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perfectly unselfish, self-forgetting, self annihilating devotion to the religious good of mankind, a self-abnegation, which is not temporal, but must have no end for ever, and the object of which is the religious enlightenment of the human race. Without this talisman, though the progress of the chela may be very rapid for a time, a point will come when his upward advance will be arrested, when real moral worth will tell; and the man who progressed along the slow and steady path may be first to merge himself in the light of the Logos.
This school recommended as the best path for all, a devotion to virtue, a gradual withdrawal from the grosser material concerns, a withdrawal of the life forces from the outward world and its interests, and the direction of these forces to the inner life of the soul, until the man is able to withdraw himself within himself, so to speak, and then, turning round to direct himself towards the Logos and the spiritual life and away from the material plane; passing first into the astral life, and then into spiritual life, till at last the Logos is reached, and he attains Nirvana.
It is therefore wiser not to seek the path of chelaship; if the man is fit for it, his Karma will lead him to it imperceptibly and infallibly; for the path of occultism seeks the chela and will not fail to find him, when the fit man presents himself.
[The foregoing is a summary of a discussion with Mr. T. Subba Row, B.A., B.L., at the Adyar Library, on the 1st December 1888.Ed.]
