Paul Brunton Daily Note
In looking for the beauty in Nature, a man is looking for his soul. In adoring this Beauty when he finds it, he is recognizing that he not only owns an animal body, but is himself owned by a higher Power.
| Such a double practice of the Short and Long Paths will not only lead to a fuller and better balanced progress but also to a quicker one. For these two opposite activities will work upon him in a reciprocal way. His faults will be ground to powder between them, as if they were millstones.
| Deep within his own heart, hidden within his own consciousness, every person carries all the evidence for the truth of these teachings that he or she is ever likely to need.
| You must remember that everyone without exception stands in life just where the evolutionary flow has brought him and that his outward life is the result of all those previous experiences in many, many incarnations…
| The deeper he plunges in meditation, the less does worldly life appeal to him when he emerges from it; the old incentives which drive him begin to weaken.
| The life that is in us goes at death into the life that is in the universe. It is as secure there as it was in us. It is not lost. Thereafter it reappears in another form, another body.
| 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 Overself has no form to be pictured and weighed, measured and numbered; it makes no movement to be timed and no sound to be registered on the ear drum.
| It is not enough to learn to bear with others, to excuse and accept their shortcomings. He must also learn to bear with himself, to accept his own shortcomings.
| Alone and depending on his little, personal ego, a man can do the merest fraction of what he can do when he becomes an instrument of the Infinite Power.
| If his evolutionary need should require it, he will be harassed by troubles to make him less attached to the world, or by sickness to make him less attached to the body. It is then not so much a matter of receiving self-earned destiny as of satisfying that need. Both coincide usually but not always and not necessarily. Nor does this happen with the ordinary man so much as it does with the questing man, for the latter has asked or prayed for speedier development.
| It is a quest to become conscious of Consciousness, to explore the I and penetrate the mystery of its knowing power.
| … We are animals in one part of our nature, human beings in the second part, and sometimes angelic in the third part. All make one creature. We learn what our bodies are through the physical senses. We learn a part of what the mind is through our thoughts. We learn still more about the mind's deeper phases through our non-thoughts--that is, intuitions.
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| Perhaps the most wonderful thing which the illuminate discovers is that his independence from the infinite life power never really existed and was only illusory, that his separation from the Overself was only an idea of the imagination and not a fact of being…
| There is nothing else like it; nothing with which the Overself could be compared.
| …Prayer is not only asking, it is first and foremost an act of worship and love of God. Only after that is done you may ask for something for yourself--mainly, of course, for spiritual things and not material…
| Seekers do not come under the power of Grace until they have done, to a sufficient extent, what the Long Path requires from them. Then only are they likely to be ready for the Short Path, and to benefit by the Grace associated with it.
| All the great prophets have made special mention of the fact that the task of spiritually enlightening others is the most important and most beneficial activity in which any man can engage…
| It is more prudent to be habitually suspicious of his own ego, and its motives, than not.
| … Humility is the first step on this path. We should realize how little we really know when confronted by the great mysteries of life…
| … The mind is drawn so deeply into itself and becomes so engrossed in itself that the outer world vanishes utterly. The sensation of being enclosed all round by a greater presence, at once protective and benevolent, is strong. There is a feeling of being completely at rest in this soothing presence…
| Those who have had this overwhelming experience require no arguments to make them believe in the soul. They know that they are the soul.
| If you want a workable and faultless prayer, what is better than the one which Socrates habitually used, ”Give me that which is best for me”, or the one which some older pagan used, ”May I love, seek, and attain only that which is good”?
| If discovery of Truth is the discovery of the answer to “Who Am I?“ then what better Master can there be than the “I“ itself…?
| … In choosing a suitable formula for his own use, the student should bear in mind that it is not only remembrance that is needed, but loving remembrance. The mantram for such repetition must not only remind him of the Overself but attract him to it. Hence, it should be one that inspires devotion and uplifts character. It should embody spiritualizing thought and gather ennobling emotion around it…
| These glimpses come on rare occasions, for the mind's tumult is hard to still--only the Overself's Grace can do so.
| What is the hidden metaphysical meaning of the Quest? It is that the infinite self in man finds that it cannot achieve adequate self-expression in the finite and imperfect life of the world. The ego may try as it will, do what it may, but the bliss, wisdom, serenity, and perfection that are the natural attributes of the Overself, in the end elude its every move. There is ultimately no alternative except to let go of searching and grasping the outer world, and retreat within. There, deep inside its own being the journey to enduring satisfaction will thenceforth be. This is the Quest leading to discovery of Overself.
| The traits and tendencies which a man receives from the preceding births constitute in their totality the personal self which he knows as ”I.”
| 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.
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