The Library
When the personal ego's thoughts and desires are stripped off, we behold ourselves as we were in the first state and as we shall be in the final one. We are then the Overself alone, in its Godlike solitude and stillness.
15.24.4.1Listen This stillness is the godlike part of every human being. In failing to look for it, he fails to make the most of his possibilities. If, looking, he misses it on the way, this happens because it is a vacuity: there is simply nothing there! That means no things, not even mental things, that is, thoughts.
15.24.4.4That beautiful state wherein the mind recognizes itself for what it is, wherein all activity is stilled except that of awareness alone, and even then it is an awareness without an object--this is the heart of the experience.
15.24.4.6The Overself is first and last felt or experienced as a deep peace within oneself. Hence the larger meaning of the greeting used in the Orient and in early Greek Mysteries that ”Peace be with you!”
15.24.4.12Listen It is all the difference between living at the still centre and on the bustling circumference, at the mysterious core and on the prosaic surface.
15.24.4.17Listen If he goes into the silence enough, he will become accustomed to the obstacles that bar entry and learn by practice how to deal with them.
15.24.4.33Listen In this deep stillness wherein every trace of the personal self dissolves, there is the true crucifixion of the ego. This is the real meaning of the crucifixion, as it was undergone in the ancient Mystery Temple initiations and as it was undergone by Jesus. The death implied is mental, not physical.
15.24.4.39Listen He feels that he is now in the very centre of his being, that he has shifted identity there. The ego no longer covers it over and occupies his whole view. Rather is it now transparent to the light radiating from this centre. This transparency is peace.
15.24.4.41The seeker after stillness should be told that the stillness is always there. Indeed it is in every man. But he has to learn, first, to let it in and, second, how to do so. The first beginning of this is to remember. The second is to recognize the inward pull. For the rest, the stillness itself will guide and lead him to itself.
15.24.4.51Listen The presence is always there, always waiting to be recognized and felt, but inner silence is needed to make this possible. And few persons possess it or seek it.
15.24.4.52Listen There is an area of peace hidden within every man. Its presence is the gracious gift of God but his task is to discover it.
15.24.4.53Listen There is a stillness in the depth of each man, but he has to find it for himself, a work demanding patience and humility.
15.24.4.54Listen The Quest will come to an end when he turns away from teachers and teachings and begins to receive instruction from within himself. Previously all that he got was someone else's idea; now he is acquiring firsthand knowledge.
15.24.4.69Listen Let the personal will relax in this gentle peace.
15.24.4.73Listen ... To continue action in the old way is to perpetuate the ego's rule. But to refuse to do so, and to be still, is to create the inner vacuum which allows the higher self to enter and work through us. This is inspired action.
15.24.4.74,Listen Once he has touched this stillness briefly, learned the way to it, and comprehended its nature, his next task is to develop it. This takes time and practice and knowledge. Or, rather, the work is done on him, not by him. He has to let be.
15.24.4.75Listen He does not, can not, fabricate this inner silence, but he provides the correct conditions of relaxed concentrated listening which allow it to be discovered as a presence within himself.
15.24.4.77He must not only give up the slavery of passion, but also the slavery of intellect.
15.24.4.79Listen Thinking is mental action, just as moving is physical action. The admonition Be still and know that I am God refers not only to the body but also to the mind. Both are to cease from activity if the higher consciousness is to be attained.
15.24.4.86Listen Thinking can put together all sorts of theories and speculations and even discoveries. But only when it dies down and lets the pure quietened mind come to rest in the very essence of consciousness, at peace with itself, with nature, with the world, only then is there a deep sense of utter fulfillment.
15.24.4.87Listen The process acts with the sureness of a chemical combination; if you quiet the ego, the Overself becomes responsively active.
15.24.4.89Listen Where the heart goes, there soon or late the other faculties will follow. This is why it is so important to let the Overself take possession of the heart by its total surrender in, and to, the Stillness.
15.24.4.90Listen To the extent that a man keeps inwardly still, to that extent he unfolds himself and lets the ever-perfect Overself shine forth.
15.24.4.93Listen Putting aside one's own internal and personal pressures is a precondition which sooner or later lets in the Overself's peace.
15.24.4.100Listen However dark or blundering the past, however miserable the tangle one has made of one's life, this unutterable peace blots it all out. Within that seraphic embrace error cannot be known, misery cannot be felt, sin cannot be remembered. A great cleansing comes over the heart and mind.
15.24.4.102Listen There will be a zone of peace around him which some feel but others cannot. It seems to put him quite at his ease and free him from any trace of nervousness.
15.24.4.105Listen This beautiful peace is both the reward of his efforts and the atmosphere surrounding his higher nature.
15.24.4.109Listen There are situations which may seem beyond endurance and circumstances beyond sufferance. It is then that those who have learned how to withdraw into their interior being, how to return to their source, may find some measure of help and strength.
15.24.4.112Listen From this deep source, he nourishes the continuous tranquillity of the atmosphere he carries about with him; from it he gains the solid assurance that the quest is worthwhile and its goal very real.
15.24.4.113Listen When you have trained yourself to empty your consciousness of its thoughts at will, your worries will naturally be emptied along with them. This is one of the valuable practical fruits of yoga.
15.24.4.114Listen In this wonderful atmosphere of unimaginable intense peace, all that was negative in the past years is effaced so radically that it becomes as nothing.
15.24.4.116Listen Even if there were no joy in the realization of the Overself it would still be worth having, for it would still be richly loaded with other treasures. But the joy is also there and always there.
15.24.4.117Listen The Overself remains always the same and never changes in any way. It is the hunger for this quality, thought of as “peace of mind,” which drives men to seek the Overself amid the vicissitudes of health or fortune which they experience.
15.24.4.123Listen To complain that you get no answer, no result from going into the silence indicates two things: first, that you do not go far enough into it to reach the intuitive level; second, that you do not wait long enough for it to affect you.
15.24.4.124Listen The stillness is not experienced in the same way as a mere lazy and idle reverie: it is dynamic, creative, and healing. The presence of one man who is able to attain it is a gift, a blessing, to all other men, though they know it not.
15.24.4.130Listen Out of this stillness will come the light he seeks, the guide he needs, the strength he requires.
15.24.4.137Listen The first way of finding peace when harassed by a hard problem or situation is to turn away from the tumult of thoughts and look for the still centre within. When it is found and just when it leaves, or must be left, ask it for the guidance needed…
15.24.4.138,Listen From this inner stillness the highest truths have come forth and passed into human knowledge.
15.24.4.139Listen As a serious Quaker, John Woolman was, as he himself wrote, “a man taught to wait in silence, sometimes many weeks together, until he hears God’s voice.”
15.24.4.142Listen There comes a time when out of the silence within himself there comes the spiritual guidance which he needs for his further course. It comes sometimes as a delicate feeling, sometimes as a strong one, sometimes in a clear formulated message, and sometimes out of the circumstances and happenings themselves…
15.24.4.146,Listen In that peace-filled oblivion of the lesser self there is renewal of life and rebirth of goodness in, and by, the Overself.
15.24.4.148Listen Just as a man who has escaped from the inside of a burning house and finds himself in the cool outdoors understands that he has attained safety, so the man who has escaped from greed, lust, anger, illusion, selfishness, and ignorance into exalted peace and immediate insight, understands that he has attained heaven.
15.24.4.150Listen ”I, the Homeless, have My home in each person's heart.” This is what the Great Silence told me.
15.24.4.159Listen In the depths of meditation, when one is sitting still and enchanted, all egoism gone for the moment and all care suspended, it is possible to understand what the word Heaven really means.
15.24.4.166Listen The effort should be to find inward stillness through a loving search within the heart's depths for what may be called “the soul,” what I have called “the Overself.” ... It is the Holy Ghost of Christian faith, the diviner part of man which dwells in eternity…
15.24.4.174,Listen One may sink inward to the point of being tightly held by the delicious Stillness, unable for a while to move limb or body into activity.
15.24.4.182Listen The man who found his divine soul will not, unless he is divinely enjoined to do so as part of a special beneficent mission, publicly advertise the fact.
15.24.4.199Listen The deeper he penetrates into this inner being, the more will he feel inclined to keep the development quite secret. It is becoming too holy to be talked about.
15.24.4.208Listen Is it not strange that the highest experience of an inner nature open to man is a completely secret one, a fully hushed one, and almost an indefinable one? Looking back upon it afterwards, knowing how profoundly beautiful and deeply moving it was at the time, he will find it difficult to speak about it to others.
15.24.4.213Listen Thoughts can be put into words, spoken and written; but the truth about Reality must remain unworded, unspoken, and unwritten. All statements about it which the intellect can grasp are merely symbolic--just clues, hints. Only in the great stillness can it be known, understood.
15.24.4.214Listen How extraordinary is this stillness that it can convey meaning without making use of words! For the communication is made through feeling, not through intellect. But inevitably, when the stillness ends, the mind begins to work, and the intellect begins to work upon the experience and translates it into words.
15.24.4.217Listen Truth may be written or spoken, preached or printed, but its most lasting expression and communication is transmitted through the deepest silence to the deepest nature in man.
15.24.4.220Listen
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