nor any enemy.  And it is in making this second effort that the fact of pain and pleasure being but one sensation becomes recognisable by those who have before been unable to perceive it.  For when the solitude of silence is reached the soul hungers so fiercely and passionately for some sensation on which to rest, that a painful one would be as keenly welcomed as a pleasant one.  When this consciousness is reached the courageous man by seizing and retaining it, may destroy the “sensitiveness” at once.  When the ear no longer discriminates between that which is pleasant or that which is painful, it will no longer be affected by the voices of others.  And then it is safe and possible to open the doors of the soul.

“Sight” is the first effort, and the easiest, because it is accomplished partly by an intellectual effort.  The intellect can conquer the heart, as is well known in ordinary life.  Therefore, this preliminary step still lies within the dominion of matter.  But the second step allows of no such assistance, nor of any material aid whatever.  Of course, I mean by material aid the action of the brain, or emotions, or human soul.  In compelling the ears to listen only to the eternal silence, the being we call man becomes something which is no longer man.  A very superficial survey of the thousand and one influences which are brought to bear on us by others will show that this must be so.  A disciple will fulfil all the duties of his manhood; but he will fulfil them according to his own sense of right, and not according to that of any person or body of persons.  This is a very evident result of following the creed of knowledge instead of any of the blind creeds.

To obtain the pure silence necessary for the disciple, the heart and emotions, the brain and its intellectualisms, have to be put aside.  Both are but mechanisms, which will perish with the span of man’s life.  It is the essence beyond, that which is the motive power, and makes man live, that is now compelled to rouse itself and act.  Now is the greatest hour of danger.  In the first trial men go mad with fear; of this first trial Bulwer Lytton wrote.  No novelist has followed to the second trial, though some of the poets have.  Its subtlety and great danger lies in the fact that in the measure of a man’s strength is the measure of his chance of passing beyond it or coping with it at all.  If he has power enough to awaken that unaccustomed part of himself, the supreme essence, then has he power to lift the gates of gold, then is he the true alchemist, in possession of the elixir of life.

It is at this point of experience that the occultist becomes separated from all other men and enters on to a life which is his own; on to the path of individual accomplishment instead of mere obedience to the genii which rule our earth.  This raising of himself into an individual power does in reality identify him with the nobler forces of life and make him one with them.  For they stand beyond the powers of