A “chela” is a person who has offered himself to a master as a pupil to learn practically the “hidden mysteries of Nature and the psychical powers latent in man.”  The master who accepts him is called in India a Guru; and the real Guru is always an adept in the Occult Science.  A man of profound knowledge, exoteric and esoteric, especially the latter; and one who has brought his carnal nature under the subjection of the will; who has developed in himself both the power (Siddhi) to control the forces of Nature, and the capacity to probe her secrets by the help of the formerly latent but now active powers of his being—­this is the real Guru.  To offer oneself as a candidate for Chelaship is easy enough, to develop into an adept the most difficult task any man could possibly undertake.  There are scores of “natural-born” poets, mathematicians, mechanics, statesmen, &c.  But a natural-born adept is something practically impossible.  For, though we do hear at very rare intervals of one who has an extraordinary innate capacity for the acquisition of occult knowledge and power, yet even he has to pass the self-same tests and probations, and go through the self-same training as any less endowed fellow aspirant.  In this matter it is most true that there is no royal road by which favourites may travel.

For centuries the selection of Chelas—­outside the hereditary group within the gon-pa (temple)—­has been made by the Himalayan Mahatmas themselves from among the class—­in Tibet, a considerable one as to number—­of natural mystics.  The only exceptions have been in the cases of Western men like Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Paracelsus, Pico di Mirandolo, Count St. Germain, &c., whose temperament affinity to this celestial science, more or less forced the distant Adepts to come into personal relations with them, and enabled them to get such small (or large) proportion of the whole truth as was possible under their social surroundings.  From Book iv. of Kui-te, Chapter on “The Laws of Upasanas,” we learn that the qualifications expected in a Chela were:—­

1.  Perfect physical health;

2.  Absolute mental and physical purity;

3.  Unselfishness of purpose; universal charity; pity for all animate beings;

4.  Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the law of Karma, independent of the intervention of any power in Nature:  a law whose course is not to be obstructed by any agency, not to be caused to deviate by prayer or propitiatory exoteric ceremonies;

5.  A courage undaunted in every emergency, even by peril to life;

6.  An intuitional perception of one’s being the vehicle of the manifested Avalokiteswara or Divine Atma (Spirit);

7.  Calm indifference for, but a just appreciation of, everything that constitutes the objective and transitory world, in its relation with, and to, the invisible regions.

Such, at the least, must have been the recommendations of one aspiring to perfect Chelaship.  With the sole exception of the first, which in rare and exceptional cases might have been modified, each one of these points has been invariably insisted upon, and all must have been more or less developed in the inner nature by the Chela’s unhelped exertions, before he could be actually “put to the test.”