I have walked the rose-gardens of Persia and have smelled the flowers--the grandchildren, hundreds of times removed, of those roses whose fragrance was an ecstasy to me when, watching with the bulbul, I paced there in another form and with intentions different to mine now. It was the perfume of the roses which made me remember. In Greece also I have lived over the old days. Before their degeneration began, what a race they were! I think that concentration was the secret of their power. The ether around that peninsula is written over with their exploits, in daring thought as well as daring action. The old etheric records are so vivid that they shine through the later writings; for you must know that what are called astral records lie layer against layer everywhere. We read one layer instead of another, either by affinity or by will. It is no more strange than that a man may go among the millions of volumes in the British Museum and select the one he wants. The most marvellous things are always simple of explanation if one has the key to unlock their secret. There has been much nonsense written about vibration, but nevertheless truth lies thereabouts. Where there is so much smoke there must be fire. In India I have met with yogis in meditation. Do you know why their peculiar way of breathing produces psychic results? No, you do not. Now let me tell you: By holding the breath long a certain--shall I say poison?--is produced in the body, which poison, acting on the psychic nature, changes the vibration. That is all. Volumes have been written about yoga, but have any of them said that? The untrained healthy lungs, in the ordinary operation, get rid of this poison by processes well known to physiologists,--that is, in the natural man, adjusted to and working contentedly on the material plane. But in order for a man still living on the material plane to become adjusted to the psychic world, a change of vibration is necessary. This change of vibration may be produced by a slight overdose of the above-mentioned poison. Is it dangerous? Yes, to the ignorant. To those who are learned in its use it is no more dangerous than most of the drugs in the pharmacopœia. Another time I will tell you about other secrets which I have discovered going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it. LETTER XXXIII FIVE RESOLUTIONS I HAVE stood at night on the roof of an Oriental palace and watched the stars. You who can see into the invisible world by changing your focus, can easily understand how I, by a reverse process, can see into the world of dense matter. Yes, it is the same thing, only turned the other way.