I see sev­er­al tasks before me, all of which can be traced back to one or two. In the course of life a great many occu­pa­tions arise, mostly owing to the mirage of illu­sion. These occu­pa­tions are fleet­ing, their res­ults slight, their worth in hap­pi­ness like­wise, and in most cases they pro­duce more reac­tions than they dis­solve. In other words, these deeds go on weav­ing the net of illu­sion and sam­sara.

The first task, then, is becom­ing con­scious. We may call this the first or less­er mys­tery: when, instead of facing out­ward, one changes dir­ec­tion and begins to look inward as well. This change of dir­ec­tion is vir­tu­ally the first step. True, accord­ing to the secret teach­ings, in fash­ion­ing the body the Lord bored the open­ings of the senses out­ward, and so man looks out­ward, towards the outer world, but there he sees illu­sion. That is why the change of dir­ec­tion is needed.

In the second, or great­er, mys­tery one advances in the newly chosen dir­ec­tion, now inward and spir­itu­al. This is the plane of spir­itu­al prac­tices, where attach­ments, undesir­able errors, wrong deeds and their reac­tions, sins and the obstacles on the path of spir­itu­al growth slowly peel away – and he draws near­er to his spir­itu­al goals. This is the level at which he is trans­muted from seeker into prac­ti­tion­er – which is very import­ant!

These two sequences of events, how­ever, unfold on one and the same plane: it is as if one, bal­an­cing on the edge of a disc, did not choose the depths of illu­sion, in which case he would fall from the disc, but turned from the rim towards the centre and then began to advance. He moves on one and the same plane, but the third or final mys­tery is when, hav­ing reached the centre of his own exist­ence, he begins to rise and, instead of mov­ing hori­zont­ally as before, moves ver­tic­ally upward. This we may call a truly spir­itu­al break­through. Puri­fic­a­tion of con­scious­ness, enlight­en­ment, sal­va­tion – it may be called by many names.

Prac­tising these three mys­ter­ies is salut­ary for every­one. Per­haps we can sum up this move­ment in the word real­isa­tion. In Hun­gari­an it does not sound beau­ti­ful, yet per­haps it best con­veys that there exists a high­er, truer real­ity, and that real­ising it, recog­nising it and com­plet­ing the path of spir­itu­al growth is a real task before us.

And those who med­it­ate on the secret of the uni­verse exper­i­ence three things: suf­fer­ings and bonds are dis­pelled, in grow­ing still­ness the bliss of exist­ence becomes open to exper­i­ence, and at last they may rejoice in the soul, etern­ally exist­ing, con­scious and full of delight.

These three exper­i­ences embody the levels above: the start­ing point is the eas­ing of man's bur­dens – suf­fer­ings and faults – which par­al­lels the change of dir­ec­tion, then come inner peace and silence, the res­ult of a spir­itu­al pro­cess rightly prac­tised, and finally he comes to exper­i­ence blessed spir­itu­al hap­pi­ness. This is the con­quest of tran­si­ence, the true spir­itu­al hori­zon set against the tragedy of a uni­verse bound for anni­hil­a­tion.

Bey­ond this per­son­al pro­cess of spir­itu­al growth, or along­side it, there exists ser­vice to the com­munity, bene­vol­ence towards oth­ers, the fur­ther­ing of human­ity's wel­fare. Per­son­al enlight­en­ment is good for the one who attains it, good for those who live around him and for the uni­verse, but it is good for the Abso­lute too. These noble tasks mean much to every­one – med­it­ate on them! Find the envir­on­ment that most spurs you on to spir­itu­al growth, that makes tran­scend­ence palp­able. The ulti­mate things are simple, and we can grasp them not so much with our reas­on as with a subtle inner fac­ulty.