Selfish people, worrying people, negative people, complaining people, venomous people need to find this inner peace. It will heal them of their moral maladies, which in turn may be the causes of their physical maladies.

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

#12924 – 7.10.3.62

BSG_5 – ZZZ

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

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

Too many unbalanced persons prematurely occupy themselves with occultism, hypnotism, spiritualism, and even mysticism. It is better not to encourage them, for that will only make their present condition worse. Their first need is to get straightened out and for this they need outside help. The proper help is not easy to find. If it is professional and paid for such as that given by psychologists, psychoanalysts, or psychiatrists, it may have only a very limited value. The kind of help that would be really efficient would be a combination of these professional skills with philosophic, intuitive, and psychic skill.

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

#13068 – 7.10.4.59

BN – Z

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 – Z

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 – P – DE

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

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 – EL1/3 – 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 – EL2/3 – 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 – EL3/3 – 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

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

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 – Z – D

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 – ZZ – DE

People are attracted towards these cults either because they are in desperate need of physical healing or spiritual healing, or because they see in them 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

#13280E – 7.10.5.144

B_11 – EL1/1

New Thought and Christian Science should correct their errors, for some of the things which they label as "negative" may not be so at all. It is divine love which sanctions losses, sicknesses, poverty, and adversities. They are not to be regarded as enemies to be shunned but rather as tutors to be heeded. Through such blows the ego may be crushed and thus allow truer thoughts to fill the emptied space. Even pleasure and prosperity may deal a man worse blows than the so-called negatives can deal him if their end effect is to close the mind's door to light.

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

#13281 – 7.10.5.145

BN – Z

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

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

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 – DK1

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.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13307E – 7.11.1.17

B_16 – EL1/1

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

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

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

BN – 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

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

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13313 – 7.11.1.23

B_16 – X – 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

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

Thought is the cause; thought is the cure.

The Negatives > Their Nature > Their Nature

#13327 – 7.11.1.37

B_16 – X – 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 – P – D

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 – P – D

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

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 – X – D

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

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 – P – DE

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 – P – DXK

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

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

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

B_01 – ZZZ – DEMK

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

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

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

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

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

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 – ZZ – 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

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

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 – EL1/2 – 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 – EL2/2 – 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

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

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 – EL1/2 – 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 – EL2/2 – 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

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

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

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

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

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

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 – P – D

This book has been wrought around many moods and it is the work of several years, so that it might seem in places as though it were the production of two or three different hands. I could have omitted some chapters because they might be thought to break the harmony of the whole, and because they sound a note not so certain or happy as I have generally sought to give forth. But I prefer to let them stay as showing something in the way of growth, and to let them stand as milestones where I had camped for a while but have long since passed by. Some of the subsequent paragraphs were indeed written so long ago that I can hardly claim identity with the author, such are the changes which the years bring.

Reflections > Reflections > Reflections

#14157 – 8.12.0.1

BN – Z

In obedience to an inner compulsion and intermittent premonition whose justification became quite clear as destiny unfolded, I have ever maintained a sacred independence amidst all such relations, a detached loyalty, and have considered Truth a goddess above all mortals and hence alone to be worshipped. This attitude brought me painful emotional conflicts during the period of my growth and provoked others to malicious misunderstandings, but it has finally and fully proved its worth.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14158E – 8.12.0.1

BN – ZEL1/4

For my loftiest, strangest, most significant, and most elevating mystic experiences occurred before I had ever met a single teacher, before I had even set foot on Asiatic soil. Through them I was really reborn. But alas! in my youth and novitiate I could not understand them. I was dazzled by the light and so continued to grope as though I were still in the dark. Now at long last I have brought my mystic and philosophic wandering to an anchor. Henceforth I owe intellectual allegiance and mystical obedience to no man.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14158E – 8.12.0.1

BN – ZEL2/4

And if I abhor the thought of forming a cult and making disciples, this is not to say that I abhor the thought of assisting my fellow man to find something of what I have already found. And if I refuse to set myself up as a sage when I am myself but a student, this is not to say that there are not always those who know even less than oneself and who may profitably share a few of my own crumbs. For no one can come into even partial comprehension of the Overself which supports the existence of all living creatures and continue to sit smugly in self-centered enjoyment of his knowledge and egoistic enjoyment of his peace. It is only ascetic mystics who touch their inner self without also touching the inner self of the universe who can do that. But he who has even begun to perceive that the basis of his own individual being is one and the same, wholly identical, with that of all other individual beings is no longer a mystic.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14158E – 8.12.0.2

BN – ZEL3/4

For him the ultimate unity of all humanity—secret and not obvious though it be—is nevertheless a fact, and he has to reorder his own life accordingly. It will not be possible for him to dismiss from his mind the melancholy case of those who aspire to a wiser and better life. They will haunt his heart like wraiths and he will not get free of them, go where he will, be it into the loneliest solitude or the busiest city. Their service becomes his inescapable duty.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14158E – 8.12.0.1

BN – ZEL4/4

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

BN – Z – K

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

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

BSG_4 – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – DEK

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – DEK

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

BN – ZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: It was certainly the most blissful time I had ever had until then. I saw how transient and how shallow was earthly pleasure by comparison with the real happiness to be found in this deeper Self. Before my illumination the solitary scenes of Nature's grandeur usually served as my greatest form of inspiration. I could become so absorbed in admiring such beauty that I would feel swallowed up in it for a period of time and fall into a tranquil state. After my illumination I no longer became totally absorbed in such scenes. They remained something separate from me: I was detached from them. The emotional exaltation they aroused was less or lower than the peace and joy I felt in the Overself. Yet this spatial detachment did not prevent me from enjoying nature, art, and music to an even greater and more satisfying extent than previously. The detachment gave me freedom, release from some personal limitations, and enabled me to feel and understand beauty in a larger and deeper way. I even became more attentive to detail.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Nor was this the only result of a paradoxical nature: there was another. When I lived in the Himalayas I felt especially during full-moon periods like the solitary inhabitant of an unpeopled planet. It is not easy even today to forget those unbelievable mountains where silence is total and absolute, where nature seems to be meditating and man seems to be intruding. When I shut my door on the bustling world and retire first within my room and then within myself, it is as if I again enter into that still Himalayan world. There is utter silence within me. If I engage in work at the desk or go out into the bustling streets and mingle with people, it is as though a current is flowing steadily and incessantly through my heart—the current of that same inner peaceful silence.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZ – K

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

BN – ZZ – DEK

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Once identified with the Cause of the True Self, how could anyone ever betray it by expressing any of the uglier traits and baser qualities which belong to the lower self? Once it is discovered that all that is noblest in every human aspiration comes from this sacred Source, how could one go along with one's ignoble tendencies?

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Thus it became clear from both these initiations that it was all-important to rid the mind of the ego, or rather, of its crushing tyranny. This could not be the result of a single and sudden act, nor of years of disciplinary toil, but of a combination of the one leading to the other, of the Long Path leading to what is called the Short Path.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Although I did not get any cosmic revelation in those days, I did feel in a general way that behind the universe there was extreme beneficence, that whatever happened had its place in the Infinite Purpose. No event was merely a chance one. The Infinite Wisdom was behind all human life and fortune. I felt that this applied just as much to so-called evil events and calamitous happenings if only we could interpret them correctly. This strongly intuitive feeling made me happy and I wanted to share it with others and to get them to rise above their own experience into it.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Although a writer never really knows how much good or how much harm his work does (for the reports of its results are few and far between), if his aim is to serve he need not be concerned about those results. He would do his best and find peace in the thought that man and fate will take care of them. So I follow the practice and counsel of an old Greek monk, Callistus Telicudes, who wrote: "One ought not to keep what is learned by Meditation, but one should make notes of it and circulate the writings for the use of others." This is why I communicate these inner experiences to those who might be helped, to those who might receive more vision of and more belief in life itself.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: During the years which elapsed, nothing dislodged me from those attitudes. If I would no longer try to push the truth upon others, neither would I let them push me out of it; and if they tried to, I could only silently smile at their foolish arguments. Experience itself was better than their arguments. I preferred to believe in the awareness which always remained with me than in the merely theoretical reasons for its non-existence.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: It was simultaneously a kind of death and also a kind of birth—or rebirth—for in that life which was Essence I felt that the wishes, desires, attachments, and ambitions of the unreal self were futile, unnecessary, and vain. The entire existence to which they belonged was a dreamlike show, a passing cinema film. Those persons who were satisfied with such an existence were satisfied with a mere shadow of a shadow. They did not even suspect what the substance which cast the shadow really was, nor where it was, nor how to find it. This substance was the Infinite Life and Infinite Consciousness. It alone was real and eternal. Everything else was only a shadow-shape which merely reflected it. When later in the Near East an old Adept of the Hebrew Mystic Kabbala told me that its major text teaches that the Real Man lives like a sun in Heaven while only the shadow-man lives on earth, I immediately caught his meaning.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: The supreme lesson of all experience must first be learned by undergoing experience itself. There was no other way at that stage. What could I do for those who would not seek themselves, but only objects outside themselves? They sought to impose more and more fetters on their minds and hearts; I to point out the way which could lead to a free and fetterless existence. The two directions were directly opposite one another. My time could be more usefully occupied with those who, having experienced the results, of travel in the one and satiated or disenchanted with these results were at last ready for travel in the other direction.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Yet it was not the intuition associated with everyday existence as an occasional phenomena, for that is usually a mental first impression or a silent feeling. That intuition may well be the faint beginnings of this Voice, which I like to call the Voice of the Overself. I felt that I could put the utmost confidence in its guidance wherever it led me, even if it led directly to loss of every material possession, to sacrifice of every human relationship, and to the renunciation of every professional ambition. The place where I heard this Voice became ever after a holy sanctuary, an oasis of peace, and a citadel of strength to which I could return or retreat whenever I was alone, or whenever a crisis of the outer world was impending. People think too often that they have to travel to distant places for wisdom or teaching. They fail to recognize that it is not only within themselves—this wisdom or this teaching—but that it will never be found anywhere else. The echo of some other person's wisdom will never take its place.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: But I know from wide experience that such a narration will help those who are already seeking the Overself to recognize certain important signs on their own way, to learn where the correct path should lead them, and, above all, to confirm them in the necessity of hope. I believe, too, that it may give those who are not questers but ordinary people more faith that God does exist and more trust in the ultimate beneficence of God's World-Idea. If it serves also in such ways, it can only do a little good to write and release this record.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: But paradoxically I did not feel any necessity to talk to them, even to friends, about these new experiences unless they themselves were seeking the inner life. On the contrary, it seemed sacrilegious to divulge promiscuously what had happened to me. So I deliberately concealed the fact of their existence. This was because I soon found that to preach truth to the mass of people was of no use. They could not grasp it and it was better to be silent about it except to those few who were themselves on the verge of the Quest. I was taught inwardly, and confirmed by disappointment, that people stand on different levels of moral character, intuitive comprehension, and purpose in life, and I was warned to cease to try to proselytize, and to let the unready go their way while I went mine.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: I prayed to become a clear channel for the unhindered flow of inspiration, goodness, and truth to such persons, to those who were seeking for these things. As regards the unreceptive majority, I found it was more practical just to let the feeling of beneficence reflect itself through me to them as sincere goodwill and outward kindness. In some way and at some future time, the Spirit from which these two emanated would touch their subconscious being and affect them, help them or uplift them when eventually it succeeded in rising to the conscious mind. The result might be slight or great, but it was certain.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: Yet that discovery delighted me. I did not seem to care. My surface individuality was going or perhaps was gone, but, somehow, something mysteriously remained that was anonymous, nameless, universal, and absolute. That was the immeasurably important Essence of me: not the other with the petty desires and little idiosyncrasies, which had wasted my time for years and distracted me from the true significance of my life. Here, in this impersonal Being, I really belonged, lived, and found happiness.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: All the people I had ever known in the past or in the present, all the events of forgotten years as well as well-remembered ones, temporarily became nothing more than dreamlike figures in the mind, envisioned happenings in the consciousness, during this second initiation. If one of my own thoughts could suddenly become me, the thinker, the transformation would be something like the one which happens when the ego becomes the Overself. For I myself am nothing other than a thought in the Overself-Consciousness.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: After years of hesitation and reluctance, I include this chapter of a chronicle of personal mystical experience. The first intention had been to write it in old age and to publish it anonymously or perhaps posthumously. But I find that old age keeps on being before me, that instead of being more than half a century old I have simply lived for more than half a century, and that this task might as well be done now as later. There are still other chapters of this kind which will have to be written one day, but their concern is chiefly with cosmic mysteries rather than with personal experience, although the unveiling of those mysteries could not have happened except as a direct result of such experience. But since those subjects do not pertain to the present book, for they are on a plane that is more ethereal and less material, I have omitted them. The reluctance to put in the present chapter arises partly because it touches private, intimate, and sacred moments, and partly because it will necessarily be so prolific in first-person pronouns that it will sound far too egotistic. Its very virtue may appear as its vanity.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: And that is really the Truth: there is no second entity or power. There is only God. [Editors' note: The two essays that form this chapter were composed when the author was in his mid-fifties. People who knew him both during and after this period generally observe that the most significant phases of his development were yet to come, during his subsequent twenty-five years. Readers will find these essays helpful in estimating whether individual paras in the following pages date from earlier or later years.]

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: I no longer looked either for the worst in him or for the good in him but accepted him just as he was for that was the way he was. Never again could I condemn him too harshly. Each person I met was indeed a part of my own consciousness. I automatically and sympathetically identified myself with him or with anyone from whom I received a letter. I entered metaphorically into his shoes and shared his outlook, hopes, understanding, and, even, limitations. My enemy was explained too: how and why he could not help being so. In this immense sympathetic sweep, I even ventured to justify him against me.

Reflections > Two Essays > Two Essays

#14159E – 8.12.1.2

BN – ZZZ – K

To put the once-abstruse truths of mentalism into works readable, understandable, and nontechnical—just as had been done with yoga—was a further effort I made with enthusiasm but now, so many years later, its importance seems even greater than it did then.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > Grand truths and common speech

#14167 – 8.12.2.8

BA11 – ZZ

The introduction of artistic style in the exposition of philosophical truth need not necessarily attenuate that truth, if it is carefully done. That is my aim. After all, so many "dry" expositions already exist that a change may interest people who otherwise pass the subject by. Art can rouse interest in an uninteresting theme. The Oriental philosophies are expressed generally in too cryptic and complicated a style. Paul Deussen has pointed out the great value of the artistic style used by the Greeks in the presentation of their philosophies, as compared with the syllogistic systematizing method used by the Hindus.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > Grand truths and common speech

#14181 – 8.12.2.22

BN – Z

My work is not only to state the old wisdom but even more to clarify it. Hence my work is not expository but clarificatory.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > Grand truths and common speech

#14193 – 8.12.2.34

BA13 – ZZZ

Although we have rigidly set our face against taxing the eyes of readers with unfamiliar Sanskrit, there is no reason why, if the English language has absorbed so many merely marketplace Asiatic words like "curry" and "bungalow," it should not also absorb a couple of valuable metaphysical words like "karma" and "yoga" which, in any case, have already been granted this new linguistic nationality by dozens of Western writers.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > Grand truths and common speech

#14201 – 8.12.2.42

BN – X – K

The books were written out of passionate feeling for truths and matters higher than those which ordinarily occupy people's minds. The hope was to make the readers feel something of what the writer felt and to establish the fact that there is a Reality beyond and behind existence, of which we are a part. The books had their own particular work to do. It was to awaken interest in it, to arouse the mind to the existence of man's higher goal, and to give both the impulse to search for truth and the urge to practise what the truth requires.

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

#14216 – 8.12.2.57

BA13 – ZZ – D

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

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

#14219D – 8.12.2.60

BA13 – ZZZ – K

For a great peace filled my heart. The white splendour of a hope that had seemed a mirage now flamed out of the lost years. It turned the dark past into a lighted avenue that led up the Hill of Patience to the House of Fulfilment. So stick to this quest with the iron determination not to stop until you have realized the truth. Don't worry about the remoteness of the goal; leave all the results to fate and do the best you can. With proper guidance, the goal can be brought infinitely nearer than it seems. Those who know truth want to share it—what else do they care for? Make up your mind and progress from can't to can!

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

#14222D – 8.12.2.63

BN – ZZZ – DEK

It is the business of my books to act as awakeners rather than as teachers, to make people aware of their higher possibilities and of the obstacles or limitations within themselves which hinder their realization.

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

#14245 – 8.12.2.86

BN – Z

It is not an exaggeration to say that sometimes I felt as if I were bringing humanity messages from another world. Starved souls have found nourishment in these pages that speak of the Overself. These writings have instructed some in the noble truths of philosophy and consoled others in the sad hours of affliction.

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

#14271E – 8.12.2.112

BA13 – P – DE

I wrote for myself as well as for others. For, as explained in so many prefaces, I am only a student of these matters and not a master. In the words of Saint Paul, "I count not myself to have attained." This is partly why I seem to have fallen into inconsistency. But every growing thing is inconsistent with its former self. Consistency belongs to the cemetery alone. Between the time when I wrote the first book and the time when I wrote the tenth book, there was an advance in capacity and an evolution in outlook. The shift of emphasis and the transference of interest which my writings show are the natural result of fuller inner maturation and further outer experience.

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

#14271E – 8.12.2.112

BA13 – ZZZ – DE

What else can I do than drop some words into a mind willing to receive them?

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

#14282 – 8.12.2.123

BN – ZZZ – K

My writing is both a form of sharing knowledge and a way of teaching it at one and the same time. It is a response to my natural desire to pass on to others some ideas that have taken their place in my pattern of life-meaning, but it is also an attempt to explain and propagate those ideas for the benefit of these others.

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

#14285 – 8.12.2.126

BA13 – P – DE

I must say at once that I do not claim to represent any teacher anywhere of any time, nor orthodox system of religion or metaphysics, mysticism or occultism. None of the representatives of any, very old or more recent, can therefore rightly say that I am giving an incorrect exposition in this writing.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > Creative independence

#14290 – 8.12.2.131

BA13 – P – DE

Something seemed to ask me, “Do you want to have your ego catered to and pampered like a child, primarily seeking its outer comforts, or will you give up the ego altogether and find peace? The choice you make at this crossroads will also determine the outer fortunes coming to you.”

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > Creative independence

#14300 – 8.12.2.141

BN – X – D

Why should I trouble to drive a golf-ball or sit up nightly over a pack of printed cards? Was it for this that I was born? I am a yogi. I am busy with a game of a higher sort. "If a man does not keep pace with his companions," says Thoreau, "perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > Creative independence

#14315 – 8.12.2.156

BN – Z

Such a grand synthesis became the object of my intensive search the more I perceived the fragmentariness of available teachings and the more I discovered the limitations of accessible teachers. But I could not find it and in the end had to construct my own.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14341 – 8.12.2.182

BN – ZZ

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

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14346D – 8.12.2.187

BN – ZZ – K

The unerring Wisdom of Providence separated me with pain and protest from limited standpoints, aroused me with shocks from India's glamour, only to unite me with pleasure and agreement to a global standpoint, illumine me with insights into real spirituality, remind me of the worth and need of Christ's message of love.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14350 – 8.12.2.191

BN – Z – K

I saw that I must work in full independence of all mystical schools, all Oriental traditions, while yet studying them sympathetically. I saw too that the combination of selected factors in their separate teachings was necessary as the resultant whole must be combined with my own personal revelation and reflection. Their theory and training, even the secret initiations given me by their masters, were not to be the finalized result but only the foundation for it. I saw that this would have to be the form in which I could best fulfil my own large aspirations as well as best give them what I had dedicated myself to give.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14359 – 8.12.2.200

BN – ZZ – K

All my previous life and travel, all my researches and experiences have been leading up to this fuller and culminating revelation that I have been asked to communicate to the world of seekers.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14362 – 8.12.2.203

BA13 – P – D

The reference to the three books mentioned in the second chapter of The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga should not be misunderstood. They were mentioned merely to illustrate one of the ways in which I was introduced to this teaching. There were other ways, too. And these three texts contain only fragments of the hidden teaching; none is final or exhaustive. Again, important aspects of it were not written down but have been transmitted privately. Let nobody think I am engaged in any kind of revival work. The circumstances and habits, the outlook and aspirations of those who lived when these texts were written are quite foreign to us. It would be as foolish to adopt such teaching in its entirety as it would be to ignore it altogether. Today's need is not merely a synthesis of modern scientific ideas with ancient mystical ones, not merely a dovetailing of Oriental and Occidental teachings, but virtually a new creation to fit the new age now about to dawn.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14367E – 8.12.2.208

BN – EL1/2 – DEK

I therefore do not advocate the study of old Sanskrit texts as an essential goal but merely as an incidental means and then only for those who like to do so. There are new forces penetrating this planet's atmosphere today and they demand a new inspiration, new thinking, and a new way of living. We have today what no previous generation has ever possessed.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14367E – 8.12.2.208

BN – EL2/2 – DEK

I am not a mere transcriber of Hindu thought. Some Hindus and their Western converts who believed so once see their mistake now, and many others will see it later before my pen is through with its job. I must forestall any Indian critic here and now, by reminding them that I am teaching this not as an Indian tradition but as a universal one. The present fact is indeed that I no longer regard myself as an exponent of any particular ancient Indian system. I wish to speak only of such knowledge as lives within me, as I have arrived at through my own thinking, experiment, and research, but which is nevertheless firmly based upon a reformulation of the hidden wisdom of Asia. I claim no special merit for original doctrine but only for original synthesis of existing doctrines. My talents have been employed in the direction of choice rather than invention. Yet this was no small matter. If I escaped with my sanity, it was only at the cost of gigantic efforts which may render smooth the path of those who shall follow when I have gone. That which guided me through this labyrinth was the light of my own philosophic experience.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14368 – 8.12.2.209

UR_2.0 – ZZZ – K

All this was a kind of training, ripening the mind and broadening its experience for the task in which I have at last engaged myself—the intellectual shaping of a great synthesis and its transposition to the literary plane.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14374 – 8.12.2.215

BA13 – ZZ

In these pages I have tried to tell how consciousness of God and how knowledge of God's value came to me.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#14378 – 8.12.3.1

BA13 – ZZZ

As this work went forward, I felt and knew some presence in myself that took a part in its making. If I were to say that these pages were written by me, there would be an uneasy feeling of untruth in me. If I were to say the contrary, there would be a sense of the absurd in such a statement. I leave the reader to make what he can of these paragraphs.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#14379 – 8.12.3.2

BA13 – ZZZ

Rather than be the scribe of ephemeral fact let me, O Lord, be the scribe of eternal vision. Let me write down word-for-word those divine messages which come to me out of the ether.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#14380 – 8.12.3.3

BA13 – ZZZ

It is both my fate and my joy to labour to the last as a medium for this voice within me. I shall put down my pen only when I put down my life.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#14381 – 8.12.3.4

BA13 – ZZZ

I am never really alone when writing but every now and then there rises before my mind's eye the vision of some man or woman whose whole life may take a new and nobler course because of a few paragraphs which flow lightly from this old pen of mine…

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#14382E – 8.12.3.5

BA13 – ZZZ – DEK

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

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#14383D – 8.12.3.6

BA13 – ZZ – K

He [PB referring to himself] could not communicate such discoveries as a matter for doubt or for settlement by discussion. He can communicate them only with a tone of authority and in an atmosphere of surety, for this is how he himself received them.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#14384 – 8.12.3.7

UR_2.9.3 – ZZZ – K

Each oracular sentence carries a message for someone, somewhere. The writer does not need to know who it is.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#14385 – 8.12.3.8

UR_6 – ZZZ – K

It is not my fault if my style insists on sounding forth an authoritative and prophetic tone. I do not create it by any act of will. It is as if some ethereal presence stands behind the mind and bids me utter its message.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#14387 – 8.12.3.10

UR_2.9.3 – ZZZ – K

The concept of the Overself's presence among us originated with the ancients but is validated by modern experience. This experience of the Overself provides the best evidence of its existence and reality: no other is needed. It would be a failure in duty not to acknowledge that I have felt and known this existence hundreds of times. It is no longer a matter of mere faith to me, but of absolute knowledge. This is not to be put by anyone to my good credit for what I am and have done in this life, but to my good karma.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14397 – 8.12.3.20

BN – ZZ – DEK

It was the opening of summer in l953. An internal tropical malady caught from eating deliberately poisoned food a few months earlier in the Far East had run its course and was about to end, as it so often did end, fatally. I suddenly and involuntarily fell across the writing desk and felt consciousness slumping into a coma. I dragged myself somehow to a couch and there the coma turned out to be the death swoon. After a couple of moments I was already almost entirely out of the physical body. The line was about to be drawn to close the past lifetime's account. . . . In that condition and at that moment my body was found by someone who happened to enter the room, someone so highly sensitive and intuitive as to recognize at once what the hidden situation was. My friend called me to come back, emphatically, pleadingly, and insistently by turns. At the same time I awoke to a dreamy consciousness, half in one world, where the astral figure of a Master, well-known and well-loved, appeared to me, and half in the physical world.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14399E – 8.12.3.22

BN – ZEL1/2

The Master said, "I have come to take you away. But you still have the choice, whether to return or to come with me." I reflected rapidly. Personally I felt quite willing to accept the vast relief from the burden of P.B.'s earthly life now offered me. But at the same time, I felt pity for those who looked to me for help. The work with and for them was unfinished. My mission to them and to others was unfulfilled. How could I go? All this happened in a very few seconds. Regretfully, reluctantly, the decision formed itself within my heart. I asked to be allowed to return to the flesh so that I could continue the service and complete the record.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14399E – 8.12.3.22

BN – ZEL2/2

I sought for the Overself amid all the conditions of life. I found it first in a series of passing glimpses that were stretched out at intervals through years and later in a series of unique and powerful experiences whose results were 'enduring'. Yes, that is the all-important word, for if it does not leave something in the consciousness that lasts the lifetime, it is not enough to have had a mystical experience. The prodigal has still not returned to his father's home, but only seen it through the haze for a few moments and from afar off.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14410 – 8.12.3.33

BN – X – DEK

How many a glorious moment has found its way from the inner life to my outer notebook!

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14412 – 8.12.3.35

BN – Z – D

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

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14413 – 8.12.3.36

BN – X – DEK

These teachings are not the result of conjecture nor the mirror of opinion. They are insights got by an opening of the inner eyes. This fact must be pointed out, in all humility, if they are to carry to any reader the revelatory understanding which they have already brought the writer.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14435 – 8.12.3.58

BA13 – P – D

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: (1) A force welled up in the heart, rose to the head, then passed forwards into space. As it left the body, I knew I was not the body. I saw the mass of human beings struggling in the misery and strife because of their greed, desire, and selfishness. I saw hands holding the globe. They belonged to a figure whose face I could not see but whom I named "The Master." He said, "Free yourself." I moved on in space and saw on the horizon a coloured sunset glow of half-light which was my destination. I then knew I was not the personal self. But I did not continue and complete my journey. This was because fear entered me—perhaps fear of the unknown. So I returned to the body.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14437E – 8.12.3.60

BN – ZZZ – DEK

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: (17) Although there had been experiences in the past of what purported to be fragmentary visions of former reincarnations, I now saw that those experiences did not belong to any level beyond the higher psychic. From the present level the entire process of reincarnation now seemed to be illusory because it belonged to the realm of illusion itself. The true Self did not reincarnate at all.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14437E – 8.12.3.60

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: (18) This technique of combined deep breathing and energy-raising was discovered quite accidentally—or so it seemed at the time. Certainly nobody taught it to me and no book revealed it to me. I was convinced then as a matter of faith, and today as a matter of knowledge, that it was picked up afresh out of the subconscious memory of former reincarnations.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14437E – 8.12.3.60

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: (19) I saw that every little detail is predestined, even the fact that I am to write at this very moment, and to write just these particular words. All that has happened to me in the past has brought me to this point, which makes the act a fated one. I am not free to do anything else than write, nor to write anything different from what I am writing.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14437E – 8.12.3.60

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: (20) I saw that everything which happens does so in conformity with the World-Idea. The entire planetary situation, which includes the situation of each being within it, is providentially arranged.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14437E – 8.12.3.60

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. EXCERPT: (6) I found that I could fully enter this transcendental state at any time and at will simply by reorienting my attention upon the idea of turning inwards in the way that a hatha yogi who rolls up his eyeballs and crosses them detaches his attention from the remainder of his physical body. In order to bring about this change of awareness, a certain object of concentration had to be used. Generally it was a simple and short declarative phrase, either an affirmation or the pictorial memory of my most outstanding experience. When the change was effected I found myself at the centre of my being. It was the real "I." Time was then brought to a standstill.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14437E – 8.12.3.60

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. VARIOUS EXCERPTS: (13) I was overpowered by a peculiar feeling of being unreal, and for once even unsure of my own identity. (14) No psychic voice came into my hearing, no psychic vision unrolled before my eyes. The spiritual and mystical life may be fulfilled completely without entering such a dubious realm. (15) There was no one whom I met who was unimportant. My interest in everyone, however short or transitory our meeting, was full and complete. (16) To sit down every day at my writing table and put this experience into words on the paper that lies in front of me, is itself heartening and inspiring. But the fact that there are other people in the world, unknown to me, who feel the same spiritual need that I once felt and who might find some hope or stimulation in such a record of personal experience, also induces me to create this little heap of manuscript.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14437E – 8.12.3.60

BN – ZZZ – K

My Initiations into the Overself. VARIOUS EXCERPTS: (2) A great love towards all things rises in me at times since the experience. (3) Since the experience I have been so eager to return to it that I feel frustrated. (4) The Consciousness first remained with me throughout every day and every night. Then it slowly remained for shorter and shorter periods—one hour less at a time. By the end of a few weeks it had totally disappeared. (5) In that deep silence the ego was integrated with the Overself. The operation was almost wholly done through the power of Grace. It descended in overwhelming force and crushed out the ego's tyrannical rule.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14437E – 8.12.3.60

BN – ZZZ – DEK

My Initiations into the Overself. VARIOUS EXCERPTS: (7) During the illumination there was no jubilant ecstasy, no emotional excitement, no unbalancing rapture. It was a happy peace, a calm abidance in beauty, love, wisdom. (8) There was no desire to play the missionary and spread the knowledge of it far and wide. On the contrary, I told no one about it but kept it secret. (9) I found I could go on thinking, or not thinking, while still remaining in the higher awareness. (10) The period of elementary training was completed, its experience finished. (11) As this presence held me, it gave me an invulnerable peace and a strange detachment from personal matters or outer happenings. (12) A new insight of this kind cannot be got by those who refuse to enlarge their visionless academic learning, those whose experience of the world is in the end mostly an experience of pages in books.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14437E – 8.12.3.60

BN – ZZZ – DEK

Mine is a religion which cannot be named, a God who cannot be discussed, a worship which cannot be seen or heard. All that I revere rests in secrecy and silence.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14441 – 8.12.3.64

BA13 – Z – DK

There is Infinite Intelligence always at work on this planet; … the real Giver of all things; … that God is the very Provider of all.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14444EM – 8.12.3.67

BSG_4 – P – DX

Still within the web of memory lies the bright day when first it drew the dark veil aside and showed me its Holy Face. For the first time I felt free of frustrated desire for any new outer possessions, circumstances, or persons. I found my joy within and my satisfaction through the Overself at all times. If anything was lacking on the physical plane, I could have it manifested into existence simply by stating to the Higher Power mentally what I needed but saying at the same time that there would be no real difference to my peace of mind if the lack continued, for I would plainly pray that "not my will, but Thine, be done." By giving up mentally what I wanted, I became detached and freed myself from the desired thing. Yet it was always given to me! By depending upon the real source of Happiness, I was allowed a secondary happiness in worldly things. An unillumined person cannot perceive that God is the very Provider of all. He believes that by obtaining money, position, or power he will find security and happiness. The illumined person knows that they are found only in God.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14444 – 8.12.3.67

BN – ZZZ – DEK

Throughout the darkest period of intense suffering, the Overself was all the time present, supporting and strengthening him to bear what there could be no escape from, what his higher destiny had irrevocably willed in order to detach him still further from egoism and personal ties. He was in its hands always, in joy and in sorrow alike.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14446 – 8.12.3.69

BN – Z – DK

I have embodied in these pages the matured wisdom and dearly bought experience of many many lifetimes.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The making of a messenger

#14450 – 8.12.3.73

BA13 – ZZZ – DK

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

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The making of a messenger

#14480D – 8.12.3.103

BA13 – ZZ – K

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

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The making of a messenger

#14481D – 8.12.3.104

BA13 – Z – K

The P.B. of l946 is not the same as the P.B. of 1926. They differ on several points, although, happily, not on the fundamental points that man’s soul is and that his duty here and now is to realize it.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The making of a messenger

#14514 – 8.12.3.137

BN – X – D

I went both abroad on land and sea as well as within mind and heart. The higher Self, the soul, God—whatever name we like to call it by—was the object of my quest. My findings were shared in my books and interviews.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The making of a messenger

#14536 – 8.12.3.159

BN – Z – DK

It is not for me to play any spectacular part in the present epoch. I have not issued these books for any propagandist purpose. Mine is a specialist's task working in a special field. But despite all this, it will not be easy for anyone to run a measuring-rod over the amount of work done. I have set ripples going but how far they will spread is the concern of destiny. P.B.'s body will pass away but his ideas will go on working. For these ideas have taken hold in some minds, who in turn will transmit them to other minds and another generation. The legacy of ideas which he toiled over during his lifetime will be with them long after his passing from this earthly plane.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The message and the marketplace

#14544 – 8.12.3.167

BN – Z

If this message is false, you cannot know this until you have fully investigated it, for to come to conclusions before thorough examinations is unworthy of a thinking person. If this message is true, then it is of colossal importance to the world, and to you.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The message and the marketplace

#14547 – 8.12.3.170

B_01 – ZZZ – K

Those who would put this account aside as a mere dream and who would lay this printed record down as purely fantastic will have their ideas compulsorily changed within the while of a decade or less. There is no dream here. Nothing is more substantial than the eternal truth of man's spiritual existence. Nothing could be more real than the experiences which come to him when he can unchain the mind from the dense vibrations of the fleshly body.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The message and the marketplace

#14550 – 8.12.3.173

BN – Z – DEK

We have a message for this age and we shall descend into the marketplace and give it. Hitherto, few would listen to the mystic's message, for he was unable or unwilling to explain it in terms of a practical application to the need of the hour.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The message and the marketplace

#14551 – 8.12.3.174

BN – ZZZ – DEK

The work of providing copies of P.B.'s books for local public libraries where they are not yet available is a constructive one. It is a more effective method of spiritual propagation than costlier methods. It breeds good karma.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The message and the marketplace

#14556 – 8.12.3.179

BN – Z – K

After all, if this teaching helps some readers penetrate the mystery of the higher power even just a little, it will really help them a lot.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The message and the marketplace

#14565 – 8.12.3.188

BN – X – D

Those who know what life means and why we are here are lamentably few. The millions perish in darkness. There is, therefore, no better service for him nowadays than to contribute the knowledge he has gained in the hope that it will alleviate the dark corners of the world of their distresses. I say "corners" deliberately, for the world at large will be too insensitive to him.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The message and the marketplace

#14568E – 8.12.3.191

BN – Z

There are lots of biographies of men and women who became famous because they achieved something in the world, but few biographies of men and women whose achievements were outside the world, and inside themselves, particularly inside their consciousness. Very few have become aware of Awareness itself, which is the highest achievement possible to any human being. These memorials of those who got outside the herd of ignorant mankind give their advice and suggestions to the few who seek to know themselves.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Sharing truth

#14572 – 8.12.4.3

BN – Z – DEK

Buddha himself foresaw that a new teacher would arise within a few thousand years after himself, and that this man would have a higher spiritual status than himself. But what is of special interest is his further prediction that a higher spiritual path would, through this medium, be opened to mankind. Everything points to the fact that the date when this teacher and his teaching will appear is within the century. Both the effect of science on man's intellect and the effect of science on his wars have brought him close to it

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Sharing truth

#14573 – 8.12.4.4

BN – X – DEK

I have indeed undertaken what I believe to be a pioneer work. I cannot give my patronage to any particular system. I can bestow it only on Truth, which is unique and systemless.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Sharing truth

#14574ED – 8.12.4.5

BA13 – P – DEK

I shall have to lay down my pen one day, but the intuitions and experiences which flow through its ink shall find other hands and continue to publish themselves to the world.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Sharing truth

#14590 – 8.12.4.21

BA13 – ZZZ – DK

In spite of their defects my books have made a useful contribution to a development which is urgently needed in modern society. Others will doubtless come after me and do much better and more careful work in this line of thought.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Sharing truth

#14593 – 8.12.4.24

BN – Z

Whoever has benefited by these ideas is under an obligation to make them available to whoever else may be ready to receive them. They should pool their best experiences and finest thoughts through the written or spoken word as noteworthy in their inner life. Let them write of what they know, not suppose, of what they have come to understand as true or what they have felt, witnessed, or experienced. Let them take care to keep within the range of their experience or knowledge, for most articles on these subjects are vitiated by the flights of imagination over fact. There is enough material in life and in thought with which they are familiar to render it unnecessary to touch the unknown.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Sharing truth

#14597 – 8.12.4.28

BN – ZZZ – DEK

Because the Quest is, and must be, an individual matter, I have sought to present the Truth-Expression in a way best suited to our times and needs—through my books—wherein each individual may find for himself the message he is ready for.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14600 – 8.12.4.31

BN – ZZ

I have not only refused to organize a cult but have prevented others from doing so who wished it ardently.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14605 – 8.12.4.36

BA13 – P – D

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

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14607D – 8.12.4.38

BA13 – ZZZ – K

I discovered with the years that the prayer I had made, so often and so earnestly, as a youngster near the threshold of adult manhood, was being adequately answered. It was a simple prayer, nothing more than to be used for the spiritual awakening of others through the written word. It did not go beyond that.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14611E – 8.12.4.42

BN – Z – DE

It is 'their' problem, not mine, to find the particular teaching and teacher best suited to their personality and level. It is not my duty to go beyond the general teachings given in the books. Those who demand personal instruction must find their own affinity. I do not give names and addresses and recommendations, but stay within the area of my authorization. Too many fail to realize that their own higher self has already begun to work and that they must co-operate with it.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14616 – 8.12.4.47

BN – Z – DEK

I am sorry that I do not know any teacher who can be recommended to them. The references in my books to the characteristics and methods of true teachers represent my conception of the ideal teacher and are not necessarily a portrait of someone I have met in the flesh. However, if I do not know where they can find such a man, or if he does not exist, then I am his forerunner and foreteller. He is needed and he must come. Providence will see to it and knows when and where he will appear.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14619 – 8.12.4.50

BN – Z

He will not seek to draw public attention to himself unless it is in his destiny to do so because he has some public work to perform. He will prefer to keep his holiness hidden from his fellows, and so it will be left for some among them to discover whether he is holy or not. This secrecy provides a wall of outward defense against the negative and evil forces which find plenty of vehicles among his fellow human beings.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14630 – 8.12.4.61

BA11 – Z

The seeker must remember that his Real Guide is his own divine Soul, or Higher Self; that it is This which led him to his present stage of awareness, whilst my books were merely used as instruments. It is to this Self that he should address his prayers and petitions for Grace and Guidance.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14634 – 8.12.4.65

B_07 – P – D

I cannot undertake the work of organized and systematic personal instruction but must, due to the force of greater circumstances, let my books go their own way, find their own pupils and serve by stimulating interest and thought.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14650 – 8.12.4.81

BN – Z

I wish no organized institution to be founded upon my name and writing. It is not the logical outcome of all my work.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14666 – 8.12.4.97

BA13 – P – D

How dismal to hear a cynic's exclamation: "A man cannot change himself." But how hopeful to hear Socrates' own experience that he had come into the world with many vices yet had rid himself of them with the help of reason. In the Bible it is written that man is made in the image of God. Would not that noun more likely be positive in attitude, uplifting in spirit?

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Obstacles to inspiration

#14691E – 8.12.4.122

A241129 – P – DEK

Too much remembrance of the world leads to too much forgetfulness of the higher purpose of our life in the world.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Obstacles to inspiration

#14714 – 8.12.4.145

BN – X – D

The problem has two faces. The first is how to preserve even a stunted inner life from vanishing when the outer life is drawing all our time thought energies and feelings. The second is how to create the beginnings of such an inner life for those who have never known it.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Obstacles to inspiration

#14720 – 8.12.4.151

BN – X – D

The selfish man puts nothing back into life.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Obstacles to inspiration

#14733 – 8.12.4.164

BN – X – D

I discovered in the end that the yogi is afraid of action and consequently indifferent to the troubles of the world and unconcerned about mankind's well-being; that his society and presence does not radically change human character for the better, as is claimed, but merely lulls its worst qualities into semi-quiescence to spring up again, however, at the first release from his immediate influence. I perceived how I had over-idealized mystics in the past and wrongly thought them to be sages, how I had mistaken their attainment of yogic peace for the true self-realization, and how inevitable was their preoccupation with themselves when the knowledge of universal truth alone could give the wider interest in the welfare of others.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > The limits of yoga

#14742 – 8.12.4.173

BN – Z

In China years ago, the existence was discovered of an organization called the Buddhist National Laymen's Association which operated its own private radio station and every night disseminated the message of Chinese Buddhism to its listeners. What they did to spread their own religion, we of the West could no doubt do to spread philosophy.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > The limits of yoga

#14749 – 8.12.4.180

BN – X – D

They welcomed me as a supposed recruit to Hinduism as a religion. But the years taught them that they were wrong. Alas! the lesson brought bitterness in its train!

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > The limits of yoga

#14750 – 8.12.4.181

BN – Z – K

For months and years I sat in mosquito-ridden rooms and endured countless sharp stings with stolid stoic patience for the sake of studying the Indian wisdom and practising the Indian yoga. Hands, feet, and face were mercilessly attacked by numerous legions of these pestilential insects, which were often ably assisted by little brown biting ants. Yet to feel that I was absorbing the one and mastering the other was sufficient reward for my sufferings. If my body was spasmodically tortured, my mind was soothed with growing peace.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > The limits of yoga

#14758 – 8.12.4.189

BN – X – K

The Divine Arms still enfold us and some have been fortunate enough to receive intimations of that fact. They will get even more than this later. But those who have discovered the life beyond ego have incurred a duty. Perhaps destiny will give them the privilege to be of humble service in a way commensurate with the time's need.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Living with truth

#14767 – 8.12.4.198

BN – X – DEK

To a certain individual it may be said: “I have faith in you—but the real You has yet to make an appearance. When it does you will then find your real work in life.”

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Living with truth

#14787 – 8.12.4.218

BN – X – D

Although I find my deepest interest in attempting to explore the dark mysteries of man, although this world is seemingly full of worry and woe, I still try to remember that there is another world—not so far off as most imagine—where ineffable bliss holds its inhabitants as permanent captives.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Living with truth

#14789 – 8.12.4.220

BN – Z – DEK

When a man grows as unconsciously as a flower, it surprises him to discover how much larger is the area, how much deeper is the penetration, of his personal influence in the circle of people which he meets.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Living with truth

#14791 – 8.12.4.222

BN – X – D

Stick to this quest with the iron determination not to stop until you have realized the truth. Don't worry about the remoteness of the goal; leave all the results to fate and do the best you can. With proper guidance, the goal can be brought infinitely nearer than it seems. Those who know truth want to share it—what else do they care for? Make up your mind and progress from can't to can!

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Living with truth

#14797ED – 8.12.4.228

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK

So stick to this quest with the iron determination not to stop until you have realized the truth. Don't worry about the remoteness of the goal; leave all the results to fate and do the best you can. With proper guidance, the goal can be brought infinitely nearer than it seems. Those who know truth want to share it—what else do they care for? Make up your mind and progress from can't to can!

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Living with truth

#14797D – 8.12.4.228

BN – ZZZ – DEK

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

Reflections > The Literary Work > For kindred souls

#14803D – 8.12.5.6

BN – X – K

In the past I tried to present a method, a technique, and an ideal that seemed suited to the generality of people. That is to say, the earlier books were works intended for such of the masses as were unable to find enlightenment elsewhere. That work has come to a natural close.

Reflections > The Literary Work > For kindred souls

#14814 – 8.12.5.17

BN – ZZ – K

Some readers will have been consciously, even anxiously, waiting for some of these ideas. Others will have been waiting unconsciously for them. Still others will find nothing here that nourishes them, so we shall bid each other farewell—amicably, I hope.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A mixed reception

#14821 – 8.12.5.24

BN – ZZZ – K

I keep myself in silent obscurity and outward inactivity while waiting for the times which, out of desperate need, will accept me just as I am and on my own terms. Those times will not come until after Armageddon.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A mixed reception

#14825 – 8.12.5.28

BN – ZZ – K

His message is for those who wish to listen to him or to read his words. Whether this means a small or a large number of persons, and whether anyone is willing to believe him or not, is not primarily his concern.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A mixed reception

#14833 – 8.12.5.36

BN – ZZZ – K

It is easy for a writer who sits comfortably at a desk to give voice to such truths. But it is hard for a reader, who is struggling with the cares and duties of everyday living, to apply them.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A mixed reception

#14838 – 8.12.5.41

BN – ZZ – K

We shall sow seeds, diffuse ideas, transmit inspirations, and watch them take root in the minds of others; but it is a later generation which shall watch them grow into sturdy plants and bear good fruits in the lives of many more individuals. There is more hope for acceptance of worthwhile ideas from the younger people, for they stand at the door of life and fumble for the key.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A mixed reception

#14855 – 8.12.5.58

BN – ZZ

We shall sow seeds, diffuse ideas, transmit inspirations, and watch them take root in the minds of others; but it is a later generation which shall watch them grow into sturdy plants and bear good fruits in the lives of many more individuals …

Reflections > The Literary Work > A mixed reception

#14855E – 8.12.5.58

BN – ZZ

We shall sow seeds, diffuse ideas, transmit inspirations, and watch them take root in the minds of others; but it is a later generation which shall watch them grow into sturdy plants and bear good fruits in the lives of many more individuals. There is more hope for acceptance of worthwhile ideas from the younger people, for they stand at the door of life and fumble for the key.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A mixed reception

#14858 – 8.12.5.61

BN – ZZ – DEK

Some who had never before heard of these teachings found them so reasonable, so inspiring, and so helpful that they instantly accepted them as true.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A mixed reception

#14859 – 8.12.5.62

B_02 – P – D

I can afford to be patient and calm despite the barking of such critics, for a historical pioneering task for this generation has fallen on my shoulders. Such self-appreciation is not identical with self-conceit. The one is the unembellished knowledge of one's correct height, the other the emotional exaggeration of it to satisfy vanity.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Responding to critics

#14884 – 8.12.5.87

BN – ZZZ

He may not desert the broad work of human enlightenment which devolves upon him. That work has to be done and neither the malice of satanic human instruments nor the misunderstanding of the superficial and ignorant should deter him from carrying it out.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Responding to critics

#14909E – 8.12.5.112

BN – ZZZ – DEK

I am well aware that the modern mind dislikes it [the repetition] and prefers terseness, but this is one instance where I consider the ancient Oriental mind was a little wiser. Whether or not this is a fault depends upon the circumstances under which the repetition occurs. The recorded conversations and addresses of Buddha are chock-full of repetitions, for example. The Yoga Vasistha repeats scores of times most of its leading ideas. Why then did the ancient Orientals use this device—for so it really is? The answer may be partly given by one of them in his own words: "Repetition either of thought or language is no fault in this study. Repetition serves to bring out and give us mental practice in the great truths." These words were written by Suresvara, the personal and chief disciple of the illustrious Shankaracharya.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Responding to critics

#14911E – 8.12.5.114

UR_2.9.1 – ZEL1/2 – DEK

The more important tenets of higher philosophy are intellectually extremely subtle, so subtle as not to be apparent at first contact with them, and extremely difficult to realize. The repeated contact with them, however, acts as a kind of indirect meditation and removes their unfamiliarity, renders them understandable, and causes them little by little to sink into the emotional consciousness.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Responding to critics

#14911E – 8.12.5.114

UR_2.9.1 – ZEL2/2 – DEK

I have written on different topics as they occurred to me, but none so different as not to be connected with the Quest in some way.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14920 – 8.12.5.123

B_01 – ZZZ – K

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

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14922D – 8.12.5.125

BN – ZZ – K

One advanced mystic considers the quest of the Overself to be the most important and most exigent activity in which anyone can engage, and if he can help anyone he is happy to do so. Having made many mistakes in the past, burnt his fingers, and stubbed his toes several times, at least he can point out errors to be avoided, even if he can do nothing more.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14927 – 8.12.5.130

BN – ZZZ – DEK

When at last I realized that my own experiences were important to no one but myself, and only the views distilled from them could have any value or interest for others, I resolved never again to write another of those personal prefatory chapters which mar several of my books.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14931 – 8.12.5.134

BN – Z

PB referring to himself: "The man who wrote that cycle of ten books is dead. The attitudes, the beliefs, and the standpoints out of which he wrote them have ceased to exist. None of these books has any relevance to his self, save as a milestone which has been passed and left behind."

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14932 – 8.12.5.135

BN – Z – K

And yet, with all their errors and faults, which are now as deeply saddening to the blundering perpetrator as they must be deeply irritating to the perceptive reader, I have left enough sound stuff in my writings for posterity as to justify their creation. As for their continuation, that is a matter over which I exercise no legal control at all. Anyway my labours and sufferings have not been altogether in vain.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14945 – 8.12.5.148

UR_2.4 – ZZZ – K

I have written many things in my earlier books which I now wish I had never written. Time has forced me to revise beliefs, impressions, estimates, and even principles. I was misled by others in some cases and went astray through my own defects in others. Again and again dark moods have come over me solely because of past mistakes. They have often caused me unhappy moments. Nevertheless, compensation creeps in now and then despite myself. For as a scientific friend at the University of Cambridge, who sees the white as well as black in them reminds me, the essence of these books is a true one, their general effect is a valuable one, and their contribution is a necessary one in these times. And, moreover, they are perhaps the most important contents, after all. If I have done nothing more than to affirm certain unalterable verities, such as the existence of man's divine soul, and to show a way to the discovery thereof, I have done something that has made many people happier and my writing has not been quite pointless. That is the credit which may balance my debits.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14946 – 8.12.5.149

BA13 – ZZZ – K

I have written many things in my earlier books which I now wish I had never written. Time has forced me to revise beliefs, impressions, estimates, and even principles. I was misled by others in some cases and went astray through my own defects in others. Again and again dark moods have come over me solely because of past mistakes. They have often caused me unhappy moments. Nevertheless, compensation creeps in now and then despite myself. For as a scientific friend at the University of Cambridge, who sees the white as well as black in them reminds me, the essence of these books is a true one, their general effect is a valuable one, and their contribution is a necessary one in these times. And, moreover, they are perhaps the most important contents, after all. If I have done nothing more than to affirm certain unalterable verities, such as the existence of man's divine soul, and to show a way to the discovery thereof, I have done something that has made many people happier and my writing has not been quite pointless. That is the credit which may balance my debits.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14946 – 8.12.5.149

UR_2.4 – ZZZ – K

I am not the first mystic who blundered in his quest nor shall I be the last. The very subtlety of its nature, the sad difficulty of getting expert guidance upon it, and the tests snares pitfalls and temptations that stage it, render this a common event. "I made many mistakes," confessed Madame Guyon, and perhaps it was out of these failures that she found her way to final success. In my own case the perils were greater than in most others, simply because I searched so widely and helped so many others so indiscriminately that I exposed myself to the attack of adverse forces almost incessantly. That I survived all this, that I did not lose bodily life or become a bodily wreck, that I have emerged mentally, morally, spiritually, and philosophically stronger out of all these trials was only to be attributed to the saving grace of my Guardian Angel and to nothing else.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14952E – 8.12.5.155

BN – EL1/2

I have experienced the black depths of occult enmity and endured the harsh menaces of occult hatred. I do not refer here to their pitiful but feeble, their treacherous and vicious human echoes on our plane. They have only my silent contempt. If my nerves are today unshattered, it is because the power that has used my pen has also intervened at the last moment again and again to save my body and mind. All this need not frighten other aspirants on this quest, however, for most of them have not to play the pioneer role that I had to play and are therefore exempt from its special risks.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14952E – 8.12.5.155

BN – EL2/2

Now comes the crux of the whole matter. So far as I can follow the teachings of the ancient sages, the path which stretches before mankind appears to have four gates set at intervals along its course. The first is open to the great majority of mankind and might be named "religion, theology, and scholasticism." The second is open to a much smaller number of persons and could conveniently be named Mysticism. The third which is rarely opened (for it is heavy and hard to move) is "the philosophy of truth," whilst the final gate has been entered only by the supermen of our species; it may be titled "Realization". Few readers would care to wander with me into the wilderness whither it leads. I refuse to tarry in the limited phases of development and have gone forward in further quest of the sublime verity which is presented to us as life's goal by the sages. I value tolerance. Let others believe or follow what suits or pleases them most; I trust they will allow me the same freedom to continue my own quest.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14973ED – 8.12.5.176

B_05 – EL1/1 – K

The last war marked a turning point in mankind's history. Out of its pain and horror something better both materially and spiritually is going to be born, and it is our task to help this coming age as pioneers who can see a little farther ahead than others.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A warning shared

#14990 – 8.12.5.193

BN – Z – DEK

The term 'Overself' was used in one sense in some passages of the books and in another sense in other passages. This is confusing to the philosophically minded. However, these books were written primarily to extend the doctrine of mysticism or meditation. From this standpoint, the inner self of man is the goal; from the philosophic standpoint, the Universal Self is the goal. The latter, of course, includes the former.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Book notes

#15029 – 8.12.5.232

UR_3.2 – ZZ – K

The word 'philosophy' is really insufficient for my purposes. I have always considered its unsatisfactory usage to be tentative and temporary, but it will have to be continued until an alternative can be found.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Book notes

#15034 – 8.12.5.237

UR_3.2 – ZZ – K

The time came to give public expression and coordinated form to doctrines which I had hitherto either not received at all or else received in disjointed fragments and torn scraps. I not only tried to simplify these metaphysical ideas for ordinary readers, but also to systematize them for intellectual ones, and to expound the whole teaching in a clear and continuous manner.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Seed thoughts

#15045E – 8.12.5.248

BN – EL1/2

I like to announce in short staccato jerky sentences the truths I intuit, but self-discipline has made me argue them out in long flowing ones. All that smooth transition from paragraph to paragraph which is rightly held to be one of the prominent features of literary artistry, is absent from my natural capacity. What little I may have gained has been gained with great labour. Like Beethoven I have a habit of working at three or four compositions at the same time. And like him I often transfer a short fragment or even a complete piece from one composition to another. But the method of composition which is most predominant of all in my make-up is the peculiar one of jotting down my ideas about a theme without any order whatsoever, so that its end middle and beginning are jumbled together anyhow. Only after a certain period has elapsed do I undertake the task of arranging it in proper sequence.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Seed thoughts

#15045E – 8.12.5.248

BN – EL2/2

My fashion of approaching the same topic from a number of sides, as well as of emphasizing the importance of certain neglected or ignored sides, led to frequent repetition which bored, irritated, or disappointed a section of my readers. But it was deliberate, and it helped other readers. It was an ancient Oriental style which was really a special method of illuminative teaching and a tested means of assisting the mind to open tight-fitting or obdurate closed doors, and of becoming aware of hitherto unperceived truths or getting to understand more easily what was before hard to understand. It was much used by the Buddha. I felt that my explorations of the spiritual realm had to be made as explicit as my pen could make them, and this was one way of doing so.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Seed thoughts

#15046 – 8.12.5.249

UR_2.9.1 – ZZ – K

Poetry is at its best when it leads man towards spiritual beauty. This indeed is the mission of all the other arts also. To write a book that will sustain a single theme through three hundred pages is an admirable intellectual achievement, but it is not really my way; I have done with it since long ago. A man must express himself in his own way, the way which follows the nature he is born with. I prefer to write down a single idea without any reference to those which went before or which are to follow later, and to write it down in a concentrated way. The only book I could prepare now would be a book of maxims of suggestive ideas. I have not the patience to go on and on and on, telling someone in a hundred pages what I could put into a single page.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Seed thoughts

#15055 – 8.12.5.258

BN – ZZZ – K

I write in pieces and patches upon a great variety of subjects—mostly short pieces, very short and incomplete patches. However if I did not do so and threw aside the material I would lose the freshness of the impact when the thought or idea came into my mind. Naturally when all these notes are brought together I will find that there is a good deal of repetition and of course a great deal to be thrown out in consequence. Revisions and changes, corrections and improvements will also be necessary. But all that does not really matter so long as the first vital impact of the concept was saved and not lost.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Seed thoughts

#15064 – 8.12.5.267

BA13 – ZZZ

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

Reflections > The Literary Work > A sacred vocation

#15098D – 8.12.5.301

BA13 – ZZ – DM*

Writing is not really my professional career. It is my God-given avocation. I am compelled to write by an inner necessity, not by any outer one. Fame, money, or power are not the baits. This necessity itself arises out of the profound dedication to human enlightenment which has burned like a flame in my innermost being for nearly thirty years.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A sacred vocation

#15118 – 8.12.5.321

BA13 – ZZZ – K

May this book be as moving a reading experience as it was a writing one.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A sacred vocation

#15119 – 8.12.5.322

BN – Z

I do not wilfully neglect correspondence, it is that I am 'unable' to attend to it when my heart is forcefully pulling me in a different direction—toward creative literary writing.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A sacred vocation

#15120 – 8.12.5.323

BN – Z

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

Reflections > The Literary Work > The contribution of silence

#15148D – 8.12.5.351

BA13 – ZZ – K

Has anyone ever known enough about anyone else to write his true biography? I completely doubt it.

Reflections > The Literary Work > The contribution of silence

#15168 – 8.12.5.371

BN – X – K

The researcher and writer concerned with such topics as I deal with must reject the social obligations of convention. His time is too valuable to be wasted and his personal contacts must be carefully limited if he is to do his work properly. Therefore, he guards both freedom and independence despite the disapproval of those who would rob him of one or the other.

Reflections > The Literary Work > The value of solitude

#15191 – 8.12.5.394

BN – Z

I must escape these loud, noisy, and talkative neighbours. This is negative, but it is an essential need for a writer, a meditator, and a lover of good literature. If I could sit down facing a window with a long view where I could admire the sunset in peace and solitude, I should call a halt and not demand much more. The immense volume of undone work presses upon me but needs a settled and suitable home. Will karma permit me to have such a home at last with no more wandering from place to place?—a home where there is a vista across a lake and a picture window overlooks the scene from a hillside or from outside a city? I prefer the Mediterranean warmth and dryness and perhaps I shall return there, but meanwhile I must accept the Swiss snows and Alpine peaks to greet me with the cold winds that blow so often in such areas. There is, of course, good spiritual instruction in my situation, for the duality of life, the mixture of good and evil, is reminding me of its existence through everything—whether in nature or in human experience. It is yin and yang again.

Reflections > The Literary Work > The value of solitude

#15217 – 8.12.5.420

BN – ZZ – K

We cannot communicate the incommunicable. The absolute reality is outside our finite thoughts; all philosophic writing must fall short of bestowing truth upon its readers. At best it can prepare the way for an attainment which must always be individual. Therefore, we who record the activities of our brains in these directions should not take ourselves too seriously. The printed paper will remain but paper (editor's note: …and digital media, just media) and readers will still have to take up the quest for themselves though we write a thousand pages. So I make this apology for my occasional light treatment of heavy matters.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > A sense of proportion

#15218E – 8.12.6.1

B_01 – ZEL1/2 – K

I am unable to share the illusion of many writers, that a few paragraphs may suffice to convert someone's materialistic darkness into spiritual light. I am well aware, however, that the pen can indeed cast plenty of mental light upon the problem of truth; but since I regard this as a buyer of gold regards brass, please pardon me if now and then I remember the futility of all our writing, when judged from the highest standpoint, and if, therefore, I break into irreverent chuckles in the midst of a grave paragraph or link up the profane with the profound in incongruous manner.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > A sense of proportion

#15218E – 8.12.6.1

B_01 – ZEL2/2 – K

It only remains for me to remember that the inspired portion of this book has been written by my subconscious self, according to the psychologists. I have, therefore, to tender my best thanks to that kindly though vague entity for its cordial existence. Readers who may happen to take pleasure in this volume should address their compliments to it, and not to myself.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > A sense of proportion

#15221 – 8.12.6.4

BN – ZZZ – K

The advantage to a hermetic philosopher of being short is the advantage of being inconspicuous in a crowd or a street, especially if he dresses modestly. Deemed insignificant, being ignored, the better he can pursue his strange ways. Blessed are the anonymous and obscure, for they shall be least interfered with. 

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > An unorthodox yogi

#15251 – 8.12.6.34

BN – Z – K

We are apt to assume a man's greatness from his talent. We confuse the tool with the workman. But a witty pen may contain no wisdom, a bewigged judge may be quite at a loss outside the law court, and a politician proposing to govern an empire may be utterly unable to govern his life!

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > People and places

#15287 – 8.12.6.70

BN – Z

We see this nostalgia in the face of Marcus Aurelius, this ruler of an empire who felt it was not his true home, who practised Christian virtues while persecuting confessed Christians, who warred by day through most of his life but meditated at night on the lofty notions of Stoic philosophy. His rebellious subjects did not let him live in outward peace so, wistfully, he ever aspired to it inwardly.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > People and places

#15290 – 8.12.6.73

BN – X – K

Even great men are not all great. How saddening to watch one fall into some negative feelings, born of the ego's limitations, into quite unnecessary embitterment, and pay for the fall with impaired health or personal trouble!

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > People and places

#15297 – 8.12.6.80

BN – Z – DK*

The Americans, with their perfectly machine-tooled minds, tend to a gregarious conformity.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > People and places

#15302 – 8.12.6.85

BN – X – K

One may not agree with all of his views and believe some of them mistaken, but this need not diminish the regard, the admiration, one has for his character and his ideals.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > People and places

#15310 – 8.12.6.93

BN – ZZZ – K

I have no fixed permanent home, no real abiding-place in this world, and wander like the Bedouin. Yet even he has his desert. I never stayed long enough in any one town or village to be absorbed by it: this enabled me to live my own life, follow my own way. Inclination began this unsettled existence and destiny sealed it.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15330 – 8.12.6.113

BN – Z – K

The remembrance that I am too old to squander time comes back periodically but always it is confronted and defeated by the realization that I will be reborn again, that in these future embodiments I shall have all the time needed.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15334 – 8.12.6.117

BN – X – D

No flesh food passes between my lips, and no smoke passes out from them.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15349 – 8.12.6.132

BN – X – D

When after the act of dying I shall be carried away to my own star, to Sothis of the Egyptians, Sirius of the Westerners, I shall at last be happy.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15378 – 8.12.6.161

BN – Z – D

Sirius, called the Dog Star in antiquity, has a symbolic meaning: it stands for the hidden knowledge of hidden truth.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15383 – 8.12.6.166

BN – X – K

The horrors of the vivisector's table create an equal karma; moreover, instead of yielding truth, as he thinks, the practice blinds him and yields illusion instead. The motive may be good but the method is wrong, for a right end cannot be achieved by a bad means.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15384 – 8.12.6.167

BN – X – K

I love flowers but only when they are in gardens or in pots. For then they are living things but, cut, they are decaying, dying ones.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15394 – 8.12.6.177

BN – X – D

In the twelve years that passed afterwards until his death, I never saw Ramana Maharshi again. At least a half dozen times I passed within a few miles of his ashram during the part of that period when I was wandering in India. A lump would come into my throat and a choking sensation would seize me as I thought how close we were in spirit and yet so harshly separated by the ill-will of certain men and by the dark shadows of my own karma. For inwardly I never broke away from him.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15427 – 8.12.6.210

BN – Z – K

When I suggest a simpler mode of living, I am not preaching neo-stoic gospel. I believe that man was born to be happy and that he need not disdain the things of this earth in order to attain some supramundane bliss. I refuse to make my philosophy a torture for myself and a nuisance to others. These thoughts coincide with my instinctive tastes and I am well content if the rest of mankind refuses them hospitality. What I do suggest is that we call the bluff of that bully, Mammon, and stop to enquire whether we really need all the things we desire, and whether all our consequent slavery is worthwhile.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15438 – 8.12.6.221

BN – Z – K

We overwork the past if we drag it constantly into the present. And this is true not only if it appears in the shape of negative broodings and lamentations but also of intellectual beliefs and views.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15443 – 8.12.6.226

BN – X – D

"Why go off to the East for light? If you believe in a World-Soul, then it should be possible to sit down even in a town like Dublin and look within until you contact that World-Soul and so gain all the spiritual light you seek. But perhaps your destiny compels you to go, for I foresee that you have an exceptional work to perform in threshing the corn of Eastern wisdom for the sake of Western students." This was the advice tendered me by my beloved friend, the distinguished Irish poet "A.E.," a few weeks before he died. It was sound advice, as I found to my cost. Yet the force which drove me to disobey it was overwhelming. It was, as "A.E." rightly surmised, my personal destiny.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15459 – 8.12.6.242

BN – Z

With filial joy I offer you this flower of days that whatever fragrance it may have shall tell of the days I spent at your side. My head was heavy and bowed with the sorry burden of earthly life; my feet had wandered long among the rocky places and then grew tired as a sleeping man, when your great love shone down upon it and warmed it into life until it took strong root in some soft earth. Is it not appropriate then that I cull the first blooms for your table? I count it one of the great things of my life that I am privileged to call you Friend. And I know if I know you at all, that I can do no greater deed in return than to speak to my fellows of the unforgettably beautiful stream into which you turned my little boat, broken and halting though the words of my stammering lips must needs be.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > Happenings on the way

#15477 – 8.12.6.260

BN – ZZ

All the experiences which life brings us are meaningful. Let us use our intelligence and learn these meanings. For life is trying to develop that intelligence in us until she can make us aware of the highest meaning of all—the Soul.

Human Experience > Human Experience > Human Experience

#15478 – 9.13.0.1

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

The human situation is a paradox. We are at one and the same time inhabitants of a world of reality as well as a world of appearance. A true human life must embrace both aspects, must be spiritual as well as physical, must integrate the intuitive as well as the intellectual. The body's needs, comfort, and surroundings must receive his attention. But they should not receive attention out of all proportion to their value. Is he here on earth for these things alone? Is the higher purpose of life to be entirely ignored? A sounder balance is required.

Human Experience > Human Experience > Human Experience

#15479ME – 9.13.0.2

B_01 – ZZZ – DXK

All worldly experiences may become doors to divinity if interpreted aright.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15480 – 9.13.1.1

B_15 – Z – K

Human experience is our laboratory for higher experiment. The world is our school for spiritual discovery. The vicissitudes of personal circumstance are our field for ethical achievement. The great books written by illumined individuals from antiquity till today are our guides.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15481 – 9.13.1.2

B_15 – Z – DE