The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett from the Mahatmas M. & K. H.

body, and which may be termed the vehicle of consciousness on its own plane, just as the physical body is the vehicle of consciousness in the physical world. It must be understood clearly however, that each of these empty shells has a certain illusory awareness or consciousness of its own, which is the collective consciousness of the aggregation of atoms and molecules of which they are composed, and quite distinct from the consciousness of the individual, or real entity, which informed them in life. The physical body has a similar consciousness which is purely animal and instinctive in nature. At death the consciousness of even the shell leaves it for a time, and does not return to it until the withdrawal of 5th, 6th, and 7th principles is complete. Not until after that is accomplished, does a certain awareness of existence return to the empty shells. It is these disintegrating corpses which can be temporarily galvanized into activity by the efforts of a medium; these can and do communicate, but only as it were from memory of what has been, and not from consciousness of present facts. This is the reason for the often stupid, meaningless, unspiritual messages from the other side of death which so disgust the seeker for real knowledge. The brief analysis given above, is the rule for all humanity, with the exception of the victims of accident and suicide on the one hand, and on the other those rare individuals (only the trained occultist knows how rare they are) who have won for themselves immortality.

Those students of "occultism" who believe themselves guided, by disincarnate entities ranging in degree from departed Theosophists to "Adepts who have relinquished the use of physical bodies on earth,"¹ by means of the methods of mediums, ouija boards and their equivalent, will do well to consider their position in the light of these letters. Communication with departed Theosophists (i.e. the real entities) as already shown is an impossibility, for alas ! they cannot be included among those who have achieved immortality, the exceptions to the general rule governing humanity being so very few; and with regard to the guidance of disembodied "Adept Spirits" it may be asked, how those who have not deserved individual instruction from Adepts in the flesh, can possibly expect to receive direct help from Their superiors—the Planetary Spirits, the Dhyan Chohanic Host? It cannot be too strongly emphasized that in thus externalizing the source from which he seeks inspiration, the student sacrifices all possibility of the grand realities of spiritual attainment and direct knowledge. "The ever unknowable and incognizable

¹ Esoteric Buddhism, p. 133. Eighth Edition.