A letter from PB to PB: (excerpt 1) It is not the tyranny of the ego which is to be removed most of all—although that is a necessary part of the Great Work—nor is it that the ego must be uprooted and killed forever—although its old self must surrender to the new person it has to become. No—let it live and attend to its daily work but only as a purified being, an ennobled character or quietened mind, an enlightened man—in short, a new ego representing what is best in the human creature. He will still be an "I" but one that is in harmony with the Overself—a descriptive name that ought to be kept and not discarded. So do not in your writings attack the ego as so many do, but lift it up to the highest possibility.

Overview of the Quest > Overview of the Quest > Overview of the Quest

#1E – 2.1.0.1

BN – ZEL1/2 – DEK

A letter from PB to PB: (excerpt 2) The teachers increase daily and ask others to follow them. The teachings multiply and the books about them too. They are not your concern. Let them do their very much needed work. But you are to enter a new and different rhythm and tell such as will listen that they need not be forlorn, lost, or without hope because they find none to appeal to their heart or mind. They are asked only to follow the God within themselves, for "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you". PB give this message while giving all proper respect and honour to the teachers of today and yesterday. Those who feel alone in this matter or who can only walk outside the groups on an independent path should be reminded that there is a God within them who can guide and help them if they turn to him.

Overview of the Quest > Overview of the Quest > Overview of the Quest

#1E – 2.1.0.1

B_07 – ZEL2/2 – DEK

The Quest not only begins in the heart but also ends there too.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#2 – 2.1.1.1

B_04 – Z

Between the ordinary man who takes himself as he is, and the philosopher who does exactly the same, there stands the Quester. In the first case, outlook is narrow, being limited by attending to the inescapable necessities and demands of day-to-day living. In the other case, peace of mind has been established, the thirst for knowledge fulfilled, the discipline of self-realized. In between these two, the Quester is not satisfied with himself, has a strong wish to become a better and more enlightened man. He tries to exercise his will in the struggle for realization of his ideal.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#5 – 2.1.1.4

B_04 – P – D

If the Infinite Being is trying to express its own nature within the limitations of this earth—and therefore trying to express itself through us, too—it is our highest duty to search for and cultivate our diviner attributes. Only in this way do we really fulfil ourselves. This search and this cultivation constitute the Quest.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#7 – 2.1.1.6

B_04 – Z – DM*

It offers a conception of life which originates on a higher level.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#8 – 2.1.1.7

BN – X – DK

The inner meaning of life does not readily reveal itself; it must be searched for. Such a search is the Quest.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#11 – 2.1.1.10

B_04 – P – DK

The quest we teach is no less than a quest for knowledge in completeness and a search for awareness of this Universal Self, a vast undertaking to which all men are committed whether they are aware of it or not.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#15 – 2.1.1.14

B_04 – P – D

The Quest is simply the attempt of a few pioneer men to become aware of their spiritual selves as all men are already aware of their physical selves.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#20 – 2.1.1.19

B_01 – ZZZ – DK

It is a quest to become conscious of Consciousness, to explore the "I" and penetrate the mystery of its knowing power.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#21 – 2.1.1.20

B_04 – P – D

The secret path is an attempt to establish a perfect and conscious relation between the human mind and that divinity which is its source.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#22 – 2.1.1.21

BA11 – P – D

When a man passes from the self-seeking motives of the multitude to the Overself-seeking aspirations of the Quest, he passes to conscious co-operation with the Divine World-Idea.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#23 – 2.1.1.22

B_04 – P – D

The very idea of a quest involves a passage, a definite movement from one place to another. Here, of course, the passage is really from one state to another. It is a holy journey, so he who is engaged on it is truly a pilgrim. And as on many journeys, difficulties, fatigues, obstacles, delays, and allurements may be encountered on the way, yes! And here there will certainly be dangers, pitfalls, oppositions, and enmities too. His intuition and reason, his books and friends, his experience and earnestness will constitute themselves as his guide upon it. There is another special feature to be noted about it. It is a homeward journey. The Father is waiting for his child. The Father will receive, feed, and bless him.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#26 – 2.1.1.25

B_04 – ZZZ – D

It is [the Quest] a brave struggle for freedom, a noble refusal to be the ego's puppet or the animal-self's victim, a fine resolve to win strength from weakness.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#29 – 2.1.1.28

B_04 – P – D

Many aspirants wrongly believe the quest to be a movement from one psychic experience to another or from one mystical ecstasy to another. But in fact it is a movement in character from animality to purity, from egoism to impersonality.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#32 – 2.1.1.31

B_04 – P – D

Many aspirants wrongly believe the quest to be a movement from one psychic experience to another or from one mystical ecstasy to another. But in fact it is a movement in character from animality to purity, from egoism to impersonality.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#32 – 2.1.1.31

UR_3.2 – ZZZ – DK

The Quest teaches a man the art of dying to the animalistic and egoistic elements in himself. But it does not stop with these negative results. It trains him also in the art of re-creating himself by the light of the ideal.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#33 – 2.1.1.32

B_04 – P – D

The worldling seeks to enjoy himself. Do not think that the truly spiritual man does not seek to enjoy himself too. The difference is that he does it in a better way, a wiser way.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#36 – 2.1.1.35

BN – Z – D

Here is a goal for men and women which can bring them the fulfilment of their best purposes, the happiness of being set free from their inward bondages, and the calmness of knowing their own soul.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#37 – 2.1.1.36

BN – X – D

The Quest is a veritable re-education of the self, leading in its turn to a noble transcendence of the self.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#38 – 2.1.1.37

BA11 – P – D

What is the hidden metaphysical meaning of the Quest? It is that the infinite self in man finds that it cannot achieve adequate self-expression in the finite and imperfect life of the world. The ego may try as it will, do what it may, but the bliss, wisdom, serenity, and perfection that are the natural attributes of the Overself, in the end elude its every move. There is ultimately no alternative except to let go of searching and grasping the outer world, and retreat within. There, deep inside its own being the journey to enduring satisfaction will thenceforth be. This is the Quest leading to discovery of Overself.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#40 – 2.1.1.39

B_04 – P – D

The quest means disciplined emotions and disciplined living, sustained aspiration and nurtured intuition.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#48 – 2.1.1.47

B_04 – P – D

There is another kind of exploration than that which traverses deserts, penetrates jungles, climbs mountains, and crosses continents. It seeks out the mysterious hinterlands of the human mind, scales the highest reaches of human consciousness, and then returns to report routes and discoveries, describe the goals to others so that they also may find their way thereto if they wish.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#51 – 2.1.1.50

BN – X – D

The high teachers of the human race have given us goals and taught us ways to approach them.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#60 – 2.1.1.59

BN – X – D

It is not a subject for academic students of technical metaphysics or for professional followers of institutional religion–although they are welcome to all that it has to give them, to the richer form and the inspired understanding of their own doctrine. No–it is primarily for the ordinary person who is willing to heed his intuitive feeling or who is willing to use his independent thinking power.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#61 – 2.1.1.60

BN – Z – K

Is the inner life irreconcilable with the world's life? Religio-mystical disciplines and practices are usually based on such a fundamental irreconcilability. Traditional teaching usually asserts it too. Yet if that be true, "Then," as Ramana Maharshi once sceptically said to me, "there is no hope for humanity."

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#64D – 2.1.1.63

BN – X – K

The Quest is not to be looked upon as something added to his life. Rather it is to be his life itself.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#72 – 2.1.1.71

B_04 – P – D

It is only the beginner who needs to think of the quest as separate from the common life, something special, aloof, apart. The more proficient knows that it must become the very channel for that life.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > General description

#76 – 2.1.1.75

B_04 – P – D

The quest is the most important adventure in human experience.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#78 – 2.1.1.77

BN – Z – DK

He who stands on the threshold of this Path is about to commence the last and greatest journey of all, one which he will continue to the end of his days. Once begun, there is no turning back or deserting it, except temporarily. And since it is the most important and most glorious activity ever undertaken, its rewards are commensurate.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#79 – 2.1.1.78

B_04 – P – D

The meaning and end of all such work is to arouse men to see certain truths: that the intuitive element is tremendously more important than the intellectual yet just as cultivable if pursued through meditation, that the mystical experience is the most valuable of all experience, and that the quest of the Overself is the most worthwhile endeavour open to human exertions.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#81 – 2.1.1.80

B_04 – ZZ – D

If there is anything worth studying by a human being, after the necessary preliminary studies of how to exist and survive in this world healthily and wisely, it is the study of man's own consciousness – not a cataloguing of the numerous thoughts that play within it, but a deep investigation of its nature in itself, its own unadulterated pure self.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#82 – 2.1.1.81

BN – X – D

In first, the discovery of the Overself, and second, the surrender to it, man fulfils the highest purpose of his life on this earth.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#84 – 2.1.1.83

BN – X – D

The businessman who does not know that the true business for which he was put on earth is to find the Overself, may make a fortune but will also squander away a lifetime. His work and mind have been left separate from his Overself's when they might have been kept in satisfying harmony with them.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#86 – 2.1.1.85

BN – X – D

Every man has another and veiled identity. Until he finds out this mystical self of his, he has failed to fulfil the higher mission of his existence.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#87 – 2.1.1.86

BN – X – D

Life offers man a variety of meanings, but in the end one meaning comes to the top of all the others and that is the meaning which shall reveal the truth about his relation to God.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#90 – 2.1.1.89

BN – X – D

When he sees life whole and therefore sees it right, he will understand why Jesus said, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you", and why, if he is to insist upon any single renovation in human life, it must be its own self-spiritualization. If he is to put emphasis anywhere, it must be upon the rediscovery of the divine purpose of his earthly life.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#91 – 2.1.1.90

B_11 – P – D

The old Sanskrit texts tell us of the “little purpose” of human life and of the “great purpose.” All know the one but few know the other; fewer still seek to realize it.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#92 – 2.1.1.91

BN – X – D

If men only knew how glorious, how rich, how satisfying this inner life really is, they would not hesitate for a moment to forsake all those things which bar their way to it.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#93 – 2.1.1.92

BN – X – D

We do not understand the depths of our own being, the mystery in which it is grounded. I speak for mankind in general, not for those few great ones who have banished illusion and ignorance.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#94 – 2.1.1.93

BN – ZZZ – DK

Socrates: "I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make your first and chief concern . . . for the highest welfare of your inner selves."

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#96 – 2.1.1.95

A241129 – P – DE

What grander ideal could a man have than to live continuously in the higher part of his being?

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#97 – 2.1.1.96

BN – X – D

That which really is, as opposed to that which appears to be, behind all the countless objects of this varied universe, is one alone, beginningless, endless, the source of all, the parent of the “I”-consciousness. This truth provides the final hope for man. Somewhere along his way he will discover it, act upon it, and be redeemed. This will be his last conversion, his final salvation, his best quest. Then only will the horrors he has contributed to the race's history begin to fade out. All else is utopian chimera based upon wishful thoughts and fanciful imaginations.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#98 – 2.1.1.97

UR_2.1 – ZZ – DEK

When men acquire proper values, whether by reflecting over their experience or by listening to their prophets, they will recognize this truth—that nothing really matters except the search for the Overself. If this calls for the giving up of earthly obstacles, then they are worth giving up for it.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#99 – 2.1.1.98

BN – ZZZ – DEK

This enterprise of the quest is the most serious in which a man can engage. We must treat it as such. But let this not cause anyone to lose the sense of humour.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#103 – 2.1.1.102

BA11 – P – D

This enterprise of the spiritual quest is the most serious in which a human being can engage. We must treat it as such. But let this not cause anyone to lose the sense of humour.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#103 – 2.1.1.102

B_01 – ZZZ – DK

The fact that so few have ventured on this quest offers no indication of what will happen in the future. If mankind could take any other way to its own self-fulfilment, this situation might remain. But there is no other way.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#105 – 2.1.1.104

B_04 – ZZZ – DK

It is not enough to know with the intellect that God is everywhere and everywhen. It is also necessary to establish a practical working connection with God, if we are to obtain the actual benefit of this knowledge. Moreover this, and this alone, will give absolute assurance.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#110 – 2.1.1.109

BN – Z – DK

He needs to recover his conscious relationship to the Overself: the subconscious one is never lost.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#111 – 2.1.1.110

B_13 – P – D

The vision of the world and the understanding of life which he receives from the lips or books of others will never be so true nor so real as that which he makes his own. What shall it profit a man if he hear a thousand lectures or read a thousand books but hath not found his Overself? The student must advance to the next step and seek to realize within his own experience that which is portrayed to him by his intellect. And this is possible only by his entry upon the Quest.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#112 – 2.1.1.111

B_04 – Z – DEMK

With every day that passes, a man makes his silent declaration of faith in the way he spends it. It is a poor declaration that modern man makes when he brushes aside all thought of prayer and meditation as something he has no time for.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#113 – 2.1.1.112

BN – X – D

The profound meaning of life is not put before our eyes. We have to dig for it with much patience and much perseverance.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#116 – 2.1.1.115

BN – X – D

The first duty of man, which takes precedence over all other duties, is to become conscious of his Overself. This is the highest duty and every other duty must bow before it. Even domestic happiness must not stand in the way of spiritual salvation when, and if, the two collide. The training which makes this possible may be largely unpracticable in his particular circumstances but it is never entirely so. The difficulty of performing this duty is not enough excuse to relieve him of it.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#118 – 2.1.1.117

BN – ZZ – DEK

What a man sees and thinks is only an awareness gleaned by the shallower part of himself. There is his deeper being—indeed, the term part is quite inapplicable here—his real essence, the greater Consciousness from which thoughts and emotions emerge for their limited lives. To find and know this is a duty to which he must one day come.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#119 – 2.1.1.118

BN – X – D

The search for truth becomes, for such a man, neither a spare-time hobby nor an intellectual curiosity, but a driving moral compulsion.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#120 – 2.1.1.119

BN – X – D

The more deeply we understand the nature of man, the more reliably shall we understand the duty of man.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#121 – 2.1.1.120

BN – X – D

Man can come into the personal knowledge that there is this unseen power out of which the whole universe is being derived, including himself. But neither the animal nor the plant can come into this knowledge. Here we see what evolution means and why it is necessary.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#126 – 2.1.1.125

BN – X – D

The most important questions which a man can ask himself—What he is and What he is here for—must be answered before his life finds its proper course. Otherwise, in the higher sense, he remains a mere animal.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#127 – 2.1.1.126

B_04 – P – DE

Every life in the fleshly body represents an opportunity to obtain spiritual realization. We can only discover our divinity to the fullest whilst in the waking state.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#129 – 2.1.1.128

BSG_4 – P – D

When a man comes to his real senses, he will recognize that he has only one problem: "How can I come into awareness of, and oneness with, my true being?" For it is to lead him to this final question that other questions and problems have staged the road of his whole life. This answered, the way to answer all the other ones which beset him, be they physical or financial, intellectual or familiar, will open up. Hence Jesus' statements: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you", and "To him that hath [enlightenment] shall be given [what he personally needs]".

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#131 – 2.1.1.130

B_11 – P – DE

Because we have lost our way, these truths are once again as fresh and significant and important as if they had never before been known to humanity.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#132 – 2.1.1.131

UR_5 – ZZZ – DK

The earlier the age at which a man begins these studies and practices the better for him. To be born into a family where they already prevail, is to have an exceedingly good destiny. But however late in life anyone comes to them, it is never too late. He will have to contend with set ways and fixed habits that will need changing, it is true.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#133 – 2.1.1.132

BN – ZZZ – DEK

It is not too late at any period of life, even in old age, to obtain a firm footing upon the spiritual path and gain its satisfying rewards.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#135 – 2.1.1.134

BN – X – D

In the end we all must turn to the inner Source of all our best human sources, to the Guru of all the gurus, to the Overself. Then why not now?

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#136 – 2.1.1.135

B_07 – P – D

NOW is the right moment to practise philosophy, to crush the ego, and to think positively.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#137 – 2.1.1.136

BN – X – D

So long as man does not know the most important part of himself and the best part of his possessions, so long will he remain the blind creator of his own miseries and the duped plaything of his own trivialities.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#141 – 2.1.1.140

BN – X – D

If we choose to be endlessly preoccupied with external matters, business, and pleasure, if we will not turn lovingly in the only direction to which we must turn if we are to behold our divine self, then it is useless to blame life, God, or luck for our unhappy blindness.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#142 – 2.1.1.141

B_01 – ZZZ – DK

Those who prefer their own ego's opinion to the Overself's impersonal intuitions, remain in the ego's darkness.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#143 – 2.1.1.142

UR_3.2 – ZZ – DK

What is the greatest need of man? I reply quite simply, Truth! For no other satisfaction will end his discontents.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#147 – 2.1.1.146

B_05 – ZZZ – K

The true mystic is always pleased to learn that an individual has started upon the spiritual quest in earnest. He knows that nothing else in life will yield such satisfaction, especially in these times of world crisis when the need for inner support is greater than ever before. There cannot be any true or lasting outward form of security today.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#149 – 2.1.1.148

BN – X – D

It is true that property, money, and possessions give most men a sense of security. But it depends on them and they bring anxieties, cares, even fears, along with their comfort and support. They still need to find or to add a personal security which is independent of these externals, which is 'personal'. This can come only from within. But it must be from a deeper level than their ordinary thoughts and emotions. They are too unstable, too subject to moods.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#151 – 2.1.1.150

BN – X – DEK

So long as a man is a stranger to his own divine soul, so long has he not even begun to live. All that he does is to exist. In this matter most men deceive themselves. For they take comfort in the thought that this attitude of indifference, being a common one, must also be a true one. They feel that they cannot go far wrong if they think and behave as so many other men think and behave. Such ideas are the grossest self-deceptions. When the hour of calamity comes, they find out how empty is this comfort, how isolated they really are in their spiritual helplessness.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#152 – 2.1.1.151

BN – Z – DEK

Millions of other humans came into the world and after a relatively short existence disappeared. He will be no exception: his turn to vanish will also come. Thought, confronted with this terrible fact, must either despair, take refuge in the hopes of religion, or resolve to find out the truth behind the tremendous cosmic drama.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#153 – 2.1.1.152

B_01 – ZZ – DK

It is better to accept the loneliness of the quester than the complacency of the worldling who lives without any understanding of life's inner purpose.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#154 – 2.1.1.153

B_04 – P – D

Men and women try various ways to overcome their innate loneliness and with various results in the end. So long as the expedient used is something or someone outside themselves, their victories turn out to be illusions. There is no final way other than the Way which everyone has had to tread at last who ever succeeded in this objective, and which leads inwards to the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#155 – 2.1.1.154

BN – Z – D

The response provoked in you by the entry of these ideas will determine your future.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#157 – 2.1.1.156

BN – X – D

We suffer from stagnation and imagine that existence in the intellect and body is enough; it is not. The primary emphasis must be laid on the living principle of our being, the central self which creates both body and intellect.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#158 – 2.1.1.157

BN – X – D

The making of money, the earning of a livelihood, and the attainment of professional or business success have their proper place in life and should be accorded it but—in comparison with the fulfilment of spiritual aspiration—ought to be regarded as having quite a secondary place.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#160 – 2.1.1.159

BN – X – D

The goals of progress are but imagined ones. There is only one goal which is undeniably real, completely certain, and authentically true—and that is an unchanging one, an eternal one. Yet it is also the one that has escaped mankind!

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#163 – 2.1.1.162

BN – X – D

Man as scientist has put under observation countless objects on earth, in sea and sky. He has thoroughly examined them. But man as man has put himself under a shallower observation. He has limited his scrutiny first to the body, second to what thinking can find. Yet a deeper level exists, where a deeper hidden self can be found.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#165 – 2.1.1.164

BA11 – ZZ – DK

He will discover that it is not enough to regard as good only that which is favourable to his physical life. He must complete the definition and sometimes even contradict it by adding that which is favourable to his spiritual life.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#166 – 2.1.1.165

BA12 – ZZ – DK

There is nothing more important in life than the Quest, and the time will come when the student discovers that there is nothing more enjoyable as well. This is inevitable in a Quest whose essential nature is one of infinite harmony and unbroken peace. No worldly object, person, or pleasure can ever bestow the satisfaction experienced in uniting with the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#167 – 2.1.1.166

B_04 – P – D

It is not the animal needs and their gratification but the realization of our divine possibilities which is the hidden justification of our presence in this world.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#168 – 2.1.1.167

BN – X – D

The ceaseless longing for personal happiness which exists in every human being is a right one, but is generally mistaken in the direction along which satisfaction is sought. For all outward objects and beings can yield only a transient and imperfect delight that can never be equivalent to the uninterrupted happiness of life in the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#169 – 2.1.1.168

BN – X – D

An existence which has no higher aims than purely physical ones, no nobler activities than merely personal ones, no inner reference to a spiritual purpose, has to depend only on its own small resources. It has failed to benefit by its connection with the power behind the universe.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#170 – 2.1.1.169

UR_2.1 – ZZ – DK

No one who ever gives the philosophic life a proper trial for a sufficient time is likely to desert it. Only the one who has never given it a fair trial, or who has failed to understand philosophy's real meaning, is ever likely to join the herd again and remain an unaspiring, insensitive, and prosaic creature.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#172 – 2.1.1.171

BN – Z – DEK

We are regarded as odd people because we trouble our heads with the search for an intangible reality. But it never occurs to our critics that it is much more odd that they should go on living without pausing to inquire if there be any purpose in life at all.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#175 – 2.1.1.174

B_01 – ZZZ – DK

A time comes in the intellectual growth of a man when he knows that he must put aside the trivialities of life and come to terms with the demands made upon him by his higher nature.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#176 – 2.1.1.175

BN – X – D

To put one's own purposes in harmony with the universe's purpose is the most sensible thing he can do. Therefore there is nothing unpractical, irrational, or eccentric in the Quest. Only the unthinking crowd, who suffer blindly and drift tragically, may believe so. No one who has felt the inner peace, received the deep wisdom, and touched the rocklike strength which mark the more advanced stages, could ever believe so.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#178 – 2.1.1.177

B_04 – P – DE

The moment we become convinced that the universal life has a higher purpose than the mere reproduction of the species, that moment our own individual life takes on a higher meaning, a glorious significance.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#179 – 2.1.1.178

BN – X – D

The importance of this work is ignored by most people and unknown to many people. They believe it to be the preoccupation of time-wasting dreamers or ill-adjusted neurotics. If they do not treat it with such indifference they treat it either with open abuse or with contemptuous indulgence. But if they could understand that it penetrates to the foundations of human living and affects the settlement of human problems, they might be less arrogant in their attitude towards it. It is not less important to the individual than to society at all times but immeasurably more so in these grave, critical times.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#185 – 2.1.1.184

BN – ZZ – DEK

The view that such an existence is selfish and unproductive, is a shallow one. It takes no account of the value of higher forces. For whoever, by this quest and practice, realizes the divine presence, does so not only for himself but for all others in that little part of the world confided to his care.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#188 – 2.1.1.187

BN – Z – DEK

All that really matters is how one lives one's life. But relative-plane activities do not constitute all there is to living. Consciousness rises from the plane behind the mind, and this region, like the outer world, needs to be explored with competent guides—its possibilities and benefits fully revealed by each individual for himself. Living will begin to achieve its own purpose when one's outer life becomes motivated, guided, and balanced by the fruits of one's inner findings.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#192 – 2.1.1.191

BA12 – P – D

All that really matters is how one lives one's life. But relative-plane activities do not constitute all there is to living. Consciousness rises from the plane behind the mind, and this region, like the outer world, needs to be explored with competent guides—its possibilities and benefits fully revealed by each individual for himself. Living will begin to achieve its own purpose when one's outer life becomes motivated, guided, and balanced by the fruits of one's inner findings.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#192 – 2.1.1.191

UR_2.1 – P – DMK

He is not only an actor giving a performance on the world-stage. He is also someone who must learn to live in the still centre of his being.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#195 – 2.1.1.194

BN – X – D

Our whole life on earth is in the end nothing else than a kind of preparation for this quest.

Overview of the Quest > What the Quest Is > Its importance and practicality

#198 – 2.1.1.197

B_04 – P – D

One thing that struck my mind forcibly on my return to the Western hemisphere after an absence of several years in the Orient, was the way we busied and over-busied ourselves, whether in work, pleasure, or movement. Few take life easily; most take it uneasily. Few go through its daily business serenely; most go through it nervously, hurriedly, and agitatedly. Our activities are so numerous they suffocate us. It is a life without emotional poise, bereft of intellectual perspective. We are intoxicated by action. We moderns give ourselves too much to activity and movement, too little to passivity and stillness. If we are to find a way out of the troubles which beset us, we must find a middle way between these two attitudes.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#201E – 2.1.2.1

B_08 – EL1/3 – DEK

The need of silence after noise, peace after feverishness, thought after activity, is wide and deep today. Amid all the nostrums and panaceas offered to humanity there is little evidence of the realization of this need.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#201E – 2.1.2.1

B_08 – EL2/3 – DEK

The conditions of modern civilized society are not helpful to mystical self-culture, although they will serve intellectual self-culture. What is first needed is a recognition of the value of retreat, of times and places where every man and woman may periodically and temporarily isolate himself or herself whilst withdrawing attention from worldly affairs and giving it wholly to spiritual ones. These words will make no appeal to the materialist mentality which still regards all spiritual experiences as the outcome of pathological conditions.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#201E – 2.1.2.1

B_08 – EL3/3 – DEK

What is the truest highest purpose of man's life? It is to be taken possession of by his higher self. His dissatisfactions are incurable by any other remedy. Spinoza saw and wrote that man's true happiness lay in drawing nearer to the Infinite Being. Sanatkumara, the Indian Sage, saw and taught, "That which is Infinity is indeed bliss; there can be no happiness in limited things."

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#201E – 2.1.2.1

BSG_4 – ZZ – DE

Such is the insecurity of the present-day world that the few who have found security are only the few who have found their own soul, and inner peace.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#201E – 2.1.2.1

BN – ZZ – DEK

I would be failing in a duty to those less fortunate if through fear of being thought a boaster I failed to state that my researches have led me to the certain discovery of the Soul.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#201E – 2.1.2.1

BA13 – ZZ – DEK

The formulation of this grand synthesis is my chosen mission, both as a researcher and a writer. I am neither the originator of this doctrine nor even its prophet. The first man who ventured into the unknown within-ness of the Universe and of himself was its originator whilst every man who has since voiced this discovery has been its prophet.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#201EM – 2.1.2.1

BA13 – ZZ – DEK

The day will come when science, waking more fully than it is now from its materialistic sleep, will confess humbly that the soul of man does really exist…

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#201E – 2.1.2.1

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

What is the truest highest purpose of human being’s life? It is to be taken possession of by our Higher Self. Our dissatisfactions are incurable by any other remedy.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#201E – 2.1.2.1

UR_1 – ZZZ – DEK3

Three happenings must show themselves: to be given 'direction', to feel an 'impulsion' towards it, and to practise 'purification' as a necessary requisite for the journey. Two warnings are needed here: fall not into the extreme of unbalance, and depend not on what is outside. One reminder: seek and submit to grace. It may be imageless or found anywhere anytime and in any form—a work of art, a piece of music, a living tree, or a human being—for in the end it must come from your own higher individuality and in your own loneliness.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#202 – 2.1.2.2

BN – X – D

Before embarking on this teaching, he should ask himself: "What attracts me most in this teaching? What do I hope to get out of it? Am I seeking religious satisfaction or metaphysical truth or moral power or inner peace or psychic faculties? Will I be satisfied with a theoretical understanding or would I go so far as to put it into practice? Am I willing to set aside a half hour daily for the exercise in meditation? How far do I wish to travel in the Quest of the Overself?"

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#203 – 2.1.2.3

B_04 – ZZ – K

In man, Heaven and Earth unite. He is free to enjoy the one or the other. The first leads to peace of mind, the second ties him to the ego's wheel. Whoever sincerely wants access to divinity may find it, but he must make the first move.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#217 – 2.1.2.17

BN – X – D

This search after the soul need not wait until death until it successfully ends. To do so would be illogical and in most cases futile. Here on earth and in this very lifetime the grand discovery may be made.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#222 – 2.1.2.22

BN – X – D

Is there some particular purpose in my birth here? Is it all mere coincidence? Must we doubt, deny, even reject God? These are some of the questions a thoughtful man might ask himself.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#225 – 2.1.2.25

B_04 – ZZ – DK

Those who feel an emptiness in their hearts despite worldly attainments and possessions may be unconsciously yearning for the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#228 – 2.1.2.28

BN – X – D

Can we build a bridge between this sorrowful earthly life and the peaceful eternal life? Are the two forever sundered? Every seer, sage, and saint answers the first question affirmatively and the second negatively.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#231 – 2.1.2.31

B_04 – P – D

It is better to come late to the higher life with its nobler values and uplifting practices, than not at all. It is still better to come to it when one is comparatively young and foundations are being laid.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#235 – 2.1.2.35

BN – ZZ – D

Those who have found their way to this Path leave forever behind them their aimless wanderings of the past.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#237 – 2.1.2.37

B_06 – P – D

We do not approach God through our knees, or through the whole body prostrate on the ground, but deep in our hearts. We do not feel God with our emotions any more than we know him with our thoughts. No! —we feel the divine presence in that profound unearthly stillness where neither the sounds of emotional clamour nor those of intellectual grinding can enter.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > General notes

#246 – 2.1.2.46

B_01 – ZZ – K1

Those whom life has wounded may turn to spiritual teachings for comfort, but too often this is only a passing reaction to sufferings. It has its temporary value and place, but it is not the same as consciously and clearly engaging in the Quest because the thirst for truth is predominant.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#254 – 2.1.2.54

B_01 – ZZZ – K

The qualifications required from him are love of the highest, desire for truth, conformity of living to the divine laws, and balance in his own person.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#260 – 2.1.2.60

BN – ZZ – DK

The seeker who has a strong yearning for Truth and who has a sense of correct values already possesses some of the indispensable qualifications for this path and should go far upon it. However, the will to continue despite all obstacles, together with a special kind of patience, is also essential—particularly in the earlier stages.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#261 – 2.1.2.61

B_05 – P – D

A mighty longing for liberation from one's present condition is a prerequisite for the philosophic quest.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#263 – 2.1.2.63

B_04 – P – D

To obtain something they greatly desire, men will arouse their will and apply it strongly. Only when sufficient experience of life matures them sufficiently are they likely to arouse and apply this same will to the Quest itself.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#265 – 2.1.2.65

B_04 – P – D

People are needed with intellectual acumen, with emotional control, with balanced reason, with loyalty to ideals and with sincerity and faithfulness in working for them. They are to be undeterred by criticism and unmoved by praise. And lastly, amid the arduous struggles of this quest, its soaring thoughts and serious comprehension of world-sorrows, a sense of humour is needed also.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#271 – 2.1.2.71

B_01 – ZZZ – K

That man is excellently qualified for philosophy who has a strong spirit for service, who is well-balanced emotionally, and who is well-equipped intellectually.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#275 – 2.1.2.75

BN – X – D

If the faculties of mind and the qualities of character which the successful man of affairs already possesses were to be transferred to the field of understanding and mastering life itself, he could quickly progress in it.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#277 – 2.1.2.77

BN – Z – K

If he is as determined as he is sincere, as unselfish as self-disciplined, as sensitive as intuitive, he may expect to go far on the quest.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#282 – 2.1.2.82

BN – X – D

In humility the quest is to be begun: in even greater humility it is to be fulfilled.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#283 – 2.1.2.83

B_04 – P – D

When these words awaken profound echoes in a man's soul, he shows thereby that the intuitive element is sufficiently alive to enable him to profit by further teaching.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#286 – 2.1.2.86

BN – X – D

They are welcome who are willing to equip themselves with proper and profounder knowledge, who wish to fit themselves by study of fundamental principles, by regular meditation, personal self-discipline, and public service for a higher life for themselves and a valuable one for society.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#288 – 2.1.2.88

BN – Z – D

The quest is unattractive to sinners and unnecessary to saints. It is for those who are not wholly indifferent to worldly desires nor yet too strongly attached to them.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#297 – 2.1.2.97

BN – X – D

Those who are satisfied with centering themselves within the ego will not be drawn to such teachings, which educate the pupils to cultivate constantly a withdrawal from the ego.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#305 – 2.1.2.105

B_02 – P – D

You have launched upon a quest from which there is no turning back. You have embarked upon a journey which will demand from you the utmost patience and deepest faith, the strongest determination and cultivation of the keenest intelligence lying latent within you.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#306 – 2.1.2.106

B_04 – P – D

He may ask himself whether he has any competence for such a great task. But this is to forget that he has been led to this point, to the quest, that the same higher self or power which out of its grace did this can lead him still farther.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#317 – 2.1.2.117

BN – Z – DM*

He who wants to co-operate with the World-Idea, which is inherent in all things, all beings, all the universe, to live in harmony with it and with his fellow-creatures, will be attracted to this quest sooner or later.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#318 – 2.1.2.118

BN – X – D

Whether he is able to follow regular periods of meditation or not, he may still have the basic essential for spiritual advancement. This is the fundamental mood of aspiration, a strong yearning to gain the consciousness of his innermost being.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#324 – 2.1.2.124

BN – X – D

The traveller on this quest is a man who uses his consciousness and his will to better his character and purify his heart.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#325 – 2.1.2.125

B_04 – P – D

When a man is ready to confess his ignorance, he is ready to begin his study of philosophy. When a man is ready to drop the distorting influence of the emotions and passions which actuate him, he is ready to begin the study of philosophy.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#329 – 2.1.2.129

B_02 – Z – K

Just because most people appear to have superficial interests and are not yet ready for the deeper thoughts of philosophy does not necessarily mean that they are not making spiritual progress. On the contrary, they may be doing very well on their own particular levels of development. It will simply be necessary for them to incarnate many more times before they are capable of understanding the more advanced truths.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#336 – 2.1.2.136

BN – Z – DK

No age is unsuited to the study and practice of philosophy. No one is too young to begin it, nor too late.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#338 – 2.1.2.138

BA11 – P – D

Does everyone have the right to know this truth? Yes and no. Yes—because all men must do so in the end as a part of the fulfilment of life's purpose. No—when they are as yet uninterested in it and unable or unwilling to receive it.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Qualifications

#349 – 2.1.2.149

B_05 – ZZZ – K

It is because we have the Overself ever present within us that we are ever engaged in searching for it. The feeling of its absence (from consciousness) is what drives us to this search. Through ignorance we interpret the feeling wrongly and search outside, among objects, places, persons, or even ideas.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#358 – 2.1.2.158

B_05 – P – D

Each man discovers afresh for himself this homey old truth, that he has a sacred soul. He need not wait for death to discover it or depend solely on the words of dead prophets until then.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#359 – 2.1.2.159

B_05 – P – D

There are reserves of Power and Intelligence within yourself, of which you live undreaming.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#361 – 2.1.2.161

BN – X – D

At intervals, on certain grave, joyous, or relaxed occasions, he may feel a deep nostalgia for what he may only dimly and vaguely comprehend. He may name it, in ignorance, otherwise but it will really be for his true spiritual source.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#363 – 2.1.2.163

BN – X – D

What a bitter irony it is that the soul, which is so near, in our very hearts in fact, is yet felt by so few!

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#364 – 2.1.2.164

BN – X – D

The heart leaps at the thought that life has some higher meaning, some better worth.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#366 – 2.1.2.166

BN – X – D

In starting this task, he knows that he is not carrying out his own personal desire but following a way chalked out for him by the higher self.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#368 – 2.1.2.168

BN – X – D

He is being called indeed, to die to his ego, to take the desires and passions, the greeds and hates out of his life, to learn the art of living in utter independence of externals and in utter dependence on the Overself. And this is that same call which Jesus uttered when he said: "He that loseth his life shall find it". Thus the sorrows of life on earth are but a transient means to an eternal end, a process through which we have to learn how to expand awareness from the person to the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#370E – 2.1.2.170

B_11 – EL1/1 – DE

If a man will not come to this quest willingly, because it leads to Truth and he loves Truth, then he must be forced onto it, unwillingly, because there is no other way to alleviate his burdens and reduce his miseries.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#371 – 2.1.2.171

B_04 – P – D

Most persons have no inclination to wake up when dreams are pleasant, whereas when they are frightening they soon awaken. So too the dream of worldly life does not impress them with the need of true religion until it becomes tragic or severely disappointing. Only when sorrow drives them to question the value of living do they take a real interest in non-worldly urges.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#372 – 2.1.2.172

B_04 – ZZZ – DK*

Certain events will so arrange themselves as to put a man upon the quest, or if he is already on it, to prepare him for a further advance. They will not be pleasant events, for they will crush his ego, or render it lame and weak for a time. But it is only through this apparent defeat by circumstances that he is compelled to accept a course which will, spiritually, benefit him greatly in the end.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#373 – 2.1.2.173

B_04 – Z – D

Do men's hearts have to be broken before they yield to the higher power? Often, yes, but not if they heed the teachers, prophets, seers, and sages.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#374 – 2.1.2.174

BN – X – D

Where a man is ready for this Quest but stubbornly clings to his old familiar way of thought and life, the Overself may or may not release karma that will tear him away from it. His ego's desires will then be macerated by suffering until its will to live gets weaker and weaker.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#375 – 2.1.2.175

B_04 – P – DE

A few come to this quest after the shock produced by the unreasonableness and unfairness and stupidity of the treatment they received from the organization, the group, the sect, the church, the party, to which they belonged. Some crisis in their lives, such as the need to get married or to get divorced, blocked by a solemn bleak dogma or decision, became the occasion of the shock. Or, as in Gandhi's case when he was thrown out of a railway compartment by an arrogant member of the ruling race, heartless discourtesy provoked swift disillusionment. A single jarring incident, a single deliberate injustice or hurt or insult was enough to bring on such resentment and indignation—penetrating as sharply as a hypodermic needle—that character change and a new outlook were inaugurated.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#376E – 2.1.2.176

B_04 – EL1/2

Some have even come to the quest not because they had any real vocation for it but because they had nowhere else to go, because the world had lost all meaning, all hope for them through some ghastly tragedy or some heartbreaking loss, and this was a better way than committing suicide. But the best way to come to the quest is of course to fulfil the higher possibilities as a human being.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#376E – 2.1.2.176

B_04 – EL2/2

Most persons need a drastic shock, an enforced awakening, a sharp arousal from that long sleep, which is the egoic existence, if they are ever to come alive spiritually. This is effective only if it breaks old habits, trends, and inclinations, thus making a new man. It may come about through hearing or reading a teacher, or through harsh events like malignant illness or unexpected bereavement.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#377 – 2.1.2.177

B_04 – P – DE

When a man comes to the point when all his outer life dissolves in tragedy or calamity, he comes also to the point when this Quest is all that is left to him. But he may not perceive this truth. He may miss his chance.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#378 – 2.1.2.178

B_04 – P – D

When one's personal life is miraculously saved during some period of great danger, perhaps in the face of death, it is for a purpose.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#380 – 2.1.2.180

BN – X – D

Before a man comes to this path he may have to grope and stumble and struggle for years.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#381 – 2.1.2.181

BN – X – D

If the man lets others draw him down below his own level, the emotion of remorse and disgust or the logic of suffering and self-preservation may force his return.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#382 – 2.1.2.182

BN – X – D

[The search for Truth] is for those who feel that their lives ought to hold something more than the mere gaining of material necessities or even the mere satisfying of intellectual urges.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#385 – 2.1.2.185

B_05 – P – D

When a man becomes tired of hearing someone else tell him that he has a soul, and sets out to gain firsthand experience of it for himself, he becomes a mystic. But, unfortunately, few men ever come to this point.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#387 – 2.1.2.187

BN – X – DEK1

Men will seek to feel the real life only after they have felt the uncertainties of human affection, the transiencies of human passion, and the insufficiencies of human activities.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#388 – 2.1.2.188

B_05 – ZZZ – DMK

To those who wish to escape from the pressures and tyrannies of contemporary materialism, philosophical mysticism offers the most effective way and the safest road. It seeks to understand the true relationship between the divine and the human. It will enable them to realize their spiritual potentialities. For materialism is and can be only a temporary phase of man's endeavour to comprehend the facts of life.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#389 – 2.1.2.189

BN – ZZ – DK

The presence of the Overself within us sooner or later, when the mind is sufficiently developed, creates of itself the craving for truth and the abstract questions about life, God, and man.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#390 – 2.1.2.190

B_05 – P – D

This knowledge that life in this world can never be fully satisfying makes him commit himself 'one day' to the quest.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#391 – 2.1.2.191

B_05 – P – DK

A time may come when a man may tire of the whole social round, the business or professional rat-race, and desire to turn away from it—when he begins to see through its futilities, vanities, and stupidities.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#394 – 2.1.2.194

BN – ZZ – DK

Those who seek a larger meaning to life cannot live like the peasant for bodily needs alone, or like the professional for bodily and cultural needs alone. Their feeling is still the profounder: a peace and harmony, an understanding and strength.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#402 – 2.1.2.202

BN – Z – K

We come to this Quest seeking something beyond the misery, wretchedness, and cruelty of this chaotic world, something of light, warmth, kindness, and peace.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#403 – 2.1.2.203

UR_1 – ZZZ – DK

The full-grown person finds in his experience of the world and in the knowledge of himself sufficient subject matter for thought about human affairs. He then asks questions, the great questions, which men have asked since earliest antiquity: What am I? Whither do I go?

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#409 – 2.1.2.209

BN – X – D

There are billions of forms and of creatures in the universes spread through space. They appear and vanish, they come and go, create and pass away, grow and decay, act and interact. This has been going on for immense periods of time; but in the thoughtful man's mind there must arise the question, 'To what end was is and shall be all this?'

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#411 – 2.1.2.211

UR_0 – ZZZ – DK

He may arrive at a true appraisal of life after he has experienced all that is worth experiencing. This is the longest and most painful way. Or he may arrive at it by listening to, and believing in, the teachings of spiritual seers. This is the shortest and easiest way. The attraction of the first way is so great, however, that it is generally the only way followed by humanity. Even when individuals take to the second way, they have mostly tried the other one in former births and have left it only because the pain proved too much for them.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#413 – 2.1.2.213

BN – X – DEK1

The hour comes when, prompted by disappointment, bereavement, or revelation, he is driven to find out the reasons for all his activities. He is beginning to feel their insufficiency, their shallowness. Such inquiry, if persisted in, will in the end put him upon the quest.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#418 – 2.1.2.218

B_05 – ZZZ – K

Awakening to the need of the Divine may come through some mental crisis or emotional shock which shakes the whole of man's being to its deepest foundations. It is out of the suffering and grief produced by such a situation that he plants the first trembling steps on the secret path. It is such outer torments of life that shatter inner resistance so that the need for spiritual help is acknowledged. And the more unsatisfactory outward life becomes, the more satisfactory does the blessed inward life seem both by contrast and in itself.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#419 – 2.1.2.219

B_05 – ZZZ – K

Before a man will undertake the moral purifications with which the quest must begin, and the mental trainings which must complement them, he must have some incentive to do so. Where will he find it? The answer is different with different men, since it depends on his stage of evolution, character, and destiny. If some find it in the sadness produced by world-weariness, others find it in the joy produced by a Glimpse. Still others are prompted by the hunger for Truth or by the thirst for self-improvement, or even blindly by the tendencies brought over from previous births.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#421 – 2.1.2.221

BN – X – D

If the teaching favourably commends itself to any individual from the first contact as being requisite to his needs, this is often a sign that he has followed it in earlier existences.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#424 – 2.1.2.224

BN – X – D

One disciple who picked up the Quest again in this life described it as a feeling of reunion, of coming home.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#425 – 2.1.2.225

BN – X – D

When he wakes up to the suspicion that the ordinary purposes of human life on earth hide other much more important ones, and that he will have to find them by himself, he may begin to seek out and study the teachings of those who have gone farther along this way.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#427 – 2.1.2.227

BN – X – D

It is not only those who have exhausted all their limited means of attaining happiness who turn away and come to this quest: there are others whose capacity for enjoyment still remains, but having had the experience of a single “glimpse” or understood the pointers given by inspired art, they are attracted towards living on a higher plane.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#441 – 2.1.2.241

BN – X – D

But where some turn away from the world for negative reasons because of their misery and disappointment, others come to the quest for positive reasons; they have sensed or suspected, felt, or been told of, a higher plane of existence: they respond to a divine call.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#442 – 2.1.2.242

BN – X – D

Deeper than all other desires is this need to gain consciousness of the Overself. Only it is unable to express itself directly at first, so it expresses itself in the only ways we permit it to—first the physical, then the emotional and intellectual quest of happiness.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#444 – 2.1.2.244

BN – X – D

The impulse which puts a man's feet on this path, is not always an explicable one. It is sometimes hard to say why he obeys it, when it will hinder his ego's natural cravings at the very start and lead to an unnatural self-effacement at the very end. All he knows is that something in him bids him begin the journey and keeps him on it despite its hurts to his pride, his passion, and his ego.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#445 – 2.1.2.245

BN – X – D

He can no more help being on the quest than he can help being on this earth. The hunger to know the inner mysteries of life, and the aspiration to experience the Soul's peace and love will not leave him alone. They are part of him, as hands or feet are parts of him.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#451 – 2.1.2.251

BN – X – D

It is natural and inevitable that, when ripened by experience, men should yearn to be united with their divine Source.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#452 – 2.1.2.252

BN – X – D

Through widely different kinds of external experience, the ego seeks but never finds enduring happiness. Discovering in the end that it is on a wrong road, it turns to internal experience.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#453 – 2.1.2.253

BN – X – D

The time will come when, under the pressure of the mysterious inner self, this quest will become the most important enterprise of his life.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#457 – 2.1.2.257

BA11 – P – D

Why are they seeking truth? Because they have at last become sensitive enough to respond to the existence of the diviner self within them, the Overself in which only Truth exists. The fact of its existence has pressed them subconsciously from within and finally provoked them into feeling a need to become aware of, and co–operative with, the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#458 – 2.1.2.258

B_05 – P – D

The urge to follow the Quest, the impulse to find the higher consciousness, comes from the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#463 – 2.1.2.263

BN – X – D

There is something within us which will not let us rest in what we are, which urges us to think of still higher possibilities.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#465 – 2.1.2.265

BN – X – D

This is the paradox that when you take the first step on this Quest, it is grace which impels you to do so. Yet you think and act as if you have never been granted the divine gift.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#466 – 2.1.2.266

BN – X – D

There comes a time when the unfulfilled possibilities of a man begin to haunt him, when his innermost conscience protests against the wastage of this reincarnation.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#467 – 2.1.2.267

BN – X – D

He must come for a while to the position that T.E. Lawrence of Arabia came to when he wrote: “The truth was I did not like the ‘myself’ I could see and hear.”

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#468 – 2.1.2.268

BN – X – DK

Too intelligent to accept the narrow short-sighted view of life, too idealistic to accept a merely animal satisfaction of desires, he needs guidance. This is what the quest is for.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#471 – 2.1.2.271

BN – X – D

The consciousness of his own imperfection sooner or later awakens in him an urge to seek perfection, that is, to enter on the Quest.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#475 – 2.1.2.275

BN – X – D

He sees now at long last that he has acted against his own best interests long enough: the time has come to redress the balance.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#480 – 2.1.2.280

BN – Z – DK

Men pass their whole lives in error when they might pass them in truth. They do wrong when they might do good. The result is suffering when it might be peace. When all the chief decisions of a man's life are made in a condition of spiritual ignorance, what other results may be expected than unfortunate ones? It is a bitter moment—and the consciousness of his error falls painfully upon him—when he discovers that the aims he pursued have led him up a blind alley and that the ambitions he nurtured have yielded only ashes for his hands. The parable of the Prodigal Son now assumes an intimate meaning for him. He may derive an astringent wisdom from all these unpleasant consequences of the lower ego's activities. It has indeed been like a blind man tremblingly feeling his way and moving from one mishap to another, making one false step after another.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#482 – 2.1.2.282

BN – X – DEK

When he sees how the little personal self has brought him so much pain sorrow disappointment and waste of years, that even when it brought him success the latter turned out to be false and deceptive, he will become disgusted with it. He will not want to live with the ego any longer and will yearn to get away from it altogether.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#483 – 2.1.2.283

BN – X – D

Men of rank, fortune, influence, or power may become complacent, satisfied with what they are or have or where they are. But this is a condition which cannot last. Why? Because the higher purpose of life, embodied in the World-Idea, is also present and will make appropriate change or exert appropriate pressure at the destined time.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#485 – 2.1.2.285

BA11 – P – D

Some people seem hungry for Truth. This is because society has starved them and given them no satisfaction other than a surface one.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#502 – 2.1.2.302

BN – X – D

For some people the Quest begins with a feeling that something is missing from their life, a need that none of their possessions or relations can satisfy.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#504 – 2.1.2.304

BN – X – D

With this event a new era opens in his personal life. He feels that, for the first time in his life, he has touched real being when hitherto he has known only its shadow. It is the first link in a whole chain of good consequences. Consequently it is in reality the most important one. Whoever once gives his allegiance to the Overself as affirmed and symbolized by his entry on the quest, undertakes a commitment of whose ultimate and tremendous consequences he has but a vague and partial notion.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#509 – 2.1.2.309

BN – X – D

Every man who catches such a glimpse of his diviner possibilities will be haunted forever after by them until he tries to catch up in actual thought and life with them. The endeavour to do so brings him sooner or later on the Quest.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#513 – 2.1.2.313

BN – X – D

It is this feeling that he is not in his true place that pushes a man into this search for a teaching or a teacher.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#519 – 2.1.2.319

BN – X – D

All that has happened before his entry upon the quest has really been converging towards it.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why people come

#526 – 2.1.2.326

BA11 – P – D

They are not necessarily more materialistic. It is simply that they have not begun to think about life, to question its meaning and ask for its purpose.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#534 – 2.1.2.334

BN – X – D

There are now so many activities calling for his interest and energies that modern man thinks he has no time to devote to finding his soul. So he does not seek it: and so he remains unhappy.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#542 – 2.1.2.342

BN – X – D

Most men devalue themselves, although they do not know it. A part of them is divine, but it is ignored and neglected.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#557 – 2.1.2.357

BN – X – D

Most people are like sleep-walkers, caught up in their own illusions. Their belief that they are awake is the biggest of these illusions.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#562 – 2.1.2.362

BN – X – D

After the work done to gain livelihood or fulfil ambition, there is usually a surplus of time and strength, a part of which could and should be devoted to satisfying higher needs. There is hardly a man whose life is so intense that it does not leave him a little time for spiritual recall from this worldly existence. Yet the common attitude everywhere is to look no farther than, and be content with, work and pleasure, family, friends, and possessions. It feels no urge to seek the spiritual and, as it erroneously thinks, the intangible side of life. It makes no effort to organize its day so as to find the time and energy for serious thought, study, prayer, and meditation. It feels no need of searching for truth or getting an instructor.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#565 – 2.1.2.365

BN – ZZ – K1

It is easy to understand why so many persons have little faith in such teachings, but it is hard to understand why so few persons take the trouble to investigate them.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#569 – 2.1.2.369

BN – ZZ – K

Quite a number seek understanding of life's meaning, but few seek a 'true' understanding. Most want a partisan or prejudiced one, an endorsement of inherited ideas or personal satisfactions.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#573 – 2.1.2.373

BN – ZZZ – K

So long as we keep ourselves focused wholly in the physical world, thoughts such as these may be read but will not reach our minds.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#593 – 2.1.2.393

BN – X – D

The man who sees no need for a higher concept of his nature than the merely physical one will see no need for a higher goal than feeding, clothing, sheltering, and amusing his body. In letting the senses, the passions, the intellect, and the ego take sole charge of his life, he quite naturally sees only mere emptiness beyond them. He doubts and refutes the intuitive-spiritual and denies and rejects the mystical. The Infinite is nothing to him so long as he prefers to remain shut in within the sense-bound outlook. This is why he dismisses mystic experience, religious feeling, and philosophic insight as mere hallucinations. But all this opposition takes place only in his conscious mind for there is unavoidable recognition in his subconscious mind. He wants to escape from himself, however, and fears the ordeal of facing himself. These words will make no appeal to the materialistic mentality which still regards all spiritual experience as the outcome of pathological conditions.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#594ED – 2.1.2.394

BN – EL1/1

Because of their unwillingness either to look within or to think more deeply for any higher purpose or obligation that they might have, people live largely in delusion and deception, especially self-deception. "Why am I here on earth?" is a question for which they can only find one answer: to satisfy their own material desires.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#606 – 2.1.2.406

BN – Z – DEK

I believe in a higher power behind the universe. Call it God, if you like. I believe in a higher power behind man. Call it the soul, if you like to. Such beliefs do not appeal to the cocktail-soaked cynics and sophisticates of our era.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Why many people don't come

#608 – 2.1.2.408

UR_2.1 – ZZ – K

It has been stated at the end of the appendix to 'The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga' that they who do not feel in possession of enough strength or desire to tread the ultimate path need not do so, and that if they remember and sometimes read about it even this will yield good fruit in time. We have been asked to be more explicit on this point. We deeply sympathize with all those who do not feel inclined to tackle the mental austerities involved in the ultimate path. If, however, they will just dip into its intellectual study from time to time, a little here this week and a little there the next, without even making their reading continuous and connected, there will slowly take shape in their minds an outline of some of the main tenets of this teaching. And however vague this outline may be it will be immeasurably better than the blank ignorance which covers the rest of mankind like a shroud.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Postponing the choice

#616E – 2.1.2.416

BN – ZEL1/2 – DEK

These new ideas will assume the characteristics of seeds, which under the water of the student's own aspiration and the sunshine of visible and invisible forces, will grow gradually into fruitful understanding and deeds. For the karmic consequence of such interest will be one day birth into a family where every opportunity for advancement will be found.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Postponing the choice

#616E – 2.1.2.416

BN – ZEL2/2 – DEK

The yearning for spiritual light wells up in the heart spontaneously. It is a natural one. But desires, egoism, and materialism cover it for so long a time that it seems unnatural.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Postponing the choice

#617 – 2.1.2.417

BN – X – D

The ideal may appeal, coming as it does from the Overself, but the ego will put up obstacles, resistances, to its realization.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Postponing the choice

#619 – 2.1.2.419

BN – ZZ – DK

How many men think and say that when their material fortunes improve, or their family problems are solved, or their living place is changed they will be able to give time and effort to the spiritual quest, but until then they must wait! But in actual fact this seldom happens. For when the improvement, solution, or change does take place, new matters call for their attention or new attachments are formed for the ego, and so the spiritual effort gets postponed again.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Postponing the choice

#623 – 2.1.2.423

BN – Z – DM

Procrastination may be perilous. Later may be too late. Beware of being drawn into that vast cemetery wherein men bury their half-born aspirations and paralysed hopes.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Postponing the choice

#625D – 2.1.2.425

BN – Z – DEK

Human beings are given more than one chance to redeem themselves. Such is the mercy of the higher power.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Postponing the choice

#627 – 2.1.2.427

BN – X – D

The longer I live and the more I observe in the lives of others, the more numerous become the illustrations of higher laws—the factuality of karma and the universality of the Quest. This is only as it should be for both are parts of the World-Idea. Thought and action are reflected back by karma. All people in all lands are seeking nostalgically for their homeland—the multitude unconsciously, the few consciously—this is their Quest.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#639 – 2.1.2.439

BN – ZZ – DEK

Let no one make the mistake of separating out the quest from everyday life. It is Life itself! Questers are not a special group, a labelled species, which one does or does not join, but are all humanity.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#640 – 2.1.2.440

B_05 – ZZZ – DK

All men seek for truth either consciously and deliberately or unconsciously and blindly, but they can seek only according to their capacity and ability, circumstances and preparedness.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#643 – 2.1.2.443

BN – X – D

Mankind is so near to God and yet so far away from God! Every fresh day is a fresh call from the Overself to man.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#645 – 2.1.2.445

BN – X – D

Hidden away in every man there exists a being immeasurably superior to the ordinary person that he is.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#646 – 2.1.2.446

BN – X – D

The divine soul dwells in every man. Therefore, every man may find it, if only he will apply the faculties he possesses.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#648 – 2.1.2.448

BN – X – D

Man is made in God's image in the sense that he latently possesses certain godlike qualities. But these have to be developed by evolution, which can be slow, through the path of normal experience, or swift, through the Quest.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#657 – 2.1.2.457

BSG_4 – P – D

All people are trying to find their Overself, to feel its love and sense its peace. Those who are in flight from worldly things do so consciously; those who are in pursuit of them do so unconsciously.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#658 – 2.1.2.458

BN – Z – DK

It is because God is hidden in all creatures that all creatures are searching all the time for God. This remains just as true even though in their ignorance they usually mistake the object of their search and believe that it is something else. Only on the quest does this search attain self-consciousness.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#662 – 2.1.2.462

BN – X – D

Every man has within him this divine possibility. But if he refuses to believe it, or puts his faith in a hard materialism, or fails to seek for it, it will remain only latent.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#667 – 2.1.2.467

BN – ZZ – DK

We are in our hidden selves already divine; … the wisdom is latent; … we are a Sage in embryo.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#671EM – 2.1.2.471

BSG_4 – P – DX

There is hope for all, benediction for the poor and the rich, the good and the bad, for every man may come into this great light. But—some men may come more easily, more quickly, while others may drag their way.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#673 – 2.1.2.473

BN – X – D

All the experiences of life are in the end intended to induce us to seek wholeheartedly for the Overself. That is, to lead us to the very portal of the Quest.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#675 – 2.1.2.475

B_04 – P – D

Prophets and teachers, sages and saints have come among us in all times to speak of that inner life and inner reality which they have found. But only those who cared to listen have profited by these revelations, communications, and counsels, and still fewer have profited by being willing to follow the path of discipleship.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#680 – 2.1.2.480

BA11 – P – D

Those who are seeking personal help are immeasurably more numerous than those who are seeking the impersonal Truth.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > In what sense is there a choice?

#682 – 2.1.2.482

BN – ZZ

Knowledge of the higher laws, consciousness of the higher self, bring special obligations. To apply them carries new responsibilities to live according to them.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Implications of the choice

#700 – 2.1.2.500

BN – X – D

It is as though the gods like to play with him for a while to try his patience and endurance, just to see how keenly he wants this attainment. If he gives up at the first few hindrances or rebuffs, it means that he is not so very keen after all; but if he can endure and keep on, and keep on, and still keep on, no matter what happens, well then, the gods say, here is someone who really wants truth, so we must give it to him. That is the attitude which he must develop.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Implications of the choice

#703E – 2.1.2.503

BA12 – P – DE

Those of us who have planted our feet on the grander path that shall lead one day to ultimate wisdom, have to go on—whether it be through sorrow or joy, weakness or strength, world-turmoil or world-peace. For us there is no turning back.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Implications of the choice

#706E – 2.1.2.506

BA13 – ZZZ – DEK

He is indeed free who, unpossessed by his own possessions, unswayed by his own family, undeflected by his own desires, remains ever loyal to the quest.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Implications of the choice

#708 – 2.1.2.508

BN – X – D

Once he has started on this quest in earnest, he will never be able to leave it again. He may try to do so for a time and to escape its claims but in the end he will fail. For some power which he cannot control will eventually and often abruptly emerge in the midst of his mental or emotional life and control him.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Implications of the choice

#709 – 2.1.2.509

BN – ZZ – DK

This quest is an irreversible journey. Once you have really started on it there is no turning back. You may believe that you have given it up in despair or turned away from it for a worldlier existence, but you are only fooling yourself. For one day either a deep repressed hunger will suddenly reassert itself or else a cataclysmic turn of events will drive you back to seek this last and enduring refuge of man.

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Implications of the choice

#710 – 2.1.2.510

BA11 – ZZ – DK*

What am I? is such an ancient and perennial question only because it has to be answered by each individual for himself. If he finds the true answer, he will find also that he cannot really transfer it to another person but only its idea, its mental shadow. That too may be valuable to others, but it is not the same.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#712 – 2.1.3.1

BA12 – P – D

He who seeks the truth about these matters will discover that it is contrary to current opinion, and therefore he will have to discover it by himself and for himself.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#715 – 2.1.3.4

UR_2.4 – ZZ – K

Humanity will not be saved in groups or by organizations. It will be saved individual by individual.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#718 – 2.1.3.7

BSG_5 – Z – DK

Taking no theoretical position, not committed to any beliefs, not wearing any labels, not putting himself in any categories, the philosophical student starts his search for truth in intellectual freedom and ends it in personal inner freedom. He is then what he is.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#723 – 2.1.3.12

B_01 – ZZ – K

Taking no theoretical position, not committed to any beliefs, not wearing any labels, not putting himself in any categories, the philosophical student starts his search for Truth in intellectual freedom and ends it in personal inner freedom. We call ourselves students of philosophy because we cannot take any name derived from a human teacher. We are not followers of this person or that person exclusively, but of the inner Light.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#723EM – 2.1.3.12

UR_2.4 – ZZZ – K

He must be willing and even determined to think and feel differently from those around him. How can it be otherwise when his goal is different from theirs, too?

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#734 – 2.1.3.23

BN – X – D

Most men live as prisoners of ideas which are not even their own but which have been suggested to them by other men. Independent thinking is rare.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#743 – 2.1.3.32

BN – Z – K

As he goes deeper and deeper into himself, his private acts become more and more independent of other people's suggestions and resistant to their influence.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#746 – 2.1.3.35

BN – X – D

Whatever form his outer life may have to take under the pressure of destiny, he will keep his inner life inviolate.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#752 – 2.1.3.41

BN – Z

The philosopher is not discouraged because the number of those who adopt philosophical ideas is so small. He is not seeking the success of a movement, group, program, or sect. Even if he were the only man who held these ideas he would still not be discouraged. For he knows that he has not been put in the world to reform it but to reform himself.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#756 – 2.1.3.45

BN – ZZ – K

Remember that custom and habit are the great tyrants who enslave the mass of mankind. Real freedom is possible only when one is true to one's own self. Do not permit yourself to be hypnotized by the common indifference to these high matters, but be loyal to the promptings of the spirit.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#768 – 2.1.3.57

BN – X – D

As a man walks through life keeping a secret loyalty to his inner spiritual self, he is likely to make a few friends among those who are keen-sighted enough to perceive this loyalty, and a few enemies among others who misconstrue his actions and misunderstand his motives. And because he firmly believes in complete payment for all deeds by the Higher Powers set over mankind, he will remain indifferent without resentment and without hatred to the latter, while silently returning a benign love to his friends.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#773 – 2.1.3.62

A250814 – Z

The person, young or old, who has his mind set on higher things than pleasures of the moment and is willing to sacrifice a fragment of time, attention, and interest to such studies and such meditations, will find his refusal to conform to other people's ways is repaid in inner growth on the quest.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#777 – 2.1.3.66

BN – X – D

It is to the Overself that he must give his ultimate allegiance.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#782 – 2.1.3.71

BN – X – D

If his mind is filled with other people’s teachings, it may give no attention to his own Overself’s teachings, leadings, and intuitions.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#783 – 2.1.3.72

BN – X – D

There is a teaching principle in every man which can provide him with whatever spiritual knowledge he needs. But he must first take suitable measures to evoke it. These include cleansing of body and mind, aspiration of feeling and thought, silencing of intellect and ego.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#784 – 2.1.3.73

BN – X – D

Although it is quite true that each quester must travel the path for himself, must move on his own two feet, this does not mean that he is travelling completely alone, or on his own. If he has no personal guide to accompany him, the Higher Self is still there, within him, pulling, drawing, leading, or pointing, if only he can learn how to recognize it.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#789 – 2.1.3.78

B_05 – P – DE

The Kingdom is within you, not somewhere else, not in an ashram, not even at the feet of a guru: Jesus' declaration is literally accurate.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#795 – 2.1.3.84

B_11 – P – D

His attraction toward this or that teacher may weaken and die but his attraction to the Inspirer of all teachers, the Overself, will keep on growing stronger in him.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#799 – 2.1.3.88

BN – X – D

What we learn from outside ourselves, from teacher or tradition, will never lead to our true fulfilment until we join it with what we learn in the stillness from inside ourselves.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#804 – 2.1.3.93

UR_4map – ZZZ – DK

Books however sacred, ceremonies however impressive, lectures however learned, even Masters however wise are still only outer helps and as such must in the end be discarded.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#807 – 2.1.3.96

BN – ZZ – K

Each will come to God in the end but each one will come as a purified transformed and utterly changed person…

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#808E – 2.1.3.97

BSG_4 – P – DE

Ultimately, there is only one real Master for every spiritual seeker, and that is his own divine Overself. The human teacher may assist him to the extent of giving him a temporary emotional uplift or a temporary intellectual perception, but he cannot bestow permanent divine consciousness on another individual. All that the teacher can do is to point out the way through the labyrinth; the journey must be made by the seeker himself. For example, an individual living alone on a desert island could travel through all the stages of the Quest and attain the highest realization even though he had no visible teacher. The Overself will give him all the guidance and help he needs. However, he is likely to mistakenly believe that his own ego is making the progress.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#813 – 2.1.3.102

B_07 – P – DE

All efforts that take him outside of himself are only halting and temporary concessions to human weakness. The soul being inside of himself, he must in the end turn within.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > General description

#816 – 2.1.3.105

BN – X – D

In whatever place you find truth, with whatever name it may be labelled, take it.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Take truth where you find it

#819 – 2.1.3.108

UR_7 – ZZZ – K

We may learn from everything and everyone, from every event and happening something that is new or a confirmation of something that is old, something affirmative or something negative.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Take truth where you find it

#825 – 2.1.3.114

BN – ZZ – K

He must make a stubborn reservation of his ground and run the flag of independence in the quest of truth, of nonattachment in the relationship with the teachers of truth. He will humbly and gladly accept whatsoever good he can find in their teachings, but he will not do so under a contract of pledged discipleship. In this matter he must be eclectic, taking the best from every available source and not shutting out any source that has something worthwhile to offer. It may not be the way for most people, for they cannot walk alone, but it is the only way for him. Self-guidance also leads to the goal.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Take truth where you find it

#831 – 2.1.3.120

UR_2.4 – ZZ – K

I have always recommended to those who feel strong enough to be able to do so, to refrain from joining any organization, to keep their freedom, while at the same time studying the doctrines of whatever organizations interest them, whatever religions engage some of their attention. This freedom enables them to look anywhere, to study everything, to question courageously, to keep breadth of view, depth of thought.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Take truth where you find it

#838 – 2.1.3.127

BSG_5 – ZZZ – D

No person comes to the knowledge of his divinity through a crowd of other persons. No human entity can discover its own relation to God through any group method. The way to spiritual awareness is entirely individual, essentially lonely, inescapably within oneself.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#841E – 2.1.3.130

B_01 – ZZ – K

To seek knowledge from unprejudiced sources is a rule hard to fulfil, because such sources are rare. The next best thing is to be an unprejudiced seeker, and this is the Ideal I have tried to follow. Sectarianism is everywhere because institutions and organizations are everywhere. There is a better chance for the truth seeker when flying the flag of independence.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#845 – 2.1.3.134

UR_2.3 – Z – K

There are those in India who have made a sect out of Vedanta, even of Advaita Vedanta. The intolerance, the fanaticism of the narrower groups and religions has been brought in here too. Let the western student of philosophy who takes it seriously enough to think, breathe in remembrance, and live actively by it, be warned, and stay free, unjoined, unlabelled, spacious in outlook, understandingly tolerant in practice. If the independence of the philosophic position stops him from speaking for any particular established religion or mystical cult, it allows him to view all religions and all cults with fairness and detachment.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#846M – 2.1.3.135

B_01 – ZZ – K

"Study both sympathetically and critically the other contemporary mystical movements but do not join them". Such is my general answer to the seeker who questions me about them. He should certainly examine and study other teachings, not necessarily for his acceptance, but for his broadening. Be a good student, but a bad joiner! For he will find it difficult to recognize the lineaments of full perfection either in the teaching or the practice of any existing institution or movement. However, the danger here is that he may overconcentrate on their study or practice, elevate side-routes into the main one, and finally get so absorbed in them as temporarily to abandon the original quest altogether. So there are certain reservations in my advice, a certain watchfulness is needed during such studies. He should take care to be only an enquirer into these cults and not a follower of them.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#847E – 2.1.3.136

B_03 – EL1/2

He should be first, a sympathetic enquirer and then only exercise the philosophical right of severely critical examination. In the end, every aspirant must find his "own". "The path of another is dangerous", says the Bhagavad Gita. Unless a spiritual teaching has enough inspiration behind it to help him successfully tackle his gravest personal problems, it is not the right one—however much it may be so to others.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#847E – 2.1.3.136

B_03 – EL2/2

With so many cults, creeds, religions, sects, and societies claiming that their teaching is the only true one or that their path is the only path to salvation, the seeker will either get bewildered or be forced to do the right thing—which is to exercise his own independent judgement and not to accept any claim on its mere face value.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#848 – 2.1.3.137

B_01 – ZZ – K

The fellowship of philosophy requires no ritual, no immersion, no dogmatic confession, no creedal test. It is free and non-sectarian. It shuts no one in, no one out.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#850 – 2.1.3.139

BA11 – P – D

Since the real essence of philosophy has only an inner content, which must be felt intuitively and grasped intellectually, but no outer form, it cannot become material for a cult, an organized group. It must lead each person on his own individual way, letting him grow naturally from within.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#852E – 2.1.3.141

BA11 – P – DE

Since the real essence of philosophy has only an inner content, which must be felt intuitively and grasped intellectually, but no outer form, it cannot become material for a cult, an organized group. It must lead each person on his/her own individual way, letting him/her grow naturally from within… This idea, or belief, that we must go somewhere, meet someone, read something, to accomplish life's best fulfilment is the first and last mistake. In the end, as in the beginning, we have nothing else to do except follow the ancient command to LOOK WITHIN.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#852EM – 2.1.3.141

BSG_1 – ZZZ – DXK

The refusal to join any ecclesiastical church or religious society does not leave a man spiritually homeless. If he faithfully exercises himself in meditation and seeks to practise the presence of God, what better "home" could he have?

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#855 – 2.1.3.144

BA11 – P – D

There are those in India who have made a sect out of Vedanta, even of Advaita Vedanta. The intolerance, the fanaticism of the narrower groups and religions has been brought in here too. Let the western student of philosophy who takes it seriously enough to think, breathe in remembrance, and live actively by it, be warned, and stay free, unjoined, unlabelled, spacious in outlook, understandingly tolerant in practice. If the independence of the philosophic position stops him from speaking for any particular established religion or mystical cult, it allows him to view all religions and all cults with fairness and detachment.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#858M – 2.1.3.147

B_01 – ZZ – DXK

Philosophy stresses the need of development's being individual. Students of other teachings may grow in groups, but not students of philosophy!

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#860 – 2.1.3.149

B_01 – ZZZ – K

Mind in its ultimate condition is free and infinite. We, as humans, are at the very beginning of its discovery. Let us not set up false steps to our journey or ignorantly put up fences to block our view. Let us avoid the ill-informed littleness of sectarianism, the common eagerness to huddle under a label.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#862 – 2.1.3.151

BN – X – DEK

He is not a joiner because of several reasons: one of them is that joiners are too often too one-sided in approach, too limited in outlook, too exclusive to let truth in when it happens to appear in a sect different from his or her own. Another reason is that too frequently there is a tyranny from above, imitated by followers, which forbids any independent thought and does not tolerate any real search.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#865 – 2.1.3.154

BN – Z – K

Having no official connection with any group, sect, organization, or church leaves me free to help anyone, anywhere.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#880 – 2.1.3.169

BA11 – P – D

The man who has seen the light and experienced its warmth will prefer his own way of living if it is the consequence of his awakening.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#883 – 2.1.3.172

BN – X – D

Those who feel tempted to do so, may study the public cults and listen to the public teachers but it would be imprudent to join any of the first or follow any of the second. It would be wiser to remain free and independent or they may be led astray from the philosophical path.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Intelligent nonconformity

#887 – 2.1.3.176

BN – X – D

The advantages of being in a position of intellectual and social, religious and personal independence are several. The chance of finding truth and, if luckily found, of expressing it, is surely larger.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Pros & cons of independence

#890 – 2.1.3.179

BN – X – D

He who depends upon his own personal intellect and personal strength alone, deprives himself of the protection which a higher power could give him.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Pros & cons of independence

#898 – 2.1.3.187

BN – X – D

Their duty is to act as pioneers; but if they are to be successful pioneers, they will need courage to forget outworn ideas and to free themselves from dying traditions so as to cope with the new conditions which are arising…

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Requirements

#906E – 2.1.3.195

BA12 – P – DE

Their duty is to act as pioneers; but if they are to be successful pioneers, they will need courage to forget outworn ideas and to free themselves from dying traditions so as to cope with the new conditions which are arising. In this connection, the suggestion that it is also a duty to co-operate with existing spiritual movements would be acceptable if it were practicable; but experience will show that most of these movements are unable to enter that deep union of hearts which alone can guarantee success to any external union. Such a plan would end in failure and it is better for them to pursue their own independent course than waste time and force in attempting what would not succeed and is not really needed.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Requirements

#906 – 2.1.3.195

BN – ZZ – DEK

The freedom to command one's life in one's own way can be got only by first getting the fearlessness to disregard the criticism and to ignore the expectations of other people.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Requirements

#907 – 2.1.3.196

B_06 – ZZZ – DM

Such is the strange paradox of the quest that on the one hand he must foster determined self-reliance but on the other yield to a feeling of utter dependence on the higher powers.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Requirements

#910 – 2.1.3.199

BA11 – P – D

Asiatic mysticism has been well nigh suffocated under the weight of monkish traditions which have accumulated around it. … For it must be remembered that in the days before the art of writing was widely used almost all the earliest texts were handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth alone. This entailed wonderful feats of memory which we must admire but it also entailed the possibility of conscious or unconscious alteration of the texts themselves, against which we must guard ourselves. … This indeed is what we do find to be the case. The inevitable consequence is that words which bore one meaning when they were uttered by the original author came bit by bit to receive a modified or altogether different meaning when they had passed through the mouths and pens of monks and priests. Our semantic study alone would indicate such a historic probability.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Is monastic discipline needed?

#957E – 2.1.3.246

UR_2.9.3 – ZZ – K

No church, no monastery, no ashram can shut in the divine life behind its walls. THAT is for all.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Is monastic discipline needed?

#958 – 2.1.3.247

B_01 – ZZZ – K

When he finds that he can go no farther by himself, the time has come to look within for more grace or to look without for more guidance. He needs the one to get away from his own selfishness or the other to get away from his own darkness.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#963 – 2.1.3.252

BN – X – D

One of the most valuable philosophic character qualities is balance. Therefore the student should not be willing to submit himself to complete authoritarianism and thus sacrifice his capacity for independent thinking, nor on the other hand should he be willing to throw away all the fruits of other men's thought and experience and dispense with the services of a guide altogether. He should hold a wise balance between these two extremes.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#966 – 2.1.3.255

BA12 – P – D

Both an inspired church and a qualified master have their place, but it is only a limited one. Beyond those limits, nothing outside his divine soul can really help the spiritual seeker. For its grace alone saves and enlightens him. The religious man who depends on a church for his salvation thereby delays it. The mystical aspirant who depends on a master for his self-realization also delays it. He will have to learn to rely less and less upon other people for his spiritual and worldly advancement, more and more upon his inner self.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#975 – 2.1.3.264

B_07 – P – DE

It is well to seek and accept guidance. The error and exaggeration creep in when you become too concentrated on a single source of guidance.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#976 – 2.1.3.265

BA12 – P – D

The duty of the aspirant to cultivate his moral character and to accept personal responsibility for his inner life cannot be evaded by giving allegiance to any spiritual authority.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#982 – 2.1.3.271

BN – X – D

The necessity of a teacher is much exaggerated. His own Soul is there, ready to lead him to itself. For this prayer, meditation, study, and right living will be enough to find its Grace. If he has sufficient faith in its reality and tries to be sensitive to its intuitive guidance, he needs no external teacher.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#985 – 2.1.3.274

B_07 – P – D

Listening to someone else's teaching, or reading it, will only be a temporary makeshift until the day when you can establish communication with your own intuitive self and receive from it the teaching which you, as a unique individual, need. From no other source can anyone get such specially suitable instruction.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#988 – 2.1.3.277

BSG_4 – P – D

In the absence of a master let him follow a lone path, welcoming whatever he can learn from competent authorities but attaching himself to none.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#992 – 2.1.3.281

BA11 – P – D

The importance of a teacher is somewhat overrated. If one continues his program of study, prayer, and meditation, and if he appeals to his own higher self for guidance, he will certainly continue to progress. Earthly responsibilities will not interfere, for the time spent away from prayer and meditation is also part of the spiritual life.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#995 – 2.1.3.284

BN – Z – D

Beware of professionalism in this field, of the professional expounder of truth and the professional seekers of it. Both Way and Goal are far simpler than most of them seem to think it is, and markedly unlike the impression left by many writings and lectures, books and teachings, whether ancient or modern.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#996 – 2.1.3.285

BN – ZZZ

To find out the truth little by little by oneself is to make it really one's own. To be pushed into it with a plunge by a master always entails the likelihood of a return to one's native and proper level later on.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#1000 – 2.1.3.289

BN – X – D

Something more is needed than what books or even gurus can give him. This can only be found within himself. The courage needed for such a standpoint must also be found, and can be, within himself.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Independence and teachers

#1003 – 2.1.3.292

UR_0 – ZZZ – DMK

The feeling of being isolated, the sense of walking a lonely path, is true outwardly but untrue inwardly. For there he is companioned by the Overself's gentle ever-drawing love. He has only to grope within sufficiently to know this for himself, and to know it with absolute certitude.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Loneliness

#1032 – 2.1.3.321

BA12 – P – D

The higher the peak one climbs, the lonelier the trail becomes. There is a paradox here for the loneliness exists outside the body, not inside the heart, and the more it grows outside the less it is felt inside.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Loneliness

#1033 – 2.1.3.322

BN – X – D

There is a point at which no aspirant can surrender his ideals under the compulsion of a materialistic society, can no longer come to terms with it. Such a point will be vividly indicated to him by his own conscience. It is then that, of his own free will, he must accept the cup of suffering.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Loneliness

#1043 – 2.1.3.332

BN – Z

The cure for loneliness is company; but if there is no affinity in the company, then it is only a quack cure. This prescription is true for everyone, even for the sage, for he finds his company in the Overself's self-presence.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Loneliness

#1047 – 2.1.3.336

BN – X – D

There is only one real loneliness and that is to feel cut off from the higher power.

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Loneliness

#1051 – 2.1.3.340

BN – X – D

Most traditional forms, or the newer organizations which have some sort of spiritual teaching, are useful in the beginning to most people. But this is not to say that they're going to be useful always. They have their limitations, and at a certain stage may prevent further advance.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Benefits for beginners

#1056 – 2.1.4.5

BN – X – D

The desire of an individual to join a group can never be given more than qualified approval. But if he feels certain that something may be gained by associating with other seekers, and if he is successful in finding a group devoted exclusively to the search for the highest Truth, it may be all right for him at that particular phase of his development.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Benefits for beginners

#1074 – 2.1.4.23

B_05 – Z – K

If any work, institution, or organization is centered in the Overself it cannot fall into the base, negative, or selfish currents which, in the historic past, have polluted, poisoned, and sometimes destroyed so many tasks and enterprises.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Benefits for beginners

#1085 – 2.1.4.34

BN – X – D

It is a common but fallacious belief that by joining a group we get at the truth more quickly, or progress to spiritual reality more easily.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1087 – 2.1.4.36

BA11 – P – D

A movement may begin and seek to keep itself free from organization, administration, and authority, but it is unlikely to remain so. For human beings, fallible or ambitious, frail or emotional, will sooner or later seek to impose their ideas, will, or themselves on the others.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1104 – 2.1.4.53

BN – X – D

I am not enamoured overmuch of this modern habit, which forms a society at faint provocation. A man's own problem stares him alone in the face, and is not to be solved by any association of men. Every new society we join is a fresh temptation to waste time.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1107 – 2.1.4.56

BN – ZZ

To tie oneself to a sectarian group and to its ideas is to form another attachment for the ego.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1111 – 2.1.4.60

BN – ZZ – K

There is no hint in Jesus' words that he wanted men to form themselves into an organized religion, to appoint a hierarchy, to create a liturgy. Was he himself not in protest against the Hebrew version of these things? Did not he suffer from its tyranny, and in the end die by it? Why should he want to set up a new institution, which would inevitably end in the same way?

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1127 – 2.1.4.76

B_12 – Z

To quote in justification of group work or church gatherings Christ's words, "Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them", is no justification at all. For most groups are anything from ten to a hundred in number, most church gatherings range from twenty to a thousand in number. Christ did not say that he would be present with a dozen, a score, two or three hundred, he precisely stated the number should be two or three.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1146 – 2.1.4.95

B_11 – Z – K

Do not confuse the necessary secrecy of philosophic presentation with the portentous secrecy of charlatanic cults.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1156 – 2.1.4.105

BN – Z

A school should exist not only to teach but also to investigate, not to formulate prematurely a finalized system but to remain creative, to go on testing theories by applying them and validating ideas by experience.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Relation to founder

#1162D – 2.1.4.111

BN – X – K

"How am I to start upon this process of true self-knowledge?" The answer begins with this: first adopt the right attitude. Believe in the divinity of your deeper self. Stop looking elsewhere for light, stop wandering hither and thither for power… Engrave on your heart the high phrases: "I possess illimitable power within me; I can create a diviner life and truer vision than I now possess." Do this and then surrender your body, your heart and mind to the Infinite Power which sustains all. Strive to obey Its inward promptings and then declare your readiness to accept whatsoever lot it assigns you. This is your challenge to the gods and they will surely answer you. Your soul will be slowly or suddenly liberated; your body will be granted a freer pathway through conditions…

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1173E – 2.1.5.1

BA12 – ZZ – DEK*

Who is willing to work upon himself? Who even feels that he has any duty to do so? Yet this simple acknowledgment could lead to the discovery of God.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1176 – 2.1.5.4

BN – X – D

Each man should be himself, not represent and copy another man. But he should be his best self, not his worst, his lower, his lesser. This calls for growth, aspiration, effort, on his part. That is to say, it calls for a quest.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1178 – 2.1.5.6

BN – X – D

The divine spirit is always there in man, has always been there; but until he cultivates his capacity to become aware of it, it might as well be non-existent for him.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1180 – 2.1.5.8

BN – X – D

The Overself is always there; it has never left us, but it has to be ardently, lovingly, and subtly searched for.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1181 – 2.1.5.9

BN – X – D

Why is it that despite all the visible and touchable counter-attractions, despite the innumerable failures and long years of fruitlessness, so many men have sought through so many ages in so many lands for God, for what is utterly intangible, unnameable, shapeless, unseen, and unheard? Because the simple but astonishing fact is that the Overself, which is the presence of God in them, is part of their nature as human beings!

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1183E – 2.1.5.11

BT1008 – P – DE

Because the Overself is already there within us in all its immutable sublimity, we have not to develop it or perfect it. We have only to develop and perfect our ego until it becomes like a polished mirror, held up to and reflecting the sacred attributes of the Overself, and showing openly forth the divine qualities which had hitherto lain hidden behind itself.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1184 – 2.1.5.12

BSG_4 – P – D

The distinction between his lower self and his higher self will slowly become clear to him through inner experience and reflection thereon.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1185 – 2.1.5.13

BN – X – D

That which appears as the spiritual seeker engaged on a Quest is itself the spiritual self that is being sought.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1188 – 2.1.5.16

B_05 – P – D

This identification with the best Self in us is the ideal set for all men, to be realized through long experience and much suffering or through accepting instruction, following revelation, unfolding intuition, practising meditation, and living wisely…

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1190 – 2.1.5.18

BN – X – D

Each human being has a specific work to do—to express the uniqueness that is himself. It can be delegated to no one else. In doing it, if he uses the opportunity aright, he may be led to the great Uniqueness which is super-personal, beyond his ego and behind all egos.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1191 – 2.1.5.19

BN – X – D

Even while he travels on this quest he should habitually remind himself of an easily forgotten truth—that what he travels to is inside himself, is the very essence of himself.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1193 – 2.1.5.21

BN – X – D

Beneath your everyday self lies a giant—an unsuspected self of infinite possibilities.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1194 – 2.1.5.22

BN – X – D

Within is mastery, within is colossal power—but you have not yet touched it. However little you have so far accomplished you can still do big things.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1195 – 2.1.5.23

BN – X – D

Because there is something of God in me as the Overself, godlike qualities and capacities are in me. I am essentially wise, powerful, loving; but to the extent that I identify myself with the little ego, I obscure these grand qualities…

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1197 – 2.1.5.25

BN – X – D

A man who wants to pursue this quest will have to become a different man—different from what he was in the past because the old innate tendencies have to be replaced by new ones, and different from other men because he must refuse to be led unresistingly into the thoughtlessness, the irreverence, and the coarseness which pervade them.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1198 – 2.1.5.26

BN – X – D

There is no need to let go of his humanness in order to find his divine essence, but only of its littleness, its satisfaction with trivial aims.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1200 – 2.1.5.28

BN – X – D

Where there is no attempt at self-improvement there is inevitable deterioration. Nature does not let us stand still.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1203 – 2.1.5.31

BT1008 – P – D

The application of these ideals is hard but let no one deceive himself into thinking that their nonapplication is much easier. Those who live without such life-purposes are subject to troubles that could have been avoided and to afflictions of their own making.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1204 – 2.1.5.32

B_01 – ZZZ – K

If he wishes to enter the portal of philosophy he will most likely begin with others, with what philosophers have thought and taught; but in the end he must make a second beginning—with himself. He will have to re-examine his own psyche, his own personality, but from a detached position, standing far to one side. He will have to decide each hour of each day how to apply the truth, gathered from books and teachers, to the events, duties, occasions, and thoughts of that day.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1210 – 2.1.5.38

BN – X – D

If a man is determined to succeed in this enterprise and optimistically believes that he will succeed, his efforts will increase and be strengthened, chances will be taken from which he would otherwise shrink; and even if he falls short of his hopes, the going is likely to be farther. What Ramana Maharshi said to me at our first meeting is apposite: “That is the surest way to handicap oneself,” he exclaimed, “this burdening of one’s mind with the fear of failure and the thought of one’s failings. The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature. . . . One can and must conquer.”

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1216 – 2.1.5.44

BN – X – D

This is the Ideal, but to translate it into the actual, to assert it in the midst and against the opposition of a grossly materialistic environment, calls for firmness and determination.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1217 – 2.1.5.45

UR_2.3 – ZZZ – K

Social betterment is a good thing but it is not a substitute for self-betterment. Love of one's neighbour is an excellent virtue but it cannot displace the best of all virtues, love of the divine soul.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1220 – 2.1.5.48

BN – X – DEK

The man who is discontented with the world as he finds it and sets out to improve it, must begin with himself. There is authority for this statement in the life-giving ideas of Jesus as well as in the light-giving words of Gautama.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1221 – 2.1.5.49

BN – X – D

He has enough to do with the discovery and correction of his own deficiencies or weaknesses, not to meddle in criticism of other people’s.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1222 – 2.1.5.50

BN – X – D

Few know where really to look for the truth. Most go for it to other men, to books, or to churches. But the few who know the proper direction turn around and look in that place where the truth is not only a living dynamic thing but is their own. And that is deep, deep within themselves.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1226 – 2.1.5.54

BN – X – D

The Holy Land, flowing with milk and honey, is within us but the wilderness that we have to cross before reaching it, is within us too.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1228 – 2.1.5.56

BN – X – D

If you are looking for truth, it is not enough to look only at your own country's, your own religion's statement of it, nor just this century's. You need also to look elsewhere, to heed the wiser voices of other centuries and to feel free to move East and West or into b.c. as well as a.d. But above all these things you must look into the mystery of your own consciousness. Uncover its layer after layer until you meet the Overself. All this is included in the Quest.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1230 – 2.1.5.58

BN – ZZ

Why did Jesus warn men not to look for the Christ-self in the deserts or the mountain caves? It was for the same reasons that he constantly told them to look for it within themselves, and that he counselled them to be in the world but not of it.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1233 – 2.1.5.61

B_11 – P – D

Do not expect to find more truth and meaning in the world outside than you can find inside yourself.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1234 – 2.1.5.62

BN – X – DM

The only man you need for this great work is yourself. Stop looking outside and look within, for there is not only the material to work upon but also the god within to guide you.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1237 – 2.1.5.65

BN – X – D

The truth will be given us: we shall not be left to starve for it. But it will be given according to our capacity to receive it.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1246 – 2.1.5.74

BN – X – D

Only when all of the mind—unconsciously evolved through the mineral, plant, animal, and lower human kingdoms—enters on the quest, does it consciously enter upon the development of its own consciousness.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1248 – 2.1.5.76

BT1008 – P – D

The egoism which falsifies our true sense of being and the materialism which distorts our true sense of reality are maladies which can hardly be cured by our own efforts. Only by calling, in trust and love, on a higher power, whether it be embodied in another man or in ourself, can their mesmeric spell ultimately be broken. Yet it is our own efforts which first must initiate the cure.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1250 – 2.1.5.78

BN – X – D

To make progress inwardly is ultimately all that matters, everything else passes except the fruit of our spiritual efforts.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1252 – 2.1.5.80

BN – X – D

The ideal here is not set at becoming a sinless saint but at becoming an enlightened and balanced human being.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1254 – 2.1.5.82

BN – X – D

The aspirant's decision to aim for the highest Goal is the governing factor: if he sticks to this decision, he is bound to succeed sooner or later. The question now arises: What is this Goal? It is the fulfilment of the Real Purpose of life, as apart from the lower purposes of earning a livelihood, rearing a family, and so forth. The aspirant will become fully Self-conscious—as aware of the divine Overself as he now is of his earthly body. And this achievement will be perpetual, not just a matter of occasional glimpses or fleeting intuitions. Even though the Quest has become more difficult under modern conditions, it has not become impossible. The timeworn means to this end must simply be brought up to date. What are the means? They are thought, feeling, will, and intuition used in a special way. This constitutes the fourfold path, or Quest.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1256 – 2.1.5.84

B_04 – P – DEK

He has chosen a path to which he has been led both by instinct and by experience. As he tries to follow it, he will meet with all kinds of difficulties but he should not turn back. Because the interrelation of outward karma to inner character is so close, he should understand that these difficulties are linked up with his inner state, and that he begins to solve them by removing the imperfection of that inner state. He must understand that, although this goal is not easy to obtain, he must refuse to give up hope. The path is right by itself, and in allying himself with it, he is allying himself with what is, after all, the greatest force in the world.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1257 – 2.1.5.85

BN – X – DEK

How often have I heard, in talk or writing, that the philosophic requirements are set too high and are beyond average human compliance. My answer is that time and patience and work keep on pushing back the measure of what is possible to a man, that grace may fitfully bless him if he sustains effort and aspiration or recognizes opportunity and inspiration, and that these requirements are not set for immediate attainment but as an ultimate goal to be striven for little by little and to give correct direction to his life. "Hope on and hold on," I told Rom Landau at an outwardly dark and mentally depressed moment of his life. He did!—and later found himself, his own peace, and became in turn through his lectures and books a help to many fellow Christians.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1258 – 2.1.5.86

BN – ZZ

It is simply a matter of finding the Overself and letting it rule the ego thenceforth. Thus the ego is not killed but put back in its lower place. But first he has to become conscious of the Overself, he has to feel it as a living presence, and he has to do this throughout the day and night, awake or asleep. That is the goal.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1261E – 2.1.5.89

BA11 – P – DE

Every man will be forced to realize his own sacredness in the end: then only will his search for happiness find fulfillment.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1263 – 2.1.5.91

BN – Z – DK

Swami Vivekananda's works can be recommended as being authentic fruits of realization that come close to the doctrine here discussed, albeit his path was not the same. The Quest follows a double line of development: mind-stilling plus mind-stimulating, each in its proper place. And the ultimate goal is to discover that there is but one reality, of which all are but a part, that the separateness of the personal ego is but superficial, and that Truth is evidenced by the consciousness of unity. The first fruit of such discovery is necessarily the dedication of life to the service of all creatures, to incessant service for universal welfare.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1264E – 2.1.5.92

BA11 – P – DE

To forget self but to remember Overself—it is as simple as that, and also as hard as that.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1265 – 2.1.5.93

BA12 – P – D

Not to find the Energy of the Spirit but the Spirit itself is the ultimate goal. Not its powers or effects or qualities or attributes but the actuality of pure being. The aspirant is not to stop short with any of these but to push on.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1266 – 2.1.5.94

BN – X – D

He has to seek for the mysterious essence of himself, which is something he touches at rare, blessed, and unforgettable moments. It allures because it is also the Perfect, ever sought but never found in the world outside.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1267 – 2.1.5.95

BN – X – D

He comes at last to full consciousness of his inner being, his soul—in the correct sense of a word that is not often understood and which is used by people without knowing what they really mean.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1269 – 2.1.5.97

BN – X – DEK

If the distant goal of this quest is the discovery of true being, this does not exclude and ought not to exclude the fullest growth of the human being, the widest realization of his best capacities, making patent what is latent.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1270 – 2.1.5.98

BN – X – D

The lotus, that lovely Oriental flower, is much used as a symbol of the goal we have to gain. It grows in mud but is not even spotted by it. It rests on water but is never even stained by it. Its colour is pure white in striking contrast to the dirty surroundings which are its home. So the disciple's inner life must be undefiled, unstained, and pure even though his outer life is perforce carried on under the most materialistic surroundings or among the most sensual people.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1272 – 2.1.5.100

BN – X – D

That which few men value and few men find is nevertheless the most worthwhile thing for which to search. What is it? It is what once found cannot be lost, once seen must be loved, and once felt awakens all that is best in a man.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1273 – 2.1.5.101

BN – X – D

The thirst for perfection is certainly present within us. This thirst is a pointer to its eventual slaking. But there is no necessary implication that this will be attained whilst we are in the flesh and on a level of existence where everything is doomed, as Buddha points out, to decay and death. It is more likely to be done on a higher level where such limitations could not exist. The perfection we seek and the immortality we hope for are more likely to be mental rather than physical achievements. For all mystics are at least agreed that there is such a level of untainted, purely spiritual being.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1274 – 2.1.5.102

BN – X – DEK

The fundamental task of man is first to free himself of animalist and egotist tyrannies, and second, to evolve into awareness of his spiritual self.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1275 – 2.1.5.103

BN – X – D

His quest can come to an end only when the unveiled Truth is seen, not in momentary glimpses, but for the rest of his lifetime without a break.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1278 – 2.1.5.106

BN – X – D

We have to bring this awareness of the Overself as a permanent and perpetual feature into active life.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1279 – 2.1.5.107

BN – X – D

Many are satisfied if they can attain just a glimpse of the Overself. But a few are not. They seek permanent abidance in the Overself, and that in the greatest possible degree.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1281 – 2.1.5.109

BN – X – D

But the main object of the quest is, after all, not these secondary betterments in bodily health, nerve, character, self-control—welcome as they are—but the discovery of truth and the living within the presence of the divine.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1282 – 2.1.5.110

BN – X – D

There are two paths laid out for the attainment, according to the teaching of Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. The first path is union with the Higher Self—not, as some believe, with the Logos. But because the Higher Self is a ray from the Logos, it is as near as a human being can get to it anyway. The second path has its ultimate goal in the Absolute, or as I have named it in my last book, the Great Void. But neither path contradicts the other, for the way to the second path lies through the first one. Therefore, there is no cleavage in the practices. Both goals are equally desirable because both bring man into touch with Reality. It would be quite proper for anyone to stop with the first one if he wishes; but for those who appreciate the philosophic point of view, the second goal, because it includes the first, is more desirable.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1287D – 2.1.5.115

BN – X – K

What he chooses at the beginning of his quest will predetermine what he will become at its end. And the choice is between self-centered escape and selfless activity. Both paths will give him a great peace. Both will permit him to remain true to his inner call. But the harder one will give something to suffering humanity also. A merely personal salvation will not satisfy the philosophical aspirant.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1288 – 2.1.5.116

BN – Z – DK*

Spiritual experiences that occur during adolescence are indications that he has possibilities of travelling on the spiritual quest. But he must decide whether he prefers abnormal occult experiences or the less dramatic, slower growth in the cultivation of his divine soul. A beginner cannot mix the two goals safely. And he can expect to have the help of an advanced mystic only if he seeks the higher goal.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1289 – 2.1.5.117

BN – X – D

The illumination is possible for all men because they are incarnate in human and not animal forms. But all men are not willing to pay its price in mental control and emotional subjugation.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1303 – 2.1.5.131

BN – X – D

If the reader finds such a task too fatiguing he should remember that the reward is nothing less than enlightenment.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1304 – 2.1.5.132

BN – X – D

It is obvious from the rarity of its historic realization that this ideal was always too ice-mantled a peak of perfection to be climbable by most men. Nevertheless we gain nothing by ignoring it, and it is at least well to know towards what goal mankind is so slowly and so unconsciously moving.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1306 – 2.1.5.134

BN – X – DEK

He feels intuitively that there is, or ought to be, some elusive element, principle, purpose, or Deity behind all life and all Nature—but is it possible for a human being to become acquainted with IT?

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1309 – 2.1.5.137

UR_2.1 – Z – K

Such a goal may be unappealing to many, held by their attachments as they are; but it is fascinating and alluring to a few, "old souls", much experienced after a long series of earthly lives, whose values have been altered, whose glamours and illusions have been eliminated. They feel like wanderers returning home.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1310 – 2.1.5.138

B_04 – Z – D

The achievement may seem too hard but it is not impossible. The best guarantee of that is the ever-presence within him of the divine soul itself.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1317 – 2.1.5.145

BN – X – D

That the Overself not only is, but is attainable, is the premise and promise of true philosophy.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1326 – 2.1.5.154

BN – X – D

That wonderful time when he can look straight into himself, through ego to Overself, awaits his endeavours.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1329 – 2.1.5.157

BN – X – D

What if the goal seems too distant or the climb too steep? Do as much or as little as you can to advance. If you lack the strength to go all the way, then go some of the way. Your spiritual longings and labours will influence the nature of your next body and the conditions of your next incarnation. Nothing will be lost. Higher capacities and more favourable circumstances will then be yours if you have deserved them. Every virtue deliberately cultivated leads to a pleasanter rebirth. Every weakness remedied leads to the cancellation of an unpleasant one.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1333 – 2.1.5.161

BN – X – D

What man will set out on a task which he can never hope to accomplish? It is too much to expect the average seeker to become a mahatma. We portray the nature of this quest not because we hold such a vain expectation but because we believe in the value of right direction and in the creative power of the Ideal. The general direction of his thoughts and deeds—rather than those thoughts and deeds themselves—as well as the ideal he most habitually contemplates, is what is most important and most significant in his life.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1337 – 2.1.5.165

BN – Z – DEK

If there were no possibility of finding one's way from this body-prisoned, time-encased condition, then no one would ever have become self-realized, and all preaching of religion and teaching of philosophy would have been futile. But we know from history and biography that such achievement has been experienced in all parts of the world and in all centuries, so that no one should give up hope.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1342 – 2.1.5.170

BN – X – D

Thinking which is fact-grounded, experience-based, and correct; living which is wise, balanced, and good; meditation which goes deeper and deeper—these are some of our basic needs.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1345 – 2.1.5.173

BN – ZZ – D

Peace of mind can be enjoyed in this world: there is no need to wait for passage to the next one.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1346 – 2.1.5.174

BN – X – D

The ultimate goal is for us to live from the Overself not from the ego.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > What exactly is the goal?

#1347 – 2.1.5.175

BN – ZZ – DEK

In every individual there is an original, mysterious, and incalculable element, because his past history and his prenatal ancestry in other lives on earth have inevitably been different at certain points from those of other individuals. His world-outlook may seem the same as theirs, but there will always be subtle variations. There is no single path which can be presented to suit the multitudinous members of the human species. There is no one unalterable approach to this experience for all human beings. Each has to find his own way, to travel forward by the guidance of his own present understanding and past experience—and each in the end really does so despite all appearances to the contrary.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Unique person: unique path

#1351E – 2.1.5.179

B_06 – EL1/4

For each man passes through a different set of life-experiences. His past history and present circumstances have constituted an individual being who is unique, who possesses something entirely his own. It is partly through the lessons, reflections, intuitions, traits, characteristics, and capacities engendered by such experiences that he is able to find his way to truth. Therefore, he is forced not only to work out his own realization but also to work it out in his own unique way.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Unique person: unique path

#1351E – 2.1.5.179

B_06 – EL2/4

Every description of a mystical path must consequently be understood in a general sense. If its expounder delimits it to constitute a precise path for all alike, he exaggerates. Although there is so much in life which the aspirant shares with other beings, there is always a residue which imparts a stamp of individuality that is different from and unshareable with the individualities of all others. Consequently, the inner path which he must follow cannot be precisely the same as theirs. In the end, after profiting by all the help which he may gain from advanced guides and fellow-pilgrims, after all his attempts to imitate or follow them, he is forced to find or make a way for himself, a way which will be peculiarly his own. In the end he must work out his own unique means to salvation and depend on himself for further enlightenment and strength. Taught by his own intelligence and instructed by his own intuition, he must find his own unique path toward enlightenment.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Unique person: unique path

#1351E – 2.1.5.179

B_06 – EL3/4

Each case is different, because each person has a different heredity, temperament, character, environment, and living habits. Therefore, these general principles must be adapted to, and fitted in with, that person's particular condition.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Unique person: unique path

#1351E – 2.1.5.179

B_06 – EL4/4

The seekers are to be found at different levels and are attracted by different approaches according to their different intellectual development, emotional temperaments, moral capacities, and intuitional sensitivity.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Unique person: unique path

#1357 – 2.1.5.185

BN – Z

All of us have to travel in the same broad direction if we would rise from the lower to the higher grades of being. But the way in which we shall travel the Way is essentially a personal one. All of us must obey its general rules, but no two seekers can apply them precisely alike.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Unique person: unique path

#1360 – 2.1.5.188

B_06 – P – D