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132 Twelve Facets of Reality a dinner and a night of celebration, but what about the person who goes with hope and ends with hopelessness? Can you not think of that?”
The intellect is a sword with two edges. It can cut from either side. It can be used by a person for growth or it can be used to justify questionable things by saying that there is some divine hand behind it all. That is the kind of reasoning which has led people to justify even animal sacrifice as offerings to God. In the name of God, animals are killed. God does not eat their flesh, but the priests do while murmuring “Thanks." Thanks to whom? To the intellect which distorts, manipulates, and justifies even killing in the name of an unknown and unseen God.
Anything can be justified in that manner. Promiscuity is justified by calling it Tantra art. When you speak against it, you appear out of date, and people say you don't know what you are talking about. Others burn out their brain cells with drugs, yet justify it by saying, “I am in heaven, I see so many different colors.” If you explain that it is merely hallucination, they laugh at you. If you tell them that what they see has no meaning, they say, “How do you know? You have not taken drugs." These are some of the ways the intellect can act as a ladder to take you downhill.
That is why the masters tell the initiates to purify their mind. It is raw; it is crude like oil. It needs to be refined. If you put crude oil in an airplane, what will happen? It will not take you up. Before it can be used, it has to go through the process of becoming gasoline. Once it has been refined, it can be used in a plane. You can depend on it. You are in the sky and you put your life in its hands. So refined gasoline is the right fuel with which to fly a plane.
In the same way, this mind, this intellect, in its crude
