“This, Mr Sinnett chooses to assume, was not the fact with the Thibet Brothers; but, in reality, this was just what they did.  The fact that they have outstripped other similar transcendentalists is due to the circumstance that the original founders of the system were men of more powerful will and higher attainments than any who have succeeded them.  And on their death they formed a compact spiritual society in the other world, impregnating the wills and imaginations of their disciples still on earth with their fantastic theories, which they still retain there, of a planetary chain, and the spiral advance of the seven rounds, and the septenary law, and all the rest of it.  In order for human beings to come into these occult knowledges, it is necessary, as Mr Sinnett admits, for the adepts to go into trance-conditions—­in other words, to lose all control of their normal, or as they would probably call them, their objective faculties.  While in this condition, they are the sport of any invisible intelligences that choose to play upon them; but fearing lest they may be accused of this, they erroneously assert that no such intelligences of a high order have cognisance of what happens in this world.  The fact that mahatmas have powers which appear supernatural proves nothing, as Mr Sinnett also admits that innumerable fakirs and yojis possess these as well, whose authority on occultism he deems of no account, when he says that ’careless inquirers are very apt to confound such persons with the great adepts of whom they vaguely hear.’  There can be no better evidence of the falsity of the whole conception than you are yourself.  For to prove to you that you were the sport of a delusion, although your own experience as a mahatma in regard to the secret processes of nature, and the sensations attendant upon subjective conditions, exactly corresponded to those of all other mahatmas, you have, under my tutelage, at various times allowed yourself to fall into trance-conditions, when, owing to occult influences which we have brought to bear, a totally different idea concerning ’nature, man, the origin of the universe, and the destinies toward which its inhabitants are tending,’ was presented to your sixth sense, which appeared ’absolute truth’ at the time, and which would have continued to seem so, had I not had the power of intromitting you through trance-conditions into a totally different set of apparent truths on the same subject, which were no more to be relied upon than the other.  The fact is, that no seer, be he Hindoo, Buddhist, Christian, or of any other religion, is to be depended upon the moment he throws himself into abnormal organic conditions.  We see best, as you have now learnt, into the deepest mysteries with all our senses about us.  And the discovery of this great fact was due to woman; and it is for this reason that mahatmas shrink from female chelas—­they are afraid of them.  According to their philosophy, women play a poor part in the system of the universe, and their chances of reaching the blissful condition of nirvana are practically not to be compared with those of the men.