What I have found in my study and experience of the mentality of mureeds is that with one mureed it is most easy to go on further and with another it is most difficult; and I have asked myself what is the reason of it.

The one with whom it is difficult to go on very often is intelligent, learned, qualified; the one with whom it is easy, is sometimes not so learned in the world’s sense of the word. And I have found that always whenever there is a difficulty it is a kind of twist in his own mind, in the mind of the pupil, that he has made a kind of knot in his mind and the thread is not smooth all through, there is a knot. It takes a long time to unravel the knot, it takes a great effort and patience; and even then it is not always easy to unravel it.

With the one who easily understands there is also a reason for it. The reason is that all other knowledge is acquired, but the knowledge of the divine Truth belongs to the soul. When it is given to the soul it is not something that is new, it is something that the soul has always known, to which the soul is wakened. I very often found with some pupils, when giving them the idea of divine knowledge, which was given, perhaps, for the first time in their lives, yet they seemed to have had it always in their heart; it was just a kind of wakening to something which was there. That is the real way of attaining to the spiritual knowledge; and that is the true knowledge which belongs to the soul, which has always been there. For the soul itself is Truth, the soul itself is divine knowledge. When the soul becomes self-conscious it understands spirituality; it does not need to learn or acquire it, it knows it, it is its belonging.

But with the children of this world the difficulty is that what is simple they do not value; what is difficult, head-breaking and heartbreaking, something which puzzles them, which they cannot understand, which confuses them, they think that is something, because it gives an exercise to their mind. The simple Truth they think is too simple, but they do not know that by giving one’s mind to the simple Truth one enters another world and the whole life changes for that person, his attitude changes, his outlook on life changes; and so the vision of the same world which he has once seen changes entirely, turning it into another world.