To exemplify the teaching, a Magnolia Tree in full blossom sixty feet high, standing at a distance, is made to look less and less dense. The green foliage fades into gray, becomes “more and more shadowy and transparent,” until “it seemed to be merely the ghost of a tree, and finally disappeared entirely from view.” “Thus” continued the adept, “you see that tree stood in the sphere of my mind as it stood in yours. We are all living within the sphere of each other’s mind.... The Adept creates his own images; the ordinary mortal lives in the products of the imagination of others, or the imagination of nature. We live in the paradise of our own soul ... but the spheres of our souls are not narrow. They have expanded far beyond the limits of the visible bodies, and will continue to expand until they become one with the universal Soul....” “The power of the imagination is yet too little known to mankind, else they would better beware of what they think. If a man thinks a good or an evil thought, that thought calls into existence a corresponding form or power ... which may assume density and become living ... and live long after the physical body of the man who created it has died. It will accompany his soul after death, because _the creations are attracted to their creator_.” (p. 83.) Scattered hither and thither, through this little volume are pearls of wisdom. For that which is rendered in the shape of dialogue and monologue is the fruit gathered by the author during a long research in old forgotten and mouldy, MSS. of the Rosicrucians, or mediæval alchemists, and in the worm-eaten _infoglios_ of unrecognized, yet great adepts of every age. Thus when the author approaches the subject of theosophical retreats or communities—a dream cherished by many a theosophist—he is answered by the “Adept” that “the _true ascetic is he who lives in the world, surrounded by its temptations_; he in whose soul the animal elements are still active, craving for, the gratification of their desires and possessing the means for such gratification, but _who by the superior power of his will conquers his animal self_. Having attained that state he may retire from the world.... He expects no future reward in heaven; for what could heaven offer him except happiness which he already possesses? He desires no other good, but to create good for the world.”... Saith the Adept. “If you could establish theosophical monasteries, where intellectual and spiritual development would go hand-in-hand, where a new science could be taught, based upon a true knowledge of the fundamental laws of the universe, and when, at the same time man would be taught how to obtain a mastery over himself, you would confer the greatest possible benefit upon the world. Such a convent would afford immense advantage for the advancement of intellectual research.... These convents would become centres of intelligence....”