It is not the faint glimpse of truth which reveals all but the full and steady insight. The innate felicity of the one may—and often does—deceive a man into believing that he is experiencing the absolute uniqueness of the other. But the philosophic student, trained to control his ego, is unlikely to mistake these passing phases of his inner life for what they are not.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29030 – 14.22.8.87

BN – Z

There is a difference between the ordinary glimpse and the philosophical way. Both come to an end; but the philosophical seeker incessantly returns to its remembrance, uses it to work continuously at the transformation of his self and never lets go of the vision.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29031 – 14.22.8.88

BN – Z – DEK

An elementary or obscure knowledge of reality is too often taken by the aspirant as the full knowledge. This is because it so dramatically transcends his ordinary condition. But it is still not to be compared with the firm certitude of clear Insight.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29032 – 14.22.8.89

BN – ZZ – K

It is possible to be open to one's best inner self, aware of its presence, its beauty and peace. And this possibility can be not only realized but also naturalized. It can become one's normal condition.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29033 – 14.22.8.90

BSG_4 – P – D

More and more its light will enter his mind, its strength his heart, and its presence his meditative periods.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29034 – 14.22.8.91

BN – Z – DEK

On that day when the glimpse comes, the impact may be strong enough and the man's ambition high enough to make him believe that this is ultimate salvation. Not so, alas!

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29035 – 14.22.8.92

BN – Z

Since it is a glimpse only, and not a completed experience, he ought not to expect his own person and personal life to be completely transformed.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29037 – 14.22.8.94

BN – Z – DK*

This is his further task, to infuse the beauty and tranquillity, the unworldliness and immaterialism of the glimpse into his ordinary everyday life.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29038 – 14.22.8.95

BN – X – D

This beautiful state of heart has yet to become natural and continuous. And that cannot happen until the personal ego is laid low and until the whole psyche of the man engages in the struggle for self-conquest.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29039 – 14.22.8.96

BN – Z

To glimpse the land beyond is not to reach the goal itself.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29040 – 14.22.8.97

BN – Z

He who experiences it only intermittently may guess from this how wonderful his existence would be if he were able to experience it constantly.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29041 – 14.22.8.98

BN – X – D

These glimpses come quite fitfully. Rare is the person to whom the Light comes and stays, day after day, year after year. Most have to work on, with, and by themselves to convert this momentary experience into the ever-present feeling of living in the Overself.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29043 – 14.22.8.100

BN – Z – D

It is man's highest happiness to stay in this heaven of Consciousness all the time, not merely catch a glimpse of it, wonderful though that be.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29044 – 14.22.8.101

BN – X – D

The joyous awareness evoked for a short period is a foretaste of what will one day be manifested continuously.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29046 – 14.22.8.103

BN – X – D

He can then say truthfully, 'knowing' whereof he speaks: "A divine element lives in me!" Far though this has taken him from the ordinary good man or ordinary pious man, it is not enough. He needs to go further so that he can attain the place where, obedient, purified, conscious of the World-Idea, he can add: "This element now works in me." With that the ego's tyranny falls away.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29047 – 14.22.8.104

BN – Z – DK

Flashes of Cosmic Consciousness or glimpses of the higher self could be of one aspect of it only, such as its beauty or its wisdom. You will have to broaden out later.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination

#29049 – 14.22.8.106

BN – Z

The purpose of this brief glimpse is to call us to more serious, more frequent, and sterner efforts, and to arouse in us increased ardours of moral self-improvement. It has shown us our finest potentialities of virtue; now we have to realize them. All elements of personality must be adjusted to the ideal shown by the glimpse, as the whole personality itself has to be surrendered to it. A work lasting several years may be rooted in a flash lasting only a few minutes…

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29050E – 14.22.8.107

BSG_5 – P – DE

The veils hiding Truth from us are lifted for a time. The idea that we have a Higher Self, the conviction that we have a Soul, breaks in upon our "little existence" with great revelatory force, and we feel we are emerging into glorious light after a dreary journey through a long dark tunnel.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29050E – 14.22.8.107

BSG_5 – P – DE

Glimpses bring human being truly into touch with his Soul and demonstrate that divinity is both with and within him. They establish in his consciousness the knowledge of its real existence and the understanding of its real character; whoever has once seen the goal, felt its sublimity, discerned its reality, enjoyed its beauty, and known its security, should draw from the experience the strength needed for the hard upward climb.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29050E – 14.22.8.107

BSG_5 – P – DE

The way is a progressive one only in the largest sense. In actuality it consists often of stagnations and setbacks, falls and even withdrawals. Instead of smooth progression there are fits and starts, rises and falls. Nearly all seekers experience lapses and wanderings aside. Continuous advance without retrogression is likely to begin only after initiation into the ultimate path.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29050E – 14.22.8.107

B_01 – ZZ – DEK3

The purpose of this brief glimpse is to call us to more serious, more frequent, and sterner efforts, and to arouse in us increased ardours of moral self-improvement. It has shown us our finest potentialities of virtue; now we have to realize them. All elements of personality must be adjusted to the ideal shown by the glimpse, as the whole personality itself has to be surrendered to it. A work lasting several years may be rooted in a flash lasting only a few minutes…

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29050E – 14.22.8.107

UR_3.2 – ZZ – DEK3

The felicitous experience of the Overself may come briefly during meditation. It comes abruptly. At one moment the student is his ordinary egoistic self, struggling with his restless thoughts and turbulent feelings; at the next the ego suddenly subsides, and every faculty becomes quiescent. All the disciple has to do is to be non-resistant to the divinity, which is taking possession of him, to receive lovingly and not strive laboriously. The oncoming of this experience will be marked by various other signs: the intellect becomes suspended; will, judgement, memory, and reasoning slip gently into abeyance. A deep serenity unknown before takes possession of him, and an exquisite calm settles over him. In these moments of joyous beauty, the bitterest past is blotted out, and the ugliest history redeemed.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29050E – 14.22.8.107

B_01 – ZZ – DEK

The upward flights of his novitiate have to be bought at the cost of downward falls. A period of illumination is often followed by a period of darkness. At first the experience of reality will come only in flashes.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29050E – 14.22.8.107

B_01 – ZZ – DEK

It is not only a question of how much of his mind does the experience illuminate but also what other parts of his personality does it inspire.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29053 – 14.22.8.110

BN – Z

When the state of egolessness is first reached, it will be in deep meditation. The second stage of its development will be when it is temporarily reached in active life, the third and last when it is established there.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29054 – 14.22.8.111

BN – Z – D

When the Grace has led him sufficiently far, he will be distinctly aware of an inner presence. It will think for him, feel for him, and even act for him. This is the beginning of, and what it means to have, an egoless life.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29055 – 14.22.8.112

BN – Z – D

Just as the sun's rays are reflected on a burnished silver plate, so the Overself's attributes are faithfully reflected on a purified and egoless mind.

Inspiration and the Overself > Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > Glimpses of Light

#29056 – 14.22.8.113

BN – Z

Evolution is only an idea within the mind, hence it has the value of something imagined. The reality is that one has never left the heavenly being, but ignorance prevents him from realizing this. To get rid of this ignorance, he must sharpen the mind by constant effort, tranquillize it by meditation, and guide it through the help of a teacher.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Contemplation

#29057 – 15.23.0.1

BN – Z

Whatever path a man starts with, he must at the end of it come to the entrance of this path—the destruction of the illusion of the ego and giving up identification with it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Contemplation

#29058 – 15.23.0.2

BN – ZZ

This notion that we must wait and wait while we slowly progress out of enslavement into liberation, out of ignorance into knowledge, out of the present limitations into a future union with the Divine, is only true if we let it be so. But we need not. We can shift our identification from the ego to the Overself in our habitual thinking, in our daily reactions and attitudes, in our response to events and the world. We have thought our way into this unsatisfactory state; we can unthink our way out of it. By incessantly remembering what we really are, here and now at this very moment, we set ourselves free. Why wait for what already is?

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29059 – 15.23.1.1

BN – ZZ – D

All other approaches to the goal depend on a dualistic principle, which puts them on a lower plane. But the Short Path is nondual: it begins and ends with the goal itself; its nature is direct and its working is immediate.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29060 – 15.23.1.2

BN – Z – D

Consciousness appearing as the person seeks itself. This is its quest. But when it learns and comprehends that it is itself the object of that quest, the person stops not only seeking outside himself but even engaging in the quest itself. Henceforth he lets himself be moved by the Overself's flow.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29061 – 15.23.1.3

BN – ZZ – D

All these substitutes for the truth may appear to be useful stepping-stones to it but in fact they keep him from it, for there is no end to the number of steps he will be able to take since there is no end to the number of ways the human mind can spin out its ideas and fancies. Unless he begins with the end first, he will get lost on the way to it.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29062 – 15.23.1.4

BN – Z

Are we to reject the plain statements of these enlightened men—that is, statements of the Short Path that you are divine? Do we know more and better about divine things than they do? Why can we not accept the idea that they describe not a theory but a discovery?

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29063 – 15.23.1.5

BN – ZZ – D

This then is the ultimate truth—that in our inmost nature we are anchored in God, inseparable from God, and that the discovery of this heavenly nature is life's loftiest purpose. Even now, already, today, we are as divine as we ever shall be. The long evolutionary ladder which by prophets and teachers, gurus and guides we are bidden to climb toilsomely and slowly and painfully need not be climbed at all if only we heed this truth continually, if we refuse to let it go, if we make it ours in all parts of our being—in thought, feeling, faith, and action.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29064 – 15.23.1.6

BN – ZZ – DM*

For if we are divine and timeless beings now (and who can gainsay it that has had a glimpse of that starry state memorably vouchsafed to him?) then we have always been such. How can we evolve who are already self-existent, perfect beings? Does it not seem more probable that something alien has accreted around us, covering up the sublimer consciousness; that Time's work is not to raise us but to free us; that our search is not for a loftier state but for our pristine state, to recover our former grandeur? What we need is not to grow but to know. Evolution cannot help us, but self-knowledge can.  

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29065 – 15.23.1.7

UR_5 – ZZZ – DK

This is the concept which governs the Short Path: that he is in the Stillness of central being all the time whether he knows it or not, that he has never left and can never leave it. And this is so, even in a life passed in failure and despair.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29066 – 15.23.1.8

BN – Z – DK1

The man on the Short Path moves forward directly to fulfil his objective. Instead of working by slow degrees toward the control of thoughts, he seeks to recollect the fact that the sacred Overself is present in his mind at this very moment, that It lives within him right now, and not only as a goal to be attained in some distant future. The more he understands this fact and holds attention to it, the more he finds himself able to feel the great calm which follows its realization, the more his thoughts automatically become still in consequence.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29067 – 15.23.1.9

BN – Z – DK1

What it asserts is that the real truth already exists in the pithy core of man's mind, that it can be seen by anyone who will undo the illusions which cover it so thickly, the passions which obscure it so agitatedly, and, above all, the egoism which fears it so greatly. This does not imply the development of new things: it implies the removal of old ones. It is concerned with the discovery of what we really are, not what we shall one day become.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29068 – 15.23.1.10

BA11 – P – DK

Pascal said in 'Le Mystère de Jesus': "Thou wouldst not seek Me, if thou didst not possess Me. Be not therefore anxious."

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29069 – 15.23.1.11

BN – X – DK*

We cannot attain reality, for we already are in it; but we can attain consciousness of it. And such consciousness arises naturally the moment we know appearance as being appearance. This knowledge may be nothing more than a second's glimpse, before old habit powerfully reasserts itself again, but it will be enough to tell us the truth.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29070 – 15.23.1.12

BN – Z – D

How far is it true that the limitations of one's capacity to understand truth are illusion, and that the constant suggestion to oneself that one is divine in attributes and qualities produces the realization of it?

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29072 – 15.23.1.14

BN – Z

It is the paradox of the Short Path that it begins with the end, in order to arrive at the end!

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29073 – 15.23.1.15

BN – X – D

The finest of all experiences is to perceive that he need no longer pursue experiences because the pursuer and the Pursued are one and the same Being. Inner experiences are all in time, doomed to pass away; but he, the Consciousness behind them, behind the ego's consciousness, is out of time, hence Immortal.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29074 – 15.23.1.16

BN – ZZ – DEK

The divine presence is there, its power is consequently there too. He may avail himself of it by Grace. Let him look to it then. But where is he to see it? Jesus provides the clearest answer: "The kingdom of heaven is within you". His hope of help can find its realization coming from one direction only—from the deeper part of his own self.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29075 – 15.23.1.17

B_11 – P – D

Wang Yang-ming: "Our original nature is purely good. It is not possible to add anything to this original state. The knowledge of the superior man merely serves to clear away the obscuration, and thus to show forth the shining virtue." And again, "The mind of man is heaven but because of the obscurations caused by selfishness, that state is not manifested. When all of them are cleared away, the original nature is restored."

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29076 – 15.23.1.18

BN – ZZ – D

What has never been lost can never be found. If a quester fails to find the Overself, it is not because of faults or weaknesses in the ego but because he is himself that which he seeks. There is nothing else to be found than understanding of this fact. Instead of seeking Overself as something above, beyond, or apart from himself, he should stop seeking altogether and recognize ‘i am’ as ‘I AM’!

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29077 – 15.23.1.19

B_05 – P – DE

The moment the questing attitude is taken, with the Overself as its sought-for goal, in that moment the ego and the Overself are put apart as two separate things and cannot be brought together again. But by letting such thoughts go, and all thoughts subside, mind may enter the Stillness and know itself again as Mind. Yet even this is useless if the understanding that the seeker is really the sought is lacking.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29078 – 15.23.1.20

B_05 – P – D

If you will not accept the saving truth that you are now as divine as you ever will be, and follow the ultimate path, then you rank yourself with those men who, as Jesus said, "love darkness rather than light", however much you may protest against such a classification.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29079 – 15.23.1.21

B_11 – P – DE

Once we can grasp this psychic fact that tomorrow exists today—as precognition has finally grasped it—we are ready to mount up to the higher philosophic fact that the spiritual goal is already within our reach, and only needs claiming.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29080 – 15.23.1.22

BN – Z

Believe implicitly that the divinity is within you, a 'knowing' divinity, and—if you will harmonize yourself with it intuitively—a guiding divinity. As a Far Eastern poet has put it: "Your rice has been cooked from the very beginning."

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29081 – 15.23.1.23

BN – Z

So long as the aspirant takes the attitude that he aspires to unite with the Overself, that he wants permanent spiritual illumination, he is merely adding another desire to those which his ego already possesses. He is still turning round inside the closed circle of the little self. There is no way out except to forget himself, to turn away from the ego and regard, fixedly and constantly, the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29082 – 15.23.1.24

BN – Z – D

The idea that we have to wait for liberation from the ego and enlightenment by the Overself, to evolve through much time and many reincarnations, is correct only if we continue to remain mesmerized by it, but false if we take our stand on reality rather than appearance: we are now as divine as we ever shall be—but we must wake up from illusion and see this truth.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29083 – 15.23.1.25

BN – Z – D

Because it is impossible for the questing ego to become the Overself, the quester must recognize that he is the Overself and stop thinking in egoistic terms of progress along a path, or attainment of a goal.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29084 – 15.23.1.26

B_05 – ZZZ – DK

Of what use is unrealized divinity to anyone? If he is unconscious of his higher self, is a man any better off? The link of being linked with God potentially is not enough. It must also be personally discovered, felt, known, and demonstrated in living activity.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29085 – 15.23.1.27

BN – Z

Because what we seek is ours already, because the Overself is always here and now, there is in reality no quest to follow, no path to travel, and no goal to reach.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29086 – 15.23.1.28

UR_4map – ZZZ – DK

Job carried the answer to his own question, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him," within himself all the time, but he did not know it.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29087 – 15.23.1.29

BN – Z – DK*

We suffer under the delusion that we must struggle, centimetre by centimetre, all the long way to the kingdom of heaven. We stare, astonished and sceptical, when a Sage—Indian, Chinese, Japanese—tells us that we are already in it.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29088 – 15.23.1.30

BN – Z – D

There is really nothing to be achieved here; only something to be accepted—the fact of your own divinity.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29089 – 15.23.1.31

BN – ZZ – DK

We came to this Earth to understand ourselves, bit by bit. There is really nothing to be achieved here; only something to be accepted—the fact of your own divinity.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29089M – 15.23.1.31

B_01 – ZZZ – DXK

Why go on hoping for a far-off day when peace and truth will be attained? Why not drastically strip off all the illusions of self-identification with ego and recognize that the true identity is already fulfilled?

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29090 – 15.23.1.32

BN – Z – D

The divine is actually within us and has been there all along…

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29091E – 15.23.1.33

BT1008 – P – DE

The divine is actually within us and has been there all along—if we set out to gain knowledge of it. What then really happens should we succeed in doing so? A recognition and a remembrance! Why then all this fuss of studies and practices, exercises and meditations, flocking to gurus and labouring at self-improvements? Is it not enough to be our own teachers and to remember our own long-held wisdom?

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29091 – 15.23.1.33

B_07 – ZZZ – DE

On the Short Path he does away with the duality of thought which sets up two ruling powers—good and evil, God and Adverse Force—and recognizes GOD as the only real existence.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29092 – 15.23.1.34

BN – Z

If the Long Path begins and ends with ego, the Short Path begins with a 180 degree turnaround, opens up a vista of the infinite Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29093 – 15.23.1.35

BN – Z – DK

This identification with the Overself is the real work set us, the real purpose for which human life in the world serves us. All else is merely a comfortable way of escape, a means of keeping us busy so that conscience need not be troubled by the central duty to which we are summoned.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29094 – 15.23.1.36

BN – ZZ – D

The Long Path methods and attitudes, ideas and principles—admirable in their place and time—have to be got rid of; otherwise the Short Path truths cannot be brought in. For the one is dualistic and objective, whereas the other is nondualistic and nonobjective. The aspirant has to turn around and take a totally opposite direction.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29096 – 15.23.1.38

BN – Z – K

The changeover to the Short Path calls for a tremendous leap from his present standpoint—whatever that may happen to be—to the highest possible one.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29099 – 15.23.1.41

BN – Z – D

There is hope if only he is determined to wake up and begin afresh, to supplant negatives with positives, and to give more of himself to the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29102 – 15.23.1.44

BN – Z – D

If, in his earlier days when on the Long Path, he practised daily checking his personal feelings where they were negative, hostile, or condemnatory in the relationship with others, or when they interrupted his inner calm in the relationship with himself, now on the Short Path he abandoned this training. It was no more the really important thing, for it had been just a preparation of the ego for that thing—which was to forget and transcend the ego by transferring attention to the remembrance of his divine being, his Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29103 – 15.23.1.45

BN – Z – D

The Long Path man's thoughts are too often with his personal self, too seldom with his Overself. The blessed turning point will be reached when he looks away from himself with persevering faith.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29104 – 15.23.1.46

BN – X – D

He must now throw himself up in the air and perform a somersault. This is the transition from Long to Short Path. Working up to it is slow, actually doing it is sudden.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29105 – 15.23.1.47

BN – Z

The Long Path man who is worried about his sins and content with his virtues gives place to the Short Path man who is preoccupied with neither—because both are facets of the ego—but seeks to understand, revere, and contemplate the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29106 – 15.23.1.48

BN – X – D

He comes up against the inevitable limitation of his personal ego and, both in meditation exercise and in practical life, turns away from it, opens his eyes, and recognizes the Presence of the Overself as his never-absent guardian angel. With that act of seeing he also receives its Grace. One after another the virtues drop into his hands as easily as ripened fruits.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29107 – 15.23.1.49

BN – Z – D

This progress through a series of attitudes leads in the end to something transcending them altogether—a shift of consciousness from ego to Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29108 – 15.23.1.50

BN – Z – D

It is at such a time that he needs to go straight to the source of divine grace, to break his mental alliance with the ego and begin a joyful reliance on the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29110 – 15.23.1.52

BN – X – D

While a man's mind is full of himself, he shuts out the influx of the Overself. This remains just as true of meditation times as of ordinary times. He must empty out all these earthly interests, all these personal concerns, and even, in the end, all these egoistic spiritual aspirations by transferring his attention to that which is beyond the ego. He must think only of the Overself—of its nature and attributes, of its tokens and signs of presence, of its reality and eternity.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29111 – 15.23.1.53

BN – Z – D

He can repudiate the man that he was in the past: the fool who committed grave errors of judgement; the sinner who fell into trap after trap; the seeker who was preoccupied with his own advancement, his own condition. He can liberate himself from all the old images of himself and assume a new one, become a new man. For he can turn his back on all these ego-regarding attitudes and transfer his thoughts, his self-identification, to the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29112 – 15.23.1.54

B_05 – P – DE

It is not good to live in unwholesome memories of what we ought not to have done but did do, and never put a period to them. Such repeated self-flagellation keeps the ego immersed in its own little circle. It is better to turn away from them and live in the sunshine of the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29113 – 15.23.1.55

BN – X – D

To bring about insight into the Overself requires an inner revolution, a psychological burrowing beneath the entire ego-consciousness to that secret place from where it arises.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29114 – 15.23.1.56

BN – Z – D

All pruning of the ego is of little use, for as one fault is removed a new one springs out of latency. Why? Because the ego is. The Short Path is the only genuine approach to truth, the only one offering real possibility of liberation. It is endorsed by Atmananda and Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi. Lifetimes have been spent by seekers who have travelled the Long Path but arrived nowhere, or are not much nearer the goal, whereas others have made swift advance from their first steps on the Short Path. The assertion that the Long Path is a necessary complement to or preparation for the Short one is correct only for those who are still under the thraldom of illusion, who are asleep. Its followers merely travel in a circle: they never get out of the illusion or awake from the sleep. That is why in the end it has to be given up, abandoned, understood for the egoistic effort that it really is.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29115E – 15.23.1.57

BN – ZEL1/2 – DEK

The entire length of the Long Path is an attempt at self-improvement and self-purification planned, managed, operated, and supervised by the ego itself. Is it conceivable that the ego will work for its own destruction? No!—it will never do that however much it pretends to do so, however subtle the bluff with which it deceives itself or others. Even when the ego rebels against itself, it is merely playing a part. It has played many different parts in the past. Appearing as a rebel is merely one more disguise in the whole series.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29115E – 15.23.1.57

BN – ZEL2/2 – DEK

The Short Path calls for a definite change of mind, a thinking of totally new thoughts, a fastening of attention upon the goal instead of the way to it. It calls for a revolution, dethroning the ego from being the centre of attention and replacing it by the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29116 – 15.23.1.58

BN – ZZ – D

The basis of Short Path practices is that the mind is like a transparent crystal which takes on the colour of what is brought into propinquity with it. By turning the mind away from the ego, even from its improvement, and towards the Overself, uplift results.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29117 – 15.23.1.59

BN – Z – D

The Short Path offers the quickest way to the blessings of spiritual joy, truth, and strength. For since these things are present in the Overself, and since the Overself is present in all of us, each of us may claim them as his own by the direct declaration of his true identity. This simple act requires him to turn around, desert the dependence on personal self, and look to the original Source whence flows his real life and being, his true providence and happiness. Disregarding all contrary ideas that the world outside thrusts upon him, disdaining the ego's emotions and desires concerning them, he "prays without ceasing" to that Source. That is, he keeps himself concentrated within upon it until he can feel its liberating qualities and expand in its sunny glories.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29118 – 15.23.1.60

BN – X – D

On the Short Path he must give no backward glances at the ego, must no longer abase himself by identifying himself with that fraudulent self. He must cling to his new attitude with the ardour of a new convert.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29119 – 15.23.1.61

BN – Z – D

Let him try to look beyond his own defects to the perfection which is in the Overself, the true image of himself in which God made man.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29120 – 15.23.1.62

BN – X – D

The Short Path frees him from all gnawing regrets about the past, with its sins of commission and of omission, its errors and follies, its mistakes and deficiencies. Instead it puts his mind to work upon their contraries—what is beautiful and worthy, what is truthful and serene, what is pure and noble. This is the inner work to which a man is called, this transition from long detours, painful struggles, and entrapment in self-centeredness which all form the Long Path. Let them go, turn around, turn to the Short Path and find peace—a peace which is not only felt but also understood.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29121 – 15.23.1.63

BN – Z – DEK

There comes a stage, whether in meditation or in the ordinary daily experience of life, at which he has to cross over from doing, trying, and managing things by his own self alone and when he can let go and open himself to the higher force—when he can submit his ego to its ordinances, its commands, or to its whispers.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29122 – 15.23.1.64

BN – Z – D

In the end, he gets tired of taking the world, others, and his own ego as the object of exclusive attention and turns with relief to the Void.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29123 – 15.23.1.65

BN – Z

Saint John of the Cross gave the following advice: "Enter into your heart and labour in the presence of God who is always present there to help you. 'Fix your loving attention upon Him without any desire to feel or hear anything of God'." Could a beginner be asked to apply such words? A person in a well-advanced state is alone likely to respond to them. Or, those who have been told about the Short Path and have studied its nature and tried to fit it into their inner work—whether they be beginners or proficient—can also put them into practice.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29124 – 15.23.1.66

BN – X – DEK

The self-revilements of the Long Path must be abandoned: his eyes must look up at that other and higher Self.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29127 – 15.23.1.69

BN – X – D

Not by the acquisition of virtues and the abandonment of vices can you attain the deeper enlightenment, they assert, but by the transference of consciousness itself to an altogether different plane.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29128 – 15.23.1.70

BN – ZZ

He thinks only of the infinite goodness at his core and ignores the human frailty of his surface.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29129 – 15.23.1.71

BN – Z

He is asked to turn his back on what he gave so much of his time and thought and feeling to for so long and to give them henceforth to a totally transcendent level—the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29130 – 15.23.1.72

BN – Z – D

On this Long Path, we stand with our back to the Overself and try to re-educate the ego. On the Short Path we turn around from this position and faces the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29132 – 15.23.1.74

BSG_4 – P – D

The time will come when you will have to turn your back upon the Long Path in order to give full attention, the full energy and the full time, to the Short Path. For with this comes a new era when the whole concern is not with the ego, not with its improvement or betterment, but with the divine itself alone—not with the surface consciousness and all its little changes but with the very depths, the diviner depths where reality abides. At this point seek only the Higher Self, live only with positive thought, stay only for as long as you can with the holy silence within, feel only that inner stillness which belongs to the essence of consciousness. Henceforth you are not to become this or that, not to gather the various virtues, but simply to be. For this you do not have to strive, you do not have to think, you do not have to work with any form of yoga, with any method of meditation.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29134 – 15.23.1.76

BN – Z – DEK

There is a certain forthright logicality in the Short Path attitude which is uncomfortably uncompromising. If each man must find out the Overself's existence for, and by, himself, by his own intuition, it will confuse him and lead him astray if he discusses his problems with others or exchanges ideas and inner experiences with them. Secondly, if that existence must be found deep within his own nature, it will be travelling in an exactly opposite direction to travel to some land or place in search of a glamorous guru.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29135 – 15.23.1.77

BN – ZZ

If true light can come only from within a man, every outer method of bringing it to him must be in reality a method which leads him astray.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29136 – 15.23.1.78

BN – ZZ – D

He sees the truth as with a jolt. There it is, within his own being, lying deep down but still in his own self. There never was any need to travel anywhere to find it; no need to visit anyone who was supposed to have it already, and sit at his feet; not even to read any book, however sacred or inspired. Nor could another person, place, or writing give it to him—he would have to unveil it for himself in himself. The others could direct him to look inwards, thus saving all the effort of looking elsewhere. But he himself would have to give the needful attention to himself. The discovery must be his own, made within the still centre of his being.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29137 – 15.23.1.79

BA12 – ZZZ – D

If he is to be true to his espousal of philosophy he will keep himself outside partisan, officially titled, and other limiting forms. And one of the best ways to approach this ideal is through the practice of self-emptying.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29138 – 15.23.1.80

BN – Z

There is an element of truth in the statement—often made by Krishnamurti—that the best way to start on the Way to Truth is to discard all that previous thinking, reading, and listening have yielded.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29139 – 15.23.1.81

BN – Z

The teacher of the Short Path tells men—and rightly—to beware of letting techniques, practices, or methods become new manacles on their hands, new obstructions on their way to inner freedom.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29140 – 15.23.1.82

BN – Z

The Short Path man ought not to depend on authorities, scriptures, rules, regulations, organizations, gurus, or writings. His past history may outwardly force such an association on him, but inwardly he will seek to liberate himself from it. For his ultimate aim is to reach a point where no interpreter, medium, or transmitter obtrudes between him and the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29141 – 15.23.1.83

BN – ZZ

Krishnamurti's free-thinking, idol-shattering teaching is a good counterbalance and advanced complement to the ordinary yoga teaching. It is not really a contradiction, since it is a Short Path form completing yoga's Long Path. Krishnamurti's uncompromising rigidity is also a corrective to the sectarian fanaticism and guru deification which mark the seeking of many beginners. They receive a shock when first reading or hearing him. He undermines and explodes the little attitudes they have been taught to copy, the precious beliefs they have been told to hold. From his point of view, the solemnities of religious ritual and the frivolities of theatrical revue are both on the same plane.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29142 – 15.23.1.84

BN – Z – K

Here, on this Short Path, he is to direct his yearnings and seekings, his hopes and thoughts, solely to the Overself. Nothing and nobody, not even a guru, is to come between them.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29143 – 15.23.1.85

BN – Z – D

In Tibet, the name "Short Path" is given to the path of complete self-reliance without any guidance from an outer master. It is understood that only exceptionally advanced aspirants are capable of entering such a path.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29144 – 15.23.1.86

BN – Z

It is often advisable to be one's own guide, studying worthy books, using prayer and reflection, and following the intuitive guidance of one's Higher Self.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29145 – 15.23.1.87

BN – Z – D

Whatever technique is adopted, in the end it cages them in, keeps them its prisoner and prevents the free search which is necessary to find truth.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Begin and end with the goal itself

#29146 – 15.23.1.88

BN – Z

What is the key to the Short Path? It is threefold. First, stop searching for the Overself since it follows you wherever you go. Second, believe in its Presence, with and within you. Third, keep on trying to understand its truth until you can abandon further thoughts about it. You cannot acquire what is already here. So drop the ego's false idea and affirm the real one.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29150 – 15.23.1.92

BN – ZZ – DK1

The Short Path stimulates him to dynamically energetic endeavours and encourages him to make lightning-like thrusts toward Reality. This he cannot do without inexorably and resolutely crushing his ego or taking advantage of a grave circumstance and unresistingly letting it crush the ego for him.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29153 – 15.23.1.95

BN – Z

The Short Path is, in essence, the ceaseless practice of remembering to stay in the Stillness, for this is what he really is in his innermost being and where he meets the World-Mind.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29155 – 15.23.1.97

BN – Z – DK1

The Short Path uses (a) thinking: metaphysical study of the Nature of Reality; (b) practice: constant remembrance of Reality during everyday life in the world; (c) meditation: surrender to the thought of Reality in stillness. You will observe that in all these three activities 'there is no reference to the personal ego'. There is no thinking of, remembering, or meditating upon oneself, as there is with the Long Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29156 – 15.23.1.98

BN – Z – DK1

A part of the Short Path work is intellectual study of the metaphysics of Truth. This is needful to expose the ego's own illusoriness, as a preliminary to transcending it, and to discriminate its ideas, however spiritual, from reality.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29157 – 15.23.1.99

BN – ZZ – DK1

In the first and second stages of the Short Path, his aim is to set himself free from the egoism in which his consciousness is confined.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29158 – 15.23.1.100

BN – Z – DK1

This is simply a way of practice for any sincere seeker. It does not interfere with his religious creed or belief.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29159 – 15.23.1.101

BN – Z

The Short Path is the real way! All else is mere preparation of the equipment for it. For with it he is no longer to direct his meditation upon the shortcomings and struggles of the personal self but up to the Overself, its presence and strength. For the consciousness of the Real, the True, the Beneficent and Peaceful comes by its Grace alone and by this practice he attracts the visitation.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29160 – 15.23.1.102

BN – ZZ – D

The Short Path is no dryly intellectual affair or coldly unfeeling one. It nurtures beautiful, exquisite moments and richly uplifting moods. Both this path and its term are vital and dynamic aesthetic experiences.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29163 – 15.23.1.105

BN – Z

He cultivates a more joyous attitude, this man on the Short Path, for remembrance of the Overself, which he practises constantly, reminds him of the glory of the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29164 – 15.23.1.106

BN – Z – D

It is better at this stage to forget his failings and bring in the atmosphere which would make them inoperative.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29165 – 15.23.1.107

BN – Z

It is not enough to learn to bear with others, to excuse and accept their shortcomings. He must also learn to bear with himself, to accept his own shortcomings.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29166 – 15.23.1.108

B_13 – ZZ – D

In its advanced phases the Short Path is no pathway at all. It has all the freedom of air and sea.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29168 – 15.23.1.110

BN – Z

It is a kind of spiritual ju-jitsu, for it uses the ego's own strength to overthrow the ego!

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29169 – 15.23.1.111

BN – Z

It is a Short Path attitude to avoid censorious reproaches and condemnatory speech—these as a part of its larger rejection of negatives and preference for positives.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29170 – 15.23.1.112

BN – Z – D

Reject every negative thought with implacable rigour—this is one of the important practical deductions of the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29171 – 15.23.1.113

BN – X – D

Recognition is a prominent feature on the Short Path. The Overself is always there but only those on the Short Path recognize this truth and think accordingly. The world is always with us, but only those on the Short Path 'recognize' the miracle that it is. In moments of exaltation, uplift, awe, or satisfaction—derived from music, art, poetry, landscape, or otherwise—thousands of people have received a Glimpse; but only those on the Short Path recognize it for what it really is.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29172 – 15.23.1.114

BN – Z – DEK

The Short Path concentrates thought upon the Real, deliberately forgetful of everything and everyone in the world of illusion.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29174 – 15.23.1.116

BN – X – D

He cannot walk this Shorter Path without rejecting the world as illusion and consequently without labelling the world's evil and suffering as illusory. It is a hard test for him to pass, a narrow gate which bars successful travel on this Path to him if he persists in clinging to his old beliefs. Their sacrifice is required of him—yet not blindly as a matter of faith alone but justly as a matter of reason as well.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29177 – 15.23.1.119

BN – ZZ

The practice of refusing to accept appearances of evil or illusion and penetrating to realities of beneficence and truth draws out and discovers the purifying and healing capabilities which can remedy those appearances.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29178 – 15.23.1.120

BN – Z

A boundless faith in the Overself's power to assist him must be the possession of a Short Path votary—that is, faith in both the existence and the efficacy of its Grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29179 – 15.23.1.121

BN – X – D

The Short Path precludes impatience and forbids anxiety.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29180 – 15.23.1.122

BN – X – D

The attitude of pursuing an objective, of searching for a truth, however admirable in the early stages, becomes an obstruction in this the latest stage.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29181 – 15.23.1.123

BN – X – D

When he is established to some extent on the Short Path he may not only expect the expected, as most people do, but also expect the unexpected.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29182 – 15.23.1.124

BN – X – D

On the Short Path he fixes his mind on divine attributes, such as the all-pervading, ever-present, beginningless and endless nature of the One Life-Power, until he is lifted out of his little ego entirely.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29185 – 15.23.1.127

BN – Z – D

Take the goal in view from the new beginning. This will help prevent going astray, making detours, losing discrimination.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29186 – 15.23.1.128

BN – Z

If he firmly plants his feet on the Short Path, if he never lets himself forget his real being is in the Overself, then he must refuse to accept a single one of those thoughts which so often trouble the traveller on the Long Path—thoughts of anxiety, frustration, or concern about his progress. He stays well above them.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29187 – 15.23.1.129

BN – Z – D

He does not have to think meanly of himself all the time, does not have to worry anxiously about his unworthy character. Rather should he learn to get more relaxed, more remindful of the existence of his diviner being.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29189 – 15.23.1.131

BN – Z

On the Short Path, instead of attacking the lower self, he lifts himself up to the presence of the higher. The evil in him may then melt away of its own accord.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29190 – 15.23.1.132

BN – Z – D

The Short Path shows him that it is better to take the highest model, to look for his strength rather than his weakness.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29191 – 15.23.1.133

BN – Z

It is the unique contribution of the Short Path that it takes advantage of the Overself's ever-present offer of Grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29192 – 15.23.1.134

BN – Z – D

When body and feeling are cleansed by disciplinary regimes, when the intellect is inspired by meditational exercises, one is ready for the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29193 – 15.23.1.135

BN – Z – D

Your reaction to events and persons depends on your recognition of Overself. If you see only little ego, and fail to see the Overself, there will be a negative reaction. Both are within you.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29194 – 15.23.1.136

BN – Z – DK

Not by harshly and negatively condemning others who act wrongly—which is needful at the proper time, with the proper person—does the Short Path votary correct them but by constructively, kindly suggesting the better way.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29195 – 15.23.1.137

BN – ZZ

Just as the ancient pagan Mysteries required some amount of preparation and some form of purification before candidates were admitted, so the Short Path ordinarily requires some Long Path work as a prerequisite. But not always and not now.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29196 – 15.23.1.138

BN – X – D

The Short Path can only be travelled if faith in the Overself is fundamental and complete, and if trust in the effectiveness of its power is strong and unwavering.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29198 – 15.23.1.140

BN – Z – D

Expect the unexpectable!

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29199 – 15.23.1.141

BN – Z – K

It is the art of being artless, spiritual without doing it consciously. It is achievement of effortless mental quiet. It is ordinary living, plus an extraordinary continuous awareness.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > The practice

#29200 – 15.23.1.142

BN – Z – D

This is the wonder of the Short Path—that it teaches us to refuse at once every thought which seeks to identify us with the feeble and unworthy self. This is the gladness of the Short Path—that it urges us to accept and hold only those thoughts which identify us directly with the strong and divine Overself, or which reflect its goodness and wisdom.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29201 – 15.23.1.143

BN – Z – D

With the Short Path, one emerges into an atmosphere that is totally different in nature and quality from the Long Path's. It is like seeing the sun break through the clouds.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29202 – 15.23.1.144

BN – Z – D

It is while working with the Short Path that the man discovers he may apply its principles to his worldly existence, his earthly fortunes too. He learns that the ultimate source of his physical welfare is not the ego but the Overself. If he looks only to the little ego for his supply, he must accept all its narrow limitations, its dependence on personal effort alone. But if he looks farther and recognizes his true source of welfare is with the Overself, with its miracle-working Grace, he knows that all things are possible to it. Hope, optimism, and high expectation make his life richer, more abundant.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29204 – 15.23.1.146

BN – Z – DEK

The consequence of this self-training on the Short Path is that in all questions, problems, situations, and practices his first thought will be to take the matter to the Overself, identifying with Overself, and later, when he returns to the second thought, the matter will be looked at under this diviner light.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29207 – 15.23.1.149

BN – Z – D

When he shifts the centre of his interest from the ego to the Stillness his life begins to manage itself. Happenings pertaining to it come about without his doing anything at all.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29208 – 15.23.1.150

BN – Z

Put in another way, it may be said that the Short Path develops inspiration and evokes intuition.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29209 – 15.23.1.151

BN – X – DEK

The Short Path will bear fruit in several virtues, which will come of their own accord and without his trying to gain them. In this way it will help him calm his passions and discipline his ego, even though his thoughts and meditations make no reference to them.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29210 – 15.23.1.152

BN – X – D

Even without making special efforts to deal with undesirable traits, some will tend to fall away through being denied attention. This is one consequence of following the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29213 – 15.23.1.155

BN – X – D

Because he travels along the Short Path with a happy heart, his attitude towards other persons tends to be a loving one, or kindly, or at least emanating goodwill.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29214 – 15.23.1.156

BN – Z

Such is the value of Short Path exercises, and more especially of those which give constant mindfulness and the Witness-attitude, that earnest practice of them may bring realization in as little time as one week to seven years.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29215 – 15.23.1.157

BN – Z

Since the Overself is the source of all virtues, the man who unites with it will easily and naturally be virtuous in the truest sense: all the bad in his character will be eliminated.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29217 – 15.23.1.159

BN – X – D

Only the Short Path can turn aspiration into attainment, for only it proffers Grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29221 – 15.23.1.163

BN – X – DK

You will know truth and experience reality in those moments when you have freed yourself from the ego's conditioning processes, from its limiting past memories and imprisoning emotions. In such moments you will be abruptly enlightened and your whole attitude toward life will be different in consequence.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29223 – 15.23.1.165

BN – ZZ

One advantage of the Short Path is that whoever takes to it thoroughly gets rid of guilt complexes, of sorrowing over his past, his errors, his sins.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29225 – 15.23.1.167

B_13 – Z – D

On the Short Path he does little to free himself from a weakness, a desire, or a passion. It goes, falls away of its own accord, if he looks to the Higher Self rather than to the management of his own ego for salvation. It is in this spontaneous way, too, that the attitude of detachment begins to appear in his character and little by little—but sometimes swiftly—becomes established. But a warning is needed here. Whatever purifications or strengthenings, whatever other attempts and trainings at self-betterment he has begun need not be dropped, provided they are kept in their place and not allowed to obscure the view of the primary goal or gradually sidetrack direction from its superior level.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29226 – 15.23.1.168

BN – X – DEK

The question of the difficulty of dislodging the ego does not arise on the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29228 – 15.23.1.170

BN – Z

He has entered a new and happier phase of his life. The problems of the past have disappeared. The door to inner light is always ready to open at his mere push.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29230 – 15.23.1.172

BN – Z – D

The Short Path gives its followers gaiety of outlook and an assurance of victory.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29231 – 15.23.1.173

BN – Z

If he keeps in right relation with his Overself, he will inevitably keep in right relation with everything and everyone else.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29232 – 15.23.1.174

BN – Z

It takes his mind off himself and his difficulties and lifts him to the level where he can perceive that the Overself can take adequate care of him and them too. It is all-sufficient for all his needs, for clearing away old spiritual perplexities, or for providing new physical surroundings.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29233 – 15.23.1.175

BN – Z

The Short Path makes it possible for the most ordinary man—unprepared, untrained though he be—to find spiritual fulfilment.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29234 – 15.23.1.176

BN – Z – D

Only when it becomes natural and therefore easy, continuous and therefore well-established, does meditation become completely fruitful. But this is possible only on the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29236 – 15.23.1.178

BN – Z – D

The Short Path provides him with the chance of making a fresh start, of gaining new inspiration, more joy.

Advanced Contemplation > Entering the Short Path > Benefits and results

#29238 – 15.23.1.180

BN – X – D

The introduction of the Short Path ought not to be mistimed; it ought not to be introduced until enough work has been done to prepare a moral and intellectual basis for it, and enough balance secured. Then only will its capacity to lead the seeker toward the glorious climax of his quest be actualized. If introduced too early it merely stimulates egotism, animates intellectual pride, or simulates illumination.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29243 – 15.23.2.2

BN – Z

There is no need to think twice to understand that this is a dangerous doctrine. If a man believes that he is already divine and has nothing more to gain in that way, pitfalls lie ahead of him: first, self-deception leading to spiritual arrogance; second, indolence leading to lack of any effort to purify character and better the mind. The end could be a smug dwelling in illusion, very far from the divine reality it is supposed to be. Out of such illusions step forth the ambitious leaders of little groups or large movements, claiming special knowledge, power, vision, authority, even messiahship.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29245 – 15.23.2.4

BN – ZZ

The dangers inherent in the Short Path have to be noted and even proclaimed. The self-identification with the divine leads to the idea that since it is sinless the practiser is sinless, too, and whatever he does is right. Such an idea can come only to those who unconsciously seek excuses to justify the satisfaction of their desires. To them, the Long Path with its exhortations to self-control and self-discipline is something to be evaded. Another danger is the conceited belief that since the divine is ever-present, the goal has been attained and nothing further need be done—no exercises, no study, no meditation, and of course no ascetic regimes. It is such dangers which were part of the reasons why, in former times, the hidden teaching was not communicated to any persons until their character was first secretly and carefully tested for maturity and their mind was tested for fitness.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29248E – 15.23.2.7

BN – EL1/2

This caution was as existent in Christian circles as in Hindu ones. Today, since it has largely been broken down, the results are to be seen in the West as well as in the East, among solitary obscure individuals as well as among publicized cults. They are to be seen in mental derangement and immoral licence, in parrot-like prattle and charlatanic deception.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29248E – 15.23.2.7

BN – EL2/2

The Short Path advocates who decry the need of the Long Path altogether because, being divine in essence, we have only to realize what we already are, are misled by their own half-truth. What we actually find in the human situation is that we are only potentially divine. The work of drawing out and developing this potential still needs to be done. This takes time, discipline, and training, just as the work of converting a seed into a tree takes time.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29253 – 15.23.2.12

BN – ZZ – DM1

It is as sure as the sun's rising that if the mass of people are taught that good is no better than evil, both being merely relative, or no more valuable than evil, both being concerned with the illusory ego, they will fall into immorality, wickedness, and disaster. To teach them the Short Path before they have acquired sufficient disciplinary habits from the Long one will only degrade them.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29254 – 15.23.2.13

BN – X – K1

Those who are attracted to the Short Path because apparently it makes none of the disciplinary demands which the Long Path makes, who are repelled or frightened by the self-subjugation and self-abnegation which the latter requires, will not have so easy an escape as they think.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29255 – 15.23.2.14

BN – Z

Because good and bad have no meaning on the plane where there is no opposition, no struggle between them, the "enlightened" man who taught others to ignore this opposition and abandon this struggle, who told them that to do what they will is the whole of the law, would thereby prove his own lack of enlightenment. In other words, he would be a dangerous impostor or a mere intellectual.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29258 – 15.23.2.17

BN – Z

The Short Pathers want to rush towards their goal in one all-sweeping operation. They lack the patience to move toward it step by step. They do not comprehend that to fully attain their wish a high degree of spiritual maturity is needed, that their way must have previously been prepared.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29267 – 15.23.2.26

BN – Z

To seek to jump to the highest level, while neglecting to improve bad ways of living or to correct the grievous weaknesses of feeling or to eliminate the faults of undisciplined thinking, is foolish and often useless.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29273 – 15.23.2.32

BN – Z

The claim that if the true self is found, all the qualities and attributes which pertain to it will also be found, naturally and automatically, at the same time is a valid one. How could the qualities and attributes of the lower nature thrive or even exist in that rarefied air? They would instantly be displaced by the higher ones. But what is overlooked by, or unknown to, the makers of this claim, is that the period of such displacement would, and could, only be a temporary one. "Nature never leaps toward what she will eventually bring about," Goethe announces, and truly. As soon as the impetus which launched him into the deep waters of the Spirit exhausts itself, as it must if he is still unpurified, unprepared, and undeveloped, the man will be thrown back to the place where he belongs. His illumination will not have enough basis to be securely established and so will turn out to be only a passing glimpse.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29282 – 15.23.2.41

BN – X – DEK*

Those who believe they can skip all this preparatory work and still realize their latent possibility are foolish. The obstructions will not remove themselves by themselves. They can be overwhelmed for a time, while the glimpse prevails, but they will certainly become evident again when the glimpse fades.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29283 – 15.23.2.42

BN – Z – K

The Short Path devotee who believes he has nothing to do and can leave all to the master, or to the Overself, believes wrongly. Such spiritual idleness may lull him pleasantly into a thin contentment but this is not the same as real inner peace won by grappling in the right attitude with difficulties as they come, or by keeping the personal will submissive during tests and obedient during temptations.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29287 – 15.23.2.46

BN – Z

There are certain other dangers to which enthusiasts for the various Short Paths are exposed. They read books devoted to descriptions of the attainments and goals and become captivated by what they read and charmed by what they are taught. Then they begin to imitate what they can and to imagine what they cannot. In the end they fall into ego-centered fantasies and ego-fostered deceptions. They think they are more exalted in attainment than they really are. But so subtle is this disguised spiritual egoism that they are quite unaware of their peril until disaster deflates it.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29288 – 15.23.2.47

BN – Z

The man who thinks of himself instead of the Overself when practising a Short Path exercise, who is unable to forget his little ego, is a traitor to that Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29289 – 15.23.2.48

BN – Z

It is well not to be boastful about one's attainments on the Long Path, still less about one's achievements on the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29290 – 15.23.2.49

BN – Z – K

The high-level teaching has been taken advantage of by the weak or the egotistic to defend their weaknesses or egotism. Personal freedom and self-expression are rightly sought but in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29292 – 15.23.2.51

BN – ZZ

The Short Path schools are correct in asserting that if we gain the Overself we shall also gain the purity of heart and goodness of character which go with it. But they omit to point out that such a gain will be quite temporary if we are unable to remain in the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29294 – 15.23.2.53

BN – Z

They believe it is possible to attain truth without tears, without discipline, and without training.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29295 – 15.23.2.54

BN – Z

To begin the Short Path without ever having done some of the corrective work of the Long one, may result in the old defects being supplemented by the new ones. The desire for quick gains and shortcuts is understandable but the desire for unearned and undeserved gains, to get something for nothing, leads to deception in the spiritual as in the financial world.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29297 – 15.23.2.56

BN – Z

The Short Path tries to get round the ego by ignoring it altogether!

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29299 – 15.23.2.58

BN – X – D

People who follow the Short Path because it seems to offer miracles are trying to escape from the irksome necessity of dealing with their lower self and overcoming it, but they try in vain. No master, no cult, no particular breathing exercise or meditation practice can take the place of this necessity. All are nothing more than another help in the struggle.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Pitfalls and Limitations

#29301 – 15.23.2.60

BN – Z

Must we crawl like the worm, inch by inch, or is there really the possibility of sudden enlightenment? Must time be allowed to do its work or can some magic act abruptly? Can there be any adequate substitute for the experiences, the reflections, and the operations of many lifetimes? Or are we merely showing ignorance when we assert that immediate awareness is too good to be true?

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29302 – 15.23.2.61

BN – Z

The Zenist who asserts that enlightenment comes all of a sudden is correct, but the evolutionist who insists that time and development are still needed is also correct.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29303 – 15.23.2.62

BN – Z

It is said by the advocates of the Short method that the power of the Spirit can remove our faults instantaneously and even implant in us the opposite virtues. That this has happened in some cases is made clear by the study of the spiritual biography of certain persons. But those cases are relatively few and those persons relatively advanced. This miraculous transformation, this full forgiveness of sins, does not happen to most people or to ordinary unadvanced people. A world-wide observation of them shows that such people have to elevate themselves by their own efforts first. When they embrace the Short method without this balancing work done by themselves upon themselves, they are likely to fall into the danger of refusing to see their faults and weaknesses which are their worst enemies, as well as the danger of losing the consciousness of sin. Those who fail to save themselves from these perils become victims of spiritual pride and lose that inner humility which is the essential price of being taken over by the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29305 – 15.23.2.64

BN – ZZ – K1

Those who believe in the Short Path of sudden attainment, such as the sectarian following of Ramana Maharshi and the koan-puzzled intellectuals of Zen Buddhism, confuse the first flash of insight which unsettles everything so gloriously with the last flash which settles everything even more gloriously. The disciple who wants something for nothing, who hopes to get to the goal without being kept busy with arduous travels to the very end, will not get it. He has to move from one point of view to a higher, from many a struggle with weaknesses to their mastery. Then only, when he has done by himself what he should do, may he cease his efforts, be still, and await the influx of Grace. Then comes light and the second birth.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29306 – 15.23.2.65

BN – X – DEK

It is a legitimate criticism that most exponents of the Short Path make it seem just too easy: heaven is always just around the corner!

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29307 – 15.23.2.66

BN – Z

The notion that by the simple yet miraculous event of attaining union he can be rid of all his faults and weaknesses is an attractive one. But is it a true one? Can they all drop off at once? Some schools of religion and mysticism answer affirmatively. But philosophy says that the new kind of man he wants to become can be formed only by slow degrees, little by little.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29308 – 15.23.2.67

BN – Z

We would all like some magic formula which could be applied in a few minutes, at the end of which time we would be different persons. The evil, the ineffectual, and the unattractive traits in us will be dramatically shed; the good, the dynamic, and the charming ones will be strikingly enhanced. But alas! life is not so easy as that.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29311 – 15.23.2.70

BN – ZZ

Whether it be through Existentialism in France or through Zen Buddhism in the United States, the attraction towards metaphysical nihilism among young men and women of the postwar world has drawn attention in cultural circles. In the States, they became known under their own title of "The Beat Generation." John C. Holmes, one of their literary leaders, said in a New York newspaper interview, "The second war ended in 1945 and by 1947 everybody was talking of the next one. By 1948 who could believe that any international organization would be able to work this thing out? So that thrust you back right on yourself. What you felt yourself, your eagerness for life, that was the important thing, and that meant jazz, liquor and fun." I might add that for many others it meant drugs too. A Greenwich Village friend who saw these types almost daily told me that by "fun" these devotees of Beat meant the free indulgence in sex.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29312E – 15.23.2.71

BN – EL1/6

John C. Holmes, one of their literary leaders [of "The Beat Generation"], said in a New York newspaper interview, "The second war ended in 1945 and by 1947 everybody was talking of the next one. By 1948 who could believe that any international organization would be able to work this thing out? So that thrust you back right on yourself. What you felt yourself, your eagerness for life, that was the important thing, and that meant jazz, liquor and fun." I might add that for many others it meant drugs too. A Greenwich Village friend who saw these types almost daily told me that by "fun" these devotees of Beat meant the free indulgence in sex. Holmes' conclusion was exactly the same as the one I made in The Spiritual Crisis of Man, that the world-crisis forced us to look to ourselves. But whereas he thought the next step was "jazz, liquor and fun," I thought it was to develop our inner spiritual resources.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29312E – 15.23.2.71

BN – EL2/6

Jack Kerouac's novels have been bestsellers and have done more to make known the ideas and conduct of the "beatniks," as he called them, than any other books. Neal Cassady, the hero of three of them and once his close friend, said, "Marijuana is the mystical shortcut to beatific vision, the highest vision you can get. He also said: "Everyone is trying to get out of their mind one way or another, and marijuana is the best, the easiest way to get to the Eternal Now."

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29312E – 15.23.2.71

BN – EL3/6

It is true that Allen Ginsberg, the leading poet of the Beat Generation movement, spoke in the same interview of "beat" meaning "seeing the world in a visionary way, which is the old classical understanding of what happens in the dark night of the soul, in Saint John of the Cross' conception. . . . The primary fact of any beat writer of any interest is that each of them has individually had some kind of Kafkaian experience of what would ordinarily be called the supernatural. I had an illumination of eternity which lasted for a few seconds and returned three or four times. These were blissful experiences . . . I was loved by God." But this further statement merely shows the confusion and chaos which has mingled liquor and jazz with mysticism and Zen Buddhism. Need we be surprised to learn that Ginsberg was treated for three-quarters of a year in an insane asylum, or that he has experimented with several different kinds of drugs?

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29312E – 15.23.2.71

BN – EL4/6

What is the real value of illuminations when the recipient is unbalanced to start with and becomes still more unbalanced after them? Is there not a clear case here for introducing the one thing these "Beat Generation" mystics reject—the discipline of the Long Path? They want the Overself's treasure but do not want to pay the price for it.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29312E – 15.23.2.71

BN – EL5/6

Even as I wrote these thoughts I was delighted to hear my old friend Dr. D.T. Suzuki, then the world's leading authority on Zen and Mahayana Buddhism, make a public protest in Boston against those Westerners who take shelter for their weaknesses under Zen's umbrella. "One has to be on guard," he said, "against the misunderstanding of the idea of freedom by many who study Zen. They seem to think it means the freedom to do what one likes, and especially the freedom to be licentious. Real freedom is very different from this and comes from a deeper level." The fact is that these young people were not really looking for truth in its highest and purest sense. They were looking for thrills. They were mostly sensation-seekers just as much as the narcotic addicts are, although in a different way and through different means. The remainder were trying to get the supreme enlightenment free of cost, without giving up anything, without giving up the ego, without undertaking any discipline. They were caught in a coil of self-deception.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29312E – 15.23.2.71

BN – EL6/6

The truth of Zen attitude—letting go of restraints, avoiding reflection, refraining from self-observation, acting spontaneously, and being natural—is that it is true only on the intuitive level. It is there the only proper and possible attitude. But how few have really attained this level! How many have merely taken their very ordinary impulses, their very human desires, their very animal lusts, for profound intuitions! Thus they merely continue to act as they would have acted anyway, for the same reasons and by the same motives. The results will continue to be the same too. They are as far from true enlightenment as everyone else but with this great difference: that whereas the others do not pretend to be superior or illumined, they do. It is a fantastic self-deception, a foolish egoism that if exaggerated could lead to lunacy.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29317E – 15.23.2.76

BN – EL1/2

Only a master can hold such an attitude [Zen attitude] with perfect fitness and propriety, only such a one can afford to "let go" of all self-control without falling into the dangerous swirling waters which are always ready to engulf the man who behaves as he pleases, and gives himself up with complete abandon to what he wrongly imagines is "walking on." This is why the earlier Chinese Zen lectures and writings were often prefaced by the warning that they were intended for persons who were already properly instructed 'and established' in "the virtues." Therefore the modern Western beginners should not let the temptation to exploit Zen for their own personal purposes lead them into a trap. The only "letting go" that they can safely indulge in is to let go of the ego, the only safe "walking on" is to walk away from their attachments.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29317E – 15.23.2.76

BN – EL2/2

Why has Zen attracted artists and intellectuals? The answer usually given is that it has favoured expression through the arts and offered relief from the strain of logic. This is true for some adherents, but for others—the easy-going, work-shy "Bohemians"—the main attraction has been its indifference to discipline, to training. Many of them are painters who put blobs of formless colour on canvas and call it a work of art, musicians who throw together a cacophony of disjointed sound and call it a melody. They have evaded the harder way of learning the techniques of art already; it is a continuation of the same attitude to evade the harder way of learning the techniques of philosophical disciplined work on themselves. The Short Path teaching seems so simple, its practices attack the goal so directly, and the goal itself is set so near that no one need be surprised to observe the rapid growth of interest in Zen recently.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29319E – 15.23.2.78

BN – EL1/2

The Short Path teaching seems so simple, its practices attack the goal so directly, and the goal itself is set so near that no one need be surprised to observe the rapid growth of interest in Zen recently. Who wants to work patiently through the rigours of the Long Path, who wants to toil through preparatory stages when a swifter, perhaps even sudden, way is available? Moreover, the Zenists assert that they want to be "natural" and that moral discipline is artificial imitative discipline. So they throw overboard all disciplines, all work on themselves, and give lust, passion, impulse, and egoism a full and free rein.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29319E – 15.23.2.78

BN – EL2/2

Those who believe that they have the right to demand a full and immediate enlightenment without previously setting up the conditions favourable to its reception, will either become disappointed by their failure or hallucinated by their imagined success. "Nothing for nothing" is Nature's law. They must give if they want to get—give up some of the barriers to enlightenment which exist in their own ego and to which they cling.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29320 – 15.23.2.79

BN – Z – DEK

He follows Zen or some other Short Path cult, imagining it will enable him to jump out of his skin, to change the entire polarity of his essential nature in the twinkling of an eye. And this too without any effort. Does he really succeed in doing it? Only in his talk.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29323 – 15.23.2.82

BN – Z

It is not enough to repeat a few high-sounding phrases and expect to be immediately and totally illumined.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29324 – 15.23.2.83

BN – Z

The hope of suddenly or swiftly getting established in the Overself by way of the Short Path naturally attracts the young and enthusiastic much more than the middle-aged and blasé. For the latter have seen every development in their consciousness come on a little at a time, and often brokenly.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29325 – 15.23.2.84

BN – Z

It is true that enlightenment can remove our accumulated moral defects all at once in a sudden and single joyous experience. But it is also true that we are unlikely to get more than the first degree if we have not previously worked upon ourselves to prepare properly for it.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29326 – 15.23.2.85

BN – X – D

There is a special temperament which scorns the process of gradual ripening, of natural growth. It belongs to the man who is unwilling to work patiently and irritated by laborious self-discipline. He is convinced that some secret may be found. Some method exists or some teacher is available to bring about an immediate and successful result just as a push-button does. All he has to do is to seek out and discover the Secret Method or teacher.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29328 – 15.23.2.87

BN – Z

It is really a kind of spiritual arrogance which believes it has only to jump from its present standpoint to the divinest level, as so many ill-equipped Zen adherents believe. Spiritual humility will seek, and be satisfied with, a more modest result.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29330 – 15.23.2.89

BN – Z

Today it is needful to describe plainly and simply what the Zen Buddhist writers hide in puzzles and riddles. This is better for the modern mentality.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29331 – 15.23.2.90

BN – ZZ

If he is to satisfy his quest for higher joys, his craving for inner peace, his longing for a knowledge of truth and reality, he must pay a price. Such things are not free.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29332 – 15.23.2.91

BN – ZZ

These schemes of spiritual redemption which claim to proceed by leaps and jumps, which abolish the climb up ladders and the crossing over bridges, will appeal to the unbalanced enthusiast and the unpractical visionary.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29336 – 15.23.2.95

BN – Z

Are they entitled to have all their defects swiftly cast out and their deficiencies automatically supplied, just because they have given their assent to a particular cosmic maxim, or their time to a particular meditational practice?

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29337 – 15.23.2.96

BN – Z

Nowhere in physical nature do we observe this leap across a chasm but everywhere everything passes gradually and little by little from one condition to the next. Why should the transition from ego to Overself contradict this universal fact?

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29339 – 15.23.2.98

BN – ZZ – D

Those who are ill-qualified for the Short Path, who come to it in order to escape the tiresome disciplines of the Long Path, who want a sudden and swift enlightenment without having to pass through the gradations of slowly preparing themselves for it, usually find themselves thrown back in the end.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > The truth about sudden enlightenment

#29340 – 15.23.2.99

BN – Z

What is the use of trying to improve oneself by Long Path methods? There will be no end to it. One can go on and on and on practising it. After all, although this will give one a better ego, it will not give one liberation from the ego itself. Furthermore, the idea of rebirth is tied in with the idea of such self-improvement through many lives. Both in turn are based on, and wholly enclosed in, the ego—hence illusory.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29341 – 15.23.2.100

BN – Z

This constant preoccupation with the ego gives a subtle power and importance to it, and draws him away from his real being in the Overself. For it is what he takes into his consciousness which affects him in character and body, in thought and conduct.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29342 – 15.23.2.101

BN – Z – D

It comes to this paradox—that the farther they travel on the path of ego-effort, the farther they move from their goal, and the less they try to approach their Source the closer they come to it!

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29343 – 15.23.2.102

BN – Z

This constant looking at oneself, this endless and exaggerated self-consciousness, may not lead to purification from fault and humility if it breeds new faults and new prides.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29344 – 15.23.2.103

BN – Z

If the Overself is timeless, unaffected by the clock's ticking, how could acts performed in time, exercises of the mind done by the clock, bring a man into the Overself's eternal consciousness?

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29345 – 15.23.2.104

BN – Z

The Long Path, despite its magnificent ideals of self-improvement and self-control, is still egoistic. For this determination to rise spiritually is directed by willed ambition—willed by the higher part of the ego.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29346 – 15.23.2.105

BN – Z – D

Most of the work of the Long Path is, in the end, ego-grounded. Many aspirants either adore or else hate themselves.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29347 – 15.23.2.106

BN – Z

The follower of the Long Path may become filled with anxiety about his future progress and guilt about his past or present history. Or, like the early Stoics and the medieval ascetics, he may be continually engaged in fighting himself. Struggle and war then become the miserable climate in which he lives. Real peace of mind is far from him. If we penetrate analytically to the base of this situation, we find that it exists because he depends primarily on his ego's strength, not on the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29348 – 15.23.2.107

BN – Z – K

Saint Teresa perfectly understood the nature of, and difference between, the two paths, and described them well and briefly. She wrote: "It is a great grace of God to practice self-examination, but too much is as bad as too little, as they say: believe me, by God's help, we shall accomplish more by contemplating the Divinity than by keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves."

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29349 – 15.23.2.108

BN – X – DEK

The fact is he is depending too much upon himself and too little upon the Overself. After all, help cannot lift itself by its own bootstraps.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29351 – 15.23.2.110

BN – Z

Is the perfecting of character a cause of enlightenment or is it an effect?

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29352 – 15.23.2.111

BN – Z

If they expect too little of themselves, they become lazy and indifferent; if too much, they undergo needless torment. Too much feverish tension or desire to make progress or get mystical experience has driven aspirants a little mad in the past, although these have never been and could never be philosophic aspirants but the religious or the occult-minded sort. Their zeal is admirable but their fanaticism needs to be firmly discouraged. They tie themselves in knots through wanting to create new virtues when it is more important to remove the old hindrances, so as to open themselves to the Overself and its grace. The belief that they alone, unaided, can attain complete enlightenment by their own personal efforts, places too heavy an obligation upon them, too large a burden, and it is not even a necessary one.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29353 – 15.23.2.112

BN – Z

The Long Path keeps the mind continually 'searching', whether for increased holiness or increased truth. It is never quiet, content, at peace.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29355 – 15.23.2.114

BN – Z

In looking back at the past, the more evolved men find certain things unpleasant to remember and unbearable to analyse. This is a helpful result for the Long Path: it weakens the lower elements of character by strengthening disgust with them. But it is negative and depressing. And in the end they must go on to the Short Path, where such preoccupation with the ego is abandoned, where a positive and cheerful identification with Overself is sought.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29356 – 15.23.2.115

BN – Z

All attempts to liberate the self from the self by the self are obviously doomed from the start.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29358 – 15.23.2.117

BN – Z

It is certainly better to remove faults and remedy weaknesses than to leave them as they are. But it is not enough to improve, refine, ennoble, and even spiritualize the ego. For all such activity takes place under the illusion that the ego possesses reality. This illusion needs to be eliminated, not merely changed for another one.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29360 – 15.23.2.119

BA12 – Z – DE

The Long Path creates a condition favourable to enlightenment, but since it is concerned with ego, it cannot directly yield enlightenment. For its work of purifying the ego, however necessary and noble, still keeps the aspirant's face turned egoward.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29361 – 15.23.2.120

BN – Z – D

The principle of so improving or purifying or training or developing the ego that it will gain illumination is a fallacious one. For the ego is the false self, and nothing that is done to it can produce the true self. To believe otherwise is to go on clinging to an illusion.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29362 – 15.23.2.121

BN – Z

A knowledge of the heavenly Overself cannot be had by studying, improving, or developing the benighted and fictitious ego. The only way in which it can be got is by direct experience of it. This axiom is the basis of the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29363 – 15.23.2.122

BN – Z – D

The Long Path exercises and disciplines are excellent but their results are inconclusive. They give the chance to progress but do not and cannot give final enlightenment and full self-mastery.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29364 – 15.23.2.123

BN – Z

Everything that he accomplishes in the way of self-improvement, self-purification, or self-mastery is accomplished by the force of the ego. No higher power, no grace of the Overself, no faith that transcends materialism is needed for these things. Whatever it is, and however beneficial it be, reform of the ego's character will not lead directly to the destruction of the ego's rule. For although the ego is willing to improve or purify itself, it is not willing to kill itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29365 – 15.23.2.124

BN – Z

The ego cannot produce an egoless result. This is why the Long Path is only preparatory and cannot be a sufficient means to a successful end.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29366 – 15.23.2.125

BN – Z – D

He must free himself of this egoistic way of looking at his life, his character, his goal, which the spiritual life of the Long Path, as well as the unspiritual life before it was engaged upon, really possesses.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29368 – 15.23.2.127

BN – Z

The Long Path of personal control and virtuous practice is necessary and must be followed. But it is still within and related to the world of darkness. It is useless as a means of entering the world of light.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29369 – 15.23.2.128

BN – Z

Such is the fertile nature of the ego that openings for its improvement, reform, or amendment are endless. This is why the Long Path must be abandoned at some time if the ego itself is to be uprooted.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29370 – 15.23.2.129

BN – Z

These Long Pathers, these self-conscious strivers after near-perfection, are still striving within the ego and, in the end, however nobly, for the ego. For they are trying to improve it, not lose it. If the latter were their real goal they would be interested in neither its improvement nor its worsening since both activities are only aspects. Why should they deal with it at all? Why not try the opposite course, the Short Path, which silences the ego, not by striving to do so but by ignoring it through fastening attention upon the Overself?

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29372 – 15.23.2.131

BN – Z – DEK

The Short Path advocate may pertinently ask his Long Path friend, "Why not make the end into the beginning? Why not directly still the mind, empty it of thoughts, instead of attaching it to some idea and concentrating upon that in the earlier stages only to drop it in the later ones? Why let it go on what the Australians call 'a walkabout'?"

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29373 – 15.23.2.132

BN – Z

Spirituality needs time to develop; the spark needs fanning; but this need not be turned into an excuse for surrendering completely to the Long Path's limitations.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29375 – 15.23.2.134

BN – Z – D

The narrow limited presentation of the path to enlightenment needs rebuttal. And this can be found in the cases of men who entered and remained in the light not by the persevering practice of yoga, or by personal guru-initiation, but by fastening interest, thought, feeling, devotion, faith on the light itself solely and exclusively.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29376 – 15.23.2.135

BN – Z

On the Long Path the aspirant is likely to probe some of his shortcomings too pessimistically, to condemn himself for them, but to be blind altogether to the most serious shortcoming of all—that of clinging to the personal ego in all circumstances.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29378 – 15.23.2.137

BN – Z – D

The Long Path has no property in itself which can turn darkness into light, the ordinary mentality into the illumined one.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29381 – 15.23.2.140

BN – Z

Time continues itself, and the time-bound consciousness with it. The Long Path does not liberate a man from it but only improves him, at the best, prepares him. For what? For the Short Path, which alone offers freedom.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29382 – 15.23.2.141

BN – Z – D

The root of all his efforts in self-improvement and self-purification is still the egoistic consciousness. Since that is the very consciousness which must be given up to let in the egoless Spirit, he must abandon these efforts and turn sooner or later to the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29383 – 15.23.2.142

BN – Z – D

It is as valid in logic as it is in practice that nothing that is done in time can produce the timeless, therefore no amount of study, purification, and meditation can make a man more divine than he is now. Then why have such ways been given out?

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29384 – 15.23.2.143

BN – ZZ

It is not enough to uncover his faults and confess his weaknesses, not even enough to correct the one and remedy the other. After all, these things concern only the stage of development he has already reached, and the ego only. He must also turn toward higher stages and also the egoless self.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29388 – 15.23.2.147

BN – ZZ – D

The labours of the Long Path are good and necessary. They weaken the ego and bring him part of the way toward the goal. But they will end in despair if he does not learn that they cannot bring him the rest of the way.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29390 – 15.23.2.149

BN – Z – D

Moral disciplines have a definite place in life to make us better human beings but they do not lift us to the Overself's level. The Long Path, to which they belong, has a humanitarian value but not a magically transcendent one.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29391 – 15.23.2.150

BN – ZZ – D

In 'The Marble Faun', Nathaniel Hawthorne writes: "We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution to go all right."

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29392 – 15.23.2.151

BN – Z

If he takes an excessive clinical interest in his own moral and spiritual state, continually observing his conduct and analysing his feelings to find the flaws in them, he loses his balance and becomes inwardly unhealthy. In putting too much emphasis upon his failings, he is giving too much attention to his own ego.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29393 – 15.23.2.152

BN – ZZ – D

The idea that a man's own virtue can bring him to the goal belongs to the Long Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29394 – 15.23.2.153

BN – X – D

It is not any kind of activity of the ego which brings salvation. How could that happen? How can a man lift himself up by the hair upon his own head? Just the same he cannot touch the Overself spirit by his own virtue. It is only the activity of the Overself which will save him from the ego. But this he must provoke or invoke by taking to the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29396 – 15.23.2.155

BN – ZZ – D

The Long Path gives many benefits and bestows many virtues but it does not give the vision of truth, the realization of the Overself, nor does it bestow Grace. For these things we must turn to the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Pitfalls and Limitations > Limitations of the Long Path

#29397 – 15.23.2.156

BN – ZZ – D

Even during the longest dark night of the soul, the Overself is not a whit less close to him than it was when it revealed its presence amid ecstasy and joy.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > The Dark Night of The Soul

#29403 – 15.23.3.6

BN – X – D

The dark night of the soul has been known to last for several years. On the other hand, it has also been known to pass away in a single year. It is a trying time when the power to meditate, the desire to worship, the urge to pray, the hope of spiritual attainment, and even the feeling of God's benevolence desert the pilgrim.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > The Dark Night of The Soul

#29414 – 15.23.3.17

BN – Z

With the dark night there is a wish to withdraw from active life, from social responsibilities, and from personal duties. A feeling of their futility accompanies the wish, a vaguely pessimistic outlook surrounds it.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > The Dark Night of The Soul

#29417 – 15.23.3.20

BN – Z

During the Dark Night he is neither spiritually alive nor spiritually dead. For though feeling deserts him, memory refuses to do so.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > The Dark Night of The Soul

#29418 – 15.23.3.21

BN – Z

The Dark Night is not the result of any physical suffering or personal misfortune: it comes from a subtler cause. It induces a depression of enormous weight.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > The Dark Night of The Soul

#29419 – 15.23.3.22

BN – Z

With the dark night, a condition of mental dullness sets in. Real sustained thinking becomes a strain. This is because the mind loses its interest in things, being apathetic.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > The Dark Night of The Soul

#29424 – 15.23.3.27

BN – Z

It comes to this, that a man who is brought down by adverse events or by inward failure, who loses confidence in himself and hope for his future, who is stricken down by what John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul"—such a man is unknowingly at a possible turning-point of his life. Let him surrender this poor crushed ego of his, this broken belief that he can successfully manage his life, and pray to the Overself to take it all over.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29439 – 15.23.3.42

BN – Z

Accept the long night patiently, quietly, humbly, and resignedly as intended for your true good. It is not a punishment for sin committed but an instrument of annihilating egoism.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29440 – 15.23.3.43

BN – ZZ

They must even bring themselves to accept the Overself's apparent indifference and their own very real dryness with full submission.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29442 – 15.23.3.45

BN – Z

If he is to be truly resigned to the divine will, he will fully accept the darkness and give his faithful consent to the hidden imperceptible work of the Overself in him.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29443 – 15.23.3.46

BN – Z

The Dark Night is much less a dark night when he believes, understands, or possibly knows that it is a work of the Overself, a movement of Its grace.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29444 – 15.23.3.47

BN – Z – D

I have always preached the gospel of hope, because if it does nothing more, it encourages effort, gives a tonic to one's spirit, and helps one through the darkest moments. As the Comte de Saint Germain said: "Every tunnel has its end."

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29447 – 15.23.3.50

BN – ZZ – D

He seems, in this desolate "night," to be up against a blank wall. But with patience he may find a way out. It is well to remember Abraham Lincoln's "This too will pass."

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29450 – 15.23.3.53

BN – Z

If the Overself did not lead him into and through the final dark night, where he becomes as helpless as an infant, as bereft of interior personal possessions as a destitute pauper, how else would he learn that it is not by his own powers and capacities that he can rise at last into enduring illumination?

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29451 – 15.23.3.54

BN – Z – D

He who has been through this "dark night" and absorbed its lessons thoroughly has lost all his pride.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29459 – 15.23.3.62

BN – Z

When the aridity has half gone and the serenity has begun to come, life becomes a little more congenial, Nature a little more beautiful. It is time to bury the old negativities.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29460 – 15.23.3.63

BN – Z

The "dark night" does more to detach a man from his ego, his interests, and his desires than the rapturous joys and emotional ecstasies. The awful feeling of being separated from or even lost forever to the higher power, works as a hidden training and secret discipline of all personal feelings.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29461 – 15.23.3.64

BN – Z

He is forced into the seeming darkness by the processes of Nature. She wishes him to turn back and, on the one hand, to purify those parts of his character and, on the other hand, to develop those parts of his psyche which have remained undeveloped.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29462 – 15.23.3.65

BN – Z

The dark nights which come to the inner man, when he feels deprived of peace and hope or especially when he feels utterly deserted by the Overself, are as necessary to educate him as the bright days when joy fills him because of the divine nearness.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29463 – 15.23.3.66

A240229 – Z

Dark Night of the Soul: In passing through this, the greatest humiliation he has ever experienced, and passing through it resignedly, patiently, and without rebellion, he reduces the ego to a cipher, and destroys its power over him.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29464 – 15.23.3.67

A240229 – Z – D

It is not only by the experience of feeling at times the presence of God that an aspirant may develop inwardly: it may also happen by the equivalent non-experience, by feeling quite deserted by God, quite left alone! This—the "dark night of the soul"—is just as essential.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29468 – 15.23.3.71

A240229 – Z

(Dark Night:) When he realizes that even despair is egotistical, he will realize that it is not only the so-called evil passions that have to be curbed but also the depressive and melancholy emotions. He needs to remember that whenever he will again penetrate into the higher region of his being, any sadness, depression, or melancholy he may suffer from will diminish gradually and then, when he is stabilized in it, vanish entirely.

Advanced Contemplation > The Dark Night of The Soul > Its significance

#29470 – 15.23.3.73

BN – ZZ

It would be wonderful if everyone, everywhere, could slip so easily into the kingdom of heaven, and just as easily stay there forever. But alas! the facts of human nature forbid it. People require teaching, training, purifying, disciplining, and preparing, before they can do so. And the course needed is a lifetime's, the work needed much and varied. That is why the Long Path is needed.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29472 – 15.23.4.1

BN – Z – D

While giving all attention to the Overself, or to its remembrance, or to its various aspects, or to the idea of it, he forgets himself. This makes it possible to transcend the ego. And this is why the Short Path must be travelled if the preparatory work of the other Path is to be completed.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29473 – 15.23.4.2

BN – Z – D

Purification of the heart and calming of the mind are necessary prerequisites for penetrating into the Overself. They belong to the Long Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29475 – 15.23.4.4

BN – Z – D

The Long Path calls on him to give up whatever is holding him in bondage, whatever is keeping him back, and, thus released, he will be free to go his way towards the specifically positive work of the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29476 – 15.23.4.5

BN – Z – D

The Long Path is taught to beginners and others in the earlier and middle stages of the quest. This is because they are ready for the idea of self-improvement and not for the higher one of the unreality of the self. So the latter is taught on the Short Path, where attention is turned away from the little self and from the idea of perfecting it, to the essence, the real being.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29477 – 15.23.4.6

BN – Z – DK1

Nature cannot be hastened. The bloom of a flower opens in its own proper time. If the Short Path yields immediate or quick results to some aspirants, it is only because they are persons of superior development. They have served their apprenticeship on the Long Path already, either in this life or previous lives.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29480 – 15.23.4.9

BN – ZZ – D

The Long Path covers all the preparatory stages leading up to but not including the decisive attempts. It is concerned with the removal of obstructions to the coming of enlightenment, whereas these attempts, which belong to the Short Path, are concerned with the conclusive formulae of enlightenment.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29481 – 15.23.4.10

BN – X – D

If the Long Path equips him with the necessary strength, purity, and concentration, the Short Path makes use of this equipment to unite his consciousness directly with the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29482 – 15.23.4.11

BN – Z – D

Yoga trains character, emotions, and especially mind's power of concentration. All this is not only a useful equipment for the Short Path practice but even a necessary one.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29484 – 15.23.4.13

BN – Z

The move towards reality may, if too quickly made, bring on changes that the overwhelmed traveller cannot endure or cope with. The genius may, but most others have to withdraw and adjust to a slower, more suitable pace. This is why growing up, becoming prepared, is the first requisite, why the Long Path precedes the Short one.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29485 – 15.23.4.14

BN – Z

Many fixations created in the past have to be removed before we can truly live in the present. This is Long Path work.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29487 – 15.23.4.16

BN – X – D

Miguel de Molinos: "It is useless to trust in the interior way of contemplation if the obstacles which hinder their progress and spiritual blight be not removed from the path of those souls that are called." In other words, the Long Path work must clear a way for the Short Path work.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29489 – 15.23.4.18

BN – X – D

The way to the goal does not lie through a cleansing of the ego alone: it lies also through a desertion of it. The first way is necessary only because it helps to make the second one possible.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29490 – 15.23.4.19

BN – Z – D

He is to keep the thought of the goal itself continually before him, to give the mental consciousness as its principal occupation a meditation on the Overself. This is the basis of Short Path work and this is why, before he can hope to succeed, he must first have set himself the Long Path task of gaining some control over his thoughts.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29491 – 15.23.4.20

BN – X – D

If the Grace of the Overself is to take hold of the man, no part of his ego ought to offer resistance. This is why a preparation for the event is needed, a process of taking out of him those things which are certain to instigate such resistance. In other words, the activity of the Long Path is necessary to the successful treading of the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29492 – 15.23.4.21

BN – X – D

The "purification" which he is to seek through the Long Path is not the narrow limited and intolerant kind which too often is called by this name. It is not at all merely a harsh denial of the sexual instinct. It is a cleansing of consciousness, of his thought-life, his emotional life, and even of his bodily condition. Its aim is to prepare his consciousness so that it can receive the truth without deflecting or warping or blocking it. Inevitably the most important work and always the most difficult work along this line will be the elimination of the ego's tyranny.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29497 – 15.23.4.26

BN – Z

The Long Path is needed because it leads to a measure of release from egoism and animalism. But it does not directly lead to the discovery of the Overself, its truth and reality. That is the Short Path's work.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29498 – 15.23.4.27

BSG_4 – P – D

It needs some strength to deflect the onset of negative moods and to refuse to sit in darkness. It needs some patience to sit quietly waiting until one feels an entry into the presence of the Source of one's being. Only a few are born with these qualities ready-made. Others must attain them slowly by passing through stages of training and self-discipline.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29501 – 15.23.4.30

BN – Z – D

Although the Short Path is quicker to travel than the Long one, the requisite personal equipment must be developed first on the Long Path, or the traveller will be bogged down by the ego which he vainly and delusively imagines away.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29503 – 15.23.4.32

BN – Z

If they approach Truth with a mind befogged by an active lower nature, how can they expect to arrive at its clear perception? This is why the work of the Long Path cannot be wholly substituted for by the work of the Short one.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29505 – 15.23.4.34

BN – Z

Another reason for the need of the Long Path's preparatory work is that the mind, nerves, emotions, and body of the man shall be gradually made capable of sustaining the influx of the Solar Force, or Spirit-Energy.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29506 – 15.23.4.35

BN – Z

Every negative thought and base desire is an obstacle to the attainment of the higher consciousness. This is why the Long Path's work is needed, for it is intended to remove all such obstacles. How can one invite that Consciousness to dwell in a body enslaved by lusts, or in a mind darkened by hates?

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29507 – 15.23.4.36

BN – Z – D

It is as needful to wait until the period of preparatory exertions is over as it is for life to germinate and put forth its green plant.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29508 – 15.23.4.37

BN – Z

The way of the Long Path is an effort to abstract him from the bonds of physical appetite and passion which prevent his free thought and balanced feeling. It is an effort of disentanglement. But by its very nature this is only a negative attainment. It must be followed by a positive one. And the latter must enable the man to fulfil life's higher purpose in the midst of human worldly activity, while yet enabling him to keep the freedom he has won through self-discipline. Therein lies the superiority of the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29511 – 15.23.4.40

BN – Z

At first he learns that he is personally responsible for his thoughts and actions, for their results in himself and outside it in his destiny. Then if he accepts this truth and in the Long Path works upon it, he is led to the discovery of the Short Path and that he is God's responsibility.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29513 – 15.23.4.42

BN – Z

It is true that he is conditioned in several ways and that the attempt to free himself from them by introducing other, and usually opposing, ways merely creates new bindings, new conditions. But to leave the statement there—as Krishnamurti does, and as Jean Klein tries to do—is misleading because it is a half-truth. These teachers regard yoga, for instance, as such a form of conditioning; yet Atmananda, who appears to be at least one source of Klein's inspiration, himself found that yoga was a 'preparation' for Advaitic truth. In short, there 'is' a progression among conditions; they are not developed in a circle but in a spiral.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29514 – 15.23.4.43

BN – Z

Seekers do not come under the power of Grace until they have done, to a sufficient extent, what the Long Path requires from them. Then only are they likely to be ready for the Short Path, and to benefit by the Grace associated with it.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29515 – 15.23.4.44

BN – X – D

What is the purpose of this Long Path inner work upon himself? It is to clear a way for the inflow of grace, even to the most hidden parts of his character.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29517 – 15.23.4.46

BN – X – D

When he finds that he is not getting either expected or promised results, he becomes disturbed. But his years have not really been wasted. They have prepared him for this next phase to come.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29518 – 15.23.4.47

BN – Z

Although the Long Path does not directly lead to Enlightenment, it reduces obstacles, prepares the seeker, and opens his way for entry to the Short Path, which in turn can subsequently lead to enlightenment.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29519 – 15.23.4.48

BN – Z – D

Not many are intuitive enough, developed enough, knowledgeable enough, and strong enough to take to the Short Path without previous preparation through the Long Path's disciplines.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29520 – 15.23.4.49

BN – Z – K

If he follows the Long Path, its goal will be reached little by little, slowly, and even then the transfer to the Short Path will have to be made. He will then be well-prepared, ready, and ably capable of meeting its demands to a measurable extent. The lightning-flash may come at any moment on this higher level.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > The preparation on the Long Path

#29522 – 15.23.4.51

BN – Z

He stands athwart the door and blocks it from opening to the gentle pressure of the very Grace which can bring him the help for which he calls out. Less preoccupation with his own ego and more with the Overself is what he really needs. This is the same as saying that the Long Path work now needs balancing with Short Path work.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29523 – 15.23.4.52

BN – X – DEK

His quest 'for' God has reached its terminus but his quest 'in' God will now start its course. Henceforth his life, experience, and consciousness are wrapped in mystery.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29525 – 15.23.4.54

BN – Z – D

He must be willing to discard the familiar attitudes developed on the Long Path. There will be an inner struggle.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29528 – 15.23.4.57

BN – Z

The changeover to the Short Path does not entirely cancel out his Long Path work but affects it in three ways. First, it reduces the labours and disciplines involved. Second, the reduced work is done without anxiety and without tension. Third, it frees him from the excessive sense of self-responsibility for his inner and outer life—that is, from excessive ego-depending.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29529 – 15.23.4.58

BN – X – D

He must call in a new power, and a higher power—Grace. He needs its help. For the ego will not willingly give up its sovereignty, however much it may become preoccupied with spiritual questions and even spiritual growth.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29530 – 15.23.4.59

BN – X – D

The laborious, sometimes desperate self-discipline of the Long Path relaxes or even stops altogether. The effortless, sometimes ecstatic self-surrender to grace through faith, love, humility, and remembrance replaces it.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29534 – 15.23.4.63

BN – X – D

Whatever you do to work upon the ego, whether you remove this weakness or improve that faculty, it will always be ego and your consciousness will always remain within its tightly closed circle. In the time you give to such work you could be occupying yourself with thought of the non-ego, the Overself, and dwelling in this thought until the sunshine behind it bursts through and you bask in the glory.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29535 – 15.23.4.64

BN – X – D

He feels that a newer and other self is coming to birth.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29537 – 15.23.4.66

BN – X – D

To mourn over the past's supposed errors for too long a time, to indulge in self-pitying remorse for the remainder of one's life, is another trick of the ego and merely strengthens it. Better take to the Short Path!

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29538 – 15.23.4.67

BN – Z – D

The Long Path developed in him through yoga-meditation the capacity to find the inner Stillness. The Short Path added to it (1) the knowledge that the Stillness is himself, and (2) the practice of continuing remembrance to be the Stillness.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29539 – 15.23.4.68

BN – Z – D

If he keeps on fixing his attention upon fighting the wandering characteristic of his thoughts, he may find after many attempts that the task seems impossible. Why is this? It is because at the same time he is limiting himself to attention upon the ego. Let him move in the opposite direction and turn to the Short Path, let the thoughts fix themselves on the Overself, upon Its great stillness, Its serene impersonality. The ego will not and cannot remove itself by itself but by going outside to THAT which is its origin. The thoughts in the end are led into surrender to the power which transcends it and will master it.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29543 – 15.23.4.72

BN – Z – DEK

If the Long Path ends in futility, confusion, and despair for many people, it does not necessarily do so for all people. Some make the transition from it to the Short Path without such suffering.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29544 – 15.23.4.73

BN – Z

There are two different approaches to the task; both are legitimate, but one belongs to the Long Path and the other to the Short Path. The first is forcibly to control the undesirable feelings and thoughts. The second is to seek their source in the ego and, by understanding it at this deep level, lose interest in them and, turning away, stop continuing to feed them.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29545 – 15.23.4.74

BN – Z

Let him rejoice at having found the Short Path with its freedoms and at having let go of the Long Path with its difficulties and tensions.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29548 – 15.23.4.77

BN – X – D

What a relief he feels when the strain and tension of the Long Path give place to the sweetness and detachment of the Short one!

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29549 – 15.23.4.78

BN – Z – D

It is not necessary to go through the struggles and toils of the Long Path after we have travelled it sufficiently far to develop some amount of the qualifications needed for the Short one. We can then desert it and, by Grace, go quickly through the change of outlook, standpoint, and consciousness necessary to travel the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29550 – 15.23.4.79

BN – X – D

The same Grace which starts us off on the Quest carries us through to its end. The Short Path phase begins when we awaken to the presence of the Grace's source.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29551 – 15.23.4.80

BN – X – D

It is not easy to start a daring revolt against so much that we held for truth for so many years. To desert the Long Path even when dissatisfied with it calls for courage.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29555 – 15.23.4.84

BN – Z

The Short Path of recognizing the divine existence here and now, whether or not the ego feels it, is the best path at a certain stage.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29556 – 15.23.4.85

BN – Z

That same relentless determination which brought him so far along this path and gave him so much self-improvement, now becomes a formidable obstruction. It must be forsaken because the ego must surrender itself.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29559 – 15.23.4.88

BN – Z

Where the Long Path ends and where the Short Path begins is not easily chalked out.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29561 – 15.23.4.90

BN – ZZ

They would like the change to take place dramatically, in a moment of time. "The wind bloweth where it listeth", said Jesus, and Grace comes here or there at an unpredictable hour.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29563 – 15.23.4.92

B_11 – P – D

Not by his ego's own will can he take hold of this jewel, but only by the Grace substituting that other Consciousness for his ego's.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29564 – 15.23.4.93

BN – X – D

Although in the earlier stages and also in the middle stages of the quest it has to be consciously and deliberately followed, in the later, the more advanced stages where the Short Path comes into operation, the seeker must begin to forget himself and his efforts, must not come between the goal and its pursuits, must identify himself with the Overself by giving himself wholly to the idea of manifesting it in his inner and outer life. Therefore, he must be free of the kind of self-consciousness which makes him aware that he is a Quester. On the contrary, he has to make spirituality a natural thing, free from self-consciousness.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29565 – 15.23.4.94

BN – Z – DEK

The man who seeks his soul or his God or his truth with such thirst, and for so long, could find it if he stops, waits patiently, looks deeply within, and lets it appear of its own accord. For he, the seeker, 'is its concern'.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29566 – 15.23.4.95

B_05 – Z

The Intermediate Path is a transition from the Long to the Short one. It consists in identifying oneself mentally with the higher self. This is immeasurably farther than identification with the ego but it is still tainted with a kind of self-centeredness. That is revealed when the pilgrim travels to the Short Path, where he seeks no identification of any sort whatsoever, bestows no more attention upon the "I," but thinks only of the higher self as it is in itself and not about its relationship with him.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29567 – 15.23.4.96

BN – Z – DK

Even if he has his moral and psychological successes on the Long Path they may, just because they are successes, inflate his ego with gratification and pride. Only when he changes his attitude and ascribes them to the Overself and regards them as defeats for himself can this not happen. He will then have transferred from the Long Path to the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29568 – 15.23.4.97

BN – Z

A time may come when his own personality is distasteful to him, when he begins to dislike his own traits of instinctive negative reaction and innate negative character. This is naturally understandable on the Long Path, but it may be minimized on the Short one.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29570 – 15.23.4.99

BN – X – D

To become their ruler you may fight desires. This is the harder way. Or you may forget them. This is the easier way. To follow it you must practise remembering the Overself constantly.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29571 – 15.23.4.100

BN – Z – D

A great humility comes into him when at long last he steps aside from his ego sufficiently to allow the perception that it is not in his own power to enter the ultimate Enlightenment. Grace is the arbiter.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29572 – 15.23.4.101

BN – Z – D

The feeling of urgency in his spiritual yearnings has gone, the feeling of patient trustful acceptance has replaced it.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29574 – 15.23.4.103

BN – Z

From now on he accepts himself as he is without tormenting himself because of what he is not.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29575 – 15.23.4.104

BN – Z

The Short Path requires him to fall into amnesia about his spiritual past. The attempt to produce a perfect being and an impeccable character need not trouble him any farther.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29576 – 15.23.4.105

BN – Z – D

This does not mean that the endeavours to nullify the bad should be totally abandoned, or abated. But they should be put in their place.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29577 – 15.23.4.106

BN – Z

What a relief he experiences when he need no longer look at himself with the emotion of guilt. He feels set free.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29578 – 15.23.4.107

BN – Z

But while philosophy includes both paths, the aspirant's individual need will indicate on which one the emphasis should be laid and when it should be transferred to the other path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29579 – 15.23.4.108

BSG_4 – P – D

The Long Path strivings are lesser ones and must, at the due time, be absorbed in the Short Path's larger ones.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29580 – 15.23.4.109

BN – X – D

The end of the Long Path is frustration. This may be an emotionally disappointing blessing, since it forces the man to turn eventually to the Short Path, whose end is fulfilment.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29583 – 15.23.4.112

BN – Z – DK

The average man is the victim of his own past, the slave of his personal history. He is conditioned by its thinking, molded by its disciplines, and dominated by its traditions. Its influence fades all too slowly. This is why the transition from the Long to the Short Path is so often the consequence of some unusual upheaval or some mesmeric contact.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29585 – 15.23.4.114

BN – Z – D

It is not a question of choice between the two paths. The beginner can hardly comprehend what the Short Path means, let alone practise it. So perforce he must take to the Long one. But the intermediate, weary of its toils and defeats, turns with relief to the other path, for which his studies and experiences have now prepared him.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29586 – 15.23.4.115

BN – Z – D

The end of the Long Path is signaled also by the sudden appeal which the Short Path now makes to the aspirant. It tells him that he has quested quite enough in the old way, which is the long way, the excessive way, so that he has become obsessed by it. It tells him that he is now standing in his own light, that he must get out of the way, and that this can be done only by entering on the Short Path, which is preoccupied not with the personal self and its advancement or purification or elevation, but with the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29587 – 15.23.4.116

BN – Z

The end of all his efforts on the Long Path will be the discovery that although the ego can be refined, thinned, and disciplined, it will still remain highly rarefied and extremely subtle. The disciplining of the self can go on and on and on. There will be no end to it. For the ego will always be able to find ways to keep the aspirant busy in self-improvement, thus blinding him to the fact that the self is still there behind all his improvements. For why should the ego kill itself? Yet the enlightenment which is the goal he strives to reach can never be obtained unless the ego ceases to bar the way to it. At this discovery he will have no alternative to, and will be quite ready for, the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29590 – 15.23.4.119

BN – Z – DEK

Once he realizes that he cannot face two ways simultaneously, he will force himself to make a choice between them. The ego or the Overself?

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29594 – 15.23.4.123

BN – Z – D

Hopkins, the Jesuit priest-poet, abandoned meditation because of constantly recurring moods of self-disgust and hopelessness. This sounds exactly like the point where Long Path work should be brought to an end, being replaced by Short Path work.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29597 – 15.23.4.126

BN – X – D

If the Long Path disciplines increase his anxieties and frustrations to an insupportable point, it is probably an indication that he needs a shift to the Short Path—with its effort to shift identity into the Overself and establish him there.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29600 – 15.23.4.129

BN – Z – D

Through humiliation and despair, failure and mistakes, the ego may be crushed to the ground. But the aftermath of this apparently hopeless situation may be the end of the Long Path, with the subsequent transfer to the Short Path, with its new hope, pardon, and peace.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29601 – 15.23.4.130

BN – X – D

The Short Path depends on naturalness and spontaneity—quite the opposite of the Long Path's discipline and effort. The individual who turns aside from the latter at the right moment does so not because he spurns them or denies them or rejects them but because they do not serve him now.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29604 – 15.23.4.133

BN – Z

The moment for departure from the Long Path is signaled by the full realization that all that he has really gained from practising its disciplines is only the practice itself, not the newer consciousness to which they were supposed to lead him.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29605 – 15.23.4.134

BN – Z

A point is reached on the Long Path when its regimens and disciplines, its exercises and vigilances, become irritating and depressing. They will then fail to accomplish their proper effects, will even be obstructive and may even be harmful. This is the time to turn away to the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29607 – 15.23.4.136

BN – Z

A man may take to the Short Path at any stage of his progress on the Long Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29609 – 15.23.4.138

BN – Z

A man cannot go on constantly disapproving of himself without becoming morbid, sick, or defeatist. At some point, and at certain intervals, he must check this process of denigration by introducing an opposing one, by affirming his true identity, the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29610 – 15.23.4.139

BN – Z

When he has reached this stage he will begin to understand that his further spiritual progress does not impose special acts such as disciplinary regimes and meditation exercises—excellent and necessary though these were in their place as preparatory work—but requires him simply to stand aside and be an observing witness of life, including his own life.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29611 – 15.23.4.140

BSG_4 – ZZ – D

The processes and procedures of the Long Path require time. But the Overself is outside of time. To identify yourself with them is to shut yourself out from it. It is consequently needful when a certain point is reached—either in experience or in preparation or in understanding—to abandon the Long Path and take to the Short Path, with its emphasis on living in the Eternal Now.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29615 – 15.23.4.144

BN – Z – D

When the inner call comes, as it will at the proper time, he need not have any hesitations about leaving the Long Path. No sentiment of loyalty need then be allowed to keep him captive to it. But changeover must not be effected too soon or new weaknesses will develop, nor too late, or the chance for timely help will be missed.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29616 – 15.23.4.145

BN – Z

However tirelessly and relentlessly he pursues the Long Path, he may come one day to the tragic discovery that the ideal it proposes to him embodies a humanly impossible perfection. With that discovery he will fall into a numb inertness, a pathetic and hopeless state which could even bring his overwrought mind not far from a breakdown. He may feel alone and deserted. He may enter into the dark night of the soul, as some mystics name it. His ego will feel crushed. He will not know what to do, nor even have the strength of will to do anything more. At this point he must wait… out of bleakness and weakness there will presently come a guidance, bidding him respond affirmatively to a suggestion, a book, or a teacher directing him toward what is really his first step on the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29619 – 15.23.4.148

A240229 – Z

When the Quest begins to mean so much to him that other things mean less, he is ready for its more advanced phase.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29622 – 15.23.4.151

BN – Z – DK

When too long a time is spent on the Long Path with too slow a progress, the urge arises to find another way. It is then that the Short Path becomes appropriate.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29624 – 15.23.4.153

BSG_4 – P – D

The failure to recognize that there is a Short Path as the advanced sequel to the Long Path, as well as the necessary complement to it, is responsible for confusions, misunderstandings, and even errors.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29627 – 15.23.4.156

BN – Z

Even those who are satisfied to continue permanently the Long Path's preparatory disciplines will one day find an inner impulsion rising spontaneously within themselves and leading them to the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29629 – 15.23.4.158

BN – Z – D

A time comes when he no longer feels the need for a technique but rather for freedom from all techniques.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29631 – 15.23.4.160

BN – ZZ

When he reaches the stage of the Long Path where there is only stress upon his shortcomings, where negative traits are the only ones seen, there is needed a less ego-centered attitude. Too much obscures the higher goal he seeks.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29632 – 15.23.4.161

BN – Z

When the Long Path work has been done to the point that it bores, depresses, or satiates him, admission must be made that he had better leave it for a while. Here is a turning point where the Short Path must be entered both for relief and for a fresh outlook.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29633 – 15.23.4.162

BN – Z – D

All this willed striving for a condition of being which seems so far beyond, will reach its terminus at this point. From now on he admits the Overself into the game. He allows for its existence.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29634 – 15.23.4.163

BN – Z

Another sign that the time may have come for a change to the Short Path is when meditation no longer yields satisfying results but becomes irksome and difficult.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29635 – 15.23.4.164

BN – ZZZ – D

When a man has come to the end of his tether, dry of all hope for accomplishment of his aim by self-effort, he is ripe for the Grace-invoking effort of the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29637 – 15.23.4.166

BN – X – D

If you are getting no result, no change in external situation, it is because you are not 'practising'. You are dependent upon the feeble little ego. Cultivate the idea incessantly that the Overself 'provides' and put yourself in dependence on its higher power. But do not attempt this before you have studied and appropriated the lessons of your existing circumstances.

Advanced Contemplation > The Changeover To the Short Path > Making the transition

#29640 – 15.23.4.169

BN – ZZ

The Long Path is devoted to clearing away the obstructions in man's nature and to attacking the errors in his character. The Short Path is devoted to affirmatives, to the God-power as essence and in manifestation. It is mystical. It shows how the individual can come into harmonious relation with the Overself and the World-Idea. The first path shows seekers how to think rightly; the second gives power to those thoughts.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29641 – 15.23.5.1

BN – Z – K1

Most people who start the short path have usually had a glimpse of the Overself, because otherwise they find it too difficult to understand what the short path is about. The long path, through its studies and practices, is the period of preparation for the advanced quest. It is called the long path because there is much work to be done on it and much development of character and emotions to go through. After some measure of this preparation the aspirants enter the short path to complete this work. This takes a comparatively much shorter time and, as it has the possibility of yielding the full self-enlightenment at any moment, it ends suddenly. What they are trying to do on the long path continues by itself once they have entered fully on the short path. On the long path they are concerned with the personal ego and as a result give the negative thoughts their attention. On the short path they refuse to accept these negatives and instead look to the Overself. Thus the struggles will disappear.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29642E – 15.23.5.2

BN – EL1/4 – DEK

In order to understand the short path, it might be helpful to compare it to the long path which consists of a series of exercises and efforts which gradually develops concentration and character and knowledge. But the long path does not lead to the goal. On the long path you often measure your own progress. It is an endless path because there will always be new circumstances which bring new temptations and trials and confront the aspirant with new challenges. No matter how spiritual the ego becomes it does not enter the whitest light, but remains in the greyish light. On the long path you must deal with the urges of interference arising from the lower self and the negativity which enters from the surrounding environment. But the efforts on the long path will at last invoke the grace, which opens the perspective of the short path.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29642E – 15.23.5.2

BN – EL2/4 – DEK

The short path is not an exercise but an inner standpoint to invoke, a state of consciousness where one comes closer or finds peace in the Overself. There are, however, two exercises which can be of help to lead to the short path, but they have quite a different character than the exercises on the long path. The short path takes less time because the aspirant turns around and faces the goal directly. The short path means that you begin to try to remember to live in the rarefied atmosphere of the Overself instead of worrying about the ego and measuring its spiritual development. You learn to trust more and more in the Higher Power. On the short path you ignore negativity and turn around 180 degrees, from the ego to the Overself. The visitations of the Overself are heralded through devotional feeling, but also through intuitive thought and action. Often the two paths can be treaded simultaneously, but not necessarily equally.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29642E – 15.23.5.2

BN – EL3/4 – DEK

The "remembrance exercise" consists of trying to recall the glimpse of the Overself, not only during the set meditation periods but also in each moment during the whole working span of the day—in the same way as a mother who has lost her child can not let go of the thought of it no matter what she is doing outwardly, or as a lover who constantly holds the vivid image of the beloved in the back of his mind. In a similar way, you keep the memory of the Overself alive during this exercise and let it shine in the background while you go about your daily work. But the spirit of the exercise is not to be lost. It must not be mechanical and cold. The time may come later when the remembrance will cease as a consciously and deliberately willed exercise and pass by itself into a state which will be maintained without the help of the ego's will.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29642E – 15.23.5.2

BN – EL4/4 – DEK

The Long Path gives him the chance to destroy the mental and emotional effects of the ego’s operation: the Short Path, to destroy the ego itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29643 – 15.23.5.3

BN – X – D

On the Long Path the man is preoccupied with techniques to be practised and disciplines to be undergone. On the Short Path he is preoccupied with the Overself, with the study of its meaning, the remembrance of its presence, and the reflection upon its nature and attributes.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29646 – 15.23.5.6

BN – Z – D

The essential features of the Long Path are its concern with moral effort and its emphasis on character building; its injunctions to pray and meditate; its insistence on the constant striving for self-mastery through physical, emotional, and mental disciplines. The essential feature of the Short Path is its quest of the flash of enlightenment through intuitive feeling and metaphysical thinking. Some believe, and would be satisfied with, this flash to be brief. Others hope for its permanent abidance.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29647 – 15.23.5.7

BN – X – D

The difference in attitude and teaching between these two schools of thought is tremendous. One says that nothing else is needed than the finding of the real Self, for that will automatically wash out all faults and shortcomings. The other says that only by eliminating those faults and shortcomings can the real Self be found. Zen Buddhism and Ramana Maharshi belong to the first school, and Martinus to the second one.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29649 – 15.23.5.9

BN – Z

All rules for regulating social conduct and shaping moral character fulfil a proper purpose in making good men. But they do not directly lead to the discovery of the ego's unreality. Therefore they do not belong to the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29657 – 15.23.5.17

BN – Z

If the Long Path seeks salvation chiefly through the building of character and the concentration of thought, the Short Path seeks it chiefly through worshipful meditation directly on the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29659 – 15.23.5.19

BN – X – D

In exaggerating the value of the ego's spiritual activity, the votary of the Long Path goes astray; but the votary of the Short Path who minimizes or denies that value altogether is also in error.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29661 – 15.23.5.21

BN – Z

All that hatred of his sins and that struggle against his imperfections which teachers of the Long Path inculcate, is abandoned when he comes under the teachers of the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29662 – 15.23.5.22

BN – Z

Perhaps a good illustration of their actual relationship is the one given by a plowman's cutting up a field and his later sowing of the field. Plowing here corresponds to the Long Path, dropping the seed in furrows thus prepared to the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29663 – 15.23.5.23

BN – Z

The Long Path creates anxiety, because one wants to make progress and finds it difficult. The Short Path has to counterbalance it, because one then realizes that there is nothing to be attained, that one is already there.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29664 – 15.23.5.24

BN – Z

The laborious effort and painful discipline of the Long Path bring him to a certain degree of spirituality but the easier, pleasanter, and quicker way of the Short Path brings him to a higher one.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29665 – 15.23.5.25

BN – Z – D