161. Any advancing voyager towards the Light who wishes to prepare himself for being receptive to that great Light must therefore fully understand that the fundamental factor in the development of any human being is his own actual experience of happiness and sorrow, of the pleasant and the unpleasant, and that any indirect or theoretical influence can only be a subsidiary factor, which furthermore has to be of a closely related nature to that individual's own direct experience of life if, indeed, he is to understand it in any way. So, if one wishes to influence other people with one's own concept and knowledge of life, first of all one must carefully make sure that this influence is only exercised towards those with an interest in it, and having an attitude of enjoyment from it, because in all other types of people it will create disharmony, for they will have no ability to want it, understand it or grasp it. This will very easily create intolerance or anger in such people, and a further irrefutable proof that one has been "casting pearls before swine". And if this situation then gives rise to anger or indignation on one's own part towards those people, one is indeed contributing to the creation of an atmosphere so cloudy and impure around the very light which one would have liked to shed, that it becomes subject to an eclipse, more or less approaching a total state, all depending on the greater or lesser strength of that indignation. And in such a case one has gained exactly the opposite of what one intended.
      With regard to influencing other people by one's own knowledge, great consideration, thought and care should be exercised, and also a completely voluntary response must be present in the people one intends to influence, and this is regardless of how high-minded and how much in harmony with the Truth one's own knowledge and ideas may happen to be.