Tao, in its secondary meaning, is the divinely fixed order of things.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12531E – 6.9.3.566

UR_3.2 – Z – K

Knowing the truth above of the ebb and flow of destiny, the sage acts always in conformity with this inner understanding. Sometimes he will be fiercely active, other times completely quiescent, sometimes fighting tragedy to the utmost, but at other times resigned and surrendered. Everything has its special time and he does not follow any course of action at the wrong time. To initiate the correct change in his activities at the incorrect time and amid wrong environing circumstances would be rash and lead to failure; to start a new and necessary enterprise at the wrong moment and amid the wrong situation of life, would also lead to failure. The same changes, however, if begun at another time and amid other conditions, will lead to success. The sage consults his innermost prompting, which, being in harmony with truth, guides him to correct action in particular situations accordingly. We can neither dictate to him as to what he should do, nor prescribe principles for his guidance, nor even predict how he is going to respond to any set of circumstances.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12531E – 6.9.3.566

BN – ZEL1/4 – K1

Knowing the truth above of the ebb and flow of destiny, the sage acts always in conformity with this inner understanding. Sometimes he will be fiercely active, other times completely quiescent, sometimes fighting tragedy to the utmost, but at other times resigned and surrendered. Everything has its special time and he does not follow any course of action at the wrong time. To initiate the correct change in his activities at the incorrect time and amid wrong environing circumstances would be rash and lead to failure; to start a new and necessary enterprise at the wrong moment and amid the wrong situation of life, would also lead to failure. The same changes, however, if begun at another time and amid other conditions, will lead to success. The sage consults his innermost prompting, which, being in harmony with truth, guides him to correct action in particular situations accordingly. We can neither dictate to him as to what he should do, nor prescribe principles for his guidance, nor even predict how he is going to respond to any set of circumstances.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12531E – 6.9.3.566

BN – ZEL2/4 – K1

The sage seeks to do the right thing at the right moment, for automatic adjustment to these varying fortunes. The proper course of action which anyone should adopt depends ultimately upon his time and place both materially and spiritually. In short, human wisdom must always be related to the cosmic currents of destiny and the divine goal. Man must be adaptable to circumstances, flexible to destiny, if his life is to be both wise and content. Unfortunately, the ordinary man does not perceive this, and creates much of his own unhappiness, works much of his own ruin. It is only the sage who, having surrendered the personal Ego, can create his own harmony with Nature and fate and thus remain spiritually undisturbed and at peace. The wise man defers action and waits if necessary for the opportune and auspicious moment; he will not indulge in senseless struggles or untimely efforts. He knows how and when to wait and by his waiting render success certain.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12531E – 6.9.3.566

BN – ZEL3/4 – K1

The sage seeks to do the right thing at the right moment, for automatic adjustment to these varying fortunes. The wise man defers action and waits if necessary for the opportune and auspicious moment; he will not indulge in senseless struggles or untimely efforts. He knows how and when to wait and by his waiting render success certain. No matter how talented he be, if his circumstances are unfavourable and the time inopportune to express them, he will resign himself for the while and devote his time to self-preparation and self-cultivation and thus be ready for the opportunity which he knows the turn of time's wheel must bring him. He puts himself into alignment with the hidden principle which runs through man and matter, striking effectively when the iron is hot, refraining cautiously when it is cold. He knows the proper limits of his activity even in success and does not go beyond them. He knows when to advance and when to retreat, when to be incessantly active and when to lie as still as a sleeping mouse. Thus he escapes from committing serious errors.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12531E – 6.9.3.566

BN – ZEL4/4 – K1

Your karma led you into this horror but your cleared sight can now lead you out of it. This will act as a healing. The conjunction of your character, temperament, and qualities with the time, surroundings, and history being what they were, the result was what it was. Now the more you can displace the so-called freedom of the ego, submit to the call of Overself, the more you will share the greater possibility which it hides.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12532 – 6.9.3.567

BN – Z – K

Karma comes into play only if the karmic impression is strong enough to survive. In the case of the sage, because he treats life like a dream, because he sees through it as appearance, all his experiences are on the surface only. His deep inner mind remains untouched by them. Therefore he makes no karma from them, therefore he is able when passing out of the body at death to be finished with the round of birth and death forever.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12534 – 6.9.3.569

BN – Z – DK

The view that karma operates like an automatic machine is not a wholly true one; this is because it is not a wholly complete one. The missing element is grace.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12535 – 6.9.3.570

BN – Z – DK

The privileges of enlightenment can only be justified on the basis of karma—"My own, my own, shall come to me," as the poet intuited.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12536 – 6.9.3.571

BN – X – K

There is no other judge of your deeds than the law of recompense, whose agent is your own Overself.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12540 – 6.9.3.575

BA11 – ZZ – DMK

Even if human karma were rigidly implacable and against it human will sadly impotent, divine Grace is still available and divine Mercy is yet accessible.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12541 – 6.9.3.576

BN – X – DK

Do your best to mend matters, the best you can, then leave the results to destiny and the Overself. You can't do more anyway. You can modify your destiny, but certain events are unchangeable because the world is not yours but God's. You may not know at first what events these are, therefore you must act intelligently and intuitively: later you can find out and accept. Whatever happens, the Overself is still there and will bring you through and out of your troubles. Whatever happens to your material affairs happens to your body, not the real YOU. The hardest part is when you have others dependent on you. Even then you must learn how to commend them to the kindly care of the Overself, and not try to carry all the burden on your own shoulders. If it can take care of you, it can take care of them, too.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12542 – 6.9.3.577

BN – ZZZ – DEK

The working of a man's karma would never come to an end if his egoism never came to an end. It would be a vicious circle from which there would be no escape. But when the sense of personal selfhood, which is its cause and core, is abandoned, the unfulfilled karma is abandoned too.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12543 – 6.9.3.578

BN – ZZ – DMK

The law of recompense has no jurisdiction over the eternal and undivided Overself, the real being, only over the body and mind, the transitory ego.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12544 – 6.9.3.579

BA11 – ZZ – DK

If a man comes into alignment with the Overself-consciousness, he is compelled to give up his earlier position of free will and free choice—for he no longer exists to please the ego alone. The regulating factor is now the Overself itself.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12546 – 6.9.3.581

BN – ZZ – DK

What we have yet to learn is that destiny makes its chesslike moves according to our thinking and doing. Whoever will offer himself unto the Overself, and will be blessed by its benediction so that he becomes as one inspired, may then perceive this strange figure at his side working for the good of man.

From Birth to Rebirth > Laws and Patterns of Experience > Karma, free will, and the Overself

#12548 – 6.9.3.583

BN – ZZ – DEMK

Whether we are in bondage to the body or to the intellect, we are still prisoners.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The limitations of free will

#12563 – 6.9.4.15

BN – Z – K

Out of his own nature and in conformity with the universal plan, a stream of influences flows over him out of the past and forces his acts and thoughts to take a certain direction. He may believe that he is following this direction quite independently and freely. In this incapacity to see how limited is his present freedom lies his subtlest illusion.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The limitations of free will

#12566 – 6.9.4.18

BN – ZZZ – DK

It is often not easy—but the sooner we do so, the sooner our mind will become less resentful and more tranquil—to recognize that this happening, this position, or this person is part of our fate, that our only freedom in such a case is a moral one. We can select our mental attitude.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The limitations of free will

#12571 – 6.9.4.23

BSG_5 – ZZZ – DK

A person’s moral response to a happening, as also their mental attitude toward it and emotional bearing under it, are largely free. It is in this realm, moreover, that important possibilities of further spiritual growth or else materialistic hardening are available. They may renew inner strength or fall back into sensual weakness.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The limitations of free will

#12572 – 6.9.4.24

BSG_5 – Z – DK

Such is the power of suggestion, tradition, and environment that the average European and American does have a feeling of being free to make his own decisions and of being able to act in the world as he wishes, whereas the average Indian has no such feeling; the latter believes that he acts according to some unknown preordained pattern. Although these two feelings are so contradictory, there is a solid basis of fact beneath each of them. The contradiction arises because they are not sufficiently understood. In the Westerner's case, it is from the Overself's freedom that his feeling is originally derived. In the Indian's, it is from the Overself's allotment of karma that his own is derived.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The limitations of free will

#12575 – 6.9.4.27

BN – X – K

Hemmed in as he is by inheritances not only from his personal past history but also from society's, it would be futile to talk of having complete freedom of choice. But it would be an error in thought and conduct to behave as if he had no freedom at all. Some measure of it does exist, since in most of his situations, if not in all, he is always faced with at least two possible lines of choice—a higher and a lower one.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The limitations of free will

#12576 – 6.9.4.28

BN – Z – DK

A single decision may entirely shape the next fifty years of a young man’s future.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The limitations of free will

#12577 – 6.9.4.29

BN – Z – DK

The circumstances in which he finds himself and the events which happen to him are not more to a man than what he thinks and does about them. For his reaction, his attitude are more often within his control than they may be.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The limitations of free will

#12578 – 6.9.4.30

BN – Z – DK

No man has free will if he is enslaved by things or affected by events outside of himself. He has it only when he is inwardly detached from them.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12606 – 6.9.4.58

BSG_5 – ZZ – DK

"We ought to exert our efforts in all (things) as though they were absolutely free, and God will do as he sees fit." —Maimonides

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12608 – 6.9.4.60

BN – Z – K1

If freedom of will is utter illusion we have to ask ourselves why the Buddha, greatest of all advocates of the truth of inexorable karma, and whose enlightenment is incontestable, gave as his dying legacy to disciples the words, "Work out your own salvation." If this is not a call to the use of will, of a free will, what is? It is hard for Westerners to accept a doctrine of complete fatalism, and the difficulty is not wholly due to their ignorance of spiritual facts which are elementary to Indians. It is also due to their instinctive refusal to be robbed of their initiative, and to their insistence on moral responsibility for ethical decisions and actions.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12612 – 6.9.4.64

BN – X – K

The man whose weakness when confronted by temptation is so great that his yielding is plainly predictable, can not be said to have the same freedom of choice that the man of strong self-mastery has.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12614 – 6.9.4.66

BN – Z – DK

Most people experience events brought about by a mixture of heredity, environment, other people's influence, and karma; not many exert their will determinedly, use their thinking power correctly, and control their energy and time to create chosen results.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12615 – 6.9.4.67

BN – Z – K

Freedom is not in itself a good or bad thing; the way it is used, whether wisely or recklessly, will determine its value.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12616 – 6.9.4.68

BN – ZZZ – DK

If you demand freedom you must accept the responsibility which accompanies it. This is not only a human and social law but also a divine and karmic law.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12620 – 6.9.4.72

BA11 – ZZ – DK

The really determined spiritual man has more powers of free will than others—powers to mold his life and to offset his karma and to create good karma to wipe out threatening or existing bad karma.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12629 – 6.9.4.81

BN – Z – DK

Man is forced in the end by life itself to undertake disciplines he resents or resists. The neophyte in philosophy, for the sake of his own personal development, anticipates them, accepts them, and co-operates with them.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12634 – 6.9.4.86

BN – Z – DK

Who possesses complete independence? Who has all the freedom he wants? Who is able to make his choices freely, unaffected by his circumstances, by social pressure, by events, or by heredity? The answer, of course, is no one. But, to the extent that anyone learns to control his thoughts, to become master of himself, he begins to control his fate.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12636 – 6.9.4.88

BN – ZZZ – DK

The destiny of an entire lifetime may be set by a single mistake, itself the consequence of ungoverned emotion or passion.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12638 – 6.9.4.90

BN – Z – DK

Fate hands him the opportunities and the difficulties: what he does with them is his choice, for which he is responsible.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12640 – 6.9.4.92

BA11 – ZZ – DK

Coaxed by pleasure in some incarnations and driven by pain in others, man slowly learns to use his faculties and powers aright.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12642 – 6.9.4.94

UR_5 – ZZZ – DK

The saying that “experience is the best teacher” is one I often thought should be altered to “experience is most often the only teacher.” It is surely better to be taught by reflection and intuition.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12644 – 6.9.4.96

BN – ZZZ – DMK

There is a shorter and better way to practical wisdom. What the ordinary man arrives at only after the several events of long years, the wiser one will arrive at earlier by intuition and reflection.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12646 – 6.9.4.98

BN – ZZ – DK

A man may move to a given point by crawling or walking, running or swimming, driving or diving; it is largely his free choice in the matter. But karma dictates where the point shall be and here his freedom ends.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12652 – 6.9.4.104

BN – ZZZ – K

The whole debate of fate versus free will for which has continued since centuries and is just as active in our own, would be dropped if the debaters knew and understood where both forces had their habitat. They are in time, relative to it: what they bring about lies in the past, present, or future, whereas they take their rise out of an eternal NOW. Time is in the mind and to assume its complete and ultimate reality is to falsify the experiences and the happenings in it.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12654 – 6.9.4.106

BSG_5 – ZZ – K

He is free to identify his own purposes with the pattern of the World-Idea, or to disregard it. In both cases he must take the consequences. In the one case he will have again and again, voluntarily if reluctantly, to subordinate his ego. In the other, he will seek to satisfy it and may at times succeed in doing so. But then he will meet those consequences because the law of karma has to give him back his own.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12659 – 6.9.4.111

BN – ZZ – K

Law rules the universe: the latter could not have been conceived as it is, so mathematically, so orderly in numerical values, unless all things were in conformity with and obedient to the World-Idea. Functioning as part of this cosmic necessity is karma. But within this condition there is some freedom to choose and to act—very limited but there.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12660 – 6.9.4.112

BN – Z – K

Where is man’s free will? He is free to choose whether he will conform to the pattern of the World-Idea, whether he will obey or not obey the higher laws.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12662 – 6.9.4.114

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

The structure of the physical brain contributes largely to the way a man acts. This leaves him less room for free will than he thinks he has. But the brain (and the whole body) structure is itself the product of past self-made karma now functioning.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12664 – 6.9.4.116

BN – ZZZ – K

The activities of the present life necessarily make their contribution towards the results now being experienced as destiny from previous lives. They may even go farther than this and may influence, modify, or altogether offset a destined experience which is reserved for the future and has still to materialize. Thus, there is no room for a hopeless fatalism in this teaching. Destiny is alterable. It is made more pleasurable by our good deeds, more bearable by our wise decisions, more painful by our bad deeds, and more unbearable by our foolish decisions.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12665 – 6.9.4.117

BN – Z – DEK

The man who wins is the man whose dice are loaded with invincible optimism, with unfailing effort, and with creative thought.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12667 – 6.9.4.119

BN – ZZ – DK

Since the gift of creativity belongs to all of us and is usable in all spheres of a man's life, he can do much to mold that life if he exerts strength and holds to determination.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12669 – 6.9.4.121

BN – Z – DK

The truth is that both are present in life, the destiny ordained by karma and the freedom towards which we are struggling. Both are present in each human existence, but it is only the advanced soul who has created that fine equilibrium between them which unites them both in harmony.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12676 – 6.9.4.128

BN – ZZ – K

The power of karma is matched by the power of personal effort, and out of the balancing of the two supported by wisdom a better result will always be obtained.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > The freedom we have to evolve

#12677 – 6.9.4.129

BN – X – K

If the man in you is held down by his body, his surroundings, his karma, the godlike in you is not: it is free. But through this freedom it chooses to be in harmony with God.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12682 – 6.9.4.134

BN – Z – DK

Man is intended to grow up into consciousness of his Godlike essence, and through that into joyful co-operation with God and deliberate participation with God's World-Idea.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12684E – 6.9.4.136

BT1008 – ZZ – DEK

Oriental fatalism, which makes God's power and will the only power and will, leaves man's power useless and renders his will superfluous. This is somewhat disheartening to the Occidental's mind and enervating to his hand. But he need not accept it; it is also the unbalanced half-dangerous fatalism of half-knowledge. Man is intended to grow up into consciousness of his Godlike essence, and through that into joyful co-operation with God and deliberate participation with God's World-Idea.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12684 – 6.9.4.136

BN – ZZ – DK

No man is really and fully free since all men are carrying out the World-Idea. The feeling which he usually possesses that he is acting under his own power and making his own choices is due to his ignorance.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12685 – 6.9.4.137

BN – Z – DK

Life is presented to each individual in a pattern that is given by a higher power—call it karma or God, destiny or divinity. He may be able to put in the smaller details, but the larger outlines are preordained. The freedom he thinks he has is illusory. But where he does not suspect it, he does have freedom, and that is his higher self, his Overself.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12687 – 6.9.4.139

BN – ZZ – DK

A man's attitude toward the question of free will changes after he has surrendered to the Overself. It has to change. For henceforth he is to be loyal not to the ego's desires but to the Overself's injunctions. If the two coincide, it is well and pleasant for him. If not, and he obeys his higher self as he must, then it can no longer be said that he has full freedom of will. But neither can it be said that he has not. For the Overself is in him, not outside, not something alien and apart; it is indeed himself at his best and highest level. Because the Overself is under no other law than that of its own being, which it always obeys, both freedom and fate are harmoniously united in it. Hence, the truly wise man will reconcile and unite the tenet of karma and the tenet of free will. He knows that only a limited vision will range them against each other.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12688 – 6.9.4.140

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK

In the end the only freedom we have is to conform to the order of the Universe and be what we have the possibility of being, and that is to move upward, transcend the little ego, and discover the hidden greatness of Overself.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12690 – 6.9.4.142

BSG_5 – ZZZ – DK

Man's free will and God's preordained will are simultaneously coinciding, acting together. It does not matter what human being's freedom leads him to do: in the end it will be turned to the accomplishment of God's evolutionary purpose. His evil will even be turned, by God's laws of karma, to good. He will be forced to evolve ultimately.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12691 – 6.9.4.143

BSG_5 – ZZZ – K

As I emerge from a trance of self-realization, the white sun sets in golden bars across the Thames. My body is seated in the half-Buddha posture on a grassy bank of the river. I find the solution of the problem which has weighed on my mind all day. I, hapless victim of a hard fate, I have communicated with myself! But now, I am conscious of the truth, for I have been lifted like a babe out of all anxiety for the future, all regret for the past. In the spiritual self, I feel a timeless life: I breathe the calm air of the Eternal. I feel safe and I could not worry even if I wanted to. To live in the true Self is to be released from all cares concerning what the morrow may bring. This is real 'freedom'. Even if fate is all-powerful, even if an unpleasant fate be in store for me, yet, if I cannot change it, I can change myself. I can enter into my inner self and therein take refuge from my fate.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12692 – 6.9.4.144

BN – ZZZ – DEK

Jesus had a passion to urge every man to live up to his higher possibilities. The man who is living a lower level than his best is not performing his proper function in life. This attitude of Jesus was in direct contrast to the widespread fatalism of the Orientals.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12695 – 6.9.4.147

B_12 – ZZ – DK

The infinite wisdom of the World-Mind is behind the world and rules its course, which is not left to the accidents of chance.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12700 – 6.9.4.152

BN – ZZ – DK

Regarding fate and free will, ordinarily man is subject to fate simultaneously with the fact that he is also operating his will. The two factors are ever present. But as the same fate was made by him in former lives, and he had the freedom to make it as he wished, ultimately there is freedom.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12705E – 6.9.4.157

BSG_5 – ZZ – K

The truth is that we are both free and not free. The one is illusion because the hidden factors, the karma in the situation, shape its history. The other is actuality because knowing that, you demean yourself unnecessarily. The ego is surrounded by truth and goodness. Why not reach out and up to the Overself?

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12706 – 6.9.4.158

BN – ZZ – DEK

There are some actions a man does not for a moment include in his planning, yet when the time comes he does them. Why? Is he driven by a higher power? Is it in fulfilment of the World-Idea?

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12707 – 6.9.4.159

BN – ZZZ – K

The power which operates the World-Idea is the same power which operates the processes of what the Asiatics call karma. The law of karma, or come-back of consequences, of causes and effects, is inseparable from the World-Idea. Behind the World-Idea is the World-Mind. Behind karma is God.

From Birth to Rebirth > Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > Human will in the World-Idea

#12710 – 6.9.4.162

BN – ZZZ – K

It comes to this—that much of human disease and sickness is traceable to the faulty functioning of the human self. Learn how to use that self correctly in its physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual aspects and you learn how to prevent or cure part, or most, or even all of your ill health.

Healing of the Self > Healing of the Self > Healing of the Self

#12712 – 7.10.0.1

ME_01 – Z – DMK2

Most of the individual's health troubles are the result of karma. The body is a source of pleasure and misery to nearly all; but both being temporary, the one balances the other. He should do his utmost to keep his body in good health by following the best program of physical living, diet, and so on, that his own experience and expert advice can suggest. He should try the most reasonable treatment for illness which both the Indian (including hatha yoga) and Western medical systems can offer. After he has done these things then there is nothing more he can do except to take his sufferings as a constant reminder of the necessity of seeking happiness in a spiritual self above the body self.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The spiritual importance of health

#12719 – 7.10.1.7

B_17 – ZZ – K

Diseased conditions in the human body are often traceable, by a subtle and penetrating analysis, to diseased conditions in the human soul. Medical science deals chiefly with the physical organism, and so long as it persists in regarding only that part of the being of man, so long will it continue to find its theories falsified, its carefully prepared experiments turned into blind guesses, and its high percentage of failures maintained. I might make my point clearer, perhaps, by stating that the body is after all only a sensitive machine, and that if the thinking and feeling man who uses that machine in self-expression is distorted, unbalanced, or discordant in any way, then these undesirable qualities will reproduce themselves in the physical organism as appropriate disease or functional derangements.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Disease has hidden causes

#12721 – 7.10.1.9

ME_01 – ZZ – K2

When plague broke like a wave over the heads of mankind in the fifteenth century and spread with startling rapidity through the nations of Europe, the obvious physical causes were in themselves but agents of the less obvious soul-causes, defects in the very character of humanity. Insomnia and cancer, to take but two of the representative illnesses of our own epoch, are no less plaguelike in their menace to people of today, no less the products of causes inherent in imperfect human character, habit, or environment.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Disease has hidden causes

#12723 – 7.10.1.11

BN – Z – K1

Although we can often find the physical causes of physical ailments, behind these physical causes there are quite often maladies of the soul. Heal the soul and the bodily healing may follow. Obviously there are many cases where no success would result.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Disease has hidden causes

#12724 – 7.10.1.12

ME_01 – Z – K2

When Jesus told the woman he healed to sin no more, he added that it was her sinning which brought her ill-health upon her. Here then is one of the potent causes of sickness.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Disease has hidden causes

#12729 – 7.10.1.17

B_11 – ZZ – K

If the change begins in the body’s behaviour it may influence the mind to a very limited extent, but if it begins in the mind’s thinking it will influence the body to a very large extent. That is the difference.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Disease has hidden causes

#12732 – 7.10.1.20

ME_01 – ZZ – K2

The psychological causes of disease have only recently come under investigation by the strict methods of modern science, but the general fact of their existence was known thousands of years ago. Plato, for instance, said: This is the great error of our day, that physicians separate the inner being from the body.”

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Disease has hidden causes

#12735 – 7.10.1.23

BN – Z – DK1

The treatment of unpleasant realities by not including them in his picture of the world comforts but at the same time befools a man. None of the great prophets like Jesus and Buddha denied the existence of sickness, the reality of pain, or the significance of suffering in the cosmos. No—they acknowledged them as being inseparable from human life but pitied the victims and offered them an inward comfort which was based on Truth and Reality.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12747 – 7.10.1.35

B_01 – ZZZ – K

The animal part of us is doomed to oblivion, the spiritual part is ageless and deathless. The physical body belongs to the animal part. All attempts to perpetuate it must fail and arise from confusing the two levels of being, the transient and the eternal.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12748 – 7.10.1.36

B_01 – ZZZ – DMK

You cannot have a single desire and yet enter the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus pointed out. So good health, the care of your painful diseases, the healing of your disturbed organs—right, necessary, and desirable as they undoubtedly are—are nevertheless matters which you must try to effect in a desireless way; you may try to cure them, but you must leave the result to the higher will. If you insist that the body must yield to your desires of a cure, to your personal desires, then your ego, not the real universal self, has got the upper hand and is directing you. In that case you will be no better off, for you have no guarantee of success even then.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12749E – 7.10.1.37

B_11 – ZEL1/2 – K

Most Christian Scientists experience a score of failures for every cure. Whereas if you do your best mentally and physically to put your body right, but do it impersonally—accepting failure, if it comes, with as much equanimity as you can—you will certainly be no worse off than the Christian Scientist so far as the possibilities of cure are concerned, and you will be infinitely better off so far as realizing truth is concerned, with all the wonderful peace that will bring in its train. This is one meaning of the words "Not my will but Thine be done" which Mrs. Eddy failed to learn.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12749E – 7.10.1.37

B_11 – ZEL2/2 – K

We get just the kind of karma whose silent instruction is needed at the time.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12750E – 7.10.1.38

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK

Don't you think, having seen so much illness around you for so many years, that life is forever striving to instill into us through pain what Buddha learned through reflection—that both body and world are doomed to decay and die, being subject to the law of universal incessant change? The experiences of life are the lessons of a guru, for we get just the kind of karma whose silent instruction is needed at the time. The whole world, more or less, is having to learn this great truth at present but it is too blind and too ignorant to grasp the lesson in its clarity and entirety.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12750 – 7.10.1.38

BN – ZZZ – DEMK

The fleshly body is but a temporary abiding place at best, and when human being has arrived at a state of perfect spirituality, he will abandon it and use a vehicle more consonant with his high condition, an electromagnetic body that will more easily and more faithfully represent him.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12757E – 7.10.1.45

BSG_4 – ZZ – K

Whereas Christian Science denies the reality of a diseased condition and doesn't deny the physical body altogether, philosophy denies only the materiality of the physical body and accepts the existence of the condition. Again, whereas Christian Science asserts that physical sickness was never given a place in God's scheme of things, philosophy says that it was given a place and fulfils a part of the divine purpose in our human evolution from a lower to a higher state of consciousness.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12759 – 7.10.1.47

BN – ZZ – K

The truth is with Jesus, who said that flesh and blood will not inherit eternal life.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12763 – 7.10.1.51

B_11 – Z – K

Life brings its sufferings to every quester, as to every nonquester, as to all beings who move on this earth. Successful completion of the quest may free him from some of them but could it ever free him from all of them? The happiness he may find cannot be an absolute; it must be qualified.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12764 – 7.10.1.52

BN – ZZ – K

Out of this physical suffering he should have learned the lessons of a deep wisdom: first, that this earth is not his home but only a camp; second, that this body is not his true self but only a garment; third, that suffering, disappointment, or discontent is inseparable from earthly life, real happiness is to be found only in the super-earthly life; fourth, that the full force of the mind must be developed by renunciation, sacrifice, concentration, and aspiration so that it can even here to a large extent create an inner life that continues peacefully in whatever state the body may find itself.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > Physical mortality

#12766 – 7.10.1.54

ME_01 – ZZ – K2

The pains and maladies which accompany and punctuate physical existence are not taken away from the spiritually aware man. Their presence continues to act as a reminder—as much to him as to all other men—that just because they do accompany the body’s life, that life is an imperfect and unsatisfying one. His five senses are working like all other men’s and so must report the painful as well as pleasurable sensations. But what he does gain is a peace deeper than the body’s sensations, and unbreakable by their painful nature. One part of him—the lesser—may suffer; but the other part—the greater—remains undisturbed. In his higher and spiritual nature he is well fortified against these afflictions, sustained by heavenly forces denied to other people.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The Philosopher's body

#12767 – 7.10.1.55

ME_01 – ZZ – K2

The Buddha was not immune from disease. The austerities he practised during his search for enlightenment permanently affected his health, and his ceaseless activity for forty-five years greatly weakened him towards the end of his life. He often suffered from a severe headache and in his old age he suffered from severe backache which sometimes forced him to stop a sermon halfway and ask one of his disciples to continue from where he left off. The unsuitable meals which he was sometimes forced to eat were responsible for a dyspepsia which persisted throughout his life, culminating in his last fatal illness of dysentery. But none of these ailments prevented him from being always ready with help for those who needed it.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The Philosopher's body

#12768 – 7.10.1.56

BN – ZZZ – K

We need also to remember that the attitude of the advanced soul towards personal suffering is not the same as the common one. His standpoint is different. So far as we know human history on this globe, all the facts show that sickness, pain, disease, and death are parts of the conditions governing the physical body's experience because they are inescapable and inevitable parts of all physical-plane experience for highly organized forms, whether human or otherwise. That is, they are part of the divine plan for man. We humans resent such experiences, but it may be that they are necessary to our rounded development and that the Illuminated who have approached closer to the infinite wisdom perceive this and drop their resentment.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The Philosopher's body

#12770E – 7.10.1.58

B_17 – ZEL1/2 – K1

We need also to remember that the attitude of the advanced soul towards personal suffering is not the same as the common one. His standpoint is different. Here we may recall Sri Ramakrishna's attitude towards the cancer in the throat from which he died, Saint Bernadette of Lourdes' attitude towards her painful lingering and fatal disease of consumption, Ramana Maharshi's fatalism about his bodily pains and ailments, and Sri Aurobindo's reply to the physician who attended him for a broken knee after a fall: "How is it that you, a Mahatma, could not foresee and prevent this accident?" "I still have to carry this human body about me and it is subject to ordinary human limitations and physical laws."

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The Philosopher's body

#12770E – 7.10.1.58

B_17 – ZEL2/2 – K1

If he can succeed in refusing to identify himself with the suffering body, he will not suffer with it.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The Philosopher's body

#12774 – 7.10.1.62

BN – X – D

The Buddha himself could not escape from suffering various illnesses; H.P. Blavatsky was a notorious sufferer of the most painful maladies; and even Mrs. Eddy herself suffered from pneumonia in her old age, although her illness was kept secret.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The Philosopher's body

#12776 – 7.10.1.64

B_17 – Z – K

It is a curious bifurcated kind of consciousness where he is aware of what the body is suffering but where he can also feel the support of infinite peace at his centre. Thus both pain and peace are within it.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The Philosopher's body

#12783 – 7.10.1.71

B_17 – ZZ – K

Do these yogic dignitaries contradict each other? "Physical health is essential for true spirituality," says Bhagat Singh Thind, a contemporary Sikh-Indian lecturer and teacher of yoga in the U.S.A. Yogananda, who claimed to have been granted the title of Paramahamsa (Great Master) by his guru, stated flatly in one of his lessons on Self-Realization: "The presence of God cannot be felt while the darkness of overpowering disease prevails." Yet Sri Ramana Maharshi, suffering from a fatal cancer, affirmed the contrary and declared the body to be nothing.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The Philosopher's body

#12787 – 7.10.1.75

B_17 – Z – K

Even in the midst of bodily sufferings, he will still keep and not lose this beautiful serenity of mind. And he is able to do so precisely because he is able to differentiate the flesh from the mind. Inevitably, it must counteract, even though it may not obliterate, the body's pain.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The Philosopher's body

#12789 – 7.10.1.77

B_17 – ZZ – DMK

Pain and suffering, sin and evil, disease and death, exist only in the world of thoughts, not in the world of pure Thought itself. They are not illusions, however, but they are transient. Whoever attains to pure Thought will also attain in consciousness to a life that is painless, sorrow-free, sinless, undecaying, and undying. Being above desires and fears, it is necessarily above the miseries caused by unsatisfied desires and realized fears. But at the same time he will also have an accompanying consciousness of life in the body, which must obey the laws of its own being, natural laws which set limitations and imperfections upon it. This much can be said to be the element of truth contained in some theoretical doctrines of Vedantic Advaita and Christian Science.

Healing of the Self > The Laws of Nature > The Philosopher's body

#12790 – 7.10.1.78

B_17 – Z – K1

There is a single source of Life which envelops the universe and pervades man. By its presence in himself he is able to exist physically and function mentally.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > The Universal Life Force

#12791 – 7.10.2.1

UR_1 – ZZZ – DK

That Power which brought the body into existence originally maintains its involuntary functions, cures its diseases, and heals its wounds. It is within the body itself; it is the life-force aspect of the Soul, the Overself. Its curative virtue may express itself through various mediums—as herbs and foods, hot, cold, or mud baths, and deep breathings, exercise, and osteopathy—or it may express itself by their complete absence as in fasting, often the quickest and most effective medium. Or, disdaining physical methods entirely, it may act directly and almost miraculously as spiritual healing.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > The Universal Life Force

#12792 – 7.10.2.2

ME_01 – X – K1

The role of physical treatments of any kind is to supply favourable conditions for the action of the universal life-force which does the real healing work, just as food, water, and air supply materials to this same force for the repair of tissue and the regeneration of cells.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > The Universal Life Force

#12793 – 7.10.2.3

ME_01 – Z – K2

Nature is an expression of the Universal Mind. The plants are given to us for medicine or food. It is an insult to Nature to despise these remedies.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > The Universal Life Force

#12796 – 7.10.2.6

BN – X – D

After all and in the end, it is Nature which brought us to birth on this planet. Can we not therefore credit her with the power of restoring the health needful to maintain the lives she has taken the trouble to originate?

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > The Universal Life Force

#12802 – 7.10.2.12

ME_01 – Z – K2

There are no miracles in Nature, but there are happenings to which science possesses no key. The human consciousness, for instance, is capable of manifesting powers which contradict psychological knowledge, just as the human body is capable of manifesting phenomena which contradict medical knowledge. Both powers and phenomena may seem miraculous, but they really issue forth from the hidden laws of man’s own being. The processes take place in the dark only to us.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > The Universal Life Force

#12809 – 7.10.2.19

ME_01 – Z – K1

This life-force, this invisible energy, is behind and within, around and above the physical body. Under certain circumstances its area can be seen and traced out and its recuperative healing power drawn upon. It forms an aura, the etheric or vital body of light, but not the still more elusive and subtle divine body of Light nor the aura of various colours, the astral body.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > The vital body

#12810 – 7.10.2.20

ME_01 – Z – K2

What are the "higher bodies"? Just as man has a physical body with which to operate in the physical world, so he has a vital body, an emotional body, and a mental body through which to express these other parts of his nature. This is the teaching of Theosophists, Hindus, and occultists. These bodies survive the death of the physical body, but are reduced to seed atoms when, between incarnations, man passes into a state of happy dreamless slumber. But from the philosophical viewpoint, the "higher bodies" are simply thought bodies, or, more correctly, states of consciousness.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > The vital body

#12812 – 7.10.2.22

ME_01 – ZZ – K2

The healing powers of Nature truly exist, quite apart from the medical powers evoked by physicians, but they exist like electricity. To benefit by them we must draw them, focus them, and concentrate them on ourselves. This is done by our strong and sufficient faith, by our own concentration of attention, and by our relaxing and stilling of the whole being.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Nature's healing power

#12819 – 7.10.2.29

ME_01 – X – K2

The modern man suffers from a certain physical sickness and some mental ailments which are of his own making. This is because his thoughts are forever centering in his personal ego, his emotions forever revolving round his little self. He can help to free himself from the one and heal himself of the other if he will create an oasis in this desert by daily and purposely withdrawing into the impersonal atmosphere of the higher nature.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Nature's healing power

#12822 – 7.10.2.32

BSG_5 – P – D

The first principle of healing is to stop the obstructive resistance of the little ego so carried away by the belief that it can successfully manage its own life. The method of doing this is to cast out all negative thoughts, all destructive feelings, and all excessive egoisms. The second principle is to attune the individual to the universal life-force. The method of doing this is to learn the art of relaxing body and mind.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Nature's healing power

#12825 – 7.10.2.35

ME_01 – P – DK2

How few have learned that it is not the quantity of medicine they swallow but the degree of contact with Nature’s lifeforce that they establish which cures their diseases.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Nature's healing power

#12828 – 7.10.2.38

ME_01 – Z – K2

The same power which can illuminate the seeking mind can also heal the suffering body.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Nature's healing power

#12829 – 7.10.2.39

BSG_5 – P – D

It is possible to direct the healing power of the white light, in imagination and with deep breathing, to any part of the body where pain is felt or to any organ which is not functioning properly. This does not instantly remove the trouble, but it does make a contribution towards the healing process.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Exercises and meditations

#12834 – 7.10.2.44

ME_01 – Z – DK2

If you want to heal a person do not concentrate upon the nature of their disease, or you may strengthen it. Concentrate rather upon the nature of their Overself, that its mighty grace may be released to them. Do not even pray that they will be cured. Pray rather that the power of the Overself’s grace may work within them, and do what it will.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Exercises and meditations

#12836 – 7.10.2.46

ME_01 – ZZZ – DK2

After he has felt the divine power and presence within himself as the reward of his meditative search, he may turn it towards the healing of his body’s ailments. This would be impossible if he were less than relaxed, peaceful, assured, if either fear or desire introduced their negative presence and thus obstructed his receptivity to the healing-power’s penetration. When the contact is successfully made, he should draw the power to every atom of his body and let it be permeated. The cure could be had at a single treatment, if he could sit still and let the work go on to completion. But although the power is unlimited, his patience is not. And so he must treat himself day after day until the outer and physical result matches the inner and spiritual achievement.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Exercises and meditations

#12839 – 7.10.2.49

ME_01 – X – K1

Healing Exercise: Inhale deeply but slowly and unhurriedly. With each breath fix the mind in the life-essence pouring in and permeating each part of the body until the whole of it is bathed and held by the stream.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Exercises and meditations

#12841 – 7.10.2.51

ME_01 – X – K2

Healing Exercise: Hold the thought that all these countless cells which compose your anatomy shall receive this transmuted energy. Along with the concentration inhale deeply, hold the breath, and exhale for an equal amount of time.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Exercises and meditations

#12842 – 7.10.2.52

ME_01 – X – K2

In the moment when you feel that actual contact with the One Infinite Life-Power has been made, draw it into the body and let it permeate every part, every organ, and every atom. It will tend to dissolve sickness and drive out disease.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Exercises and meditations

#12850 – 7.10.2.60

ME_01 – Z – K2

Hindu religion worships light in its intensest form—the sun. The Hindu holy men say that the sun-bath is good for the body; if taken when its rays are mild—that is, at dawn and at dusk—it can cure the body of many diseases. They further claim this practice will re-absorb the semen into the blood stream and thus strengthen the physical body.

Healing of the Self > The Universal Life Force > Exercises and meditations

#12858 – 7.10.2.68

BN – X – D

As he penetrates deeper and deeper into that subtle world of his inner being, he finds that thought, feeling, and even speech affect its condition as powerfully as outer conditions affect his physical being. A complete falsehood or a gross exaggeration, when conscious and deliberate, stuns or inflames the delicate psyche. If persisted in and made habitual, the psyche becomes diseased and falls sick. This may be followed, soon or late according to the sensitivity of the man, by physical sickness. If sickness does not come, then he will be exposed to it in the form of a karma shadowing some future incarnation.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12865 – 7.10.3.3

BN – Z – K

Where there is no obvious transgression of the laws of bodily hygiene to account for a case of ill health, there may still be a hidden one not yet uncovered. Where there is no hidden one, the line of connection from a physical effect may be traced to a mental cause—that is, the sickness may be a psychosomatic one. Where this in turn is also not obvious, there may still be a hidden mental one. Where all these classes of cause do not exist, then the origin of the sickness must necessarily be derived from the karma of the previous reincarnation—sometimes even from a still earlier one, although that is less likely. Under the law of recompense, the very type of body with which the patient was born contains latently, and was predisposed to reveal eventually, the sickness itself. The cause may be any one of widely varying kinds, may even be a moral transgression in the earlier life which could not find any other way of expiation and so had to be expiated in this way. Therefore it would be an error to believe that all cases of ill health directly arise from the transgression of physical hygienic laws.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12866 – 7.10.3.4

BN – ZZ – K

It is possible to be quite enlightened without being quite free from physical maladies. For the body's karma does not end until the body's life ends.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12867 – 7.10.3.5

BN – ZZ – K

In a broad general division, philosophy finds three causes of sickness. They are wrong thinking, wrong living, and bad karma. But because karma merely brings back to us the results of the other two, we may even limit the causes of disease to them. And again because conduct is ultimately the expression of thought, we may limit the cause of disease finally to a single one of wrong thinking… But the thinking which produced the sickness may belong to the far past, to some earlier reincarnation, and not necessarily to the present one…

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12869E – 7.10.3.7

BSG_5 – Z – DEK

It might be said that most 'organic' physical disease is karmically caused and most functional physical sickness is mentally caused.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12870 – 7.10.3.8

BN – ZZZ – K1

Deep hurts and bitter experiences from a former unknown incarnation throw their shadows on the present one.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12873 – 7.10.3.11

BN – ZZ – DK

There is no inevitability of physical suffering on this path generally, but there is for certain individuals. Karma comes down more plentifully at certain times for certain aspirants, but as mind and body are highly interrelated, this is offset by the purification of body and emotions. Hence students need not be afraid of this. Again, spiritual healing is a real fact, but it works in a mysterious way dependent on divine grace; but here also it applies only to certain individuals.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12878 – 7.10.3.16

BN – Z – K

Disease may re-emerge again at some later time, or if it doesn't, it will do so in the next birth. We are not saying here however that all sickness and all disease are caused by wrong thinking in this present reincarnation but that some of them are. How great or how small that part is depends entirely upon the individuals concerned. With some, it is a very high proportion, with others it is a small one. In the former case, therefore, we must look back to anterior lives for the wrong thought or wrong conduct which produced the sickness of the present physical body as bad karma.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12881 – 7.10.3.19

BN – ZZ – K

Although Mary Baker Eddy—of whom I am a great admirer—was quite correct in saying that the Real Self is free from sickness, pain, and suffering, the simple denial—by the individual—of these obviously present symptoms will often fail to banish them. Philosophy takes a broader view: it does not attempt to deny the undeniable. It recognizes that all prolonged or intense suffering, being karmically self-earned—whether in this lifetime or in a former one—carries with it a message. This message must be learned and actively taken to heart while, at the same time, every available means—physical, mental, and spiritual—within reason should also be applied in the hope of relieving the suffering and restoring normalcy. The practice of Christian Science is one part of these means, and a most valuable part, but still only a part.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12882 – 7.10.3.20

B_17 – P – K

The thoughts of God must necessarily be expressive of the will of God. It is quite impossible to separate the one from the other. It logically follows that suffering and sickness being present in the world, they must also be the expressions of God's will.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12883E – 7.10.3.21

A250224 – Z – K

Metaphysical or faith cure is an oversimplification of the healing problem and consequently yields only a part-truth. Bodily healing is an occasional by-product of the healing of thought and feeling, or the re-education of moral character; it is not at all the invariable result of such processes. Sickness may come to advanced students for a variety of causes, some of which arise from outside the individual. Karma is the commonest, but one such cause might be the application of a test or ordeal from the divine soul to the human ego that aspires to evolve more rapidly.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12886 – 7.10.3.24

BN – ZZZ – K

Certain maladies in the physical being may quite easily be directly traced to evil impulses in the mental being. It is not only man's diseases which are the consequence of his bad thinking, however, but also man's misfortunes. If he is healthy in body he may be unhealthy in fortune. Karma's retribution expresses itself in a variety of ways. It is a mistake to narrow this linking of wrong thinking and ill feeling with the body's sicknesses alone. They are to be linked with all forms of bad karma. Disease is only one form. Their effects may appear in other forms instead. Disease is merely one of them.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The karma of the body

#12889 – 7.10.3.27

BN – ZZ – K

Wrong thinking expresses itself in the end in wrong functioning of some organ of the body. The nature of the thoughts and the nature of the malady correspond to each other.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12891 – 7.10.3.29

ME_01 – ZZ – K

The body’s organs are affected by the mind’s states. Worry or fear, shock or excessive emotion may disturb, reduce, increase, or even paralyse their working for a time—in some cases for all time.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12898 – 7.10.3.36

BN – ZZ – DK*

We know that a person can worry himself into a state of physical sickness, but there seems to be less acceptance for the opposite idea that emotions and thoughts can also produce healing and not injury.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12905 – 7.10.3.43

ME_01 – P – DK

When fears and doubts, negative thoughts and pessimistic moods strongly dominate the inner life for long periods, or for a shorter one more strongly, they may provoke repercussions in the physical body and create disease.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12906 – 7.10.3.44

BN – X – D

When a man is ever bitter, resentful, unkind, and critical; never gentle, constructive, praising, and compassionate; then poison trickles through his inner being and must in the end reappear in his bodily being.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12908 – 7.10.3.46

BN – ZZ – DK

All negative states of mind and emotions are destructive. They work harm to some one of the body's organs or interfere with its functions. If those states are continuous, they sink into the subconscious and the results appear as disease. This is possible because the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the automatic functions of the body, is open to influence by the subconscious mind.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12911 – 7.10.3.49

BN – X – D

Depression, melancholia, and despair have been known to bring on wasting ailments and even death. The mind's suffering, if too intense and too prolonged, may shift to the flesh.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12916 – 7.10.3.54

B_17 – Z – K

To the extent that he can release himself by inner discipline from his negatives, to that extent will he release himself from many troubles which might otherwise descend upon him. As irritations fall away from his personal feelings, ills of body, circumstance, or relationship fall away from threatening his personal fortunes.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12920 – 7.10.3.58

BN – X – D

If the mind of a spiritual healer can help to remove disease, it is equally true that the mind of some other person can contribute to cause it. If one’s own wrong thinking may be partly or wholly responsible for one’s diseases, others who are thinking constantly or powerfully about one may be partly or even wholly responsible for them too. This is the basis of sorcery in the Orient and of witchcraft in the medieval West.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12921 – 7.10.3.59

ME_01 – P – K

People do not understand how their destructive moods, thoughts, and emotions affect the cerebro-spinal system and through that eventually the intestinal organs to the degree of creating poisons within those organs. It is not enough to take care of the diet and to eliminate foods which are harmful to physical health. It is equally necessary to take care of thoughts and feelings, and to eliminate all those which are harmful both to spiritual and physical health.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12929 – 7.10.3.67

ME_01 – ZZ – K

There is a corrective purpose in the existence of disease. Any cure which removes the symptoms but fails to correct the inner mental or physical cause of them is merely a temporary expedient, not a real cure. It serves the ego’s present convenience. But the future must necessarily be menaced by a reappearance of the same disease, or of a different one which will also express the cause. And this may happen either in the same lifetime or in the next.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12933 – 7.10.3.71

ME_01 – ZZ – K

The power of the mind over flesh is proved convincingly even by such simple, everyday experiences as the vomiting caused by a horrible sight, the weeping caused by a tragic one, the loss of appetite or positive indigestion caused by bad news, and the headache caused by quarreling.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Mental states and physical conditions

#12945 – 7.10.3.83

BN – X – D

Those who seek healing only to be restored to sensual courses and selfish designs, may commit further errors and be worse off in the end.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The importance of hygiene

#12963 – 7.10.3.101

BN – Z – K1

It would be just as wrong to argue that every physical disease proves a moral fault or mental deformity to exist, as it would be to argue that the absence of such disease proves moral or mental perfection to be attained. Many animals are quite healthy too!

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The importance of hygiene

#12964 – 7.10.3.102

BN – X – K1

Where physical laws of hygiene have been broken and continue to be broken, where gluttonous or ill-informed eating and intemperate living have led to bodily disturbance, the sufferer must rectify his physical errors still whether his spiritual healing is successful or not.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The importance of hygiene

#12965 – 7.10.3.103

BN – Z – K1

Insofar as man through ignorance fails to observe nature's laws or through weakness persistently disobeys them, he is everywhere suffering the penalties attached to his wrong habits.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The importance of hygiene

#12967 – 7.10.3.105

B_17 – Z – K

The man who revels in his sensuality will naturally defend it. But when some form of great suffering comes to him as a direct consequence, and he sees it for the first time as a sin, he will cease doing so.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > The importance of hygiene

#12969 – 7.10.3.107

B_17 – Z – K

Those who have witnessed the ghastly results of becoming addicted to drugs may not know that at a certain point the addict may become involved very easily with what is called "black magic." This is the forbidden path which seeks to obtain a higher spiritual result by the wrong means, by forbidden means and, in the end, causes a man to lose his own soul and become a slave of evil forces.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Dangers of drugs and alcohol

#12982 – 7.10.3.120

B_16 – Z – K

Strong alcohol paralyses the brain centre controlling spiritual and intuitive activity for two hours, and so nullifies meditation, which should not be practised within two hours of drinking it. Those who take such stimulants and still want to unfold spiritually should restrict their drinks to light wine or beer.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Dangers of drugs and alcohol

#12983 – 7.10.3.121

BN – X – K1

Smoking not only harms the body but also depresses the mind. The cumulative and ultimate effect of the poison which it introduces is to lower the emotional state by periodic moods of depression.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Dangers of drugs and alcohol

#12984 – 7.10.3.122

BN – X – K1

It is true that a number of persons who have used a plant (not chemical) drug have had visions of previous embodiment in animal and human forms. But because they got it in an illegitimate way, they often have to suffer a penalty, either in self-damage or in self-entangled karma.

Healing of the Self > The Origins of Illness > Dangers of drugs and alcohol

#13009 – 7.10.3.147

BN – X – K

A wise system of healing would coordinate physical and psychological, artificial and natural, dietary and spiritual treatments, using some or all of them as a means to the end—cure. But as the spiritual is the supreme therapeutic agent—if it can be touched—it will always be the one last resort for the desperate and chronic sufferers when all other agents have had to accept defeat.

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > Services of the healing arts

#13010 – 7.10.4.1

ME_01 – P – K

Why should we not unite working on the body by physical means with working on it by the healing power of the higher self? Why not give the latter a chance to repair its own work, since the physical-mental ego is its own projection?

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > Services of the healing arts

#13012 – 7.10.4.3

ME_01 – P – K

The art of healing needs all the contributions it can get, from all the worthy sources it can find. It cannot realize all its potentialities unless it accepts them all: the homeopath along with the allopath, the naturopath along with the chiropractor, the psychiatrist along with the spiritual ministrant. It does not need them all together at one and the same time, of course, but only as parts of its total resources. A philosophic attitude refuses to bind itself exclusively to any single form of cure.

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > Services of the healing arts

#13014 – 7.10.4.5

BN – Z – K1

It is foolish to believe that there is any particular healing method which has only to be applied for it to be universally and equally successful or that there is any particular human healer who has only to be visited for one to be cured.

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > Services of the healing arts

#13023 – 7.10.4.14

ME_01 – P – K

On transplants: If they have any positive value at all, amid all the negative ones, it is a blind and mistaken attempt to renovate human life—blind, because ignorant of life's higher laws of rebirth and karma, mistaken because leading always to greater evils than those it seeks to remedy.

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > Medicine and surgery

#13048 – 7.10.4.39

BN – X – K

Iconoclastic science came into the world and in a few short centuries turned most of us into sceptics. It may therefore surprise the scientists to be told that within two or three decades their own further experiments and their own new instruments will enable them to penetrate into, and prove the existence of, a superphysical world. But the best worth of these eventual discoveries will be in their positive demonstration of the reality of a moral law pervading man's life—the law that we shall reap after death what we have sown before it, and the law that our own diseased thoughts have created many of our own bodily diseases.

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > Medicine and surgery

#13052 – 7.10.4.43

BN – ZZZ – K1

The mistake of the analysts is to treat lightly what ought to be taken seriously, to regard as a parental fixation or sex repression what is really the deep spiritual malady of our times—emptiness of soul.

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > The practices of psychology

#13058 – 7.10.4.49

BN – X – K1

The psychoanalysts work busily on the ego all the time, thus keeping the poor patient still imprisoned in it. But a reference to the Overself might help him really to get rid of some complexes.

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > The practices of psychology

#13081 – 7.10.4.72

BN – ZZZ – DK1

Too many of these neurotics are too full of unstable egoism to have their emotional complexes soluble by any other psychological treatment than a robust and direct attack upon these complexes. A mushy sentimentality will merely prolong the life of such a complex.

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > Neuroses and its treatment

#13105 – 7.10.4.96

B_10 – ZZ – K

The mild use of tobacco and the mild indulgence in alcohol are better in the end than the sudden breaking away from them under the spell of a hypnotic "cure." For in the one case the addict still has some room left for the development of self-control, whereas in the other, not only has he none but he is liable either to relapse again or else to divert his addiction into some other channel which may be not less harmful and may even be more.

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > Hypnosis

#13128 – 7.10.4.119

BN – X – K1

Hypnotism is morally wrong because it is the imposition of one person's will on another person. It is also practically ineffective because its results are mostly transient and the patient relapses later into his original or even a worse state. This is because it is an attempt to cheat karma and to sidestep evolution, but the Overself of the patient will not allow that to happen. Hence hypnotism's failure, for it is an artificial attempt to do the patient's own walking for him. Every man must in the end do it for himself. The hypnotist who cures me of the drink habit leaves me just as weak-willed afterwards as I was before, nay, even more so. But if I develop my own willpower and thus cure myself of the habit I get both a permanent cure and a stronger character.

Healing of the Self > Healers of The Body and Mind > Hypnosis

#13136 – 7.10.4.127

BN – X – K

Spiritual healing must be separated from mental healing, as the former works by a descent of divine grace but the latter by a power-concentration of mind. A cure in the first case will not only be permanent but also affect the character of the patient, whereas in the second case a cure may be and often is (especially when hypnotic methods are used) transient whilst the character remains untouched. In this connection there are some statements in the chapter on “Errors of the Spiritual Seeker’’ in my book ‘The Inner Reality’.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Spiritual and mental healing defined

#13139 – 7.10.5.3

ME_01 – P – K

In the case of mental healing there is not necessarily any change at all in the character of the patient. His angers, his hostilities, or his resentments may remain as active as before. His cure simply illustrates the power of mind over body—his own or someone else’s mind. It is achieved by faith or concentration or suggestion. But in the case of spiritual healing there is an inner change along with bodily cure.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Spiritual and mental healing defined

#13141 – 7.10.5.5

ME_01 – P – K

It is not the true spiritual healing if it leaves the character and outlook untouched, unimproved. There are other kinds of healing which may relieve or cure one kind of ailment while leaving the person still open to make the karma that later brings on another kind of ailment.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Spiritual and mental healing defined

#13143 – 7.10.5.7

ME_01 – Z – K2

True healing is primarily the healing of spiritual ignorance, never the gaining of prosperity, and only occasionally the getting of good health. It is to win an unbreakable peace and a perfect knowledge which neither death nor man can steal or impair.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Spiritual and mental healing defined

#13155E – 7.10.5.19

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK

The New Thought mental healing cults do not understand the difference between those occult powers (healing is one of them) performed by the ego deliberately and those occult powers performed through the ego spontaneously at the Overself's bidding. The first kind are on an inferior level and keep the practitioner still enchained within egoism. But of course, by contrast to the orthodox church teaching, this New Thought teaching is certainly broader.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Mental healing—its limited success

#13160 – 7.10.5.24

BN – X – K1

… it is essential to note that the healer can utter these healing formulae, think these healing truths, either out of his intellect or out of his insight. In the first case his words and thoughts are merely like the map of a country. In the second case they are like an actual visit to the country. The first healer makes an unwarranted claim, does not see that his statements could be truly made only if he attained the stature and purity of Jesus. It is not enough that the patient should have faith; the healer himself must have the requisite higher consciousness. For the divine power which actually effects the healing will not come from his ordinary self but out of this higher one.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Mental healing—its limited success

#13175E – 7.10.5.39

ME_01 – P – K

In all this Christian Science teaching it is essential to note that the healer can utter these healing formulae, think these healing truths, either out of his intellect or out of his insight. In the first case his words and thoughts are merely like the map of a country. In the second case they are like an actual visit to the country. The first healer makes an unwarranted claim, does not see that his statements could be truly made only if he attained the stature and purity of Jesus. It is not enough that the patient should have faith; the healer himself must have the requisite higher consciousness. For the divine power which actually effects the healing will not come from his ordinary self but out of this higher one.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Mental healing—its limited success

#13175 – 7.10.5.39

BN – X – K

Another extremely fanatical attitude of which we must beware is the belief that mental healing displaces all other systems and agencies for curing disease or keeping health; that its advocates may totally discard every branch of medicine and surgery, hygiene, and physical treatment. Sanity and balance call for the acceptance in its proper place of whatever Nature and man can contribute. With these preliminary warnings, we venture to predict that as the principles and practices of mental healing come to be better, namely more rationally understood, it will establish for itself a firm place in therapeutics which will have to be conceded—however grudgingly—by the most materialistic and most sceptical of medicos.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Mental healing—its limited success

#13192 – 7.10.5.56

BN – Z – K1

Even if Christian Science and New Thought sects produce healings, they are still not truly "divine." They use some lower force—some vital force, as the Indians say. For they are all attached to the ego, which is itself a consequence of their unconscious belief in its reality. The ego has cunningly inserted itself even into these highly spiritual teachings and is still the hidden source behind both their prophets and their followers. This explains Mary B. Eddy's and so many New Thought teachers' commercialism as well as the errors which are contained in the teachings of Emmet Fox, which led to his own mental-physical breakdown and death.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Mental healing—its limited success

#13195 – 7.10.5.59

BN – X – K1

Those who are born with healing skills, probably brought over from former births, function on different levels. The commonest is that which radiates life-force and energizes the cells of the sick person. This kind of healer must first put himself into a passive mood and then, when he feels the vibratory force of the life-force active within him, let it pass, with or without touching the patient, into the latter. The vibrations of the life-force are universal; they are not the healer’s own personal property. He simply possesses a skill in letting himself be used as a channel, and it is usually concentrated in his hands. A healer like Saswitha, who says he is merely drawing the therapeutic power from his patient and redirecting it or returning it back to the patient, forgets that if this is so the patient himself gets it from the cosmic forces. It is not his own personal property.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Healers and the spiritual path

#13204 – 7.10.5.68

ME_01 – Z – K1

Spiritual healing is a gift which is innate in certain individuals and very difficult to acquire by others. It may, however, exist latently, and could show itself only after a certain degree of spiritual development has been attained.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Healers and the spiritual path

#13223 – 7.10.5.87

BN – X – DM

All healers lose their power after a time. This is to lead them to a higher level.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Healers and the spiritual path

#13226 – 7.10.5.90

ME_01 – P – K

My basic conclusion is that healing exists on all these different levels, which means its power comes from different sources. But this said, I feel that all healers should know their limits, their limitations, and I fear that many of them do not simply because they are carried away by their enthusiasm. Secondly, I feel that all healers would not only be none the worse for some knowledge of anatomy and physiology and the commoner maladies, but they should even attempt to acquire some of this knowledge. Otherwise many errors, many false or exaggerated claims, are made by the healers. I am not questioning their honesty; I believe most of them are honest. But I am questioning their lack of knowledge, I mean accurate knowledge and fuller knowledge. On the other hand, I criticize the medical profession for failing to enter into dialogue with the healers, for they would learn much to their own profit and to the improvement of their professional help if they adopted a humbler attitude towards the unorthodox healers.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13229 – 7.10.5.93

BN – Z – K1

Those who approach him with their wish to be healed and their faith in his power to bring it to realization, have still not approached him aright. They must also be willing to have their own contribution to the disease’s existence pointed out. They must also agree to rectify wrong habits of living and thinking. If they come only for pleasant words and a successful cure, if they are not prepared to deny themselves or to discipline themselves, he cannot heal them.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13231 – 7.10.5.95

ME_01 – Z – K

Deep down within the heart there is a stillness which is healing, a trust in the universal laws which is unwavering, and a strength which is rock-like. But because it is so deep we need both patience and perseverance when digging for it.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13233 – 7.10.5.97

ME_01 – ZZ – DK1

To pray for a bodily cure and nothing more is a limited and limiting procedure. Pray also to be enlightened as to why this sickness fell upon you. Ask also what you can do to remove its cause. And above all, ask for the Water of Life, as Jesus bade the woman at the well to ask.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13234 – 7.10.5.98

B_11 – ZZ – K1

If he can apply this teaching now, if he can put his faith in and make his contact with the higher power from this very moment, if he can forget himself for an instant, he can receive healing instantaneously.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13235 – 7.10.5.99

BN – X – K1

When Jesus told the sick person,"Thy faith has brought thee recovery," he did not mean, as many now think, faith that the cure will be effected. No–he meant faith in the healing power–God. The first kind keeps the mind still centered in ego, whereas the second kind of faith lifts the mind away from ego. Another translation: "Your faith has made you well."

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13236 – 7.10.5.100

B_11 – Z – K

Because the Overself is not outside a man but is his own innermost nature, full faith in its presence and power is essential to experience its healing and help.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13237 – 7.10.5.101

BN – X – D

An honest healer can say only that their healing depends on two conditions being fulfilled: the faith of the patient and the permission of the higher powers.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13242 – 7.10.5.106

ME_01 – Z – K

Those who do not understand the Overself’s workings expect it always to manifest—if it manifests at all—in all its naked purity. If they desire healing, they think that the Overself’s help can show itself only in a direct spiritual healing, for instance. The truth is that they may get the cure from a purely physical medium, like a fast, a diet, or a drug; yet that which roused them to seek this particular medium or gave it its successful result ‘was’ the Overself.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13250 – 7.10.5.114

ME_01 – Z – K1

Jesus' primary intention was to heal the inner man, to promote a directional change in his thought and feeling, to divert him from a sinful to a righteous attitude towards life, and to convert him from spiritual indifference to spiritual enthusiasm. The healing of the body was but a by-product and took place only after these inner processes had been successfully carried out. When the higher elements in a man's character got the better of his lower ones, the victory was followed by, and symbolized in, a return of health to the sick body. It was a visible sign of the reality of the invisible healing. Jesus could not have cured the physical sicknesses if the sufferers had not previously felt his greatness, repented of their former way of life, asked forgiveness, and resolved to become righteous.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13251E – 7.10.5.115

B_11 – ZEL1/3 – DEK1

Jesus could not have cured the physical sicknesses if the sufferers had not previously felt his greatness, repented of their former way of life, asked forgiveness, and resolved to become righteous. The Gospels record the cases of those who were able to do this; they do not record the cases of the far larger number who could not and whose bodily maladies therefore remained uncured. Most readers erroneously believe that Jesus could heal any and every person. Nobody can do that because nobody can force faith, conversion, penitence, moral evolution, and spiritual aspiration into a stubborn man's heart.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13251E – 7.10.5.115

B_11 – ZEL2/3 – DEK1

There is a further factor in Jesus' healings. They were often accompanied by the proclamation that the patient's sins were forgiven him. This means first, that the aforesaid prerequisite conditions had been established and second, that the man's Overself had intimated its gracious cancellation of the particular bad destiny which had expressed itself in the sickness. The forgiveness came through Jesus as a medium; it did not originate in him. Those who believe that Jesus personally could unburden all men's evil fate, err. He could do it only in those cases where a man's own higher self-willed it. Jesus then became a medium for its grace.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13251E – 7.10.5.115

B_11 – ZEL3/3 – DEK1

The healing does not come from the healer himself; it comes ‘through’ him. What he does is to prepare conditions rendering it possible for this to happen. But this is no guarantee that the Overself will necessarily make use of them every time.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13252 – 7.10.5.116

ME_01 – P – K

We eagerly seek to be relieved of sickness or trouble, but where relief is followed by a feeling of relationship to the Overself, we have gained something far more valuable than we originally sought.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13253 – 7.10.5.117

BSG_5 – P – DK*

Spiritual healing cannot be successfully practised by anybody who has merely picked up its jargon and intellectually familiarized himself with its ideology. It can be successfully practised only by one who has entered into the consciousness of, and surrendered his ego to, the divine spirit within himself.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13258 – 7.10.5.122

ME_01 – P – DK

The attunement of one’s mind to the Universal Mind, of one’s heart to the fundamental love behind things, is capable of producing various effects. One of them may be the healing of bodily ills.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > The work of the Overself

#13267 – 7.10.5.131

ME_01 – Z – DK1

The basis of higher healing work is the ‘realization’ of man as Mind. But the latter is a dimensionless unindividuated unconditioned entity. It is not 'my' individual mind. The field of Mind is a common one whereas the field of consciousness is divided up into individual and separate holdings. This is a difference with vast implications, for whoever can cross from the second field to the first, crosses at the same time from an absurdly limited world into a supremely vital one. Consequently, genuine and permanent healing is carried on without one’s conscious association and can be effected by dropping the ego-mind and with it all egoistic desires. Hence the first effort should be to ignore the disease and gain the realization. Only 'after' the latter has been won should the thoughts be allowed to descend again to the disease, with the serene trust that the bodily condition may safely be left in the hands of the World-Mind for final disposal as It decides. There should not be the slightest attempt to 'dictate' a cure to the higher power nor the slightest attempt to introduce personal will into the treatment. Such attempts will only defeat their purpose. The issues will partly be decided on the balance of the karmic and evolutionary factors concerned in the individual case. And yet there are cults which do not find it at all incongruous to suggest to the Infinite Mind what should thus be showered upon one, or to dictate to karma what exactly it should do! Once surrender is truly made, the desires of the self go with it and peace reigns in the inner life whether illness still reigns in the external life or not. Thus there is a false easy yielding of the will which deceives no higher power than the personal self, and there is an honest yielding which may really invoke the divine grace.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13268E – 7.10.5.132

ME_01 – ZEL1/2 – K2

The basis of higher healing work is the ‘realization’ of man as Mind. But the latter is a dimensionless unindividuated unconditioned entity. It is not 'my' individual mind. The field of Mind is a common one whereas the field of consciousness is divided up into individual and separate holdings. This is a difference with vast implications, for whoever can cross from the second field to the first, crosses at the same time from an absurdly limited world into a supremely vital one. Consequently, genuine and permanent healing is carried on without one’s conscious association and can be effected by dropping the ego-mind and with it all egoistic desires. Hence the first effort should be to ignore the disease and gain the realization. Only 'after' the latter has been won should the thoughts be allowed to descend again to the disease, with the serene trust that the bodily condition may safely be left in the hands of the World-Mind for final disposal as It decides. There should not be the slightest attempt to 'dictate' a cure to the higher power nor the slightest attempt to introduce personal will into the treatment. Such attempts will only defeat their purpose. The issues will partly be decided on the balance of the karmic and evolutionary factors concerned in the individual case. And yet there are cults which do not find it at all incongruous to suggest to the Infinite Mind what should thus be showered upon one, or to dictate to karma what exactly it should do! Once surrender is truly made, the desires of the self go with it and peace reigns in the inner life whether illness still reigns in the external life or not. Thus there is a false easy yielding of the will which deceives no higher power than the personal self, and there is an honest yielding which may really invoke the divine grace.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13268E – 7.10.5.132

ME_01 – ZEL2/2 – K2

It is a mistake, however, to turn the higher self into a mere convenience to be used chiefly for obtaining healing or getting guidance, for healing the sicknesses of the physical body, or guiding the activities of the physical ego. It should be sought for its own sake, and these other things should be sought only occasionally or incidentally, as and when needed. They should not be made habitual. In his periodic meditations, for instance, the aspirant should seek the divine source of his being because it is right, necessary, and good for him to do so and he should forget every other desire. Only after he has done that and found the source, and only on his backward journey to the day’s activities, may he remember these lesser desires and utilize the serenity and power thus gained for attending to them.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13269 – 7.10.5.133

ME_01 – P – K

Your assertion that Jesus primarily wished to free men of disease, or to teach them how to become so, is untenable. Whoever has entered into the consciousness of his divine soul—which Jesus had in such fullness—has his whole scale of values turned over. It is then that he sees that the physical is ephemeral by nature, whereas the reality whence it is derived is eternal by nature; that what happens inside a man's heart and head is fundamentally more important than what happens inside his body; and that the divine consciousness may and can be enjoyed even though the fleshly tenement is sick.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13270 – 7.10.5.134

B_11 – ZZZ – K

The sufferer should use whatever physical medical means are available—both orthodox and unorthodox ones. At the same time he should practice daily prayer. But he should not directly ask for the physical healing for its own sake. He should ask first for spiritual qualities and then only for the physical healing with the expressed intention of utilizing his opportunity of bodily incarnation to improve himself spiritually.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13271 – 7.10.5.135

ME_01 – P – DK

Healing is but a mere incident in the work of a sage. Such a one will always keep as his foremost purpose the opening of the spiritual heart of man.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13272 – 7.10.5.136

BN – ZZ – DK1

The Overself knows what you are, what you seek, and what you need.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13274 – 7.10.5.138

BN – X – D

Continued ill health is a great trial. The very fact that an individual has been forced to endure a life of endless suffering will surely lead him to realize that worldly life yields little—if any—real satisfaction or happiness, and that it is necessary to seek it in something Higher, in the Quest of the true Spiritual Life, or in God. Somewhere, sometime, this need of his will call forth an answer.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13275 – 7.10.5.139

B_17 – ZZ – K

The Overself does have the power to heal the diseases of the body by its Grace, but whether that Grace will be thus exercised or not is unpredictable. It will do what is best for the individual in the ultimate sense, not what the ego desires. For the Divine Wisdom is back of everything every time.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13276 – 7.10.5.140

BSG_5 – ZZ – DK

Spiritual healing does not necessarily follow automatically upon the giving of complete faith. Nor does it necessarily follow upon the voluntary cleansing of the emotional nature. There are other factors involved in it. The place of suffering and sickness in the World-Idea is one of them. For those aspirants who will be satisfied with nothing short of achieving the Highest, the need of transcending the ego takes precedence over everything else, even over the body’s healing.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13277 – 7.10.5.141

ME_01 – ZZ – DEK

For those aspirants who will be satisfied with nothing short of achieving the Highest, the need of transcending the ego takes precedence over everything else, even over the body's healing.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13277E – 7.10.5.141

BA12 – ZZZ – DEK

People are attracted towards these cults either because they are in desperate need of physical healing or because they are in need of spiritual healing, or because they see in these doctrines an opportunity to satisfy both spiritual aspiration and material needs by a single faith and effort. They are trying to make the best of both worlds. To be able to attain the Kingdom of Heaven and to gain prosperity or cure disease along with it is certainly a most attractive benefit. But unfortunately it is also a little too good to be true. We would all like to have it, but can we have it? What did Jesus himself say about this point? He said, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you". The word of greatest importance in this sentence is the word "first". If you wish to employ the help of a higher power and feeling, then you must give your first thought, your first devotion, your first reverence, your first love to that higher power and not to any lesser thing, such as material gain or even physical cure, as the price of your worship.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13280 – 7.10.5.144

B_11 – ZZ – K

There are times when the Overself’s grace may manifest even in the ugly form of illness! If its entry into the everyday consciousness is blocked or twisted by materialistic scepticism, animalistic obsessions, inherited complexes, or excessive extroversion, it may forcibly make its way through them. The body may then be stricken down with sickness until such time as the blockage or distortion is removed.

Healing of the Self > The Healing Power of The Overself > Seek inner peace

#13283 – 7.10.5.147

BN – Z – DK

We see what appears to be evil rampant in the world, especially in this century, but it is not absolute evil. It is destined to disintegrate and vanish. How can you be so sure? Because if man grows he comes to the truth. If he does not then he loses his manhood for a time. His evil goes with him. The man who lives in the truth lives in ethereal light, beautiful peace, even if the shadows are there. He sees on deeper levels where evil cannot penetrate and where the senses of unevolved men cannot extend. If you are not able to know the great truths for yourself then believe in them. 

The Negatives > The Negatives > The Negatives

#13290 – 7.11.0.1

B_16 – ZZ – K

There is that in man which repeatedly works against his finer aspirations, which provides him with opposition. Upon this anvil his character is hammered out, shaped, and developed.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13291 – 7.11.1.1

BN – X – DK

So soon as a being limits interests and welfare to its own self exclusively, so soon is it bound to come into conflict with other beings. Thus evil originates through the first being's ignorance, not through the presence of an absolute and eternal principle of evil.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13292 – 7.11.1.2

B_16 – Z – K

Not to see the world as it is, with all its depravity and malice, is to be a fool, even if one happens to be a saint as well. The philosopher, like the ordinary man, sees its actuality but, unlike the ordinary man, is not stained by it. Moreover, he sees also the goodness and aspiration and, more importantly, the divine World-Idea.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13295 – 7.11.1.5

B_16 – Z – K

Evil is something which man encounters on his journey to Good. Evil-doing is what he expresses when still far from his destination.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13296 – 7.11.1.6

B_16 – Z – K

It is true that evil forces do exist but not true that they exist on the highest level. Insight into the ultimate sees them not.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13297 – 7.11.1.7

B_16 – Z – K

Evil is certainly present, plain to sight and unpleasant to experience; but it is not altogether, nor only, what it seems. It is really an appearance, and reconcilable with the benign source of good.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13298 – 7.11.1.8

B_16 – Z – K

Why is history such a record of wars, oppressions, exploitations, invasions, and persecutions? Why have all the saviours, avatars, prophets, and saints succeeded only with individual men here and there, not with the mass of mankind? Is the religious dream of universal goodness nothing more than a dream? It is not a help but a self-deception to ignore the double polarity of existence, the yin-and-yang in the universe, the shadow-self in man. Only outside of religion, in the philosophic realm of ultimate being, the Unique, the Real, where the entire world itself is cast out, can we talk of friction-free consciousness, and only in the deepest meditation can we share it. Although the experience is a temporary one, the peace in it so passes the understanding that "the kingdom of heaven" is its fit name. Here indeed is the Good raised to its highest degree. Here is a demonstration that human evil is but privation of good.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13299 – 7.11.1.9

B_16 – ZZ – K

What may be true on the ultimate level—the non-existence of evil, the reality of the Good, the True, the Beautiful—becomes false on the level of duality. Here the twofold powers, the opposites, do exist, do hold the world in their sway. To deny relative evil here is to confuse different planes of being.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13300 – 7.11.1.10

B_16 – ZZ – K1

Evil arises only when an entity goes astray into the delusions of separateness and materialism, and thence into conflict with other entities. There is no ultimate and eternal principle of evil, but there are forces of evil, unseen entities who have gone so far astray and are so powerful in themselves that they work against goodness, truth, and justice. But by their very nature such entities are doomed to eventual destruction, and even their work of opposition is utilized for good in the end and becomes the resistance against which evolution tests its own achievements, the grindstone against which it sharpens man's intelligence, the mirror in which it shows him his flaws.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13302 – 7.11.1.12

B_16 – ZZ – DK1

The lower nature is incurably hostile to the higher one. It prefers its fleeting joys with their attendant miseries, its ugly sins with their painful consequences, because this spells life to it.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13303 – 7.11.1.13

B_16 – Z – DMK1

Everything and everyone has a negative side. One could fill up a lifetime looking for and finding it. One could go on grumbling, criticizing, ranting, and hating. But there is also the positive and opposite side. The philosophical attitude seeks deeper, keeps calmer, for it finds equilibrium on another plane.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13304 – 7.11.1.14

B_16 – Z – K

Evil can take every form, even that of the guru, the quest, and the learner.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13306 – 7.11.1.16

B_16 – Z – K

Some years ago someone asked me, "What about absolute evil?" The answer is this: with Confucius we say that sin is due to ignorance, and with Pythagoras that evil is due to the absence of good. Ignorance leads to selfishness, and extreme ignorance leads to extreme selfishness, which in turn leads to extreme evil. Now, all these are relative conditions and pass away in time as the person learns his lessons through the series of experiences and corrects his mistakes during the reincarnations. There cannot be an absolute evil because there is only one Absolute Power, one God, one Supreme Being; and it is this which inspires the highest goodness known to man when he discovers its presence, through the Overself, in his heart. In that sense only I said there was an absolute good. The pairs of opposites exist only in the finite, relative, and limited world. There is no opposite to the Supreme Power in the timeless and infinite world, no Satan with whom God is in everlasting conflict. But, on its own level, Mind knows neither good nor bad. There is only IS-ness.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13307 – 7.11.1.17

B_16 – Z – K

When the good is absent the evil is present. The cynic who denies the existence of the good, the dreamer who denies the existence of the evil—each ignores the other half of life as evidenced in history and in the world around him.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13309 – 7.11.1.19

B_16 – Z – K

A cultivated man of taste and feeling can find much that is beautiful in nature and art; and if he is also a moral idealist, he will find much that is good and virtuous in human life and experience. But it would be incomplete to stop there and ignore the fact that there is also around us much that is base, dark, and even evil. The two sides put together form a complete observation. But it is only the mystics and the philosophers who can see—because it requires a deeper penetration than the intellect and the senses can give—that the dark side deals with the world of appearances, a world which is fleeting and ephemeral, whereas the good side and the beautiful side is merely a hint of that other world closer to Reality.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13310 – 7.11.1.20

B_16 – Z – K

Evil is a very real problem in this world of time and space. Evil forces exist and must be fought with all our strength. Nevertheless the Power out of which all things and all entities come is a beneficent one. Love is its radiation. There is no evil and no pain in it. They begin only on the lower levels of separation and differentiation.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13311 – 7.11.1.21

B_16 – Z – K

Philosophy does not agree with the doctrine that man can sink into oblivion permanently. If man's fundamental nature, however hidden it be, is essentially immaterial and of the same stuff as divinity, where can he sink back to except to that self-same divinity? The mystery of evil is perhaps the profoundest of all but it cannot be understood through surface views. Evil is closely connected with suffering and the latter in its turn with karma, which again is itself an expression of the fundamental self. It is all an educative process from which nobody can escape—not even Satan himself were there such a personal devil, which philosophy does not admit, although there are evil spirits, evil beings, and evil men. All will be saved because when seen from the timeless viewpoint they are already saved. The great mass of humanity are moving in the right direction, despite appearances to the contrary, and they shall enter the kingdom of heaven one day. Do not doubt that; the guarantee is that they are in their hidden selves already divine.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13312 – 7.11.1.22

B_16 – ZZZ – DEK

The great mass of humanity is moving in the right direction, despite appearances to the contrary, and they shall enter the kingdom of Heaven one day. Do not doubt that; the guarantee is that they are in their hidden selves already divine.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13312E – 7.11.1.22

BSG_4 – ZZZ – DEK

The mystery of evil is perhaps the profoundest of all but it cannot be understood through surface views. Evil is closely connected with suffering and the latter in its turn with karma, which again is itself an expression of the fundamental self. It is all an educative process from which nobody can escape—not even Satan himself were there such a personal devil, which philosophy does not admit, although there are evil spirits, evil beings, and evil men. All will be saved because when seen from the timeless viewpoint they are already saved.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13312E – 7.11.1.22

UR_1 – ZZZ – DEK3

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

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13312EM – 7.11.1.22

BSG_4 – ZZZ – DXK

No man is beyond redemption for no man is utterly evil.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13313 – 7.11.1.23

B_16 – Z – K

The problem of evil must be considered in the light of various factors. One of these is standpoint; one man's evil is another man's good. Another is karma; the individual has enough latitude to go to the dogs but has to suffer from the consequences of his acts. Then there is the question of rebirth. It seems impossible for human beings to be reborn as animals but Nature has made some provision for it. Then the ethical value of suffering must be considered. But most important of all are the questions of the nature of God, His relation to the universe and to humanity, and the purpose, if any, which is being worked out.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13314 – 7.11.1.24

B_16 – ZZ – K

When a man commits an act of violence and destruction against other men, he is denounced and punished as a criminal. But when Nature commits such an act and maims or kills a mass of people, God is not denounced. Instead, poet and priest search for some excuse, find some hidden good intention, for God's reputation for goodness must be saved.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13315 – 7.11.1.25

B_16 – Z – K

If the forces of evolution or laws of nature, as the expression of the World-Mind, have evoked the World-Idea and with it the possibilities of evil, we must unflinchingly accept the logical conclusion. This is that the World-Mind certainly permits the presence of Evil, allows and does not hinder its actuality. Nevertheless, we should always couple with this admission the equal and attendant truth that there is a higher outcome from the working of evil, a nobler purpose in its actuality. Through the operations of the law of recompense and the pressures of divine evolution it is transmuted into good. Evil has nowhere else to turn in the end except to turn itself into good!

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13316 – 7.11.1.26

B_16 – ZZ – K

To accept God as the source of this universe but to reject God as the source of those things contained in the universe which we dislike, is to deny God. Because we humans dislike evil and suffering, we separate them from God. But when we do that we separate ourselves from God.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13317 – 7.11.1.27

B_16 – Z – K

The good and the bad are all part of the world-picture, although their proportions vary as the time-wheel turns around.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13318 – 7.11.1.28

B_16 – Z – K

It is the function of such opposing forces, environments, or persons to compel him to negotiate them properly, or suffer the consequences.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13319 – 7.11.1.29

B_16 – Z – K

It would be a totally unobservant or totally theoretic person who denied the presence of Evil, but it would be an ill-informed one who did not perceive that its life and power are circumscribed.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13320 – 7.11.1.30

B_16 – ZZ – K

I hope I shall not be misunderstood for saying that I saw clearly how the physical expression of evil is a necessary prerequisite to the spiritual redemption from evil. For what the sinner does is after all only an outcome of what he thinks. If the doing of wrong actions will, by the higher law of recompense, bring him ultimately the physical punitive consequences of those actions, they will also bring him—and again ultimately—the thought that the two are inseparably connected together. This is a step—admittedly only a first step—toward that repentance and that purification which make redemption possible.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13321 – 7.11.1.31

B_16 – Z – K

The notion that the God-Power is engaged in a desperate struggle with an evil power, that God calls on man to give his help and that the outcome of this warfare depends to any extent on such help—this notion is a ridiculous one.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13322 – 7.11.1.32

B_16 – Z – K

My experience of life and observation of others have taught me that there is no situation in which you will find good alone present without some concomitant evil. To look for undiluted good is utopian, unrealistic, and self-deceptive.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13323 – 7.11.1.33

B_16 – ZZ – K

The awful fact of innate evil, the hideous mystery of innate sin, must be recognized and faced. We cannot make bad men into good men; but Nature, Life, with millions of years at her disposal, can.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13324 – 7.11.1.34

B_16 – ZZZ – K

Evil arises where the good is still undeveloped from its latency, but sometimes it is the distortion of the good.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13325 – 7.11.1.35

B_16 – ZZ – K

We will understand this problem better when we understand that the presence of good and evil in the universe does not signify a division of power but a division of thought.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13326 – 7.11.1.36

B_16 – Z – K

Thought is the cause; thought is the cure.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13327 – 7.11.1.37

B_16 – Z – K

Satan can pretend to be an Angel of Light. There are adepts in evil who hide their real aim behind an outward show of altruistic purpose.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13328 – 7.11.1.38

B_16 – Z – K

The evil in human relations springs from the ignorance in human beings. As each one brings the principle of truth into his own consciousness, he brings it into his relation with others as a result. The love which accompanies it denies birth to cruelty, anger, and lust or dissolves any which already exist.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13330 – 7.11.1.40

B_16 – Z – K

Although it is perfectly true that divine goodness is at the heart of things, it is no less true that demonic evil is on the surface of things. The followers of simple cults which stubbornly try to see only the goodness and not the evil, which deny things as they are and indulge wishful thinking, have themselves and their leaders to blame when disaster awakens them to the errors in the map they are following. They would do better to arouse themselves, while there is yet time, to keep a soundly balanced attitude, neither falling over to one side or the other overmuch, yet always remembering that superphysical experience between the incarnations is disproportionately good and free from evil, by contrast with physical plane experience.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13331 – 7.11.1.41

B_16 – Z – K

Let us not insult human reason by denying human evil.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13332 – 7.11.1.42

B_16 – Z – K

In any universal arrangement or personal situation, there is either gross disorder, with its consequent turmoil trouble and suffering, or there is real order, with its harmonious co-operation with the divine will working outward from the divine centre—be it man's heart or the sun's rays.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13333 – 7.11.1.43

B_17 – Z – K

The great ills (miscalled evils) of bodily life, such as disease and poverty, are often forced upon him by an implacable fate. But it would be a delusion to class them always with the great evils of mental life, such as hate and cruelty. For their control is frequently beyond his power, and their course may have to be endured, whereas sinful thoughts and their resultant deeds are not independent of his control and may be avoided.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13334 – 7.11.1.44

B_16 – ZZ – K

When right principles, theories, or concepts are taken up by the wrong persons, they become wrong themselves—because misused, falsified, perverted.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13335 – 7.11.1.45

B_16 – ZZZ – K

Suffering is not always an evil. It is often educative. All evil is then seen to spring from separativeness, which is a stage inevitable to all creatures as they follow the line of unfoldment. Evil therefore is the adverse element in Nature. Man can conquer it in his mind by conquering separativeness and realizing the All as himself. At the same time he discovers that the whole creation is really a mental one, hence like but not the same as a dream; and if he keeps awake to the Static Reality whilst in the midst of the earthly dream, the whole world becomes merely a school for educating consciousness. Then suffering, evil, and the like are transient aspects leaving permanent results.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13336 – 7.11.1.46

B_16 – ZZ – K

Those who ignorantly believe that God needs their help to ensure his triumph over evil in this world, have yet to learn that this triumph has been eternally accomplished already. The human being who can affect this situation either by helping or hindering does not exist.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13338 – 7.11.1.48

B_16 – Z – K

It is a disturbing concept which holds that man's goodness seldom becomes actualized without the presence of, and struggle against, man's evil.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13339 – 7.11.1.49

B_16 – Z – K

If men engaged themselves more in asking not "What is good and what is evil?" but rather "What is the Highest Good?" the first question would get itself answered automatically and peace would then follow anyway.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13340 – 7.11.1.50

B_16 – Z – DK

But because we affirm that the powers of evil will destroy themselves in the end, this must not be mistaken to mean that we may all sit down in smug complacency. We ought not to make this an excuse for inaction. On the contrary, it should inspire us to stronger efforts to preserve the noblest things in life from their attack.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13342 – 7.11.1.52

B_16 – ZZ – DMK

Burke may have over-weighted his judgement by applying it to all cases, but there is still plenty of substance in it when he declared: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13343 – 7.11.1.53

B_16 – ZZ – K

If humanity is to travel upward and fulfil its higher destiny, it can do so only by enlarging its area of interest and extending its field of consciousness. It must, in short, seek to realize the Overself on the one hand, to feel its oneness on the other.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13348E – 7.11.2.4

BSG_4 – P – DE

The ego's interference shows itself in practical life no less than in mystical life. Under its influence, people create a false and favourable mental picture of a situation or of a person. They then expect one or the other to yield results that by their very nature could not be yielded. This leads to disappointment and unhappiness within themselves. Or the same people create a false but unfavourable picture and then severely criticize another for faults which do not exist outside the picture itself. This leads to disharmony and friction with others. From this simple instance we may see that the elimination of egotistic interference—a goal that philosophic discipline sets for itself—is not merely a theoretical affair for dreamers or hermits with nothing else to do but is a practical affair promising great practical benefits for everyone who has to live or work in the world. The charge that philosophy is useless can only be made by those who have failed to inform themselves sufficiently about it.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13355 – 7.11.2.11

B_02 – ZZZ – K

Our only enemies are those inside ourselves. They are our weaknesses and vices, our lower passions and intellectual deformities. It is better to fight them than to fight other people.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13356 – 7.11.2.12

BN – ZZZ – K

When the last word of the last argument against the realization of the principles has been uttered, it will be found that all the obstacles lie inside and not outside us. There are mountains of selfishness, ignorance, and inertia in the human heart, but—as Jesus pointed out—faith can remove them.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13357 – 7.11.2.13

B_12 – ZZ – K

The struggles and conflicts, within men and between them, come from the ego’s presence.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13359 – 7.11.2.15

BN – Z – D

The ego is behind each point of resistance in a man which holds him down from advancing further on this Quest.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13361 – 7.11.2.17

BN – Z – DK

What lies at the root of all these errors in conduct and defects in character? It is the failure to understand that he is more than his body. It is, in one word, materialism.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13362 – 7.11.2.18

BN – ZZZ – K1

Sheikh al Khuttali, a Sufi adept, addressing a disciple who complained at his circumstances, said: "O my son, be assured that there is a cause for every decree of Providence. Whatever good or evil God creates, do not in any place or circumstance quarrel with his action or be aggrieved in thy heart."

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13363E – 7.11.2.19

BSG_4 – ZZ – DEK

Like a stone in a shoe which we stubbornly refuses to remove, the fault still remains in our character when we stubbornly insist on blaming things or condemning persons for its consequences. In this event the chance to eliminate it is lost, and the same dire consequences may repeat themselves in our life again.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13363E – 7.11.2.19

B_01 – ZZ – DEK3

Behind a self-deceiving facade of pretexts, excuses, alibis, and rationalizations, the ego is forever seeking to gratify its unworthy feelings or to defend them. The ego lies to itself, lies to the human being who identifies himself with it, and lies to other human beings. The ego offers bitter resistance all along the way, disputes every yard of his advance, and is not overcome without incessant struggle against its treacheries and deceptions.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13363E – 7.11.2.19

BSG_4 – ZZZ – DE

The aspirant who is really earnest about the quest should develop the attitude that his personal misfortunes, troubles, and disappointments must be traced back to his own weaknesses, defects, faults, deficiencies, and indisciplines. Let him not blame them on other persons or on fate. In this way he will make the quickest progress whereas by self-defending or self-justifying or self-pitying apportionment of blame to causes outside himself, he will delay or prevent it. For the one means clinging to the ego, the other means giving it up.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13363E – 7.11.2.19

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK

It is a man's own internal defects which often conspire against him, and which show their faces in many of the external troubles that beset him. Yet it is hard for him to accept this truth because his whole life-habit is to look outwards, to construct defensive alibis rather than to engage in censorious self-inquisition.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13363E – 7.11.2.19

B_01 – ZZZ – DEK3

The aspirant who is really earnest about the quest should develop the attitude that his personal misfortunes, troubles, and disappointments must be traced back to his own weaknesses, defects, faults, deficiencies, and indisciplines. Let him not blame them on other persons or on fate. In this way he will make the quickest progress whereas by self-defending or self-justifying or self-pitying apportionment of blame to causes outside himself, he will delay or prevent it. For the one means clinging to the ego, the other means giving it up…

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13363E – 7.11.2.19

B_01 – ZZZ – DEMK

Behind a self-deceiving facade of pretexts, excuses, alibis, and rationalizations, the ego is forever seeking to gratify its unworthy feelings or to defend them. The ego lies to itself, lies to the man who identifies himself with it, and lies to other men. The ego offers bitter resistance all along the way, disputes every yard of his advance, and is not overcome without incessant struggle against its treacheries and deceptions.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13363EM – 7.11.2.19

BA11 – ZZZ – DXK

How often in history there is a record of fierce, blind, and fanatic hatred directed against those of marked difference in race, caste, religion, class, custom, or habit. With time and strength it explodes into persecution, violence, or war. The root of this evil may be fear, suspicion, envy, greed, or unbalance; but all these find their roots in the ego, and can only be radically removed by transcending egoism.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13365 – 7.11.2.21

BN – ZZ – DK

The root of all the trouble is not man's wickedness or animality or cunning greedy mind. It is his very I-ness, for all those other evils grow out of it. It is his own ego. Here is the extraordinary and baffling self-contradiction of the human situation. It is man's individual existence which brings him suffering and yet it is this very existence which he holds as dear as life to him!

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13366 – 7.11.2.22

BN – Z – DK1

What are the blockages which prevent the soul’s light, grace, peace, love, and healing from reaching us? There are many different kinds, but they are resolvable into the following: first, all negative; second, all egoistic; and third, all aggressive. By “aggressive” I mean that we are intruding our personality and imposing our ideas all the time. If we would stop this endless aggression and be inwardly still for a while, we would be able to hear and receive what the Soul has to say and to give us.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13368 – 7.11.2.24

BN – ZZZ – DK1

When the results are pleasant for the moment, we like to deceive ourselves. We like to put a pretty mask on an ugly passion, for instance, or wear a magnificent cloak around a wretchedly selfish act. But karma cannot so easily be deceived and works out its own results with time. And these depend not only on the appearance of what we are and do but also on the real character and hidden nature behind it.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13371 – 7.11.2.27

BN – ZZ – K

So what are depressions and sadnesses but the ego pitying itself, shedding silent tears over itself, loving itself, looking at itself and enwrapped in itself? What is a happy calm but a killing of such egoism?

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13372 – 7.11.2.28

BN – ZZZ – K1

Few persons have either the capacity or the wish to stand back sufficiently far from themselves to see what it is they are really doing and where it is they are really going. We play different roles in the cosmic drama at different levels, and this is true of all men. We all have to rise from the animal to the human, from the human to the divine. The ego is there, but consciousness can either use it as free being or get stuck in it and be used by it. When consciousness is free that means it is free of all the negatives too and especially free of all those identifications with undesirable conditions of the ego and unworthy manifestations of it.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13376 – 7.11.2.32

B_01 – ZZ – K

Where the ego rules in the business world, it is trying to get more than it gives. This is an offense against the law of justice, an attempt to get what is not its fair due. The dark karma of such an attempt may be seen in the strife and conflict and clash of interests and lack of peaceful harmony which sound as discords in politico-economic relationships today.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13381 – 7.11.2.37

BN – ZZZ – K

If a man could keep himself out of his thinking and feeling, he would more easily arrive at truth. If he could believe his personal views to be nothing, but truth everything, he would sooner receive its grace.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Their Roots in Ego

#13390 – 7.11.2.46

BN – ZZZ – K

Because of what he is and what he seeks to do, the quester has special trials, special experiences and temptations, apart from the ordinary ones which accompany all human activities.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13391 – 7.11.2.47

BN – Z – K1

Elaborate traps are set at intervals along his road, made up of a combination of his own weaknesses with persons or events related to them. He must be wary of relapsing into complacency, must be prepared for tests and temptations in a variety of forms.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13392 – 7.11.2.48

BN – Z – K1

It is tantalizingly hard to effect the passage from the lower to higher state. For between them lies an intermediate zone of consciousness which possesses an ensnaring quality and in which the ego makes its last desperate effort to keep him captive. Hence this zone is the source of attractive psychic experiences, of spiritual self-aggrandizements, of so-called messianic personal claims and redemptive missions, of great truths cunningly coalesced into great deceptions.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13393 – 7.11.2.49

BN – Z – K1

A man may travel quite a distance on the way towards this goal of self-conquest and then, as success begins to appear on the horizon, may fail and fall from it in the last few tests. His very success may begin to generate vanity, pride, self-importance, ambition, and arrogance. In this way his ego is once more stimulated instead of being subjugated. Thus he steps aside from the path although he has already gone so far along it.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13394 – 7.11.2.50

BN – X – D

His failure follows inevitably from his attempt to serve two masters. The ego is strong and cunning and clamant. The Overself is silent and patient and remote. In every battle the dice are loaded in the ego's favour. In every battle high principle runs counter to innate prejudice.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13398 – 7.11.2.54

BN – ZZ – K1

If the ego cannot trap him through his vices it will try to do so through his virtues. When he has made enough progress to warrant it, he will be led cunningly and insensibly into spiritual pride. Too quickly and too mistakenly he will believe himself to be set apart from other men by his attainments. When this belief is strong and sustained, that is, when his malady of conceit calls for a necessary cure, a pit will be dug unconsciously for him by other men and his own ego will lead him straight into it. Out of the suffering which will follow this downfall, he will have a chance to grow humbler.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13399 – 7.11.2.55

BA12 – ZZZ – DK1

The risk is greater because a human emissary of the adverse element in Nature will automatically appear at critical moments and consciously or unconsciously seek hypnotically or passively to lead him astray as he or she has gone astray. Our own world-wide experience, embracing the written reports and spoken confidences of thousands of individual cases of mystical, yogic, and occult seekers—both Oriental and Occidental—has gravely taught the need of this warning.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13400 – 7.11.2.56

BN – Z – K1

Whoever seeks to tread a path such as the one shown here will sooner or later find that these forces set themselves in opposition to his interior journey. His way will be blocked by external circumstances that entangle him in hopeless struggles or heart-breaking oppressions and enslavements, or by psychical attacks which seek to sweep him off his spiritual feet and destroy his higher aspirations. Persons in his immediate environment may be moved by these invisible forces to work against him, causing uprisings of hatred and misunderstanding; one-time friends may turn into treacherous enemies more virulent than the poison of a cobra. Public critics will appear and endeavour to nullify whatever good he is doing for humanity, or to prevent its continuance. The single aim and object of all these attempts will be to prevent his alignment with the Overself, to render mental quiet impossible, or to keep his heart and mind crushed down to earth and earthly things. He must needs suffer these things. Their power, scope, and duration may be diminished, however.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13401 – 7.11.2.57

BN – ZZZ – K1

The path is beset not only by the pitfalls arising out of one's own human failings, but at critical times by unconscious or conscious evil beings in human form who seek to destroy faith through falsehoods and to undermine reliance on true guidance through sidetracks and traps.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13402 – 7.11.2.58

BN – Z – K1

As that esteemed Indian yogi and philosopher, the late Sri Aurobindo, more than once mentioned, those who are working for the survival of Truth in a truthless world thereby become targets for powerful forces of hatred wrath and falsehood. Whoever publicly bears a deeply spiritual message to humanity, has to suffer from evil's opposition.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13406 – 7.11.2.62

BN – ZZ – K1

The things which hamper the student's progress are varied, and although they may bring despondency and discouragement, impatience and rebellion, they need not and should not be permitted to bring the loss of all hope. Difficulties there must be, but they need not make us cowards. The times of swift progress are generally followed by times of slow moving; success alternates with failure as day with night. He must go on with the faith and trust that obstacles are not for all time, that fluctuations on the path are inevitable, and that his own inner divine possibilities are the best guarantee of ultimate attainment. The trials of the path, as indeed the trials of life itself, are inescapable. He should endure the tribulations with the inner conviction that a brighter world awaits him; hope and faith will lead him to it.

The Negatives > Their Roots in Ego > Special tests for questers

#13413 – 7.11.2.69

BN – ZZZ – DEK1

The sinister spread of black magic, withcraft, sexual perversion, and drug-addiction in our own time is menacing. Some of their votaries are consciously worshipping demonic powers, evil as such, others only because they have been misled into the belief that it is the Good.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Their Presence in The World

#13428 – 7.11.3.15

BN – X – K1

If there is infinite love in or behind the world, there is also infinite suffering in the world, as Buddha noted.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Their Presence in The World

#13432 – 7.11.3.19

B_17 – Z – K

The evil forces have stirred up evil events and provocative crises, and striven to get the masses to react to them in an evil way.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Their Presence in The World

#13433 – 7.11.3.20

B_16 – Z – K

Coming events cast their good or evil configuration beforehand upon calm, sensitive souls. That the unseen hand of destiny is unfolding the vivid scenes of a unique drama is evident to them. That the contemporary currents of world-throbbing happenings are but presages indicating that a radical shift-over in human existence is upon us is also clear to them. In geological history, earthquakes are a means adopted by Nature to restore a disturbed equilibrium. In human history, wartime world-upheaval is both karma's way of attaining equilibrium in an unbalanced society and evolution's way of making another spurt forward.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Their Presence in The World

#13435 – 7.11.3.22

BN – X – K

The evil which is present in the world may show a new, exaggerated, and deceitful form but in itself is no new thing. On the contrary, it is an ancient thing. Plato predicted that if one of the gods came to this earth, he would not be allowed to live. His ethical ideals would be rejected in practice. His physical presence would be removed in murder.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Their Presence in The World

#13442 – 7.11.3.29

BN – X – D

Are human life and human destiny ruled by mere chance or by iron law? If by chance, then our race is wholly at the mercy of evil men, but if by law, then we may hope to see the pattern of ultimate good eventually show itself in its history as these men and all men are steered back to righteous courses by suffering and intuition, by revelation and reflection.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Their Presence in The World

#13476 – 7.11.3.63

B_17 – ZZ – K

The fact that human character as a whole seems not to have improved in our time does not mean that it will fail to improve in the future. Human virtue is only in its infancy and will one day attain its maturity. Human goodness in essence is indestructible because the divine soul in man is indestructible.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Their Presence in The World

#13477 – 7.11.3.64

BN – ZZZ – K

There is in the very midst of humanity today, albeit hidden and awaiting its hour of manifestation, that which is the very opposite of what has already manifested itself through the evil channels. There is divine pity as against barbarous cruelty, sublime wisdom as against materialistic ignorance, altruistic service as against aggressive selfishness, and exalted reverence against hard atheism. There is the recall to a forgotten God. There is redemptive grace. There is a hand outstretched in mercy to the worst sinner, and in consolation to the worst sufferer. Those who are mystically sensitive feel its presence even now, however intermittently.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Their Presence in The World

#13478 – 7.11.3.65

BN – X – D

Most of the modern civilizations which are based on materialism and take no account of the spiritual nature of man are building towers of Babel which, when they have reached a certain height, will topple down. The greater the height, the larger the number of broken pieces. The creativity of these civilizations is illusory; they seem to be productive, but they are really destructive, for since they do not conform to the World-Idea the karma they are making must inevitably bring all this about.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Materialism

#13483 – 7.11.3.70

BN – Z – K

There is a line of connection which can be traced from the appearance of gentle Jesus to the terrors of the Inquisition. There is another line which can be traced from the work of pioneer scientists like Galileo and Bacon to the work of atomic scientists like Einstein and Oppenheimer. If Jesus' gospel was a message from God, science was a different kind of revelation from God. Both Inquisitional tortures and Hiroshima's horrors are evidences of what men have done to the fine things entrusted to them. It is for the men themselves to undo their misdeeds and not wait for a Saviour to do it. The responsibility is theirs.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Unbalanced technological development

#13491 – 7.11.3.78

A231003 – ZZ – K

If the scientific gropers-in-the-dark were allowed fully to explore, and their political masters to exploit, the atom until all its energy were released, our Earth would either blow up into pieces and all mankind with it, or else have its atmosphere so poisoned by radioactivity as to make any life within it impossible. But it is not in the World-Mind's World-Idea that this shall be allowed. The so-called progress of man in this direction will be arrested. He will be allowed to injure himself, since he insists on playing with these dangerous forces, but not to destroy himself.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Unbalanced technological development

#13499 – 7.11.3.86

BN – X – D

I prefer evolution to revolution in political affairs. All revolutions are born of violence, hatred, and assassination whilst the attempt to establish and maintain them leads to oppression and despotism until their karma is exhausted. Evolution moves more slowly but also moves more peacefully, more bloodlessly.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Hatred and violent revolution

#13520 – 7.11.3.107

BN – X – K

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

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

#13532D – 7.11.3.119

B_16 – Z – K

Excerpt from an article in a Czech magazine on contemporary Czech literature: "Those ideals which were formerly given to the world by prophets of religion, headed by Jesus the Nazarene, are now practically applied by scientific socialists beginning with Karl Marx". Such is the plausible self-deception into which so many intellectuals have fallen. This quotation shows a grave lack of understanding of religion, of the prophets, and especially of Jesus. The distance between the Nazarene and the author of the first Communist Manifesto is not merely horizontal, it is vertical. The two men stand on different levels, belong to different worlds.

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

#13536 – 7.11.3.123

B_12 – X – K

Although war itself is full of horrors it must not be forgotten that it has an obverse side. In some ways it acts like the old-fashioned surgical operation of blood-letting. All the moral scum in humanity's character rises to the surface, concentrated mostly amongst the totalitarian gangsters, but it rises only that it may be seen for what it is and cleared off. The sufferings of mankind have an educative value and tend to adjust the sins and excesses of mankind. It is the ultimate tendency of evil forces to destroy themselves from within as well as to suffer destruction from without through the mysterious operation of karma. Materialism reaches its final culmination in the social and personal crises generated by war. By displaying its own horrible results before humanity's very eyes, it is, by reaction, awakening many sleeping mentalities to the need of a spiritual outlook.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > War

#13548 – 7.11.3.135

B_16 – Z – K

If their compassion for helpless animals is so small that they will not give up eating flesh, by what right do they call upon God to show compassion toward them and stop war?

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Causes of war

#13582 – 7.11.3.169

BN – X – D

The evil forces working through mediums are cunning enough not to show their true ultimate aims all at once. These become clear to the observer only by successive stages, only gradually. Whoever has critically studied the ways of evil spirits will know that they first lure their mediumistic victims or gullible public along the path of self-injury or even self-destruction by winning their confidence with a series of successful predictions or favourable interventions. When this confidence has been well established, these dark forces then reveal their real intent by persuading their victims, through gigantic lies or false predictions, to commit a final act in which everything is staked on a single throw. The unhappy dupes invariably lose this last throw and are then overwhelmed by shattering disaster.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > World War II, Nazism, Fascism, Hitler

#13608ED – 7.11.3.195

B_16 – Z – K

Hitler is to be seen not as he was first hailed, that is, as the re-creator of his country, but as the unconscious instrument of Nemesis, as a vulgar channel for inescapable historic forces. Above all human dictators rises the unnoticed figure of 'their' dictator—karma! Even this vile unspeakable Hitler was a punitive instrument in the hands of mankind's karma, a sadistic agent of planetary self-earned fate.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > World War II, Nazism, Fascism, Hitler

#13626 – 7.11.3.213

BN – X – K

The terrific shocks which nations and individuals received during the war aroused them to the imperative need of finding new ways of life. The breakdown of old supports was most marked. What people would not do voluntarily was expedited by the painful hammer-blows of calamitous karma into urgent birth.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Effects of World War II

#13659 – 7.11.3.246

BN – X – K

So long as those who lead nations or rule peoples have wholly or partially inadequate understanding of the profounder significance of human existence, so long will those nations and peoples be led from one painful blunder to another.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13732 – 7.11.3.319

BN – X – D

Mankind cannot be fashioned in actuality into goodness or wisdom overnight—let alone the godlike exemplary image of which scripture speaks. Not even the most powerful adept can do that. Much of the preaching, most of the idealistic teaching, is hardly relevant to the human situation as we find it in the world today. Only clear thinking, and even clearer non-thinking intuition, can see the picture, not only as it is, but also in its wholeness.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13734E – 7.11.3.321

BN – ZEL1/2 – K

Without some knowledge of the World-Idea, those who hold public office, those who lead their countries, merely grope their way under the delusion that they see it. This does not mean that knowledge of this truth provides all the needed and perfect solutions of the problems. The egoistic attitudes and blindnesses, the narrownesses, the greeds, hates, prejudices, animosities, passions, and violent emotions of the people would still continue to block the way and obstinately obstruct the wisest and best of leaders, creating a karma that will have to operate, a destiny that brings back what is put forth. This is not to say that a fine leader's presence and power are as nothing; they mitigate the bad effects of mankind's own past making, and they initiate new constructive efforts which will penetrate the future.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13734E – 7.11.3.321

BN – ZEL2/2 – K

If it were not for the presence of a few human lights in our world, and for their mostly silent but sometimes open activity, that world would have deteriorated spiritually, morally, to an extent far below what it has done.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13751 – 7.11.3.338

BN – ZZ – D

Mankind has entered a new cycle, one wherein each man must learn something of the truth for himself. In former cycles he did not need to bear this responsibility. In the present one, he must accept it.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13752 – 7.11.3.339

BN – X – D

A time like the present should not be used as an excuse to escape into the past but as an inspiration to bring in the future.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13753 – 7.11.3.340

BN – X – D

While our mental attitude remains what it is, no solution is possible. We meet hatred with hatred, suspicion with suspicion, fear with fear. Even nuclear disarmament would only ease the world's crisis and not end it, would only put off the urgency and acuteness and still leave the problem of enmity where it is. Among the ancients, Indian Buddha, Chinese Lao Tzu, and Syrian Jesus gave their solution. Buddha explained the operation of a higher law when he pointed out, "Hatred ceases not by hatred but by love". And the Western world has heard often enough (but does not practise) what Jesus taught on this matter.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13755 – 7.11.3.342

B_12 – Z – K

There is no perpetual peace anywhere on this planet, only perpetual strife. But it is open to man to take the violence, the murder, and the war out of this strife. He may purge it of its savage beast qualities.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13757 – 7.11.3.344

BN – ZZ – K1

The great Cuban crisis of 1962 resulted in a situation which brought about a postponement of the menace of World War III, but did not, fully and finally, avert it. All efforts to obtain peace may succeed or not succeed—the results are variable—but any effort to establish peace permanently cannot possibly do so fully and finally until the human race comes into a larger obedience to the higher spiritual laws.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13760 – 7.11.3.347

BN – X – DEK

The dark possibility that destroys our future can give place to a brighter one only when enough philosophically illumined people are to be found in each country. Nor need they be many—a few in each city would throw out enough influence to bring about this change. It is the tragedy of our age that philosophical thoughts should be classed with idle dreams when they are the most practical of all today.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13772 – 7.11.3.359

BN – X – DEM

Today, the mission of philosophy is a planetary one, for truth is needed everywhere, and for the first time can be transmitted everywhere. We speak here in terms of geographical fact, for vested religious interests and totalitarian political despotisms still continue to serve their masters, the darker forces of evil, by obstructing the contemporary planetary enlightenment.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13777 – 7.11.3.364

BN – ZZZ – DEK*

Most eloquent of all is Emerson: "Love is the one remedy for all ills. We must be lovers and at once the impossible becomes possible. Our history for these 1000 years has not been the history of kindness but of selfishness. Love would put a new face on this weary old world, in which we dwell as enemies too long. Love will accomplish that which force could never achieve. Once or twice in history, kindness has been tried in illustrious instances, with signal success."

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13805 – 7.11.3.392

BN – Z – K

Many leaders such as Churchill, and even the Pope, have talked of a new world to be built. Their aims are excellent but it will not suffice to change things externally alone; people must be educated aright, which means they must be educated in truth. The time to sit in seclusion or to enjoy one's inner peace all alone will then have gone. Service and Action will be the keynote. The justification of the higher philosophy is what it can do ultimately, not merely what it can think. It alone has a sane view because it alone knows the need of a sound foundation in correct thinking plus an active effort afterwards, erected on such a foundation. How hard this ultimate teaching is as a way of life until one becomes habituated to it! For he has to feel that all the world is but a dream, even horrid wars, and yet he will have to know it as actual and act as though it were real. For ultimately it is real. Just as all the events, people, and objects of a dream are after all nothing but Mind, in essence, because they are ideas and Mind is their reality, so in this world we have to understand that that which is regarded as Mind, unified, all around us is the real. It is because ignorant people concentrate only on their material beliefs, taking body and environment as matter, and regarding everything as individual and separate, that they can never get at this higher realization. If he remembers that all golden rings, watches, tie pins, and so on, are in essence only one substance—gold—so he may remember that all bodies, things, and events are in essence also one substance—Mind. The sage is the person who holds firmly to this double "vision" or rather understanding and has made it his or her own by unremitting effort.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13808 – 7.11.3.395

BN – ZEL1/2 – K

Many leaders such as Churchill, and even the Pope, have talked of a new world to be built. Their aims are excellent but it will not suffice to change things externally alone; people must be educated aright, which means they must be educated in truth. The time to sit in seclusion or to enjoy one's inner peace all alone will then have gone. Service and Action will be the keynote. The justification of the higher philosophy is what it can do ultimately, not merely what it can think. It alone has a sane view because it alone knows the need of a sound foundation in correct thinking plus an active effort afterwards, erected on such a foundation. How hard this ultimate teaching is as a way of life until one becomes habituated to it! For he has to feel that all the world is but a dream, even horrid wars, and yet he will have to know it as actual and act as though it were real. For ultimately it is real. Just as all the events, people, and objects of a dream are after all nothing but Mind, in essence, because they are ideas and Mind is their reality, so in this world we have to understand that that which is regarded as Mind, unified, all around us is the real. It is because ignorant people concentrate only on their material beliefs, taking body and environment as matter, and regarding everything as individual and separate, that they can never get at this higher realization. If he remembers that all golden rings, watches, tie pins, and so on, are in essence only one substance—gold—so he may remember that all bodies, things, and events are in essence also one substance—Mind. The sage is the person who holds firmly to this double "vision" or rather understanding and has made it his or her own by unremitting effort.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13808 – 7.11.3.395

BN – ZEL2/2 – K

It was the Stoics who wrote that the wise man will not waste his energy and years in futile political endeavours if he finds his environment too corrupt.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: collective

#13818 – 7.11.3.405

BN – ZZ – K

He allows other creatures the right to live, even to the point of eating no meat, but if they encroach on his own right, and endanger his own survival, then he will defend himself as resolutely as other men. Nor is the situation changed if these creatures are not animal but human. Pacifism is useful as a protest against human proneness to resort to violence, so he sympathizes with it in specific cases. But its usefulness ends when unscrupulous aggression seeks to triumph and needs the education of defeat.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Pacifism: general, non-nuclear ethic

#13847 – 7.11.3.434

BN – ZZ – K

Man has been forced against a wall built from the results of his own actions, that is, karma, and made to face two alternatives: either he goes on preparing defensively or aggressively for war or starts the new course of preparing for peace.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Pacifism in light of nuclear threat

#13887 – 7.11.3.474

BN – X – K

What is the opposing quality to the violence of today? Not merely nonviolence—a negative one—but gentleness—a positive one.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Pacifism in light of nuclear threat

#13892 – 7.11.3.479

BN – Z – K1

In a world seething with negative thoughts, murky in several areas with suspicion and even hatred, inflamed with violent feelings, the person who knows the truth must hold all the more to inner and outer calm, to goodwill and faith in the Overself's presence.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: individual

#13898 – 7.11.3.485

BN – Z – K

Evil is strong in the world and sometimes people who aspire to the good become discouraged and depressed. It is at such moments that they need to recall whatever glimpses of the Real they have had and to remember that all things pass away, including the evil.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: individual

#13899 – 7.11.3.486

BN – ZZ – K

We live in apocalyptic times, as history is already revealing. The call today is a penitential one, a solemn recall from earthliness to holiness, from frivolousness, grossness, and madness to remembrance of life's higher purpose. Those who feel in their own hearts some sort of a response, however feeble, should cling to this precious intuition and let it guide them until they are saved.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: individual

#13900 – 7.11.3.487

BN – X – D

Questions about man's future and civilization's prospects trouble us. More pessimistic answers are gloomily given than optimistic ones. It is not easy to do otherwise, when the facts are so tragically plain and when they lie so plentifully all around us. Philosophy least of all can afford wishful thinking. It too sees the night falling but whilst counselling stoic resignation it does not discourage constructive resistance. And it reminds the individual that society's catastrophes should urge him all the more to seek and find the one necessary refuge—his own sacredness.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: individual

#13902 – 7.11.3.489

BN – ZZZ – K

If anyone wants to see a better world he must make his contribution toward it. And this demands inexorably that he begin with himself and make his character and conduct better.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: individual

#13903 – 7.11.3.490

BN – X – D

If greater knowledge brings greater power, it also brings greater responsibility. The more he receives from the Overself's grace, the more should he give to humanity's need.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: individual

#13911 – 7.11.3.498

BN – X – D

If catastrophe and obliteration threaten humanity and if the individual is hopeless when confronted by them, it is logical to conclude that although humanity might not be able to save itself, the individual can save themselves from these disasters if they believe that inner salvation is at least a possibility where outer salvation is not. Yes, you and I can save ourselves from within even when we cannot save ourselves from without. That at least is a better lot than the one of the person who can save themselves neither from within nor from without and put their faith in political action alone. For politics is merely a system of human bargaining actuated by self-seeking. It can invoke the aid of no higher power because it does not rise higher than this self-seeking interest itself. But the individual is free to lift themself above this sordid plane and therefore they are in a position to invite the attention and aid of higher powers.

The Negatives > Their Presence in The World > Constructive alternatives: individual

#13915 – 7.11.3.502

BN – ZZZ – K

It is because all humanity is approaching the threshold of a new era, a better era, that all the devils of the old era put forth their fiercest efforts, whilst there is yet a little time, to degrade human character, to drag it down into the hells of the worst forces and emotions—hate, envy, aggressiveness, and brutality.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Their presence

#13918 – 7.11.4.2

BN – Z – DK

Humanity did not come into its present grievous situation by chance. The whole picture of thoughts and their consequences, passions and their evils, acts and their effects, must be seen under the light of immutable karmic law.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Their presence

#13927 – 7.11.4.11

BN – ZZ – K

Yes, there is odious evil in the world—much of it petty but some of it quite monstrous. It takes its genesis in the thoughts of men.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Their presence

#13952 – 7.11.4.36

BN – Z – K1

Mentalism says that most of one's misery is inflicted on oneself by accepting and holding negative thoughts. They cover and hide the still centre of one's being, which is infinite happiness.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Their presence

#13953 – 7.11.4.37

BN – ZZZ – DEK1

Where there is fierce hatred or monstrous cruelty, be sure that evil forces are present too.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Their presence

#13958 – 7.11.4.42

B_16 – Z – K

Brutality and cruelty are especially linked with the minds and actions of those persons swayed by evil forces, whether physical or psychical.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Their presence

#13966 – 7.11.4.50

B_16 – Z – K

We would not allow full freedom of movement to plague-carrying rats in our kitchens and homes. Yet we allow these human carriers of mental plague the freedom to print and publish, declaim, and propogate their poisonous suggestions and negative ideas, their pornography and violence, their hates and moral subversion, their evil.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Their presence

#13971 – 7.11.4.55

BN – X – K1

When a civilization finds its pleasure in witnessing plays which explore all aspects of pornography, seeing films exploring all aspects of brutality and crime, permitting sports as cruel as fox-hunting, it has become low in morals, vulgar in taste, and self-destructive in its karma. It will fall, as Rome fell, as feudal Japan's last phase fell.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Their presence

#13974 – 7.11.4.58

BN – X – K

In every human difficulty there are two ways open to us. The common way is familiar enough: it consists in reacting egoistically and emotionally with self-centered complaint, irritability, fear, anger, despair, and so on. The uncommon way is taken by a spiritually minded few: it consists in making something good out of something bad, in reacting selflessly, calmly, constructively, and hopefully. This is the way of practical philosophy, this attempt to transform what outwardly seems so harmful into what inwardly at least must be markedly beneficent. It is a magical work. But it can only be done by deep thought, self-denial, and love.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#13977E – 13.20.1.325

A230510 – ZEL1/2 – K1

If the difficulty is regarded as both a chance to show what we can do to develop latent resources as well as a test of what we have already developed, it can be made to help us. Even if we do not succeed in changing an unfavourable environment for the better, such an approach would to some extent change ourselves for the better. We must accept, with all its tremendous implications for our past, present, and future, that we are ultimately responsible for the conditions which stamp our life. Such acceptance may help to shatter our egoism and that, even though it is painful, will be all to the good. Out of its challenge can come the most blessed change in ourselves.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#13977E – 13.20.1.367

A230510 – ZEL2/2 – K1

Truth twisted into service of the lower purposes or even the evil forces must be carefully inspected, analysed, and lastly corrected or rejected.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#13978 – 7.11.4.62

B_16 – ZZ – K

Whenever a strong impulse becomes uppermost and inclines him toward some deed or speech of a negative kind, he had better scrutinize its source or nature as quickly as he can.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#13979 – 7.11.4.63

BN – Z – K1

If he must hate something, let him hate hatred itself.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#13981 – 7.11.4.65

BN – X – K1

The storms of violent passion are to be resisted as the smoothness of inner peace is to be invited.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#13982 – 7.11.4.66

BN – Z – K1

He should never allow the actions or words of ignorant men to arouse in him reactions of anger, envy, or resentment.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#13992 – 7.11.4.76

BN – ZZZ – K1

The counsel of Jesus to "resist not evil" does not apply to other men's acts but to our own thoughts. We are to turn aside from a negative thought-habit by the simple method of substituting the opposite and positive one. We need not spend our strength resisting the thought of misery, for example. We are to substitute hope for misery, whenever the latter appears.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14000 – 7.11.4.84

B_11 – ZZ – K

Do not attempt to fight evil with evil. Overcome it by calling on a higher power to bring out the good in you wherewith to meet it. In this way you obey Jesus' counsel, "Resist not evil".

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14010 – 7.11.4.94

B_11 – ZZ – K

We may regret the existence of these faults in others, but we may not refuse to recognize them if practical dealings are involved.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14014 – 7.11.4.98

BN – Z – K1

In such critical times as these even some faith in the existence of a higher power, and some aspiration towards serving it, has protective value.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14017 – 7.11.4.101

BN – X – D

Every evil person who crosses our path provides an opportunity, in the injury he attempts to do us, to keep ourselves from being provoked into retaliation, anger, or resentment. If we succeed in overcoming our own feelings, we mount upward a step.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14027 – 7.11.4.111

BN – X – D

In a negative situation, where negative criticisms and negative emotions are rampant, other persons may try to involve him in it, or at least get him to support their attitude and endorse their criticism. But a feeling may come over him preventing him from doing so. If so, he should obey and remain silent. With time the rightness of this course will be confirmed.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14028 – 7.11.4.112

BN – ZZ – K1

It is always a certainty that the practice of active goodwill directed toward those who regard him harshly will benefit his own development, while it is always a possibility that this practice may dissolve the harsh feeling against him. It is all gain and no loss. This is one part of the case for Jesus' advice to return good for evil.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14034 – 7.11.4.118

B_12 – ZZZ – K

You must remember that you will meet with those individuals who are themselves the bearers of antagonistic forces, instruments of darkness—sometimes consciously, mostly unconsciously, people used by evil forces. So far as possible you must avoid such people. Certainly never enter into intimate association with them, whether the relation be business or personal. If you do you will find that sooner or later some of their unfortunate karma will tumble on you and you will have to suffer with them. These people are opposed to your quest and all that it stands for, although they may talk as believers in spiritual things—indeed, they often belong to some cult or other. But they do not understand truth or live it. They cannot help you and you are not strong enough to carry them. So leave them alone. And that is not always easy, because often they are people of a kind that force themselves into your life.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14036E – 7.11.4.120

B_16 – ZEL1/2 – K

These people are opposed to your quest and all that it stands for, although they may talk as believers in spiritual things—indeed, they often belong to some cult or other. But they do not understand truth or live it. They cannot help you and you are not strong enough to carry them. So leave them alone. And that is not always easy, because often they are people of a kind that force themselves into your life. Sometimes you can know them by this hallmark, by this aggressive way which they try to entangle you. It may even be necessary at times to deal with such people with a firm hand, even mercilessly and relentlessly. If so, do not hesitate, but do it without any personal feeling of any kind.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14036E – 7.11.4.120

B_16 – ZEL2/2 – K

Sentimentality is not spirituality. It is true we give our goodwill to all mankind, and so we give it to those who are the instruments of dark forces. But that does not mean weakness or foolishness in our dealings with them. Life will teach them. Leave them alone.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14038 – 7.11.4.122

B_10 – ZZ – K

If he finds himself brought by circumstances into the society of evil-minded people, the first step to self-protection should be to switch the mind instantly into remembrance of the witness-self and to keep it there throughout the period of contact. To turn inwards persistently when in the presence of such discordant persons is to nullify any harmful or disturbing effect they might otherwise have on our thoughts.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14043 – 7.11.4.127

BN – ZZ – K1

What Jesus taught nearly two thousand years ago, and what the Buddha taught nearly five hundred years before him, is still true—even more true, if that could be, for it has the proofs afforded by all history during that time: hatred cannot end by being returned, nothing will dissolve it save a generous and patient goodwill.

The Negatives > In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > Ways of responding

#14053 – 7.11.4.137

B_12 – ZZ – K

Most people have failed to recognize that the forces of destiny are back of these events. Even the powerful impact of such stirring events as history has recorded in our own times has not been enough to bring about this recognition. Yet they sense their own helplessness, although they do not understand that it is the very inevitability of their karma which has made them feel this helplessness.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14066 – 7.11.5.5

BN – ZZ – K

These sinister figures seek, and often get, key positions in politics, organized groups, etc., and from there manipulate the mass and use them as blind unwitting tools.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14073 – 7.11.5.12

BN – Z – K1

There is a grimmer prospect than overpopulation. By destroying his home, man as species is destroying himself, not to mention animals and plants who will pass with him. If this planet dies a new one will be born, yes, but he will carry the moral guilt.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14092 – 7.11.5.31

BN – X – D

An ethically blinded world may not perceive the actuality and factuality of karma. Hence, it may not comprehend that it was Europe's remorseless collective karma which compelled Neville Chamberlain—pacifist though he was—finally to declare the war for whose avoidance he had dedicated the work of a whole decade. There is no other God pulling historic strings than the karmic laws of retribution and re-adjustment. And let us not forget that this destiny is not an arbitrary tyrannical power; it is self-earned by the nations as by individuals and thus self-called into operation. The sufferings it brings to peoples are really the reactions of their own near or remote deeds. They are visited by the consequences of their own making. Karma works in its own time to set straight all crooked things, not in ours. Nevertheless we can sometimes see it move quickly enough to teach a vivid lesson both to those who suffer its consequences and those who observe that suffering.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14102 – 7.11.5.41

BN – ZZZ – K

An ethically blinded world may not perceive the actuality and factuality of karma. There is no other God pulling historic strings than the karmic laws of retribution and re-adjustment. The sufferings it brings to peoples are really the reactions of their own near or remote deeds. They are visited by the consequences of their own making. Karma works in its own time to set straight all crooked things, not in ours. Nevertheless we can sometimes see it move quickly enough to teach a vivid lesson both to those who suffer its consequences and those who observe that suffering.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14102E – 7.11.5.41

UR_1 – ZZZ – K

When men who have spent their whole lives harbouring destructive ideas are given a constructive teaching, they are naturally impermeable and unreceptive to it. There are materialists who are impatient at hearing philosophic truths and even irritated by them. Such persons may even become quite violently abusive. This happens because they have completely lost their capacity to practise calm unprejudiced abstract thinking, and because they have crushed the feeling of veneration before something higher or nobler than themselves—whether it be a beautiful landscape or God.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14106 – 7.11.5.45

BN – ZZ – K1

Whilst so many are obsessed by materialistic outlooks, it is inevitable that they should lose the moral sense and commit blunder after blunder and consequently suffer distress after distress. Yet of the worst result of these obsessions, they are not even aware. And that is, to live so remote from their own inner core of divinity as to miss the most worthwhile values and meanings of life itself.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14110 – 7.11.5.49

BSG_5 – ZZ – K

Their faith in a higher purpose of life having failed, it is not long before the labour of correcting and purifying human nature will seem unnecessary.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14115 – 7.11.5.54

BN – Z – K1

The rule of casting out all negative thoughts, and keeping them out, is an absolute one. There are no exceptions and no deviations. Such negatives as hate, irritability, and fault-finding make poisons in the body and neuroses in the mind. They irritate the nerves, disturb the proper movement of the blood, distort the internal secretions, and destructively affect the chemical composition of tissue cells. Nor is this the end. They provoke like emotions in other people with whom we are constantly thrown in contact. We then have to suffer the effects as if they were echoes of our own making. Thus the discords inside oneself throw up disturbances outside oneself. One's anger provokes the other person's anger, for instance.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14125 – 7.11.5.64

BN – ZZ – K

When the lower passions of violence, aggression, and greed are more developed than reason, they enslave reason and put it to their own selfish service. Excessive greed and unscrupulous ambition easily distort the straight shapes of rational truth and put plausible disguises on ancient errors. The defect in all such thinking is that it has not been pushed far enough. It stops too short and too soon. It stops working when confronted by ethical considerations and it will not go on to reckon with the existence of retributive karma. The defeat and failure of its wrong-doers illustrates the eventual defeat and failure which always overtake wrong-doing in the end.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14138 – 7.11.5.77

BN – X – K

Pessimism is practical defeatism and psychological suicide. It is the child of despair and the parent of dissolution.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14148 – 7.11.5.87

BN – X – K1

Long ago Buddha said that if we make room in our minds for negative, bitter thoughts of complaint, outrage, or injury against those who mistreat us, we shall not be free and will remain unable to find peace.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14149 – 7.11.5.88

BN – Z – DK1

Beware of giving birth to thoughts of hate, envy, malice, or wrath and sending them to another person. For they will reach him, yes, but will then return like a boomerang to their source.

The Negatives > Their Visible and Invisible Harm > Their Visible and Invisible Harm

#14150 – 7.11.5.89

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: If anyone could imagine a consciousness which does not objectify anything but remains in its own native purity, a happiness beyond which it is impossible to go, and a self which is unvaryingly one and the same, he would have the correct idea of the Overself.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – DEK

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: It ought now to be made clear that these two initiations were mystical ones and not philosophic. They enabled one to see the inner meaning of his own life, but not of all life. They concerned the "I" and gave knowledge of the True Self. They did not concern the universe and the human relation to it. Those subjects belonged to the field of a philosophic initiation which came much later and was my fourth in line. That was an event which interpreted all other events. While still including the mystical initiation, there was blended into it the fuller perception of a Cosmic Knowledge.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: At first it was not possible to retain that peaceful state continuously. It would fade away intermittently. Both to prevent that from happening and to make the needed conditions to sustain its presence, the practice of this exercise in creative imagination became necessary. I found the exercise a valuable one for use in meditation practices of later years and so pass it on for the benefit of others. Even then I knew that the effort required was too great for me, that imaginative power alone was too insufficient for such a result to be achieved without Grace. If I had to depend on myself, on my poor little human self, the end of it would be merely an illusion which would one day be harshly dispelled or a dream from which I would one day rudely awake. The imagination by itself was not capable of bringing such an exalted state into actual realization, but the imagination plus Grace was capable.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Before I reached the threshold of manhood and after six months of unwavering daily practice of meditation and eighteen months of burning aspiration for the Spiritual Self, I underwent a series of mystical ecstasies. During them I attained a kind of elementary consciousness of it.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Those who are intimidated by the Quest's difficulties ought to be stimulated by its rewards. They should take to heart the truth that no spiritual darkness is a permanent one, and that at no time are they really lost, deserted, or fallen creatures. If their will weakens or their light clouds, it is an inevitable part or result of their imperfect nature as well as of their unfinished development. But it is also a condition which must right itself with further experience, evolutionary pressure, or unexpected Grace.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Thus the first step was to make the desired state come true in imagination. This could not be done without the fullest trust that it would do so, and without the fullest consent of my logical mind that it could do so. The second step was to identify myself imaginatively with the ideal state during the day as often as I could remember to do it, and during formal meditation periods as intensely as I could force the mind into doing it. In the first step I had to project a picture of myself as active in the outer world, to put forth a thought-form which would incubate for a period of time like an egg. I had not merely to think about that desired state from present conditions but also—indeed, rather—to think from it. I had to determine my outlook by it as if it were already an actuality and to imitate all the characteristics and qualities it had. I was not to gaze up to the idea, but to gaze down from it.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Negatively, one could not raise one's hand or open one's lips to injure a fellow being. One could not be antagonistic to him even in thought. Positively, one had to practise an active goodwill toward all living creatures.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: In the result, the state of divided being—the state of disunion in the heart—which had been my general state and which is necessarily the general state of all seekers, began to vanish. Instead of two opposing forces being ever at war within myself, the actual and the ideal, there began to appear only a single controlling force. This led in turn to a great happiness which made unnecessary all the constant searching for happiness in outside things, circumstances, or persons—a searching which is one of the causes of this self-division.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: When the ego works on its own self, its willingness is reluctant and its power is limited. When Grace works inside the ego, its participation is joyous and its power is unpredictable. Does Divine Grace exist? Orthodox theology makes an arbitrary fact of it and does not correctly present it. Yet it is reasonable in theory and verified by experience that it comes down to meet and mingle with human aspiration. But it is also a fact that such a desirable consciousness is not likely to happen if the aspirant fails to fulfil the conditions controlling its appearance.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: When my meditation seemed to have ended a great store of strength poured into me. Indeed, it was so overwhelming as to appear irresistible. I felt that every obstacle could be overcome by its support and help, and that I merely had to stretch out my hand to gain victory. Suddenly I saw a vision in which a duplicate of myself was pushing a huge boulder away from the entrance to a cave. I knew instinctively that the boulder was a symbol for the lower self and that the cave was a symbol for the Higher Self. I could feel a change working rapidly in my character and personality, bringing me closer to the ideal which I held. I succeeded at last in rolling away the boulder and, with that, attained a certain degree of self-mastery which from that moment onward remained with me. I felt that I could never again fall below that degree, that it was no more possible to do so than it was for the hatched chicken to return to the egg.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Suddenly I saw a vision in which a duplicate of myself was pushing a huge boulder away from the entrance to a cave. I knew instinctively that the boulder was a symbol for the lower self and that the cave was a symbol for the Higher Self. I stood at the entrance to the cave and looked inside. I found it to be full of light, dazzlingly brilliant by comparison with the murky gloom outside it. The power to enter the cave was not given to me, only to stand at the entrance and gaze inside. I understood that the inner work necessary to gain this power would constitute the next cycle of my labours.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: On the day when its long awaited dawn reddened my sky I certainly had no doubts that it was at work because I could directly feel its inner movements as soon as I started to meditate. I was perfectly aware of a swift change from the ordinary to the deeper level and of the inward pull which are signs of its action and which repeated themselves many times in other meditations.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: The glamour and the freshness of those mystical ecstasies subsided within three or four weeks and vanished. But the awareness kindled by them remained for three years. I then met an advanced mystic—an expatriate American living in Europe—who told me that I was near the point where I could advance to the next and higher degree of illumination and that, at such a period, most aspirants undergo certain tests before they succeed in gaining the degree. He was right. I underwent the tests very soon after and failed in them—failed so miserably that I fell headlong down and lost even the spiritual consciousness which I had previously possessed. The period which followed was a terrible one, a veritable "dark night of the soul" through which I had to struggle slowly and painfully for another three years. During all that period there was neither time nor capacity to practise meditation, nor was I inclined to sustain aspiration.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: The time came when this attitude developed to an extreme. I did not know how to stop losing myself in the process of absorbing the other man into my own entity, so that he became a part of it, too often an incongruous part. What he thought or felt was reflected in my own consciousness like an image in a mirror. So if he told me something which did not correspond to the thought in his mind I immediately became aware of his discrepancy. It was sympathy lifted to a degree which amounted to empathy.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: What I went through in these initiations may fairly be described as finding the True self—that impersonal part of us which is covered over and effectively hidden by the personal ego. But the second time I found it in a very different way from that of the first, when the discovery had been tremendously emotional, excitedly rapturous, and ebulliently joyous. The second discovery was quiet, strong, and poised. This does not mean that it did not bring an intense glowing satisfaction: but all feeling was perfectly controlled by the sense of dominant will, of the higher purpose fulfilling itself rigidly. Indeed, I learned later that one of the tests of the greater enlightenment is the extraordinary calm in which it happens—a calm like the one which follows the violent monsoon storm in the tropics.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Inexperienced travellers on this path often find that their early enthusiasm wanes and then the journey becomes tedious. For working upon themselves, changing improving and developing the moral mental and emotional material they must use is so slow an affair, so poor in visible results, that it tends to stifle buoyancy and enfeeble determination. Perhaps there will also be periods of harsh testing when resentment doubt or rebellion against the Quest will appear within themselves. So I had to instill the lesson of never abandoning the belief that the struggle was worthwhile, of always trusting in the eventuality of Grace, and of living in the memory of their past uplifted moments.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – Z – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: A response came at last. I felt myself being carried down deeper into my inner being until a level of rich consciousness was touched. It required great intensity of purpose, great resolution of will, and extreme power of concentration to remain on that level, so I summoned up these resources and succeeded in remaining. After a while I was instructed by the inner Voice to form a mental picture of a duplicate of myself at work, in talk or travel, or in any other activity likely to be entered during the following day. In this picture I was to keep hold of the awareness in which I was now held and not to let my attention wander from it for even a minute. I was particularly guided to include such occasions or contacts where I was likely to be provoked by annoyance, irritation, overconcentration on work, and excessive physical activity into forgetfulness.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: I laid down a program for regular daily meditation, practised even more intensively, and tried harder to improve myself than I had done for years. There suddenly came a feeling of impending momentous discovery. During that memorable session, I recovered once more the degree of consciousness which I had enjoyed in the earlier period of my Quest, although there was more knowledge and understanding this time. I could see more clearly that there was a definite preordained pattern in my life and in the lives of others: all the chief events had some kind of inner meaning in them; all could teach some lesson which if learned would lead to spiritual growth. To discern these lessons, we have to develop a more mature emotional attitude in our relations with others and also a stronger character. We have to get ourselves out of our selves and look at each situation, momentarily at least, the way the other person involved in it looks at it. Then we have to seek true justice for all and not be selfish.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: It became obvious that if I depended on myself, on my own poor and feeble power, the effort could not end in anything but failure. There was no hope for progress unless the Overself came to my rescue and, out of its Grace, brought about the desired state. I asked ardently for its help; indeed, I begged for it and lamented that life was worthless unless it could be lived continuously in that state. I carried on this one-way conversation in a lovingly familiar yet humbly beseeching tone.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: After this it was easy to see why people welcome the condition of deep dreamless sleep. This is not only for the obvious reason of physical and mental recuperation, but also because it frees them from personal being, offers them an escape from the world and its care. This same freedom entered into knowledge of the Overself, but with a difference that the same happiness which is derived from deep sleep is here consciously enjoyed. Such happiness is really inseparable from awareness of the Overself. The reward of giving up the ego-sense is the ability to live in the deepest part of one's deepest being—the Overself.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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In this emptying of self, of fears and desires, the anxiety or relation about the results of their activity is also emptied. At the same time there is the certainty that they will be taken care of in the World-Mind's Providence.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: It is at times necessary to give a man a shock to show him what he is really like. This is usually done by friends, sometimes by enemies, and occasionally by the Master. It is always done by life itself. The experience is painful, but, if its lessons are sufficiently taken to heart, the debt owed to it is a large one. It arouses the man to do what will save him from avoidable sufferings in the future by stimulating him to remove their causes within himself. One day I was faced with an unexpected event which gave me a tremendous shock. The emergency called for all the wisdom and strength and determination I could muster in order to deal with it. I succeeded in doing so and was drastically aroused in the process. In this way I shook myself out of the spiritual depression and, in a somewhat desultory manner, took up again the practice of meditation as well as occasional attempts at self-improvement. This transition period was succeeded by another when I acted more resolutely and worked more diligently.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Now I come to a metaphysical result of the second initiation. In the earlier one, I seemed to expand the ego with love and delight. In the later one, I seemed to attenuate it with perception and revaluation. Just before it happened I felt that some drastic and highly important event was about to develop. When it did happen the feeling was soon explained. There was a sloughing off of the old self which was followed by a sense of immense relief. It was as if a tremendously heavy and burdensome topcoat had been thrown off my shoulders. The sense of being liberated was immeasurable. The ego's dominance was gone. I could see now how it had confined my thinking and dimmed my outlook.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Although it properly belongs to my experience of philosophic initiation, it is perhaps interesting to note at this point that in the deep meditations accompanying that initiation I went through a stage where the ego's consciousness was annihilated so utterly and where pure consciousness, not centered or divided in any way, was so overwhelming that God alone reigned as I AM. There was then no duality of person and Overself, no hint even of the cosmic mysteries involved in the vanished world's existence.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: I discovered that there are progressive degrees of the mystical initiation leading to progressive degrees of the Cosmic one in turn. I have no experience beyond the first of the Cosmic degrees. Yet even that slight unveiling taught me that the immense mystery which surrounds us will ever remain a mystery. The human entity is not competent to cope with more than a very limited degree of knowledge and still remain human. There is an iron ring around what it can know, a ring that we cannot pass beyond.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: In this emptying of self, of fears and desires, the anxiety or relation about the results of their activity is also emptied. At the same time there is the certainty that they will be taken care of in the World-Mind's providence. By carrying out these exercises and then consciously forming the habit of carrying their results into the everyday life and routine, I came in time to keep the peace all day long. This was certainly a great reward for all the years of toil and effort which preceded it. But it also brought certain responsibilities to myself and to others.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: In the first initiation I had only a vague notion of what was happening to me. This was partly because of its unfamiliarity, partly because I had little knowledge of the subject at the time, and partly because I lacked intellectual development at that early age. In the second one there was not only more understanding of the experience but better adjustment to it. Again, after the earlier experience, I found myself reverting to a child's simplicity, trust, and openness. But after the latter one there was a desire to add whatever discrimination, wisdom, and practicality that my experience and study had since been able to garner. These two tendencies existed side by side and seemed to accommodate each other without difficulty. There was no conflict between reason and intuition or between reason and faith.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Then I was led to build up imaginatively a picture of what might have happened had I successfully passed the tests. I was also led to see that each man or woman who had been brought by life into short or long association with me had borne a silent message or embodied a hidden test, or else was someone to be helped or served in a way which would reveal itself in time. That Presence which was and yet was not told me inwardly how, through all the frustration and confusion which had filled the second cycle of my spiritual career, it had never left me but had remained beside me waiting for the time when my own efforts to find my way back would unite with its magnetic drawing power to liberate me. I was told that there was in this a great lesson—the necessity of hope—which I ought to communicate to the aspirants I would meet later who were spending fruitless barren years of spiritual seeking, and who were becoming discouraged at the lack of results.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: To write that this inner peace is perfect is no literary overstatement or emotional colouring, but an accurate factual description. "Come unto Me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest" is still as true today as when spoken by the Christ-Consciousness through Jesus nearly two thousand years ago.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: This faculty brought many unpleasant registrations to my mind and began to make life intolerable. Not until some time later, when I had had enough of it, was I told and taught by the Interior Word that the condition was only a preliminary one and now needed to be brought under strict control. I was warned that I did not need to effect harmony with others on the plane of their ego. Help was given me for the cure of this condition but I, on my part, had to make a positive exercise of the will for many months and a definite withdrawal of attention from others as well. Gradually these phenomena disappeared until I became quite free of them.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Because of the sweetness which pervaded my heart, the world looked different and it was not difficult to restrain those ignobler tendencies. I was perfectly conscious of the fact that I was Spirit and that my neighbour, however outwardly repulsive he might be, was Spirit too. When I looked at anyone I saw his outer person as a mere surface appearance. Within it, in his heart region, there was a calm centre of divine peace. It remained unchanged no matter how educated the surface self was and untarnished no matter how evil that self acted.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: The vision came to an end and with it I realized that a man does not become truly humble until he has first seen himself as truly great. The glimpse of his Higher Self throws a powerful light by reaction upon his darker one. He discovers how simple, how ignorant, how weak, and how arrogant he is and has been. If the discovery brings him to the ground, it also stimulates him to resolve to remake himself in the image of the ideal. With the shaming contrast between the animal and the angelic in him, as well as between the human and the Divine, he is penetrated through and through with the need of imposing the Higher Will forcefully upon the lower one.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: The years which succeeded this vision were years of development and growth. One of the most interesting new phenomena of that period came about occasionally when I was entering into or emerging from the deeper states of meditation. Out of the silent recesses of my being there came forth utterance—yet no form was to be seen and no one was there, nor did any vision come with it! This was the mystery—that speech came into existence without a speaker. It was the activity of vocal intuition, a Presence which spoke to the inner ear and not to the outer. It must not be confused with the hearing of audible voices such as mediums and psychics are supposed to hear. It was nothing of that kind. This was one's Spiritual Self speaking to one's human self. I suppose it was what the German mystics of the sixteenth century called "The Interior Word" and what the medieval saints of the Catholic church meant when they claimed that God talked to them. It was definite, commanding, forceful, insistent, and authoritative. If it gave an order, it gave also the power needed to carry out the order.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: There are not a few persons who have known infrequent occasions when their ordinary mentality seems to lapse, when their feeling for beauty and goodness seems to expand enormously, and when their worldly cynicism falls away into abeyance for a short time. The place may seem perfect for this experience, but it may also seem quite the opposite—such as a noisy metropolitan street. There are many other persons who have known the beauty of a great musical symphony and felt its power to draw the emotions into a vortex of delight or grandeur. Such persons can more easily imagine what this rapturous emotional mystical experience is like. But they may not know that under the ordinary human consciousness there is a hidden region whence these aesthetic feelings are drawn.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: I felt that the desires and attachments I had cared about so greatly, anguished over and worried for, were not important at all in themselves but only in the spiritual lesson to which they led in the end. All the little desires, all the personal yearnings, are really God-desire. At first it is unconscious but with the growth of understanding it becomes conscious. It is then that the will turns around to start on the Quest, and that the desiring heart which had been looking and hungering for things outside itself starts to look within itself.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

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