Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

Better than the life of a hundred years of the man who perceiveth not the deathless state is the short life of a single day of the man who senses the deathless state.  Him I call a true Teacher who knows the mystery of death and rebirth of all beings, who is happy within himself and enlightened.

"Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?"  And the disciples answered: "Some say that thou art Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."

"Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.  And if you will receive it, this is Elijah who was destined to come.  He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."

The wise in heart mourn not for those that live, nor those that die.  Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never.  Never was time it was not.  End and Beginning are dreams!  Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems! Nay, as when one layeth his worn-out robes away, and, taking new ones, sayeth, "These will I wear today!"  So putteth by the spirit lightly its garb of flesh, and passeth to inherit a residence afresh.

The soul passes from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold.  Thou puttest off thy bodies as raiment; and as vesture dost thou fold them up.  Thou art from old, O' Soul of man, yea, thou art from everlasting.

There was a beginning.  There was a beginning before that beginning.  There was a beginning previous to that beginning.  Death and life are not far apart.  When I look for their origin, it goes back into infinity; when I look for their end, it proceeds without termination.  Life is the follower of death, and death is the predecessor of life. What we can point to are the faggots that have been consumed; but the fire is transmitted elsewhere.

O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the Gods, know that if you become worse you shall go to the worse souls, or if better to the better, and in every succession of life and death you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like.  This is the justice of heaven, which neither you nor any other unfortunate will ever glory in escaping.  Take heed thereof, for it will be sure to take heed of you.  If you say --I am small and will creep into the depths of the earth, or I am high and will fly up to heaven, you are not so small or so high that you shall not pay the fitting penalty.  And thinkest thou, bold man, that thou needst not to know this? --he who knows it not can never form any true idea of the happiness or unhappiness of life or hold any rational discourse respecting either.

All souls are subject to the trials of reincarnation.  They know not how they are being at all times judged, both before coming into this world and when they leave it.  They do not know how many transformations and mysterious trials they must undergo.  The souls must re-enter the absolute substance whence they have emerged.  But to accomplish this end they must develop all the perfections, the germ of which is planted in them; and if they have not fulfilled this condition during one life, they must commence another, a third, and so forth.

There have been thousands of changes in form.  Look always to the form in the present;  for, if you think of the forms in the past, you will separate yourself from your true Self.  These are all states of the permanent which you have seen by dying.  Why then do you turn your face from death?  Die happily and look forward to taking up a new and better form.  Like the sun, only when you set in the West can you rise again with brilliance in the East.

I have held and hold souls to be immortal. Speaking as a Catholic, they do not pass from body to body, but go to Paradise, Purgatory, or Hell.  But I have reasoned deeply, and, speaking as a philosopher, since the soul is not found without a body and yet is not body, it may be in one body or in another, and pass from body to body.  From Spirit, the Life of the Universe, proceeds the life and soul of everything that has soul and life.

Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude whose starry plains are but the vestibule of Spiritual Worlds?  A lifetime may be needed merely to gain the virtues which annul the errors of man's preceding life.  The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others --existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things.  The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.

One great distinction between Theosophy and exoteric Buddhism is that the latter, represented by the Southern Church, entirely denies (a) the existence of any Deity, and (b) any conscious post-mortem life, or even any self-conscious surviving individuality in man.  Such at least is the teaching of the Siamese sect, now considered as the purest form of exoteric Buddhism.