'“When the disciple is ready, the master is there, for the readiness is within ourselves and the mastery is within ourselves.” When we have reached a point where we deserve the next step, it is always conveyed to us, usually by an archetypal symbol, sometimes by a new point of view. We have read the sacred text a thousand times, we have examined the learned work a hundred times, but suddenly, as we go through one of these works for the hundredth and first time, the meaning dawns upon us, and the dawning of the meaning is what Boehme called the Aurora, or the sunrise, The dawning of the meaning is the reward to the individual of having brought the experiment to the next degree below that which the dawning represents. When he has reached the point where the dawning must be next, it comes; and this is the crown of the adept in alchemy. He then possesses the secret and by extension can use this secret in whatever manner he sees fit; but before he has achieved it he has seen what fitness is, and would be incapable by his own integrity of misusing or corrupting or compromising the wisdom which he has received.'
Excerpted from "The Alchemist's Primer: Fundamentals of Esoteric Transformation" 2009 The Philosophical Research Society
