Paul Brunton Daily Note
The Short Path will bear fruit in several virtues, which will come of their own accord and without his trying to gain them. In this way it will help him calm his passions and discipline his ego, even though his thoughts and meditations make no reference to them.
| … Why not try the opposite course, the Short Path, which silences the ego, not by striving to do so but by ignoring it through fastening attention upon the Overself?
| This is a paradox of the Short Path, that on the one hand he practises this exercise of playing the game of being enlightened, and on the other of freely confessing his faults, limitations, and weaknesses but just as freely accepting them. Thus a curious peace of mind settles in him and becomes naturalized. But it is not a spurious peace. It rejects worry or anxiety and negates fear.
| How true is the Bible's metaphorical statement that man shall not look upon the face of God and live. Yes, he, the ego, must die if God is to be present.
| When a man or woman comes into fuller awareness of the True Self he arrives at the same time at the discovery of his true work, together with the capacity to perform it…
| The remembrance that I am too old to squander time comes back periodically but always it is confronted and defeated by the realization that I will be reborn again, that in these future embodiments I shall have all the time needed.
| There is hope for all because there is Grace for all. No man is so sinful that he cannot find forgiveness, cleansing, and renewal.
| All men come back to bodily life again if they leave a residue of karma. All karma that is not brought to an end by bringing the mind's bondage to the ego-thought to an end, makes reincarnation inescapable.
| I have witnessed some advanced souls going through the process of passing to another sphere of consciousness, the process we call death, who spread mental sunshine around so that the bereaved ones gathered at the bedside felt it as a consoling counterbalance to their natural human grief. The truth made some kind of impression upon them that this universal event in Nature can actually be a change to brighter, happier, and freer existence.
| Imagine and believe that the Master is here in your room, sitting in his accustomed chair or position. Then behave and meditate as you would do if in his presence.
| … This inner work leads the practitioner--if he is willing to go so far--deeper within the self. What does he find there if efforts are successful? A beautiful quietude, an unearthly sense of having moved to another plane of being, a closer communion with spirituality…
| Everyone can give his assent to the statement that his physical environment is not himself, but it requires great penetration to give his assent to the equally true statement that his thoughts are not himself.
| It is not a question of choice between the two paths. The beginner can hardly comprehend what the Short Path means, let alone practise it. So perforce he must take to the Long one. But the intermediate, weary of its toils and defeats, turns with relief to the other path, for which his studies and experiences have now prepared him.
| Continued and constant pondering over the ideas presented herein is itself a part of the yoga of philosophical discernment. Such reflection will as naturally lead the student towards realization of his goal as will the companion and equally necessary activity of suppressing all ideas altogether in mental quiet. This is because these ideas are not mere speculations but are themselves the outcome of a translation from inner experience…
| … The strength to set aside the patterns of thought imposed on his mind by long habit is required…
| It may properly be said that no man ever comes to the end of this Search. But that is because he one day comes to know that the seeking attitude is itself one of the last obstacles, and must be dropped.
| The more I travel the world of living men and study the recorded experiences of dead ones, the more I am convinced that mystical powers, religious devotion, intellectual capacity, and ascetic hardihood do not possess anything like the value of noble character…
| … A third phase becomes necessary, the phase of getting rid of the ego altogether; this can be done only by the final dissolving operation of Grace, which the man has to request and to which he has to give his consent…
| My Initiations into the Overself. (1) A force welled up in the heart, rose to the head, then passed forwards into space. As it left the body, I knew I was not the body…
| My Initiations into the Overself. (5) In that deep silence the ego was integrated with the Overself. The operation was almost wholly done through the power of Grace. It descended in overwhelming force and crushed out the ego's tyrannical rule.
| My Initiations into the Overself. (7) During the illumination there was no jubilant ecstasy, no emotional excitement, no unbalancing rapture. It was a happy peace, a calm abidance in beauty, love, wisdom.
| My Initiations into the Overself. (9) I found I could go on thinking, or not thinking, while still remaining in the higher awareness.
| My Initiations into the Overself. (11) As this presence held me, it gave me an invulnerable peace and a strange detachment from personal matters or outer happenings.
| … We shall understand that the Overself is forever present with us and that this presence is more immediate and intimate than anything else in life.
| There is only one real loneliness and that is to feel cut off from the higher power.
| Before he reaches a certain stage he will necessarily have to seek guidance from without, from books and teachers, because of his uncertainty, lack of confidence, and ignorance. But after he reaches it, it will be wiser and safer for him to seek guidance from within. The higher self will impart all the knowledge he needs, as and when he needs it.
| There are little graces, such as those which produce the glimpse; but there is only one great Grace: this produces a lasting transformation, a deep radical healing and permanent enlightenment.
| The stage of contemplation has its own definite signs. Prominent among them are its thought-free emptiness, its utter tranquillity, its absence of personal selfishness.
| If, in meditation, he feels as if he had always been sitting there, it means he touched eternity, timelessness.
| … He cannot behave differently from the way he does--that is, if he is not on the quest and therefore not struggling to rise beyond himself. His own past--and it stretches back farther than he knows--created the thoughts, the acts, and the conditions of the present.
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