With the adepts is a book written by Franz
Hartman in the year 1910. It was actually
written from notes passed down to him from
a friend; about his experiences on the astral
plane.
In the book the protagonist(whose remains
unnamed); travels to the spriritual land of the
Adepts. An adept is a spiritually developed
man; or on rare ocassions woman; that expresses powers and qualities that makes
him/her far more developed than the average human being.
In the book they discuss; a lot of things.

They are not limited to; but Include:
1) What is man?
2) The path to spiritual progress
3) The greatest obstacles to man's spiritual
progress.
4) Some Spiritual laws.
5) How to fix some of the problems that
plagues today's society.

The wisdom contained in this book is
valuable now; as it was a 100 years ago.

Link to download pdf file: https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/ebooks1/franz-hartmann/with-the-adepts/with-the-adepts.pdf

Some excerpts from the book:

As the present civilisation now stands, there
are two methods adopted for the education of the people. One is by means
of what is called Science, the other by means of what is called Religion. As far
as science is concerned, her deductions and speculations are based upon
observation and logic. Her logic may be good enough; but her powers of
observation, upon which the fundamentals of her logic rest, are restricted to
her very imperfect faculties of sensual perception, and therefore your
science is based entirely upon external illusions, and is consequently a
superficial and illusive science. Knowledge of the inner life of nature is far
more important than the study of external phenomena.

"The power of the imagination is yet too little known to mankind, else they
would better beware of what they think. If a man thinks a good or an evil
thought, that thought calls into existence a corresponding form or power
within the sphere of his mind, which may assume density and become living,
and continue to live long after the physical body of the man who created it
has died. It will accompany his soul after death, because the creations are
attracted to their creator."

Every thought calls into existence the
form or power of which we think; but these things have no life until life is
infused into them by the Will. If they do not receive life from the Will, they
are like shadows and soon fade away. If this were not the case, men could
never read of a crime without mentally committing it, and thereby creating
most vicious Elementals. You may imagine evil deeds of all kinds; but, unless
you have a desire to perform them, the creations of your imagination obtain
no life. But if you desire to perform them, if your will is so evil that you
would be willing to perform them if you had the external means to do so,
then it may perhaps be as bad for you as if you had actually committed
them, and you create thereby a living although invisible power of evil. It is
the Will which endows the creations of imagination with life,
because Will and Life are fundamentally identical."

"Thus intellectual man, growing up protected by fashion and friends in a
school, college, university, or perhaps within the walls of the convent, finds
himself isolated from contrary influences and meets with but little
resistance. Crowded together with those who think like him, he lives and
thinks like the others. Over their heads waves the banner of some accepted
authority, and upon that banner are inscribed certain dogmas in which they
believe without ever daring to doubt their veracity. There they grow,
throwing upon each other the shadow of their ignorance, and each prevents
the others from seeing the sunlight of truth. There they cram their brains
with authorised opinions, learning details of our illusory life which they
mistake for the real existence; they become top-heavy, for all the energy
which they receive from the universal fountain of life goes to supply the
brain; the soul is left without supply; the strength of character, of which the
heart is the seat, suffers; the intellect is overfed and the spirit is starved.
Thus they may grow up and become proud of their knowledge; but perhaps
some day new and strange ideas appear on the mental horizon, a wind
begins to blow, and down tumbles the banner upon which their dogmas
have been inscribed, and their pride tumbles down with it.

"What the disciple ought to seek is to strengthen his character, which constitutes his real individuality; keeping it always in harmony with the law of divine wisdom and love. A man without strength of character is without true individuality, without self-reliance, moved only by the emotions which arise in his mind and which belong to powers foreign to his divine nature. "Only after the attainment of a certain state of maturity, life in a solitude, isolated from contrary influences, becomes desirable and useful, and those who retire from the world as long as they need the world are attempting to ascend to the kingdom of heaven by beginning at the top of the ladder. Let him who needs the world remain in the world. The greater the temptations are by which he is surrounded, the greater will be his strength if he successfully resists. Only he who can control his mind and within his own mental sphere create the conditions which his spirit requires, is independent of all external conditions and free. He who cannot evolve a world within his own soul needs the external world to evolve his soul.

Unspiritual men, therefore, who retire from the world because they are
afraid of the world, cannot be considered to be heroes who have renounced
the world; they deserve rather to be regarded as cowards who have
deserted their ranks at the beginning of the battle with life. Such people
sometimes retire into convents for the purpose of having a comfortable life,and in addition to that a ticket to heaven. They imagine they do a service to
God by leading a harmless and useless life; for which imaginary service they
expect to obtain a reward at the end of life. But the reward which they will
receive will also exist merely in their imagination. As the sensualist wastes
his time in the prosecution of useless pleasures, so the bigot wastes his time
in useless ceremonies and prayers. The actions of the former are instigated
by a desire for sensual pleasure in this life, those of the latter by the hope
for pleasure in another life; both are acting for the purpose of gratifying
their own selfish desires. I am unable to see any essential difference
between the motives and morals of the two.

The great bulk of those things which are
said to be the necessities of life are only artificially created necessities, and
millions of people lived and attained old age long before many of the things
which our modern civilisation considers as absolutely necessary had been
discovered or invented. The term 'necessity' has a relative meaning; and to a
king a dozen of palaces, to a nobleman a carriage and four, may appear as much a necessity as to a beggar a bottle of whisky, or to a fashionable man a
new swallowtail coat. To get rid at once of all such fancied necessities and
the trouble which is imposed upon us to attain them, the shortest and
surest way is to rise above such necessities and to consider them not to be
necessary at all. Then a great amount of our energy would become free, and
might be employed for the acquisition of that which is really necessary,
because it is eternal and permanent, while that which serves merely
temporal purposes ends in time.

The majority of evil-doers do
evil, not for the love of evil, but for the purpose of attaining some selfish
purpose. The villains who are on the road to Black Magic do evil because
they love it, in the same sense as those who are on the road to true
adeptship perform good merely because they love good. But whether man
performs good or evil acts, a constant or frequent repetition of such acts
causes him finally to perform them instinctively, and thus his own nature
becomes gradually either identified with good or with evil. He who merely
tortures a fly for the sake of torturing it, and because he is pleased to do so,
is farther progressed on the road to villainy and absolute evil with
consequent destruction, than he who murders a man because he imagines it
to be necessary for his own protection that he should murder him.

What will it serve you, if your head is full of speculations about the details
of the phenomenal illusions of life, and you become a senile slowpoke in your
old age? What will it serve you, roaming about the world and gratifying your
curiosity in regard to its details, when, after that world has vanished, they
for ever disappear from your memory? Perhaps it would be better for the
learned if they knew less of scientific theories and had more soul knowledge. It would be better if they had fewer theories and more
experience. If they were to employ, for instance, some of their time and
energy for the development of the spiritual power of clairvoyance, instead
of spending it to find out the habits of some species of African monkey, they
would fare better by it. If they were to obtain the power to heal the sick by
the touch of their hands, instead of seeking new methods to poison
humanity by inoculations of injurious substances, humanity would be the
gainer. There are thousands of people who work hard all their lives, without
accomplishing anything which is really useful or enduring. There are
thousands who labour intellectually or mechanically to perform work which
had better be left undone. There are vastly more people engaged in
undermining and destroying the health of man than in curing his ills, more
engaged in teaching error than in teaching the truth, more trying to find
that which is worthless than that which is of value; they live in dreams and
their dreams will vanish; they run after money, and the money will remain
while they themselves perish and die.

"The obstacles which arise from the external world are intimately connected with those from the inner world, and cannot be separated; because external temptations create inward desires, and inward desires call for external means for gratification. There are many people who do not crave for the illusions of life, but who have not the strength to resist them; they have a desire to develop spiritually and to gain immortality, but employ all of their time and energy for the attainment of worthless things, instead of using it to dive down into the depths of the soul to search for the priceless pearl of wisdom. Thousands of people have not the moral courage to break loose from social customs, ridiculous habits, and foolish usages, which they inwardly abhor, but to which they nevertheless submit because they are customs and habits to act against which is considered to be a social crime. Thus thousands sacrifice their immortality to the stupid goddess of fashion.

Who dares to break loose from the bondage imposed upon him by the
fashion which at present dominates religious thought? Who has the courage
to incur the sneers of the slowpoke, the ridicule of the ignorant, the laughter
of the fool, and gain thereby a light of whose existence those who live in
eternal darkness know nothing? The vast majority of people drown the voice
of reason and dance with the fool. Rather than have their vanity suffer, they
allow the spirit to starve; rather than be crucified and rise into immortal life,
they submit to the galling chain; they lose their appreciation of liberty, and,
becoming used to their chains, begin to love them and impose them upon
others.

The continual rush after more money, more comfort, more pleasure, after
we already possess all we require, which characterises our present
civilisation, is not necessarily a sign of viciousness and moral depravity; but it
is rather caused by the instinctive impulse, inherent in the constitution of
man, to reach some higher and better condition, which expresses itself on
the mundane plane. Man intuitively knows that, no matter how rich in
money or fame he may be, he has not yet reached a state in which he will be
contented to rest; he knows that he must still keep on striving for
something, but he does not know what that something is. Not knowing the
higher life, he strives for more of those things which the lower life affords.
Thus we may see a bug or a butterfly falling into a lake, and in its vain efforts
to save itself from drowning swimming away from the shore, because it
does not know in which direction the means for salvation exist. The curse of
the world and the root of all evil is ignorance. The curse of man is his
ignorance of his higher nature and final destiny, and the efforts of a true
system of religion and science ought to be above all to remove this
stupidity.

It is idle for the priests to assert that they can forgive sins, or that sins can
be forgiven through them. If they do not possess any spiritual powers, we
cannot believe that they are able to communicate them to others; and if
they convey such powers to others, where are their effects to be seen? Do
the ignorant become wise after having been baptized with water? Do those
who have submitted to the ceremony of confirmation obtain firmness of
faith? Does the sinner become innocent after having the load taken off from
his conscience by means of absolution? Can our clergymen change the laws
of nature? Can they by any external ceremony cause the growth of an inner principle? or does he who enters a church an animal, come out an animal
still?

How can any one be a true spiritual guide who has no spiritual powers, and
who, perhaps, does not even know that such powers exist? What would you
think of a surgeon who knew nothing whatever of anatomy? what of a
physician who did not know his patient? what of a blind painter, a deaf
musician, an slowpoke mathematician? What shall we think of a physician of
the soul who knows nothing at all about the soul or its attributes, who has
never seen it, and is merely of the opinion that it exists? Have we not a right
to doubt the usefulness of such a physician, and exclaim with Shakespeare--
"Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it"?

If we only look at the mysteries of nature by the light of wisdom, with which each human being, except an idiot, has been endowed by nature at the time of his birth. But if in the place of the sun of divine wisdom, the artificial candlelight of false logic, sophistry, and speculation has been lit by irrational education, man steps out of his natural state and becomes unnatural. The images of the eternal truths--which were mirrored in his mind while he was a child and innocent, and not sufficiently intellectually developed to understand them--become, by the time that his intellect is developed, so distorted and perverted by prejudices and misconceptions that their original forms are no more recognisable, and, instead of seeing the real, man only sees the hallucinations which his fancy has created."