=Deaf and Blind.=--The teacher continued: "Under the rule of the wild beast men have become demoralised. They reject every idea of a retributive justice. If anyone points to an instance of it, he is suppressed. If a blasphemer loses his tongue, they call it 'Actinomyces,' nothing more. And the obstinacy of the unrepentant revolts against heaven itself: 'It is so far to heaven; what do we know about it? We are ants; no God troubles himself about us.' If something good happens to a man, he attributes it to his own power; if something evil, he calls it 'bad-luck.' Science explains earthquakes by algebra, and if it wants to be very learned, by seismology. The quantity of crime and wickedness which _must_ exist is fixed by statistics. And yet heaven is so near. God's invisible servants are around us, in the streets and in our rooms. We do not see them, but those who have eyes, and only they, behold their operations. The world is like a vast institute for the deaf and blind, in which the unfortunates are told by their teachers that they are the only ones who can see and hear. The theosophists say that we are already living two lives--a conscious one on the earth, and an unconscious one above. But most men seem to have broken off communication with the higher plane, and therefore they cannot comprehend what is from above, but have discovered that there is no higher and no lower in the universe." [Footnote 1: Not explained in original footnote.] =Recollections.=--The pupil said: "Often has my experience confirmed this saying of the theosophists, that, as well as here, we live also on a higher plane from whence we receive our inspirations, ideas, and intuitions. After such visitations (do they take place by night?) I do not flourish down here, but find everything perverse, defective, absurd. I once conceived the strange idea that I have my true home somewhere else, and that a vague recollection has made me give my present home an arrangement similar to that of my real one.