive the guidance which the helpers are trying to give, and this cannot but be 
best for us, whether its object be to save us from death or, when that is 
impossible, to conduct us safely through it. 

Assistance of this latter kind has not infrequently been given in cases of 
accidents to individuals, as well as of more general catastrophes. It will be 
sufficient to mention one example as an illustration of what is meant. In one of 
the great storms which did so much damage around our coasts a few years ago, 
it happened that a fishing boat was capsized far out at sea. The only people on 
board were an old fisherman and a boy, and the former contrived to cling for a 
few minutes to the overturned boat. There was no physical help at hand, and 
even if there had been in such a raging storm it would have been impossible for 
anything to be done, so that the fisherman knew well enough that there was no 
hope of escape, and that death could only be a question of a few moments. He 
felt a great terror at the prospect, being especially impressed by the awful 
loneliness of that vast waste of waters, and he was also much troubled with 
thoughts of his wife and family, and the difficulties in which they would be left by 
his sudden decease. 

A passing helper seeing all this endeavoured to comfort him, but finding his mind 
too much disturbed to be impressionable, she thought it advisable to show 
herself to him in order to assist him the better. In relating the story afterwards she 
said that the change which came over the fishermans face at sight of her was 
wonderful and beautiful to see; with the shining form standing upon the boat 
above him he could not think that an angel had been sent to comfort him in his 
trouble, and therefore he felt that not only would he himself be carried safely 
through the gates of death, but his family would assuredly be looked after also. 
So, when death came to him a few moments later, he was in a frame of mind 
very different from the terror and perplexity which had previously overcome him; 



and naturally when he recovered consciousness upon the astral plane and found 
the .angel. still beside him he felt himself at home with her, and was prepared to 
accept her advice as regards the new life upon which he had entered. 

Some time later the same helper was engaged in another piece of work of very 
similar character, the story of which she has since told as fellows: .You 
remember that steamer that went down in the cyclone at the end of last 
November; I betook myself to the cabin where about a dozen women had been 
shut in, and found them wailing in the most pitiful manner, sobbing and moaning 
with fear. The ship had to founder - no aid was possible - and to go out of the 
world in this state of frantic terror is the worst possible way to enter the next. So 
in order to calm them I materialized myself, and of course they thought I was an 
angel, poor souls; they all fell on their knees and prayed me to save them, and 
one poor mother pushed her baby into my arms imploring me to save that at 
least. They soon grew quiet and composed as we talked, and the wee baby went 
to sleep smiling, and presently they all fell asleep peacefully, and I filled their 
minds with thoughts of the heaven-world, so that they did not wake up when the 
ship made her final plunge downwards. I went down with them to ensure their 
sleeping through the last moments, and they never stirred as their sleep became 
death.. 

Evidently in this case, too, those who were thus helped had not only the 
enormous advantage of being enabled to meet death calmly and reasonably, but 
also the still greater one of being received on its farther shore by one whom they 
were already disposed to love and trust - one who thoroughly understood the 
new world in which they found themselves, and could not only reassure them as 
to their safety, but advise them how to order their lives under these much altered 
circumstances. And this brings us to the consideration of one of the largest and 
most important departments of the work of invisible helpers - the guidance and 
assistance which they are able to give to the dead. 

CHAPTER 12. 

Work Among the Dead. 

IT is one of the many evils resulting from the absurdly erroneous teaching as to 
conditions after death which is unfortunately current in our western world, that 
those who have recently shaken off this mortal coil are usually much puzzled and 
often very seriously frightened at finding everything so different from what their 
religion had led them to expect. The mental attitude of a large number of such 
people was pithily voiced the other day by an English general, who three days 
after his death met one of the band of helpers whom he had known in physical 
life. After expressing his great relief that he had at last found someone with 
whom he was able to communicate, his first remark was: .But if I am dead, where 
am I? For if this is heaven I don.t think much of it; and if it is hell, it is better than I 
expected.. 



But unfortunately a far greater number take things less philosophically. They 
have been taught that all men are destined to eternal flames except a favoured 
few who are superhumanly good; and since a very small amount of self-
examination convinces them that they do not belong to that category, they are 
but too often in a condition of panic terror, dreading every moment that the new 
world in which they find themselves may dissolve and drop them into the clutches 
of the devil, in whom they have been sedulously taught to believe. In many cases 
they spend long periods of acute mental suffering before they can free 
themselves from the fatal influence of this blasphemous doctrine of everlasting 
punishment - before they can realize that the world is governed, not according to 
the caprice of a hideous demon who gloats over human anguish, but according 
to a benevolent and wonderfully patient law of evolution, which is absolutely just 
indeed, but yet again and again offers to man opportunities of progress, if he will 
but take them, at every stage of his career. 

It ought in fairness to be mentioned that it is only among what are called 
protestant communities that this terrible evil assumes its most aggravated form. 
The great Roman Catholic Church, with its doctrine of purgatory, approaches 
much more nearly to a conception of the astral plane, and it devout members at 
any rate realize that the state in which they find themselves shortly after death is 
merely a temporary one, and that it is their business to endeavour to raise 
themselves out of it as soon as may be by intense spiritual aspiration, while they 
accept any suffering which may come to them as necessary for the wearing away 
of the imperfections in their character before they can pass to higher and brighter 
regions. 

It will thus be seen that there is plenty of work for the helpers to do among the 
newly dead, for in the vast majority of cases they need to be calmed and 
reassured, to be comforted and instructed. In the astral, just as in the physical 
world, there are many who are but little disposed to take advice from those who 
know better than they; yet the very strangeness of the conditions surrounding 
them renders many of the dead willing to accept the guidance of those to whom 
these conditions are obviously familiar; and many a man.s stay on that plane has 
been considerably shortened by the earnest efforts of this band of energetic 
workers. 

Not, be it understood, that the karma of the dead man can in any way be 
interfered with; he has built for himself during life an astral body of a certain 
degree of density, and until that body is sufficiently dissolved he cannot pass on 
into the heaven-world beyond; but he need not lengthen the period necessary for 
that process by adopting an improper attitude. 

All students ought clearly to grasp the truth that the length of a man.s astral life 
after he has put off his physical body depends mainly upon two factors - the 
nature of his past physical life, and his attitude of mind after what we call death. 



During his earth life he is constantly influencing the building of matter into his 
astral body. He affects it directly by the passions, emotions and desires which he 
allows to hold sway over him; he affects it indirectly by the action upon it of his 
thoughts from above, and of the details of his physical life - his continence or his 
debauchery, his cleanliness or his uncleanliness, his food and his drink - from 
below. 

If by persistence in perversity along any of these lines he is so stupid as to build 
for himself a coarse and gross astral vehicle, habituated to responding only to the 
lower vibrations of the plane, he will find himself after death bound to that plane 
during and long and slow process of that bodys disintegration. On the other hand 
if by decent and careful living he gives himself a vehicle mainly composed of finer 
material, he will have very much less post-mortem trouble and discomfort, and 
his evolution will proceed much more rapidly and easily. 

This much is generally understood, but the second great factor - his attitude of 
mind after death - seems often to be forgotten. The desirable thing is for him to 
realize his position on this particular little arc of his evolution - to learn that he is 
at this stage withdrawing steadily inward towards the plane of the true ego, and 
that consequently it is his business to disengage his thoughts as far as may be 
from things physical, and to fix his attention more and more upon those spiritual 
matters which will occupy him during his life in the heaven-world. By doing this 
he will greatly facilitate the natural astral disintegration, and will avoid the sadly 
common mistake of unnecessarily delaying himself upon the lower levels of what 
should be so temporary a residence. 

But many of the dead very considerably retard the process of dissolution by 
clinging passionately to the earth which they have left; they simply will not turn 
their thoughts and desires upward, but spend their time in struggling with all their 
might to keep in full touch with the physical plane, thus causing great trouble to 
any one who may be trying to help them. Earthly matters are the only ones in 
which they have had any living interest, and they cling to them with desperate 
tenacity even after death. Naturally as time passes on they find it increasingly 
difficult to keep hold of things down here, but instead of welcoming and 
encouraging this process of gradual refinement and spiritualization they resist it 
vigorously by every means in their power. 

Of course the mighty force of evolution is eventually too strong for them, and they 
are swept on in its beneficent current, yet they fight every step of the way, 
thereby not only causing themselves a vast amount of entirely unnecessary pain 
and sorrow, but also very seriously delaying their upward progress and 
prolonging their stay in astral regions to an almost indefinite extent. In convincing 
them that this ignorant and disastrous opposition to the cosmic will is contrary to 
the laws of nature, and persuading them to adopt an attitude of mind which is the 
exact reversal of it, lies a great part of the work of those who are trying to help. 



It happens occasionally that the dead are earthbound by anxiety - anxiety 
sometimes about duties unperformed or debts undischarged, but more often on 
account of wife or children left unprovided for. In such cases as this it has more 
than once been necessary, before the dead man was satisfied to pursue his 
upward path in peace, that the helper should to some extent act as his 
representative upon the physical plane, and attend on his behalf to the 
settlement of the business which was troubling him. An illustration taken from our 
recent experience will perhaps make this clearer. 

One of the band of pupils was trying to assist a poor man who had died in one of 
our western cities, but found it impossible to withdraw his mind from earthly 
things because of his anxiety about two young children whom his death had left 
without means of support. He had been a working man of some sort, and had 
been unable to lay by any money for them; his wife had died some two years 
previously and his landlady, though exceedingly kindhearted and very willing to 
do anything in her power for them, was herself far too poor to be able to adopt 
them, and very reluctantly came to the conclusion that she would be obliged to 
hand them over to the parish authorities. This was a great grief to the dead 
father, though he could not blame the landlady, and was himself unable to 
suggest any other course. 

Our friend asked him whether he had no relative to whom he could entrust them, 
but the father knew of none. He had a younger brother, he said, who would 
certainly have done something for him in this extremity, but he had lost sight of 
him for fifteen years, and did not even know whether he was living or dead. 
When last heard of he had been apprenticed to a carpenter in the north, and he 
was then described as a steady young fellow who, if he lived, would surely get 
on. 

The clues at hand were certainly very slight, but since there seemed no other 
prospect of help for the children, our friend thought it worth while to make a 
special effort to follow them up. Taking the dead man with him he commenced a 
patient search after the brother in the town indicated; and after a great deal of 
trouble they were actually successful in finding him. He was now a master 
carpenter in a fairly flourishing way of business - married, but without children 
though earnestly desiring them, and therefore apparently just the man for the 
emergency. 

The question now was how the information could be conveyed to this brother. 
Fortunately he was found to be so far impressionable that the circumstances of 
his brother.s death and the destitution of his children could be put vividly before 
him in a dream, and this was repeated three times, the place and even the name 
of the landlady being clearly indicated to him. He was immensely impressed by 
this recurring vision, and discussed it earnestly with his wife, who advised him to 
write to the address given. This he did not like to do, but was strongly inclined to 
travel down into the west country, find out whether there was such a house as 



that which he had seen, and if so make some excuse to call there. He was a 
busy man, however, and he finally decided that he could not afford to lose a 
day.s work for what after all might well prove to be nothing but the baseless fabric 
of a dream. 

The attempt along these lines having apparently failed, it was determined to try 
another method, so one of the helpers wrote a letter to the man detailing the 
circumstances of his brother.s death and the position of the children, exactly as 
he had seen them in his dream. On receipt of this confirmation he no longer 
hesitated, but set off the very next day for the town indicated, and was received 
with open arms by the kind-hearted landlady. It had been easy enough for the 
helpers to persuade her, good soul that she was, to keep the children with her for 
a few days on the chance that something or other would turn up for them, and 
she has ever since congratulated herself that she did so. The carpenter of course 
took the children back with him and provided them with a happy home, and the 
dead father, now no longer anxious, passed rejoicing on his upward journey. 

Since some Theosophical writers have felt it their duty to insist in vigorous terms 
upon the evils so frequently attendant upon the holding of spiritual sances, it is 
only fair to admit that on several occasions good work similar to that of the helper 
in the case just described has been done through the agency of a medium or of 
some one present at a circle. Thus, though spiritualism has too often detained 
souls who but for it would have attained speedier liberation, it must be set to the 
credit of its account that it has also furnished the means of escape to others, and 
thus opened up the path of advancement for them. There have been instances in 
which the defunct has been able to appear unassisted to his relatives or friends 
and explain his wishes to them; but these are naturally rare, and most souls who 
are earth-bound by anxieties of the kind indicated can satisfy themselves only by 
means of the services of the medium or the conscious helper. 

Another case very frequently encountered on the astral plane is that of the man 
who cannot believe that he is dead at all. Indeed, most people consider the very 
fact that they are still conscious to be an absolute proof that they have not 
passed through the portals of death; somewhat of a satire this, if one thinks of it, 
on the practical value of our much vaunted belief in the immortality of the soul! 
However they may have labeled themselves during life, the great majority of 
those who die, in this country at any rate, show themselves by their subsequent 
attitude to have been to all intents and purposes materialists at heart; and those 
who on earth have honestly called themselves so are often no more difficult to 
deal with than others who would have been shocked at the very name. 

A very recent instance was that of a scientific man who, finding himself fully 
conscious, and yet under conditions differing radically from any that he had ever 
experienced before, had persuaded himself that he was still alive, and merely the 
victim of a prolonged and unpleasant dream. Fortunately for him there happened 
to be among the band of those able to function upon the astral plane a son of an 



old friend of his, a young man whose father had commissioned him to search for 
the departed scientist and endeavour to render him some assistance. When after 
some trouble the youth found and accosted him, he frankly admitted that he was 
in a condition of great bewilderment and discomfort, but still clung desperately to 
his dream hypothesis as on the whole the most probable explanation of what he 
saw, and even went so far as to suggest that his visitor was nothing but a dream-
figure himself! 

At last, however, he so far gave way as to propose a kind of test, and said to the 
young man, .If you are, as you assert, a living person, and the son of my old 
friend, bring me from him some message that shall prove to me your objective 
reality.. Now although under all ordinary conditions of the physical plane the 
giving of any kind of phenomenal proof is strictly forbidden to the pupils of the 
Masters, it seemed as though a case of this kind hardly came under the rules; 
and therefore, when it had been ascertained that there was no objection on the 
part of higher authorities, an application was made to the father, who at once 
sent a message referring to a series of events which had occurred before the 
son.s birth. This convinced the dead man of the real existence of his young 
friend, and therefore of the plane upon which they were both functioning; and as 
soon as he felt this established, his scientific training at once reasserted itself, 
and he became exceeding eager to acquire all possible information about this 
new region. 

Of course the message which he so readily accepted as evidence was in reality 
no proof at all, since the facts to which it referred might have been read from his 
own mind or from the records of the past by any creature possessed of astral 
senses! But his ignorance of these possibilities enabled this definite impression 
to be made upon him, and the Theosophical instruction which his young friend is 
now nightly giving to him will undoubtedly have a stupendous effect upon his 
future, for it cannot but greatly modify not only the heaven-state which lies 
immediately before him, but also his next incarnation upon earth. 

The main work, then, done for the newly dead by our helpers is that of soothing 
and comforting them - of delivering them when possible from the terrible though 
unreasoning fear which but too often seizes them, and not only causes them 
much unnecessary suffering, but retards their progress to higher spheres - and of 
enabling them as far as may be to comprehend the future that lies before them. 

Others who have been longer on the astral plane may also receive much help, if 
they will but accept it, from explanations and advice as to their course through its 
different stages. They may, for example, be warned of the danger and delay 
caused by attempting to communicate with the living through a medium, and 
sometimes (though rarely) an entity already drawn into a spiritualistic circle may 
be guided into higher and healthier life. Teaching thus given to persons on this 
plane is by no means lost for though the memory of it cannot of course be 
directly carried over to the next incarnation, there always remains the real inner 



knowledge, and therefore the strong predisposition to accept it immediately when 
heard again in the new life. 

A rather remarkable instance of service rendered to the dead was the first 
achievement of a very recent recruit to the band of helpers - one who is hardly as 
yet a fully-fledged member. This young aspirant had not long before lost an aged 
relation for whom he had felt an especially warm affection; and his earliest 
request was to be taken by a more experienced friend to visit her in the hope that 
he might be of some service to her. This was done and the effect of the meeting 
of the living and the dead was very beautiful and touching. The older person.s 
astral life was already approaching its end, but a condition of apathy, dullness 
and uncertainty prevented her from making any immediate progress. 

But when the boy, who had been so much to her in earth-life, stood once more 
before her and dissolved by the sunlight of his love the grey mist of depression 
which had gathered around her, she was aroused from her stupor; and soon she 
understood that he had come in order to explain to her her situation, and to tell 
her of the glories of the higher life toward which her thoughts and aspirations 
ought now to be directed. But when this was fully realized, there was such an 
awakening of dormant feeling in her and such an outrush of devoted affection 
towards her earnest young helper, that the last fetters which bound her to the 
astral life were broken, and that one great outburst of love and gratitude swept 
her forthwith into the higher consciousness of the heaven-world. Truly there is no 
greater and more beneficent power in the universe than that of pure, unselfish 
love. 



CHAPTER  13.
Other Branches of the Work.

BUT turning back again now from the all-important work among the dead to the 
consideration of the work among the living, we must briefly indicate a great 
branch of it, without a notice of which our account of the labours of our invisible 
helpers would indeed be incomplete, and that is the immense amount which is 
done by suggestion - by simply putting good thoughts into the minds of those 
who are ready to receive them. 

Let there be no mistake as to what is meant here. It would be perfectly easy - 
easy to a degree which would be quite incredible to those who do not understand 
the subject practically - for a helper to dominate the mind of any average man, 
and make him think just as he pleased, and that without arousing the faintest 
suspicion of any outside influence in the mind of the subject. But, however 
admirable the result might be, such a proceeding would be entirely inadmissible. 
All that may be done is to throw the good thought into the person.s mind as one 
among the hundreds that are constantly sweeping through it; whether the man 
takes it up, makes it his own, and acts upon it, depends upon himself entirely. 
Were it otherwise, it is obvious that all the good karma of the action would accrue 
to the helper only, for the subject would have been a mere tool, and not an actor 

- which is not what is desired. 
The assistance given in this way is exceedingly varied in character. The 
consolation of those who are suffering or in sorrow at once suggests itself, as 
does also the endeavour to guide toward the truth those who are earnestly 
seeking it. When a person is spending much anxious thought upon some spiritual 
or metaphysical problem, it is often possible to put the solution into his mind 
without his being at all aware that it comes from external agency. 

A pupil too may often be employed as an agent in what can hardly be described 
otherwise than as the answering of prayer; for though it is true that any earnest 
spiritual desire, such as might be supposed to find its expression in prayer, is 
itself a force which automatically brings about certain results, it is also a fact that 



such a spiritual effort offers an opportunity of influence to the Powers of Good, of 
which they are not slow to take advantage; and it is sometimes the privilege of a 
willing helper to be made the channel through which their energy is poured forth. 
What is said of prayers is true to an even greater extent of meditation, for those 
to whom this higher exercise is a possibility. 

Besides these more general methods of help there are also special lines open 
only to the few. Again and again such pupils as are fitted for the work have been 
employed to suggest true and beautiful thoughts to authors, poets, artists and 
musicians; but obviously it is not every helper who is capable of being used in 
this way. 

Sometimes, though more rarely, it is possible to warn persons of the danger to 
their moral development of some course which they are pursuing, to clear away 
evil influences from about some person or place, or to counteract the 
machinations of black magicians. It is not often that direct instruction in the great 
truths of nature can be given to people outside the circle of occult students, but 
occasionally it is possible to do something in that way by putting before the minds 
of preachers and teachers a wider range of thought or a more liberal view of 
some question than they would otherwise have taken. 

Naturally as an occult student progresses on the Path he attains a wider sphere 
of usefulness. Instead of assisting individuals only, he learns how classes, 
nations and races are dealt with, and he is entrusted with a gradually increasing 
share of the higher and more important work done by the adepts themselves. As 
he acquires the requisite power and knowledge he begins to wield the greater 
forces of the mental and the astral planes and is shown how to make the utmost 
possible use of each favourable cyclic influence. He is brought into relation with 
those great Nirmnakyas who are sometimes symbolized as the Stones of the 
Guardian Wall, and he becomes - at first of course in the very humblest capacity 
- one of the and of their almoners, and learns how those forces are dispersed 
which are the fruit of their sublime self-sacrifice. Thus he rises gradually higher 
and higher until, blossoming at length into adeptship, he is able to take his full 
share of the responsibility which lies upon the Masters of Wisdom, and to help 
others along the road which he has trodden. 

On the mental plane the work differs somewhat, since teaching can be both 
given and received in a much more direct, rapid and perfect manner, while the 
influences set in motion are infinitely more powerful, because acting on so much 
higher a level. But (though it is useless to speak of it in detail at present, since so 
few of us are yet able to function consciously upon this plane during life) here 
also - and even higher still - there is always plenty of work to be done, as soon as 
ever we can make ourselves capable of doing it; and there is certainly no fear 
that for countless ons we shall ever find ourselves without a career of unselfish 
usefulness open before us. 



CHAPTER 14. 

The Qualifications Required.

HOW, it may be asked, are we to make ourselves capable of sharing in this great 
work? Well, there is no mystery as to the qualifications which are needed by one 
who aspires to be a helper; the difficulty is not in learning what they are, but in 
developing them in oneself. To some extent they have been already incidentally 
described, but it is nevertheless as well that they should be set out fully and 
categorically. 

1. Single-mindedness. The first requisite is that we shall have recognized the 
great work which the Masters would have us do, and that it shall be for us the 
one great interest in our lives. We must learn to distinguish not only between 
useful and useless work, but between the different kinds of useful work, so that 
we may each devote ourselves to the very highest of which we are capable, and 
not fritter away our time in labouring at something which, however good it may be 
for the man who cannot yet do anything better, is unworthy of the knowledge and 
capacity which should be ours as Theosophists. A man who wishes to be 
considered eligible for employment on higher planes must begin by doing the 
utmost that lies in his power in the way of definite work for Theosophy down 
here. 
Of course I do not for a moment mean that we are to neglect the ordinary duties 
of life. We should certainly do well to undertake no new worldly duties of any sort, 
but those which we have already bound upon our shoulders have become a 
krmic obligation which we have no right to neglect. Unless we have done to the 
full the duties which karma has laid upon us we are not free for the higher work. 
But this higher work must nevertheless be to us the one thing really worth living 
for - the constant background of a life which is consecrated to the service of the 
Masters of Compassion. 

2. Perfect self-control. Before we can be safely trusted with the wider powers of 
the astral life, we must have ourselves perfectly in hand. Our temper, for 
example, must be thoroughly under control, so that nothing that we may see or 


hear can cause real irritation in us, for the consequences of such irritation would 
be far more serious on that plane than on this. The force of thought is always an 
enormous power, but down here it is reduced and deadened by the heavy 
physical brain-particles which it has to set in motion. In the astral world it is far 
freer and more potent, and for a man with fully awakened faculty to feel anger 
against a person there would be to do him serious and perhaps even fatal injury. 

Not only do we need control of temper, but control of nerve, so that none of the 
fantastic or terrible sights that we may encounter may be able to shake our 
dauntless courage. It must be remembered that the pupil who awakens a man 
upon the astral plane incurs thereby a certain amount of responsibility for his 
actions and for his safety, so that unless his neophyte had courage to stand 
alone the whole of the older worker.s time would be wasted in hovering round to 
protect him, which it would be manifestly unreasonable to expect. 

It is to make sure of this control of nerve, and to fit them for the work that has to 
be done, that candidates are always made, now as in days of old, to pass what 
are called the tests of earth, water, air and fire. 

In other words, they have to learn with that absolute certainty that comes not by 
theory, but by practical experience, that in their astral bodies none of these 
elements can by any possibility be hurtful to them - that none can oppose any 
obstacle in the way the work which they have to do. 

In this physical body we are fully convinced that fire will burn us, that water will 
drown us, that the solid rock forms an impassable barrier to our progress, that we 
cannot with safety launch ourselves unsupported into the ambient air. So deeply 
is this conviction ingrained in us that it costs most men a good deal of effort to 
overcome the instinctive action which follows from it, and to realize that in the 
astral body the densest rock offers no impediment to their freedom of motion, 
that they may leap with impunity from the highest cliff, and plunge with the most 
absolute confidence into the heart of the raging volcano or the deepest abysses 
of the fathomless ocean. 

Yet until a man knows this - knows it sufficiently to act upon his knowledge 
instinctively and confidently - he is comparatively useless for astral work, since in 
emergencies that are constantly arising he would be perpetually paralyzed by 
imaginary disabilities. So he has to go through his tests, and through many 
another strange experience - to meet face to face with calm courage the most 
terrifying apparitions amid the most loathsome surroundings - to show in fact that 
his nerve may be thoroughly trusted under any and all of the varied groups of 
circumstances in which he may at any moment find himself. 

Further, we need control of mind and of desire; of mind, because without the 
power of concentration it would be impossible to do good work amid all the 
distracting currents of the astral plane; of desire, because in that strange world to 



desire is very often to have, and unless this part of our nature were well 
controlled we might perchance find ourselves face to face with creations of our 
own of which we should be heartily ashamed. 

3. Calmness. This is another most important point - the absence of all worry and 
depression. Much of the work consists in soothing those who are disturbed, and 
cheering those who are in sorrow; and how can a helper do that work if his own 
aura is vibrating with constant fuss and worry, or grey with the deadly gloom that 
comes from perpetual depression? Nothing is more hopelessly fatal to occult 
progress or usefulness than our nineteenth century habit of ceaselessly worrying 
over trifles - of eternally making mountains out of molehills. Many of us simply 
spend our lives in magnifying the most absurd trivialities - in solemnly and 
elaborately going to work to make ourselves miserable about nothing. 
Surely we who are Theosophists ought, at any rate, to have got beyond this 
stage of irrational worry and causeless depression; surely we, who are trying to 
acquire some definite knowledge of the cosmic order, ought by this time to have 
realized that the optimistic view of everything is always nearest to the divine 
view, and therefore to the truth, because only that in any person which is good 
and beautiful can by any possibility be permanent, while the evil must by its very 
nature be temporary. In fact, as Browning said, .the evil is null, is naught, is 
silence implying sound,. while above and beyond it all .the soul of things is 
sweet, the Heart of Being is celestial rest.. So They who know maintain unruffled 
calm, and with Their perfect sympathy combine the joyous serenity which comes 
from the certainty that all will at last be well; and those who wish to help must 
learn to follow Their example. 

4. Knowledge. To be of use the man must at least have some knowledge of the 
nature of the plane on which he has to work, and the more knowledge he has in 
any and every direction the more useful he will be. He must fit himself for this 
task by carefully studying Theosophical literature; for he cannot expect those 
whose time is already so fully occupied to waste some of it in explaining to him 
what he might have learnt down here by taking the trouble to read the books. No 
one who is not already as earnest a student as his capacities and opportunities 
permit, need begin to think of himself as a candidate for astral work. 
5. Unselfishness. It would seem scarcely needful to assist upon this as a 
qualification, for surely everyone who has made the least study of Theosophy 
must know that while the slightest taint of selfishness remains in a man, he is not 
yet fit to be entrusted with higher powers, not yet fit to enter upon a work of 
whose very essence it is that the worker should forget himself but to remember 
the good of others. He who is still capable of selfish thought, whose personality is 
still so strong in him that he can allow himself to be turned aside from his work by 
feelings of petty pride or suggestions of wounded dignity - that man is not yet 
ready to show the selfless devotion of the helper. 


6. Love. This, the last and greatest of the qualifications, is also the most 
misunderstood. Most emphatically it is not the cheap, namby-pamby 
backboneless sentimentalism which is always overflowing into vague platitudes 
and gushing generalities, yet fears to stand firm for the right lest it should be 
branded by the ignorant as .unbrotherly.. What is wanted is the love which is 
strong enough not to boast itself, but to act without talking about it - the intense 
desire for service which is ever on the watch for an opportunity to render it, even 
though it prefers to do so anonymously - the feeling which springs up in the heart 
of him who has realized the great work of the Logos, and having once seen it, 
knows that for him there can be in the three worlds no other course but to identify 
himself with it to the utmost limit of his power - to become, in however humble a 
way, and at however great a distance, a tiny channel of that wondrous love of 
God which, like the peace of God, passeth man.s understanding. 
These are the qualities toward the possession of which the helper must 
ceaselessly strive, and of which some considerable measure at least must be his 
before he can hope that the Great Ones who stand behind will deem him fit for 
full awakening. The ideal is in truth a high one, yet none need therefore turn 
away disheartened, nor think that while he is still but struggling toward it he must 
necessarily remain entirely useless on the astral plane, for short of the 
responsibilities and dangers of that full awakening there is much that may safely 
and usefully be done. 

There is hardly one among us who would not be capable of performing at least 
one definite act of mercy and good will each night while we are away from our 
bodies. Our condition when asleep is usually one of absorption in thought, be it 
remembered - a carrying on of the thoughts that have principally occupied us 
during the day, and especially of the last thought in the mind when sinking into 
sleep. Now if we make that last thought a strong intention to go and give help to 
some one whom we know to be in need of it, the soul when freed from the body 
will undoubtedly carry out that intention, and the help will be given. There are 
several cases on record in which, when this attempt has been made, the person 
thought of has been fully conscious of the effort of the would-be helper, and has 
even seen his astral body in the act of carrying out the instructions impressed 
upon it. 

Indeed, no one need sadden himself with the thought that he can have no part 
nor lot in this glorious work. Such a feeling would be entirely untrue, for every 
one who can think can help. Nor need such useful action be confined to our 
hours of sleep. If you know (and who does not?) of some one who is in sorrow or 
suffering, though you may not be able consciously to stand in astral form by their 
bedside, you can nevertheless send them loving thoughts and earnest good 
wishes; and be well assured that such thoughts and wishes are real and living 
and strong - that when you so send them they do actually go and work your will 
in proportion to the strength which you have put into them. Thoughts are things, 
intensely real things, visible enough to those whose eyes have been opened to 



see, and by their means the poorest man may bear his part in the good work of 
the world as fully as the richest. In this way at least, whether we can yet function 
consciously upon the astral plane or not, we all can join, and we all ought to join, 
the army of invisible helpers. 

But the aspirant, who definitely desires to become one of the band of astral 
helpers who are working under the direction of the great Masters of Wisdom, will 
make his preparation part of a far wider scheme of development. Instead of 
merely endeavouring to fit himself for this particular branch of their service, he 
will undertake with high resolution the far greater task of training himself to follow 
in their footsteps, of bending all the energies of his soul to attain even as they 
have attained, so that his power of helping the world may not be confined to the 
astral plane, but may extend to those higher levels which are the true home of 
the divine self of man. 

For him the path has been marked out long ago by the wisdom of those who 
have trodden it in days of old - a path of self-development which sooner or later 
all must follow, whether they choose to adopt it of their own free will, or to wait 
until, after many lives and an infinity of suffering, the slow, resistless force of 
evolution drives them along it among the laggards of the human family. But the 
wise man is he who eagerly enters upon it immediately, setting his face 
resolutely toward the goal of adeptship, in order that, being safe for ever from all 
doubt and fear and sorrow himself, he may help others into safety and happiness 
also. What are the steps of this Path of Holiness, as the Buddhists call it, and in 
what order they are arranged, let us see in our next chapter. 



CHAPTER 15

The Probationary Path.

EASTERN books tell us that there are four means by which a man may be 
brought to the beginning of the path of spiritual advancement: 1. By the 
companionship of those who have already entered upon it. 2. By the hearing or 
reading of definite teaching on occult philosophy. 3. By enlightened reflection; 
that is to say, that by sheer force of hard thinking and close reasoning he may 
arrive at the truth, or some portion of it, for himself. 4. By the practice of virtue, 
which means that a long series of virtuous lives, though it does not necessarily 
involve any increase of intellectuality, does eventually develop in man sufficient 
intuition to enable him to grasp the necessity of entering upon the path, and show 
him in what direction it lies. 

When, by one or another of these means, he has arrived at this point, the way to 
the highest adeptship lies straight before him, if he chooses to take it. In writing 
for students of occultism it is hardly necessary to say that at our present stage of 
development we cannot expect to learn all, or nearly all, about any but the lowest 
steps of this path; whilst of the highest we know little but the names, though we 
may get occasional glimpses of the indescribable glory which surrounds them. 

According to the esoteric teachings these steps are grouped in three great 
divisions: 

1. The probationary period, before any definite pledges are taken, or initiations 
(in the full sense of the word) are given. This carries a man to the level necessary 
to pass successfully through what in Theosophical books is usually called the 
critical period of the fifth round. 
2. The period of pledged discipleship, or the path proper, whose four stages are 
often spoken of in Oriental books as the four paths of holiness. At the end of this 
the pupil obtains adeptship - the level which humanity should reach at the close 
of the seventh round. 


3. What we may venture to call the official period, in which the adept takes a 
definite part (under the great Cosmic Law) in the government of the world, and 
holds a special office connected therewith, Of course every adept - every pupil 
even, when once definitely accepted, as we have seen in the earlier chapters - 
takes a part in the great work of helping forward the evolution of man; but those 
standing on the higher levels take charge of special departments, and 
correspond in the cosmic scheme to the ministers of the crown in a well-ordered 
earthly state. It is not proposed to make any attempt in this book to treat of this 
official period; no information about it has ever been made public, and the whole 
subject is too far above our comprehension to be profitably dealt with in print. We 
will confine ourselves therefore to the two earlier divisions. 
Before going into details of the probationary period it is well to mention that in 
most of the Eastern sacred books this stage is regarded as merely preliminary, 
and scarcely as part of the path at all, for they consider that the latter is really 
entered upon only when definite pledges have been given. Considerable 
confusion has been created by the fact that the numbering of the stages 
occasionally commences at this point, though more often at the beginning of the 
second great division; sometimes the stages themselves are counted, and 
sometimes the initiations leading into or out of them, so that in studying the 
books one has to be perpetually on one.s guard to avoid misunderstanding. 

This probationary period, however, differs considerably in character from the 
others; the divisions between its stages are less decidedly marked than are those 
of the higher groups, and the requirements are not so definite or so exacting. But 
it will be easier to explain this last point after giving a list of the five stages of this 
period, with their respective qualifications. The first four were very ably described 
by Mr Mohini Mohun Chatterji in the first Transaction of the London Lodge, to 
which readers may be referred for fuller definitions of them than can be given 
here. Much exceedingly valuable information about them is also given by Mrs. 
Besant in her books The Path of Discipleship and In the Outer Court. 

The names given to the stages will differ somewhat, for in those books the Hindu 
Sanskrit terminology was employed, whereas the Pli nomenclature used here is 
that of the Buddhist system; but although the subject is thus approached from a 
different side as it were, the qualifications exacted will be found to be precisely 
the same in effect even when the outward form varies. In the case of each word 
the mere dictionary meaning will first be given in parentheses, and the 
explanation of it which is usually given by the teacher will follow. The first stage, 
then is called among Buddhists. 

1. Manodvravajjana (the opening of the doors of the mind, or perhaps escaping 
by the door of the mind) - and in it the candidate acquires a firm intellectual 
conviction of the impermanence and worthlessness of mere earthly aims. This is 
often described as learning the difference between the real and the unreal; and 
to learn it often takes a long time and many hard lessons. Yet it is obvious that it 


must be the first step toward anything like real progress, for no man can enter 
whole-heartedly upon the path until he has definitely decided to .set his affection 
upon things above, not on things on the earth,. and that decision comes from the 
certainty that nothing on earth has any value as compared with the higher life. 
This step is called by the Hindus the acquirement of Viveka or discrimination, and 
Mr. Sinnett speaks of it as the giving allegiance to the higher self. 

2. Parikamma (preparation for action) - the stage in which the candidate learns to 
do the right merely because it is right, without considering his own gain or loss 
either in this world or the future, and acquires, as the Eastern books put it, 
perfect indifference to the enjoyment of the fruit of his own actions. This 
indifference is the natural result of the previous step; for when the neophyte has 
once grasped the unreal and impermanent character of all earthly rewards, he 
ceases to crave for them; when once the radiance of the real has shone upon the 
soul, nothing below that can any longer be an object of desire. This higher 
indifference is called by the Hindus Vairgya. 
3. Upachro (attention or conduct) - the stage in which what are called .the six 
qualifications. (the Shatsampatti of the Hindus) must be acquired. These are 
called in Pli: 
(a) Samo (quietude) - that purity and calmness of thought which comes from 
perfect control of the mind - a qualification exceedingly difficult of attainment, and 
yet most necessary, for unless the mind moves only in obedience to the 
guidance of the will it cannot be a perfect instrument for the Master.s work in the 
future. This qualification is a very comprehensive one, and includes within itself 
both the self-control and the calmness which were described in chapter 14,  as 
necessary for astral work. 
(b) Damo (subjugation) - a similar mastery over, and therefore purity in, one.s 
actions and words - a quality which again follows necessarily from its 
predecessor. 
(c) Uparti (cessation) - explained as cessation from bigotry or from belief in the 
necessity of any act or ceremony prescribed by a particular religion - so leading 
the aspirant to independence of thought and to a wide and generous tolerance. 
(d) Titikkh (endurance or forbearance) - by which is meant the readiness to bear 
with cheerfulness whatever one.s karma may bring upon one, and to part with 
anything and everything worldly whenever it may be necessary. It also includes 
the idea of complete absence of resentment for wrong, the man knowing that 
those who do him wrong are but the instruments of his own karma. 
(e) Samdhna (intentness) - one-pointedness involving the incapability of being 
turned aside from one.s path by temptation. This corresponds very closely with 
the single-mindness spoken of in the previous chapter. 


(f) Saddh (faith) - confidence in one.s Master and oneself: confidence, that is, 
that the Master is a competent teacher, and that, however diffident the pupil may 
feel as to his own powers, he has yet within him that divine spark which when 
fanned into a flame will one day enable him to achieve even as his Master has 
done. 
4. Anuloma (direct order or succession, signifying that its attainment follows as a 
natural consequence from the other three) - the stage in which is acquired that 
intense desire for liberation from earthly life, and for union with the highest, which 
is called by the Hindus Mumukshatva. 
5. Gotrabh (the condition of fitness for initiation); in this stage the candidate 
gathers up, as it were, his previous acquisitions, and strengthens them to the 
degree necessary for the next great step, which will set his feet upon the path 
proper as an accepted pupil. The attainment of this level is followed very rapidly 
by initiation into the next grade. In answer to the question, .Who is the 
Gotrabh?. Buddha says, .The man who is in possession of those conditions 
upon which the commencement of sanctification immediately ensues - he is the 
Gotrabh 
The wisdom necessary for the reception of the path of holiness is called 
Gotrabh-gna. 

Now that we have hastily glanced at the steps of the probationary period, we 
must emphasize the point to which reference was made at the commencement - 
that the perfect attainment of these accomplishments and qualifications is not 
expected at this early stage. As Mr. Mohini says, .If all these are equally strong, 
adeptship is attained in the same incarnation.. But such a result is of course 
extremely rare. It is in the direction of these acquirements that the candidate 
must ceaselessly strive, but it would be an error to suppose that no one has been 
admitted to the next step without possessing all of them in the fullest possible 
degree. Nor do they necessarily follow one another in the same definite order as 
the later steps; in fact, in many cases a man would be developing the various 
qualifications all at the same time - rather side by side than in regular succession. 

It is obvious that a man might easily be working along a great part of this path 
even though he was quite unaware of its very existence, and no doubt many a 
good Christian, many an earnest freethinker is already far on the road that will 
eventually lead him to initiation, though he may never have heard the word 
occultism in his life. I mention these two classes especially, because in every 
other religion occult development is recognized as a possibility, and would 
certainly therefore be intentionally sought by those who felt yearnings for 
something more satisfactory than the exoteric faiths. 



We must also note that the steps of this probationary period are not separated by 
initiations in the full sense of the word, though they will certainly be studded with 
tests and trials of all sorts and on all planes, and may be relieved by encouraging 
experiences, and by hints and help whenever these may safely be given. We are 
apt sometimes to use the word initiation somewhat loosely, as for example when 
it is applied to such tests as have just been mentioned; properly speaking it 
refers only to the solemn ceremony at which a pupil is formally admitted to a 
higher grade by an appointed official, who in the name of the One Initiator 
receives his plighted vow, and puts into his hands the new key of knowledge 
which he is to use on the level to which he has now attained. Such an initiation is 
taken at the entrance to the division which we shall next consider, and also at 
each passage from any one of its steps to the next. 



CHAPTER 16.

The Path Proper.

IT is in the four stages of this division of the path that the ten Samyojana, or 
fetters which bind man to the circle of rebirth and hold him back from Nirvna, 
must be cast off. And here comes the difference between this period of pledged 
discipleship and the previous probation. No partial success in getting rid of these 
fetters is sufficient now; before a candidate can pass on from one of the steps to 
the next he must be entirely free from certain of these clogs; and when they are 
enumerated it will be seen how far-reaching this requirement is, and there will be 
little cause to wonder at the statement made in the sacred books that seven 
incarnations are sometimes required to pass through this division of the path. 

Each of these four steps or stages is again divided into four: for each has (1) its 
Maggo, or way, during which the student is striving to cast off the fetters; (2) its 
Phala (result or fruit) when he finds the results of his action in so doing showing 
themselves more and more; (3) its Bhavagga or consummation, the period when, 
the result having culminated, he is able to fulfil satisfactorily the work belonging 
to the step on which he now firmly stands; and (4) its Gotrabh, meaning, as 
before, the time when he arrives at a fit state to receive the next initiation. The 
first stage is: 

1. Sotpatti or Sohan. The pupil who has attained this level is spoken of as the 
Sowani or Sotpanna - .he who has entered the stream, - .because from this 
period, though he may linger, though he may succumb to more refined 
temptations and turn aside from his course for a time, he can no longer fall back 
altogether from spirituality and become a mere worldling. He has entered upon 
the stream of definite higher human evolution, upon which all humanity must 
enter by the middle of the next round, unless they are to be left behind as 
temporary failures by the great life-wave, to wait for further progress until the next 
chain of worlds. 
The pupil who is able to take this initiation has therefore already outstripped the 
majority of humanity to the extent of an entire round of all our seven planets, and 



in doing so has definitely secured himself against the possibility of falling out of 
the stream in the fifth round. He is consequently sometimes spoken of as .the 
saved. or .the safe one.. It is from a misunderstanding of this idea that there 
arises the curious theory of salvation promulgated by a certain section of the 
Christian community. The .onian salvation. of which some of its documents 
speak is not, as has been blasphemously supposed by the ignorant, from eternal 
torture, but simply from wasting the rest of this on or dispensation by falling out 
of its line of progress. This also is the meaning, naturally, of the celebrated 
clause in the Athanasian Creed, .Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is 
necessary that he hold the catholic faith. (See The Christian Creed, p.91). The 
fetters which he must cast off before he can pass into the next stage are: 

1. Sakkyaditthi - the delusion of self. 
2. Vichikichchh - doubt or uncertainty. 
3. Slabbataparmsa - superstition. 
The first of these is the .I am I. consciousness, which as connected with the 
personality is nothing but an illusion, and must be got rid of at the very first step 
of the real upward path. But to cast off this fetter completely means even more 
than this, for it involves the realization of the fact that the individuality also is in 
very truth one with the All, that it can therefore never have any interests opposed 
to those of its brethren, and that it is most truly progressing when it most assists 
the progress of others. 

For the very sign and seal of the attainment of the Sotpatti level is the first 
entrance of the pupil into the plane next above the mental - that which we usually 
call the buddhic. It may be - nay, it will be - the merest touch of the lowest sub-
plane of that stupendously exalted condition that the pupil can as yet experience, 
even with his Master.s help; but even that touch is something that can never be 
forgotten - something that opens a new world before him, and entirely 
revolutionizes his feelings and conceptions. Then for the first time, by means of 
the extended consciousness of that plane, he truly realizes the underlying unity 
of all, not as an intellectual conception merely, but as a definite fact that is patent 
to his opened eyes; then first he really knows something of the world in which he 
lives - then first he gets some slight glimpse of what the love and compassion of 
the great Masters must be. 

As to the second fetter, a word of caution is necessary. We who have been 
trained in European habits of thought are unhappily so familiar with the idea that 
a blind unreasoning adhesion to certain dogmas may be claimed from a disciple, 
that or hearing that occultism considers doubt as an obstacle to progress, we are 
likely to suppose that it also requires the same unquestioning faith from its 
followers as modern superstitions do. No idea could be more certainly false. 

It is true that doubt (or rather uncertainty) on certain questions is a bar to spiritual 
progress, but the antidote to that doubt is not blind faith (which is itself 



considered as a fetter, as will presently be seen) but the certainty of conviction 
founded on individual experiment or mathematical reasoning. While a child 
doubted the accuracy of the multiplication table he would hardly acquire 
proficiency in the higher mathematics; but his doubts could be satisfactorily 
cleared up only by his attaining a comprehension, founded on reasoning or 
experiment, that the statements contained in the table are true. He believes that 
twice two are four, not merely because he has been told so, but because it has 
become to him a self-evident fact. And this is exactly the method, and the only 
method, of resolving doubt known to occultism. 

Vichikichchh has been defined as doubt of the doctrines of karma and 
reincarnation, and of the efficacy of the method of attaining the highest good by 
this path of holiness; and the casting off of this Samyojana is the arriving at 
absolute certainty, based either upon personal first-hand knowledge or upon 
reason, that the occult teaching upon these points is true. 

The third fetter to be got rid of comprehends all kinds of unreasoning or mistaken 
belief, all dependence on the efficacy of outward rites and ceremonies to purify 
the heart. He who would cast it off must learn to depend upon himself alone, not 
upon others, nor upon the outer husk of any religion. 

The first three fetters are in a coherent series. The difference between 
individuality and personality being fully realized, it is then possible to some extent 
to appreciate the actual course of reincarnation, and so as to dispel all doubt on 
that head. This done, the knowledge of the spiritual permanence of the true ego 
gives rise to reliance on one.s own spiritual strength, and so dispels superstition. 

II. Sakadgm. The pupil who has entered upon this second stage is spoken of 
as a Sakridgmin - .the man who returns but once. - signifying that a man who 
has reached this level should need but one more incarnation before attaining 
arahatship. At this step no additional fetters are cast off, but the pupil is occupied 
in reducing to a minimum those which still enchain him. It is, however, usually a 
period of considerable psychic and intellectual advancement. 
If what are commonly called psychic faculties have not been previously acquired, 
they must be developed at this stage, as without them it would be impossible to 
assimilate the knowledge which must now be given, or to do the higher work for 
humanity in which the pupil is now privileged to assist. He must have the astral 
consciousness at his command during his physical waking life, and during sleep 
the heaven-world will be open before him - for the consciousness of a man when 
away from his physical body is always one stage higher than it is while he is still 
burdened with the house of flesh. 

III. Angmi. The Angmin (he who does not return) is so called because, 
having reached this stage, he ought to be able to attain the next one in the life he 
is then living. He enjoys, while moving through the round of his daily work, all the 


splendid possibilities of progress given by the full possession of the priceless 
faculties of the heaven-world, and when he leaves his physical vehicle at night he 
enters once more into the wonderfully-widened consciousness that belongs to 
the buddhi. In this step he finally gets rid of any lingering remains of the two 
fetters of 

4. Kmarga - attachment to the enjoyment of sensation, typified by earthly love, 
and 
5. Patigha - all possibility of anger or hatred. 
The student who has cast off these fetters can no longer be swayed by the 
influence of his senses either in the direction of love or hatred, and is free from 
either attachment to or impatience of physical plane conditions. 

Here again we must guard against a possible misconception - one with which we 
frequently meet. The purest and noblest human love never dies away - is never 
in any way diminished by occult training; on the contrary, it is increased and 
widened until it embraces all with the same fervour which at first was lavished on 
one or two. But the student does in time rise above all considerations connected 
with the mere personality of those around him, and so is free from all the injustice 
and partiality which ordinary love so often brings in its train. 

Nor should it for a moment be supposed that in gaining this wide affection for all 
he loses the especial love for his closer friends. The unusually perfect link 
between nanda and the Buddha, as between S. John and Jesus, is on record to 
prove that on the contrary this is enormously intensified; and the tie between a 
Master and his pupils is stronger far than any earthly bond. For the affection 
which flourishes upon the path of holiness is an affection between egos, and not 
merely between personalities; therefore it is strong and permanent, without fear 
of diminution or fluctuation, for it is that .perfect love which casteth out fear.. 

IV. Arahat (the venerable, the perfect). On attaining this level the aspirant 
constantly enjoys the consciousness of the buddhic plane, and is able to use its 
powers and faculties while still in the physical body; and when he leaves that 
body in sleep or trance he passes at once into the unutterable glory of the 
nirvnic plane. In this stage the occultist must cast off the last remains of the five 
remaining fetters, which are: 
6. Rparga - desire for beauty of form or for physical existence in a form, even 
including that in the heaven-world. 
7. Arparga - desire for formless life 
8. Mno - pride. 
9. Uddhachcha - agitation or irritability. 
10.Avijj - ignorance. 


On this we may remark that the casting off of Rparga involves not only getting 
rid of desire for earthly life, however grand or noble that life may be, and astral or 
devachanic life, however glorious, but also of all liability to be unduly influenced 
or repelled by the external beauty or ugliness of any person or thing. 

Arparga - desire for life either in the highest and formless planes of the 
heaven-world or in the still more exalted buddhic plane -would be merely a higher 
and less sensual form of selfishness, and must be cast off just as much as the 
lower. Uddhachcha really means .liability to be disturbed in mind,. and a man 
who had finally cast off this fetter would be absolutely unruffled by anything 
whatever that might happen to him - perfectly impervious to any kind of attack 
upon his dignified serenity. 

The getting rid of ignorance of course implies the acquisition of perfect 
knowledge - practical omniscience as regards our planetary chain. When all the 
fetters are finally cast off the advancing ego reaches the fifth stage - the stage of 
full adeptship - and becomes. 

V. Asekha, .the one who has no more to learn,. again as regards our planetary 
chain. It is quite impossible for us to realize at our present level what this 
attainment means. All the splendor of the nirvnic plane lies open before the 
waking eyes of the adept, while when he chooses to leave his body he has the 
power to enter upon something higher still - a plane which to us is the merest 
name. As Professor Rhys Davids explains, .He is now free from all sin; he sees 
and values all things in this life and their true value; all evil being rooted from his 
mind he experiences only righteous desires for himself and tender pity and 
regard and exalted love for others.. 
To show how little he has lost the sentiment of love, we read in the Metta Sutta of 
the state of mind of one who stands at this level: .As a mother loves, who even at 
the risk of her own life protects her only son, such love let there be toward all 
beings. Let goodwill without measure prevail in the whole world, above, below, 
around, unstinted, unmixed with any feeling of differing or opposing interests. 
When a man remains steadfastly in this state of mind all the while, whether he be 
standing or walking, sitting or lying down, then is come to pass the saying which 
is written, .Even in this life has holiness been found.. . 



CHAPTER 17.

What Lies Beyond.

BEYOND this period it is obvious that we can know nothing of the new 


qualifications required for the still higher levels which yet lie before the perfect 
man. It is abundantly clear, however, that when man has become Asekha he has 
exhausted all the possibilities of moral development, so that further advancement 
for him can only mean still wider knowledge and still more wonderful spiritual 
powers. We are told that when man has thus attained his spiritual majority, 
whether in the slow course of evolution or by the shorter path of self-
development he assumes the fullest control of his own destinies and makes 
choice of his future line of evolution among seven possible paths which he sees 
opening before him. 

Naturally at our present level we cannot expect to understand much about these, 
and the faint outline of some of them which is all that can be sketched in for us 
conveys very little to the mind, except that most of them take the adept altogether 
away from our earth-chain, which no longer affords sufficient scope for his 
evolution. 

One path is that of those who, as the technical phrase goes, .accept Nirvna.. 
Through what incalculable ons they remain in that sublime condition, for what 
work they are preparing themselves, what will be their future line of evolution, are 
questions upon which we know nothing; and indeed if information upon such 
points could be given it is more than likely that it would prove quite 
incomprehensible to us at our present stage. 

But this much at least we may grasp - that the blessed state of Nirvna is not, as 
some have ignorantly supposed, a condition of blank nothingness, but on the 
contrary of far more intense and beneficent activity; and that ever as man rises 
higher in the scale of nature his possibilities become greater, his work for others 
ever grander and more far-reaching, and that infinite wisdom and infinite power 
mean for him only infinite capacity for service, because they are directed by 
infinite love. 



Another class chooses a spiritual evolution not quite so far removed from 
humanity, for though not directly connected with the next chain of our system it 
extends through two long periods corresponding to its first and second rounds, at 
the end of which time they also appear to .accept Nirvna,. but at a higher stage 
than those previously mentioned. 

Others join the deva evolution, whose progress lies along a grand chain 
consisting of seven chains like ours, each of which to them is as one world. This 
line of evolution is spoken of as the most gradual and therefore the least arduous 
of the seven courses; but though it is sometimes referred to in the books as 
.yielding to the temptation to become a god.. it is only in comparison with the 
sublime height of renunciation of the Nirmnakya that it can be spoken of in this 
half-disparaging manner, for the adept who chooses this course has indeed a 
glorious career before him, and though the path which he selects is not the 
shortest, it is nevertheless a very noble one. 

Yet another group are the Nirmnakyas - those who, declining all these easier 
methods, choose the shortest but steepest path to the heights which still lie 
before them. They form what is poetically termed the .guardian wall,. and, as The 
Voice of the Silence tells us, .protect the world from further and far greater 
misery and sorrow,. not indeed by warding off from it external evil influences, but 
by devoting all their strength to the work of pouring down upon it a flood of 
spiritual force and assistance without which it would assuredly be in far more 
hopeless case than now. 

Yet again there are those who remain even more directly in association with 
humanity, and continue to incarnate among it, choosing the path which leads 
through the four stages of what we have called above the official period; and 
among these are the Masters of Wisdom - those from whom we who study 
Theosophy have learnt such fragments as we know of the mighty harmony of 
evolving Nature. But it would seem that only a certain comparatively small 
number adopt this course - probably only so many as are necessary for the 
carrying on of this physical side of the work. 

In hearing of these different possibilities, people sometimes exclaim rashly that 
there could of course be no thought in a Master.s mind of choosing any but that 
course which most helps humanity - a remark which greater knowledge would 
have prevented them from making. We should never forget that there are other 
evolutions in the solar system besides our own, and no doubt it is necessary for 
the carrying out of the vast plan of the Logos that there should be adepts working 
on all the seven lines to which we have referred. Surely the choice of the Master 
would be to go wherever his work was most needed - to place his services with 
absolute selflessness at the disposal of the Powers in charge of this part of the 
great scheme of evolution. 

This then is the path which lies before us, the path which each one of us should 
be beginning to tread. Stupendous though its heights appear we should 
remember that they are attained but gradually and step by step, and that those 
who now stand near the summit once toiled in the mire of the valleys, even as we 
are doing. Although this path may at first seem hard and toilsome, yet ever as we 
rise our footing becomes firmer and our outlook wider, and thus we find 
ourselves better able to help those who are climbing beside us. 

Because it is at first thus hard and toilsome to the lower self, it has sometimes 
been called by the very misleading title of .the path of woe;. but, as Mrs. Besant 
has beautifully written, .through all such suffering there is a deep and abiding joy, 
for the suffering is of the lower nature, and the joy of the higher.. When the last 
shred of the personality is gone all that can thus suffer has passed away, and in 
the perfected Adept there is unruffled peace and everlasting joy. He sees the end 
toward which all is working, and rejoices in that end, knowing that earth.s sorrow 
is but a passing phase in human evolution. 

.That of which little has been said is the profound content which comes from 
being on the path, from realizing the goal and the way to it, from knowing that the 
power to be useful is increasing, and that the lower nature is being gradually 
extirpated. And little has been said of the rays of joy which fall upon the path from 
loftier levels, the dazzling glimpses of the glory to be revealed, the serenity which 
the storms of earth cannot ruffle. To any one who has entered on the path all 
other ways have lost their charm, and its sorrows have a keeper bliss than the 
best joys of the lower world.. (Vhan, vol. v., No. 12.) 

Let no man therefore despair because he thinks the task too great for him; what 
man has done man can do, and just in proportion as we extend our aid to those 
whom we can help, so will those who have already attained be able in their turn 
to help us. So from the lowest to the highest we who are treading the steps of the 
path are bound together by one long chain of mutual service, and none need feel 
neglected or alone, for though sometimes the lower flights of the great staircase 
may be wreathed in mist, we know that it leads up to happier regions and purer 
air, where the light is always shining.   The end of this book.