If he is still alive, the personal help of a master is certainly valuable. If he is not, his spirit is too remote from the physical world to be helpful to the ordinary aspirant in any other than a general impersonal way. His influence is then carried by writings left behind, by the thought-forms he left during his lifetime in the mental atmosphere here, and by the few disciples closest to him in the inner sense. Otherwise, only an advanced yogi, able to raise his consciousness by meditation to the same plane as the master's, could get any contact at all. It is as necessary to his disciples that he leave them deprived of his guidance as well as of the consolation of his presence as it was earlier necessary for them to have them while he was still on earth. After all, it is their own Overself that they are seeking. They must begin to seek it just where it is--within themselves and not in someone else. The time has then come when, if they are to grow at all, they must cease drawing on his light and strength and begin drawing on their own. The very hour of his departure from them is appointed in their destiny by the infinite intelligence, which has sufficient reasons for making it then, and not earlier or later. If they must henceforth strive for direct touch with the Infinite and no longer lean on the encouragement of an intermediary, this is because they are at the stage to make better progress that way, whatever their personal emotions may argue to the contrary.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 6 : Student-Teacher > # 855
