"In claiming the Power of Speech, as it is called, the Neophyte cries out to The Great One who stands foremost in the Ray of Knowledge on which he has entered, to give him guidance.
When he does this, his voice is hurled back by the power he has approached, and echoes down to the deep recesses of human ignorance.
In some confused and blurred manner the news that there is Knowledge and a Beneficent Power which teaches is carried to as many men as will listen to it.
No disciple can cross the threshold without communicating this news, and placing it on record in some fashion or other.
He stands horror-struck at the imperfect and unprepared manner in which he has done this; and then comes the desire to do it well, and with the desire thus to help others comes the power.
For it is a pure desire, this which comes upon him; he can gain no credit, no glory, no personal reward by fulfilling it.
And therefore he obtains The Power to fulfil it.
The history of the whole past, so far as we can trace it, shows very plainly that there is neither credit, glory, nor reward to be gained by this first task which is given to the Neophyte.
Mystics have always been sneered at, and seers disbelieved; those who have had the added power of intellect have left for posterity their written record, which to most men appears unmeaning and visionary, even when the authors have the advantage of speaking from a far-off past.
The disciple who undertakes the task, secretly hoping for fame or success, to appear as a teacher and apostle before the world, fails even before his task is attempted, and his hidden hypocrisy poisons his own soul, and the souls of those he touches.
He is secretly worshiping himself, and this idolatrous practice must bring its own reward. "
" What more natural than that the hard-drinking poet should find in Adolf Hitler the very man he was looking for? He became a close adviser to the rising young man in the German Workers’ Party, lending him books, helping to improve his German – both written and spoken – and introducing him to his wide circle of friends, which included not only certain wealthy persons who were induced to contribute to the party’s funds and Hitler’s living but such future aides as Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler’s admiration for Eckart never flagged, and the last sentence of Mein Kampf is an expression of gratitude to this erratic mentor: He was, says Hitler in concluding his book, ”one of the best, who devoted his life to the awakening of our people, in his writings and his thoughts and finally in his deeds.”79
Such was the weird assortment of misfits who founded National Socialism, who unknowingly began to shape a movement which in thirteen years would sweep the country, the strongest in Europe, and bring to Germany its Third Reich. The confused locksmith Drexler provided the kernel, the drunken poet Eckart some of the ”spiritual” foundation, the economic crank Feder what passed as an ideology, the homosexual Roehm the support of the Army and the war veterans, but it was now the former tramp, Adolf Hitler, not quite thirty-one and utterly unknown, who took the lead in building up what had been no more than a back-room debating society into what would soon become a formidable political party.
All the ideas which had been bubbling in his mind since the lonesome days of hunger in Vienna now found an outlet, and an inner energy which had not been observable in his make-up burst forth. He prodded his timid committee into organizing bigger meetings. He personally typed out and distributed invitations. Later he recalled how once, after he had distributed eighty of these, ”we sat waiting for the masses who were expected to appear. An hour late, the ’chairman’ had to open the ’meeting.’ We were again seven, the old seven.”80 But he was not to be discouraged. He increased the number of invitations by having them mimeographed.
He collected a few marks to insert a notice of a meeting in a local newspaper. ”The success,” he says, ”was positively amazing. One hundred and eleven people were present.” Hitler was to make his first ”public” speech, following the main address by a ”Munich professor.”
Harrer, nominal head of the party, objected. ”This gentleman, who was certainly otherwise honest,” Hitler relates, ”just happened to be convinced that I might be capable of doing certain things, but not of speaking.
I spoke for thirty minutes, and what before I had simply felt within me, without in any way knowing it, was now proved by reality:
"I could speak!”
Hitler claims the audience was ”electrified” by his oratory and its enthusiasm proved by donations of three hundred marks, which temporarily relieved the party of its financial worries. "
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