Day by day
... The body's needs, comfort, and surroundings must receive his attention. But they should not receive attention out of all proportion to their value. Is he here on earth for these things alone? Is the higher purpose of life to be entirely ignored? A sounder balance is required.
9.13.1.306, ExcerptListen 1 Jan 2016From childhood through adulthood, man passes from one change to another in himself--his body, feelings, and thoughts. The idea of himself, his personality, changes with it. Where and what is the I if it has no unbroken integrity?
6.8.2.54Listen 2 Jan 2016To 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 3 Jan 2016Prayers really begin when their words end. They are most active not when the lips are active but when they are still.
12.18.2.65Listen 4 Jan 2016The glimpse, when finally it does come, compensates for all the struggles and difficulties of the years that precede it. He can look back upon them with complete detachment, perhaps even smile at them. Even the sufferings seem no longer what they were, but diminish into unimportant little incidents.
14.22.7.67Listen 5 Jan 2016The difference between the intermediate and the final state is the difference between feeling the Overself to be a distinct and separate entity and feeling it to be the very essence of oneself, between temporary experience of it and enduring union with it.
16.25.2.42Listen 6 Jan 2016Although karma is clinched by what a man does in fact, it is built up also by what he long thinks and strongly feels.
6.9.3.147Listen 7 Jan 2016The Long Path man's thoughts are too often with his personal self, too seldom with his Overself. The blessed turning point will be reached when he looks away from himself with persevering faith.
15.23.1.46Listen 8 Jan 2016The initiated early Christians understood well enough that the Christ was no other than their own higher self, the Overself. This was true then; it is true now...
12.17.5.121, ExcerptListen 9 Jan 2016He must finish what he has started. He must go on until the peace, the understanding, the strength, and the benevolence of these rare uplifted moods have become a continuous presence within him.
14.22.8.30Listen 10 Jan 2016Prophets and teachers, sages and saints have come among us in all times to speak of that inner life and inner reality which they have found. But only those who cared to listen have profited by these revelations, communications, and counsels, and still fewer have profited by being willing to follow the path of discipleship.
2.1.2.480Listen 11 Jan 2016Observe how still our whole being spontaneously becomes when we want to be fully receptive just before some important announcement. If it is of the highest possible importance, we almost hold our breath; such is the intense stillness needed to take it in to the utmost degree and to miss nothing. How much more should we be still throughout every part of mind and body when waiting to hear the silent pronouncements of the Overself!
15.23.7.277Listen 12 Jan 2016There is no reason why he should not preserve his individuality even if he should surrender it to God.
16.25.2.217Listen 13 Jan 2016From all these studies, meditations, and actions the student will little by little emerge an inwardly changed man. He comes to the habitual contemplation of his co-partnership with the universe as a whole, to the recognition that personal isolation is illusory, and thus takes the firm steps on the ultimate path towards becoming a true philosopher. The realization of the hidden unity of his own life with the life of the whole world manifests finally in infinite compassion for all living things. Thus he learns to subdue the personal will to the cosmic one, narrow selfish affection to the wide-spreading desire for the common welfare. Compassion comes to full blossom in his heart like a lotus flower in the sunshine...
13.20.4.224, ExcerptListen 14 Jan 2016When he can look at his life-experience as something that seems to happen to somebody else, he will have a sure sign of detachment.
6.8.4.456Listen 15 Jan 2016Reason must walk side by side with emotion, science with mysticism, compassion with self-interest, action with thought. This balanced life and no other is the truly philosophic one.
13.20.3.426Listen 16 Jan 2016When 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 17 Jan 2016Do not let the mind occupy itself with any thoughts whenever there is no actual matter needing attention.
15.23.6.26Listen 18 Jan 2016If you seek to invoke the divine grace to meet a genuine and desperate physical need or human result, seek first to find the sacred presence within yourself and only after you have found it, or at least only after you have attained the deepest point of contemplation possible to you, should you name the thing or result sought. For then you will not only be guided whether it be right to continue the request or not, but you will also put yourself in the most favourable position for securing grace.
12.18.2.159Listen 19 Jan 2016Both the inward and outward lives of every man are controlled by a concealed entity--the Overself. Could he but see aright, he would see that everything witnesses to its presence and activity.
14.22.3.179Listen 20 Jan 2016At the centre of each man, each animal, each plant, each cell, and each atom, there is a complete stillness. A seemingly empty stillness, yet it holds the divine energies and the divine Idea for that thing.
16.26.1.213Listen 21 Jan 2016The greatest of all diet reforms is the change from meat-eating to a meatless diet...
4.5.3.5, ExcerptListen 22 Jan 2016The more he can inwardly free himself from the claims of his daily regime--that is, the more he can become emotionally detached from it and transfer his interest, love, and desire to the higher self--the greater will be his power to achieve dominance over undesirable conditions.
9.13.1.406Listen 23 Jan 2016These sufferings cause us to seek relief and act as spurs to stimulate aspiration, as propelling forces toward spiritual efforts, as goads to drive us on to the quest. Without them we would live on the surface of things, squandering our energies on the petty, and tend to miss the true meaning of life.
9.13.1.319Listen 24 Jan 2016The ego is perfectly capable of making all sorts of compromises or truces with itself--moral ones with its conscience, logical ones with its intellect, spiritual ones with its aspirations--and perfectly capable of all sorts of dodges, quibbles, evasions, and disguises, whether dealing with matters on the highest or lowest level of reference.
6.8.3.57Listen 25 Jan 2016If we are to think correctly, we cannot stop with thinking of the Overself as being only within us. After this idea has become firmly established for its metaphysical and devotional value, we must complete the concept by thinking of the Overself as being also without us. If in the first concept it occupies a point in space, in the second one it is beyond all considerations of place.
14.22.3.391Listen 26 Jan 2016It is not only that man does not know his spiritual nature but, which is worse, that he holds a false idea of his own nature. He takes the shadow--ego--for the substance--Overself. He takes the effect--body--for the cause--Spirit.
6.8.2.39Listen 27 Jan 2016The power of the higher Self is such that he who becomes its channel can affect others--if Grace be granted them by their own higher Self--by the mere thought alone. He will need neither to be near, to touch or to speak to them.
16.25.5.268Listen 28 Jan 2016Mankind is so near to God and yet so far away from God! Every fresh day is a fresh call from the Overself to man.
2.1.2.445Listen 29 Jan 2016His own efforts at this stage will consist in removing from the field of concentration every mental association and emotional influence which distracts him from attaining the stillness. When he has succeeded in removing them, he is then to do nothing at all, only to relax.
15.23.7.250Listen 30 Jan 2016He who has nurtured the thoughts and cultivated the stillness and behaved by the injunctions which philosophy has offered him will, when the late evening of his life comes, not only never regret it but be glad for it.
0.2.2.67Listen 31 Jan 2016
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