Vivekananda Mailing List-9/14/03

[Guest guest]

The sine qua non of acquiring spiritual truth for one's self or for

imparting it to others is the purity of heart and soul. A vision of God

or a glimpse of the beyond never comes until the soul is pure. Hence

with the teacher of religion we must see first what he is , and then

what he says. He must be perfectly pure, and then alone comes the value

of his words, because he is only then the true " transmitter " . What can

he transmit if he has not spiritual power in himself? There must be the

worthy vibration of spirituality in the mind of the teacher, so that it

may be sympathetically conveyed to the mind of the taught. The function

of the teacher is indeed an affair of the transference of something,

and not one of mere stimulation of the existing intellectual or other

faculties in the taught. Something real and appreciable as an influence

comes from the teacher and goes to the taught. Therefore the teacher

must be pure.