“Often,” he says, “what we take from the spirit world is only a reflection of what lies inside ourselves.”

As reported by Quoteinvestigator on January 11, 2011 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/01/11/what-lies-within/ the quote appeared in “Meditations in Wall Street” (1940) by Wall Street trader Henry Stanley Haskins, "a Wall Street trader with a checkered background. The phrase was misattributed because the true author's name was initially withheld. In addition, the assignment of the maxim to a more prestigious individual, e.g., Emerson or Thoreau, made it more attractive and more believable as a nugget of wisdom." Emerson made a number of similar statements — in "The American Scholar," for example, he says "Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds" — which probably increased the likelihood of misattribution.
Misattributed
Variant: What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Variant: What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

[2005, The Transfiguration of Man, World Wisdom, 109, 978-0-94153219-8]
Spiritual path, Wisdom

Pearls of Wisdom

Source: The Little Man in The Tower

Source: A Voice in the Wind

Source: The Subtle Knife

Joyzelle, Act i, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin