n of first-hand knowledge. That first-hand knowledge was
shared by Their immediate followers, who carried on the teaching of
the system after the Teacher had withdrawn. And it matters not what
religion you take, living or dead, you will find it equally true, that
phenomena were common in the earlier days of the teaching of that
religion.

Now let me take two typical religions, one Eastern and one Western,
with regard to the continuance of the phenomena of the earlier
days--the Hindu religion in the East for the Eastern example, and
the Roman Catholic Church in the West for the Western example. In both
these great religious movements we find a continuance of phenomena;
neither Hinduism as typical of Eastern teaching, nor Roman
Catholicism as the most widespread form of Christianity in the West,
has ever taken up the position that the life which showed itself
through the earlier teachers was cut off and no longer irrigated the
fields of the religion. On the contrary, you find both these typical
religions claiming continuity of life and of knowledge. Amongst the
Hindus it is a commonplace to assert the possibilities of yoga,
that a man can now, as much as in the days of the Manu or of the great
Rishis, do what They did, can free himself from the physical
body, can travel into other worlds of the systems, can acquaint
himself with the forces and objects of those worlds, and carry on as
definite a study of the Not-Self in those worlds, as anyone who wishes
to do so may carry on a definite study of the Not-Self in the physical
world. The claim has never been given up; the practice never wholly
disappeared. So also with the Roman Catholic communion. There has
been there a succession of saints and of seers who have always claimed
to be in direct touch with other worlds, and who have claimed and
exercised the powers of those worlds manifestly on the physical plane.
To-day in the Roman Catholic Church similar phenomena are said to
occur, and certainly the evidence offered for these phenomena is far
more easily verifiable than the evidence offered for such phenomena in
the earlier centuries of the Christian story. So also among the
Hindus it is more easy to prove nowadays the powers possessed by a
yogi, than it is to prove the possession of those powers thousands of
years ago in the obscurity of the earlier days of Hinduism.
Consequently you find amongst Roman Catholics and Hindus a definite
belief that these things are still pos