Day by day
To keep up the meditation for some length of time, to force himself to sit there while all his habitual bodily and mental instincts are urging him to abandon the practice, calls for arousing of inner strength to fight off inattention or fatigue. But this very strength, once aroused, will eventually enable him to keep it up for longer and longer periods.
4.4.3.29Listen 1 Jul 2025This, the real I, is always accessible to him in meditation and always is the half-known background of his conscious self at other times.
14.22.3.54Listen 2 Jul 2025This is the paradox of human existence: the ego is yourself and the Overself is yourself, yet the first cannot easily contact the second.
6.8.1.16Listen 3 Jul 2025But while philosophy includes both paths, the aspirant’s individual need will indicate on which one the emphasis should be laid and when it should be transferred to the other path., and will serve as well to sustain vitality, while being free from the stain of slaughter.
15.23.4.108Listen 4 Jul 2025If he is to save himself he will need a relentless honesty about, and toward, himself. He must be uncompromising in getting at true appraisals of his motives, his actions, and his feelings.
3.2.6.17Listen 5 Jul 2025The Short Path requires him to fall into amnesia about his spiritual past. The attempt to produce a perfect being and an impeccable character need not trouble him any farther.
15.23.4.105Listen 6 Jul 2025Thou!
Unseen, untouched and unknown,
The only grace I beg for
Is the grace of loving Thee!
— My prayer12.18.2.54Listen 7 Jul 2025He is beginning to detach himself from his own ego when he is experiencing a strong self-distrust and a great doubt about the value of his own judgement.
15.24.3.197Listen 8 Jul 2025We make growth only by degrees because we separate ourselves from the ego only by degrees. The notion that any man can annihilate the ego overnight is an illusory one. He only seems to do so. What actually happens in such a case is that the annihilation is the final culminating event of a long, hidden process—hidden, that is to say, in former incarnations …
3.2.3.46, ExcerptListen 9 Jul 2025The Long Path strivings are lesser ones and must, at the due time, be absorbed in the Short Path’s larger ones.
15.23.4.109Listen 10 Jul 2025This very egocentricity has prepared the way for its own collapse, and thence for the spiritual mentality which transcends it and which is next to be developed.
6.8.1.163Listen 11 Jul 2025We shall sow seeds, diffuse ideas, transmit inspirations, and watch them take root in the minds of others; but it is a later generation which shall watch them grow into sturdy plants and bear good fruits in the lives of many more individuals …
8.12.5.61, ExcerptListen 12 Jul 2025The follower of the Long Path constantly or intermittently feels the urge to improve himself but the follower of the Short one rests untroubled. He has surrendered himself to the higher power, which necessarily means that he has abandoned or denied every kind of urge in himself too, including the self-improvement urge.
15.23.5.118Listen 13 Jul 2025The intenser the longing for enlightenment, the easier it is to practise recollection.
4.4.7.20Listen 14 Jul 2025… A ray from the Overself will shine upon our normal mind and transform and transfigure it. But moments of spiritual ecstasy are heralds of the high state which is yet to come when the Overself is taken fully into our councils and we have let go of the terrestrial ego with its dwarfed personal viewpoint …
3.2.3.29, ExcerptListen 15 Jul 2025The glimpses are not controllable. They come or go without consulting us.
14.22.6.48Listen 16 Jul 2025The preliminary requisites to a lasting illumination are development and balance. If part of his nature is still undeveloped in relation to the finished goal and if all parts are off balance in relation to one another, the illumination will go soon after it comes. This balance of mind and life are essential.
13.20.3.389Listen 17 Jul 2025“All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine.” That which you need is yours now—if only you could raise yourself to the recognition of your true relation to your Overself.
16.25.1.53Listen 18 Jul 2025There is no final absorption; the individual continues to exist somehow in the Supreme. The fact that he can pass away into it at will and yet return again, proves this.
16.25.2.202Listen 19 Jul 2025Most men are so smugly content to do their own ego’s will all the time that it never enters their minds to pause and enquire what the Overself’s will for them is.
3.3.2.119Listen 20 Jul 2025We need to know the truth, the wisdom-knowledge, but it is not enough. We need to have the living mystic experience, the vital feeling of what I am, but it is not enough. For we need to synthesize the two in a full actual intuitive realization, conferred by the Overself. This is Grace. This is to emerge finally—born again!
16.25.2.51Listen 21 Jul 2025It is partly because the Overself waits for us in silence that we have to approach it in silence too.
4.4.7.26Listen 22 Jul 2025The point which has yet to be made is that these glimpses are not supernatural superhuman and solely religious experiences. When scientific psychology has advanced to the point where it really understands the human being in all his height and depth, and not merely his surface, it will see this.
14.22.4.45Listen 23 Jul 2025When after the act of dying I shall be carried away to my own star, to Sothis of the Egyptians, Sirius of the Westerners, I shall at last be happy.
8.12.6.161Listen 24 Jul 2025Don’t occupy yourself with things or thoughts, not even with the search for inner experiences, but be quiet and desireless..
15.24.3.204Listen 25 Jul 2025He may have to learn how to accommodate what he cannot control or avoid. This is resignation, the very name—Islam—of the religion given to the world by Muhammed. But if he has to accept certain things, this is not to say that their accommodation implies his approval of them. It means rather that he ceases to grumble or worry about them.
6.9.3.175Listen 26 Jul 2025One needs a place where the only noise is that which one makes oneself. Then, the lovely stillness without helps to induce the lovely stillness within.
3.3.5.1Listen 27 Jul 2025Even while he is acting in a situation, he trains himself to observe it.
4.4.7.17Listen 28 Jul 2025The pathetic thoughts of what might have been torment him. But are they futile? If they show how actions could have been improved and decisions bettered, they sow seeds for the next birth.
6.9.2.60Listen 29 Jul 2025… when he is established in the final stage, he is established in security. The roots of evil have been totally destroyed within him. Never again will they have the chance to grow and yield bitter fruit … He will look back with astonishment at the man he formerly was, at the ignorance and weakness which held him in bonds …
3.2.3.74, ExcerptListen 30 Jul 2025… The end will come but it will be a transformation of form and a passage to a freer higher state.
6.9.1.108, ExcerptListen 31 Jul 2025
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