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The true mystic is a man who enters into full possession of his inner life, and who, having become cognizant of his sub-consciousness, finds in it, through concentrated meditation and steady discipline, new faculties and enlightenment.
The mystic, then, is one who seeks for truth and the Divine directly within himself, by a gradual detachment and a veritable birth of his higher soul. If he attains it after prolonged effort, he plunges into his own glowing center. Then he immerses himself, and identifies himself with that ocean of life which is the primordial Force.
The weapons of the mystic are concentration and inner vision; the weapons of the occultist are intuition, and synthesis. Each corresponds to the other; they complete and presuppose each other.
homage. If I meet a man and blame him for his shortcomings, I rob myself of power to attain higher knowledge; but if I try to enter lovingly into his merits, I gather such power.
Veneration, homage, devotion are like nutriment making it healthy and strong, especially strong for the activity of cognition. Disrespect, antipathy, underestimation of what deserves recognition, all exert a paralyzing and withering effect on this faculty of cognition.
All knowledge pursued merely for the enrichment of personal learning and the accumulation of personal treasure leads you away from the path; but all knowledge pursued for growth to ripeness within the process of human ennoblement and cosmic development brings you a step forward.
Every idea which does not become your ideal slays a force in your soul; every idea which becomes your ideal creates within you life-forces.
Adapt each one of your actions, and frame each one of your words in such a way that you infringe upon no one's free-will.
Provide for yourself moments of inner tranquility, and in these moments learn to distinguish between the essential and the non-essential.
Outward circumstances can only alter the course of his outward life; they can never awaken the inner spiritual man. The student must himself give birth to a new and higher man within himself.
As long as the outer man has the upper hand and control, this inner man is his slave and therefore cannot unfold his powers.
I must develop the faculty of letting the impressions of the outer world approach me only in the way in which I myself determine; then only do I become in the real sense a student. And only in as far as the student earnestly seeks this power can he reach the goal.
He will in no way be estranged from his daily tasks and duties, for he comes to realize that the most insignificant action he has to accomplish, the most insignificant experience which offers itself to him, stands in connection with cosmic beings and cosmic events.
It will always be found that they who really know are the most modest of men, and that nothing is further from their nature than what is called the lust for power.
No one is of use as an esoteric student or will ever attain results of real value who has not learned to wait in the highest and best sense of the word.
The teacher, as we know, can confer upon the pupil no powers which are not already latent within him, and his sole function is to assist in the awakening of slumbering faculties.
For every one step that you take in the pursuit of higher knowledge, take three steps in the perfection of your own character.
