To depend upon oneself for the truth may draw one nearer to it or push it farther away. Which result will happen depends upon which path—the Short or Long—we are travelling.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29666 – 15.23.5.26

BN – Z

The Short Path refuses to give the ego any importance at all whereas the Long one gives it too much importance. The first attitude looks at all life in the widest possible perspective whereas the second looks at its own life in a self-centered way, even though that self has been extended to include the ego's higher characteristics.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29667 – 15.23.5.27

BN – Z

The Short Path does not deny anything taught on the Long one. It gives a greater truth.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29668 – 15.23.5.28

BN – Z

On the Short Path he becomes aware of the fact of forgiveness. He leaves out the constant self-criticism and self-belittling, the painstaking self-improvement practices, of the other Path and begins to take full note of this saving fact.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29669 – 15.23.5.29

BN – Z – DK*

If the immediate purpose of the Long Path is to train, discipline, and prepare the ego, the immediate purpose of the Short Path is to transcend it.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29670 – 15.23.5.30

BSG_4 – Z – D

Although the two Paths are so sharply divided from one another in theory, they not seldom overlap in fact.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29672 – 15.23.5.32

BN – Z

While the Long Path man is busy worrying about the evil in himself and in the world, the Short Path man is busy smiling at the good in the Overself and in the World-Idea.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29673 – 15.23.5.33

BN – X – D

The danger of becoming too self-centered exists on the Long Path but the danger of deifying the self exists on the Short one.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29674 – 15.23.5.34

BN – Z

Moments which shame him into the miserable awareness of his shortcomings may appear plentifully on the Long Path but have no likelihood of existence on the Short one.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29675 – 15.23.5.35

BN – Z

Confucius' injunction to acquire specific virtues is Long Path, whereas Lao Tzu's counsel to let the mind become empty so that Tao may enter it is Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29676 – 15.23.5.36

BN – Z – D

He can identify himself with ego or with Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29677 – 15.23.5.37

BN – ZZ – D

While he is on the Long Path, his efforts are given to improving the ego and purifying his nature, whereas on the Short one they are given to forgetting the ego and looking beyond his nature.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29678 – 15.23.5.38

BN – Z – D

The Long Path meditates on the ego, the Short Path on the Overself. This is the basic difference between them.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29679 – 15.23.5.39

BN – Z – D

The Long Path wants to purify and perfect the ego but the Short Path wants to find God. The Long Path deals with the little pieces of a design but the Short Path deals with the pattern itself. The Long Path takes one minor theme after another but the Short one takes up the main underlying theme alone. It is also the difference, as well as distance, between the immediate goal and the ultimate one.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29680 – 15.23.5.40

BN – Z – DEK

The Quest contains two parts. In the first, or Long Path, the aspirant is made into a new person. In the second, or Short Path, he is made into an illumined one.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29681 – 15.23.5.41

BN – Z – D

On the Long Path he fought the defects in himself every day and every step of the way. They were not to be tolerated. On the Short Path, he accepts himself because he accepts all life.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29682 – 15.23.5.42

BN – ZZ

If the Long Path is occupied with getting rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings, the Short Path is the very opposite, for it occupies itself only with those wanted thoughts and feelings. Thus the move is a transition from negativity to positivity.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29683 – 15.23.5.43

BN – Z

The Long Path devotee is more interested in his personal progress whereas the Short Path devotee is more interested in impersonal principles. The first identifies himself with a caged-in sect, a limited group, a set of wordy dogmas and authority, whereas the second identifies himself with spacious freedom of attitude and independence of thought. The first is an occultist, the second a mystic.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29684 – 15.23.5.44

BN – Z

The metaphysical background of the Short Path that finds only Good in the Universe and only One Real Existence is the very opposite of the Long Path's that finds good and evil in constant conflict and millions of egos whose separateness is very real to him. So, the Short Path regards the goal as being already and always present, whereas the Long Path regards it as lying at the end of a long journey over the Quest's route.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29685 – 15.23.5.45

BSG_4 – Z

The Long Path offers a negative process whose end result is to disidentify the man from his body. The Short Path offers a positive process whose result is to identify him with his Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29687 – 15.23.5.47

BN – Z – D

He may take up either of two positions. Both are difficult. The first is to look upon the successive births in a physical body, with their vicissitudes of experience, as wearisome, perhaps even unendurable. He must then cut the series by rooting out the desires beneath, the very craving for physical and personal existence. The second is on an utterly different plane. It is to turn his attention away from his own person altogether and to direct it towards That which is the only Real, the Supreme Source, the Ultimate Being.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29688 – 15.23.5.48

BN – Z

All spiritual paths—except the Short Path—have elements of artificiality about them.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29689 – 15.23.5.49

BN – Z

The Short Path rejects duality, acknowledges only identity with Perfect Being, and tries to achieve its aim by recognizing this identity. The Long Path accepts duality and tries to achieve the same aim by mastering the ego.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29690 – 15.23.5.50

BN – Z – D

On the Long Path the aspirant is careful to observe the various rules of right behaviour prescribed for him; while on the Short Path he finds that, the Overself being the essence of the Spirit of righteousness, he can achieve all these noble purposes by the single act of uniting consciously with it.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29691 – 15.23.5.51

BN – Z

The Short Path looks to the Overself and away from the ego. Its thoughts are directed to knowing the infinite being, not to improving the human being.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29693 – 15.23.5.53

BN – Z

The Long Path strives to attain a higher state whereas the Short Path establishes its present identity with that state. This it can do only by denying appearances.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29694 – 15.23.5.54

BN – Z

Should a change of character be diligently pursued as a natural preparation of oneself for enlightenment, and as a special duty to make it possible? Should the enlightenment itself be directly pursued on the supposition that after its achievement there must inevitably follow a repudiation of the old faulty self and a repentance for its acts?

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29695 – 15.23.5.55

BN – ZZ

The Long Path is concerned with the human struggle to approach the divine, the Short Path with intuition of the divine presence in the human.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29698 – 15.23.5.58

BN – Z – D

The Short Path is content with exercises done for their own sake, not for the sake of the results they bring. In this it is the opposite of the Long Path, which does them for results, and is attached to those results.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29699 – 15.23.5.59

BN – Z – D

The Long Path brings the self to a growing awareness of its own strength, whereas the Short Path brings it to a growing awareness of its own unreality. This higher stage leads inevitably to a turnaboutface, where the energies are directed toward identification with the One Infinite Mind. The more this is done, the more Grace flows by reaction into the Self.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29701 – 15.23.5.61

BN – Z – D

The Long Path follower, with his strenuous concern for self-improvement, his compelling anxiety for self-advancement to fulfil the inner purposes of life, may make life more difficult than it need be and himself become more humourless. The Short Path follower can afford to forget his past struggles, and begin to enjoy life.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29703 – 15.23.5.63

BN – Z

The Long Path devotee is concerned with learning how to concentrate his thoughts in the practice of meditation, and later even with meditation itself, to some degree, so far as it is an activity among ideas and images. The Short Path devotee is not. He is concerned with direct union with the object of all these efforts, that is, with the Overself. So he substitutes contemplation for meditation, the picture-free, idea-free purity of the mind's original state for the image- and thought-filled density of its ordinary state.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29704 – 15.23.5.64

BN – Z – DEK1

The Long Path is more easily practised while engaged in the world, the Short Path while in retreat from it. The experiences which the vicissitudes of worldly life bring him also develop him, provided he is a Quester. But the lofty themes of his meditations on the Short Path require solitary places and unhurried leisurely periods.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29705 – 15.23.5.65

BN – Z – K1

It might be said with some truth that the various Long Path processes are based upon the use of willpower whereas the Short Path ones are based upon auto-suggestion. The former employ the conscious mind in directed effort, whereas the latter implant ideas in the subconscious mind while it is in a relaxed state.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29706 – 15.23.5.66

BN – X – K1

The Short Path offers a swifter unfoldment of the intuitional consciousness. It is not so bound to the limitation of time as the Long Path is. It seeks to identify the man now with his higher self.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29707 – 15.23.5.67

BN – X – D

Whereas the widely varied exercises in meditation of the Long Path evoke mental images and use the creative imagination in most cases, but empty consciousness of them only in some cases, the exercises of the Short Path evoke no images at all.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29711 – 15.23.5.71

BN – Z

The Long Path votary works from systems, rules, plans, and techniques put down by its guides but the Short Path votary has no path chalked out for him. He is forever "waiting on the Lord."

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29712 – 15.23.5.72

BN – Z

On the Long Path we search for truth, reality, the Overself. That is, we use the ego's forces and faculties. On the Short one we keep still and let truth, reality, the Overself's Grace search for us instead. The ego is then no longer in the picture.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29718 – 15.23.5.78

BN – ZZ – D

Whether the truth grows slowly in his mind or explodes suddenly in his feelings is less important than that it shall be the truth.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29720 – 15.23.5.80

BN – Z

On the Long Path he identifies himself with the personal ego, even though it be the higher part of the ego, whereas on the Short Path he is only the observer of the ego. This shows up clearly in his attitudes. "What have I to do with my personal past?" he asks himself on the second path. "That belongs to a dead self, which is now rejected and with which I refuse to identify."

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29721 – 15.23.5.81

BN – Z – DEK

If the Long Path is too often, too largely an anguished one—because of the self-scrutiny to find the shortcomings in oneself which block the way—then the Short Path is a compensatory one, a joyful quest.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29722 – 15.23.5.82

BN – Z

If the Long Path is based on belief in man's power to attain the Good, the Short Path is based on the contrary belief that all such efforts end in futility and failure. It is then that a higher power than his little ego must be called on. For although the ego is willing to do everything to spiritualize and improve itself, it is stubbornly unwilling to "lose its life" for God's sake.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29724 – 15.23.5.84

BN – Z

Although it is quite correct to say that we grow through experience, that suffering has valuable lessons, and so on, we must also remember that these are only half-truths. The other half is that by Short Path identifications, we can so totally change our outlook that adverse experience becomes unnecessary.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29725 – 15.23.5.85

B_17 – ZZ – D

There is no wish in the Short Path man to be better than he is, no desire to improve his character or purify his mind, no sense of being obliged to rectify the distortions brought about by the ego in both thought and feeling.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29726 – 15.23.5.86

BN – Z

The work of the Long Path consists of the voluntary actions of human effort; but that of Grace, as manifested on the Short Path, has no direct connection with the self-conscious will.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29727 – 15.23.5.87

BN – Z

The Long Path calls for a continued effort of the will, the Short one for a continued loving attention.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29728 – 15.23.5.88

BN – ZZ – D

The Long Path sets up an attitude of yearning whereas the Short Path considers the Spirit an ever-present fact and consequently there is no need to yearn for it!

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29729 – 15.23.5.89

BN – Z

The Long Path practitioner looks upon illumination as something to be attained in the future when all requirements have been fully met, whereas the Short Path devotee looks upon it as attainable here and now.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29730 – 15.23.5.90

BN – Z – D

How like a labyrinth is the seemingly endless, twisting Long Path! How straight and direct is the Short Path!

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29731 – 15.23.5.91

BN – Z

If the Long Path sets responsibility for a man's growth and salvation squarely on his own shoulders, the Short Path sets it on God.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29732 – 15.23.5.92

BN – Z

The basic idea of the Long Path votary is that the goal must be reached in stages by constant striving through many lives to purify his character and perfect his wisdom. The basic idea of the Short Path is that it can be reached suddenly by constant meditation alone.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29734 – 15.23.5.94

BN – X – D

It is only on the Long Path that a man seeks so desperately for truth and insight. All that feverish ambition fades away on the Short Path, where he learns to hold himself in peace and patience.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29736 – 15.23.5.96

BN – X – D

Whereas the Long Path brings its results by systematic advance, the Short Path brings them by chancing suddenly on them.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29737 – 15.23.5.97

BN – Z

The Long Path is arranged in progressive stages, whereas the Short Path is not; it points to direct, immediate, and final enlightenment.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29738 – 15.23.5.98

BN – Z

Whereas the Long Path man strives for growth, the Short Path man lets it come naturally without the interference of his egoic consciousness.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29739 – 15.23.5.99

BN – Z

The Long Path is an intermittent fight against the animal nature and the human ego. The Short Path is a continuous quest of the attention for the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29742 – 15.23.5.102

BN – Z – DK

If he begins with the Short Path he may feel that whatever is accomplished is self-accomplished and thus, subtly, insidiously, his ego will triumphantly reassert, or keep, its supremacy. But if he begins with the Long Path and, after all his efforts, reaches an inconclusive result, the consequent despair may crush his ego and point up his dependence on, and need of, Grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29743 – 15.23.5.103

BN – Z

All the more elementary and religious and occult forms of meditation, including those used on the Long Path—all that lead to what the Hindu yogis call 'savikalpa samadhi'—usually have to be passed through; but one ought not to remain with them. The pure philosophic meditation as ultimately sought and reached on the Short Path is to put the attention directly on the Overself and on nothing else.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29744 – 15.23.5.104

BN – ZZ – DEK

The attempt to get rid of the faults and evils in oneself by using the powers of concentration and meditation belongs to the Long Path. But it is still occupied with the ego. For those who have turned to the Short Path, the object of meditation is entirely changed. It is no longer occupied with purifying, improving, or bettering the ego—it is occupied only with the transcendent self, and the thought of the ego, the remembrance of it, is left behind altogether.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29745 – 15.23.5.105

BN – X – D

The Long Path provides the aspirant with a task unfulfilled, waiting, and sometimes burdensome. The Short Path on the contrary is just something to be understood and lived; it is not a burden but a quiet, peaceful, ever pleasant and ever present consciousness.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29746 – 15.23.5.106

BN – Z

The Long Path requires the aspirant to work on himself, make various reforms, practise certain exercises, and contribute his own personal efforts in various ways. But the Short Path is less concerned with what he does than with what is done to him. Why? Because it is the path of grace. He is to be passive, to receive.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29747 – 15.23.5.107

BN – X – D

Whereas the Short Path is to be practised at all times and in all places, by continuous remembrance and constant self-recollectedness, the Long Path is to be practised at set times and in special places, by formal exercises.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29749 – 15.23.5.109

BN – X – D

The Long Path man is aware of many or most of his weaknesses and faults, and is tormented by this knowledge. The Short Path man blissfully ignores them or, if he fails to reach this formulated goal, is sure they will fade away and dissolve under the higher self's grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29750 – 15.23.5.110

BN – X – D

If the Long Path creates despair about oneself, about the frustration of one's spiritual hopes, the Short Path creates joy about one's close relationship with the Overself and the feeling of its acceptance of one.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29751 – 15.23.5.111

BN – Z – D

It is the personal ego which operates the will and tries to bring about the result. This is quite proper and pertinent on the Long Path practice. But when attention is turned away from it to the Short Path, it is no longer the will but the higher power which should be looked to for the result.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29753 – 15.23.5.113

BN – Z – D

The work of the Long Path is to loathe and remove the ego's sins; that of the Short Path is to love and receive the Overself's grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29754 – 15.23.5.114

BN – Z – D

If the Long Path followers tend to have little sense of humour in matters relating to the quest, the Short Path ones tend to have much of it.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29755 – 15.23.5.115

BN – ZZ

The achievement by the Long Path method is a forced one, the result of doing some exercise, working on character, following some technique. But it is all an ego-fabricated thing. The Short Path way leads to the opposite, to a new birth, a new transformed man, salvation itself. But this comes about quite naturally, without the ego's participation, for it comes about by the Overself's grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29756 – 15.23.5.116

BN – Z – D

The follower of the Long Path constantly or intermittently feels the urge to improve himself but the follower of the Short one rests untroubled. He has surrendered himself to the higher power, which necessarily means that he has abandoned or denied every kind of urge in himself too, including the self-improvement urge.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29758 – 15.23.5.118

BN – Z – D

What the Japanese Zenists call "The Sudden Path" and the Tibetan Sages "The Short Path" are closely similar in important points. Both prescribe that the work be done in a joyful attitude. Both teach that the goal is also the means. Both claim to offer a rocket flight to Reality.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29760 – 15.23.5.120

BN – Z

Buddha found his way to Enlightenment within six years and with no guru. This is to note that the depth of concentration he used was such that he would not let go until he kept his oath and reached Nirvana. This meant not only determination but also faith that there 'was' such a truth as Nirvana.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29765 – 15.23.5.125

BN – X – D

In theological language the Long Path stands for repentance from sin, the Short Path for 'faith' in the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29770 – 15.23.5.130

BN – X – DK

Jesus put more emphasis on the Short Path than on the Long one, on the kingdom of heaven within man than on the animalistic urges and earthly shortcomings that afflict him.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29779 – 15.23.5.139

BN – Z – D

The Patanjali Long-Path yoga school tells us we are weaklings, whereas the Vedanta Short-Path school tells us of our potential divine strength.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29782 – 15.23.5.142

BN – Z

When Jesus counselled, "Cast thy burden . . ." he was phrasing a perfect invitation to travel the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29784 – 15.23.5.144

BN – Z – D

This idea of the existence of a double path is not new although it is unfamiliar. Nor is it specifically Indian. As long ago as the fifth centuries the Buddhist monk Seng-Chao, a disciple of that Kumara Jiva who translated so many Indian texts for the Chinese, taught that all the effort and study and practice of exercises were not enough to attain enlightenment but were only a necessary preparation for it.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their contrast and comparison

#29788 – 15.23.5.148

BN – Z

Philosophy asserts that a combination of both the Long and Short Paths is the only practical means for a modern Western aspirant to adopt. If, lured by the promise of sudden attainment or easy travelling, he neglects the Long Path, the passage of time will bring him to self-deception or frustration or disappointment or moral decline. For his negative characteristics will rise and overpower him, the lack of preparation and development will prevent him from realizing in experience the high-level teachings he is trying to make his own, while the impossibility of balancing himself under such circumstances will upset or rob him of whatever gains he may still make.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29791E – 15.23.5.151

BN – ZEL1/1 – K1

The Long Path of the Yoga discipline is occupied with the cleansing and correction of his sins but the Short Path's affirmation brings their forgiveness. The first way is self-reproachful and sadly repentant. The second is self-relaxing and cheerfully untroubled. The philosophic student must learn to combine these two parts in his mental outlook and to use this double method in his practical approach.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29792 – 15.23.5.152

BN – Z

The Long Path expresses a partial truth. The Short Path expresses another—although higher—partial truth. Bring the two parts together and the result will be that whole truth which man must have for the adequate guidance of his life.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29793 – 15.23.5.153

BN – Z – D

The Long Path is needed to make a man or woman ripe for receiving truth, but only the Short Path can lead to it. This is the answer to the dilemma created by the claims of the Wu Wei school. Its practical application is: 'act' as the Long Path requires by working on and improving the self, but 'think' as the Short Path enjoins by holding the attitude "There is nothing to be attained. Realization is already here and now!"

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29794 – 15.23.5.154

BN – Z – DEK

When the Overself is present in a man's consciousness, it is present in all his thoughts and actions. They are then under Its rule, they proceed from It. The man does not have to seek for any particular virtues, for all can and will then come of themselves as needed. Only then is any virtue solidly established. But until this presence is permanently secured, it would be foolish to cease working upon oneself, correcting oneself, improving oneself. A merely intellectual and theoretical acquaintance with this doctrine is inadequate. It is necessary until then to practise a coexistence of Short and Long Paths.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29795 – 15.23.5.155

BN – ZZ – DEK

The yogi—especially the yogi of the Southern Buddhist sect—who refuses to accept this Vedantic view, refuses unconsciously to accept the forgiveness of his karma. For if he were to practise identifying himself with the infinite being, the resultant inundation and dissolution of his ego would wash his sins away. The attitude of guilt and the feeling of being a miserable sinner, the mood of repentance and remorse, are useful and necessary at certain times and stages but are obstructive and harmful at the wrong time or the wrong stage. It is also sinful to reject forgiveness when it is available. The fact is that the Long Path is incomplete without the Short one.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29796 – 15.23.5.156

BN – Z – DEK

There is no compulsive necessity, as most advocates of one or the other side seem to believe there is, to choose fully and finally between them, no real need to reject the one because the other is accepted. We may go along with the Vedantins and say that the One alone is real. But we may also go along with the dualists and say that the world around us and the human being are, in another sense, also real! It is quite fruitless to bring the two views into fanatical controversy with one another, far more useful to bring them into amicable relation. Why divide them when they serve us so well when reconciled?

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29797E – 15.23.5.157

BN – EL1/6

Every time there is an attempt to communicate these truths by speech or in writing—let alone teach them to disciples—there is a falsification of the Vedantic tenet that there are no others! Then why do the Vedantists preach, teach, lecture, and write? Does this not show the utter impracticality of their position, true though it is as an ultimate metaphysical one?

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29797E – 15.23.5.157

BN – EL2/6

The bliss that meditation practice at its deepest brings to a developed yogi does not annihilate the pain that the same yogi may feel when he resumes his ordinary active condition. Ramana Maharshi himself mentioned this quite a few times.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29797E – 15.23.5.157

BN – EL3/6

Iso Upanishad: "They enter the region of the dark who are occupied solely with the finite. But they fall into a region of still greater darkness who are occupied solely with the Infinite."

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29797E – 15.23.5.157

BN – EL4/6

Nonduality in its extreme form is not to the taste of the masses. Instinctively they shy away from it. Let the two views accommodate each other. While these levels of reference ought not to be mixed together when theory and principles are concerned, there is one way in which there is considerable profit to be gained if the timeless eternal and universal atmosphere of Vedanta is kept at the back of the mind when the worldly problems have to be met. They can be met with this remembrance that one's true being is, and will be, safe and unaffected, and that whatever decision or action we are called to make, the first thing is to keep calm.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29797E – 15.23.5.157

BN – EL5/6

Each side—dualist and nondualist—is quite correct when they apply their teaching in its proper place, but quite wrong when they misapply. Thus, dualists who offer dualism as ultimate are wrong, but then nondualist Vedantists are also misconceiving the proper application of their tenets when they insist on applying their "no world exists, no ego exists" doctrine to human life generally.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29797E – 15.23.5.157

BN – EL6/6

The 'short path-long path', once understood, becomes a key to the solution of many problems and to the answer of many questions of Questers.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29798 – 15.23.5.158

BN – ZZ – D

Those who depend solely on the Short Path without being totally ready for it take too much for granted and make too much of a demand. This is arrogance. Instead of opening the door, such an attitude can only close it tighter. Those who depend solely on the Long Path take too much on their shoulders and burden themselves with a purificatory work which not even an entire lifetime can bring to an end. This is futility. It causes them to evolve at a slower rate. The wiser and philosophic procedure is to couple together the work on both paths in a regularly alternating rhythm, so that during the course of a year two totally different kinds of results begin to appear in the character and the behaviour, in the consciousness and the understanding. After all, we see this cycle everywhere in Nature, and in every other activity she compels us to conform to it. We see the alternation of sleep with waking, work with rest, and day with night.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29799 – 15.23.5.159

BN – ZZZ – DEK1

The danger in both cases is in limiting one's efforts to the single path. It may invite disaster to give up trying to improve character just because one has taken to the Short Path. Yet it may invite frustration to limit one's efforts to such improvement. The wise balance which philosophy suggests is not to stop with either the Short or the Long Path but to use both together.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29800 – 15.23.5.160

BN – Z – DK1

This balanced objective which philosophy seeks calls for a balanced approach to it. The mind's dwelling on personal weaknesses and shortcomings in the ego must be compensated by its remembrance of the strength and harmony in the Overself. It is as needful for the aspirant to practise disidentifying himself from the ego as it is to practise identifying himself with the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29801 – 15.23.5.161

BN – Z – DEK

Such a double practice of the Short and Long Paths will not only lead to a fuller and better balanced progress but also to a quicker one. For these two opposite activities will work upon him in a reciprocal way. His faults will be ground to powder between them, as if they were millstones.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29803 – 15.23.5.163

BN – Z – D

On the Long Path he has used various forms of practice. Now at the portals of the Short Path, he may intermittently and temporarily discard them and then just as intermittently and temporarily practise them. In this manner he can unite the two paths.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29804 – 15.23.5.164

BN – X – D

The advocates of the Long Path claim that the mind must be trained and the heart must be cleansed before enlightenment is possible. The advocates of the Short Path claim that it is sufficient to deny the ego and affirm the higher self. The philosopher studies the facts revealed by observation and research and concludes that the methods of both schools must be united if enlightenment is not only to be lastingly attained but also not to fall short of its perfect state.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29806 – 15.23.5.166

BN – X – D

Just as we have two viewpoints in philosophy—the immediate and the ultimate—so we have two paths to the philosophic goal—the Long and the Short. This double emphasis is not peculiar to philosophy for it may be found in Nature too.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29807 – 15.23.5.167

BN – Z

It is true that the Long Path is only a preliminary one and that the Short Path is certainly a more advanced one. But it is also true that each is incomplete without the other. The best plan is to adopt as much of both paths as the aspirant can.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29808 – 15.23.5.168

BN – Z – D

The Long Path is splattered with discouragements. Only those who have sought to change themselves, to remold their characters, to deny their weaknesses, know what it is to weep in dissatisfaction over their failures. This is why the Short Path of God-remembrance is also needed. For with this second path to fulfil and complete the first one, Grace may enter into the battle at any moment and with it victory will suddenly end the struggles of many years, forgiveness will suddenly wipe out their mistakes.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29810 – 15.23.5.170

BN – Z – D

Without this conquest of the lower nature no enlightenment can remain either a lasting or an unmixed one. And without suitable disciplines, no such conquest is possible. This is one reason why it is not enough to travel the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29811 – 15.23.5.171

BN – Z – D

People who think they have a number of faults may use that as an excuse to become passive and not try. But the combination is necessary. The danger of the Short Path is that he comes to think: "I am enlightened and have nothing more to do." It is another form of the ego. This happens often on the Short Path. So a balance between the Long and Short paths is most important.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29812 – 15.23.5.172

BN – Z

The path of dealing with his shortcomings one by one is not only too long, too slow, but also incomplete and negative. It is concerned with what not to be and not to do. This is good, but it is not enough. It pertains to the little ego. He must add to it the path of remembering his higher all-self. This is a positive thing. More, it brings the Grace which finishes the work he has already started. It carries him from the ego's past into the Overself's Eternal New.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29813 – 15.23.5.173

BN – Z – D

Wisdom counsels us to begin the Quest with the Long Path. When we have gone some distance on it, we may add the Short Path, changing the emphasis from one to the other by turns. This intermittent approach sets up a kind of reciprocal rhythm. The improvement of character opens the door of sensitivity a little wider to intuition, and the improved intuition helps to exalt character.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29814 – 15.23.5.174

BN – Z – D

To all those who come to such a teacher for lessons in philosophy, he makes it plain that unless they are willing to discipline themselves on all three levels—physical, emotional, mental—he cannot teach them; that is, unless they are willing to follow the Long Path also.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29815 – 15.23.5.175

BN – Z – D

The Long Path is paradoxically both a complement to the Short one and a preparation for it. It must first be practised alone. Only after some advance has been made can the time come for them to be practised conjointly.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29816 – 15.23.5.176

BN – Z – D

A man cannot look in two directions at one and the same time. He may look at himself, his ego, or he may turn away and look above, at his Overself. In the latter case, if he has sufficiently thinned away the obstructions to it, grace may descend and lift his ego up to unite with his Overself. Then, and then alone, he will be able to live in both.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29817 – 15.23.5.177

BN – ZZ – D

Let it be clear that the attempt to try the Short Path alone is not being decried. What is being said is that the likelihood of failure is great and that even if success is won, it will be a one-sided, ill-balanced, narrow thing.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29820 – 15.23.5.180

BN – Z

The situation here is much the same as that which attends artistic creation. There are those who say that technique is everything and inspiration is illusory. There are others who say that inspiration is everything and technique is nothing. Is this not similar to the situation in spiritual circles, where the yoga school makes individual virtue and effort the price of enlightenment, and the opposing school makes waiting for inspiration and grace the price?

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29821 – 15.23.5.181

BN – Z

Ramana Maharshi was quite right. Pruning the ego of some faults will only be followed by the appearance and growth of new faults! Of what use is it so long as the ego remains alive? Hence the failure of mankind's moral history to show any real progress over the past three thousand years, despite the work of Buddha, Jesus, and other Messiahs. The correct course, which has always been valid for the individual, is just as valid for all mankind—get at the root, the source, the ego itself. But although Maharshi was right, his teaching gives only part of Truth's picture. Presented by itself, and without the other part, it is not only incomplete but may even become misleading. By itself it seems to indicate that there is no need to work on our specific weaknesses, that they can be left untouched while we concentrate on the essential thing—rooting out the ego. But where are the seekers who can straightaway and successfully root it out? For the very strength of purpose and power of concentration needed for this uprooting will be sapped by their faults.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29823 – 15.23.5.183

BN – X – DEK

There is this difference when the Long Path is entered alone and when it is entered with the accompaniment of the Short one, that in the second case there is added the light of guidance, the protection of peace, the acceleration of progress, and the harmony of equilibrium.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29825 – 15.23.5.185

BN – X – D

They are not really opposed to each other, but are in fact complementary. If the Long Path is a steep uphill climb, the Short Path is its sunny side.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29826 – 15.23.5.186

BN – X – D

He has to keep this inner stability and peace through times of public disaster or private distress. Long Path practices will help him attain it, but only intermittently. It is the Short Path which alone can establish it durably.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29827 – 15.23.5.187

BN – Z – D

It is better, and brings life more into right balance, if both are followed simultaneously. But even so, in most cases it will be found necessary to emphasize the Long Path's practice of disciplines and cultivation of virtues.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29831 – 15.23.5.191

BN – Z

The twofold way is indispensable: on the one hand the way of self-effort, working to overcome the ego, and on the other the way of Grace, through constantly seeking to remember your true identity in the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29833 – 15.23.5.193

BN – Z – D

The Long and Short paths can no more be separated from one another than the two sides of a coin or the two poles of a magnet. Each would be meaningless without the other and therefore belongs to the other.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29834 – 15.23.5.194

BN – Z

The two paths must not be kept separate in practice, whatever they are in theory. The beginner will naturally put his emphasis on the Long Path, the proficient on the Short Path, but neither can afford to neglect one or the other path without perils and dangers or futilities and disappointments marking his way.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29835 – 15.23.5.195

BN – Z – D

In theory the long path ought to precede the short path, but in actual practice such precedent endures for a limited time only, and then both paths are to be followed simultaneously.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29836 – 15.23.5.196

BN – Z – DK*

The question of conduct cannot arise where consideration is given to the ultimate nonduality alone; but on the practical plane, in the sphere of I and Thou, ethics must inevitably enter into considerations.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29838 – 15.23.5.198

BN – Z

"Be still and know that I am God" is the key to the enigma of truth, for it sums up the whole of the Short Path. Paradox is the final revelation. For this is "non-doing." Rather is it a "letting-be" a non-interference by your egoistic will, a silencing of all the mental agitation and effort.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29842 – 15.23.5.202

BSG_4 – Z – D

Once we become conscious of this truth the scales fall from our eyes. We give up our bondage to the erroneous belief in limitation. We refuse to entertain this false thought that there is some lofty condition to be attained in the far future. We are resolute that the Self shall recognize itself now. For what shall we wait? Let us stack all our thoughts upon the Reality, and hold them there as with a spike; it will not elude us, and the thoughts will dissolve and vanish into air, leaving us alone with the beauty and sublimity of the Self.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29844 – 15.23.5.204

BA12 – Z – D

Just as a child has to learn the art of writing by slow degrees, so the student has to free his mind from erroneous views and to train his habitual thought to hold to the remembrance of the True and the Real little by little. But just as the single manipulation of an electric light switch instantly reveals all the objects in a room, so suddenly the maturation of insight reveals the here-and-now actuality of the True and the Real.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29845 – 15.23.5.205

BN – Z – D

The limitation of the Long Path is that it is concerned only with thinning down, weakening, and reducing the ego's strength. It is not concerned with totally deflating the ego. Since this can be done only by studying the ego's nature metaphysically, seeing its falsity, and recognizing its illusoriness, which is not even done by the Short Path, then all the endeavours of the Short Path to practise self-identification with the Overself are merely using imagination and suggestion to create a new mental state that, while imitating the Overself's state, does not actually transcend the ego-mind but exists within it still. So a third phase becomes necessary, the phase of getting rid of the ego altogether; this can be done only by the final dissolving operation of Grace, which the man has to request and to which he has to give his consent. To summarize the entire process, the Long Path leads to the Short Path, and the Short Path leads to the Grace of an unbroken egoless consciousness.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29846 – 15.23.5.206

BN – ZZ – DEK1

The sun's warmth and beauty brings out the flower's growth. It does not strive, struggle, or push. This is a good simile of the Short Path's final phase, taught also in the Chinese doctrine of wu-wei (inaction) and the Indian doctrine of asparsa yoga (without-effort method).

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29847 – 15.23.5.207

BN – ZZ – D

To live neither in the present nor in the future but in the eternal calls for a power of self-mastery that is extremely rare and for a perseverance in self-reform that is truly heroic.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29848 – 15.23.5.208

BN – Z

Lao Tzu teaches that Tao will do it all—so let be, let Tao act in its own way and its own time and without your fretting anxiously trying everything—it's not necessary.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29850 – 15.23.5.210

BN – Z

He gives each moment the best that is in him, and so living from moment to moment becomes a glorious adventure.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29851 – 15.23.5.211

BN – Z

Do not lament the difficulty of bringing about this basic change in thinking. The Overself is there. Believe in it.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29852 – 15.23.5.212

BN – ZZ – D

The voice of the Overself is as clear as the voice of Jesus: "Go and sin no more, thy sins are forgiven thee." Do not weigh yourself down with perpetual self-reproach and recurring feelings of guilt.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29853 – 15.23.5.213

B_14 – P – D

Whereas the yogas of the East and the occultisms of the West were communicated according to the capability of the others to receive, or to their qualifications and development, these things do not enter the picture here. What is given out is given freely to all. Jesus is not a teacher assigning marks at an examination, he is a benevolent philanthropist! Salvation is taken out of the ego's hands altogether; the only requirement is "Do Nothing, for that will be ego-doing."

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29854 – 15.23.5.214

BN – Z

With the withdrawal from all outward-directed attachments, he becomes aware of his own inner self. With the awareness of his own real Self, all outgoing attachments drop away from him. Thus by whichever of these two paths he approaches the goal, it merges in the end with the other one.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29855 – 15.23.5.215

BN – X – D

The notion that the truth will be gained, that happiness will be achieved, that the Overself will be realized at the end of a long attempt must be seen as an illusory one. Truth, happiness, and the Overself must be seen in the Present, not the future, at the very beginning of his quest, not the end, here and now. It is not a matter of time. This is because time is a trick the mind plays on itself; because the past, the present, and the future are all rolled into one eternal NOW; because what is to happen has already happened.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29856 – 15.23.5.216

BN – ZZ – DEK

The more he practises identifying himself with the timeless Now (not the passing "now"), the more he works for true freedom from besetting passions and dragging attachments. This is the Short Path, more heroic perhaps but in the end much pleasanter than the Long Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29857 – 15.23.5.217

BN – Z – DK*

Why all this effort to be wiser than you are, little man? Why not savour the Oriental contentment of accepting what Nature has given you? Why disturb yourself with such strivings and broodings? These are perilous questions to put to young ardent souls, eager to prepare themselves for the life that stretches ahead of them. But they are questions which the quester of many years must come to in the end.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29858 – 15.23.5.218

BN – ZZ

He who finds that the Path has vanished, that he can say, "I am neither seeking truth, nor finding it," has reached the Short Path even though he does not know it.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29860 – 15.23.5.220

BN – Z

Why wait for a realization always deferred to an ever-receding future? Bless the present hour, and thus every hour of your life!

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29861 – 15.23.5.221

BN – ZZ

Their greatest advance will be made when they cease holding the wish to make any advance at all, cease this continual looking at themselves, and instead come to a quiet rest in the simple fact that God is, until they live in this fact alone. That will transfer their attention from self to Overself and keep them seeing its presence in everyone's life and its action in every event…

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29862E – 15.23.5.222

BA12 – ZZ – DEK

Those who look for advancement by looking for inner experiences or for discoveries of new truth do well. But they need to understand that all this is still personal, still something that concerns the ego even if it be the highest and best part of the ego. Their greatest advance will be made when they cease holding the wish to make any advance at all, cease this continual looking at themselves, and instead come to a quiet rest in the simple fact that God is, until they live in this fact alone. That will transfer their attention from self to Overself and keep them seeing its presence in everyone's life and its action in every event. The more they succeed in holding to this insight, the less will they ever be troubled or afraid or perplexed again; the more they recognize and rest in the divine character, the less will they be feverishly concerned about their own spiritual future.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29862 – 15.23.5.222

BN – ZZ – DEK

The real Short Path is really the discovery that there is no path at all: only a being still and thus letting the Overself do the work needed. This is the meaning of Grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29863 – 15.23.5.223

BSG_5 – ZZ – D

The sense of time's pressure which spurs the Long Path follower disappears from the Short Path follower. He becomes careless of time and squanders it shamelessly, as if he has INFINITE LEISURE.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29864 – 15.23.5.224

BN – Z

He no longer feels any desire to reform the world or to improve himself. He accepts both just as they are.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29865 – 15.23.5.225

BN – Z

Let even the Short Path go, at the proper moment, and sit loosely to life.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29867 – 15.23.5.227

BN – ZZ – K

Wu Wei has a double meaning: first, letting Life, Mind, act through you by yourself, becoming still, thought-free, and empty of ego—you are then not doing anything, but being done to, being used; second, pursuing truth impersonally. The usual ways seek personal attainment, achievement, salvation. The aspirant thinks or speaks of "my mind" or "my purification" or "my progress"; hence such ways are self-enclosed, egoistic. Whatever repression of ego that there is occurs only on the surface and merely drives it down to hide in the subconscious, whence it will re-emerge later. These methods are Long Path ones, hence are destined to end in futility and despair.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29868E – 15.23.5.228

BN – EL1/2

The deeper way of 'Wu Wei' is to lose the ego by doing nothing to seek truth or to improve oneself; adopting no practice; following no path. The Short Path turns realization over to Overself so that it is not your concern any longer. This does not mean that you do not care whether you find truth or not, but that whereas ordinary care for it arises out of desire of the ego or anxiety of the ego or egoistic need of comfort, escape, or relief, Short Path care arises out of the stillness of mind, the serenity of faith, and the acceptance of the universe.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29868E – 15.23.5.228

BN – EL2/2

"The kingdom of God is within you". We may rightly take the simple meaning of this sentence, its pointer towards the place and the practice of meditation. But there is a second meaning, seldom understood, its pointer towards time and immediacy: the kingdom is here and now.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29870 – 15.23.5.230

B_11 – P – D

Why create needless frustrations by an overeager attitude, by overdoing spiritual activity? You are in the Overself's hands even now and if the fundamental aspiration is present, your development will go on without your having to be anxious about it. Let the burden go…

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29872E – 15.23.5.232

BA12 – P – DE

Why create needless frustrations by an overeager attitude, by overdoing spiritual activity? You are in the Overself's hands even now and if the fundamental aspiration is present, your development will go on without your having to be anxious about it. Let the burden go. Do not become a victim of too much suggestion got from reading too much spiritual literature creating an artificial conception of enlightenment, just as too much reading of medical literature by a layman may make him the victim of hypochondriac tendencies. Do not be satisfied with the self-conscious spirituality which comes from forced growth and harsh unnatural asceticisms, or from egocentrically watching personal progress. That is a better and truer spirituality which is natural, as natural as waking from sleep; which is unforced, because not the result of following technique and practising exercises; which is unconscious, growing and blooming as the flower does; which is drawn by the Overself's beauty and warmth and peace.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29872 – 15.23.5.232

BN – ZZ – DEK

Make tomorrow today—this is the injunction of the Short Path teaching.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29874 – 15.23.5.234

BN – Z

None of us can do more for our spiritual growth than to get out of its way! This business of trying to do something with the mind or practise some exercise with the body in order to come closer to the Overself is based on the Long Path belief that it is we who have the power to attain that desire and desirable state. But instead of trying to reach the Overself, why not let the Overself reach us? This can be done only if we will get out of its way.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29875 – 15.23.5.235

BN – Z – D

We need the spiritual assurance which looks for enlightenment not in some long-drawn-out future but today.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29877 – 15.23.5.237

BN – Z

It may properly be said that no man ever comes to the end of this Search. But that is because he one day comes to know that the seeking attitude is itself one of the last obstacles, and must be dropped.

Advanced Contemplation > Balancing the Paths > Their combination and transcendence

#29879 – 15.23.5.239

BN – ZZ – D

There are three progressive stages in this technique. First, the student proves to himself, by following the master's guidance, that the ego is fictitious and illusory. Second, he concentrates diligently on Short Path meditation techniques to dig beneath the ego and escape from it. Third, he proves to himself the fact of Nonduality, that there is only the One Mind's existence.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29880 – 15.23.6.1

BN – Z

Ordinary meditation is still preoccupied with his own ego and therefore is still barred from ascending to the Himalayan peaks where alone God is to be felt and found. The meditator is still too wrapped up in his own development, his own problems, his own aspirations. Advanced nondual meditation forgets all that in order to remember and identify itself solely with God.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29881 – 15.23.6.2

BN – Z – D

Give yourself to the Overself is simple to say, but one must descend and ascend through a number of levels before its full majestic meaning is realized.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29884 – 15.23.6.5

BN – Z

Four of the fundamental features which distinguish the philosophic meditation exercises from the others and which stamp them with marked superiority are (a) their metaphysical character, (b) their permanent results, (c) their impersonality, and (d) their universality.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29885 – 15.23.6.6

BN – Z

Grace is of two kinds. The ordinary, better known, and inferior kind is that which is found on the Long Path. It flows from the Overself in automatic response to intense faith or devotion, expressed during a time of need. It is a reaction to seeking for help. The rarer and superior kind is found on the Short Path. It arises from self-identification with the Overself or constant recollection of it. There is no ego here to seek help or to call for a Grace which is necessarily ever present in the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29886 – 15.23.6.7

BN – Z – D

These exercises are for those who are not mere beginners in yoga. Such are necessarily few. The different yogas are successive and do not oppose each other. The elementary systems prepare the student to practise the more advanced ones. Anybody who tries to jump all at once to the philosophic yoga without some preliminary ripening may succeed if he has the innate capacity to do so but is more likely to fail altogether through his very unfamiliarity with the subject. Hence these ultramystic exercises yield their full fruit only if the student has come prepared either with previous meditational experience or with mentalist, metaphysical understanding—or better still with both. Anyone who starts them, because of their apparent simplicity, without such preparation must not blame the exercises if he fails to obtain results. They are primarily intended for the use of advanced students of metaphysics on the one hand or of advanced practitioners of meditation on the other.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29887E – 15.23.6.8

BN – EL1/2 – K1

These ultramystic exercises yield their full fruit only if the student has come prepared either with previous meditational experience or with mentalist, metaphysical understanding—or better still with both. Anyone who starts them, because of their apparent simplicity, without such preparation must not blame the exercises if he fails to obtain results. They are primarily intended for the use of advanced students of metaphysics on the one hand or of advanced practitioners of meditation on the other. This is because the first class will understand correctly the nature of the Mind-in-itself which they should strive to attain thereby, whilst the second class will have had sufficient self-training not to set up artificial barriers to the influx when it begins.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29887E – 15.23.6.8

BN – EL2/2 – K1

Being based on the mentalist principles of the hidden teaching, they were traditionally regarded as being beyond yoga. Hence these exercises have been handed down by word of mouth only for thousands of years and, in their totality, have not, so far as our knowledge extends, been published before, whether in any ancient Oriental language like Sanskrit or in any modern language like English. They are not yoga exercises in the technical sense of that term and they cannot be practised by anyone who has never before practised yoga.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29888 – 15.23.6.9

BN – X – K1

Although the writer regards it as unnecessary and inadvisable to disclose in a work of popular instruction those further secrets of a more advanced practice which act as shortcuts to attainment for those who are ready to receive them, suffice to say that whoever will take up this path and go through the disciplinary practices here given faithfully and willingly until he is sufficiently advanced to profit by the further initiation of those secrets, may rest assured that at the right time he will be led to someone or else someone will be led to him and the requisite initiation will then be given him. Such is the wonderful working of the universal soul which broods over this earth of ours and over all mankind. No one is too insignificant to escape its notice, just as no one is deprived of the illumination which is his due.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29889E – 15.23.6.10

BN – ZEL1/2 – K1

Such is the wonderful working of the universal soul which broods over this earth of ours and over all mankind. No one is too insignificant to escape its notice, just as no one is deprived of the illumination which is his due; but everything in nature is graduated, so the hands of the planetary clock must go round and the right hour be struck ere the aspirant makes the personal contact which in nine cases out of ten is the preliminary to entry into a higher realization of these spiritual truths.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29889E – 15.23.6.10

BN – ZEL2/2 – K1

These higher forms of yoga are not accessible to those who have insufficient leisure for reflection—that is, to most people.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29892 – 15.23.6.13

BN – ZZ

The privilege of these daily communions with the Overself is a blessed one.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29895 – 15.23.6.16

BN – Z

The glimpse is to be welcomed as a relief from the unsatisfactory limitations of ordinary existence. But because it gives enlightenment only temporarily, it is not enough. It is necessary to seek out the way of getting a permanent result. Such a result is the best means to measure the value of any technique.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29896 – 15.23.6.17

BN – X – DEK

Books and discussions can, at best, serve only as guides for the individual inward search. This search for the True Self should be accompanied by efforts to impartially observe, improve, and develop that personal self which is ordinarily accepted as the be-all and end-all of existence. Constant attempts to cultivate and maintain awareness of the True Self—the Overself—together with making it the object of his deepest love and humble worship, are among the qualifications essential to progress.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29897 – 15.23.6.18

BN – Z – D

The grand illumination itself is sudden but the process of achieving it is a task so complex that it can be carried through only by successive stages. For the obstructions to be cleared on the way are heavy and numerous while the advances involve shifting from one tentative standpoint to another. The way to ultimate being cannot be travelled in a single leap; there must be a time-lag until the moment when it actually dawns. The interval naturally falls into elementary, intermediate, and advanced stages. Nothing once gained in yoga need be discarded; only we take it up into the wider gain which absorbs and preserves but also transcends it. The newer knowledge does not disqualify the results of earlier investigations. For the price of advanced yoga must be paid partly out of the profits got from elementary yoga.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29899E – 15.23.6.20

BN – X – DEK

For want of a better term, we have sometimes designated the highly advanced meditation exercises here given as 'ultramystic'—for a study of them will reveal that the common or popular forms of yoga do not exhaust the possibilities of man's quest of the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29899E – 15.23.6.20

UR_3.2 – Z – DEK3

Only by a personal discovery of the soul, and consequently only by going "inside" himself to discover it, can a man know himself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29902 – 15.23.6.23

BN – ZZ – D

It refreshes the heart and renews the will in the most extraordinary way if we sit with hands crossed in the lap or open on the knees and with mind surrendered, quiet, empty.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29904 – 15.23.6.25

BN – X – D

Do not let the mind occupy itself with any thoughts whenever there is no actual matter needing attention.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29905 – 15.23.6.26

BN – ZZ – D

In the advanced practice of meditation it is not only required that the body shall be utterly relaxed but also that it shall be without the slightest movement from head to foot.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29906 – 15.23.6.27

BN – X – D

It is an error to think of the advanced contemplative practices as specially intended for sitting only. In the end they are just as much for walking and standing.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29907 – 15.23.6.28

BN – ZZ

It is better not to fix a firm duration for this period but to let its terminal moment be dictated by the inner voice.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29908 – 15.23.6.29

BN – Z

The advanced form of meditation merges into contemplation. Here there is no special need to adopt any one posture or to sit in any one way. It is then a practice done in a more inwardly absorbed condition; the physical body and surroundings are less present or quite ignored.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29913 – 15.23.6.34

BA11 – P – D

When he has reached the stage of advancement the rules prescribed for beginners and intermediates do not necessarily apply to him. He can now meditate whether sitting upright, as the prescription usually counsels, or lying limp on his back. His mind is not now so bound by these external conditions.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29916 – 15.23.6.37

BN – X – D

Each day he should take time out of his other preoccupations to wrap himself in a certain high mood, an exalting reverie.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Advanced Meditation

#29917 – 15.23.6.38

BN – Z

To stop abruptly activities, movements, thoughts and hold one's mind in a state of suspense, yet relaxed, is another exercise if the relaxation is passive enough. It leads into a meditative mood or a glimpse. Useful exercises are to concentrate consciousness on the point between the eyebrows or in the heart centre or in the centre behind the solar plexus. These are of course only yogic exercises, but useful as preparatory ones. More important is the attempt to put his own person into a new perspective, to transcend his own ego from the Overself plane.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Specific exercises for practice

#29918 – 15.23.6.39

BN – Z

The exercises of sinking oneself in enjoyment of an artistic production constitute another Short Path method, provided they are followed up and completed by further stages described in the seventh and eighth chapters of The Quest of the Overself. These exercises will be useful only if the music, literature, or painting is truly inspired.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Specific exercises for practice

#29919 – 15.23.6.40

BN – Z

He must eliminate from his inner life the imaginary pictures of possible happenings favouring his ego. He must cast out misleading expectations of future attainment. Only pure truths should be considered.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Specific exercises for practice

#29920 – 15.23.6.41

BN – ZZ

When Jesus invites men to "cast all burdens upon me" and when Krishna invites them to "cast off all works on me" both are suggesting that we should imagine all our troubles being borne and all our actions as being done by the higher self, if we have not yet found it, and should actually let it displace the personal ego in practical life, if we have.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Specific exercises for practice

#29923 – 15.23.6.44

BN – Z – D

This exercise requires him not only to remember and stay in the highest concept of Supreme Being as often as possible but also to counter it occasionally by remembering the transiency of his earthly ego, experiences, and life.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Specific exercises for practice

#29924 – 15.23.6.45

BN – Z

The method of meditation appropriate to this class of seekers is to transfer self-identity to the Overself in, and by, constantly repeated declarations of the truth.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Specific exercises for practice

#29926 – 15.23.6.47

BN – Z – D

If contact with people becomes at any time or in any situation unpleasant and nothing worthwhile can be done by discussion, he can always withdraw into that mental void.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Specific exercises for practice

#29927 – 15.23.6.48

BN – ZZ

His dependence on self-effort must be balanced by his dependence on Grace. If he relies solely on his own endeavours to better his character and develop his intuition, he may find himself frustrated and unhappy with the result. Grace is to be invoked by making contact through prayer and meditation with his Overself. But the meditation should be of a special kind—what may be called the practice of nonduality. In it he should seek to identify himself with the universal and infinite power, to forget that he is an individual.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Specific exercises for practice

#29928 – 15.23.6.49

BN – Z – D

A valuable practice of the Short Path is to see himself already enjoying the realization of its goal, already partaking of its glorious rewards. This is a visualizing exercise in which his own face confronts him, a smiling triumphant face, a calm peaceful face. It is to be done as many times every day as he can remember to do it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Yoga of the Liberating Smile

#29929 – 15.23.6.50

ME_01 – P – DK

By combining deep breathing with gentle smiling, both acts being done quite slowly, and by keeping the mind solely attentive to the body's condition, a relaxed half-drowsy state will develop. No other thoughts should be allowed to enter; the whole of his being should lie completely reposed in the rhythmic breathing and happily hypnotized by the lazy smile. Everything should be light and effortless. This is the Yoga of the Liberating Smile.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Yoga of the Liberating Smile

#29930 – 15.23.6.51

BN – Z – D

The Yoga of the Liberating Smile is to be practised at two special times—when he is falling into sleep at night and when he is waking from sleep in the morning.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Yoga of the Liberating Smile

#29931 – 15.23.6.52

BN – Z – DK

This truth insinuates itself into the mind in all its quiet sublimity. We alas! can receive only the mere flavour of it, such is the resistance of our ego, whereas a Buddha, with squatting body and dreaming face, can receive the full total force of it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Yoga of the Liberating Smile

#29932 – 15.23.6.53

BN – Z

So there he squats on couch, seat, or rug, unaware of time, the slightest of smiles hovering over his face.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Yoga of the Liberating Smile

#29933 – 15.23.6.54

BN – Z – K

Because the Short Path is an attempt to withdraw from the ego's shade and to stand in the Overself's sunshine, it must be accompanied by the deliberate cultivation of a joyous attitude. And because it is so largely a withdrawal from the Long Path's disciplines, it must also be accompanied by a sense of freedom. Hence its proper physical facial expression is the radiant smile. Its votary should look for beauty and seek to come into harmony at all times—in Nature, in art, in the world, and in himself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Yoga of the Liberating Smile

#29934 – 15.23.6.55

BN – Z – DEK

He can practise the yoga of the liberating smile. When it appears, tensions go, desires fade out. It is peace-bringing.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Yoga of the Liberating Smile

#29935 – 15.23.6.56

BN – Z

There is the egotistic smile of the salesman, a surface affair, put on, something added and, at times, in total contradiction to the state of his feelings. There is the smile of the philosopher-mystic, a sincere and genuine outer reflection of his inner being.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Yoga of the Liberating Smile

#29936 – 15.23.6.57

BN – Z

The secret of successful altruistic intercession during meditation is, first, to enter the deepest part of his own being, and then—but only then—to enter the deepest part of the other man's. Here he will begin by praying for his spiritual improvement and end by visualizing the thing as done. To spend a few minutes each day in such intercessory service for others is to bless not only them but also himself. All his other virtues flower more radiantly in the sunny air of such benign love.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Intercessory meditation

#29937ED – 15.23.6.58

BN – EL1/2 – DEK

Do not carry your own troubles or your temptations or other people's troubles and situations straight into your meditation. There is a proper time and place for their consideration under a mystical light or for their presentation to a mystical power. But that time and place is not at the beginning of the meditation period. It is rather towards the end. All meditations conducted on the philosophic ideal should end with the thoughts of others, with remembrance of their spiritual need, and with a sending-out of the light and grace received to bless individuals who need such help. At the beginning your aim should be to forget your lower self, to rise above it. Only after you have felt the divine visitation, only towards the end of your practice period should your aim be to bring the higher self to the help of the lower one, or your help and blessing to other embodied selves. If, however, you attempt this prematurely, if you are not willing to relinquish the personal life even for a few minutes, then you will get nothing but your own thought back for your pains.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Intercessory meditation

#29937ED – 15.23.6.58

BN – EL2/2 – DEK

The exercise of drawing down the Life Force as a white light should be accompanied by deep rhythmic breathing. It will be effective only after inspiration has been sought in meditation, and partially found. Hence it is best performed just before, or just after, the stillness is reached.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Intercessory meditation

#29938 – 15.23.6.59

ME_01 – P – K

The practice of extending love towards all living creatures brings on ecstatic states of cosmic joy.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Intercessory meditation

#29939 – 15.23.6.60

BA11 – Z – DK1

He will help others more by holding them mentally in this inner peace than by falling into a state of nervous anxiety about them.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Intercessory meditation

#29941 – 15.23.6.62

BN – ZZ – D

Would you have your friend live a better life? Picture only that better life in your thoughts of him.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Intercessory meditation

#29942 – 15.23.6.63

BN – X – D

In the deepest state of contemplation he is not able to be concerned about himself. How then can he be concerned about other men? "At such times," said Bonaventura "one must not think of creatures."

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Intercessory meditation

#29943 – 15.23.6.64

BN – ZZ

One of the deeper ways to help others is to bring them into meditation, if the meditation has been successful in making contact with the Higher Power. For then he can let it act upon himself in all his thoughts about the different areas of his life and by merely invoking the image or name of any person let it act upon that person too.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Intercessory meditation

#29944 – 15.23.6.65

BN – ZZ

There is no doubt that the practice of meditation leads to a sensitizing of the meditator's mind, if only because he has to make himself passive and receptive during the meditative period. After the first great battle of achieving concentration has been won there is then a possibility that the thoughts, feelings, and moods of other persons may enter his own consciousness if they are either present physically or connected with him mentally. If those impressions are of a lower character than his own character they may either disturb him and give him some trouble in dealing with them, or at the least divert him from his habitual attitude, however briefly, or he may make the mistake of identifying them as being his own, of his own creation. For these reasons it is better for those who are still under development not to attempt by mental treatment to elevate the minds of others directly, unless it is done at the peak period of a meditation, when they have been able to reach a high level of purpose, concentration, and purity.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Intercessory meditation

#29945E – 15.23.6.66

BN – EL1/1

As taught in 'The Wisdom of the Overself', use the last few minutes in the twilight state of consciousness before falling asleep at night for constructive self-improvement. The best form this can take during your present phase of development is to relax in bed, empty the mind of the day's cares, and make definite, concrete suggestions about the good qualities desired and imaginatively visualize yourself demonstrating these desired qualities. Furthermore, you should go even farther and visualize yourself in possession of the Higher Consciousness, attuned to the Higher Will and expressing the Higher Poise. All this will be like seeds planted in the inner being and growing during sleep.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Night meditations

#29947 – 15.23.6.68

BN – X – DEK

If, in the act of falling asleep, he invites the higher self through aspiration, he may one day find that in the act of waking up an inner voice begins to speak to him of high and holy things. And with the voice comes the inspiration, the strength, and the desire to live up to them.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Night meditations

#29950 – 15.23.6.71

BN – Z – D

It is a valuable exercise to review at night the events of the past day or to review in the morning those which can be expected in the coming day.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Night meditations

#29951 – 15.23.6.72

BN – X – D

There is a verse of the Koran which says: "Arise in the midst of the night and commune with thy God. Thy ego will be crushed and things will be revealed to thee thou didst not know before and thy path in life will be made smooth."

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Night meditations

#29954 – 15.23.6.75

BN – X – DK

In those delicious moments where sleep trembles into waking, there is some sort of a beginning Glimpse but alas, it vanishes without fulfilling its promise as soon as the world of objects comes more fully into the circle of attention. And this is precisely where the value of such a state lies, both for the ordinary man and for the would-be yogi. It has no objects. It is "I" without a world. It is awareness-in-itself. True, it is fleeting and does not last, but a man can learn to practise holding himself to it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Night meditations

#29956 – 15.23.6.77

BN – X – D

In those first moments when awakening from the nightly sleep we may enter a heavenly thought-free state. Or, if we cannot reach so high, we may receive thoughts which give guidance, tell us what to do, warn us against wrong decisions, or foretell the future.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Night meditations

#29957 – 15.23.6.78

BN – Z – D

On awakening from the night's sleep, take the inspired book, which you are to keep on a bedside table for the purposes of this exercise, and open it at random. The higher self may lead you to open it at a certain page. Read the paragraph or page on which your glance first rests and then put the book aside. Meditate intently on the words, taking them as a special message to you for that particular day. In the course of your activities you may later find this to be so, and the message itself a helpfully connected one.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Night meditations

#29958D – 15.23.6.79

BN – ZZZ – DEK

To play the role of an observer of life, his own life, is to assist the process of inwardly detaching himself from it. And the field of observation must include the mental events, the thought-happenings, also. For mentalism shows that they are really one world. In the end everything belonging to experience belongs to mental experience.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29961 – 15.23.6.82

BN – ZZ – DEK*

The student has to stand aside from the thought-forms, which means that he must stand aside from the person and look at it as something external to himself. If and when he succeeds in getting behind it, he automatically adopts the standpoint of the Overself. He must make the person an object and the Overself its observer. Now this element of pure awareness is something constant and unbroken; hence it is not ordinary consciousness, which is a discontinuous thing made of totalized thoughts, but transcendental consciousness.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29962 – 15.23.6.83

BN – X – DEK

The position of the impersonal observer is only a tentative one, assumed because it is a practical help perhaps midway toward the goal. For when it is well-established in understanding, outlook, and practice, something happens by itself: the observer and the observed ego with its body and world become swallowed up in the undivided Mind.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29963 – 15.23.6.84

BSG_4 – P – D

It is an experience wherein he finds himself aware of the ego from within itself and also, at the same time, aware of it as an observer. This is not to be confused with an experience wherein he finds himself standing behind his ‘body’, not identifying with it but observing it: yet he still remains in ego.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29964 – 15.23.6.85

BN – Z – D

Scott in his search for the South Pole and Smythe in his quest for the summit of Everest, reported in their written accounts the sense of not being alone, of being companioned by a mystic unseen presence which bestowed a strange calm. That presence was the Grace of the Overself, and if we understand the psychological secret of what happened to Scott and Smythe we may then understand that it is not only far-wandering explorers and high-climbing mountaineers who may call up the Overself by their brave trust. The same dangerous experience which has brought fear, horror, and despair to other men brought them dignified confidence and mystical enlargement of consciousness which made them aware for the time of the hidden observer. They had indeed suddenly but partially stepped into the transcendental state. Whoever successfully practises the Hidden Observer meditation will experience precisely the same sense of not being alone, of being companioned by a mystic presence which brings with it a benign sense of assurance and security. He will, however, experience much more than that.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29965E – 15.23.6.86

BN – EL1/1 – DEK

Can he look at himself as if he were a total stranger, as if he were meeting for the first time an alien from a distant land? Can he treat his own speech and actions as if those of somebody else?

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29966 – 15.23.6.87

BN – Z

Although the aspirant has now awakened to his witness-self, found his "soul," and thus lifted himself far above the mass of mankind, he has not yet accomplished the full task set him by life. A further effort still awaits his hand. He has yet to realize that the witness-self is only a part of the All-self. So his next task is to discover that he is not merely the witness of the rest of existence but essentially of one stuff with it. He has, in short, by further meditations to realize his oneness with the entire universe in its real being. He must now meditate on his witness-self as being in its essence the infinite All. Thus the ultramystic exercises are graded into two stages, the second being more advanced than the first. The banishment of thoughts reveals the inner self whereas the reinstatement of thoughts without losing the newly gained consciousness reveals the All-inclusive universal self. The second feat is the harder.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29967 – 15.23.6.88

BN – X – DEK1

He must keep this part of himself firmly held back, must guard it against getting entangled with the world, must make it a silent observer and mere looker-on only.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29968 – 15.23.6.89

BN – ZZ

When a man has practised the witness exercise for some time and to some competency, he will become repeatedly aware of a curious experience. For a few minutes at most and often only for a few moments, he will seem to have stepped outside his body and to be confronting himself, looking at his own face as though it were someone else's. Or he will seem to be standing behind his own body and seeing his face from a side angle. This is an important and significant experience.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29970 – 15.23.6.91

BN – Z – D

To become the Witness-self does not mean to contemplate one's gestures and listen to the sound of one's voice.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29971 – 15.23.6.92

BN – Z

He feels that he is gazing down at himself from a height, seeing his personal ego for the trivial thing that it is.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29972 – 15.23.6.93

BN – Z – D

One special exercise of the Short Path is easily done by some persons and gives them excellent results, although it is hard to do by others. It consists in refusing to let remain any particular mental registration of the surrounding place or people, or of any physical experience being undergone. Instead the mental image is to be firmly dismissed with the thought, "This too is like a dream," and then immediately forgotten. The exercise may be kept up for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time. The practical benefit it yields is to give improved self-control; the metaphysical benefit is to weaken the sway of illusion; the mystical benefit is to enable him to take the stand of the Witness-attitude more easily; and the personal benefit is to make him a freer and happier man.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29974 – 15.23.6.95

BN – X – D

He has to learn a new art—that of remaining relaxed and at ease, almost an impassive observer, while his body or his intellect does its work in the world, performs in the role set for it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29975 – 15.23.6.96

BN – ZZ – D

His role is to play witness of what he is, how he behaves, the thoughts he admits, just as if he were witnessing someone else. This move-over from the actively-engaged person to the watcher who is impersonal and disengaged even in the midst of action, is one from drift to control. He must begin by putting the ego, his own ego, forward as an object of observation. He will not succeed fully in doing so, because he is involved on both sides—as subject and object—but the direction can be fixed and the work can be started. With time and practice, study and reflection, help and sincerity, some sort of impersonality and neutrality can be established. When inner stillness is fully reached, the work becomes much easier until it is completed by the grace of the higher Self, Overself. Of course, outside of meditation, he is conscious of his commonplace body; but he is also conscious of his awe-inspiring Overself. He sees the first as part of a passing show, himself as an uninvolved observer, and behind both the eternal Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29976 – 15.23.6.97

BN – Z – DEK

The first important need is to separate himself in thought and outlook from the animal side of his nature—not for any moral reasons but for metaphysical ones—and part of the inner work which this calls for is to take up the observer role. He is to look at the body (and its actions, desires, and passions) as if it were apart from himself—in short, to gain a detached view. This practice is fruitful because one idea can be used to counter or displace a second idea: both cannot be held in attention simultaneously. When this has been carried on for a long enough time to show its benefits, it may be used on a higher and more elusive level: he can adopt the impersonal observer attitude towards the ego itself, of which the body is of course a part.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29977 – 15.23.6.98

BN – X – DEK

He participates in every action not only as the performer doing it but also as the audience seeing it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29978 – 15.23.6.99

BN – X – D

Let him play the part of a witness to his own ego, through all its experiences and vicissitudes. In that way he will be emulating by effort those enlightened men to whom the part comes easily and naturally by their own development.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29979 – 15.23.6.100

BN – Z – D

His role in everyday life is a double one: that of being both the world's actor and a spectator.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29981 – 15.23.6.102

BN – X – D

The attitude of detached and impartial observer helps to protect him, to diminish his animality, and to correct his egoism even while he takes part in some of the chief concerns of human activity. As for the others, if he chooses to withdraw from them because he considers them unworthy of a philosopher, we should be grateful that someone has had the moral courage to do so.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29982 – 15.23.6.103

BN – Z – DEK

As meditation is practised, further indrawing takes place and the apparatus for thinking is repudiated in turn. "I am not this mind." The process continues further; as the self ever draws inward he casts off, one by one, all that he once held to be himself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29983 – 15.23.6.104

BN – Z – D

The question "Who am I?" is asked somewhere in that monumental ancient book The Yoga Vasistha. It was often included centuries later by Saint Francis in his prayers. But Sri Ramana Maharshi gave it central importance in his advice to spiritual seekers and meditators.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29985 – 15.23.6.106

BN – X – D

Not only all other men's bodies but also his own must be regarded as objects to Consciousness, as the not-self which is seen by the Self.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29986 – 15.23.6.107

BN – X – DEK

What is the practical use of enquiring, “To whom is this experience happening? To whom this pain, this joy, this distress, or this good fortune?’’ First, it makes him remember the quest upon which he is embarked by reminding him that it is the ego which is feeling these changes and that he is not to identify himself with it and thus limit his possibilities if he really seeks the higher self behind it. Second, it suggests that he look for the root of his ego and with it his hidden “I’’ instead of merely being swept away by what is happening within the ego itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Witness exercise

#29987 – 15.23.6.108

ME_01 – Z – DK*

On this Short Path he searches into the meaning of Being, of being himself and of being-in-itself, until he finds its finality. Until this search is completed, he accepts the truth, passed down to him by the Enlightened Ones, that in his inmost essence he is Reality. This leads to the logical consequence that he should disregard personal feelings which continue from past tendencies, habits, attitudes, and think and act as if he were himself an enlightened one! For now he knows by evidence, study, and reflection that the Overself is behind, and is the very source of, his ego, just as he knows by the experience of feeling during his brief Glimpses. Bringing this strong conviction into thought and act and attitude is the "Heavenly Way" [or "As If"] exercise, a principal one on the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29988E – 15.23.6.109

BN – ZEL1/2 – DEK1

For now he knows by evidence, study, and reflection that the Overself is behind, and is the very source of, his ego, just as he knows by the experience of feeling during his brief Glimpses. Bringing this strong conviction into thought and act and attitude is the "Heavenly Way" [or "As If"] exercise, a principal one on the Short Path. He pretends to be what he aims to become: thinks, speaks, acts, behaves as a master of emotion, desire, ego because he would be one. But he should play this game for, and to, himself alone, not to enlarge himself in others' eyes, lest he sow the seed of a great vanity.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29988E – 15.23.6.109

BN – ZEL2/2 – DEK1

It is objected, why search at all if one really is the Overself? Yes, there comes a time when the deliberate purposeful search for the Overself has to be abandoned for this reason. Paradoxically, it is given up many times, whenever he has a Glimpse, for at such moments he knows that he always was, is, and will be the Real, that there is nothing new to be gained or searched for. Who should search for what? But the fact remains that past tendencies of thought rise up after every Glimpse and overpower the mind, causing it to lose this insight and putting it back on the quest again. While this happens he must continue the search, with this difference, that he no longer searches blindly, as in earlier days, believing that he is an ego trying to transform itself into the Overself, trying to reach a new attainment in time by evolutionary stages.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29989E – 15.23.6.110

BN – ZEL1/2 – DEM1

The search for the Overself is given up many times, whenever he has a Glimpse, for at such moments he knows that he always was, is, and will be the Real, that there is nothing new to be gained or searched for. Who should search for what? But the fact remains that past tendencies of thought rise up after every Glimpse and overpower the mind, causing it to lose this insight and putting it back on the quest again. While this happens he must continue the search, with this difference, that he no longer searches blindly, as in earlier days, believing that he is an ego trying to transform itself into the Overself, trying to reach a new attainment in time by evolutionary stages. No! through the understanding of the Short Path he searches knowingly, not wanting another experience since both wanting and experiencing put him out of the essential Self. He thinks and acts as if he is that Self, which puts him back into It. It is a liberation from time-bound thinking, a realization of timeless fact.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29989E – 15.23.6.110

BN – ZEL2/2 – DEM1

Practice of the "As If" exercise is like being spiritually reborn and finding a new way of life. It gives courage to those who feel grievously inadequate, hope to those who feel hooked by their past failures.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29990 – 15.23.6.111

BN – X – DK

Exercise: In this pictorial meditation, he is to put himself in a tableau of achieved result. He is to see himself doing successfully what he seeks to do, and the sight is to be accompanied by intense faith and firm conviction. The desirable qualities of character are to be thought of as already existing and possessed, already expressing themselves in action and living. Furthermore they are to be pictured vividly and clearly; they must be understood without any uncertainty, dimness, or hesitation.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29991 – 15.23.6.112

BN – X – DEK

The "As If" exercise is not merely pretense or make-believe. It requires penetrative study and sufficient understanding of the high character and spiritual consciousness in the part to be played, the role to be enacted, the auto-suggestion to be realized.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29992 – 15.23.6.113

BN – Z – DM1

When the assaults of man's animal nature, the instincts of his body, have to be dealt with, a swift assumption of the AS IF attitude is necessary.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29993 – 15.23.6.114

BN – X – D

A part of the practical technique for attaining the inner awareness of this timeless reality is the practice of the AS IF exercise. With some variations it has already been published in 'The Wisdom of the Overself', and an unpublished variant has been included in descriptions of the Short Path as "identification with the Overself." The practitioner regards himself no longer from the standpoint of the quester, but from that of the Realized Man. He assumes, in thought and action, that he has nothing to attain because he bases himself on the Vedantic truth that Reality, of which he is a part, is here and now—is not reached in Time, being timeless—and that therefore he is as divine as he ever will be. He rejects the appearance of things, which identifies man only with his ego, and insists on the higher identification with Overself also.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29994 – 15.23.6.115

BN – Z – DEK

The self-identification with the Overself should be as perfect as he can make it. He is to be it, and not merely the student meditating on it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29995 – 15.23.6.116

BA12 – ZZ – D

"As If" exercise. He must sink himself in the imagined character of the ideal with intense feeling until he becomes the image itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29996 – 15.23.6.117

BN – X – DK*

This practice in the Short Path of self-identification with the Overself is to be done both casually at odd moments and deliberately at daily contacts in meditation. It is through them—whenever the identification is effectual—that Grace gets some of its chance to work its transformation upon him.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29997 – 15.23.6.118

BN – X – D

Whatever name be given to this exercise, whether "As If" or another, its essence is to consider the goal as already reached, to convert the end of the quest into the beginning. Is this too audacious an assumption? This elicits counter-questions. Why remain within the circle of the probable as if the circle of the possible did not also exist? Where did the saying "Adventures are for the adventurous" come from if not from human experience?

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#29999 – 15.23.6.120

BN – X – DEK*

Even if he has no spiritual experience at all but only complete faith in it, even if he cannot live the role of the illumined fulfilled man, then let him act it. This is an exercise to be practised. Let him try to think and behave as if his quest is successful, let him copy the fulfilled philosopher.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30000 – 15.23.6.121

BN – X – D

This practice of picturing oneself as one ought to be, of visualizing the man free from negative qualities and radiant with positive ones that are part of the Quest's ideal, has near-magical results.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30002 – 15.23.6.123

BN – X – D

It is as if the Overself were hypnotizing him out of his lower nature.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30003 – 15.23.6.124

BN – X – DK

Let him picture his own self as if it were at the end of its quest. Let him see it enthroned on the summit of power and engaged in tranquil meditation for his own joy and for mankind's welfare.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30004 – 15.23.6.125

BN – X – D

The practice aims at saturating the mind with this idea of true Identity.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30006 – 15.23.6.127

BN – Z – DK

He learns that he may set his own limits, that so long as he thinks all day that he is only this person, doing and speaking in the ordinary way what men usually do, then he is certainly nothing more. But if he starts the day on a higher level, thinking that he is divine in his inmost being, and keeps on that level as the hours pass, then he will feel closer to it. This is a practical procedure, one which has its effect on consciousness, on character, and on events.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30007 – 15.23.6.128

BN – X – D

The method of the Short Path is to affirm that in the heavenly consciousness of the Overself there is no evil, no wrong-doing, no sinfulness, and no faultiness; and that because the true being of man is there the aspirant should identify himself with it in faith, thought, and vision. In that threefold way he sees himself dwelling and acting in the Overself, and therefore without his specific sins and faults. He regards them as non-existent and drops anxiety or concern about them. He does this as much as he can from morning to night and this fulfils Jesus' injunction to "pray without ceasing" in a deeper and philosophical sense.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30008 – 15.23.6.129

B_11 – P – DE

Identity Exercise: He will not have to struggle as on the Long Path. There will no more be irksome effort. The mind will be glad to rest in this positive state, if he holds from the very beginning the faith that it already is accomplished, that the aspiration toward it is being fulfilled now, not at some unknown distant time. Such an attitude engenders something more than pleasant feelings of hope and optimism: it engenders subconscious power.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30010 – 15.23.6.131

BN – X – D

It is now and not in some future time of achievement that he should, in this exercise, regard only his best self as his Identity. 

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30011 – 15.23.6.132

UR_5 – ZZZ – DK

The old trouble-bringing attitudes and self-frustrating ways are the ego's. At the appearance of irritating circumstances, go into reverse by practising the "As If" exercise and thus lift up consciousness here and now.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30012 – 15.23.6.133

BN – ZZ – D

If a man has acting talent, let him try it on this visualization exercise: let him copy the characteristics of illumination. It will be immensely more profitable to him than copying those of some worldly role on a stage. The latter may gain him a livelihood; the former will gain him LIFE.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30013 – 15.23.6.134

BN – ZZ – D

To practise the "As If" Short Path exercise successfully, it is necessary to let go and forget all past techniques and begin afresh; they are attachments and, to that extent, distractions. They may cause self-consciousness, anxiety for success, and impatience. The divinity is there, within you; have faith that it 'is' so and entrust yourself to it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30017 – 15.23.6.138

BN – Z – DEK

Balance the "As if I am enlightened" exercise: Counter by "As if the Divine Mothers were present" whenever I speak to others, whatever I do, alone or in society. It notes and judges my speed and action. In the first example I am alone always; but in the second I am not, there is the other. The idea is not so much that it notes and judges our actions as that we are in a holy presence.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30018 – 15.23.6.139

BN – Z

He cannot be a philosopher part of the time and an unawakened unenlightened person the remainder (or most) of the time: but he can, for the sake of this exercise, imaginatively think that he is one. In the light of his antecedent personal history, the attempt may be an audacious one; but if his present longing, determination, and self-discipline are large enough, it may become a magical transforming one.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30020 – 15.23.6.141

BN – Z – D

The "Identity" [“As if I am enlightened”] exercise is a changeover from humbly aspiring to a higher level to creatively imagining oneself as being there already. The dangers here are conceit, deceit, and complacency.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30021 – 15.23.6.142

BN – X – DEK

He shapes himself into another person in imagination, in faith, and in will. For a while he creates the illusion of a new destiny accompanying this new person. Is this not a veritable rebirth? Does he not get away from the old everyday person and forget him utterly through this miraculous transformation? He lives so completely in this visualized ideal self that there is no space left for the old faults, the old weaknesses to creep in.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30023 – 15.23.6.144

BN – X – D

See yourself as you ought to be. Try to act accordingly.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30024 – 15.23.6.145

BN – Z – D

Even if it only be a pose that is cultivated, it still remains a valuable discipline and exercise which gives good results. For it has much suggestive power, this "As If" method, and is an essential part of the Short Path.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30026 – 15.23.6.147

BN – X – D

The “The As If I am enlightened” attitude pays well, provided it is maintained rigidly after having been assumed.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > "As-If'' exercise

#30027 – 15.23.6.148

BN – X – D

Why should the Short Path be a better means of getting Grace than the Long one? There is not only the reason that it is not occupied with the ego but also that it continually keeps up remembrance of the Overself. It does this with a heart that gives, and is open to receive, love. It thinks of the Overself throughout the day. Thus, it not only comes closer to the source from which Grace is being perpetually radiated, but it also is repeatedly inviting Grace with each loving remembrance.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30028 – 15.23.6.149

BN – Z – DM1

Any action must be properly timed if it is to give its best return, but the remembrance exercise is the only kind which can be done at any time—now—and in any place—here. This simple movement of the mind in remembrance is easy enough for anyone at any stage of evolution to perform yet important enough for the wisest of us.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30029 – 15.23.6.150

BN – Z – DK

To acknowledge this Presence and this Power within him as continually or as often as he can, is a practice whose results are larger than its simplicity suggests.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30030 – 15.23.6.151

BN – X – D

The basis of this exercise is that the remembering of the Overself leads in time to the forgetting of the ego. To let the mind dwell constantly on the thought of the Overself, tranquillizes it. To bring the figure of the spiritual guide into it, strengthens it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30031 – 15.23.6.152

BN – Z – DEK

To keep the Overself constantly in our thoughts is one of the easiest ways to become worthy of its grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30032 – 15.23.6.153

BN – X – D

The student must place this seed-thought in his mind and hold to it throughout the day. He need not fear that he will lose anything material thereby. Let him remember the definite promise of the Overself speaking through Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita: "I look after the interests and safety of those who are perpetually engaged on My service, and whose thoughts are always about Me and Me alone." He will learn by direct experience the literal meaning of the term Providence—"that which provides."

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30033 – 15.23.6.154

BN – Z – DEK1

How long should a man practise this remembrance of the Overself? He will need to practise it so long as he needs to struggle with his ego.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30034 – 15.23.6.155

BN – Z – D

No amount of exaggerated homage to a guru can take the place of remembering the Real.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30035 – 15.23.6.156

BN – Z – D

Emerson knew this practice. "By His remembrance, life becomes pervaded with nectarine bliss," he said.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30036 – 15.23.6.157

BN – X – D

If the past is unredeemable, and the future unpredictable, what more practical course is open than to safeguard the present by constant remembrance of the divine?

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30037 – 15.23.6.158

BN – Z – D

The practice of recollection was, and still is, used by the Sufis, Muhammedan mystics, to draw the feelings more and more away from the earthly things to the divine.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30038 – 15.23.6.159

BN – X – D

The Overself, like a woman, wants to be loved ardently and exclusively. The door upon which you may have been knocking a long time in vain will open to your frequent loving remembrances.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30039 – 15.23.6.160

BN – X – DEK

He may not mention such a thing as spiritual being but it is thought at the back, in the middle, and even in the front of his head. It is irremovable and irreplaceable.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30040 – 15.23.6.161

BN – Z

The 'Vedas' tell us that the constant remembrance and thinking of oneself as pure Spirit makes one overcome delusion and obtain Truth.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30041 – 15.23.6.162

BN – X – D

Constant remembrance of the Overself's presence becomes a way to counter the much more evident presence of the body and the world—that is, the illusion of matter.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30042 – 15.23.6.163

BN – Z – D

Constant remembrance of the Overself's presence becomes a way to counter the much more evident presence of the body and the world―that is, the illusion of matter. The term "illusion" here used must not be read as meaning that the human being and the world do not exist. It means that they exist, yes, but that they do not exist as other than a transient appearance. They are not fundamentally 'real'.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30042M – 15.23.6.163

BSG_1 – ZZZ – DXK

His awareness is still only a babe; it needs to grow and growth calls for nourishment. This he is to give by the simple act of remembering and attending to it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30043 – 15.23.6.164

BN – X – D

Fix the attention undividedly upon the Overself which is anchored in your heart-centre. Then everything you do during the day will naturally be divinely inspired action and true service. The Overself is your true source of power: turn towards it and receive its constructive guidance for your task of daily living.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30044 – 15.23.6.165

BN – ZZ – D

By reorienting thought toward Overself, forgetfulness sets in for the little self: the measure of one is the measure of the other.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30045 – 15.23.6.166

BN – ZZ – D

It is needful to reserve a part of one's being, consciousness, or thought, for this unique remembrance, which is of a value set apart from all others.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30046 – 15.23.6.167

BN – X – D

By keeping close to the Overself he can gain its protective guiding or helpful influence. No day should pass without its remembrance, no enterprise should be begun without its invocation.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30048 – 15.23.6.169

BN – ZZ – D

Shams Tabriz: "Keep God in remembrance until the self is forgotten." Here is a whole yoga path in one short, simple sentence.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30050 – 15.23.6.171

BN – Z – D

The best way to honour this immense truth of the ever-present reality of the Overself is to remember it—as often, as continuously, and as determinedly as possible. It is not only the best way but also the most rewarding one. For then its saving grace may bestow great blessing.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30051 – 15.23.6.172

BN – X – D

To put oneself regularly into the practice of this remembrance is to come within the cheering warmth of these higher truths.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30053 – 15.23.6.174

BN – Z – D

Better than any long-drawn yoga discipline is the effort to rivet one's hold on the here-and-now of one's divinity.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30054 – 15.23.6.175

BN – Z – D

The Overself remembrance should be held in the back of the mind, even though he may appear to be properly attentive to external matters.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30055E – 15.23.6.176

BA12 – Z – DE

Seize the odd moments for Remembrance practice, escaping from the web of self-thoughts into the Void of Being.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30057 – 15.23.6.178

BN – Z – D

His practice of constantly bringing the Overself to mind is a valuable part of the aspirant's equipment. Each remembrance has a twofold value: first, as a mystical exercise to cultivate concentration, and second, as a recurrent turning-away from worldly thoughts to spiritual ones.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30058 – 15.23.6.179

BN – Z – D

There are leisure moments or unoccupied minutes during the day which could profitably be used for The Overself Remembrance exercise.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30059 – 15.23.6.180

BN – X – D

If he can lovingly recall those moments when thought became incandescently bright and feeling was lifted high above its ordinary self, meditation upon them will be especially fruitful and profitable.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30060 – 15.23.6.181

BN – Z – D

At odd moments in the very midst of worldly activity he is to recall what his mental and emotional state was like when he reached peak heights during formal meditation in seclusion. And for the brief space of those moments he is to try by creative imagination to feel that he is back on those heights.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30061 – 15.23.6.182

BN – X – D

In this meditation he reproduces the conditions which surrounded him at the time the Glimpse came. He fills in every tiny detail of the picture—the furnishings of a room perhaps, the faces and voices of other persons who were present, and especially how he became aware of the first onset of the Glimpse.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30062 – 15.23.6.183

BN – X – D

It could well be said that the essence of the Short Path is remembering who he is, what he is, and then attending to this memory as often as possible.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30063 – 15.23.6.184

BN – Z – DM1

Concentrate on reliving in intense memorized detail former moments of egoless illumination.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30064 – 15.23.6.185

BN – Z – DM1

In remembrance, he should once again love the beauty and revere the solemnity of this experience. If the effort to remember the Overself is kept up again and again, it attenuates the materialistic mental tendencies inherited from former lives and arrests the natural restlessness of attention. It eventually achieves a mystical concentration of thoughts akin in character to that reached during set periods of meditation, but with the added advantage of not stopping the transaction of worldly activity. >>Moments of utter inward stillness may come to him. The ordinary familiar ego will then desert him with a lightning-like suddenness and with hardly less brevity. Let him fix these moments firmly in his memory. They are to be used in the ensuing years as themes for meditation and goals for striving.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30065 – 15.23.6.186

BN – ZZ – DEK

A useful method is to stop whatever he is doing, remain still, and let his mind fly back to the thought of the Overself. He is to make this break several times a day, the more often the better, but he may find it easier to begin with only two or three times a day and gradually to extend the number over a few months.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30066 – 15.23.6.187

BN – X – D

Those moments when the feeling of something beyond his present existence comes to him are precious indeed. They must be eagerly welcomed and constantly nourished by dwelling upon them again and again, both in remembrance and in meditation. The loving recollection of those beautiful inspired moments and the intense concentration upon them is in itself a mystical exercise of special importance. This exercise is designed to help the learner transcend his attachment to externality, his tendency to live in the senses as though they alone reported reality.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30067 – 15.23.6.188

BN – ZZ – D

It is not only needful to practise this remembrance as often as convenient or even possible, but also for as long as convenient or possible.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30068 – 15.23.6.189

BN – X – D

The earnest seeker is always busy, for whenever there is a slackness of time he has business to transact with the true self.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30069 – 15.23.6.190

BN – ZZ

There is one method whereby the treasures found in meditation may be brought, little by little, into the active state. This is to try to recollect, at odd times during the day, the peace, bliss, strength, or truth, or any messages gleaned during the best moments of the preceding meditation. The more often this is done, the sooner will the gap between meditation and activity be bridged.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30070 – 15.23.6.191

BN – Z – D

What Confucius called "the Superior Man" will constantly keep his mind on superior topics and not waste its energy on trivialities. And the best of all these topics is the Overself—the glimpses of its nature, the remembrance of its being his essential selfhood.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30071 – 15.23.6.192

BSG_5 – Z – D

He has to learn by practice the art of retreating at any moment into the mystic citadel within the heart.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30074 – 15.23.6.195

BN – Z

Let him immerse himself in that feeling and little by little a powerful sense of well-being will penetrate his heart.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30075 – 15.23.6.196

BN – X – D

Concentrate on the remembered delight, the lovely silence, of some past Glimpse. Try to bring it into sharp vivid focus.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30076 – 15.23.6.197

BN – Z

The effort at this higher stage (Short Path) is not to follow fixed schedules for mental quiet but constantly to remember Overself. If, however, he feels drawn to practise at any time, he does so.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30077 – 15.23.6.198

BN – X – DEK

Although when feeling a descent of the stillness the aspirant is told to drop whatever he is doing and to hold himself in the stillness as long as he can or as long as it is there, he may also practise a useful exercise entirely on his own initiative at any time of the day involving a similar mental and physical posture. For this purpose he holds whatever he is doing whenever he wishes and as often as he wishes and keeps himself suspended, as it were, not moving, not thinking of anything else except the passive remembrance of the Overself. This special exercise of remembrance may be done for a single minute or for a few, just as he wishes.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30079 – 15.23.6.200

BN – X – DEK

He should try to remember the inner and outer conditions under which the glimpse came to him and, temporarily, try to make them again part of himself and his surroundings. He is to do so as if he were an actor appearing in this part on a stage. For the time being, he must think, feel, and live as if the experience is really happening, the glimpse really recurring. For the time being he must enter the world of imagination and copy the remembered details, the treasured impressions, as specifically as he can. The image which his past supplies is to be transferred to his present, brought to life again and reincarnated afresh. If he is unable to achieve such similarity at the first trial, this need not deter him from making a third, a seventh, and a twentieth trial on later days.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30080 – 15.23.6.201

BN – X – DEK

Recall the glimpse as vividly as possible. Select the highest experience that stands out in memory and recast it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30081 – 15.23.6.202

BN – Z – DEK

In this matter the words of the Koran must be taken literally: "Believers hasten to the remembrance of Allah and leave off all business."

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30082 – 15.23.6.203

BN – X – D

When this stage is attained, the work he has to do in reorienting attention toward the Overself-thought is not any more for the particular sessions of meditation practice alone, but also to be kept up during the day's activities. Attention will have to be returned again and again to this simple but primary requirement.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30083 – 15.23.6.204

BN – Z – DEK

There is no moment when this work of inner remembrance may stop. It ought to start at the time of rising from bed in the morning and continue to the time of retiring to bed at night.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30084 – 15.23.6.205

BN – X – D

It is possible that he may fall into the mistaken belief that because he has relieved himself of the duties and toils of the Long Path, he has little else to do than give himself up to idle dreaming and lazy optimism. No—he has taken on himself fresh duties and other toils, even though they are of a different kind. He has to learn the true meaning of "pray without ceasing" as well as to practise it. He has to meditate twenty times a day, even though each session will not be longer than a minute or two. He has to recollect himself, his essential divinity, a hundred times a day. All this calls for incessant work and determined effort, for the exercise of energy and zeal.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30085 – 15.23.6.206

BN – X – DEK

The next goal is to keep himself in the Consciousness, whether he lives with others in community or alone with himself in solitude.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30086 – 15.23.6.207

BN – Z

This work of constant remembrance is one of self-training. The mind is accustomed by habit and nature to stay in the ego. It has to be pulled out and placed in the thought of the higher self, and kept there.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30087 – 15.23.6.208

BN – Z – D

You should imaginatively recapture it as if its benign presence comes over you, its goodwill pervades you, its guidance helps you, and its peace enfolds you.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30088 – 15.23.6.209

BN – Z – D

Continuous remembrance of the Stillness, accompanied by automatic entry into it, is the sum and substance of the Short Path, the key practice to success. At all times, under all circumstances, this is to be done. That is to say, it really belongs to and is part of the daily and ordinary routine existence. Consequently, whenever it is forgotten, the practitioner must note his failure and make instant correction. The inner work is kept up until it goes on by itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30089 – 15.23.6.210

BN – ZZ – DK1

The essence of the matter is that he should be constantly attentive to the intuitive feeling in the heart and not let himself be diverted from it by selfishness, emotion, cunning, or passion.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30090 – 15.23.6.211

BN – ZZZ – DK1

One of the most valuable forms of yoga is the yoga of constant remembrance. Its subject may be a mystical experience, intuition, or idea. In essence it is really an endeavour to insert the transcendental atmosphere into the mundane life.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30091 – 15.23.6.212

BN – X – DM1

The method of this exercise is to maintain uninterruptedly and unbrokenly the remembrance of the soul's nearness, the soul's reality, the soul's transcendence. The goal of this exercise is to become wholly possessed by the soul itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30092 – 15.23.6.213

BN – ZZ – DK1

This constant remembrance of the higher self becomes in time like a kind of holy communion.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30093 – 15.23.6.214

BN – X – DK1

Stick to the remembrance of the Overself with dogged persistence wherever you are and whatever you are doing. This is one of the easiest, the simplest, and the safest of all yoga paths to reach the goal effectively. Anyone, be he the most intellectual of metaphysicians or the most unintellectual of illiterates, may use this path and use it with success.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30095 – 15.23.6.216

BN – Z – DEK

He must think as often and as intently of the Overself as an infatuated girl thinks of the next appointed meeting with her lover. His whole heart must be held captive, as it were, by this aspiration. This is to be practised not only at set formal times but also constantly throughout the day as an exercise in recollection. This yoga, done at all times and in all places, becomes a permanent life and not merely a transient exercise. This practice of constant remembrance of the Overself purifies the mind and gradually renders it naturally introverted, concentrates and eventually illumines it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30096 – 15.23.6.217

BN – X – D

Take it with you wherever you go—first, in remembrance as Idea, then, as you develop, in actuality as Presence.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30097 – 15.23.6.218

BN – X – D

It is a long way from the custom which satisfies religious need by attendance at church for an hour or two once a week, to the recollection which thirsts and hungers every moment anew.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30098 – 15.23.6.219

BN – Z

Whether he is leisurely at ease or actively at work, the practice of Remembrance can go on—the only difference between the two states being a difference of its intensity and vividness.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30099 – 15.23.6.220

BN – Z – D

The practice of Remembrance begins with an act of choice, since it throws out of the mind all that it conveniently can without interfering with the work or matter in hand.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30100 – 15.23.6.221

BN – Z – D

He is to keep the mind concentrated inwardly on the real self every wakeful moment until it will stay by itself in the real self. The aim is not to entertain a passing idea but to surrender to a habit which remains.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30101 – 15.23.6.222

BN – Z – D

The woman far advanced in pregnancy may be attending to household duties—may cook, sew, or wash most of the day—yet not at any moment will her mind be completely carried away from the infant she is bearing inside.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30102 – 15.23.6.223

BN – X – D

With his mind constantly reverting to the Overself (like a silent mantram) as the Reality to which he aspires, the inner work goes on.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30103 – 15.23.6.224

BN – X – D

It comes with time and practice, this ability to move at will from activity to meditation, from working or walking to stillness or worship.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30104 – 15.23.6.225

BN – X – D

How can he adjust his vision of eternity to living prosaically in the here and now? It is hard and, like many others, he will fail. But repeated effort, undaunted practice, comprehension of the Short Path may enable him to do so at last.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30105 – 15.23.6.226

BN – X – D

"Be with IT" is the best advice for those who can understand it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30106 – 15.23.6.227

BA12 – Z

Once you have caught this inner note in your experience of your own self-existence, try to adhere firmly to the listening attitude which catches it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30107 – 15.23.6.228

BN – X – D

Reminiscence—recollection by the mind of its own identity—is itself equal to a meditation.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30111 – 15.23.6.232

BA11 – Z – D

Every time he departs from the stillness there is needed a warning awareness. This does not easily or normally come by itself but by self-training, self-observation—"mindfulness," the Buddha called it. The feeling for it has to be persistently nurtured; first brought into being, then preserved at all hours of the day and in whatever surroundings he finds himself.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30113 – 15.23.6.234

BN – X – DEK

The Short Path not only requires him to turn his attention in the Overself's direction but also to maintain it there.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30114 – 15.23.6.235

BN – X – D

Be present at your thinking and breathing and feeling and doing. This is what the Buddha called 'mindfulness.' But the highest possible form of mindfulness is to be present with the Overself for, after all, the other four are concerned with the ego, even though they are attempts to free yourself from it; but here it concerns that which completely transcends the ego.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30115 – 15.23.6.236

UR_3.2 – ZZZ – DMK

The loving, adoring recollection of the Overself, the constant return to memory of it amid the world's distractions, the reiteration of this divine thought as a permanent background to all other thinking, is itself a yoga path. Indeed it is the same as that taught by Saint Paul when he wrote, "Pray without ceasing" and "Bring every thought into captivity to Jesus Christ".

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30116 – 15.23.6.237

B_11 – Z – D

The immediate task is to become increasingly aware of the Overself's presence, or, if you are working under a master, of the master's presence in your own heart.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30117 – 15.23.6.238

BN – X – DEK

When the naturalness of living fully in the Divine Presence while working in the world becomes a daily experience, the man will be living and existing at one and the same time on different levels.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30119 – 15.23.6.240

BN – Z – D

The successful philosopher is no dreamer: he keeps his practicality, his interest in world affairs, his willingness to accept responsibility, thus remaining an effective servant of mankind. But all this is done 'within' the Remembrance.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30121 – 15.23.6.242

BN – ZZZ – D

When activity of any kind, in work or in leisure, takes place in this atmosphere of remembrance, it becomes sacramental even though the ordinary observer may not know it.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30122 – 15.23.6.243

BN – Z – DK

To keep up this remembrance all the time, in all circumstances, requires practice and perseverance to an extent that seems beyond the ordinary. But they are actually within everyone's untapped resources and untouched reserves.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30123 – 15.23.6.244

BN – Z

In this way, and by this regular observance, he sets up gradually a new rhythm in his mental and emotional worlds, imposes little by little a new pattern on his behaviour.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30125 – 15.23.6.246

BN – Z

The continuous remembrance of the Overself as the unseen background upon which the personal panorama unfolds itself enables us to keep a proper perspective upon events and affords us the final cure of troublesome ills.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30127 – 15.23.6.248

BN – Z – D

Meditation should so develop that it becomes a constant attitude of recollectedness. The set exercises in concentration for short periods belong to the earlier stages and are intended simply to obtain mental control.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30128 – 15.23.6.249

BN – X – D

The goal is to remember the Overself without interruption and at all times.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30130 – 15.23.6.251

BN – Z – D

He must work unwearyingly at this task of self-recollection, for it is important that he shall not show spiritual-mindedness out merely because he has let business-mindedness in.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30131 – 15.23.6.252

BN – ZZ

He learns to look away from the ego and turn to the Overself. He keeps his thoughts as often as possible on the remembrance of the latter's infinite ever-presence. He keeps his heart occupied with the feelings of peace, faith, harmony, and freedom that this remembrance generates.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30133 – 15.23.6.254

BN – Z – D

This act of recollection requires no effort, no exercise of the power of will. It is an act of turning in, through and by the power of love, toward the source of being. Love redirects the attention and love keeps it concentrated, sustained, obedient.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30134 – 15.23.6.255

BN – X – D

He is wrong to object that you can't hold two different thoughts at the same time and that hence you can't remember God and attend to worldly details simultaneously. You can. God is not a thought, but an awareness on a higher level. Mind does not hold God. Certainly, mind can't have two objects of thought, for they are in duality, but they can be held by God's presence. Only here is the union of subject and object possible. All other thoughts are in duality.

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Remembrance exercise

#30135 – 15.23.6.256

BN – Z – K1

At this exalted stage, mind abides immersed in itself, not in its productions and functions.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30139 – 15.23.7.4

BN – Z

Meditation often leads to fatigue but contemplation never. The one takes strength from him, the other gives it to him.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30142 – 15.23.7.7

BN – Z – D

If meditation may have unfortunate results when its concentrative power is applied negatively or selfishly, contemplation—its higher phase—may have similar results when its passive condition is entered without previous purification or preparation. Miguel de Molinos knew this well and therefore put a warning in the preface of his book The Spiritual Guide which treats with the authority of an expert the subject of contemplation. "The doctrine of this book," he announced, "instructs not all sorts of persons, but those only who keep the senses and passions well mortified, who have already advanced and made progress in Prayer."

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30143 – 15.23.7.8

BN – X – K1

There is a single basic principle which runs like a thread through all these higher contemplation exercises. It is this: if we can desert the thoughts of particular things, the images of particular objects raised by the senses in the field of consciousness, and if we can do this with complete and intelligent understanding of what we are doing and why we are doing it, then such desertion will be followed by the appearance of its own accord of the element of pure undifferentiated Thought itself; the latter will be identified as our innermost self.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30144 – 15.23.7.9

BN – X – DK1*

Now an extraordinary and helpful fact is that by making Mind the object of our attention, not only does the serenity which is its nature begin to well up of its own accord but its steady unchanging character itself helps spontaneously to repel all disturbing thoughts.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30145 – 15.23.7.10

BN – X – DK1

In the third stage, contemplation, the mind ceases to think and simply, without words, worships loves and adores the Divine.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30147 – 15.23.7.12

BN – Z – DK1

To think about thinking leads the understanding towards the verge of its own source. To contemplate contemplation leads it directly into that source itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30149 – 15.23.7.14

BN – Z

Contemplation for an hour is better than formal worship for sixty years.—Muhammed

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30151 – 15.23.7.16

BN – Z

It is immaterial whether, for this purpose (meditation), an external object, an idea, a concept or nothingness, is focussed. It is a question of practising pure quiescence. The mere accumulation of force which absolute stillness brings with it creates an increase in one's power of concentration. It is unbelievable how important for our inner growth is a few minutes of conscious abstraction every morning.—Count Keyserling

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30152 – 15.23.7.17

BN – Z

In the profoundest state of contemplation, the thinking faculty may be entirely suspended. But awareness will not be suspended. Instead of being aware of the unending procession of varied images and emotions, there will be a single joyous serene and exalted consciousness of the true thought-transcending self.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30153 – 15.23.7.18

BN – X – D

He will find himself in the mind's deep silence, the heart's gentle stillness, reached after forsaking the ego's activity.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30154 – 15.23.7.19

BN – Z

To sit in the stainless silence, watchful yet passive, is the proper art of contemplation.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30159 – 15.23.7.24

BN – Z – D

During such meditations the place around may seem to be filled to overflowing with a sense of the divine presence.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30161 – 15.23.7.26

BN – X – D

What he finds so deeply within himself is neither a thought nor an emotion. It is a fused knowing-feeling.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30162 – 15.23.7.27

BN – ZZ – D

In this condition, with mind shifted away from sensory experience into a fixed self-absorption and stilled to the utmost degree, the meditator may be said to have mastered contemplation.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30164 – 15.23.7.29

BN – X – D

When the requisite preparatory instruction has been passed through, and when the mind lets thoughts go, lets objects go, lets the ego go, it comes to know itself, to perceive itself, to discover itself as Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30166 – 15.23.7.31

BN – ZZ – D

In that Stillness, far from the physical activities, emotional excitations, and mental changes of everyday life, "the awareness of awareness" becomes possible, the Mind itself is isolated. The real being of a human being is at last discovered and exhibited.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30167 – 15.23.7.32

BSG_4 – P – D

The mere absence of thoughts is not necessarily presence of Reality-Consciousness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30169 – 15.23.7.34

BN – Z

In that deep state the mind is at perfect equilibrium. The forces which ordinarily drive it into conflict or passion are thoroughly restrained.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30172 – 15.23.7.37

BN – Z

His consciousness, freed of thoughts, is then 'in itself', unmixed and unprojected.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30173 – 15.23.7.38

BN – Z

Those who know this method and can practise it successfully, know also the extraordinary change which comes over their whole being when the mind is stilled.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30174 – 15.23.7.39

BN – Z

When his thoughts are brought into a stilled condition and his awareness fully introverted, a state resembling sleep will supervene but, unlike sleep, it will be illumined by consciousness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30175 – 15.23.7.40

BN – X – D

In this state of "conscious sleep" there is no awareness of the physical body and no movement of thoughts succeeding one another. The Stillness alone reigns.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30176 – 15.23.7.41

BN – X – K

The resultant condition is no negative state. Those who imagine that the apparent blankness which ensues is similar to the blankness of the spiritualistic medium do not understand the process. The true mystic and the hapless medium are poles apart. The first is supremely positive; the second is supinely negative. Into the stilled consciousness of the first ultimately steps the glorious divinity that is our True Self, the world-embracing shining One; into the blanked-out consciousness of the second steps some insignificant person, as stupid or as sensible as he was on earth, but barely more; or worse, there comes one of those dark and malignant entities who prey upon human souls, who will drag the unfortunate medium into depths of falsehood and vice, or obsess her to the point of suicide.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30178 – 15.23.7.43

BN – Z – K1

It is not a dreamy or drowsy state. He is more lucidly and vitally conscious than ever before.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30179 – 15.23.7.44

BN – Z – DK1

It is not just ceasing to think, although it prerequires that, but something more: it is also a positive alertness to the Divine Presence.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30180 – 15.23.7.45

BN – Z – DK1

This last stage, contemplation, is neither deep reflective thinking nor self-hypnotic trance. It is intense awareness, without the intrusion of the little ego or the large world. In this state the thought-making activity comes to an end, the intellect itself is absorbed in the still centre of being, and a luminous peace enfolds the man.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30181M – 15.23.7.46

BA11 – P – DX

This last stage, contemplation, is neither deep reflective thinking nor self-hypnotic trance. It is intense awareness, without the intrusion of the little ego or the large world.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30181 – 15.23.7.46

BN – Z – DK1

In this strange experience he seems to be doing nothing at all, to be mentally quite inactive, all his forces having reached a full stop. Yet the Overself is intensely active.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30183 – 15.23.7.48

BA11 – P – D

When he is settled down in this final stage, his mind takes on a diamond-like quality—hard and unchangeable in its identification with its deepest layer, bright and positive in its radiation.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30184 – 15.23.7.49

BN – X – D

The stillness is not a cold one: it is living, radiant.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30185 – 15.23.7.50

BN – Z – K

The ever-shifting intellect has at last been established in the eternal stillness of the soul that now dominates it; the leaping mercury has been solidified and the alchemical instrument prepared wherewith human base metal can be turned into spiritual gold, immune to the corrosive acids of earthly experience.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30186 – 15.23.7.51

BN – Z

There are definite stages which mark his progress. First he forgets the larger world, then his immediate surroundings, then his body, and finally his ego.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30187 – 15.23.7.52

BN – ZZ – D

The differences between the first and second stages [concentration and meditation, respectively—ed.] are: (a) in the first there is no effort to understand the subject or object upon which attention rests, whereas in the second there is; (b) concentration may be directed to any physical thing or mental idea, whereas meditation must be directed to thinking about a spiritual theme either logically or imaginatively. >>In the third stage [contemplation—ed.] this theme pervades the mind so completely that the thinking activity ceases, the thoughts and fancies vanish. The meditator and his theme are then united; it is no longer separate from him. Both merge into a single consciousness. To shut off all thoughts and things, even all sense of a separate personal existence, and rest in contemplation of the One Infinite Life-Power out of which he has emerged, is the goal and end of the third stage.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30188E – 15.23.7.53

BN – EL1/2

To shut off all perceptions of the outer world, all physical sense-activities of seeing hearing and touching, is the goal and end of the first stage [concentration]. It is achieved when concentration on one subject or object is fully achieved. To shut off all movements of the inner world, all mental activities of thinking, reasoning, and imagining, is the goal and end of the second stage. It is achieved when the subject or object pervades awareness so completely that the meditator forgets himself and thus forgets even to think about it: he is it [meditation]. To shut off all thoughts and things, even all sense of a separate personal existence, and rest in contemplation of the One Infinite Life-Power out of which he has emerged, is the goal and end of the third stage [contemplation].

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30188E – 15.23.7.53

BN – EL2/2

This withdrawal of attention from the immediate environment which occurs when deeply immersed in thought, looking at the distant part of a landscape, or raptly listening to inspired music, is the "I" coming closer to its innermost nature. At the deepest level of this experience, the ego-thought vanishes and "I-myself" becomes merged in the impersonal Consciousness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30192D – 15.23.7.57

BSG_4 – P – D

The third stage [Contemplation] is successfully reached when he forgets the world outside, when he neither sees nor touches it, neither hears nor smells it with his body, when memory and personality dissolve in a vacuum as the attention is wholly and utterly absorbed in the thought of, and identity with, the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Contemplative Stillness

#30193 – 15.23.7.58

BN – X – D

The lines of the face become somewhat rigid, the eyes mostly or wholly closed, as he retires into himself and into abstraction from this world. That which draws him magnetically through noisy thoughts to the state of silent thoughtlessness is none other than the soul itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30197 – 15.23.7.62

BN – X – D

At this point he may lose touch with the outer world and no longer see or sense it in any way. The consciousness sinks away from place and form, the passing of time and the solidity of matter, into its own being.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30200 – 15.23.7.65

BN – X – D

The world is more and more shut off as his concentrated attention moves inward until it vanishes altogether. It is then that he may become aware of his unknown "soul" and its peace.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30201 – 15.23.7.66

BN – Z – D

The deepest meditation takes the meditator to a completely different level of consciousness. It causes him to drop all thoughts about the world and especially about himself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30203 – 15.23.7.68

BN – X – D

This feeling of extreme lightness, of entire independence from the body, may grow to such an extreme point of intensity that the idea of being actually levitated into the air may take hold of his mind. He is in such a state that inner reality is confused with physical reality.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30205 – 15.23.7.70

BN – Z

In that deeper state when the body is held still with concentration, the mind paradoxically feels most liberated.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30207 – 15.23.7.72

BN – Z

There will be no sensation of weight in his physical body and a light airy feeling will replace it. It will also seem as though a heavy inner body has fallen away from him, leaving an ethereal detachment, a delightful liberation, as a result.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30210 – 15.23.7.75

BN – Z

If the consciousness has not previously been prepared, by competent instruction or intuitive understanding, to receive this experience, then the passage out of the body will begin with a delightful sense of dawning liberation but end with a frightful sense of dangerous catastrophe. Both knowledge and courage are needed here, otherwise there will be resistance to the process followed by an abrupt breaking away from it altogether.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30212 – 15.23.7.77

BN – Z – DK1

Consciousness is withdrawn from the senses and nervous system, even life itself is largely withdrawn from the heart and lungs, until the man himself is centered in the higher self.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30213 – 15.23.7.78

BN – Z

There are stories of Socrates in the Grecian wars and of a nameless yogi in the Indian mutiny, absorbed in such deep contemplation that neither the noise and tumult nor the violence and strife of battle were enough to break it. Each remained bodily still and mentally serene for hours.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30215 – 15.23.7.80

BN – X – D

Saint Teresa writes about what she terms "the trance of union": "As to the body, if the rapture comes on when it is standing or kneeling, it remains so." If, when starting the meditation period, you are suddenly transfixed with the stillness or if it occurs during non-meditation times, remain in the place and attitude as you are. Do not move—or you break the spell. It is then irrecoverable. Never resist this "possession." Obviously this is possible only if alone.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30216 – 15.23.7.81

BN – Z