most a couple of hundred years.  We may break, as it were, the shock of Death, and instead of dying, change a sudden plunge into darkness to a transition into a brighter light.  And this may be made so gradual that the passage from one state of existence to another shall have its friction minimized, so as to be practically imperceptible.  This is a very different matter, and quite within the reach of Occult Science.  In this, as in all other cases, means properly directed will gain their ends, and causes produce effects.  Of course, the only question is, what are these causes, and how, in their turn, are they to be produced.  To lift, as far as may be allowed, the veil from this aspect of Occultism, is the object of the present paper.

We must premise by reminding the reader of two Theosophic doctrines, constantly inculcated in “Isis” and in other mystic works—­namely, (a) that ultimately the Kosmos is One—­one under infinite variations and manifestations, and (b) that the so-called man is a “compound being”—­ composite not only in the exoteric scientific sense of being a congeries of living so-called material Units, but also in the esoteric sense of being a succession of seven forms or parts of itself, interblended with each other.  To put it more clearly we might say that the more ethereal forms are but duplicates of the same aspect,—­each finer one lying within the inter-atomic spaces of the next grosser.  We would have the reader understand that these are no subtleties, no “spiritualities” at all in the Christo-Spiritualistic sense.  In the actual man reflected in your mirror are really several men, or several parts of one composite man; each the exact counterpart of the other, but the “atomic conditions” (for want of a better word) of each of which are so arranged that its atoms interpenetrate those of the next “grosser” form.  It does not, for our present purpose, matter how the Theosophists, Spiritualists, Buddhists, Kabalists, or Vedantists, count, separate, classify, arrange or name these, as that war of terms may be postponed to another occasion.  Neither does it matter what relation each of these men has to the various “elements” of the Kosmos of which he forms a part.  This knowledge, though of vital importance in other respects, need not be explained or discussed now.  Nor does it much more concern us that the Scientists deny the existence of such an arrangement, because their instruments are inadequate to make their senses perceive it.  We will simply reply—­“get better instruments and keener senses, and eventually you will.”

All we have to say is that if you are anxious to drink of the “Elixir of Life,” and live a thousand years or so, you must take our word for the matter at present, and proceed on the assumption.  For esoteric science does not give the faintest possible hope that the desired end will ever be attained by any other way; while modern, or so-called exact science—­laughs at it.