The Library
Ecstasies come and go outside the mystic's own will, but philosophic enlightenment is something which we win and keep because we work for and earn it.
11.16.2.15Listen How can a mental state be the final realization? It is temporary. Mystic experience is such a state. It is something one enters and leaves. Beyond and higher is realization of unchanging truth.
11.16.2.29Listen … Compassion thins the ego’s strength and assists us to become properly equipped to achieve insight into Truth …
11.16.2.62,Listen Whereas ordinary mysticism seeks only to discipline the personality, philosophical mysticism seeks both to discipline and develop it.
11.16.2.81Listen From the philosophical standpoint, it is not enough to say that a man is illumined and leave it at that. The depth and permanence of his illumination need also to be considered.
11.16.2.83Listen 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…
11.16.2.90,Listen He is not set free from the evolutionary task of developing his personality because he has developed the capacity to enter mystical states. He must fulfil this task and thus bring all his capabilities into equilibrium; until he has done this, his enjoyment of the divine bliss will be only a sporadic and broken one. But this task fulfilled, it will become a natural and continuous one.
11.16.2.103Listen There are many who are earnest in thought and steadfast in aspiration but who, despite this, have never had any mystical experience, never known any psychical phenomena, and never felt any ecstatic uprush. They may be consoled to learn that, philosophically, these happenings are not at all the most significant indicators of spiritual advancement. The ennoblement of character, the development of intuition, and the cultivation of inner equilibrium are more important.
11.16.2.105Listen The developed mystic needs but neglects the undeveloped thinker within himself, just as the thinker needs but neglects the mystic. It is not enough to arrive at truth through mystical feelings; we must also arrive at it through metaphysical thinking…
11.16.2.142,Listen There is hope for the seeker who wishes to recapture the joys of a past mystical experience. But the experience may be regained in a different form. The emotional excitement that accompanied its earlier phases is more likely to be balanced--as it should be--by greater intellectual understanding of what is happening and how to control it.
11.16.2.180Listen Without a complete and penetrative understanding of philosophical truth, a real union with the Overself cannot be effected, but only an apparent one...
11.16.2.192,Listen The degree of enlightenment which a mystic has reached corresponds also to the degree of freedom from the ego which he or she has reached.
11.16.2.216Listen Enlightenment is not equal in all mystics. With most it is only at its beginning, whatever they personally may believe to the contrary; with some it is more developed; with a few others it is perfect. In all cases it is proportionate to the extent to which the ego's influence is obliterated.
11.16.2.224To unite the ego with the Overself is the highest achievement open to the mystic whilst yet in the flesh…
11.16.2.230,Listen It would be a grave mistake to believe that the following of ascetic regimes and the stilling of wandering thoughts causes the higher consciousness to supervene. What they really do is to permit it to supervene. Desires and distraction are hindrances to its attainment and they merely remove the hindrances. This makes possible the recognition of what we really are beneath them. If however we do nothing more than this, which is called yoga, we get only an inferior attainment, often only a temporary one. For unless we also engage in the rooting out of the ego, which is called philosophy, we do not get the final and superior transcendental state.
11.16.2.258Listen
3 Jul 2014
5 Oct 2018
10 Sep 2023
14 Feb 2024
27 Feb 2024
8 Sep 2017
3 Aug 2014
10 Aug 2013
23 Sep 2019
7 Jul 2014
20 Aug 2014
25 Jul 2011
12 Feb 2011
23 Jul 2018
4 Sep 2020
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