“Each human being, each unit of consciousness, is so unlike any other that the individual need can only be supplied when full causal consciousness exists on the part of the teacher, and when the pupil has himself reached a point where he is willing to know, to dare and to be silent.
The dangers involved in the misuse of the Word are so great that we dare do no more than indicate basic ideas, and fundamental principles, and then leave the aspirant to work out for himself the points necessary for his own development and to carry out the needed experiments until he finds for himself that which he needs.
Only that which is the result of self-effort, of hard struggle and of bitter experience is of permanent and lasting value. Only as the disciple—through failure, through success, through hardly won victories, and the bitter hours that succeed defeat—adjusts himself to the inner condition, will he find the use of the Word scientifically and experimentally of value. His lack of will defends him largely from the misuse of the Word, whilst his endeavor to love guides him eventually to its correct intoning. Only that which we know for ourselves becomes inherent faculty.
The statements of a teacher, no matter how profoundly wise he may be, are but mental concepts until experimentally part of a man’s life. Hence, I can but point the way. I may give but general hints; the rest must be threshed out by the student of meditation for himself.”
(from a meditation course on The Secret Doctrine)
