e can never be too
well guarded. If, as some suppose, they have to be entirely passive and
lose themselves in the object before them, they should remember that, by
thus encouraging passivity, they, in fact, allow the development of
mediumistic faculties in themselves. As was repeatedly stated--the
Adept and the Medium are the two Poles: while the former is intensely
active and thus able to control the elemental forces, the latter is
intensely passive and thus incurs the risk of falling a prey to the
caprice and malice of mischievous embryos of human beings, and the
elementaries.

It will be evident from the above that true meditation consists in the
"reasoning from the known to the unknown." The "known" is the
phenomenal world, cognizable by our five senses. And all that we see in
this manifested world are the effects, the causes of which are to be
sought after in the noumenal, the unmanifested, the "unknown world:"
this is to be accomplished by meditation, i.e., continued attention to
the subject. Occultism does not depend upon one method, but employs
both the deductive and the inductive. The student must first learn the
general axioms, which have sufficiently been laid down in the Elixir of
Life and other occult writings. What the student has first to do is to
comprehend these axioms and, by employing the deductive method, to
proceed from universals to particulars. He has then to reason from the
"known to the unknown," and see if the inductive method of proceeding
from particulars to universals supports those axioms. This process
forms the primary stage of true contemplation. The student must first
grasp the subject intellectually before he can hope to realize his
aspirations. When this is accomplished, then comes the next stage of
meditation, which is "the inexpressible yearning of the inner man to 'go
out towards the infinite.'" Before any such yearning can be properly
directed, the goal must first be determined. The higher stage, in fact,
consists in practically realizing what the first steps have placed
within one's comprehension. In short, contemplation, in its true sense,
is to recognize the truth of Eliphas Levi's saying:--

To believe without knowing is weakness; to believe, because one knows,
is power.

The Elixir of Life not only gives the preliminary steps in the ladder of
contemplation but also tells the reader how to realize the higher
stages. It traces, by the process of contemplation a