Publisher's Note

When it was decided to reprint this classic work as an abridgment and bind it into one volume, it was recognized that it would be a difficult and delicate chore; yet it was considered necessary to be able to offer The Inner Life to a new generation of seekers and students of the Ancient Wisdom.

Fortunately we were able to enlist the considerable knowledge of a longtime student of Theosophy, Shirley Nicholson, as editor. Although such editing has been kept to a minimum — there were passages which virtually belonged together that were separated when it was a two-volume work — so there are several places where positioning has been altered in the combining of both books into one. Otherwise very few changes have been made other than the Americanizing of the spelling or modernizing phrases which would not be understood as well by today's readers. Therefore the abridgment of the original two-volume work is minimal with the exception of two sections that would not be directly relevant to the lay reader for which this special abridged edition was prepared.

I wish that I could help my American readers to realise the conditions under which this book has been produced. The Theosophical Society as a whole does not by any means sufficiently understand or appreciate the work done at its Headquarters, and although for you in America it is away on the other side of the earth, I should like to help you to see it as it is. Readers of the “Messenger” must at least, have some general idea of the appearance of the place, and must know something of the life which is lived here — a long life, a strenuous life, and a life lived under very peculiar conditions. Nowhere else in the world at this present moment is there such a center of influence — a center constantly visited by the Great Ones, and therefore bathed in their wonderful magnetism. The vibrations here are marvellously stimulating, and all of us who live here are therefore constant strain of a very peculiar kind, a strain which brings out whatever is in us. Strong vibrations from other planes are playing all the while upon our various vehicles, and those parts of us which can in any sense respond to them are thereby raised, strengthened and purified. But it must be remembered that there is another side to this. There may well be in each of us some vibrations the character of which is too far removed from the level of these great influences to fall into harmony with them, and where that is the case intensification will still take place, but the result may well be evil rather than good. To live at Adyar is the most glorious of all opportunities for those who are able to take advantage of it, but its effect on those who are constitutionally unable to harmonize with its vibrations may be dangerous rather than helpful. If a student can bear it he may advance rapidly; if he cannot bear it he is better away.

C. W. Leadbeater

Adyar, July, 1910.





* Mrs. Annie Besant

While Mrs. Besant was absent from Adyar on a tour through England and America last year, it fell to my lot to take charge of the daily meetings of the students here. In the course of that time I delivered many informal little addresses and answered hundreds of questions. All that I said was taken down in shorthand, and this book is the result of those notes. In a number of cases it happened that what was said on the roof at the meetings was afterwards expanded into a little article for The Theosophist or The Adyar Bulletin; in all such cases I reprint the article instead of the stenographic report, as it has had the advantage of certain corrections and additions. Necessarily a book of this sort is fragmentary in its nature; necessarily also it contains a certain amount of repetition; though this latter has been excised wherever possible. Many of the subjects treated have also been dealt with in my earlier books, but what is written here represents in all cases the result of the latest discoveries in connection with those subjects. The subjects have been classified as far as possible, and this volume is the second series, containing the remaning sections.

C. W. Leadbeater

Adyar, July, 1911.

The clairvoyant is simply a man who develops, within himself, the power to respond to another octave out of the stupendous gamut of possible vibrations, and so enables himself to see more of the world around him than those of more limited perception.¹

...in some of the experiments our scientific men must be actually disintegrating physical matter, and throwing it back on to the astral plane; in which case it would seem that they must presently be forced to admit the existence of astral matter, though they will naturally think of it as nothing but a further subdivision of physical matter.³

These ‘sheaths’ therefore are not separate layers, which one after another crystallize around a solid nucleus, but rather in the nature of mutually penetrating forms of energy, from the finest 'all-radiant', all-pervading luminous consciousness down to the densest form of 'materialized consciousness', which appears before us as our visible, physical body. The correspondingly finer or subtler sheaths penetrate, and thus contain, the grosser. ⁴

... other modes of energy organized in vibratory spheres to enable consciousness to function in definite and limited ways.⁵

Viewed thus in its broadest outline, we can see Man as a synthesis of principles or vehicles of growing significance, and widening powers, as we approach toward his essence which is one with the ultimate reality. ⁶

... the active principle of the play, the total universe in action, where everything is dynamically connected with everything else. In the words of the Gita, ‘Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life.’ ⁹

... the karma-bearing fruit is the incidents and elements of our present biography, as well as the traits and dispositions of the personality producing and enduring them. ¹⁰

For character is nothing but the tendency of our will, formed by repeated actions. Every deed leaves a trace, a path formed by the process of walking, and whenever such a once-trodden path exists, there we find, when a similar situation arises, that we take to this path spontaneously. This is the law of action and reaction, which we call karma, the law of movement in the direction of the least resistance.... It is what is commonly known as the ‘force of habit‘.... When departing from one and entering into another life, it is the consciousness thus formed which constitutes the nucleus or germ of the new embodiment. ¹¹