"Adepts and Mahâtmas are not a miraculous growth, nor the selfish successors of some who, accidentally stumbling upon great truths, transmitted them to adherents under patent rights. They are human beings trained, developed, cultivated through not only a life but long series of lives, always under evolutionary laws and quite in accord with what we see among men of the world or of science. Just as a Tyndall is greater than a savage, though still a man, so is the Mahâtma, not ceasing to be human, still greater than a Tyndall. The Mahâtma-Adept is a natural growth, and not produced by any miracle; the process by which he so becomes may be to us an unfamiliar one, but it is in the strict order of nature."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Masters_of_Wisdom_(Theosophy)