Have you ever noticed in the histories of the great religions how they grow feebler in their power over men as faith takes the place of knowledge, and tradition the place of the living testimony of living men?
That is one of the values of Theosophy in the religious world, that it teaches men to travel to worlds unseen, and to bring back the evidence of what they have met and studied; that it so teaches men their own nature that it enables them to separate soul and body, and travel without the physical body in worlds long thought unattainable, save through the gateway of death.

I say "Long thought unattainable"; but the scriptures of every religion bear witness that they are not unattainable.

The Hindu tells us that man should separate himself from his body as you strip the sheath from the stem of the grass.

The Buddhist tells us that by deep thought and contemplation mind may know itself as mind apart from the physical brain.

Christianity tells us many a story of the personal knowledge of its earlier teachers, of a ministry of angels that remained in the Church, and of angelic teachers training the neophytes in knowledge.