By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is actually dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have necessitated in disruption the agony of dying.  He has been dying gradually during the whole period of his Initiation.  The catastrophe cannot happen twice over, he has only spread over a number of years the mild process of dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a few hours.  The highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely unconscious of, the World; he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless of its miseries, in so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense of Duty never leaves him blind to its very existence....

The process of the emission and attraction of atoms, which the occultist controls, has been discussed at length in that article and in other writings.  It is by these means that he gets rid gradually of all the old gross particles of his body, substituting for them finer and more ethereal ones, till at last the former sthula sarira is completely dead and disintegrated, and he lives in a body entirely of his own creation, suited to his work.  That body is essential to his purposes; as the Elixir of Life says:—­

To do good, as in every thing else, a man most have time and materials to Work with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers by which infinitely more good can be done than without them.  When these are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive....

Giving the practical instructions for that purpose, the same paper continues:—­

The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the mental man more penetrating and profound; the moral man more self-denying and philosophical.

Losing sight of the above important considerations, the following passage is entirely misunderstood:—­

And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for people to ask the Theosophist “to procure for them communication with the highest Adepts.”  It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own progress by meddling with mundane affairs.  The ordinary reader will say:  “This is not god-like.  This is the acme of selfishness.” ....But let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world, would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation.  And is the result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?