The So-Called Dangers of Initiation

Those who boast most of selflessness are the least selfless, just as those who use the word “truthful” after every third sentence are usually the most untruthful. This, too, is based on a profound law in occultism. First, it is a matter of delving deeper and deeper into the real truths and insights of secret science, and not setting oneself ideals such as: You must overcome your ego. — Such a phrase accomplishes nothing. Nothing is achieved, for example, if there is a stove here and I say to it: You must be a good stove, you must heat the room. You can stroke it and treat it lovingly, but that achieves nothing. Only when you put wood in the stove will it heat up. So it is of no use to preach virtue, selflessness, and freedom to the world. The right thing to do is to heat it up, to give people fuel; and that fuel is the secret scientific truths. Just as wood and coal warm up the stove, so the real secret scientific truths gradually make people selfless. And why? Because in many ways they divert interest away from the little point called the ego. Theosophical or secret scientific truths are so great, so powerful and significant, and demand so much of us that we gradually come to regard ourselves as individuals as highly uninteresting. One first learns how uninteresting the individual personality is. This learning, how uninteresting the individual human personality is, this learning about oneself, when brought about by the fuel of esoteric truths, leads people to liberation from egoism.