The unity between our character and our destiny is inseparable; the connection between our way of thinking and the course of events is unerring.

#34743 – 1.9.0.38

BN – ZZZ – DK1

There are cosmic compulsions which none escape and which permeate human destiny, for they are part of the World-Idea.

#34744

BN – Z – K1

Those who are unaware of the penalties they incur by misuse of the power to think and the will to act are in urgent need of the teaching of karma.

#34745 – 1.9.0.44

BN – ZZ – DK1

Fate is what an outside will imposes upon us, irrespective of our merits or demerits. Karma is what unconsciously our own will has imposed upon us through the come-back of our actions.

#34746

BN – ZZ – K1

The Law of Karma makes each man responsible for his own life. The materialists who deny karma and place all the blame and burden upon the shoulders of environment and heredity deny responsibility. They begin and end with an illusion.

#34747 – 1.9.0.47

BSG_5 – ZZZ – DK1

If he accepts this tenet of karma coupled with rebirth, then his awakening to a sense of responsibility for his life and the course it takes should lead in turn to a feeling of the need for self-discipline.

#34748 – 1.9.0.52

B_01 – Z – DK1

If philosophy accepted the doctrine of complete fatalism, it could hold out no hope to mankind. If it said that every event in the history of the world was predestined from the very beginning; that each event in a man's life was preordained from before his birth; that no thought, no word, and no deed could have been avoided, then its mystical teaching would have been unnecessary, its metaphysical teaching would have been falsified, and its moral teaching would have been in vain. But philosophy has never been shipwrecked upon the rocks of such foolish fatalism. It says that what happens inside you is intimately connected with what happens outside you, that thought, feeling, will, intuition, or character makes its secret contributions towards the events of your life, and that to the extent to which you begin to control yourself, you will begin to control your personal welfare.

#34749

BN – ZZ – K1

If we look at men in the mass, we must believe in the doctrine of fatalism. It applies to them. They are compelled by their environments, they struggle like animals to survive precisely because they are not too far removed from the animal kingdom which was the field of their previous reincarnational activity. They react like automatons under a dead weight of karma, move like puppets out of the blind universal instincts of nature. But this is not the end of the story. It is indeed only its beginning. For here and there a man emerges from the herd who is becoming an individual, creatively making himself into a fully human being. For him each day is a fresh experience, each experience is unique, each tomorrow no longer the completely inevitable and quite foreseeable inheritance of all its yesterdays. From being enslaved by animality and fatality, he is becoming free in full humanity and creativity.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Defining karma, fate, and destiny

#34750E – 6.9.3.112

BN – ZZ – DEK

Karma compels us so long as we do not anticipate the direction of its course by intelligence, nor endeavour to divert its flow by self-determination.

#34751

BN – X – K1

"Where there is no choice, where circumstances make the decision, one must bow one's head to them. Fatalism is acceptable only in the sense of recognizing what is inevitable and what is not. But fatalism is unacceptable as a blind, unquestioning, helpless submission to every happening."

#34753

BN – ZZ – K1

The theoretical basis of this teaching about the physical manifestation of mental sickness lies in mentalism. The practical basis lies in observation and experience.

#34754

BN – Z – K1

A great rage or an overwhelming fear affects the heartbeat until it slows down or quickens dangerously. A sudden tremendous fright can cause syncope, even death. Such is the known power of emotion over functions of the body's organs. When living habits are reformed and brought to conform to the requirements of hygienic laws so that the patient stops doing those things which gave his disease the requisite conditions for it to take hold, and when the different systems of physical therapy are applied as required without prejudice against or favouritism for any particular one, and when this is combined with faith in the spiritual healing power invoked by a practitioner or by the patient himself, the chances of a cure are raised to the highest.

#34755

BN – Z – K1

It is more prudent and more conducive to a successful result if he is prepared to make necessary changes of thought and feeling and character. The greater the healing asked for, the greater the sacrifice he may in turn be asked to make. When, for instance Jesus asked the distressed sufferers to believe, they were not being asked to believe merely superficially, but rather so deeply that they would at least try to make the changes called for. Having contributed so much to the disease, they ought to contribute something to the cure.

#34756

BN – X – K1

An informed friend asked me to warn against egoistic healing; it is dangerous for people still in the ego to heal others, and safe only in self-healing.

#34757

BN – X – K1

Psychoanalysis is primarily a search for what is wrong with man; philosophic analysis is a search for what is right with him. Psychoanalysis seeks to correct the false self; philosophy to reveal the true one that is underneath it. Psychoanalysis probes the dead past of childhood; philosophy the living present of maturity.

#34759

BN – ZZ – K1

Humbled by feelings of personal littleness and moral unworthiness, he is awed by this discovery that he has become a channel though which a power that is not his own, and is indeed beyond his own, flows out for the helping and healing of other men.

#34760

BN – Z – K1

It is a great error for an ordinary person to sit down when confronted by practical problems and say, "God will take care of this for me." God may do so but it is just as likely that God will not do so. John Burroughs wrote the lines, "I sit serene, with folded hands and wait, My own, my own, shall come to me," as also found in the sayings of Lao Tzu: "He who takes a back seat shall be first. He who hides his own greatness shall be put in front," etc. These assertions are perfectly true—but only of the Adept. For him, he need only sit still and all things come to him; but for the others—the unrealized, the materialistic—they must strive, struggle, and suffer for everything they need.

#34761

BN – X – K1

Why does God allow the evil and suffering when the same result of spiritual advantage could be got in other ways? There are some questions to which there are no answers because God alone can answer them, and this is one. We can however find what human intuition, human mystical revelation, has to say about these things and accept such contributions at their own value.

#34762

B_17 – ZZ – K1

The dark and destructive forces show themselves in Nature and life. To leave them out, unaccounted for and ignored, is to leave a weak place in oneself.

#34763

BN – X – K1

You must plant your feet firmly on one definite purpose. Opposition will whirl around you, but hold on. Perverted Man is full of prejudice, and ninety-nine out of every one hundred you meet will unconsciously or consciously attempt to deflect you from your divine purpose.

#34764

BA12 – ZZZ – K1

Until such time as each member of a community, nation, or society practises sufficient self-control to bring about his own inner peace, it is illusory to expect outer peace in the world. This is why history is a record of conflict.

#34765

BN – ZZ – K1

The malign powers of evil in the world, which have been so widely spread, so active and so violent in our own generation, are not to be ignored by dreaming optimism.

#34766

BN – ZZ – K1

The world's evil and untruth are plainly there. The saint may not want to see them, because he does not want to think badly about other people; but the philosopher must distinguish them and harms no one by doing so, because he sees the Good and the True behind everything at the same time.

#34767

BN – ZZ – K1

The nihilistic nature of Existentialism is shown by its founder, Sartre, holding the opinion, according to Simone de Beauvoir, that if there was nothing to attack and destroy, the writing of books would not be worthwhile.

#34768

BN – X – K1

The Existentialists have given pessimism and nihilism a morbid prestige.

#34769

BN – X – K1

Throw out negative thoughts as they would hinder the uplift of your mind. Replace them by frequent and positive remembrance of the Overself.

#34770 – 1.11.0.38

BN – ZZ – DK1

What we see around us in the world today—poison in the air, water, soil, food, even in the stratosphere, and destroying the human body through disease—is but a reflected crystallization of poison in the human mind and heart. If the invisible evil were not present, the visible one would not have come into existence. Even those whose faith can not stretch so far, can trace the direct lines of connection by the use of reason alone.

#34771

BN – Z – K1

Do not gaze overlong upon that person, that thing, that place, whose history is evil, whose nature is evil, lest you imperil yourself, or your health, or your fortunes. Better, avoid them if you can.

#34773

BN – Z – K1

This I may say that my work throughout has always been based on a firsthand knowledge of what I write about and not upon hearsay or tradition.

#34774

BN – ZZ – K1

There are times—and they are the times when, looking back, I love my profession most—when writing becomes for me not a profession at all but either a form of religious worship or a form of metaphysical enlightenment. It is then, as the pen moves along silently, that I become aware of a shining presence which calls forth all my holy reverence or pushes open the mind's doors.

#34775

BN – ZZ – K1

The Writer who sometimes sits behind the writer of these lines smiling at my puny attempts to translate the Untranslatable, once bade me put away for an indefinite period the thought of any future publications. I obeyed and there was a long silence in the outer world—so long that two obituary notices were printed by newspapers! I had enough leisure to discover the faultiness of the earlier work and felt acutely that the world was better off without my lucubrations. But a day came when I felt the presence of the Presence and I received clear guidance to take the pen again.

#34776

BN – ZZ – K1

Writing, which is an exercise of the intellect to some, is an act of worship to me. I rise from my desk in the same mood as that in which I leave an hour of prayer in an old cathedral, or of meditation in a little wood.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A sacred vocation

#34777D – 8.12.5.301

BA13 – ZZ – DM1*

Much that was pertinent to the Quest was left unmentioned in the earlier books, partly through reluctance to speak of certain matters, partly through the writer's own need of further personal development to attain irrefragible conclusions about other matters. The reluctance has now been overcome and the development has been achieved.

#34778

BN – Z – K1

All the volumes that I have previously written belong to the formative stage. Only now, after thirty years of unceasing travail and fearless exploration, have I attained a satisfying fullness in my comprehension of this abstruse subject, a clear perspective of all its tangled ramifications, and a joyous new revelation from a higher source hitherto known only obscurely and distantly. All my further writings will bear the impress of this change and will show by their character how imperfect are my earlier ones. Nevertheless, on certain principal matters, what I then wrote has all along remained and still remains my settled view and indeed has been thoroughly confirmed by time. Such, for instance, are (1) the soul's real existence, (2) the necessity for and the great benefits arising from meditation, (3) the supreme value of the spiritual quest, and (4) the view that loyalty to mysticism need not entail disloyalty to reason.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#34779D – 8.12.5.125

BN – ZZ – K1

It is regrettable in those early books that I over-estimated the pace of progress and brought the goal noticeably nearer than it really is.

#34780

BN – X – K1

I have gathered my materials from the West as well as the East, from modern science as well as ancient metaphysics, from Christian mysticism as well as Hindu occultism. The narrowness which would set up any Indian yoga as being enough by itself is something which I reject. And there is no cult, organization, or group with which I associate myself or within whose limitations I would ask others to confine themselves.

#34781

BN – ZZ – K1

There is no cult, organization, or group with which I associate myself or within whose limitations I would ask others to confine themselves.

#34781E

B_01 – ZZ – K

The purpose of these pages is not to attack but to explain, to appeal, and to suggest. Their criticism is constructive and untouched by malice. It comes from a well-wisher and not from an opponent of religion: therefore it ought not to be resented.

#34782

BA13 – ZZ – K1

It demanded no less than hundreds of interviews with different teachers and hermits, thousands of miles of travel to reach them, and at least a hundred thousand pages of the most abstruse reading in the world before I could bring my course of personal study in the hidden philosophy to a final close. Today I have not got the time to take others through such a long and arduous course and they have probably not got the patience to endure it.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The making of a messenger

#34783D – 8.12.3.103

BA13 – ZZ – K1

My researches were made not only amongst modern books and ancient texts and living men. They were also made in the mysterious within-ness of my own consciousness.

#34784

BA13 – ZZ – K1

I have gathered my materials from the West as well as the East, from modern science as well as ancient metaphysics, from Christian mysticism as well as Hindu occultism. My researches were made not only amongst modern books and ancient texts and living men. They were also made in the mysterious within-ness of my own consciousness.

#34784EM

UR_2.0 – ZZZ – K

The world-wide extent of my correspondence and travels; the extraordinary variety of Oriental and Occidental human contacts which has fallen to my lot; the narratives and information which have fallen from the lips of those who have sought me out for interviews and those whom I, too, have sought out for the same purpose; the knowledge which I have gleaned from ancient little-known texts and modern printed books in four continents; experiments made and observations recorded amongst mystics and devotees of the most varied types—from all these sources an immense amount of valuable mystical occult and metaphysical knowledge, theoretical and practical, has fallen into my hands. Had I known all this at the beginning of my own quest—now thirty years ago, I would have been saved much trouble, many errors and constant sufferings. However, others will profit by it for I intend to make the best fruit of my own experience available to genuine seekers.

#34785

BA13 – ZZ – K1

I am a researcher, that is my special job. Then I go on to convert the results of my researches into notes and reports, into analyses and reflections. Later I draw upon this material for my published writings.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The making of a messenger

#34786D – 8.12.3.104

BA13 – Z – K1

I lay no special claim to virtue and piety which most men do not possess. But I do lay claim to indefatigable research into mystical truth, theory, and practice.

#34787

BN – Z – K1

I am only a generator of ideas, not a disseminator of them. My work is to inspire and direct others in private, that they might serve humanity spiritually in public.

#34789

BA13 – ZZZ – K1

Those who look in these pages for an exact presentation of the Oriental doctrines look in vain. Scholars, purists, and pundits had better beware of these pages. We do not write for them. For the teachings which we have drawn from the East have been used as a base upon which to build independently; but the responsibility for the superstructure rests solely with us, for it is a building intended for the Modern West. Nevertheless those who decry our writings cannot deny that they have contributed much towards the creation of a new interest in Oriental literature. They would do well also to place some of their censure upon destiny, which all along has used me as an agent at first unwitting but later clearly conscious.

#34791

BN – ZZ – K1

Not one but several minds will be needed to labour at the metaphysical foundation of the twentieth-century structure of philosophy. I can claim the merit only of being among the earliest of these pioneers. There are others yet to appear who will unquestionably do better and more valuable work.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#34793D – 8.12.2.187

BN – ZZ – K1

This synthesis has developed from the world-wide researches of this writer, plus the secret traditions of Oriental teachers, the personal experiences of Occidental adepts, and the needs of modern aspirants. It notes with approval the trend toward interest in yoga and mysticism, but with regret where so much of this interest is directed to antique or medieval types unsuited to those needs, which are based on professional business and occupational conditions unknown to such earlier types. Into this synthesis has gone the garnerings from great storehouses of the past, but added to them are the fresh creative findings of the present. Orient and Occident, ancient and modern, have joined together to produce this distinctive teaching. It is not enough to resuscitate the doctrines and methods of a bygone era; we must also evolve our own. And this can be done only out of firsthand experience of illumination under modern conditions.

#34795

UR_2.0 – ZZ – K1

I did not 'seek' to become the formulator of such a unique and priceless message to mankind. Indeed knowing myself in weakness as well as strength, I naturally shrink from seeking such an immense responsibility and would rather have helped and served a worthier man to formulate the message. This is not to say that I underrate its value, its dignity, its public prestige. But all my previous attempts to evade the task having ended in failure, I now positively and affirmatively—no longer reluctantly and hesitantly—step forward to its accomplishment. I do so moreover with tranquil joy, for I am utterly convinced in the deepest recess of my heart, no less than in the logical thinking of my brain, that the teaching is so greatly needed in our time by those who have sought in vain for comprehensive elucidation of the problem of their existence, that I feel the help it will give them constitutes the best possible use of my energies, talents, and days in this incarnation.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The need for spiritual education

#34796D – 8.12.2.60

BA13 – ZZZ – K1

Although I was already travelling the road to the self-discovery of these truths, it is true that an apparent fortuitous meeting with an extraordinary individual at Angkor saved me from some of the time and labour involved in this process. For he turned out to be an adept in the higher philosophy who had not only had a most unusual personal history but also a most unusual comprehension of the problems which were troubling me. He put me through strange initiatory experiences in a deserted temple and then, with a few brief explanations of the hidden teachings, placed the key to their solutions in my hands. But after all it was only a key to the door-chamber, and not the entire treasure itself. These I had to ferret out for myself. That is, to say, I was given the principle but had to work out the details, develop the applications, and trace out the ramifications for myself. I was provided with a foundation but had to erect the super-structure by my own efforts. And all this has been a task for many years, a task upon which I am still engaged.

#34797

BN – ZZ – K1

Henceforth the background of this teaching will be, nay must be, a universal one. It shall resist those who would label it Eastern because they will not be able to deny its Western contents, form, and spirit. It shall resist those who would label it Western, because they too shall not be able to deny its Eastern roots and contents.

#34798

BN – ZZZ – K1

Let them remember that the Truth comes not from any person but from the Holy Spirit. It is from such a source that what is worthy in my writings has come; the errors however are mine. Let them therefore describe themselves as students of philosophy, not as followers of Brunton.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#34799D – 8.12.4.38

BA13 – ZZZ – K1

I try to practise the advice I give others and to live according to the teachings I write down. This does not mean that I always succeed in doing so. But the endeavour being there, the ideas they concern have been put through some testing in action: they are not left in the air as mere untried theories. Today, through a world-wide correspondence and formerly through numerous interviews I have uncovered in addition to them the experiences of people standing in every grade of development.

#34800

BN – Z – K1

This book is but a mirror, in which I have shown the facts and events of a life devoted to the quest of Realization. Whether the conclusions it contains are to your taste or not, please deign to believe that as a record I have endeavoured to invest it with absolute verity.

#34802

BN – ZZ – K1

It is not without much reluctance that I have ventured to betray aloud the intimate experiences received in secret and solitary communion with nature. I would fain have harboured them until this body was gone, when their fate would carry no concern for me. But the bidding of my spiritual Guides was such that these words have gone out into print.

#34803

BA13 – ZZZ – K1

If this book can only make the Overself seem as real to the imagination of others as it is to me in actuality, as living a presence to their faith as it is to my meditation, it may be of some service to them. But if it fails to do so, it may still….

#34805

BN – X – K1

In this book I have considered myself to be a sensitive recording instrument, carefully and minutely registering the impressions received from these higher states of consciousness.

#34806 – 1.12.0.33

BN – X – DM1

In this book I have considered myself to be a sensitive recording instrument, carefully and minutely registering the impressions received from these higher states of consciousness. They are messages brought from the infinite for the blessing and guidance of finite man. But he must recognize their value and esteem their source.

#34806M – 1.12.0.33

BA13 – ZZZ – DK

My work is a "prophetic" message to our times, a religious revelatory work. An academic seal would put it on an intellectual and consequently lower plane.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#34807D – 8.12.3.6

BA13 – ZZ – K1

If I make a first formal appearance as a teacher, it is only in deference to the mission now imposed on me and the mandate now given me.

#34808

BA13 – ZZ – K1

Have I not searched far and suffered much to prepare an easier path for you all, to cut through thick jungles a track which others could follow with less pain and less labour? Have I not gleaned sufficient knowledge at great cost to be worthy of a hearing? Have I not attained sufficient proficiency in yoga and philosophy to be worthy at least of a claim on truth-seekers' attention? Have I not toiled and over-toiled in the effort to share both the modicum of knowledge and the measure of proficiency with others to be worthy at least of their interest?

#34809

BN – ZZZ – K1

It is precisely because we are entering an epoch when the common people are at last coming into their own and when the world's conscience about its duty toward the underprivileged has been tardily aroused, that I feel I am obeying a divine command when I write of sacred things in direct manner, of metaphysical themes in a plain manner, and of mystical experiences in a familiar manner. Spiritual snobs may call my treatment of these subjects, cheap, and my work, journalese, but its result—faintly indicated by the long record of help gratefully acknowledged—is their best answer.

#34811

BN – X – K1

I have written this book because in an age when the two opposed conceptions of man are throwing the world into strife and revolution and war, there is clear need for personal testimony from those who know the truth rather than those who believe in it.

#34812

BN – ZZ – K1

To attempt this book will be an adventure for the Warriors of Light, but the wanderers of night will put it down with much celerity. For these pages are enchanted with a white magic which can inflict no greater injury on adversaries than to permit them to resist the principles contained therein.

Reflections > The Literary Work > For kindred souls

#34813D – 8.12.5.6

BN – X – K1

To the outside observer, my declining years have been dead ones, apparently spent in inactivity and futility. But this is only one side of the picture. For they have also been spent in a hidden activity on a higher plane, as much for my own spiritual growth as for the world's peace.

Reflections > The Literary Work > The contribution of silence

#34814D – 8.12.5.351

BA13 – ZZ – K1

I have attempted to think out anew, and on the basis of my own experience and not that of men who lived five thousand years ago, what should be the attitude of a normal modern man toward life. Such blessed independence may be scorned by some, but it is a birthright which I jealously guard.

#34815

BN – Z – K1

I believe that there is a soul in man. This is a frank if commonplace avowal. Yet as I look again at these words, I find a false modesty in them. It is a poor tribute to truth to hesitate timidly in making the open declaration that I 'know' there is a soul because I daily commune with it as a real, living presence.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#34816 – 8.12.3.36

BN – Z – DEM1

Life remains what it is—deathless and unbound. We shall all meet again. Know what you are, and be free. The best counsel today is, keep calm, aware. Don't let the pressure of mental environment break into what you know and what is real and ultimately true. This is your magic talisman to safeguard you; cling to it. The last word is—Patience! The night is darkest before dawn. But dawn comes.

#34817 – 1.12.0.44

BA12 – ZZZ – DK1

I prefer anonymity for my work but fate has ignored my preference.

#34818

BA13 – ZZ – K1

I cannot reiterate enough that the fortunes, events, and experiences of human existence are controlled by higher laws, that there is meaning and purpose in them, and that it is the business of human intelligence to seek out and learn the reasons for them.

#34819

BN – ZZZ – K1

I am not one of those who deplore the modern way of life, who regret its increasing Americanization because of its emphasis on mechanical gadgets and conveniences. These things are good. But I do deplore the lack of a sense of proportion in pursuing these things, the lack of measure when these constitute the sole purpose of living.

#34820

BN – ZZ – K1

There is only room in your mind for a single thought at a time. Take care, then, that it be a positive one.

#34821 – 1.13.0.10

BN – ZZ – DK1

Should anyone lazily, passively, quietly, and cowardly accept things as they are? Or should he challenge them, rebel against them and criticize them irreverently, even scornfully? Are they correct, those saints who declare—or even Stoic thinkers like Seneca who accept—all suffering and pain not only as God's will for us but also as our own will? Seneca says, “Take all things as if desired and asked for.” (He referred to tribulations.) But 'philosophy' teaches that if you accept life do not accept blindly. Seek the lesson, the instruction, the education, and karmic reason and cause behind it. Add knowledge to your faith.

#34822

A250224 – ZZ – K1

Out of suffering may come the transmutation of values, even the transfiguration of character. But these developments are possible only if the man co-operates. If he does not, then the suffering is in vain, fruitless.

#34823 – 1.13.0.13

B_17 – Z – DK1

When a human being is crushed to the ground, when his ego is deflated and he calls out in sheer desperation for guidance or for help, the answer may not come to him in the form that he wants or expects; it may come in the form of clues and hints at best, of suggestions. It is for him then to patiently take them up and follow them to where they lead. The suffering which has come to him is not meaningless. There is a sublime rationality behind it, even if it is only the specific effect of a cause which he set going in previous incarnations.

#34824

B_01 – ZZZ – K1

It is pardonable to wish a change of situation when it is grievous but it is better to enquire first what message the situation holds for us. Otherwise we may be attempting to elude the Overself's directive and thereby incurring the danger of an even greater disaster.

#34825

BN – ZZZ – K1

The kind of experience which man most dislikes to have is the very kind which forces him to seek out its cause, and thus begin unwittingly the search for life's meaning. The disappointments in his emotional life, the sufferings in his physical body, and the misfortunes in his personal fate ought to teach him to discriminate more carefully, to examine more deeply, and in the end to feel more sympathy with the sorrowing.

#34826

B_17 – ZZZ – K1

The failures which everyone has left behind him—whether in career, relationship, or the quest itself—do not necessarily represent wasted effort. From each of them he can salvage the tuition for a fresh start, the caution for a wiser one, and more knowledge of himself.

#34827 – 1.13.0.22

BN – Z – DK1

The experiences of life, ennobling some people but degrading others, can in the end affect our thoughts, desires, and feelings only as we let them. It is for us to say whether they shall call forth our divinity or our brutality. Our attitude of mind helps to determine our experience of the world.

#34829

BN – Z – K1

What happens to a man is important, but not quite so important as what he makes of it.

#34830 – 1.13.0.29

BN – Z – DK1

We shall not indulge the vain hope of guiding all humanity out of the chaos in which it now finds itself, for humanity will refuse to follow the light which is itself guiding us. Deluded by its lower nature, blinded by its hollow traditions and hypocritical conventions, indifferent to the still small voice of truth merely because the voice of untruth blares more impressively through the thousand loudspeakers of vested interests, the human race will continue to flounder confusedly and to suffer needlessly. But here and there are individuals who will nevertheless welcome the light we bring. For their sake we must patiently hold the torch aloft.

#34831

BN – ZZZ – K1

If industrial civilization has enriched our outer life it has also impoverished the inner life. It need not have done so if we had brought about a proper equilibrium between the two and if we had done so under the light of the guiding principle of what we are here on earth for. > >The composer of music or poetry, the thinker or sculptor who brings into the outer world what he has felt, glimpsed, thought in his own inner world, experiences a certain kind of satisfaction by that very act. The craftsman or the artisan who is able to make something by his own handiwork shares a measure of this satisfaction too. But the mass of workers packed away into a factory and occupied solely with machinery repeating the same movements dozens and dozens of times can hardly hope to get even an inkling of this satisfaction. If such monotonous work is essential, then let it be performed at intervals and let there be a rhythm of recuperation where the workers can return to themselves.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Status of the herd

#34832DP – 9.13.2.140

B_08 – ZZ – DEK1

Those whose good fortune has given them enough to satisfy many desires ought not wait for old age to see how these satisfactions were passing and uncertain. They ought to do the heroic thing and detach themselves from the desire while there is still vigour in their feeling and their will.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#34833D – 9.13.3.124

BN – Z – K1

Young immature people lack balance, knowledge, experience, and responsibility so that they are more easily rushed into courses of action dictated by frantic passion or frenzied emotion. But if they live long enough, life itself will impose its own disciplines upon them and compel them to accept adult responsibility and make the necessary growth which goes with it. Otherwise they may come to write their lives off as failures in the real sense, which includes the visible results in the world and the invisible moral and mental consequences in themselves. Until the balance within themselves is got right, they are liable to make decisions and commit actions which will later be regretted.

#34834

BN – X – K1

I am in much sympathy with rebellions against much academic education, with protests against its dryness, its narrow limitations, its rigidities, its stuffiness, and its pedantic quibbling. But unless these protests and rebellions are led by older persons with enough experience, maturity, judgement, and balance, they fall into the hands of communists, na\i\rve liberals, and other politically minded destructive forces.

#34835

BN – X – K1

I was critical of the sadhus in India on certain points—never mind what they were. The differences got aired in several Indian newspapers at the time rather sensationally, and with much miscomprehension—even malice. But I also admired them on other points, some of which I find present today among those young drop-outs who have a religious turn of mind. They are in rebellion against a materialistic society and refuse to join it. They remind us that Jesus was a drop-out too. They try to live by working on self, supporting themselves co-operatively and not competitively, without ambitions, without insurance, with only a few possessions—by sincerity and not by appearance.

#34836

B_12 – Z – K1

Where the physical body is cherished as the sole reality and made the sole basis for social and political reform, where hate-driven men advocate physical violence as the sole means of effecting progress, be sure of the presence of evil forces, dangers to society, ignorant opponents of truth, and enemies of the Light.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Totalitarianism, Communism

#34837D – 7.11.3.119

B_16 – Z – K1

Of what use is an education if it does not teach the young how to use their minds so as to promote their own welfare, instead of their own harm? All ought to be made aware of the value and need of emotional and thought control, of discriminating between destructive or negative thoughts and constructive or positive ones.

#34838

BN – Z – K1

It is his choice whether to accept the trammels of family life or the freedom of celibate life. Both conditions have their advantages and disadvantages, their compensations and difficulties. Each is a valid form of experience. But because most scriptures of most religions have been written by monks, their own status has been favoured and set higher. But it must be repeated: there is no one way which is the only way.

#34839

BN – Z – K1

In one of his essays, Bacon delivers himself of the thought that the man who marries gives a hostage to fortune. This is so but it is part of the picture of the pairs of opposites which is universal throughout the world and inseparable from human existence. It is yin and yang—the duality of all manifested life. However there is an aspect of this topic which he might have included and that is that in marrying the man takes on another person's burdens in addition to his own. Yet this is equally true of all other forms of personal association with other human beings—of the hiring of assistants and the joining of an organization, of the making of friends and enjoyment of social contacts, of the working in a profession or the maintaining of a business. In all these activities a man takes on either a little or a large share of the problems of others.

#34840

BN – Z – K1

What Buddha taught about the transient, the changing, the elusive character of all human joy is plainly true: he went further and declared it unsatisfactory because of these reasons. Still further and on the same grounds, he rejected the attractions of the Beautiful Form. We are not to be ensnared by these perfections of form, that shapeliness of figure, that stateliness of architecture, and those symmetries of pattern such as engaged the ancient Greek artist. But the philosopher who cannot accept this further attitude is entitled to ask, "So long as we do not permit ourselves to be deceived into regarding them as the ultimate happiness, so long as we acknowledge their relativity and brevity, so what if they do pass, if they have their day? Why not enjoy them to the utmost while they are there? Why refuse an exquisite sight or an enchanting sound if, apart from the pleasure it affords, it might even be used as a stepping-stone to spiritual uplift?"

#34841

BN – ZZ – K1

Art fulfils its highest purpose, acquires more valuable significance, when it becomes a vehicle for spiritual beauty.

#34842

BN – Z – K1

The writer or artist or musician who is to stir up the intuitions in your mind must be the human receptacle of divine inspiration.

#34843

BN – Z – K1

It is a fact that beautiful surroundings create an atmosphere, benefit the emotional-mental state, and rest or stimulate a man according to their nature.

#34844

BN – X – K1

Whether it be a piece of glued furniture or a constructed building, a piece of written prose or a flying machine, it should serve not the functional alone nor the beautiful alone, but a blend of both together.

#34845

BN – X – K1

This is creative stillness; it is also magical, for it brings about the merging of yin and yang.

#34846

A240901 – Z – K1

The artist who is infatuated with himself uses his production to flatter and hence strengthen his ego.

#34847

BN – Z – K1

An artistic production that is really inspired must give joy to its creator at the time of creation equally as to its possessor, hearer, or beholder. If it does not, then it is not inspired.

The Arts in Culture > Creativity, Genius > Creativity

#34848D – 9.14.2.25

BN – ZZ – K1

Method and technique are necessary in themselves but incomplete; inspiration and intuition should shine behind them.

#34849

BN – ZZ – K1

Although technical equipment is not all there is to the practice of art, it must be mastered. Without it, inspiration suffers from a faulty or deficient medium.

The Arts in Culture > Creativity, Genius > Genius, inspiration, technique

#34850D – 9.14.2.81

BN – ZZ – K1

Music can express the mystical experience better than language; it can tell of its mystery, joy, sadness, and peace far better than words can utter. The fatigued intellect finds a tonic and the harassed emotions find comfort in music.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Music

#34851D – 9.14.4.301

B_09 – ZZZ – DK1

Those Westerners who try to ape Indians—and not only Indians, but the ancient Indians at that—by adopting their dress, clothes, beliefs, and general way of life are putting themselves in a somewhat ridiculous position, if not a false one. We may give admiration and sympathy to Indian ideas and ideals up to a certain point, but we need not do it by throwing away completely all our Western heritage, which also has its substantial value. We need not let them prevent us from giving an adequate appreciation to the offerings of our own culture.

#34852

BN – X – K1

No one need find himself faced with the choice between Orient and Occident in his search for truth. It is a false choice—the real one is within himself.

#34853

BN – ZZ – K1

We hear of lamas in Tibet who immure themselves in sealed rooms, with but a small hole in the wall to receive their morsel of food, so that in total darkness and in total inactivity they may better concentrate all their attention on their inner practices. We hear of monks in the Zendo halls of Japan who sit half round the clock while holding the mind persistently to their meditations. We hear of yogis in India who forsake wife and home, position and possessions, and withdraw to forest, cave, or ashram. We shrink with terror from such hard exercises and abnegations. How puny seems our own effort by contrast, how paltry our own self-denial!

#34854

BN – X – K1

In the Musée Guimet in Paris, we may see a couple of ancient statuettes that perfectly portray Buddha's wonderful half-smile of happy deliverance from this world of ignorance, illusion, error, sin, and suffering.

#34855

BN – Z – K1

Those Indian religions which preach futility and enjoin renunciation are as much a product of their tropical enervating climate as the malarias and fevers and choleras which beset Indian bodies.

#34856

BN – X – K1

Why did Buddha not wait even a week after his enlightenment near Benares before going out to preach among the people? Why did he keep up this spreading of his message so incessantly for the remaining forty-five years of his life? Contrast this with the many Hindu sages and mystics, from his own time till this day, who sit and wait for would-be disciples to approach them. The answer lies only partly in the special mission and power with which he was invested by the World Mind.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Buddha, Buddhism

#34857D – 10.15.2.301

BN – Z – K1

It was our own widening experience and personal disillusionments that forced us to examine not only the profits of yoga and the successes of its followers, but also the deficiencies of yoga and the failures of its followers. Thus in this reconsideration there developed an attempt at a more scientific approach to the subject. And such were the practical observations which arose out of these experiences and out of the analysis of these failures, that they compelled us and must one day compel other seekers also to look for a corrective for the maladies which have affected the body of mysticism, as well as to discover a purgative for the primitive errors which have secured lodgement under its name.

#34859

BN – ZZ – K1

Revelations come from the Overself; messages are transmitted to us and they are true enough in their beginning. But personal desires seize on them instantly, change and fashion them to suit the ego.

#34860

BN – ZZZ – K1

We should distinguish the theories and doctrines woven round the mystic's experience from the significant features of the experience itself. And those features are: the awareness of another and deeper life, a sacred presence within the heart, the certitude of having found the Real, the gladness and freshness which follow the sense of this discovery.

The Sensitives > The Sensitives > The Sensitives

#34861D – 11.16.0.1

BN – Z – K1

However essential this seeking of the spiritual self must obviously be, however splendid the attainment of such a peace-filled, desire-free state must and will always seem, it cannot in itself constitute an adequate goal. Two important elements are lacking in it. The first is knowledge and the second is compassion. The first would show precisely what is the place of such an attainment in the full pattern of human existence; the second would bring it into active relation with the rest of social existence. Whilst these are lacking, this state can only partially understand itself and only negatively affect others. It keeps its own peace by ignoring the world's suffering.

#34862

BN – ZZ – K1

The mystical ideal of finding his relationship to the spiritual self must be broadened out to include the metaphysical ideal of finding his relationship to the universe.

#34863

BN – Z – K1

It is unjust to deny the truths of religion in efforts to show up its superstitions or to decry its services and contributions to human welfare in order to point at its persecutions.

#34864

BN – X – K1

God is Mind and they that would worship it in truth must worship it mentally. The ostentatious ceremonies set up by paid professionals enable men and women to obtain pleasing emotional effects but they do not enable them to worship God. A building becomes a sacred temple when it ceases to hear phonographic mumblings and when it ceases to witness theatrical mimicries, and when it provides a fitting place where its visitors can engage in undisturbed silent and inward-turned communion with their own deeper Mind.

The Religious Urge > Organization, Content of Religion > Places of worship

#34865D – 12.17.2.62

BN – X – K1

It is something in history to ponder over that in the Alban hills, a few kilometres from Rome, there was once a Temple of Orpheus where, 3000 years ago, the Orphic mysteries were celebrated, where Orphic religion prevailed with its tenets of rebirth, fleshless diet, the quest, and inner reality. It is arguable whether the two other religions which followed it in that area have brought a better message.

The Religious Urge > Comments On Specific Religions > Ancient religions

#34866D – 12.17.5.3

BN – X – K1

If the credo of a religion insists on keeping these allegorical, symbolical, or child-directed early myths even in an age like our own when knowledge, education, scientific discovery, and observed facts require higher mental satisfaction, the masses will consider themselves deceived and back away from their faith in the truly authentic beliefs; whereas if the religious authority has the courage to revalue its credo, explaining why it does so, it can continue to hold them.

#34867

BN – X – K1

What other way have undeveloped masses to enter into some kind of communion with God except the way of a church established by other men and of doctrines promulgated by other men, when the masses have not the necessary capacity for either an intellectual or a mystical communion? But when the established religious institution becomes a barrier to further inner growth of the masses and when the doctrines block the path for a more reasonable or more felt understanding of the Higher Power, then it is time for a revision of both things.

#34868

BN – X – K1

We do not feel the need of hallowing our days. That is our great loss.

#34869

BN – Z – K1

The devotee who is mainly trying to draw God's attention to himself is still ego-centered.

#34870

BN – Z – K1

At no level of his spiritual development need a man leave off the custom of prayer. The religious devotee, the mystical meditator, the metaphysical thinker, and the integrated philosopher alike need its fruits.

#34871

BN – Z – K1

God needs no worship, no praise, no thanksgiving. It is man himself who needs the benefit to be derived from these activities.

#34872

BN – Z – K1

He who sits with humbled, bowed head and folded, clasped, or knees-rested hands, with mind and heart in awed reverence, in sincere, worshipful, and rapt absorption which is aware of nothing else than the divine presence—he is praying, is meditating, is worshipping, is in heaven already.

The Reverential Life > The Reverential Life > The Reverential Life

#34873D – 12.18.0.1

BN – Z – K1

In the adoration of his higher self he reaches the apex of existence. It proves that he has found out the secret of his own personality and solved the mystery of his relation to God.

#34874

BN – Z – K1

But selflessness does not mean the surrender of one's own ego to someone else's ego. Renouncing the personal will does not mean becoming the creature of another person's will. Humility does not mean becoming the helpless victim of other people's wrong-doing. The only surrender that we are entitled to make is surrender to the Higher Power.

#34875

BN – ZZ – K1

To surrender a problem to the Overself is to cease worrying about it. If the worry still remains, its presence is proof that the surrender has not really been made.

#34876 – 1.18.0.37

BN – Z – DK1

It seems as if grace visits us at moments of its own choosing. That is the truth, but not the only truth. For study, practice of exercises, training, self-discipline, prayer, aspiration, and meditation also form a total effort which must attract grace as its reward eventually.

#34877 – 1.18.0.45

BN – X – DK1

There are different strata of the finite mind. He learns to see how the self is caught and works in them in order to go beyond them and become aware of That which is infinite Mind.

#34878

BN – X – K1

The first and root error which has vitiated the philosophy of the West is its assumption that the world of waking life is the only real world.

#34879

BN – Z – K1

As human life extends as an indivisible whole through all three states and is never limited to any one of them alone, it is unscientific and unphilosophic arbitrarily to select the waking condition and ignore the facts of the other two. All the data obtainable ought to be secured, and then integrated into a synthetic system by apprehending them simultaneously in their entirety. The synthesis of all life's states can alone produce sufficient data upon which to grasp the true nature of the world. Only a superior mind, free from vulgar prejudice against sleep and dream, will realize the immense importance of such co-ordination.

#34880

BN – Z – K1

A subtle, careful analysis of the three states of consciousness will show the logical need of a fourth, which is their hidden basis.

#34881

BN – X – K1

The real heaven is a state of delightful rest which the finite human mind cannot correctly imagine and usually misconceives as a state of perpetual idleness for the ego.

#34882 – 1.19.0.26

BA11 – Z – DK1

It is in the fullness of the eternal present, the eternal now, that a man can really live happily. For by seeking That which makes him conscious of the present moment, by remembering it as being the essence of his fleeting experience, he completes that experience and fulfils its lofty purpose.

#34883 – 1.19.0.7

BN – Z – DK1

The immediate present is not the eternal NOW.

#34884

BN – Z – K1

Life is changing dream-stuff to the thinker but it nevertheless is spun out of immutable reality.

#34885

BN – Z – K1

There is only one real presence, the divine Presence. This is the final truth we all have to learn, and to experience. When this happens we see the world as it is in appearance, just as other persons do, but we also intuit it at the same time as it is in essence and feel it held in that Presence.

#34886

BN – Z – K1

The apparent void out of which the universe seems to have been made, created, born, or evolved, is really the essence, the being, the life-power of God.

#34887

BN – X – K1

The Advaitin who declares that as such he has no point of view, has already adopted one by calling himself an Advaitin and by rejecting every other point of view as being dualistic. A human philosophy is neither dualistic alone nor nondualistic alone. It perceives the connection between the dream and the dreamer, the Real and the unreal, the consciousness and the thought. It accepts Advaita, but refuses to stop with it; it accepts duality, but refuses to remain limited to it; therefore it alone is free from a dogmatic point of view. But in attempting to bring into harmony that which forever is and that which is bound by time and space, it becomes a truly human philosophy of Truth.

What Is Philosophy? > Toward Defining Philosophy > Living synthesis, not anemic eclecticism

#34888D – 13.20.1.478

BN – X – K1

We may begin by asking what this philosophy offers us. It offers those who pursue it to the end a deep understanding of the world and a satisfying explanation of the significance of human experience. It offers them the power to penetrate appearances and to discover the genuinely real from the mere appearance of reality; it offers satisfaction of that desire which everyone, everywhere, holds somewhere in his heart—the desire to be free.

What Is Philosophy? > What Is Philosophy? > What Is Philosophy?

#34889D – 13.20.0.2

BA11 – ZZ – DK1

In the first stage of progress we learn to stand aside from the world and to still our thoughts about it. This is the mystical stage. Next, we recognize the world as being but a series of ideas within the mind; this is the mentalist-metaphysical stage. Finally, we return to the world's activity without reacting mentally to its suggestions, working disinterestedly, and knowing always that all is One. This is the philosophical stage.

#34890

BN – ZZ – K1

We cannot afford to dispense with mysticism merely because we take to philosophy. Both are essential to this quest and both are vital in their respective places. The mystic's power to concentrate attention is needed throughout the study of philosophy. The philosopher's power to reason sharply is needed to give mystical reverie a content of world-understanding. And in the more advanced stages, when thinking has done its work and intellect has come to rest, we cease to be a philosopher and dwell self-absorbed in mystic trance, having taken with us the world-idea without which it would be empty. We can only afford to dispense with both mysticism and philosophy when we have perfectly done the work of both and when, amid the daily life of constant activity, we can keep unbroken the profound insight and selfless attitude which time and practice have now made natural.

#34891

BN – Z – K1

But it is of the highest importance to note that the principle of balance cannot be properly established in any man until each of the elements within him has been developed into its completeness. The failure to do so produces the type of man who knows truth intellectually, talks it fluently, and does the wrong in spite of it. A balance of immature and half-developed faculties is transitory by its very nature and never wholly satisfactory, whereas a balance of fully matured ones is necessarily durable and always perfectly gratifying.

#34892

BN – Z – K1

This perfect harmony between the various elements of his personality is not to be achieved with some in the state of half-development and others of full development. All are to be brought up to the same high level.

#34893 – 1.20.0.62

BN – Z – DK1

Manifested life remains no less real because we belittle it with the harsh cognomen of "illusion." Our active existence requires no apology on its behalf to the one-eyed philosophers who accuse Westerners of being entrapped by "Maya."

#34894

BN – Z – K1

When a certain balance of forces is achieved, something happens that can only be properly called "the birth of insight."

What Is Philosophy? > Its Realization Beyond Ecstasy > Insight

#34895D – 13.20.4.181

BN – ZZ – K1

Insight is a function of the entire psyche and not of any single part of it.

What Is Philosophy? > Its Realization Beyond Ecstasy > Insight

#34896D – 13.20.4.184

BN – ZZ – K1

Insight is the flower of reason and not its negation.

What Is Philosophy? > Its Realization Beyond Ecstasy > Insight

#34897D – 13.20.4.161

BN – Z – K1

Where we speak either metaphysically or meditationally of the experience of pure consciousness, we mean consciousness uncoloured by the ego.

#34898D

BN – Z – K1

The materialist's mistake primarily consists in this, that his mind considers its impressions and sensations—entirely dependent as they are on its own presence—as external realities, whilst dismissing its own independent reality as a fiction.

#34899

BN – X – K1

"Recent scientific theory calls attention not to the uniformity but to the indeterminacy of nature which, by transferring probability from human thought to objective reality, suggests that matter is mind externalized." —Times Literary Supplement, May 12, 1945.

#34900

BN – X – K1

The mysterious power of the mind, which makes us feel the world to be outside of and separate from ourselves, disappears during certain ultramystical experience.

#34901

BN – X – K1

Matter cannot be honestly denied by the ordinary man since it is fully real to his senses. Its reality but not its appearance can be denied by the scientist, since it is a compound of invisible and intangible forces to his intellect.

#34902

BN – Z – K1

Mentalism does not deny the existence of the natural universe. It denies the materialistic view of that universe. It refuses to attribute to matter a creative power to be found only in life, an intelligent consciousness to be found only in mind.

#34903

BN – ZZ – K1

We do not bring out the old arguments for the acceptance of an inner Reality to persuade anyone to drop his faith in the reality of the world without.

#34904

BN – Z – K1

The ignorance which accepts matter as a reality rather than as an idea can be overcome only by a course of emotional purification, mystical contemplation, and metaphysical reflection.

#34905

BN – ZZ – K1

Mind is the power to be conscious, to think, and to imagine. It is not the fleshly brain.

#34906

BN – Z – K1

If we want to think correctly of the form and dimensions of mind, we must try to think of it as unbounded space. Thus it is everywhere.

#34907

BN – Z – K1

Mind must precede any thought, any knowing. It must be there to make any thinking possible at all.

#34908

BN – X – K1

It is only after several years of constant reflection upon this topic, helped by occasional mystical glimpses or experiences, that anyone can dissolve such troubling questions about the truth of mentalism.

#34909

BN – Z – K1

The world must be present in my mind or it is not present at all to me. Only as an idea does it truly exist for me.

#34910

BN – Z – K1

Mentalism teaches that it is our thought activity which brings the whole world into our consciousness, and that when this thought activity comes to an end, the world also comes to an end, for us. It teaches that there is no other object than the thought itself.

#34911

BN – ZZ – K1

We have to overcome the habitual custom of thinking that the "I" is one thing and that its experience in a world totally outside it is another. Both are mental.

#34912

BN – ZZ – K1

Our idea of the external world is caused partly by the energies of our own mind and partly by the energies of the World-Mind. It is not caused by a separate material thing acting on our sense organs.

#34913

BN – ZZ – K1

It is one and the same Reality which 'appears' in different ways to beings on different planes of perception. If it is true that they are dealing only with Appearance because they are perceiving only its forms, it is equally true that, as soon as they discover what it is that projects these forms, they will discover that life is a harmonious whole and that there is no fundamental conflict between the so-called worldly life and the so-called spiritual life.

#34914

B_08 – ZZ – K1

The Overself is utterly above all personality yet is not bereft of a kind of individuality.

#34915 – 1.22.0.13

BN – Z – DM1

When we realize that the intellect can put forth as many arguments against this theme as for it, we realize that there is in the end only one perfect proof of the Overself's existence. The Overself must prove itself. This can come about faintly through the intuition or fully through the mystical experience.

Inspiration and the Overself > The Overself's Presence > Responding to critics

#34916D – 14.22.3.410

BN – X – DK1

What, it has been asked, if I get no glimpses? What can I do to break this barren, monotonous, dreary, and sterile spiritual desert of my existence? The answer is if you cannot meditate successfully go to nature, where she is quiet or beautiful; go to art where it is majestic, exalting; go to hear some great soul speak, whether in private talk or public address; go to literature, find a great inspired book written by someone who has had the glimpses.

Inspiration and the Overself > Preparing for Glimpses > How to attract a glimpse

#34917D – 14.22.5.13

BN – ZZ – DK1

He should remember that there are two approaches to the Quest and both have to be used. There is the Long Path of self-improvement, self-purification, and self-effort; and there is the Short Path of forgetting the self entirely and directing his mind towards the Goal, towards the One Real Life, by constant remembrance of it and by practising self-identification with it. If he uses the first approach, he can progress to a certain point. But by bringing in the second approach, the Higher Power is brought in too and comes to his help with Grace.

#34918 – 1.23.0.1

BN – Z – DK1

On the Long Path he trains himself to detect and reject the lower impulses, egoisms, and desires. On the Short Path he trains himself to be open to the higher impulses or intuitions and to absorb them.

#34919

BN – Z – K1

Those who take to the Short Path have to encounter the risk of self-deception, of falling victims to the belief in their own imaginary spiritual attainments.

#34920

BN – Z – K1

Wherever one is, whatever the place, or whoever the persons, one should think oneself to be in the divine presence.

#34921 – 1.23.0.24

BA12 – ZZZ – DK1

We keep nearly all our attention all the day on ourselves and only a slight part of it on the Overself. It is needful to change this situation if we want a higher state of consciousness. This is why the exercises in remembrance are much more valuable than their simplicity suggests.

#34922 – 1.23.0.30

BN – X – DM1

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

Advanced Contemplation > Advanced Meditation > Intercessory meditation

#34923D – 15.23.6.58

BN – ZZ – DEK1

If we did not know that behind it there was Nirvana, we might regard the slight pleasant smile of Gautama as ambiguous. But we know that not only was he happy to have escaped from the trap of ephemeral human affairs; he was happy because he had entered an entirely new depth and dimension of consciousness.

#34924

BN – Z – K1

The Overself remains always the same and never changes in any way. It is the hunger for this quality, thought of as “peace of mind,” which drives men to seek the Overself amid the vicissitudes of health or fortune which they experience.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The still centre within

#34925D – 15.24.4.123

BN – ZZ – DK1

Young souls look for happiness, older ones for peace, calm, and equilibrium.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#34926D – 15.24.1.16

BN – ZZ – K1

The importance of cultivating calmness is well known in India. The Brahmin youth at puberty when initiated into his caste status and given the sacred thread is taught to make the first sought-for attribute calmness. Why is this? Because it helps a man to achieve self-control and because without it he becomes filled with tensions. These tensions come from the ego and prevent him from responding to intuitive feelings and intuitive ideas. For the student of philosophy it is of course absolutely essential to achieve a composed and relaxed inner habit.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The goal of tranquillity

#34927D – 15.24.2.25

BN – Z – K1

It is far subtler than the first ecstasies of a newly made mystic, much more refined than the personal joys of a religious saint. It is deeper, quieter, more relaxed yet, withal exquisite—this peace.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > Seek the Deeper Stillness

#34928D – 15.24.4.26

BN – Z – K1

To be at peace means to be empty of all desires—a state the ordinary man often ridicules as inhuman or dismisses as impossible. The spiritual seeker goes farther and understands better, so he desires to be without desire—but only to a limited extent. Moreover, some of his desires may be hidden from consciousness. Only the sage, by which I do not mean the saint, is completely free from desires because the empty void thus created is completely filled by the Overself.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Timelessness

#34929D – 15.24.3.262

BN – ZZ – K1

There is a materialistic serenity and a spiritual serenity. The first comes from the possession of money, property, position, or affection. The other comes from no outward possessions but from inward ones. The first can be shattered at a single blow; the other soon recovers.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Solving difficulties

#34930D – 15.24.3.106

BN – ZZ – DK1

No pleasure which is brief, sensual, and fugitive is worth exchanging for equanimity and peace, not even if it is multiplied a thousand times during a lifetime's course.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#34931D – 15.24.2.52

BA12 – ZZ – DK1

To attain knowledge of Brahman, the mind must be held in the prerequisite state of being calm, tranquil, and in equilibrium—not carried away by attachment to anything. 'After' this is established, and only then, can you begin enquiry with any hope of success. Unless the mind is balanced you cannot get Brahman.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The goal of tranquillity

#34932D – 15.24.2.24

BN – Z – K1

When the I is no longer felt then all the problems and burdens associated with it are also no longer felt. This is the state of inner calm which philosophy seeks to bring about in a man.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > Staying calm

#34933D – 15.24.2.192

BN – Z – K1

Holding on to the future in anxiety and apprehension must be abandoned. It must be committed to the higher power completely and faithfully. Calmness comes easily to the man who really trusts the higher power. This is unarguable.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > Staying calm

#34934D – 15.24.2.158

BN – ZZ – DM1

After he has learnt to practise inner stillness during the set daily period, he must learn how to carry it into his ordinary activities.

#34935

BN – Z – K1

Does the phrase "peace of mind" suggest that he will not suffer in a suffering world? This can hardly be true, or even possible. As actual experience, it means that his thoughts are brought under sufficient control to enable him to repel disturbance and to retain sensitivity. The sacred stillness behind them becomes the centre.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#34936D – 15.24.2.142

B_17 – ZZ – K1

Do not confuse inner detachment with callous indifference. Do not search after impossible results. A worthy goal for human beings cannot be devoid of human feelings, however elevated they may be: it cannot be a glacial one.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Practise Detachment

#34937D – 15.24.3.33

BN – ZZ – K1

Being detached from the world, which philosophy practises, is not the same as being indifferent to the world, which mysticism preaches.

#34938

BN – ZZ – K1

This is what he has to learn—and it can be learned only by personal practice, not from any book—how to keep in beautiful equipoise receptivity to his sacred Centre and efficiency in attending to the world's demands. This is answering Jesus' call to be in the world but not of it. This is the union of busy actuality with central tranquillity.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Free activity

#34939D – 15.24.3.297

B_11 – ZZZ – K1

In deepest contemplation, the 'Nirvikalpa Samadhi' of the Indian yogis, both egolessness and blissful peace can be experienced. But it is a temporary state; return to the world must follow, so the quest is not finished. The next step or stage is 'application', putting into the active everyday life this egoless detachment and this satisfying calmness.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Free activity

#34940D – 15.24.3.319

UR_3.2 – Z – K1

It is not that he has no likes and dislikes—he is still human enough for them—but that he knows that they are secondary to a true and just view, and that his inner calm must not be disturbed by them.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#34941D – 15.24.2.144

BN – ZZ – K1

The Buddha tried to teach men to look only on the decay and death and suffering inherent in existence on this physical plane. This is as unfair and as extreme—if isolated—as the teaching of modern American cults which look only on the growth and life and joy which are also inherent here.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#34942D – 15.24.1.26

BN – Z – K1

After the brief hour of peace come the long months of storm: its purity is then contested by opposition, its light by the world's darkness. It is through the varying episodes of experience that he must struggle back to the peace and purity which he saw in vision and felt in meditation. True, he had found them even then but they were still only latent and undeveloped.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > Be Calm

#34943D – 15.24.2.1

BN – Z – K1

He becomes not only a spectator of others, but also of himself. If such detachment is seldom seen, it may be because it is seldom sought.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Becoming the Witness

#34944D – 15.24.3.206

BN – ZZ – DM1

Try to do your new duties with inner calmness and outer efficiency. But whatever you are doing, try to keep ever in the background of consciousness the remembrance of the Overself; it will be both a form of yoga and a protective influence.

#34945 – 1.24.0.21

BN – ZZ – DK1

He can find the Overself even if he is caught up in the work of earning a livelihood. But his participation in the world's activity and pleasure will have to be a limited one. Not other men's voices but his own inner voice should say how far he should go along with the world.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Timelessness

#34946D – 15.24.3.263

BN – ZZ – DK1

In the foreground of his thought he deals with practical affairs in a practical way; in the background he remembers always that they are only transitory manifestations of an Element beyond all transitoriness, an Element to which he gives his deepest self. But only when his power of yogic concentration is complete and his knowledge of philosophic truth mature, does the possibility of achieving such harmony arrive—not before.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Free activity

#34947D – 15.24.3.298

BN – ZZ – K1

To be detached from the world does not mean to be uninterested in the world.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Practise Detachment

#34948D – 15.24.3.32

BN – ZZ – K1

To turn one's mind instantly towards the divinity within, when in the presence of discordant people, is to silence harsh thoughts and to banish hurtful feelings. This frequent turning inward is necessary not only for spiritual growth, but for self-protection. Everything and everyone around us plays a potent influence upon our minds, and this is the best means of detaching oneself from this ceaseless flow of suggestions.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Turn inward

#34949D – 15.24.3.53

BN – ZZ – DK1

Do not be anxious about making provision for the future, if you are in a state of surrender to the Overself; but if you are not, then indeed you need to be anxious. The first relies on a superior power, the second on an inferior. If you will trust the Overself today, it will provide for you tomorrow. If you repose trust in the Overself, it will never let you down and you may go forward in surety. It is indeed the "Father who gives us each day our daily bread."

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Timelessness

#34950D – 15.24.3.261

BN – ZZ – DEM1

We think that this or that will bring us to the great happiness. But the fortunate few know that in meditation the mind is at its most blissful when it is most empty.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#34951D – 15.24.1.91

BN – X – DK1

Joy and sorrow are, after all, only states of mind. He who gets his mind under control, keeping it unshakeably serene, will not let these usurpers gain entry. They do not come from the best part of himself. They come from the ego. How many persons could learn from him to give up their unhappiness if they learnt that most of their sorrows are mental states, the false ego pitying itself?

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#34952D – 15.24.1.104

BN – ZZ – K1

He may become detached without becoming dehumanized. He may live inwardly apart from the rest of the world without lessening his goodwill and good feeling for others.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Practise Detachment

#34953D – 15.24.3.34

BN – ZZZ – K1

Those activities which belong to a human existence in the world may still go on, and need not be renounced, although they may be modified or altered in certain ways as intuition directs. His business, professional, family, and social interests need not be given up. His appreciations or creations of art need not be abandoned. His intellectual and cultural life can remain. It is only demanded of him that none of these should be a self-sufficient thing, existing in total disregard of the Whole, of the ultimate and higher purpose which is behind reincarnation.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Training mind and heart

#34954D – 15.24.3.150

B_08 – ZZZ – DMK1

Where others get caught in this whirlpool and spend themselves, their energies, and their years in the piling-up of earthly possessions or the exhausting of earthly pleasures, he says to his instincts: "Thus far, and no farther." For him there is satisfaction in a restrained enjoyment of this world, with enough time and thought and strength for study of the great gospels and the practice of going into the Silence.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > True asceticism

#34955D – 15.24.3.165

B_05 – ZZ – DK1

We must use the material things, yes, and not abandon them; but we must do so without attachment. We may love the good things of life like other men, but we ought not to be in bondage to this love. We should be ready to abandon them at a moment's notice, if need be. It is not things that bind us, not marriage, wealth, or home, but our craving for marriage, wealth, or home. And what is such craving in the end but a line of thinking, a series of mental images?

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > True asceticism

#34956D – 15.24.3.164

BN – Z – DK1

He becomes detached when he frees himself from the universally prevalent tendency to connect every experience with the personal ego. Detachment takes him out of himself and saves him from getting emotionally involved in his environment.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > True asceticism

#34957D – 15.24.3.189

BN – Z – DK1

If he is to keep his inner peace he must always keep the innermost part of himself aloof and deny the world any intimacy with it.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Free activity

#34958D – 15.24.3.299

BN – ZZ – K1

No other person can bring us happiness if he or she does not possess it in himself or in herself. The romantic urge to seek in a second individual that which neither of the two has, can never find successful fulfilment.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#34960D – 15.24.1.17

BN – ZZ – K1

The attitude of Emerson, which induced him to call himself "a professor of the science of Joy," is more attractive than that of Schopenhauer, who taught the futility of life, proclaimed the vanity of existence, and spread the mood of despair. Emerson declined to accept the massive Oriental doctrine of melancholy resignation along with the Oriental gems of wisdom which he treasured. "This world belongs to the cheerful!" he said.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > Philosophic happiness

#34961D – 15.24.1.37

BN – Z – K1

Pleasure is satisfaction derived from the things and persons outside us. Happiness is satisfaction derived from the core of deepest being inside us. Because we get our pleasures through the five senses, they are more exciting and are sharper, more vivid, than the diffused self-induced thoughts and feelings which bring us happiness. In short, pleasure is of the body whereas something quite immaterial and impalpable is the source of our happiness. This is not to say that all pleasures are to be ascetically rejected, but that whereas we are helplessly dependent for them on some object or some person, we are dependent only on ourselves for happiness.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#34962D – 15.24.1.75

BN – ZZ – K1

"Sadness does not befit a sage" is the reminder of an ancient Confucian text. "He is a man inwardly free of sorrow and care. He should be like the sun at midday—illuminating and gladdening everyone. This is not given to every human—only one whose will is directed to 'The Great' is able to it. For the attribute of 'The Great' is joyousness."

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > Philosophic happiness

#34964D – 15.24.1.35

BN – ZZ – K1

It is not that the years pass by unregarded, nor that he is dead to human feelings, but that at this centre of his being to which he now has access, there is utter calm, a high indifference to agitations which compels him to treat them with serene dignity. He is a dweller in two worlds more or less at the same time.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#34965D – 15.24.2.145

BN – ZZZ – K1

Gautama's assertion that "life is suffering" may be matched with Socrates' assertion that "life is terrible." But both Indian and Greek sage referred solely to life in the ego. Is it quite fair to stress the misery of human existence without pointing to its mystery? For that is just as much there, even if attention is seldom turned toward it. Man, in order to complete and fulfil himself, will and must rise to life in the Overself with the ego put into place, belittled and broken.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#34966D – 15.24.1.30

A241129 – ZZZ – DK1

There is a silence born of ignorance and another born of knowledge—mystical knowledge. The right interpretation comes only through the intuitive faculty—not through the intellect.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > Seek the Deeper Stillness

#34967D – 15.24.4.20

BN – ZZ – K1

This stillness is the godlike part of every human being. In failing to look for it, he fails to make the most of his possibilities. If, looking, he misses it on the way, this happens because it is a vacuity: there is simply nothing there! That means no things, not even mental things, that is, thoughts.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > Seek the Deeper Stillness

#34968D – 15.24.4.4

BN – Z – DK1

The spirit (Brahman) is NOT the stillness, but is found by humans who are in the precondition of stillness. The latter is their human reaction to Brahman's presence coming into their field of awareness.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > Seek the Deeper Stillness

#34969D – 15.24.4.5

BN – X – K1

The Stillness is both an Understanding, an Insight of the mind, and an Experience of the being. The whole movement or vibration comes to a stop.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The still centre within

#34970D – 15.24.4.172

BN – Z – K1

It is not easy to translate this sacred silence into comprehensible meaning, to describe a content where there is no form, to ascend from a region as deep as Atlantis is sunk today and speak openly in familiar, intelligible language; but I must try.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The Great Silence

#34971D – 15.24.4.195

BA13 – ZZZ – K1

As his centre moves to a profounder depth of being, peace of mind becomes increasingly a constant companion. This in turn influences the way in which he handles his share of the world's activities. Impatience and stupidity recede, wrath at malignity is disciplined; discouragement under adversity is controlled and stress under pressures relaxed.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#34972D – 15.24.2.98

BN – ZZ – DK1

Truth lies hidden in silence. Reveal it—and falsehood will creep in, withering the golden image. Communication by speech or paper was not necessary.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The Great Silence

#34973D – 15.24.4.205

BN – X – K1

Whatever the trouble be which distresses anyone—be it physical or mental, personal or public, worldly or spiritual—there is one sure refuge to which one can always turn and return. If he has learnt the art of being still, he can carry his trouble to the mind’s outer threshold and leave it there, passing himself into its innermost recess of utter serenity and carefree tranquility. This is not a cowardly escapism or a foolish self-deception, although with the un-philosophical mystic it could be and often is. For when he emerges from the inner silence and picks up his trouble again, he will pick up also the strength to endure it bravely and the wisdom to deal with it rightly. This will always be the case if his approach is through philosophical mysticism, which makes inspired action and not inspired dreaming its goal. Furthermore, his contact with the inner Mind will set mysterious forces working on his behalf to solve the problem quite independently of his conscious effort and knowledge.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Timelessness

#34974D – 15.24.3.278

ME_01 – Z – K1

Truth may be written or spoken, preached or printed, but its most lasting expression and communication is transmitted through the deepest silence to the deepest nature in human being.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The Great Silence

#34975D – 15.24.4.220

BSG_4 – ZZZ – DK1

The reason why this silent, inward, and pictureless initiation in the stillness is so much more powerful ultimately, is that it reaches the man himself, whereas all other kinds reach only his instruments or vehicles or bodies.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The Great Silence

#34976D – 15.24.4.219

BN – Z – K1

When he temporarily achieves this lofty condition, he ceases to think, for his mind becomes inarticulate with heavenly peace.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The still centre within

#34978D – 15.24.4.173

BN – X – K1

However dark or blundering the past, however miserable the tangle one has made of one's life, this unutterable peace blots it all out. Within that seraphic embrace error cannot be known, misery cannot be felt, sin cannot be remembered. A great cleansing comes over the heart and mind.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The still centre within

#34979D – 15.24.4.102

BN – ZZ – DK1

To complain that you get no answer, no result from going into the silence indicates two things: first, that you do not go far enough into it to reach the intuitive level; second, that you do not wait long enough for it to affect you.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The still centre within

#34980D – 15.24.4.124

BN – Z – DK1

The effort should be to find inward stillness through a loving search within the heart's depths for what may be called "the soul," what I have called "the Overself." This is not the soul thought of by a judge when he passes the sentence of death and asks the Lord to have mercy on the condemned man's soul. It is the Holy Ghost of Christian faith, the diviner part of man which dwells in eternity. The nearer we get to it in our striving, the greater will be the mental peace we shall feel. It can be found and felt even whilst thoughts continue to move through the mind, although they will necessarily be thoughts of a most elevated nature for the baser ones could not obtain entry during this mood.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The still centre within

#34981D – 15.24.4.174

BN – ZZ – DEK1

In this deep stillness wherein every trace of the personal self dissolves, there is the true crucifixion of the ego. This is the real meaning of the crucifixion, as it was undergone in the ancient Mystery Temple initiations and as it was undergone by Jesus. The death implied is mental, not physical.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > Seek the Deeper Stillness

#34982D – 15.24.4.39

B_11 – ZZ – DK1

He who attains this beautiful serenity is absolved from the misery of frustrated desires, is healed of the wounds of bitter memories, is liberated from the burden of earthly struggles. He has created a secret, invulnerable centre within himself, a garden of the spirit which neither the world's hurts nor the world's joys can touch. He has found a transcendental singleness of mind.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#34983D – 15.24.2.97

BN – ZZ – DEK1

Only he is able to think his own thought, uninfluenced by others, who has trained himself to enter the Stillness, where alone he is able to transcend all thought.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > Practise Detachment

#34984D – 15.24.3.6

BN – Z – DK1

A man may fall into the sin of vanity because of the facility with which he is able to work up the devotional feelings or excite the spiritually rapturous ones. But those who enter into the Void because they are able to enter into the innermost part of themselves, cannot fall into this sin. They are detached not only from the emotions but also from themselves. This is why they live in so great and so constant a peace.

The Peace within You > Practise Detachment > True asceticism

#34985D – 15.24.3.187

BN – Z – K1

The truth which leads a man to liberation from all illusions and enslavements is perceived in the innermost depths of his being, where he is shut off from all other men. The man who has attained to its knowledge finds himself in an exalted solitude. He is not likely to find his way out of it to the extent, and for the purpose, of enlightening his fellow men who are accustomed to, and quite at home in, their darkness unless some other propulsive force of compassion arises within him and causes him to do so.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > The Great Silence

#34986D – 15.24.4.196

BN – ZZZ – K1

It is not enough to achieve peace of mind. He must penetrate the Real still farther and achieve joy of heart.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#34987D – 15.24.1.112

BN – Z – K1

If you investigate the matter deeply enough and widely enough, you will find that happiness eludes nearly all men despite the fact that they are forever seeking it. The fortunate and successful few are those who have stopped seeking with the ego alone and allow the search to be directed inwardly by the higher self. They alone can find a happiness unblemished by defects or deficiencies, a Supreme Good which is not a further source of pain and sorrow but an endless source of satisfaction and peace.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#34988D – 15.24.1.74

BN – ZZZ – DK1

If the mind can reach a state where it is free from its own ideas, projections, and wishes, it can reach true happiness.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#34989D – 15.24.1.77

BN – ZZ – DK1

That beautiful state wherein the mind recognizes itself for what it is, wherein all activity is stilled except that of awareness alone, and even then it is an awareness without an object—this is the heart of the experience.

The Peace within You > Seek the Deeper Stillness > Seek the Deeper Stillness

#34990D – 15.24.4.6

BN – X – DK1

This is that ultimate solitude to which all human beings are destined.

#34991

BN – ZZ – K1

When, however, the content of this concept is subjected to critical analysis, we discover some disturbing facts. What mystic is or ever has been omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent? Such are the distinguishing characteristics of God. Yet how many mystics have asserted they were identical with God! Is it not an insult to common sense to make such an assertion? Yet every "paramahamsa" in India still makes it!

#34992

BN – X – K1

It is legitimate to say that something godlike is within me, but it is quite illegitimate to say, “I am God.” For the fragrance of a flower is after all not the same as the flower itself.

#34993 – 1.25.0.16

UR_3.2 – Z – DK1

THE SAINT: has successfully carried out ascetic disciplines and purificatory regimes for devotional purposes. > >THE PROPHET: has listened for God's voice, heard and communicated God's message of prediction, warning, or counsel. > >THE MYSTIC: has intimately experienced God's presence while inwardly rapt in contemplation or has seen a vision of God's cosmogony while concentrated in meditation. > >THE SAGE: has attained the same results as all these three, has added a knowledge of infinite and eternal reality thereto, and has brought the whole into balanced union. > >THE PHILOSOPHER: is a sage who has also engaged in the spiritual education of others.

#34994

BN – Z – K1

It would be a mistake to believe that these two forces, although so very different from each other, are fighting each other. This is not so. They are to be regarded as complementary to one another. They are like positive and negative poles in electricity, and they must exist together or die together. They are inseparable, but the need between them is correct balance, or equilbrium.

World-Idea > Polarities, Complementaries, Dualities of The Universe > Opposites constitute universe

#34995D – 16.26.3.57

BN – X – K1

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

#34996D – 16.28.2.97

BN – Z – DK1

If you feel that the principles touched on in these pages are true, then remember that the greatest homage you can pay to Truth is to use it. Spiritual peace is given as a prize to those who wisely aspire, and who will work untiringly for the realization of their aspiration.

#34997 – 1.1.0.2

BN – ZZZ – DK

The evil that appears when the events are seen for the first time, perhaps disappears when they are seen for the second time. This is because, in the ordering of Universal Life, there is an ultimate correctness. What happens today in the world, or what will happen tomorrow, will not occur outside of divine knowledge and, therefore, will not escape the power of divine laws.

DEB

B_16 – ZZ – K

I have written down what I have learned and discovered over the many years of my life; if these ideas are helpful to you, you are welcome to them—but do not make the mistake of calling me a guru. We must all learn to think for ourselves in the end, so these words, this philosophy, can only be a guide to your own work.

DEB

BA13 – ZZZ

All methods and techniques—and of course, all human beings who propound them—are merely instruments to help those who study this philosophy to obtain a methodless, technique-free, teacherless state.

DEB

BSG_1 – ZZZ – K

From EPICTETUS: "We write beautiful maxims; but are we well imbued with them, and are we putting them into practice?"

EPICTETO

UR_6 – ZZZ – K

From MADAME GUYON: "It is not the quantity that is read, but the way of reading, which gives us benefit."

GUYON

UR_6 – ZZZ – K

From RAMANA MAHARSHI: "One should remain as a witness to whatever happens, adopting the attitude, "Let whatever strange things that happens happen, let us see!" This should be one's practice. Nothing happens by accident in the divine scheme of things."

RAMANA

BA21 – ZZ

From RAMANA MAHARSHI: "The 'Ordainer' [Higher Power, God…] controls the destiny of souls according to their past actions, their 'prarabdha karma'. What is destined not to happen, will not happen, even if you try with all you might. What is meant to happen, will happen, whatever you do to prevent it. This is certain. Therefore, it is better to understand it, to remain silent."

RAMANA

BA21 – ZZ

From RAMANA MAHARSHI: "Grace is always there. You just need to surrender to it. It is your Self itself. It is not something that can be acquired from outside of you. If it is external, it is useless. In the end, all that is needed is to know that its existence is in you. You are never out of its reach."

RAMANA

UR_3.2 – ZZ – K

From RAMANA MAHARSHI: "Let what comes come. Let what goes go. Find out what remains."

RAMANA

UR_4map – ZZZ – K

From RAMANA MAHARSHI: "Realization is not acquisition of anything new nor is it a new faculty. It is only removal of all camouflage."

RAMANA

UR_4map – ZZZ – K

From RAMANA MAHARSHI: "There is neither past nor future. There is only the present. Yesterday was the present to you when you experienced it, and tomorrow will be also the present when you experience it. Therefore, experience takes place only in the present, and beyond experience nothing exists."

RAMANA

UR_4map – ZZZ – K

From RAMANA MAHARSHI: "There is no Truth. There is only the truth within each moment."

RAMANA

UR_1 – ZZZ – K

From RAMANA MAHARSHI: "Do not meditate, be! Do not think that you are, be! Don’t think about being, you are!"

RAMANA

UR_1 – ZZZ – K

From RAMANA MAHARSHI: "Only humility destroys the dominance of the ego."

RAMANA

UR_4map – ZZZ – K

From RAMANA MAHARSHI: "A profoundly wise person helps all humanity without it knowing."

RAMANA

UR_4map – ZZZ – K

From SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: "Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of Knowledge is to take the essential. Take it and try to live by it."

VIVEKANANDA

UR_6 – ZZZ – K