It is not the custom of a true master to accept personal students externally and formally from among those who apply for the first time, but only from those who have been in touch with him for some years at least and hence have had sufficient time to make sure that this is really the teacher they want. Such a teacher would not desire and ought not to accept those pupils who do not belong to his orbit by inward affinity. He would be foolish to accept a candidate whose true call is with some other teacher, unwise to permit a passing enthusiasm to waste his own time and disappoint the enthusiast's hopes. It is easy in transient moods of enthusiasm to make a mistake in this matter and to find that he is not, after all, the kind of man they originally believed him to be or the kind of teacher that best suits them. So for their sake no less than his, it is better to look elsewhere unless they have the patience to wait a few years before making such a firm and final decision. For every teacher will naturally possess his own notion of the qualifications for discipleship which he values most and seeks most. He always places more stress upon deep loyalty than upon any other virtue. He would not even mind so much that his students should drink alcoholic liquor to excess as that they would fail him in this regard. Fidelity is the finest of virtues in his eyes. Disciples who lack this will soon be dropped. But if he asks for loyalty he does not ask for slavishness. He will be perfectly satisfied to be taken for an ordinary mortal without being turned into a perfect, unerring god. He is the last man to wish to be set up for what he is not. Nor will he demand from anyone that blind servility which does duty with most aspirants in place of the genuine loyalty that ought to be offered. Externally and formally, however, there is nothing to stop anyone meanwhile from appointing himself, if he so wishes, a student--mentally, secretly, and internally. For discipleship is self-created by the mental attitude of devotion which by reaction spontaneously brings him interior help. He will not then really need the external signs of acceptance.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 6 : Student-Teacher > # 609
