“Then, instead of growing and developing under the law of action and reaction, which in the East they call karma, you would have been its victim.” “I do not understand you.” “He is indeed a wise man,” said the Teacher, “who understands the law of karma, which is also the law of cause and effect. But come. I will now take you to your new instructor.” Then, leaving me alone, the Teacher and his charge disappeared in the grey distance. I remained there a long time, pondering what I had seen and heard. LETTER XL THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY I AM about to say something which may shock certain persons; but those who are too fond of their own ideas, without being willing to grant others their ideas in turn, should not seek to open the jealously guarded doors which separate the land of the so-called living from the land of the certainly not dead. This is the statement which I have to make: that there are many gods, and that the One God is the sum-total of all of them. All gods exist in God. Do what you like with that statement, dear world, for truth is more vital than anybody’s dream, even yours or mine. Have I seen God? I have seen Him who has been called the Son of God, and you may remember that He said that whoever had seen the Son had seen the Father. But what of the other gods? you ask; for there are many in the world’s pantheons. Well, the realities exist out here. What! you say again, can man create the gods of his imagination and give them a place in the invisible? No. They existed here first, and man became aware of them long ago through his own psychic and spiritual perception of them. Man did not create them, and the materialists who say that he did know little of the laws of being. Man, primitive man, perceived them through his own spiritual affinities with and nearness to them. When you have read folk-tales of this god and that, you have perhaps spoken patronisingly of the old myth-makers and thanked your lucky stars that you lived in a more enlightened age. But those old story-tellers were the really enlightened ones, for they saw into the other world and recorded what they saw. Many of the world’s favourite gods are said to have lived upon the earth as men. They have so lived. Does that idea startle you? How does a man become a god, and how does a god become a man? Have you ever wondered? A man becomes a god by developing god-consciousness, which is not the same as developing his own thought _about_ God. During recent years you have heard and read much of so-called Masters, men of superhuman attainments, who have forgone the small pleasures and recognitions of the world in order to achieve something greater.