People have become used to working superficially, and now it is very difficult to make them understand what mental work is and that it offers extraordinary possibilities not found in any other activity. Let us take an image: when minerals are mined, look at how many tons of minerals have to be extracted from the earth to obtain a certain amount of metal – gold, silver, iron or copper! What is left is the gangue, which is thrown out. Similarly, several tons of rose petals have to be distilled to obtain a few pints of rose essence, and one pint of this essence is so precious it is worth a fortune.

Why am I giving you these images? To make you understand that the work people do generally consists in shifting tons of gangue, the coarsest material, whereas thinking allows one to extract its quintessence. So long as you do not know how to work with your mind to control your energies and direct them towards higher realms, whatever you may acquire will simply be like truckloads of minerals, and these will be a burden to you until you learn to extract their quintessence.