I AM THAT I AM :
"A man cannot feel what is most valuable in the system unless he is disappointed in what he has been doing, disappointed in what he has been searching for. If he is a scientist he should be disappointed in his science. If he is a religious man he should be disappointed in his religion. If he is a philosopher he should be disappointed in philosophy. If he is a theosophist he should be disappointed in theosophy. If he is an occultist he should be disappointed in occultism. And so on.
But you must understand what this means. I say for instance that a religious man should be disappointed in religion. This does not mean that he should lose his faith. On the contrary, it means being 'disappointed' in the teaching and the methods only, realizing that the religious teaching he knows is not enough for him, can lead him nowhere. All religious teachings, excepting of course the completely degenerated religions of savages and the invented religions and sects of modern times, consist of two parts, the visible and the hidden. To be disappointed in religion means being disappointed in the visible, and to feel the necessity for finding the hidden and unknown part of religion.
To be disappointed in science does not mean losing interest in knowledge It means being convinced that the usual scientific methods are not only useless but lead to the construction of absurd and self contradictory theories, and, having become convinced of this, to begin to search for others. To be disappointed in philosophy means being convinced that ordinary philosophy is merely pouring from one empty vessel into another, and that people do not even know what philosophy means although true philosophy also can and should exist. To be disappointed in occultism does not mean losing faith in the miraculous, it is merely being convinced that ordinary, accessible, and even advertised occultism, under whatever name it may pass, is simply charlatanism and self deception and that, although somewhere something does exist, everything that man knows or is able to learn in the ordinary way is not what he needs."
P. D. Oupensky, In Search Of The Miraculous
2026-10-22 22:02:53