acquire physiologically speaking, inasmuch as it exacts supreme self-control at a crucial moment. Those who have never attempted this degree, when told of it, are apt to either declare it impossible, or to scorn it as undesirable. But those who have once mastered this degree would no more forego the power which is now theirs, than a freed prisoner would voluntarily return to his dungeon. This way lies the path of liberty and life, and joy, and they who have once trodden it in the perfect fullness, of magnetic union with a dearly loved spouse will never care to stumble along the old paths. The Oneida Community despite its social mistake of promiscuity, has made the human race its everlasting debtor, in that it has left a thirty years scientific experiment on record detailing the methods and attesting the value of this second degree.
But let it never be forgotten that this second degree must be built upon the first degree Alpha-ism. To make use of it as a means to increased sensuality is to degrade it, and to do so effectually bars the initiate from entrance upon that third and highest degree where all joys physical, mental, emotional and spiritual reach an intensity beside which the joys of the first and second degree pale as a candle-flame in the radiance of sunlight. Moreover, if this degree be thus degraded by the initiate, it is almost certain to bring nervous diseases of a very distressing character in its train.
On the third, and highest degree, no book has yet been written, so far as I know. The teaching seems to have been handed down orally or else by pictured symbolism or mystic rite, understood only by the initiates of this degree. I am now compiling notes for my work on "Psychic Wedlock" which I hope will take up the projected three degrees in more detail than is possible in this treatise. For the present, I can only lay down a few general principles,—and these principles which cannot be fully grasped by any except those who have mastered the first and second degrees.
The Hindus have the theory that God can enjoy food, drink and in fact all sense-pleasures but only through the
