[Skull]

From Purucker's Dialogues:

Student — Does not the aspirant himself have to make every effort to win the victory?

G. de P. — Certainly, he must walk every step along the pathway to victory. He is not carried there. Every step he himself must take. How could it be otherwise? Human adults are not fed like babes. We feed ourselves, we inform ourselves, we teach ourselves, we make our own way in the world; and if that is a necessity in ordinary human existence, I can tell you that it is tenfold the same necessity in the esoteric life. There we must ourselves win everything. And why? Because we are simply bringing out what is within us, our own will, our own consciousness, must become awakened, fully awakened, and by our own efforts.

You cannot see unless you use your own faculty of vision. You cannot understand by some one else's understanding. Is not that clear? You must gain everything you ever have in the esoteric training. And that is why, to those who do not understand, there are aspects of the esoteric training which may seem to be a little hard, because people in the Occident have been brought up with the idea that they must be carried to victory, saved by the "blood of the Lamb," and all that kind of tommyrot.

This reminds me of the teaching of the Blackies, of the Brothers of the Shadow, with the aim of sending you to sleep, trying to down the individual spiritual impulses of your own being!

No! The opposite is the truth. You cannot live by trusting to someone else to live for you. You yourself must awaken in your own soul the holy flame. And it is the same with every other step in spiritual and intellectual progress that you make. How can you experience the unspeakable delight of compassion, the ineffable feeling of being at one with the All, by hearing that some one else has thus achieved? You yourself must be the vehicle of the inner light, must gain it. It is both in you and above you, invigorating you and inspiring you. Be it!