dear jasper:

i gave your letter to a distressed soul: she returned thanks, saying it was a cooling draught to one athirst. the thanks of course are yours. now this lady says it was refreshment to the weary, that letter. true, or she would not say it. but it was not so to me nor to you.

we needed it not. but she illustrates a certain state of progress. she is not yet where we are; but which is happier? she is happier, but poorer in hope. we are not all too happy, but are rich in hope, knowing the prize at the end of time, and not deterred by the clouds, the storms, the miasms and dreadful beasts of prey that line the road. let us, then, at the very outset wash out of our souls all desire for reward, all hope that we may attain. for so long as we thus hope and desire, we shall be separated from the self. if in the self all things are, then we cannot wish to be something which we can only compass by excluding something else.

so being beyond this lady so grateful, we find that everything we meet on this illusory plane of existence is a lure that in one way or another has power84 to draw us out of our path. that is the point we are at, and we may call it the point where lures of maya have omnipresent power. therefore we must beware of the illusions of matter.

before we got to this stage we knew well the fateful lure, the dazzling mirror of the elemental self, here and there in well-defined places, and intrenched as it was, so to say, in strongly-marked defenses. those we assaulted; and that was what it desired, for it did think that it then had no need to exercise the enchantment which is hard because so subtle, and so distributed here and there that we find no citadels to take, no battalions in array. but now our dearest friends are unconsciously in league with the deceptive in nature. how strongly do i realize the dejection of arjuna as he let his bow drop from his hand and sat down on his chariot in despair. but he had a sure spot to rest upon. he used his own. he had krishna near, and he might fight on.

so in passing along those stages where the grateful lady and others are, we may perhaps have found one spot we may call our own and possess no other qualification for the task. that spot is enough. it is our belief in the self, in masters: it is the little flame of intuition we have allowed to burn, that we have fostered with care.

then come these dreadful lures. they are, in fact, but mere carcasses, shells of monsters from past existences, offering themselves that we may give them life to terrify us as soon as we have entered them either by fear or love. no matter which way we enter, whether by attachment or by repugnant horror, it is all one: they are in one case vivified by a lover; in the other by a slave who would be free but cannot.

here it is the lure of enjoyment of natural pleasures, growing out of life's physical basis; there it is85 self-praise, anger, vanity, what not? even these beautiful hills and river, they mock one, for they live on untrammelled. perhaps they do not speak to us because they know the superiority of silence. they laugh with each other at us in the night, amused at the wild struggle of this petty man who would pull the sky down. ach! god of heaven! and all the sucklings of theosophy wish that some great, well-diplom?d adept would come and open the secret box; but they do not imagine that other students have stepped on the spikes that defend the entrance to the way that leads to the gate of the path. but we will not blame them, nor yet wish for the things—the special lots—that some of them have abstracted, because now that we know the dreadful power that despair and doubt and violated conscience have, we prefer to prepare wisely and carefully, and not rush in like fools where angels do not pass uninvited.

but, companion, i remind you of the power of the lure. this path passes along under a sky and in a clime where every weed grows a yard in the night. it has no discrimination. thus even after weeks or months of devotion, or years of work, we are surprised at small seeds of vanity or any other thing which would be easily conquered in other years of inattentive life, but which seem now to arise as if helped by some damnable intelligence. this great power of self-illusion is strong enough to create a roaring torrent or a mountain of ice between us and our masters.

in respect to the question of sex. it is, as you know, given much prominence by both women and men to the detriment of the one sex or the other, or of any supposed sex. there are those who say that the female sex is not to be thought of in the spirit; that all is male. others say the same for the female. now both are wrong. in the true there is no sex,86 and when i said "there all men are women and all women are men," i was only using rhetoric to accentuate the idea that neither one nor the other was predominant, but that the two were coalesced, so to say, into one. in the same way you might say, "men are animals there and vice versa." mind, this is in regard to spirit, and not in regard to the psychical states. for in the psychical states there are still distinctions, as the psychical, though higher than the material, is not as high as spirit, for it still partakes of matter. for in the spirit or atma all experiences of all forms of life and death are found at once, and he who is one with the atma knows the whole manifested universe at once. i have spoken of this condition before as the turya or fourth state.

when i say that the female principle represents matter, i do not mean women, for they in any one or more cases may be full of the masculine principle, and vice versa.

matter is illusionary and vain, and so the female element is illusionary and vain, as well as tending to the established order.d so in the kaballa it is said that the woman is a wall about the man. a balance is necessary, and that balance is found in women, or the woman element. you can easily see that the general tendency of women is to keep things as they are and not to have change. woman—not here and there women—has never been the pioneer in great reforms. of course many single individual women have been, but the tendency of the great mass of the women has always been to keep things as they are until the men have brought about the great change. this is why women always support any established religion, no matter what,—christian, jewish, buddhist, or brahmin. the buddhist women are as much believers in their religion and averse from changing87 it as are their christian sisters opposed in the mass to changing theirs.

now as to telling which element predominates in any single person, it is hard to give a general test rule. but perhaps it might be found in whether a person is given to abstract or concrete thought, and similarly whether given to mere superficial things or to deep fundamental matters. but you must work that out, i think, for yourself.

of course in the spiritual life no organ disappears, but we must find out what would be the mode of operation of any organ in its spiritual counterpart. as i understand, the spiritual counterparts of the organs are powers, and not organs, as the eye is the power to see, the ear the power to hear, and so on. the generative organs would then become the creative power and perhaps the will. you must not suppose that in the spirit life the organs are reproduced as we see them.

one instance will suffice. one may see pictures in the astral light through the back of the head or the stomach. in neither place is there any eye, yet we see. it must be by the power of seeing, which in the material body needs the specialized place or specializing organ known as the eye. we hear often through the head without the aid of the auricular apparatus, which shows us that there is the power of hearing and of transmitting and receiving sounds without the aid of an external ear or its inside cerebral apparatus. so of course all these things survive in that way. any other view is grossly material, leading to a deification of this unreal body, which is only an image of the reality, and a poor one at that.

in thinking over these matters you ought always to keep in mind the three plain distinctions of physical, psychical, and spiritual, always remembering that the last includes the other two. all the astral things88 are of the psychical nature, which is partly material and therefore very deceptive. but all are necessary, for they are, they exist.

the deity is subject to this law, or rather it is the law of the deity. the deity desires experience or self-knowledge, which is only to be attained by stepping, so to say, aside from self. so the deity produces the manifested universes consisting of matter, psychical nature, and spirit. in the spirit alone resides the great consciousness of the whole; and so it goes on ever producing and drawing into itself, accumulating such vast and enormous experiences that the pen falls down at the thought. how can that be put into language? it is impossible, for we at once are met with the thought that the deity must know all at all times. yet there is a vastness and an awe-inspiring influence in this thought of the day and night of brahman. it is a thing to be thought over in the secret recesses of the heart, and not for discussion. it is the all.

and now, my brother, for the present i leave you. may your restored health enable you to do more work for the world.

i salute you, my brother, and wish you to reach the terrace of enlightenment.

z.