The Library
Against this immense cosmic background, we may see the paltriness of human pride, the ridiculousness of human conceit.
16.26.4.12Listen Although it is not possible to offer irrefutable scientific proof of the doctrine of spiritual evolution, it can be shown to be as reasonable a doctrine as any of its rivals. And for those who have had mystical experience of the divine presence behind the mind, of divine wisdom behind the cosmos, it is the only acceptable doctrine.
16.26.4.13Listen No living creature in the kingdom of animals knows more than its immediate surroundings or cares for more than the sustenance of its immediate existence. It lives in an immense and varied universe but that fact is lost to its mentality and outside its interest. Only when the evolving entity attains the stage of developed human beings does this unconsciousness disappear. Then life takes on a larger meaning and the life-force becomes aware of itself, individualized, self-conscious. Only then does a higher purpose become possible and apparent.
16.26.4.26Listen No animal has the capacity to get outside itself and to perceive itself quite impersonally. Some humans do have it and more will have it as they develop their potentialities.
16.26.4.31Listen Yes, let it be admitted that man moves and acts with an animal body but let it not be forgotten that he thinks with a human brain and feels with a heart capable of responding to calls for charity. More, there is something in him which aspires to spirituality.
16.26.4.36Listen The mineral, the plant, and the animal have the infinite Life-Power within them, too, but they do not know that they have it. Man alone can know his own divinity...
16.26.4.38,Listen … The highest possibility which separates man from beast is attainment of insight into truth, experience of his divine source.
16.26.4.40,Listen All animals must reincarnate but men may take to the Quest and with time stop the process.
16.26.4.41Listen … All things dissolve in the end, but man alone dissolves consciously into a higher Consciousness.
16.26.4.42,Listen We are not just higher animals and nothing more but are possessed of something that the other animals do not possess--a self-consciousness which can be developed until it matures into a thinking power as well as a totally superior kind of awareness--that of the Overself.
16.26.4.43Listen A human life presents the only opportunity for attaining the realization of Overself. It ought not to be taken away from any man, however evil he may be, and however remote from this goal, in punishment for his crime.
16.26.4.44Listen … man may use his human faculties to transcend his present level…
16.26.4.46,Listen The choice between submitting or not submitting to his animal genes and hormones belongs to man, but the tendency to follow them belongs to the earlier stage; it is very, very ancient and is coming under his control very, very slowly. He fulfils himself as truly human when this transcendence of his ancestry is complete.
16.26.4.47Listen … We are animals in one part of our nature, human beings in the second part, and sometimes angelic in the third part. All make one creature. We learn what our bodies are through the physical senses. We learn a part of what the mind is through our thoughts. We learn still more about the mind's deeper phases through our non-thoughts--that is, intuitions.
16.26.4.54,Listen Such is the triple nature of man--a lower self of animal instincts, a middle self of human thoughts, a higher self of divine nature.
16.26.4.55Listen We may well wonder how animal lust, human cunning, and angelic nobility can come to be mingled in a single entity. That indeed is the mystery of man.
16.26.4.56Listen ... The cosmos may be annihilated or disintegrate completely but the creative idea of it will still live on in the World-Mind. More, in the same way a man's body may die and disintegrate, but the creative idea of him will still remain in the World-Mind as his Soul. It will not die. It's his real Self, his perfect Self. It is the true Idea of him which is forever calling to be realized. It is the unmanifest image of God in which man is made and which he has yet to bring into manifestation in his everyday consciousness.
16.26.4.63,Listen The man who, according to the Bible, is made in the image of God is not the earthly man, visible to all and speaking in a voice that sounds in physical ears. He is to be found in the deep centre of consciousness, where there is only a Void, and he speaks in silence to the attentive mind, not to other persons.
16.26.4.73Listen The man that is made in the image of God is not physical man or desire-filled man or thought-breeding man but he who dwells behind all these--silent, serene, and unnoticed.
16.26.4.74Listen If we do not know the “why” of universal existence, we do know the “why” of human existence. It provides the field of experience for discovering the divine soul. The integral quest which ends in this discovery is, consequently, the greatest and most important of human undertakings.
16.26.4.82Listen Man's experience is so limited and his mental equipment so small that his attempt to understand the universe would seem impertinent were it not for the assurance of great prophets and seers that where intellect and sense fail, intuition succeeds.
16.26.4.84Listen If human life has any higher purpose, it is that the human ego should find its way back to that harmony with the Overself which has become disturbed but never disrupted.
16.26.4.86Listen … the highest work in which intellectual power can engage is to seek the reason for human existence …
16.26.4.88,Listen The goal of life is to be consciously united with Life.
16.26.4.90Listen Man's need is twofold: recollection of his divine nature and redemption from his earthly nature.
16.26.4.91Listen The higher purpose of existence is to advance man until he can live in the awareness of his divine selfhood.
16.26.4.94Listen There is an orderly structure in the universe and an orderly pattern in the lives of its creatures. If everything else is governed by laws, why not the growth of man's spirituality?
16.26.4.98Listen You are part of the World-Mind's World-Idea. Therefore, you are a part of its purpose too. Seek to be shown what that is, and how you may realize it, rather than mope in misery, frustration, or fear. Look upon your situation--personal, domestic, career, mental, emotional, spiritual--as having significance within that purpose, as teaching you some specific lesson or telling you what to do or not to do.
16.26.4.101Listen Every person is unconsciously trying to fulfil a higher purpose set for him by the Overself…
16.26.4.105,Listen How old is the series of experiences through which we moved unknowingly towards our present evolutionary position! How lofty is the level toward which we have yet to climb…
16.26.4.109,Listen Every man is offered a chance to live again, not once but as many times as will bring him to his diviner being and establish him in that…
16.26.4.112,Listen The World-Idea's end is foreordained from the beginning. This leaves no ultimate personal choice. But there's a measure of free will in a single direction--how soon or how late that divine end is accomplished. The time element has not been ordered, the direction has.
16.26.4.115Listen When one is allowed a glimpse of the World-Idea, he feels that he understands at last why he came here, what he has to do, and where his place is. It is like an immense enlargement of the mind, an escape from the littleness of the ego, and a finding-out of a long-hidden secret.
16.26.4.121Listen ... This is the use he is to make of his life on earth: his personal life, his family relations, his professional career--all must become subject to the higher purpose. The resolve made, the matter of success or failure is no longer urgent, for every subsequent embodiment will point in this direction. Philosophy has instructed him in the unreality of time and has revealed to him his indissoluble connection with the Overself…
16.26.4.123,Listen He has come to the inner sight of the World-Idea's meaning for him: that he is to use the human self to lift his nature up from the animal one, and that he is to put himself at the service of his angelic, his best, self, to lift his nature up from the ordinary human. In this way he co-operates with the World-Idea.
16.26.4.123,Listen Only to the extent that he unites his own little purpose with the universal purpose can he find harmony and happiness. Its strength will support him firmly in adversity and misfortune, as it will carry him triumphantly through misery and hostility.
16.26.4.140Listen We can be co-workers with the World-Mind only to the extent that we withdraw from our ego. Then only are we able to receive correctly the wonderful revelation of the world's meaning and laws, so that we can participate intelligently and lovingly.
16.26.4.146Listen ... It is no truer message than this: ”Seek for the divine within yourself, return to it every day, learn how to continue in it and finally be it.”
16.26.4.170,Listen … The development of all beings from primitive amoeba to perfect spiritual consciousness is assured.
16.26.4.174,Listen We may call it evolution if we wish but the actuality is not quite the same. The universe is being guided to follow the World-Idea--this is the essence of what is happening.
16.26.4.175Listen We may call it evolution if we wish but the actuality is not quite the same. The universe is being guided to follow the World-Idea—this is the essence of what is happening.
16.26.4.175Listen We must begin by recognizing that this planet exists for a specific purpose and that the evolution of all creatures upon it is part of that purpose.
16.26.4.180Listen This earth, with the varied experiences of good and evil, joy and suffering, peace and peril which it offers us, is a school of initiation leading primitive animal man into the development of awareness until he reaches the first discovery of his Overself.
16.26.4.181The world exists for the training of ever-ascending living things--from their early start as protoplasmic cells to their later development as human beings.
16.26.4.182Listen The differences in consciousness between an amoeba, an insect, an animal, and a human represent a line of growth.
16.26.4.185Listen Everything that has feeling or awareness, however dim, is capable of developing to higher and higher forms of existence. But only when it is individuated and attains the human form does it fulfil its possibilities.
16.26.4.188Listen There are different stages in the development of people: some stand on the lower, some on the higher ones--and others fill in the space between. There is no equality among human beings, in character or manners, in intelligence or intuitiveness…
16.26.4.201,Listen Slowly, at times pleasurably and at times painfully, the human entity builds up its consciousness and capacities through the ages.
16.26.4.206Listen There is no choice in the matter, ultimately, although there is immediately. The entire human race will have to traverse the course chalked out for it, will have to develop the finer feelings, the concrete intellect, the abstract intellect, the balance between the different sides. If men do not seek to do so now, it is only a question of time before they will be forced to do so later.
16.26.4.214Man will be redeemed and saved. This is not mere pious wishful thinking but ineluctable destiny. The divine World-Idea could not be realized if this redemption and this salvation were not eventually possible and inescapably certain.
16.26.4.215Listen It is easier to transform a wilderness into a garden flourishing with plants and flowers than to transform humanity into a spiritual race. But time and life, evolution and experience will all combine to do it. The movement up to higher levels will be slow and painful, the maturation of human character retarded and halting, but they will be sure because they are written in the fate of man.
16.26.4.216Listen The World-Idea is operative on every level. It invites savage humans to outwit their fellow animals by beginning to use brain-power through arrows, slings, and primitive traps; at a higher level to compete with fellow humans and rise economically and socially by using the same power; at a still higher level to reduce sufferings and self-made miseries by practising control over self and avoidance of injury to others; then, at a still higher level, to discover and nurture their spiritual nature.
16.26.4.218Listen As the two interact--the human purpose and the World-Idea--each man slowly unfolds his intelligence, which is the fusion of intellect with intuition, and this culminates in Enlightenment, the ultimate and revelatory Insight.
16.26.4.220Listen The movement upward from the ego's me to the real I consciousness is as sure as the movement of the planets themselves.
16.26.4.221Listen Nobler and wiser types of humanity, standing at loftier altitudes of consciousness, will begin to emerge from the mass. If they are all too few today, they will be more numerous tomorrow.
16.26.4.233Listen The inhabitants of each planet belong to different stages of evolution: some higher and some lower. This applies not only to the human inhabitants but also to the animal and even the plant inhabitants. They pass in great waves from one planet to another at certain stages of this evolution, going where they can find the most appropriate conditions either for expression of their present stage or for the stimulation of their next immediate stage. Consequently the stragglers and laggards who fall behind pass to a planet where the conditions are of a lower nature, for there they are more at home. On the other hand, the pioneers who have outstripped the mass and can find no conditions suitable for their further development pass to a planet in a higher stage.
16.26.4.236Listen … Man bears the divine within his breast.
16.26.4.237,Listen … the notion that life first attains individual self-consciousness in man is justified in philosophy and by experience. What is it of which he alone is conscious? It is of being himself, his ego. In all earlier stages of evolution, consciousness is entirely veiled in its forms and never becomes self-aware …
16.26.4.237,Listen Human beings have made too much fuss about themselves, their own importance in the cosmic scale. Why should there not be other forms of life superior to them, conscious intelligent beings higher in mentality, character, and spiritual knowledge, better equipped with powers and techniques?
16.26.4.238Listen There are beings not subject to the same laws as those governing mankind's physical existence. They are normally not visible to men. They are gods.
16.26.4.242Listen We have not come from oblivion. All our past is present in our characters, capacities, and tendencies; therefore we shall not go into oblivion. There is no death--only a change of state.
16.26.4.247Listen His destination is also his origin. But to say that he was born in the eternal Spirit starts the question, ”How can time, which is placed outside eternity, bring him to eternity?” The answer is that it does not bring him there; it only educates him to look for, and prepares him to pass through, the opening through which he can escape. Need it be said that this lies at the point where ego surrenders wholly to Overself?
16.26.4.249Listen The Goal towards which man is slowly travelling by successive steps is a threefold one: the fully developed environment, the fully developed intelligence, and the realized soul. The last is the best and the other two are but servants of it, for here he comes first to a comprehension and then to a realization of himself. Yes, he is on his way to the grand awakening into full self-consciousness.
16.26.4.250Listen The process of human evolution serves a twofold purpose. The first is to develop the physical, emotional, and intellectual characteristics. The second is to lead the individual to enquire into, and become fully conscious of, his divine origin.
16.26.4.253Listen The journey of life is both an adventure and a pilgrimage. We pass from body to body to collect experience. The fruit of experience is Enlightenment: the knowledge of Overself, established awareness of its presence; and knowledge of the Unseen Power behind the universe, established connection with it.
16.26.4.254We are here in this world for a higher purpose than the obvious physical one of self-preservation, for even that is contributory to it. We are here to evolve into the consciousness of Overself. Every physical experience is only a means toward such spiritual development.
16.26.4.255Listen ... The ego comes to slow birth in finite consciousness out of utter unconsciousness and, later, to recognition and union with its infinite source. That source, whence it has emanated, remains untouched, unaffected, ever knowing and serenely witnessing. The purpose in this evolution is the ego's own advancement. When the Quest is reached, the Overself reveals its presence fitfully and brokenly at first but later the hide-and-seek game ends in loving union.
16.26.4.256,Listen ... The true teaching about reincarnation is not that the divine soul enters into the captivity and ignorance of the flesh again and again but that something emanated from the soul, that is, a unit of life that eventually develops into the personal ego, does so…
16.26.4.257,Listen ... It is not the Overself that suffers and struggles during this long unfoldment but its child, the ego. It is not the Overself that slowly expands its intelligence and consciousness, but the ego. It is not the Overself that gets deluded by ignorance and passion, by selfishness and extroversion, but the ego…
16.26.4.257,Listen ... The Overself never descends or climbs, never loses its own sublime consciousness. What really does this is something that emanates from it and that consequently holds its capacity and power in latency, something which is finited out of the Overself's infinitude and becomes first, the simple unit of life and later, the complex human ego…
16.26.4.257,Listen … The Overself contains this reincarnating ego within itself but does not itself reincarnate. It is the parent; the ego is only its offspring…
16.26.4.257,Listen … It may be plainly affirmed that man's individuality survives even in the divinest state accessible to him…
16.26.4.257,Listen … the highest form is hidden away in the lowest one. There is development from the blindly instinctive life of animals to the consciously thinking life of man. The blind instinctive struggles of the plant to sustain itself are displaced in the evolutionary process by the intelligent self-conscious efforts of the man…
16.26.4.257,Listen ... The Infinite Being, whose Consciousness and Power is behind the universe of history, can itself have no history, for it is beyond time, evolution, change, development, can have no purpose which is gainful to itself, cannot be made the object of human thought correctly because it utterly transcends the limitations of such thought...
16.26.4.258,Listen We murmur against the world's obstructiveness to our aspirations: the body is our stumbling-block. Yet if we had to live always as disembodied spirits, our spiritual development would need an immeasurably longer time to accomplish itself. The sharper focus of physical consciousness quickens our pace.
16.26.4.263Listen Man, in his earlier phases of being, was connected with the Overself and aware of it. But his connection lacked his own control. Eventually, to fulfil the purpose of evolution, he lost this connection and with it his awareness. Now he has to regain the connection and reawaken this awareness by his own efforts and out of his own inner activity, through his own desiring and in his own individual freedom. What has he gained by this change to compensate the loss? His consciousness has become more sharply focused and consequently more clearly aware.
16.26.4.264Listen Our source is in the Overself; our growth is but a return to it, made fully conscious as we were not before.
16.26.4.265Listen The immediate purpose of human incarnation and evolution is to develop a true and full self-consciousness at all levels from the lowest to the highest. The man who does not know himself beyond the physical intellectual ego is still only half-conscious.
16.26.4.266Listen
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