PREFATORY: A WRITER ON HIS WRITINGS--- A MAN who undertakes the task of communicating his deeper thoughts to a number of readers, & especially of leading them into realms of knowledge, forms of experience & phases of consciousness that surpass what is usual, must always do so in a spirit of devotion to his take if he would reach their hearts & not merely cover the white sheets with cold words. It was because I fully realized this truism some years ago that I refrained from writing my first book of teachings, The Secret Path, until an inner compulsion came to me which I could not, & would not, disobey. Many people had requested me, either by letter or in person, to write a book of definite instruction upon the art of spiritual meditation. For they knew that I had learned a little of this art both by dint of many years’ hard effort & also by spending, during my wanderings in the East, intermittent periods as the pupil of some Wise Men of the Orient who are admittedly adepts in this domain of knowledge. Again & again, I refused to accede to their request for such a book, & the more they pressed me, the more adamant, the more obstinate I became in the negative course which I had chosen. The reasons them being a cynical dislike, amounting at times almost to a horror, of being classed as a spiritual teacher, prophet or messenger. THE MYSTERY OF MAN:- THE first, & for some considerable time one may say the ruling, thought which vividly dominates an infant child’s consciousness is the awareness of I. The last thought which moves with the spirit out of the tenement of the brain at death is also that of I. During the intervening years between these two points of birth & death—years which make up that composite picture of commonplace events, unrehearsed comedies, occasional tragedies, brief sunshine & lingering shadows that we call life—the chief preoccupation of most human beings is with that same I.