The Library
These glimpses come at the most unexpected of times and in the most unexpected places … Reports have been received which reveal that they may come abruptly during the strain and pressure of business or professional activity, as well as during the relaxation of leisure hours, at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the day, during pleasurable periods or amid great suffering.
14.22.6.1,Listen The Overself’s take-over is not always the same but changes with the time and the occasion, the person and the place. It may be gentle, quiet, almost unmarked at first, or it may be like a tremendous force, commanding and irresistible.
14.22.6.2Listen When this consciousness takes hold of a man, it takes him by surprise. Infinity is so utterly different from what he was experiencing a few minutes earlier that its wonder, its truth, its beauty, its love fill him abruptly, as if in descent from the skies.
14.22.6.5Listen The beginner usually has to go through an emotional experience in order to receive a mystical experience, but the proficient is under no necessity to do so.
14.22.6.22Listen In that moment he feels on the very verge of eternity, about to lose himself in its impersonal depths.
14.22.6.25Listen When the opportunity to gain a glimpse of his Overself draws near, it will be foreshadowed by certain happenings, either of an inward or an outward nature, or both.
14.22.6.26Listen They may come quite abruptly, those intensely lived moments of true vision, those spasmodic glimpses of a beauty and truth above the best which earthly life offers. The mind then rests and there is a gap in its usual activities, a Void out of which these heavenly experiences come to life as they overcome our ordinary feelings.
14.22.6.28Listen The Overself takes over his identity not by obliterating it but by including it through its surrender.
14.22.6.30Listen The glimpse may move so gently into awareness that the beginning is hardly noticed. Or it may move in with a rush that overwhelms him. With it, knowledge, understanding, meaning, nobility, and divinity fill the aura around him at the moment.
14.22.6.39Listen The glimpse may come in the depth of meditation where expectancy places it. But it may also come at unexpected moments.
14.22.6.44Listen The glimpse may come only once or twice in a lifetime to one quester yet repeat itself twentyfold to another person.
14.22.6.49Listen The glimpse shows up something of his higher identity …
14.22.6.56,Listen The points of this experience are the difficulty of describing it precisely, the joy it yields and the peace it brings, the feeling of a finer self and the sense of a higher presence, the appraisal of its preciousness and the fading away of worldly desires.
14.22.6.67Listen When the two are one, when ego and Overself no longer remain at a distance from one another, man experiences his first illumination. What will happen thereafter is wrapped in mystery.
14.22.6.69Listen In this brief interval when he feels himself to be in the presence of the Overself, when goodwill, peace, and wisdom become living eternal realities rather than mere mocking words, the littleness vanishes from life and a sacred grandeur replaces it.
14.22.6.70Listen These splendid moments, so filled with flashes of beauty and goodness, so tremendous in meaning and perspective, are like peeps into Paradise.
14.22.6.74Listen Glimpses vary much in their nature. Some are soft, mild and delicate, quiet and restrained; others are ecstatic, rapturous, and excited. All give some sort of uplift, exaltation, enlightenment, or revelation and also to varying degrees.
14.22.6.79Listen I remember the first time I had this astonishing experience…I seemed to dissolve and vanish from that place, but not from consciousness. Something was there, a presence, certainly not me, but I was fully aware of it. It seemed to be something of the highest importance, the only thing that mattered. After a few minutes I came back, discovered myself in time and space again; but a great peace had touched me and a very benevolent feeling was still with me. I looked at the trees, the shrubs, the flowers, and the grass and felt a tremendous sympathy with them and then when I thought of other persons a tremendous benevolence towards them.
14.22.6.80,Listen In this mysterious moment the two are one. He no longer abides with the mere images of reality. He is now in the authentic world of reality itself.
14.22.6.81Listen There are three stages in each glimpse. The initial one brings a soft feeling of its gentle approach. The second carries the man to its peak of upliftment, enlightenment, and peace. The final one draws him down again into a fading glow which occupies the mind's background and later survives only in memory.
14.22.6.82Listen It is a state of exquisite tenderness, of love welling up from an inner centre and radiating outward in all directions. If other human beings or animal creatures come within his contact at the time, they become recipients of this love without exception. For then no enemies are recognized, none are disliked, and it is not possible to regard anyone as repulsive.
14.22.6.83With the glimpse a feeling overspreads his heart of benevolence towards all living creatures--not only human but also animal and not only animal but even plant. He would not, could not knowingly harm a single one. The Christians call this love, the Buddhists compassion, the Hindus oneness. My own term is goodwill, but all are right…
14.22.6.94,Listen There are exquisite moments when all existence seems elevated to a higher plane, when one's individual being is absorbed in a harmony with all things.
14.22.6.97Listen He will feel spontaneous peace that comes from he knows not where, intellectual conviction that the right path has been found, mysterious detachment that takes hold of him during worldly temptations and worldly tribulations alike.
14.22.6.108Listen When you are in this wider consciousness you are at home. Outwardly you may be without a roof to shelter your head but still you will feel protected, secure, and provided for. Your feeling and your trust are not groundless. For the outward manifestation of this inward care will follow.
14.22.6.109Listen You will comprehend that while the Overself thus enfolds you, you can never again feel lonely, never again find the sky turned black because some human love has been denied or been withdrawn from you.
14.22.6.110Listen A feeling of lightness and freedom, of songlike well-being and perfect harmony, comes with this disidentification from the body.
14.22.6.113Listen This is his first thrilling discovery of the Overself's existence, his first incontestable evidence of its power. No later experience can equal it in emotional feeling. It is one of the really momentous points of his life.
14.22.6.119Listen These glimpses are encounters with divinity. There is a quality about them which separates them from all the other contacts and encounters of life.
14.22.6.125Listen This wonderful and exquisite feeling is really within himself, only he transfers it unconsciously to the scenes and persons outside himself and thus perceives goodness and beauty everywhere.
14.22.6.132Listen If the intercourse of man and woman is the most intimate act in the lives of both, the conscious contact of a human being with the Overself is even more intimate still.
14.22.6.134Listen His consciousness is lifted up into another world of being; his little self is in communication with the Overself; his perception of truth is instantly translated into power to live that truth.
14.22.6.135Listen With both the brief Glimpse and the lasting Fulfilment comes a strong feeling of release. This refers to release from all the various kinds of limitation and restriction which have hemmed and oppressed him heretofore.
14.22.6.142Listen … He will feel an overwhelming sense of relief as the glimpse deepens and all cares, all burdens, fade away.
14.22.6.143,Listen It is like the feeling of returning to a well-beloved home after long absence, a joy whose arisal is spontaneous and unavoidable.
14.22.6.145Listen In these enchanted moments, all life takes on the shadowlike quality of a dream.
14.22.6.151Listen The sudden Olympian elation which the glimpse gives, the unfamiliar feeling that it is like looking through a window on an entirely different and wholly glorious world of being, the inner knowing that this is reality--these things make it a benediction.
14.22.6.153Listen The Glimpses are not completely uniform in their details. In each one there is different emphasis on a particular aspect, such as its Beauty, Power, Impersonality, or Emptiness.
14.22.6.160Listen The glimpse will affect each individual in a different way, although the feeling of stepping out of darkness into light will be common to all.
14.22.6.163Listen Mostly as a result of meditation, but sometimes during an unexpected glimpse, a mystical experience of an unusual kind may develop. He feels transparent to the Overself; its light passes into and through him. He then finds that his ordinary condition was as if a thick wall surrounded him, devoid of windows and topped by a thick roof, a condition of imprisonment in limitation and ordinariness. But now the walls turn to glass, their density is miraculously gone, he is not only open to the light streaming in but lets it pass on, irradiating the world around.
14.22.6.166Listen He touches the Permanent, feels that his true self is part of eternity and this other self is a foolish thing he is glad to be rid of.
14.22.6.171Listen There is something in man which does not belong to this world, something mysterious, holy, and serene. It is this that touches and holds him at certain unforgettable moments.
14.22.6.176Listen The discovery of timelessness, of its reality and factuality, is both a thing to wonder at and a joyful experience.
14.22.6.189Listen The Glimpse comes as a benediction and as a grace. The heart should be grateful, immensely grateful for its visitation. It possesses a beauty which is not of this world, which gives joy to the heart.
14.22.6.206Listen As this wonderful feeling steals over him, there is a clear and unmistakable sense that the Overself is displacing the ego. Hitherto he has obeyed the rule of the flesh and the brain and consequently has shared their pitiful limitations. Now he becomes acutely aware that a new sovereign is taking his place on the throne.
14.22.6.212Listen As he approaches nearer to awareness of the Overself, he approaches nearer to a cloistral inward stillness.
14.22.6.213Listen There is a unique bliss in this new-found freedom of the second self, a sublime peace in this dissolution of old restraints.
14.22.6.218Listen The ego slides from off his shoulders like a heavy overcoat and he feels delightfully free.
14.22.6.222Listen It is the glorious moment when Adam re-enters Eden, even though he is only a visiting guest and not a permanent dweller therein.
14.22.6.226Listen During these wonderful glimpses ordinary existence seems suspended.
14.22.6.234Listen He finds a new joy deep within himself, a new and higher meaning deep within life.
14.22.6.235Listen How inadequate are constructed sentences to tell anyone the total wonder of a glimpse, of the I's departure and the Overself's arrival!
14.22.6.240Listen This is his real being. He sought for it, prayed to it, and communed with it in the past as if it were something other than, and apart from, himself. Now he knows that it was himself, that there is no need for him to do any of these things. All he needs is to recognize what he is and to realize it at every moment.
14.22.6.264Listen He enters into a state which is certainly not a disappearance of the ego, but rather a kind of divine fellowship of the ego with its source.
14.22.6.265Listen It is neither the ego thinking of the Overself nor the Overself thinking of itself. All thoughts are absent from this experience. It is rather that the Overself contemplates and knows itself in the moment that the ego is withdrawn into it.
14.22.6.269Listen For the brief period in which it prevails, the glimpse destroys the ego's dominance.
14.22.6.271Listen His old centre in the ego has mysteriously gone. His new centre in the Overself has taken its place.
14.22.6.272Listen In that moment man has come to himself. Before then he has been dwelling in alien things, in his passions, his thoughts, his emotions, and his desires.
14.22.6.276Listen In this ecstatic mental silence, the personal will is given up, the impersonal Overself is given mastery.
14.22.6.277Listen His personal identity is taken away for a while, to be replaced by a higher one.
14.22.6.278Listen To be born again, in the sense that Jesus used this phrase when speaking to Nicodemus, means to leave the ego's limited and outward awareness for the Overself's infinite and inward awareness.
14.22.6.279It is literally a going out of his little self into the liberating enlightening Overself.
14.22.6.281Listen In that blessed moment he sinks his identity into the Reality which he has reached.
14.22.6.283Listen The glimpse gives a man either a revelation or a confirmation that something exists which transcends this ordinary life, that it is holy, beautiful, satisfying, and that he may commune with it.
14.22.6.286Listen The glimpse is a man's personal revelation of his divine possibilities. It is breath-taking and beautiful. He eagerly seeks its repetition.
14.22.6.287Listen Only when he knows his ego as it is known in the Overself can a man be truly said to know himself.
14.22.6.289Listen The divine self reveals itself for a few thrilling moments and then draws back into the void where it dwells. But the glimpse is enough to tell him that a higher kind of life is possible and that there is a being beyond the ego.
14.22.6.291The glimpse gives him a slight inkling of what the term Overself means. It shows him--not as intellectual idea but as realized fact--something of the ideal toward which he shall strive.
14.22.6.292Listen It is from such paradoxical moments that man learns both how insignificant he is and how great he is!
14.22.6.294Listen With this experience of his own divinity, he discovers a meaning in life. Henceforth, he is able to take part consciously in the higher evolution which is inherent in it.
14.22.6.297Listen The Glimpse provides assurance that the Soul exists, that God is, that the purpose of human life must include spiritual fulfilment to be complete...
14.22.6.300,Yes it is a wonderful feeling, this which accompanies a glimpse of the higher self; but when it is also merged with a knowing, a positive perception beyond the need of discussion, interpretation, formulation, or judgement, it gives the philosophical seeker a certitude which is like a benediction.
14.22.6.301Listen Every man who passes through this experience and holds its memory, verifies for himself that there is an Infinite Life-Power pervading the entire universe--also that it is ever present, perfectly wise, and all-knowing. Its point of contact with him is his Overself.
14.22.6.302Listen In that sudden moment of spiritual awareness, or that longer period of spiritual ecstasy, he identifies himself no more with the projection from Mind but with pure Mind itself. In that severance from its projection, the shadow becomes the sun.
14.22.6.303Listen During such unforgettable moments the Soul will speak plainly, if silently, to him. It may tell him about his true relationship to the universe and to his fellow creatures. It will certainly tell him about Itself. It may separate him from his body and let him gaze down upon it as from a height, long enough to permit him to comprehend that the flesh is quite the poorest and least significant part of him. And perhaps best of all it will certainly fill him with the assurance that after his return to the world of lonely struggle and quick forgetfulness, It will still remain beside and behind him.
14.22.6.304Listen A glimpse may exalt the man and give him inspiration, but above everything else it attests for him the fact that he is fundamentally Spirit. This is the commonest kind of Glimpse but there is another kind which, in addition to doing these things, opens mysterious doors and provides inlooks to the working of secret laws and occult processes in Nature, the world and the life of man. This kind of glimpse may fitly be termed “a revelation.”
14.22.6.305Listen In this mood there is knowledge without thoughts, understanding without words.
14.22.6.312Listen What goes on within his ego could be better seen, and judged, if he could climb above it for a short time. This is just what the glimpse enables him to do. It clears the sight.
14.22.6.313Listen The experience explains a man to himself for the first time, lights up the fact that he lives in two planes at one and the same time. It reveals his ego as the illusion which envelops his consciousness and his Overself as the reality behind his consciousness.
14.22.6.315Listen It is in those uplifted moments that one has the possibility of coming near to confirm the Pythagorean belief that the human soul is an emanation of the Universal Divine Mind.
14.22.6.322Listen If he will compare those rapturous and illumined moments with his prosaic ordinary days, he will have an excellent clue to what his life's goal should be, what his true self really is, as well as how and where he should look for both.
14.22.6.326Listen When he reaches this high level, he feels that he is an integral part of the cosmos, rooted in and supported by the illimitable Reality. But the glimpse is only momentary for he is forced by some powerful attraction to return to his body and with it to his ordinary self.
14.22.6.332Listen The Glimpse provides overwhelming confirmation of the belief in a divine principle, positive certainty that it rules the world, and renewed assurance that one day all men will obey its benign prompting towards goodness and wisdom.
14.22.6.334He learns then that there is another part of himself not the ego which has hitherto dominated his thoughts and days--a delightful beautiful unpressured part. He knows then what peace of mind really means. He sees that he has lived only as a fraction of himself, and even that has been made miserable by inner or outer friction.
14.22.6.336Listen He perceives that this is a new kind of experience, a new way of knowing, a new level of happiness, a new quality of life.
14.22.6.338Listen He who has tasted the immeasurable joy of the Overself's peace will not care to shrink back again into the little self's confines. For he will know then that the Infinite, the Void, the Transcendent--call what he will the loss of his ego--is not a loss of happiness but an unlimited magnification of it.
14.22.6.341In these brief but glorious moments we discover that we are divine beings. If most of us are worse than the front we present to our neighbours, all of us are better than they think through our affiliation with divinity.
14.22.6.353Listen Men are so wrapt up in themselves that even when the glimpse happens, they look at the experience as their own, in origin occurrence and result. They seldom look at it from the other side. For it is also an attempt by the Overself first to reveal Itself, second to communicate with them.
14.22.6.358Listen The Glimpse is the difference between trying to know and actually knowing.
14.22.6.361Listen With the glimpse there comes a curious feeling of absolute certitude, happy certitude, utter doubtlessness. The truth is there plainly before him and deeply sensed within him.
14.22.6.363Listen This experience of the ultimate oneness of all things and of one's own part in that oneness is, of course, well known in mystical experience--especially in nature mysticism but also in some kinds of religious mysticism, and certainly in philosophic mysticism. The first effect is to make one feel that one is not alone, that the universe is behind one and that one does not need to be crushed by anxieties, worries, and fears--all pertaining to the little self. Such an experience is indeed an excellent counter to them.
14.22.6.364Listen We read in the Bhagavad Gita of Arjuna’s cosmic vision. He was given a glimpse of a part of the universal order, the World-Design, the World-Idea. Others who have had this glimpse saw other parts of it, such as the evolution of the centre of consciousness through the animal into the human kingdom, an evolution which is recapitulated in a very brief form by an embryo in the womb …
14.22.6.368,Listen With a glimpse comes revelation. He feels that he belongs to an immortal race, that there is an inner Reality behind all things, and that the ultimate source is a beneficent one.
14.22.6.369Listen With this awakening he begins to relate his own purposes in life to the universal purpose.
14.22.6.371Listen A vivid, intense, and self-critical revelation of how ”sinful” he has been may precede, accompany, or follow the glimpse. It may shake him to his core. But it cannot be said that he feels he has betrayed his best and higher being any more than it can be said a child has betrayed the adult it has not yet grown into. He understands this at the same time and so forgives himself.
14.22.6.373Listen In the mystical happening of the Glimpse, the man gets the intuition that this is what he belongs to; here he can find rest.
14.22.6.376Listen The experience tells him vividly, luminously, and memorably that there is an existence beyond the physical one and a consciousness beyond the personal one.
14.22.6.381Another reason why glimpses are given to man is to show him — as in a magic mirror — that there is such a thing as the Overself.
14.22.6.382Listen These brief enlightenments give us clues to both the true way and the true goal. They point within.
14.22.6.383Listen The glimpse gives him an untrammeled consciousness of this freer and higher self.
14.22.6.385Listen The passing from hope to certainty comes with the glimpse.
14.22.6.387When this felicitous glimpse comes to a man it brings him certitude. He knows now that God IS and where he is.
14.22.6.394The revelation wells up slowly, quietly, deeply; it is unfaltering and continues so long as he does not interrupt or interfere with it by his own thoughts. It is really his own innermost guide and guru, his higher self.
14.22.6.400He knows from this experience that he is incipient with a love that the world does not ordinarily know, with a goodness that it seldom sees in action, and with an understanding that lights up dark places in the course of life.
14.22.6.403Listen
8 Apr 2024
17 May 2021
27 Aug 2021
2 Nov 2018
9 Sep 2023
19 Jan 2020
4 Dec 2012
27 Apr 2018
9 Jan 2015
18 Aug 2023
4 Apr 2021
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28 Sep 2024
17 Sep 2024
10 Apr 2023
15 Jul 2024
18 Dec 2016
27 Oct 2017
11 Jan 2020
7 Feb 2015
19 Feb 2011
5 Apr 2019
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20 Feb 2017
26 Dec 2013
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2 May 2017
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21 Jan 2018
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13 Oct 2017
24 Dec 2019
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21 Jul 2014
28 May 2016
22 Dec 2021
19 Jun 2022
26 Apr 2015
3 Aug 2019
9 May 2018
17 Jan 2024
25 Aug 2012
3 Nov 2017
11 Dec 2021
20 Jan 2024
13 Aug 2021
28 May 2023
30 Jul 2022
18 May 2024
27 Jan 2021
19 May 2013
3 Nov 2024
22 Apr 2024
30 Jul 2020
14 Sep 2016
20 Jul 2020
21 Oct 2024
29 Jul 2023
5 Mar 2011
12 Apr 2021
30 May 2022
13 Jan 2013
2 Mar 2017
9 Jan 2024
26 Mar 2011
1 Mar 2020
24 May 2024
7 Mar 2023
29 Mar 2011
26 Mar 2017
23 Feb 2016
7 May 2024
14 Feb 2016
11 Jun 2024
6 Jun 2023
24 Oct 2017
23 Sep 2011
6 Sep 2011
27 Feb 2019
17 Jan 2016
25 Nov 2010
5 Feb 2019
16 Nov 2022
28 Mar 2011
28 Sep 2018
29 Oct 2023
27 Jan 2022
24 Oct 2011
24 Jun 2013
2 Dec 2022
3 Jun 2011
18 Apr 2020
14 Apr 2020
4 Jan 2018
8 Dec 2010
4 Jan 2022
21 Nov 2024
9 Jul 2021
22 May 2011
2 Mar 2011
27 Apr 2011
26 Mar 2022
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