These three cosmic forces—Attraction, Repulsion, and Rest—constitute the triune manifestation of the World-Idea. You will find them in every department of existence.

World-Idea > Polarities, Complementaries, Dualities of The Universe > Cyclic unfoldment, reversal

#33545 – 16.26.3.87

BN – Z – K1

Infinite Mind releases from within itself an infinite variety of suns, stars, planets, substances, plants, and creatures. Even the process itself is an infinite one, countered only by necessary dissolutions and destructions, pauses and rests. Even universes get old and die off. All that is released into manifestation is subject to this perpetual law of movement and change, growth, decay, death, reappearance, and recurrence.

World-Idea > Polarities, Complementaries, Dualities of The Universe > Cyclic unfoldment, reversal

#33556 – 16.26.3.98

BN – X – D

The course taken by each life-entity in its slow development is neither straight nor direct, but a winding one, going forward and backward upward and downward, curved like a series of interwoven spirals.

World-Idea > Polarities, Complementaries, Dualities of The Universe > Spiral movement of universal flux

#33600 – 16.26.3.142

BN – Z – K1

Why should the waves of life-entities take this spiral-like two-way course? Why do they not go along a direct single one? The answer is that they have to gather experience to grow; if this experience includes totally opposed conditions, all the parts of each entity can grow, all its latent qualities can be stirred into unfoldment. In the oppositions of birth and death, growth and decay, in-breathing and exhaling, youth and age, joy and suffering, introversion and extroversion, spirit-form and body-form, it fulfils itself.

World-Idea > Polarities, Complementaries, Dualities of The Universe > Spiral movement of universal flux

#33601 – 16.26.3.143

BN – Z – K1

The idea of man which exists in and is eternally known by the World-Mind is a master-idea.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33608 – 16.26.4.2

BN – X – K1

When we can learn what the true worth of man is and wherein lies his real salvation, we shall learn the most practical of all things. For this, more than anything else, will show us how to live on earth peacefully, prosperously, healthily, and usefully.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33609 – 16.26.4.3

BN – X – D

Against this immense cosmic background, we may see the paltriness of human pride, the ridiculousness of human conceit.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33618 – 16.26.4.12

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

Although it is not possible to offer irrefutable scientific proof of the doctrine of spiritual evolution, it can be shown to be as reasonable a doctrine as any of its rivals. And for those who have had mystical experience of the divine presence behind the mind, of divine wisdom behind the cosmos, it is the only acceptable doctrine.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33619 – 16.26.4.13

BN – X – D

No living creature in the kingdom of animals knows more than its immediate surroundings or cares for more than the sustenance of its immediate existence. It lives in an immense and varied universe but that fact is lost to its mentality and outside its interest. Only when the evolving entity attains the stage of developed human beings does this unconsciousness disappear. Then life takes on a larger meaning and the life-force becomes aware of itself, individualized, self-conscious. Only then does a higher purpose become possible and apparent.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33632 – 16.26.4.26

BN – ZZZ – DK1

No animal has the capacity to get outside itself and to perceive itself quite impersonally. Some humans do have it and more will have it as they develop their potentialities.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33637 – 16.26.4.31

BN – X – D

A self-conscious creature is one that not only knows its own individual feelings and thoughts, its own mind, but can also reflect upon them. The animal has not reached this stage but the human has.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33638 – 16.26.4.32

BN – X – DK

Yes, let it be admitted that man moves and acts with an animal body but let it not be forgotten that he thinks with a human brain and feels with a heart capable of responding to calls for charity. More, there is something in him which aspires to spirituality.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33642 – 16.26.4.36

BN – X – D

The mineral, the plant, and the animal have the infinite Life-Power within them, too, but they do not know that they have it. Man alone can know his own divinity. Indeed he is not truly a man until he has known it.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33644 – 16.26.4.38

BN – Z – DEK

The animal's active possibilities are limited to eating, drinking, sex, and obedience to, or service of, human masters. It has no cultural possibilities, no aesthetic faculty or artistic appreciation, no intellectual development. But the highest possibility which separates man from beast is attainment of insight into truth, experience of his divine source.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33646 – 16.26.4.40

BN – Z – DEK

All animals must reincarnate but men may take to the Quest and with time stop the process.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33647 – 16.26.4.41

BN – X – DK

A tension holds all things in equilibrium between coming together of their elements, temporary maintenance of their forms, and passing away into dissolution. This includes the mineral, the plant, the animal, and the human. But when we look at the last-named, a new possibility opens up which could not have happened to Nature's earlier kingdoms. All things dissolve in the end, I wrote, but man alone dissolves consciously into a higher Consciousness.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33648 – 16.26.4.42

BN – Z – DEK1

We are not just higher animals and nothing more but are possessed of something that the other animals do not possess—a self-consciousness which can be developed until it matures into a thinking power as well as a totally superior kind of awareness—that of the Overself.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33649 – 16.26.4.43

BN – X – D

A human life presents the only opportunity for attaining the realization of Overself. It ought not to be taken away from any man, however evil he may be, and however remote from this goal, in punishment for his crime.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33650 – 16.26.4.44

BN – X – DK

It is questionable whether the advantages of being a human creature are outweighed by the disadvantages. The Buddhists think they are, the Epicureans think they are not, but the Vedantins think man is an immensely fortunate creature. Why? Simply because he may use his human faculties to transcend his present level and, as they call it, "realize himself."

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33652 – 16.26.4.46

BN – Z – DEK

If man walks upright, and most of the animals do not, it is because this upright posture is symbolic of his gradual progression into ruling his animal body and animal nature.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33654 – 16.26.4.48

BN – X – D

We cannot separate the importance of the body from the importance of the mind. We are animals in one part of our nature, human beings in the second part, and sometimes angelic in the third part. All make one creature. We learn what our bodies are through the physical senses. We learn a part of what the mind is through our thoughts. We learn still more about the mind's deeper phases through our non-thoughts—that is, intuitions.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33660 – 16.26.4.54

BN – X – DEK

Such is the triple nature of man―a lower self of animal instincts, a middle self of human thoughts, a higher self of divine nature.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33661 – 16.26.4.55

BSG_4 – Z – DK

We may well wonder how animal lust, human cunning, and angelic nobility can come to be mingled in a single entity. That indeed is the mystery of man.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Man more than animal

#33662 – 16.26.4.56

BN – X – D

The ideas in a man's mind are hidden and secret until he expresses them through actions, or as speech, or as the visible creations and productions of his hands, or in behaviour generally. Those ideas are neither lost nor destroyed. They are a permanent part of the man's memory and character and consciousness and subconsciousness, where they have been recorded as automatically and as durably as a master phonograph disc records music. Just as a wax copy may be burnt but the music will still live on in the master disc, so the cosmos may be annihilated or disintegrate completely but the creative idea of it will still live on in the World-Mind. More, in the same way a man's body may die and disintegrate, but the creative idea of him will still remain in the World-Mind as his Soul. It will not die. It's his real Self, his perfect Self. It is the true Idea of him which is forever calling to be realized. It is the unmanifest image of God in which man is made and which he has yet to bring into manifestation in his everyday consciousness.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Divine essense of Man

#33669 – 16.26.4.63

BN – Z – DEK1

Human beings are what they are. Nothing can alter that. Out of the immortal, benign, eternal Mind they came, to It they shall return. Meanwhile It is their very essence, that is, It is life.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Divine essense of Man

#33674 – 16.26.4.68

BN – ZZZ – DEK

Though it seems entirely our own faculty, this thought-making power is derived from a hidden one, the Universal Mind, in which all other men's minds lie embedded. What he does with this power is a man's own concern, for better or worse, yielding him more knowledge or more ignorance.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Divine essense of Man

#33678 – 16.26.4.72

BN – X – K1

The man who, according to the Bible, is made in the image of God is not the earthly man, visible to all and speaking in a voice that sounds in physical ears. He is to be found in the deep centre of consciousness, where there is only a Void, and he speaks in silence to the attentive mind, not to other persons.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Divine essense of Man

#33679 – 16.26.4.73

BN – X – D

The man that is made in the image of God is not physical man or desire-filled man or thought-breeding man but he who dwells behind all these—silent, serene, and unnoticed.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Divine essense of Man

#33680 – 16.26.4.74

BN – ZZ – DK1

If we do not know the "why" of universal existence, we do know the "why" of human existence. It provides the field of experience for discovering the divine soul. The integral quest which ends in this discovery is, consequently, the greatest and most important of human undertakings.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33688 – 16.26.4.82

BA11 – ZZ – DK

There is something which he can and must know in order to fulfil himself, but it is not a piling-up of numbered facts; it is nothing other than his relation to the source of the cosmos.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33689E – 16.26.4.83

BA12 – ZZ – *DME

Man's experience is so limited and his mental equipment so small that his attempt to understand the universe would seem impertinent were it not for the assurance of great prophets and seers that where intellect and sense fail, intuition succeeds.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33690 – 16.26.4.84

BN – X – D

If human life has any higher purpose, it is that the human ego should find its way back to that harmony with the Overself which has become disturbed but never disrupted.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33692 – 16.26.4.86

BN – ZZZ – DK

We must all give life what it demands from the human—that it shall seek to transcend its present state, that is, transcend itself in the end. For life as we know it is only one expression of the World-Idea, the inexorable will of the World-Mind.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33693 – 16.26.4.87

BN – Z – DEK

Everywhere in the advanced countries specialists, experts, and scientists are seeking more knowledge of the human body and its world or are applying this knowledge to practical use. Yet the highest work in which intellectual power can engage is to seek the reason for human existence. This will lead it to discover, and bow before, the World-Mind.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33694 – 16.26.4.88

BN – ZZ – DEK

The goal of life is to be consciously united with Life.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33696 – 16.26.4.90

BN – Z – DK1

Man's need is twofold: recollection of his divine nature and redemption from his earthly nature.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33697 – 16.26.4.91

BN – X – D

If it be asked whether there is any purpose in life, the answer must be "Yes!—to perfect ourselves and know ourselves; to find the happiness which comes as a fruit of such fulfilment".

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33698 – 16.26.4.92

BA11 – ZZ – DK

Attaining to our manhood is good chiefly as it provides us with the chance, during subsequent years, of attaining to our higher selfhood.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33699 – 16.26.4.93

BN – X – D

The higher purpose of existence is to advance man until he can live in the awareness of his divine selfhood.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33700 – 16.26.4.94

BT1008 – P – D

There is an orderly structure in the universe and an orderly pattern in the lives of its creatures. If everything else is governed by laws, why not the growth of man's spirituality?

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33704 – 16.26.4.98

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

You are part of the World-Mind's World-Idea. Therefore, you are a part of its purpose too. Seek to be shown what that is, and how you may realize it, rather than mope in misery, frustration, or fear. Look upon your situation—personal, domestic, career, mental, emotional, spiritual—as having significance within that purpose, as teaching you some specific lesson or telling you what to do or not to do.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33707 – 16.26.4.101

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

It is nonsense to say that any man is alone in his trouble. He is in the great World-Idea, part of it, belonging to it, sustained by it.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33708 – 16.26.4.102

BA11 – ZZ – DK

Every person is unconsciously trying to fulfil a higher purpose set for him by the Overself, and all the purposes fit together and combine to form a part of the World-Idea.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33711 – 16.26.4.105

BN – Z – DEK

How old is the series of experiences through which we moved unknowingly towards our present evolutionary position! How lofty is the level toward which we have yet to climb!

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33715E – 16.26.4.109

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK

Every man is offered a chance to live again, not once but as many times as will bring him to his diviner being and establish him in that. Human existence is a kind of bewitchment; we experience what we are made to experience. All is simply the expression of the World-Idea—that is, of God's will—but we share in the making, participate in the divine ideation.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33718 – 16.26.4.112

BA11 – zz – DEK

The World-Idea's end is foreordained from the beginning. This leaves no ultimate personal choice. But there's a measure of free will in a single direction—how soon or how late that divine end is accomplished. The time element has not been ordered, the direction has.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Purpose of human life

#33721 – 16.26.4.115

BA11 – ZZ – DMK1

When one is allowed a glimpse of the World-Idea, he feels that he understands at last why he came here, what he has to do, and where his place is. It is like an immense enlargement of the mind, an escape from the littleness of the ego, and a finding-out of a long-hidden secret.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Glimpsing the World-Idea

#33727 – 16.26.4.121

BSG_5 – P – D

He has come to the inner sight of the World-Idea's meaning for him: that he is to use the human self to lift his nature up from the animal one, and that he is to put himself at the service of his angelic, his best, self, to lift his nature up from the ordinary human. In this way he co-operates with the World-Idea. This is the use he is to make of his life on earth: his personal life, his family relations, his professional career—all must become subject to the higher purpose. The resolve made, the matter of success or failure is no longer urgent, for every subsequent embodiment will point in this direction. Philosophy has instructed him in the unreality of time and has revealed to him his indissoluble connection with the Overself. All this was seen by the sages long ago and symbolized by them in the Sphinx and the Pyramid.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Glimpsing the World-Idea

#33729 – 16.26.4.123

BN – ZZ – DEK

We see that life is encircled by a great Being, that the Mind behind the universe—although so still and uncommunicative and, apparently, unconcerned—is in reality sending its messages in varied ways all the time.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Glimpsing the World-Idea

#33730 – 16.26.4.124

UR_2.2 – Z – K

In those divinely captured moments when ego is loosened and Overself is present in awareness, the amazing pattern of the World-Idea shines clearly.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Glimpsing the World-Idea

#33735 – 16.26.4.129

BN – X – D

What they may expect to find with intellect at most is the slow uncovering of little fragments of the World-Idea: but with intuition the subtler meanings and larger patterns are possible. These include but also transcend the physical plane. A few fated persons, whose mission is revelation, are granted once in a lifetime the Cosmic Vision.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Glimpsing the World-Idea

#33742 – 16.26.4.136

BN – X – K1

Only to the extent that he unites his own little purpose with the universal purpose can he find harmony and happiness. Its strength will support him firmly in adversity and misfortune, as it will carry him triumphantly through misery and hostility.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Co-operating with the World-Idea

#33746 – 16.26.4.140

BN – X – D

The more one learns about the World-Idea, the more one wonders at it. To go farther and co-operate with it is to find peace.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Co-operating with the World-Idea

#33748 – 16.26.4.142

BA11 – ZZ – DK

If Nature keeps her lips inexorably shut to the questions of those who abuse her, she graciously opens them in perfect response to those who ask with a quieted, co-operative and harmonious ego.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Co-operating with the World-Idea

#33751 – 16.26.4.145

BN – Z – K1

We can be co-workers with the World-Mind only to the extent that we withdraw from our ego. Then only are we able to receive correctly the wonderful revelation of the world's meaning and laws, so that we can participate intelligently and lovingly.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Co-operating with the World-Idea

#33752 – 16.26.4.146

BN – X – D

When he sees the meaning of life, he cannot help but give it his acceptance. Circumstances previously rebelled against now fit into a reasonable place in the pattern of things.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Co-operating with the World-Idea

#33753 – 16.26.4.147

UR_0 – ZZZ – DK

All spiritual study is incomplete if it ignores the facts, truths, laws, and principles of cosmogony. To attempt to justify this neglect with the accusation that they belong to the world of illusion is silly and useless. For the accuser must still continue to live in an illusory body and use an illusory self governed by those laws. After every such attempt and for each violation of those laws—upon which the order and harmony of the universe depend—which his neglect brings about, he must pay the penalty in suffering.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Co-operating with the World-Idea

#33767 – 16.26.4.161

B_17 – Z – K1

It must be remembered that these higher laws are established throughout the cosmos, not merely in our part of it; that this higher truth can never undergo any alteration in itself, whatever way different men of insight may speak about it; that we human beings have the privilege, when purified, of partaking in the real holy communion which alone fulfils our highest prayers.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Co-operating with the World-Idea

#33770 – 16.26.4.164

BN – X – DEK

Learning what these cosmic laws are and trying to live in obedience to them is the only way whereby humanity can do what is best for itself. It will have to come to such obedience through the lessons of experience and cannot escape it.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Co-operating with the World-Idea

#33773 – 16.26.4.167

BN – X – D

It is no truer message than this: "Seek for the divine within yourself, return to it every day, learn how to continue in it and finally 'be' it".

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Co-operating with the World-Idea

#33776E – 16.26.4.170

BA12 – ZZ – DEK

The concept of the Overself is foundational. It provides meaning for life. It is no truer message than this: "seek for the divine within yourself, return to it every day, learn how to continue in it and finally 'be' it."

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Co-operating with the World-Idea

#33776EM – 16.26.4.170

B_01 – ZZZ – DXK

The forces which move men and bring about events are not always to be found by rational analysis. There is another factor present which eludes such analysis. It may be called the evolutionary intent of the World-Mind.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33777 – 16.26.4.171

BN – X – D

All things and beings flow forth from the illimitable Power, all derive their consciousness from It. Nor may we stop with this acknowledgment. For they derive whatsoever they have of intelligence from It, too. Is it not a grand thought, full of promise and hope, that in the gradual progression of this intelligence from minute cells to celestial beings, it passes upward through man, enabling him in time to attain and know his own Divinity?

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33778 – 16.26.4.172

BN – X – D

To say that man is unconsciously seeking God, or rather his Higher Self, is the truth. To say that God is seeking man is an error based upon a truth. This truth is that in the divine idea of the universe, the evolutionary development of life-cells will bring them slowly up to an awareness of the diviner level; but the Higher Self, having no desire and no emotions, cannot be said to be seeking anything. Indeed, the evolutionary pattern being what it is, there is no need for it to seek, as the development of all beings from primitive amoeba to perfect spiritual consciousness is assured.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33780 – 16.26.4.174

BN – Z – DEK1

The development of all beings from primitive amoeba to perfect spiritual consciousness is assured.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33780E – 16.26.4.174

BT1008 – ZZZ – DEK

We may call it evolution if we wish but the actuality is not quite the same. The universe is being guided to follow the World-Idea—this is the essence of what is happening.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33781 – 16.26.4.175

BN – Z – DK1

Because mind is the basal reality, all this majestic progression is nothing else than an evolution from lower to higher forms of intelligence and consciousness.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33783 – 16.26.4.177

BN – X – D

We must begin by recognizing that this planet exists for a specific purpose and that the evolution of all creatures upon it is part of that purpose.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33786 – 16.26.4.180

BN – ZZ – DK

This earth, with the varied experiences of good and evil, joy and suffering, peace, and peril which it offers us, is a school of initiation.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33787E – 16.26.4.181

BSG_4 – P – DE

The world exists for the training of ever-ascending living things—from their early start as protoplasmic cells to their later development as human beings.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33788 – 16.26.4.182

BN – X – D

The world does not exist solely for the benefit of the human species. It is a means of development and expression for all kinds of creatures, a development in which the humans share so largely.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33789E – 16.26.4.183

BN – X – DEK

The differences in consciousness between an amoeba, an insect, an animal, and a human represent a line of growth.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33791 – 16.26.4.185

BN – X – D

Everything that has feeling or awareness, however dim, is capable of developing to higher and higher forms of existence. But only when it is individuated and attains the human form does it fulfil its possibilities.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33794 – 16.26.4.188

BN – X – D

The nature and functions of man are reflected in miniature in the cells which compose his body, while he himself reflects those of the Universal Mind in which he is similar to the cell.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33797 – 16.26.4.191

BN – X – D

There is not one cell in the whole organism of man which does not reflect in miniature the pattern, the proportions, and the functions of the immense cosmos itself.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33798 – 16.26.4.192

BA11 – ZZZ – DK1

There are different stages in the development of people: some stand on the lower, some on the higher ones—and others fill in the space between. There is no equality among human beings, in character or manners, in intelligence or intuitiveness. Those who resent this fact may deny it, thereby revealing their incapacity for understanding truth. Exploitation of the lower types by the higher ones has bred the resentment, and this in turn has blinded the eyes or the mind.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33807 – 16.26.4.201

BN – Z – DEK

It is significant that animals tend to live in herds. As man matures, he reaches more and more individuality.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33811 – 16.26.4.205

BN – X – D

Slowly, at times pleasurably and at times painfully, the human entity builds up its consciousness and capacities through the ages.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33812 – 16.26.4.206

BN – X – D

There is no choice in the matter, ultimately, although there is immediately. The entire human race will have to traverse the course chalked out for it, will have to develop the finer feelings, the concrete intellect, the abstract intellect, the balance between the different sides. If men do not seek to do so now, it is only a question of time before they will be forced to do so later.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33820 – 16.26.4.214

BN – Z – DK1

Man will be redeemed and saved. This is not mere pious wishful thinking but ineluctable destiny. The divine World-Idea could not be realized if this redemption and this salvation were not eventually possible and inescapably certain.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33821 – 16.26.4.215

BT1008 – P – D

It is easier to transform a wilderness into a garden flourishing with plants and flowers than to transform humanity into a spiritual race. But time and life, evolution and experience will all combine to do it. The movement up to higher levels will be slow and painful, the maturation of human character retarded and halting, but they will be sure because they are written in the fate of man.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33822 – 16.26.4.216

BT1008 – P – D

Set, in the Egyptian religion, was the Destroyer, the leader of the powers of darkness, the opposer of Life and the adversary of aspiring man; hence he was turned into Satan by the Christians, into Shai’tan by the Israelites. But just as Set was defeated in the end, his power broken and his submission as a penitent accepted, so man, the prodigal son, will return and will be saved, despite his sins. The covenant has been made: there is ultimate hope for all.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33823 – 16.26.4.217

BN – Z – DK

The World-Idea is operative on every level. It invites savage humans to outwit their fellow animals by beginning to use brain-power through arrows, slings, and primitive traps; at a higher level to compete with fellow humans and rise economically and socially by using the same power; at a still higher level to reduce sufferings and self-made miseries by practising control over self and avoidance of injury to others; then, at a still higher level, to discover and nurture their spiritual nature.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33824 – 16.26.4.218

BN – X – D

As the two interact—the human purpose and the World-Idea—each man slowly unfolds his intelligence, which is the fusion of intellect with intuition, and this culminates in Enlightenment, the ultimate and revelatory Insight.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33826 – 16.26.4.220

BN – ZZ – DMK

The movement upward from the ego's "me" to the real "I" consciousness is as sure as the movement of the planets themselves.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33827 – 16.26.4.221

BT1008 – Z – DK*

Humanity will within a certain time—not in our time—humbly submit as it once did in prehistoric times to rulers guided by true sages and adopt the higher forms of government inspired by the true facts of life. Philosophers will then be not merely the witnesses of their age but also its activators. Then only will humanity at last prevent outer war, even though its own moral nature will still need much more growth. With that recognition, Nature herself will grow kindlier and the area of other forms of human suffering will diminish noticeably.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33837 – 16.26.4.231

BN – X – D

Even though we reach a higher kind of civilization one day, human differences will continue to express themselves.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33838 – 16.26.4.232

BN – X – D

Nobler and wiser types of humanity, standing at loftier altitudes of consciousness, will begin to emerge from the mass. If they are all too few today, they will be more numerous tomorrow.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33839 – 16.26.4.233

BN – X – D

The waves of life have moved across other planets before arriving on this earth and, when this has outserved its usefulness, will move on again.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33841 – 16.26.4.235

BN – X – D

The inhabitants of each planet belong to different stages of evolution: some higher and some lower. This applies not only to the human inhabitants but also to the animal and even the plant inhabitants. They pass in great waves from one planet to another at certain stages of this evolution, going where they can find the most appropriate conditions either for expression of their present stage or for the stimulation of their next immediate stage. Consequently the stragglers and laggards who fall behind pass to a planet where the conditions are of a lower nature, for there they are more at home. On the other hand, the pioneers who have outstripped the mass and can find no conditions suitable for their further development pass to a planet in a higher stage.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33842 – 16.26.4.236

BN – ZZ – DK1

The notion that God created this world spectacle for the benefit of man alone is an absurd and unwarranted anthropolatry, but the notion that life first attains individual self-consciousness in man is justified in philosophy and by experience. What is it of which he alone is conscious? It is of being himself, his ego. In all earlier stages of evolution, consciousness is entirely veiled in its forms and never becomes self-aware. Only in the human state does individual consciousness of being first dawn. There may exist on other planets creatures infinitely more intelligent and more amiable than human beings. We may not be the only pebbles on the beach of life. Nevertheless the piece of arrogance which places man highest in the scale of existence contains the dim reverberation of a great truth, for man bears the divine within his breast.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33843 – 16.26.4.237

BN – X – DEK1

Human beings have made too much fuss about themselves, their own importance in the cosmic scale. Why should there not be other forms of life superior to them, conscious intelligent beings higher in mentality, character, and spiritual knowledge, better equipped with powers and techniques?

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33844 – 16.26.4.238

BN – Z – DK1

There are existences for beings on levels and in times and spaces different from ours. The level we know and the humans we see only partially manifest the World-Idea.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33846 – 16.26.4.240

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

There are beings not subject to the same laws as those governing mankind's physical existence. They are normally not visible to men. They are gods.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33848 – 16.26.4.242

BN – Z – DK1

The Gods are both symbols of particular forces and beings dwelling on higher planes.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > World-Idea guides evolution

#33849 – 16.26.4.243

BN – Z – K1

The human entity has travelled through joy and suffering, experienced birth and death, experimented with good and evil for the very purpose of becoming a fully conscious entity. How then could annihilation—Vedantic or any other kind—be its ultimate fate?

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33851 – 16.26.4.245

BN – X – D

We have not come from oblivion. All our past is present in our characters, capacities, and tendencies; therefore, we shall not go into oblivion. There is no death―only a change of state.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33853 – 16.26.4.247

BSG_4 – P – D

His destination is also his origin. But to say that he was born in the eternal Spirit starts the question, ”How can time, which is placed outside eternity, bring him to eternity?” The answer is that it does not bring him there; it only educates him to look for, and prepares him to pass through, the opening through which he can escape. Need it be said that this lies at the point where ego surrenders wholly to Overself?

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33855D – 16.26.4.249

BN – ZZ – DK

The Goal towards which human being is slowly travelling by successive steps is a threefold one: the fully developed environment, the fully developed intelligence, and the realized Soul. The last is the best and the other two are but servants of it, for here we come first to a comprehension and then to a realization of ourselves. Yes, we are on our way to the grand awakening into full Self-consciousness.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33856 – 16.26.4.250

BSG_4 – ZZZ – DK

All this vast evolution of environments and their entities has but one ultimate aim from man’s point of view and so far as he is concerned. It is to bring him into a miniature likeness to his divine Parent, to make him into an image of godlike beauty, power, wisdom, and being.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33857 – 16.26.4.251

BN – Z – DK

The process of human evolution serves a twofold purpose. The first is to develop the physical, emotional, and intellectual characteristics. The second is to lead the individual to enquire into, and become fully conscious of, his divine origin.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33859 – 16.26.4.253

BN – ZZ – DK

The journey of life is both an adventure and a pilgrimage to our essential being. All the reincarnations which are necessary to the unfoldment of our character and capacities must be lived through. We pass from body to body to collect experience. The fruit of experience is Enlightenment: the established awareness of the essential being's presence, the Overself or soul. The aspirant must take heart that one day the goal will be reached, even if there were no law of evolution to confirm it—as there is.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33860M – 16.26.4.254

B_01 – ZZZ – DXK

We are here in this world for a Higher Purpose than the obvious physical one of self-preservation, for even that is contributory to it. We are here to evolve into the consciousness of Overself. Every physical experience is only a means toward such spiritual development.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33861 – 16.26.4.255

B_01 – ZZZ – DK

The highest form is hidden away in the lowest one. There is development from the blindly instinctive life of animals to the consciously thinking life of man. The blind instinctive struggles of the plant to sustain itself are displaced in the evolutionary process by the intelligent self-conscious efforts of the man.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33863E – 16.26.4.257

BT1008 – P – DEK

But because causation is shown to be illusory, and the cosmos uncreated and unending, this does not mean that our cosmology denies the truth of evolution. It denies only the conventional attitude towards evolution. For it takes all change and hence all progress out of the realm of ultimate reality and relegates them to where they belong, to the realm of immediate appearance.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33865 – 16.26.4.259

UR_2.2 – ZZ – K

We murmur against the world's obstructiveness to our aspirations: the body is our stumbling-block. Yet if we had to live always as disembodied spirits, our spiritual development would need an immeasurably longer time to accomplish itself. The sharper focus of physical consciousness quickens our pace.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33869 – 16.26.4.263

BN – ZZ – DK

Man, in his earlier phases of being, was connected with the Overself and aware of it. But his connection lacked his own control. Eventually, to fulfil the purpose of evolution, he lost this connection and with it his awareness. Now he has to regain the connection and reawaken this awareness by his own efforts and out of his own inner activity, through his own desiring and in his own individual freedom. What has he gained by this change to compensate the loss? His consciousness has become more sharply focused and consequently more clearly aware.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33870 – 16.26.4.264

BN – ZZZ – DK

Our source is in the Overself; our growth is but a return to it, made fully conscious as we were not before.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33871 – 16.26.4.265

BN – ZZZ – DK

The immediate purpose of human incarnation and evolution is to develop a true and full self-consciousness at all levels from the lowest to the highest. The man who does not know himself beyond the physical intellectual ego is still only half-conscious.

World-Idea > True Idea of Man > Evolution's goal is not merger

#33872 – 16.26.4.266

B_01 – ZZ – DMK

If anyone wishes to call World-Mind the Lord of the Universe, he will not be wrong; but then if someone else wishes to assert that World-Mind cannot be a Personal God, neither will he be wrong. Is there any possible reconciliation of these two views? Yes, for in both cases these are only mental formulations, and it is impossible to describe God positively, accurately in intellectual terms. All mental concepts of God have to be discarded in the end. No dogmatic statement can hold the truth 'as it is': we merely get from the statement something to satisfy the intellect. For the Real is ineffable, that is, undescribable and untouchable by the ordinary finite capacity of humans. But because there is something godlike, somewhere, in man, intuition may reveal it.

World-Mind > World-Mind > World-Mind

#33876 – 16.27.0.2

BN – Z – DEK

If by God you mean something higher than mere material existence, then we do not deny God. It is the false notions of God that we deny, the grotesque caricatures that appear in churches and temples and sermons and books. We look on this higher Reality as something not afar off from the essence of our own selves. We have discovered that the common everyday life does not exhaust the alphabet of existence, that there is something sublime beyond it and yet akin to us. We do honour and revere such a God, if you wish to call It such, because we believe It to be the true God.

World-Mind > What Is God? > Differing views of God

#33883 – 16.27.1.7

BA11 – ZZ – K

This is the mistake all too often made by those who ask the age-old questions: they see that every creature's life has a beginning, so they assume God must have had one too. But the Life-Force which appears anew in every babe comes from God; it has always existed, taking on countless outward forms. God, its source, has always been and never began…

World-Mind > What Is God? > Differing views of God

#33891E – 16.27.1.15

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK

It will be found by experience that preoccupation with such questions as "Why does God allow evil in the world?" will fall away under the influence of the Witness Self. The question is relative to and relevant only in the sphere of the personal self in interaction with other personal selves, and in that sphere it has no answer. In the sphere of the Overself the question does not exist. "Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest" is still as true as when spoken by the Christ nearly two thousand years ago.

World-Mind > What Is God? > Is God good, conscious?

#33905 – 16.27.1.29

B_11 – Z – DK

What Jesus called "the only true God" is the ultimate formless reality, not the thoughts about it or the pictures of it created in human imaginations. It is an object of insight, not of sense or thought.

World-Mind > What Is God? > God beyond finite knowing

#33916 – 16.27.1.40

B_12 – ZZZ – K

If God were not a mystery He would not be God. Men who claim to know Him need semantic correction; this said, their experience may yet be exceptional, elevating, and immaterialistic. But let God remain God, incomprehensible and untouchable.

World-Mind > What Is God? > God beyond finite knowing

#33922 – 16.27.1.46

BN – Z – K1

The one infinite life-power which reveals itself in the cosmos and manifests itself through time and space, cannot be named. It is something that is. For a name would falsely separate it from other things when the truth is that it is those things, all things. Nor would we know what to call it, since we know nothing about its real nature.

World-Mind > What Is God? > God beyond finite knowing

#33924 – 16.27.1.48

BA11 – ZZZ – DK1

The atheist says, "God is nowhere!". The mystic says, "God is now here!". The philosopher says, "God is!".

World-Mind > What Is God? > God beyond finite knowing

#33928 – 16.27.1.52

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

It was his consciousness of being united with this timeless pre-existent as well as ever-existent Life that enabled Jesus to announce: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was I am". "I am that I am", was the revelation of God to the Hebrew Master, Moses. "That I am", was the revelation of God to the anonymous Hindu Master of the Upanishads.

World-Mind > What Is God? > God beyond finite knowing

#33931 – 16.27.1.55

B_12 – X – K

All verbal definitions of the World-Mind are inevitably limited and inadequate. If the statements here made seem to be of the nature of dogmatic concepts it is because of the inadequacy of language to convey more subtle meaning. They who read these lines with intuitive insight allied to clear thinking will see that the concepts are flexible verbal frames for holding thought steady in that borderland of human consciousness where thinking verges on wordless knowing.

World-Mind > What Is God? > God beyond finite knowing

#33932 – 16.27.1.56

BN – ZZ – K1

All scientific evidence indicates that there is a single power which presides over the entire universe, and all religious mystic experience and philosophic insight confirms it. Not only is this so, but this power also maintains the universe; its intelligence is unique, matchless, incredible. This power is what I call the World-Mind.

World-Mind > What Is God? > The active God we worship

#33934 – 16.27.1.58

BA11 – ZZZ – DM1

The World-Mind is unique, different from any other existing or conceivable mind in the whole cosmos. Indeed, all these others can only arise out of and within it, but can never equal or transcend it.

World-Mind > What Is God? > The active God we worship

#33937 – 16.27.1.61

BN – X – D

Behind all the innumerable creatures in this universe and behind all the innumerable phenomena of the universe itself, there is a single, infinite, eternal, supreme Intelligence.

World-Mind > What Is God? > The active God we worship

#33940 – 16.27.1.64

BA11 – ZZ – DK

No human idea can account for its own existence without testifying to the prior existence of a human mind. The world as idea can only account for its own existence by pointing to a World-Mind. And it is equally a fact that the highest kind of existence discoverable to us in the universe is mental existence. In using the name "Mind" for God, I but follow some of the highest examples from antiquity, such as Aristotle in Greece, Hermes Trismegistus in Egypt, Asvaghosha in India, and the Patriarch Hui Neng in China.

World-Mind > What Is God? > The active God we worship

#33947 – 16.27.1.71

UR_3.2 – Z – K

For us who are philosophically minded, the World-Mind truly exists. For us it is God, and for us there is a relationship with it—the relationship of devotion and aspiration, of communion and meditation. All the abstract talk about nonduality may go on, but in the end the talkers must humble themselves before the infinite Being until they are as nothing and until they are lost in the stillness—Its stillness.

World-Mind > What Is God? > The active God we worship

#33948 – 16.27.1.72

BN – Z – K1

Modern man looks in all sorts of impossible places for an invisible God and will not worship the visible God which confronts him. Yet little thinking is needed to show that we are all suckled at the everlasting breast of Nature. It is easy to see that the source of all life is the sun and that its creative, protective, and destructive powers are responsible for the entire physical process of the universe. However it is not merely to the physical sun alone that the aspirant addresses himself but to the World-Mind behind it. He must look upon the sun as a veritable self-expression and self-showing of the World-Mind to all its creatures.

World-Mind > What Is God? > The active God we worship

#33952 – 16.27.1.76

BN – X – K1

In the sense that the World-Mind is the active agent behind and within the universe, it is carrying the whole burden of creation; it is the real doer, carrying us and our actions too.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33963 – 16.27.2.6

BN – ZZ – K1

The World-Mind is called Adi-buddhi in the Nepalese-Tibetan esotericism: meaning Divine Ideation, the First Intelligence, the Universal Wisdom.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33966 – 16.27.2.9

BN – ZZ – K1

We are frequently informed by religious and mystical sources that God is Love. It would be needful for those who accept this statement to balance and complete it by the affirmation that God is Pure Intelligence.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33967 – 16.27.2.10

BN – ZZZ – K1

The Intelligence which formulated the World-Idea is living and creative—in short, Divine. The so-called laws of nature merely show its workings.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33970 – 16.27.2.13

BN – X – K1

The World-Mind holds in one eternal thought the entire World-Idea.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33973 – 16.27.2.16

BN – X – D

Were the World-Mind beyond, because outside, the finite universe, then it would be limited by that universe and thus lose its own infinitude. But because it includes the universe completely within itself while remaining completely unlimited, it is genuinely infinite. World-Mind is neither limited nor dissipated by its self-projection in the universe. If World-Mind is immanent in the universe, it is not confined to the universe; if it is present in every particle of the All, its expression is not exhausted by the All.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33982 – 16.27.2.25

BN – X – K1

Inexplicable and incomprehensible though the fact must be to the human intellect, the One infinite Mind never loses its own character even though it is seemingly incarnated into the myriad forms of an evolving universe, never loses itself in them.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33983 – 16.27.2.26

BA11 – Z – DK

This is the reality that is hidden in me and you, in the whole universe itself. It acts everywhere and exists eternally.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33990 – 16.27.2.33

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

Outwardly all differ but in the deepest root of consciousness all are the same. This is the Reality that is hidden in me and you, in the whole universe itself. It acts everywhere and exists eternally.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33990EM – 16.27.2.33

UR_1 – ZZZ – DXK

Thus make it. Unseen itself, its presence is seen in every earthly form; unthinkable though it be, its existence is self-manifested in every thought.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33993 – 16.27.2.36

BN – Z – K1

The universe comes forth from the World-Mind, from its own being and its own substance. Therefore the universe is divine, therefore God is present in every atom and likewise in every one of us. Whoever denies the existence of God denies the very essence of his own self.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33994 – 16.27.2.37

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

The World-Mind is in us all, reflected as "I." This is why ever-deeper pondering and penetration are needed to remove the veil of individuality and perceive BEING.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#33999 – 16.27.2.42

BN – ZZ – DEK

Swami Narayananda said, "God is the Subject of all subjects. In one sense He can never be known. It being the very Subject of all subjects how can we know it? To know means to objectify a thing, and the Supreme Subject can never become an object. In another sense, God is more than known to us. For it is our very Self. What proof do we want for our very existence?"

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > Attributes, characteristics, powers

#34000 – 16.27.2.43

BN – X – K1

The point which appears in space is a point of light. It spreads and spreads and spreads and becomes the World-Mind. God has emerged out of Godhead. And out of the World-Mind the world itself emerges—not all at once, but in various stages. From that great light come all other and lesser lights, come the suns and the planets, the galaxies, the universes, and all the mighty hosts of creatures small and great, of beings just beginning to sense and others fully conscious, aware, wise. And with the world appear the opposites, the dual principle which can be detected everywhere in Nature, the yin and yang of Chinese thought.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > As source of all

#34005 – 16.27.2.48

A240901 – Z – K1

If the divine activity ceases in one universe it continues at the same time in another. If our World-Mind returns to its source in the end, there are other World-Minds and other worlds which continue. Creation is a thing without beginning and without end, but there are interludes and periods of rest just as there are in the individual's own life in and outside the body.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > As source of all

#34008 – 16.27.2.51

BN – ZZ – DK1

The World-Mind is the conscious Power sustaining all life, the intelligent Energy sustaining all atoms, the divine being behind and within the Universe.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > As source of all

#34013 – 16.27.2.56

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

The World-Mind eternally thinks this universe into being in a pulsating rhythm of thought and rest. The process is as eternal as the World-Mind itself. The energies which accompany this thinking are electrical. The scientists note and tap the energies, and ignore the Idea and the Mind they are expressing.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > As source of all

#34017 – 16.27.2.60

BN – Z – DK1

Hidden behind the so-called material universe is the Power which emanated it, which is present in all atoms. Hidden behind the Power is the eternal Mind. If we could raise ourselves to the ultimate point of view, we would see all forms in one spirit, one essence in all atoms, and hence no difference between one world and another, one thing and another, one man and another.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > As source of all

#34019M – 16.27.2.62

BA11 – ZZZ – K

There is no power in the material universe itself. All its forces and energies derive from a single source—the World-Mind—whose thinking is expressed by that universe.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > As source of all

#34020 – 16.27.2.63

BN – X – K1

The statement "Light is God" is meant in two senses: first, as the poetical and a psychical fact that, in the present condition of the human being, his spiritual ignorance is equivalent to darkness and his discovery of God is equivalent to light; second, as the scientific fact that has verified in its findings that all physical matter ultimately reduces itself to waves of light, and since God has made the universe out of His own substance, the light-waves are ultimately divine.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > As source of all

#34032 – 16.27.2.75

BN – ZZ – K1

The Light of the World-Mind is the Source of the physical universe; the Love of the World-Mind is its structural basis.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > As source of all

#34034 – 16.27.2.77

BN – ZZ – K1

All the forces of the physical world are derived from a single source—the solar energy.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > As source of all

#34035 – 16.27.2.78

BN – X – K1

If we seek an origin for the consciousness, however small finite and limited it may be, that a man possesses, none other can be found except the universal consciousness which informs the entire universe and guides its development.

World-Mind > Nature of World-Mind > As source of all

#34039 – 16.27.2.82

BN – X – DK

How does God “create” the universe? Since in the beginning God alone is, there is no second substance that can be used for such “creation.” God is forced to use his own substance for the purpose. God is Infinite Mind, so he uses mental power—Imagination—working on mental substance—Thought—to produce the result which appears to us as the universe.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > How

#34043 – 16.27.3.1

BN – ZZ – DK1

Can anything be derived from something that is essentially different from it? This is impossible. Therefore existence cannot be derived from non-existence. If the universe exists today, then its essence must have existed when the universe itself had not been formed. This essence needed no "creation" for it was God, World-Mind, Itself.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > How

#34044 – 16.27.3.2

BN – ZZ – K1

The visible cosmos has come into being out of the invisible absolute by a process of emanation. That is why the relation between them is not only pantheistic but also transcendent.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > How

#34046 – 16.27.3.4

BN – X – K1

When Prospero says, in Shakespeare's play, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” he implies the existence of some greater Mind in which we are the dreams.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > How

#34051 – 16.27.3.9

BN – X – D

Every form of existence can be reduced to a form of consciousness. The final essence of all these consciousnesses is God.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > How

#34058 – 16.27.3.16

BN – X – D

The act of creative meditation which brings the universe into being is performed by the World-Mind. We, insofar as we experience the world, are participating in this act unconsciously. It is a thought-world and we are thought-beings.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > How

#34061 – 16.27.3.19

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

Spinoza arrived at this truth by clear mathematical reflection, that "each particular thing is expressed by infinite ideas in infinite ways in the infinite understanding of God."

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > How

#34068 – 16.27.3.26

BN – Z – K1

In all these studies the principal concept should be returned to again and again: the entire universe, everything—objects and creatures—is in Mind. I hold all the objects of my experience in my consciousness but I myself am held, along with them, in an incredibly greater consciousness, the World-Mind's.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > How

#34069 – 16.27.3.27

BA11 – ZZ – DMK1

It is the 'presence' of the World-Mind which makes things happen according to the World-Idea: the former does not need to put forward each particular activity.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > How

#34075 – 16.27.3.33

BN – Z – DEK1

Take the beginning and the end of the Greek alphabet and suppose that the first letter, Alpha, is the first faint stirrings of the universe. And take the last letter, Omega, to be the last vanishing trace of that universe. Imagine that Alpha is the reincarnation of the previous Omega, and you will have a key to what is really happening. But what is this mysterious invisible intangible source whence all this is derived and into which all this passes?

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > Distinguishing World-Mind and Mind

#34096 – 16.27.3.54

UR_0 – ZZZ – DEMK

There has been so much friction and clash between the different religions because of this idea: whether God is personal or impersonal—so much persecution, even hatred, so unnecessarily. I say unnecessarily because the difference between the two conceptions is only an apparent one. Mind is the source of all; this is Mind inactive. Mind as World-Mind-in-manifestation is the personal God. Between essence and manifestation the only difference is that essence is hidden and manifestation is known. World-Mind is personal (in the sense of being what the Hindus call 'Ishvara'); Mind is totally impersonal. Basically, the two are one.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > Distinguishing World-Mind and Mind

#34098 – 16.27.3.56

UR_3.2 – ZZ – K1

The World-Mind, however, has a double life. As Mind, it is eternally free but as the World-Mind, it is eternally crucified, as Plato said, on the cross of the world's body.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > Distinguishing World-Mind and Mind

#34101 – 16.27.3.59

BN – X – K1

Manifestation implies the necessity of manifesting. But it might be objected that any sort of necessity existing in the divine equally implies its insufficiency. The answer is that the number One may become aware of itself as being one only by becoming aware of the presence of Two—itself and another. But the figure Nought is under no compulsion. Here we have a mathematical hint towards understanding the riddle of manifestation. Mind as Void is the supreme inconceivable unmanifesting ultimate whereas the World-Mind is forever throwing forth the universe-series as a second, an "other" wherein it becomes self-aware.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > Distinguishing World-Mind and Mind

#34102 – 16.27.3.60

BN – X – K1

God-active, the Unseen Power, is (for us humans) the World-Mind. God-in-repose is Mind.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > Distinguishing World-Mind and Mind

#34103 – 16.27.3.61

BN – Z – K1

It would, however, be a mistake to consider the World-Mind as one entity and Mind as another separate from it. It would be truer to consider World-Mind as the active function of Mind. Mind cannot be separated from its powers. The two are one. In its quiescent state it is simply Mind. In its active state it is World-Mind. Mind in its inmost transcendent nature is the inscrutable mystery of Mysteries but when expressing itself in act and immanent in the universe, it is the World-Mind. We may find in the attributes of the manifested God—that is, the World-Mind—the only indications of the quality, existence, and character of the unmanifest Godhead that it is possible for man to comprehend. All this is a mystery which is and perhaps forever will remain an incomprehensible paradox.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > Distinguishing World-Mind and Mind

#34107 – 16.27.3.65

UR_3.2 – Z – K1

The World-Mind is a radiation of the forever incomprehensible Mind. It is the essence of all things and all beings, from the smallest to the largest.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > Distinguishing World-Mind and Mind

#34109 – 16.27.3.67

BN – Z – K1

If it be true that absolute divine Mind knows nothing of the universe, nothing of mortal man, then it is also true that the World-Mind, which is its other aspect, does know them.

World-Mind > World-Mind and "Creation'' > Distinguishing World-Mind and Mind

#34111 – 16.27.3.69

BN – X – K1

Philosophy defines God as Pure Mind from the human standpoint and perfect Reality from the cosmic one. The time has indeed come for us to rise to meditate upon the Supreme Mind. It is the source of all appearances, the explanation of all existences. It is the only Reality, the only thing which is, was, and shall be unalterably the same. Mind itself is ineffable and indestructible. We never see it as it is in itself but only the things which are its passing phases.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34116 – 16.28.1.3

BSG_4 – ZZ – DEK

The time has indeed come for us to rise to meditate upon the supreme Mind. It is the source of all appearances, the explanation of all existences. It is the only reality, the only thing which is, was, and shall be unalterably the same. Mind itself is ineffable and indestructible. We never see it as it is in itself but only the things which are its passing phases.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34116E – 16.28.1.3

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

The ultimate reality is one and the same, no matter what it is called; to the Chinese mystic it is TAO, that is, the Significance; to the Christian mystic it is GOD; to the Chinese philosopher it is TAT CHI, that is, The Great Extreme; to the Hindu philosopher it is TAT, that is, Absolute Existence. It has its own independent, everlasting, invisible, and infinite existence, while all worldly things and creatures are but fragmentary and fleeting expressions of IT on a lower sphere altogether. It lies deeply concealed as their innermost substance and persists through their changes of form.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34117 – 16.28.1.4

UR_2.2 – ZZZ – K

Before the personal ego came into being, Being was. "Before Abraham was I am", announced Jesus. Before thoughts, Thought! In its timelessness, Mind is the One without a Second; "in its timed manifestation it is all things".

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34118 – 16.28.1.5

B_12 – Z – K

Absolute mind is the actuality of human life and the plenitude of universal existence. Apart from Mind they could not even come into existence, and separated from it they could not continue to exist. Their truth and being are in It. But it would be utterly wrong to imagine the Absolute as the sum total of all finite beings and individual beings. The absolute is not the integral of all its visible aspects. It is the unlimited, the boundless void within which millions of universes may appear and disappear ceaselessly and unendingly but yet leave It unaffected. The latter do not exhaust even one millionth of its being.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34121 – 16.28.1.8

BN – X – K1

With every thought we break the divine stillness. Yet behind all thoughts is Mind. Behind all things that give rise to thoughts is Mind.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34123 – 16.28.1.10

BN – X – D

That which is at the heart of all existence—the world's and yours—must be real, if anything can be. The world may be an illusion, your ego a fiction, but the ultimate essence cannot be either. Reality must be here or nowhere.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34128 – 16.28.1.15

BN – Z – DK

No one can see the Real yet everyone may see the things which come from it. Although it is itself untouchable, whatever we touch enshrines its presence.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34135 – 16.28.1.22

BN – X – D

There is but One God, One Life, One infinite Power, one all-knowing Mind. Each man individualizes it but does not multiply it. He brings it to a point, the Overself, but does not alter its unity or change its character.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34136 – 16.28.1.23

BN – Z – K1

The One Mind is experiencing itself in us, less in the ego-shadow and fully in the Overself, hardly aware in that shadow and self-realized in the light that casts it.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34137 – 16.28.1.24

BN – X – K1

The term nonduality remains a sound in the air when heard, a visual image when read. Without the key of mentalism it remains just that. How many Vedanta students and, be it said, teachers interpret it aright? And that is to understand there are no two separate entities—a thing and also the thought of it. The thing is in mind, is a projection of mind as the thought. This is nonduality, for mind is not apart from what comes from and goes back into it. As with things, so with bodies and worlds. All appear along with the ultimately cosmic but immediately individual thought of them.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34138 – 16.28.1.25

BN – ZZZ – DEK1

Hidden behind the so-called material universe is the Power which emanated it, which is present in all atoms. Hidden behind the Power is the eternal Mind. If we could raise ourselves to the ultimate point of view, we would see all forms in one spirit, one essence in all atoms, and hence no difference between one world and another, one thing and another, one man and another.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34141M – 16.28.1.28

BA11 – ZZZ – K

Nonduality simply means that there is nothing other than the unseen Power, nothing else, no universe, no creature.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34145 – 16.28.1.32

BN – X – K1

In The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga and The Wisdom of the Overself I unveiled that portion of the hidden teaching which negated materialism and showed the world to be immaterial and spiritual. In this book I unveil the remaining portion which shows that the person himself is devoid of real existence, that the ego is a fiction, and that there is only the One Universal Mind.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34151 – 16.28.1.38

BN – ZZ – K1

Just as the dreamer's mind appears to split itself up into the various figures and persons of his dream, so the One has never really split itself up into the many, but it has appeared to do so.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Mind alone Is

#34153 – 16.28.1.40

BN – X – D

When Mind concentrates itself into the World-Mind, it establishes a focus. However vast, it goes out of its own unlimited condition, it passes from the true Infinite to the pseudo-Infinite. Consequently the World-Mind, being occupied with its cosmos, cannot be regarded as possessed of the absolute character of Pure Mind. For what is its work but a movement of imagination? And where in the ineffable absolute is there room for either work or imagination? The one would break its eternal stillness, the other would veil its unchangeable reality. This of course it can never do, for Being can never become Non-Being. But it can send forth an emanation from itself. Such an emanation is the World-Mind. Through its prolonged contemplation of the cosmos Mind thus becomes a fragment of itself, bereft of its own undifferentiated unbroken unity. Nevertheless the World-Mind, through its deputy the Overself, is still for humans the highest possible goal.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Levels, phases, functions of Mind

#34154 – 16.28.1.41

BN – X – K1

Mind is the essence of all manifested things as World-Mind and the Mystery behind unmanifest Nothing.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Levels, phases, functions of Mind

#34156 – 16.28.1.43

BN – X – K1

Mind is the essence of all conscious beings. Their consciousness is derivative, borrowed from it; they could know nothing of their own power; whereas Mind alone knows all things and itself. When it knows them in time, it is World-Mind; when it knows itself alone, it is the unknown to man and unknowable Godhead.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Levels, phases, functions of Mind

#34158 – 16.28.1.45

BN – X – K1

The term Tao, as used by Lao Tzu, does not refer to the World-Mind, that which is responsible for the manifested universe, but to the pure, essential being of Mind-in-itself. What I have called the World-Mind, he calls Teh.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Levels, phases, functions of Mind

#34161 – 16.28.1.48

UR_3.2 – Z – K

The Mind's first expression is the Void. The second and succeeding is the Light, that is the World-Mind. This is followed by the third, the World-Idea. Finally comes the fourth, manifestation of the world itself.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Levels, phases, functions of Mind

#34165 – 16.28.1.52

BN – ZZ – K1

The Supreme Godhead is unindividualized. The World-Mind is individuated (but not personalized) into emanated Overselves. The Overself is an individual, but not a person. The ego is personal.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Levels, phases, functions of Mind

#34166 – 16.28.1.53

BN – X – K1

What is the meaning of the words "the Holy Trinity"? The Father is the absolute and ineffable Godhead, Mind in its ultimate being. The Son is the soul of the universe, that is, the World-Mind. The Holy Ghost is the soul of each individual, that is, the Overself. The Godhead is one and indivisible and not multiform and can never divide itself up into three personalities.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Levels, phases, functions of Mind

#34167 – 16.28.1.54

BN – Z – K1

The holy trinity is truth, goodness, and beauty. For they are leading attributes of the divine soul in man.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Levels, phases, functions of Mind

#34169 – 16.28.1.56

BN – X – D

We are constantly faced by the hoariest of all problems which is "Why did the Universe arise out of the depth and darkness of the Absolute Spirit?" The Seer can offer us a picture of the way in which this Spirit has involved itself into matter and is evolving itself back to self-knowledge. That is only the How and not the Why of the world. The truth is not only that nobody has ever known, that nobody knows, and that nobody will ever know the final and fundamental purpose of creation, but that God himself does not even know—for God too has arisen out of the Absolute no less than the universe, has found himself emanated from the primeval darkness and utter silence. Even God must be content to watch the flow and not wonder why, for both God and man must merge and be absorbed when they face the Absolute for the last time. (In the symbolic language of the Bible, "For man cannot meet God face to face and live.")

The Alone > Absolute Mind > On knowing Why

#34173 – 16.28.1.60

BN – X – K1

As Mind the Real is static, as World-Mind it is dynamic. As Godhead It alone is in the stillness of being; but as God it is the source, substance, and power of the universe. As Mind there is no second thing, no second intelligence to ask the question why it stirred and breathed forth World-Mind, hence why the whole world-process exists. Only man asks this question and it returns unanswered.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > On knowing Why

#34175 – 16.28.1.62

BN – Z – K1

Mind, which forever is, can undergo no change in itself and no multiplication of itself. If it could, it would not be what it is—the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, and the Unique. Nor, being perfect, complete, could it have desire, purpose, aim, or motive for itself. Therefore it could not have projected the universe on account of any benefit sought or gain needed. There is no answer to the question why the universe was sent forth.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > On knowing Why

#34178 – 16.28.1.65

BA11 – ZZ – DK*

The Infinite Power can never become exhausted. It is self-sustaining.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as self-existent, transcendent, unique

#34195 – 16.28.1.82

BN – Z – K1

"Before Abraham was I am!" These words are an expression of the higher mentalism. Note carefully that Jesus did not say "I was". This means that he as the non-personal unindividuated Mind existed before the birth of Abraham. "I am" points to the eternal One where no individual entity ever was, is, or shall be.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as self-existent, transcendent, unique

#34200 – 16.28.1.87

B_12 – Z – DK

It is the unique not only because of what IT is but also because two statements concerning IT can be quite contradictory, yet each can still be correct!

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as self-existent, transcendent, unique

#34205 – 16.28.1.92

BN – X – K1

That which both Greek Plato and Indian Vedantin called "the One" did not refer to the beginning figure of a series, but to "One-without-a-Second."

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as self-existent, transcendent, unique

#34208 – 16.28.1.95

BN – Z – K1

The Absolute is both everywhere and nowhere. It cannot be considered in spatial terms. Even the word 'infinite' is really such a term. If it is used here because no other is available, let it be clearly understood, then, that it is used merely as a suggestive metaphor.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as unchangeable

#34214E – 16.28.1.101

UR_3.2 – ZZ – K

That which always remains the same, never changes, that is reality.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as unchangeable

#34216 – 16.28.1.103

BA11 – ZZ – DK

We must never forget that the entire dynamic movement occurs inseparably within a static blessed repose. Becoming is not apart from Being. Its kinetic movement takes place in the eternal stillness. World-Mind is forever working in the universe whereas Mind is forever at rest and its still motionlessness paradoxically makes all activity and motion possible. The infinite unconditioned Essence could never become confined within or subject to the finite limited world-form. The one dwells in a transcendental timelessness whereas the other exists in a continuous time. There cannot be two eternal principles, two ultimate realities, for each will limit the other's existence and thus deprive it of its absolute character. There is only the One, which is beyond all phenomena and yet includes them.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as unchangeable

#34221E – 16.28.1.108

UR_2.3 – ZEL1/2 – DEK1

The manifestation of the cosmic order, filled with countless objects and entities though it be, does not in any way or to any extent alter the character of the absolute Reality in which it appears. That character is unvarying—is never reduced to a lower form, never confined in a limited one, never modified by conditions, never deprived of a single iota of its being, substance, amplitude, or quality. It always is what it was. It is the ultimate origin of everything and everyone in this universe, yet it remains as unchanged by their death as by their birth, by their absence as by their presence. Everything in the universe is liable to changes, because it was born and must die. We venerate God because He is not liable to change, being ever-existent and self-subsisting, birthless and deathless.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as unchangeable

#34221E – 16.28.1.108

UR_2.3 – ZEL2/2 – DEK1

If Mind is to be regarded aright, we must put out of our thought even the notion of the cosmic Ever-Becoming. But to do this is to enter a virtual Void? Precisely. When we take away all the forms of external physical existence and all the differences of internal mental existence, what we get is an utter emptiness of being which can hardly be differentiated after we have taken away its features and individualities, its finite times and finite distances. There is then nothing but a great void. What is the nature of this void? It is pure Thought. It is out of this empty Thought that the fullness of the universe has paradoxically evolved. Hence it is said that the world's reality is secondary whereas Mind's reality is primary. In the Void the hidden oneness of things is disengaged from the things themselves. Silence therefore is not merely the negation of sound but rather the element in which, as Carlyle said, great things fashion themselves. It is the supreme storehouse of power.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as Void

#34227 – 16.28.1.114

BN – Z – K1

It would be completely false to regard the Void as being a nothing and containing nothing. It is Being itself and contains reality behind all things. Nor is it a kind of inertia, of paralysis. All action springs out of it, all the world-forces derive from it.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as Void

#34231 – 16.28.1.118

BSG_5 – ZZ – DK1

IT is the Principle behind both consciousness and unconsciousness, making the first possible and the second significant. Yet neither consciousness nor unconsciousness, as we humans know them, resemble it.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as Consciousness

#34237 – 16.28.1.124

BN – X – K1

There is a single Consciousness without beginning or end, ever the same in itself, beyond and behind which there is nothing else.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as Consciousness

#34238 – 16.28.1.125

BA11 – ZZ – DK

Ultimate reality does not lie in this world, nor in that which perceives it, but in that which perceives the perceiver.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as Consciousness

#34242 – 16.28.1.129

UR_2.2 – Z – K

Consciousness can exist apart from the world, from the things and creatures in it, and even from the ego, but the world exists only as a projection of consciousness. In this sense the world has no lasting reality but, by contrast, the consciousness has.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as Consciousness

#34243 – 16.28.1.130

BN – X – D

Beyond all forms which consciousness can take is its very essence, consciousness in itself, alone and unique. It can never be transformed or changed and it can never disintegrate.

The Alone > Absolute Mind > Real as Consciousness

#34246 – 16.28.1.133

BN – X – D

What the Godhead is we do not know. The nature and the structure of the Grand Mystery are beyond all human investigation. We cannot describe it correctly or name it accurately. We can only observe some of its workings and effects in our individual selves and in the universe.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Inadequacy of human symbolization

#34258 – 16.28.2.6

BN – X – D

The Infinite Reality cannot be reasoned with, but only reasoned about. It cannot even be adequately symbolized, for regarding it as a mental image, a pictured thought is only a more refined form of idol-worship. It can only be designated. The true Godhead is unconditioned, formless, not picturable. No individual worship can reach what is utterly beyond all individual existence. No name can be given that will properly stand for what is without attributes and without limitations. In the ultimate reality there are and can be no distinctions and no differences, no grades and no change.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Inadequacy of human symbolization

#34259 – 16.28.2.7

UR_2.2 – ZZ – K

If, remembering the infinitude of the Ultimate Reality, we refuse to personify it and refuse to worship such a personification, we lift ourselves from the exclusively religious to the integrally religio-mystical-philosophic standpoint.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Inadequacy of human symbolization

#34262 – 16.28.2.10

UR_2.2 – Z – K

In ancient Mexico, the Highest Godhead was “the Idea that could not be reproduced” and no personification or representation of it of any kind was allowed. But this was doctrine only for the upper classes and the intellectually cultivated. The masses were given a God who was visible and comprehensible.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Inadequacy of human symbolization

#34263 – 16.28.2.11

BN – Z – DK

The ultimate reality cannot be represented with any fidelity nor can the ultimate truth be communicated with any accuracy.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Inadequacy of human symbolization

#34264 – 16.28.2.12

UR_2.2 – ZZ – K

The great mysterious emptiness—that is all man can know of God.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Inadequacy of human symbolization

#34283 – 16.28.2.31

BN – X – DK

In the end he will have to confess, as the English hermit Richard Rolle confessed six hundred years ago, despite his deep mystical experiences, that it is not possible to know what God is but only 'that' he is.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Inadequacy of human symbolization

#34292 – 16.28.2.40

BN – X – D

Because there is nothing quite like it in human experience and because there is no opposite in the entire cosmos from which it can be differentiated, the Absolute Being remains utterly incomprehensible to the human intellect.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Inadequacy of human symbolization

#34294 – 16.28.2.42

BN – X – D

The absoluteness of the Godhead is complete and basic. It is not categorically identical with man any more than the ray is with the sun; they are different although not more fundamentally different than the ray from the sun. Hence there can be no direct communication and no positive relationship between them. A profound impenetrability, an existence beyond comprehension, is the first characteristic of the Godhead, when gazed at by human sight.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Inadequacy of human symbolization

#34300 – 16.28.2.48

BN – X – K1

It is the topic most worth writing about yet least understood. Whoever has entered into a partial understanding—it would be too much to demand more—of it, bears some responsibility. He must communicate with his fellows.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reporting, nonetheless, has value

#34312 – 16.28.2.60

BN – ZZ – DK

There was one question which Jesus left unanswered. It was Pontius Pilate's "What is Truth?" There was one question which Buddha heard several times but always refused to answer. It was "What is Reality?" Since Truth is the knowledge of Reality, both amount to the same.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reporting, nonetheless, has value

#34313 – 16.28.2.61

UR_2.5 – ZZ – DMK

When we seek comprehension of that aspect of the Overself where there is no universe at all, no activity, no ideation, we seem to enter a great void, an utter no-thingness. The "I" cannot breathe in this rarefied atmosphere. And yet it would be the supreme illusion in a world of illusions to regard this void as the abode of unreality. > >No object in the universe corresponds to the Overself; therefore we are forced to term it "The Void," but the existence of all objects is only explained by its own. > >We may fittingly compare the Overself with any catalytic agent of chemistry which, unaltered itself, activates other substances by its presence. We may carry the comparison further and point out that just as the catalyst is ultimately a product of the same primal stuff as these substances, however different they appear to be, so the thoughts and things whose play constitutes the universe are ultimately of the same primal essence as the Overself.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reality reveals itself through Overself

#34333 – 16.28.2.81

BN – X – DEK

To say that the ultimate Reality is utterly unknowable is quite correct from the standpoint of the actual human situation involving ordinary and familiar instruments of knowledge, namely, the body's senses and the mind's reasonings. But it is not quite correct from the standpoint of possible human attainment. What neither sense nor intellect can find, a third and higher faculty, now latent, may find. This is the faculty of insight.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reality reveals itself through Overself

#34337 – 16.28.2.85

UR_2.2 – ZZ – K

The inability of little man to enter into the knowledge of transcendent God does not doom him to perpetual ignorance. For God, being present in all things, is present in him too. The flame is still in the spark. Here is his hope and chance. Just as he knows his own personal identity, so God knows God in him as the Overself. This divine knowing is continually going on, whether he is awake or asleep, whether he is an atheist or a saint. He can share in it too, but only by consenting to submit his intellect to his intuition. This is not an arbitrary condition imposed by theocratic whim but one which inheres in the very nature of the knowing processes. By accepting it, he may put the whole matter to the test and learn for himself, in due time, his other nonpersonal identity.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reality reveals itself through Overself

#34341 – 16.28.2.89

BN – Z – DEM1

The divine essence is Unknowable to the finite intellect, but knowable, in a certain sense, by the deepest intuition. And this sense can arise to the man previously prepared by instruction and purification, or by studied knowledge and purification, if he puts away thoughts, even those about the essence, or lets them lapse of their own accord, and awaits its self-disclosure patiently, reverently, lovingly—three conditions of high importance.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reality reveals itself through Overself

#34342 – 16.28.2.90

BN – X – DK1

When we, human beings, through our most enlightened representatives, look for the highest principle of being, life, existence, consciousness—the Supreme Power, the Origin of all Substance, the ultimate Deity, in fact—we find It is one and the same thing looked at from different human standpoints. It is nameless but we may call it, Mind. There is no point where we can come into contact with It for It transcends everything, every human capacity. When we look for It in relation to the universe which includes us, we may call It World-Mind, or in religious terminology, God. Here there is real possibility of a contact, for in our innermost self the connection is already there.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reality reveals itself through Overself

#34346 – 16.28.2.94

UR_2.2 – ZZZ – K

Let us not deceive ourselves and dishonour the Supreme Being by thinking that we know anything at all about IT. We know nothing. The intellect may formulate conceptions, the intuition may give glimpses, but these are our human reactions to IT. Even the sage, who has attained a harmony with his Overself, has found only the godlike within himself. Yes, it is certainly the Light, but it is so for him, for the human being. He still stands as much outside the divine Mystery as everyone else. The difference is that whereas they stand in darkness he stands in this Light.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reality reveals itself through Overself

#34347 – 16.28.2.95

BN – ZZ – K1

Philosophic meditation will show him that his own existence is rooted in that of a higher power, while philosophic study will explain some of the laws governing his experiences from birth to death. But at the bottom of existence and experience is ineffable incomprehensible Mystery.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reality reveals itself through Overself

#34348 – 16.28.2.96

BN – X – D

Neither the senses nor the intellect can tell us anything about the intrinsic nature of this Infinite Mind. Nevertheless we are not left in total ignorance about it. From its manifestation, the cosmos, we may catch a hint of its Intelligence. From its emanation, the soul, we may catch more than a hint of its Beneficence. More than, I say, because the emanation may be felt within us as our very being whereas the manifestation is outside us and is apart.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reality reveals itself through Overself

#34349D – 16.28.2.97

BN – Z – DK

After the last sermon has been preached, the last book written, Mind remains the Mystery behind all mysteries. Thought cannot conceive It, imagination cannot picture It, nor language express It. The greatest mystic's experience is only his own personal reaction to Its atmosphere, as from a distance. Even this blows him to pieces like a bomb, but the fact that he can collect them together again afterwards shows that it must have been present in some inexplicable supernormal way and was not lost, both to continue existence and to remember the event.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Reality reveals itself through Overself

#34350 – 16.28.2.98

BN – X – K1

This is the Principle which forever remains what it was and will be. It is in the universe and yet the universe is in it too. It never evolves, for it is outside time. It has no shape, for it is outside space. It is beyond man’s consciousness, for it is beyond both his thoughts and sense-experience, yet all consciousness springs mysteriously out of it.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34352E – 16.28.2.100

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

To keep this origin always at the back of one's mind because it is also the end of all things, is a necessary practice. But this can only be done if one cultivates reactionlessness to the happenings of every day. This does not mean showing no outward reaction, but it does mean that deep down indifference has been achieved—not an empty indifference, but one based on seeing the Divine essence in all things, all creatures, and a Divine meaning in all happenings.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34353 – 16.28.2.101

BN – ZZZ – K1

There is only this one Mind. All else is a seeming show on its surface. To forget the ego and think of this infinite and unending reality is the highest kind of meditation.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34354 – 16.28.2.102

BA11 – ZZ – DK

First, remember that It is appearing as ego; then remember to think that you are It; finally cease to think of It so you may be free of thoughts to be It!

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34355 – 16.28.2.103

BN – X – DK1

To attach oneself to a guru, an avatar, one religion, one creed, is to see the stars only. To put one's faith in the Infinite Being and in its presence within the heart, is to see the vast empty sky itself. The stars will come and go, will disintegrate and vanish, but the sky remains.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34356 – 16.28.2.104

BN – ZZ – K1

In a world of constantly changing scenes, fortunes, health, and relationships, a precious possession is the knowledge that there is the unseen Unchanging Real. Still more precious is awareness within oneself of ITS ever-presence.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34357 – 16.28.2.105

BN – X – D

In the moment that there dawns on his understanding the fact of Mind's beginninglessness and deathlessness, he gains the second illumination, the first being that of the ego's illusoriness and transiency.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34358 – 16.28.2.106

BA11 – ZZ – DM1

He will have gone far intellectually when he can understand the statement that mind is the seeker but Mind is the sought.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34360 – 16.28.2.108

B_05 – Z – DM1

He who puts his mind on the Unlimited instead of on the little parts, who does not deal with fractions but with the all-absorbing Whole, gains some of Its power.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34361 – 16.28.2.109

BN – X – D

What we need to grasp is that although our apprehension of the Real is gradual, the Real is nonetheless with us at every moment in all its radiant totality. Modern science has filled our heads with the false notion that reality is in a state of evolution, whereas it is only our mental concept of reality which is in a state of evolution.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34362 – 16.28.2.110

BA11 – ZZ – DK1

Thinking can, ordinarily, only produce more thoughts. Even thinking about truth, about reality, however correct it be, shares this limitation. But if properly instructed it will know its place and understand the situation, with the consequence that at the proper moment it will make no further effort, and will seek to merge into meditation. When the merger is successfully completed, a holy silence will pervade the consciousness which remains. Truth will then be revealed of its own accord.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34363 – 16.28.2.111

BN – ZZ – DM1*

The "Void" means void of all mental activity and productivity. It means that the notions and images of the mind have been emptied out, that all perceptions of the body and conceptions of the brain have gone.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34367 – 16.28.2.115

BSG_5 – Z – DK1

Master Huang Po: “This Mind is here, now. But as soon as any thought arises you miss it. It is like space . . . unthinkable.”

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34368 – 16.28.2.116

BN – X – D

Mentalism is the study of Mind and its product, thoughts. To separate the two, to disentangle them, is to become aware of Awareness itself. This achievement comes not by any process of intellectual activity but by the very opposite—suspending such activity. And it comes not as another idea but as extremely vivid, powerfully compelling insight.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34371 – 16.28.2.119

BA11 – ZZZ – DMK1

Mind in its most unlimited sense is reality. A man can know it only by the intuitive process of being it, in the same manner in which he knows his name, which is not an intellectual process but an immediate one.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34373 – 16.28.2.121

BN – X – D

Those who look to God as a healer, or as a mother, or as a father, or as a teacher are still looking for God within the ego. They are thinking of God only in relation to themselves because their first [egoistic] interest is in themselves. But those who look to God in the Void, and not in any relationship or under any image or idea, really find God. Therefore, they really find "the peace which passeth understanding."

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34377 – 16.28.2.125

BSG_5 – P – D

(a) Awareness alone is whatever it turns its attention to, seems to exist at the time: only that. If to Void then there is nothing else. If to world, then world assumes reality. (b) What is it that is aware? The thought of a point of awareness creates, gives reality at the lowest level to ego, and at the highest to Higher Self but when the thought itself is dropped there is only the One Existence, Being, in the divine Emptiness. It is therefore the Source of all life, intelligence, form. (c) The idea held becomes direct experience for the personality, the awareness becomes direct perception.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34381 – 16.28.2.129

BN – X – K1

Awareness is the very nature of one’s being: it ‘is’ the Self.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34382 – 16.28.2.130

BN – Z – DK1

Every man credits himself with having consciousness during the wakeful state. He never questions or disputes the fact. He does not need anyone else to tell it to him, nor does he tell it to himself. It is the surest part of his knowledge. Yet this is not a knowing which he brings into the field of awareness. It is known differently from the way other facts are known by him. This difference is that the ego is absent from the knowledge—the fact is not actually perceived.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34383 – 16.28.2.131

BN – X – K1

Reason tells us that pure Thought cannot know itself because that would set up a duality which would be false if pure thought is the only real existence. But this is only reason's inability to measure what transcends itself. Although all ordinary experience confirms it, extraordinary experience refutes it.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34384 – 16.28.2.132

BN – X – K1

Consciousness is the best witness to its own existence.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > Meditations on Mind

#34385 – 16.28.2.133

BN – X – D

Mind has no second thing to know and experience, no world. Nor can anyone know and experience Mind and yet remain an individual, a person.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > The ultimate "experience''

#34388 – 16.28.2.136

BN – X – K1

When thought of the little self vanishes, even gloating thought of its spiritual rapture, and That which is behind or beyond it in utter stillness is alone felt and known, then he is said to experience "the touch of the Untouchable," as ancient sages called it.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > The ultimate "experience''

#34389 – 16.28.2.137

BN – Z – DEK

If you believe that you have had the ultimate experience, it is more likely that you had an emotional, or mental, or mystic one. The authentic thing does not enter consciousness. You do not know that it has transpired. You discover it is already here only by looking back at what you were and contrasting it with what you now are; or when others recognize it in you and draw attention to it; or when a situation arises which throws up your real status. It is a permanent fact, not a brief mystic ”glimpse.”

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > The ultimate "experience''

#34391 – 16.28.2.139

BN – Z – DK1

The true union, completely authentic and completely beatific, where mind melts into Mind without the admixture of personal wish or traditional suggestion, cannot be properly described in words. For he who experiences it may know its onset or its end because of the enormous contrast with his ordinary self, but he will not know its full height simply because he will not even know that he is experiencing it. For to do so would be to re-introduce the ego again and thus fall away from the purity of the union. There would then be admixture—which is the fate of most unions.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > The ultimate "experience''

#34392 – 16.28.2.140

BN – X – K1

The actual experience alone can settle this argument. This is what I found: The ego vanished; the everyday "I" which the world knew and which knew the world, was no longer there. But a new and diviner individuality appeared in its place, a consciousness which could say "I AM" and which I recognized to have been my real self all along. It was not lost, merged, or dissolved: it was fully and vividly conscious that it was a point in universal Mind and so not apart from that Mind itself. Only the lower self, the false self, was gone but that was a loss for which to be immeasurably grateful.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > The ultimate "experience''

#34394 – 16.28.2.142

BN – ZZ – DEM1

When you speak of ”an experience” you imply that first, there is an experiencer and second, there is an object of which he has an experience. That is, you refer to the realm of duality. It may be lofty, inspiring, unusual, but it is an event with a beginning and an ending; it is inside time, however variously the sense of time changes. It is not to be identified with the Real.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > The ultimate "experience''

#34395 – 16.28.2.143

BN – X – D

The final grade of inner experience, the deepest phase of contemplation, is one where the experiencer himself disappears, the meditator vanishes, the knower no longer has an object—not even the Overself—to know for duality collapses. Because this grade is beyond the supreme "Light" experience where the Overself reveals its presence visually as a dazzling mass, shaft, ball or ray of unearthly radiance which is seen whether the bodily eyes are open or closed, it has been called the divine darkness.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > The ultimate "experience''

#34399 – 16.28.2.147

BA11 – Z – DK1

He can find the nothingness within himself only after he has evaluated the nothingness of himself. The mystery of the Great Void does not disclose itself to the smugly satisfied or the arrogantly proud or the intellectually conceited.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > The ultimate "experience''

#34400 – 16.28.2.148

BN – ZZ – K1

In this astonishing revelation, he discovers that he himself is the seeker, the teacher, and the sought-for goal.

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > The ultimate "experience''

#34405 – 16.28.2.153

BN – X – D

Only after he has worked his way through different degrees of comprehension of the world whose passing his own development requires and even after he has penetrated the mystery beyond it, does he come to the unexpected insight and attitude which frees him from both. In other words he is neither in the Void, the One, or the Many yet nor is he not in them. Truth thus becomes a triple paradox!

The Alone > Our Relation To the Absolute > The ultimate "experience''

#34407 – 16.28.2.155

BN – X – K1

The Quest of the Overself is none other than the final stage of mankind's long pursuit of happiness.

#34409 – 1.1.0.1

B_04 – ZZ – DK1

When a man feels imperatively the need of respecting himself, he has heard a faint whisper from his Overself. Henceforth he begins to seek out ways and means for earning that respect. This begins his Quest.

#34410

BN – Z – K1

The central point of this Quest is the inner opening of the ego's heart to the Overself.

#34411 – 1.1.0.3

B_04 – ZZ – DK1

It is not for those who feel the want of a social meeting every Sunday morning, where they can display their good clothes and listen to good words. It is for those who feel the want of something great in life to which they can give themselves, who cannot rest satisfied with the business of earning their bread and butter alone or spending their time in pleasures. What cause, what mission can be greater than fulfilling the higher purpose of life on earth?

#34412

BN – ZZ – K1

We are here on earth in pursuit of a sacred mission. We have to find what theologians call the soul, what philosophers call the Overself. It is something which is at one and the same time both near at hand and yet far off. For it is the secret source of our life-current, our selfhood, and our consciousness. But because our life-energy is continuously streaming outwards through the senses, because our selfhood is continuously identified with the body, and because our consciousness never contemplates itself, the Overself necessarily eludes us utterly.

#34413 – 1.1.0.5

BN – ZZZ – DEK1

There are four goals which philosophy sets before the mind of man: (1) to know itself; (2) to know its Overself; (3) to know the Universe; (4) to know its relation to the universe. The search for these goals constitutes the quest.

#34414

BN – Z – K1

It is this Ideal that gives a secret importance to every phase of our life-experience. It is this goal that invests unknown and unnoticed men and women with Olympic grandeur. It is this Thought that redeems, exalts, and glorifies human existence.

#34415

BN – Z – K1

A humble life dedicated to a great purpose, becomes great.

#34416

BN – Z – K1

This is not merely a matter for a small elite interested in spiritual self-help. It is a serious truth important to every man everywhere.

#34417

BN – Z – K1

There is a great tendency on the part of students of mysticism, practitioners of Yoga, and seekers after spiritual truth to regard their Quest as something quite apart from life itself, just as the stamp collector and the amateur gardener regard their special hobby as something which can be added to their routine of living. This is a fundamental error. The Quest is neither a serious hobby nor a pleasant diversion from the dullness of prosaic everyday living. It is actually living itself. Those who do not understand this fall as a result into eccentricities, self centerednesses, superiority complexes, sectarianism, futile proselytizing of the unready or antagonistic, and attempting to impose upon others what is not suited to them.

#34418E

BN – ZEL1/2 – K1

Those who separate the Quest from their day-to-day existence shut out the most important field of their further growth. They tend to become dreamers and lose their grip on practicalities. Yet, when any of these faults is mentioned to a seeker, he rarely realizes that it applies to him personally but usually believes that it applies only to other seekers. This is because he regards himself as being more advanced than he really is.

#34418E

BN – ZEL2/2 – K1

The work starts with you—with some impulse arising in you, or with some feeling, thought, idea, or some object seen, or with a person, teacher, or with a book or with a lecture or with Nature or with an artistic creation. But whether it be outside or inside you it has to be accepted by you. But if you ask why it happens just then, the answer can only be the Source of all things willed it.

#34419

BN – ZZ – K1

The intuition which brought you to the gates of this quest is, like all authentic intuitions, a spark which you may contract by doubt, hesitation, and accepting negative suggestion from outside sources or which you may expand by faith, obedience, and accepting positive suggestion from those who have already followed and finished this quest.

#34420

BN – X – K1

His journey starts from the place in consciousness where he finds himself. He may repeat the history of some other travellers who seek here and there in this cult and that one for the food that will allay their inner hunger. Years may be spent in such search but whether it ends inside one of these cults or outside all of them, one day something happens to him. His mind is suddenly lit up with understanding and his heart filled with peace. The experience soon passes but the memory of it lasts long. It made him so happy that he yearns to repeat it. But alas! This is one thing that he seems unable to do at will. If it happens again, he will take up the Quest where it really belongs—inside himself. He will cease looking here and there and set to work in real earnestness on himself. He will have to purify his character, practise meditation regularly, and study inspired works.

#34421

BN – X – K1

When this vague yearning for something that worldly life cannot satisfy becomes unendurable, it may be a sign that they are ready for this Quest.

#34422 – 1.1.0.14

B_04 – ZZ – DK1

We may first take to this quest to find a way of escape from our sufferings, whether mental or physical; but gradually we become aware that this negative attitude is not enough, that we must also realize positively the mysterious purpose of human existence.

#34423

BN – Z – K1

Man’s main business is to become aware of his true purpose in life; all other business is secondary to this concern. It is Man's true business in this world to discover his real self and to ascertain his relationship to the surrounding world.

#34424EM – 1.1.0.17

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

Man's main business is to become aware of his true purpose in life; all other business is secondary to this primary concern.

#34424 – 1.1.0.17

BT1008 – ZZZ – DK1

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

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

#34425D – 2.1.1.63

BN – X – K1

Anyone who is willing to make an earnest endeavour may arrive by his own intelligence, helped if he wishes by the writings of those who have more leisure and more capacity for it, at a worthwhile understanding of these abstract subjects. The intermittent study of these writings, the regular reading of these books will help him to keep his thinking close to true principles. He will get inspiration from their pages, comfort from their phrases, and peace from their ideas. These statements spark the kinetic mental energy of a responsive few and inspire them to make something worthwhile of their lives. What it writes in their minds is eventually written into their activities.

#34426

UR_6 – ZZZ – K1

The highly strung nervous, mental, and artistic temperaments that largely throng these spiritual paths are of all others predisposed to go astray. They become fascinated by the wondrous worlds of study and experiment which open out for them. They are apt to ignore the vital potency of living out these teachings, as opposed to talking about them. For the opposition of having to work in heavy matter brings out the real power of the soul. Its resistance makes accomplishment more difficult but more enduring.

#34427

BN – X – K1

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

Overview of the Quest > Its Choice > Postponing the choice

#34428D – 2.1.2.425

BN – Z – DEK1

The quest is not an enterprise of fits and starts, not something to be started today and left off tomorrow, but is the most durable undertaking in a man's life. This is to be his most sacred life-purpose, the most honoured ground of his very existence, and everything else is to be made to subserve it.

#34429

B_04 – ZZZ – K1

In that sacred silence he will dedicate his life to the Quest. And although no one except himself will hear or know that dedication, it will be as binding and obligatory as any solemn pledge made in full assembled lodge.

#34430

BN – X – K1

Its chief enemy is indecision. The world is packed with people who suffer from this fault. So our greatest dramatist took this as his theme for his wonderful play, Hamlet. A little more decision on the part of the Prince of Denmark, and the series of tragedies which close the play would have been averted. But in that case the play would not have carried the lesson Shakespeare wanted it to give—how Hamlet was tortured by his own indecisiveness. Wise Faith wins. The fool of today is the wise man of tomorrow—if he lets his mistakes teach him. Not what he can do, but what he 'does' do, matters. The bird of victory finally perches on the shoulders of the man who dares.

#34431 – 1.1.0.26

BN – Z – DEK1

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

Overview of the Quest > Self-Development > Attainments

#34432D – 2.1.5.416

BN – ZZZ – DEK1

Those who decline to search for ultimate truth because they believe it to be unattainable, because they despair of ever finding it, betray it.

#34433

UR_2.2 – ZZ – K1

The higher truth can properly be given only to those who are eligible for it, whose minds are ripe enough to receive it without bewilderment, and whose judgement is developed enough to see its worth.

#34434

BN – ZZZ – K1

There must be a certain ethical maturity before a man will even be willing to listen to such a teaching, and there must be a certain intellectual maturity before he will be able to learn it. There must be the will to analyse, the capacity to take an impartial attitude, the strength to renounce the vulgar view of things, and the desire to travel the road of truth inexorably to its last and logical conclusion. The fount of seeking must not be consciously or unconsciously muddied by selfish motive. It is not suggested that these preliminary qualifications must be present in their perfection and fullness—such will be the final result and not the first attempts on the quest—but that they should be present to a sufficient degree to make a marked disciplinary contribution to one's inner life.

#34435

BN – ZZZ – K1

It is not only a path to be followed but one to be followed with good humour and graciousness.

#34436 – 1.1.0.31

BSG_2 – ZZ – DK1

Those whose emotions are strongly held by personal psychological problems would be better prepared for the quest if they first got their lives straightened out or first underwent personal re-adjustment. Where their attitudes are neurotic, hysteric, or psychopathic, it is rash impertinence to dare to consider themselves as candidates for probing the divine mysteries.

#34437

BN – ZZZ – K1

The sacrifice demanded of the aspirant is nothing less than his very self. If he would reach the higher grades of the path, he must give up the ego's thinking and desiring, must overcome its emotional reactions to events and persons and things. Every time he stills the restless thoughts in silent meditation he is giving up the ego; every time he puts the desires aside in a crucial decision he is giving up the ego; every time he disciplines the body, the passions, the activities, he is giving up the ego. It demands the utmost from him before it will give the utmost to him; it forces him to begin by self-humbling and, what is worse, to end by self-crucifixion. Every aspirant has to pass through these ordeals—there is no escape from them. They are what Light on the Path refers to as "the feet being bathed in the blood of the heart." Thus, the Quest is not for weaklings.

#34438 – 1.1.0.33

BN – ZZZ – DEK1

There is only one Duty for men: it is to realize the divinity within. Slavish adherence to any personal, social, or racial duties, set us from outside, must bend and go whenever it comes into conflict with this higher Duty. At the call of this compelling inner voice, the Prince Gautama Buddha trampled down the gilded “duties” of his royal position and walked out into the wilderness a homeless wanderer.

#34439 – 1.1.0.34

BN – ZZZ – DM1

Entering upon this Quest is neither a pleasant nor an easy affair. The aspirant has to begin with the belief that he is a very imperfect person, that before he can penetrate into the spiritual realms he must first prepare himself for such an entrance by working hard to separate himself from these imperfections. Before he entered on the Quest, he liked himself most—now he discovers that he hates himself most. Before he entered on the Quest, he had different enemies here and there—now he has only one enemy, and that is himself. Hitherto he supported the ego by identifying himself with it—henceforth he must deny the ego, and try to affirm the higher self.

#34440

BN – ZZ – K1

He will not be the first aspirant, nor the last, who continues to worship the ego under the delusion that he has begun to worship the Overself.

#34441

BN – X – K1

This wrong self-identification is not only a metaphysical error but also a mental habit. We may correct the error intellectually but we shall still have to deal with the habit. So deeply ingrained is it that only a total effort can successfully alter it. That effort is called the Quest.

#34442 – 1.1.0.37

BN – X – DK1

You may be familiar with the contents of a hundred books on mysticism and yet not be familiar with mysticism itself. For it concerns the intuition, not the intellect.

#34443

BN – X – K1

That the soul exists, that it is something other than his ordinary self, and that it abides within himself, are affirmations which remain basic and common to authentic mystical experience of every school and religion.

#34444

BN – Z – K1

It must be clearly understood that it is only the philosophical quest, the path of the Bodhisattva, which we advocate here, which is threefold. The mystical quest is not. It is simpler. It requires only a single qualification—meditation practice. But it gives only a single fruit—inner peace—whereas the threefold quest yields a threefold fruit: (1) peace, (2) the intellectual ability to instruct others, (3) service. If therefore philosophy calls for a greater effort than mysticism, it compensates by its greater result. And whereas the mystical result is primarily an individual benefit, the philosophical result is both an individual and social one.

#34445

BN – Z – K1

If this benevolent ideal has been set up from the start, then he will not swerve from it at the end. He will draw back from the very verge of the eternal Silence and resume his human garb, that he may compassionately guide those who still seek, grope, blunder, and fall.

#34446

BN – ZZ – K1

Be not afraid! > This very hour begin. > To do the Work thy spirit glories in; > A thousand unseen forces wait to aid,> Be not afraid, > Begin! Begin!

#34447

BN – Z – K1

Some have the illusion that the Path is heavily trodden. It is not. ""Many are called but few are chosen."" The traveller must learn to walk resignedly in partial loneliness. The struggle for certain truth and the quest of the divine soul are carried on by every man and must be carried on in an austere isolation when he reaches the philosophic level. No crowd progress and no mass salvation are possible here.

#34448E

B_05 – ZEL1/3 – K1

There is and could be no such thing as a sect in philosophy. Each of its disciples has to learn that there is only one unique path for him, dependent on his past history and present characteristics which constitute his own individuality. To attempt to forego that unique individuality, to impose the spiritual duty of other persons upon himself is, as the Gita points out, a dangerous error. Philosophy tries to bring a man to realize his own divinity for himself. Hence it tries to bring him to independent thinking, personal effort, and intuitive development. This is not the popular way nor the easy one; it offers no gregarious comfort or herd support. But it is the only way for the seeker after absolute truth. Though the solitary student may suffer from certain disadvantages, he also enjoys certain definite advantages.

#34448E

B_05 – ZEL2/3 – K1

In any case, man never really escapes from his essential loneliness. He may push his social efforts at avoidance to extremes and indulge his personal ones to the point of creating illusions, but life comes down on him in some way or other and one day forces him back on himself. Even where he fancies himself to have achieved happiness with or through others, even in the regions of love and friendship, some physical disharmony, some mental change, some emotional vacillation may eventually arise and break the spell, driving him back into isolation once more.

#34448E

B_05 – ZEL3/3 – K1

Philosophy tries to bring a man to realize his own divinity for himself. Hence it tries to bring him to independent thinking, personal effort, and intuitive development. This is not the popular way nor the easy one; it offers no gregarious comfort or herd support. But it is the only way for the seeker after absolute truth. Though the solitary student may suffer from certain disadvantages, he also enjoys certain definite advantages.

#34448E

B_02 – ZZ – K1

Does this mean that the aspirant should seek no guide, should take no friendly hand in his own at all? No! It simply means that if he realizes that his choice of a teacher might well change his whole life for better or for worse, and if he seeks well-qualified guidance, he must be discriminating, which means that he must not rush into acceptance of the first guide he meets. He should take his time over the matter and give it the fullest thought. It is quite proper and sound practice for him to be prudent before signing away his life to a teacher or his mind to a creed. It is not the first teacher he meets or the first doctrine he hears that he should accept. Rather should he follow Confucius' practical advice to shoppers: "Before you buy, try three places." Nay, he might have to try thirty places before he finds a really competent teacher or a completely true doctrine. Such a search calls for patience and self-restraint, but the longer it continues the likelier will its goal be reached.

#34449

BN – X – K1

It is true that the higher self can guide and even teach the aspirant from within and that in the end it is the only real guide and teacher. But it is also true that a premature assumption of self-sufficiency may lead him dangerously astray. Indeed, the higher self will direct him to some other human agent for help when he is sufficiently ready. Self-reliance and independence are valuable qualities but they may be pushed too far and thus turned into failings. The student who remains self-guided and self-inspired without making missteps or wasting years, is fortunate.

#34450

BN – ZZ – K1

There is no contradiction between advising aspirants at one time to seek a master and follow the path of discipleship, and advising them to seek within and follow the path of self-reliance at another time. The two counsels can be easily reconciled. For if the aspirant accepts the first one, the master will gradually lead him to become increasingly self-reliant. If he accepts the second one, his higher self will lead him to a master.

#34451

BN – ZZ – K1

That there are perils on this path of self-guidance, is obvious. It is easy to fall into conceit, to breed arrogance, even to imagine an inner voice. Here the saving virtue of balance must be ardently sought, and the protective quality of humbleness must be gently fostered.

#34452

BN – Z – K1

The truth is that nearly all aspirants need the help of expert human guides and printed books when they are actively seeking the Spirit, and of printed books at least when they are merely beginning to seek.

#34453

BN – X – K1

Is it really necessary to travel to some holy land, some sacred place, some distant guru? The true answer is that none of these things is necessary. What you seek is precisely where you now are. Holiness and teaching can meet you there. Is it too hard for you to believe this?

#34454

BN – Z – K1

But one can only have the right to exercise such self-reliance if one pays for it in the coin of self-discipline.

#34455

BN – X – K1

No seeker should be so foolish as to reject the proffered hand of a worthy master. Indeed, such is his weakness and ignorance that he needs all the help he can get from all the strong and wise men of his own times and, through their writings, of past times. But the basis of his relation to such a master should not therefore be one of complete servitude and intellectual paralysis, nor one of totalitarian prohibition from studying with other masters or in other schools. He should keep his freedom to grow and his independence to choose if he is to keep his self-respect.

#34456

B_07 – ZZZ – K1

This injunction to be oneself is to be followed discriminatingly, not blindly. Why should I not follow the procession of another man's thoughts if they be good and true and beautiful?

#34457

BN – Z – K1

A small group of sincere students meeting together may be of great help to each participant provided there is a basic spiritual affinity among them. If this is lacking even in one of the group, such a meeting may well lead to more confusion than enlightenment or may cause some or all to forget that on the quest each walks alone.

#34458

BN – ZZ – K1

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

Overview of the Quest > Organized Groups > Relation to founder

#34459D – 2.1.4.111

BN – X – K1

True spirituality means applying the knowledge got from learning and heeding the laws of the inner life in the differing degree that each individually can do so. It does not mean joining a group or a society and chattering fruitlessly about it or gossiping inquisitively about spiritual leaders.

#34460

B_01 – ZZ – K1

The moral re-education required by philosophy is not a mere Sunday-school pious hope. It is a practical necessity because of the psychological changes and nervous sensitivity developed by the meditation practices. Without it these exercises may prove dangerous to mind, character, and health. The virtues especially required are: harmlessness in feeling and deed, truthfulness in thought and word, honesty with oneself and with others, sexual restraint, humility.

#34461

BN – X – K1

No amount of travel will arrive at truth, or bring one into contact with an Adept, if the other conditions are lacking.

#34462

BN – X – K1

It is a grave misconception to regard the mystical progress as passing mostly through ecstasies and raptures. On the contrary, it passes just as much through broken hearts and bruised emotions, through painful sacrifices and melancholy renunciations.

#34463

BN – X – K1

That same light which reveals his spiritual importance reveals also his personal insignificance.

#34464

BN – X – K1

When the sublime light of the Ideal shines down upon him and he has the courage to look at his own image by it, he will doubtless make some humiliating discoveries about himself. He will find that he is worse than he believed and not so wise as he thought himself to be. But such discoveries are all to the good. For only then can he know what he is called upon to do and set to work following their pointers in self-improvement.

#34465

BN – Z – K1

You will not be able to understand the world better than you understand yourself. The lamp which can illumine the world for you must be lighted within yourself.

#34466

BN – ZZZ – K1

He begins by an unthinking and immature religious attitude, proceeds to the meditational experiments and personal experience of mysticism or the rational abstractions of metaphysics, and ends in the integral all-embracing all-transcending life of philosophy.

#34467

BN – X – K1

He must purify his heart of egoism, his bodily instincts of animalism, and then a favourable atmosphere will be available for the truth to make itself known to him. This statement presupposes that it is already present and only waiting to reveal itself. Such is philosophy's contention, and such is the philosopher's own experience. It first comes to him as "The Interior Word," the Logos within, and later as "the second birth."

#34469

BN – Z – K1

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

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

#34470D – 2.1.5.115

BN – X – K1

The stages of the quest are fairly well defined. First — the aspiration toward spiritual growth manifests itself in a man's heart. Second — the feeling of repentance for past error and sin saddens it. Third — the submission to an ascetic or self-denying discipline follows as a reaction. Fourth — the practice of regular exercises in meditation is carried on.

#34471 – 1.1.0.67

BN – X – DM1

He will know what both the fullness and the fulfilment of life mean only when the consciousness that the Spirit is his own very self comes to life within him.

#34472 – 1.1.0.69

UR_5 – ZZZ – DK1

The path requires an all-round effort. It calls for the discipline of emotions as well as the purification of character from egoism, the practice of the art of meditation as well as religious devotion and prayer, constant reflection about the experiences of life to learn the lessons behind them, and constant discrimination between the values of earthly and spiritual things. This self-development crowned by altruistic activity will in time call forth the grace of the Overself and will bring blissful glimpses occasionally to encourage his endeavours. As pointed out in my 'Wisdom of the Overself', not only one but all the functions of one's being must unite in the effort to reach the spiritual goal. 

#34473 – 1.1.0.70

BN – Z – DEK1

If the quest is to be an integral one, as it must be to be a true one, it should continue through all four spheres of a man's being: the emotional, the intellectual, the volitional, and the intuitional. Such a fourfold character makes it a more complicated affair than many mystics believe it to be.

#34474

BN – X – K1

Anyone who can find a direct teacher in the Overself needs no other. But because the ego easily inserts itself even into his spiritual explorations and its influence into his spiritual revelations, he may still need an outer teacher to warn him against these pitfalls in his way.

#34475 – 1.1.0.72

B_07 – Z – DK1

The need of a spiritual guide is nearly as great as ever today and remains but little changed, but the character of the relation between the disciple and the guide has to change. The old following in blind faith must give place to a new following in intelligent faith.

#34476

BN – Z – K1

Few aspirants are sufficiently developed to justify receiving the personal attention and tuition of a master. All aspirants may, however, seek for his blessing. He will not withhold it. But such is its potency that it may at times work out in a way contrary to their desire. It may bring the ego suffering in the removal of inner weakness as a prelude to bringing it inner light. They should therefore pause and consider before they ask for his blessing. Only a deep earnestness about the quest should motivate such an approach.

#34477

BN – ZZ – K1

It is next to impossible to ascertain the Truth without the guidance of a Teacher. This is the ancient tradition of the East and it will have to become the modern tradition of the West. There is no escape. The explanation of this statement lies in the subtle nature of the Truth. Thus, in the West, men of such acute intelligence and such high character as Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Thoreau came close to the verge of Truth. They could not fully enter because they lacked a Guide. Even in India, the greatest mind that land of Thinkers ever produced, the illustrious Shankara, publicly acknowledged the debt he owed to his own Teacher, Govindapada.

#34478

BN – Z – K1

If an opportunity seems to occur to become the disciple of a master, be sure first to test whether he is fit to hold such a position. Do not test his supposed possession of occult powers or healing gifts; check rather whether he is master over himself before he plays the role over the lives of others. Is he free from the lust of sex, the greed of money, the itch for fame, the passion of wrath, and the desire for power? If not, he may be remarkable, unusual, clever, fluent, psychic, friendly, or anything else, but be sure that he is not competent to guide disciples to the kingdom of heaven.

#34479

BN – Z – K1

Six are the duties of such a teacher: (1) to instruct the student in new knowledge, (2) to correct the errors of his existing knowledge, (3) to develop his mentality in a balanced way, (4) to restrain him from committing evil, (5) to encourage him compassionately, and (6) to open the mystical path to him by active help in meditation.

#34480

BN – X – K1

Three qualifications at least are required in a spiritual teacher: thorough competence, moral purity, and compassionate altruism. Only he who has triumphed over the evil in himself can help others do the same for themselves. Only he who has discovered the divine spirit in himself can guide others to make their own discovery of it. Teaching that does not stem forth from personal experience can never have the effectiveness of teaching that does.

#34481

BN – ZZ – K1

It is essential that a spiritual preceptor live up to the lofty precepts he hands out; if he is unable to do this, he ought to come down from his high seat and take his place among the pupils—preferably in the back row. The Western student of divine mysteries is very eager and very apt to rush out and attempt to teach his fellows before he has completed his course of studies, and before he has quite realized their truth by experience. The obvious reasons are many: a love of the limelight and a sense of superiority are but two of them. How different, this, from that lowly humility of Lao Tzu, whose followers increased from a single person in his lifetime to many millions after his death. "The Sage wears a coarse garment, but carries a jewel in his bosom" is his beautiful announcement. "To know, but to be as though not knowing, is the height of wisdom" is another of his spirit-realized utterances.

#34482

BN – ZZ – K1

Truth cannot be got without a master. That the Buddha did get it without such help does not disprove the truth of this principle. For the arisal of a Buddha is a rare phenomenon on this earth. Mortals who are struggling in mental darkness compose the mass of mankind, not Buddhas sent to enlighten them and therefore destined to be self-enlightened.

#34483

BN – ZZ – K1

That man is most likely to become and is best fitted to become your teacher to whom you are drawn not so much by his experience and wisdom, his goodness and power, as by some intuitional attraction. For this is a sign of an earlier relationship in other lives on earth. The personal trust and intellectual dependence which it generates are themselves signs that you have been teacher and disciple in former reincarnations. It is best to accept the leading of this attraction, for the man under whom you have continuously worked before is the man whom destiny will allot you to pick up the same work again. You may postpone the opening up of such a relationship again but in the end you cannot avoid it. Destiny will have the last word in such a matter.

#34484

BN – ZZ – K1

If he is not too proud to begin at the point where he finds himself rather than at some point where he once was or would now like to be, if he is willing to advance one step at a time, he may realize his goal far more quickly than the less humble and more pretentious man is likely to realize it.

#34485

BN – ZZZ – K1

The Long Path represents the earlier stages through which all seekers after the higher wisdom will have to pass; they cannot leap up to the top. Therefore those stages will always remain valuable.

#34486

BN – Z – K1

The aspirant for illumination must first lift himself out of the quagmire of desire, passion, selfishness, and materialism in which he is sunk. To achieve this purpose, he must undergo a purificatory discipline. It is true that some individuals blessed by grace or karma spontaneously receive illumination without having to undergo such a discipline. But these individuals are few. Most of us have to toil hard to extricate ourselves from the depths of the lower nature before we can see the sky shining overhead.

#34487 – 1.2.0.3

BN – X – DK1

An intellectual understanding is not enough. These ideas can be turned into truths only by a thorough self-discipline leading to liberation from passions, governance of emotions, transformation of morals, and concentration of thoughts.

#34488

BN – Z – K1

He has to develop religious veneration, mystical intuition, moral worth, rational intelligence, and active usefulness in order to evolve a fuller personality. Thus he becomes a fit instrument for the descent of the Overself into the waking consciousness.

#34489 – 1.2.0.5

BN – X – DK1

Many a yogi will criticize this threefold path to realization. He will say meditation alone will be enough. He will deprecate the necessity of knowing metaphysics and ridicule the call to inspired action. But to show that I am introducing no new-fangled notion of my own here, it may be pointed out that in Buddhism there is a recognized triple discipline of attainment, consisting of (1) 'dyhana' (meditation practice), (2) 'prajna' (higher understanding), (3) 'sila' (self-denying conduct).

Overview of Practices Involved > Balance the Psyche > Cultivate balance

#3348D – 3.2.5.196

BN – X – K

Many a yogi will criticize this threefold path to realization. He will say meditation alone will be enough. He will deprecate the necessity of knowing metaphysics and ridicule the call to inspired action. But to show that I am introducing no new-fangled notion of my own here, it may be pointed out that in Buddhism there is a recognized triple discipline of attainment, consisting of (1) 'dyhana' (meditation practice), (2) 'prajna' (higher understanding), (3) 'sila' (self-denying conduct).

Overview of Practices Involved > Balance the Psyche > Cultivate balance

#34490D – 3.2.5.196

BN – X – K1

It is a fault in most of my writings that I did not mention at all, or mentioned too briefly and lightly, certain aspects of the quest so that wrong ideas about my views on these matters now prevail. I did not touch on these aspects or did not touch on them sufficiently, partly because I thought my task was to deal as a specialist primarily with meditation alone, and partly because so many other workers had dealt with them so often. It is now needful to change the emphasis over to these neglected hints. They include moral re-education; character building; prayer, communion, and worship in their most inward, least outward, and quite undenominational religious sense; mortification of flesh and feeling as a temporary but indispensable discipline; and the use of creative imagination in contemplative exercises as a help to spiritual achievement.

#34491

BN – X – K1

There is a point of view which rejects the attitude that destitution and dire poverty are the only paths to spirituality and replaces it by the attitude that a simple life and a small number of possessions are better. The poverty-stricken life is usually inadequate and unaesthetic. We need a sufficiency of possessions in order to obtain efficiency of living, and an aesthetic home in order to live the beautiful life. How much more conducive to success in meditation, for instance, is a well-ordered home, a refined elegant environment, a noiseless and undisturbed room or outdoor spot! But these things cost money. However much the seeker may saturate himself in youthful years with idealistic contempt for the world's values, he will find in time that even the things important to his inner spiritual life can usually be had only if he has enough money to buy them. Privacy, solitude, silence, and leisure for study and meditation are not free, and their price comes high.

#34492

BN – Z – K1

To live a simpler life is not the same as to live an impoverished life. Our wants are without end and it is economy of spiritual energy to reduce them at certain points. But this is not to say that all beautiful things are to be thrown out of the window merely because they are not functional or indispensable.

#34493

BN – Z – K1

What earlier scholars translated as "nonacceptance of gifts" in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, Mahadevan has translated as "non-possession." The difference in meaning is important. The idea clearly is to avoid burdens which keep attention busy with their care.

#34494

BN – Z – K1

What is really meant by renunciation of the world? I will tell you. It is what a man comes down to when confronted by certain death, when he knows that within an hour or two he will be gone from the living world—when he dictates his last will and testament disposing of all his earthly possessions.

#34495

BN – Z – K1

It is not the world that stands in our way and must be renounced but our mental and emotional relationship with the world; and this needs only to be corrected. We may remain just where we are without flight to ashram or convent, provided we make an inner shift.

#34496 – 1.2.0.12

BN – Z – K1

There is something crazy in this idea that we were put into the world to separate ourselves from it!

#34497

BN – X – K1

The inability to believe in or detect the presence of a divine power in the universe is to be overcome by a threefold process. The first part some people overcome by "hearing" the truth directly uttered by an illumined person or by other people by reading their inspired writings. The second part is to reflect constantly upon the Great Truths. The third part is to introvert the mind in contemplation.

#34498

BN – X – K1

He must be observant, must understand the heights and depths of human nature, human motives, and human egoism. He should do this because it will help him to know both others and himself, to serve them better and to protect his quest.

#34499

BN – Z – K1

He who enters upon this quest will have plenty to do, for he will have to work on the weaknesses in his character, to think impartially, to meditate regularly, and to aspire constantly. Above all, he will have to train himself in the discipline of surrendering the ego.

#34500 – 1.2.0.16

BN – Z – K1

Show me a man who is regular and persistent in his practice of daily study, reflection, and meditation, and you will show me a man determined to break the bonds of flesh and destined to walk into the sphere of the spirit, though years may elapse and lives may pass before he succeeds. He has learned to ask, to seek, and to find.

#34501

BN – Z – K1

As a preface to this reflective reading, he should put his heart in an attitude of humility and prayerfulness. He needs the one because it is the divine grace which will make his own efforts bear fruit in the end. He needs the other because he must ask for this grace. And however obscurely he may glimpse the book's meaning at times, his own reflective faith in the truth set down in its pages and in the inner leading of his higher self, will assist him to progress farther. Such a sublime stick-to-it-iveness brings the Overself's grace in illuminated understanding.

#34502

BN – X – K1

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

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

#34503ED – 3.2.3.67

BSG_4 – ZZ – DEK

From the first moment that he sets foot on this inner path until the last one when he has finished it, he will at intervals be assailed by tests which will try the stuff he is made of. Such trials are sent to the student to examine his mettle, to show how much he is really worth, and to reveal the strength and weakness that are really his, not what he believes are his. The hardships he encounters try the quality of his attainment and demonstrate whether his inner strength can survive them or will break down; the sufferings he experiences may engrave lessons on his heart, and the ordeals he undergoes may purify it. Life is the teacher as well as the judge.

#34503

B_15 – ZZZ – K1

Every act is to be brought into the field of awareness and done deliberately.

#34504

BN – Z – K1

The discipline of the self, the following of ethical conduct, the practice of mystical meditation—all these are needed if the higher experience resulting in insight is being sought.

#34505 – 1.2.0.21

BN – Z – DM1

Aspiration alone is not enough. It must be backed by discipline, training, and endeavour.

#34506

BN – Z – K1

He who wishes to triumph must learn to endure. No one can go beyond the first stage without forcing himself to endure irksomeness, to hold on, to wait patiently, determinedly, and to hope cheerfully for eventual success.

#34507M

BA12 – ZZ – K

He who wishes to triumph must learn to endure.

#34507

BN – ZZZ – K1

From the intuitions that are the earliest guides of the seeking mind to the ecstatic self-absorptions that are the latest experiences of the illumined mystic, there are certain obstructions which have to be progressively removed if these manifestations are to appear. They can be classified into three groups: those that belong to the unchecked passions of man, those that belong to his self-centered emotions, and those that belong to his prejudiced thinking. By a critical self-analysis, by a purificatory self-denial, and by an ascetic self-training, the philosophic discipline generates a deep moral and intellectual earnestness which wears down these obstructions and prepares the seeker for real advance.

#34508

BN – Z – K1

The Quest is not to be followed by studying metaphysically alone or by sitting meditatively alone. Both are needful yet still not enough. Experience must be reflectively observed, and intuition must be carefully looked for. Above all, the aspirant must be determined to strive faithfully for the ethical ideals of philosophy and to practise sincerely its moral teachings.

#34510 – 1.2.0.26

BSG_4 – ZZ – DK1

Even though he learns all these truths, he has only learnt them intellectually. They must be applied in the environment, they must be deeply felt in the heart, and, finally, they must be established as the Consciousness whence they are derived.

#34511

BN – Z – K1

Make it a matter of habit, until it becomes a matter of inclination, to be kind, gentle, forgiving, and compassionate. What can you lose? A few things now and then, a little money here and there, an occasional hour or an argument? But see what you can gain! More release from the personal ego, more right to the Overself's grace, more loveliness in the world inside us, and more friends in the world outside us.

Overview of Practices Involved > Balance the Psyche > Engage the whole being

#34512D – 3.2.5.12

BN – ZZ – DK1

It is not merely undesirable for others' sake for a man to engage in spiritual service prematurely and unpurified, but positively dangerous to his own welfare.

#34513

BN – X – K1

The only authentic mandate for spiritual service must come, if it does not come from a master, from within one's Higher Self. If it comes from the ego, it is then an unnecessary intrusion into other people's lives which can do little good, however excellent the intention.

#34514

BN – ZZZ – K1

When he came down into reincarnation, he came with the responsibility for his own life, not for other people's. They were, and ever afterwards remained, responsible for their own lives. The burden was never at any time shifted by God onto his shoulders.

#34515

BN – ZZ – K1

He must examine himself to find out how far hidden self-seeking enters into his altruistic activity.

#34516 – 1.2.0.33

BN – ZZ – DK1

It is futile for anyone who has muddled his own life to set out to straighten the lives of others. It is arrogant and impertinent for anyone to start out improving humanity whilst he himself lamentably needs improvement. The time and strength that he proposes to give in such service will be better used in his own. To meddle with the natural course of other men's lives under such conditions is to fish in troubled waters and make a fool of himself. Only when he has himself well in hand is there even a chance of rendering real service. A man whose own interior and exterior life is full of failure should not mock the teaching by prattling constantly about his wish to serve humanity. Such service must first begin at the point nearest to him, that is, his own self.

#34517

BN – Z – K1

If he can keep his motives really pure and his ego from getting involved, he may find the way to render service. But few men can do it.

#34518

BN – ZZ – K1

It is not that he is not to care about other people or try to help them, but that he is to remember that there is so little he can do for them while he is so little himself.

#34519

BN – X – K1

Help given, or alms bestowed, out of the giver's feeling of oneness with the sufferer, is twice given: once as the physical benefit and once as the spiritual blessing along with it.

#34520

BN – X – K1

Philosophic service is distinguished by practical competence and personal unselfishness.

#34521

BN – ZZZ – K1

I must cut a clear line of difference between helping people and pleasing them. Many write and say my books have helped them when they really mean that my books have pleased their emotions. We help only when we lift a man's mind to the next higher step, not when we confirm his present position by "pleasing" him. To help is to assist a man's progress; to please is to let his bonds enslave him.

#34522

BN – ZZ – K1

The seeker must live primarily for his own development, secondarily for society's. Only when he has attained the consummation of that development may he reverse the roles. If, in his early enthusiasm, he becomes a reformer or a missionary much more than a seeker, he will stub his toes.

#34523

BN – Z – K1

If he begins to think of himself as the doer of this service, the helper of these people, he begins to set up the ego again. It will act as a barricade between him and the higher impersonal power. The spiritual effectiveness of his activity will begin to dwindle.

#34524 – 1.2.0.41

BN – ZZZ – DK1

Because the ultimate issue lies with the grace of the Overself, the aspirant is not to prejudge the results of his Quest. He is to let them take care of themselves. This has one benefit, that it saves him from falling into the extremes of undue discouragement on the one hand and undue elation on the other. It tells him that even though he may not be able, in this incarnation, to attain the goal of union with the Overself by destroying the ego, he can certainly make some progress towards his goal by weakening the ego. Such a weakening does not depend upon grace; it is perfectly within the bounds of his own competence, his own capacity.

#34525 – 1.2.0.42

BN – ZZ – DEK1

Such inward invulnerability seems too far away to be practicable. But the chief value of seeking it lies in the direction which it gives to thought, feeling, and will. Even if it unlikely that the aspirant will achieve such a high standard in this present incarnation, it is likely that he will be able to take two or three steps nearer its achievement.

#34526

BN – X – K1

Let us accept the invitation, ever-open, from the Stillness, taste its exquisite sweetness, and heed its silent instruction.

#34527

BN – Z – K1

Let him withdraw once a day at least, not only from the world's outer activities but also from his own inner conflicts.

#34528

BN – ZZ – K1

In these periods of retreat we are to live with Principles, to get our minds cleansed and hearts pure, to straighten the crooked thoughts and to be where hurry and pressure are not.

#34529

BN – Z – K1

Such a retreat is not to be regarded as a holiday, although it accidentally serves that purpose too, but as a way of life. It is not just a means of filling idle time or of inertly resting in an interval between activities, but is a creative endeavour to transmute oneself and one's values.

#34530

BN – X – K1

To practise retreat in the philosophical manner is very different from the escapist manner. In the first case, the man is striving to gain greater mastery over self and life. In the second case, he is becoming an inert slacker, losing his grip on life.

#34531

BN – X – K1

What philosophy prescribes is neither a life solely given up to monastic retreat nor a life entirely spent in active affairs, but rather a sensible and proportioned combination of the two, a mixture in which the first ingredient necessarily amounts to less than the second.

#34532

BN – Z – K1

Wisdom demands balance. Yet the modern man leads an unbalanced life. He is engaged in ceaseless activity, whether of work or pleasure, without the counterbalance of quiet repose and inner withdrawal. His activity is alright in its place, but it should be kept there, and should not overrun these precious moments when he ought to take counsel of his higher being. Hence the periodic practice of mental quiet is a necessity, not a luxury or hobby. It is called by the Chinese esoteric school "cleansing the mind."

#34533

BN – Z – K1

If these occasional retirements from the world benefit him, if he comes out of them with a stronger will and a clearer mind and a calmer heart, if they enable him to collect his thoughts about deeper matters and to gather his forces for the higher life, then it would be foolish to dub this as escapism.

#34534

BN – ZZ – K1

If he is to find the highest in himself, a man can best begin this search by retiring to the country and by working at some occupation where he does not have to fight selfishly and compete fiercely with others. By thus working less ambitiously and living more plainly, he will have a better chance to cultivate the tender plant of aspiration. By thus separating himself from the agitated atmosphere of cities, what he loses in outer fortune he will gain in inner fortune. Yet, if he faithfully follows his ideals, he will find that the same inner voice which prompted him to dwell apart will at times urge him to return for a while also and learn the missing part of his lesson. Most of the needful lessons of life can be learnt in obscure retreat, in small rural communities, but not all. The others are to be gained only in the large bustling cities and societies of men.

#34535

BN – ZZ – K1

Because most of us have to pass our lives on this earth and in human society, we cannot travel the fugitive way. We cannot enter monasteries or sit in ashrams. And because some of us prefer philosophy to escapism we do not want to do so. For we believe that the real thing ascetics seek escape from is not the world, not society, but themselves; that our chief work in life is to remake ourselves. When we go into occasional and limited retreat we do so to quieten the mind, to detach the heart, to extend our perspectives, and to reflect upon life—not to run from it and squat the years idly away.

#34536

BN – Z – K1

He who lives a noble life in the midst of the world's business is superior to him who lives a noble life in the midst of a monastery.

#34537

BN – ZZ – K1

We need to take these occasional retreats to cleanse ourselves inwardly, to find fresh strength and gather new inspiration, to study ourselves, meditate, and understand truth.

#34538 – 1.3.0.12

BN – ZZ – DK1

There is a real need to balance our extreme tendency to activism with something of quietism, to offset our excessive doing with deeper being.

#34539 – 1.3.0.13

BN – Z – DK1

The fast pace of modern living and the busy clamour of modern cities prevent us from meeting ourselves. We have to sit down as if we were in the desert all alone surrounded by silence and slow the pace of thoughts until in the gaps between them we begin to see who the thinker is. But we must give it time, we must be patient. It is not out there right in front, but hidden deep inside. Inside there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel.

#34540

BN – Z – K1

The benefits of meditation apply both to mundane life and to spiritual seeking.

#34541E – 1.3.0.15

BSG_4 – P – DE

Think what it means to be able to give our mental apparatus a complete rest, to be able to stop all thoughts at will, and to experience the profound relief of relaxing the entire being―body, nerves, breath, emotions, and thoughts…

#34541E – 1.3.0.15

BSG_4 – P – DE

We must strike a healthy balance between work and retirement, activity and contemplation, pleasure and reflection, and not remain victims of prevailing conventions. A few minutes invested every day in meditation practice will more than pay for themselves. We must not only introduce it as a regular feature of the human day but also as an important one.

#34541E – 1.3.0.15

BN – X – DE

We must reorganize our daily lives so that time can be found for the leisurely cultivation of the soul through study, reflection, and meditation. Such periodical intervals of withdrawnness from the endless preoccupation with external affairs are a spiritual necessity.

#34541E – 1.3.0.15

BN – X – DE

The benefits of meditation apply both to mundane life and to spiritual seeking. Think what it means to be able to give our mental apparatus a complete rest, to be able to stop all thoughts at will, and to experience the profound relief of relaxing the entire being—body, nerves, breath, emotions, and thoughts.

#34541E – 1.3.0.15

BA11 – Z – DEK