within the limit of his conscious effort.  To obtain knowledge by experiment is too tedious a method for those who aspire to accomplish real work; he who gets it by certain intuition, lays hands on its various forms with supreme rapidity, by fierce effort of will; as a determined workman grasps his tools, indifferent to their weight or any other difficulty which may stand in his way.  He does not stay for each to be tested—­he uses such as he sees are fittest.

All the rules contained in “Light on the Path,” are written for all disciples, but only for disciples—–­those who “take knowledge.”  To none else but the student in this school are its laws of any use or interest.

To all who are interested seriously in Occultism, I say first—­take knowledge.  To him who hath shall be given.  It is useless to wait for it.  The womb of Time will close before you, and in later days you will remain unborn, without power.  I therefore say to those who have any hunger or thirst for knowledge, attend to these rules.

They are none of my handicraft or invention.  They are merely the phrasing of laws in super-nature, the putting into words truths as absolute in their own sphere, as those laws which govern the conduct of the earth and its atmosphere.

The senses spoken of in these four statements are the astral, or inner senses.

No man desires to see that light which illumines the spaceless soul until pain and sorrow and despair have driven him away from the life of ordinary humanity.  First he wears out pleasure; then he wears out pain—­till, at last, his eyes become incapable of tears.

This is a truism, although I know perfectly well that it will meet with a vehement denial from many who are in sympathy with thoughts which spring from the inner life. To see with the astral sense of sight is a form of activity which it is difficult for us to understand immediately.  The scientist knows very well what a miracle is achieved by each child that is born into the world, when it first conquers its eyesight and compels it to obey its brain.  An equal miracle is performed with each sense certainly, but this ordering of sight is perhaps the most stupendous effort.  Yet the child does it almost unconsciously, by force of the powerful heredity of habit.  No one now is aware that he has ever done it at all; just as we cannot recollect the individual movements which enabled us to walk up a hill a year ago.  This arises from the fact that we move and live and have our being in matter.  Our knowledge of it has become intuitive.

With our astral life it is very much otherwise.  For long ages past, man has paid very little attention to it—­so little, that he has practically lost the use of his senses.  It is true, that in every civilization the star arises, and man confesses, with more or less of folly and confusion, that he knows himself to be.  But most often he denies it, and in being a materialist becomes that strange