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

Overview of the Quest > Independent Path > Loneliness

#1051 – 2.1.3.340

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Benefits for beginners

#1056 – 2.1.4.5

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Benefits for beginners

#1074 – 2.1.4.23

B_05 – Z – K

Instead of being found out, the particular needs and special tendencies of the individual seeker will be ignored and even suppressed in the endeavour to conform him to the system. There is both good and bad in this. Which of these he will receive depends upon the competence of the teacher, if he has one, or the mental attitude he takes toward the system itself—upon his blind slavish adherence to it or intelligent, open-eyed use of it.

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Benefits for beginners

#1076 – 2.1.4.25

B_07 – Z – K

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

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Benefits for beginners

#1085 – 2.1.4.34

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1087 – 2.1.4.36

BA11 – ZZ – DK

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

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1104 – 2.1.4.53

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1111 – 2.1.4.60

BN – ZZ – K

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

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1127 – 2.1.4.76

A241224 – ZZZ – K

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

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Problems

#1146 – 2.1.4.95

A241224 – ZZ – K

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

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Relation to founder

#1162D – 2.1.4.111

BN – X – K

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1173E – 2.1.5.1

BA12 – ZZ – DEK*

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1175 – 2.1.5.3

BA11 – ZZ – K

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1176 – 2.1.5.4

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1178 – 2.1.5.6

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1180 – 2.1.5.8

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1181 – 2.1.5.9

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1183E – 2.1.5.11

BT1008 – P – DE

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1184 – 2.1.5.12

BSG_4 – P – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1185 – 2.1.5.13

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1188 – 2.1.5.16

B_05 – ZZ – DK

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1190 – 2.1.5.18

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1191 – 2.1.5.19

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1193 – 2.1.5.21

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1194 – 2.1.5.22

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1195 – 2.1.5.23

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1197 – 2.1.5.25

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1198 – 2.1.5.26

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1200 – 2.1.5.28

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1203 – 2.1.5.31

BT1008 – P – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1204 – 2.1.5.32

B_01 – ZZZ – K

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1210 – 2.1.5.38

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1216 – 2.1.5.44

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1217 – 2.1.5.45

UR_2.4 – ZZZ – K

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1220 – 2.1.5.48

BN – X – DEK

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1221 – 2.1.5.49

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1222 – 2.1.5.50

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1226 – 2.1.5.54

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1228 – 2.1.5.56

BN – X – D

Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus ask his followers to enter into a church but he does ask them, by implication, to enter within themselves.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1231 – 2.1.5.59

B_12 – ZZ – K

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1233 – 2.1.5.61

B_11 – Z – DK

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1234 – 2.1.5.62

BN – X – DM

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1237 – 2.1.5.65

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1246 – 2.1.5.74

BN – X – D

Ideally, we learn the wisdom of life best, easiest, and most from teachers, from instruction by those who know the Way in its beginning and end. Actually, we have to learn it by ourselves, by our own experience, by self-expression, all necessary and valuable, suffering as well as joy.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1247 – 2.1.5.75

B_07 – ZZ – K

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1248 – 2.1.5.76

BT1008 – P – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1250 – 2.1.5.78

BN – X – D

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > General description

#1252 – 2.1.5.80

BN – X – D

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

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

#1254 – 2.1.5.82

BN – X – D

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

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

#1256 – 2.1.5.84

B_04 – Z – DEK

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

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

#1257 – 2.1.5.85

BN – X – DEK

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

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

#1261E – 2.1.5.89

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK3

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

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

#1263 – 2.1.5.91

BN – Z – DK

Swami Vivekananda's works can be recommended as being authentic fruits of realization that come close to the doctrine here discussed, albeit his path was not the same. The Quest follows a double line of development: mind-stilling plus mind-stimulating, each in its proper place. And the ultimate goal is to discover that there is but one reality, of which all are but a part, that the separateness of the personal ego is but superficial, and that Truth is evidenced by the consciousness of unity. The first fruit of such discovery is necessarily the dedication of life to the service of all creatures, to incessant service for universal welfare. Hence, in this light, the yogi who has withdrawn into cave or forest is on a lower plane–good for him as a phase of his personal development but useless to those who must live truth, the truth of unity.

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

#1264 – 2.1.5.92

BN – ZZ – DEK

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

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

#1265 – 2.1.5.93

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

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

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

#1266 – 2.1.5.94

BN – Z – DK

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

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

#1267 – 2.1.5.95

BN – Z – DK

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

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

#1269 – 2.1.5.97

BN – X – DEK

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

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

#1270 – 2.1.5.98

BN – X – D

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

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

#1272 – 2.1.5.100

BN – X – D

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

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

#1273 – 2.1.5.101

BN – X – D

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

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

#1274 – 2.1.5.102

BN – X – DEK

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

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

#1275 – 2.1.5.103

BN – X – D

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

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

#1278 – 2.1.5.106

BN – X – D

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

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

#1279 – 2.1.5.107

BN – X – D

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

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

#1281 – 2.1.5.109

BN – X – D

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

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

#1282 – 2.1.5.110

BN – X – D

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

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

#1287D – 2.1.5.115

BN – X – K

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

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

#1288 – 2.1.5.116

BN – Z – DK*

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

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

#1289 – 2.1.5.117

BN – X – D

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

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

#1303 – 2.1.5.131

BN – Z – DK

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

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

#1304 – 2.1.5.132

BN – Z – DK

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

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

#1306 – 2.1.5.134

BN – X – DEK

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

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

#1309 – 2.1.5.137

UR_2.2 – Z – K

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

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

#1310 – 2.1.5.138

B_04 – ZZ – DK

If men tell you that the path is a mere figment of the imagination, they are welcome to their belief. I, who have seen many men enter it and a few finish it, declare that the difference between the beginning and the end of the path is the difference between a slave and a master.

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

#1312 – 2.1.5.140

BN – ZZ – K

Jesus said that the way to eternal life is straight and narrow. He could have added that it is also long and difficult. Yet the beginner should not let these things discourage him. There is help within and without.

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

#1314 – 2.1.5.142

B_12 – ZZ – K

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

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

#1317 – 2.1.5.145

BN – Z – DK

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

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

#1326 – 2.1.5.154

BN – Z – DK

Every man may awaken to the presence of Christ-consciousness within himself and thus step out of the merely animal and nominally human existence. It will then be a divinely human one.

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

#1328 – 2.1.5.156

BN – ZZ – DK

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

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

#1329 – 2.1.5.157

BN – Z – DK

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

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

#1333 – 2.1.5.161

BN – ZZ – DK

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

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

#1337 – 2.1.5.165

BN – Z – DEK

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

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

#1342 – 2.1.5.170

BN – Z – DK

Different terms can be used to label this unique attainment. It is insight, awakening, enlightenment. It is Being, Truth, Consciousness. It is Discrimination between the Seer and the Seen. It is awareness of That Which Is. It is the Practice of the Presence of God. It is the Discovery of Timelessness. All these words tell us something but they all fall short and do not tell us enough. In fact they are only hints for farther they cannot go: it is not on their level at all since it is the Touch of the Untouchable. But never mind; just play with such ideas if you care to. Ruminate and move among them. Put your heart as well as head into the game. Who knows one day what may happen? Perhaps if you become still enough you too may 'know'—as the Bible suggests.

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

#1344 – 2.1.5.172

BN – Z – K

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

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

#1345 – 2.1.5.173

BN – ZZ – DK

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

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

#1346 – 2.1.5.174

BN – Z – DK

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

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

#1347 – 2.1.5.175

BN – ZZ – DEK

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

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

#1351E – 2.1.5.179

B_06 – ZEL1/4 – K

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

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

#1351E – 2.1.5.179

B_06 – ZEL2/4 – K

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

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

#1351E – 2.1.5.179

B_06 – ZEL3/4 – K

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

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

#1351E – 2.1.5.179

B_06 – ZEL4/4 – K

Just as there is not a single radius only from the centre of a circle to its circumference but countless ones, so there is not a single path only from man to God but as many paths as there are men. Each has to find the way most appropriate to him, to the meaning and experience of truth.

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

#1352 – 2.1.5.180

B_06 – ZZ – K

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

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

#1357 – 2.1.5.185

BN – Z – DK

In one's search for Truth he may have progressed through orthodox Christianity, Christian Science, and Spiritualism—but, eventually, the Quest will lead him away from limited, organized public approaches, and bring him to the unrestricted freedom of the Presence of the Overself. Other movements, such as those mentioned, may be useful to beginners; but when some progress has been made, the path necessarily opens onto the Quest where it becomes unlimited, individual, and private.

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

#1359 – 2.1.5.187

B_04 – Z – K

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

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

#1360 – 2.1.5.188

B_06 – ZZ – DK

The philosophic approach does not limit the seeker rigidly to a single specific technique. While it asks him to follow the basic path and fulfil the fundamental requirements which all beginners must follow, it also points out that this is only a general preparation. A point will be reached when he is ready for more advanced work, and when the personal characteristics and circumstances which are particularly his own must be brought in for adjustment if he is to receive the greatest benefit. No two seekers and the surrounding conditions are ever exactly alike, and, at a certain stage, what is helpful to one will be time-wasting to another.

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

#1361 – 2.1.5.189

B_06 – ZZ – K

Each seeker must find out his own path, his own technique for himself. Who else has the right or the capacity to do it for him?

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

#1363 – 2.1.5.191

B_06 – ZZ – K

Let him walk forward slowly or quickly, as suits him best, and also in his own way, again as suits his individuality which he has fashioned through the reincarnations to its present image and from which he has to begin and proceed farther.

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

#1366 – 2.1.5.194

B_06 – ZZZ – DK

There are not only widely different stages of evolutionary growth for every human being but also widely different types of human beings within each stage. Hence a single technique cannot possibly cover the spiritual needs of all humanity. The seeker should find the one that suits his natural aptitude as he should find the teacher who is most in inward affinity with him.

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

#1367 – 2.1.5.195

BN – ZZ – DK

Let him take up whatever path is most convenient to his personal circumstances and individual character and not force himself into one utterly unsuited to both, merely because it has proven right for other people.

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

#1368 – 2.1.5.196

B_06 – ZZ – K

There is no single universal rule for all men: their outer circumstances and inner conditions, their historical background and geographical locality, their karmic destiny and evolutionary need, their differences in competence, render it unwise, unfair, and impracticable to write a single prescription for them.

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

#1369 – 2.1.5.197

B_06 – ZZZ – K

Each man's path is his own unique one, with its own experiences. Some are shared in common with all other seekers but others are not; they remain peculiar to himself. Therefore a part—whether large or small—of what he has to do cannot be prescribed by another person, be he guru or not. In the groups, organizations, schools, there is too much rigidity in the instruction, the rules, and the expectancy aroused of what should happen at each stage. This is too tight a program. It brings confusion and frustration and does not correspond to the actual situation which an independent observer finds among these circles.

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

#1376 – 2.1.5.204

B_06 – ZZ – K

Every man's individual life-path is unique. It may not be to his best interests to conform to a technique imposed upon him by another man or to confine his efforts to a pattern which has suited others. What may be right for another man who is at a different stage of development may be wrong for the aspirant.

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

#1378 – 2.1.5.206

BA12 – ZZ – DK

The Quest is too individual a matter to fit everyone in the same way, like a ready-made suit of clothes. Each man has his own life-problems to consider and surmount. In trying to do so wisely nobly and honestly he does precisely what the Quest calls for from him at the time.

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

#1383 – 2.1.5.211

B_04 – ZZ – K

Changes of circumstances which bring uncertainty of the future will not frighten him. They will interest him. He will seek to discover if they point the way to an incoming of new forces of experience necessary for his further development.

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

#1388 – 2.1.5.216

BN – Z – DK

The claims that these simpler paths like devotion or repeating a declaration can lead to the goal, are neither true nor untrue. For they lead to the philosophic path which, in its own turn, leads directly to the goal.

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

#1397 – 2.1.5.225

BN – Z – DK

Is there a single teacher, prophet, messenger, or saint who has been universally acclaimed and universally followed? For that to be, all mankind would need the same outer background and inner status.

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

#1398 – 2.1.5.226

BN – Z – DK

However different personal reactions will necessarily be with every individual seeker, there will still remain certain experiences, requirements, and conditions—and these are the most important ones—along his path which must be the same for every other seeker too.

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

#1404 – 2.1.5.232

B_06 – ZZ – K

Each human being has to strive for this higher consciousness in his own way. Each path to it is unique. But at the same time he may profitably avail himself of the general instruction contained in writings like the present one.

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

#1409 – 2.1.5.237

B_06 – ZZ – K

In short, let him know himself. He may then have a key to better knowledge of other things, especially of the meaning of his own life.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1420E – 2.1.5.248

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

Do not let the past hold you down. Do not let dust-laden memories keep you down. Make today a fresh day, a new beginning.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1433 – 2.1.5.261

BN – ZZ – DK

He should not be discouraged because others have gone ahead on the path more quickly than he, any more than he should be gratified because some have gone ahead more slowly than he, for the fact is that the goal he seeks is already within his grasp. He is the Overself that he seeks to unite with, and the time it seems to take to realize this is itself an illusion of the mind. Let him, therefore, go forward at his own rate and within the limits of his own strength, leaving the result in the hands of God.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1439 – 2.1.5.267

BN – X – DEK

His weaknesses may come in the way of his seeking, yet he still remains an authentic seeker.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1448 – 2.1.5.276

B_05 – Z – K

From a long-range point of view, is anyone really "lost"? It is sometimes consoling to remember that we have Eternity before us, and we can only do what we are capable of at a given time.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1452 – 2.1.5.280

B_13 – ZZ – K

From a long-range point of view, is anyone really lost? It is sometimes consoling to remember that we have Eternity before us, and we can only do what we are capable of at a given time.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1455 – 2.1.5.283

BN – Z – DK

… he is showing quarrelsomeness, or trying to conquer it; he is losing himself in the day’s activity, or saving himself from it in a half-hour retreat. He is letting negative thoughts or feelings stay in his heart, or trying to drive them out of it. He is practising a larger relationship and a kindlier attitude toward those he encounters in his day-to-day business, or he is failing to recognize why they—and not others who are quite different—have been put into his path by the Infinite Intelligence. His environment is really a testing-place and a disciplinary school…

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1457 – 2.1.5.285

BN – P – DE

The question of how far he would be prepared to travel in this quest has no geographical reference. It is a metaphorical one and refers only to the time he can give each day to the exercises, studies, and devotions, as well as to the moral ideals he can bring himself to pursue. He is not asked for more than he feels he can humanly give under his present circumstances and responsibilities. As for going to India or elsewhere, that is unnecessary and even inadvisable. One of the greatest Western mystics I ever knew spent every day in the city of London, where he had a business to manage. He did his job and made a success of it, stuck to his ideals and became spiritually "aware." He was indeed an adept at meditation but he had never set foot in the Orient. The seeker has indeed not very far to travel. Four hundred years ago Sebastian Franck, a German who had attained the full spiritual realization, wrote: "We do not need to cross the sea to find Him—the Word is nigh thee, is 'in thy heart'."

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1458 – 2.1.5.286

B_08 – ZZ – DEK*

The belief that we have to travel to far places for the light of Truth is not really true but our own feebleness may have to make it true. As soon as we settle down in hope and confidence to discover the deeper forces within ourselves they begin to become active.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1459 – 2.1.5.287

BN – ZZ – DEK

To those who want to travel to India or elsewhere in search of salvation, or of a master who shall lead them to it, the question must be asked, "Can you not see that if you take yourself there you will still have to cope with your ego there as here? Look deeper into your own heart, for that is where what you seek really is."

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1463 – 2.1.5.291

BA12 – ZZ – DK

There is nothing wrong with the urge to visit India, for then he may learn more about this world of ours and the people in it, and especially about Indian spiritual traditions. The wrong sets in when he believes that just by displacing himself in space in this way he is likely to have enlightenment handed over to him by some other man, called a guru, on a platter. This cannot be, whatever wishful thinking on the one side and fanatical narrowness on the other may say. At the moment the fad is more Indonesia than India but the point of the matter is still the same. For enlightenment involves liberation from his ego, its captivity and deceitfulness.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1465 – 2.1.5.293

BN – Z – DEK

One man may go to the Orient and gain nothing. It is not emotional exuberance which produces a high spiritual result, nor visits to many ashrams, but the depth and concentration with which the truth is seen.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Knowing and working within one's limitations

#1467 – 2.1.5.295

BN – Z – DK

The stages of the Quest pass by degrees from the disciplining of the ego to the opening of consciousness to the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1469 – 2.1.5.297

B_04 – ZZ – DK

There is an Indian formula covering three progressive stages of the quest: Hearing, Reflection, Enlightenment. It means: Receiving instruction (from guru or text), Thinking constantly over the teachings until they are thoroughly assimilated, Experiencing glimpses of a mystical nature. With the end of this third phase, the aspirant has not only to repeat and prolong the glimpses until his whole life is permeated by the wisdom and peace which is their fruit, but also to receive and apply the highest and final philosophic doctrine. With this, his enlightenment becomes natural, effortless, unbroken. It is unified with his activity, established whether he is busy in the world or seated in meditation.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1472 – 2.1.5.300

BN – X – D

In the course of his life the student will pass from one phase of development to another, thus gradually enriching and expanding his whole character.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1474 – 2.1.5.302

BN – X – D

The attitude of faith in another person is undoubtedly helpful to beginners, provided the faith is justified. But it is a stage necessarily inferior to the attitude of faith in one's own soul. To turn inwards rather than outwards, to overcome the tendency towards externality, is to ascend to a higher stage.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1480 – 2.1.5.308

BN – X – D

Although the movement towards enlightenment goes forward by stages, the actual moment of enlightenment comes abruptly with a sudden transcendence of the darkness in which men ordinarily live.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1486 – 2.1.5.314

BA11 – Z – DK

The time will come, if he perseveres, when his mind will naturally orient itself toward the spiritual pole of being. And this will happen by itself, without any urging on his part. No outer activity will be able to stop the process, for to make it possible his mind will apparently double its activity. In the foreground, it will attend to the outer world, but in the background it will attend to the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1487 – 2.1.5.315

BN – X – D

The ascending degrees of initiation into higher understanding of truth and large capacity to receive contemplative awareness open themselves to him one by one as he passes each successive test leading to it. These tests consist, in the lower grades, of willingness to submit physical habits, passions, and desires to discipline and, in higher grades, willingness to submit thoughts and feelings to it. In all, they lead to a progressive detachment from the animal and the ego.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1489 – 2.1.5.317

BN – Z – DK*

This momentary glimpse of the Overself provides the real beginning of his quest. The uninterrupted realization of it provides the final ending.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1492 – 2.1.5.320

B_04 – ZZ – DK

When he begins to sense the inner peace and exaltation which is a perfume, as it were, upon the threshold of the Overself, he may understand how real this inner life is and paradoxically how unintelligible, indescribable, and immaterial from the ordinary standpoint. It is something, and yet not something which can be put into shape or form graspable by the five senses. Anyway it is there and it is the Immortal Soul.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1493 – 2.1.5.321

BN – X – D

The personal man needs to grow and develop adequately as man. Only after this does he reach the stage when it is safe, and not premature, to undo the ego, and destroy its rule. For after this point the latter becomes a tyranny when the task now is to make it a subserviency.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1494 – 2.1.5.322

BN – X – D

It is good as a beginning to believe in God. It is admirable as the next step to try to come closer to God by worship—but it is not enough. It is a fulfilment of a still higher duty to try to know that in us which is the link with God, which in contrast to man is of a godlike nature.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1498 – 2.1.5.326

BN – X – D

The order of progress is from belief to knowledge, and thence to love of that which is known.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1499 – 2.1.5.327

BN – X – D

If a man comes to this quest by thought or by suffering or by fate, he will end by love if he remains with it, love of that which shines forth during his first glimpse, love of the Overself. It is like the child losing, then finding, its parent.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1500 – 2.1.5.328

BN – X – D

First, he has a vague feeling of being attracted towards the Overself. Then he bestows more attention upon it, thinks of it frequently; at length attention grows into concentration and this, in turn, culminates in absorption. In the end, he can say, with al Hallaj: “I live not in myself, only in Thee. Last night I loved. This morning I am Love.”

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1501 – 2.1.5.329

BN – X – D

The stages in philosophic training usually begin with gaining a theoretical knowledge of the teachings. When this is well established, it grows in time into an aspiration for self-improvement and into an effort to mold character and conduct in conformity with the philosophic ideal. Such a maturation period is often a long and difficult one. In the third stage the “glimpse” of enlightenment begins to be experienced. The first glimpse has a far-reaching effect and is likely to be associated with the first contact with an inspired spiritual guide, or with the writings of such a man. In the case of some persons there is a different series of steps. The glimpse comes first, the theoretical study next, striving to express through living comes last.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1502 – 2.1.5.330

BN – X – D

The seeker will pass through three periods successively before he can enter the sublime land of Realization. First he must experiment with and exhaust the external possibilities of religion; then he must practise the internal rite of meditation; lastly he must, with sharpened intelligence, pursue the subtlest of all philosophies.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1503 – 2.1.5.331

B_05 – Z – K

That a higher existence is possible for mankind may be a strong intuitive feeling or a strong religious belief. It can develop through experience of a mystical glimpse into personal realization or more lastingly, more truthfully, through experience of philosophic insight.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Stages of development

#1504 – 2.1.5.332

BN – X – D

The whole psyche of man must get into this task of self-spiritualization. Feeling alone cannot do it, will alone cannot do it, thinking alone cannot do it, and intuiting alone cannot do it. Every element must contribute to it and be shaped by it.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Only whole person finds whole truth

#1513 – 2.1.5.341

BN – Z – DK

If he comes to the quest with his whole being, turning every side of it to the quest's light and discipline, he may confidently expect the full insight, the full transformation and not a partial, incomplete result.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Only whole person finds whole truth

#1525 – 2.1.5.353

BN – X – DEK

The first reward is truth realized in every part of his being, the lower self becoming the instrument of the Soul. The second reward is peace, intensely satisfying and joyous. A keen and constant longing after the Soul’s consciousness, a willingness to surrender all to it inwardly, are however necessary prerequisites.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1526 – 2.1.5.354

BN – X – D

Out of the Quest will come a yearning for what is the best in life and the highest in Truth.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1531 – 2.1.5.359

B_04 – ZZZ – K

When this truth is at last seen, that heaven is not a place in space but a condition of being, and that therefore it can to a certain extent be realized even before death, a feeling of joy and a sense of adventure are felt. The joy arises because we are no longer restricted by time, and the adventuresomeness arises because a vista of the quest's possibilities opens up.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1533 – 2.1.5.361

UR_3.2 – Z – DEK

He whose resort is solely the personal ego is constantly subject to its limitations and narrowness and, consequently, is afflicted with strains and anxieties. He who lets it go and opens himself up, whose resort is to his Higher Self, finds it infinite and boundless and, consequently, is filled with inward peace.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1536 – 2.1.5.364

BN – X – D

The quest often begins with a great sadness but always ends with a great happiness. Its course may flow through both dark and bright moods at times, but its terminus will be unbelievably serene.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1537 – 2.1.5.365

B_04 – Z – DEK

When he has brought the host of conflicting emotions to rest, when he has trained the thoughts to obedience, when he has fought and beaten the ego itself, he comes to a state of peace.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1540 – 2.1.5.368

BN – X – D

To enter into the presence of a high inspiration, feel its ennoblement, and understand its message, brings a deeply satisfying joy.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1541 – 2.1.5.369

BN – X – D

Nobody can earnestly work through a course in the higher philosophy without finding oneself a better and wiser person at the end than he or she was at the beginning. And this result will come to him/her almost unconsciously, little by little, through the creative power of right thinking.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1548 – 2.1.5.376

BSG_4 – P – D

Here on the quest, it is not only possible for him to meet the profoundest thoughts of the human mind but also its highest experiences.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1550 – 2.1.5.378

BN – X – D

He who finds the Overself, loses the burdens, the miseries, and the fears of the ego.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1551 – 2.1.5.379

BN – X – D

How does the quest remove his fears? By providing him sooner or later with firm assurance that the Overself's gracious power is not only illuminative but also protective.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1552 – 2.1.5.380

BN – X – D

Slowly, as he strives onward with this inner work, his faults and frailties will fall away and this ever-shining better self hidden behind them will begin to be revealed.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1553 – 2.1.5.381

BN – X – D

His meditations tend to make him sensitive and his studies sympathetic; the two qualities combine well so that others notice how kindly he is in personal relations.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1556 – 2.1.5.384

BN – X – D

The time will come when values will change, when ambitions, powers, possessions, and acquisitions will all be put back into their proper places, when their tyranny over the will and the feelings will be put to an end.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1558 – 2.1.5.386

BA12 – ZZ – DMK

Those who will take the trouble to comprehend what all this means, and who will do what they can to practise the requisite exercises, will find with increasing joy that new life opening up to them.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1560 – 2.1.5.388

BN – X – D

When this inner work is sufficiently advanced, certain traits of character will either advance in strength or appear for the first time. Among them are patience, goodwill, stability, self-control, peacefulness, and equableness.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1561 – 2.1.5.389

BN – X – D

No man may free himself from every form of outward suffering but all men may free themselves from inward suffering.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1569 – 2.1.5.397

B_17 – ZZ – K

Any man may detect the presence of divinity within himself, if he will patiently work through the course prescribed by authoritative books or a competent guide. It is not the prerogative of spiritual genius alone to detect it.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1571 – 2.1.5.399

BN – X – D

From the first momentary glimpse of the soul till the final rest in it, he is being led to accept the truth that the love which he wants and hopes to find outside himself must be found within himself. The true beloved is not a person but a presence. When genuine love in its most intense form utterly overwhelms him, he will find that its physical form is a mere caricature of it and that its human form is a pale reflection from it. Instead of having to beg some woman or some man for crumbs of affection from their table, he will find a veritable fountain of everflowing love deep within his heart, and therefore ever available to him in the fullest measure. This is the one beloved who can never desert him, the unique soul-mate who will forever remain with him, the only twin soul he can seek with the absolute certainty that it is truly his own.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1578 – 2.1.5.406

B_10 – ZZZ – DEK

Instead of having to beg some woman or some man for crumbs of affection from their table, he will find a veritable fountain of everflowing love deep within his heart, and therefore ever available to him in the fullest measure. This is the one beloved who can never desert him, the unique soul-mate who will forever remain with him, the only twin soul he can seek with the absolute certainty that it is truly his own.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1578E – 2.1.5.406

BA12 – ZZZ – DEK

He will expand the meaning of his own habitual life-experience as he expands the awareness of the divine in himself.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1582 – 2.1.5.410

BN – ZZ – DK

He who is sufficiently ready to recognize the Higher Purpose of Life, and who has the courage to change and improve his way of thinking, thereby replacing negative thoughts by positive ones, will certainly be rewarded by improved circumstances and greater happiness than he may already enjoy.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1587 – 2.1.5.415

BN – X – D

No one who feels that his inner weakness or outer circumstances prevent him from applying this teaching should therefore refrain from studying it. That would not only be a mistake but also a loss on his part. For as the Bhagavad Gita truly says, "A little of this knowledge saves from much danger." Even a few years' study of philosophy will bring definite benefit into the life of a student. It will help him in all sorts of ways, unconsciously, here on earth and it will help him very definitely after death during his life in the next world of being.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1588D – 2.1.5.416

BN – ZZZ – DEK

Although its promises and experiences may not appear glamorous in a worldly sense, the Quest reveals itself to be the best of all possible ways of living.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1589 – 2.1.5.417

BN – X – D

Out of these intense struggles with his thoughts and emotions, these repeated meditations and altruistic actions, these constant self-analyses and ardent yearnings, he will eventually get something which words can hardly describe. It will be a new sense of sacredness, an enlightened awareness of a deeper self, a blessed loving serenity.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1592 – 2.1.5.420

BN – ZZ – DK

Despite the tragedy and horror of our times, those who have eyes to see can still see the divine arms enfolding us. Despite the presence of monstrosities in the world, there is also the presence of the Overself―beautiful, radiant, benign, and indestructible.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1594E – 2.1.5.422

BSG_4 – ZZ – DEK

In meditation practice, metaphysical study, and right conduct we have the triune path which brings satisfaction, peace, wisdom, and true prosperity. Jesus taught us all this long ago but unfortunately his message has been largely misunderstood, distorted, and even falsified. However he also taught that we are all the children of God. It is a Father's business to look after his children. Despite the tragedy and horror of our times, those who have eyes to see can still see the divine arms enfolding us. Despite the presence of monstrosities in the world, there is also the presence of the Overself—beautiful, radiant, benign, and indestructible.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#1594 – 2.1.5.422

B_12 – ZZ – DEK

Keep away from psychic practices and occult explorations. They are filled with dangers and pitfalls. First devote your energies to the foundational work of learning philosophy, improving character, disciplining emotion, and cultivating calmness. Only after this work has been well advanced will it ever be safe for you to take up occultism, for only then will you be properly equipped to do so.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Dangers

#1604 – 2.1.5.432

BN – X – DEK

The deepest spiritual experience goes beneath thought and emotion and especially beneath the personal ego. Only then does one come in contact with the Infinite life-power which is behind everything, and which is the true goal of this Quest.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Dangers

#1605E – 2.1.5.433

BSG_4 – P – DE

The wary seeker should be on his guard against those who offer pseudo-knowledge as well as those extremists who would lead him off balance.

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Dangers

#1615 – 2.1.5.443

B_05 – Z – K

We are not left to find out for ourselves what the truth is. Now and then messengers appear among us, each bearing his own personal communication about the existence of a higher power and the need of a higher life.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > General notes

#1632 – 2.1.6.4

BN – X – D

We may help the Overself in drawing us to the goal by surrendering to the guidance of a competent spiritual adviser or we may obstruct it by clinging to the ego's. But an incompetent adviser will also obstruct it, and in fact become a channel for the ego's truth-obscuring tactics.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > General notes

#1633 – 2.1.6.5

BN – X – D

Happiness depends on our understanding of life, understanding depends upon the penetration of insight, insight depends upon right instructions received from a competent teacher.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1640 – 2.1.6.12

UR_4map – ZZZ – DEK

Heaven lies within and without us, it is true. But in most cases, only by the intervention of some authentic spiritual genius do we seem able to translate this into actuality for ourselves.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1644 – 2.1.6.16

BN – X – D

Life is teaching us all the time but its voice needs a human being as a more direct medium, its lessons need human speech or writing to gain clearer utterance.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1645 – 2.1.6.17

B_07 – ZZZ – K

Most men find they need a concrete symbol to receive their devotion and concentrate their aspiration. In short, they find they need a Spiritual Leader, be he historical and of the past, or contemporary and of the present.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1650 – 2.1.6.22

BN – Z – K

Every generation has to find its own way through these mysteries and to these truths anew, despite the heavy freight of recorded teachings and revelations which it receives from all the previous ones. This is why new prophets have always been needed to provide the old, old clues.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1652 – 2.1.6.24

B_06 – ZZZ – K

Something or someone is needed to draw us from the ego to the Overself behind it.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1653 – 2.1.6.25

BN – X – D

No seeker is so wise, so informed, so perfect, or so balanced as not to need the constructive criticism and expert counsel of a true spiritual guide.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1658 – 2.1.6.30

B_05 – Z – K

The instruction and criticism of a qualified living guide are worth having. But owing to the rarity of such guides, many seekers are unable to find one.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1662 – 2.1.6.34

B_05 – Z – K

Whoever seeks to raise his own consciousness to the Overself’s, will get most help from seeking out an individual who has already accomplished that task. In the presence of someone whose own consciousness is in the Overself, he will receive the inward inspiration which can energize and lead his personal efforts in the same direction.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1677 – 2.1.6.49

BN – X – D

The earnest seeker will get more from a single meeting with a truly inspired man than from attendance at a hundred sessions in an organized spiritual school or ashram. For the first will awaken his intuition whereas the second will merely add to his information. The first will really advance his progress whereas the second will only give the illusion of doing so. But such is the widespread ignorance and inexperience of these things, as well as the suggestive power of pomp and prestige, that the organized institution will always attract fifty followers where the lone illuminate will attract five.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1679 – 2.1.6.51

B_05 – Z – K

So long as experience and results have not established sufficient confidence in our intuitive guidance and sufficient trust in our philosophic knowledge, we need to continue travelling with a teacher.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1687 – 2.1.6.59

B_07 – Z – K

A phrase or two, coming from an inspired man, may set a subconscious process working in the mind of another and lead him in the end to acquire a new truth or a new view.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1691 – 2.1.6.63

BN – X – D

To follow one's own path, rejecting the idea of seeking the expert help, tested knowledge, and accumulated experience of a Master is to follow a haphazard course of trial and error. The determination to maintain such independence and to make one's way by one's own effort is not of much use. One will be far better off working under guidance than without it.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1693 – 2.1.6.65

B_07 – ZZ – K

It is always pleasant to learn that a seeker has found a good teacher. It may be puzzling then to hear that the teacher can no longer continue with his pupil. However, in such a case, the individual should not be unnecessarily distressed, because he can most certainly continue to make progress on the Quest irrespective of whether or not he has an outward teacher. All he needs to do is to pray humbly to God, whose love and forgiveness will accompany him always where a human teacher's cannot.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1697 – 2.1.6.69

B_07 – Z – K

To say that no teacher is necessary is to set oneself up as a teacher by that very statement.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1703 – 2.1.6.75

B_07 – Z – K

We need to build up an intimate inner relationship with a being whose compassion is wide enough to understand us and whose power is developed enough to help us. It does not matter that he is dead.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > The need for a teacher

#1706 – 2.1.6.78

BN – X – D

It is not essential to find a teacher in the flesh—he may be in print. A book may become a quite effective teacher and guide.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Books as teachers

#1709 – 2.1.6.81

BN – X – D

In the absence of a sage's personal society, one may have recourse to the best substitute—a sage's printed writings.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Books as teachers

#1710 – 2.1.6.82

BN – X – D

The personal contact with a master does not necessarily require a face-to-face meeting. It can also be effected through a letter written by him—nay, to some degree, even through a book written by him. For his mind incarnates itself in these productions. Thus, those who are prevented by circumstances from meeting him physically, may meet him mentally and gain the same results.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Books as teachers

#1714 – 2.1.6.86

BN – X – D

The perspicacious student will cling steadfastly throughout his life to the writings of illumined masters, returning to them again and again. Their works are the truest of all, pure gold and not alloys.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Books as teachers

#1715 – 2.1.6.87

UR_6 – ZZZ – DMK

The truth-seeker will be wise to make use of such outward helps as appeal to him. They may be the written word, the printed book, the molded statuette, the pictorial representation, or the human photograph—always provided they are referable to a genuinely inspired source. He should study the words and works, the lives and examples of practising mystics, and follow in their footsteps.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Books as teachers

#1723 – 2.1.6.95

B_05 – Z – K

One of the helps to kindle this spark into a flame is the reading of inspired literature, whether scripture or not—the mental association through books with men who have themselves been wholly possessed by this love.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Books as teachers

#1737 – 2.1.6.109

BN – X – D

The words of inspired men are like a lighthouse to those seekers who are still groping in the dark.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Books as teachers

#1739 – 2.1.6.111

B_05 – ZZ – DK

It is a man's own fault if, through his failure to seek spiritual guidance or understanding, none is vouchsafed to him. "Ask, and it shall be given unto you", said Jesus in this reference, which complements and is necessary to the assertion of the Chinese sage: "Those who know do not speak".

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1747 – 2.1.6.119

B_11 – Z – K

If the strong yearning for truth be absent, a man may meet a thousand masters of the quest but he will neither recognize them for what they are nor experience any exaltation in their presence. This yearning must indeed be as strong as the hunger of a starving man or the desperation of a traveller lost in the desert.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1749 – 2.1.6.121

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

He should not exaggerate the need for a teacher. Ultimately, his development will depend on principles rather than on personalities.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1759E – 2.1.6.131

B_07 – Z – K

When it is said that the readiness of the seeker determines the appearance of the master, this applies to the first fundamental initiation of his spiritual life. It does not mean that a master will come into his town and seek him out, but that he will come into his life. And this may be brought about in various ways—as by the seeker himself being led, either by worldly circumstances or by his own seeking, out of his own town to the town or country where the master is living.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1768 – 2.1.6.140

B_07 – Z – K

The seeker who is fumbling for the right direction to take should welcome the help of a competent guide. But where such a guide is not personally forthcoming, the best substitute is a personal disciple of his or, failing that, a book written by him.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1791 – 2.1.6.163

B_07 – ZZ – DK

It is often said that when the pupil is ready the Master will appear. But I have not yet read anyone's additional statement—that he may be invisible and unhearable—that is, he may be entirely within you.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1795 – 2.1.6.167

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

The difficulty which you mention about finding a teacher need not be overrated. You have within yourself a ray of God, which is your own soul. If you pray to and beseech it constantly for guidance, it will surely lead you to all that you really need to know.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1801 – 2.1.6.173

BN – ZZ – DK

Occasionally one feels he is not worthy enough to contact a spiritual teacher because he does not have a "clean heart." This is a wrong mental attitude. He needs assistance in getting this "clean heart" and there is nothing wrong in seeking such help.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1821 – 2.1.6.193

B_07 – Z – K

What we can hope to find today is no longer a teacher to instruct our minds nor a master to guide our steps but an inspirer to set us aflame, to show us the world as the Overself sees it. There is for each seeker only one man in the whole world who can do that. He and he alone can work this miracle.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1830 – 2.1.6.202

B_05 – Z – K

Something within seems to recognize the true teacher when he appears. This is not miraculous when one understands that the visible present has its root in the invisible past and that discipleship is a relation which reappears in birth after birth. However, the philosophic path does not depend only on faith or intuition but also on rational appeal and proved fact. Therefore, some time must elapse before one knows thoroughly that he has found the right path and the right teacher.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1855 – 2.1.6.227

BN – X – DEK

Another sign that you have found the right master is when you find that he is the one who inspires you to go more deeply into yourself during meditation than any other.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1856 – 2.1.6.228

BN – X – D

It is a discriminating seeker who responds only to what is wise and true and fine in a teacher but rejects what is frail or fallible in him.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1866 – 2.1.6.238

B_07 – Z – K

We have seen a number of spiritual teachers either arise in the West or come here from the East and each one seems to find a certain number of adherents. These teachers and their teachings are of varying quality and may be helpful to many of those who join them. But it is necessary to give a measure of warning against exaggerations made by the teachers about themselves or, if not, made by their followers. It is easy for untrained and inexperienced seekers to be taken in by confident claims to the highest enlightenment. It is better to look for the signs of humility and impersonality.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1875 – 2.1.6.247

B_07 – ZZ – K

How honest was that reputedly wise man Socrates in saying what so few gurus have ever said. He had just answered Xenophon's request for advice on a certain matter and concluded: "But my opinion is only that of a man."

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1905 – 2.1.6.277

A241129 – ZZ – K

Where is the man who is wise enough to give everyone else spiritual guidance, personal advice, marital counsel, and prediction of future? Who with a single look knows all about you as he already knows all about God and the universe? Let us not look for fantasies of wishful thinking but see humans as humans.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1909 – 2.1.6.281

BN – ZZ – K

Behind the majestic phrases of most of these spiritual teachers, we usually find in the end of a searching investigation based on living with them or on the historic facts of their lives, that there stand poor frail mortals. Hence those few who emerge as being one with, and not inferior to, their teachings stand out all the more as truly great men.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1913 – 2.1.6.285

BN – ZZZ – K

The mystical and cultist circles which talk much about these matters use the name 'Master' to trail such an accumulation behind it of falsified facts, superstitious notions, and nonsensical thinking, that it is needful to be on guard for semantic definition whenever this term is heard.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1944 – 2.1.6.316

UR_3.2 – Z – K

The student is mistaken if he thinks the teacher ever places obstacles or temptations in anyone's way. He does not have to do that; it is done by life itself, or, more precisely, by the karma arising from the individual character and its special needs. The teacher may note them and act accordingly, but he does not create them. In the end, the student himself creates his own obstacles and his own temptations by his thinking, by his character, and by his karma.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1948 – 2.1.6.320

B_07 – Z – K

It is a self-deception to believe that the master can interfere in all sorts of miraculous ways in the disciple's worldly life or intervene in all sorts of arbitrary ways in his spiritual life. The master's true function, the most important role he can play in the disciple's career, is to assist the latter's efforts to withdraw into his inner self, to guide, strengthen, and protect his endeavour to practise meditation.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Issues in seeking a teacher

#1953 – 2.1.6.325

B_07 – Z – K

He is a true messenger who seeks to keep his ego out of his work, who tries to bring God and man together without himself getting in between them.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#1970D – 2.1.6.342

BSG_4 – P – D

The sincere teacher seeks to wean his disciples at the earliest possible moment. To succeed in doing so, he will promise nothing as a gift but will emphasize how necessary it is to apply the teaching to their personal lives honestly and continuously.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#1996 – 2.1.6.368

B_07 – ZZ – K

It is the will of a higher power that he, whose own inner eye is open, shall be instrumental in opening that eye for others wherein it is closed.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2027 – 2.1.6.399

BN – X – D

What a guide may be able to do in certain cases is to facilitate the awakening of higher consciousness and to make easier the entry of higher truths.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2029 – 2.1.6.401

BN – X – D

It is usually quite impossible for the average aspirant to determine who is a fully qualified master. But it is sometimes quite possible to determine who is not a master. He may apply this negative test to the supposed master's personal conduct and public teaching.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2034 – 2.1.6.406

BN – X – D

If the truly advanced mystic ever gives the impression that he frowns on any person who has erred, a totally false impression has been received. For he knows that it is through that small part of evolution which is devoted to free will that we learn and grow. He who has himself learnt and grown in this way never frowns at the mistakes of others, but, instead, forgives them.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2048 – 2.1.6.420

B_14 – ZZ – K

A teacher who gives a well-argued discourse about the Truth helps us, but so does the teacher who announces the Truth in non-discursive terms. Both are needful in their place.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2053 – 2.1.6.425

B_07 – ZZ – K

The Overself is costless. It is, as Jesus pointed out, as free as the wind which comes and goes. Whoever has realized it will gladly teach the way to anyone who is ripe and ready for his teaching. If any man puts a price on it and offers to sell it to you, be sure he is offering a false or shoddy imitation.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2065 – 2.1.6.437

BN – Z – K

The teacher's duty is to give direction, provide knowledge, warn against pitfalls, correct errors. It is not his duty to save the pupil necessary efforts of will and thinking.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2068 – 2.1.6.440

B_07 – ZZZ – K

The first service of the Master is to point out the way, both inwardly and outwardly, to the disciple. This shortens his journey by several lifetimes, which would otherwise have to be spent in wanderings, explorings, gropings, and searchings.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2070 – 2.1.6.442

BSG_4 – P – D

The duty of any spiritual teacher is to lead the seeker to her own Higher Self, to find her own source of inner light and strength and thus not to lean on outside human beings.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2079 – 2.1.6.451

B_07 – ZZZ – K

It is an important part of his task to show men what their personal lives look like from an impersonal standpoint. Hence he points out the fallacy of their egotistic actions and the foolishness of their egotistic purposes.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2105 – 2.1.6.477

BN – ZZ – DK

The first task of a genuine guide is not to flatter the seeker but to criticize him, not to let him remain ignorantly in the grip of his unrecognized weaknesses but to point them out relentlessly to him.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2108 – 2.1.6.481

B_07 – ZZZ – K

The spiritual leader who is always soft and sentimental may help some of his pupils, but he would help them more if, at the same time, he were also hard and firm. The first attitude will attract more to him, but without the second to balance it neither he nor they will get the proper view of life.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2116 – 2.1.6.489

B_01 – ZZ – K

The title "leader" implies its corollary "follower." but a spiritual leader of the kind here described does not want a mass of followers trailing behind him in a partisan spirit. It is enough for him to give others a few inspirations, ideas, insights, and yet leave them free to work on the material as they wish, unobligated to join any movement.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2124 – 2.1.6.497

B_01 – ZZZ – DK

It is needful for you to understand that a philosophic teacher never really wants anyone to follow him but only to follow Truth. Socrates humorously described himself as practising the same vocation as his mother who was a midwife—the only difference between them being that whereas she helped women to deliver themselves of infants, he helped men to deliver themselves of the true ideas with which their minds were in labour. His business, like that of all genuine teachers, was not to impart truth as something new and foreign but to assist the student to elicit it from within himself. Every genuine teacher tries in his work to lead the student's mind in such a way that his thinking gradually changes without his becoming conscious of the fact at the time, although he will recognize it in retrospect later. He makes students think for themselves; stimulates them to solve their own metaphysical, personal, and emotional problems; and points out the pitfalls and fallacies which lie in their life-path.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2125E – 2.1.6.498

BN – ZEL1/2 – K

Every genuine teacher tries in his work to lead the student's mind in such a way that his thinking gradually changes without his becoming conscious of the fact at the time, although he will recognize it in retrospect later. He makes students think for themselves; stimulates them to solve their own metaphysical, personal, and emotional problems; and points out the pitfalls and fallacies which lie in their life-path. Because his outlook is so disinterested, because his primary purpose is to liberate and not limit them, to give and not get, such a teacher's services can never be bought by anyone—although they may be claimed by those who are prepared to cast off the shoes of conventional prejudice at his door and who are willing to refrain loyally from imposing upon him their preconceived notions of what characteristics the teaching, the teacher, and the quest should possess. Thus if he will not shackle them, they in their turn must not shackle him. Such would-be disciples are rare, but such teachers who practise what they preach are rarer still.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2125E – 2.1.6.498

BN – ZEL2/2 – K

It is the teacher's duty to foster his disciple's creativeness, not his imitativeness—to encourage the disciple to develop his own inspiration.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2139 – 2.1.6.512

B_07 – ZZ – DK

A teacher of spiritual culture, ideals, principles, and practices must think of the intellectual level of those he seeks to instruct and address his message to that. Because there are different levels of aspirants, different levels of teaching are necessary.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2154 – 2.1.6.527

B_07 – ZZZ – K

To explain such subtle teachings in all their fullness to anyone who will not be able to understand them or to feel as interested as the student does, would be foolish. Nevertheless, he is not the proprietor of them so he cannot keep them solely for his own use; nor is he so separate from others that their inner fate is not his concern. If someone comes who asks questions sincerely or needs comfort spiritually or seeks guidance in bewilderment, the student must give what he can. But he must give it prudently, not pouring out one drop more of his knowledge or power than is needed for the particular person at this particular stage in evolution. There is no necessity to keep truth jealously guarded, as in medieval times, nor to rush to the opposite extreme and give everything to everyone.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a teacher

#2160 – 2.1.6.534

BN – Z – K

The master will teach with love what the student must learn with reverence.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master-disciple relationship

#2179 – 2.1.6.553

BN – X – D

There is no tie so strong, no attraction so deep as that between Master and pupil. Consequently it persists through incarnation after incarnation.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master-disciple relationship

#2186 – 2.1.6.560

BN – X – D

When Buddha was asked by critics if all his disciples acted according to his teaching, he frankly answered: "Some do and some do not." The critics exclaimed, "How is it that even your own disciples do not follow you?" So Buddha explained, "My task is merely to show the path. Some tread it and others do not."

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master-disciple relationship

#2194E – 2.1.6.568

B_07 – ZZZ – K

It is an error to believe that one disciple must necessarily associate with the other disciples of the same teacher. Only where there is real temperamental harmony and personal affinity should disciples associate together. Where these are lacking, it is much wiser and safer not to do so. For then the evil forces take advantage of the chance to develop disharmony, quarrels, ill-feeling, and even worse. This spoils the progress of both.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master-disciple relationship

#2210 – 2.1.6.584

B_16 – ZZ – K

If one cannot be happy with certain students, he must wish them well and then go his own way. He must never allow himself to be drawn into quarrels for then the evil forces become active.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master-disciple relationship

#2212 – 2.1.6.586

B_16 – ZZ – K

The teacher must be regarded as a symbol, not as a person. He is to be considered merely as an agent for that which he represents, not as just another human being entering into a human relation with the disciple. So few understand what is really involved in this relationship, so many misunderstand it and are therefore disappointed by it in the beginning or along the way, that the teacher prefers with rare exceptions of well-advanced cases, not to enter into it outwardly at all but instead to offer a little friendly help without obligation.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master-disciple relationship

#2225E – 2.1.6.599

B_07 – ZZ – K

This eagerness to become a disciple and learn truth is the first necessary qualification. Without it nothing can be done; with it everything will come naturally in automatic response from the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2264 – 2.1.6.638

BN – X – D

If the disciple feels personally humiliated or becomes hysterically tearful at the teacher's well-meant fair and constructive criticisms, he is not only suffering needlessly but also rejecting the expert help for which he came to the teacher, even though the form it takes is unexpected and disagreeable. Good advice is still good even when unpalatable.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2272 – 2.1.6.646

B_07 – ZZZ – K

Of all the many forms of work which a man can find to do, of all the several ways in which his active functions can express themselves, there is none higher than this, that he guide men out of illusion into reality. It is not wrong therefore to give his office great reverence and himself great devotion.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2285 – 2.1.6.659

BN – ZZ – DMK

To listen properly to a guru, is not to bring in the ego with its interpretations. To read correctly from an inspired guru's book is to keep out the common tendency to put in one's own personal meanings. In short, let the mind Be Still and know the Truth!

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2296 – 2.1.6.670

UR_2.5 – ZZZ – K

If a person is strongly egoistic and arrogantly self-opinionated, if he lacks humility even when he approaches a Master, then not only can he not follow the path, but he must circle around looking for its gate. Such a person, uneducable and unteachable, is unfit for the path of discipleship. Life is the only teacher he is ready for. Life is intelligent enough to bring him exactly the kind of experiences he needs—crushing disappointments, frustrations, humiliations, and disasters.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2300 – 2.1.6.674

B_01 – ZZZ – K

Despite the absence of a teacher, it is still possible to intensify his efforts. His surroundings offer part of the material for study; his personal history can be explored for a greater awareness of the meanings of his past and present experiences; and every situation offers an opportunity for a more objective observation of himself.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2309 – 2.1.6.683

BN – Z – DK

The teacher can only help you to help yourself. Ultimately it will be by your own efforts alone that you uncover the wisdom and beauty you are seeking -and which are even now within you.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2340E – 2.1.6.714

BSG_4 – P – DE

The teacher can only help one to help himself. 'Ultimately' it will be by his own efforts alone that the student uncovers the wisdom and beauty he is seeking—and which are even now within him. Such efforts, in order to be successful, must be courageous and continuous: repeated failures should serve only to stimulate deeper determination.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2340E – 2.1.6.714

B_07 – ZZZ – DK

It is not enough to receive a teaching from someone else. The truth of the teaching must be tested by personal experience, the worth of it should be measured by personal knowledge.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2343 – 2.1.6.717

B_03 – ZZ – DK

The disciple will learn in the end, by experience, that he must look to himself alone for salvation. The last words of the dying Buddha, addressed though they were to his own disciples, have been a useful guide to me: “Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourselves.”

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2346 – 2.1.6.720

BN – ZZ – DK

The kind of teacher who is really useful will put no emphasis upon himself but upon the aspirant's own work, and then see him at intervals only. Once the materials needed are pointed out, the student should teach himself; and this he can do only through self-practice.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2348E – 2.1.6.722

B_07 – ZZ – DEK3

Whatever is called for to bring on enlightenment exists within himself already, but it is latent and undeveloped. By study, exercise, and practice the aspirant can be his own teacher. Sooner or later he will have to take this work into his own hands. The notion that someone else can or will do it all for him is delusory.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2348E – 2.1.6.722

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK

You must play the teacher to yourself. He cannot tread the path for you: you must walk and work by your own effort. The mother cannot grow up on behalf of the child, no matter how greatly she loves it. The adept cannot do your growing-up for you. Nature's laws must prevail. He has shown you the way: use your will to follow it. But devote a little time each day to keeping open the channel of communication with him and thus receive his impetus, his inspiration to help you. So although you must strive by your own use of free will, do not imagine that you need strive unaided.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2349 – 2.1.6.723

B_07 – ZZ – K

Whoever does not understand that the guide must lead him to where he will seek his own way, will go on endlessly looking for teachers, one after the other, or else become a spiritual hypochondriac, a semi-invalid needing the guru-doctor to dance constantly in attendance on his ego-centered symptoms.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Qualifications, duties of a disciple

#2357 – 2.1.6.731

B_07 – ZZ – K

Such communication between the teacher and student might be called "Telementation".

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Cultivating the inner link

#2367 – 2.1.6.741

B_07 – Z – K

It is also possible to take any revered person as a master and, in one’s own mind, make him the teacher. Even though no meeting on the physical level may occur, one’s attitude of attention and devotion in meditation will draw from him a reaction which will telepathically give whatever guidance is needed at the time.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Cultivating the inner link

#2375 – 2.1.6.749

BN – Z – DK

He must work harder than ever on his character and, by crushing his ego, sensitize his mind for the reception of the spiritual Grace that is to come during initiation.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Cultivating the inner link

#2387 – 2.1.6.761

BN – Z – DK

In the end, the only way the earnest seeker can find a teacher is to find himself. The deeper he penetrates into the mysterious recesses of his own spiritual being, the closer he comes to the ever-present master within—the higher self. The longer he looks, the more powerful will be its attraction, the more magnetic its spell over him.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Cultivating the inner link

#2395E – 2.1.6.769

B_07 – ZZ – K

Yet the deeper we travel, the less need have we of thoughts and words, for all multiplicity collapses in this marvelous unity. We can neither think nor talk of this sublime state with any accuracy. Hence the only medium whereby we can properly represent it is—silence!

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Cultivating the inner link

#2404 – 2.1.6.778

BN – Z – DK

The soul will lead him by stages to itself. Hence it may lead him to reverence for some scriptural personage or to devotion toward some living master and then, when these have fulfilled their purpose, away and beyond them. For the quest is from the world of things and men to the world of Mind’s void; from thoughts and forms to the thought-free formless Divine.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2422 – 2.1.6.796

BN – X – DK

It will not be until a late stage that he will wake up to the realization that the real giver of Grace, the real helper along this path, the real master is not the incarnated master outside but the Overself inside his own heart. What the living master does for him is only to arouse his sleeping intuition and awaken his latent aspiration, to give him the initial impetus and starting guidance on the new quest, to point out the obstructions to advancement in his individual character and to help him deal with them.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2442 – 2.1.6.816

BN – ZZ – DK

Think more deeply than the conventional mass of guru-followers dare to do and you will come to perceive that in the end there is only one Teacher for each man, his own Overself; that all other and outer gurus are merely channels which IT uses. "It is He who lives inside and speaks through the outer guru's voice," declares a Tibetan text. Why not go direct to the source?

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2447 – 2.1.6.821

BN – ZZ – DEK

The higher self is the ultimate spiritual guide whom he is to revere and the real spiritual helper on whom he is to rely.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2448 – 2.1.6.822

BN – ZZ – DMK

I have never said that the disciple should not feel love for the teacher, for that inevitably arises of itself and is indeed the basic force that draws the one to the other. Without it there could be no discipleship. But it is necessary to understand that the love is really felt for the divine presence which is using the teacher. It is not felt for the guru (teacher) as a person. That is the correct condition. If, however, it is diverted to the guru's person, then it is spoilt, rendered impure, and the true relationship is broken. In fact, idolatry sets in. The emotions of attraction and reverence which are felt need not be given up, but they should be directed to the true source, the higher power, which is using the teacher, and not towards his personality at all.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2454 – 2.1.6.828

B_07 – ZZ – K

In the final reckoning we are not the disciple of this or that man but rather the disciple of the Overself.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2458 – 2.1.6.832

BN – ZZZ – DK

Jesus tried to turn the minds of his followers from the man to Spirit, from the body to Overself but, like Muhammed, Buddha, and Krishna, failed. He told them not even to call anyone Master, nor even to call him Rabbi. But history shows how greatly they disobeyed his instruction.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2460 – 2.1.6.834

B_12 – ZZ – K

The Master as Symbol: All this talk of master and disciple is vain and futile. You yourself, when attracted to a certain man in whom you have faith, set him up as a master in your own mind, keep him there for a number of years, and eventually drop him when you no longer feel the need of a human symbol of the Infinite. All this time it is your own higher self, which is guiding you, even when it is using the mental image of the guide you may have selected for the purpose. All this time you were moving in the direction of the discovery of your Overself inwardly even when you seemed to be moving towards an external master.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2463E – 2.1.6.837

B_07 – ZEL1/2 – K

The Master as Symbol: All this time you were moving in the direction of the discovery of your Overself inwardly even when you seemed to be moving towards an external master. If you find ABC a helpful symbol, use him as your master, but do not ask him to confirm this usage for the choice was yours. No confirmation from him is called for. Why doubt the guidance of your Overself? If you accept the master in full faith, by that very act you are showing faith in the leading given you by the Overself. Your obedience to it is enough. It has accepted you or it would not be drawing you inwards, as it is. ABC is one with it. Therefore how could the master refuse you? But do not lose sight of the inwardness of the whole process by going to him for an outward sign. Do not materialize it. Make use of him if you wish to, and if he is what you believe him to be, your faith will not be wasted. Your act of mental creation will not lead to hallucination so long as you know that the true ABC is not his body but his mind.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2463E – 2.1.6.837

B_07 – ZEL2/2 – K

If discovery of Truth is the discovery of the answer to "Who Am I?" then what better Master can there be than the "I" itself—the unknown Knower rather than the familiar, known ego? Yet so few seekers have taken it on trust: nearly all venture it in dependence on some other man. And what can that Master do in the end better than teach his disciple to see his own divine face?

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2465 – 2.1.6.839

BN – ZZ – DEK

The argument as to whether a living master alone can "save" men or whether a dead one can also do so, is a fallacious one. No man is saved by another man. His own soul is his real saviour. When he believes that a master, living or dead, is saving him, his own soul is actually at work within him at the time but is using the mental image of the master to serve as a focus-point for his side—that is, the self-effort side—of the process. Thousands who never knew the living Jesus have felt the real presence and dynamic power of Jesus enough to convert them from sinful to Godly lives. It was the idea of Jesus which they really knew, not the man himself, as it was grace of their Overselves which was the true presence and power they admittedly felt.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2467E – 2.1.6.841

B_11 – ZEL1/2 – K

Thousands who never knew the living Jesus have felt the real presence and dynamic power of Jesus enough to convert them from sinful to Godly lives. It was the idea of Jesus which they really knew, not the man himself, as it was grace of their Overselves which was the true presence and power they admittedly felt. They concentrated their faith on the idea but the reality behind it was the unknown Overself. They needed the idea—any idea—as a point in their own form-time-and-space personal consciousness where the formless, timeless, placeless, impersonal soul could manifest itself to them.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2467E – 2.1.6.841

B_11 – ZEL2/2 – K

The true teacher acts by proxy, as it were, for the aspirant's Overself until such time as the aspirant himself is strong enough to find his own way. Until that moment the teacher is a shining lamp, but after it he will withdraw because he does not want to stand between the seeker and the latter's own self-light which gradually leads the disciple to dispense with him!

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2469 – 2.1.6.843

B_06 – ZZZ – K

With the thought of the higher power, an image will spontaneously spring up in his mind. It will be the image of that man who manifests or represents it to him.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2470 – 2.1.6.844

BN – X – D

If there is a genuine inner relationship between them, then he will feel that a part of the master has never left him, even though the master is himself long dead.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2480 – 2.1.6.854

BN – Z – DK

If the life of Jesus be viewed symbolically—as the lives of such divine men often are in part—the same necessity, at a certain time, of physical separation from disciples to bring them into mental nearness, appears. This last stage, where the presence and picture of the Master are displaced by the pictureless presence of the disciple's own spirit, is accurately described in the words of Jesus to his disciples: "I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth". Any other interpretation of them leaves them without reasonable meaning.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Master as symbol

#2482M – 2.1.6.856

B_11 – Z – K

The teacher is a support needed by the disciple to help him progress through successive stages of the quest, as they are stages of thinning illusion. When he stands on the threshold of reality, then the last and thinnest illusion of all must be left behind, the support of any being outside himself, apart from himself, for within him is the infinite life-power.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Graduation

#2485 – 2.1.6.859

B_07 – Z – K

The true teacher so develops his disciples that they can come closer and closer to the time when they can find their way without him. All his service is intended to lead them toward graduation when he himself will no longer be needed.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Graduation

#2490 – 2.1.6.864

B_07 – ZZZ – K

It is the same teaching as that of Jesus' hard saying about the necessity of taking up the cross and denying father and mother.

Overview of the Quest > Student-Teacher > Graduation

#2495E – 2.1.6.869

B_11 – ZZZ – K

His first effort is to find the obstacles which retard the enlightenment; his second, to remove them. This constitutes the Long Path.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > What is the Long Path?

#2499 – 3.2.1.1

BN – X – D

The mind is prevented from knowing the truth by its own defects limitations or deficiencies, by its own passions self-centeredness and possessiveness. The philosophic discipline sets up as an objective the elimination of these hindrances. Such disciplines are physical, mental, and emotional.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > What is the Long Path?

#2501 – 3.2.1.3

BN – X – DEK

For the man or woman who truly desires to follow the Quest and who wonders how to begin, the present course should be to read and study the exercises given in my earlier books, going over them carefully again and again until all the basic concepts are familiar. At the same time, one should find a few minutes out of every day when it is possible to be alone, undisturbed and unobserved. Meditation should be opened by silent prayer, formulated to express spiritual yearnings for the higher way of life. This may be followed by concentrating on a chosen spiritual theme. Every endeavour should be made to keep thoughts from wandering and to bring them back whenever they do.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > What is the Long Path?

#2502 – 3.2.1.4

BN – X – DEK

Bring again and again into remembrance the fact that you are a pilgrim, that this world is but a camp, and that the situations in which you find yourself, or create for yourself, should be regarded not from the worldly point of view only, but still more from that of this quest of the Overself.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > What is the Long Path?

#2527 – 3.2.1.29

B_04 – ZZZ – K

If he can do little to bring on the advent of Grace, he can do much to remove the obstructions to it.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > What is the Long Path?

#2533 – 3.2.1.35

BN – X – D

The Quester cannot imitate the conventional lives of other people. He has to make some changes, and particularly some sacrifices, if he is to follow a path whose goal is different from theirs. He has to find some time for meditation and study, some time when he can fully and truly be himself, and this requires, however short, a daily period of solitude. He has to arrange his diet so that it will not provide more difficulty for his inner work. He has to be careful of what company he keeps, so that he will not be constantly responding to their auras, either in struggle or in defense.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > What is the Long Path?

#2538 – 3.2.1.40

BN – ZZZ – K

The rays of light would enter every man's conscious mind even now, were they not prevented by the extroversion of his attention, the upheavals of his emotion and passion, the narrow rigidities of his logical intellect, and the attachments of his ego. This is why the removal of these obstructions—which is the Long Path's special work—is indispensable to his progress.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > What is the Long Path?

#2541 – 3.2.1.43

BN – X – D

When he becomes dissatisfied with himself, when he feels that what he is doing, thinking, achieving is either not enough or too inferior or even too misguided, he may be ready for the Long Path of self-improvement.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > What is the Long Path?

#2546 – 3.2.1.48

BN – X – D

There are no practices that will reveal the meaning of life. The latter can come only from experience and reflection. But practices have secondary uses, such as helping to develop concentration, which is needed for right reflection.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > What is the Long Path?

#2549 – 3.2.1.51

BN – X – D

The quest of truth by a mind deformed by hate, anger, bias, bitterness, or greed, or deficient in concentration, calmness, or aspiration must end in a failure which will be partial or total to the extent that these negatives are partial or total. This is why the Long Path is needed.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Purification and development of character

#2557 – 3.2.1.59

BN – X – DEK

Certainly he must be eager to seek the truth, willing to give time for the search since it requires study and meditation, but equally he must be prepared to practise some self-discipline. This is partly because the quest of truth succeeds to the extent that he disengages himself from the ego and from the thoughts, the passions, and the moods it produces.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Purification and development of character

#2573 – 3.2.1.75

BN – ZZ – DK

It is easy and human to project our wishes on the universe of our experience and think our fancies into the universe of our ideas. Therefore, the quest of the Overself must begin with a discipline of the underself.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Purification and development of character

#2579 – 3.2.1.81

BN – ZZ – DEK

He must put down the lower emotions every time they rear their heads. The ordinary unquesting man may allow resentment, jealousy, anger, lust, hate, and greed to appear and act without restraint on the scene of his life, but the disciple cannot. Self-purification is both his need and his duty.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Purification and development of character

#2605 – 3.2.1.107

BN – X – D

If the advances in understanding, the glimpses of higher states, and the improvements in mental attitudes are regarded egoistically, that is, with the smug complacence that it is "I" who has brought them about, then their value is only preparatory. For they still leave him self-enclosed and he still remains outside the Overself. The Long Path merely takes him to another part of the ego, even though it is the higher part.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2634 – 3.2.1.136

BN – X – DEK

He must not judge himself with too much leniency, or he will fail to fight his weaknesses or to fight them sufficiently, or with too much severity, or he will be so easily discouraged as to bring on unnecessary mental suffering.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2643 – 3.2.1.145

BA12 – ZZ – K

Those who recur often to thoughts of their past get trapped by it and kept prisoner of the ego. Remorse for sins committed and self-pity for being the victim of other people's sinning—both are soon overdone and create more obstacles to be overcome on the quest.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2652 – 3.2.1.154

BA11 – ZZ – DK

Every negative thought which may arise within himself or be picked up unconsciously from others becomes an aggression against this quest.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2655 – 3.2.1.157

BN – Z – DK

Too often spiritual aspiration is simply worldly ambition transplanted to a higher but subtler level. The aspirant is not necessarily deceiving himself, for a mixture of motives is quite common.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2664 – 3.2.1.166

B_08 – Z – K

Too much preoccupation with his own spiritual advancement, too much of self in his thoughts and too little of the Overself—this only binds him tighter to the ego.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2670 – 3.2.1.172

BN – X – D

Although we must cease to blame others for our troubles, or conditions for our misfortunes, and assume responsibility for the self which we have created and the actions it has done, we need not push our sense of guilt to the point of morbidity. Although we have attracted so many of our misfortunes by our own thoughts and feelings and actions, we need not feed pessimism until it becomes despair. Too many persons on the Long Path fall into these errors through expecting more from themselves than they actually realized.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2673 – 3.2.1.175

B_13 – ZZ – K

Some things inside his own being are blocking his way to the Overself. An effort—determined, continuous, and daring—is needed to clear them. They are emotional and passional in appearance, egoistic in essence.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2679 – 3.2.1.181

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

The seeker on the Long Path tries to eliminate his baser feelings and to cultivate his nobler ones. But in all this effort he is looking at himself alone, purifying and improving his ego but still his own ego.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2689 – 3.2.1.191

BSG_4 – P – D

If a scheme for progress, such as the Quest, remains intellectual alone and does not come down to the heart, and move it, the aspirant will continue to remain outside the precinct of the Overself.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2693 – 3.2.1.195

B_04 – ZZZ – DK

The arc of his development usually begins with the Long Path and rises to the Short one, but theoretically it should begin with both together in harmonious combination.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2701 – 3.2.1.203

BN – X – D

The Short Path is a cheerful Path, a Path of happiness. Just before this begins, the aspirant may experience the Dark Night of the Soul. He feels utterly helpless, has no feeling of spiritual Reality. It is a melancholy time—no feeling of spirituality or longing for it. He is neither worldly nor spiritual. He feels alone and abandoned and separated by a wall from his Guru. He feels God has forgotten him. This dark night may last a short time or long years. He is unable to read spiritual things, or think about them. There is no desire for ordinary things either. He feels sad and disappointed and may even try suicide. In this unhappiness even those who love him cannot bring him comfort. In both hemispheres, Western and Eastern, there is a saying: the night is darkest just before dawn. He is on the lowest point. After that, the Short Path brings back the Joy—just like clouds moving away from the Sun.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2707E – 3.2.1.209

A240229 – Z – DE

On the Short Path the aspirants need the philosophical study to understand only one point: What is Reality. It is necessary to understand the difference between the Illusion and the Reality. Every teacher's biggest difficulty is to get the students to understand that not only the world but also the ego is illusion.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2707E – 3.2.1.209

BSG_4 – Z – DE

Wu-Wei, meaning inaction, not trying, is the highest teaching of Taoism and Zen. The Overself is already there. You as ego must get out of the way!

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2707E – 3.2.1.209

BSG_4 – Z – DE

At the end we have to be like little children and leave our Enlightenment to the Father and give up our lives to him.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2707E – 3.2.1.209

BN – Z – DEK

Because the ego lives in its own darkness, it cannot give light. The light may come only from the Overself, which is the Sun and Light of human existence.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2707E – 3.2.1.209

BN – Z – DEK

The best advice is, first, that it will not last forever; he must have patience. Second, he must have hope. Then he reaches a better level than ever before. The Dark Night of the Soul does not come to every seeker. It is like a shadow thrown by the Sun. When the Sun appears in the subconscious, the shadows arise. But it is the beginning of a great inner change. It is not a wasted time; there is a great deal of work going on—but in the subconscious—to root out the ego. It is being done by the Overself. It is a sign of Grace, but the aspirant nevertheless feels unhappy.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2707E – 3.2.1.209

A240229 – Z – DEK

Therefore Jesus said: "If you want to find your true Self you have to deny yourselves", meaning deny the ego.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2707E – 3.2.1.209

B_11 – Z – DEK3

There is not one fixed rule for everyone. One person is suited for a little of the Short Path and more or longer of the Long Path; with the other person it is vice versa. With most people the combination is the best way. It depends partly on their feelings, their intuition, … In the end, everyone must come to the Short Path, the Inner Path.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2707E – 3.2.1.209

UR_4map – ZZZ – DEK

We must be now guided by our inner feeling of what we need, or by our intuition. If people ask whether they have to study, the answer is that the books deal with the thoughts. What they give is not the Truth, but only intellectual statements of it. It will only prepare them for a better understanding. When they study these books they will only get more thoughts. In the end they have to come to the point where they need no books. There are good books but we must always discriminate between wrong teachings and right teachings, which may get mixed together in the same book. This is the highest we can go with such studies.

Overview of Practices Involved > Ant's Long Path > Confronting the obstacles within

#2707E – 3.2.1.209

UR_2.5 – ZZZ – DEK3

He will have to recognize that not only the universe outside but his own nature inside is governed by precise laws, and that his spiritual progression is subject to such laws, too.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Attitudes that help or hinder

#2708 – 3.2.2.1

BN – X – D

Progress along this path is not merely a matter of chronology; nobody may measure it with accuracy for nobody knows what forces may suddenly arise out of an individual's past to hinder him or what forces may suddenly arise out of the Overself to help him.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Attitudes that help or hinder

#2721 – 3.2.2.14

B_01 – ZZ – K

The aspirant who prefers to see himself as much more advanced than he really is, is suffering from the inflation of a strong ego. The aspirant who prefers the opposite view and prefers to underrate his position is suffering from the inferiority of a feeble ego. Both attitudes are undesirable.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Attitudes that help or hinder

#2725 – 3.2.2.18

BA12 – ZZ – K

He who thinks only of the obstacles in his way will never attain the goal. It is necessary to meditate on, and work to develop, positive qualities which will make progress possible.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Attitudes that help or hinder

#2747 – 3.2.2.40

BSG_4 – P – D

If you find progress to be slow and the promised rewards still out of sight, do not despair. Be patient as Nature herself is patient. Find, if you can, the friendship of those more advanced than yourself and receive from their presence the stimulus to become unhurried by time and unhurt by moods of impatience. The path may be a long one, but when success comes it comes unexpectedly and the final stages are short and rapid. It is the earlier and more elementary stages which are long drawn out. You are not in a position to judge exactly what progress you have made. This is why you must have great patience.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Attitudes that help or hinder

#2756 – 3.2.2.49

BN – ZZ – DEK

Quite apart from the spiritual rewards, there are additional and tangible ones also—better health, greater achievement, and less avoidable self-earned trouble.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2764 – 3.2.2.57

BN – X – D

He has gone far on this path when his last thought on falling asleep at night is the Overself and his first thought on waking up in the morning is again the Overself.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2769 – 3.2.2.62

BN – X – D

You may certainly hope for success when the whole trend of your thinking and the whole trend of your action is strongly directed to this single purpose only, when you have resolutely subordinated personal feelings and temperamental predilections to the solution of the problem of truth.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2770 – 3.2.2.63

BN – X – D

He who has nurtured the thoughts and cultivated the stillness and behaved by the injunctions which philosophy has offered him will, when the late evening of his life comes, not only never regret it but be glad for it.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2774 – 3.2.2.67

BN – X – D

Two trustworthy evidences of real progress are attainment of balance and attenuation of ego.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2778 – 3.2.2.71

BN – ZZ – DK

If anyone really wants to progress, let alone succeed, I do not know any way of escaping these two indispensable conditions: exercise and perseverance. There is good hope for a man no matter how much of a beginner he is, but only if he is eager to see his mistakes, if he is his own harshest critic, and if he puts forth a continuous and persistent effort to amend his life.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2779M – 3.2.2.72

BA12 – ZZZ – DMX*

He may measure progress partly by the signs of strengthened intuition and partly by the signs of strengthened will.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2784 – 3.2.2.77

BN – X – D

It is true that no spiritual effort is ever made in vain either in the individual struggle for progress or in the way individual progress influences others.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2794 – 3.2.2.87

BN – Z – D

It often happens to one on this path that what he greatly needs does not come to him when he prematurely asks for it but only comes when the need is actually ripe. This combination of doing his bit and then trusting in God will carry him through all his difficulties.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2797E – 3.2.2.90

BA12 – ZZ – DEK

Eventually, one will tend to dislodge oneself from less worthwhile pursuits. Ordinary automatic responses to these and other worldly affairs will cease as one feels the deepening need for thought-stilling and inner peace.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2798 – 3.2.2.91

BN – X – D

The mind must go on gradually parting with its ancient illusions, its time-fed prejudices, hardly aware of any progress, until one fateful day truth triumphs abruptly in a vivid flash of supreme illumination.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2799 – 3.2.2.92

BN – X – D

It takes much inner experience, much reflection on the immutable laws, and much outer experience that confirms those laws before his confidence in the divine wisdom becomes as unshakable as a rock, and before all negative moods become powerless to touch him.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2804 – 3.2.2.97

BN – Z – D

It is quite possible to make progress on the Quest without the aid of a teacher. The aspirant’s own higher self will give him the guidance and assistance he needs—provided he has sufficient faith in its existence.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2806 – 3.2.2.99

B_07 – ZZ – DK

With continuous perseverance on the quest, his life becomes stabilized and his energies concentrated. His advance will be marked no less by deeper thoughts and steadier emotions, by kindlier words and nobler emotions in the ordinary round of daily life, as by subtler intuitions and serener meditations in the hidden life.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2808E – 3.2.2.101

BN – X – DEK

How he is to apply this philosophy to particular situations in everyday living—for we live in practical times and a teaching is judged and tested not only by what it claims to do but also by what it actually does—is quite rightly a man's own business and responsibility.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2808E – 3.2.2.101

B_02 – ZZ – DEK3

When the picture of himself is no longer pleasing to him but on the contrary, painful, he is beginning to see truly. When he passes from the stage of self-pity to that of self-loathing he is beginning to progress effectively.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2809 – 3.2.2.102

BN – X – D

In the earlier stages of his development the aspirant is helped by being told exactly what to do. But in the later stages the less this is done the better for him.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2811 – 3.2.2.104

BN – ZZ – DK

A mere belief in the soul’s existence is the first and shortest step. An intellectual study of its nature and a devotional discipline of the self is the next and longest step. A direct intuitive understanding of the soul’s presence is the third and last one.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2817 – 3.2.2.110

BSG_4 – P – D

The Quester who has reached a sufficiently advanced stage becomes keenly aware of the paradoxes and contrarieties of his life.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2821 – 3.2.2.114

B_05 – ZZ – K

At first he will find nothing more on the path than what his efforts can secure for him. This is why the earlier years often seem so long, so sterile, and so monotonous. But during the next period grace mingles with his efforts and encouraging results then appear. The third and last stage witnesses the gifts of the Overself falling like ripe plums into his lap without any further efforts on his part. Here all is done by the simple working of grace. Then the major virtues of life will come into his possession, not as arbitrary compulsions of an unwilling ego, but as ripe fruit falling into his hands from a sap-filled tree. For although it is often said that the spiritually evolved man undergoes a profound self-loss, which penetrates his whole nature and affects his whole expression, the truth is that he does not really lose himself in the new consciousness which has taken possession of him. He loses only his frailty and ignorance, his egoistic pettiness and mental distractedness, his body-based materialism and useless sorrow.

Overview of Practices Involved > The Measure of Progress > Sources, signs, and stages of growth

#2824 – 3.2.2.117

BN – X – DEK

If the purpose of life on earth be a wide and deep spiritual growth, and if one attends above all else to that purpose, then whatever the future may bring it could only bring fresh material for such growth. Its own uncertainty cannot dissipate this certainty. One's growth is guaranteed, whether the future be pleasant or unpleasant, so long as one lives in the present strictly according to his dedicated ideal.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2825 – 3.2.3.1

BN – X – D

Many are the aspirants who complain that they have had no mystical experiences, no rapt ecstatic exaltations, no great awe-inspiring enlightenments. "Give me just a single Glimpse", they cry disheartened, "and I will then be sure that your path is correct, your way is the one for me. Otherwise… "Some of them drift away to join sects, teachers, cults, or to embrace new doctrines, techniques, systems. Some remain but are halfhearted, apathetic, and often critical. A few concern themselves with fundamental issues and work patiently on, holding the view that this Quest must be followed to the end for its own sake, whether Glimpses do or do not come.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2844 – 3.2.3.20

B_04 – ZZ – K

There will always be opportunities for the follower of this path to put his philosophy into practice. Whether pleasant or unpleasant, they should be welcomed! The more he tries, the more he is likely to accomplish. He should take care not to depend upon his personal judgement alone. If he makes the beginnings of a right (that is, impersonal and egoless) response to each problem, help may mysteriously appear to guide him to a right solution. Even tests and trials will provide him with the chance to grow spiritually, and to bring him closer to his goal.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2846 – 3.2.3.22

BN – ZZ – DEK

Man’s story is a serial one. It proceeds through body after body, birth after birth. But the fact is that once he really absorbs the spirit of this quest he will be unable to desert it for more than an interval, even should he wish to. He will be inexorably driven back to it by mysterious forces within his own psyche.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2849E – 3.2.3.25

BA11 – Z – DEK

A ray from the Overself will shine upon our normal mind and transform and transfigure it. But moments of spiritual ecstasy are heralds of the high state which is yet to come when the Overself is taken fully into our councils and we have let go of the terrestrial ego with its dwarfed personal viewpoint.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2853E – 3.2.3.29

BN – X – DEK3

Jesus said, "Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven". What did he mean? Consider the minds of children in whom the ego is but little developed. How egoless they are. How spontaneous and immediate is their knowledge of the world around them.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2853E – 3.2.3.29

B_11 – Z – DEK

To give up the “I” is very hard, yet that is our one and only task. The right attitude eclipses the ego and brings peace, whereas the wrong attitude enhances the ego and brings pain.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2853E – 3.2.3.29

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

Consider what happens when we become intensely interested in a story unfolding itself on a cinema screen. What happens during the deepest points of such concentration? For the time being we actually forget ourselves, and we drop the whole burden of personal memories, relations, desires, anxieties, and pettinesses which constitute the ego. Temporarily the I is transcended. The attainment of the Overself is nothing more than the ability to detach, not destroy, the ego at will.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2853E – 3.2.3.29

BA11 – ZZ – DEK3

If he remains loyal to these ideals, then, through both dreary lapses and bright spurts alike, his spiritual life will grow in strong intensity and quality.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2854 – 3.2.3.30

BN – X – D

No philosopher has ever turned away from these teachings. No student of philosophy has ever done so without returning again after, with time and experience, he had more thoroughly tested its comparative worth or truth against whatever else he had tried.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2864 – 3.2.3.40

B_02 – ZZ – K

It is important to let everything happen naturally, not to try to force an inner mystical experience, not to be anxious about its non-arisal.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2866 – 3.2.3.42

BN – X – DK

We make growth only by degrees because we separate ourselves from the ego only by degrees. The notion that any man can annihilate the ego overnight is an illusory one. He only seems to do so. What actually happens in such a case is that the annihilation is the final culminating event of a long, hidden process—hidden, that is to say, in former incarnations and abruptly pushing its way into the surface consciousness of the present reincarnation. No man flies to such Himalayan altitudes; he can only climb to them.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2870 – 3.2.3.46

BN – ZZ – DEK

We make growth only by degrees because we separate ourselves from the ego only by degrees. The notion that any man can annihilate the ego overnight is an illusory one. He only seems to do so. What actually happens in such a case is that the annihilation is the final culminating event of a long, hidden process—hidden, that is to say, in former incarnations …

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Understanding the pace of development

#2870E – 3.2.3.46

BN – ZZ – DEK

From the first moment that he sets foot on this inner path until the last one when he has finished it, he will at intervals be assailed by tests which will try the stuff he is made of. Such trials are sent to the student to examine his mettle, to show how much he is really worth, and to reveal the strength and weakness that are really his, not what he believes are his.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2891ED – 3.2.3.67

BSG_4 – ZZ – DEK

The tests show whether we become sufficiently strong to translate our ideals into action, whether we have conquered our passions and ruled our emotions at the bidding of those ideals, whether we will be willing to take the path of self-denial when the lower nature seeks to lure us away from the path.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2892 – 3.2.3.68

BSG_4 – P – DE

Those who have much faith in the benevolent intentions of the "Mind behind the Universe", sooner or later find that faith severely tested. For the calamities of human life come to all of us.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2893 – 3.2.3.69

B_03 – Z – K

Once he has committed himself to this quest, he will find that events so arrange themselves as to indicate his sincerity, examine his motives, display his weaknesses, and find out his virtues. His devotion to the philosophic ideal will be tested, his loyalty to the goal will be tried.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2894E – 3.2.3.70

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

The manner in which he will approach trying, painful, or hostile situations will also betray the true measure of his spirituality, his devotion to higher values, and his comprehension of what he has undertaken. He has to show, by the way he meets these events and faces such conditions, what he really is and wants to be. He will adjust himself to such problems only according to the degree of maturity attained.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL01/12 – DEK

At certain times, during his exterior life, a crisis may occur which, though it may cause agony, will also provide opportunity. The challenge of opposition and adversity, of difficulty and suffering, provides opportunities to make progress through the struggle of overcoming them. But the art of rightly using these opportunities, instead of bungling them, is not easy to acquire.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL02/12 – K

The calamity, the bitterness, the despair, and the fatigue, which he may have to endure during these probationary years can all be turned to spiritual account, can all be made profitable in terms of better self-control, ennobled character, and truer values. Experience can be turned into a source of strength, wisdom, and growth; or it can remain a source of weakness, foolishness, and degeneration. It all depends upon the attitude he adopts toward it and the way he thinks and feels about it. Men have their faults in temperament and their defects in intelligence. Mistakes in action and errors in judgement, although never acceptable, are originally excusable. But continuance of the same mistakes and the same errors, despite repeated warnings in the shape of their results, is always inexcusable.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL03/12 – K

It is a painful process, this disentanglement from the lower human and merely animal natures, but it is a necessary one if inner peace is ever to be attained. Observation of other students' lives will be helpful in lessening its painfulness. The lessons he learns from the analytic contemplation of his own errors are excellent but costly, whereas those he learns from the contemplation of other men's errors are excellent and free. The chance to overcome difficulties and fight temptations is the chance both to test character and promote growth. The hours of trouble or distress shake up his psyche and, by enabling him to detect his weaknesses, by drawing attention to his faults, by forcing him to practise a stark self-examination, afford him the chance to get rid of them.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL04/12 – DEK

All through this quest, but especially at certain critical periods, events will so happen and situations will so arrange themselves that the aspirant's weaknesses of character will be brought out into the open. The experience may be painful and its results may be saddening, but only by thus learning to know and discriminate against his bad qualities can he set out to submit them to the formative discipline of philosophy. Only so can he realize vividly what are the weak places in his character and strengthen them. If these incidents make him aware how pitifully slender are his own resources, if they bring him to realize how weak and faulty his character really is, then there is compensation for their painfulness.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL05/12 – DEK

It is easy for him to believe he is virtuous or perceptive, but it is for life itself to reveal how far he is above temptation or error. Therefore, those experiences and events, contacts and persons, who afford the opportunity for this to be done, are indispensable. He may be strong in moral sincerity, but weak in critical judgement. It is his business now to become aware of this deficiency, to set about remedying it by attending to a co-equal cultivation of the different sides of personality.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL06/12 – K

If he succeeds in passing this probation, he will emerge stronger in the particular quality at stake than before. For it will have found fuller expression—it will have affected his practical will, his emotional feelings, his logical thinking, and even his capacity to receive and respond to intuitional guidance. Thus, to the extent that he is successful, to that extent will he bring the quality to a higher pitch of development. He may even learn to be grateful to time which brings healing, to afflictions which bring wisdom, and to opposition which elicits strength. If he is properly oriented, every external experience and every emotional and intellectual adventure will then help him towards a fuller and truer attitude towards life.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL07/12 – K

If he obeys the injunctions of philosophy, in spirit as well as in letter, those very situations which before aroused his lower nature will now awaken his higher one. Each trouble can become a challenge to provoke the response of that serene detachment which can handle it more wisely. Each temptation can sound a call to be active in that penetrative analysis which can master it more effectually. If this inner life can sufficiently possess him, he will gain an independence of external things and events which can carry him unaffected and undisturbed through the severest ordeals. But this inward detachment will not be the correct kind if it weakens his sense of responsibility or causes failure in the carrying out of duties.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL08/12 – K

If a man cannot be wise, let him not therefore be foolish. No statement in the foregoing pages should be misconstrued as an injunction to go seeking either temptations on the one hand or tribulations on the other. No one is called upon to become either an experimental hedonist or a sentimental martyr. It is enough to ask anyone who thinks otherwise: What guarantee is there that he will be able to stop at the point where he proposes to stop?

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL09/12 – K

He who has once embarked on this quest, may be diverted from it for a while, but he can never be driven from it forever. His eventual return is certain. Every fresh manifestation of human wrong-doing and human wickedness of which he is the sufferer, every new reverse of fortune and loss of possession, should only strengthen his determination to follow this quest and cultivate its calm detachment because it should strengthen his realization of the futility of basing his happiness on earthly things alone. He needs always to remember that the ordeal is transient but its prize is permanent, that if he succeeds in emerging from its tests still loyal to the ideal, he will also emerge with ennobled character, greater power, and increased faculty. When he wins through, in the end, then the long sufferings of past failures will bloom into pity for others and into strength for himself.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL10/12 – DEK

Hitherto, he has always been liable to miss his steps or fall by the wayside. But when he is established in the final stage, he is established in security. The roots of evil have been totally destroyed within him. Never again will they have the chance to grow and yield bitter fruit. When memories of his past life recur, he will find it hard to believe that they did not happen to someone else rather than to himself. He will look back with astonishment at the man he formerly was, at the ignorance and weakness which held him in bonds.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL11/12 – DEK

Reaching this final paragraph and casting about in mind for a valedictory thought, it is a fact, and a most extraordinary one, that after this beautiful entry into the higher level of his being, the past loses its capacity to hurt him, memory can no longer depress him, and the host of old blunders, sins, or tragedies are blotted out as though they had never been. Thus, at long last, those trying years of toilsome exercises and studies, hard sacrifices and disappointments, show their pleasant, satisfying result. By his success in passing these recurring tests, he has thereby shown that he fully deserves the higher and holier consciousness which now follows them.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2898E – 3.2.3.74

A240107 – ZEL12/12 – K

You should not desert the Quest in resentment because earthly sufferings have come upon you. For if you do so, then you are inviting still further sufferings to come as a consequence of infidelity. Let you rather look upon them as mostly of your own making, through which you may learn lessons for the ultimate perfecting of your character, and always as tests of the sincerity with which you embarked on the quest. You must use these trials as opportunities to show forth endurance, steadfastness, and faithfulness, as well as to increase your wisdom. They do not come by chance. Earthly sufferings are as useful to you if not more so than the earthly joys which you so readily welcome.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2900 – 3.2.3.76

B_01 – ZZZ – K

If a man is seriously embarked on this quest, he will understand that when a desirable object is being put into his possession, or torn away from it, his sincerity will be tested by the impersonality with which he regards the event and deduces its meaning.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2905 – 3.2.3.81

BN – X – D

Why not apply creative imagination to these testing periods? When you know that you are about to enter one of them, imagine that you will pass through it quite successfully, see yourself in your mind's eye measuring up to ideal conduct.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2906 – 3.2.3.82

BN – X – DK

In each test there exists the chance, through success, to gain strength and pass up in Initiation to a higher level or, through failure, to display weakness and fall in conduct to a lower one.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2912 – 3.2.3.88

BN – X – D

In the Egyptian Mysteries, his capacity to resist a sexual temptation was deliberately tested. If he failed, the initiator would dismiss him, after addressing him thus: ”You have yielded to the attraction of the senses. Whoever lives in the senses remains in darkness.” If he succeeded, he would be granted leave to attend the temple college and receive instruction for some years in the mysteries of man and the universe.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2915 – 3.2.3.91

BN – X – D

Every test successfully met is rewarded by some growth in intuitive knowledge, strengthening of character, or initiation into a higher consciousness.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2916 – 3.2.3.92

BN – X – D

Every test is a teacher to guide us to a higher level, a providential friend to give us the quality we most need.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2920 – 3.2.3.96

BN – ZZ – D

The test will come with every major crisis, every minor ordeal. If his inner work has been well done he will be surprised at the calmness with which he meets and passes the event, astonished at his strength.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2921 – 3.2.3.97

BN – X – D

Before passing into a higher phase of his development, the disciple is usually confronted by life with a situation which will test his fitness for it. His success in meeting this test will open a gate leading to the next degree.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2923 – 3.2.3.99

BN – X – D

In every test he has the possible chance to reveal himself as he would like to be, as well as the certain chance to reveal what he already is.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2932 – 3.2.3.108

BN – ZZ – DK

Those who take to this spiritual road have to endure its tests. It is not enough to have faith or feel spiritual when life's course is smooth and fortunate. They must learn to hold their faith and feeling when its course runs through difficulties and sickness also. If the test reveals that they lose their hold at such times, then it shows their need of doing further work on themselves. For this failure shows that they want good fortune and good health even more than they want to fulfil the higher spiritual purpose of their incarnation.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2936 – 3.2.3.112

BN – ZZZ – K

At the very gate of this higher quest, you will find certain obstacles obstructing your entry. They are not alien to you, they are in your mind. Your primary duty, therefore, is to overcome them.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2938 – 3.2.3.114

BN – X – D

The Overself will take him at his word and will let his destiny bring him not only those experiences which he earns but especially those which he needs. If he comprehends this situation impersonally he will realize that he must welcome them all, and not single out the pleasant ones alone for his favour. All can become his teachers if he will let them, so all should be received rightly and attentively. Rebellion and resentment merely shut out the lesson they have to teach him: if he misses this lesson he will have to go through the same experience again at some future time and repeat the same suffering so needlessly.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2943 – 3.2.3.119

BA12 – ZZZ – K

In one sense troubles are our teachers and the greater the trouble the greater the teaching impressioned upon us.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2946 – 3.2.3.122

BN – X – D

The aspirant must never give way to excessive grief. Any period of grave difficulty may be regarded, perhaps, as a test of his faith. At such a time, he should constantly practise his philosophy, while also praying for greater strength and understanding. In the Overself there is no agony or pain; these belong to the sphere of illusion.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2953 – 3.2.3.129

BN – X – DEK

When one is up against an especially difficult situation for which no immediate solution can be found, it will help him if he will use the time while waiting for the change—which will come—in order to deliberately cultivate greater patience and forebearance, as well as a more objective attitude.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2954 – 3.2.3.130

BN – ZZ – DK

A difficult or frightening situation must be considered a challenge. At such a time, the student should seek even more intensely through prayer, meditation, and faith—while also practising self-control to the best degree he is able—to achieve the needed spiritual strength and understanding in order to endure and overcome his troubles. In times of actual danger, the calm remembrance of the Overself will help to protect him.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2955 – 3.2.3.131

BN – X – DEM

His troubles may at times leave him with a sense of frustration and defeat. This is natural. It simply means that a difficult hand is being dealt out to him by fate. He should appraise it philosophically as a general indication of the unsatisfactoriness of earthly life in the Buddhistic sense. On this path he gets all kinds of vicissitudes and ups and downs, partly to demonstrate vividly that the inner reality is the only unchanging value and thus compel a resort to its quest, and partly to bring out latent qualities. But he will not be tried beyond what he can bear.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2959 – 3.2.3.135

BN – ZZ – DEK

Although worldly desires are all right in their place and may be legitimately satisfied, they must remain subordinate to the spiritual aspiration for self-realization. To help the individual to agree voluntarily to such subordination, the Overself, which has been invoked, deliberately arranges experience (under karma) in such a way as to underline spiritual values. Once he is able to bring feelings into accord with such values, he will find that the very things which eluded his grasp when he sought them, now come to him of their own accord. Thus sacrifices demanded turn out to be merely temporary, whereas the happiness obtained is double—both earthly and spiritual. This is why Jesus said: "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things shall be added unto you."

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2963 – 3.2.3.139

BN – Z – DEK

In terrible times of suffering and anxiety it is more necessary than ever to cultivate receptivity to the divine forces within ourselves through spiritual studies and meditation.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2964 – 3.2.3.140

B_17 – ZZ – DK

The path is veritably a "razor's edge." One with limited awareness cannot know how grave his situation may be nor how narrow an escape he may, at some time, have had. If, at such a time, great efforts are put forth for him by someone highly advanced, satisfactory results may still be achieved, notwithstanding the student's mistakes. When his weaknesses are counterbalanced by earnest aspiration and faith, if he never deserts his Ideal no matter what happens, if he clings to his desire for conscious attainment of unity with the Overself as the highest goal life offers and measures all other rewards accordingly, then the student may always count on the assistance which brought him safely through his time of crisis.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2965 – 3.2.3.141

BN – Z – DEM

An experience which ended in disillusionment is not necessarily a wasted one. It may have its positive side: it may have contributed certain ideas.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2968 – 3.2.3.144

BN – ZZ – DK

Nothing but a great and unexpected upheaval will precipitate a change in their mental habits or impel a deviation from their physical habits. If it does come, they look upon it as a disaster, although when time gives them a longer perspective they look upon it as an enlightenment.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2972 – 3.2.3.148

BN – X – D

The particular problems which life has presented him with are exactly the ones suited to his own personal development. In their solution by his own efforts and his own thinking, lies his own advantage and growth. To turn them over to someone else is an evasive and undignified action, harmful in the end.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2973 – 3.2.3.149

BN – ZZ – DEK

He may be sure of one thing, that his fidelity to ideas and ideals, to teacher and teachings, will be tested. This is inescapable if his will is to be surrendered to the higher will, if his character is to be purified and his attitude cleansed of its egoism.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2975 – 3.2.3.151

BN – X – D

A missed chance or a failed test in one year may lead directly, if the lesson be heeded, to a used chance or a successful test in a later year.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2979 – 3.2.3.155

BN – ZZ – DM

At every important turn on his path the aspirant will find a choice awaiting him. He will find himself facing a set of circumstances which test his motive, strength, and attainment. These periodical tests can be neither evaded nor avoided, and often they are not recognized for what they are. Temptation may camouflage them under attractive colours. Nevertheless the student's conduct in regard to them will decide whether he passes onward and upward, or falls back into pain and purification.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2981 – 3.2.3.157

B_15 – ZZ – DMK

Learn to penetrate within yourself, your deeper, almost unknown self. It will need patience to return day after day, not stopping until the truth is reached, the peace is felt, the blessing descends. It will need perseverance until the source of strength is found. Thereafter it will take you over: this is grace. But remember—with each return from the day's efforts you will be confronted by the world again, by its harsh reality yet glorious beauty, its stark conflicts yet benign interludes. So—know this world in which you have to live, its petty minds and noble souls. Learn from both. And when you have seen enough of the world's surface ask for its tremendous secret.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2988 – 3.2.3.164

BA12 – ZZZ – DEK

When Jesus declared, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you", he did not declare that this would happen after a single knock, nor even after a hundred knocks. If he meant anything at all, he meant ceaselessly repeated knocking.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2992 – 3.2.3.168

B_11 – Z – K

The more successful type of Quester is the one who can keep his interest, enthusiasm, and practices in a stable, unwaning condition.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2993 – 3.2.3.169

BN – X – D

He may have his doubts, hesitations, criticisms, and even rebellions later—they may stretch out far in time—but in the end they cannot alter his course. For the quest he was born; to the quest he must surrender. The obligation is a lifelong one.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2995 – 3.2.3.171

BN – ZZZ – DK

He must refuse to follow the common error and identify himself with this one physical body of the present incarnation. Rather, he must identify himself with his mental being and feel this as something immortal, something reappearing on earth time after time and coming closer and closer, with each appearance, to the goal…

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2996E – 3.2.3.172

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

If he is not willing to wait, this quest does not offer much for him. It is not only in meditation—although primarily in it—that patience is a requisite, but also in the work of purifying and ennobling character.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#2999 – 3.2.3.175

BN – X – D

Pursue the quest, practise its exercises, and undergo its disciplines with a patience that does not halt for an instant. If you do this, the time will come when the Overself can hold out no longer. It will then no longer dwell in secret but in your heart.

Overview of Practices Involved > Uncertainties of Progress > Facing the problems of development

#3000 – 3.2.3.176

BN – X – D