When seeking Reality, people often do exactly the opposite of what is needed to find it.
When we are studying esoteric and gnostic teachings, there are certain things that it may be wise to keep in mind.
The main thing to remember is to keep our priorities straight. We are studying for a purpose, and that purpose is to understand our own nature and the universe with sufficient accuracy such that we may take wise action. That purpose is not to accumulate knowledge or develop the mind, for all this does is to strengthen the mind, which in turn strengthens the power of the self - and this strengthens the illusion that we labor under and makes it more difficult for the Wisdom of Spirit to be impressed upon us. If the self is strengthened, then we are strengthening the bars of our prison house, and clinging to the world rather than seeking God. If the mind is strengthened, we are in truth seeking to shut out the Light.
The inner, gnostic Light is what is important. A genius, who has not awakened the Light within, is just as stuck in ignorance as anyone else. A scholar, who has studied all the world's esoteric and gnostic literature, may still not be able to open the door of revelation if the Spirit in the heart is not awakened. But if someone has truly awakened their heart, then we have not a genius or a scholar, but a saint. Their heart is open, and in that open heart can flow the Wisdom of the group life, the Wisdom of Spirit, and the Transcendental understanding of the Mind of God.
All of the worlds teachings regarding Truth, Reality, God, and the Divine Path to God are in essence only a collection of thought forms. Those thoughtforms are of the same nature as the world of thought itself: an illusion. That illusion exists for all thought, and while thought does exist, the realities that are presented by thought to the mind do not exist; they are always false. Thoughts about God are only the image of God produced by thought. Thoughts of Reality are only the image of Reality produced by thought. Likewise for Truth, Love, enlightenment, and the whole realm of what we call the personal life. We do not even see clearly what is right before us, for we see the thought, and not what the object really is. But the self takes these thoughts as Truth, and is thus deceived by the illusion.
The thought substance that composes the highest Divine Ideal is still only mental substance and is not in itself connected up with Reality. Thought of this kind can only connects us up to Reality insofar as it guides us to awaken the heart and bring us into an awareness of the movement of Spirit within our lives. These thoughts only really start to help us when we start to move away from them and toward Spirit.
In addition, all the "knowing" of these thought forms is accomplished by the mind. This mind, being a part of the personal nature, is also a part of the illusion of self. The self - the false concept of separateness and division that maintains itself by the power of the grasping mind - is precisely what prevents us from perceiving the Divine Light and entering the Divine Universe. We are dazzled by the little light of the mind and are thus distracted from seeing the Divine Flame.
Further, all that the mind can know is really only of the Universe of Illusion, not the Universe of Reality. It takes the awakened, Divine Intuition to cognize Reality. It takes the realization of God;s Mind to perceive God's Universe. The human mind, being of the nature of illusion, is dealing with human thoughts, which are of necessity only illusory. The human mind does not have any capacity to perceive Reality; indeed, as long as the human mind is present, Reality cannot be perceived. Even our highest thoughts about God and Truth are still only thoughts, and a part of the Universe of Illusion.
Consequently as we study, we are using an illusory mind to accumulate illusory knowledge about an illusory universe.
If, for example, we are studying about God's Will, what do we really find out? We connect with a thoughtform of God's Will. We may achieve some mental understanding of that Will. We may indeed thereby connect up with a deva life that is the embodiment of peoples ideas about God's Will in this illusory world. This deva life, or aeon, feeds the mind and stimulates it. There is a moment of synchronization. The mind may feel a moment of realization, understanding, or revelation as a result. The student may imagine that he or she has really connected up with God's Will. But trapped as we are in the universe of Illusion, there hasn't really been any contact with the Divine Will. There has only been yet another contact of another aspect of the world of Illusion by means of illusory thought.
Experiences and learnings like this, however, are the essence of how humanity has learned about Truth in the past and the present. And this is precisely why all such efforts have failed. For people have assumed that what their minds comprehended was Truth, when it was not Truth. They have assumed that they have contacted Reality, when they have not contacted Reality. They have believed that in the stimulation of their minds that they have come closer to the realm of the Intuition, when in fact their effort is the opposite of the task that needs to be done to reach the Divine Intuition. When seeking Reality, people often do exactly the opposite of what is needed to find it.
Let us take for example, someone is who dominated by their emotions. They are swept by their feelings and drown in their desires every moment of the day. What would you say to help them? Primarily to start using the mind. Let them come out of their emotional life, gain a bit of disinterested perspective, and begin to see clearly. We say to such people "If you would only think"... "If you would only use your head a little." In this is a seeking to see them gain a measure of detached disinterest from their emotional life. They need to separate themselves from it. Above all, we let these people turn to the Grace of God, to lift them out of their predicament and their emotional preoccupation into the clear light of Spirit's guidance.
Then along comes an insane man, who says, "No, you should proceed differently. The more that you feel, the more you will think! Strive harder and harder to feel, and soon you will be thinking." It is easy to see the error. We know from hard experience that it is the emotions that shut out the light of the mind; it is overemphasis on our feelings that makes it impossible to live a mental life. We know better than to follow the insanity. People would laugh at such ignorant thoughts.
But let us take this one step further. Let us take as an example someone who has developed their mind, who is a thinking being, and who has intelligence. And let us say that they seek to awaken the Divine Intuition, and come into a realization of the inner, Divine Reality. Along comes our insane man again, who says, "Of course, the more that you think, the more you will Intuit! Strive harder and harder to study, build up your mind, and soon you will reach the realm of the Divine." This message, however, has been accepted by almost every aspiring student on earth: that through the development and growth of the mind, the Divine Intuition will be awakened. Few people laugh at such thoughts.
Our mad man is still wrong. Feeling harder does not lead to any thought. Nor does thinking harder lead to any Intuition. Strengthening the feeling nature has the effect of blocking our rational thoughts out. Likewise, strengthening the mind has the effect of blocking out Spirit's Wisdom.
We need, therefore, to come out of our mental life, just as we previously may have come out of our emotional life. We need a detached disinterest in our thoughts, ideas, visions, and knowledge, and not be attached to and wrapped up in them. We need to seek God's Grace, that we may be lifted out of our preoccupation with the mind and freed from its little, cold flame so that the Gnostic Light may have the opportunity to arise.
This should all be kept in perspective, and it is the narrow "middle path" that is the path of Wisdom. We do not wish to have an overly weak mind, either, that is incapable of understanding subtle Truths. Nor do we wish to deny the use of study in preparing ourselves for later realization. But study and mental growth is only preparatory to the Path itself. If we are truly seeking to break the circle of birth, death, and rebirth that we are trapped in, study, meditation, pondering, and mental contemplation are only preliminary efforts on that Path.
Indeed, our whole effort to learn and to grow is counter to Divine Realization. The mind that studies Truth, assimilates knowledge, and gathers information to itself is really only building up its own existence. No matter what material it gathers, no matter how wise or how revelatory, it continues to build itself up. This is just the nature of the mind, and there is no blame involved here, but if we are not aware of the eternal tendency of the mind to build itself up, we may become trapped in that building, and continue to build and build and build, never realizing that eventually the entire construct of thought must be destroyed for the Light to be seen. The mind will always continue to support the self in its efforts to validate and justify its own existence. And this validation is what keeps the falsehood of a separated self alive.
If, then, we are seeking for more than intellectual knowledge, for something more than mental illumination, and for something more than existence in this realm of Illusion, it is necessary to come to a point in which the books are dropped, the teachers are dropped, the understandings of the mind are dropped, and the mental clinging itself is dropped. We let go. At that point, it is possible for Grace to intervene and for Spirit to awaken within us. And as it awakens, it brings its Divine knowledge of the Plan for this Earth to us. We find our part to play within the group life, and we discover the group purpose. This, in its turn, makes it possible for us to be lifted up into the realization of Divine Wisdom, and come into contact with some small fragment of the Kingdom of God - the world of Reality, Truth, and Life.
Indeed, we get to the point where reading and study are no longer possible for us. We come to the point where the heart is so connected up with inner Wisdom that all worldly thoughtforms seem dry and uninteresting. We come to the point where the effort to study and understand is also clearly seen as something that supports the self and its existence, and thus is something that is freely given up. We come to the point where the whole realm of the mind is seen as a field of forces and powers that do nothing except distract us from connecting up with Spirit and with Light.
Now there are those who believe that they can have their cake and eat it too. There is an assumption that even as we seek Reality, we can also hold onto all our thoughts and ideals. There is a belief in many students that they can grasp hold of the Divine Realities even as they also hold onto their illusory thoughts. This cannot be the case.
If we are seeking Reality and Truth, then we must first discard the unreal and the false. For if we are clinging to our own unreal and false ideas about Reality and if we are holding fast to our own concepts about Truth, then we are looking to our own minds to reveal that Reality and that Truth to our consciousness. This can never be the case, for the human mind can only apprehend the Illusion. The human mind has no power to apprehend Reality. If Reality is being apprehended, then the human mind is no longer present. The ego-self likewise can only exist in a world of illusion. If, then, we enter the world of Truth, the self no longer exists. Since both the mind and the self are no longer present when Reality is apprehended, then they certainly cannot be the vehicles for apprehending them. We cannot expect our minds to encompass the Kingdom of God, nor our self to enter it, for that Kingdom is of an entirely different order of things. It is of a different Universe altogether, where the separated self and its mind cannot exist.
But people continue to use their minds to search for Reality and Truth. This search all too often leads not to God's Eternal Kingdom, but to Lucifer's illusory labyrinth. The mind is given a multitude of ideas to ponder, a mountain of words the plow through, and an endless stream of impressions. There are indeed enough books, teachers, and teachings in the world to last anyone ten thousand years of study. Many people are never able to find their way out of this maze of materials, and they spend a lifetime trying to encompass it all. But the Truth is simple. And the Path to Truth is a simple one as well. "Initiation is simplification" says the Master Djwhal Khul, and this small, simple thought is unfortunately mostly ignored by those people who are seeking Truth in the maze of materials out on the spiritual circuit today.
So when we encounter complexity, intricacy of thought, and technicality of material, know that while the material may be valid and useful, it is not the knowledge that leads us straight to God. At best, that knowledge is there for those who are not really ready for an uncompromising search for Truth. It is there to assist those minds that fail to grasp the need to let go of everything and seek humbly for the Divine. It is present for those who are still on the path of separateness, and who have not yet awakened to the group life. It acts as a crutch for those who have not yet learned to walk on the Path of Spirit's guidance. At the worst, and all too often, that knowledge is there to mislead, deceive, and confuse the mind so that the gates of the prison house of self may be locked ever more tightly.
Likewise when we encounter the various systems of spiritual development, meditation, initiation, and ritual, we are still looking at the outer and not at the inner, the form instead of the Spirit, and the illusion instead of the Reality. For there is nothing simpler nor more powerful than the method of surrender to God.
And know that when we see any written or spoken teaching, however wise it may be, however great an initiate said it, and however exalted a consciousness it may represent, it is still not Reality. It is still not Truth. It is still not God. For Reality, Truth, and God can only really be discerned in the Wisdom of the heart. They cannot be found anywhere else.