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, &c. 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 self-same 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
Mirandolo, Count St. Germain, &c., whose temperament 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.
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