Some Facts about Adeptship

The following is an excerpt from a letter written by the Master known as “K.H.” to A.P. Sinnett in late 1882. It’s worth reading carefully and studying, since it enables us to realise some very important facts, such as:

#1. Even the Masters and Adepts are not entirely infallible.

#2. It is not the outer personal self but the inner entity, the soul within, which has reached a state of Adeptship in both former lives and the present one.

#3. The Adept or Master is the unseen permanent individuality, not the externally visible present personality.

#4. It is neither convenient nor necessary for an incarnated Adept to keep his inner spiritual self constantly in a state of full function or activity.

#5. Adepts and Masters can therefore sometimes be found to make mistakes; not philosophical, ideological, or metaphysical mistakes, but small errors of an ultimately inconsequential nature.

It is significant to note the great contrast between the humility, honesty, and straightforwardness of the real Master K.H., who is physically incarnated right here on Earth as are many of the Masters of Wisdom, and the loud, grandiose, self-important claims and proclamations of the so-called “Ascended Master Kuthumi,” a non-existent and imaginary being so popular amongst channellers and who is even worshipped and prayed to by many misguided people in the New Age Movement who are either ignorant of the actual facts or simply not interested in them, preferring fantasy to reality.

The purpose of putting this passage online is not to make us start thinking critically of the Masters but to help us to think more accurately about the Masters, in terms of who and what they are, the work they do, and how they function. Things are not quite how we might imagine.

As the same great Trans-Himalayan Initiate remarked in The Final Mahatma Letter of 1900, “The cant [i.e. pious, sanctimonious, religious talk] about ‘Masters’ must be silently but firmly put down. Let the devotion and service be to that Supreme Spirit alone of which each one is a part. Namelessly and silently we work and the continual references to ourselves and the repetition of our names raises up a confused aura that hinders our work.” Let us never forget it.

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“At this stage of our correspondence, misunderstood as we generally seem to be, even by yourself, my faithful friend, it may be worth our while and useful for both, that you should be posted on certain facts – connected with adeptship. Bear in mind then, the following points.

“(1) An adept – the highest as the lowest – is one only during the exercise of his occult powers.

“(2) Whenever these powers are needed, the sovereign will unlocks the door to the inner man (the adept,) who can emerge and act freely but on condition that his jailor – the outer man will be either completely or partially paralyzed – as the case may require; viz: either (a) mentally and physically; (b) mentally, – but not physically; (c) physically and not entirely mentally; (d) neither, – but with an akashic film interposed between the outer and the inner man.

“(3) The smallest exercise of occult powers then, as you will now see, requires an effort. We may compare it to the inner muscular effort of an athlete preparing to use his physical strength. As no athlete is likely to be always amusing himself at swelling his veins in anticipation of having to lift a weight, so no adept can be supposed to keep his will in constant tension and the inner man in full function, when there is no immediate necessity for it. When the inner man rests the adept becomes an ordinary man, limited to his physical senses and the functions of his physical brain. Habit sharpens the intuitions of the latter, yet is unable to make them supersensuous. The inner adept is ever ready, ever on the alert, and that suffices for our purposes. At moments of rest then, his faculties are at rest also. When I sit at my meals, or when I am dressing, reading or otherwise occupied I am not thinking even of those near me; and, Djual Khool can easily break his nose to blood, by running in the dark against a beam, as he did the other night – (just because instead of throwing a “film” he had foolishly paralyzed all his outer senses while talking to and with a distant friend) – and I remained placidly ignorant of the fact. I was not thinking of him – hence my ignorance.

“From the aforesaid, you may well infer, that an adept is an ordinary mortal, at all the moments of his daily life but those – when the inner man is acting.

“Couple this with the unpleasant fact that we are forbidden to use one particle of our powers in connexion with the Eclectics (for which you have to thank your President and him alone -) and that the little that is done, is, so to say, smuggled in – and then syllogize thusly:-

“K.H. when writing to us is not an adept.

“A non-adept – is fallible.

“Therefore, K.H. may very easily commit mistakes; –

“Mistakes of punctuation – that will often change entirely the whole sense of a sentence; idiomatic mistakes – very likely to occur especially when writing as hurriedly as I do; mistakes arising from occasional confusion of terms that I had to learn from you – since it is you who are the author of “rounds” – “rings” – “earthly rings” – etc. etc.* Now with all this, I beg leave to say, that after having carefully read over and over our “Famous Contradictions” myself; after giving them to be read to M.; and then to a high adept whose powers are not in the Chohan’s chancery sequestered by Him to prevent him from squandering them upon the unworthy objects of his personal predilections; after doing all this I was told by the latter the following: “It is all perfectly correct. Knowing what you mean, no more than any other person acquainted with the doctrine, can I find in these detached fragments anything that would really conflict with each other. But, since many sentences are incomplete, and the subjects scattered about without any order, I do not wonder that your “lay chelas” should find fault with them. Yes; they do require a more explicit and clear exposition.”

“Such is the decree of an adept – and I abide by it; I will try to complete the information for your sake.”

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* “… terms that I had to learn from you – since it is you who are the author of “rounds” – “rings” – “earthly rings” – etc. etc.” These concepts, such as planetary chains, globes, rounds, root races, and so forth, are an integral part of the Masters’ own teachings but no specific names or terminology had previously been formulated for them in the English language. It was left to A.P. Sinnett to do this, during the early stages of his written correspondence with the Master K.H. and the Master M., and some of the words and terms he coined were accepted and subsequently used by the Masters and the one they called their “Direct Agent,” H.P. Blavatsky.