It is a relief to turn from these eternal legal quibbles (of my business) to say a word or two on eternal matters.

Now and then there are underlined sentences occurring in The Path. These ought to be studied. One about one yogee not doing anything not seen in another yogee's mind will open up a subject. Reticence does not always mean ignorance: if we dig out the knowledge we drag down at the same time rocks and debris of other sorts, whereas, if a miner hands us the nugget, that is all we get at the time. So a slight reticence often results in our going at the digging ourselves.

In September Path is another. Getting back the memory of other lives is really the whole of the process, and if some people don't understand certain things it is either because they have not got to that point in their other lives or because no glimmer of memory has yet come.

The communion of saints is a reality, and it often happens that those brought up in the same school speak26 the same language. While not being one, such are very like co-scholars no matter when or where. Furthermore, there are some peculiar natures in this world who, while they are like mirrors or sponges that reflect and absorb from others certain information, still retain a very strong individuality of their own. So it is with this gentleman whose letter you enclose. There is scarcely any doubt that he, if he tells true tales, sees in the astral light. The description of things "moving about like fishes in the sea" is a real description of one of the manners in which many of these elemental forms are seen. So it may, as premised above, be settled that he sees in the astral light.

He should know that that astral light exists in all places and interpenetrates everything, and is not simply in the free air alone. Further should he know that to be able to see as he sees in the light is not all of the seeing thus. That is, there are many sorts of such sight, e.g., he may see now certain airy shapes and yet not see many others which at the same time are as really present there as those he now sees. So it would seem that there are "layers" or differences of states in the astral light. Another way to state it is that elementals are constantly moving in the astral light—that is, everywhere. They, so to say, show pictures to him who looks, and the pictures they show will depend in great part upon the seer's thoughts, motives and development. These differences are very numerous. It therefore follows that in this study pride must be eliminated. That pride has disappeared from ordinary life does not prove that it has done any more than retreat a little further within. So one must be careful of becoming even inwardly vain of being able to see any such things; for if that happens it will follow that the one limited plane in which one may be a seer will be accepted as the whole. That, then, will be falsity. But if recognized as delusive because partial, then it remains27 true—so far as it goes. All true things must be total, and all totalities exist at once, each in all, while these partial forms exist partially in those that are total. So it follows that only those that are total reveal entire truth, and those that partake of lower nature—or are partial—receive but a limited view of truth. The elementals are partial forms, while the man's individual soul is total, and according to the power and purity of that form which it inhabits "waits upon the Gods."

Now our bodies, and all "false I" powers up to the individual soul, are "partial forms" in common with the energic centres in astral light. So that it must follow that no matter how much we and they participate in each other the resulting view of the one Truth is partial in its nature because the two partial forms mingling together do not produce totality. But it intoxicates. And herein lies the danger of the teaching of such men as P. B. Randolph, who advocates participation with these partial beings by means of sensual excesses glorified with a name and gilded with the pretence of a high purpose—viz., knowle............