But it by no means follows that the man who can manipulate matter on the lower planes is therefore able to speak with authority on the higher.

The fact that the spiritual man is always a great psychic, always has power to utilise higher forces for controlling physical matter, that fact, while true, does not prove the truth of the opposite idea, that the man who has power over matter is necessarily highly unfolded as regards the spirit.

It is true, of course, that the founders of religion were men surrounded with clouds of phenomena, and the reason for that is the one I have just stated: that to the truly spiritual man matter is an obedient servant; to use a quotation from an Indian book: "The truly spiritual man all the siddhis stand ready to serve." Now it was necessary for the founding of religions and for the teaching of many of the doctrines of religions which had to do with worlds invisible to the physical eye, that the man who first promulgated these doctrines should be a man who had a first-hand acquaintance with the conditions they described.

For you must remember that in every religion there are two sides to its teaching: the side of the spiritual truths known only to the unfolded divine consciousness; the side of the existence of other worlds than this, and of the conditions existing in those worlds--important to men, as they have to pass into those worlds after death, important to men also, as much of the symbolism, the rites and ceremonies, are connected with what we may roughly call occult science.

As the Buddha said when speaking of worlds beyond the physical: "If you want to know your way to a village and particulars about the village, you ask a man who lives there and who has gone along the roads leading to it: and so you do right to come to me when you want to know about the Devas and about the invisible worlds, for I know those worlds and I know the way thereto." So that looking back to these great spiritual Teachers and Revealers of the unseen, we find they are always men of first-hand knowledge.