The main aim of the spiritual master is not in the visible results of his external activity but the invisible reality of his internal holiness. Being is more important than doing. There are far more men who place more emphasis on external activities than on the internal attitude, hardly comprehending that the internal attitude is more important.
Social activity has no autonomous value in itself if it does not spring from the mystical attitude of man. It doesn't matter what man does or says - what matters is what man is. All deeds may be good and praiseworthy, but if they are not the spontaneous manifestation of the internal attitude, are worthless!
There are two very serious dangers in external activities when dissociated from internal reality:
1. These activities give the author false security, creating self-sufficiency in the face of the results obtained, preventing it from going beyond what it has already accomplished, or thinks accomplished. This self-delusion and sufficiency are the greatest spiritual disaster for a man who is externally active and internally passive because they bring him into an area of spiritual stagnation. Woe to the spiritual master fully satisfied with its external deeds! The only factor that can prelude its redemption is deep dissatisfaction with itself. Incomparably more important than the glorious deeds on the horizontal level is the intensification of the vertical being. There is little point in doing, saying and having in the world of quantitative objects, if in the world of the qualitative subject there is no profound being.
2. That this master thinks it influences its disciples with what it does and says when it is impossible to promote the true conversion of another person if the master itself is not a genuine and authentic convert, or someone intimately in union with God. Only my being can influence the being of others; but if my being is weak, it cannot give strength to the weak. Only a powerful positive can act on negatives; if the master is not 100% positive, due to an intense and profound experience of God, it will not be able to exert real influence over other negatives.
The disciples can admire and applaud the master; but they will not feel strong enough to abandon the world of their moral miseries and enter the world of virtue and holiness, because they do not see that world made concrete in the master. And even in the favourable case that they judged that the divine world is realized in it, they would not be converted to God, because it is not appearances that act, but reality, a reality that, in this case, would be absent from the master. It can say to them with great eloquence that the world of the spirit is grand and beautiful, and, at best, they will believe those words - but from believing to being, goes a great distance. Believing is a distant and vague theory - being is a close and concrete reality. The transition from believing to being is difficult, and if the disciple does not see this being realized in the master, it will not be converted because it does not see the master converted!
The converted master is the one who can truly say: “I and the Father are one ... It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”.
The words of a false master can give some light to the disciples; but strength is lacking, which does not come from words, but from the spiritual reality of the master, in which the “Word” has become flesh and dwells substantially in it, “full of grace and truth”.
There is a reality infinitely more important than any external deed - it is the Christlike realization of the master, for whom the deeds are as a means to a certain end. The external activity must be a spontaneous overflow of the inner plenitude. If that plenitude does not exist, what overflows? Any emptiness camouflaged in its plenitude or a lie presented as being true? ... A fire painted on a painter's canvas does not provide light or heat - whereas the smallest portion of real fire can set fires and illuminate entire worlds.
It matters little what a man says, does or has - it matters what he is. What he is, refers to the quality of his inner Self - what he says, does or has, refers to the quantities of his external ego.
The social charity produces much - but only spiritual Love realizes man.
Wherever there is a man fully realized in Love, there will be great deeds, fruitful and beneficial; but where there is no realization through Love, but only charity, there will be noisy external deeds, which, however good they may be, will be in danger of collapse and disintegration, due to the lack of the quality of what is sacred and which dwells in man.
It matters little what man does in the external world of objects - what matters is what he does in himself. Single self-realization surpasses all external realizations.
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