The Library
If the purpose of life on earth be a wide and deep spiritual growth, and if one attends above all else to that purpose, then whatever the future may bring it could only bring fresh material for such growth. Its own uncertainty cannot dissipate this certainty. One's growth is guaranteed, whether the future be pleasant or unpleasant, so long as one lives in the present strictly according to his dedicated ideal.
3.2.3.1Listen There will always be opportunities for the follower of this path to put his philosophy into practice. Whether pleasant or unpleasant, they should be welcomed! The more he tries, the more he is likely to accomplish. He should take care not to depend upon his personal judgement alone. If he makes the beginnings of a right (that is, impersonal and egoless) response to each problem, help may mysteriously appear to guide him to a right solution…
3.2.3.22,Listen … Man’s story is a serial one. It proceeds through body after body, birth after birth. But the fact is that once he really absorbs the spirit of this quest he will be unable to desert it for more than an interval, even should he wish to. He will be inexorably driven back to it by mysterious forces within his own psyche…
3.2.3.25,Listen To give up the “I” is very hard, yet that is our one and only task. The right attitude eclipses the ego and brings peace, whereas the wrong attitude enhances the ego and brings pain...
3.2.3.29,Listen ... The giving up of thoughts leads to the giving up of the personal self. In his quietest moments a man hears in the depths of his being a voice which tells him that he comes from a country to which one day he must return…
3.2.3.29,Listen ... The personality is but a transient shadow; a shadow presupposes a light; the light of the real self exists; renounce living in the shadow and move over to the light…
3.2.3.29,Listen … Consider what happens when we become intensely interested in a story unfolding itself on a cinema screen. What happens during the deepest points of such concentration? For the time being we actually forget ourselves, and we drop the whole burden of personal memories, relations, desires, anxieties, and pettinesses which constitute the ego. Temporarily the I is transcended. The attainment of the Overself is nothing more than the ability to detach, not destroy, the ego at will…
3.2.3.29,Listen Consciousness is the unique element in every experience…
3.2.3.29,Listen … Jesus said, “Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven.” What did he mean? Consider the minds of children in whom the ego is but little developed. How egoless they are. How spontaneous and immediate is their knowledge of the world around them …
3.2.3.29,Listen If he remains loyal to these ideals, then, through both dreary lapses and bright spurts alike, his spiritual life will grow in strong intensity and quality.
3.2.3.30Listen From the first moment that he sets foot on this inner path until the last one when he has finished it, he will at intervals be assailed by tests which will try the stuff he is made of. Such trials are sent to the student to examine his mettle, to show how much he is really worth, and to reveal the strength and weakness that are really his, not what he believes are his…
3.2.3.67,Listen The tests show whether he has become sufficiently strong to translate his ideals into action, whether he has conquered his passions and ruled his emotions at the bidding of those ideals, whether he will be willing to take the path of self-denial when the lower nature seeks to lure him away from the path.
3.2.3.68Listen ... Once he has committed himself to this quest, he will find that events so arrange themselves as to indicate his sincerity, examine his motives, display his weaknesses, and find out his virtues. His devotion to the philosophic ideal will be tested, his loyalty to the goal will be tried.
3.2.3.70,Listen ...The lessons he learns from the analytic contemplation of his own errors are excellent but costly, whereas those he learns from the contemplation of other men's errors are excellent and free…
3.2.3.74,Listen ... He who has once embarked on this quest, may be diverted from it for a while, but he can never be driven from it forever. His eventual return is certain…
3.2.3.74,Listen ... All through this quest, but especially at certain critical periods, events will so happen and situations will so arrange themselves that the aspirant's weaknesses of character will be brought out into the open. The experience may be painful and its results may be saddening, but only by thus learning to know and discriminate against his bad qualities can he set out to submit them to the formative discipline of philosophy...
3.2.3.74,Listen … The manner in which he will approach trying, painful, or hostile situations will also betray the true measure of his spirituality, his devotion to higher values, and his comprehension of what he has undertaken. He has to show, by the way he meets these events and faces such conditions, what he really is and wants to be. He will adjust himself to such problems only according to the degree of maturity attained…
3.2.3.74,Listen If a man is seriously embarked on this quest, he will understand that when a desirable object is being put into his possession, or torn away from it, his sincerity will be tested by the impersonality with which he regards the event and deduces its meaning.
3.2.3.81Listen Why not apply creative imagination to these testing periods? When you know that you are about to enter one of them, imagine that you will pass through it quite successfully, see yourself in your mind's eye measuring up to ideal conduct.
3.2.3.82Listen In each test there exists the chance, through success, to gain strength and pass up in Initiation to a higher level or, through failure, to display weakness and fall in conduct to a lower one.
3.2.3.88Listen In the Egyptian Mysteries, his capacity to resist a sexual temptation was deliberately tested. If he failed, the initiator would dismiss him, after addressing him thus: ”You have yielded to the attraction of the senses. Whoever lives in the senses remains in darkness.” If he succeeded, he would be granted leave to attend the temple college and receive instruction for some years in the mysteries of man and the universe.
3.2.3.91Listen Every test successfully met is rewarded by some growth in intuitive knowledge, strengthening of character, or initiation into a higher consciousness.
3.2.3.92Every test is a teacher to guide us to a higher level, a providential friend to give us the quality we most need.
3.2.3.96Listen The test will come with every major crisis, every minor ordeal. If his inner work has been well done he will be surprised at the calmness with which he meets and passes the event, astonished at his strength.
3.2.3.97Listen Before passing into a higher phase of his development, the disciple is usually confronted by life with a situation which will test his fitness for it. His success in meeting this test will open a gate leading to the next degree.
3.2.3.99Listen Quite often, the aspirant will not be aware how far he has grown in virtue until some crucial test arises in the sphere of everyday living. Then, to his surprise and pleasure, he may note the ease with which he passes it.
3.2.3.104Listen At the very gate of this higher quest, you will find certain obstacles obstructing your entry. They are not alien to you, they are in your mind. Your primary duty, therefore, is to overcome them.
3.2.3.114Listen … In the Overself there is no agony or pain; these belong to the sphere of illusion.
3.2.3.129,Listen When one is up against an especially difficult situation for which no immediate solution can be found, it will help him if he will use the time while waiting for the change--which will come--in order to deliberately cultivate greater patience and forebearance, as well as a more objective attitude.
3.2.3.130Listen ... In times of actual danger, the calm remembrance of the Overself will help to protect him.
3.2.3.131,Listen ... On this path he gets all kinds of vicissitudes and ups and downs, partly to demonstrate vividly that the inner reality is the only unchanging value and thus compel a resort to its quest, and partly to bring out latent qualities. But he will not be tried beyond what he can bear.
3.2.3.135,Listen In terrible times of suffering and anxiety it is more necessary than ever to cultivate receptivity to the divine forces within ourselves through spiritual studies and meditation.
3.2.3.140Listen ... When his weaknesses are counterbalanced by earnest aspiration and faith, if he never deserts his Ideal no matter what happens, if he clings to his desire for conscious attainment of unity with the Overself as the highest goal life offers and measures all other rewards accordingly, then the student may always count on the assistance which brought him safely through his time of crisis.
3.2.3.141,Listen Nothing but a great and unexpected upheaval will precipitate a change in their mental habits or impel a deviation from their physical habits. If it does come, they look upon it as a disaster, although when time gives them a longer perspective they look upon it as an enlightenment.
3.2.3.148Listen The particular problems which life has presented him with are exactly the ones suited to his own personal development…
3.2.3.149,Listen At every important turn on his path the aspirant will find a choice awaiting him. He will find himself facing a set of circumstances which test his motive, strength, and attainment. These periodical tests can be neither evaded nor avoided, and often they are not recognized for what they are. Temptation may camouflage them under attractive colours. Nevertheless the student's conduct in regard to them will decide whether he passes onward and upward, or falls back into pain and purification.
3.2.3.157Listen The more successful type of Quester is the one who can keep his interest, enthusiasm, and practices in a stable, unwaning condition.
3.2.3.169Listen ... He must refuse to follow the common error and identify himself with this one physical body of the present incarnation. Rather, he must identify himself with his mental being and feel this as something immortal, something reappearing on earth time after time and coming closer and closer, with each appearance, to the goal…
3.2.3.172,Listen If he is not willing to wait, this quest does not offer much for him. It is not only in meditation--although primarily in it--that patience is a requisite, but also in the work of purifying and ennobling character.
3.2.3.175Listen Pursue the quest, practise its exercises, and undergo its disciplines with a patience that does not halt for an instant. If you do this, the time will come when the Overself can hold out no longer. It will then no longer dwell in secret but in your heart.
3.2.3.176Listen … a man who has practised meditation all his life and apparently got no results, may very likely be given the reward at the moment of death.
3.2.3.178,Listen If one sticks to the Quest, come what may, he can be certain that his perseverance will eventually bring results. Some of the metaphysical studies and mystical exercises seem hard at first, but if one persists with them, the time will surely come when much which was hitherto obscure will suddenly become brilliantly clear and meaningful in a single instant before his eyes.
3.2.3.186Listen … Students are often apt to forget that it is their present thoughts, feelings, and actions which are predetermining the favourable or unfavourable conditions of incarnations to come, as well as the remainder of this one.
3.2.3.187,Listen To keep to this inner work steadfastly and persistently, to make of its exercises and practices a regular routine, is to make the undertaking easier for oneself in the end, as well as more successful in its results.
3.2.3.199Listen
27 Jan 2014
13 Dec 2012
4 Dec 2017
2 Jun 2011
26 Jun 2013
26 Oct 2013
3 Apr 2017
18 Apr 2017
20 Mar 2024
17 May 2012
22 Nov 2012
23 Aug 2021
24 Apr 2012
23 Mar 2012
27 Mar 2012
8 Aug 2016
16 Oct 2019
9 Jul 2023
20 Jun 2012
26 Feb 2015
10 May 2015
23 Mar 2011
12 Aug 2012
5 Feb 2012
13 Oct 2013
2 Jan 2013
17 Oct 2017
18 Mar 2024
13 Mar 2015
16 Feb 2012
26 Apr 2014
1 May 2023
20 Jul 2012
28 Mar 2013
24 Nov 2017
6 Jun 2014
15 Nov 2017
26 Jan 2012
11 Jun 2014
1 Mar 2012
11 Jun 2021
15 Jun 2012
5 Nov 2023
5 Jan 2013
The notebooks are copyright © 1984-1989 The Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation
This site is run by Paul Brunton-stiftelsen · info@paulbruntondailynote.se