Speaking of sylphs, I met the Teacher last night, and asked him if that French magician I told you about could really make good his promise to his aerial companion, and help her to acquire the kind of soul essential to incarnation on earth as a woman. His answer was, “No.” Of course I asked him why, and he answered that the elemental creatures, or units of force inhabiting the elements, as we use that term, could not, during this life cycle, step out of their element into the human. “Can they ever do so?” I asked. “I do not know,” he replied; “but I believe that all the less evolved units around the earth are working in the direction of man; that the human is a stage of development which they will all reach some day, but not in this life cycle.” I asked the Teacher if he knew the magician in question, and he answered that he had known him for a thousand years, that long ago, in a former life, the Paris magician had placed his feet upon the path which leads to power; but that he had been side-tracked by the desire for selfish pleasures, and that he might wander a long time before he found his way back to real and philosophical truth. “Is he to be blamed or pitied?” I asked. “Pity cuts no figure in the problem,” the Teacher replied. “A man seeks what he desires.” After the Teacher went away I began asking myself questions. What was _I_ seeking, and what did I desire? The answer came quickly: “Knowledge.” A year ago I might have answered “Power,” but knowledge is the forerunner of power. If I get true knowledge, I shall have power enough. It is because I want to give to you, and possibly to others, a few scraps of knowledge which might be inaccessible to you by any other means, that I am coming back, and coming back, time after time, to talk with you. The greatest bit of knowledge that I have to offer you is this: that by the exercise of will a man can retain his objective consciousness after death. Many persons out here sink into a sort of subjective bliss which makes them indifferent as to what is going on upon the earth or in the heavens. I could do so myself, easily. As I believe I have said before, while man on earth has both subjective and objective consciousness, but functions mostly in the objective, out here he has still subjective and objective consciousness, but the tendency is towards the subjective.