Khwâjâ Bâyazîd was asked, “What is the way to God?” He replied: “When thou hast vanished on the Way, then hast thou come to God.” Mark this: If one attached to the Way cannot see God, how can one attached to self see God?

When the Sun of Divine Knowledge rises, all modes of knowledge become ignorance; when Divine aspiration appears, all desires melt away . .

Whoever is bound to his exterior—his turban, his robe, the size and colour of his garment—is still attached to the personality and a worshipper thereof. Thou canst serve either personality or the Law: two contraries cannot unite. So long as you hanker after approbation and dignity so long as you become angry at an insult, you are with your old genius and self-conceit, and have not been accepted by the Law. You should sacrifice yourself in the SELF. To no purpose do you change your dress and food. If you eat a single blade of grass in a lifetime, remain clad in a single garment for a thousand years, are shut up in a monastery away from the sight of men,— beware, lest you should be deluded. All these are but the subtleties of the desire-nature, its cunning and craft.

Many pious men are as motionless as a serpent or a scorpion frozen with cold. Their piety is not due to rectitude and purity, but to lack of opportunity. When summer comes in and the surroundings change, one may behold what they do . . . . No one can safely tread the Path with­out a Guide . . . . In the beginning, a disciple is not a fit recipient of the Divine Light. He is like a bat, unable to bear the light of the Sun. As it is dangerous folly to travel in utter darkness, he needs a light less dazzling than the Sun, in order to illumine the Path for his safety. Such a light is that coming from the Masters, who, like the moon [reflecting the light of the sun], have become fit reflectors of the Spiritual Light.— Letter 51.