The Library
Whoever wishes to develop beyond the spiritual level of the mass of mankind must begin by changing the normal routine of mankind. He must reflect, pray, and meditate daily. He must scrutinize all his activities by the light of philosophy's values and ethics…
3.2.5.4,Listen He has to learn how to surrender his egotism and swallow his pride. He has to cleanse his heart of impurity and then open it to divinity.
3.2.5.5Listen The aspiration has gotten into his bloodstream and every act, every thought follows inevitably from this one primal fact.
3.2.5.8Listen Make it a matter of habit, until it becomes a matter of inclination, to be kind, gentle, forgiving, and compassionate. What can you lose? A few things now and then, a little money here and there, an occasional hour or an argument? But see what you can gain! More release from the personal ego, more right to the Overself's grace, more loveliness in the world inside us, and more friends in the world outside us.
3.2.5.12This Quest cannot be followed to success without the quality of courage. It is needed at the beginning, in the middle, and near the end. It is needed to think for oneself, to act in nonconformity to one's environment, and to obey intuitive leading toward new, unknown, or unfamiliar directions.
3.2.5.13Listen By the use of will, of force of a decision made and kept, a man may strive against his animal self to win peace. By the practice of mental quiet, of turning inward, of letting his higher nature emerge, he may win it, too.
3.2.5.17Listen Wisdom is needed to make the most of life. The discipline of character is needed to prevent avoidable suffering. The control of thought is needed to attain peace. Reverence for the highest is needed for spiritual fulfillment.
3.2.5.26Listen The man who takes his body for himself, misunderstands himself. Only a course of severe discipline will correct it and reveal to him by intense experience the power subtler than flesh, subtler even than intellect, which is at the vital centre deep within consciousness.
3.2.5.27Listen It is true that the aspiration for Overself is also a desire and must eventually also go. But it is useful and helpful in getting free from lesser or lower desires.
3.2.5.31Listen The means needed for the quest have been listed in Buddha's eightfold path: (1) right belief, (2) right decision, (3) right words, (4) right dealings, (5) right livelihood, (6) right tendency, (7) right thinking, (8) right meditative immersion into oneself.
3.2.5.32Listen He is not only to seek the Real, but he is also to love the Real; not only to make it the subject of his constant thoughts but also the object of his devoted worship.
3.2.5.39Listen When we feel the littleness of our ego against the greatness of our Overself, we become humble. Therefore it is that to those who feel neither the one nor the other, the first prescription is: cultivate humility.
3.2.5.41Listen Those who cannot or will not learn to bow their heads in reverence at certain times like sunsets, in certain places like massive mountains, or before certain men like sages, will not be able to learn the highest wisdom.
3.2.5.42Listen The refinement and evolution of a human being requires not only a cultivation of his intellectual faculties, not only of his heart qualities, but also of his aesthetic faculties. All should be trained together at the same time. A love of the beautiful in nature and art, in sunsets and pictures, in flowers and music, lifts him nearer the ideal of perfection.
3.2.5.43Listen It may not be an axiom in many teachings, but it is in philosophy: to purify emotion, to refine feeling, to control attitude, and to uplift mood by accepting help from art and nature are spiritual exercises.
3.2.5.46Listen The attitude of expectancy and hope in the matter of seeking illumination is a correct one. But the hour when this Grace will be bestowed is unpredictable; therefore, hope must be balanced with patience, and expectancy with perseverance. Meanwhile, there is all the work one can handle in attending to the improvement of character and understanding, the cultivation of intuition and practice of meditation, the prayers for Grace, and in self-humbling beneath the Will of the Overself.
3.2.5.53Listen Until the time his karma brings him the indwelling Master, the seeker must continue to prepare for what will then happen. He must seek to uncover and uproot all faults and characteristic weaknesses. He must resolve to achieve the best life--that is, one that exemplifies truth, goodness, and beauty. He must understand well the proper values to be attached to worldly matters and to spiritual ones. He must face the difficulties of everyday life with courage and with the knowledge gleaned from his study.
3.2.5.55Listen Ultimately he will have to rise into that pure atmosphere whence he can survey his personal life as a thing apart. And, still more difficult as it is, he will have to live in such a way as to use personality to express the wisdom and goodness felt on that height…
3.2.5.59,Listen At last he finds that he must become as a little child and re-acquire faith. But this time it will not be blind faith; it will be intelligent. He must free himself from the pride, arrogance, and conceit of the intellect and bow in homage before the eternal Mystery; there is much that he can learn about himself, his mind, the laws of living, and the ways of Nature. Nothing is to be rejected. He needs to believe as well as to know. In the end, too, he has to drop all the isms, however much he may have got from them in the past, and think, feel, and live as a free being.
3.2.5.60Listen His personal duty is to grow spiritually all he can as quickly as possible. He must concentrate on himself, but always keep at the back of his mind the idea that one day he will be fit to serve others and do something for them too. Spiritual growth entails meditation practices kept up as regularly as possible, metaphysical study, cultivation of intuition, and a kindling of an ever increasing love for the divine soul, the true “I.” It is this soul which is the ray of God reflected in him …
3.2.5.61,Listen The fact that one may not have had any apparent mystical experience, even though he has tried practising concentration, need not dismay him. Concentration alone is not enough. It is no less important to practise prayer and aspiration, unremitting effort at improving character and eliminating weaknesses, strengthening the will and purifying the emotions. If he applies faithful and persistent effort in these directions, he will not only cultivate a properly balanced and well-developed personality, but he will eventually call forth the Grace and Guidance of the Overself.
3.2.5.64Listen In what way and by what means can a man discover the truth? By an aspiration active enough and intelligent enough to penetrate both mysticism and philosophy while saturating itself in reverence.
3.2.5.67Listen Counsel to a seeker: First hear or study, reflect and understand what you, the world, and God are. Then enter the Stillness, love it. The Stillness will take care of you, and of your problems.
3.2.5.68Listen The Quest uses the whole of one's being, and when enlightenment comes, all parts are illumined by it. To prepare for this, one should continue the self-humbling prayers for Grace, the exercise of sudden remembrance of the Overself, the surrender of the lower nature to the Higher, and the never-ceasing yearning for Reality.
3.2.5.70Listen He needs a humbleness like that of the grass which is trodden by all feet, a patience like that of the tree which is exposed to all weathers.
3.2.5.76Listen It is a work upon himself, his character and outlook, his knowledge and capacity. But especially is it a work upon his faculty of attention, his control of thought, his delicate awareness.
3.2.5.78Listen We are living in wonderfully momentous times and it is the task of those on the Path to become bearers of the light in a dark age. But first, before that can be, each one must purify, ennoble, and instruct himself. He must fit himself for the divine grace because nothing can be done by his own personal power.
3.2.5.83Listen If daily work is accompanied by daily remembrance, and if detachment from the ego is practised along with both, this goal can be attained by a worldling as much as by a world-renouncer.
3.2.5.88Listen These teachings have first to become known, then understood, next accepted, and lastly made a part of day-to-day living.
3.2.5.89Listen He should ask of each day what it has yielded in this lifelong struggle for the realization of higher values.
3.2.5.92Listen He need not torment himself trying to understand everything in the teaching, if he finds many parts too difficult. It is enough to start with what he can understand and apply that to daily living. This will lead later to increased intuitive capacity to receive such ideas as he had to pass by for the time being.
3.2.5.94Listen … a valuable part of the quest's technique is to treat each major experience as a means of lifting himself to a higher level. All depends not on the particular nature of the experience, but upon his reaction to it. It may be pleasurable or painful, a temptation or a tribulation, a caress by fortune or a blow of fate; whatever its nature he can use it to grow. As he moves from experience to experience, he may move from strength to strength. If he uses each situation aright--studying it analytically and impersonally, supplicating the higher self for help if the experience is in the form of temptation, or for wisdom if it is in the form of tribulation--his progress is assured…
3.2.5.96,Listen There is great profit in the coinage of spiritual self-growth waiting to be picked up at every turn. The method is a simple one. Consider every person who makes an impact on your life as a messenger from the Overself, every happening which leaves its mark as a divinely-sent teacher.
3.2.5.97Listen We must endeavour to find this divinity within, not merely at set times of meditation, but also amid the press of the marketplaces.
3.2.5.98Listen Since most of us have to live in the world as laymen, or even prefer to do so, we must learn how to make use of the world so that it will promote our spiritual aspirations and not obstruct them.
3.2.5.101Listen The beginner needs knowledge, needs to attend lectures, study books, discuss ideas, and even debate the criticism of them. But the man who has done all that needs to move on, to get into the testing ground where teachings and values must prove themselves--that is, into life itself.
3.2.5.103Listen … And the Gita tells us that no efforts are in vain; all bring their fruit sometime, somewhere--if not in this birth then in another, if not in this world then in the next…
3.2.5.109,Listen When the will is feebler than the imagination, the life loses its balance.
3.2.5.126Listen To promote his idealistic tendencies and to neglect his realistic ones, to achieve a high level of intellectuality and to remain at a low level of morality, to be over-critical of others and under-critical of oneself--these are types of unbalance which he should adjust as soon as possible.
3.2.5.128Listen The ideal is the fullness and harmony of balanced qualities, wasting none, denying none: the active will companioned by the mystical intuition, the pleasure-loving senses steadied by the truth-loving reason.
3.2.5.131Listen Whatever faculty, quality, function, or aspect he is deficient in, he should seek to cultivate it. Whatever is present to excess, he should seek to curb or modify it. Harmony, Balance, and Completeness characterize the idea.
3.2.5.143Listen The virtue of balance is neither easily nor quickly bought, but its cost is repaid by the values it yields—greater security, more endurance, less error, and better progress.
3.2.5.148Listen He has to train himself to catch what the soul intuits as clearly as he can already catch what the intellect thinks and the body reports.
3.2.5.153Listen Whenever he observes too much one-sidedness in his being or living, he must attend to its balance and make needed adjustments.
3.2.5.156Listen Balance is needed in all ways on this quest. The student must not overvalue his emotional experiences, nor overconcentrate upon his metaphysical studies. He must strive for poise in all things and at all times …
3.2.5.158,Listen In the well-formed and well-informed aspirant the activities of both paths will be subtly blended. This is part of what is meant when it is said that he is properly balanced. And out of this union will come the second birth, the new man who reflects at last the glorious consciousness of the Overself.
3.2.5.163Listen Energy and drive in action, calm and patience in meditation—this is the combination he ought to achieve.
3.2.5.165Listen Salvation does not depend on any one factor but on a balanced total of several factors. The devotional temperament is not enough. The disciplined will is not enough. The moral virtues are not enough. The trained intellect is not enough.
3.2.5.170Listen The more intellectual a man is, the more does he need to bring a devotional element into the studies and practices.
3.2.5.184Listen All influences, contacts, persons, or places which destroy our balance are to be shunned as undesirable, if not evil.
3.2.5.186Listen … He must humble the ego. He should do this himself, secretly, and through calm, reflective meditation; then life will not do it to him openly and through bitter external circumstances.
3.2.5.191,Listen Evolution is working along three lines in the human being: the intellectual, the mystical, and the moral-physical. All must be attended to … The threefold path is what philosophy asks for although religion, science or mysticism is usually satisfied with a single path. Meditation is the most important of all as without it one cannot transcend the intellect, but it is not enough by itself …
3.2.5.195,Listen He must not only do so far as he can all that the Long Path demands from him but he must also step outside it altogether and do those totally different things that the Short Path demands.
3.2.5.199Listen But finding the higher presence within the heart is only the first step. The next is to surrender oneself to it, to be passive in its hands, to let it direct the course of thought, feeling, and conduct. This is a task which is not less hard, and will take not less time, than the first one. It is indeed an art to be learnt by unremitting practice.
3.2.5.202Listen The Quest has two aspects. One is the constant accumulation of right thoughts, feelings, and acts, along with the constant elimination of wrong ones. The other aspect called the Short Path is the constant remembrance and contemplation of the Overself.
3.2.5.209Listen
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