Chelas and Chelaship

It is an extremely serious thing to pledge oneself to the Brotherhood or Lodge of the Masters as a chela, a disciple, and the inevitable consequences of such a pledge are often painful and difficult, and the Karmic and moral responsibility of the probationary chela so immense.

This is why we do not especially focus on this subject on this website, as we do not want to awaken people’s interest in these matters prematurely. It is well known that the matter of chelaship appears misguidedly enticing and exciting to those naïve and misinformed souls who have been reading books from the so-called “Ascended Masters” or by such people as C. W. Leadbeater and Alice Bailey. But it is not something to play with . . . for it demands absolutely everything . . . and those who fail will have to pay the cost . . . not to any human being but to the Karmic Law that they have willingly and often recklessly invoked.

H. P. Blavatsky stated that the Theosophical Movement consists of three main “sections”:

1. The First Section is the Lodge or Brotherhood of the Mahatmas Themselves.

2. The Second Section is comprised of chelas and lay chelas – which means disciples and lay disciples – of the Masters, and includes both those who have been formally accepted as a chela after successfully passing through a period of “probation,” which lasts for a minimum of seven years but can potentially last indefinitely, and also those who are still on their probation. This is the distinction between what are called “probationary chelas” and “accepted chelas.”

A “lay chela” – whether probationary or accepted – is one who still lives in the world at large and is involved with “everyday life,” rather than living and studying personally and directly with the Masters Themselves in Their retreats and schools in different parts of the world. Accepted chelas have the promise and potential of becoming – through their own efforts, exertions, and receiving initiations – Adepts and Masters of Wisdom in their own right in some future lifetime. This can be achieved as relatively swiftly as seven subsequent rebirths, teaches “The Voice of the Silence,” which HPB translated from the Book of the Golden Precepts “for the daily use of Lanoos,” “Lanoo” being the Senzar equivalent of the Sanskrit word “chela.” The Second Section is therefore the esoteric, private, inner side of the Movement.

3. The Third Section is the exoteric, public, outer side of the Theosophical Movement and its work.

In the Preface to the book “Raja-Yoga, or Occultism” (a compilation of some of HPB’s articles, published by Theosophy Company of Bombay, India) it is explained:

“The work of the Lodge falls into two divisions – (1) that of fecundating the mind of the race, or mass movement; and (2) that of gaining new adherents and chelas to be trained as future members of the Lodge, or individualistic work. This work goes on in every cycle, and the existence of the Lodge and the Path to it are truths which every civilization has been taught. The qualifications and requirements, the rules of life and conduct, however differently arranged, enumerated, or explained, are the same. The exigencies of cycles are calculated by the Lodge. . . . Thus in historic times Gautama, the man who became Buddha, the Enlightened, was the reformer and codifier of the occult system; once again Sang-Ko-Pa [i.e. Tsong Kha-Pa] of Kokhonor, in the fourteenth century, became the reformer of esoteric as well as of vulgar Lamaism. Among his commandments there is one that enjoins Those concerned to make an attempt to enlighten the world, including the “white barbarians,” every century, at a certain specified period of the cycle. Ever since the fourteenth, every century has seen the dual attempt to change the manas of humanity, including that of the West, and to draw from within its ranks those ready, however few, for the Path of Discipleship leading to Emancipation-Enlightenment. The attempts of earlier centuries were mostly private, though their influence and the mark they have left behind are traceable by any intuitive student of history; but in pursuance of the fiat of this Tibetan World-Reformer, the Theosophic Movement of our era, fulfilling the requirement of the cyclic law, was launched on the stormy ocean of publicity. The time was ripe and the Benediction of the Chiefs sent H.P.B. to our world. . . . One of the prime objects of H.P.B.’s mission was to open up communication between the world of man and that of Masters, and to create a suitable Embassy in the former domain through which the work of the Lodge could be carried on.”

Through the means established by HPB, many members of the Theosophical Society of her day became probationary lay-chelas. As can be read below, barely any succeeded in becoming “accepted”; at least not in that lifetime but the Path can be taken up again in a subsequent incarnation and very often is. When we understand the powerful and not altogether pleasant or easy effects that pledging oneself as a chela has upon one’s inner nature, the many failures and disasters of numerous prominent historical figures in the modern Movement become more understandable and we can perhaps feel more compassion for some of them, whilst not excusing or overlooking the harm and damage some of them wrought upon the very Movement which they claimed to represent.

The path and process of probation is never going to become an easy thing. The idea of a minimum of seven years probation unsurprisingly does not appeal to many people and thus the claims by some later “Theosophical” writers that this necessity has now suddenly been done away with, and has ceased to be valid or required, are much more appealing for those who – to use an expression of HPB’s – “prefer to believe what is pleasant rather than what is true.” The original Theosophical position on this matter may indeed sound somewhat stern and severe but it is a scientific necessity and works for the benefit of all concerned.

William Q. Judge – HPB’s closest and most trusted friend and colleague, her co-disciple of the Master M. and fellow Teacher – wrote, in some very brief but important sentences under the heading “MASTERS AND CHELAS” in the “Subjects for Discussion” pamphlet, “Seven years probation, the fixed law of growth. Seven years chelaship necessary because of the change of atoms and astral connections.”

Damodar K. Mavalankar, the disciple of the Master K.H. who was eventually called to go and live and train direct with the Masters in the Himalayas, elaborated upon this in a letter to an enquirer:

“This is no whim or caprice on the part of the venerated Masters; all Their rules and laws are based upon a thorough comprehension of the hitherto unknown laws of nature, and a better understanding of the Humanity which surrounds Them. Modern science even has found out that after each seven years, the body of a man is entirely changed. You will thus perceive that for the body to be so completely changed within seven years, the process must be going on gradually all the time, and the new body that is thus formed is entirely of the man’s own making, for this process of the emission and the attraction of atoms is going on all the time. If, therefore, knowing this secret, the man controls his desires and passions all the time, so that he will emit from himself those atoms that are not suited for his progress, . . . and if he attracts only those atoms which are suited to his progress, then the body he will have formed will be entirely his own creation, . . . For the completion of this process seven years are necessary. You will thus see why the probationary period is fixed for seven years. It is no arbitrary rule, but the necessary condition exacted by nature itself. This is the reason also why the neophyte has always to guard self against self; i.e., he must watch all the time his desires and passions, so as to prevent them from attracting atoms unsuited to spiritual progress.”

Bearing all of the above in mind, we reproduce below H. P. Blavatsky’s article “Chelas and Lay Chelas” (first published in “The Theosophist,” July 1883) along with excerpts from her article “The Theosophical Mahatmas” (“The Path,” December 1886) so that these plain words can be read direct from the only Theosophical Teacher who the Masters called Their “Direct Agent.” If anyone can tell us about chelaship, HPB ought to be the best equipped to do so.

We do not wish to turn anyone away from the aim or prospect of chelaship. We only wish to make it perfectly clear what a serious thing it is, whereas it is treated and spoken of so lightly, casually, and even flippantly, amongst the Pseudo-Theosophists and the followers of the New Age Movement, where the concept has also been abused and exploited, for the gain or pleasure of leaders of certain movements and organisations.

Those serious students of Theosophy who carefully read the following and who still feel inwardly sure that they wish – or even need – to follow such a Path, and who feel that they cannot be fully content remaining a member of the “Third Section” only, can take courage and comfort from knowing that they are amongst the few who have what it takes.

CHELAS AND LAY CHELAS

AN ARTICLE BY H. P. BLAVATSKY

As the word Chela has, among others, been introduced by Theosophy into the nomenclature of Western metaphysics, and the circulation of our magazine is constantly widening, it will be as well if some more definite explanation than heretofore is given with respect to the meaning of this term and the rules of Chelaship, for the benefit of our European if not Eastern members. A “Chela” then, is one who has offered himself or herself as a pupil to learn practically the “hidden mysteries of Nature and the psychical powers latent in man.” The spiritual teacher to whom he proposes his candidature is called in India a Guru; and the real Guru is always an Adept in the Occult Science. A man of profound knowledge, exoteric and esoteric, especially the latter; and one who has brought his carnal nature under subjection of the WILL; who has developed in himself both the power (Siddhi) to control the forces of nature, and the capacity to probe her secrets by the help of the formerly latent but now active powers of his being: – this is the real Guru. To offer oneself as a candidate for Chelaship is easy enough, to develop into an Adept the most difficult task any man could possibly undertake. There are scores of “natural-born” poets, mathematicians, mechanics, statesmen, etc., but a natural-born Adept is something practically impossible. For, though we do hear at very rare intervals of one who has an extraordinary innate capacity for the acquisition of occult knowledge and power, yet even he has to pass the self-same tests and probations, and go through the same self-training as any less endowed fellow aspirant. In this matter it is most true that there is no royal road by which favourites may travel.

For centuries the selection of Chelas – outside the hereditary group within the gon-pa (temple) – has been made by the Himalayan Mahatmas themselves from among the class – in Tibet, a considerable one as to number – of natural mystics. The only exceptions have been in the cases of Western men like Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Paracelsus, Pico di Mirandola, Count St. Germain, etc., whose temperamental affinity to this celestial science more or less forced the distant Adepts to come into personal relations with them, and enabled them to get such small (or large) proportion of the whole truth as was possible under their social surroundings. From Book IV of Kiu-te, Chapter on “the Laws of Upasans,” we learn that the qualifications expected in a Chela were: –

1. Perfect physical health;

2. Absolute mental and physical purity;

3. Unselfishness of purpose; universal charity; pity for all animate beings;

4. Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the law of Karma, independent of any power in nature that could interfere: a law whose course is not to be obstructed by any agency, not to be caused to deviate by prayer or propitiatory exoteric ceremonies;

5. A courage undaunted in every emergency, even by peril to life;

6. An intuitional perception of one’s being the vehicle of the manifested Avalokitesvara or Divine Atman (Spirit);

7. Calm indifference for, but a just appreciation of everything that constitutes the objective and transitory world, in its relation with, and to, the invisible regions.

Such, at the least, must have been the recommendations of one aspiring to perfect Chelaship. With the sole exception of the 1st, which in rare and exceptional cases might have been modified, each one of these points has been invariably insisted upon, and all must have been more or less developed in the inner nature by the Chela’s UNHELPED EXERTIONS, before he could be actually put to the test.

When the self-evolving ascetic – whether in, or outside the active world – had placed himself, according to his natural capacity, above, hence made himself master of, his (1) Sarira – body; (2) lndriya – senses; (3) Dosha – faults; (4) Dukkha – pain; and is ready to become one with his Manas – mind; Buddhi – intellection, or spiritual intelligence; and Atma – highest soul, i.e., spirit. When he is ready for this, and, further, to recognize in Atma the highest ruler in the world of perceptions, and in the will, the highest executive energy (power), then may he, under the time-honoured rules, be taken in hand by one of the Initiates. He may then be shown the mysterious path at whose thither end the Chela is taught the unerring discernment of Phala, or the fruits of causes produced, and given the means of reaching Apavarga – emancipation, from the misery of repeated births (in whose determination the ignorant has no hand), and thus of avoiding Pretya-bhava – transmigration.

But since the advent of the Theosophical Society, one of whose arduous tasks it was to re-awaken in the Aryan mind the dormant memory of the existence of this science and of those transcendent human capabilities, the rules of Chela selection have become slightly relaxed in one respect. Many members of the Society becoming convinced by practical proof upon the above points, and rightly enough thinking that if other men had hitherto reached the goal, they too if inherently fitted, might reach it by following the same path, pressed to be taken as candidates. And as it would be an interference with Karma to deny them the chance of at least beginning – since they were so importunate, they were given it. The results have been far from encouraging so far, and it is to show these unfortunates the cause of their failure as much as to warn others against rushing heedlessly upon a similar fate, that the writing of the present article has been ordered. The candidates in question, though plainly warned against it in advance, began wrong by selfishly looking to the future and losing sight of the past. They forgot that they had done nothing to deserve the rare honour of selection, nothing which warranted their expecting such a privilege; that they could boast of none of the above enumerated merits. As men of the selfish, sensual world, whether married or single, merchants, civilian or military employees, or members of the learned professions, they had been to a school most calculated to assimilate them to the animal nature, least so to develop their spiritual potentialities. Yet each and all had vanity enough to suppose that their case would be made an exception to the law of countless centuries’ establishment as though, indeed, in their person had been born to the world a new Avatar! All expected to have hidden things taught, extraordinary powers given them because – well, because they had joined the Theosophical Society. Some had sincerely resolved to amend their lives, and give up their evil courses; we must do them that justice, at all events.

All were refused at first, Col. Olcott, the President, himself, to begin with; and as to the latter gentleman there is now no harm in saying that he was not formally accepted as a Chela until he had proved by more than a year’s devoted labours and by a determination which brooked no denial, that he might safely be tested. Then from all sides came complaints – from Hindus, who ought to have known better, as well as from Europeans who, of course, were not in a condition to know anything at all about the rules. The cry was that unless at least a few Theosophists were given the chance to try, the Society could not endure. Every other noble and unselfish feature of our programme was ignored – a man’s duty to his neighbour, to his country, his duty to help, enlighten, encourage and elevate those weaker and less favoured than he; all were trampled out of sight in the insane rush for adeptship. The call for phenomena, phenomena, phenomena, resounded in every quarter, and the Founders were impeded in their real work and teased importunately to intercede with the Mahatmas, against whom the real grievance lay, though their poor agents had to take all the buffets. At last, the word came from the higher authorities that a few of the most urgent candidates should be taken at their word. The result of the experiment would perhaps show better than any amount of preaching what Chelaship meant, and what are the consequences of selfishness and temerity. Each candidate was warned that he must wait for years in any event, before his fitness could be proven, and that he must pass through a series of tests that would bring out all there was in him, whether bad or good. They were nearly all married men and hence were designated “Lay Chelas” – a term new in English, but having long had its equivalent in Asiatic tongues. A Lay Chela is but a man of the world who affirms his desire to become wise in spiritual things. Virtually, every member of the Theosophical Society who subscribes to the second of our three “Declared Objects” is such; for though not of the number of true Chelas, he has yet the possibility of becoming one, for he has stepped across the boundary-line which separated him from the Mahatmas, and has brought himself, as it were, under their notice. In joining the Society and binding himself to help along its work, he has pledged himself to act in some degree in concert with those Mahatmas, at whose behest the Society was organized, and under whose conditional protection it remains. The joining is then, the introduction; all the rest depends entirely upon the member himself, and he need never expect the most distant approach to the “favor” of one of our Mahatmas, or any other Mahatmas in the world – should the latter consent to become known – that has not been fully earned by personal merit. The Mahatmas are the servants, not the arbiters of the law of Karma. LAY-CHELASHIP CONFERS NO PRIVILEGE UPON ANY ONE EXCEPT THAT OF WORKING FOR MERIT UNDER THE OBSERVATION OF A MASTER. And whether that Master be or be not seen by the Chela makes no difference whatever as to the result: his good thoughts, words and deeds will bear their fruits, his evil ones, theirs. To boast of Lay Chelaship or make a parade of it, is the surest way to reduce the relationship with the Guru to a mere empty name, for it would be prima facie evidence of vanity and unfitness for farther progress. And for years we have been teaching everywhere the maxim “First deserve, then desire” intimacy with the Mahatmas.

Now there is a terrible law operative in nature, one which cannot be altered, and whose operation clears up the apparent mystery of the selection of certain “Chelas” who have turned out sorry specimens of morality, these few years past. Does the reader recall the old proverb, “Let sleeping dogs lie”? There is a world of occult meaning in it. No man or woman knows his or her moral strength until it is tried. Thousands go through life very respectably, because they were never put to the pinch. This is a truism doubtless, but it is most pertinent to the present case. One who undertakes to try for Chelaship by that very act rouses and lashes to desperation every sleeping passion of his animal nature. For this is the commencement of a struggle for the mastery in which quarter is neither to be given nor taken. It is, once for all, “To be, or Not to be”; to conquer, means ADEPTSHIP; to fail, an ignoble Martyrdom; for to fall victim to lust, pride, avarice, vanity, selfishness, cowardice, or any other of the lower propensities, is indeed ignoble, if measured by the standard of true manhood. The Chela is not only called to face all the latent evil propensities of his nature, but, in addition, the whole volume of maleficent power accumulated by the community and nation to which he belongs. For he is an integral part of those aggregates, and what affects either the individual man, or the group (town or nation) reacts upon the other. And in this instance his struggle for goodness jars upon the whole body of badness in his environment, and draws its fury upon him. If he is content to go along with his neighbours and be almost as they are – perhaps a little better or somewhat worse than the average – no one may give him a thought. But let it be known that he has been able to detect the hollow mockery of social life, its hypocrisy, selfishness, sensuality, cupidity and other bad features, and has determined to lift himself up to a higher level, at once he is hated, and every bad, or bigoted, or malicious nature sends at him a current of opposing will power. If he is innately strong he shakes it off, as the powerful swimmer dashes through the current that would bear a weaker one away. But in this moral battle, if the Chela has one single hidden blemish – do what he may, it shall and will be brought to light. The varnish of conventionalities which “civilization” overlays us all with must come off to the last coat, and the Inner Self, naked and without the slightest veil to conceal its reality, is exposed. The habits of society which hold men to a certain degree under moral restraint, and compel them to pay tribute to virtue by seeming to be good whether they are so or not, these habits are apt to be all forgotten, these restraints to be all broken through under the strain of chelaship. He is now in an atmosphere of illusions – Maya. Vice puts on its most alluring face, and the tempting passions try to lure the inexperienced aspirant to the depths of psychic debasement. This is not a case like that depicted by a great artist, where Satan is seen playing a game of chess with a man upon the stake of his soul, while the latter’s good angel stands beside him to counsel and assist. For the strife is in this instance between the Chela’s Will and his carnal nature, and Karma forbids that any angel or Guru should interfere until the result is known. With the vividness of poetic fancy Bulwer Lytton has idealised it for us in his Zanoni, a work which will ever be prized by the occultist; while in his Strange Story he has with equal power shown the black side of occult research and its deadly perils. Chelaship was defined, the other day, by a Mahatma as a “psychic resolvent, which eats away all dross and leaves only the pure gold behind.” If the candidate has the latent lust for money, or political chicanery, or materialistic scepticism, or vain display, or false speaking, or cruelty, or sensual gratification of any kind, the germ is almost sure to sprout; and so, on the other hand, as regards the noble qualities of human nature. The real man comes out. Is it not the height of folly, then, for any one to leave the smooth path of common-place life to scale the crags of chelaship without some reasonable feeling of certainty that he has the right stuff in him? Well says the Bible: “Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall” – a text that would-be Chelas should consider well before they rush headlong into the fray! It would have been well for some of our Lay-Chelas it they had thought twice before defying the tests. We call to mind several sad failures within a twelvemonth. One went bad in the head, recanted noble sentiments uttered but a few weeks previously, and became a member of a religion he had just scornfully and unanswerably proven false. A second became a defaulter and absconded with his employer’s money – the latter also a Theosophist. A third gave himself up to gross debauchery, and confessed it with ineffectual sobs and tears, to his chosen Guru. A fourth got entangled with a person of the other sex and fell out with his dearest and truest friends. A fifth showed signs of mental aberration and was brought into Court upon charges of discreditable conduct. A sixth shot himself to escape the consequences of criminality, on the verge of detection! And so we might go on and on. All these were apparently sincere searchers after truth, and passed in the world for respectable persons. Externally, they were fairly eligible as candidates for Chelaship, as appearances go; but “within all was rottenness and dead men’s bones.” The world’s varnish was so thick as to hide the absence of the true gold underneath; and the “resolvent” doing its work, the candidate proved in each instance but a gilded figure of moral dross, from circumference to core. …

In what precedes we have, of course, dealt but with the failures among Lay-Chelas; there have been partial successes too, and these are passing gradually through the first stages of their probation. Some are making themselves useful to the Society and to the world in general by good example and precept. If they persist, well for them, well for us all: the odds are fearfully against them, but still “there is no Impossibility to him who WILLS.” The difficulties in Chelaship will never be less until human nature changes and a new sort is evolved. St. Paul (Rom. vii, 18, 19) might have had a Chela in mind when he said “to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.” And in the wise Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi it is written: –

“The enemies which rise within the body,
Hard to be overcome – the evil passions –
Should manfully be fought; who conquers these
Is equal to the conqueror of worlds.” (XI, 32.)

A FEW RELATED EXCERPTS FROM

“THE THEOSOPHICAL MAHATMAS”

(ALSO BY H. P. BLAVATSKY)

Our MASTERS are not “a jealous god”; they are simply holy mortals, nevertheless, however, higher than any in this world, morally, intellectually and spiritually. However holy and advanced in the science of the Mysteries – they are still men, members of a Brotherhood, who are the first in it to show themselves subservient to its time-honoured laws and rules. And one of the first rules in it demands that those who start on their journey Eastward, as candidates to the notice and favours of those who are the custodians of those Mysteries, should proceed by the straight road, without stopping on every sideway and path, seeking to join other “Masters” and professors often of the Left-Hand Science, that they should have confidence and show trust and patience, besides several other conditions to fulfil. Failing in all of this from first to last, what right has any man or woman to complain of the liability of the Masters to help them? . . .

Once that a theosophist would become a candidate for either chelaship or favours, he must be aware of the mutual pledge, tacitly, if not formally offered and accepted between the two parties, and, that such a pledge is sacred. It is a bond of seven years of probation. If during that time, notwithstanding the many human shortcomings and mistakes of the candidate (save two which it is needless to specify in print) he remains throughout every temptation true to the chosen Master, or Masters, (in the case of lay candidates), and as faithful to the Society founded at their wishes and under their orders, then the theosophist will be initiated into ______ thenceforward allowed to communicate with his guru unreservedly, all his failings, save this one, as specified, may be overlooked: they belong to his future Karma, but are left for the present, to the discretion and judgment of the Master. He alone has the power of judging whether even during those long seven years the chela will be favoured regardless of his mistakes and sins, with occasional communications with, and from the guru. The latter thoroughly posted as to the causes and motives that led the candidate into sins of omission and commission is the only one to judge of the advisability or inadvisability of bestowing encouragement; as he alone is entitled to it, seeing that he is himself under the inexorable law of Karma, which no one from the Zulu savage up to the highest archangel can avoid – and that he has to assume the great responsibility of the causes created by himself. . . .

During the eleven years of the existence of the Theosophical Society I have known, out of the seventy-two regularly accepted chelas on probation and the hundreds of lay candidates – only three who have not hitherto failed, and one only who had a full success. No one forces any one into chelaship; no promises are uttered, none except the mutual pledge between Master and the would-be chela. Verily, Verily, many are the called but few are chosen – or rather few who have the patience of going to the bitter end, if bitter we can call simple perseverance and singleness of purpose. . . .

From the first I knew what I had to expect, for I was told that, which I have never ceased repeating to others: as soon as one steps on the Path leading to the Ashrum of the blessed Masters – the last and only primitive Wisdom and Truth – his Karma, instead of having to be distributed throughout his long life, falls upon him in a block and crushes him with its whole weight. He who believes in what he professes and in his Master, will stand it and come out of the trial victorious; he who doubts, the coward who fears to receive his just dues and tries to avoid justice being done – FAILS. He will not escape Karma just the same, but he will only lose that for which he has risked its untimely visits.

**~ * ~**

HPB’s article refers to the Theosophical Society. However, the Theosophical Society is no longer what it once was. Today the genuine Theosophical Movement is kept alive by the United Lodge of Theosophists, an international association which is independent from any Theosophical Society organisation.

The ULT was founded in 1909 – with the mission statement “To spread broadcast the Teachings of Theosophy as recorded in the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge” – by Robert Crosbie, who was one who had entered, or re-entered, the Path of Chelaship through the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society when that Esoteric Section was established by HPB and Mr Judge. After the passing of those two Messengers or Representatives of the Masters’ Lodge, the Movement soon fell into disarray and chaos, on its exoteric and esoteric fronts included, and disloyalty to its original work, teachings, and principles. All of this can be read about in many other articles on this site, all of which are listed here.

In an attempt to remedy this or to at least keep genuine Theosophy and the genuine Theosophical Movement alive in the world, Mr Crosbie established the United Lodge of Theosophists. In a February 1915 article in the “Masters and Their Message” series in “Theosophy” magazine, published by the Parent ULT Lodge in Los Angeles, he felt able to say –

“Names are things. The actual names of the Masters have never been given out and are not known to any but Themselves and Their pledged Disciples. To be a pledged Disciple of the School of the Masters is quite another matter from being a member of the Esoteric Section, which is probationary and whose members are lay chelas. The actual names of H.P.B. and W.Q.J. and of pledged Disciples are unknown and have never been given out, nor is the actual name of the School of the Masters used by any of the so-called esoteric sections of the now numerous Theosophical Societies. . . . Like the numberless religions and religious off-shoots throughout all time, and like the numberless schools of the mysteries, secret societies, occult orders, of the past and of the present, the various theosophical societies and esoteric sections of the day are in no sense representative of the School of the Masters or the Theosophical Movement. They represent merely claimants to the mantle of the prophet and those who accept those claims. They rest upon personal assumptions, personal claims and followings, personal psychological experiences of one kind and another. . . . [but] The Anciently universal Wisdom-Religion, the School of the Masters and the Theosophical Movement are in unbroken continuity of existence to-day as always. . . . Now, as always, they have their representatives and agents among men, who cannot be found out by any but those who have earned the right to know them.”