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: 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 – DK

It is true that my writings represent a simplification of the philosophy of truth and that therefore they do not adequately cover the ground, but this is not to say that they represent a distortion of it.

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

#14189 – 8.12.2.30

BA13 – ZZ – K

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 – K

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

When I undertook to raise mysticism to sane acceptable and useful standards, I undertook a job which was crying out to be done.

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

#14212 – 8.12.2.53

BA13 – ZZ – 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 – DK

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

#14222DP – 8.12.2.63

BN – ZZZ – DEK

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 – ZZZ – DEK

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 – DEK3

I conceive my work to be the blowing of smouldering coals of aspiration into burning flames of inspiration, expressible and visible in the end as altruistic action.

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

#14274 – 8.12.2.115

BA13 – ZZZ – K

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

Does not my own privacy require that I leave others alone and not try to take on their affairs or problems?

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

#14283 – 8.12.2.124

B_13 – ZZ – 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 – ZZ – DEMK

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 – ZZ – DEK

With more than forty years spent in these studies and with the observation of thousands of people engaged in their practical application, I have become familiar with most of the leading mystical ideas. What is better is that I have also watched results in practice all over the world. Out of this experience, certain definite conclusions have formed themselves and forced my acceptance. The fact that I belong to no special group, no particular religion, no separate organization, but keep my mind open for truth from any direction with complete independence, has doubtless helped the formulation of these conclusions.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > Creative independence

#14291 – 8.12.2.132

BA13 – ZZ – K

As a writer I have been my own master. As a student of truth I ended as my own guru.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > Creative independence

#14298 – 8.12.2.139

BN – ZZ – K

It was Ramana Maharshi of Arunachala who said, "You yourself are your own guru. Be that". As a writer I have been my own master. As a student of truth I ended as my own guru.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > Creative independence

#14298M – 8.12.2.139

BA13 – ZZ – K

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

This is not a personal teaching, peculiar to its author alone. Its fundamental tenets have been taught since the hoariest antiquity, in the Far, Middle, and Near East, as well as in the great Mediterranean cultures. It is true that they were not taught to the generality of people, but that was only because the latter had not reached the needed educational standard to understand and welcome it. It is true also that the author has adapted the teaching to the modern situation but that still leaves its essentials unchanged.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14343 – 8.12.2.184

B_02 – ZZ – K

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

The formulation of this grand synthesis is my chosen mission, both as a researcher and a writer. I am neither the originator of this doctrine nor even its prophet. The first man who ventured into the unknown within-ness of the Universe and of himself was its originator whilst every man who has since voiced this discovery has been its prophet.

Reflections > Philosophy and Contemporary Culture > The challenge of synthesis

#14354EM – 8.12.2.195

BA13 – ZZ – 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 – ZZZ – DK

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 – ZEL1/2 – 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 – ZEL2/2 – 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

B_02 – 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 – ZZZ – K

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 – K

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 – K

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 – K

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 – K

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 – DEMK

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

Out of this wide orbit we have at last come to a point where the process of sifting the wheat from the chaff has sufficiently advanced to permit us to stand aside from all asserted teachers, to be indifferent to the utterances of all authoritative texts, and to devote no further time to researches in Oriental lands. Nevertheless, in the present book, owing to the personal progress which has been made since the completion of the previous volume (which is not nullified by the fact that the long path we have yet to tread reveals by contrast how little advanced we really are), we have been guided more than anything else by an inner guide in such cases where limited attainment made verification not possible. It taught us what to set down where we could not see, and it told us what to give forth to others concerning regions where we could not walk.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > A mysterious presence

#14395 – 8.12.3.18

B_03 – ZZZ – K

I did not merely observe and describe these experiences from outside, as an intellectual scientific researcher might do, but I penetrated into them and revealed what was found there to others who lacked the capacity to accompany me.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14396 – 8.12.3.19

BA13 – ZZ – 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 is my long-sustained and well-tested belief that I have had certain revelations from a higher source. The revelations are mixed, some dealing with the world's fortunes and misfortunes but others dealing purely with the Overself's wisdom and workings. The source is beyond me and met only in the profundity of meditation. I cannot name it or describe it, so others may call it what they like, yet I am directly aware of it.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > Inside mystical experience

#14407 – 8.12.3.30

BA13 – ZZZ – K

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

B_02 – ZZZ – DK

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. 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

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

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 – ZZ – 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 – DMK

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 dedication of my intellect and pen to the spreading of Light was the first act of my literary career. It certainly helped me, by preoccupying my working time with spiritual ideas; and perhaps it helped the world.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The making of a messenger

#14509 – 8.12.3.132

BA13 – ZZ – 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

I write out of no other authority than my own metaphysical reflections, my own mystical experiences, my own studies and observations of other people's spiritual quests—ancient, medieval, and modern—throughout the world. Much of what I have described, here or elsewhere, has been what I myself have experienced. If nothing else hinted it, surely the precision of my statements, the vividness of my phrases, and the reality of my descriptions hint at firsthand experience? If I did not know from personal knowledge the course which this quest usually takes, if I had not endured its crushing darknesses and sacrificial anguish, its perplexing distresses and tantalizing oscillations—as much as its dazzling illuminations and unforgettable ecstasies, its benedictory graces and healing serenity—surely I could not have written about it as I did?

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The making of a messenger

#14538 – 8.12.3.161

BA13 – ZZZ – K

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

I wish, therefore, to put before readers the fundamentals of this hidden philosophy in concise form and plain phrasing… put them in possession of the basic principles and provide them with an Ariadne’s thread to guide them through the maze of life and its problems of reflection and experience. Nay, even if I fail to do this but succeed in kindling within them something of the love of Truth, that passionate quest for the meaning of all of life, all experience and all this wonderful world, I shall have accomplished enough to justify our coming together in these pages.

Reflections > Encounter With Destiny > The message and the marketplace

#14563E – 8.12.3.186

B_02 – ZZZ – 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

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 – ZZZ – DEK3

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

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

The essence of this teaching is to be found only in that unlimited sphere where impersonality and universality reign. No better name than philosophy could be found for it, because no other is so impersonal and so universal. Although Brunton has written so many pages about it, he does not want it called by his name and turned into a cult. If Bruntonism should arise, he himself would be the first anti-Bruntonist! He is not at all interested in the triumph or fame of P.B. But he is deeply interested in the triumph and spread of that attitude which will best advance mankind's spiritual life. He does not ask for personal acceptance and honour to be bestowed upon what is true and helpful in his ideas. He does not want people to follow him but to follow the quest of truth. He does not call them to a declared creed but to a suggested way of approach, to the integral philosophical way which secures results no narrow sect could secure. Let people use the signposts he has erected, by all means, but let them not ignore the many other valuable ones which have also been erected for their benefit from the earliest times until today.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14598 – 8.12.4.29

BA13 – ZZZ – K

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 – ZZ – DK

Let them remember that the Truth comes not from any person but from the "Holy Spirit" (from "the creative energy of the Higher Self"). 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

UR_2.5 – ZZZ – K

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

Others may join any sect they like but I have never joined, and do not intend to join, the Bruntonians!

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14614 – 8.12.4.45

BA13 – ZZZ – K

I have done what I could to prevent the existence of a Brunton cult.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14615 – 8.12.4.46

BN – Z – DK

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

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 – ZZZ – DK

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 – ZZZ – DK

I write for the few, and if the public wish to buy my books, they do so at their own peril of misunderstanding me!

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Seeking the impersonal

#14644 – 8.12.4.75

BA13 – ZZZ – K

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 – ZZ – DK

I accept beforehand therefore the fact that many people will dislike these pages. Even the mystical aspirants amongst mankind are a mixed, complex lot with contradictory outlooks and conflicting aims. There is no doctrine that will appeal to all.

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > The challenge of formulation

#14689E – 8.12.4.120

BA13 – ZZ – K

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

What is it that leads us into sympathy with another's painful suffering?

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Obstacles to inspiration

#14699 – 8.12.4.130

B_17 – Z – K

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 – ZZ – DK

What can be done for those persons—alas! so many in these times—whose minds are covered in midnight darkness where the Overself is concerned and whom no spiritual intimations seem to reach?

Reflections > Reflections On Truth > Obstacles to inspiration

#14716 – 8.12.4.147

BN – ZZZ – DK

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

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

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

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

#14797DP – 8.12.4.228

BA11 – ZZZ – DMK

I write for those who have felt the truth in intuitive flashes as well as for those who must be argued into it by intellectual reasonings.

Reflections > The Literary Work > For kindred souls

#14798 – 8.12.5.1

BA13 – ZZ – K

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 – 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 – Z – DK

The medical profession, the educational profession, the church ministry and priesthood have not been sufficiently aroused to the importance of my observations, reports, and findings. This is understandable since I am technically only a layman in their eyes. So, appreciation has so far been left to the general public, to those who appreciate my independence and the consequent freedom from bias in my writings.

Reflections > The Literary Work > A mixed reception

#14860 – 8.12.5.63

BN – ZZ – K

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

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_2.5 – 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

What is worthy in my work will bear consequences and be durable; the errors will be overcome by truth and time, and pass away. This is a result which I myself wish for it.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Corrections, revisions, development

#14956 – 8.12.5.159

BA13 – ZZZ – K

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

#14973D – 8.12.5.176

B_05 – ZZ – 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

In Discover Yourself, I have used the words of Jesus as mere pegs on which to hang my own teaching. This follows the example of the ancient religion makers. It has thus helped thousands of Christians, who might otherwise not have been reached by my words, to a higher concept of Truth. Therefore, it does not really matter whether Jesus was a full philosopher or only a simple mystic.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Book notes

#14996 – 8.12.5.199

B_12 – ZZ – K

It was not easy for me to write the chapter on suffering in The Spiritual Crisis of Man, but it was immensely harder for others to read it and bear what was said.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Book notes

#15023 – 8.12.5.226

B_17 – Z – K

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 subject of this work is no less than the total regeneration of man. No more practical subject could be written about, yet it is too often deemed interesting only to dreamers or fanatics. No more important one could be brought to our attention, for it is the very purpose for which the infinite power has put us into existence on this earth today. Jesus proclaimed it when he said, "Ye shall be born again." It is the process which plants, grows, and ripens all those attributes of the true human being that distinguish him from the merely animal being.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Book notes

#15044 – 8.12.5.247

BA13 – ZZ – K

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 – K

Buddha and Jesus deliberately preached to the unlettered mass of people. This is one of the reasons why Gautama repeated himself so often and why Jesus used simple parables so much.

Reflections > The Literary Work > Seed thoughts

#15077 – 8.12.5.280

B_12 – Z – K

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

Reflections > The Literary Work > A sacred vocation

#15097D – 8.12.5.300

BA13 – ZZ – K-1

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 – ZZ – K

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 – ZZ – K

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

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

I can work in no other way than the one which befits my temperament. I must spread the truth in an unorganized way and let it take root in the individual hearer of it.

Reflections > The Profane and The Profound > An unorthodox yogi

#15247 – 8.12.6.30

BA13 – 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 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

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 – ZZ – DEK

Those who complain that their opportunities for meditation, study, travel to India, and so on are nil, and that therefore they have no possibility of spiritual growth, need not despair. The common life regarded in an uncommon light, the ordinary activities engaged in from a different standpoint, become part of a spiritual path through which development is possible.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15482 – 9.13.1.3

B_15 – Z – K

If life is a process of gaining education through experience and reflection, it is also a process of correcting errors and approaching truth, of clearing illusions and perceiving realities.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15483 – 9.13.1.4

B_15 – Z – K

The ego naturally and understandably revolts bitterly against calamities which are put upon it by chance, by destiny, or by any other apparent cause outside itself. The quester must not accept this emotion but ought to separate himself from it. In this way he advances at a spurt on his quest.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15484 – 9.13.1.5

B_15 – Z – K

Life presents him from time to time with occasions for improving character and strengthening its weaker places. But whether he accepts them as such, or lets his ego follow its habitual trends without opposition, is his choice.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15485 – 9.13.1.6

B_15 – Z – K

The various experiences through which we have passed, reflectively and analytically instruct us; the immoderate desires we have checked repeatedly, strengthen us; and the wandering thoughts we have concentrated determinedly, tranquillize us. Life never runs to waste if it thus is attuned to the notes of this quest.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15486 – 9.13.1.7

B_15 – Z – K

Life is our real school, for it provides the chance to acquire virtue and discipline evil, to nurture the mind and clarify its thoughts.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15487 – 9.13.1.8

B_15 – Z – K

If he can bring himself to look upon events when they flow upon him as being intended to elicit his qualities and exercise his powers, and thus give him the chance to cultivate them, he will learn to acknowledge and accept the responsibility of choosing whether those qualities be positive or negative, whether those powers be good or bad.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15488 – 9.13.1.9

B_15 – ZZ – K

No experience is a wasted one when it is treated philosophically, when not only its final results but every moment of it is used as material for his strivings toward the ideal and his understanding of the True.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15489 – 9.13.1.10

B_15 – ZZ – K

No situation or circumstance is really counter to self-liberation. Each one may be used for enlightenment.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15490 – 9.13.1.11

B_15 – Z – K

Here, in this physical world, the ego is put to school. Here it learns lessons, sins and suffers, yields to passion and then checks it, responds to intuition and is led upward.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15491 – 9.13.1.12

B_15 – Z – K

All activities in the world are an opportunity both for self-study and for objective awareness of the self in each situation. An intensified longing for the way itself, rather than a too great concern with the particular steps along the way, will clarify these efforts.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15492 – 9.13.1.13

B_15 – Z – K

The experiences of daily living in the world become, for the quester, occasions for working on himself, for co-operating with the World-Idea as it concerns himself.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15493 – 9.13.1.14

B_15 – Z – K

When every situation which life can offer is turned to the profit of spiritual growth, no situation can really be a bad one.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15494 – 9.13.1.15

B_15 – ZZZ – K

The kind of environment in which he lives may hinder or hasten a man's mystical development, but every kind of environment can contribute towards his understanding of life and therefore towards his general spiritual development.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15495 – 9.13.1.16

B_15 – ZZZ – K

In the end each experience incites the living entity to unfold the powers qualities and characteristics already within itself but still unexpressed.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15496 – 9.13.1.17

B_15 – Z – K

The whole of his everyday experience can be brought within the area covered by the Quest. Indeed it must be so brought if the self-division from which ordinary unquesting man suffers is to be avoided. The ills and calamities of life, as much as its joys and boons, will then contribute toward his understanding and growth.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15497E – 9.13.1.18

B_15 – Z – K

Regarded in this way, every experience becomes an instruction, all life a spiritual adventure.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15498 – 9.13.1.19

B_15 – ZZ – K

He sees in the end that all his life and business, relationships and contacts in the world really constitute a contest with his own self; that all have the forming and finding of himself as the ultimate result and ultimate fulfilment.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15499 – 9.13.1.20

B_15 – ZZ – K

Life on earth for us is not to be a goal in itself, but a means to the goal. All its experiences are to be used to shape our character and increase our knowledge and, above all, to bring us nearer the discovery of, and identification with, our Overself.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15500 – 9.13.1.21

B_15 – ZZZ – DK

Everything, every experience, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, may be turned into a pointer towards our true nature, a reminder of the high quest which all human beings are here on earth to follow, whether consciously or not.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15501 – 9.13.1.22

B_15 – ZZZ – DMK

Each experience of human existence offers at least one clue, generally more, to the hidden secret of being, the Overself.

Human Experience > Situation > Daily life as spiritual opportunity

#15502 – 9.13.1.23

B_15 – ZZ – K

If we accept the existence of a higher power behind life and the universe and if, further, we believe that infinite wisdom is an attribute of this power, then, finally, we must also accept life as we find it and as we humanly experience it.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15503 – 9.13.1.24

B_15 – ZZZ – K

There is no problem which does not carry within it a hidden meaning, no person associated with us who does not bear within himself a hidden message. As soon as we rise above the level of their appearance, and as long as we stay on that level, the problem shows us the way to solve it and the person plays his true note in the harmony of our lives.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15504 – 9.13.1.25

B_15 – ZZZ – K

It requires a strong faith to believe that even in the midst of the direst distress, of the gloomiest hardship, what happens is sanctioned by, and under the rule of, divinely ordained laws and that it has a rational and higher meaning which we should seek to extract and heed. Those who lack this faith bear strain-ridden faces that betray no inner calm. Yet it is only a single step to turn around and start the journey from inner wretchedness to inner radiance.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15505 – 9.13.1.26

B_15 – ZZZ – K

The penetrative mind of the deep thinker finds in time that life in this world is not only life in illusion but also in pain. Yet for him to stop with this discovery is to stop at an intermediate stage on the way to truth. He must travel beyond it and learn the hidden cosmic laws and thus come to understand the magnificent goal toward which all this passage through worldly existence is leading.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15506 – 9.13.1.27

B_15 – ZZZ – K

All the power behind the cosmos insists on meeting cause with effect, action with reaction, evil with retribution.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15507 – 9.13.1.28

B_15 – ZZZ – K

What controls the course of our lives? Fate is something which descends on us from outside ourselves and to which we have made no visible contribution—as in the death of a beloved one. Destiny is something which arises out of our own causation.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15508 – 9.13.1.29

B_15 – ZZ – K

Throw out the idea of coincidence. Remember there is a World-Idea. There is meaning in life, in its events, happenings, karmas, meetings, and opportunities.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15509 – 9.13.1.30

B_15 – ZZZ – DK

The troubles and inconveniences of life do not come to us without the knowledge and sanction of the higher power. Therefore they do not come to us without some reason.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15510 – 9.13.1.31

B_15 – ZZ – K

Knowledge is the crying need of the hour, knowledge of the higher laws governing the life and fortune of human beings.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15511 – 9.13.1.32

B_15 – ZZZ – K

The central message of philosophy to the modern era is that man is not isolated but supported by a friendly power, not left in the dark but surrounded by helping hands.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15512 – 9.13.1.33

B_15 – ZZ – DK

There is a higher destiny behind all the experiences which the aspirant undergoes. Although purificatory work may at times have brought hardships to him and to those whom he loves, still he must recognize that it may also have afforded protection against dangerous possibilities from which he and they have been saved.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15513 – 9.13.1.34

B_15 – ZZ – K

The man who is ignorant of the higher laws, such as the law of recompense, may still display sagacity in certain situations if his character is good and his intellect sharp. But if they are not, then he will display only fatuity.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15514 – 9.13.1.35

B_15 – ZZ – K

The man who hesitates to accept the idea of rebirth must confess, in his frankest moments, that he cannot reconcile the sufferings around him with faith in a benevolent power.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15515 – 9.13.1.36

B_15 – ZZ – K

The teaching of reincarnation, that every individual enters repeatedly a new life on earth, carries the sister teaching of compensation. The two constitute the most plausible teaching about the suffering of man which he has ever been offered. This teaching sets in place under universal law what otherwise seems mere chance.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15516 – 9.13.1.37

B_15 – ZZZ – K

The nearer he comes to this insight the larger is his acceptance of life. Each event is seen to be either inevitable, just, or right. No news is ever so bad that there is no good behind it. Less and less is he inclined to attempt to reform others or to meddle in their affairs. More and more he sees that there is wisdom and purpose at work in all happenings, and that the law of recompense never ceases to operate.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15517 – 9.13.1.38

B_15 – ZZZ – K

In the end, after so many births, all these experiences must lead to the mystical rebirth.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15518 – 9.13.1.39

B_15 – Z – K

If you live in harmony with Life it will unfold in perfect sequence the exact experience which you need.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15519 – 9.13.1.40

B_15 – ZZZ – K

There is no situation in the life of a quester, no incident and no contact, which is not a parable to be penetratively read and its inner meaning adequately elucidated.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15520 – 9.13.1.41

B_15 – ZZ – K

If he works faithfully on the quest, every experience which is essential to his inner growth will gravitate to him, every thing or person needful to his development will be drawn to him, subject to some synchronization with his personal karma. He, on his side, ought to welcome those situations which can be used to strengthen his inner life.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15521 – 9.13.1.42

B_15 – ZZ – K

Nothing in his experience is to be condemned but everything is to be understood. It is there because its lesson is needed. Similarly, no one in his experience is to be despised but everyone is also to be understood. Each is there to test or tempt, to teach or uplift.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15522 – 9.13.1.43

B_15 – ZZZ – K

The fact that an event has happened or that an experience has arrived must have some significance in a man's life. It could not be there unless he had earned it or unless he needed it. If he is not willing to meet it from this approach and deal with its effect impersonally, he will miss most of its lesson.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15524 – 9.13.1.45

B_15 – ZZZ – DK

The experiences which come to him and the circumstances in which he finds himself are not meaningless. They usually have a personal karmic lesson for him and should be studied much more than books. He must try to understand impersonally the inner significance behind these events. Their meaning can be ascertained by trying to see them impartially, by evaluating the forces which are involved in them, by profound reflection, and by prayer. Each man gets his special set of experiences, which no one else gets. Each life is individual and gets from the law of recompense those which it really needs, not those which someone else needs. The way in which he reacts to the varied pleasant and unpleasant situations which develop in everyday life will be a better index to the understanding he has gained than any mystical visions painted by the imagination.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15525 – 9.13.1.46

B_15 – ZZ – DEK1

Every important event occurring to him who follows this path has an inner as well as an outer significance, for it traces back to a karmic origin which is specially selected to promote his self-knowledge and self-purification.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15526 – 9.13.1.47

B_15 – Z – K

If he will look upon each situation when it comes as a new lesson to learn, or an old one to learn better, he will gain precisely what he needs just at the time he needs it. Books can only seldom speak with exactness to his personal condition, for they are written to suit too many individuals and they are too general to be quite pertinent to his own personal requirements.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15527 – 9.13.1.48

B_15 – Z – K

If his growth requires a drastic change in his surroundings or his circumstances, be sure it will happen.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual laws structure experience

#15528 – 9.13.1.49

B_15 – ZZ – K

The whole world carries a message—nay, innumerable messages—to the man with ears to hear.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15529 – 9.13.1.50

B_15 – ZZ – K

Every event, happening, and action-consequence carries its message to those concerned. Too often that message is the need of abandoning negativity or animality, of becoming positive or disciplined.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15530 – 9.13.1.51

B_15 – ZZ – K

Some events happen to a man or some people come into his life to stand as symbols representing a truth of human existence generally, or a fact of inner life, or a principle of ethical, moral, or karmic law. The situation offers a lesson, or a warning, or an instruction or challenge.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15531 – 9.13.1.52

B_15 – Z – K

Experience is apparently of value only insofar as it leads to thoughts about the experience, but actually it has another and hidden value—in the subconscious mind.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15532 – 9.13.1.53

B_15 – Z – DMK

The education of self which is provided by experience is an almost subconscious process.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15533 – 9.13.1.54

B_15 – Z – K

The lessons remain long after the problems themselves have died.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15534 – 9.13.1.55

B_15 – Z – K

There is no school of philosophy where instruction is so regularly given as the school of life itself.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15535 – 9.13.1.56

B_15 – ZZZ – K

There is no substitute for personal experience, no more effectual way to learn the lessons of human existence than to see with one's own eyes and feel with one's own body. This said, philosophy neither justifies nor approves this way, but only explains why it is the commonest one.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15536 – 9.13.1.57

B_15 – ZZZ – K

Every generation must learn these lessons afresh, must find by its own experience that evil traits will invite the purgation of suffering. Technical advance can be kept for and maintained by the next generation, but spiritual advance is a highly personal and individual matter. It drops out again when the man himself drops out of circulation. This is why real historians who happen also to be deep thinkers tell us that mankind's moral nature changes only slightly during the centuries. The group has to learn its moral lessons all over again but some units in that group need not.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15537 – 9.13.1.58

B_15 – Z – K

In life we learn that truth, principle, knowledge, or information best which we teach ourselves.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15538 – 9.13.1.59

B_15 – ZZ – K

Reflection and imagination, analysis and anticipation, rightly used and harmoniously combined, can supersede experience. Indeed, they are forms of experience. But, being under our individual control and direction, they can be used as instruments to save us long-drawn and emotionally painful results.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15539 – 9.13.1.60

B_15 – Z – K

Why should we individually undergo every possible experience? Can we not, by creative imagination, intuitive feeling, and correct thinking, save ourselves the need of passing through some experiences? This is so, but it is so only for those who have developed such faculties to a sufficient degree.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15540 – 9.13.1.61

B_15 – Z – DK1

Ironically enough, pain and suffering are not always necessary. But only the few understand this. They may learn quietly from philosophy within a few years what humanity at large must learn brutally through suffering and relearn again in every epoch.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15541 – 9.13.1.62

B_01 – ZZZ – DK

He who will not heed the counsels of reason or accept the promptings of intuitive feeling will receive the less pleasant instruction of experience.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15542 – 9.13.1.63

B_15 – ZZ – K

All people are inescapably guided by experience. But the prudent man looks to other people's—especially the best—as well as his own, whereas the fool is limited entirely to his own.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15543 – 9.13.1.64

B_15 – ZZ – K

Experience is an expensive way of gaining wisdom.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15544 – 9.13.1.65

B_15 – ZZ – K

If a man feels that despite the dictates of reason he should embark on a particular unethical adventure simply to gain some sort of experience, and if he believes that this experience is a necessary part of the whole of his development, then let him go ahead, taste the bittersweet fruits of his actions, and learn at first hand why it should have been left alone.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15545 – 9.13.1.66

B_15 – Z – K

What is demonstrated by observing contemporary life is that so few men are willing to take their lessons from the past experience of other men throughout history, that so many obdurately prefer to learn under pressure the hard way. The same foolish errors, the old pain-bringing sins are repeated monotonously and regularly. The cost of ignoring such experience is heavy. People are not teachable and their defects not corrigible by the gentle way. They will not absorb guidance from the interior sources of reflection or intuition or the exterior sources of preachment or observation.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15546 – 9.13.1.67

B_15 – ZZ – K

It is true that wisdom comes with experience but that experience need not be gained at the cost of one's own suffering. It can just as well be gained by the observation of it in others.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15547 – 9.13.1.68

B_15 – ZZ – DK

Most people learn and can only learn by the method of trial and error—that is, by the method of experience.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15548 – 9.13.1.69

B_15 – Z – K

Men are not left to depend for guidance only on what they learn by experience. What they believe by faith also guides them.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15549 – 9.13.1.70

B_15 – Z – K

The art of living includes the arts of survival and social adaptation. In life, with its pleasures and miseries, its problems and mysteries, these arts must be learned from theory and practice, from surrender and compromise, from teachers and elders.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15550 – 9.13.1.71

B_15 – ZZ – K

The truth starkly lights up certain situations, but it is equally valid to say that certain situations light up the truth.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15551 – 9.13.1.72

B_15 – Z – K

They would not need to get any experience of the world without, if they would get sufficient experience of the world within.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15552 – 9.13.1.73

B_15 – Z – K

All the experiences through which he passes, and many of those through which he observes others pass, should find their way after reflection and distillation into his wisdom.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15553 – 9.13.1.74

B_15 – Z – K

The lessons of past experience are not enough in themselves to provide all the guidance needed for present living. We need also the ideals held up by intuition, the principles and ideas presented from within by the higher part of our nature, and from without by the spiritual teachers and religious prophets of mankind.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15554 – 9.13.1.75

B_15 – ZZ – K

It is one thing to grope through life blindly and another to fulfil the law of our being consciously.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15555 – 9.13.1.76

B_15 – Z – K

Where experience is extremely narrow, its deficiency may be supplied by reading, reflection, or intuition.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15556 – 9.13.1.77

B_15 – Z – K

Only after he has fully tasted and long enjoyed the fruits of striving ambition and straining desire will he be in a position to assess their worth correctly. Only then will he be perceptive enough to consider the vacuity of his ephemeral life.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15557 – 9.13.1.78

B_15 – ZZ – K

It is possible for man to learn whether a proposed course is wise or foolish, prudent or reckless, without having to wait for the testimony of events. In that case he must look for the counsel of spiritual teachers.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15558 – 9.13.1.79

B_15 – Z – K

What he can teach himself from the pages of a book is one thing, and a very necessary thing, but what he can only teach himself from life's experiences is another.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15559 – 9.13.1.80

B_15 – ZZZ – K

He may learn this truth by reading someone else's ideas or reflecting on his own, by the arguments of logical thinking or the announcements of intuitive feeling.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15560 – 9.13.1.81

B_15 – ZZ – K

Life and grief will teach a man through harsh tragedy what reason and intuition would teach him through tender pleading.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15561 – 9.13.1.82

B_15 – ZZZ – K

If they will not come to the truth by directly accepting it from the truth-seers, then they must come to it by a more roundabout and painful way.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15562 – 9.13.1.83

B_15 – ZZZ – K

Life is the real tutor; experience is the principal education. The voice of truth is within.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15563 – 9.13.1.84

B_15 – ZZZ – K

It is one thing to learn from experience, another to remember and not to forget these lessons.

Human Experience > Situation > Experience as personal teacher

#15564 – 9.13.1.85

B_15 – ZZZ – K

A man's acts constitute the daily declaration of his faith. If he possesses spirituality let him demonstrate it by actual achievement. Action is to be considered the first criterion of philosophic achievement.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15565 – 9.13.1.86

B_15 – ZZ – K

His fidelity to the Quest will be tested, both by specially critical periods and by everyday happenings. On the one side, temptations will call him; on the other, difficulties will deter him. Will he bend the knee before the world's idols? Will he stand strong amid the world's turmoil? Only when the hour of testing comes can he know.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15566 – 9.13.1.87

B_15 – ZZ – DK

The tests through which life itself outwardly puts him may seem appropriate or not but they contribute to the discoveries within himself, to the knowledge of his character, its strengths and limits, its belated ambitions and ludicrous self-deceptions.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15567 – 9.13.1.88

B_15 – ZZZ – K

I have tried to teach from the very beginning of my writing career—well before I went off to the Orient—and have repeated tirelessly, the close connection between spiritual truth and practical life, as opposed to spiritual imagination. I have insisted that the ordinary activities of everyday existence must bear the impress of this truth, that the inward light must shine in outward conduct. In other words, I tried to say that this is not a matter only for dreamers, useless to men and women who carry on the world's work, but a matter for all, whether they want to live in the busy world or in the cloistered monastery. Philosophy is for use. It is not a thing which is queer, outlandish, and entirely superfluous, as some think.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15568 – 9.13.1.89

B_15 – ZZZ – K

The beginner should look more to his outer situation and environment, for he is more affected by it; the proficient should look more to his inner reactions to situation or environment, for they then become his test. The role they play in his development depends on the stage he is at.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15569 – 9.13.1.90

B_15 – ZZ – K

If, instead of bitterly resenting it, we receive the test in the right attitude or pass through the trial with the proper thoughts about it, we shall find when it is over that the experience has been of great value to us. We shall find that it has lifted us to a new and higher level of character, a new and truer conception of life. Our lower nature is weakened, our better nature strengthened. Our eyes are clearer. Our feet advance another step forward on the Quest.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15570 – 9.13.1.91

B_15 – ZZ – K

Knowing that his reaction to whatever happens is even more important than the happening itself, he watches for hidden tests of his character and capacity. Whether he is coping with the problems of his work or moving in the circle of his family, he uses each episode or situation to prove himself worthy or to discover a weakness. In the latter event he will not become discouraged but will probe, analyse, plan, and resolve until he turns it into a new strength.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15571 – 9.13.1.92

B_15 – ZZZ – K

It is the unexpected situation, when there is no time to calculate a response or prepare a reply, that reveals what measure of strength we can rise to. It is in the sudden crisis—which is only a situation pushed to a complete extreme—when there is no chance to escape altogether or to evade partially, that what wisdom we have, or lack, shows itself.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15572 – 9.13.1.93

B_15 – ZZZ – DK

Life with its variety of experiences is always testing him anyway, but it is when he is under stress that he is tested most.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15573 – 9.13.1.94

B_15 – ZZZ – K

Theoretical knowledge of the truth is not valueless. Its very presence, even if we fail to apply it, tends to irritate and impel us towards such application.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15574 – 9.13.1.95

B_15 – ZZZ – K

These eternal truths must be brought down into his simple daily experience. Every act is to be done in their light, every thought held in their atmosphere.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15576 – 9.13.1.97

B_15 – ZZZ – K

If the practice of meditation is to be limited to recluses and the study of metaphysical truth confined to monasteries, then both mysticism and metaphysics will be in danger of becoming merely theoretical subjects. For active life in the world, with its problems to be grappled with and its realities to be faced and its temptations to be overcome, provides both a necessary testing-ground and a valuable expressional medium for mystical experience and metaphysical reflection.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15577 – 9.13.1.98

B_15 – ZZ – K

When we understand it aright, each test is then seen not to be an ordeal to be shrinkingly dreaded, but a gate to be eagerly welcomed; and this is because it offers us the chance of a higher development, of an entry into a higher state of being and capacity.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15579 – 9.13.1.100

B_15 – ZZZ – K

An impracticable teaching is a defective teaching. What is unworkable in practice is untrue in theory.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15581 – 9.13.1.102

B_15 – ZZZ – K

The minor details which, in their numerous throng, make up most of our daily life offer a chance to express philosophy's wisdom and apply philosophic discipline just as much as the great ones.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15582 – 9.13.1.103

B_15 – ZZ – K

It is largely through such spiritual trial and error that so many find their way through imitations, frauds, sterilities, and black perils to the authentic philosophy and the real quest.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15583 – 9.13.1.104

B_15 – Z – K

Every new experience or new set of circumstances becomes his teacher. Every personal reaction to it becomes an indication of his spiritual status.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15584 – 9.13.1.105

B_15 – ZZZ – K

Sooner or later situations will form themselves which will remind him that only by enforcing the teachings in his own conduct can he get their benefits, only by applying them in deeds and linking them to daily living can he verify their truth.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15585 – 9.13.1.106

B_03 – ZZ – K

Hardships offer tests but so do easier circumstances, although this is less plainly seen because the tests are so different.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15586 – 9.13.1.107

B_15 – ZZ – K

The spiritual gains made in spite of the world's opposition and in its very midst will be solid durable and substantial. But the gains made in an ashram may be imaginary superficial and transient.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15588 – 9.13.1.109

B_15 – Z – K

The result of his actions will tell him something about the ideas which led to them, about the truth or falsity, the rightness or wrongness, of those ideas. It will tell him whether his faith is well-placed or ill-placed.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15591 – 9.13.1.112

B_15 – Z – K

The last test must still be how far he brings the truth into his life.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15592 – 9.13.1.113

B_15 – Z – K

The troubles of a follower do not prove that the teachings have failed. They prove only that he did not actually follow them in reality, whatever else he may have done in appearance, that they were not active in his mind and heart and will, however much they may have seemed so in the sight of others.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15593 – 9.13.1.114

B_15 – ZZ – K

When the truth alters his whole conception of life, penetrates his heart and stirs his will, it has become his own.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15594 – 9.13.1.115

B_15 – ZZ – K

What he accepts as idea and principle must be applied to experience and sustained in action. Then, and then only, will it manifest itself in fortune and destiny.

Human Experience > Situation > Spiritual truth in practical life

#15595 – 9.13.1.116

B_15 – ZZ – K

Life does not tell us why we are here: we have to enquire of it, seek to understand it, and wait while seeking for the answers.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15596 – 9.13.1.117

B_15 – ZZ – K

Every event in his life should be made to reveal its karmic meaning for him. He may not at first perceive this; time, patience, and tranquil invitation to his deeper being—best done after meditation, before sleep, or before rising—can help.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15597 – 9.13.1.118

B_15 – ZZ – K

In some way this life is a charade, a play which is being acted out but whose meanings have to be inferred from given clues.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15598 – 9.13.1.119

B_15 – ZZ – K

It is not the mere succession of events that make up the essence of a man's life: it is what he extracts from those events.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15599 – 9.13.1.120

B_15 – Z – K

Every new circumstance or happening in his life has some message for him from the Infinite Mind or some lesson to convey to him or some test to strengthen him. It is for him to seek out this inner significance and to re-adjust his thinking and actions in accordance with it.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15600 – 9.13.1.121

B_15 – ZZZ – DK1

What is the Overself telling me through this experience? What does it want me to learn, know, do, or avoid? Your environment is really a testing-place and a disciplinary school.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15601 – 9.13.1.122

B_15 – ZZZ – DK

Many people read the lessons of their experience but alas! what they read is different from what is really indicated. Too often it is an egoistic distortion or even a gross falsification of the real lesson.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15602 – 9.13.1.123

B_15 – ZZZ – K

It is only if experience is correctly interpreted that it brings discretion, and only if thought is correctly reasoned that it brings discernment.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15603 – 9.13.1.124

B_15 – ZZ – K

He should learn to profit spiritually and practically by all his experiences, the pleasurable as well as the painful, the gay as well as the grave. But he can do this only if he reads from them not what he wishes to read, not what will soothe or flatter his ego, but what is really their message and teaching. The unguided seeker finds it harder to succeed in this endeavour than his luckier fellow, but it is worth trying.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15604 – 9.13.1.125

B_15 – ZZ – K

The undisciplined mind is easily misled.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15605 – 9.13.1.126

B_15 – Z – K

An experience may be wrongly interpreted so that little or nothing is learned from it, or, which is worse, the mind's error or heart's evil may be increased.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15606 – 9.13.1.127

B_15 – ZZ – K

Reason alone may give him the truth about a situation, but personal feeling may give him a half-lie about it. Yet he will prefer that to the truth simply because the ego is being supported.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15607 – 9.13.1.128

B_15 – ZZ – DMK

An experience involving suffering may not bear its lesson on its face—unless it has repeated itself so many times that the lesson is plain and clear. Although having a teachable and receptive mind will elucidate it more quickly, more often it is dark and obscure. There is needed something or someone to draw the line of connection between cause and effect. That something can be only the intuition, but how seldom is that achieved? That someone must be a teacher or a book.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15608 – 9.13.1.129

B_07 – ZZZ – K

He sees in the situation only what his bias permits him to. That is, he consciously or unwittingly excludes from sight those factors which he does not wish brought to his attention.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15609 – 9.13.1.130

B_15 – ZZ – K

Those who have committed themselves to a particular belief, opinion, or theory may get back its mere reflection when they try to understand their experiences.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15610 – 9.13.1.131

B_15 – Z – K

The profounder a truth the more it will be misunderstood and misapplied.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15611 – 9.13.1.132

B_15 – ZZ – K

It is in the nature of human self-centeredness to appraise things, persons, and events only by the measure of satisfaction or suffering they yield. But such egotism hides their true nature and real value, and obstructs their power to bring about progress.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15612 – 9.13.1.133

B_15 – Z – K

It was because the Greeks knew that meditative reflection upon the meaning of tragic experience is less effective in the midst of it, while emotion is highly involved, that they avoided actual representation of the tragedy itself. The audience then received it only as an idea, not as a spectacle.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15613 – 9.13.1.134

B_15 – Z – K

It is better, more prudent, more satisfying in the end to see things just as they are and not foolishly to imagine them in exaggerated, idealized, or wished-for forms.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15615 – 9.13.1.136

B_15 – ZZ – K

We look only at the mere appearance of a situation or experience and expect to judge it rightly by that. The divine message it contains is nearly always a hidden one.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15616 – 9.13.1.137

B_15 – ZZ – K

The ordinary person judges from the surface of things and at times is deceived in consequence. The seeker of truth must penetrate to the depth of things.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15617 – 9.13.1.138

B_05 – ZZ – K

He should cultivate the habit of looking beneath the surface of many incidents in his daily life, both the important and the trivial, to determine the character of the forces they represent. Some show forth the good or evil within himself, or within others; all have some useful lesson to teach. Some, standing for the power of evil, ignorance, or illusion, necessitate constant watchfulness against temptations outside; others symbolize weaknesses inside that must be ceaselessly fought.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15618 – 9.13.1.139

B_15 – ZZ – K

If he succeeds in keeping out of the emotional surface of his being the temptation to take his situation rebelliously, and penetrates instead deep down inside where he can take it resignedly, he will gain strength and feel peace.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15619 – 9.13.1.140

B_15 – Z – K

The art of extracting a spiritual message even from the most ordinary circumstances is worth practising. But it can be done only if one lives in a certain independence of them, if while experiencing them one stands apart from them.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15620 – 9.13.1.141

B_15 – Z – K

The aspirant lives a kind of double life. He sees all his experiences as personal events just like other men do. But he also sees them again as material for study: what is and what ought to be his reaction to them?

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15621 – 9.13.1.142

B_15 – ZZ – DK

This is the double role he has to play: a looker-on at what is happening around him and an active participator in these events.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15622 – 9.13.1.143

B_15 – ZZ – DK

Where destiny compels us to follow an undesired path, to consort with undesired company, to work at undesired tasks, a special attitude must be created and kept until that particular cycle is ended. The experience must be studied philosophically—that is, impersonally—in the larger perspective of life's general meaning and our own character's personal needs.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15623 – 9.13.1.144

B_15 – ZZ – K

If he is to learn the full lesson of his situation, he must not only examine and analyse it, but he must do so as if it were somebody else's.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15624 – 9.13.1.145

B_15 – Z – K

It is not only a way of looking at life but also a way of participating in it.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15625 – 9.13.1.146

B_15 – Z – K

Every circumstance or situation may be looked at from a higher plane than the merely animal or narrowly selfish one so that a higher benefit may be got from it. But this attitude calls for a willingness and detachment and courage which most people lack.

Human Experience > Situation > Getting the point

#15626 – 9.13.1.147

B_15 – Z – K

Neither suffering alone nor joy alone can educate his heart and develop his mind in the right way. Both are needed.

Human Experience > Situation > Sunshine and shadow

#15629 – 9.13.1.150

B_17 – Z – K

It is the ironic paradox of human existence that both suffering and joy can enable a man to pass to a higher plane. How is this possible? Suffering drives him to seek its own end, that is, to seek peace. Thus he is led inevitably and eventually to the quest of Overself. Joy draws him towards its source, which rises ever higher as it becomes more refined. Thus he is brought in time to recognize that the true permanent happiness is in the Overself. The urge to shun misery and experience joy shows itself on every plane and in every kind of condition because it is finally and fully satisfied only in the Overself.

Human Experience > Situation > Sunshine and shadow

#15630 – 9.13.1.151

B_17 – ZZZ – K

Hiding within our pleasures and lurking behind our possessions are their malignant enemies—change and death. Sickness trails behind the healthiest life and may one day catch up with it. Our joys are insecure, our loves and friendships ever open to separation and bereavement. We may try to ignore these facts by forgetting them but life itself will force us to remember them again. It is better to accept them frankly, even though we individually hope for the best.

Human Experience > Situation > Sunshine and shadow

#15634 – 9.13.1.155

B_01 – ZZZ – K

The seeker should remember that it is possible to learn just as much from joyous, satisfying experiences as from those of suffering and frustration.

Human Experience > Situation > Sunshine and shadow

#15643 – 9.13.1.164

B_05 – ZZ – DK

We suffer primarily because we have isolated our conscious being from the universal Being. Only when we renounce this isolation shall we be able to remove our suffering.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15661 – 9.13.1.182

B_17 – Z – DMK

Pain and suffering belong to the worlds of limited being, not to the world of infinite being. If man has to endure them, it is because they serve to remind him of this, to warn him against self-deception and to arouse him to take the homeward path.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15662 – 9.13.1.183

B_17 – Z – K

So long as men do not believe in the truth of Jesus' message, "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things shall be added unto you", so long will they grope blindly and suffer needlessly.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15666 – 9.13.1.187

B_11 – ZZZ – K

The more anyone resists the fulfilment of the higher purpose of his life on earth, the more suffering he creates for himself. It is the ego and the animal in him which instigate this resistance.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15667 – 9.13.1.188

B_17 – Z – K

The misdirection of energies, the waste of efforts, and the penalty of useless sufferings constitute the sad result of our ignorance concerning life's higher laws.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15669 – 9.13.1.190

BA12 – ZZZ – K

The unenlightened mind sees in the shadows of existence only misfortune where the enlightened mind sees Karmic instruction and opportunity for self-improvement along with misfortune. When it is schooled both by experience and revelation to recognize and admit that its own mistaken behaviour has led to most of its misfortunes, to see the causal connection between personal wrong-doing and the penal troubles or sufferings which follow in its wake, it will act righteously through fear. But later, when it is schooled by subtler experience and loftier revelation to see the divine quest which life ordains it to follow, it will act righteously not from fear but through faith. When it comes to see or believe that most of its griefs are self-inflicted, it sees well.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15674 – 9.13.1.195

B_17 – Z – K

To react to the pressure of suffering with blind resentment is the way of the ignorant. To study the nature of this suffering and learn its message, self-educating his character accordingly, is the way of the aspirant. He will understand that at some time, in some way, he broke the universal laws and inevitably brought this thing upon himself.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15675 – 9.13.1.196

B_17 – ZZ – K

Your suffering may be shortened or even ended if you will express the fullest self-inculpation and throw no blame for it on others. For their misbehaviour does not absolve you from the responsibility for your own.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15684 – 9.13.1.205

B_13 – ZZ – K

A human existence cannot be separated from a painful and suffering one, however small its measure, so long as it is tied to the flesh or emotions.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15690 – 9.13.1.211

B_17 – Z – K

While man identifies his highest good with momentary pleasure, he will continue to receive the educative experience of suffering.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15693 – 9.13.1.214

B_17 – ZZ – K

If moral instruction and spiritual direction fail to lead a person on the right self-controlled course, then troubles, sufferings, shocks, and scares may have to do so. Sooner or later he will have to surrender himself to strict principles—the sooner the pleasanter in the end.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15694 – 9.13.1.215

BA12 – ZZ – K

Years of error and suffering could have been years of success and peace if the man had known the principle of right thinking and right living. Wasted and spoiled years become so because of this first and fundamental ignorance leading to mistakes in judgement and sins in conduct. This is the reason why a man suffers and why he causes others to suffer.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15695 – 9.13.1.216

B_17 – ZZ – K

Some sufferings entirely fail to improve character, so the sufferer continues to repeat and repeat the cycle of self-originating cause and painful effect.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15705 – 9.13.1.226

B_17 – Z – K

We learn our lessons from suffering, it is true, but so inadequately that we forget them all too quickly. Out of this failure to comprehend life comes the continuance or recurrence of most human trouble.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15706 – 9.13.1.227

B_17 – ZZ – K

The result of wrong-doing will reach a man in the end and teach him the value of its opposite. If he stubbornly needs many lessons and many classes in life's school before he is willing to accept this value, the fact is regrettable and his suffering is inevitable.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15709 – 9.13.1.230

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

A lesson which must be learned in the end had better be learned in the beginning. The price of lateness is multiplication of suffering.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15710 – 9.13.1.231

B_17 – ZZ – K

It is not enough to say that you have suffered. Have you profited from your sufferings? If not, all your weeping was useless.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15714 – 9.13.1.235

B_17 – ZZZ – K

Good fortune may put a stop to the suffering caused by ill fortune, but where the ill fortune has been the end-result of tendencies in our own character or defects in our own mentality or deficiencies in our own personality, these things will remain like seeds within us and will one day sprout again; then the ill fortune will reappear and the suffering with it.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15715 – 9.13.1.236

B_17 – ZZ – K

If it were true that men gained nothing from self-earned suffering and learned nothing from it, that they went on making the same errors and committing the same sins again and again, then they would not be men but the lowest of the lower animals. The capacity to think distinguishes men from these creatures. It may be very feebly and most imperfectly used, but this capacity is still being used in some way. Such mental activity may lead to wrong results or to little results, but it cannot lead to no result at all. The conclusion is that if men do not learn from experience today—that is, in one lifetime—they will inevitably do so tomorrow—that is, in another and a later lifetime.

Human Experience > Situation > Causes of suffering

#15718 – 9.13.1.239

B_17 – ZZZ – K

Some say suffering is ennobling, others say it is degrading. But if we look around us we shall see that both assertions are right in some cases, wrong in other cases. It does not have, and cannot have, the same effect in all cases.

Human Experience > Situation > Different reactions to suffering

#15719 – 9.13.1.240

B_17 – Z – K

The same kind of shock experienced by two different kinds of men may have entirely opposite effects. The extremely materialistic may find the ground slipping under their feet and may feel, for the first time, the urge to seek spiritual help. The extremely unworldly may fall for the first time into a dark night which casts doubt upon the truth of their treasured beliefs and which drives them toward a worldlier outlook as being closer to the real facts. Great traumatic suffering, whether bodily or mental, points two ways.

Human Experience > Situation > Different reactions to suffering

#15722 – 9.13.1.243

B_17 – Z – K

Such is the intractability of human egoism that if suffering ceases too quickly he learns little or nothing from it. The old habits of thought and patterns of conduct will remain only slightly erased or else not erased at all. If suffering continues too long, it may arouse negative emotions of bitterness, resentment, anger, despair, apathy, or self-pity. Again little or nothing is learned.

Human Experience > Situation > Different reactions to suffering

#15723 – 9.13.1.244

B_17 – Z – K

When suffering is too prolonged, too acute, or too large, it may induce a hatred of life and a longing for death.

Human Experience > Situation > Different reactions to suffering

#15725 – 9.13.1.246

B_17 – Z – K

The tears of suffering may blind us to the truth behind suffering.

Human Experience > Situation > Different reactions to suffering

#15728 – 9.13.1.249

B_17 – Z – K

When a man is stretched on the rack of suffering, he may not be able to see or willing to accept in his anguish its spiritual lesson.

Human Experience > Situation > Different reactions to suffering

#15734 – 9.13.1.255

B_17 – ZZ – K

Intense suffering may dull the capacity for higher thought, as intense pleasure may lull it.

Human Experience > Situation > Different reactions to suffering

#15738 – 9.13.1.259

B_17 – Z – K

Philosophy does not ascetically applaud suffering and pain. It deplores them. In themselves, they are regarded as evils. It accepts them as good only when they succeed in bringing about a change of thought—a conversion of heart or an ennoblement of conduct.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15740 – 9.13.1.261

B_17 – ZZ – K

Those who, like Gandhi, can find beauty in human suffering are welcome to do so; most of us cannot, but we may appreciate the values and benefits it yields without enjoying such "beauty."

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15741 – 9.13.1.262

B_17 – Z – K

Since our faulty ways of thinking and living can be pointed out to us by suffering and since we are thus given the chance to put an end to them, does not suffering prove itself to be a useful part of the world-scene? Is it not, at least sometimes, a friend disguised as an enemy?

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15742 – 9.13.1.263

B_17 – ZZZ – K

To the man on this Quest, the man willing to step aside from his ego, earthly misfortunes may sometimes be seen as disguising spiritual blessings if they force him to fall back on the eternal truths and his own deeper resources.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15744 – 9.13.1.265

BN – X – D

If Nature's way of evolution is cruel, it is also necessary. For the human entity would soon be led astray from its true path if there were no suffering to warn it of wrong direction, no pain to signal a disharmonious condition.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15750 – 9.13.1.271

B_17 – ZZ – K

The sufferings which destiny brings us are not to be looked upon as punishment so much as instruction. They are intended to teach us right thinking and to turn us to right doing.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15751 – 9.13.1.272

B_17 – ZZ – K

All circumstances are used by the divine forces of evolution to develop the human soul and, distasteful though it is to us, suffering is one of the chief forces of such evolution. Humanity, having so deeply and so widely lost sight of the higher purpose of its life on earth, has had to undergo calamity and distress in consequence. To recall blind men and women to this purpose is a noble task and a compassionate duty for those who tread the path of philosophy.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15753 – 9.13.1.274

BN – ZZZ – DEK

Whatever difficulties we encounter in the course of a lifetime, we should remember that some reason has put them there: they are not meaningless. But whether put there by our own fault or by other people’s fault, or by an implacable destiny, it is usually possible to extract profit from them, at the least, or to get through them successfully, at the most. Through the capacity they draw out, the power they develop, or the discipline and correction they impose, they can be made to yield personal advantage.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15754 – 9.13.1.275

ME_01 – ZZ – K

The extreme contemporary human suffering has also been an educational discipline in this wisdom. What men cannot yet receive with their conscious intelligence they are already receiving with their subconscious intelligence.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15760 – 9.13.1.281

B_17 – ZZ – K

Suffering has a purgative place, in the scheme of things. If in the earlier stages of man's growth it tempts him to seek relief in evil courses, in the later stages it presses him to seek out its real cause and final cure. Next it has an educative place for it leads him to analyse experience and learn to understand its lessons. Last it has a redemptive place, for it drives him to confess his weakness and seek mercy, grace, and help.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15761 – 9.13.1.282

B_17 – Z – K

Every outward experience has its inward benefits, if only we will look for them with ego-free eyes. And this is true even when the experience involves suffering. Behind suffering we may learn to find some lesson to profit by, some purificatory discipline to be undergone, some ignored fact to be faced, or some wisdom to be gleaned.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15762 – 9.13.1.283

BSG_4 – ZZ – DK

We must cultivate the philosophical spirit which seeks, through calm reflection, to learn and profit by the widest experiences and the commonest errors. It is important that disillusionment should not create bitterness, that we should blame no one but ourselves for our premature judgements. We shall be shamefully defeated in our quest of the Overself if the pain of our experiences makes us less generous intellectually when it ought to make us more so. Yes, our heart must not shrink; the more it has suffered, the more it should expand in forgiveness, in compassion, and in freedom from prejudice.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15767 – 9.13.1.288

B_13 – ZZZ – K

There is no situation so bad, no predicament so undesirable, no crisis so formidable that it cannot be transformed, either in its physical actuality or in our mental picture of it, into a good. But this requires a willingness to work upon it spiritually, that is, egolessly.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15769 – 9.13.1.290

BN – X – D

Poignant suffering may foster profound thought.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15771 – 9.13.1.292

B_17 – ZZ – K

Those who trouble to follow virtuous lives and ask why God should strike them down with some great misfortune or some grave malady and leave other uncaring ones unscathed, may find a possible answer in the idea of karma, but they will find a certain answer in the idea that their suffering is an ego-melting and ego-crushing process. Only after this experience is the truth about happiness revealed.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15772 – 9.13.1.293

B_17 – Z – K

What else can be so beneficial and so necessary to him than an experience which tends to detach him from his ego? With some persons or at some times, it may be a joyous experience; with others or at other times it may cause suffering.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15773 – 9.13.1.294

BN – X – D

No man is so uneducable that suffering leaves no residue in his mind.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15777 – 9.13.1.298

B_17 – ZZ – K

The aspirant who has experienced a great deal of suffering during his lifetime may be comforted by the thought that, undoubtedly, much unfavourable karma has been thus worked off. Moreover, such experiences lead to a better-balanced personality, as a rule, which is as essential for the Quest as meditation.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15779 – 9.13.1.300

B_01 – ZZ – K

If the aspirant could assume a perfectly impersonal point of view he would be able to see how much of his spiritual development he owes to the heartache, loss, and suffering which he once complained about or regarded pessimistically. He would then understand how these very factors have helped immeasurably to deepen his determination, sharpen his intelligence, and, above all, improve his character.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15780 – 9.13.1.301

B_17 – ZZZ – K

A dangerous situation in which we become involved while dreaming may so frighten us as to cause us to awaken with a start. The situation is entirely imaginary, yet it is enough of itself to shock us out of the whole sequence of imaginary situations which constitute the dream life and into the relative reality of waking life. In the same way, the sufferings of earthly life, although ultimately just as illusory as the rest of that life, awaken us to search for reality that transcends it.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15783 – 9.13.1.304

B_17 – Z – K

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 > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15785EM – 9.13.1.306

B_01 – ZZZ – DEXK

The average man's mode of living becomes fixed by routine, by convention, and by the community. Unless he is an exceptional person, he is not particularly interested in teachings and counsel that directly oppose the desires, feelings, inclinations that he has come to regard as normal. No matter how true those teachings may be or how excellent the counsel, he will remain deaf to both until whipped into an about-face listening to them by sheer pressure of last-resort necessity, the desperate attempt to find relief or escape when all the usual channels fail him. Suffering becomes first his awakener and later his tutor.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15788 – 9.13.1.309

B_17 – ZZZ – K

Suffering assaults our shallowness and disturbs our ethical apathy.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15789 – 9.13.1.310

B_17 – Z – K

You may have lost your long-held fortune, your wife may have shamefully betrayed you, your enemies may have spread false accusations against you, while your private world may have tumbled to pieces over your head. Still there remains something you have not lost, someone who has not betrayed you, someone who believes only the best about you, and an inner world that ever remains steady and unperturbed. That thing and that being are none other than your own Overself, which you may find within you, which you may turn to when in anguish, and which will strengthen you to disregard the clamant whine of the personal distress. If you do not do this, there is nothing else you can do. Whither can you turn save to the inner divinity?

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15792 – 9.13.1.313

BN – ZZ – DEK1

Katherine Mansfield, the story writer, died early but not before she could write that the closing years of bodily suffering had changed her outlook on life. She had come from doubt about God to faith in God, from despair to a feeling that perfect Love behind the universe called for perfect trust from her. The tuberculous body, which had kept her so immobilized for so long a time, brought her nevertheless to a kind of meditation wherein she lay, feeling the stillness within grow more and more palpable and the aspiration to merge in it grow stronger and stronger.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15794 – 9.13.1.315

B_17 – Z – K

Suffering forces man to pause on his onward way and reflect, however briefly, upon its cause, and search, however wrongly, for its cure. At such a moment he may be led to consider his life as a whole and so be led to the Quest itself.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15795 – 9.13.1.316

B_17 – ZZ – K

When a man reaches the breaking point in his suffering, he is more likely to turn to the inner life. But when pleasure and health and prosperity fill the years, why should he?

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15796 – 9.13.1.317

B_17 – ZZ – K

These sufferings cause us to seek relief and act as spurs to stimulate aspiration, as propelling forces toward spiritual efforts, as goads to drive us on to the quest. Without them we would live on the surface of things, squandering our energies on the petty, and tend to miss the true meaning of life.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15798 – 9.13.1.319

B_17 – ZZZ – DMK

The prophets and teachers may attract a man's interest in the path, but only misfortune and suffering will compel him to follow it.

Human Experience > Situation > Purpose of suffering

#15799 – 9.13.1.320

B_17 – ZZ – K

If the quest is good only for our brighter hours and not for our darker ones, it is no good at all. But if men desert it because of their troubles, then they have neither properly understood it, nor ever adequately followed it. For the quest is our best support when times are worst and emergencies are gravest.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15806 – 9.13.1.327

BN – X – D

Should we not say with Plato that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong? The problem of suffering does not exhaust itself with its practical aspect. We have also to consider its metaphysical one. If we have the intellectual and moral courage to do this without the egocentric attitude and the surface emotionality which normally govern our approach to it, it will be possible to see it in a clear light. Such is the self-discipline which philosophy asks from its students and such is the emancipated outlook it gives in return.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15808 – 9.13.1.329

B_17 – Z – K

Even if this philosophic attitude towards adversity and calamity did nothing more to change matters than to change his attitude towards them, it would have done enough. Even if it could not save him from the suffering they cause but enabled him to suffer with understanding, it would have done enough. Even if it only guided him to study his suffering and to listen to the message that it had to deliver to him, it would have done enough.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15810 – 9.13.1.331

B_17 – ZZ – K

He is to meet each experience with his mind, remembering his relationship to the higher self and, consequently, the higher purpose of all experiences. He is never to forget the adventure in identity and consciousness that life is.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15812 – 9.13.1.333

BN – X – K1

Karma is the precise result of what a man thinks and does. His reaction to events and situations is the precise result of what he is, his stage in evolution. Therefore, lesser reactions and hence better fortune can come only when he elevates his evolutionary status.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15825 – 9.13.1.346

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

Beware of your thoughts, for when long sustained and strongly felt, they may be reflected in external situations or embodied in other humans brought into your life. But they cannot, of themselves and devoid of physical acts, make the whole pattern of your life—only the adept can do that. For other factors are also contributing, such as the will of God—that is, evolutionary necessity, or the World-Idea.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15835D – 1.13.1.356

BN – X – K

If you live inwardly in love and harmony with yourself and with all others, if you persistently reject all contrary ideas and negative appearances, then this love and this harmony must manifest themselves outwardly in your environment.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15846 – 9.13.1.367

BN – X – DK1

Truth and Love will conquer in the end—however far off that be—for they are deeply buried in the hearts of men and will be slowly uncovered by the instruction which life itself gives. We must acquire something of God's patience.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15848 – 9.13.1.369

A250814 – ZZ – DK

The human failing which makes so many worry and create avoidable mental suffering about themselves and about others, can and must be met by a strong positive endeavour to keep the mind in its highest place. It is not in the nature of our godlike inmost self to feel depressed, to suffer melancholy, or to express worry. If we are to turn to that nature as our true being and basis for living, we will reject these negatives.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15849 – 9.13.1.370

B_17 – Z – DEMK

Why add to any dark or difficult situation? Is it not enough to have to endure it that you must enlarge it by setting up the tension of your negative emotions or disturbed thoughts about it? Keep them out of it.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15850 – 9.13.1.371

BN – ZZ – DK

The anguish and cries of the ego in suffering are, to the aspirant, an opportunity and an inducement to make the great surrender and to rise to a nobler viewpoint. Giving way, in suffering, to negative emotions of resentment, anger, despair, and bitterness is very easy. The wiser attitude of doing all that can be done in a bad or difficult situation and then calmly accepting the issue is much less easy, but it must be attempted.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15856 – 9.13.1.377

BN – ZZZ – K

Our outer lives to some extent reflect the state of our minds. Many of the trials we have to bear would dissolve after we faced ourselves and removed the negative characteristics within our minds. But there are some karmic difficulties which cannot be altered, no matter how clear and pure the mind becomes.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15866 – 9.13.1.387

BN – X – D

Those who turn cruel destiny or harsh accident to opportunity by taking a spiritual profit from it, abandoning natural bitterness and emotional rebellion, coming creatively in mind and positively in feeling to their suffering, thereby bring about its redemption.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15874 – 9.13.1.395

B_17 – ZZ – K

Acceptance of suffering is sometimes a key to the way out of it. The greater the suffering, the greater are the possibilities of peace succeeding it—provided that the lessons to be learned from it have been correctly interpreted and actively applied to daily life.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15876 – 9.13.1.397

B_01 – ZZZ – K

To see why our suffering is there and to know that it will pass gives us a great advantage over the ignorant who suffer blindly and forget its ephemerality; for it replaces rebellion and resentment with patience and endurance.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15877 – 9.13.1.398

B_17 – ZZ – K

The wise man knows that suffering has been essential to his development and has helped him to learn certain lessons. When others fall into the same experience, therefore, he does not wish that they should not have it so much as that they should learn the lesson of it. It would be illogical to apply his wisdom in his own case but to withhold it in the case of others. If a sentimentalist says that because he feels sympathy for others, he wishes them not to suffer, then that is all the more reason—not less—for wishing them not to suffer blindly.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15879 – 9.13.1.400

B_17 – ZZZ – K

The aspirant who heeds the injunctions of the Stoic sages and the Galilean preacher to dismiss excessive care for the external paraphernalia and possessions of life, who believes in and practises the doctrine of mental detachment, will not need to have forced upon him the physical renunciation and physical detachment taught in a more salutary and painful form by loss and misfortune.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15882 – 9.13.1.403

BN – ZZ – K

The more he can inwardly free himself from the claims of his daily regime—that is, the more he can become emotionally detached from it and transfer his interest, love, and desire to the higher self—the greater will be his power to achieve dominance over undesirable conditions.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15885 – 9.13.1.406

BN – X – D

The wisdom that one is offered the opportunity to learn through experiences of suffering should lead not only to some self-renunciation, but also to some true self-humblement beneath the will of destiny, which has revealed itself as insuperable. Once he becomes inwardly submissive, he will find that time quickly heals its own wounds, and that a great peace will be bestowed on his inner life.

Human Experience > Situation > Transformation of suffering

#15887Ds – 9.13.1.408

B_17 – ZZ – K