The Library
All living forms everywhere embody this principle of being--the One Infinite Life-Power. It is not itself personal yet it is open to man's personal access and will respond to his invocation--provided he succeeds in establishing contact with it and provided his approach is right--but its response must come in its own way and time.
12.18.1.1Listen … adoration of the divine soul and humility in the divine presence are two necessary qualities which the quester ought to develop. The first is expressed through meditation and the second through prayer.
12.18.1.2,Listen Look how the smaller birds greet the sun, with so much merry chirruping and so much outpouring of song! It is their way of expressing worship for the only Light they can know, an outer one. But man can also know the inner Sun, the Light of the Overself. How much more reason has he to chirp and sing than the little birds! Yet how few men feel gratitude for such privilege.
12.18.1.3Listen Why ought I to cultivate religious faith, feeling worship? Because it lifts up the feeling nature generally. Because it develops humility. Because it invites Grace. Because it is the duty of a human being in relation to its Source.
12.18.1.4Listen ... Life in this world is like foam on the sea: it passes all too soon; but the moments given in adoration and obeisance to the Soul count for eternal gain…
12.18.1.5,Listen ... It is the greatest good fortune to attain such serenity--to be lifted above passion and hatred, prejudice and fear, greed and discontent, and yet to be able to attend effectively and capably to one's worldly duties. It is possible to reach this state. The seeker may have had glimpses of it already. Someday, sometime, if he is patient, he will enter it to stay--and the unimaginably rewarding and perfect purpose of his life, of all his lifetimes, will be fulfilled.
12.18.1.5,Listen He will come to perceive that his real strength lies in remembering the higher self, in remembering the quest of it, and, above all, in remembering the two with intense love, devotion, and faith.
12.18.1.6Listen If the aspirant will cultivate a feeling of reverence toward the higher power … he will profit much.
12.18.1.7,Listen When devotion, worship, and reverence are fortified by knowledge, they can one day reach a stage where notably less is desired or demanded and peace then naturally arises. Nor is a measure of peace the only gain. Virtue later follows after it, quietly and effortlessly growing.
12.18.1.9Listen Since true philosophy is also a way of life, and since no such way can become effectual unless the feelings are involved, it includes and cultivates the most refined and most devotional feelings possible to man.
12.18.1.11Listen Nature displays her beauteous landscapes in vain if he who has wandered into her presence lacks the aesthetic reverent sensitivity to glance appreciatively at the grand vistas. Similarly, philosophy calls for a tuned-in, quieted, and reverent mentality if a man who wanders to its feet is to profit by it.
12.18.1.12Listen I will never tire of telling men that the Overself is as loving as any parent and that it does care for our real welfare. But we must return that love, must give our unconditional devotion, if we are to have a correct relationship with it.
12.18.1.15Listen The need is for much more bhakti, especially during meditation, for intenser and warmer yearning to feel the sacred presence. It is really a need to descend from merely knowing in the head to knowing and feeling in the heart.
12.18.1.17Listen This deep, inner, and indescribable feeling which makes him yearn for closeness to the higher power is neither a misguided feeling nor a vain one.
12.18.1.20Listen It is a queer notion which regards a philosopher as a man without feeling, only because he has brought it under control. Not that it is altogether to his credit that he has been able to do so, for grace must share some credit too. There is plenty of feeling in his communion with the Higher Self.
12.18.1.21Listen This is the magic talisman which will strengthen and save you, even though you go down into Hades itself—this faith and love for the inner self.
12.18.1.22Listen Reverence, awe, adoration--these are evoked by, and themselves evoke the feeling of, the Overself's presence.
12.18.1.25Listen The message of philosophy in this matter may be summed up as this: Look beyond your tiny circle of awareness and forget the little I for a while in order to remember that greater and grander Being whence you have emanated.
12.18.1.28Listen The key word here is reverence. It ought to enter every remembrance and every meditation.
12.18.1.35Listen He has raised an altar to the unknown God in his heart. Henceforth he worships there in secret and in silence. His hours of solitude are reserved for it, his moments of privacy dedicated to it.
12.18.1.36Listen If they do not come to this quest with enough reverence, they are led later to the reverence by the quest.
12.18.1.38Listen Memorable are those minutes when we sit in silent adoration of the Overself, knowing it to be none other than our own best self. It is as though we have returned to our true home and rest by its hallowed hearth with a contentment nowhere else to be known. No longer do we possess anything; we are ourselves ineffably possessed…
12.18.1.39,Listen We revere God best in silence, with lips struck dumb and thoughts hid deep.
12.18.1.42Listen If men really wish to revere God, they may best do so by revering God's deputy in their hearts, the Overself.
12.18.1.48Listen Aspiration which is not just a vague and occasional wish but a steady settled and intense longing for the Overself is a primary requirement. Such aspiration means the hunger for awareness of the Overself, the thirst for experience of the Overself, the call for union to the Overself. It is a veritable power which lifts one upward, which helps one give up the ego more quickly, and which attracts Grace. It will have these desirable effects in proportion to how intensely it is felt and how unmixed it is with other personal desires.
12.18.1.53Listen Remember that no enterprise or move should be left to depend on the ego's own limited resources. The humble invocation of help from the Higher Self expands those resources and has a protective value. At the beginning of every day, of every enterprise, of every journey, and of every important piece of work, remember the Overself and, remembering, be obedient to its laws. Seek its inspiration, its power. To make it your silent partner is to double your effectiveness.
12.18.1.54If you want to know how to set about finding the Higher Self, Jesus has very clearly given the answer. Seek, knock, and ask; pray to it and for it--not just once but scores of times, if necessary, and always with your whole heart, lovingly, yearningly, reverently.
12.18.1.55Listen What intellect cannot do because of its feebleness the aspirational feeling can do by its force.
12.18.1.57Listen To yearn only at times for this spiritual awakeness is not enough. He must yearn for it continually.
12.18.1.59Listen To remember the Overself devotedly, to think about it frequently and lovingly, is part of this practice.
12.18.1.60Listen The quest is not a thing to be played with; that is only for those who merely talk about it. To engage in it is of necessity to devote one's entire life to it.
12.18.1.61Listen Dwelling upon the beauty and tranquillity, the wisdom and the power of the Overself, he lets thoughts move towards it of their own accord.
12.18.1.64Listen If he is to achieve his purpose, it should be clearly pictured in his mind and strongly supported by his will. It should be desired with all his being, believed in with all his heart.
12.18.1.65Listen Henceforth he lives on and for the quest, killing in his heart all other desires.
12.18.1.69Listen ... Let us go where Jesus advised--deep inside the heart. For we carry the truth within ourselves--yet how few know it--and bear the closest of ties with that Power in consciousness itself.
12.18.1.71,Listen Loving attention to the Overself should not be limited to moments spent in meditation or prayer, but should form the background for all one's other thoughts.
12.18.1.72Listen ... The Overself waits with deepest patience for him--man--to prefer it completely to everything and everyone else. It waits for the time when longings for the soul will leave the true aspirant no rest, when love for the divine will outlast and outweigh all other loves. When he feels that he needs it more than he needs anything else in this world, the Overself will unfailingly reveal its presence to him…
12.18.1.76,Listen By thought, the ego was made; by thought, the ego’s power can be unmade. But the thought must be directed toward a higher entity, for the ego’s willingness to attack itself is only a pretense. Direct it constantly to the Overself, be mentally devoted to the Overself, and emotionally love the Overself. Can it then refuse to help you?
12.18.1.77Listen The way to be admitted the Overself´s presence can be summed up in a single phrase: love it. Not by breathing in very hard nor by blowing out very slow, not by standing on the head…can admission be gained. Not even by long study of things divine nor by acute analysis of them. But let the love come first…
12.18.1.78,Listen When the divine has become the sole object of his love and the constant subject of his meditation, the descent of a gracious illumination cannot be far off.
12.18.1.80Listen Love is both sunshine for the seed and fruit from the tree. It is a part of the way to self-realization and also a result of reaching the goal itself.
12.18.1.81Listen Amid all his mental adventures and emotional misadventures, he should never lose sight of the goal, should never permit disappointment or frailty to cause desertion of the quest.
12.18.1.84Listen He who is possessed by this love of truth and who is so sincere that he is willing to subordinate all other desires to it will be repaid by truth herself.
12.18.1.86Listen Only when the Overself becomes the focus of all his thinking is it likely to become the inspirer of all his doing.
12.18.1.87Listen He will come, if he perseveres with sufficient patience, to look upon his practice not as a dry exercise to which he reluctantly goes at the call of duty but as a joyous return to which he is attracted by his heart's own desire.
12.18.1.88Listen How close he comes to the truth may depend on how deeply he cares for it.
12.18.1.90Listen Love will have to enter his quest at some point--love for the Overself. For it is through this uniting force that his transformation will at the end be effected.
12.18.1.91Listen Unless he loves the Overself with deep feeling and real devotion, he is unlikely to put forth the efforts needed to find it and the disciplines needed to push aside the obstacles in the way to it.
12.18.1.92Listen Love of the Overself is the swiftest horse that can bear us to the heavenly destination. For the more we love It, the less we love the ego and its ways.
12.18.1.93Listen The devotional attitude will not decrease with the growth of the mystical one. It too will grow, side by side with the other. But it will cast out of itself more and more egoistic selfish interest or grasping until it becomes the pure love of the Overself for the latter's sake alone.
12.18.1.94Listen Why do we come to God's presence only with our messy problems and our dark troubles? Why only as beggars, or when unhappy, miserable, unhealthy? Can we not come to Him joyously, for His own sake, for love of Him alone?
12.18.1.95Listen The more we are devoted to the diviner attractions, the less devoted or susceptible do we become to the earthly ones. Thus the mere exercise of the faculty of veneration for something beyond ourselves gradually lifts us nearer to the desireless state.
12.18.1.111Listen The duty of worship, whether in a public temple or a private home, exists not because God needs our praise--for he is not in want of anything--but because we need to recollect him.
12.18.1.120Listen
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