It is a common practice for aspirants to mistake their emotional extravanganzas and mental projections--however noble they appear to be--for glimpses of the infinite reality. It is a common error for them to take the creations of their own thought and the suggestions of other minds for genuine mystic revelations. For the path of meditation is beset with hosts of long-nurtured notions which reappear in mystic visions and oracular messages as though they were independent and separate visitants from outside. It is also beset with influences drawn from past reading or authoritarian dogmas which mislead the mind or play queer tricks upon it. The average mystic is easily deluded by the masks which vanity, desire, or egoism assumes. Too quickly does he believe that he is God-guided; too readily does he imagine that great angels or noted Masters are hovering around to display supernatural visions; too willingly does he go astray in the mist of illusion which always hangs dangerously near the credulous, the inexperienced, and the unphilosophical.
-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives > Chapter 2 : Phases of Mystical Development > # 11
