The Library
The battle to secure mental stillness must first be fought and won before the battle of the ego can be brought to an end. For it is only in that deep state wherein all other thoughts are put to rest that the single thought of ”I” as ego can be isolated, faced, fought until its strength is pitilessly squeezed out and destroyed at last…
13.20.1.13,Listen ... In my secret heart I separate myself from nobody, just as this teaching itself excludes no other in its perfect comprehension. Because I had to call it by some name as soon as I began to write about it, I called it philosophy because this is too wide and too general a name to become the property of any single sect. In doing so I merely returned to its ancient and noble meaning among the Greeks who, in the Eleusinian Mysteries, designated the spiritual truth learnt at initiation into them as philosophy and the initiate himself as philosopher or lover of wisdom…
13.20.1.18,Listen ... I do not know of any better or broader name with which to mark those who pursue this quest than to say that they are students of philosophy…
13.20.1.18,Listen ... The democratic abolishment of class status and exclusive groups, which will be a distinctive feature of the coming age, should also show itself in the circles of mystical and philosophic students. If they have any superiority over others, let them display it by a superiority of conduct …
13.20.1.18,Listen ... The more we believe in the oneness of life, the less we ought to herd ourselves behind barriers. To add a new cult to the existing list is to multiply the causes of human division and thence of human strife…
13.20.1.18,Listen … He is always conscious of the fact that he is a citizen of the world-community…
13.20.1.18,Listen … The philosopher's larger and nobler vision refuses to establish a separate group consciousness for himself and for those who think as he does. Hence he refuses to establish a new cult, a new association, or a new label. To him the oneness of mankind is a fact and not a fable…
13.20.1.18,Listen Science suppresses the subject of experience and studies the object. Mysticism suppresses the object of experience and studies the subject. Philosophy suppresses nothing, studies both subject and object; indeed it embraces the study of all experience.
13.20.1.21Listen It is perhaps the amplitude and symmetry of the philosophic approach which make it so completely satisfying. For this is the only approach which honours reason and appreciates beauty, cultivates intuition and respects mystical experience, fosters reverence and teaches true prayer, enjoins action and promotes morality. It is the spiritual life fully grown.
13.20.1.22Listen ... The fivefold path consists of religious veneration, mystical meditation, rational reflection, moral re-education, and altruistic service…
13.20.1.23,Listen ... There exists a supreme reality beyond the awareness of sense or intellect; there exists a soul in man which is rooted in this reality; the higher purpose of human life is to establish full consciousness of and communion with this soul…
13.20.1.55,Listen Philosophy affirms, not on the basis of theoretical speculation but on that of direct experience, that every human being has a divine soul from which it draws life, consciousness, and intelligence.
13.20.1.59Listen Genuine philosophy is a living force actively at work in molding the character and modifying the destiny of its votaries.
13.20.1.61Listen This is philosophy which opens the way to bigger thoughts, wider minds, and finer ideals; which makes the quest for truth an inner adventure and a religious duty; and which finally points to a supernal divine stillness as the place where the revelation must be made.
13.20.1.68Listen It is not quite the same to go in search of a faith to believe in as to go in search of a truth to understand. Philosophy, however, unites the two endeavours.
13.20.1.93Listen Calmness and balance are the most admired virtues in the philosophic code. The first is developed to the extent of becoming superb self-composure, the second until it integrates utter opposites.
13.20.1.108Listen The would-be philosopher should not feel bound by labels, categories, and other fences which people want to put on others simply because they themselves live quite willingly surrounded by such fences and cannot understand someone who refuses to do so. Philosophy is a path which ends in the pathless--a way to the inner freedom which comes with truth.
13.20.1.153Listen Philosophy explains life, guides man, and--by removing his misunderstanding about his own identity--redeems him.
13.20.1.170Listen … For meditation will have calmed his temperament and disciplined his character; the metaphysics of truth will have sharpened his intelligence, protected him against error, and balanced his outlook; the philosophic ethos will have purified his motives and promoted his altruism, whilst the philosophic insight will have made him forever aware that he is an inhabitant of the country of the Overself…
13.20.1.173,Listen He who has sufficiently purified his character, controlled his senses, developed his reason, and unfolded his intuition is always ready to meet what comes and to meet it aright. He need not fear the future. Time is on his side. For he has stopped adding bad karma to his account and every fresh year adds good karma instead…
13.20.1.175,Listen ... He knows that each experience which comes to him is what he most needs at the time, even though it be what he likes least. He needs it because it is in part nothing else than his own past thinking, feeling, and doing come back to confront him to enable him to see and study their results in a plain, concrete, unmistakable form…
13.20.1.175,Listen Epictetus: ”There is only one thing for which God has sent me into the world, and that is to perfect my nature in all sorts of virtue or strength; and there is nothing that I cannot use for that purpose.”
13.20.1.175,Listen Those who would assign philosophy the role of a leisurely pastime for a few people who have nothing better to do, are greatly mistaken… It can be applied to all personal and social problems without exception. It shows us how to achieve a balanced existence in an unbalanced society…
13.20.1.177,Listen If philosophy begins with doubt and wonder, it ends by taking away whatever doubts are left in the mind and converting the wonder into holy reverence.
13.20.1.178Listen The divine character of his inmost being will become plain to him, and that not as a matter of wishful thinking or suggested belief but as firsthand personal experience.
13.20.1.194Listen Each person who brings more truth and goodness, more consciousness and balance into his own small circle, brings it into the whole world at the same time. A single individual may be helpless in the face of global events, but the echoes of the echoes of his inspired words and deeds, presence and thoughts, may be heard far from him in place and time.
13.20.1.200Listen The first awakening to intellectual and artistic values in a young person is an important event, as the first awakening at puberty to sex is a dynamic one. But the first awakening to the vision of what philosophy has to offer transcends them all.
13.20.1.209Listen To pass on this philosophical knowledge is as necessary as to pass on essential forms of agricultural or industrial knowledge.
13.20.1.221Listen When a man sticks to unshakeable principles and abides by unalterable ethics, he derives an inner strength which not only is protective but also makes him feel secure.
13.20.1.226Listen A mind freed from its weaknesses and illuminated by the Overself, a life guided from within and ruled by truth--these are some of the rewards the quest offers him.
13.20.1.229Listen There is a deep joy in this growing perception of life's larger meaning, a profound comfort in the ever increasing knowledge of its beneficent purpose.
13.20.1.234Listen The worth of this teaching does not depend upon the numbers of people who espouse it. The weaker the response which it receives from the world in general, the stronger should be the effort put forth by the few, if they really believe in it, to keep it alive.
13.20.1.250Listen The philosophic movement is a loose and free one. Its strength cannot be measured by numbers or institutions, for externality and rigidity are out of harmony with its teaching and character. Yet, unorganized and unadvertised though it be, it is not less vital and not less significant than more visible movements.
13.20.1.252Listen In philosophy a man can find everything he needs for his spiritual guidance throughout life. His religious, mystical, metaphysical, and ethical requirements are all provided for. If he faithfully follows its teaching, no other system will ever attract him again.
13.20.1.263Listen When our eyes have been opened to the true meaning of man, when we know that this is not to be found in his transient personality but in his enduring essence, life will possess a quality it never had before.
13.20.1.265Listen A teaching which helps men and women to meet adversity with courage, opposition with serenity, and temptation with insight can surely render a real service to the modern world.
13.20.1.284Listen The first feeling is one of astonishment that such a large area of knowledge and experience should exist among us humans and yet be almost unknown to most of us.
13.20.1.293Listen He who has ascended to these higher levels of being, reflects the changed point of view in all his personal relationships. Resentment collapses, forgiveness arises.
13.20.1.300Listen How many persons have told me that it was the help and support got from these philosophic ideas, truths, and principles which enabled them to endure periods of public terror or private distress without nervous breakdown!
13.20.1.303Listen When a man or woman comes into fuller awareness of the True Self he arrives at the same time at the discovery of his true work, together with the capacity to perform it…
13.20.1.321,Listen ... Here then is a teaching, very old and very wise, which summarizes all human knowledge, actual and possible, and which shows man how best to shape his personal and practical life. I am not its originator. I can but try to re-present it to a troubled, broken, and blinded world which waits for this knowledge in modern form…
13.20.1.325,Listen Daily meditation will overcome the materializing effect of constant contact with worldly influences…
13.20.1.325,Listen ... We need to achieve a balanced life with a wise alternation between action and repose, work and meditation, being positive and being passive…
13.20.1.325,Listen ... The God Who is to be found within ourselves must also exist equally outside ourselves in the phenomenal universe, else how would He be Infinite...?
13.20.1.325,Listen ... This philosophy rightly understood and rightly used will make men who make history. It calls for people who are ready and able to raise it above the status of a tea table topic, and to devote to its study and practice not merely an occasional free evening, but their whole lives; who will not only understand these great truths intellectually, but feel their transforming power in their hearts, and courageously live them in everyday life...
13.20.1.325,Listen … they who think that the purpose of human incarnation is to increase pleasures and accumulate property have learned nothing from the instability of life and insecurity of possessions which have marked the period now passing …
13.20.1.325,Listen The greatest evils of our age are not in its outward materialism but in its inward ignorance, and not in its practical inventiveness but in its mental unbalance.
13.20.1.325,Listen Philosophy combines a lofty idealism with an intense practicality.
13.20.1.326Listen This teaching can be understood only by those who try to live it: all others merely think they understand it. Only those who have incorporated it in their lives for a number of years can know how intensely practical philosophy is.
13.20.1.327Listen Practical philosophy is the art of living so as to fulfil life’s higher purpose.
13.20.1.329Listen … It is a grave mistake to regard these matters as having no more than a theoretical interest, to be played with or not according to one’s taste …
13.20.1.330,Listen Wisdom begins only when you apply in practice what you absorb in theory.
13.20.1.332Listen The effect of his studies and meditations will slowly but surely reveal itself in his life. His world outlook will sparkle with vitality, his speech will form itself with precision, his deeds will be wise and more virtuous. For philosophy, unlike metaphysics, is not only a theory to be learned from books but even more an integral way of life to be practised in society.
13.20.1.335Listen Philosophy will show a man how to find his better self, will lead him to cultivate intuition, will guide him to acquire sounder values and stronger will, will train him in right thinking and wise reflection, and, lastly, will give him correct standards of ethical rightness or wrongness…
13.20.1.337,Listen It is not that truth has to be made practical, for it is the most practical thing which exists. It is that men have to become better instructed in it, as well as in the higher laws which reflect it, and then live out what they have learned.
13.20.1.338Listen Philosophy demands that we actualize our ideals. Wisdom must flower in deeds that accord with it or it is not wisdom. Action is the decisive factor …
13.20.1.357,Listen The man who faithfully obeys the injunctions and practices the regimes of philosophy can never be a failure, whatever the world says. Nor can he be unemployed, for he understands that his real employer is the Overself and that the work he is doing will not end while life does not end.
13.20.1.389Listen ... Philosophy aims at producing a group of men and women trained in mind control, accustomed to subordinate immediate interests to ultimate ends, sincerely desirous of serving humanity in fundamental ways, and possessed of philosophic knowledge which will make them valuable citizens…
13.20.1.397,Listen ... The time has come to develop the knowledge and extend the understanding of a teaching which few know and fewer still understand. Occupied principally, as it is, with matters of eternal rather than ephemeral life, it finds today a larger opportunity for service than it could have found at any earlier period in consequence of the evolutionary forces which have been working on man's history, ideas, attitudes, communications, and productions. It is the most important knowledge which any human being could study.
13.20.1.397,Listen If he can combine and balance a practical attitude towards the world with a transcendental detachment from the world, he will fulfil man’s higher purpose.
13.20.1.416Listen … The attraction toward the divine need not mean repulsion from the world. There is room in human life for both the heavenly and the earthly. To deepen knowledge and increase beauty, to spread compassion and to uplift man—this is our work today.
13.20.1.425,Listen Philosophy includes religion but not “a” religion. It is universal, not sectarian.
13.20.1.445Listen … just as food can never displace drink for the sustenance of a healthy body, so meditation can never displace prayer for the sustenance of a healthy spiritual life, any more than study can displace meditation. Worship and prayer are essential philosophic duties.
13.20.1.452,Listen Philosophy rises above sects and is therefore free from sectarian dispute, friction, and hostility. It is naturally tolerant, knowing that as men rise in cultural and moral development, their beliefs will rise in truthfulness and nobility.
13.20.1.497Listen By refusing to join philosophy to any built-up structure, social or cultural organization, or particular group of people, this approach keeps its own freedom and bestows that same freedom on those who study it.
13.20.1.519Listen As one reflects upon the majestic grandeur of this teaching, its amplitude and height, one feels like a traveller who stands for the first time at a vantage point of the Himalayas, where loftier and ever loftier snowy summits fill the whole horizon to his left and right, as far as his eyes can see.
13.20.1.524Listen
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12 May 2024
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20 Jun 2011
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19 Jun 2020
13 Feb 2018
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1 Oct 2012
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15 Aug 2015
14 Dec 2023
14 Sep 2023
27 Jul 2012
11 Oct 2013
16 Oct 2014
13 Nov 2024
29 May 2022
28 Jul 2023
5 Dec 2020
13 Jun 2022
2 Dec 2014
2 Jan 2015
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