I happened to be in London on business the other day in this ethereal condition, when Mr Sinnett's book appeared, and I at once projected it on the astral current to Thibet. I immediately received a communication from Ushas to the effect that it compelled some words of reply from the sisterhood, and a few days since I received them. I regret that it has been necessary to occupy so much of the reader's time with personal details. They were called for in order that he should understand the source of my information, and my peculiar qualifications for imparting it. It will be readily understood, after my long connection with the Thibetan brotherhood, how painful it must be to me to be the instrument chosen not merely of throwing a doubt upon "the absolute truth concerning nature, man, the origin of the universe, and the destinies toward which its inhabitants are tending," to use Mr Sinnett's own words, but actually to demolish the whole structure of Esoteric Buddhism! Nor would I do this now were it not that the publication of the book called by that name has reluctantly compelled the sisterhood to break their long silence. If the Thibetan Brothers had only held their tongues and kept their secret as they have done hitherto, they would not now be so rudely disturbed by the Thibetan Sisters. * * * * * "The Sisters of Thibet," writes Ushas, of course with an astral pen in astral ink, "owe their origin to a circumstance which occurred in the time of Sankaracharya, erroneously supposed by the initiated to be an incarnation of Buddha. This teacher, who lived more than a century before the Christian era, dwelt chiefly upon the necessity of pursuing _gnyanam_ in order to obtain _moksha_--that is to say, the importance of secret knowledge to spiritual progress, and the consummation thereof. And he even went so far as to maintain that a man ought to keep all such knowledge secret from his wife. Now the wife of Sankaracharya, whose name was Nandana, 'she who rejoices,' was a woman of very profound occult attainments; and when she found that her husband was acquiring knowledges which he did not impart to her, she did not upbraid him, but laboured all the more strenuously in her own sphere of esoteric science, and she even discovered that all esoteric science had a twofold element in it--masculine and feminine--and that all discoveries of occult mysteries engaged in by man alone, were, so to speak, lop-sided, and therefore valueless. So she conveyed herself secretly, by processes familiar to her, away from her husband, and took refuge in this region of Thibet in which we now dwell, and which, with all his knowledges, Sankaracharya was never able to discover, for they were all subjective, and dealt not with the material things of this world. And she associated herself here in the pursuit of knowledge with a learned man called Svasar, 'he who is friendly,' who considered secret knowledge merely the means to an end,