The discovery of moral relativity gives no encouragement however to moral laxity. If we are freed from human convention, it is only because we are to submit ourselves sacrificially to the Overself's dictate. The unfoldment of progressive states of conscious being is not possible without giving up the lower for the higher.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Moral relativity

#7884 – 5.6.1.311

BN – X – K1

If it is not possible for the generality of mankind to practise ethical indolence permanently and to avoid the moral struggles which the situations of life lead to intermittently, it is much less possible for the minority of mankind who have begun this quest to do so. Life becomes graver for them. If they do not obey the call of conscience the first time, it may become more painful to obey it the second time. If they persist in following an ignoble and contemptible course after they have already seen that it is ignoble and contemptible, the karma becomes proportionately heavier. It has been said that knowledge is power, but it needs equally to be said that knowledge is also responsibility.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Conscience

#7908 – 5.6.1.335

BN – Z – K

There is a guiding conscience in a man which develops or weakens as he responds to the forces and influences playing on and in him from both bygone lives and the current incarnation. It is this preoccupation with choosing good and avoiding evil, with religious feelings and moral virtues, that lift man above the animal.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Conscience

#7910 – 5.6.1.337

BN – X – D

It is not only a question of what course of action will be most effective, but of what will be most ethical. Neither of these two factors can be ignored with impunity; both must be brought into a balanced relation.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Conscience

#7921 – 5.6.1.348

BN – X – D

When confronted by difficult decisions, one must be especially careful to take into consideration the future effects of his choice. A decision based on sentiment, or on other emotional reactions, unchecked by reason, cannot solve any problem—as the student has, undoubtedly, already learned. It is necessary to examine past experience—one's own, and that of others—in order to discover and profit from the lessons there presented. Failure to do so leads to painful repetition of avoidable suffering. This is particularly true of personal relationships.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Conscience

#7925 – 5.6.1.352

BA12 – ZZ – K

The mark of true goodness is, first, that it never by thought, word, or deed injures any other living creature; second, that it has brought the lower nature under the bidding of the higher; and third, that it considers its own welfare not in isolation but always against the background of the common welfare.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Goodness

#7934 – 5.6.1.361

BA11 – ZZZ – DMK

The goodness which one man may express in his relation to another is derived ultimately from his own divine soul and is an unconscious recognition of, as well as gesture to, the same divine presence in that other. Moreover, the degree to which anyone becomes conscious of his true self is the degree to which he becomes conscious of it in others. Consequently, the goodness of the fully illumined man is immeasurably beyond that of the conventionally moral man.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Goodness

#7940 – 5.6.1.367

BN – ZZ – K1

What is sin? It may be defined, first, as any act which harms others; second, as any act which harms oneself; third, as any thought or emotion which has these consequences.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Goodness

#7944 – 5.6.1.371

BN – X – DK

The selfish person thinks only of satisfying his own wants first of all, not caring if he harms others. The next higher type thinks also of his immediate circle of family and friends. But the highest type of all gives equal regard to himself, to his family, to whoever crosses his path, and to all others. He feels for everyone, never satisfying his desires by wrongfully taking away from, or harming, another.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Altruism

#7959 – 5.6.1.386

BN – X – D

If it be asked, How can anyone who is attuned to such impersonality be also benevolent? the answer is that because he is also attuned to the real Giver of all things, he need not struggle against anyone nor possess anything. Hence he can afford to be generous as the selfish cannot. And because the Overself's very nature is harmony and love, he seeks the welfare of others alongside of his own.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Altruism

#7960E – 5.6.1.387

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

The best charity in the end is to show a man the higher life that is possible for him.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Altruism

#7965 – 5.6.1.392

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

The continued study of this philosophy will inevitably lead the student to accept its practical consequences and thus make the universal welfare of mankind his dominant ethical motive.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Altruism

#7977 – 5.6.1.404

BA11 – ZZ – DK

It is the work of a lifetime to venture on such a great improvement of character as will place the lower self under our control, instead of our being controlled by it. We are likely to get disheartened at times by the seeming slowness of progress. This is partly because we are too apt to think in terms of this single incarnation only, whereas those who understand life's actual range think of it in terms of dozens and scores. Hence we have to learn a certain tolerant patience with ourselves, while at the same time maintaining an ardent aspiration for self-improvement and a critical attitude towards our weaknesses. This sounds contradictory but it is not really so. It is rather a matter of getting a proper balance between the two attitudes.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Patience, perseverance

#7988 – 5.6.1.415

BN – ZZ – DEK

However disheartening the slowness of his growth may be to his emotions, the remembrance that he is a sage in embryo should always be encouraging to his reason.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Patience, perseverance

#7990 – 5.6.1.417

BT1008 – P – D

We are in our hidden selves already divine; … the wisdom is latent; … we are a Sage in embryo.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Patience, perseverance

#7990EM – 5.6.1.417

BSG_4 – P – DX

A man will do the best he can in his personal situation, not the best that someone else could do in the same situation. His action is relevant to his strength and understanding. All this is true. But it is equally true that he has untapped inner resources. Why not try to better his best?

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Patience, perseverance

#7996 – 5.6.1.423

BN – Z – K

When we enlarge our love of the Divine by making it a matter of the will as well as feeling, we ennoble it.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Patience, perseverance

#8001 – 5.6.1.428

BN – Z – DK

His quest of the Overself must be an untiring one. It is to be his way of looking at the world, his attitude toward life.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Patience, perseverance

#8007 – 5.6.1.434

BN – X – D

Each difficulty surmounted, each weakness resisted will fortify his will and increase his perseverance. It will evoke the better part of his nature and discipline the baser, and thus fit him more adequately to cope with the next ones.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Patience, perseverance

#8009 – 5.6.1.436

BN – X – D

He must be equally steadfast in adhering to this attitude whether other people utter complaints against him or make compliments to him.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Patience, perseverance

#8010 – 5.6.1.437

BN – ZZ – D

Tenacity of purpose is a characteristic of all who accomplish great things. Drawbacks cannot disgust him, labour cannot weary him, hardships cannot discourage him in whom the quality of persistence is always present. But to the man without persistence every defeat is a Waterloo.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Patience, perseverance

#8013 – 5.6.1.440

BN – Z – D

Everything that belongs to the ego and its desires or fears has to go. For some men it is hard to put aside pride, for others it is harder to put aside shame, but both feelings have to go.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8028 – 5.6.1.455

BN – X – D

His thoughts, his feelings, and his actions must work in combination to effect this great self-purification which must precede the dawn of illumination. And this means that they must work upon themselves and divert their attention from other persons whom they may have criticized or interfered with in the past. The aspirant must reserve his condemnation for himself and leave others alone to their karma.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8029 – 5.6.1.456

B_13 – ZZZ – K

But although the aspirant will be greatly helped by a calm analysis of the transiency, suffering, and frustration inherent in life, he will be greatly hindered if he uses it as an excuse for a defeatist mentality and depressive temperament. The gallant inspiration to go forward and upward is indispensable.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8032 – 5.6.1.459

BA12 – ZZ – K

His attitude towards those situations in life which are difficult or trying will show how far he has really gone in the Quest. If he has not undergone the philosophic discipline, he will either analyse these situations in a wrong egoistic way or else avoid analysing them altogether.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8036 – 5.6.1.463

BN – X – D

You are to be penitent not only because your wrong acts may bring you to suffering but also, and much more, because they may bring you farther away from the discovery of the Overself.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8045 – 5.6.1.472

BA12 – ZZ – DK

To repine for past errors or to wish that what has been should not have been has only a limited usefulness. Analyse the situations, note effects, study causes, draw lessons—then dismiss the past completely.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8046 – 5.6.1.473

BN – ZZ – DK

He may be ashamed of what he did in the past but then he was that sort of man in the past. If he persists in identifying himself with the "I," in time such feelings will come to him and cause this kind of suffering. But if he changes over to identifying himself with the timeless being behind the "I" there can be no such suffering.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8048 – 5.6.1.475

BA12 – ZZ – DK

When he can bring himself to look upon his own actions from the outside just as he does those of other men, he will have satisfied the philosophic ideal.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8061 – 5.6.1.488

BN – X – D

Since he is called upon to forgive others, he must likewise forgive himself. He need not torment himself without an end by the remembrance of past errors and condemn himself incessantly for their commitment. If their lesson has been well learnt and well taken to heart, why nurse their temporary existence into a lasting one by a melancholy and remorse which overdo their purpose?

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8073 – 5.6.1.500

B_14 – ZZ – K

If the aspirant has any grievance against another person or if he be conscious of feelings of anger, resentment, or hatred against another person, he should follow Jesus' advice and let not the sun go down on his wrath. This means that he must see him as expressing the result of all his own long experience and personal thinking about life and therefore the victim of his own past, not acting better only because he does not know any better. The aspirant should then comprehend that whatever wrongs have been done will automatically be brought under the penalty of karmic retribution. Consequently, it is not his affair to condemn or to punish the other person, but to stand aloof and let the law of karma take care of him. It is his affair to understand and not to blame.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8076E – 5.6.1.503

B_13 – ZEL1/2 – K

He must learn to accept a person just as he is, uncondemned. He certainly should try not to feel any emotional resentment or express any personal ill-will against that person. He must keep his own consciousness above the evil, the wrong-doing, the weaknesses, or the faults of the other man and not let them enter his own consciousness—which is what happens if he allows them to provoke negative reactions in his lower self. He should make immediate and constant effort to root such weeds out of his emotional life. But the way to do this is not by blinding himself to the faults, the defects, and the wrongdoings of the other.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8076E – 5.6.1.503

B_13 – ZEL2/2 – K

Whatever mistakes he has made, whatever sins he has committed, let him learn their lessons, correct his thinking, improve his character, and then forgive himself. Let him joyously receive Jesus' pardon, "Go thou and sin no more!" and accept the healing grace which follows self-amendment.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Value of confession, repentance

#8077 – 5.6.1.504

B_11 – ZZ – K

We have begun to question Nature and we must abide the consequences. But we need not fear the advancing tide of knowledge. Its effects on morals will be only to discipline human character all the more. For it is not knowledge that makes men immoral, it is the lack of it. False foundations make uncertain supports for morality.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Truthfulness

#8085 – 5.6.1.512

BN – X – K1

Men ask, "What is truth?" But in reply truth itself questions them, "Who are you to ask that? Have you the competence, the faculty, the character, the judgement, the education, and the preparation to recognize truth? If not, first go and acquire them, not forgetting the uplift of character."

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Truthfulness

#8086 – 5.6.1.513

BN – X – K1

Clarity of vision goes much better with purity of heart.

Emotions and Ethics > Uplift Character > Truthfulness

#8091 – 5.6.1.518

BA12 – ZZ – DK

Those are much mistaken who think the philosophic life is one of dark negation and dull privation, of sour life-denial and emotional refrigeration. Rather is it the happy cultivation of Life’s finest feelings.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8102 – 5.6.2.7

BSG_1 – ZZZ – DMK

Sentimentality is a disease. The sooner the aspirant is cured of it, the quicker will be progress.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8106 – 5.6.2.11

B_10 – ZZ – K

It is possible to attain a stoic impassivity where the man dies to disturbing or disquieting emotions and lives only in his finer ones, where the approbation of others will no longer excite him or the criticism by others hurt him, where the cravings and fears, the passions and griefs or ordinary and everyday human reactions are lacking. But in their place he will be sensible to the noblest, the most refined feelings.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8108 – 5.6.2.13

BN – Z – K

There is one relationship which takes precedence over all others. It is the relationship with the Overself.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8110 – 5.6.2.15

BN – X – D

The disciple must have no room for false sentimentality if he seeks truth. Consequently, he will not apply the phrase "a broken heart" to himself at any time, for he knows that what it really means is a broken ego, a severed attachment to some external thing which has to be given up if the way is to be cleared for the coming of Grace. It is only when he is unwilling or unable to do this for himself that destiny steps in, taking him at his word in his search for truth and reality, and breaks the attachments for him. If he accepts the emotional suffering which follows and does not reject it, he is able to pass into a region of greater freedom, and of progress to a higher level. His heart is not broken arbitrarily or capriciously, but only there where it most needs to be broken—where passion, desire, and attachment bind him the most strongly to illusion and to error.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8115 – 5.6.2.20

B_10 – Z – K

Only after long experience and severe reflection will a man awaken to the truth that the beauty which attracts him and the ecstasy which he seeks can be found free of defects and transiency only in the Soul within.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8116 – 5.6.2.21

BN – X – D

Philosophy will create within him a disgust for evil, a disdain for what is ignoble, a taste for what is refined and beautiful, a yearning for what is true and real.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8117 – 5.6.2.22

BN – X – D

The real philosopher ‘feels’ what he knows: it is not a dry intellectual experience alone but a living one.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8125 – 5.6.2.30

BN – ZZZ – D

The higher human feelings such as kindness and sympathy, patience and tolerance have to be nurtured.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8127 – 5.6.2.32

BN – X – D

He will not lose the capacity to feel; in this he will still be like other men: but it will be free from false sentimentality and debased animality.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8129 – 5.6.2.34

B_10 – ZZ – K

He who enters upon this Quest will have to revise his scale of values. Experiences which he formerly thought bad, because they were unpleasant, may now be thought good, because they are educative or because they reveal hitherto obscured weaknesses.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8130 – 5.6.2.35

B_04 – ZZ – DK

The Roman Stoics, who sought to control their emotions and master their passions, placed character above knowledge. We pursue a similar albeit less rigorous discipline in controlling feelings by reason because we place knowledge above character. The latter is made a preliminary to attainment of the former.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8147 – 5.6.2.52

BN – X – K

It is well to remember not to let oneself become the victim of negative feelings or harsh thoughts. They do not mend matters but only make you suffer more, and also suffer needlessly.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8152 – 5.6.2.57

B_01 – ZZZ – DK

It is one of the side effects of philosophy that it purifies human affection, takes the littleness out of it, and lifts it to a higher and wider plane. This may bring some pain or it may bring a shared pleasure, depending on those involved in the experience.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8153 – 5.6.2.58

BN – X – D

In most human relations, egoism in one person is replied by egoism in the other.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8157 – 5.6.2.62

BN – X – D

If anyone is to carry out Christ's bidding of reconciliation with enemies and forgiveness of those who have harmed him, he can do so only by giving up the ego.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8159 – 5.6.2.64

B_14 – ZZZ – K

A fuzzy sentimentality which passes for mystical feeling is only its counterfeit.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8167 – 5.6.2.72

B_10 – ZZ – K

Muhammed knew the power of tears. He bade his followers to weep whenever they recited the Koran.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Re-Educate Feelings

#8172 – 5.6.2.77

BN – X – D

Few people know what love really means because with nearly all it is filtered through the screens of bodily and selfish considerations. In its pure native state it is the first attribute of the divine soul and consequently it is one of the most important qualities which the seeker has to cultivate.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8178 – 5.6.2.83

B_10 – ZZ – DMK

The love for which man is searching exists; it is as perfect, as beautiful, as perpetual, and as healing as he can imagine it to be. But it does not exist where he wants to find it. Only the inner kingdom holds and gives it at the end of his search. No other human being can do so unless he or she has previously entered the kingdom, and then only through all the limitations and colourings of the earthly consciousness.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8179 – 5.6.2.84

B_10 – ZZ – DK

Although we have stated in 'The Wisdom of the Overself' that a love restricted to the limited circle of wife, family, or friends is unphilosophic and should be extended in universal compassion to all mankind, this should not be mistaken to mean that such a restricted love ought to be abandoned. On the contrary, it should have its fullest place within the larger one. We have also written in the same book that "love" is one of the most misused words in English. We may now add that it is also one of the most debased words. Why? Because, very often, it is based on sheer self-interest and not on the beloved's interest and gives only so long as it gets; because, not seldom, the greater the ardour with which it begins, the greater the antipathy with which it ends; and because it frequently mistakes the goading of animal glands for the awakening of human affection. True love does not change or falter because the beloved has changed and faltered or because the physical circumstances wherein it was born have become different. It cannot be blown hither and thither by the accidents of destiny.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8180E – 5.6.2.85

B_10 – ZEL1/1 – K

It expresses itself outwardly in an exceptionally kindly behaviour. He will not hurt others unnecessarily. He feels that one of the best pieces of advice he can give others is: "Be kind." In this way you abrase your own egoism and show forth something—just an echo—of this love which emanates from the indwelling spiritual self. The cost in thus weakly and briefly identifying yourself with others is little: the gain in moral growth is large. When your duties, activities, or responsibilities in life call for critical judgement of any person, that is allowable. But when you fall into it for the sake of idle gossip or, what is worse, when you are nastily censorious, slanderously back-biting, for the sake of malice, that is unkind and unpardonable. Above his own deliberate willing or wishing, quite spontaneously and impulsively, a feeling of pure love begins to well up within him. It is unconnected with physical or egoistic causes, for all those who touch his orbit benefit by it. It does not stop flowing if they are foolish or ugly, sinful or deformed, unclean or disagreeable.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8181 – 5.6.2.86

BN – Z – DEK

The capacity to give and receive love is not to be destroyed, nor can it be. Nature has planted its roots too deeply for that destruction to be attempted with success or desired with wisdom. But the man or woman who aspires to the highest cannot let it stay ungrown and benefit from its finest fruits. He should nurture it, purify it, exalt it, and spiritualize it. He should direct it toward his best self, his Overself, aspiring and yearning. And when it comes back to him in the blessed form of Grace, he should be ready and fit to receive it.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8189 – 5.6.2.94

BN – X – D

We may divide these different kinds of love conveniently into animal-physical love, emotional-mental love, and impersonal-spiritual love.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8194 – 5.6.2.99

B_10 – ZZZ – K

We have been told by well-meaning ministers of religion and counsellors in psychology to practise Jesus's words, "Love thy neighbour." Now there are two different ways in which we can do so, because there are two different interpretations of these words—the religious and the philosophic. According to the first, we have at least to be amiable toward our next-door neighbour, or at most to throw our arms around him and express our warm feeling for him in a gushy, sentimental, hyper-emotional manner. According to the second and philosophic interpretation, we have to understand that every person who crosses our path is our neighbour, everyone with whom we are thrown into momentary or continuous contact is our neighbour, whether at home or at work. It is in these immediate contacts that irritations are bred, differences are noted, and dislikes appear.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8196E – 5.6.2.101

B_10 – ZEL1/2 – K

It is much easier to love humanity as a whole or in the abstract than it is to love humanity in the individual and in the concrete. In spite of the instinctive urge to manifest irritability, dislike, anger, resentment, or even hatred against those with whom you are thrown in contact, you can steel your will and resist the negative feeling. If you can take all these negative feelings and sublimate them into understanding, tolerance, and goodwill based on the teachings of philosophy, you are actually loving your neighbour in the sense that Jesus meant it. You will then see that such philosophic love is far removed from and far superior to the hyper-emotionalism which blows hot and cold.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8196E – 5.6.2.101

B_10 – ZEL2/2 – K

The idea that ordinary people can love one another, including those they have never met as well as those they meet day after day, is a pleasant piece of sentimentalism. It sounds well when solemnly uttered by ministers of religion before their respectful congregations or when published as advice by professional psychologists. But where are the individuals who succeed in following it? Only saints can achieve complete empathy. For all others the idea is vague and unreal, although convenient to use in talk at Christmas time.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8203E – 5.6.2.108

B_10 – Z – K

When one's love for another is of the highest type and leads to an expansion of understanding, compassion, and tolerance of others, he has glimpsed the greater purpose of personal love: how the surrender of his heart may lead to its opening to, and becoming united with, Universal Love.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8206 – 5.6.2.111

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

Being aware of the weaknesses or faults of another does not necessarily mean we love him less. It is an essential part of the message of love that we learn how to forgive surface characteristics by contemplating the essence of the beloved, to see what "is," while also seeing deeper to what truly IS—the Divine evidenced in a particular form.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8207 – 5.6.2.112

B_14 – ZZ – DK

Only when love ceases to be personal and becomes impersonal, when it passes out of the local into the universal, does it fulfil itself and attain its own unmixed and unadulterated integrity.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8208 – 5.6.2.113

B_02 – ZZZ – K

Real love is not something to be withdrawn abruptly when the person who is its object annoys or offends you.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8209 – 5.6.2.114

BA11 – ZZZ – DMK

Those who cannot make the leap and rise above human love to their higher self—with its impersonality and immateriality—may continue to draw a happiness from it. But the limitations will be there, inexorable, unconquerable, of time and body, relativity and change.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8212 – 5.6.2.117

B_10 – ZZZ – K

Fear weakens a man, hate destroys him in the end, but love brings him his best.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8213 – 5.6.2.118

BN – Z – D

There is a common notion that love, to be worth its name, must be highly emotional and dramatically intense. That, of course, is one kind but it is not the best kind which is calm, unchanging, and unexcited.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8216 – 5.6.2.121

BN – X – D

When a man discovers that the same Overself dwells in his enemy as in his own heart, how can he ever again bring himself to hate or injure another?

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8221 – 5.6.2.126

BN – X – D

The injunction [of Jesus] "Love thy neighbour" has often led to confusion in the minds of those who hear or read it, a confusion which forces many to refuse to accept it. And they are the ones who do not understand its meaning but misinterpret it to mean "Like thy neighbour!" The correct meaning of this age-old ethical injunction is "Practise compassion in your physical behaviour and exercise goodwill in your mental attitude towards your neighbour." Everyone can do this even when he cannot bring himself to like his neighbour. Therefore, this injunction is not a wholly impracticable one as some believe, but quite the contrary.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8223E – 5.6.2.128

B_10 – ZEL1/5 – K-1

Whoever imagines that it means the development of a highly sentimental, highly emotional condition is mistaken; for emotions of that kind can just as easily swing into their opposites of hate as remain what they are. This is not love, but the masquerade of it. Sentimentality is the mere pretense of compassion. It breaks down when it is put under strains, whereas genuine compassion will always continue and never be cancelled by them. True love towards one's neighbour must come from a level higher than the emotional and such a level is the intuitive one. What Jesus meant was, "Come into such an intuitive realization of the one Infinite Power from which you and your neighbour draw your lives that you realize the harmony of interests, the interdependence of existence which result from this fact."

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8223E – 5.6.2.128

B_10 – ZEL2/5 – K

What Jesus meant, and what alone he could have meant, was indicated by the last few words of his injunction, [Love thy neighbor] "as thyself." The self which they recognized to be the true one was the spiritual self, which they were to seek and love with all their might—and it was this, not the frail ego, which they were also to love in others. The quality of compassion may easily be misunderstood as being mere sentimentality or mere emotionality. It is not these things at all. They can be foolish and weak when they hide the truth about themselves from people, whereas a truly spiritual compassion is not afraid to speak the truth, not afraid to criticize as rigorously as necessary, to have the courage to point out faults even at the cost of offending those who prefer to live in self-deception. Compassion will show the shortcoming within themselves which is in turn reflected outside themselves as maleficent destiny.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8223E – 5.6.2.128

B_10 – ZEL3/5 – K

When he views those who are suffering from the effects of their own ungoverned emotion, passion and desire, he does not sink with those who are victims of this lack of control, even though he feels self-identity with them. He cannot permit such feelings to enter his consciousness. If he does not shrink from his own suffering, it is hardly likely that he will shrink from the sufferings of others. He does not really regard himself as apart from them. In some curious way, both they and he are part of one and the same life. If he does not pity himself for his own sufferings in the usual egoistic and emotional way, how can he bring himself to pity the sufferings of others in the same kind of way? This does not mean that he will become coldly indifferent towards them. On the contrary, the feeling of identification with their inmost being would alone prevent that utterly; but it means that the pity which arises within him takes a different form, which is far nobler and truer because emotional agitation and egotistic reaction are absent from it.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8223E – 5.6.2.128

B_10 – ZEL4/5 – K

He feels with and for the sufferings of others, but he never allows himself to be lost in them; and just as he is never lost in fear or anxiety about his own sufferings, so he cannot become lost in those emotions or the sufferings of others. The calmness with which he approaches his own sufferings cannot be given up because he is approaching other people's sufferings. He has bought that calmness at a heavy price—it is too precious to be thrown away for anything. And because the pity which he feels in his heart is not mixed up with emotional excitement or personal fear, his mind is not obscured by these excrescences, and is able to see what needs to be done to relieve the suffering ones far better than an obscured mind could see. He does not make a show of his pity, but his help is far more effectual than the help of those who do.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8223E – 5.6.2.128

B_10 – ZEL5/5 – K

Jesus' preachment of love of one's neighbour as oneself is impossible to follow in all fullness until one has attained the height whereon his own true self dwells. Obedience to it would mean identifying oneself with the neighbour's physical pain and emotional suffering so that they were felt not less keenly than one's own. One could not bear that when brought into contact with all kinds of human sorrow that shadow life. It could be borne only when one had crushed its power to affect one's own feelings and disturb one's own equilibrium. Therefore, such love would bring unbearable suffering. By actively identifying oneself with those who are sorrowing, by pushing one's sympathy with them to its extreme point, one gets disturbed and weakened. This does not improve one's capacity to help the sufferer, but only lessens it. To love others is praiseworthy, but it must be coupled with balance and with reason or it will lose itself ineffectually in the air.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8224ED – 5.6.2.129

B_10 – ZEL1/2 – K

By actively identifying oneself with those who are sorrowing, by pushing one's sympathy with them to its extreme point, one gets disturbed and weakened. This does not improve one's capacity to help the sufferer, but only lessens it. To love others is praiseworthy, but it must be coupled with balance and with reason or it will lose itself ineffectually in the air. Not to let his interest in other matters or his sympathy with other persons carry him away from his equilibrium, his inner peace, but to stop either when it threatens to agitate his mind or disturb his feelings, is wisdom.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8224ED – 5.6.2.129

B_10 – ZEL2/2 – K

Love of the divine is our primary duty. Love of our neighbour is only a secondary one.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8225 – 5.6.2.130

BN – X – D

Compassion is the highest moral value, the noblest human feeling, the purest creature-love. It is the final social expression of man's divine soul. For he is able to feel with and for another man only because both are in reality related in harmony by the presence of that soul in each one.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8226D – 5.6.2.131

BA11 – ZZ – DEMK-1

PB: In the ninth chapter of "The Wisdom of the Overself" I wrote: For this notion of love is a sadly limited one. To bestow it only on a wife or a child, a sweetheart or a sister, is to bestow it in anticipation of its being returned. Man finds in time that such giving which hopes for a getting is not enough. Love cannot stop there. It seeks to grow beyond the restricted circle of a few friends and relations. Life itself leads him on to transcend it. And this he does firstly, by transcending the lure of the pitiful transient flesh and secondly, by transforming love into something nobler and rarer—compassion. In the divine self-giving of this wonderful quality and in its expansion until all mankind is touched, love finally fulfils itself.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8228E – 5.6.2.133

B_10 – ZEL1/2 – K

In the divine self-giving of this wonderful quality [compassion] and in its expansion until all mankind is touched, love finally fulfils itself. This last sentence may lead to misunderstanding. The paragraph in which it appears is, I now see, incomplete. For compassion is an emotion felt by one ego when considering the suffering condition of another ego. But spiritual development eventually lifts itself above all emotions, by which I do not of course mean above all feeling. The wish to help another person should not spring out of compassion alone, nor out of the aspiration to do what is right alone, nor out of the satisfaction derived from practising virtue for its own sake alone. It should certainly come out of all these, but it should also come even more out of the breaking down of the ego itself. With that gone, there will be a feeling of oneness with all living creatures. This practice of self-identification with them is the highest form of love.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8228E – 5.6.2.133

B_10 – ZEL2/2 – K

Some students have expressed disagreement with my use of the term "compassion" when describing the enlightened man's loftiest social quality. They believe the common term "love" would be more correct. Now one of the fundamental terms of the New Testament is, in the original Greek, "agape"—which is always translated as "love." But this is unsatisfactory because man's love may be selfishly motivated whereas "agape" has the definite implication of unselfish, or better, selfless love. And the only English word which I can find to express this idea is the one which I have used, that is, "compassion."

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8230E – 5.6.2.135

B_10 – ZEL1/2 – K

If we cast out its selfish, sentimental, or sensual associations, the word "love" would be enough to express this attitude, but because these associations thickly encrust its meaning, the word "compassion" is better used. The kind of compassion here meant is not condescending toward others. Rather does it stretch out its hands through innate fellow-feeling for them. It puts itself in the shoes of others and intellectually experiences life from their standpoint.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8230E – 5.6.2.135

B_10 – ZEL2/2 – K

"Hatred ceaseth not by hatred," declared the Buddha, "It ceaseth only by compassionate love." This counsel is much the same as Jesus' injunction to love our enemies. Many people, who wish to do what is ethically right and feel that their best course is to follow the ethics prescribed by such great souls as Jesus or Buddha, get confused here and wallow in sentimentality under the mistaken impression that they are following these counsels.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8231E – 5.6.2.136

B_14 – ZEL1/4 – K

The sentimentalists misunderstand Jesus if they believe that he taught us to practise outwardly and practically unconditional and universal forgiveness. On the contrary, he made repentance the prerequisite of such visible forgiveness. Those who refuse to repent and persist in wrongdoing must be inwardly and silently forgiven, but otherwise left to suffer the karma of their actions. What is really meant is that we should be big-hearted enough not to exclude our enemies from our goodwill to all mankind and that we should be big-minded enough to comprehend that they are only acting according to their own experience and knowledge of life. This is to "forgive them for they know not what they do." When we hold them in thought and when we image them with feeling we must do so without anger, without hatred, without bitterness.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8231E – 5.6.2.136

B_14 – ZEL2/4 – K

All doctrines which are based on hatred emanate from the blackest of evil forces. Hatred is always their indicator just as compassion is always an indicator of the good forces. By practising great-hearted compassion, we help to counteract whatever ill-feelings have been generated. Therefore let us not at any time or under any provocation lose ourselves in emotions of resentment, bitterness, and hatred. We must not hate the most misguided of our enemies. We may oppose their false ideas resolutely, we may hate their sins, but not the sinners. We must pity even the most violent of them and not spoil our own characters by accepting their example. We must not sink to the low level of seeking revenge. The desire for revenge is a primitive one. It is apposite to the tiger and reptile kingdom, but in the human kingdom it should be replaced by the desire for justice.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8231E – 5.6.2.136

B_14 – ZEL3/4 – K

These two attributes—hatred and pity—stand at opposite poles to each other: the one as being the worst of all human vices and the other as being the best of all human virtues. This, then, is a further reason why we must take care not to fall into the all-too-easy habit of hating enemies. For they are still members of this great human family of ours, still creatures planted like us on this woeful planet both to learn its immediate lessons and to share its ultimate redemption.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8231E – 5.6.2.136

B_14 – ZEL4/4 – K

"Hatred ceaseth not by hatred," declared the Buddha, "It ceaseth only by compassionate love." This counsel is much the same as Jesus' injunction to love our enemies. Many people, who wish to do what is ethically right and feel that their best course is to follow the ethics prescribed by such great souls as Jesus or Buddha, get confused here and wallow in sentimentality under the mistaken impression that they are following these counsels.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8231E – 5.6.2.136

B_10 – ZZZ – K

A gushy sentimentality which refrains from saying what needs to be said or doing what needs to be done because it will hurt people's feelings, is mere weakness and cowardice, not true compassion.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8232E – 5.6.2.137

B_10 – ZZ – K

He must give out that love of which Jesus spoke. But it is not to be an unbalanced sentimentality; rather it is a serene self-identification with others without being thrown off one's own centre. That is why reason is a helpful check here. Above all, he must love the Real, the Overself.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8233 – 5.6.2.138

B_10 – ZZZ – K

We can harm others and ourselves by practising a sloppy sentimentality in the name of love, a misguided humanitarianism in the name of service.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8235 – 5.6.2.140

B_10 – ZZ – K

"Love thy neighbour", preached Jesus. Perhaps! but that does not mean I must also love his ill-mannered vulgarity, his insensitive crude commonness, his unfair class, race, and national hates, his malice towards all and charity toward none.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8237 – 5.6.2.142

B_11 – ZZZ – K

A silent compassion which does things is preferable to a voluble sentimentality which does nothing.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Love, compassion

#8238 – 5.6.2.143

B_10 – ZZ – K

Disinterested action does not mean renouncing all work that brings financial reward. How then could one earn a livelihood? It does not mean ascetic renunciation and monastic flight from personal responsibilities. The philosophic attitude is that a man shall perform his full duty to the world, but this will be done in such a way that it brings injury to none. Truth, honesty, and honour will not be sacrificed for money. Time, energy, capacity, and money will be used wisely in the best interests of mankind, and above all the philosopher will pray constantly that the Overself will accept him as a dedicated instrument of service. And it surely will.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Detachment

#8246D – 5.6.2.151

BN – ZZZ – DEK

The degree of attachment is measurable by the degree of emotional involvement. Therefore, to become detached is to become emotionally detached.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Detachment

#8264 – 5.6.2.169

BSG_4 – Z – K

Ambition wears thin with time or even wears out altogether. The hour may come when it means nothing and when a man feels nothing of it. Only the young are so eager to risk the perils of upward flight to fame. The reflective man is indifferent to worldly ambitions as the aged man is tired of them. Philosophy leads its votaries to a somewhat similar detachment, but, by supplying new incentives, does not lead to negative results.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Detachment

#8293 – 5.6.2.198

BN – X – D

It was Jesus’ closest relative, his own mother, who sought to sidetrack him from his mission, compelling him to exclaim, “Woman! What have I to do with thee?” It was Ramana Maharshi’s own mother who sought to drag him back from his meditation-cave to a worldly life, compelling him to tell her, in effect, not to alter a course already preordained for him. The duties towards one’s family are limited ones, whereas the duty towards one’s soul is an unlimited one.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Family

#8309 – 5.6.2.214

B_11 – ZZZ – DK

Once he has found out his true relationship to the higher power, the problem of settling his relationship to other human beings becomes easy.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Friendship

#8312 – 5.6.2.217

BN – X – D

Sometimes a quick friendship means that he is reviving an old spiritual relationship out of the hidden past, out of the numerous incarnations which have been lost in time. Therefore understanding and recognition come quickly, explanations and introductions are not waited for and are not necessary in the real soul-realm.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Friendship

#8319 – 5.6.2.224

BN – Z – DEK

Much harm has been done by the pseudo-romantic nonsense and false suggestions put out by cinema, magazines, and novels. [Translator’s note: In the 21st century, we could add the internet and social media.]

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Marriage

#8340E – 5.19.15.245

B_10 – ZZ – K

We shall secure personal happiness only to the extent that we unfold ourselves to the light of the impersonal Overself.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Happiness

#8349 – 5.6.2.254

BN – X – D

The happiness which everyone wants can be found only in the eternal, not in the temporal. But everyone continues to try this or that, with the same endlessly repeated result. Nobody listens to the prophets who tell this, or listens with more than his ears, until time teaches him its truth. Then only do his heart and will begin to apply it.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Happiness

#8350 – 5.6.2.255

UR_1 – ZZZ – K

Happiness cannot be found by those who seek it as a goal in itself. It can be found only by those who know it is a result and not a goal.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Happiness

#8353 – 5.6.2.258

UR_1 – ZZZ – K

Every day is a new day, with new possibilities of a fresh, determined, and more courageous approach to all daily difficulties. Let us forget the past and start planning for a happier tomorrow!

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Happiness

#8356E – 5.6.2.261

BSG_4 – ZZZ – DEK

It is an heroic and stoic goal to set before a man, that he shall not be dependent upon others for his happiness and that he shall be emotionally self-sufficient. But it is a goal reachable by and, in the present kind of faulty human society, useful to, only the few.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Happiness

#8357 – 5.6.2.262

BN – X – K

“Are you happy?” is a question people often ask him. But he has not sought happiness. He has sought to find out why he is here and to fulfil that purpose.

Emotions and Ethics > Re-Educate Feelings > Happiness

#8366 – 5.6.2.271

BN – X – D

Anger and hatred are dangerous emotions to carry about with you. Whether or not they lead to actions harmful to the person they are directed against, they are certainly harmful to you. Conquer them quickly, get these psychological poisons out of your system.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8381 – 5.6.3.11

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

The longer he lives the more he discovers that real peace depends on the strength with which he rules his own heart, and real security depends on the truth with which he rules his own mind. When he leaves his emotions in disorder they bring agony—as the accompaniment or the follower of the happiness they claimed at first to be able to give. When he lets his thoughts serve the blindnesses of his ego, they deceive, mislead, or trouble him.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8391 – 5.6.3.21

BN – Z – K1

Emotion is an unreliable adviser but refined, purified, and liberated from egotism, it becomes transformed into intuition.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8398 – 5.6.3.28

BN – X – D

There are two kinds of inner peace. The first is somewhat like that which the ancient Stoics cultivated: the result of controlling emotions and disciplining thoughts, the result of will and effort applied to the mastery of self. It brings with it, at best, a contentment with what one has, at least, a resignation to one's lot. The second is much deeper, for it comes out of the Overself. It is the blessed result of Divine Grace liberating one from the craving for existence.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8400 – 5.6.3.30

BN – X – K

He should calmly recognize that suffering has its allotted function to perform in the divine plan, that other people have their lessons to learn through it when they will learn in no other way, and that the spectacle of its operation should, in such cases, be met with intelligent understanding rather than with neurotic sentimentality. He should face the fact that many people will not learn from reason, intuition, or teaching and that no one can really liberate them from their sufferings except themselves. Every other kind of liberation is a false one. Others may effect it today only to see the same condition return tomorrow.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8404E – 5.6.3.34

B_10 – ZEL1/2 – K

He should not, in certain situations calling for hard decision, for instance, show unjustifiable weakness under the belief that he is showing forbearance, nor submit to antisocial egotism under the thought that he is practising love, nor abandon his highest duties for the sake of making a false and superficial peace with interfering ignorance, nor passibly accept a flagrant wrong because God's will must always be borne.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8404E – 5.6.3.34

B_10 – ZEL2/2 – K

Whether or not it is possible to attain a perfection of calmness that is secure against all assaults, it is surely possible to attain sufficient calmness to keep off many or most of the emotional disturbances and mental turmoils which derive from the petty incidents of everyday life.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8415 – 5.6.3.45

BN – ZZ – DK

Look through the miserable emotions of the ego and go beyond them to the smiling serenity of the Overself.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8421 – 5.6.3.51

BN – X – DK

The more he practises keeping calm in the confrontations of worldly stress, the less difficult will it be to practise meditation. The practice not only makes it easier for intelligence to operate but also for thoughts to come under control.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8431 – 5.6.3.61

BN – X – D

The Stoics in old Europe tried to put the emotions under the absolute control of reason. The Buddhist yogis in old India tried to do exactly the same. But whereas the Stoics did this in order to meet the everyday alternations of fate, health, and fortune with great courage, the yogis did it in order to escape from those alternations. The Stoics were practical men who accepted the world but sought to conquer it through the power gained by conquering themselves. The yogis rejected the world and, like the desert monks of early Christianity, wanted to be done with its struggles and afflictions.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8438 – 5.6.3.68

BN – X – K

This inner quiescence, this emotional calm, this being at peace with oneself, this refusal to be upset or feel hurt, is one of those conditions which make possible the discovery of the true being.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8442 – 5.6.3.72

BSG_4 – P – D

The truth crushes all the falseness and all the deceptiveness in sentimentality and emotionality but leaves intact what is sound in them. The ego eagerly wants to nourish itself with these pitiful illusions, therefore.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8443 – 5.6.3.73

B_10 – ZZ – K

To eradicate anger he should cultivate its opposite—forgiveness.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8445 – 5.6.3.75

B_14 – ZZZ – DK

It is prudent to keep away from temptation—at least until enough positive strength has been developed to risk the test. But if development is not sought and obtained, then untempted and unproven virtue may be merely negative.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8452 – 5.6.3.82

BN – X – DEK

There is nothing wrong with the human desire for affection, companionship, and marriage. But he who has embarked on the spiritual path should remember that more is expected from him than from ordinary people. He is expected to have a definite measure of control over his emotions and impulses and must not be carried off his feet into extremes where he loses balance. It is not possible to make good progress on the spiritual path unless some triumph over the impulsive nature is secured.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8455 – 5.6.3.85

BN – X – DEK

When critical moments arrive in a man's life his best recourse is first to calm not to panic, second to remember and turn towards the Overself. In that way he does not depend on his own small resources alone, but opens himself to the larger ones hidden in his subconscious.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8458 – 5.6.3.88

BN – X – D

The emotional agitations will certainly come to an end when he finds his real inner peace, for he cannot have the two together. To have the peace he has to give up the agitations.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8461 – 5.6.3.91

BN – X – D

The practice of calmness frees a man from the fretful, nervous tension so many carry around with them; he brings a pleasant air of repose with him.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8468 – 5.6.3.98

BN – X – D

Only an unflinching devotion to truth and an unyielding exercise of reason can see through these insincerities of sentimentality.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8477 – 5.6.3.107

B_10 – ZZ – K

These neurotics seeking comfort, who invade mysticism to its detriment, display their self-willed, petty egotisms by resenting the discipline of their emotions, and thus contribute to their own further suffering.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8493 – 5.6.3.123

B_17 – Z – K

Sentimentality may enfeeble a person and mislead his impulses.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Higher and lower emotions

#8495 – 5.6.3.125

B_10 – ZZ – K

No aspirant is asked to remain emotionally neutral regarding his personal hopes and fears. He is asked to strive for impartiality in his decisions, to recognize that it is wrong action which secures his own enjoyment at the cost of other people's suffering or his own gain at the cost of their rights.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Self-restraint

#8518 – 5.6.3.148

BA12 – ZZ – K

The same human characteristic of emotion which enslaves and even harms him when it is attached to earthly things alone, exalts and liberates him when it is disciplined and purified by philosophy.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Self-restraint

#8520 – 5.6.3.150

BN – Z – K1

The emotional hurts which meant so much and felt so deep when he was spiritually juvenile, will come to signify less and less as he becomes spiritually adult. For he sees increasingly that they made him unhappy only because he himself allowed them to do so, only because, from two possible attitudes, he himself chose the little ego's with its negative and petty emotionalism as against the higher mind's positive and universal rationality.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Self-restraint

#8534 – 5.6.3.164

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

With regard to the emotions, the path is a crucifixion of the personal ego. The aspirant's heart must be searched and searched until it is free from all reservations and utterly surrendered to the higher self. It is impossible to pass through such a process without undergoing the terrible ordeal of crushing some feelings and surrendering others. The adept is indeed the man who has triumphed over his emotions, but it would be an indefensible and inexcusable error to think he lives in a complete emotional vacuum, that he is a man without feeling or sensibilities of any kind. Bulwer Lytton has pictured for us in his brilliant novel Zanoni a character of this type, the Rosicrucian adept Mejnour. This picture is close to reality in certain respects but it is far from reality in other respects. Let us not make the mistake of believing that the adept does not know the meaning of the words affection, sympathy, compassion, joy, enthusiasm, and even ecstasy. He does, but he knows them all within the higher self, which rules them.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Matured emotion

#8543E – 5.6.3.173

B_17 – ZEL1/2 – K

Let us not make the mistake of believing that the adept does not know the meaning of the words affection, sympathy, compassion, joy, enthusiasm, and even ecstasy. He does, but he knows them all within the higher self, which rules them. The only emotions he does not know are those lower ones, such as anger, resentment, hatred, prejudice, bitterness, lust, pride, and intolerance. Yes!—the philosophical life does not lack emotional content but it is not the kind of narrow, selfish, vacillating emotion so many human beings are accustomed to.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Matured emotion

#8543E – 5.6.3.173

B_17 – ZEL2/2 – K

It might be thought that the philosophic discipline seeks to eliminate emotion. The truth is that it seeks to maturate emotion. The disciple’s feelings—no less than his thoughts—must grow up and assume their philosophic responsibilities.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Matured emotion

#8546 – 5.6.3.176

BN – Z – DK

It is an error to regard him as inhuman, as lacking in feeling. What he rejects is negative feeling: what he seeks to overcome is animal wrath, lust, hatred; what he affirms is positive feeling of the best kind—delicate, sensitive, aesthetic, compassionate, and refined. Thus his stoic imperturbability is not 'rigor mortis'.

Emotions and Ethics > Discipline Emotions > Matured emotion

#8551 – 5.6.3.181

BN – X – K

The same power which, when misgoverned, drags men down into materialism, also lifts them into spiritual awareness when directed upward.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8557 – 5.6.4.1

BN – X – D

He must needs declare open war on his own passions, for he now sees that he cannot have them and peace too. Like all war this one will witness both victories and defeats, hardships and sufferings. But out of these battles with himself he may progress, learning discrimination and gaining willpower.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8581 – 5.6.4.25

BA12 – ZZ – K

The more he trains himself to recognize and reject the impulses that come from his lower nature, the more will clarity of comprehension become his.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8584 – 5.6.4.28

BA12 – ZZ – DK

Only when the lessons of birth after birth etch themselves deeply and unmistakably into his conscious mind through dreadful repetition can he accept them co-operatively, resignedly, and thus put a stop to the needless sufferings of desire, passion, and attachment. 

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8586E – 5.6.4.30

UR_5 – ZZZ – DEK

When a man's desires and yearnings, thirsts and longings are so strong as to upset his reasoning power and block his intuitive capacity, he is stopped from finding truth. In this condition he shuts his eyes to those facts which are displeasing or which are contrary to his desires and opens them only to those which are pleasing or agreeable to his wishes. Thinking bends easily to desires, so that the satisfaction of personal interest rather than the quest of universal truth becomes its real object.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8587 – 5.6.4.31

BN – Z – K1

The faculty of will is immeasurably more important to the progress of the inner life than that of intellect. For the passions and appetites of the body are controlled by will; the strength of the lower nature is at the service of the ego's will rather than of its intellect.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8591 – 5.6.4.35

BN – X – DEK

When control is so perfect that he can never again raise his voice in anger, he need turn attention to only one other passion—the sexual.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8594 – 5.6.4.38

BN – X – D

It is not possible for these finer elements to become, little by little, paramount in his outlook, consciousness, and conduct without a corresponding decline in the coarser ones. He will gradually become the ruler of his physical appetites and then master of his bodily desires. Indeed, as all his longings for the Overself slowly gather themselves together into a great dedicated life, there is an equally great shift-over from the animal part of his being to the truly human, allied with an opening-up of the angelic or divine part.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8603 – 5.6.4.47

BN – X – DK

So long as a man identifies himself with the physical body, so long will he perforce have to identify himself with its desires and passions. Only when he transfers this self-identification to the infinite mental being can he completely detach himself from them.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8605 – 5.6.4.49

BN – X – D

The heart must become empty of all desires. This brings about the emotional void, which corresponds, in its own place, to the mental void experienced in the depth of mystical meditation. To this emptiness he must give himself, with it he must satisfy himself. In this way he obeys Jesus and becomes "poor in Spirit".

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8613 – 5.6.4.57

B_11 – Z – K

Both desires and fears bind a man to his ego and thus bar the way to spiritual fulfilment. They could not exist except in relation to a second thing. But when he turns his mind away from all things and directs it toward its own still centre, it is the beginning of the end for all desires and all fears.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8616 – 5.6.4.60

BN – X – D

It is true that we all share an animal body with the lower creatures. But that does not force us to stay on their level emotionally.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8628 – 5.6.4.72

BN – X – D

Whoever puts a moral purpose into life automatically lifts himself above the physical level of mere animality. For him begins a struggle between the slavery of sense and the freedom of enlightenment, between blind emotion and deliberate will, between inward weakness and inward strength. Henceforth, he seeks happiness rather than pleasure, the calm of a satisfied mind rather than the excitement of satisfied senses. If this is a stoic ideal, it is a necessary one, for he must conquer himself. He hates himself, and no man can live in peace with what he hates.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8638 – 5.6.4.82

BN – X – K

Make sure what you really want before you go after it. The bitter experience in life is to find after years of effort that the thing you have gained is not the thing you want.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8639 – 5.6.4.83

BN – X – D

If a man is not free from lust, fear, and anger, be sure he is not united with the Overself, whatever other qualities, powers, or virtues he shows.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8642 – 5.6.4.86

BN – X – D

The idea that he has to attain mastery over the desires of the flesh is a correct one. But that this mastery will lead to reunion with a soul-mate is not the teaching of the best mystics or philosophers. What really happens is a reunion with the true Beloved, who is none other than the Soul of the individual, his higher Self. This is a real living entity, whose presence is felt, whose words are heard, and whose beauty arouses all one's love.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8648 – 5.6.4.92

B_10 – ZZ – DK

If your passion is transferred from a passing object or human body to the more durable and beautiful soul, you will be progressing from a lower to a higher plane.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8681 – 5.6.4.125

BN – X – D

To what better use can a man put his will than the eradication of hatreds and the subduing of passions? For out of these two sources alone come so many wrong deeds and so much consequent suffering.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8699 – 5.6.4.143

B_17 – ZZZ – DMK

He who submits his emotions and passions to reason, and his reason to intuition, will save himself many regrets.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8705 – 5.6.4.149

BN – X – D

When passion, uncontrollable and blind, irrational and violent, is behind action, the consequences may be harmful to its owner but they may also be instructive—if he is willing to be instructed. For life is an educational process, which everyone has to undergo whether the pupils like it or not.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8708 – 5.6.4.152

BN – Z – DEK

The desires of human beings are never satiated, nor can they ever be since human beings must go on searching for final satisfaction. It is in their nature to do so. But what cannot be satiated by outer things can turn in on itself and find rest at last within.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8720 – 5.6.4.164

BN – X – D

It is the strength or feebleness of his attachments and desires which largely govern his first and earlier paces in the relinquishment of ego.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8722 – 5.6.4.166

BN – X – D

When insight arises, the passions become subdued and the problems which beset man become solved of their own accord. We may quarrel and kill whilst we remain in ignorance, but we must needs feel for and with each other when we comprehend at long last that in the Overself we are one.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8723 – 5.6.4.167

BN – X – D

Whereas the conventional good man seeks to leave behind only the gross and flagrant forms of sin, the philosophic disciple is much more scrupulous. Whereas the one is content to moderate the strength of his lower nature, the other tries to subjugate it altogether.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8725 – 5.6.4.169

BN – X – D

We are to discipline, and when necessary abstain from satisfying, the lower impulses of our nature because we are to cultivate its higher intuitions. The clamant voice of the one drowns the soft whisper of the other.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8726 – 5.6.4.170

BN – X – D

The rising generations have legitimate complaints against their ancestors. But in the matter of winning full freedom to follow their desires and upset the old Christian moral codes, the Mosaic decalogues, Confucian precepts, and the Indian taboos, they need to pause. Puritanic ideals are denounced but are not entirely inhuman: they have to be sifted and the good in them taken out. Stoic, simple living and self-discipline can be softened, its harshness also taken out, and the residue will be what the moderns need if they are to travel up higher and not sink lower.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8735 – 5.6.4.179

BN – X – K

If before performing an impulsive, undisciplined, and irresponsible deed he would remember what the consequences are and that he will have to bear them, then he will have taken the first step towards self-mastery.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8737 – 5.6.4.181

BN – Z – DK

The animal gives way to its desires and feelings more quickly than the human because it acts by instinct. The human, so far as he is an animal, also acts by instinct. But to the extent that he has developed reason and will he has developed a counter to that instinct which moderates or controls his desires and his feelings. Those humans who are nearer on the scale of evolution to the animal kingdom give way to passion and anger more readily because they have less self-control.

Emotions and Ethics > Purify Passions > Purify Passions

#8743 – 5.6.4.187

BN – X – DEK

That alone is true culture which refines taste, improves character, lifts standards, corrects behaviour, and teaches self-control.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8748 – 5.6.5.2

BN – X – D

His general attitude in discussion or study should be unbiased and unprejudiced, his observation of men and their situations impersonal and serene. He must realize that small men cannot entertain large views, that he is called upon to be big enough to put aside his personal sympathies and antipathies at certain times. He must realize too that whilst a man's mind moves at the low level of harsh prejudice or hot passion, it cannot possibly arrive at just conclusions. Before he can arrive at the truth of a highly controversial matter, he must detach himself from partisan feeling about it. Only in such inner silence can he think clearly and correctly about it. Where his criticism is directed against others, it should be the result of calm, impersonal reflection, not of emotional chagrin. This poised spirit will help him to avoid foolish extremes and dangerous rashness.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8750E – 5.6.5.4

BN – ZEL1/3 – K

He should not adopt a violent partisan spirit towards a problem or a principle for he knows that such a spirit always obscures the truth. Instead, he should always calmly view all sides in a balanced way. It is because he himself holds no rigidly partisan view that the earnest philosophic student can see better than other people what is true and what is false in every partisan view. It is not often that all the truth lies on one side and all the falsehood on the other. His ethical attitude should be more tolerant and less unfriendly than the average, as his intellectual attitude should be more inclusive and less dogmatic. He should refuse to imitate the irresponsible multitudes, with their surface judgement and facile condemnation. He should seek to understand and to respect the views of others; he should take the trouble to put himself in their place, to give an imaginative sympathy to their standpoint. He need not fall into the error of necessarily sharing them and may still stand on the intellectual foothold which he has secured.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8750E – 5.6.5.4

BN – ZEL2/3 – K

Although this attitude will more and more show itself in personal and social situations and in practical and general affairs as a matter of course according to his growth, it will also show itself in his spiritual life. The unprejudiced study and unbiased comparison of various systems of religions, metaphysics, mysticism, and ethics will be for him valuable parts of philosophic culture. He should be both willing and desirous to understand all of the chief points of view, all the leading variants of doctrine in these systems, but at the same time he will know his own mind and views. Even while he is seeking to know the minds and views of others, he should estimate how limited, how distorted, how falsified, or how large an aspect of truth each represents. He can do this with the help of the philosophic conception of truth, which lights up all these others, because it stands at the peak toward which they have climbed only a part of the way.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8750E – 5.6.5.4

BN – ZEL3/3 – K

To become a fuller human being a man must acquire education and culture. Both he and his life will be enriched. But unless he keeps humility, his egoism may grow too.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8757 – 5.6.5.11

BN – X – D

Suppose you knew that this was to be your last day on earth. How would you behave towards others? Would you not sink all short-range attitudes and rise above the petty selfishness, the pitiful enmities, and the harsh discords which may have marred your past? Would you not try at least to feel goodwill toward all men? This is how philosophy bids you behave at all times and not merely on your deathbed.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8775 – 5.6.5.29

B_02 – ZZZ – DMK

He is open-eyed enough to see men as they are, but also generous enough to see them as they must one day become.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8777 – 5.6.5.31

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

As the full meaning of reincarnation and of karma sinks deeper and deeper into his mind, a generous tolerance will rise higher and higher in his feelings. He will begin to see that every wrong-doer is what he is because of his past experience and present mentality and has to act in the way he does and cannot act in any other way. The life of such a man develops inevitably and naturally out of his character, out of his mode of thought, and out of his experience on this earth in the present and in former lives.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8778 – 5.6.5.32

BA11 – ZZ – DEMK

If he practises goodwill to others, it is more likely that the higher power will bestow grace upon him through others.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8780 – 5.6.5.34

BN – X – D

If he is to keep his inward peace unruffled he must live above the level of those who have it not. This can be done only if he obeys the practical injunctions of Jesus and Buddha, only if he keeps out of his emotional system all the negatives like resentment, bitterness, quarrelsomeness, jealousy, spite, and revenge. These lower emotions must definitely be outgrown if philosophic calm is to be the supreme fact and philosophic wisdom the guiding factor in his life. When other men show their enmity and meanness toward him, he is to retaliate by showing his indifference and generosity. When they falsely assail his character or enviously calumniate his work, he is to forbear from harsh feelings and not let them forfeit his goodwill. He is not to succumb to the human temptation to retaliate in kind. For he is engaged on a holy ascent, and to succumb would be to slip grievously back. Indeed, out of the base actions of others, he may kindle noble reactions which assist his upward climb.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8786 – 5.6.5.40

B_10 – ZZZ – K1

The man who is no longer disturbed by the presence or working or characteristic of his own ego will not be disturbed by that of others. No negative feeling will enter his attitude toward them.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8788 – 5.6.5.42

BA11 – ZZ – DMK

As a man advances in inward development, gaining ever richer experience in fresh embodiments, he comes to see that he will gain more by practising co-operation than by selfishly seeking his own isolated benefit alone.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8805 – 5.6.5.59

BN – X – D

Elegance is often found as an accompaniment of refinement. This is not only true of physical things, behaviour, and conduct, but also of character and mind.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8810 – 5.6.5.64

BN – X – DK

Assert the ego aggressively against others and you provoke their egos to assert themselves. Hostility breeds hostility, violence encourages the others to be violent.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8813 – 5.6.5.67

BN – X – D

With each coming of this experience, there is a going of bitterness out of his heart. More and more he sees that people cannot help being what they are, the products of their own past experience and present characteristics, the living milestones of a cosmic evolutionary process. How can he blame, resent, or condemn them? More and more, therefore, does tolerance suffuse his attitude and acceptance mellow his contacts with the world.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8823 – 5.6.5.77

B_13 – ZZ – K

The blood and violence, the fear and suffering associated with the production of meat, should be enough to make kindhearted, sensitive people shun it.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8824 – 5.6.5.78

BN – X – D

When thrown among those who do wrong and practise evil, he will not fall into anger, hatred, resentment, or bitterness, but will use the occasion to rise into patience, detachment, or indifference, knowing that such persons will sometime and somewhere infallibly receive the painful return of what they have given out.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8825 – 5.6.5.79

BN – ZZZ – K

A smile will say to others what words may fail to do, will express your basic attitude of, in Jesus' phrase "good will unto all men".

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8858 – 5.6.5.112

B_11 – ZZZ – K

The easiest way to express this feeling, described by Jesus as "goodwill unto all", is to be courteous to all.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8866 – 5.6.5.120

B_11 – ZZ – K

In his upward climb he should slowly learn to drop the emotional view of life and to replace it by the intelligent view. Thus he will show his passage from a lower to a higher level. But it is to be an intelligence that is serene in activity, impersonal in judgement, warm in benevolence, and intuitive in quality. There should be no room in it to hold bias or bigotry, on the one hand, or dead logic-chopping on the other.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8871 – 5.6.5.125

BA12 – ZZ – DEMK

If you can go to a man you greatly dislike and remember that he, too, will one day discover his spiritual identity and express a finer, more lovable self, it will be easier to be calm, patient, just, and at ease with him.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8877 – 5.6.5.131

BN – X – D

He cannot meet hatred with hatred, but only with resignation. His answer to enmity is to condone it. His attitude to opposition is to be tolerant.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8879 – 5.6.5.133

BN – ZZZ – DK

Let him accept others as he accepts himself, with all their and his defects, but with the addition that he will constantly aim at improving himself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8887 – 5.6.5.141

BN – X – D

When the actions or words of others provoke us, it is easy to become irritable, resentful, or indignant; it is hard to practise a bland patience and exercise a philosophic tolerance. But that is just what the aspirant must do.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8890 – 5.6.5.144

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

A quarrelsome man carries his enemies with him for he creates them wherever he goes. There is no peace in his outer life because there is none in his inner life.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8910 – 5.6.5.164

BN – ZZZ – DK

When it is not possible for his relatives or friends to share with him the acceptance of spiritual ideas, he should be tolerant, understanding, and patient toward such disagreement.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8911 – 5.6.5.165

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

If anyone or anything, a man or a book, can contribute to free us from the resentments towards others or the bitternesses towards life which poison feelings, thoughts, and health, he has rendered us a great service or the book has proved its worth.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8916 – 5.6.5.170

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

The refinement of tastes, the improvement of understanding, the betterment of manners—this is the cultural preparation for the path.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Spiritual value of manners

#8931 – 5.6.5.185

BN – X – DK

Where good manners are sincerely felt and sincerely practised, they represent consideration for other people, abandonment of the self-centered habit we are born with. And what does this in turn represent but a surrender of the ego? This helps to explain why Hilaire Belloc could write: "Of Courtesy it is much less Than courage of heart or holiness, Yet in my walks it seems to me That the Grace of God is in Courtesy."

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Spiritual value of manners

#8933 – 5.6.5.187

BN – X – DEK

The difference between those who behave rudely and those who behave politely is not only a social one: it is also a spiritual one. For it is goodwill which inspires good manners, where they are genuinely felt, that same "good will unto all men" which Jesus enjoined us to practise. The lack of courtesy has a deeper negative meaning than most people comprehend.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Spiritual value of manners

#8934 – 5.6.5.188

B_11 – ZZ – K

Whether it be in the forms of art, music, poetry, literature, or those of living, dress, behaviour, manners, or speech, the quality of a person reveals himself in his coarseness or refinement. By that I mean whether he is or is not on the quest which is after all an attempt to refine ourselves from materialism to spirituality and therefore from low quality thoughts and feelings to higher and nobler ones.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Spiritual value of manners

#8946 – 5.6.5.200

B_09 – ZZ – K

Whatever helps to refine character, feeling, mind, and taste is to be welcomed and cultivated as part of the philosophic work.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Spiritual value of manners

#8948 – 5.6.5.202

BN – X – D

The more speech and thought are kept free from negative statements about other faiths, other teachings, other persons, and other organizations, and the more we practise courtesy and silence in matters where we do not agree with them, the better will it be for our true development.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Discipline of speech

#8982 – 5.6.5.236

BN – X – D

The only gentlemanly thing to do when the raucous clamour of falsehood grates on the air and the frightful spectre of animosity gibbers at him is to oppose them with silent fact of what he is and leave it at that. It is better therefore that he let personal abuse find like-minded ears and pay it back only with dignified silence. He who understands what he is about and who is conscious of the purity of his motivation can afford to smile at his "critics" and remember the Turkish admonition: "Let the dogs bark: the caravan marches on." His sense of dwelling in the Overself would be of little avail if he reacted to these unpleasant events and unfortunate experiences in the way which personal emotion would persuade other men to react.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#8988E – 5.6.5.242

BN – ZEL1/2 – K

It is natural for the egoistic part of him to feel resentment, indignation, bitterness, disillusionment, and even sadness over base calumnies, the personal hatred, and prejudice he has endured. But it is equally natural for the diviner part of him to feel undisturbed, unsurprised, and compassionate over the same treatment. For here there is a perfect understanding that these opponents can only act according to their knowledge and experience, can only view him, because of the limited facts at their disposal and the limited evolutionary character they possess, through the spectacles of ignorance. Karma will assuredly take care of their deeds; his business is to take care that he send them his kindliest thoughts, keeping the devils of separateness out of their relation, holding firmly to the feeling that they are all members of the same grand life.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#8988E – 5.6.5.242

BN – ZEL2/2 – K

If an enemy, a critic, or an opponent accuses him of committing a sin or having a fault, he need not get disquieted over the event nor lose his inner calm nor feel angry and resentful nor retaliate with counter-accusations. Instead he should give it his attention, coolly, to ascertain if there is any foundation for it. In this way he disidentifies himself from the ego.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#8990 – 5.6.5.244

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

If he trains himself in thought control as a means to ego control, then neither flatterers nor critics can reach him with their praise or blame.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#8994 – 5.6.5.248

BN – X – D

Although he should heed criticisms of himself to sift them for their truth or falsity, he need not be too concerned about them. His real judge is his own Overself, not any human being.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#8997 – 5.6.5.251

B_01 – ZZZ – K

When he feels that unjust criticism is levelled against him, let him remember that it is wiser to keep silent than to stir up a hornet's nest. At such times it is his duty to extend the utmost goodwill and compassionate forgiveness to the parties concerned and to their dupes. For they act as they do through ignorance or misunderstanding. When they begin to love truly, they will begin to understand aright. To the sage, these are pinpricks, for he is not interested in his personal fortunes but in the Quest for truth.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9000 – 5.6.5.254

B_14 – ZZZ – K

He trains himself to talk without rancour of those who criticize him, and without bias of those whose ideas or ideals are antithetic to his own. In the face of provocation he seeks to keep his equanimity.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9003 – 5.6.5.257

BSG_4 – ZZ – K

He trains himself to talk without rancour of those who criticize him, and without bias of those whose ideas or ideals are antithetic to his own. In the face of provocation he seeks to keep his equanimity. But such calm, such satisfying equanimity, can only be kept if he does not expect too much from others, does not make too many demands on life, and is not too fussy about trifles.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9003M – 5.6.5.257

BSG_4 – ZZ – K

We shall make the curious discovery that the more men worship their own fallacies of thought and belief, the firmer the conceit that they know the Truth.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9010 – 5.6.5.264

UR_2.5 – ZZ – K

If it is right to forgive others their sins against us, it must also be right to forgive ourselves and not constantly condemn ourselves to self-reproach. But it's not right to absolve ourselves and forget before we have fully learned the lessons and resolutely made a start to apply them.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9020 – 5.6.5.274

B_14 – ZZZ – K

One shouldn't brood over fancied wrongs which he believes have been done to him nor dwell on another's faults. The law of recompense will deal with the situation. Emotional bitterness is harmful to both persons. On this path, the student must learn to overcome such feelings; they act as obstacles which hinder his advancement.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9025 – 5.6.5.279

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

Some well-meaning moralists who say that the disciple should no longer look for the evil in others, swing to the other extreme and say that he should look only for the good. Philosophy, however, does not endorse either point of view, except to remark that we have no business to judge those who are weaker than ourselves and less business to condemn them. It further says that to look only for the good in others would be to give a false picture of them, for a proper picture must combine the bright and the dark sides. Therefore it prefers mentally to leave them alone and not to set any valuation upon them, to mind its own affairs and to leave them to the unerring judgement of their own Karma.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9029E – 5.6.5.283

B_13 – ZEL1/2 – DEMK

When a disciple is forced to have dealings with another man which make it necessary for him to understand the character of the person with whom he is dealing, this understanding must be fair, just, calmly made, impartial, and unprejudiced. Above all, it must not arouse personal emotions or egoistic reactions: in short, he will have to be absolutely impersonal. But it is seldom that a disciple will have to make such an exception. He should refrain from giving attention to the imperfections and shortcomings of others, and he should certainly never blame them for these. He should turn his critical gaze towards himself alone—unless he is specifically asked by others to examine them—and exercise it to correct himself and improve himself and reform himself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9029E – 5.6.5.283

B_13 – ZEL2/2 – DEMK

He should refrain from giving attention to the imperfections and shortcomings of others, and he should certainly never blame them for these. He should turn his critical gaze towards himself alone—unless he is specifically asked by others to examine them—and exercise it to correct himself and improve himself and reform himself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9029E – 5.6.5.283

B_01 – ZZ – DEK

He should refrain from giving attention to the imperfections and shortcomings of others, and he should certainly never blame them for these. He should turn his critical gaze towards himself alone—unless he is specifically asked by others to examine them—and exercise it to correct himself and improve himself and reform himself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9029E – 5.6.5.283

BA12 – ZZ – DEK

Why blame a person for what he does if his higher faculties have not yet awakened and possessed him? He is only doing what he can. Moreover it is prudent never to condemn others. For others will then by karmic law condemn you.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9030 – 5.6.5.284

B_13 – ZZ – DMK

We need not be blind to the faults and lapses of inspired men, but we ought to forgive them. A balancing of accounts justifies this attitude. Those who bring this rare gift with them deserve a wider indulgence than others.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9031 – 5.6.5.285

B_14 – Z – K

What is the use of reproaching a fly for not being a bird or its inability to travel as far or look as beautiful? Yet this is what they do who deplore others' bad behaviour and spiritual ignorance.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9039 – 5.6.5.293

BN – Z – DK

By blaming other persons, one’s own ego is served by its implied superiority.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9040 – 5.6.5.294

BN – ZZ – DK

From the time that he perceives that he does not and can not know all the circumstances, he ceases to condemn others.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9045 – 5.6.5.299

B_13 – ZZZ – K

It is not for him to judge others, for this would imply finding fault with the divine World-Idea, of which they are a part. He knows well that, in their own proper time, they will unfold their better characteristics.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9046 – 5.6.5.300

BN – ZZ – K

The student should not go about criticizing or abusing others. He should not do so because it is mentally unhealthy and hinders his own progress, because it will one day bring down criticism or abuse upon his own head, because he has to foster a compassionate outlook, and because he ought to understand that everybody on earth is indeed here owing to his own imperfection so that the labor of showing up faults would be an endless one.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9053 – 5.6.5.307

BN – Z – DEK

Such people do not come to hear the truth about themselves or to learn the truth about life. They come for confirmation of their own ideas, flattery about their own character, and endorsement of their own conduct. This is why they will vehemently reject all criticism or correction.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9055 – 5.6.5.309

BN – ZZZ – K

It is stupid to bring into conversation with others beliefs which they are certain to scoff at but which one cherishes as holy.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9056 – 5.6.5.310

BN – Z – DK

The necessity of forgiving others what they have done to us is paramount. Nay, it is a duty to be constantly and unbrokenly practised, no matter what provocation to disobey it we may receive. Our contact with others, or our relation to them, must bring them only good! never bad.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9060 – 5.6.5.314

BN – X – D

To the degree you keep ego out of your reaction to an enemy, to that degree you will be protected from him. His antagonism must be met not only with calmness, indifference, but also with a positive forgiveness and active love. These alone are fitting to a high present stage of understanding. Be sure that if you do so, good will ultimately emerge from it. Even if this good were only the unfoldment of latent power to master negative emotion which you show by such an attitude, it would be enough reward. But it will be more.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9061 – 5.6.5.315

B_14 – ZZZ – DEK1

Noble indignation and just resentment are on an immensely higher level than grossly selfish indignation and greedy resentment. But in the case of the disciple, for whom the scale of moral values extends farther than for the "good" man, even they must be abandoned for unruffled serenity and universal goodwill. To the definitely wicked and the evilly obsessed he need not give his love. But he must give them and all others who wrong him his forgiveness, for his own sake as well as theirs.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9062E – 5.6.5.316

B_10 – ZEL1/2 – DEK

Every thought of resentment at another's action against him, every mood of bitterness at the other's refusal to do something he wishes him to do, is a crude manifestation of egoism in which, as disciple, he cannot indulge without harming his own self and hindering a favourable change in the other person's attitude towards him. The man who burns with hate against an enemy is, by the fuel of his own thoughts, keeping the fire of the other man's mutual hate alive. Let him remember instead those glorious moments when the higher self-touched his heart. In these moments all that was noble in him overflowed. Enemies were forgiven, grievances let go and the human scene viewed through the spectacle of tenderness and generosity. Only by such a psychological about-turn towards goodwill and forgiveness will he open the first door to abatement of his enemy's feeling.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9062E – 5.6.5.316

B_10 – ZEL2/2 – DEK

Ordinarily it is not easy, not natural, to forgive anyone who has wronged us. The capacity to do so will come to us as understanding grows large enough…

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9063E – 5.6.5.317

B_14 – ZZ – DEK

The moral purification involved in casting out all hatred and granting complete forgiveness opens a door to the Overself's light.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9065 – 5.6.5.319

B_14 – ZZ – DK

If it is proper to forgive a man's crime, it is not proper, through emotionalism and sentimentality pushing forgiveness to the extreme, to condone his crime.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9066 – 5.6.5.320

B_14 – Z – K

The true mystic harbours only goodwill towards one who chooses to be his enemy, together with good wishes for the other’s well-being and for his coming closer to the higher self, hence closer to the truth.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9067 – 5.6.5.321

BN – X – D

To serve humanity is in the end to serve yourself. This follows from the working of karma. To forgive those who, in ignorance, sin against you is, for the same reason, to forgive yourself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9068 – 5.6.5.322

B_14 – ZZZ – DMK

To serve humanity is in the end to serve yourself. This follows from the working of karma. To forgive those who, in ignorance, sin against you is, for the same reason, to forgive yourself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9068 – 5.6.5.322

B_01 – ZZZ – DMK

In the end the heartlessly cruel punish themselves, though whether here in this life, in purgatory after death, or in some future re-embodiment is another matter.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9069 – 5.6.5.323

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

Every man whose orbit touches your own is unwittingly your teacher. He has something of value for you, however small it be. Let him perform his mission, then. Do not dim the lesson by covering it with clouds of negative emotion.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Criticizing constructively

#9090 – 5.6.5.344

BN – X – D

Criticism of others should be benevolent, constructive, and suggestive, firm yet sympathetic.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Criticizing constructively

#9093 – 5.6.5.347

BN – ZZ – K

His handling of an uncongenial person with whom he has to live, or work will fail or succeed according to his practice of identifying himself with him when he deals with or speaks to him. If he fails to do this, it means that he persists in identifying himself solely with his own little ego and its personal interests, activities, or desires—hence the irritability, bad temper, and negative reaction to the other's deficiencies. But if, on the contrary, he instantly tries to feel with him, to identify himself with him, to give him temporary intellectual sympathy—that is, to practise love—there will be forgiveness of the other's failings and mistakes, good humoured acceptance of his deficiencies and laughing patience with his shortcomings. Both persons will then make more progress more rapidly.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Sympathetic understanding

#9101 – 5.6.5.355

B_14 – ZZ – K

Try to understand other persons not in order to blame them but in order to understand better the operations of mind itself, the human mind.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Sympathetic understanding

#9104 – 5.6.5.358

B_13 – ZZ – K

Why should he let resentment drag him into the same error? On the contrary, they offer a chance to deny his ego, to exalt his ethical outlook, and to shift his emotional centre of gravity from the negative pole to the positive one. Let him regard them as his tutors, possibly his benefactors. Let him take these episodes as chances both to do needed work on himself and to refuse to identify himself with negative emotions. They are to be used for present instruction and future guidance. Thus he lifts himself out of his personal ego, actually 'denying himself' as Jesus bids him do.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Sympathetic understanding

#9105E – 5.6.5.359

BN – ZEL1/3 – K

Why should he let resentment drag him into the same error? On the contrary, they offer a chance to deny his ego, to exalt his ethical outlook, and to shift his emotional centre of gravity from the negative pole to the positive one. Let him regard them as his tutors, possibly his benefactors. Let him take these episodes as chances both to do needed work on himself and to refuse to identify himself with negative emotions. They are to be used for present instruction and future guidance. Thus he lifts himself out of his personal ego, actually 'denying himself' as Jesus bids him do.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Sympathetic understanding

#9105E – 5.6.5.359

BN – ZEL2/3 – K

Why should he let resentment drag him into the same error? On the contrary, they offer a chance to deny his ego, to exalt his ethical outlook, and to shift his emotional centre of gravity from the negative pole to the positive one. Let him regard them as his tutors, possibly his benefactors. Let him take these episodes as chances both to do needed work on himself and to refuse to identify himself with negative emotions. They are to be used for present instruction and future guidance. Thus he lifts himself out of his personal ego, actually 'denying himself' as Jesus bids him do.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Sympathetic understanding

#9105E – 5.6.5.359

BN – ZEL3/3 – K

Why should he let resentment drag him into the same error? On the contrary, they offer a chance to deny his ego, to exalt his ethical outlook, and to shift his emotional centre of gravity from the negative pole to the positive one. Let him regard them as his tutors, possibly his benefactors. Let him take these episodes as chances both to do needed work on himself and to refuse to identify himself with negative emotions. They are to be used for present instruction and future guidance. Thus he lifts himself out of his personal ego, actually 'denying himself' as Jesus bids him do.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Sympathetic understanding

#9105E – 5.6.5.359

B_10 – ZZZ – K

If a man becomes cold, pitiless, impenetrable, if he sets himself altogether apart from the life and feelings of other men, if he is dead to the claims of music and the beauties of art, be sure he is an intellectualist or a fanatical ascetic—not a philosopher.

Emotions and Ethics > Avoid Fanaticism > Avoid Fanaticism

#9119 – 5.6.6.10

BN – Z – K1

We need not become less human because we seek to make ourselves better men. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful will refine, and not destroy, our human qualities.

Emotions and Ethics > Avoid Fanaticism > Avoid Fanaticism

#9120 – 5.6.6.11

BN – X – K1

The discipline of passion, the checking of emotion, and the ruling of the flesh do not demand that we are to turn into inert wooden creatures. We may still keep the zest for life, the enthusiasm for worthwhile things, and the appreciation of art and beauty, but we shall keep these things in their proper place.

Emotions and Ethics > Avoid Fanaticism > Avoid Fanaticism

#9161 – 5.6.6.52

B_09 – Z – K

We must recognize that men are at different stages of response to the commands of Moses, the counsels of Jesus, the admonitions of Gautama, and the teachings of Krishna. Consequently it is vain to hope that they will accept or obey a universal rule of behaviour.

Emotions and Ethics > Avoid Fanaticism > Avoid Fanaticism

#9182 – 5.6.6.73

B_13 – ZZ – K

Every beginner must remember that his own way to truth is not the only way. However perfectly it suits his need and temperament, it may not suit another human being's. Each gains his understanding of it according to the level of his evolution.

Emotions and Ethics > Avoid Fanaticism > Avoid Fanaticism

#9184 – 5.6.6.75

B_06 – ZZZ – K

A temperate self-discipline is certainly inculcated by philosophy, but it does not call for the extreme of rigorous asceticism. A reasoned austerity at certain times and a wise self-denial at other times fortify and purify a human being.

Emotions and Ethics > Avoid Fanaticism > Avoid Fanaticism

#9209 – 5.6.6.100

B_01 – ZZ – K

It is not enough to try to secure peace between the nations. We must also try to secure it between men and animals by ceasing to slaughter them.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues

#9233 – 5.6.7.8

BN – X – D

To take advantage of the helplessness of so many animals when confronted by man's deadly weapons, cruel snares, or powerful contrivances is a sin. The karmic scales of life will read off an appropriate penalty for it. Ordinary human brutality to these creatures is bad enough but scientific brutality by vivisection is worse.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues

#9234 – 5.6.7.9

BN – X – D

I lament the cutting of flowers and the caging of animals: the one because it condemns living things to swift decay and early death, the other because it condemns living creatures to the utter hopelessness of lifelong imprisonment.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues

#9240 – 5.6.7.15

BN – X – D

Why should the last dying days of cut flowers bring joy, happiness, uplift, and inspiration to anyone?

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues

#9241 – 5.6.7.16

BN – X – D

Those who can only find their fun by the wanton killing of harmless animals, show no mercy and, at the appropriate time, will receive none.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues

#9244 – 5.6.7.19

BN – X – D

Justice often demands that force be used in order to implement its decisions. Philosophy sets up justice as one of the guiding principles of personal and national conduct. Therefore philosophy has no use for pacifism or nonviolence.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Nonviolence, nonresistance, pacificism

#9250 – 5.6.7.25

BN – Z – K1

Sir Arthur Bryant: "Christ's injunction to the angry and revengeful to turn the other cheek was addressed to the individual, seeking by forbearance to render unto God, for his soul's sake, the things that are God's, and not to the rulers of society. Christ never . . . bade his followers to turn someone else's cheek to the lawless and aggressor".

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Nonviolence, nonresistance, pacificism

#9256 – 5.6.7.31

B_11 – ZZ – K

When the bloodshed and horrors of fighting have to be experienced by one on the Quest, let him steel his nerves and toughen his feelings by sheer effort of willpower. Let him console himself in the knowledge that it is only a temporary affair and will have to come to an end, at which time he can then live the kind of life he wants to live. Such a state of affairs, although a terrible business, underlines Buddha's teaching about the ever-presence of suffering and the consequent necessity of finding an inner refuge from it. Whatever happens, he must try to keep his moral outlook undegraded by outside pressures. Good character is the foundation of a worthwhile life, spiritually and materially.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Nonviolence, nonresistance, pacificism

#9259 – 5.6.7.34

B_17 – Z – K

The pursuit of nonviolence in the international field is like the pursuit of politico-economic utopia—a dream. It is laudably idealistic but, unfortunately, it is also ill-founded. The pacifism which preaches a total and absolute nonviolence, applicable all the time and in all situations, fails to recognize what is written all over the universe—the law of opposites. It is their balance which holds all things in the world, all creatures in Nature, together. In human life their conflict breeds violence, and their recession, peace. War can change its form, can lose its brutality, can be lifted to a higher level altogether where words displace weapons, and this will certainly happen. But war at worst, friction at best, will not disappear so long as the ego in man with its negative emotions is his ruler.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Nonviolence, nonresistance, pacificism

#9264 – 5.6.7.39

BN – ZZ – DEK

Pacifism is a natural and inevitable consequence of the monkish and mystic view of life. Monks may rightly submit to martyrdom, but philosophers must resist the evil forces and even fight them to the end.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Nonviolence, nonresistance, pacificism

#9270 – 5.6.7.45

B_16 – ZZZ – DK

What was called 'Reason' in The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga and what was honoured as 'Reason' by the Cambridge Platonists is a mystical plus intellectual faculty and not merely an intellectual one. It is not merely a coexistence but a fusion of the two capacities.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9287 – 5.7.1.3

UR_3.2 – Z – K

True intelligence is the working union of three active faculties: concrete thinking, abstract thinking, and mystical intuition.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9289 – 5.7.1.5

BN – X – K

The intellect ought to work only as a servant, obeying intuition's orders in practical life or filling in details for intuition's discoveries in the truth-seeking quest.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9294 – 5.7.1.10

BN – Z – K

Intellect, reason, and intelligence are not convertible terms in this teaching. The first is the lowest faculty of the trio, the third is the highest, the second is the medial one. Intellect is logical thinking based on a partial and prejudiced collection of facts. Reason is logical thinking based on all available and impartially collected facts. Intelligence is the fruit of a union between reason and intuition.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9298 – 5.7.1.14

BN – Z – DK1

He accepts all that mystical intuition can tell him about his own and the universal being. But he sees that it will not be weakened, it will only be supported checked and balanced if he listens also to what the rational intellect can tell him.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9307 – 5.7.1.23

BN – X – D

The intelligence, as something more than intellect alone, can be used to carry one’s thinking to the verge of an intuition which will light up some of our understanding. But such a success requires certain preconditions: a measure of equilibrium in personality, a measure of self-discipline in character, intensive pondering on the truth.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9314 – 5.7.1.30

BN – X – K

Intellect obstructs the light of the Overself.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9318 – 5.7.1.34

BN – X – D

Human thinking can only lead to, and produce, another thought, or series of thoughts. It cannot get beyond itself, cannot rise to any object that is not of the nature of a thought.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9320 – 5.7.1.36

BN – X – D

The dangers of developed intellect are pride and complacency, over-analysis and over-criticism.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9327 – 5.7.1.43

BN – ZZ – K

The intellect can quite expertly give its support to any position the ego desires it to take up. It can become instrumental in the search for truth only as it becomes freed from egoism.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9330 – 5.7.1.46

BN – ZZ – K

But with stronger thinking power there comes also intellectual pride and egoistic conceit. He must offset them by humbling himself deliberately before the higher self. He must not hesitate to pray daily to it, on bended knees and with clasped hands, begging for its grace, offering the little ego as a willing sacrifice and asking for guidance in his darkness.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9348 – 5.7.1.64

BN – Z – K1

If you are trying to grasp the great Mystery do not make the mistake of unwittingly holding on to the intellect while doing so.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9351 – 5.7.1.67

BN – X – K

For the intellectual type, the essence of his need is to see that he is not his thoughts, that they are but projections thrown up out of consciousness. He is that consciousness, the very knowing principle itself.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9357 – 5.7.1.73

BN – X – D

The work done by original deeply penetrative thinking can go far, can uncover much not yet known; but it cannot solve the mystery of the thinker himself, unless it renounces its right to do so and lets the diviner Self take over in utter silence.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9359 – 5.7.1.75

BN – Z – K1

The silent mind receives spiritual guidance and allows grace to approach; the thinking mind deals with the world and attends to its activities.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9365 – 5.7.1.81

BN – Z – DK

Only when the intellect, after admiring its own massive historical achievement, will turn upon itself and perceive how puny is that by contrast with the still-awaited answer to the question, What am I?—only then will the possibility of higher forces coming to its aid be realizable.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9366 – 5.7.1.82

BN – X – D

If you try to make Mind a topic for analysis, worship, or discussion, it is no longer the unseen uncomprehended Mystery but a projection, whereupon it is at once objectified and becomes an idea-structure. Such an act falsifies it. You honour it more truly if you stay silent in voice, still in thought.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9374 – 5.7.1.90

BN – Z – K

It is not enough to purify the moral nature of evil and sin. It is also needful to purify the intellectual nature of error and delusion. Hence moral discipline must be complemented by an intellectual one.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9392 – 5.7.1.108

BN – X – K

The situation may be summed up thus: If the activity of thinking is directed towards external objects and inspired by the desire to attain or retain them, it binds a man to his spiritual ignorance. If however it is directed towards God or his divine soul and is inspired by the desire to attain it, then it leads him to spiritual intuitions.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9408 – 5.7.1.124

BN – X – D

To understand intellectually is good but to glimpse intuitively is better. Best of all is not merely to look at truth but to enter into it.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9409 – 5.7.1.125

BN – ZZZ – DM

First there must be intellectual understanding of the truth of his real being, then he can advance to the practices which lead to its realization.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9413 – 5.7.1.129

BN – X – DK

The intellect’s finest function is to point the way to this actual living awareness of the Overself that is beyond itself. This it does on the upward path. But it has a further function to perform after that awareness has been successfully gained. That is to translate that experience into its own terms, and hence into ordinarily comprehensible ones, both for its own and other people’s benefit.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9417 – 5.7.1.133

BN – Z – DEK1

Reasoned thinking may contribute in two ways to the service of mystical intuition and mystical experience. First and commonest is a negative way. It can provide safeguards and checks against their errors, exaggerations, vagaries, and extravagances. Second and rarest is a positive and creative way. It can lead the aspirant to its highest pitch of abstract working and then invite its own displacement by a higher power.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9418 – 5.7.1.134

BN – Z – K1

These studies do indeed open up the loftier faculties of human intelligence, faculties which bring us to the very borderland of insight.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9420 – 5.7.1.136

BN – X – D

To learn that Reality is beyond the intellect’s capacity to know it is to learn something about it. To learn what it is not may seem useless to some people but that does prepare the mind, as well as the way, for the positive knowledge of it through insight.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9421 – 5.7.1.137

BN – X – D

Man’s self is not his thoughts but the consciousness which makes those thoughts possible. He stands in somewhat the same relation to them that they stand to the body: he uses them and partially expresses himself through them.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9433 – 5.7.1.149

BN – X – D

Most of us move from one standpoint to another, whether it be a lower or a higher one, because our feelings have moved there. The intellect merely records and justifies such a movement and does not originate it.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9440 – 5.7.1.156

BN – X – K1

So long as these two faculties of human mind—reason and imagination—are surrendered to its animal side, so long will they prevent the real human being from being born.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9446 – 5.7.1.162

BN – X – D

My use of the term 'reason,' although with a capital 'R' in 'The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga', seems to have been misunderstood by several persons. This forced me to add an appendix to the chapters in order to clear the matter in their mind. Reasoning, in its highest sense, transcends mere logic and welcomes the alliance of meditation; out of their union comes wisdom, peace, balance, and so, blessing. There is a translation from the Sanskrit of the Katha Upanishad made by Professor Mishra of the University of Barcelona, published with a preface by Suresh Radhakrishnan, President to India, who was then lecturing at Oxford University. In this translation there are two verses which use the term. Here is the first: ‘The man whose chariot is driven by reason holding well the reins of his mind, reaches the end of his journey, the Supreme Pervading Spirit.’ And the other verse is: ‘Beyond the senses is the mind, and beyond mind is reason (lost). Beyond reason is the great Self.’

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9454 – 5.7.1.170

UR_3.2 – Z – K

The intellect is not competent to establish the existence of God, which only a higher faculty can know and consequently make any valid assertions about. But neither is it competent to disprove the existence of God since it can disprove only those finite matters which it can deal with: God, being infinite, is outside its reach in every way.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9472 – 5.7.1.188

BA11 – ZZ – DK

Where intuitive feeling will guide him aright to his best decisions, calculating intellect will not infrequently step in with doubts or fears and rob him of them.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9479 – 5.7.1.195

BN – ZZ – K

Where intuitive feeling will guide him aright to his best decisions, calculating intellect will not infrequently step in with doubts or fears and rob him of them.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9480 – 5.7.1.196

BN – X – D

The contribution of intellect is indispensable. But it is not enough. It leaves a most important part of the psyche—the intuition—still untouched.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9481 – 5.7.1.197

BN – X – D

The danger of slipping into this overstress on intellectual activity and not retaining the healthy balance between it and intuitional activity, is large and real.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9482 – 5.7.1.198

BN – X – D

The intellect has so dominated the modern man that his approach to these questions is first made through it. Yet the intellect cannot provide the answers to them. They come, and can only come, through the intuition.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9483 – 5.7.1.199

BN – Z – DK

The intellectual knowledge of the Truth is merely its shadow and not the Truth itself. The Truth is a higher state of awareness which leads you out of the little personal and physically materialistic everyday life into a new world of being—the world of your higher self which transcends these things. It is a real experience and not a mere speculation. It brings with it the peace which passeth understanding of which Saint Paul spoke, frees you from anxieties, fears, and all other negative ideas. It reveals to you that God, in the sense of a Universal Intelligence and Universal Power, is actually the basis of all existence.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9487 – 5.7.1.203

BN – Z – DEK

Logical thinking about a proposed course can never be equal to intuitive guidance about it. For the first is limited by the ego's capacity and experience whereas the second transcends them.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9490 – 5.7.1.206

BN – X – D

The intellect cannot know itself; it must have an object; but that which is behind it does know it. That Overself is the only entity which can know itself, which fuses subject and object into one.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9491 – 5.7.1.207

BN – X – D

Only after reason matures to its fullest extent can we look to the dawning of a perfect intuition, or 'insight' as I prefer to call it.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9495 – 5.7.1.211

UR_3.2 – ZZ – K

No single human faculty is alone adequate to the search for truth. All must be used, including intuition, and finally crowned by a new one—insight.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9498 – 5.7.1.214

UR_3.2 – ZZ – DMK

Men who have daily experience of a divine presence will not waste their time arguing whether or not a divine power exists.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9499 – 5.7.1.215

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

The depth of insight is not to be measured by the length of intellect.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9502 – 5.7.1.218

BN – Z – K

Thought bedims consciousness instead of expressing it, coffins the universal Mind into the narrow ego. Man began to think when he began to forget his Overself. However, the forces of evolution will so work that one day he will learn to remember his divinity and yet use his intellect at will without losing this remembrance.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9503 – 5.7.1.219

BN – X – DEK

The cultivation of intelligence is one of the supreme duties of man. Fact-fed thinking—hard, deep, rational, and thorough—is what converts vague surmise into unbreakable certainty, blind belief or tormenting doubt into irrefutable knowledge, and native error into new truth.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > The Service of Intellect

#9504 – 5.7.2.1

BN – Z – K

By forming clearer ideas of the Overself’s activity, he can better co-operate with it, and more effectually remove the obstacles which obstruct that activity within him.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > The Service of Intellect

#9505 – 5.7.2.2

BN – X – D

All knowledge is beneficial to man in varying degrees. The knowledge of his own soul, being the highest degree of human knowledge, offers the greatest degree of benefit to man.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > The Service of Intellect

#9507 – 5.7.2.4

BN – Z – D

What the higher self is trying to do in us may be obstructed through ignorance or assisted by knowledge.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > The Service of Intellect

#9510 – 5.7.2.7

BN – X – D

As his conception of the truth becomes clearer, his aspiration to realize it in his life becomes stronger. This is so and must be so.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Cultivation of intelligence

#9514 – 5.7.2.11

UR_1 – ZZZ – DK

The intellectual study of these truths is not without great value. It prepares him for their eventual realization, nourishes his soul, strengthens his higher will, and encourages his finer hopes. Moreover, holy reverence is born of itself as he meditates on the picture of universal intelligence which thus unfolds before his gaze.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Cultivation of intelligence

#9521 – 5.7.2.18

BN – Z – K1

When the aspirant has great devotion to the Overself but little understanding of it, Nature will halt him at a certain stage of his spiritual career and compel him to redress the balance.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Balance of intellect and feeling

#9590 – 5.7.2.87

BN – X – D

We do not overcome our doubts by suppressing them, we do not meet our misgivings by denying them, and we do not refute falsehood by shirking questions which happen to be inconvenient.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Doubt and the modern mind

#9615 – 5.7.2.112

BN – Z – K1

No doctrine is so sacred that it is not to be questioned. Man cannot escape from his duty to doubt. Each generation must reflect in its own way on the conundrums of existence and be vigorously alive to its own problems, which are not wholly the problems of other epochs, and must face them in a fresh living manner.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Doubt and the modern mind

#9622 – 5.7.2.119

B_03 – ZZ – K

If you do not know whether God exists do not fall into the error of denying that he does exist. It is an error because it is something which we do not know and to make such a positive statement has no justification.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Doubt and the modern mind

#9645 – 5.7.2.142

BN – Z – K

When intelligence is applied so thoroughly as to yield a whole view and not merely a partial view of existence, when it is applied so persistently as to yield a steady insight into things rather than a sporadic one, when it is applied so detachedly as to be without regard to personal preconceptions, and when it is applied so calmly that feelings and passions cannot alter its direction, then and only then does a man become truly reasonable and capable of intellectually ascertaining truth.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > The Development of Intellect

#9646 – 5.7.3.1

BN – Z – K1

What this age needs to seek is a new intellectualism, a new science, one informed by deeper spiritual feeling and protected by higher spiritual ideals.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > The Development of Intellect

#9657 – 5.7.3.12

BN – X – D

It is not enough to be a collector of other men’s ideas. He must also be an original generator of his own. He must go into the pure silence to think independently, to analyse problems and consider them for himself, and to pray for enlightenment.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Independence and individuality

#9675 – 5.7.3.30

BN – X – D

Unless one is prepared to part with a wrong habit of thinking, unless one is willing to eradicate all limited conceptions which blur clear-sightedness, unless, in short, one is willing to reorient the mental outlook completely, it will never be possible to penetrate the world illusion.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Independence and individuality

#9676 – 5.7.3.31

BN – ZZ – K

The time comes when the seeker must sift out all the doctrines he has received and let those go which lack reasonableness, the sound of truth, the lofty tone of impersonality. And even after he has sieved away the ideas born of narrowness, pettiness, bigotry, prejudice, and false sentimentality, he has still to choose those which he can usefully work with.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Comparison and synthesis

#9750 – 5.7.3.105

B_03 – ZZ – K

There is a need to develop flexibility by practising the shift of attitudes, to see why others hold their beliefs, and to be able to stretch one's own thought so as to enter sufficiently into theirs. This produces sympathetic understanding, but the opposite—critical judgement—must not be forsaken.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Comparison and synthesis

#9759 – 5.7.3.114

BN – X – D

Conventional people, fond only of commonplace ideas, may feel shocked at some philosophical statements. They do not see that their thinking is falsified because they have prejudiced their quest of truth from the start, because it is done within the context of conventional attitudes. How few can free themselves from the thick incrustations of prejudice; how many are unable to approach an idea with calm, impersonal, detached open-mindedness! Most people naturally pick out from a teaching those views which please them and reject the others. Only the seeker who has disciplined himself morally and intellectually will be heroic enough to take unpleasing views along with the pleasing ones. Philosophy's teaching will appeal, and can only appeal, to those who have striven to escape from dogmatism, who have shaken off widespread prejudices and outgrown crudely materialistic ideas, and whose minds are sufficiently developed to realize the value of free views and flexible attitudes.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Comparison and synthesis

#9770E – 5.7.3.125

B_05 – ZZZ – K

When I meet with certain persons or certain books, I am often reminded of a certain sentence in Roman Seneca’s writings: “There are many who might have attained to wisdom, had they not fancied they had attained it already.”

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Comparison and synthesis

#9777 – 5.7.3.132

BN – Z – DK*

His mind acknowledges no criterion of truth, no convention of goodness, no taste in beauty merely because convention tradition or society supports it. He has to examine it first; he has also to find out what other minds in olden and medieval as well as modern times, in widely differing Oriental lands as well as Occidental ones, thought of these matters; finally he has to consult his own reason and, above all, his own intuition and compare all these views quite impartially and without selfish interest.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Authority and the past

#9791 – 5.7.3.146

UR_2.5 – ZZ – K

We may accept the judgement of authority but only after we have examined the history and tested the worth of such authority, be it book or person, tradition or institution.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Authority and the past

#9804 – 5.7.3.159

B_03 – ZZ – K

Even if a belief were held throughout the world, it is not thereby proven true. It may still be a world-wide self-deception or, more likely, traditionally received suggestion.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Authority and the past

#9815 – 5.7.3.170

B_03 – ZZ – K

He need not share the timid concern for consistency. He need not be imprisoned forever in views which he held long ago. He need not be intimidated by his own past record, if at different periods of his life he has slowly changed or abruptly altered his world-view. Had he not been a seeker, quite probably this would not have happened, and he would have remained sunk in the ignoble complacency of thoughtless orthodoxy.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Authority and the past

#9841 – 5.7.3.196

B_05 – ZZ – K

The independent-minded seeker will welcome truth from any quarter, any era, will be avid for whatever fragments of it he can find, and wherever he may find it.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Authority and the past

#9850 – 5.7.3.205

B_05 – ZZZ – K

If he wants to ferret out what is real in existence he must put himself to some trouble. He must persevere, read and re-read these pages until the meaning of it all dawns suddenly upon him, as it will if he does. The reflective study of these high-grade writings forces the mental growth of the student. The absorption of their spirit elevates him for a while to the spiritual plane of the author.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Books

#9855EM – 5.7.3.210

BA12 – ZZZ – DXK

It is better to look twice at some assertions. Sometimes it is wiser to look beneath the words themselves and scrutinize the character of the writer himself.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Books

#9904 – 5.7.3.259

UR_6 – ZZZ – K

The words of the book can carry you to a certain point in consciousness. When this is reached you can go farther and higher only by closing the book! It has served you well but you must turn now to a new source. Let thoughts come into quietude; intuition will take their place: a holy presence will be felt: surrender to it.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Books

#9916 – 5.7.3.271

BN – X – D

A continual round of reading may yield pseudo-progress, the feeling of making continual growth, but after all it will only add more thoughts to those he already possesses. Only by thinking out for himself what he is reading—and for this he will need abstention from it—will he be able to add understanding to it.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Books

#9930 – 5.7.3.285

UR_6 – ZZZ – K

Logic is always beset by the serious charge that its so-called truths are fallacious ones. For instance, it insists on the law of contradiction, the law which says that a statement of facts cannot be true and false at the same time. But the careful study of illusions produces conclusions which falsify this law. We do not mean by this criticism to declare logic to be useless. We mean only what we have elsewhere written, that it is a good servant but a bad master.

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > Facts and logic

#9971 – 5.7.4.29

BN – Z – K1

If we begin our quest of truth with any assumption, at the end we gain nothing new, nothing which was not already there in the beginning. And when we then remember that we started with a mere belief, we realize that there is and can be no certainty about our final conclusions, no matter how rigidly logical we have been during the journey. We begin with imagination and end with it. This is not philosophy, but poetry. There is no other road for genuine philosophy than to depend on facts, not on presuppositions.

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > Facts and logic

#9974 – 5.7.4.32

BN – Z – K

Take karma, for instance: They may mouth this doctrine a hundred times yet, never having thought it out for themselves, they do not understand its far-reaching implications.

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > Facts and logic

#9995 – 5.7.4.53

BN – ZZZ – DK

If he is too easily vexed by other people’s criticism, this is because the ego is still upholding his pride and vanity.

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > The need for precision

#10027 – 5.7.4.85

BN – X – D

As a rule the wise man will not spare strength to engage in polemical thrusts. But when the inner monitor bids him enter the fray, he has no other recourse than to submit.

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > The need for precision

#10035 – 5.7.4.93

BN – ZZ – K

The meaning of a word or phrase may be multiple, which is why translations vary, why interpretations are disputed, and why statements in bureaucratic jargon leave some persons uncertain and others unclear. Hence lawyers are hired, teachers of semantics arise, and sects flourish. But turn to numbers and one knows precisely what one is dealing with. They fulfil their function without debate. No mist arises. So Pythagoras can boldly assert: "The universe is founded upon numbers."

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > The need for precision

#10051 – 5.7.4.109

BN – ZZ – K

Mind and its expression in language are thoroughly interwoven and to improve one is to improve the other.

The Intellect > Semantics > Clarity is essential

#10095 – 5.7.5.20

BN – X – K

We have begun our studies not by learning new matter but by unlearning the old. So much that we take for granted is not knowledge at all but fantasy. For instance, we assume unconsciously that "B" must exist. The only way to cure ourselves of false assumptions is first to discover that they are assumptions. The only way to clear our minds of false learning is to inquire into all our learning and examine its warrant. And since all thoughts are embodied in words, we can carry out this essential preliminary task only by examining the words habitually used, the terms we have inherited from our mental environment, and to see how far they are justified.

The Intellect > Semantics > Clarity is essential

#10097 – 5.7.5.22

BN – X – K

The philosopher must ask each word to yield thoroughly a definition which possesses an exactitude that may well terrify the ordinary man. He must become a hunter and wander through the forests of verbal meaning to track down real meaning. He will not rush prematurely into utterance. Words are cheap for the ordinary man but dear for him. His studied hesitation leads, however, closer to truth. This interpretational discipline must be vigorously applied until it leads to a thorough understanding of all concepts which are the essential counters in philosophical research. For when men go astray in their definitions of these highly important terms, they will surely go astray in their thinking, and thence be led astray altogether from truth.

The Intellect > Semantics > Clarity is essential

#10104 – 5.7.5.29

UR_3.0 – ZZ – K1

There are no words in human language in which Truth can find adequate expression.

The Intellect > Semantics > Clarity is essential

#10105 – 5.7.5.30

UR_3.2 – ZZ – K

We need not be afraid to question everything, to doubt everything, even the words we use and our own very selves. We have nothing but falsehood, illusion, and self-deception to lose if we take nothing for granted.

The Intellect > Semantics > The problem with words

#10197 – 5.7.5.122

BN – ZZ – K

The right use of words has brought into being that immense store of recorded knowledge which is one of the most precious heritages man possesses. Today, through the understanding of words, we are able to shake hands with the world's most renowned sages, to have the privilege of a discussion with the distant wise, and to sit at table for an intellectual feast with the dead.

The Intellect > Semantics > The meaning of language

#10215 – 5.7.5.140

BN – X – K

(a) "The vulgar belief that Science has "explained everything" is a hopeless misunderstanding. As we shall afterwards find, it would be nearer the truth to say that Science has explained nothing. (b) Science does not even try to refer facts of experience to any ultimate reality. That is not its business. (c) In a limited sense Science explains things, namely, by reducing them to simpler terms, by discovering the conditions of their occurrence, and by disclosing their history. What do we mean when we say that Physics has accounted for the tides or that Physiology has made some function of the body much more intelligible than it used to be? What is meant is that we have gained a general conception of the nature of the facts in question, and that we are able to relate them to some general formula. In this sense only does Science explain things, and it does not really get beyond a description."—Thomson, Introduction to Science.

The Intellect > Science > Influence of science

#10268 – 5.7.6.40

BA11 – ZZ – K

If knowledge fails to reconcile science with religion and philosophy, then civilization will become the victim of a politically directed materialistic scientific knowledge, and end by destroying itself.

The Intellect > Science > When science stands alone

#10289 – 5.7.6.61

BA11 – ZZ – DK

When science leads man to deny his sacred source and to decry all personal testimonies to experience of its existence, science is no longer serving man but seriously crippling him.

The Intellect > Science > When science stands alone

#10292 – 5.7.6.64

BN – X – D

The mystic, who knows more about the internal world than the scientist, is entitled to a hearing not less respectful than that to which the scientist is entitled because he knows more about the external world.

The Intellect > Science > When science stands alone

#10301 – 5.7.6.73

BN – X – D

The same education which frees a man from superstition may cause him to miss the subtler knowledge of his real inner being, so that his mind wrongly believes itself to be a product of the body.

The Intellect > Science > When science stands alone

#10310 – 5.7.6.82

BN – X – D

Philosophy respects science, but not the abuses of science. When they occur, they create materialism in metaphysical thought, pollution in industrial application, and unbalance in religious criticism.

The Intellect > Science > When science stands alone

#10324 – 5.7.6.96

BA11 – ZZ – DK

The hope of educated men who understand and appreciate the services of science but who deplore its dangers and recognize its limitations, lies in the investigation and development of consciousness.

The Intellect > Science > Science and metaphysics

#10363 – 5.7.6.135

BA11 – Z – DK

Every thoughtful scientist now knows that just as matter has turned out to be a manifestation of force, so force will eventually turn out to be a manifestation of something higher; he perceives that matter is really an appearance behind which stands the reality force; so an ultimate reality must be reckoned as standing behind force. In other words, there is but ONE Reality and various forms under which it appears.

The Intellect > Science > Science and metaphysics

#10375 – 5.7.6.147

BA11 – ZZZ – K

There is but ONE Reality and various forms under which it appears. Therefore the man who perceives this naturally, perceives the ultimate reality everywhere. He does not need to meditate or to go into a trance to find it.

The Intellect > Science > Science and metaphysics

#10375EM – 5.7.6.147

UR_1 – ZZZ – K

The materialist who sees only the animal side of human being is usually brutal or sensual, whereas the materialist who sees also the intellectual side is immeasurably more evolved. But both miss the intuitive side.

The Intellect > Science > Science and metaphysics

#10379 – 5.7.6.151

BSG_5 – P – D

Constant reflection on metaphysical and ethical themes reaches a point where one day its accumulated weight pushes him around the corner into a mystical realization of those themes no less surely than meditation might have done.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Metaphysics of Truth

#10390 – 5.7.7.2

BN – Z – DK

Although every tenet of the metaphysics of truth is worked out with strict rationality and scientific respect for facts, there is a hidden support in transcendental knowledge running right through them all.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Metaphysics of Truth

#10391 – 5.7.7.3

BN – X – K

The whole intellectual structure is supported by a solid core of super-intellectual insight.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Metaphysics of Truth

#10392 – 5.7.7.4

BN – Z – K

One day, if this kind of metaphysical thinking is carried on sufficiently, rightly, and concentratedly, a person’s intellect may overreach itself, even lose itself in that wonderful faculty, intuition, or even slip farther into inspiration. This is a mysterious event where something grander takes over by a process which is certainly not mechanical.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Metaphysics of Truth

#10396 – 5.7.7.8

BN – ZZ – K

The failure of metaphysics begins when it becomes speculation based on imagination, when its ideas are derived from other ideas instead of from observed facts.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10412 – 5.7.7.24

BN – Z – K

The study of speculative metaphysics may chill off religious belief but the study of the metaphysics of truth brings with it deep religious feelings.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10413 – 5.7.7.25

BN – X – K

The unsatisfactoriness of most Vedantic metaphysics is that it limits itself to ontology. The unsatisfactoriness of most Western metaphysics is that it limits itself to epistemology. Both are one-legged creatures. A satisfying full-limbed system must first begin with epistemology and then end with ontology.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10415 – 5.7.7.27

BN – X – K1

Our advice is—study metaphysics to its bottom and then make good your escape from it before you become a mere metaphysician! Once you start using metaphysical jargon you are lost.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10416 – 5.7.7.28

BN – ZZ – K1

But if it is only ordinary metaphysics, then it cannot bring the student to such an experience, although it can give him good intellectual exercise and logical discipline if he wants these things. Ordinary metaphysical thinking is a kind of mental groping about in the dark, whereas that used in metaphysics of truth is like walking along a well-made road direct to a goal. This is so because the system itself is built up after and upon the mystic experience. Metaphysical self-debate for merely logical purposes is not meant here.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10427 – 5.7.7.39

BN – X – K

There are two kinds of knowledge: the ordinary kind which supplies information about a particular thing object or person and the higher kind which leads to wisdom. A man may correctly understand the handling of an electrical appliance and yet be a fool in the handling of his own life.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10428 – 5.7.7.40

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

The metaphysics of Truth has no recognized place in the academic world, as academic teaching is really based more or less on materialism.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10433 – 5.7.7.45

BSG_5 – P – DK

Metaphysics enables the mystic to make clear and conclusive to themselves the principles on which their inward experience is based. This helps them, not only by satisfying the need for intellectual understanding, not only by supplying weapons to fight both their own doubts and the criticisms of sceptics, but also, by giving directional guidance, enables them to avoid errors in mystical practice.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10446 – 5.7.7.58

BN – X – K

The words we use belong to the limited range of conditioned existence. How then can they be of actual service in describing the Unconditioned? The only service they can render is a symbolic or suggestive one. Reality cannot be expressed in any of the positive terms we know, for there is nothing like it in the familiar world. It may be hinted at negatively.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10455 – 5.7.7.67

BN – Z – K

The metaphysical system may be only a reflected image of the Truth, but still it is as faithful an image as present-day human intellect can show. Therefore, it is most helpful to the seeker who is groping their difficult way and need all the guidance they can get.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10461 – 5.7.7.73

BN – X – K

The modern school of existentialist metaphysics gives too much weight to passing experiences and too little to permanent principles, too much to appearances and too little to the realities, too much to the political economic and social, too little to the moral ethical and spiritual phases of human life. This brings about an unbalance and a half-truthness in its conclusions.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10467 – 5.7.7.79

BN – Z – K

What is self? What is thought? What is reality? These are accepted by metaphysics as three of its chief problems.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Issues and adherents

#10473 – 5.7.7.85

BN – X – K

For those who have devoted several years to its detailed study, this teaching is not a matter of pious belief or fanciful thinking but a tested fact and demonstrated truth. Nor, for them, does it depend upon the say-so of some bygone man or the tradition of some bygone century. It depends upon procurable evidence and appeals to scientific attitude.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Issues and adherents

#10482 – 5.7.7.94

B_02 – ZZ – K

The philosophic student knows that the same thoughts which rear their heads and obstruct the mystic from attaining Thought can be turned round and used to help them attain it. But to achieve this successfully there must be metaphysical knowledge.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10512 – 5.7.7.124

BN – X – K

Those who make philosophical writings their constant study are using life profitably.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10513 – 5.7.7.125

BN – X – D

But let it not be thought that the metaphysical effort is a wasted one. On the contrary, it is essential for training the mind to think correctly about the Overself, for supplying it with the firm conviction that such an ultimate reality does exist, and for encouraging it to take up the practical quest of ultramysticism; whilst after the latter quest has been successfully realized the metaphysical effort again becomes useful when the sage seeks to communicate to others a precise report and accurate explanation of his own grand experience.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10520 – 5.7.7.132

BN – ZZ – K

Once a person begins to bestow their thought upon thought itself, they begin a path of enquiry which, if pushed to its farthest end, will bring them into astonishing discoveries and, if they follow them into practical application, beneficial changes.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10522 – 5.7.7.134

BN – Z – K

If a man will constantly think about these metaphysical truths, he will develop in time the capacity to perceive them by direct intuition instead of by second-remove reflection. But to do this kind of thinking properly the mind must be made steady, poised, concentrated, and easily detached from the world.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10525 – 5.7.7.137

BN – ZZZ – DK1

His conduct will be better, his mind wiser, and his heart happier if he seeks and gains a knowledge of the divine laws governing the universe than if he refuses to do so.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10526 – 5.7.7.138

BN – ZZ – K

The worth of metaphysics to us is relative to the work which we put into it, to the degree of hard thinking which we achieve under its direction. For it demands sustained enquiry into facts, careful assessment of the value of statements, and careful judgement of conclusions.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10533 – 5.7.7.145

BN – X – K

The mystic who has not this clear metaphysical knowledge may attain a limited goal, but even then, because their effort is not a guided one, much of it is lost in blind striving.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10538 – 5.7.7.150

BN – X – K

The study of the metaphysics of truth prepares the mind for mystical revelation, helps it to become mystically intuitive.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10542 – 5.7.7.154

BN – X – K

It trains the mind to move guardedly along the path from reasoned thinking to conclusive judgement, to proceed cautiously and not precipitately when opinions are formed, and to form them not at random but only after sifting factual evidence from idle hearsay.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10544 – 5.7.7.156

B_03 – ZZ – K

There is this to be said for such study, that it brings to us ready for assimilation what others have had to purchase by long experience and arduous research.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10545 – 5.7.7.157

BN – X – K

Metaphysical study lifts a human being into the clear keen air above personal considerations.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10556 – 5.7.7.168

BSG_4 – P – D

Because the metaphysics of truth deals with root ideas, and because in a mentalist universe such ideas are naturally more potentially powerful and more important than materialist ones, the metaphysics of truth becomes the most worthwhile study in which man's intellect can engage. For these ideas provide him with the right patterns for shaping physical existence.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10562 – 5.7.7.174

BN – ZZ – K1

The contemplation of universal laws and metaphysical truth chastens the feelings and elevates the thoughts. This study causes man to forget himself, to turn aside from his little ego, and thus helps to clear a path to discovery of his Overself.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10563 – 5.7.7.175

BN – ZZ – DK

The intellect offers a reality which can never be a felt reality but only a described one. Intellectual work can only paint the picture of reality; we have to verify this picture by realizing it within our own experience.

The Intellect > Intellect, Reality, and The Overself > Intellect, Reality, and The Overself

#10564E – 5.7.8.1

UR_4 – ZZZ – DEK3

Every verbal explanation really fails to explain the Overself unless and until we know it for ourself within ourself and as ourself.

The Intellect > Intellect, Reality, and The Overself > Intellect, Reality, and The Overself

#10565E – 5.7.8.2

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK

The danger of most pseudo-spiritual paths is that they stimulate the ego, whereas the authentic path will suffocate it.

The Ego > The Ego > The Ego

#10566 – 6.8.0.1

BN – ZZ – K

The best measuring-stick for progress is, in earlier stages, the degree of disappearance of the ego's rule and, in later ones, the degree of disappearance of the ego itself.

The Ego > The Ego > The Ego

#10567 – 6.8.0.2

BN – ZZ – DK

That element in his consciousness which enables him to understand that he exists, which causes him to pronounce the words, "I Am," is the spiritual element, here called Overself. It is really his basic self for the three activities of thinking feeling and willing are derived from it, are ripples spreading out of it, are attributes and functions which belong to it. But as we ordinarily think feel and act, these activities do not express the Overself because they are under the control of a different entity, the personal ego.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10568 – 6.8.1.1

UR_5 – ZZZ – DK

The source of wisdom and power, of love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10569 – 6.8.1.2

BN – ZZ – DK

Is it true that most men suffer from mistaken identity? Normal experience leads a man to identify with his body but he fails to go farther and deeper to ask himself: 'Who is present in the body?'

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10570M – 6.8.1.3

BA11 – ZZZ – DXK

Since the person a man is most interested in is himself, why not get to know himself as he really is, not merely as he appears to be?

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10571 – 6.8.1.4

BN – Z – DK

The ego self is the creature born out of man's own doing and thinking, slowly changing and growing. The Overself is the image of God, perfect, finished, and changeless. What he has to do, if he is to fulfil himself, is to let the one shine through the other.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10574 – 6.8.1.7

BN – Z – DM1*

The ego is after all only an idea. It derives its seeming actuality from a higher source. If we make the inner effort to search for its origin we shall eventually find the Mind in which this idea originated. That mind is the Overself. This search is the Quest. The self-separation of the idea from the mind which makes its existence possible, is egoism.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10576 – 6.8.1.9

UR_5 – ZZZ – DMK

What he takes to be his true identity is only a dream that separates him from it. He has become a curious creature which eagerly accepts the confining darkness of the ego's life and turns its back on the blazing light of the soul's life.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10577 – 6.8.1.10

BN – ZZ – DK

Once this question—what am I?—is answered, there are no other questions. In the light of its dazzling answer, he knows how to handle all his problems.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10578 – 6.8.1.11

BN – ZZ – DK

This is the amazing contradiction of man's life, that although bearing the divine within himself, he is aware only of, and pursues unabated, its very opposite.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10582 – 6.8.1.15

BN – Z – DM

This is the paradox of human existence: the ego is yourself and the Overself is yourself, yet the first cannot easily contact the second.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10583 – 6.8.1.16

BN – Z – DM

A tremendous surprise comes when the Overself shows him to himself—when, for the first time, the ego can see what it is really like by a diviner light.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10584 – 6.8.1.17

BN – Z – DK

The personal ego derives its own light of consciousness and power of activity from the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10590 – 6.8.1.23

BN – Z – DK

The ego borrows its reality, its power of perception, its very capacity to be aware, from its association with the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10595 – 6.8.1.28

BN – Z – DK

The ego is a passing thing, but its source is not.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10596 – 6.8.1.29

BN – Z – DK

Keep on thinking about the difference between the personal ego and the impersonal Overself until you become thoroughly familiar with them.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10598 – 6.8.1.31

BN – ZZ – DM

The true self of man is hidden in a central core of stillness, a central vacuum of silence. This core, this vacuum occupies only a pinpoint in dimension. All around it there is ring of thoughts and desires constituting the imagined self, the ego. This ring is constantly fermenting with fresh thoughts, constantly changing with fresh desires, and alternately bubbling with joy or heaving with grief. Whereas the centre is forever at rest, the ring around it is never at rest; whereas the centre bestows peace, the ring destroys it.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10599 – 6.8.1.32

BN – Z – DK1

The Overself-consciousness is reflected into the ego, which then imagines that it has its own original, and not derived awareness.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10600 – 6.8.1.33

BN – X – DK1

Why I chose "What Am I": (1) Because I wanted to start with the idea of a non-"I" consciousness instead of their own "I" with which they are continuously occupied; (2) Because the word Brahman is of neuter gender, neither masculine nor feminine. Brahman in us is Atman, the Self—but utterly impersonal. "What" lends itself more easily to this impersonality than "Who"; (3) The answer to "What Am I?" is multiple but it begins with "a part of the world!" and is followed by another question, "What is my relation to this world?" The answer requires the discovery of Mentalism, leading back through the thought of the world, thinker, and consciousness, to Brahman.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10603 – 6.8.1.36

UR_3.2 – Z – K