Way of Power, The : Studies in the Occult

I have spoken of the science of the occult as standing on the tripod of the psychic, intellectual and physical and I might have said much more on all three, as India has done in her great teachings. But in such matters it is wise to be extremely practical and to begin at the beginning and with something entirely in one's own control

From the Author:

A book of this sort has so many debts to acknowledge that it should be thickly set with notes and references, and yet in writing for the general reader this is not possible.

Therefore I can only say, speaking generally, how much I owe to many and great thinkers from those of three millenniums ago down to the present time. I am often asked to recommend books on these subjects, but it is difficult to do so, for with regard to many of the Indian thinkers on whom so much depends their invaluable writings, even when translated, are hampered with Sanskrit terms very difficult for those unused to them, and modern writers sometimes assume more patience and perhaps knowledge than the average man with all the preoccupations of life has time to possess. Yet he may wish to know.

This book is therefore an effort to interpret, to suggest, and no one knows better than myself what a contracted statement it is of what a great subject. Yet I venture to hope there are those to whom my experiences and conclusions, as I felt my way, may be of the same value that they have been to myself. And this is why I have stated them in a detail which may be misunderstood as egoism.

EXCERPT

"The Occult of Today Is the Science of Tomorrow."

I have chosen this motto for my book relating to the occult, for it is an attempt to describe the (at first) very small experiences and knowledge which led me to see the reality of the true occult world lying like an almost uncharted country behind the thick jungle of fraud and charlatanry, and which have led me also to state in comparative detail what I found on my journey and the conclusions it compelled. I use the illustration of "going through the Looking Glass" for two excellent reasons.

Firstly, everyone knows that remarkable story of Alice, dear to two or three generations, and how she passed through the Looking Glass to the queer upside-down sort of country behind it. Secondly, few people realize that the book is a wonderful parable of how you can get through the mere reflections of things into the reality behind them if only you know the way. Carroll, who was a great mathematician, knew of the undiscovered country from that point of view. I found a very different road and as a matter of fact there are almost as many roads as there are people. The country behind the Looking Glass, generally called the Occult world, is reality, and the daily world we live in is Shadow-land though the reflections look so hard and bright and real that they take most of us in.

The world is a great mirror. A man sees himself in it as the foremost figure and around him the persons and things which make his surroundings. The Japanese have called it the Mirror of the Passing Show--an uncommonly good name. Seeing it with our eyes we take this reflection for reality and are quite content to believe our senses and go comfortably or uncomfortably on our way. Very few people know what blind feelers the five senses are--feeble, faulty, mistaken, and yet (until we know better) our only means of approach to anything outside the prison of ourselves. We pity a blind, deaf, dumb man, but are much in the same case ourselves. It is only a question of degree, and the microscope, telephone, and so forth carry us a few steps farther into the dark. They are simply extensions. That is what makes the occult world so amazingly interesting.