The Library
When we can fully accept the truth that God is the governor and manager of the universe, that the World-Mind is behind and controlling the World-Idea, then we begin to accept the parallel truths that all things and creatures are being taken due care of and that all events are happening under the divine will. This leads in time to the understanding that the ego is not the actual doer, although it has the illusion of doing, working, and acting. The practical application of this metaphysical understanding is to put down our burdens of personal living on the floor and let Providence carry them for us: this is a surrender of the ego to the divine.
12.18.4.2Listen It is when a man breaks down and finally admits that he cannot go on, that both he and his life must change--it is at such a moment that he is close to the guidance and help of the Overself, if only he can recognize them and is willing to accept them.
12.18.4.7Listen There is a panacea for all troubles. It is to turn them over to the Overself. This is a daring act; it will demand all your faith and all your understanding, but its results are proven. They are not available, however, for the lazy drifters and idle dreamers, for the insincere would-be cheaters of the Overself, and for the superstitious seekers of something-for-nothing.
12.18.4.9Listen He will come to the point where he will give up the burden of always trying to do something for his spiritual development, the burden of believing that it rests entirely upon his own shoulders.
12.18.4.12Listen If you cannot see the proper way to deal with your problem, if making a right decision or coping with a difficult situation seems too much for you, if all the usual guides to action prove insufficient or unhelpful, then it is time to hand the trouble over to the Superior Power.
12.18.4.14Listen ... When he abandons further trust in his own nature and clings to no more personal hopes, he really lets go of the ego. This gives him the possibility of being open to grace.
12.18.4.15,Listen The surrender of every problem as it arises to the higher self, the renouncing of personal will in the matter, and the readiness to accept intuitive guidance as and when it comes provide a superior technique and yield better results than the old ways of intellectual handling and personal planning alone.
12.18.4.17Listen So long as he is more afraid of giving up the ego than he is desirous of gaining the consciousness beyond it, so long will he dwell in its gloom.
12.18.4.18Listen Having worked to the utmost upon himself, but finding that a stable spiritual consciousness still eludes him, he has no recourse except to submit his further development to a higher power than his own will and then wait and let it work upon him.
12.18.4.20Listen If we concentrate attention only on the miseries and distresses which afflict us, then we have to depend on our own intellect to find a way out of them. If, however, we turn concentration in the opposite direction, that of the Overself, and deposit our troubles there, we gain a fresh source of possible help in dealing with them.
12.18.4.24Listen When it seems humanly impossible to do more in a difficult situation, surrender yourself to the inner silence and thereafter wait for a sign of obvious guidance or for a renewal of inner strength.
12.18.4.25Listen In the end, after many a rebellion, he learns to trust God and accept his lot, like a tired old man.
12.18.4.26Listen To surrender is to know one’s own incompetence and to put one’s life in wiser hands.
12.18.4.27Listen No one finds that the pattern of his experience of life conforms to what he wished for in the past or wishes for now, so everyone in the end must learn acceptance.
12.18.4.28Listen The passage from black despair to healing peace begins with learning to “let go.” This can refer to the pasts crippling pictures, the present’s harsh conditions, or the future’s grim anticipations. To what then can the sufferer turn? To the Overself and its divine power.
12.18.4.29Listen He has tried to manage his life by himself through all these years, but the results have been too deplorable too frequently. Is it not time to let the Overself take over?
12.18.4.31Listen When he has exhausted every means of finding a right and reasonable solution to his problem, it is time to hand it over to the higher self …
12.18.4.32,Listen ... Every time he patiently crushes a wrong or foolish thought, he adds to his inner strength. Every time he bravely faces up to a misfortune with calm impersonal appraisal of its lesson, he adds to his inner wisdom. The man who has thus wisely and self-critically surrendered himself may then go forward with a sense of outward security and inward assurance, hopeful and unafraid, because he is now aware of the benign protection of his Overself…
12.18.4.33,Listen … Life is a struggle for all; only the wise struggle ego-lessly, but they struggle all the same. They have to because the adverse element in Nature is forever at war, tearing down where they build, stimulating strife where they give peace, and enslaving minds where they lead to freedom.
12.18.4.34,Listen This surrender of the future does not imply idleness and lethargy. It does imply the giving up of useless worry, the abandonment of needless anxiety.
12.18.4.37Listen … The novice's statement that he commits his life into God's hands is not enough, for obviously if he continues to repeat the same foolish judgements and the same guilty conduct as before this commitment, his life still remains in the personal ego's hands. If his commitment is to be effective, it must be accompanied by the duty of self-improvement. Surrender to a higher power does not relieve him of this duty; on the contrary, it compels him more than ever before to its carrying out…
12.18.4.39,Listen Surrender to the Higher Self is one thing; apathetic resignation to life is another. The one act gives birth to, or is the consequence of, mystical intuition. The other merely shuts out or prevents the arisal of such intuitions.
12.18.4.41Listen We render much lip service to the theme of doing God’s will; hundreds of writers, speakers, and clergymen utter its praise; but how few take a practical opportunity of giving it real expression by giving up the ego.
12.18.4.44Listen If the problem is really handed over to the Higher Power he is released from it. This lifts the feeling of being burdened with it. But if the feeling still remains, then he has deceived himself, has not truly committed it except outwardly in mumbled words.
12.18.4.48Listen The surrender to the Overself must not be misinterpreted as surrender to lethargy, to lack of initiative, or to absence of effort. It means that before initiative rises and before effort is made, a man will first look to the Overself for inspiration. When such inner guidance and rational thinking speak with united voice, then he can go forward with a plan, a faith, or a deed, sure and unafraid and confident.
12.18.4.50Listen This turning of a problem or a situation over to God may be real humility but it may also be a cowardly evasion of an unpleasant decision or difficult act.
12.18.4.53Listen Self-surrender does not mean surrender to someone else's ego, but rather to the Overself. Merely giving up one's own will to perform the will of somebody else is personal weakness and not spiritual strength…
12.18.4.57,Listen It is for him to do whatever practical wisdom calls for in each situation but, having done that, to relinquish the results to the higher power for better or for worse.
12.18.4.68Listen The indispensable prerequisite to mystical illumination is self-surrender. No man can receive it without paying this price…
12.18.4.70,Listen If a man can give up his fears and anxieties to the higher self, because he is convinced that it is better able to manage his problems than the egoistic self, because he believes in trusting to its wisdom rather than to his own foolishness, yet does not evade the lessons implicit in those problems, his surrender becomes an act of strength, not of weakness.
12.18.4.73Listen … should we not seek out the lesson behind what is sent us and thus be able to co-operate intelligently with it? Then the Overself’s will truly becomes our own …
12.18.4.74,Listen We ought not to expect man to give what he is not yet ready to give. Only in the measure that he recognizes a higher purpose to be fulfilled will he renounce the ego which hinders that fulfilment.
12.18.4.77Listen His destination is also his origin. But if you say that he was born in the eternal Spirit, the question arises how can time, which is placed outside eternity, bring him to eternity. The answer is that it does not bring him there, it only educates him to look for, and prepares him to pass through, the opening through which he can escape. Need it be said that this lies at the point where ego surrenders wholly to Overself?
12.18.4.85Listen He is to sacrifice all the lower emotions on the altar of this quest. He is to place upon it anger, greed, lust, and aggressive egoism as and when each situation arises when one or another of them shows its ugly self. All are to be burnt up steadily, if little by little, at such opportunities. This is the first meaning of surrender to the higher self.
12.18.4.87Listen No candidate could enter the King's Chamber and be initiated therein into the Greater Mysteries without stooping in emblematic submission beneath the low doorway at its entrance. For no man may attain adeptship without surrender of his personal egoism and his animal nature.
12.18.4.88Listen From the day that he abandons the egoistic attitude, he seeks no credit, assumes no merit. Hence Lao Tzu says: “Those most advanced in Tao are the least conspicuous of men.”
12.18.4.89Listen Do not let the ego try to manage your worldly life. Do not let it even manage your search for truth! It is faulty and fallible. Better to cast the burden on the higher self and walk by faith, not knowing where you are going, not seeing what the future is.
12.18.4.91Listen When the ego is truly given up, the old calculating life will go with it. He will keep nothing back but will trust everything to the Overself. A higher power will arrange his days and plan his years.
12.18.4.93Listen But before he can even attempt to surrender the underself, he must first begin to feel, however feebly and however intermittently, that there is an Overself and that it is living there deep within his own heart. Such a feeling, however, must arise spontaneously and cannot be manufactured by any effort of his own... For such a feeling is nothing else than a manifestation of grace…
12.18.4.94,Listen … An old Sanskrit text, the Tripura, says: ”Of all requisites Divine Grace is the most important. He who has entirely surrendered to his larger self is sure to attain readily. This is the best method.”
12.18.4.94,Listen … Without the divine grace, the Sufis say, man cannot attain spiritual union with Him, but they add that this grace is not withheld from those who fervently yearn for it.
12.18.4.94,Listen The more he becomes conscious of that thing in himself which links him with the World-Mind, the more he becomes conscious of a higher power back of the world's life, a supreme intelligence back of the world's destiny. It is consequently back of his personal destiny, too, and bringing him what he really needs to fulfil the true purpose of his earthly existence. With this realization he becomes content to surrender it to God's will, to abandon all anxiety for the future, all brooding over the past, all agitation over the present.
12.18.4.95Listen No man can penetrate into the being of the Overself and remain an ego-centered individual. On the threshold he must lay down the ego in full surrender.
12.18.4.96Listen You will have turned over the matter or problem if certain signs appear: first, no more anxiety or fretting about it; second, no more stress or tension over it; third, no more deliberating and thinking concerning it.
12.18.4.98Listen If he wants the full Grace he must make the full surrender. He should ask for nothing else than to be taken up wholly into, and by, the Overself. To ask for occult powers of any kind, even the kind which are called spiritual healing powers, is to ask for something less than this.
12.18.4.100Listen Whatever happens in the world around him, he will so train his thoughts and feelings as to keep his knowledge of the World-Idea, and his vision of its harmony, ever with him.
12.18.4.101Listen If he turns his problem over to the Overself in unreserved trust, he must admit no thoughts thereafter of doubt or fear. If they still knock at his door he must respond by remembering his surrender.
12.18.4.104Listen The real meaning of the injunction, so often delivered by spiritual prophets, to give up self is not a humanitarian one and does not concern social relations with other men. It is rather a psychological one, a counsel to transfer attention from the surface self to the deeper one, to give up the personal ego so as to step into the impersonal Overself.
12.18.4.107Listen The real meaning of these constant injunctions to practise selflessness is not moral but metaphysical and mystical. It is to give up the lower order of living and thinking so as to be able to climb to a higher one.
12.18.4.109Listen It is the poor ego which worries and struggles to come closer to perfection. But how can the imperfect ever transform itself into the perfect? Let it cease its worry and simply surrender itself to the ever-perfect Overself.
12.18.4.112Listen We achieve a total surrender of the ego only when we cease to identify ourselves with it. In this aspiration is the key to a practical method of achievement.
12.18.4.117Listen Practise referral of doubts, questions, needs, requests to the Higher Power. Do not depend on the ego alone.
12.18.4.121Listen To turn to the Higher Power and to wait patiently for its direction or support is a good practice but it must be remembered that one can only turn to a Higher Power by turning away from the ego.
12.18.4.124Listen He begins with turning his problems over to the higher unseen Power: he ends by turning himself over to it. This is what is also called “surrendering to God” and “taking refuge in Him alone.”
12.18.4.125Listen The finite mind of man can not take possession of the Infinite Power any more than the little circle can contain the large one. At the point where the two come into contact there must be surrender, self-surrender, a willingness to let go of its own self-centre, its own instinct of self-preservation.
12.18.4.126Listen To die to one's self is to let go of all attachments, including the attachment to one's own personal ego. In some ways it is like the act of passing away from the fleshly body.
12.18.4.127Listen What it is necessary for him to do is really to surrender his fears and anxieties, whether concerning himself or those near and dear to him, or those who, he thinks, want to hurt him. He should surrender all these to God and be himself rid of them. For this is what giving up the ego truly means. He would then have no need to entertain such negative thoughts. They would be replaced by a strong faith that all would be well with him. To the extent that he can give up the little ego with its desires and fears, to that extent he invites and attracts divine help in his life.
12.18.4.129Listen ... The Grace comes in time if it is wanted strongly enough, and then he steps out of the shadows into the sunshine and a benign assurance is born in the heart. Of course this can never be the result of metaphysical striving alone but only of a coordinated, integral effort of thought, feeling, and action…
12.18.4.131,Listen The surrendering of his life to the Overself does not depend wholly upon his own efforts. He cannot bring it about as and when he wills. He can bring about the prerequisite conditions for this manifestation. He can fervently yearn for it, but the last word depends upon the Overself, upon Grace…
12.18.4.131,Listen We struggle to find God, we long after what seems unattainable, and we must hold nothing back, must yield all, surrender all, until the ego melts with every fetter that belongs to it.
12.18.4.132Listen If we turn ourselves over to the higher power, surrendering our personal spiritual future to it, we must also turn over the personal physical future, with all its problems, at the same time.
12.18.4.135Listen ”Whatever you do, offer it to Me,” said Krishna. This implies constant remembrance of the Higher Power, which in turn saves those who obey this injunction from getting lost in their worldly life.
12.18.4.136Listen ... ”Everything has to be paid for” is a saying which holds as true in the realm of the inner life as it does in the marketplace. The surrender of his life to the Higher Power involves the surrender of his ego. This is an almost impossible achievement if thought of in terms of a complete and instant act, but not if thought of in terms of a partial and gradual one. There are parts of the ego, such as the passions for instance, which he may attempt to deny even before he has succeeded in denying the ego itself…
12.18.4.137,Listen When a man consciously asks for union with the Overself, he unconsciously accepts the condition that goes along with it, and that is to give himself wholly up to the Overself…
12.18.4.138,Listen The Inner Being will rise and reveal Himself just as soon as the ego becomes sufficiently humbled, subdued, surrendered. The assurance of this is certain because we live forever within the Love of God.
12.18.4.139Listen … if he really does not want to cling to the ego, he must cling to nothing else. He is to have no sense of inner greatness, no distinct feeling of having attained some high degree of holiness.
12.18.4.140,Listen Once he grasps that the higher part of his being not only knows immeasurably more than he what is good for him, but also possesses infinitely more power than he does to bring it about, he is ready to enter upon the surrendered life…He realizes that other forces are now beginning to enter his life and mind, and his part is not to obstruct them but to let them do their work. The more his own passivity meets their activity, the better will this work be done.
12.18.4.141,Listen … The more he looks in things and to persons for his happiness, the less he is likely to find it. The more he looks in Mind for it, the more he is likely to find it. But as man needs things and persons to make his existence tolerable, the mystery is that when he has found his happiness in Mind they both have a way of coming to him of their own accord to complete it.
12.18.4.143,Listen He who has the courage to put first things first, to seek the inner reality which is changeless and enduring, finds with it an ever-satisfying happiness from which nothing can dislodge him. This got, it will not prevent him seeking and finding the lesser earthly happinesses. Only he will put them in a subordinate and secondary place because they are necessarily imperfect, liable to change and even to go altogether …
12.18.4.143,Listen He who puts himself at the Overself's disposal will find that the Overself will in turn put him where he may best fulfil his own divine possibilities.
12.18.4.144Listen … He must now and henceforth let the future take care of itself, and await the higher will as it comes to him bit by bit… It will be like crossing a river on a series of stepping-stones, being content to reach one at a time in safety and to think of the others only when they are progressively reached, and not before…
12.18.4.145,Listen … The true aspirant who has made a positive turning-over of his personal and worldly life to the care of the impersonal and higher power in whose existence he fully believes, has done so out of intelligent purpose, self-denying strength of will, and correct appraisal of what constitutes happiness…It will mean freedom from the torment of not knowing what to do, for every needed decision, every needed choice, will become plain and obvious to the mind just as the time for it nears. For the intuition will have its chance at last to supplant the ego…
12.18.4.145,Listen Emotional worry, whether it be worry about worldly and personal affairs or even about the spiritual quest, will vanish if one surrenders one's life to the Overself entirely. That is the only way to enjoy real freedom from worry; that is inner peace.
12.18.4.150Listen Anxieties subside and worries fall away when this surrender to the Overself grows and develops in his heart. And such a care-free attitude is not unjustified. For the measure of this surrender is also the measure of active interference in his affairs by the Divine Power.
12.18.4.153Listen When he has made this surrender, done what he could as a human being about it and turned the results over completely to the higher self, analysed its lessons repeatedly and taken them deeply to heart, the problem is no longer his own. He is set free from it, mentally released from its karma, whatever the situation may be physically. He knows now that whatever happens will happen for the best.
12.18.4.154Listen There is a strikingly parallel thought in the Bhagavad Gita which confirms the New Testament’s injunction, “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things shall be added unto you.” In the Indian scripture, Krishna, the Indian Christ, enjoins his disciple Arjuna: “Whoever worships Me and Me alone with no other thought than the worship of Me, the care of his welfare I shall take upon myself.”
12.18.4.156Listen Such a surrender to the higher self brings with it release from negative tendencies, liberation from personal weaknesses.
12.18.4.159Listen The Overself--when you are fortunate enough to find it--will provide for and protect you, comfort and support you.
12.18.4.162Listen Once we accept the soul’s existence, faith in its power and worship of its presence follow by deduction.
12.18.4.164Listen To the degree that he can surrender his mind to the higher self, to that degree does he surrender the worries and fears that go along with it.
12.18.4.171Listen If he has really turned his life over to the higher power, then he need not crease his brow trying to work out his own plans. He can wait either for the inner urge to direct him or for new circumstances to guide his actions.
12.18.4.173Listen The same power which has brought him so far will surely carry him through the next phase of his life. He must trust it and abandon anxieties, as a passenger in a railroad train should abandon his bag by putting it down on the floor and letting the train carry it for him. The bag represents personal attempts to plan, arrange, and mold the future in a spirit of desire and attachment. This is like insisting on bearing the bag's weight himself. The train represents the Higher Self to which the aspirant should surrender that future. He should live in inner Peace, free from anticipations, desires, cares, and worries.
12.18.4.174Listen He need no longer seek things essential to his life or needful to his service; they themselves will come seeking him.
12.18.4.175Listen He has nothing more to do, at this stage, than to give up the ego and give in to the Overself. This done, all that matters will be done, for from that time his farther way will be shown to him, and his subsequent acts guided, by the Overself.
12.18.4.176Listen He finds that having attained this liberation of his will from the ego's domination, his freedom has travelled so far that it loses itself and ceases to be free. For it vanishes into the rule of his higher self, which takes possession of him with a completeness and a fullness that utterly hoop him around. Henceforth, its truth is his truth, its goodness is his goodness, and its guidance his obedience.
12.18.4.184He who has turned all problems over to the Overself is no longer faced with the problem of solving each new problem that arises. He is free.
12.18.4.185Listen With this serene acceptance of Life, this glad co-operation with it and willing obedience to its laws, he begins to find that henceforth Life is for him. Events begin to happen, circumstances so arrange themselves, and contacts so develop themselves that what he really needs for his further development or expression appears of its own accord.
12.18.4.187Listen His struggle for survival has ended. Henceforth his life has been entrusted to a higher power.
12.18.4.189Listen He knows, having aligned himself harmoniously with the higher power that supports the universe, that it surely can and will support the little fragment of the universe that is himself. A sublime confidence that he will be taken care of in the proper way pervades him in consequence.
12.18.4.190Listen Those who sincerely and intelligently live according to the philosophical ideal as best they can, surrendering the ego to the Overself continually, receive visible proof and wonderful demonstration of a higher presence and power in their lives. They can afford to trust God, for it is no blind trust.
12.18.4.192Listen In that wonderful state the feeling of tension, the troubling by fear, and the suffering from insecurity vanish away. Why? Because the particular problems involved have been taken over by the Overself. Also, because no negative thinking is possible in that peaceful atmosphere. From this we may deduce an excellent practical rule for daily living: surrender all problems to the Overself by turning them out of your mind and handing them over, but not in the wrong way by refusing to face them…
12.18.4.195,Listen When a man has reached this stage, where his will and life are surrendered and his mind and heart are aware of divine presences, he learns that it is practical wisdom not to decide his future in advance but rather to let it grow out of itself like corn out of seed.
12.18.4.288Listen
15 Feb 2021
14 Aug 2019
14 Jul 2014
24 Apr 2022
23 Jan 2022
22 May 2015
15 Dec 2011
22 Jun 2013
3 Oct 2015
27 Jun 2015
31 Dec 2011
29 Dec 2014
19 Sep 2021
21 Dec 2020
27 Oct 2011
1 Feb 2016
24 Sep 2022
6 Jul 2013
13 Aug 2019
10 Aug 2020
24 Aug 2019
24 Jul 2018
28 Nov 2023
2 Jun 2013
8 Jan 2012
5 Sep 2022
8 Jun 2015
3 Jul 2020
25 Sep 2014
7 Jun 2024
8 Dec 2021
30 Mar 2019
19 Dec 2015
18 Dec 2014
14 Jul 2016
11 Apr 2022
7 Mar 2019
9 Sep 2016
3 Oct 2014
22 Jul 2023
21 Aug 2023
25 Dec 2017
16 Sep 2016
30 Dec 2012
4 Sep 2014
14 Aug 2023
5 Dec 2011
30 Dec 2016
27 Sep 2018
10 Jan 2012
3 Apr 2013
18 Oct 2023
29 Jun 2015
22 Dec 2011
16 Nov 2015
26 Oct 2016
18 Feb 2012
19 Jan 2013
18 Feb 2013
27 Nov 2017
9 Dec 2019
18 May 2014
3 Nov 2015
28 May 2014
8 Jan 2015
5 Aug 2020
21 Dec 2016
30 Jun 2019
5 Feb 2024
13 Jan 2017
25 Sep 2019
27 Oct 2019
14 Jun 2019
30 Dec 2018
11 Nov 2023
2 Feb 2022
4 Dec 2016
15 Feb 2016
25 Nov 2023
13 Nov 2017
12 Dec 2019
21 Feb 2015
19 Aug 2024
14 Dec 2016
8 May 2011
4 Nov 2021
9 Sep 2012
21 Mar 2019
28 Sep 2014
24 Jul 2016
6 Oct 2016
2 Jun 2015
The notebooks are copyright © 1984-1989 The Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation
This site is run by Paul Brunton-stiftelsen · info@paulbruntondailynote.se