all who are spoken of in the different faiths as
Founder or Founders of a particular religion would fall under the
name, Master.

Now I was hesitating a moment in completing that sentence, because one
almost has to explain that in thus using the word one is including in it
a little more than is included under the term in the special
significance with which we are going to use it now; for in the case of
the religions of the Hindus, the religion of the Buddhists, and
the religion of the Christians, when we speak of the Founder of each of
these religions, we are speaking of great personages who, in the Occult
Hierarchy, are higher than those whom we call Masters: in the case of
Hinduism, the Manu, who is the Lord really of the whole of the Fifth
Root Race; in the case of Buddhism, the Buddha, who is a
teacher of all gods and men before He takes up His place as the
illuminated, the supreme Buddha. And in the case of the Christian
Religion also, there is something peculiar in the life of the Founder.
You have there, in the first place, a being whom we call by the name
Jesus, in himself a disciple, but living in the world at that time under
exceedingly strange and peculiar conditions. Some of you may have read
with some amount of care that section of the third volume of _The Secret
Doctrine_ which is called "The Mystery of the Buddha." I am bound
to confess that as it stands there it is very confused, partly
intentionally, I think, on the part of the writer, but also partly in
consequence of the fact mentioned in that volume, that you have there
put together a large number of fragments, and they were put together by
myself at a time when I knew very much less of the arrangement, so to
speak, of those relationships between the higher and lower worlds than I
do now. Hence there is some darkness there that belongs to the subject,
and some that belongs to the incompetence of the compiler. The result of
the two together is a good deal of confusion to any student who has not
the key to it. I am only concerned for the moment with one of these
statements, with what are called "the remains of the Buddha"--not
a very comfortable name, because it gives one the idea of a corpse--that
is, empty bodies of the Buddha on the various planes. Those have
been preserved on the higher planes for special purposes, and are
occasionally used under very peculiar conditions, when subtle bodies of
a very pure and very lofty character are needed for so