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The one is the steady natural path of progress through moral effort, and practice of the virtues. A natural, coherent, and sure growth of the soul is the result, a position of firm equilibrium is reached and maintained, which cannot be overthrown or shaken by any unexpected assault. It is the normal method followed by the vast mass of humanity, and this is the course Shankarâchârya recommended to all his Sannayasis and successors. The other road is the precipitous path of occultism, through a series of initiations. Only a few specially organised and peculiar natures are fit for this path.
Occult progress, growth along this path, is effected by the adept directing through the chela various occult forces, which enable him to obtain prematurely, so to speak, a knowledge of his spiritual nature: and to obtain powers to which he is not morally entitled by degree of his progess.
Under these circumstances it may happen that the chela loses his moral balance, and falls into the dugpa path.
From this it must not be concluded that the Southern Indian school of occultism regards adeptship and initiation as a mistake, as a violent and dangerous usurpation of nature's functions.
The adept hierarchy is as strictly a product of nature as a tree is: it has definite and indispensable purpose and function in the development of the human race: this function is to keep open the upward path, through which descend the light and leading without which our race would require to make each step by the wearisome, never ending method of trial and failure in every direction, until chance showed the right way.
In fact the function of the adept hierarchy is to provide religious teachers for the stumbling masses of mankind.
But this path is eminently dangerous to those who do not hold the talisman which ensures safety; this talisman is a
