True Teaching comes from beyond Personality. It is not of this
world. Yet it gives life to this world, and inspiration. Teaching
is the inward soul of a culture, and that culture--embracing
language, art, philosophy science, government--is its physical
manifestation, or body. As there are bodies without souls, so
there are movements and cultures that have persisted, or
degenerated, although their native Teaching has disappeared. But
you will not find a living well of esoteric teaching devoid of
its culture, as you will not a soul without a housing. There are
ghosts, and there are relics of esotericism; and those who in the
name of a spiritual quest pursue the collection of these scraps
of antiquities, or embers of a fire long extinguished, are akin
to those who summon poltergeists. It is necromancy, not the
pursuit of the inner life.

Eastward, Ho!

There is a tradition that the movement of esotericism has been
from east to west, as the sun-path. So that the spiritual light
of man has been kindled in the Orient, and been passed on, now
brightly, now hidden, toward the Occident. And if we count
Egyptian mysticism and Greek mysteries as belonging to the
Levant, or Eastern Mediterranean, we can see that the world
religions have had their birth in Asia. And their spread, for the
most part, has been westward. (I am thinking of Christianity,
Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism; Islam has spread almost
equally in all directions from the Arabian peninsula.)

With this established orientation, it has been customary for the
Western seeker-after-Truth to return to the East for the source
of esoteric ideas. There, amid authentic squalor, at the feet of
a sufi or a swami, and only there, can he get the genuine
article--so goeth the legend. In these latter days, of course, it
has been carried a further step: the "Masters" have come West, in
ever greater numbers, bringing with them their authentic squalor
and micro-habitats, pitching their tents along the great caravan
routes of the West--near airports, media-rich cities, trendy
resorts. The Western seeker need no longer traipse the bazaars of
Samarkand in search of a wizened horse trader with a cloudy eye
and a ruby in his ear-lobe. He may consult the Internet instead.

The Prodigal Pilgrim

But the convenience factor does not really alter the basic
problem, which is incompatibility. In the considered words of
Lawrence of Arabia: "A man who gives himself to he a possession
of aliens leads a Yahoo life... he is giving away his own
environment: pretending to theirs; and pretenses are hollow,
worthless things.... Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly
might he be converted to another faith...." (Seven Pillars of
Wisdom)

Incompatibility is not a small thing. An insistence on Oriental
inspiration is not esotericism, but exoticism. And it invariably
involves the seeker in massive rejection of himself, his family,
his environment and allegiances--all factors which are there to
be used in his spiritual growth.

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Some Thoughts on Esotericism