________________
spot it immediately. So, too, when your mind is pure and calm you will be able to see within yourself. The task of the spiritually ignorant is to stir up the water, to make it muddy. The task of the spiritually enlightened is to calm the water and give it a crystalline purity. And the more material things you possess, the greater the ripples. And sometimes the ripples become a whirlpool and the man is sucked in by it.
You must know how to make the right use of the things you possess so that they may enable you to elevate yourself. If you use them to bury yourself with, then you behave like those ignorant devotees who bury their god under flowers and lose all sight of him.
You must learn to distinguish between the means and the end, and then you will automatically ask yourself: “Am I my own master?”
Circumstances are determined by man himself. If a man is weak he is easily overwhelmed by circumstances; but if he is strong he overcomes them. Then it is not the circumstances which mould him, but it is he who shapes circumstances.
Never take any step which involves the sacrifice of your inner peace, for then you will never learn to