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We must be content to progress, as students have ever done, by stages of development; in each
grade the primal truths are re-stated in a different form; they are revealed or re-veiled in language
and symbolism suitable to the learner's own mental condition; hence the need of a teacher, of a
guide who has traversed the path, and who can recognise by personal communion the stage which
each pupil has attained. There is no royal or easy path to high attainment in Mysticism. Unwearied
effort, combined with purity of life, is of vital importance. The human intellect can only appreciate
and assimilate that which the mind's eye can at any time perceive. The process cannot be forced.
Mystic lore cannot be stolen. If any learner did appropriate the knowledge of a Grade beyond him it
would be to him but folly, disappointment and darkness.
Students have often been offered a doctrine, or assertion, or explanation, which their intellect has
rejected as absurd, or as sheer superstition; which same dogma they have later in life assimilated
with every feeling of esteem. Occultism in this resembles Freemasonry; we are either admitted to
the hidden knowledge, or we are not; and if we are not admitted, we never believe any secret of its
ritual even if it be offered to us. The secrets of Occultism are like Freemasonry; in truth they are to
some extent the secrets that Freemasonry has lost. They are of their very nature inviolable; for they
can only be attained by personal progress; they might be plainly told to the outsider, and not be
understood by him. For if anyone has been able to divine and to grasp such a secret, he will not tell
it even to his dearest friend; for the simple reason that if his friend is unable to divine it for himself,
its communication in mere words would not confer the hidden knowledge upon him.
The whole Kabalistic theories are of a nature similar to the secrets of Freemasonry; there was much
doctrine that was never written nor printed: these works often describe imagery which seems folly,
and contain doctrines that at first seem absurd; yet they enshrine the highly spiritual teachings
which I have shortly outlined. The mere reading of these volumes is of little avail; the spiritual eye
needs to be opened to see spiritual things; and the great Kabalists of old did not cast pearls of
wisdom before the ignorant or the vicious, nor suffer the unclean to enter the Temple of Wisdom.
The serious student must make strenuous efforts to attain to the higher life of the True Occultism,
then perchance in a distant future, a record of temptations avoided, and of a life of self-sacrifice may
serve as Signs and Pass Words to secure admission to the Palace of the Great King.
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