Now I was hesitating a moment in completing that sentence, because one almost has to explain that in thus using the word one is including in it a little more than is included under the term in the special significance with which we are going to use it now; for in the case of the religions of the Hinḍus, the religion of the Buḍḍhists, and the religion of the Christians, when we speak of the Founder of each of these religions, we are speaking of great personages who, in the Occult Hierarchy, are higher than those whom we call Masters: in the case of Hinḍuism, the Manu, who is the Lord really of the whole of the Fifth Root Race; in the case of Buḍḍhism, the Buḍḍha, who is a teacher of all gods and men before He takes up His place as the illuminated, the supreme Buḍḍha. And in the case of the Christian Religion also, there is something peculiar in the life of the Founder. You have there, in the first place, a being whom we call by the name Jesus, in himself a disciple, but living in the world at that time under exceedingly strange and peculiar conditions. Some of you may have read with some amount of care that section of the third volume of _The Secret Doctrine_ which is called "The Mystery of the Buḍḍha." I am bound to confess that as it stands there it is very confused, partly intentionally, I think, on the part of the writer, but also partly in consequence of the fact mentioned in that volume, that you have there put together a large number of fragments, and they were put together by myself at a time when I knew very much less of the arrangement, so to speak, of those relationships between the higher and lower worlds than I do now. Hence there is some darkness there that belongs to the subject, and some that belongs to the incompetence of the compiler. The result of the two together is a good deal of confusion to any student who has not the key to it. I am only concerned for the moment with one of these statements, with what are called "the remains of the Buḍḍha"--not a very comfortable name, because it gives one the idea of a corpse--that is, empty bodies of the Buḍḍha on the various planes. Those have been preserved on the higher planes for special purposes, and are occasionally used under very peculiar conditions, when subtle bodies of a very pure and very lofty character are needed for some particular purpose. Now in the case of Him who was known as Jesus, the subtle bodies were these particular bodies that are kept on the higher planes, and He was allowed to use these for a number of years, holding them, as it were, as tenant for the great personage who was to take possession of them later. Then came the lofty being known as the Boḍhisaṭṭva, who took possession of these vehicles which had thus been kept ready for Him, and He who was the disciple and now is the Master Jesus took birth later as Apollonius of Tyana, and so passed onwards step by step until he became one of the Masters of the Wisdom.