Page 13

the traps of a — Fern! Let us reason, my Brother. Let us put entirely aside the fact of my being an initiate, an adept — and reason out the position your imaginative faculties have created for me, like two common mortals with a certain dose of common sense in mine, and a great dose of the same in your head. If you are prepared to concede me even so little, I am prepared to prove to you that it is absurd to think that I could have been taken in in the meshes of so poor a scheme! You write that in order to test me, Fern wanted to know "if Morya wished it (his vision) published — and Morya replies quite falling into the trap that he did wish it." Now, to credit the last assertion is rather hard; and it needs a man of but moderate good sense and reasoning powers to perceive that there are two insuperable difficulties in the way of reconciling your foregoing opinion of myself and the belief that I was actually caught in the trap. 1st: The substance and text of the vision. In that vision there are three mysterious beings — the "guru" — the "Mighty one" and the "Father"; — the latter one being your humble servant. Now it is hard to believe — unless I am credited with faculties of a hallucinated medium — that I, knowing well that I had never approached, until then, the young gentleman from within a mile's distance, nor had I ever visited him in his dreams — that I should believe the reality of the vision described, or that, at least, my suspicions should not have been aroused by such a strange assertion.

2nd. The difficulty of reconciling the double fact of my