May 18, 1900.] 



SCIENCE 



771 



this adept goes on to observe, her initiates 

 are ' not indigent and their comfortable for- 

 tunes are acquired by healing mankind mor- 

 ally, physically and spiritually.' 



" But right here is the greatest danger of 

 all Sciosophy. lbs precepts must never be 

 sold for money. Once turn your dreams 

 into coin, whether as novelist, poet, 

 phrenologist, palmist, pulmist, horoscopist, 

 astrologist or medicine-man, and all their 

 sacreduess disappears. The precepts of 

 Sciosophy exist in endless store, boundless 

 corollaries of unfettered hypothesis, but to 

 convert them into gold is the Midas touch 

 that works their degradation. To appeal 

 to the principles of Sciosophy for hire is to 

 become an empiricist, a quack, a leech, a 

 vampire, to be everything that is lowest on 

 the earthy chain, the lowest of all planes. 

 It may be true, indeed, that he who pays 

 most for his astral healing is likely to 

 be soonest cured, but the pay degrades 

 his astral healer. The adept who never 

 touches earthy pay is the one most likely 

 to be exceedingly rewarded, for the true 

 reward is within himself. 



" The Sciosophist who serves men for 

 coin, does it at the sacrifice of his own 

 soul. ' Before a soul can pass to life beyond 

 our planet,' says a noted Mahatma, ' it 

 must unroll the long coil of its incarnations 

 and look itself in the face.' To have made 

 a living by charting of skulls, or mapping 

 finger tips on a basis of sciosophic inven- 

 tions, to have cured diseases by faith or 

 hope or the laying on of hands, to have 

 cast horoscopes for money, or laid bare the 

 secrets of the future through the light of 

 moon or stars, tea-grounds or broken tea- 

 cups, to have found gold or coal or water 

 by witch hazel rods, rain through atmal 

 incantations, or love through postage- stamp 

 flirtation, all this is prostitution of a 

 heaven-bora gift. The soul of the scioso- 

 phist who has done such things dare not, 

 when translated, look its past in the face. 



It must seek blindly a new incarnation, 

 the lowlier the better, that it may start 

 again free from temptations which assail 

 the gifted and the great. 



"The author of ' Body, Mind and Soul,' 

 in a sciosophic trance, once saw in Devachan 

 the soul of a famous adept, who, in his 

 seventy-eighth incarnation, had ' acquired a 

 gift of second sight and through it has ac- 

 quired a comfortable fortune by healing 

 mankind ' in an elegant office in Chicago. 

 His soul after phj'sical death is thus de- 

 scribed : 



" A man six feet tall and fairly propor- 

 tioned, who during life in the physical 

 body claimed the friendship of a few of the 

 world-famed great, when seen a few months 

 after death had a tall frame. About a 

 year later, he had arms and legs shrunken 

 to about the size of a dog's legs ; and the 

 body shrunken, but still large, was carried 

 on all fours ; and the head had become of 

 the shape one might imagine a cross be- 

 tween a dog and an alligator to produce ; 

 and the huge jaws were stretched in vain 

 to make a sound of any sort. The soul of 

 the man was eucased in this hideous non- 

 physical body, and readily recognized the 

 writer. Two years later, this soul was seen 

 near the fifth descent in the caverns ; and 

 the non-physical body which it had lately 

 left was roaming about the first zone, a 

 huge, lean, hungry alligator-dog, which 

 prej'ed like a vampire on the vitality of 

 any man to whom it could get access. 



" It is easy to see from this that the scio- 

 sophic adept on his way to Nirvana gains 

 nothing from a 'comfortable fortune,' wrung 

 from the hopes and fears of men and paid 

 for from the crystal aura of his own soul, 

 the upper triad of Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the 

 only thing in a changing world which is 

 worth hoarding to you or to me. 



" N"o, no, truth is within you, life is soul 

 growth, wealth is wealth of the mind. Kam- 

 aloka, the place of desire, is not an elegant 



