The Library
It would be wonderful if everyone, everywhere, could slip so easily into the kingdom of heaven, and just as easily stay there forever. But alas! the facts of human nature forbid it. People require teaching, training, purifying, disciplining, and preparing, before they can do so. And the course needed is a lifetime's, the work needed much and varied. That is why the Long Path is needed.
15.23.4.1Listen While giving all attention to the Overself, or to its remembrance, or to its various aspects, or to the idea of it, he forgets himself. This makes it possible to transcend the ego. And this is why the Short Path must be travelled if the preparatory work of the other Path is to be completed.
15.23.4.2Listen Purification of the heart and calming of the mind are necessary prerequisites for penetrating into the Overself. They belong to the Long Path.
15.23.4.4Listen The Long Path calls on him to give up whatever is holding him in bondage, whatever is keeping him back, and, thus released, he will be free to go his way towards the specifically positive work of the Short Path.
15.23.4.5Listen The Long Path is taught to beginners and others in the earlier and middle stages of the quest. This is because they are ready for the idea of self-improvement and not for the higher one of the unreality of the self. So the latter is taught on the Short Path, where attention is turned away from the little self and from the idea of perfecting it, to the essence, the real being.
15.23.4.6Listen Nature cannot be hastened. The bloom of a flower opens in its own proper time. If the Short Path yields immediate or quick results to some aspirants, it is only because they are persons of superior development. They have served their apprenticeship on the Long Path already, either in this life or previous lives.
15.23.4.9Listen The Long Path covers all the preparatory stages leading up to but not including the decisive attempts. It is concerned with the removal of obstructions to the coming of enlightenment, whereas these attempts, which belong to the Short Path, are concerned with the conclusive formulae of enlightenment.
15.23.4.10Listen If the Long Path equips him with the necessary strength, purity, and concentration, the Short Path makes use of this equipment to unite his consciousness directly with the Overself.
15.23.4.11Listen Many fixations created in the past have to be removed before we can truly live in the present. This is Long Path work.
15.23.4.16Listen Miguel de Molinos: “It is useless to trust in the interior way of contemplation if the obstacles which hinder their progress and spiritual blight be not removed from the path of those souls that are called.” In other words, the Long Path work must clear a way for the Short Path work.
15.23.4.18Listen The way to the goal does not lie through a cleansing of the ego alone: it lies also through a desertion of it. The first way is necessary only because it helps to make the second one possible.
15.23.4.19Listen He is to keep the thought of the goal itself continually before him, to give the mental consciousness as its principal occupation a meditation on the Overself. This is the basis of Short Path work and this is why, before he can hope to succeed, he must first have set himself the Long Path task of gaining some control over his thoughts.
15.23.4.20Listen If the Grace of the Overself is to take hold of the man, no part of his ego ought to offer resistance. This is why a preparation for the event is needed, a process of taking out of him those things which are certain to instigate such resistance. In other words, the activity of the Long Path is necessary to the successful treading of the Short Path.
15.23.4.21Listen The Long Path is needed because it leads to a measure of release from egoism and animalism. But it does not directly lead to the discovery of the Overself, its truth and reality. That is the Short Path's work.
15.23.4.27Listen It needs some strength to deflect the onset of negative moods and to refuse to sit in darkness. It needs some patience to sit quietly waiting until one feels an entry into the presence of the Source of one’s being. Only a few are born with these qualities ready-made. Others must attain them slowly by passing through stages of training and self-discipline.
15.23.4.30Listen Every negative thought and base desire is an obstacle to the attainment of the higher consciousness. This is why the Long Path's work is needed, for it is intended to remove all such obstacles. How can one invite that Consciousness to dwell in a body enslaved by lusts, or in a mind darkened by hates?
15.23.4.36Listen Seekers do not come under the power of Grace until they have done, to a sufficient extent, what the Long Path requires from them. Then only are they likely to be ready for the Short Path, and to benefit by the Grace associated with it.
15.23.4.44Listen What is the purpose of this Long Path inner work upon himself? It is to clear a way for the inflow of grace, even to the most hidden parts of his character.
15.23.4.46Listen Although the Long Path does not directly lead to Enlightenment, it reduces obstacles, prepares the seeker, and opens his way for entry to the Short Path, which in turn can subsequently lead to enlightenment.
15.23.4.48Listen … less preoccupation with his own ego and more with the Overself is what he really needs. This is the same as saying that the Long Path work now needs balancing with Short Path work.
15.23.4.52,Listen His quest for God has reached its terminus but his quest in God will now start its course. Henceforth his life, experience, and consciousness are wrapped in mystery.
15.23.4.54Listen The changeover to the Short Path does not entirely cancel out his Long Path work but affects it in three ways. First, it reduces the labours and disciplines involved. Second, the reduced work is done without anxiety and without tension. Third, it frees him from the excessive sense of self-responsibility for his inner and outer life--that is, from excessive ego-depending.
15.23.4.58Listen He must call in a new power, and a higher power--Grace. He needs its help. For the ego will not willingly give up its sovereignty, however much it may become preoccupied with spiritual questions and even spiritual growth.
15.23.4.59Listen The laborious, sometimes desperate self-discipline of the Long Path relaxes or even stops altogether. The effortless, sometimes ecstatic self-surrender to grace through faith, love, humility, and remembrance replaces it…
15.23.4.63,Listen Whatever you do to work upon the ego, whether you remove this weakness or improve that faculty, it will always be ego and your consciousness will always remain within its tightly closed circle. In the time you give to such work you could be occupying yourself with thought of the non-ego, the Overself, and dwelling in this thought until the sunshine behind it bursts through and you bask in the glory.
15.23.4.64Listen He feels that a newer and other self is coming to birth.
15.23.4.66Listen To mourn over the past's supposed errors for too long a time, to indulge in self-pitying remorse for the remainder of one's life, is another trick of the ego and merely strengthens it. Better take to the Short Path!
15.23.4.67Listen The Long Path developed in him through yoga-meditation the capacity to find the inner Stillness. The Short Path added to it (1) the knowledge that the Stillness is himself, and (2) the practice of continuing remembrance to be the Stillness.
15.23.4.68Listen … To attract the Grace from the Overself the seeker needs to turn away from his self-centeredness to what is its utter opposite--preoccupation with the Overself. He is to think of the Divine alone, of the infinitude and eternity of the Higher Power, and to forget all about his personal growth for a while.
15.23.4.70,Listen If he keeps on fixing his attention upon fighting the wandering characteristic of his thoughts, he may find after many attempts that the task seems impossible. Why is this? It is because at the same time he is limiting himself to attention upon the ego. Let him move in the opposite direction and turn to the Short Path, let the thoughts fix themselves on the Overself, upon Its great stillness, Its serene impersonality...
15.23.4.72,Listen Let him rejoice at having found the Short Path with its freedoms and at having let go of the Long Path with its difficulties and tensions.
15.23.4.77Listen What a relief he feels when the strain and tension of the Long Path give place to the sweetness and detachment of the Short one!
15.23.4.78Listen It is not necessary to go through the struggles and toils of the Long Past after we have travelled it sufficiently far to develop some amount of the qualifications needed for the Short one. We can then desert it and, by Grace, go quickly through the change of outlook, standpoint, and consciousness necessary to travel the Short Path.
15.23.4.79Listen The same Grace which starts us off on the Quest carries us through to its end. The Short Path phase begins when we awaken to the presence of the Grace's source.
15.23.4.80Listen They would like the change to take place dramatically, in a moment of time. “The wind bloweth where it listeth,” said Jesus, and Grace comes here or there at an unpredictable hour.
15.23.4.92Listen Not by his ego’s own will can he take hold of this jewel, but only by the Grace substituting that other Consciousness for his ego’s.
15.23.4.93Listen … In the later, the more advanced stages where the Short Path comes into operation, the seeker must begin to forget himself and his efforts … must identify himself with the Overself by giving himself wholly to the idea of manifesting it in his inner and outer life…
15.23.4.94,Listen The Intermediate Path is a transition from the Long to the Short one. It consists in identifying oneself mentally with the higher self. This is immeasurably farther than identification with the ego but it is still tainted with a kind of self-centeredness. That is revealed when the pilgrim travels to the Short Path, where he seeks no identification of any sort whatsoever, bestows no more attention upon the ”I,” but thinks only of the higher self as it is in itself and not about its relationship with him.
15.23.4.96Listen A time may come when his own personality is distasteful to him, when he begins to dislike his own traits of instinctive negative reaction and innate negative character. This is naturally understandable on the Long Path, but it may be minimized on the Short one.
15.23.4.99Listen To become their ruler you may fight desires. This is the harder way. Or you may forget them. This is the easier way. To follow it you must practise remembering the Overself constantly.
15.23.4.100Listen A great humility comes into him when at long last he steps aside from his ego sufficiently to allow the perception that it is not in his own power to enter the ultimate Enlightenment. Grace is the arbiter.
15.23.4.101Listen The end of the Long Path is frustration. This may be an emotionally disappointing blessing, since it forces the man to turn eventually to the Short Path, whose end is fulfilment.
15.23.4.112Listen The average man is the victim of his own past, the slave of his personal history. He is conditioned by its thinking, molded by its disciplines, and dominated by its traditions. Its influence fades all too slowly. This is why the transition from the Long to the Short Path is so often the consequence of some unusual upheaval or some mesmeric contact.
15.23.4.114Listen It is not a question of choice between the two paths. The beginner can hardly comprehend what the Short Path means, let alone practise it. So perforce he must take to the Long one. But the intermediate, weary of its toils and defeats, turns with relief to the other path, for which his studies and experiences have now prepared him.
15.23.4.115Listen ... The disciplining of the self can go on and on and on. There will be no end to it. For the ego will always be able to find ways to keep the aspirant busy in self-improvement, thus blinding him to the fact that the self is still there behind all his improvements. For why should the ego kill itself? Yet the enlightenment which is the goal he strives to reach can never be obtained unless the ego ceases to bar the way to it. At this discovery he will have no alternative to, and will be quite ready for, the Short Path.
15.23.4.119,Listen Once he realizes that he cannot face two ways simultaneously, he will force himself to make a choice between them. The ego or the Overself?
15.23.4.123Listen Hopkins, the Jesuit priest-poet, abandoned meditation because of constantly recurring moods of self-disgust and hopelessness. This sounds exactly like the point where Long Path work should be brought to an end, being replaced by Short Path work.
15.23.4.126Listen If the Long Path disciplines increase his anxieties and frustrations to an insupportable point, it is probably an indication that he needs a shift to the Short Path--with its effort to shift identity into the Overself and establish him there.
15.23.4.129Listen Through humiliation and despair, failure and mistakes, the ego may be crushed to the ground. But the aftermath of this apparently hopeless situation may be the end of the Long Path, with the subsequent transfer to the Short Path, with its new hope, pardon, and peace.
15.23.4.130Listen When he has reached this stage he will begin to understand that his further spiritual progress does not impose special acts such as disciplinary regimes and meditation exercises--excellent and necessary though these were in their place as preparatory work--but requires him simply to stand aside and be an observing witness of life, including his own life.
15.23.4.140Listen The processes and procedures of the Long Path require time. But the Overself is outside of time. To identify yourself with them is to shut yourself out from it. It is consequently needful when a certain point is reached--either in experience or in preparation or in understanding--to abandon the Long Path and take to the Short Path, with its emphasis on living in the Eternal Now.
15.23.4.144Listen When too long a time is spent on the Long Path with too slow a progress, the urge arises to find another way. It is then that the Short Path becomes appropriate.
15.23.4.153Listen Even those who are satisfied to continue permanently the Long Path's preparatory disciplines will one day find an inner impulsion rising spontaneously within themselves and leading them to the Short Path.
15.23.4.158Listen When the Long Path work has been done to the point that it bores, depresses, or satiates him, admission must be made that he had better leave it for a while. Here is a turning point where the Short Path must be entered both for relief and for a fresh outlook.
15.23.4.162Listen Another sign that the time may have come for a change to the Short Path is when meditation no longer yields satisfying results but becomes irksome and difficult.
15.23.4.164Listen When a man has come to the end of his tether, dry of all hope for accomplishment of his aim by self-effort, he is ripe for the Grace-invoking effort of the Short Path.
15.23.4.166Listen
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