"No," he replied. "What you see, once you begin seeing in this way, you will never forget. You will know what you are and where you are going. You will be like a rock -- you will know where you stand."

And a month later in one of his group discourses, he said:

"When the eyes are turned inward in full consciousness -- which cannot be done mechanically, but which is done in less than a second by the Master -- the third eye opens, and you see the inmost Self of all. This is insight. This is illumination."

And Lao-Tzu, speaking of this state in the Tao-Teh-King, says, according to Dwight Goddard's translation:

"If, in our practice of concentration, our heavenly eye is suddenly opened and we gain enlightenment, thenceforth we shall be free from lust and greed."

In the meantime, Baba had asked us each to write an account of our life with him, from the beginning to the present time. As I did this, the memory of many wonderful experiences with and through him was evoked. The combination of the old and new had a curious, overwhelming effect upon me. With all these experiences, all this internal help, this guidance, this inspiration, I should, I felt, by this time have become a saint. Instead, I was proud, austere, impatient, easily irritated. What was the good of ecstatic experience, if, the very next day, I was to become impatient over a trifle? Why should Baba, when he gave us our instructions in meditation, have stressed vision and audition, when what we needed was the elimination of desire and self-interest?

A few days later I awoke from a short nap in the mid-afternoon with a great key. I give it as it wrote itself that day:

"The chief obstacle to attainment -- the one stumbling-block that persists until the very moment that the goal is reached, and from which all other barriers derive -- is the thirst for sensation. Fundamentally, the thirst for sensation is a desire for change. Either, as was the case before our original manifestation, we have no sensation whatever, but desire to experience sensation; or, as is the case now, we experience sensation, but desire different sensations.

"For example, we are now in India in the midst of a tropical summer. Our bodies are not used to the intense heat. We desire cooler weather. Then the monsoon comes -- cool, but with strong winds, heavy rains, clouded skies. For a time, we are refreshed -- but, if the clouds persist, we become depressed; if the winds sweep everything before them, we become flustered; if the rains beat down upon us, we become uncomfortable. We wish it would clear. Whatever comes, we desire something else. Constantly, we desire change.

"The immediate remedy for this is not to desire changelessness, but to accept whatever changes may come and not to desire others. Then we shall enjoy what comes, yet not become involved in it. We shall be free from all desire, because we are free from the desire for change, which is the root of all desire.

"We shall have established an inner changelessness in the midst of outer change; we shall have attained to that calm steadfastness, that equality of mind and soul to all things and under all circumstances, that detachment from the results of action, that impersonal enjoyment, which bestow real freedom, even in the midst of manifestation."

This was something fundamental, practicable, true. I determined to apply it. I had done it before, to be sure, as far back as 1926, when, in an attempt to be conscious of the presence of God within myself and everything I contacted, I was made to realize that the chief barrier to such consciousness was our constant, unwitting attempt to make God over into what we thought He ought to be, instead of accepting Him as He chose to manifest Himself to us. We tried to make Him fit into the molds which our preconceived ideas of the nature of God had established in our minds. But God was infinite -- He would not be bound by molds. He was beyond what we call good and evil, yet both were His instruments. We must learn to recognize Him in and through and back of everything.

There was another experience of this character -- a profoundly beautiful one -- which came to me in 1929. I was having great difficulties in connection with the North Node Book Shop, which, though constantly and apparently miraculously maintained since 1923, was never self-supporting, and always, financially in a critical condition. It