He named what his whole teaching rests on, and it is less mystical than you might expect.

The Alpha and the Omega, he said, is the ability to hold the mind steady and to set your will over it. At the base of his teaching sit three words, and he leaned on each one as he said it. Persistence. Duration. Discipline. And with them, as he put it specifically, the conscious use of the word NO against the sirens of this world.

Without discipline and persistence, he told me, reaching any goal is impossible from the outset, and that is true of anything a person takes up, not only of philosophical systems. The higher the aim you set, the more discipline and patience and persistence it will ask of you.

He gave the method as plainly. The first move in the struggle is deep study: know every element of the habit, or the passion, you mean to be rid of. Then dissolve each part of it, steadily, patiently, and without mercy.

And he grieved over what people choose instead.