At Bareilly the writer met a member of the Theosophical Society from Farrukhabad, who narrated his experiences and shed bitter tears of repentance for his past follies—­as he termed them.  It appears from his account that fifteen or twenty years ago having read about contemplation in the Bhagavad Gita, he undertook the practice of it, without a proper comprehension of its esoteric meaning and carried it on for several years.  At first he experienced a sense of pleasure, but simultaneously he found he was gradually losing self-control; until after a few years he discovered, to his great bewilderment and sorrow, that he was no longer his own master.  He felt his heart actually growing heavy, as though a load had been placed on it.  He had no control over his sensations the communication between the brain and the heart had become as though interrupted.  As matters grew worse, in disgust he discontinued his “contemplation.”  This happened as long as seven years ago; and, although since then he has not felt worse, yet he could never regain his original healthy state of mind and body.

Another case came under the writer’s observation at Jubbulpore.  The gentleman concerned, after reading Patanjali and such other works, began to sit for “contemplation.”  After a short time he commenced seeing abnormal sights and hearing musical bells, but neither over these phenomena nor over his own sensations could he exercise any control.  He could not produce these results at will, nor could he stop them when they were occurring.  Numerous such examples may be cited.  While penning these lines, the writer has on his table two letters upon this subject, one from Moradabad and the other from Trichinopoly.  In short, all this mischief is due to a misunderstanding of the significance of contemplation as enjoined upon students by all the schools of Occult Philosophy.  With a view to afford a glimpse of the Reality through the dense veil that enshrouds the mysteries of this Science of Sciences, an article, the Elixir of Life, was written.  Unfortunately, in too many instances, the seed seems to have fallen upon barren ground.  Some of its readers pin their faith to the following clause in that paper:—­ Reasoning from the known to the unknown meditation must be practiced and encouraged.

But, alas! their preconceptions have prevented them from comprehending what is meant by meditation.  They forget that the meditation spoken of “is the inexpressible yearning of the inner Man to ’go out towards the infinite,’ which in the olden time was the real meaning of adoration”—­ as the next sentence shows.  A good deal of light would be thrown upon this subject if the reader were to turn to an earlier part of the same paper, and peruse attentively the following paragraphs:—­

So, then, we have arrived at the point where we have determined—­ literally, not metaphorically—­to crack the outer shell known as the mortal coil or body, and hatch out of it, clothed in our next.  This ‘next’ is not a spiritual, but only a more ethereal form.  Having by a long training and preparation adapted it for a life in the atmosphere, during which time we have gradually made the outward shell to die off through a certain process .... we have to prepare for this physiological transformation.