p140- 'Now for the first time I understood  Pistorius and was able to reconstruct in my mind the whole dream that he had sat himself to fulfill. He had wanted to be a priest, to announce the new religion, provide new forms for the movement, serve it with love and devotion and create a series of new symbols. But it was beyond his power to do so; this could never be his function. He lingered too much in the past, his knowledge of ancient ways was too precise; he knew too much Egypt, India, Mithras and Abraxas. His love was bound up with symbols that the world had already seen and in his heart of hearts he realized that the new must be really new and different and must spring up from new soil and not be created from meseums and libraries. Perhaps his function was to help to lead men to themselves - as he had done in my case - not to provide them with the yet unspoken message and their new gods.'

p142  - "You know that I wished to become a priest.  Above all I wanted to be the priest of the new religion of which you and I have so  many presentiments.  That role can  never be mine.  I know  it and I have known  it for a long time without wholly admitting it to myself. I now intend to undertake another kind of priestly service - perhaps on  the organ,  perhaps some  other way. But I must always have things around me that I find beautiful and sacred - organ music and mystery, symbol and myth. I need those and cannot renounce them. That is my weakness. For often  enough, Sinclair,  I know  that I ought not to have desires of this kind, that they are luxury and weakness. It would be larger minded and juster if I put myself quite unreservedly at the disposal of fate. But that I cannot do; it is the only thing I cannot do. But perhaps you can. It is difficult; it is the only really difficult thing there is. I have often dreamed of doing so; but I cannot; I am afraid. I am not capable of standing so naked and alone; I am a poor weak dog who needs warmth and food and likes the comfort of his fellow creatures near him. The man who really wants nothing beyond his destiny no longer has his neighbours beside him; he stands quite alone and has nothing but the cold world around him. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane."

p160 - 'But here was love and soul, this was the home of dream and legend. And yet we lived in no way cut off from the outside world; we often lived in the midst of it in our thoughts and discussions but on different ground. We were not divided off from  the majority of men by boundaries, but by another kind of vision. It was our function to represent an island in the world, a kind of prototype perhaps, to proclaim  in  our lives new potentialities  by our way of  living. I,  who had been a solitary so long,  learned  about the companionship which is possible  between human beings  who have tasted utter and complete  loneliness. I no longer hankered after the tables of the fortunate nor the feats of the  blessed.  I was no  longer affected by envy or  nostalgia, when I watched the community life of others. And slowly I was initiated into the secret of those who bear the 'sign' on  their brow.
   We who bore the 'sign' might rightly be considered odd by the World, even mad and dangerous. We were 'Awake' or 'Awakening' and our striving was directed at an ever-increasing  wakefulness, whereas the striving  and  quest for  happiness  of the rest was aimed at identifying their thoughts,  ideals, duties, their lives and fortunes  more  and  more  closely with  that of the herd.  That too was power and greatness. But whereas we in our conception, represented the will of nature to renew itself to individualize and march forward, the others lived for the perpetuation of things as they are.  For them humanity - which they loved as we did - was something complete that must be maintained and protected. For us humanity was a distant goal towards which we were marching, whose image no one yet know, whose laws were nowhere written  down.'