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

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 – Z – 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 – Z

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 – P – 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 – Z – 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 – P – D

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 – Z – 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 – ZZ – 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 – Z – 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 – ZZ – 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

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 – P – D

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

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

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

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

#15525E – 9.13.1.46

BA11 – ZZ – DE

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

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

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 – P – D

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

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 – P – DK

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 – Z – D

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 – 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 – Z – D

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

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 – ZZZ

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

#15601ME – 9.13.1.122

B_15 – ZZ – DXK

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 – DK

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

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 – P – D

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

BSG_4 – P – D

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

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 – ZZ – 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 – P – 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 – P – D

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 – Z

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 – 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 – P – D

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 – Z

The very struggles and sufferings which bring both practical and metaphysical wisdom to the mature and reflective person may bring evil emotions to the undeveloped and unthinking person. It is possible to read wholly opposing lessons from one and the same experience. Thus when afflicted by a common distress men rise to higher virtue or fall into deeper wrong-doing.

Human Experience > Situation > Different reactions to suffering

#15721 – 9.13.1.242

BN – ZZ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 – P – D

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

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 – D

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 – P – DE

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

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

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

Frankly confess your past mistakes, then analyse and absorb their unpalatable lessons, and resolve to apply the unpleasant result to your future actions. This is practical wisdom. It may be a saddening procedure, and if it is to be an effectual one, it ought to be. But having done it, be done with it. Turn your face toward the sun of hopefulness. Remember the strength, light, and joy waiting to be drawn from your higher self.

Human Experience > Situation > "Failure"

#15893 – 9.13.1.414

BN – Z – D

It is not always possible to judge appearances. There are failures in life who are successes in character. There are successes in life who are failures in character.

Human Experience > Situation > "Failure"

#15895 – 9.13.1.416

BN – ZZ – K1

Who has not made mistakes in the past? Wisdom lies in not making the same mistake twice. Situations which bring to the surface what might otherwise have lain hidden in his character and which put his quality to the test give him a chance to adjust himself accordingly. Every important event which leads to them has an inner as well as an outer significance, for it traces back to a karmic origin which is specially selected by the Overself because he is on this Quest to promote his self-knowledge and self-purification…

Human Experience > Situation > "Failure"

#15902E – 9.13.1.423

BA11 – P – DEK

However much he may wince at the memory of them, he is answerable for his mistakes and should so regard many of the pains and penalties he suffers from. To the extent that he intellectually analyses the whole course of his conduct and comes to the right conclusion about it so as to discover where and how he went wrong, his anguish will be somewhat compensated in the end. To do this he needs to perceive those weaknesses in himself which led to his blunder and to set to work to eliminate them. If he omits this and merely surrenders to the emotional suffering, letting himself go into barren despair or falling into egocentric unbalance, he makes the bad worse.Who has not made mistakes in the past? Wisdom lies in not making the same mistake twice. Situations which bring to the surface what might otherwise have lain hidden in his character and which put his quality to the test give him a chance to adjust himself accordingly. Every important event which leads to them has an inner as well as an outer significance, for it traces back to a karmic origin which is specially selected by the Overself because he is on this Quest to promote his self-knowledge and self-purification.

Human Experience > Situation > "Failure"

#15902E – 9.13.1.423

BN – ZEL1/2 – DEK

If he follows the deeper lead, these situations will surely work out for the best in the end, but if he follows the ego's lead, it may easily make a bad situation worse. However the external situation develops he must cling to his ideals, to his faith in the higher power's intuitive guidance. In this way he does not depend on his own strength alone. At the same time, he can use all his human powers of judgement to fill in the details of what is necessary and right in his own personal behalf.

Human Experience > Situation > "Failure"

#15902E – 9.13.1.423

BN – ZEL2/2 – DEK

Is this a world of exile from our spiritual home or is it a world of education for our spiritual home? If it is the first then all experience gained in it is worthless and useless. But if it is the second then every experience has meaning and is related to this universal purpose.

Human Experience > Living in The World > A play of opposites

#15916 – 9.13.2.1

BN – Z – D

The divine being is present in all people, from the crudest to the most cultured. The Overself is forever with us simply because it is what we really are. We are seeking it, knowingly or unwittingly, and are preordained to do so.

Human Experience > Living in The World > A play of opposites

#15920EM – 9.13.2.5

B_01 – ZZZ – DXK

No man has any choice as to whether or not he should seek the kingdom of heaven, his higher Spiritual Self. Every man is seeking it, knowingly or unwittingly, and is preordained to do so. There is no escape. There is no satisfaction for him outside it.

Human Experience > Living in The World > A play of opposites

#15920 – 9.13.2.5

BT1008 – ZZZ – DEK

What matters is not only the quality of a man's consciousness but also the quality of his day-to-day living, not only the rare special mystical ecstasies that may grace his experience but also his relationship with the contemporary world and his attitude toward it. It is not enough to be a mystic: he cannot avoid the common road which all men must travel. In brief, can he be in the world but not of it? Can he sanctify the ordinary, the customary; those actions, this business, that very work for a livelihood; the contacts with family, friends, critics, and enemies? After all he is a human being with personal concerns; he cannot live for twenty-four hours a day in abstract ideas alone, or in religious withdrawnness: he has a body of flesh, a relevant duty or responsibility to perform in the world outside.

Human Experience > Living in The World > A play of opposites

#15924 – 9.13.2.9

BN – ZZ – K1

During times of great suffering, he may best countenance his bereavement by taking it as a reminder of the transiency of earthly life, and of the necessity to cultivate the interior life of spiritual growth. By so doing, he helps himself and also others.

Human Experience > Living in The World > A play of opposites

#15943 – 9.13.2.28

B_17 – ZZ – DK

Most people live upon the mere surface of their consciousness, knowing nothing of the great Power and intelligence which support it.

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

#16003 – 9.13.2.88

BN – X – D

If industrial civilization has enriched our outer life it has also impoverished the inner life. It need not have done so if we had brought about a proper equilibrium between the two and if we had done so under the light of the guiding principle of what we are here on earth for.

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

#16055DP – 9.13.2.140

B_08 – P – DEK

Again paradox is truth. The brevity of life, possessions, beauty, and such is true and good reason to abandon all: world, love, and so on. But the opposite is also true. We can enjoy beauty, life, and all the rest if detached. So both sides together equal the whole truth. So I join no sect or teaching—alone.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Reconciling the mystical and mundane

#16072 – 9.13.2.157

BN – ZZ – K

To work effectively in this world of everyday without repudiating or forgetting the world of the Spirit—this is his duty.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Reconciling the mystical and mundane

#16074 – 9.13.2.159

BN – X – D

Wang Yang-ming maintained that wisdom and virtue could not be gained by meditation alone. He asserted that the daily experience of dealing with ordinary matters was also needed, providing that experience was sincerely reflected upon by conscience, reason, and intuition.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Reconciling the mystical and mundane

#16081 – 9.13.2.166

BN – X – D

Living in the world as we are, having to submit to demands which the world makes upon us, we must learn how to deal with them in a correct way. By correct I mean in harmony with our inner goal.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Reconciling the mystical and mundane

#16083 – 9.13.2.168

BN – X – D

What is wrong if we claim some happiness from this world, provided we keep our balance, the heart anchored to an allegiance higher than the world, the mind always remembering for what it is really here?

Human Experience > Living in The World > Reconciling the mystical and mundane

#16089 – 9.13.2.174

B_08 – P – D

If he puts everything in its place—the lower and lesser things where they belong, the higher and greater ones above them—what has he to fear from the world? He can still remain active in it; flight will be unnecessary. If he does not forget the final purpose of all this worldly activity, that through the body's life and the mind's existence he may seek and find his true self, the Overself, the inner failure and superficiality of so many lives will be avoided.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Reconciling the mystical and mundane

#16097 – 9.13.2.182

B_08 – P – DE

If he does not forget the final purpose of all this worldly activity, that through the body's life and the mind's existence he may seek and find his true self, the Overself, the inner failure and superficiality of so many lives will be avoided.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Reconciling the mystical and mundane

#16097E – 9.13.2.182

UR_5 – ZZZ – DEK

This earthly life is the ”narrow gate” which opens onto the kingdom.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Reconciling the mystical and mundane

#16100 – 9.13.2.185

BN – X – D

It is here, in the ordinary and uneventful tasks of the day, that he may find just as much opportunity to practise nonattachment, to suppress egoism, and to express wisdom.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Reconciling the mystical and mundane

#16103 – 9.13.2.188

BA11 – P – D

It is of immense importance, whether in the internal spiritual life or the external worldly career, to cultivate the art of detecting, recognizing, and accepting opportunity. Two factors need especially to be remembered here. First, sometimes she presents her face plainly and unmistakably, but more often she presents two faces each equally attractive and each claiming to bear her name: or else she disguises herself under the garb of commonplace events and unprepossessing personalities. Second, she never repeats the same situation with the same chances in precisely the same way. With altered conditions, the same causes cannot produce the same phenomena. To miss those chances through ignorance or the blindness of unpreparedness, through logic's limitation or the dismissing of intuition, is to miss portions of success or happiness that could easily have been ours.

Human Experience > Living in The World > How to treat opportunity

#16109 – 9.13.2.194

BN – X – DEK

The opportunity is unrepeatable and unreceivable in exactly the same way, for the passage of time—be it a moment or a century—has forced change on both the situation and the person.

Human Experience > Living in The World > How to treat opportunity

#16111 – 9.13.2.196

BN – X – D

A single mistake in the rejection of an opportunity or in the choice of direction at a crossroad may lead to a quarter-lifetime's suffering. The student may quite easily discover by analysis the smaller lessons embodied in that suffering and yet may quite overlook the larger lessons, for he may fail to ascribe major blame to the early rejection or choice. He may still not realize how it all stems out of that primary root, how each error in conduct that naturally happens after it becomes a channel for a further one, and that in its turn for still another, so that the descent is eventually inevitable and its attendant sorrows become cumulative. Thus all traces back to the initial foundational error, which is the most important one because it is the choice of wrong direction, because such a wrong choice means that the more he travels through life, the more mistaken all his later conduct becomes.

Human Experience > Living in The World > How to treat opportunity

#16113 – 9.13.2.198

B_17 – Z – K1

If he accepts the hand of opportunity when it is offered him, the effects will be favourable in every direction. If he feels the premonition that he is on the verge of a new cycle, and makes decisions or acts accordingly, the way into it will open out for him.

Human Experience > Living in The World > How to treat opportunity

#16114 – 9.13.2.199

BN – X – D

What most people count as great misfortunes sometimes open the door to new opportunities, ideas, or courses of action leading to advantages that would not otherwise have come. It is wiser to defer an appraisal of such events until they have shown their results as a whole to a final view.

Human Experience > Living in The World > How to treat opportunity

#16116 – 9.13.2.201

BN – X – D

How little do we know that some small act, some minor move, may lead to consequences that open up an entirely new phase of experience.

Human Experience > Living in The World > How to treat opportunity

#16117 – 9.13.2.202

BN – X – D

If a situation is fraught with anxiety and is also either unavoidable or unalterable, the first procedure is to organize all your forces to meet it calmly. The second is to call on the higher power for help by turning to it in relaxation and meditation.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16129 – 9.13.2.214

BN – X – D

However harassing a problem may seem to us, if we can give up our egoistic attitude towards it, if we can keep the lower emotions away from it, the best possible solution under the circumstances will develop of its own accord. There is veritable magic in such a change of thinking and feeling. It opens the gate to higher forces and enables them to come to our help.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16134 – 9.13.2.219

BN – X – D

Each problem is to be solved by the simple method of turning it over to the Overself and then dismissing it from mind. The ego is faulty and blind; what it cannot solve or manage, the Overself can. But this method requires time and patience.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16135 – 9.13.2.220

BN – X – D

Take your peril to the Overself, identify your real being with the Overself and not with the vanishing ego. Then you will be at the standpoint which perceives that you are as secure and safe as the Overself is. Hold your position as the final and highest one. Reject the very thought of being in danger. There is none in the Overself.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16137 – 9.13.2.222

BN – X – D

The problem which the ego has created for you but which the ego cannot solve for you will dissolve under the impact of the Overself’s light.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16138 – 9.13.2.223

BN – X – D

He should make it an unfailing practice to turn inwards in moments of need for help and in moments of perplexity for direction.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16139 – 9.13.2.224

BN – X – D

No other act is so urgent or so important as this, to turn now in thought and remembrance, in love and aspiration, toward the Overself. For if you do not but turn toward that other and worldly act which is so clamant and demanding, you fall into a tension which may lead to error and consequent suffering. But if you do turn toward the Overself first and then act, you rise up to inner calm and consequent wiser judgement.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16140 – 9.13.2.225

BA12 – P – D

Why fatigue yourself trying to make a difficult decision? Why not hand the problem over to the higher power, which knows better than you? Where logic fails to guide, surrender and intuition may take its place and prove their worth. Having turned the problem over to the higher power, just leave it to time. This does not necessarily mean you have nothing further to do. There may be action required, but in that case quietly await the signal or guidance: let it appear of its own accord in its own hour, meanwhile trusting yourself to the Power, giving your problem to its wisdom, and letting your destiny take its course under this new association.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16146 – 9.13.2.231

BN – ZZ – K

He has to ask himself: What is it that the Overself is impelling me to do? The answer will hardly ever be a spontaneous one. He will have to wait patiently for days or weeks or perhaps months before it will be heard sufficiently clearly and definitely.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16148 – 9.13.2.233

BN – X – D

Often the guidance does not come till the time when it is needed, the answer to our questioning does not make itself heard until the eleventh hour. Until then we must learn to wait in hopeful patience and in trustful expectation.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16153 – 9.13.2.238

BN – X – D

The intuition may be slow in revealing itself but when it does the inner certitude it provides, the strong consciousness of being right, will enable him to act decisively and swiftly.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16159 – 9.13.2.244

BN – X – D

If he turns away from his problem and to the Overself, the moment its peace is felt or its message of truth is heard, he may take this as a sign that help in some way will assuredly come to him.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16163 – 9.13.2.248

BN – Z – DK*

If, while managing a situation, you are filled with anxiety or taut with tension, take it as a warning sign that you are managing with the unaided ego alone. That is, you have forgotten, or failed, to turn it over to the higher power, to put it in the hands of the Overself.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16167 – 9.13.2.252

BN – X – D

To become as a child, in Jesus' sense, means to become permeated with the happiness, with the joy, which a child's freedom from responsibilities and anxieties brings it. All problems being turned over to the higher power, the philosopher enjoys the same inner release.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16168 – 9.13.2.253

BN – X – D

While you are thinking about a problem and in search of an answer to it, you cannot get the intuition which is its true and final solution. But when you are no longer doing so, the answer appears. This happens with the genius during the interval between two thoughts but with the ordinary man during sleep.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16173 – 9.13.2.258

BN – X – D

If the technique of turning a problem or situation over to the higher power fails to yield favourable results, the fault lies in the person attempting to use it, not in the technique itself. If he is using it as an attempt to escape from coping with the problem or as a refusal to face up to the situation, and thus as an evasion of the lessons involved, it will be better for his own growth to meet with failure. And even among those who claim to have perceived the lessons, they may not have really done so but may have accepted only what suited their egos and rejected the rest. The full meaning of the experience must be taken deeply to heart and applied sincerely to living before the claim to have learned it can be substantiated.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16178 – 9.13.2.263

BN – X – D

With the onset of crisis or stress, trouble or calamity, he turns his mind instantly toward the Higher Power. This can be done easily, effortlessly—but only after long self-training and much practice in thought control.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16186 – 9.13.2.271

BN – Z – DK

The need to make a rapid decision may create panic in an uncertain mind. Here again the best counsel is to go into the calm Silence, push aside the insistent thoughts of pressure, and wait in patience for mental quiet to manifest itself. Then only can intuitive guidance emerge.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16194 – 9.13.2.279

BN – X – D

Even where men are ignorant of the law of karma, the higher self provides warnings to them when they deviate from the right path; but, alas, they do not heed these delicate feelings which speak from within and are often called the voice of conscience.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16197 – 9.13.2.282

BN – Z – K

If he feels clearly guided to a mission which seems impossible, he may safely leave to the Overself the means of carrying it out.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16206 – 9.13.2.291

BN – ZZ – D

At the very moment that any problem produces thoughts of despondency, turn that problem over to the higher power again, and try to remain inwardly calm.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Seeking guidance

#16213 – 9.13.2.298

BN – X – D

The ultimate value of all this activity in business, profession, politics, family, and so on is not in carrying them on successfully, but in using them to carry one’s own mind nearer to enlightenment.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Worldly success

#16232 – 9.13.2.317

BN – Z – DK*

Poverty is a stiff test of moral fibre.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Worldly success

#16235 – 9.13.2.320

BN – Z – K1

With conditions in the business world fostering the ego's over-growth as they do, I have often advised young men of exceptional talent engaged in or entering this world to make money quickly with the special purpose of escaping from it. Then they can give adequate time to the study and meditation and retreat they need for their philosophic interests. Thus they use their business career as an expedient, not to satisfy ambition.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Worldly success

#16244 – 9.13.2.329

BN – X – D

To live with men as one of them, yet not to live within their narrow limitations, is his duty and necessity.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Independence

#16254 – 9.13.2.339

BN – X – D

Let others not mistakenly believe that he has adopted a non-cooperative attitude, has fled from reality, renounced a human existence in exchange for an illusory one in an imaginary world, or deserted the paths of sanity and reason. If he wants to live in comparative outer peace with them, he must make certain outer concessions. It is better to behave as unprovokingly as possible, to hide his deeper thoughts behind a screen, and to avoid being labelled as a religious fanatic or intellectual faddist. It is especially unwise to uncover one's philosophical thoughts before everybody. He must try to adjust himself smoothly to his environment. This is a hard task, but he must not shirk it and must do all that can be done in the given circumstances.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Independence

#16255E – 9.13.2.340

BN – ZEL1/3 – K1

He must fulfil his reasonable obligations towards society, must co-operate in turning the great wheel of human activity, must contribute his share in achieving the general welfare; but he should reserve the right to do so in his own way and not according to society's dictation. And because he has outstripped those around him in important ways, because he is already thinking centuries ahead of them, it is unlikely that he will succeed wholly in fending off their criticisms or even in avoiding their hostility. For with all his endeavours to placate them and with all his sacrifices for the sake of harmony, human nature being what it is—a mixture of good and evil, of the materialistic and the holy—crises may sometimes arise when society will attack him.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Independence

#16255E – 9.13.2.340

BN – ZEL2/3 – K1

If the inner voice of conscience bids him do so, then he will perforce have to make a firm stand for principles. It is then that he must summon enough courage to do what is unorthodox or to say what is unpopular and display enough independence to disregard tradition or ignore opinion. Up to a certain point he may walk with the crowd, but beyond it his feet must not move a step. Here he must claim the privilege of self-determination, concerning which there can be no compromise; for here, at the sacred bidding of the Overself, he must begin to live his own life. Consequently, although he will always be a good citizen he may not always be a popular one.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Independence

#16255E – 9.13.2.340

BN – ZEL3/3 – K1

Let us not betray the good that is in us by a cowardly submission to the bad that is in society.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Independence

#16256 – 9.13.2.341

BN – ZZ – DK1

He endeavours to live his own life in his own way, as much as circumstances allow and prudence dictates.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Independence

#16272 – 9.13.2.357

BN – ZZ

Where he knows that other persons will not be sympathetic to these teachings, he will be prudent to remain silent about them. Where his friends know of his own interests and disparage them, he will be wise to avoid futile arguments.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Independence

#16273 – 9.13.2.358

BN – ZZ – D

The belief that a change of city or land may lead to a change of mental condition is not altogether without basis, even though we still take the ego and its thoughts with us wherever we go.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Effects of environment, change

#16286 – 9.13.2.371

BN – X – D

There are situations in life and associations with persons which try patience. There are environments which appear to imprison him. The natural impulse is to run away from them or to resist them in bitterness. It may be well to avoid continuing the experience if he can. But let him enquire first if he has gained from it the hidden lesson and profited by the hidden opportunity to grow.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Effects of environment, change

#16288 – 9.13.2.373

BN – ZZZ – K

Hope is the scaffolding of life. But unless the hands go out in action we may stand upon it forever yet the building will never be erected. That is why we who seek for Truth must work interiorly and work intensely amid the common mortar and bricks of mundane existence. Our dreams of a diviner life are prophetic, but we turn them to realities only when we turn our hands to the tasks and disciplines presented by the world.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Cultivate an active attitude

#16305 – 9.13.2.390

BN – ZZ – K1

You may accept the inevitable with bitterness and resentment or with patience and grace. Mere acceptance alone is not sufficient.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Cultivate an active attitude

#16318 – 9.13.2.403

BN – ZZZ – K

The indifference toward unalterable or the resignation to unavoidable suffering preached by so many prophets was not preached merely as an idealistic fancy, but, in most cases, as a realizable fact out of their personal experiences. Admittedly, its accomplishment is quite hard. For it depends in part on a complete concentration upon that which suffering cannot touch—the hidden soul. But this is not to be confused with a defeatist fatalism, a false resignation to God's will, or a harsh asceticism.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Cultivate an active attitude

#16319 – 9.13.2.404

BN – ZZ – DEK

The situation of the human being, neither animal nor angel but stretched out somewhere between both, is unique.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16321 – 9.13.2.406

BN – X – D

This is the final vindication of the practical truth that you must deal with human nature as it is, not as you would like it to be or as you imagine it to be. The man of today lives, moves, and has his being in his personal ego and will continue to do so until he has learned, grasped, thoroughly understood, and completely realized the truth of the illusiveness of the individual self. Until that happy day arrives, it is far wiser to take a human being as he is and simply to place checks and restrictions upon his egoism.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16325 – 9.13.2.410

BA12 – ZZZ – DEK

The man of today lives, moves, and has its being in its personal ego and will continue to do so until it has learned, grasped, thoroughly understood, and completely realized the truth of the illusiveness of the individual self.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16325E – 9.13.2.410

BSG_4 – ZZZ – DE

We must accept the higher fact that beneath the egoic differences there subsists the Overself's unity and it is our sacred duty to realize it inwardly while tolerating difference outwardly.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16329 – 9.13.2.414

BN – X – D

It is not necessary for the aspirant to seek frantically any new outward relationships to things or people; these should and will evolve naturally, so to speak, from his own growing spirituality. ”Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you.” By denying the ego and by frequent meditation all things are influenced for him in ways he cannot now realize. As he directs his mind and heart to the Overself, his character, his disposition, even the outer contacts and relationships will become attuned and re-adjusted.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16330 – 9.13.2.415

BN – X – D

He will learn to measure the worth of another man or of an experience by the resulting hindrance to, or stimulation of, his own growth into a diviner consciousness.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16332 – 9.13.2.417

BN – X – DK1

Where a wrong is done us by someone generally we may be sure that the experience represents the expiation of a wrong which we have done to someone in a past incarnation. It is useless to cry out against the injustice of the injury when the cause lies deep within our own history. It is best to put aside the natural feeling of resentment and, understanding as well as we may what it is we are expiating, take its lessons to heart.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16335 – 9.13.2.420

BA11 – ZZ – DK

However virtuous our intentions, we not infrequently work harm to others. This shows that it is not enough to be good. Wisdom must direct our goodness, must bestow on us the capacity to foresee what is likely to ensue from our actions.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16336 – 9.13.2.421

BN – X – D

Every person who is important to him, every relationship that arouses emotion or thought is there for a meaning.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16337 – 9.13.2.422

BN – X – D

If each person could look at his own life not only in an impersonal way but also with philosophic insight, he would perceive the meaningfulness of the happenings in his life, of the relations with other persons, and even the larger backgrounds themselves. All served a higher purpose or fulfilled a higher service, leading him from half-animal to truly human being, or obeyed a moral law such as karma.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16341 – 9.13.2.426

BN – Z – K

The more he behaves with kindly qualities towards others, the more will their behaviour towards him reflect back at least some of these qualities. The more he improves his own mental and moral conditions, the more will his human relations bring back some echo of this improvement.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16342 – 9.13.2.427

BN – X – D

We need not be afraid to help others because we are afraid to interfere with their karma. Reason must guide our sympathy, it is true, and if our beneficent act is likely to involve the beneficiary in continued wrong-doing or error it may be wiser to refrain from it. It is not generosity to condone his sin and to confirm him more strongly in his foolish course. But the law of karma can be safely left to provide for its own operations. Indeed it is even possible that it seeks to use us as a channel to modify or end this particular piece of suffering in the other person. To refuse to relieve suffering, human or animal, because it may be an interference with their karma is to misapply one's knowledge of the law of karma.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16344 – 9.13.2.429

BN – ZZZ – K

We do not love our neighbour as ourself for the simple reason that we cannot. He loves himself quite enough anyway and does not need our addition. But, this said, we are ready to serve him amicably.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16345 – 9.13.2.430

BN – X – D

Whoever gets caught in the misery and unhappiness and self-pity of a person in distress and lets himself remain in that depressed condition, cannot render as much help—if any at all—as the one who is detached, imperturbable, but compassionate.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Relations with others

#16355 – 9.13.2.440

BN – Z

There is no reason to feel that love for a marriage partner is at variance with efforts toward self-evolvement. In its best sense, mutual love is an aid for both to progress and develop as individuals.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Marriage

#16359 – 9.13.2.444

BA11 – P – D

The necessity of achieving mental harmony and union of ideals in marriage counsels great caution in selecting one suited to be a life-companion. A wrong decision in this matter may be disastrous in every way, whereas a right one will be helpful in many ways.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Marriage

#16361 – 9.13.2.446

BSG_5 – P – DK*

It is not enough for two persons to get married because they love one another. They must also suit one another.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Marriage

#16372 – 9.13.2.457

BN – X – D

When a separation, divorce, or break-up of relationship comes between two persons—be they friends, spouses, or associates of some kind—it may appear sudden in happening, but it already exists on the subconscious plane. The event merely brings it to the surface.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Marriage

#16382 – 9.13.2.467

B_01 – ZZ – K

Socrates once declared, "I am a man and like other men a creature of flesh and blood." He was married and had three sons. Yet this did not prevent him from attaining a lofty wisdom and the highest intellectual clarity and magnificent moral rectitude.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Marriage

#16384 – 9.13.2.469

A241129 – P – D

The marriage which is either unsatisfactory to one of the partners or unhappy for both of them may always take a different turn if regarded from a different viewpoint—a higher one.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Marriage

#16402 – 9.13.2.487

BSG_5 – P – D

Socrates suffered from a scolding, nagging, and bad-tempered wife. One day she gave him a farewell parting by pouring dirty water on him from an upper storey while he was in the street. This caused his friends to complain to him and ask why he endured it. Instead of complaining, he pointed out to his friends that this gave him the impetus, and provided some of the means, to become a philosopher.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Marriage

#16406 – 9.13.2.491

A241129 – Z – K

Marriage brings about an interfusion of destinies and auras which may have important consequences. If the partner is actively opposed to the ideals and ideas of the quest, the aspirant will find it much more difficult to follow its star, if not be indeed completely halted for a time.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Marriage

#16408 – 9.13.2.493

BSG_5 – P – D

The thing that really matters in the life of a nation is the quality of its leaders, the character of those who guide its destinies. Young men may not realize that enthusiasm alone is not enough, that character always does and always will count, that he who fits himself for greatness will see whole kingdoms delivered into his hands. Inspiration brings fortune in its train and inspired teachers will always rise.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Politics

#16419 – 9.13.2.504

BN – Z – DEK1

He must allow others the same liberty of thought which he asks for himself, the same freedom of expression and the same right to a private opinion, but these liberties are valid only so far as he seeks the common welfare along with his own. If the others do not do so or do so under the form of dangerous illusions which are harmful to society, then he has a right to ask for restraints to be put upon them.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Politics

#16445 – 9.13.2.530

BN – ZZZ

Going to school is one thing, getting educated is another, although they coincide at times. Learning from a teacher is preparation. Learning from life in the world is observation. Learning from oneself is intuition.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Education

#16520 – 9.13.2.605

BN – Z – K1

We live in an age when false statements are passed off as true ones and when deceptive values are passed off as real ones, when the dissemination of knowledge is getting more and more into the hands of those who are themselves too young to wisely instruct the young, too unbalanced to help the characters of the young, and too theoretical to be able to pass over really practical information which will help their students.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Education

#16521 – 9.13.2.606

BN – ZZ – K1

It is not enough for parents to protect a child—they should also encourage and stimulate it to awaken spiritually.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Education

#16522 – 9.13.2.607

BN – Z – DK1

Why should the universities teach only the humanities and the sciences, but fail to teach a single student how to become a full human being? Why do they not impart the only science which deals with THAT WHICH IS? How many have told me that during the few minutes of a short Glimpse they feel that more worthwhile knowledge came to them than they gained in all their years of formal education in school and college!

Human Experience > Living in The World > Education

#16530 – 9.13.2.615

BN – Z – DEK

No system of education can be a complete or an adequate one if it omits to teach young persons how to meditate. This is the one art which can assist them not only to develop self-control and to improve character but also to master all the other arts through mastery of concentration. When their minds have been trained to concentrate attention well, all their intellectual capacities and working powers attain the most individual expression with the least effort.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Education

#16537 – 9.13.2.622

BN – Z – DEK

True education will nurture noble character rather than egoistic calculation, foster sharp intelligence rather than routine memory, train the student to the kind of technical work he or she likes to do and can do, and teach things of lasting value rather than force useless ones into the mind.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Education

#16547 – 9.13.2.632

B_01 – ZZ – K

What is the use of educating so many young people's heads when we leave their intuitive natures absolutely untouched, uncultivated, and unused?

Human Experience > Living in The World > Education

#16554 – 9.13.2.639

BN – X – D

We are not sufficiently informed about the meaning of life and not sufficiently concerned with the purpose of life. In our ignorance we deify the machine and destroy ourselves. In our indifference we lose all chance of gaining peace of mind.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Education

#16559 – 9.13.2.644

BN – X – D

Each of us has been endowed with intelligence, determination, and ability, so that we may use these in order to grow spiritually—and to learn how to properly care for ourselves and others.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Education

#16563 – 9.13.2.648

BN – X – D

The world will change, and change for the better, when we put our schools in order, when we educate our children less in geography and more in unselfishness, less in history and more in high character, less in a dozen other subjects and more in the art of right living.

Human Experience > Living in The World > Education

#16569 – 9.13.2.654

BN – X – D

Young persons, whose enthusiasm is fresh and whose minds are open, especially need to become convinced by these teachings. In this way they would not only lay one of the best possible foundations for their future, but also be of the greatest possible service to others.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections on youth

#16571 – 9.13.3.2

BN – Z – DM

Although I deplore the condemnation of everything bygone, everything old, which is indulged in by so many of the young today, I agree with them that new times may bring new forms of inspiration and that the Truth, the Reality, does not necessarily have to be tied to tradition or look heavy with age or be stiff with the shapes given to it by our forefathers; it can be new, fresh, vivid, original. I include under this heading not only religious and metaphysical matters, but also artistic ones.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections on youth

#16583 – 9.13.3.14

BN – Z – K1

The idea of authority is hotly contested by the young, who fail to see that it is just as necessary as the idea of non-authority or freedom. This is true whether it is imposed on us by the higher laws governing existence or by other persons who are qualified to do so or even imposed by ourselves in the form of ideals and standards.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections on youth

#16585 – 9.13.3.16

BN – X – K1

As the old questions about existence—whether of man, the universe, or God—clamour in the mind for answers, a conflict goes on inside the young and educated about what they are to do with their lives.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections on youth

#16600 – 9.13.3.31

BN – X – D

The Stoic teaching that passion should be controlled by reason does not appeal to today's younger generation. But its merit remains.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections on youth

#16626 – 9.13.3.57

BN – X – K

A time comes to turn from youth and become a man, to put aside sloppy sentimentality and look at the hard realities which must be lived with.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections on youth

#16638 – 9.13.3.69

B_10 – Z

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

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16693D – 9.13.3.124

BN – Z – K

Old infirm people who become weary of the body and hence weary of themselves have no way out except the larger identification with something larger than the body self.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16695 – 9.13.3.126

BSG_5 – P – D

Among the benefits of old age is the fact that one can look back and try to comprehend what one had to do to uplift oneself in this lifetime. While one was involved in the experiences, their real lessons were too often obscured by unbalanced emotion or blocked by fast-held ego.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16701 – 9.13.3.132

BSG_5 – P – D

Those who have reached the middle years are likely to know more about life than those who have not. They are certainly more capable of sustaining attention and concentration than callow youths. Hence, they are better able to receive the Truth and to accept the value of philosophy than the young. Old age ought to become the tranquil period which ruminates over the folly and wisdom of its memories; it is to reflect upon, and study well, the lessons garnered from experience.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16704E – 9.13.3.135

BSG_5 – P – DE

This increasing loss of memory which afflicts so many elderly people need not be a cause of emotional depression, as it so often is: we have more likelihood of some measure of mental peace when the burden of unneeded or excessive memories falls away. It is something for which to be grateful.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16741 – 9.13.3.172

BN – X – D

For those without a higher viewpoint, the prospect of old age is a difficult one. The clever attractive modern cosmetics may take the years off a woman's appearance, but the years remain—oppressive and disturbing—within her consciousness. Early enthusiasm for living must, in the end, give way to a saddened recognition of our mortality. Reflection warns both woman and man of the frustrations awaiting human desire, but it also tells them of the compensations. These, however, must be earned. Foremost comes peace of mind.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16746 – 9.13.3.177

BN – ZZ – K1

It is not pleasant to reach old age. One tires easily—not only physically but also mentally—and one begins to weary of the routines of merely living, performing similar acts day after day. I speak of course of the average person, mass humanity—but one who has kept his mind alive, alert, eager to know, learn, and understand, who has developed his inmost resources cultural and spiritual, can never get bored.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16747 – 9.13.3.178

BN – ZZ – K1

Any man who has reached the middle or late period of his life has reached an age when the most important activity he can undertake is to try to fulfil as much as possible of the higher purpose of his life on earth. The basis for this activity must necessarily be self-improvement, the building of character and the overcoming of the ego.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16750 – 9.13.3.181

BN – X – D

There is no finer or more fitting way to spend time during the evening years of life than in turning the mind toward reflection and then stilling it in the Silence.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16755 – 9.13.3.186

BSG_5 – P – D

Our elders are worthy of respect, but their counsel is worthy of heeding only if they are old in soul as well as body, only if they have extracted through many lifetimes all the wisdom possible from each one. Experience without reflection misses most of its value, reflection without depth misses much of its value, depth without impartiality may miss the chief point. For all our experience, our life in the body and world, is a device to bring out our soul.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16769 – 9.13.3.200

BSG_5 – ZZ – DEK1

The mere number of years of existence is not enough basis on which to judge a man’s wisdom. The body’s age is quite separate from the soul’s.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16770 – 9.13.3.201

BA11 – Z – D

Every man over a certain age is under sentence of death. Some men below that age are equally threatened. Should not both groups be sobered enough by such a remembrance to ask, "Why am I here on this Earth?"

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16777 – 9.13.3.208

B_01 – ZZZ – K1

The dying autumn leaves induce sad thoughts such as: we are only passengers travelling through this world…

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16778 – 9.13.3.209

BA11 – P – D

At the end of many years, after passing through many varied experiences, as we draw close to the terminus of life, we realize that we have not altered our character in fundamentals. We know then that many lifetimes may be needed to change ourselves.

Human Experience > Youth and Age > Reflections in old age

#16781 – 9.13.3.212

BN – X – D

It is not only a spiritual crisis for mankind but also a spiritual opportunity.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Crisis and visible effects

#16828 – 9.13.4.37

BN – X – D

The nations need collective outer peace, but men themselves need personal inner peace. The two are related.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Causes, meaning of crisis

#16829 – 9.13.4.38

BN – X – D

The sufferings imposed by the last war were terrible, but those who found a deep religious or philosophical support within themselves were better able to meet them. In the coming age which will dawn soon, the working classes will come into their own, culturally speaking. It is therefore important that they should learn to understand the inner significance of life and not be led by merely superficial doctrines. The ultimate purpose of life here on earth is a spiritual one, and this must be remembered.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Causes, meaning of crisis

#16830 – 9.13.4.39

BN – Z – DEK

The world crisis as a sign that mankind is passing through a spiritual turning-point includes truth-seekers also. It is time for them to stop living by other men's spiritual experience and to start living by their own.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Causes, meaning of crisis

#16833 – 9.13.4.42

BN – X – D

Through all this range of experience, human consciousness is evolving, is coming closer to the level where it will be able to take the next step forward and upward. This can be a false pretentious "mind expansion" got artificially and perilously through drugs, or it can be the real thing.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Causes, meaning of crisis

#16835 – 9.13.4.44

BN – X – DEK

The spiritual awakening can come to mankind only as it comes to individuals—after it is strongly desired by the individual himself; and it will be desired only when all other desires have been tried and found wanting.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Causes, meaning of crisis

#16838 – 9.13.4.47

BN – X – D

In the individual life it mostly happens that grace descends only after a period of great suffering. In humanity's life it is the same. Only when war and crises have run their course will new spiritual light be shed on us.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Causes, meaning of crisis

#16841 – 9.13.4.50

BN – X – D

Other forces are operating in the world-crisis which are quite beyond the knowledge, experience, and perception of most people. They are certain spiritual forces of destiny and evolution.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Causes, meaning of crisis

#16848 – 9.13.4.57

BN – X – D

The old doctrine of karma is quite correct in explaining present-day world suffering, but not all of it. The explanation is too complicated and must be left for the future. However, it may be said that the one lesson humanity is compelled to learn is that of its interdependence and hence of its ultimate unity. The sufferings and unsatisfactory conditions of one nation affect distant nations also. The sufferings of the world can be removed only by removing their cause. But ignorance of this condition is so widespread that it is a sign that there are practically no sages active in the modern world.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Causes, meaning of crisis

#16857 – 9.13.4.66

BN – ZZ – K

So long as any civilization plays the hypocrite to its best beliefs, so long as the inner life does not matter while the outer life can give it all the satisfactions it seeks, so long may one predict with full assurance that the arc of its history will sooner or later take a downward plunge into disaster. Why this should be so is no mystery if one understands that God has set man upon this earth to fulfil and realize obscure higher purposes as well as the obvious lower ones. Man evades the challenge only at the risk of unwittingly calling into existence destructive forces that will terrorize his civilization and frighten him into remembrance of what these higher purposes demand of him.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Causes, meaning of crisis

#16875 – 9.13.4.84

BN – X – DEK

It is a fact that all men are at different stages and see life in different ways or under different limitations. Their experience is always relative to their standpoint. Hence it is wrong to declare any man to be ignorant, for usually he does know what is proper to his own level.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16879 – 9.13.4.88

M231217 – ZZ – K

To turn our gaze to past times and look for similar situations in them and then to observe what happened thereafter, will not avail us today. For such a situation has never before existed. It is without historical precedent.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16882 – 9.13.4.91

BN – X – D

We do not reincarnate only to continue or finish learning the same old lessons—much less to repeat them—but also to start learning new ones. Life itself demands of us that there should be a definite progression to a wider and higher level. Those who want blindly to imitate only what people did five thousand years ago, show their ignorance of life's requirement. This earth exists to enable man to progress from lower to higher levels and from narrower to wider areas.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16883 – 9.13.4.92

BN – ZZ – DEK

Ideas which belong to an age that is passing away are themselves doomed to pass away. They become barren and ineffective. We must try to unlearn them. Even certain mental attitudes which suited past epochs have now become retrograde. Emotional reactions which were correct in primitive peoples have now become impediments.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16889 – 9.13.4.98

BN – X – D

Where so many creatures are at early stages of descent into ego-experience and ego-development, it is foolish to expect them to respond to teachings suitable for advanced stages alone—where the need is for growing release from the ego. The first group naturally and inevitably has different, even opposing, outlooks, trends, ideas, beliefs, inclinations, and desires from those of the second one. It wants to fatten the ego, whereas the other wants to thin it down. To condemn it as wrongly directed is ignorant, impractical, and mistaken. If the history of mankind has teemed with war and bloodshed in the past, part of the cause can be found here. But that same history moves also in cycles. We stand today between two cycles, two eras, two cultures. The next one will not only be new; it will also be brighter and better in every way.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16892 – 9.13.4.101

BN – ZZ – DEK1

The human situation is the final resultant of various forces whose play and counterplay make it up. It is packed with complexities. The doctrinaire who oversimplifies it does so at the price of imperilling truth. Let us note two out of the several factors which control it. If every event were to be completely predetermined by karma, there would be nothing for us to do. But if every event were to happen exactly as we willed it, the universe would become a chaos.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16899 – 9.13.4.108

BN – Z – K

If men will not break away from what is 'bad' in their past—as, for instance, the fear, suspicion, and distrust which develop between two races or two nations through their historic relationship—then Nature (that is, God, Life, call it as you like) will do it for them forcibly and violently through natural disasters (such as earthquakes, floods, climatic extremes, drought) or through merely presenting them with the fruits of their own thinking crystallized on the physical level—that is, with their karma in the form of war, revolution, and so on.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16903 – 9.13.4.112

BN – Z – K

In a world where no great event happens by chance, where even the tiniest seed sprouts under an all-governing law, the destruction of a whole continent such as Atlantis is full of significance for humanity. It means that Nature, which is but another name for God, could not proceed farther with its evolutionary purpose for the inhabitants of that continent without a fresh start, without a clean break from old ways which had exhausted themselves.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16918 – 9.13.4.127

BN – ZZ – DK

It was not possible for earlier generations to crowd so much experience into so short a period of time, so much compulsory thinking about events into so many events themselves. Those alive today have the chance to make more quickly a forward move in spiritual growth, to learn certain lessons in which they have been laggards, but which Nature is determined to enforce.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16939 – 9.13.4.148

BN – X – DEK

Here and there doors are being opened through which the light needed by our darkened times is beginning to flow in.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16940 – 9.13.4.149

BN – X – D

Because the social strata were too rigidly organized, because they did not permit the upward passage of worthy or gifted individuals, they provoked resentment and, in the end, rebellion. Democracy became the karma of aristocracy.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16945 – 9.13.4.154

BN – X – K

The human race has evolved to a point where its condition of receptivity to these teachings is more favourable than at any previous time.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Historical perspectives

#16960 – 9.13.4.169

BN – X – D

The end of a vanishing old arc is crossed by the beginning of the uprising new one. Hence the few hopes amid the many despairs, the few lights amid the wide darkness. Alas! it is not a new age that is here, not even its beginning, but only the dawn before the beginning of its beginning.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New era in evolution

#16980 – 9.13.4.189

BN – ZZZ – DEK

The great changes in human thought and society which marked the birth of the Christian epoch in the West, find their parallel in the great changes that are even now beginning to mark the coming birth of the next epoch. The labour pains have already begun, but actual birth will not take place until the next century.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New era in evolution

#16981 – 9.13.4.190

BN – X – DEK

The point now attained in human evolution by the ego offers us the key to a correct understanding of the world crisis.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New era in evolution

#16987 – 9.13.4.196

BN – X – D

There are, of course, in every land a few who long ago passed this point in their development and more who have recently passed it. They are the pioneers, sensitive to spiritual ideals and struggling to follow them. But now the challenge has been issued to humanity as a whole. Its unseen guardian has issued an ultimatum. It must make the passage and will not be allowed to delay any longer.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New era in evolution

#16991 – 9.13.4.200

BN – Z – DK

We are passing through a disheartening period of violent and unprecedented storms, but if we have learned the single lesson of hoping on and holding on, we shall win through into clear weather.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New era in evolution

#16994 – 9.13.4.203

BN – X – D

Help for modern man can best come from those who understand the modern mind. Man's environment alters with the course of time and so does man's mentality. A simple repetition of what he was in former centuries or a mere revival of what he knew in former centuries is not efficient today. There is no traditional form of this teaching which will hold good for all time. This is always true but it is particularly true today, when we live in the middle of a general transition from the separative cycle of evolution to the unitive. During the period of human evolution in which our generation lives, it is unwise retrogressive and inexpedient to look only to ancient sources for inspiration knowledge and revelation.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New era in evolution

#16998E – 9.13.4.207

BN – Z

Humanity still clings much too strongly to its egoism in most matters, despite the tuition of war crisis and upheaval; this is the very standpoint which must be abandoned, or at least markedly modified, if humanity is not to pass through further large-scale suffering. And this in turn must itself be the fruit of an awakening to the higher purpose of earthly life—it does not matter whether or not such an awakening takes place through or outside the church. After the war's end, we had to wait a couple of years for the situation to clarify itself and for the uprising tendencies to show themselves.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New era in evolution

#17001 – 9.13.4.210

BN – Z – DEK

There is no third way open to us. The world is rapidly moving into a new age. We may either cling to the remnants of the age that is vanishing or we may meet the age which is coming. We must make our choice. We have had enough and more than enough of the high-sounding platitudes of babblers. We need now some concrete expression that will be more truthful and less talkative. For the problems will stand squarely confronting them and cannot be avoided or evaded as lesser problems have often been.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New era in evolution

#17005 – 9.13.4.214

BN – ZZ – DEK

If the crisis can force enough men to acknowledge their own insufficiency, if it can bring them to recognize that the old ways of living have led to a dead end, and if it can arouse them to search for higher values as well as newer paths, it will be passed successfully.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New era in evolution

#17006 – 9.13.4.215

BN – X – D

Ideals must still be given to the world, even if they seem quite impractical and even if the giver is crucified as Jesus was, or shot as Kennedy was. They are needed to offset the egoism and materialism which come so much more easily to most people.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New era in evolution

#17010 – 9.13.4.219

BN – Z

The philosophy of Truth, which is the highest kind of enlightenment possible to humanity, will become as easily accessible as it was remotely hidden in former centuries.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New age directions

#17015E – 9.13.4.224

BSG_4 – Z – DEK

The time has come when education should re-educate itself, when medicine should give Nature's herbs their due and demand that all foods be rid of their added poisons, when the body-soul relationship should be correctly revealed by psychology and psychiatry, when for their health's sake and their soul's sake human beings should stop devouring corpses. The events and changes which have come on the world scene since the turn of the century stagger the mind, but those which will come before the end of it will be even more startling.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New age directions

#17017 – 9.13.4.226

BN – X – K1

Man’s dependence on the earth for fuel such as wood, coal, oil, and gas, will give way in the future to dependence on the sun. Its rays will give him all that he needs for this purpose.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New age directions

#17025 – 9.13.4.234

BN – X – D

A new and higher epoch in our history will come by divine cyclic law: nothing and no one can prevent its birth. And that will occur through the incarnation of spiritually intuitive men born for this special purpose. It is such an epoch alone which will witness the realization of dreams of world peace and justice, dreams whose failure of realization by political, military, and other means will force by necessity the attempt through the last and only effectual means—moral and intellectual renewal.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New age directions

#17036 – 9.13.4.245

BN – Z – DEK

Wendell Wilkie's book 'One World' is in harmony with the philosophical position. I think that the author would have modified his views a little if he had known Asia for a longer time and in a deeper way. Humanity is not emotionally ready for the world-state, which would be the only way to implement his ideals with 100% efficiency, but it certainly is ready for an association of nations more advanced in its form and stronger in its power than ever before. Co-operation is perhaps the proper keyword to present problems; union must come later. However, in the consideration of all political and social problems, we have to return again and again to the human problem. The spiritual darkness of the human race is the real root of its external troubles. Only its spiritual illumination will really remove those troubles permanently. Until that happens we must necessarily alleviate the situation, so far as it can be done, by utilizing external methods. The result will never be quite satisfactory but it can be progressively so. The same applies to the settlement of internal social and economic problems.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New age directions

#17050 – 9.13.4.259

BN – X – DEK

The notion that we shall enter a marvellous new age when the lion will lie down with the lamb is an idle one. Human nature would have to alter first and it does not ordinarily alter with such excessive speed. But the notion that we can have a better age than the wretched one which is dying, is a sensible hope. > >I dedicated The Wisdom of the Overself to the pioneers of a nobler epoch. Does that mean I believe such an epoch will soon begin? My answer is that I do believe it will begin but not necessarily soon. The arrival of a nobler epoch, in the sense of one that will witness society being organized for the material benefit of the masses rather than for the benefit of the few, is becoming obvious to all. But a society organized for the spiritual benefit of all classes is very far from obvious and I do not at all see it coming soon. We are indeed a very long way from it, as I stated in the preface to The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga. If anything may be predicted of the age which we are entering, it is that the tempo of change will be tremendously accelerated, and that new inventions and new ideas will come quickly and plentifully to the front.

Human Experience > World Crisis > New age directions

#17058 – 9.13.4.267

BN – Z – DEK

In his humbling discovery that for all his physical vigour and intellectual power he is still spiritually weak, contemporary man is discovering the need of religion, mysticism, or philosophy.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Role of philosophy, mysticism now

#17062 – 9.13.4.271

BN – Z – DK

It is because we live in unprecedentedly troubled days that the light of philosophy is so needed. The more distressing the time in which we live, the more necessary is the quest for what will raise us above all distress.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Role of philosophy, mysticism now

#17064E – 9.13.4.273

B_02 – ZZ – DEK

Philosophy is naturally best expounded out of gaiety of heart at the universe's wonderful meaning; but its lessons are best received, and its discipline best enforced, in the sadness of mind which comes to thought over the conditions of life today.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Role of philosophy, mysticism now

#17069 – 9.13.4.278

BN – ZZ – K1

The education of human intelligence, the culture of spiritual intuition, and the ennoblement of character are necessities, since it is they, together, that stand between mankind and catastrophe.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Role of philosophy, mysticism now

#17074 – 9.13.4.283

BN – X – D

The world crisis has not only made it possible for these ideas to penetrate minds which were formerly indifferent towards them, but also to show their immense value when practically and personally applied.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Role of philosophy, mysticism now

#17079 – 9.13.4.288

BN – X – D

Philosophy today represents a refuge for those suffering from the hatred and strife in the world as well as a source of goodness and wisdom for those who seek to permeate their lives with meaning.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Role of philosophy, mysticism now

#17082 – 9.13.4.291

BN – X – D

For those who properly understand it and faithfully practise it, philosophy stands amid the uncertainties and threats of our time as a secure citadel. In it one finds assurance for heart and mind, and will find safe guidance for one's body.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Role of philosophy, mysticism now

#17088 – 9.13.4.297

BN – X – D

It is not to be expected that the mass of people, with their weak moral and mental capabilities, could accept and follow the philosophic ideals. This was true in every past century and it is still true today. But never before has so widespread and so devastating a peril threatened mankind. It may be that a certain number of persons who might otherwise have passed the philosophic revelation carelessly by will feel the pressure of the times sufficiently to take warning and to take more heed for themselves.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Role of philosophy, mysticism now

#17090 – 9.13.4.299

M231217 – Z – K

Religions must rise and fall, change and die, because men's beliefs must change with the changing times. This is why I see in the higher philosophy of Truth the only enduring hope for a peace on earth which will be unbreakable, and the only charger for goodwill towards men which will survive as long as this planet survives.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Role of philosophy, mysticism now

#17091 – 9.13.4.300

BN – Z – K

Not that the ultimate destiny of every living creature is inglorious: the eventual awakening of its individual mind into the universal divine self is indeed as certain as the dawn of the next day's sun, but truth can be understood only by those who are willing to accept the atmosphere of eternity.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Need for wisdom, peace

#17106E – 9.13.4.315

B_01 – ZZZ – K

The modern world has rightly sought and attained knowledge. Now it must quickly seek and attain wisdom, the next higher octave of knowledge, or it risks losing its gains and destroying itself.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Need for wisdom, peace

#17113 – 9.13.4.322

BA11 – P – D

There are great truths which the world needs today but which the world is not consciously seeking for and therefore will not readily accept. Those who have found these truths, tested their correctness and worth, are consequently not willing to engage in the futile path of aggressive proselytizing. They quietly make the truth available to whosoever is willing to take the trouble to seek it out.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Need for wisdom, peace

#17119 – 9.13.4.328

B_02 – ZZZ – DMK

The world's need is silently crying out for inspired and selfless people who will awaken the world's attention to spiritual values. There is little need today for a philosophy which is merely academic, or mostly antiquarian, or utterly antediluvian.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Need for wisdom, peace

#17126 – 9.13.4.335

BN – ZZZ – DEK

It was this same High Lama whom I met at Angkor who foretold that the world’s spiritual enlightenment would next come through a Western channel. The fulfilment of this prediction cannot be far off now.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Need for wisdom, peace

#17127 – 9.13.4.336

BN – X – DK

The clear Stoic perception of Marcus Aurelius Antonius lamented, "Rome is dying because Rome has nothing more to live for." But the awakened persons of today who refuse to yield to the animality and materialism of their epoch have something tremendously important to live for. They have escaped conquest by it because their own escape is to be the first fateful step towards achieving the future world-remnant's survival and escape. In doing so, in making their lone stand against this inner peril, they perform a valuable service of defense against the outer one.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Need for wisdom, peace

#17134 – 9.13.4.343

BN – X – K

Wherever the fortunes of life may take you and whatever the dangers it may bring you, I hope you will always keep the thought of the Divine Overself as the best talisman to cling to. It is in these terrible times that you may come to appreciate more than ever the value of faith in divine wisdom behind life and assured immortality after death.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Need for wisdom, peace

#17136 – 9.13.4.345

BN – X – D

Powerful forces in the heaven worlds are gathering for a transmission and will enter our world at an appropriate time, which is fixed and measurable within this century. These forces will stimulate new thoughts and new feelings, new intuitions and new ideals of a religious, mystical, and philosophic kind in humanity. It will verily be the opening of a new epoch on earth, comparable to that which was opened 2000 years ago by the coming of Christ. The impulse will bring science into religion and religion into science: each will sustain the other and both, purified and vitalized, will guide humanity to a better and truer life. Insofar as science is an expression of man's desire to know, it is in perfect harmony with the highest spirituality. Only when it is unguided by his intuitive feelings, his heart, and put at the service of his animal nature alone, does it become anti-spiritual and bring him self-destruction as a punishment.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Forebodings

#17143 – 9.13.4.352

BN – X – DEK1

Many sensitive persons suffer on account of their awareness of humanity's tragic suffering. But they must realize that life is still in God's hands and will assuredly remain so. The human viewpoint receives only a limited fraction of the whole picture. God's love is greater than ours has yet shown itself to be, and it is infinitely wiser. Despite the activity of evil forces and the horrors of the contemporary scene, this is nevertheless a dominant fact.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Forebodings

#17145 – 9.13.4.354

B_16 – ZZ – K

If we make a comparison between our times and the conditions which preceded the destruction of the Greek and Roman civilizations, and if we note the chaos, dissension, strife, and violence which then prevailed and now prevail, we shall be forced to regard the future of our own civilization with apprehension.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Forebodings

#17155 – 9.13.4.364

BN – X – D

Nostradamus predicted that art and religion would dominate the coming era (the twenty-first century onwards) and that wars would no longer be waged.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Forebodings

#17176 – 9.13.4.385

BN – X – D

Operation W.W.3: Its object is not to benefit certain persons while others, equally meritorious, remain unbenefitted, but to guard the higher philosophy and to preserve the Quest's practices and disciplines for generations yet to come. The benefit to individuals is incidental and due in most cases to favourable karma created by devoted service.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Forebodings

#17185 – 9.13.4.394

BN – X – K

Karma has determined to shatter to pieces the obtuse conservatism which clings to disguised materialism and camouflaged immorality.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Forebodings

#17189 – 9.13.4.398

BN – X – K

Karma is not and can never be a merely individual matter. Society as a whole creates the slum which creates the criminal. If society calls him to account for his crimes, he may in his turn call society to account for making his criminal character possible. Consequently society must also share with him, if in lesser degree, the karmic responsibility for his misdeeds.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Forebodings

#17192 – 9.13.4.401

BN – Z – K

By learning the art of thought-control, by studying the higher laws that govern life, above all by seeking out the true self within us, we shall be able to create enough mental peace and emotional courage to make the best of the worst.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Forebodings

#17194E – 9.13.4.403

BA12 – P – DE

Those who look for and those who expect a millennium of spirituality and justice, of goodness and truth—or even the beginning of such a millennium—as a result of the spread and acceptance of some cult, have always been disappointed in the past and must be so again in our own time.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Forebodings

#17203 – 9.13.4.412

M231217 – Z – K

We see every indication around us that the old order of foolish ideas and self-centered ideals is undergoing its last stages of existence. Its cultural possibilities are close to exhaustion.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Forebodings

#17208 – 9.13.4.417

BN – X – D

Those of us who are the humble spokespersons of philosophy neither seek cheap triumphs nor expect swift victories. We know where human nature stands today. We are resigned to accept whatever results may come because we are convinced that the forces promoting human moral and mental growth are irresistible, that however slow and long the human journey may be, its final arrival at Truth and Beauty and Goodness can never be prevented.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Good will ultimately prevail

#17213 – 9.13.4.422

B_02 – ZZZ – DK

It is inevitable that during the uncertainty and danger of war people often turn for help to God, but after the war there is a reaction away from God. This has usually happened throughout history. However, there is very little that an individual can do about the world's spiritual condition, but there is a great deal that he can do to improve his own. The more he can understand the universal laws by increasing his knowledge of them, the better he will understand that even in the darkest times, when evil seems to be triumphant, still that is only temporary and limited because only the good can triumph in the end.

Human Experience > World Crisis > Good will ultimately prevail

#17218 – 9.13.4.427

BN – X – DEK

Art brings beauty to the body's senses, yet if we wish to pursue it farther we must withdraw from them, inwards, keeping the mood they started, etherealizing and developing it until we penetrate to its abode. There, under enchantment, we are 'beauty'.

The Arts in Culture > The Arts in Culture > The Arts in Culture

#17221 – 9.14.0.1

BN – Z

Aesthetic appreciation of art productions, no less than harmonious rapport with Nature, leads us nearer and nearer to the divine in us, until our inner being is wholly absorbed in its ecstatic joy or unutterable peace.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17227 – 9.14.1.6

BN – X – D

Anyone who is susceptible to beauty in music or place has a spiritual path ready-made for him.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17231 – 9.14.1.10

B_09 – Z – DK1

A creative work of music, pictorial art, or literature which kindles an inspired mood in the audience, the beholder, or the reader has justified itself. It has made a contribution to humanity not less valuable on its own different plane as that which is made by the engineer or the builder.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17249 – 9.14.1.28

BN – Z – K1

Beauty is as much an aspect of Reality as truth. He who is insensitive to the one has not found the other.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17253 – 9.14.1.32

BN – Z – K1

We must call in the services of art to give religion its finest dress. Music must show its triumphs in the individual soul, architecture must create the proper atmosphere for communion, painting and sculpture must give visual assistance to the mind's upward ascension.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17254 – 9.14.1.33

BN – X – K1

Judge a work of art by analysing its effect. Does it leave you feeling better or worse, inspired or disturbed, calmed or restless, perceptive or dulled? For every opportunity to behold great paintings or listen to inspired music or read deeply discerning literature is itself a kind of Grace granted to us.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17255 – 9.14.1.34

BN – ZZ – K1

A gracious and refined style of living might be disapproved by those of ascetic tendencies and even decried as materialistic. But aesthetic feeling can be quite compatible with spirituality.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17257 – 9.14.1.36

BN – X – K1

One of life's objectives is to develop in us these aesthetic feelings, for they lead to the Overself.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17258 – 9.14.1.37

BN – X – D

A work of art which awakens in its beholder or hearer or reader a deep feeling of reverential worship or inner strength or mental tranquillity thereby gives him a blessing. It enables him to share the artist's inspiration.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17260 – 9.14.1.39

BN – Z – DK1

The inspired beauty to which a true artist introduces the world is an aspect of the same power to which a true priest introduces his flock.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17262 – 9.14.1.41

BN – X – K1

A philosophic temperament, well-developed and sufficiently rounded, has little taste for the ugly bareness propagated in the name of simple living, or for the dreary denial of the beautiful arts in the name of anti-sensuality.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17263 – 9.14.1.42

BN – X – K1

A mind caught up with spiritually significant meanings, or attentively held by highly beautiful sounds, is a mind that one day will respond to Truth.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17265 – 9.14.1.44

BN – ZZ – K1

Beauty is one side of reality which attracts our seeking and our love. But because it is so subtle and our perceptions are so gross, we find it first in the forms of art and Nature, only last in the pure immaterial being of the intangible reality.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17266 – 9.14.1.45

BN – Z – DK1

To deny spiritual worth to art because it is created to meet physical sense is shortsighted. It starts with the physical response but, in its highest form, it transcends that level. Beethoven set as his loftiest mission the exaltation of man to a harmony with sacred ideals, to joy in the triumph of good over evil, to peace and goodwill on earth. Bach comes near him in certain works which are more specifically concerned with religious themes, whereas Beethoven was more favourable to humanitarian ones.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17281 – 9.14.1.60

BN – X – D

It is true that men learn through disappointment and develop through suffering. But this need not cause us to forget that they also learn and develop through joy and beauty.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17283 – 9.14.1.62

B_17 – Z – DK1

Through art man can create images of those qualities and attributes he finds in the Overself: its beauty, its order, its intelligence. Whether these images come through the medium of music or painting, of sculpture or poetry, they may bring their audience into a mood, a glimpse, or a thought closer to their source.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17289 – 9.14.1.68

B_09 – P – D

The concentration of attention instead of the dispersal of it—this is the guiding rule which is behind the Japanese custom of displaying a single picture for a period of time instead of several competing with one another. There is a precise remembered effect in the first case but a confused one in the second.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17293 – 9.14.1.72

BN – ZZZ – DEK

There was a professional landscape gardener (he is not now alive but his work is very much so) who laboured in a public park for thirty-five years. His toil was his spiritual path, a karma yoga. It gave him inner satisfaction, and gave us who visited that park a chance to share it. He was a true artist, with a pure love of Nature.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17312 – 9.14.1.91

BN – X – K

All rare and inspired art is to be received as the Overself's voice uttering a message and calling us back to our true homeland.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17328 – 9.14.1.107

BN – X – D

When Nature's beauty or human being's art moves you deeply, be grateful for their help and appreciate their service. But do not stop there. Use them as aids to transcend your present level and come closer to the god within you.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > The arts and spirituality

#17332 – 9.14.1.111

BSG_4 – P – D

Refined and gracious living is an expression of refined taste. It does not necessarily need great wealth to support it, for even within a modest income it can still be expressed in a modest way. A few plants, soft lights, fine porcelain, pleasantly patterned carpet, brightly coloured pictures, and a minimum of decorative furniture will give a man comfort and beauty.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Value of aesthetic environment

#17340 – 9.14.1.119

BN – X – K1

A simple environment, even an austere one, is understandable and acceptable in the case of those who have outwardly renounced the world, as well as of those who try to live in the world and yet be inwardly detached from it. But an ugly environment, even a drab one, is neither understandable nor acceptable in the case of those who profess to worship the Spirit. For its attributes are not only Goodness and Truth, among others, but also Beauty. To cultivate an indifferent attitude toward material possessions is one thing, but to show an insenstiive one toward beautiful creations and to feel no repugnance toward ugly ones is not a spiritual approach; it is anti-spiritual.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Value of aesthetic environment

#17354 – 9.14.1.133

BN – Z – K1

The technique of art is important, but the mission of art—to communicate and awaken the intuitive feeling of Beauty—is still more important.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Sacred mission of art

#17358 – 9.14.1.137

BSG_4 – P – D

It is the business of an artist, poet, or writer (of the more serious kind) to lift a man out of himself, his little ego, by presenting beauty, truth, or goodness so attractively that the man is drawn and held by it to the point mentioned—of forgetting himself.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Sacred mission of art

#17359 – 9.14.1.138

BN – ZZ – DK

The artist may work to earn his livelihood. But if he is also to consult his conscience, he must at the same time strive to become a servant of the Holy Spirit.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Sacred mission of art

#17363 – 9.14.1.142

BN – X – K1

What is the final call of true art? Not to the work which expresses it but to the spirit which inspires it, the divine source of which it reminds us.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Sacred mission of art

#17364 – 9.14.1.143

BN – Z – K1

Art can take place of and be a substitute for religion only when it is truly inspired.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Sacred mission of art

#17367 – 9.14.1.146

BN – X – K1

When they fulfil their highest mission, painting and sculpture try to make visible, music tries to make audible, prose literature tries to make thinkable, poetic literature tries to make imaginable the invisible, inaudible, unthinkable, and unimaginable mystery of pure Spirit. Although it is true that they can never give shape to what is by its very nature the Shapeless, it is also true that they can hint, suggest, symbolize, and point to It.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Sacred mission of art

#17368 – 9.14.1.147

B_09 – Z – K1

An art production whose form derives from spiritual tradition or symbolism, whose content derives from spiritual experience or understanding, is at least as worthy of veneration as a religious relic.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Sacred mission of art

#17369 – 9.14.1.148

BN – X – K1

Whoever accepts the higher mission of art and comes nearer and nearer to it through his creative activity, will then go on from art to the Spirit deep within his own self.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Sacred mission of art

#17375 – 9.14.1.154

BN – X – DK1

Behind the work of a poet or composer true to art’s higher mission is this hidden power of his own higher self. It bestows the inspiration which permeates his work.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Sacred mission of art

#17390 – 9.14.1.169

B_09 – P – D

It is a common mistake among artists and writers to regard inflammation as inspiration, and to take inflamed feelings for inspired revealings.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Criticism of "modern art"

#17414 – 9.14.1.193

BN – X – K1

Feeling is as necessary as thinking, but it must be positive or intuitive feeling, not negative or materialistic.

The Arts in Culture > Appreciation > Criticism of "modern art"

#17420E – 9.14.1.199

UR_2.4 – ZZ – K

The original creative mind initiates its own ideas, but where do they come from? You might as well ask where does all inspiration come from. There are deeper levels of the human consciousness which feed the inspired person at times. It is beyond emotion and beyond thinking, although we express its promptings through these things.

The Arts in Culture > Creativity, Genius > Creativity

#17464 – 9.14.2.5

BN – X – D

No artist really creates anything. All he can do is to try to communicate to others in turn what has been communicated to him.

The Arts in Culture > Creativity, Genius > Creativity

#17465 – 9.14.2.6

BN – ZZZ – K1

If he succeeds in transmitting through the medium of his work something of the inspiration he receives, be he priest or artist, he is truly creative.

The Arts in Culture > Creativity, Genius > Creativity

#17466 – 9.14.2.7

BN – X – K1

The creative faculty should be cultivated and developed as both a great aid to, and an expression of, spiritual growth.

The Arts in Culture > Creativity, Genius > Creativity

#17472 – 9.14.2.13

BN – X – DK1

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

The Arts in Culture > Creativity, Genius > Creativity

#17484D – 9.14.2.25

BN – Z – K

The genius is both receptive and expressive. What he gets intuitively from within he gives out again in the forms of his art or skill.

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

#17496 – 9.14.2.37

BN – ZZ – K1

The artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine of inspiration. If his star of fair fortune favours him that day, then must he surrender his lips to the soft lure of the amber-coloured drink that sets care a-flying and restores to the tongue the forgotten language of the soul. For these sibylline inspirations of his come from a sky that is brighter than his own and he cannot control it.

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

#17498 – 9.14.2.39

BN – ZZ – K1

He creates, not to express his small personality as so many others do, but to escape from it. For it is to the divine which transcends him, which is loftily impersonal, that he looks for inspiration.

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

#17500 – 9.14.2.41

BN – ZZZ – DK1

The supremely gifted artist who works primarily out of pure love of his art—whether it be writing, painting, or music—rather than out of love of its rewards, sometimes approaches and arrives at this same concept through another channel. Such a genius unconsciously throws the plumbline of feeling into the deep mystery of his being. He is lifted beyond his ordinary self at his most inspired moments. He feels that he is floating in a deeper element. He receives intimations of the pure timeless reality of Mind, whose beauty, he now discovers, his best works have vainly sought to adumbrate. The flash of insight is granted him, although if he is only an artist and not also a philosopher he may not know how to retain it.

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

#17502 – 9.14.2.43

B_09 – Z – K1

If the artist becomes truly inspired he will not seek to bring horror to men but rather beauty. This will be so whatever way it shows itself—colour, sound, word, or form. The final step is not with beauty for its own sake but for what it points and leads to—the beautiful Consciousness which awaits man, the inner beauty.

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

#17505 – 9.14.2.46

BN – X – D

If he composes, paints, sculpts, or writes as the light within shows him the thing or thought to be depicted—not as opinion, bias, or untruth urges him—he will be truly inspired.

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

#17506 – 9.14.2.47

BN – ZZZ – K1

There is this quality about an inspired work, that you can come back to it again and again and discover something fresh or helpful or beautiful or benedictory.

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

#17507 – 9.14.2.48

BN – Z – K1

Such an inspired production gives out a form of energy which makes those who can receive it with enough sympathy feel and see what its creator felt and saw. There is an actual transmission.

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

#17508 – 9.14.2.49

BN – Z – K1

In matter and manner, in content and technique, in substance and style, the productions of the faultless artist who is only technically competent will never equal those of the faultless artist who is also spiritually mature.

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

#17527 – 9.14.2.68

BN – ZZ – K1

The artist has two functions: to receive through inspiration and to give through technique.

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

#17532 – 9.14.2.73

BN – ZZ – K1

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

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

#17540D – 9.14.2.81

BN – Z – K

Where literature, poetry, music, painting, or other real art is truly inspired, it comes near to religion and nearer still to mysticism. Those persons who cannot find any affinity with these last two may get their spiritual aid from the arts. Respectfully approached, properly used, and correctly understood, these too can be sacred, as the ancients well understood. If today art has been dragged into muddy gutters and mad encounters, if it has been squalidly commercialized and deprived of purpose, meaning, form, or Truth, that is because the invaders are not artists but barbarians.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17560 – 9.14.3.6

B_09 – P – DE

Through the practice of art a man may come closer to soul than through occultism.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17562 – 9.14.3.8

BN – X – K1

The artist uses a medium outside himself to effect his own personal approach to the ecstatic state of ideal beauty as well as to inspire the appreciators of his artistic production. The mystic uses no external medium whatever, but makes his approach to the source he finds inside himself. Although the mystic, if he be blessed with intellectual talents or artistic gifts, can project his ecstatic experience into an intellectual or artistic production when he chooses, he is not obliged to do so. He has this internal method of transmitting his experience to others through mental telepathy. Hence mysticism is on a higher level than art. Nevertheless, art, being much easier for most people to comprehend and appreciate, necessarily makes the wider appeal and reaches hundreds of thousands where mysticism reaches only a few.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17566 – 9.14.3.12

BN – X – K1

The creative artist is taken out of himself for a time and is serenely elevated, just as the meditative mystic is. But the two states, although psychologically similar, are not spiritually similar. For the mystic enters his elevated state consciously and deliberately goes in quest of his inner being or soul. He uses it as a springboard to escape from the world of space time and change. The artist, however, uses it as a means of creating something in the world of space time and change. Hence although art approaches quite close to mysticism, it has not the same divine possibilities, for it lacks the higher values, the moral disciplines, and the super-sensuous aims of mysticism.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17574 – 9.14.3.20

BN – X – K1

Even the highest art is only a means to an end—it ought not to be made an end in itself. The inspired artist must in the end put aside his theme, his medium, his work and turn to the Divine alone, not to its expressions down here.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17575 – 9.14.3.21

BN – Z – K1

It is not only the workers in art who may get carried away by their concentration, but also the laymen who become the recipients of their productions and put themselves under their charm with a similar degree of concentration. In both cases—in the artist who creates and the layman who contemplates—there is an approach to the borderline of yoga. If it is pure beauty which calls forth their adoration and not some lesser thing, they may indeed cross this borderline and find themselves in a yogic state. What is said here of art is true also of the impulses derived from Nature. If man would only take such moods more seriously and rise to the highest level towards which the mood can carry them, they may well return to ordinary consciousness if not with a glimpse then with the next best thing to a glimpse.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17577 – 9.14.3.23

BN – X – K1

The function of art is different from that of mysticism, but both converge in the same ultimate direction. Both are expressions of the human search for something higher than the ordinary.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17581 – 9.14.3.27

BN – Z – K1

In the admiration of Nature's beauty and the appreciation of art, music, poetry, and literature, the seeker can find sources of inner help and themes for meditation.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17589 – 9.14.3.35

B_05 – P – D

Goethe knew, and said, that if he could find out why an artistic production interested and impressed, excited or fascinated him, he could advance another step forward towards saying the Truth.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17608 – 9.14.3.54

BN – X – D

The philosophic search for enlightenment and the artist's search for perfection of work can meet and unite.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17612 – 9.14.3.58

BN – Z – K1

Plato saw what the inspired artist discovers in the end, that beauty of form and shape is only a lead to the formless beauty of Overself.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17615 – 9.14.3.61

BN – X – D

This faculty of admiration, properly used and rightly directed, may become a way of inner communion. Music, sunset, landscapes are, among others, fit objects.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17621 – 9.14.3.67

B_09 – Z – K

When a piece of deep music or a chapter of illumined writing puts him under a kind of spell towards the end, when the aesthetic joy or intellectual stimulus of one or the other gives him the sensation of being carried away, he ought to take full advantage of what has happened by putting aside the thought of the music or book and remembering that he is at the gate of the Overself.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17623 – 9.14.3.69

B_09 – ZZ – K1

It is a rare moment when he looks upon Beauty itself rather than upon the forms of Beauty.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17625 – 9.14.3.71

BN – X – K1

The artist's productions may be most inspired; he may glorify art and put it on a pinnacle as the noblest and loftiest human activity when at its best. But it is still a manifestation of man's ego, the finest and final one. He must transcend it in the end. Like yoga, it prepares the way, is a step not a stop.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17629 – 9.14.3.75

BN – X – K1

Art can be a path to spiritual enlightenment but not to complete and lasting enlightenment. It can be born out of, and can give birth itself to, only Glimpses. For art is a search for beauty, which by itself is not enough. Beauty must be supported by virtue and both require wisdom to guide them.

The Arts in Culture > Art Experience and Mysticism > Art Experience and Mysticism

#17634 – 9.14.3.80

B_09 – X – K1

Wisdom is all the better when it is likewise witty. Raise a laugh while you lift a man. Mix some humour with your ink and you shall write all the better. Sound sense loses nothing of its soundness when it is poured into bright, good-humoured phrases. Truth is often cold-blooded and a bath in warm smiles makes it all the more attractive.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Writing, literature, poetry

#17639 – 9.14.4.5

BN – ZZZ – K1

The notion that the effects of inspiration should not be handled by the labours of revision is a wrong one. This is so, first, because few artists ever achieve a total purity of inspiration—however ecstatic their creative experience may be—and second, because even if achieved it is still limited by the personal nature of the channel through which it flows. The writer who refuses to touch manuscripts again or to correct proofs displays vanity or ignorance or both.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Writing, literature, poetry

#17642 – 9.14.4.8

BN – ZZZ – K1

No man who has seen his soul's grandeur and felt its sublimity could write in a dull dreary inartistic style about it.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Writing, literature, poetry

#17652 – 9.14.4.18

BN – Z

Shelley's death at an early age has often been lamented. Yet, leaving aside the elements of fate or karma, we may see how the negative quality of impatience contributed towards it. He had bought a small sailing vessel during his residence, on the Italian coast. He went on a journey to purchase supplies and to tend to other matters and then was about to return to the residence, where his wife and child awaited him. It was only one day's sailing from where he was, but an expert seaman and also the lighthouse-keeper warned him that a storm was coming and that he would do better to postpone his trip until it had passed. He did not listen to them owing to his eagerness to return to his wife, and he sailed away. Within a very short time, quite short, the storm suddenly appeared. There were violent upheavals of the water, and the little ship disappeared beneath the waves. This is how he was drowned. Shelley was lost with it—at least the living Shelley—for his body was recovered later, and humanity was deprived of the products of his bright genius at a still more mature age.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Writing, literature, poetry

#17705 – 9.14.4.71

BN – X – K

There is a style which is formed artificially and self-consciously by nimble, intellectual rhetoric. There is a style which forms itself unconsciously out of natural loftiness of character. Truly inspired writing and speaking come from the latter class.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Inspired revelatory writing

#17766 – 9.14.4.132

BN – ZZ

A piece of writing which expresses the illumination of the writer has the possibility of initiating the reader. It is an echo or a reflected image.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Inspired revelatory writing

#17768 – 9.14.4.134

BN – X – DEK

When the inspired sentence is read, the sensitive mind comprehends that it is no longer merely reading words. It is also receiving the grace of the Presence.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Inspired revelatory writing

#17770 – 9.14.4.136

UR_6 – ZZZ – DK

The writer who engages the reader's mind and invites it to think renders an intellectual service. But the writer who incites it to intuit renders a spiritual one.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Inspired revelatory writing

#17781 – 9.14.4.147

BN – ZZZ – K1

There are phrases in the New Testament which must impress the mind of every sensitive person. These phrases embody truths but they embody them in language which carries added authority derived from the style. I refer to the King James version, the translation into English made in the seventeenth century and today replaced by several modern versions in plain everyday twentieth-century English. It is true that in the modern ones the ordinary person gets a clearer notion of the meaning and, therefore, for him the modern translation is undoubtedly more useful. But I wrote of the sensitive person. For him not only is the meaning clear enough in the old version, but the style, with its beauty and authority, makes the statements even weightier.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Inspired revelatory writing

#17782 – 9.14.4.148

BN – Z – K1

The way to use a philosophic book is not to expect to understand all of it at the first trial, and consequently not to get disheartened when failure to understand is frequent. Using this cautionary approach, he should carefully note each phrase or paragraph that brings an intuitive response in his heart's deep feeling (not to be confused with an intellectual acquiescence in the head's logical working). As soon as, and every time, this happens, he should stop his reading, put the book momentarily aside, and surrender himself to the activating words alone. Let them work upon him in their own way. He is merely to be quiet and be receptive. For it is out of such a response that he may eventually find that a door opens to his inner being and a light shines where there was none before. When he passes through that doorway and steps into that light, the rest of the book will be easy to understand.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Inspired revelatory writing

#17783 – 9.14.4.149

UR_2.4 – ZZZ – DK

The spiritual author who conforms to his own teachings, who is as careful of his ethics, motives, actions, and thoughts as he is of his style, is a rare creature. There is not less posing to a public audience in the world of religio-mysticism than there is in the world of politics. The completely sincere may write down their experiences or their ideas for the benefit of others, but they are more likely to do so for posterity rather than for their own era. Their most inspired work is published after their death, not before it. The half-sincere and the completely insincere feel the need of playing out their roles during life, for the ego's vanity, ambition, or acquisitiveness must be gratified. The half-sincere seldom suspect their own motives; the insincere know their own too well.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Inspired revelatory writing

#17786 – 9.14.4.152

BN – ZZZ – K1

Any piece of writing that can move men to seek the true and honour the good will have done more for them than if it moves them to join a sect or a cult.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Inspired revelatory writing

#17797 – 9.14.4.163

BN – ZZ – K

A spoken word or a written book which reaches through a man’s ordinary everyday character to his better self renders him a service which may be fleeting or lasting. The result will depend on whether or not he follows up the mood invoked.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Inspired revelatory writing

#17812 – 9.14.4.178

UR_6 – ZZZ – DK

Of all the arts which minister to the enjoyment of man, music is the loftiest. It provides him with the satisfaction which brings him nearer to truth than any other art. Such is its mysterious power that it speaks a language which is universally acknowledged throughout the world and amongst every class of people; it stirs the primitive savage no less than the cultured man of the twentieth century. When we try to understand this peculiar power which resides in music, we find that it is the most transient of all the others. The sounds which delight your ears have appeared suddenly out of the absolute silence which envelops the world and they disappear almost instantaneously into that same silence. Music seems to carry with it something of the divine power which inheres in that great silence so that it is really an ambassador sent by the Supreme Reality to remind wandering mortals of their real home. The aspirant for truth will therefore love and enjoy music, but he must take care that it is the right kind of music—the kind that will elevate and exalt his heart rather than degrade and jar it.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Music

#17931 – 9.14.4.297

B_09 – ZZ – K1

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

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Music

#17935D – 9.14.4.301

B_09 – P – D

Music like any of the intellectual arts may help or hinder this Quest. When it is extremely sensual, disruptive, or noisy, it is a hindrance and perhaps even a danger. When it is uplifting or inspiring or spiritually soothing, it is a help.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Music

#17939 – 9.14.4.305

B_09 – Z – DK1

It was an ill and suffering Handel, an ageing and impoverished man, who gave the world its greatest oratorio. How did he do it? He sat immobile, staring vacantly into space until the inspiring choruses burst upon his inner ears, and then he wrote feverishly for hours at a time. This went on for three weeks. So was born the Messiah.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Music

#17963 – 9.14.4.329

BN – X – D

I shall never forget the wonderful message which Ramana Maharshi sent me by the lips of an Indian friend (he never wrote letters). It was some years before his death and my friend was visiting the ashram preparatory to a visit to the West, whither he was being sent on a mission by his government. The visitor mentioned to the Maharishee that he intended to meet me: was there any communication of which he could be the bearer? "Yes," said the Maharishee, "When heart speaks to heart, what is there to say?" Now I don't know if he was aware of Beethoven's existence in the distant world of Western music, but I am certain he could not have known that the dedication to the Missa Solemnis was "May heart speak to heart." This is a work whose infrequent performance stirs me to depths when I hear it, so reverential, so supernal is it. Few know that Beethoven himself regarded the Missa as his greatest composition. It must surely be his most spiritual composition, a perfect expression of the link between man and God.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Music

#17967E – 9.14.4.333

B_09 – ZEL1/1 – DEK1

Art is not only here to embellish human existence. It is also here to express divine existence. In good concert music, especially, a man may find the most exalted refuge from the drab realism of his prosaic everyday life. For such music alone can express the ethereal feelings, the divine stirrings and echoes which have been suppressed by mundane extroversion. The third movement of Beethoven's Quartet in A Minor, for instance, possesses genuine mystical fervour. One may derive for a few minutes from hearing its long slow strains a grave reverence, a timeless patience, a deep humility, an utter resignation and withdrawnness from the turmoil of the everyday world.

The Arts in Culture > Reflections On Specific Arts > Music

#17972 – 9.14.4.338

B_09 – Z – K1

It is good to go as a touring sightseer to those exotic Oriental lands but it is immeasurably better to go as a receptive seeker. "What can I learn there?'' is a more profitable attitude wherewith to enter them than "What can I look at there?'' Not to imitate their people should be our aim, but to take their best and fuse it with our own. If we come among them and their literary and artistic productions possessed by thoughtfulness, tolerance, humbleness, and aspiration, we shall return home enriched and enheartened indeed.

The Orient > The Orient > The Orient

#17985 – 10.15.0.1

BN – Z

Let us utilize contributions from every quarter of the compass, but let us do so only to formulate our own individual wisdom. They are to help us, not to dominate us, for our effort must be a creative one.

The Orient > The Orient > The Orient

#17986 – 10.15.0.2

BN – Z

Youngsters who take to the Indian religions with all the enthusiasm of converts, too often get a hazy understanding of the philosophy associated with them if, intellectually, there is any interest beyond the religious one itself. Nor is this surprising when swamis who collect Western disciples confuse religion with philosophy in a kind of mixed-up Irish stew.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > General interest

#18000 – 10.15.1.14

BN – X – K1

We witness today much more interest in these subjects of mysticism, meditation, and Oriental religion not only among the general public, but also among college students and even among scientists who wish to investigate.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > General interest

#18004 – 10.15.1.18

BN – X – D

He would do well to give respect, veneration, and love to the Oriental Wisdom. For when the structures that we Westerners have put up are gone, its verities will still be there, unchanged and unchangeable.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Value of Eastern thought

#18031 – 10.15.1.45

BN – X – K1

The Oriental use of the term "wisdom" not only includes our Occidental notion of Solomonic judgement in dealing with a situation, but ranges far enough to include the capacity to understand the universe as it really is in depth, and not merely in terms of sensory experience.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Value of Eastern thought

#18032 – 10.15.1.46

BN – X – K1

You need go to no one and no where, if you are seeking God. If this is your sincere desire, you have no need to go outside your own consciousness.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Modern opportunities

#18068 – 10.15.1.82

BN – X – D

What can you do in India that you cannot do in your own land? The same struggle against the passions, the emotions, and the ego which is taking place in the one country is taking place in the other. You cannot escape it by moving the body from one spot to a different one. What you have to achieve is within yourself. If you are running to India for refuge, you will be forced to learn there that your only refuge is a purified character, a disciplined self.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Modern opportunities

#18069 – 10.15.1.83

BN – ZZZ – DEK

In the blind adherence to superstitious beliefs which affects Westerners who try to turn themselves into Hindus, I am more anti-Hindu than most prejudiced sceptics; but in the deep acclaim for the wonderful truth-statements to be found in some ancient Indian texts, I am more pro-Hindu than the swami followers. This is because in both cases I write from inside knowledge and personal experience. My attitude is consequentially a semi-detached one.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Romantic glamour

#18103 – 10.15.1.117

BN – Z – K1

If this higher philosophy is to become more acceptable among the Western races, it will have to be formulated by members of those races themselves and be presented in a modern, suitable form. It will be necessary to find inspired Western sources to whom we may turn for its interpretation and Truth instead of trying to depend on contemporary India.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Western assimilation of Eastern thought

#18113 – 10.15.1.127

BN – ZZ

I have for some years kept myself apart from Indian spiritual movements of every kind and do not wish to get associated with them in any way. Consequently, I shall not resume my contact with any swami or yogi, for I wish to work in utter independence of them. My reasons are based on the illuminations which have come to me, on my understanding that the West must work out its own salvation, and on the narrow minded intolerance of the Indian mentality towards any such creative endeavour on the West's part.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Western assimilation of Eastern thought

#18125 – 10.15.1.139

BN – ZZ – K1

The Western peoples will never be converted wholesale to Hinduism or Buddhism as religions, nor will their intelligentsia take wholesale to Vedanta or Theosophy as philosophies. These forms are too alien and too exotic to affect the general mass. Historically, they have only succeeded in affecting scattered individuals. The West's spiritual revival must and can come only out of its own creative and native mind.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Western assimilation of Eastern thought

#18126 – 10.15.1.140

BN – X – K1

It is both wise and right that we should study the religious faiths and doctrines of the past, practise the yoga techniques and asceticisms of bygone eras, and revere the inspired teachers and prophets of other lands and times and not treat them as quaint picturesque museum pieces. To gain the larger outlook which philosophy demands, we must familiarize ourselves with the chief teachings of the past, with the chief messages of the whole world. It is indeed through assimilation of all these bygone teachings that the present one will best be assimilated; through their comprehension this will be more fully comprehended, too. They give us something which we can bring to bear on the knowledge which belongs to our own times and can help us grasp it more effectively.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Western assimilation of Eastern thought

#18133E – 10.15.1.147

BN – EL1/2

It is indeed through assimilation of all these bygone teachings that the present one will best be assimilated; through their comprehension this will be more fully comprehended, too. They give us something which we can bring to bear on the knowledge which belongs to our own times and can help us grasp it more effectively. Only after we have done this, only after we have absorbed them into our inner being through study and sympathy, are we entitled—nay, expected—to stand aside from them and concentrate exclusively on the new teaching, the contemporary message of our own era. For it is foolish and wrong to remain immured in the antique systems and not to proceed beyond them. We have been born in this twentieth century to understand what was not previously revealed and to discover what will conform to its advanced needs.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Western assimilation of Eastern thought

#18133E – 10.15.1.147

BN – EL2/2

Those in the West who saw that it could not proceed metaphysically to its farther possibilities out of its own resources, nor develop mystically, had to call in the aid of Oriental knowledge, experience, and teaching. This was a wise and broad-minded move. But this is not the same as deserting the Occidental heritage, from the early Greeks onward. Some do this and become fanatics.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Western assimilation of Eastern thought

#18134 – 10.15.1.148

BN – X – K1

Most either fall in love with the Oriental presentations and attitudes on spiritual matters or underestimate them. There ought to be room for a few who want to take an independent stand, who try to be impartial, and who know the subject.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Western assimilation of Eastern thought

#18139 – 10.15.1.153

BN – X – K1

Those who are so fascinated by the ancient tenets and methods that they surrender themselves wholly to them are living in the past and are wasting precious time relearning the past. They are ignoring the lessons of Western civilization. Why were they reborn in the West if not to learn new lessons? Let them absorb whatever is good and useful and true in the old teaching, but let them give it the new form required by our altered conditions of life. They must be flexible enough to adapt themselves to the demands made by the present. Those teachers who have not perceived this continue to teach the old methods alone. They are phonographically handing down that which they have received by tradition. If they had realized the inner spirit of their inheritance rather than its musty outer form, they would have become utterly free of the past. For then they would stand alone in the great Aloneness. And out of such a spirit they would instinctively give what is needed now, not what was needed in past centuries.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Western assimilation of Eastern thought

#18162E – 10.15.1.176

BN – ZEL1/2 – K1

We may welcome the knowledge and custom which have come down to us from those who have lived before but we must not become embalmed in them. Our times are not theirs, our world shows large differences from that in which they dwelt, and our needs are peculiarly our own. Nature will not permit us to revert in complete atavism even if we try, for disappointment calls us back in the end. Here is today's book of life, she says; read it and master the fresh lessons it offers you.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Western assimilation of Eastern thought

#18162E – 10.15.1.176

BN – ZEL2/2 – K1

The West thinks life is a ladder; the East knows it is a wheel. The West regards it as a climb, the East as a roundabout. The West sees a distant perfection towards which we progress and develop and evolve. The East sees that escape from the wheel can occur now or at any time. The West gives a beginning and so must give an end to the ladder. The East sees no beginning and no end in a circle.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Differences between East and West

#18177 – 10.15.1.191

BN – Z

A belief which the Occidental regards as odd, the Oriental may regard as unquestionable. Reincarnation is such a belief.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Differences between East and West

#18180 – 10.15.1.194

BN – Z – D

Tantra has been greatly misunderstood in the West by those who have seized upon the merely physical aspect of it alone. Its highest and primary reference is not to men and women in their sexual body relationships. The aim of the higher Tantra is to bring the personal self and the Overself together in harmony balance and union. Then only is the full human being likely to be developed. Then only are all the miseries and troubles so often associated with sexual ignorance and sexual indiscipline likely to be overcome.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Differences between East and West

#18182 – 10.15.1.196

BN – X – K1

It was a widely travelled, well-educated, but deeply spiritual Indian who said to me, because he was free from narrow religious sectarianism, that "India is a dying land." Once noted for its intense religious faith, the latter exists now more outwardly than inwardly and the depths of human search for the highest Truth are being covered up. This search is passing over to the Western countries.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Decline of traditional East

#18254 – 10.15.1.268

BN – Z – K1

The bittersweet savour of life in the body, its joy mingled with suffering, its great moments marred by their shortness, is well understood by the older thinkers and mystics of the East but less by their younger descendants of today.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Reciprocal West-East impact

#18274 – 10.15.1.288

BN – Z

Sir S. Radhakrishnan, Vice President of the Indian Republic and honoured expounder of Indian philosophy, has humbly said that "there is much we have to learn from the peoples of the West and there is also a little which the West may learn from us." My own travel and observation in both hemispheres lead to a less humble conclusion. What each has to learn from the other is about equal.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Reciprocal West-East impact

#18288 – 10.15.1.302

BN – Z – K1

The sword suspended by a hair over Damocles' head at a banquet in ancient Syracuse was intended to demonstrate and symbolize how precarious was the happiness of those seated there. Prince Gautama was carefully sheltered by his parents from the sights of human suffering. So when, in his twenties, he saw for the first time a sick man, a dead man, and a decrepit old man, he was filled with horror and renounced the world of royal luxury to become a monk. Unhappy and searching for peace of mind, he wandered through Northern India. From Syracuse to Benares is a long distance, but we see that from Greek speculation on the value of human existence to Indian reflection upon it is quite a short one.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Parallels between East and West

#18294 – 10.15.1.308

BN – Z – DEK

The soul of man incarnates all over the face of this planet, and the same man will now take the East in his stride and now the West. No custom-house frontier can make the ancient traveller to Truth halt on his high journey and take a different direction. No Western birth will exempt him from following the same path which the Eastern seeker must walk—the subdual of self, the subjugation of thought, and a kindled yearning for his infinite Home.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Universality of truth

#18308 – 10.15.1.322

BN – ZZ – DEK

If you listen to the propagandist Theosophists, they will tell you that Tibet is the spiritual headquarters of the Universe. If you listen to the missionary swamis, they will tell you that India is the spiritual centre of the Universe. My experience has shown me that Tibet is only the spiritual headquarters of Tibet and that India is only the spiritual centre of India. The source to which we almost instinctively turn when we are in quest of spiritual light must no longer be sought outside ourselves. It must be sought within our own heart.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > Universality of truth

#18311 – 10.15.1.325

BN – ZZZ – DEK

The present day needs not only a synthesis of Oriental and Occidental ideas, but also a new creative universal outlook that will transcend both. A world civilization will one day come into being through inward propulsion and outward compulsion. And it will be integral; it will engage all sides of human development, not merely one side as hitherto.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > East-West synthesis

#18331 – 10.15.1.345

BN – Z – DEK1

It is no longer enough to be merely Western in standpoint. But this is not to say that we must consequently swing to the opposite extreme and adopt an Indian one, as some of those who have been unable to satisfy their spiritual needs in Christianity aver. On the contrary, the truth is to be regarded from a universalist standpoint, for this is the only correct one. If it be sought as being merely Indian, its Occidental seekers will go astray. This is so not only because their needs and their situation are exceptional, but also because a dozen different traditional conceptions of truth now befog the Indian scene and bewilder the Indian seekers themselves.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > East-West synthesis

#18332 – 10.15.1.346

BN – X – K1

When the Western practicality has become permeated by the ancient Eastern contemplativeness, and when Eastern civilization is rebuilt by Western initiative, the whole of mankind will come to healing. Reverie is not enough. Dream and do. Let the buds of high thought burst into the flowers of heroic action. In the present chaotic and critical state of the world, it is better for those with spiritual ideals to throw their weight into positive service of humanity. We must do something to objectify these ideals.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > East-West synthesis

#18337 – 10.15.1.351

BN – Z – DEK

We need to carry something of the Oriental brain under our Occidental skulls, to seek for a kind of synthesis between the seething activities of the West and the dusty quietism of the East, to accept and use the advantages of modern technical civilization whilst avoiding the evils that come with it. We need the dynamic power of the Occident but must mingle with it something of the introspective qualities of the Orient. Such a combination of ideals would lead to a full and truly human life. We must be pioneers of a new and wiser age which would bring together the best elements of Asian thought with Euro-American practicality in happy marriage. This would not only bring us contentment, not only restore inner peace and outer prosperity, but also put the larger nations on the path to true greatness.

The Orient > Meetings of East and West > East-West synthesis

#18340 – 10.15.1.354

BN – X – K1

To leave out of one's reckoning both the body and the world as non-existent is not an idea that has profited India in any way, if we look at her history. In the very act of denying them as illusions, the Indian has himself fallen into an illusion.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Images of environment, culture, history

#18438 – 10.15.2.97

BN – X – K1

Whoever understands the workings of the Indian mind where it has not been changed by overmuch contact with Western men or modern thought, will understand its pessimistic trend. For it imperiously demands and strongly needs the consolation of a world-escaping religion. The undertones of Indian life are not happy; they speak of resignation and melancholy, of unalterable destiny and the insignificance of man.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Images of environment, culture, history

#18442 – 10.15.2.101

BN – X – K1

In my Asian wanderings I noticed that the people of sun-scorched plains were the most fatalistic and those of the hills were least so. Where the one group surrendered easily to lethargy, the other used will and energy to shape circumstance.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Images of environment, culture, history

#18469 – 10.15.2.128

BN – X – K1

The fundamental basis of Hinduism is a conception of God which is at least as lofty as that to be found in any other religion. But time, which develops the physical sciences of the human race, degenerates its spiritual sciences. So India has cluttered up the primal purity of its faith with a miscellaneous assortment of customs which cramp and devitalize the people. Stupid and cruel practices do not become less stupid and less cruel because they receive the sanction of religion. Caste, 'purdah', early marriage, untouchability, extravagant expenditure on marriage, the unfair laws of inheritance, the countless idiotic duties prescribed by priests, and a host of minor stupidities of which the absurdly exaggerated notion of cow-dung's value is a single sample—these do not help India, they hinder her. They have become embedded in the religious culture of the country and only an iconoclastic ruthless hand can extract them.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Spiritual condition of modern India

#18480E – 10.15.2.139

BN – EL1/2

It is because I love the lofty philosophy of the Upanishads and the inspiring records of India's great Seers that I would like to see the vile superstitions which batten parasitically upon the life-blood of the people driven from the land. I would like to see a new Hinduism arise, purified and set free from its diseases. I would like to see the people unchain themselves from the idiotic custom-prisons into which they have been forced by unspiritual priests who have substituted the letter for the spirit, external ceremony for internal faith.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Spiritual condition of modern India

#18480E – 10.15.2.139

BN – EL2/2

The bane of Indian higher cultural life is the lack of independent ventures of the mind. For hundreds of years men have not had the courage to do more than write interpretations of other books, which themselves were written thousands of years ago and hence before human knowledge had advanced to the degree it did later. We find in Sanskrit few original works but any number of commentaries.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Spiritual condition of modern India

#18518 – 10.15.2.177

BN – Z – K1

It could be said that to put fine points upon these three Sanskrit words which are used so loosely today might be helpful to students. First, the word ‘guru’ applies to one who opens the eyes of those who are spiritually blind. The title ‘swami’ applies to one who provides spiritual teaching for the ignorant. The term ‘acharya’ applies to one who provides the best example of spiritual conduct.

The Orient > India Part 1 > General and comparative

#18607 – 10.15.2.266

UR_3.2 – Z – K1

There is this difference between the two largest and oldest Asiatic peoples. The mystics of India always sought an idealized human being as their master. When they found him, he was proclaimed God incarnate; everything he said or did, everything about him was considered perfect. Consequently they fell into self-deception and in their excess created an unhealthy relationship. The mystics of China were not such dreamers. They sought no impossible human perfection; they recognized necessary human limitations and inescapable human flaws.

The Orient > India Part 1 > General and comparative

#18611 – 10.15.2.270

BN – X – K1

The spectacle of metaphysicians, yogis, and religionists fussing over their little respective fragments, in the belief that they represented the whole, greets our astonished gaze! How much could a mere novice hope to learn when most of the experts themselves are struggling to apprehend the alphabet of their own traditional doctrines? Sometimes their attempts to elucidate the higher wisdom end only in darkening it! This medley of opposed opinions among learned men themselves may be amusing to an indifferent observer but is agonizing to an ardent seeker after truth. For he will find such a bewildering host of doctrines in the vast jungle of Indian philosophy and mysticism that the effort to understand and reconcile flatly contradictory tenets will be sufficient to drive a man crazy.

The Orient > India Part 1 > General and comparative

#18613 – 10.15.2.272

BN – X – K

The Vedantin needs Buddhism to complete and to equilibrate his outlook; the Buddhist needs Vedanta for the same purpose. Otherwise, there is a kind of one-sidedness in each one. A widening-out will improve their views and better the persons.

The Orient > India Part 1 > General and comparative

#18616 – 10.15.2.275

BN – X – K1

Atman—one of the most important and basic doctrines in Sanskrit learning. To take Atman as self is to confirm and strengthen the very error which the doctrine of Atman seeks to refute! Such a procedure imbues the mind anew with the thought of "I." For in Atman there can be no such thing as a personal entity, no existence of an ego at all. Those who have studied both the Hindu Upanishads and the Buddhist Abhidhamma sufficiently and profoundly cannot fail to observe that Atman is merely the intellectual parallel and counterpart of Nirvana. And who has more strongly fought the belief in self than Buddha?

The Orient > India Part 1 > General and comparative

#18618 – 10.15.2.277

BN – X – K1

The Muhammedan and Hindu authors of important spiritual works including scriptural works usually began with an invocation. This prefatory act was both part of putting themselves into the mood, the passive mood, of receiving inspiration from the Higher Power and part a reminder to the reader to approach his reading with sufficient reverence and seriousness.

The Orient > India Part 1 > General and comparative

#18632 – 10.15.2.291

BN – X – K1

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

The Orient > India Part 1 > Buddha, Buddhism

#18642D – 10.15.2.301

BN – X – K

To think of Gautama the Buddha, the picture of his face appears as emanating pure intelligence tinted by compassion. To read his printed sayings is to feel that attention must move slowly, that the mind needs all its seriousness to absorb their meanings.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Buddha, Buddhism

#18649 – 10.15.2.308

BN – Z – K1

When this excess of guru-worship and priest-riddenness became too prevalent in India, Buddha tried to re-proclaim the truth and to counterbalance the superstition. He taught, in many places and on many occasions, "No one saves us but ourselves; No one can and no one may; Each alone must tread the path." In our own time we hear echoes of these beliefs that Buddha tried to reform. It is claimed that Ramakrishna, and two later historic gurus, actually transferred the bad karma of their disciples to their own shoulders; this explained the serious illnesses which killed off all three.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Buddha, Buddhism

#18685 – 10.15.2.344

BN – X – K

And yet, if everything is incessantly changing, still there is a certain continuity of substance or essence throughout these changes which prevents us from asserting that it has become a totally different thing; if every human being is not the same as he was some time ago, still we have also to admit, with Buddha, he is not another being. The alterations we witness occur in the realm of form, not of essence.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Buddha, Buddhism

#18694 – 10.15.2.353

BN – Z – K1

The first doctrine presented by Hinduism is what the absolute Self, Brahman, is. The second doctrine is the identity of the absolute Self with Brahman. According to the second of these doctrines (whose profundity makes the services of an expounder and a commentator so useful), the inmost Being of man, Atman, is divine and perfect, as is the cosmic Being of the Lord, Ishvara. The third doctrine is that the universe is 'maya', an illusory thing that has no ultimate reality. The fourth doctrine is that history is not a meaningless scramble of happenings, but flows through karma—God's law—and through avatars—God's incarnations. The traditional mission of all the Shankaras has been to guard, protect, or preach the doctrines and beliefs, from the simple commandments for illiterate peasants, to the higher mystical experiences of the yogis and metaphysical teachings of Advaita.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Vedanta, Hinduism

#18695 – 10.15.2.354

BN – X – K1

EXCERPT from the essay "Sri Ramana was a Pure Channel for a Higher Power": … Again and again he gave us this teaching, that the real Maharshi was not the body which people saw; it was the inner being. Those who never made the journey to India during his lifetime may take comfort in this thought: that it is possible to invoke his presence wherever they are, and to feel its reality in the heart. 

The Orient > India Part 1 > Ramana Maharshi

#18754E – 10.15.2.413

A230706 – EL1/1

Ramana Maharshi was one of those few men who make their appearance on this earth from time to time and who are unique, themselves alone—not copies of anyone else—and who contribute something to the world's spiritual welfare that no one else has contributed in quite the same way.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Ramana Maharshi

#18755 – 10.15.2.414

BN – ZZ – K

The notion that anyone can take on the burden of someone else's guilt, or karma, is itself a negation of the law of karma. This must apply to Ramana Maharshi no less than to the common man.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Ramana Maharshi

#18781 – 10.15.2.440

BN – X – K

The Maharshi demonstrated the truth of Lao Tzu's counsel concerning the advantages of lying low if one rests one's life on the Overself. Never once did he push his own name and fame, but his worth came to world recognition. Never once did he ask for a roof over his head, but others provided it for him.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Ramana Maharshi

#18784 – 10.15.2.443

BN – Z

A remark once made by Ramana Maharshi reminded me of Tagore's extraordinary statement in his poem Vairagya. A pilgrim goes in quest of God after leaving home. The more he travels, the farther he goes from his house, the more he puts himself farther from the object of his pilgrimage. In the end, God cries, "Alas! Where is my worshipper going, forsaking me?"

The Orient > India Part 1 > Ramana Maharshi

#18793 – 10.15.2.452

BN – X – K1

Ramana Maharshi: One night in the spring of 1950, at the very moment that a flaring starry body flashed across the sky and hovered over the Hill of the Holy Beacon, there passed out of his aged body the spirit of the dying Maharshi. He was the one Indian mystic who inspired me most, the one Indian sage whom I revered most, and his power was such that both Governor-General and ragged coolie sat together at his feet with the feeling that they were in a divine presence. Certain factors combined to keep us apart during the last ten years of his life, but the inner telepathic contact and close spiritual affinity between us remained—and remains—vivid and unbroken. Last year he sent me this final message through a visiting friend: "When heart speaks to heart, what is there to say?"

The Orient > India Part 1 > Ramana Maharshi

#18794 – 10.15.2.453

BN – ZZZ – K1

The evil forces seek to impede such work and will use both those who openly disavow faith as well as those who claim to have it but show little sign of its works. During my years of absence in the Orient one of those unfortunate human instruments published the statement that I had started a lawsuit against Ramana Maharshi! This assertion was utterly false in every way, as well as completely impossible, for the inner contact between Maharshi and myself remained always unbroken, while the outer relationship remained always of the friendliest. Indeed, on my side I made it a habit of annually expressing my affection and respect through some visiting friend or in a written message, and on his side never a year passed without his enquiring kindly after my welfare through these friends. Before he died he sent me a special message: "When heart speaks to heart, what is there to say?" Many years have passed since this stupid lie was printed, but my reaction to it, as well as to other lies emanating from the same source and sedulously circulated, remains a silent one. Such a mixture of evil and vulgarity deserves and can be met only with contempt.

The Orient > India Part 1 > Ramana Maharshi

#18803 – 10.15.2.462

BN – ZEL1/2 – DEK

I hold and feel with Gautama of blessed fame that my duty is to extend ungrudging compassion to those that wrong me and to return the protection of benevolent pity for their malicious attacks. I have no enemy. I know that all creatures are of the same divine element as myself, and to those who in their blindness do not see it I bear no resentment. The truth is at once my solace and my strength. All are my tutors, none enemies. May all men share in the peace of true enlightenment!

The Orient > India Part 1 > Ramana Maharshi

#18803 – 10.15.2.462

BN – ZEL2/2 – DEK

The sphere of religion is gross illusion, the sphere of mysticism and occultism is subtle illusion, the sphere of ordinary metaphysics is growing perception but muddled and confused with opinion, while the sphere of pure philosophy is the removal of all illusion and error. This opens the gate to that fusion of feeling and thinking which is finally expressed in all action and thus leads to realization of truth. Asceticism is also a stage, intended to help the mind see clearly, unconfused by its desires, but of itself it can never give truth. It is often taken in India as a sign of highest attainment, whereas the real sage hides himself by trying to be outwardly as much like others as possible; hence he is rarely to be found wearing monkish robes.

The Orient > India Part 2 > Krishnamurti

#18852E – 10.15.3.511

BN – ZEL1/1

In the personal presence of Gandhi, one felt that he was being used by some tremendous impersonal, almost cosmic power. But the feeling was noticeably different in kind from that one experienced with, say, Sri Aurobindo or Ramana Maharshi. It may be that in Gandhi's case the inspirer was the energy of Karma, shaper of India's destiny!

The Orient > India Part 2 > Gandhi

#18865 – 10.15.3.524

BN – X – K1

Pathos in Ananda Mayee's singing voice caused her hearers to weep. It was like listening to a divine angelic voice.

The Orient > India Part 2 > Ananda Mayee

#18874 – 10.15.3.533

BN – X – K1

The Chinese temperament was too realistic to follow the Indian into a merely metaphysical view of life and too practical to run away with it into an escapist view. Indeed, the very name of the principal religion of China—Confucianism—is the Doctrine of the Mean, the Mean being the middle point between two extremes, the balance between two sides. Even the two most celebrated Chinese mystics exhibited their national tendencies in their writing and philosophically united the idea of real being with the idea of illusory being. Such were Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. Like the Indians, the Chinese were ready to find out what other-worldliness had to offer them; but unlike the Indians, they were not ready permanently to forsake the worldly life while doing so. Even the Buddhist school, which has lasted longest and remained strongest in China, is the one named "The Round Doctrine"—meaning that it is widely rounded to include both the spiritual and the material. This is the "Tendai" school.

The Orient > China, Japan, Tibet > General notes on China

#18913 – 10.15.4.2

BN – X – K1

Sir Francis Younghusband crossed the Gobi Desert on foot and explored it again on a later occasion. Mongolia, where it is positioned, as a Lamaistic Buddhist country, owed spiritual fealty to the Dalai Lama in Tibet. Sir Francis told me one day of a mysterious Mongolian whom he had met and who without uttering a single word aloud, purely by telepathic contact, had powerfully influenced his mind and given it a greatly broader spiritual outlook. Many years later I met this same adept, then an exile in Cambodia from his native land which had fallen to the Communist-atheist regime. Through the services of an educated Chinese disciple who was with him, we were able to converse about Buddhism and other matters. He gave out a teaching which formed the basis of mentalism and which was occasionally so subtle that it went above my head, but which I understood sufficiently to revolutionize my outlook. Some of its tenets were incorporated in the mentalism explained in my books The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga and The Wisdom of the Overself.

The Orient > China, Japan, Tibet > General notes on China

#18920 – 10.15.4.9

BN – X – K1

Tao is a term which according to context stands for variable meanings: the Truth, the Way, the Moral Order, the Reason or Intelligence (not intellect), 'That which is above form'. It is a curious experience to compare the declaration of Jesus, 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life' with the Confucian statement, 'The Tao is rooted in one's own person'.

The Orient > China, Japan, Tibet > Taoism

#18950 – 10.15.4.39

UR_3.2 – Z – K

Confucius lived 2500 years ago yet for 1500 years his wisdom was highly prized throughout China. He described a standard and ideal to be sought for human behaviour and human social intercourse. Character and conduct need to be disciplined and polished, he affirmed, and proper decorum must enter into one's relations with others. Proper respect must be shown to those entitled to it. The Chinese rightly considered him a sage who knew the ultimate significance of life, who was enlightened and understood the hidden meaning and the higher purpose of human existence. For these reasons I also advocate that this matter of refined behaviour be regarded in a totally new light as a form of spiritual expression and development.

The Orient > China, Japan, Tibet > Confucius, Confucianism, neo-Confucianism

#18992 – 10.15.4.81

BN – X – K1

The Supreme Ultimate, a term Chou Tun-Yi took from the 'Book of Changes' is infinite and imperishable, and the source of the cosmos. It provides the ethics, the Moral Order, the Law for all things, yet it equates with the Ultimateless (this term was used by Lao Tzu, who also called it the Limitless). Yin and Yang are evolved out of the Supreme Ultimate. They are the negative and positive, the quiescent and active, female and male, soft and hard, dark and bright principle. Through their interaction they bring about all phenomena. Sometimes one prevails, sometimes the other, but at no time is either ever absent. These five stages are successively cyclical and involutionary from spirit down to matter. Ether, though invisible, is considered material.

The Orient > China, Japan, Tibet > Confucius, Confucianism, neo-Confucianism

#19029E – 10.15.4.118

UR_3.2 – Z – K