Don't imagine for one moment that you have to go to the Himalayas to find the inner vision; or that you will obtain the key to the Hidden Mysteries by shutting yourself in a monastery. Wherever you are, you must lose sight of yourself. Not the higher Self of Reality, but the lesser self of the carnal, or sense-conscious plane--the personality that conceals _you_. And above all, you are not to regard this personality as an enemy to be scourged and beaten and reviled. It is, or it should be, a willing, and helpful servant of your soul even as we say "the hand is the servant of the brain." If your hand becomes unruly and does not obey your brain, train it to do so, don't cut it off, even though the Bible does appear to tell you to--why should the men who wrote in that far-off time know more of Truth than we of a later century? You may imagine that you need to belong to some "Brotherhood," in order to learn the secrets of alchemical transmutation. There is nothing of the Great Wisdom which can be taught you, which you cannot learn of yourself if you will look within and unite with the heart of the world. There is no wisdom higher than love; and there is no power greater than love; and there is no heaven happier than love and there is no God holier than love. If you will take this for your creed you will readily see that it is for you to think love into those things that appear to lack it; think purity into those things that appear impure; think unity into those things that appear separated; and taking the lesson home to your own intimate conduct of life, invest the expression of your sex with the pure and lofty and holy power God gave to it, or refrain from the thought of sex until you can learn to do so. Says a modern writer: "If you are still so out of tune with the Infinite as to harbor any thought of evil or shame in connection with the specialized organs and functions of sex, let this illumination from on high cast that devil out of your cosmos forever. And if you turn away with soul offended from even 'the slimy gendering of the toad,' you dishonor God who once knew no higher creative formula and still blesses it with His fruitful presence." And finally do not make the too common mistake of confounding brazenness with freedom from shame and self-condemnation. Whatever of beauty and purity and joy has come to you in this life has come because of the divinity of Sex. If you have been wise enough to know this, and have reverenced it and purified your mind in respect to that function of your being, you will not cheapen it by parading the subject before those who have no idealism, any more than you would "cast pearls before swine;" you will not countenance jokes and ribald songs; you will not indulge in promiscuousness; but instead you will fold it within the sacred intimacy of your heart's divine altar, as something too beautiful, too holy for the garish light of the un-tender day.