between the stir of the marketplace and the stillness of the snow-capped Himalayas.  He has not to go about among men in order to form this link; in the astral he is that link, and this fact makes him a being of another order from the rest of mankind.  Even so early on the road towards knowledge, when he has but taken the second step, he finds his footing more certain, and becomes conscious that he is a recognised part of a whole.

This is one of the contradictions in life which occur so constantly that they afford fuel to the fiction writer.  The occultist finds them become much more marked as he endeavors to live the life he has chosen.  As he retreats within himself and becomes self-dependent, he finds himself more definitely becoming part of a great tide of definite thought and feeling.  When he has learned the first lesson, conquered the hunger of the heart, and refused to live on the love of others, he finds himself more capable of inspiring love.  As he flings life away it comes to him in a new form and with a new meaning.  The world has always been a place with many contradictions in it, to the man; when he becomes a disciple he finds life is describable as a series of paradoxes.  This is a fact in nature, and the reason for it is intelligible enough.  Man’s soul “dwells like a star apart,” even that of the vilest among us; while his consciousness is under the law of vibratory and sensuous life.  This alone is enough to cause those complications of character which are the material for the novelist; every man is a mystery, to friend and enemy alike, and to himself.  His motives are often undiscoverable, and he cannot probe to them or know why he does this or that.  The disciple’s effort is that of awakening consciousness in this starry part of himself, where his power and divinity lie sleeping.  As this consciousness becomes awakened, the contradictions in the man himself become more marked than ever; and so do the paradoxes which he lives through.  For, of course man creates his own life; and “adventures are to the adventurous” is one of those wise proverbs which are drawn from actual fact, and cover the whole area of human experience.

Pressure on the divine part of man re-acts upon the animal part.  As the silent soul awakes it makes the ordinary life of the man more purposeful, more vital, more real, and responsible.  To keep to the two instances already mentioned, the occultist who has withdrawn into his own citadel has found his strength; immediately he becomes aware of the demands of duty upon him.  He does not obtain his strength by his own right, but because he is a part of the whole; and as soon as he is safe from the vibration of life and can stand unshaken, the outer world cries out to him to come and labor in it.  So with the heart.  When it no longer wishes to take, it is called upon to give abundantly.

“Light on the Path” has been called a book of paradoxes, and very justly; what else could it be, when it deals with the actual personal experience of the disciple?