but whether this effort of mine will really be
any interpretation I cannot say. To a deaf
and dumb man, a truth is made no more intelligible
if, in order to make it so, some misguided
linguist translates the words in which
it is couched into every living or dead language,
and shouts these different phrases in his ear.
But for those who are not deaf and dumb one
language is generally easier than the rest; and
it is to such as these I address myself.

The very first aphorisms of "Light on the
Path," included under Number I, have, I know
well, remained sealed as to their inner meaning
to many who have otherwise followed the purpose
of the book.

There are four proven and certain truths
with regard to the entrance to occultism. The
Gates of Gold bar that threshold; yet there are
some who pass those gates and discover the
sublime and illimitable beyond. In the far
spaces of Time all will pass those gates. But
I am one who wish that Time, the great deluder,
were not so over-masterful. To those
who know and love him I have no word to
say; but to the others--and there are not so
very few as some may fancy--to whom the
passage of Time is as the stroke of a sledge-hammer,
and the sense of Space like the bars