Whatever is on earth is the resemblance and shadow of something that is in the sphere, while that resplendent thing [the prototype of the Soul‐Spirit] remaineth in _unchangeable_ condition, it is well also with its shadow. When that resplendent one removeth far from its shadow life removeth [from the latter] to a distance. Again that light is the shadow of something more resplendent than itself.(529) Thus speaks the _Desatir_, in the _Book of Shet_ (the prophet Zirtusht), thereby showing the identity of its Esoteric doctrines with those of the Greek Philosophers. The second statement of Plato confirms the view that the Mysteries of the Ancients were identical with the Initiations practised even now among the Buddhist and the Hindu Adepts. The higher visions, the most truthful, were produced through a regular discipline of gradual Initiations, and the development of psychical powers. In Europe and Egypt the Mystæ were brought into close union with those whom Proclus calls “mystical natures,” “resplendent Gods,” because, as Plato says: [We] were ourselves pure and immaculate, being liberated from this surrounding vestment, which we denominate body, and to which we are now bound like an oyster to its shell.(530) As to the East, The doctrine of planetary and terrestrial Pitris was revealed _entirely_ in ancient India, as well as now, only at the last moment of initiation, and to the adepts of superior degrees.(531) The word _Pitris_ may now be explained and something else added. In India the chela of the third degree of Initiation has two Gurus: One, the living Adept; the other the disembodied and glorified Mahâtmâ, Who remains the adviser or instructor of even the high Adepts. Few are the accepted chelas who even see their living Master, their Guru, till the day and hour of their final and for ever binding vow. It is this that was meant in _Isis Unveiled_, when it was stated that few of the _fakirs_ (the word _chela_ being unknown to Europe and America in those days) however Pure, and honest, and self‐devoted, have yet ever seen the astral form of a purely _human pitar_ (an ancestor or father), otherwise than at the solemn moment of their first and last initiation. It is in the presence of his instructor, the Guru, and just before the _vatou_‐fakir [the just initiated chela] is despatched into the world of the living, with his seven‐knotted bamboo wand for all protection, that he is suddenly placed face to face with the unknown PRESENCE [of his Pitar or Father, the glorified invisible Master, or disembodied Mahâtmâ]. He sees it, and falls prostrate at the feet of the evanescent form, but is not entrusted with the great secret of its evocation, for it is the supreme mystery of the holy syllable. The Initiate, says Éliphas Lévi, _knows_; therefore, “he dares all and keeps silent.” Says the great French Kabalist: