successive veils, in an unbroken series up the long vista which leads to Nirvana.  And this too, qualified by the necessity that new powers entail new responsibilities, and that the capacity of increased pleasure entails the capacity of increased sensibility to pain.  To this, the only answer that can be given is two-fold:  (1st) the consciousness of Power is itself the most exquisite of pleasures, and is unceasingly gratified in the progress onwards with new means for its exercise and (2ndly) as has been already said—­this is the only road by which there is the faintest scientific likelihood that “Death” can be avoided, perpetual memory secured, infinite wisdom attained, and hence an immense helping of mankind made possible, once that the adept has safely crossed the turning-point.  Physical as well as metaphysical logic requires and endorses the fact that only by gradual absorption into infinity can the Part become acquainted with the Whole, and that that which is now something can only feel, know, and enjoy everything when lost in Absolute Totality in the vortex of that Unalterable Circle wherein our Knowledge becomes Ignorance, and the Everything itself is identified with the nothing.

Is the Desire to “Live” Selfish?

The passage “to live, to live, to live must be the unswerving resolve,” occurring in the article on the Elixir of Life, is often quoted by superficial and unsympathetic readers as an argument that the teachings of occultism are the most concentrated form of selfishness.  In order to determine whether the critics are right or wrong, the meaning of the word “selfishness” must first be ascertained.

According to an established authority, selfishness is that “exclusive regard to one’s own interest or happiness; that supreme self-love or self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding those of others.”

In short, an absolutely selfish individual is one who cares for himself and none else, or, in other words, one who is so strongly imbued with a sense of the importance of his own personality that to him it is the crown of all thoughts, desires, and aspirations, and beyond which lies the perfect blank.  Now, can an occultist be then said to be “selfish” when he desires to live in the sense in which that word is used by the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life?  It has been said over and over again that the ultimate end of every aspirant after occult knowledge is Nirvana or Mukti, when the individual, freed from all Mayavic Upadhi, becomes one with Paramatma, or the Son identifies himself with the Father in Christian phraseology.  For that purpose, every veil of illusion which creates a sense of personal isolation, a feeling of separateness from the all, must be torn asunder, or, in other words, the aspirant must gradually discard all sense of selfishness with