g pleasure to others for the sake
of one's own development. Well, let those who think so defer till
another lifetime the attempt to enter the path in real earnest. But let
them not glory in their own fancied unselfishness. For, in reality, it
is only the seeming appearances which they allow to deceive them, the
conventional notions, based on emotionalism and gush, or so-called
courtesy, things of the unreal life, not the dictates of Truth.

But even putting aside these difficulties, which may be considered
"external," though their importance is none the less great, how are
students in the West to "attune themselves" to harmony as here required
of them? So strong has personality grown in Europe and America, that
there is no school of artists even whose members do not hate and are not
jealous of each other. "Professional" hatred and envy have become
proverbial; men seek each to benefit himself at all costs, and even the
so-called courtesies of life are but a hollow mask covering these demons
of hatred and jealousy.

In the East the spirit of "non-separateness" is inculcated as steadily
from childhood up, as in the West the spirit of rivalry. Personal
ambition, personal feelings and desires, are not encouraged to grow so
rampant there. When the soil is naturally good, it is cultivated in the
right way, and the child grows into a man in whom the habit of
subordination of one's lower to one's higher Self is strong and
powerful. In the West men think that their own likes and dislikes of
other men and things are guiding principles for them to act upon, even
when they do not make of them the law of their lives and seek to impose
them upon others.

Let those who complain that they have learned little in the Theosophical
Society lay to heart the words written in an article in the _Path_ for
last February:--"The key in each degree is the _aspirant himself_." It
is not "the fear of God" which is "the beginning of Wisdom," but the
knowledge of SELF which is WISDOM ITSELF.

How grand and true appears, thus, to the student of Occultism who has
commenced to realize some of the foregoing truths, the answer given by
the Delphic Oracle to all who came seeking after Occult Wisdom--words
repeated and enforced again and again by the wise Socrates:--MAN KNOW
THYSELF.

Chelaship has nothing _whatever_ to do with means of subsistence or
anything of the kind, for a man can isolate his mind entirely from his
body and its surroundings. Chela