Profoundly interesting is this world-tragedy of conflict to those who see in it a necessary preparation, a clearing of the ground, for the coming of … - Annie Besant

Those who have in any sense realised that God is around them, in them, and in everything, will be able to understand how a place or an object may become "sacred" by a slight objectivisation of this perennial universal Presence, so that those become able to sense Him who do not normally feel His omnipresence... This is the rationale of places of pilgrimage, of temporary retreats into seclusion; the man turns inward to seek the God within him, and is aided by the atmosphere created by thousands of others, who before him have sought the same in the same place....The effect produced will, of course, vary with the relative strengths of the vibrations... the laws of vibration are the same in the higher worlds as in the physical, and thought vibrations are the expression of real energies.

If glancing back to the history of the past, you are able to see there something of the promise of the future; if you realize something of the changing world around you, the physical earth showing signs of alteration; if you see the beginnings of the new type, of the new sub-race; if you understand something of the problems around us and the hopelessness of trying to solve them along lines previously used; if you realize the growing expectation, the looking for the coming of One to lead and to guide, and then you realize that while He is preparing for His coming, His children are preparing to welcome Him and are getting ready to march under His banner and to carry out His will; then I think that... to some of us, there will rise up the hope, nay, the certainty, that we are on the eve of mighty changes to be carried out under a World Teacher, Who shall come to our help. Who shall act as our Guide; and as that thought grows strong in your hearts, life will grow full of hope, full of joyful expectation.

His fervent devotion and a gravity beyond his years led his parents to dedicate him to the religious and ascetic life, and soon after a visit to Jerusalem, in which the extraordinary intelligence and eagerness for knowledge of the youth were shown in his seeking of the doctors in the Temple, he was sent to be trained in an Essene community in the southern Judæan desert. When he had reached the age of nineteen he went on to the Essene monastery near Mount Serbal, a monastery which was much visited by learned men travelling from Persia and India to Egypt, and where a magnificent library of occult works—many of them Indian of the Trans-Himâlayan regions—had been established. p. 131