APPENDIX 



Adepts 



There are Adepts of various grades. There are such as 

 live like normal men in their physical bodies, and who 

 are able to send their astral spirit out of their bodies 

 during their sleep to any place they choose, and on 

 awakening, their astral spirit returns again into the 

 body to which it belongs; and there are others who 

 have no physical bodies, because they have arrived at a 

 state of perfection in which such bodies are no longer 

 required for their purposes.^ "There are persons who 

 have been exalted {verzuecht) to God, and who have re- 

 mained in that state of exaltation, and they have not 

 died. Their physical bodies have lost their lives, but 

 without being conscious of it, without sensation, without 

 any disease, and without suffering, and their bodies 

 became transformed, and disappeared in such a manner 

 that nobody knew what became of them, and yet they 

 remained on the earth. But their spirits and heavenly 

 bodies, having neither corporeal form, shape, nor colour, 

 were exalted to heaven, like Enoch and Elias of old " ^ 

 (Fhilosoph., v.). 



» See H. P. Blavataky, *' The Voice of the Silence " {Nirmanahaya's). 



* C. von Eckartsbausen speaks in his "Disclosures of Magic" (1790) 

 about the Adepts as follows : " These sages, whose number is small, are 

 children of light, and are opposed to darkness. They dislike mystifica- 

 tion and secrecy; they are open and frank, having nothing to do with 

 secret societies and with external ceremonies. They possess a spirituftl 

 temple, in which God is presiding. 



"They live in various parts of the earth, and do not meddle with poli- 

 tics ; their business is to do as much good to humanity as is in their power, 



387 



