The period of this sleep may vary from
twenty-five to two hundred years, depending upon the degree of his
advancement. But even this period may be said to be a waste of time,
and hence all his exertions are directed to shorten its duration so as
to gradually come to a point when the passage from one state of
existence into another is almost imperceptible. This is his last
incarnation, as it were, for the shock of death no more stuns him. This
is the idea the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life means to
convey when he says:
By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is
actually dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved
himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have
necessitated in disruption the agony of dying. He has been dying
gradually during the whole period of his Initiation. The catastrophe
cannot happen twice over, he has only spread over a number of years the
mild process of dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a
few hours. The highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely
unconscious of, the World; he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless
of its miseries, in so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense
of Duty never leaves him blind to its very existence.
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