Do the Masters help, inspire others than Theosophists, than the T. S.? Well you know, I should be awfully ashamed of any Theosophist who could not answer that question instantly. Of course they do! Why, it is one of our ABC thoughts, teachings, that the Masters aid and help and inspire anywhere where there is an open door to their entrance, in other words, where the soul is not surrounded with impassable frontiers, keeping the light out, the help away. Why of course! And if the Masters" influence were not felt in other organizations than the T. S., as indeed it may be felt, it would be in this case because they had lost touch, had enclosed themselves with the impassable barriers of the frontiers of thought and feelings. The truth is that the Masters work anywhere where the doors are opened to their entrance, and where the conditions propitious for their work exist.
Just take one thought which has been one of the dreams of my life from childhood. If the Christian Church or Churches could go back to the original teachings of their great Master, to really primitive Christianity, the blessed Masters would be working through them as one of the greatest channels in the West today to help men. And if they don't so work therein, it would be because the help is barred out by frontiers of thought and feeling.
And the T. S. — as I have often pointed out, it will depend upon us, Brothers and Friends, us members of the Theosophical Society, whether the Masters continue to work through it as an instrument as now they are doing, or abandon it. They will never abandon us as long as we keep our hearts and minds open; but if we begin to put frontiers around our consciousness, we do the work of exclusion, not they. The gods go to, said the old Greeks, the gods visit, the houses of those who open doors to them. Think what that means. Why not try to entertain divine and divinely human guests? You can do it.
The whole trouble with us and with civilization is that we build these frontiers around us. They are not placed there by Nature. They are builded by ourselves, frontiers of exclusion in thought, in feeling, in tradition, in everything. And what happens to the man who shuts himself up in a cell and lives there? Who loses? The world, or the foolish man? Such a cell is a frontier of consciousness. And the man (or the civilization) is great precisely in proportion as he can throw aside, break through, the barriers, the frontiers, with which habit and custom and he himself have surrounded himself, and move out to ever loftier houses of consciousness, ever receding frontiers of consciousness.
What makes a religion successful? The building around itself of frontiers of thought, frontiers, barriers of exclusion? Why of course not. The answer is obvious. Destroy the barriers, the door is open to all.