Lester reflected on that. "What do you mean by co-operation?"
"Trust, in the first place—till trust becomes knowledge."
"But if this intelligence knows already what I need—?"
"It will do the wise thing, only you won't be associated with it. What you want is the association, to have your part. You don't get your part, you don't have the association, because you isolate yourself. Your mind is closed to the powers and activities that are all about you. When you understand what they are you will have your share in them."
"But why should my mind be closed if yours is open?"
"It's a matter of habit. We go on here from the very point at which we left off there. I had the habit already. Our life at Oberammergau bred it into one. You didn't have it. Your thoughts were limited to a physical world and a physical body and a physical way of doing everything. Now you have it all to learn, very much as you had in your physical childhood."
"Then I'm not being punished for my sins?"
He asked the question in some uneasiness.
"You are. Don't you see? The punishment is that you're not more advanced. You've been like the idle boy in school; and now you find it hard to catch up. If it were not for the great thing you've done you'd be farther behind than you are."
"The great thing I've done? I don't understand you."