If you wish, call it self-making--this process of using one's own mental powers, one's own emotional energies, to actualize the new being that is his best self. It does not seek like a mendicant for free transformation by another person, a guru. It makes use of the highest kind of imagination, a deeply relaxed suggestive visualization. Whatever is called for to bring on enlightenment exists within himself already, but it is latent and undeveloped. By study, exercise, and practice the aspirant can be his own teacher. Sooner or later he will have to take this work into his own hands. The notion that someone else can or will do it all for him is delusory, the belief that a guru can absolve his duty is adolescent wishful thinking. If the result is to have any lasting value, it must be self-wrought or in the end the aspirant will have to start again, use this approach, and throw away the negative thought that he is helpless without someone else who must be sought and found. The kind of teacher who is really useful will put no emphasis upon himself but upon the aspirant's own work, and then see him at intervals only. Once the materials needed are pointed out, the student should teach himself; and this he can do only through self-practice.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 6 : Student-Teacher > # 722
