There are some assumptions and presumptions which necessarily attend upon the divine speculation, to which each seeker is inevitably drawn. All search is a struggle to arise from the false to the real. No struggle is possible unless the seeker has some initial idea, right or wrong, about the real. Further, the false cannot eternally take its stand upon the false and patently and wantonly cling to itself and remain itself endlessly. Thus arises the imperative need to visualize Truth, to take one’s stand on this imagined or perceived Truth, and to act as if one has realized this cherished goal of search. This also implies a belief that one has realized it although, again and again, one will be rudely shaken out of this belief by having to face the unchallengeable facts that overtake one in one’s imaginative race.
A sincere belief, no matter how false, does not chain the seeker irredeemably, because he is open to correction. However, the person who knowingly and deliberately plays a false role is pretentiously airing claims for which he has no authority. He is inviting a spiritual doom for himself by yielding to patent illicitness. He embraces his boastful jingoism in order to exploit the simple credulity of others. The first person sincerely, albeit falsely, believes in his own spiritual credentials. The other fraudulently and knowingly poses as what he inwardly knows himself not to be — far from veritable truth. The difference is tremendous. The former is confirming in perceived Truth, whereas the latter is confirming his being in perceived falseness.
The conscious impostor in spiritual jingoism therefore condemns himself to a self-created shadowy destiny of piling sins, quite apart from dragging all the other credulous souls into the slippery quagmire of his own creation. He is spiritually burying himself and all who, in their childlike simplicity, have loved him and put their faith in him. The jingo invites this doom upon himself and others who have loved him; he cannot escape it except through an act of special grace from some Perfect Master. The most tragic fact in the situation is that the impostor does not deserve such grace, which alone can save him.
-Beams, p53