is far more sweeping than some of our modern Theosophists are apt to imagine.  They declare that the Siddhis are to be avoided, but forget that the Indian who says this also avoids the use of the physical senses.  He closes physical eyes and ears as hindrances.  But some Theosophists urge avoidance of all use of the astral senses and mental senses, but they do not object to the free use of the physical senses, or dream that they are hindrances.  Why not?  If the senses are obstacles in their finer forms, they are also obstacles in their grosser manifestations.  To the man who would find the Self by the Self, every sense is a hindrance and an obstacle, and there is no logic, no reason, in denouncing the subtler senses only, while forgetting the temptations of the physical senses, impediments as much as the other.  No such division exists for the man who tries to understand the universe in which he is.  In the search for the Self by the Self, all that is not Self is an obstacle.  Your eyes, your ears, everything that puts you into contact with the outer world, is just as much an obstacle as the subtler forms of the same senses which put you into touch with the subtler worlds of matter, which you call astral and mental.  This exaggerated fear of the Siddhis is only a passing reaction, not based on understanding but on lack of understanding; and those who denounce the Siddhis should rise to the logical position of the Hindu Yogi, or of the Roman Catholic recluse, who denounces all the senses, and all the objects of the senses, as obstacles in the way.  Many Theosophists here, and more in the West, think that much is gained by acuteness of the physical senses, and of the other faculties in the physical brain; but the moment the senses are acute enough to be astral, or the faculties begin to work in astral matter, they treat them as objects of denunciation.  That is not rational.  It is not logical.  Obstacles, then, are all the senses, whether you call them Siddhis or not, in the search for the Self by turning away from the Not-Self.

It is necessary for the man who seeks the Self by the Self to have the quality which is called “faith,” in the sense in which I defined it before—­the profound, intense conviction, that nothing can shake, of the reality of the Self within you.  That is the one thing that is worthy to be dignified by the name of faith.  Truly it is beyond reason, for not by reason may the Self be known as real.  Truly it is not based on argument, for not by reasoning may the Self be discovered.  It is the witness of the Self within you to his own supreme reality, and that unshakable conviction, which is shraddha, is necessary for the treading of this path.  It is necessary, because without it the human mind would fail, the human courage would be daunted, the human perseverance would break, with the difficulties of the seeking for the Self.  Only that imperious conviction that the Self is, only that can cheer the pilgrim in the darkness that comes down upon him, in the void that he must cross before—­the life of the lower being thrown away—­the life of the higher is realised.  This imperious faith is to the Yogi on this path what experience and knowledge are to the Yogi on the other.