Mystics

"Finding this quiet appropriation of my property a little too much, I took the liberty to ask for their return; they gravely replied that my diamond and other jewels were confiscated to the profit of Great Britain I returned sadly to my inn... I resigned myself, however, and slept the most profound sleep. I do not know what passed during the night; but the next morning, when I returned to the Custom House, I found the greatest change in manners and faces. The customs authorities spoke to me in the most respectful tone. They made a million excuses and gave me back my jewel box..."

"Now, my enemies think I am crushed. They have said to one another ‘let us trample under foot this man who knows us too well’; but they do not know that in spite of their efforts I shall rise triumphant, when the time of trial is over. They rejoice in the wounds they have inflicted upon me; but these foolish people in their mad transports do not see hovering over them the cloud from which the lightning will dart."

"All religions were tolerated under this system: a belief in God was the sole qualification..."

"I amuse myself, not by making people believe what I wish, but by letting them believe what they wish. These fools of Parisians declare that I am five hundred, and I confirm them in the idea since it pleases them."

"A torrent of tears streamed from my eyes, and I was able at last, without dying, to press to my heart..."

"Oh, you privileged beings to whom heaven has made the rare and fatal gift of an ardent soul and a sensitive heart, you who have experienced the delights of a first love, you alone will understand me, you alone will appreciate what after ten months of torture the first moment of bliss is like!"

"Cagliostro is supposed by some writers to have been an agent of the Illuminati, a secret order pledged to overturn the thrones of Europe and establish democracy... hence this trampling upon the lilies alluded to the stamping out of the French monarchy by the Illuminati, which was an order grafted on Freemasonry."

"After a long imprisonment and many examinations by the inquisitors of the Holy Office, Cagliostro was finally condemned to death as a heretic, sorcerer and FreeMason, on March 21, 1791; but Pope Pius VI commuted the sentence to life imprisonment."

"Egyptian Masonry he asserted to have been instituted by Enoch and Elijah, who taught its divine mysteries, and he reintroduced adoptive or androgynous Masonry..."

"He appeared in court proud and triumphant in his coat of green silk embroidered with gold. "Who are you, and whence do you come?" asked the attorney for the Crown. "I am an illustrious traveler," he answered bombastically. There was great laughter in court, in which the judges joined."

"The day after his acquittal he was banished from France by order of the king. At St. Denis his carriage was driven between two dense and silent lines of sympathizers; and, as his vessel cleared the port of Boulogne, 5,000 persons knelt down on the shore to receive his blessing."

"On August 22, 1785, Cagliostro was arrested under a lettre de cachet and cast into the Bastille, charged with complicity in the affair of the Diamond Necklace, an intrigue that involved in its toils a queen, a cardinal, a courtesan and a conjurer."

"That he believed in his mission to enlighten the world through his mystic doctrines admits of no doubt in my mind. Had he been a mere charlatan he would not have practiced his system of medicine and Masonry in such a humanitarian manner."

"He lavished money right and left, cured the poor without pay, and treated the great with arrogance. The Cardinal de Rohan invited the sorcerer and his wife to live at the episcopal palace."

"He taught that the Philosopher's Stone was no fable, and that belief many before and since his time have shared..."

"Though much has been written about Cagliostro... It is based on contemporary records inspired by envy, hatred and contempt in an age notoriously passionate, revengeful and unscrupulous. It is, moreover, extremely superficial, being merely a repetition of information obtained second-hand by compilers apparently too ignorant or too lazy to make their own investigations."

"Whatever sympathy for Cagliostro my researches may have evoked it has always been exceeded by contempt of those who, combining an unreasoning prejudice with a slovenly system of compilation, have repeated the old charges against him with parrot-like stupidity. The object of this book is not so much an attempt to vindicate Cagliostro as to correct and revise, if possible, what I believe to be a false judgment of history."

"We are not learning the occult alphabet; most of us have done all that before we came here. I used to read for about three or four hours a day before I met M.H.-not as a duty, but because I liked it. When you’ve extracted all the knowledge you can out of books, then the Master appears."

"How would the bulk of fastidious Americans with their legislation against this, that and the other, regard a man who had seven hundred wives and two hundred concubines? Would they consider him the wisest man on this whole continent? I should like to know how even he could find the time to cultivate wisdom, under the stress of such extensive erotic obligations."

"If some people are not disposed to believe that morals change with the times, then let them look into the book held most sacred by all the peoples of the West, and read how at one time the idea of Justice was ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ Or look further back still and read of King Solomon, said to be the wisest- which surely also implies the most moral - man who ever lived."

"No supermoralist ever interferes with the liberty of other people- only moralists do that. By all means let men make as many laws as they like if it amuses them, but let them make them for themselves, and not for others. What business have we to go poking our fingers into other people’s pies? Do you think that by forcing our fellows to do this or that, we are furthering their evolution?"

"There is only one way to further the evolution of your fellows, and that is by persuading them- not by forcing them, mind you- to alter their motives; for motives is everything, actions are secondary. If you can teach people to think with their hearts as well as with their brains, you’ll have done some good."

"The supermoralist realizes that when he has acquired a virtue or a faculty, be it truthfulness or ecstatic trance- what matter-then is the time to hide it or indulge in it sparingly, or both, as circumstances dictate."

"One of our rules is never to do things in an extraordinary way, when they can be done in an ordinary way. What we do after the disciple and the Master have become closely linked is another matter."

"Of course, no doubt sensation mongers would much prefer that we miraculously appeared before our prospective pupils and said: ‘I’m your Guru - come and be my disciple.’ But such is not our policy and never will be."

"Tonight I am going to speak of practically the greatest obstacle to occult Wisdom, spiritual attainment and mystical progress. That obstacle is Conventionality in whatever form it may take, be it in relation to morals or religion. The New Testament writers portrayed the Pharisees as its most typical adherents, and Jesus is reported to have said that the harlots were nearer the kingdom of Heaven than these Pharisees- which, allowing for Oriental hyperbole, is in accordance with fact."

"Pain belongs to the illusory things of life; and it is a characteristic of children to like illusions; their very games consist in pretending to be kings or soldiers or what not. Contentedness, on the other hand, is one of the qualities of maturity... Jealousy...is also, of course, a form of childishness."

"What we do exist for is principally to guide mankind at large and to give forth such moral, spiritual, and ethical ideas as may be required at a particular time. How is this achieved? Through our chelas who moving in the world and using their discretion, spread such portions of our teaching as they seem wise and as opportunity offers... If they are writers, some of that teaching is set forth in their books; if they are poets, it appears in their poetry; if they are musicians, the spirit of it echoes forth from their music."

"If we look at the mental bodies of very conventional people we find their outlines hard and rigid, and the bodies themselves small and as it were under - nourished."

"...in speaking of religion and perfection we must not forget there are certain unreflective persons who imagine that to be perfect means of necessity to be tedious at the same time; they quite fail to realise that dullness is an attribute of imperfection rather than perfection, and that they might with equal lack of rectitude say... that to live in the Nirvana of perpetual bliss would be to live in the tedium of a perpetual hell."

"...if one could erase the many unsatisfactory associations connected with the word saint, and rid the word "Superman" of its equally unsatisfactory ones, Justin... might with perfect right be called either of these, or both. Indeed, my association with this truly wonderful man showed me that a saint could exist without exhibiting an ultra-devotional temperament, carrying itself almost to a degree of unpleasantness, and a superman could exist likewise, without that arrogant love of power which is so characteristic of the Nietzschean ideal."

"For the man who writes alone for his friends, and not for his enemies as well, falls short of being a true philosopher, by reason of the fact that all real philosophy has missed its goal unless it brings us Peace."

"A certain point of view... is a prophylactic against all sorrow..and to acquire the right point of view...is the object of all mature thinking. That being so, mental pain is the result of a certain sort of childishness, and a grown-up soul would be as incapable of suffering over the thing you spoke of, as a grown-up person over the breaking of a doll."

"In a word, show people what they cannot understand and immediately they will ascribe it to something they can understand — for that is ever the tendency of the ignorant."

"From what seeds does this weed of conventionality grow? From mental laziness, fear- of what others will think; vanity- or the capacity to be hurt by what they will say; and superstition- or the false notion that what the majority think must be right."

"...to all outward appearance these Adepts are perfectly normal, perfectly human; but it is to outward appearance only... Dressing neither in strange garments nor having in ghost-haunted castles, these men, far from wishing to awaken the curiosity or admiration of their fellows, seek to render themselves as ordinary to the casual observer as they possibly can."

"True it is that the so-called enlightenment of our twentieth century civilisation seeks to negate or explain away the unusual powers of these men, but deeper thinkers who have taken the trouble to penetrate behind the veil of superficial knowledge are coming to the conclusion that the old truism " where there is smoke there must also be fire " is applicable to the case in point, and that this negation, and explaining away on the part of so-called civilisation is not the result of real knowledge, but of ignorance instead."

"...It is absolutely essential that in order to find we must know how to seek, only to him who follows the requisite of this maxim is it possible to discover the truth..."

"Let us then try to imagine a human being, devoid of the weaknesses and drawbacks of the ordinary person; a being who is utterly beyond the feelings of selfishness, vanity, jealousy, anger, hatred, and other "vices" of a kindred nature; moreover a being who possesses a consciousness so intense, so infinitely alive as to warrant the expression superconsciousness..."

"...there are a number of people who may doubt the possibility of attaining to that degree of perfection which he indubitably manifested, thus crediting me with writing romance instead of fact. And yet he does not by any means stand alone at his stage of spiritual evolution, for not only are there many more like him living amongst us at the present time, but if world-history is to be accredited with truth, there have been hundreds as great as and greater than he in the past."

"And this superconsciousness of necessity embraces a continual sensation of unconditional bliss and unconditional Love, conjoined with which is a supreme wisdom and power."

"...the Adept, possessing knowledge of Nature and its laws as yet not disclosed to Humanity at large, is able to control natural forces in a way which the ignorant cannot even imagine, let alone follow: indeed, were he to exhibit the manipulation of those forces to the uninitiated (which, however, he never would do) they in their utter incredulity and ignorance would ascribe the whole exhibition to trickery, and pronounce him at best a conjuror, if not a fraud."

"Then, in an ecstasy of love, you will repeat the Name of Hu constantly, devoting every breath of your life in contemplation of him. Only when your soul merges in the essence of the Lord,will you deserve the name Bahu."

"Were my whole body festooned with eyes, I would gaze at my Master with untiring zeal O, how I wish that every pore of my body would turn into a million eyes— Then, as some closed to blink, others would open to see! But even then my thirst to see him Might remain unquenched. What else am I to do? To me, O Bahu, a glimpse of my Master Is worth millions of pilgrimages to the holy Kaaba"

"The first (trapping) thing which occurs to a mystic is that he gains the power of unveiling and miracles. He becomes haughty and self conceited upon this power due to his Nafs. He gets temporary happiness but remains away from the Closeness and Union of Allah. Though it is a virtuous act according to the creature but for The Creator it is a great veil."

"Does it matter whether His training came from among us or as a direct revelation from God, the one source where all things really exist? For when an idea from God-mind has been contacted by one man and sent out through the spoken word, cannot one, or all, again contact that thought in the Universal? Because one has contacted the idea and sent it out, it does not follow that it is his particular possession. If he did appropriate and hold it, where would be room for receiving? (Chapter II)"

"He began by saying, "Tis Christmas Morning; to you I suppose it is the day Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, was born; to you the thought must come that He was sent to remit sins; to you He must typify the Great Mediator between you and your God. You seem to appeal to Jesus as a mediator between you and your God, who seems to be a stern and, at times, an angry God sitting off somewhere in the place called heaven, located where I do not know, except it be in man's consciousness. You seem to be able to reach God only through His less austere and more loving Son, the great and noble One whom we all call Blessed and whose advent into the world this day commemorates. To us this day means more; to us this day not only means the advent into this world of Jesus, the Christ, but also this birth typifies the birth of Christ in every human consciousness... (Chapter II)"

"To receive more we must give out what we have received. If we withhold what we receive, stagnation will follow and we will be like the wheel that generates power from the water and suddenly, of its own volition, begins to withhold the water which it is using. It will soon find itself stifled with inert water. It is only when the water is allowed to flow freely through that it is of value to the wheel to create power. Just so with man. When he contacts God's ideas he must give them out in order to receive the benefit from them. He must allow all to do the same, that they may grow and develop as he is growing. (Chapter II)"

"I could not understand all his teachings and I could not accept them fully, nor was I able, with all I saw while in the East, to fully accept at the time. It required years of meditation to bring me the realization of the deep spiritual meaning of these peoples' lives. Their work is accomplished without ostentation and in perfect childlike simplicity. They know the power of love to protect them and they cultivate it until all nature is in love with them and befriends them. (Chapter I)"

"There is a striking resemblance between the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth and those of these Masters as exemplified in their daily life. It has been thought impossible for man to derive his daily supply directly from the Universal, to overcome death and to perform the various so-called miracles that Jesus performed while on earth. The Masters prove that all these are their daily life. They supply everything needed for their daily wants directly from the Universal, including food, clothing and money. They have so far overcome death that many of them now living are over five hundred years of age... (Chapter I)"