the Gates. But only those who desire to go
that way read the meaning hidden within the
words. Scholars, or rather scholiasts, read the
sacred books of different nations, the poetry
and the philosophy left by enlightened minds,
and find in it all the merest materiality.
Imagination glorifying legends of nature, or
exaggerating the psychic possibilities of man,
explains to them all that they find in the Bibles
of humanity.

What is to be found within the words of
those books is to be found in each one of us;
and it is impossible to find in literature or
through any channel of thought that which
does not exist in the man who studies. This
is of course an evident fact known to all real
students. But it has to be especially remembered
in reference to this profound and obscure
subject, as men so readily believe that nothing
can exist for others where they themselves find
emptiness.

One thing is soon perceived by the man
who reads: those who have gone before have
not found that the Gates of Gold lead to
oblivion. On the contrary, sensation becomes
real for the first time when that threshold is
crossed. But it is of a new order, an order
unknown to us now, and by us impossible to