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That first Initiation corresponds to the matriculation which admits a man to a University, and the attainment of Adeptship to the taking of a degree at the end of a course. Continuing the simile, there are three intermediate examinations, which are usually spoken of as the second, third, and fourth Initiations, Adeptship being the fifth.

Not Adeptship, but what is now for us the fourth step on the Path, was the goal appointed for that chain. Only one of those choices brought them, or rather a few of them, over into this Earth-chain to act as guides and teachers to the earlier races.

Inside that cottage you will find two Yogis men who are only one remove from the highest plane of adeptship. They are both wrapped in an ecstatic trance, otherwise I should not venture to obtrude your presence upon them. Their astral bodies have departed from them, to be present at the feast of lamps in the holy Lamasery of Rudok in Tibet.

They may have mounted to their heights by philosophical reasoning alone, or else by scientific investigation. They are called by many names, according to the viewpoint of the speaker, but at the last they are of but one religion; one philosophy; one belief TRUTH. The state of Adeptship is reached only after a long and arduous apprenticeship extending over many lives.

This man and his companions have not attained this high position or they could not have crossed the sea without contamination. It is probable that they are all advanced chelas who hope in time to attain to the supreme honour of adeptship."

This did not satisfy his ambitions, for he wished to be numbered among the rishis or adepts, and subjected himself to the most horrible asceticism to qualify himself for adeptship. His indifference to physical pain was truly marvellous. He had rolled his naked body to the Ganges over hundreds of miles of burning sands!

Some few others who had not been quite so far advanced have attained Adeptship only comparatively recently that is, within the last few thousand years, and these are the Adepts of the present day. We, who find ourselves in the higher races of humanity now, were several stages behind Them, but the opportunity lies before us of following in Their steps if we will.

Consequently the human race as a whole is very little more than half-way through its evolution, and those few souls who are already nearing Adeptship, which is the end and crown of this evolution, are very far in advance of their fellows. How do they come to be so far in advance?

As the man passes beyond even saint-hood and becomes a great spiritual power, his causal body increases in size, because it has so much more to express, and it also begins to pour out from itself in all directions powerful rays of living light. In one who has attained Adeptship this body is of enormous dimensions.

He who has not yet been initiated is still in danger of being left behind by our present wave of evolution, and dropping into the next one the "æonian condemnation" of which the Christ spoke, which has been mistranslated "eternal damnation". It is from this fate of possible æonian failure that is, failure for this age, or dispensation, or life-wave that the man who attains Initiation is "safe". He has "entered upon the stream" which now must bear him on to Adeptship in this present age, though it is still possible for him by his actions to hasten or delay his progress along the Path which he is treading.