Day by day
Meditation, if successful, accomplishes two main purposes: it draws the mind inward, releasing it from the physical imprisonment, and it elevates the mind to a heavenly state of union with the Overself.
4.4.1.312Listen 1 Jan 2024Practical philosophy is the art of living so as to fulfil life’s higher purpose.
13.20.1.329Listen 2 Jan 2024In our best moments, we discover that we are not really alone, for with them comes our best self. It is our guide and comforter.
14.22.7.151Listen 3 Jan 2024If something awakens in him, a serious urge to unfold more of his spiritual nature, then the practice of meditation becomes one of the best ways to get into action.
4.4.1.22Listen 4 Jan 2024The more intellectual a man is, the more does he need to bring a devotional element into the studies and practices.
3.2.5.184Listen 5 Jan 2024We have never learnt to keep our minds still as we sometimes keep our bodies still. It is by far the harder task but also the most rewarding one …
4.4.1.47, ExcerptListen 6 Jan 2024Grace is the benign effluence of the Overself, the kindly radiation from it, ever-present in us …
12.18.5.4, ExcerptListen 7 Jan 2024Nowhere in physical nature do we observe this leap across a chasm but everywhere everything passes gradually and little by little from one condition to the next. Why should the transition from ego to Overself contradict this universal fact?
15.23.2.98Listen 8 Jan 2024Only 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 9 Jan 2024The Short Path concentrates thought upon the Real, deliberately forgetful of everything and everyone in the world of illusion.
15.23.1.116Listen 10 Jan 2024Not all persons come into this desirable state through formal methods of meditation and regular practice of them. Some attain it through adopting a higher attitude to the happenings, situations, impressions, and emotions which each day’s course presents to them.
16.25.2.70Listen 11 Jan 2024The purely intellectual approach to the Overself can never replace the psychological experience of it. This latter is and must be supreme.
4.4.1.15Listen 12 Jan 2024He can then say truthfully, knowing whereof he speaks: “A divine element lives in me!” Far though this has taken him from the ordinary good man or ordinary pious man, it is not enough. He needs to go further so that he can attain the place where, obedient, purified, conscious of the World-Idea, he can add: “This element now works in me.” With that the ego’s tyranny falls away.
14.22.8.104Listen 13 Jan 2024If he insists on clinging to the ego, he makes it impossible to know truth, approach God, or experience the timelessness of reality. Only an outer intervention can then help him, only the Grace coming direct or through some human channel.
12.18.5.127Listen 14 Jan 2024The Short Path makes it possible for the most ordinary man—unprepared, untrained though he be—to find spiritual fulfilment.
15.23.1.176Listen 15 Jan 2024A knowledge of the heavenly Overself cannot be had by studying, improving, or developing the benighted and fictitious ego. The only way in which it can be got is by direct experience of it. This axiom is the basis of the Short Path.
15.23.2.122Listen 16 Jan 2024The discovery of timelessness, of its reality and factuality, is both a thing to wonder at and a joyful experience.
14.22.6.189Listen 17 Jan 2024First, mind is held until its continual changes are stilled; second, it is then possible to switch its identification to the Overself.
4.4.1.146Listen 18 Jan 2024Spirituality needs time to develop; the spark needs fanning; but this need not be turned into an excuse for surrendering completely to the Long Path’s limitations.
15.23.2.134Listen 19 Jan 2024There 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 20 Jan 2024So hard are the lessons which earth-life forces us to learn, so hard its sufferings, that it is only fair to say that the bliss to which we shall emerge after leaving it, or even now in mystic states, is not less in any way.
6.9.1.77Listen 21 Jan 2024… We may fittingly compare the Overself with any catalytic agent of chemistry which, unaltered itself, activates other substances by its presence …
16.28.2.81, ExcerptListen 22 Jan 2024The commonest way, the most usual way, of attracting grace was indicated by the Carthusian monk Guiges, more than eight hundred years ago: “It would be a rare exception to gain [the degree of] contemplation without prayer. . . . Prayer gains the grace of God.”
12.18.5.176Listen 23 Jan 2024The peace of contemplation, when achieved, falls upon us like eventide’s hush. The brain’s busy travail stops, the world’s frantic pressure upon the nerves ends.
15.23.7.109Listen 24 Jan 2024Prayer is a help, but some method that not only goes still deeper into the human heart but helps to silence the ego is also needed. This can be found through the practice of contemplation.
4.4.1.26Listen 25 Jan 2024Withdraw into the inner Stillness: what better thing can a man do? For it will point to the goal, give direction and support to finding it.
4.4.1.34Listen 26 Jan 2024It is not within the power of man to finish either the purificatory work or its illumination-sequel: his Overself, by its action within his psyche, must bring that about. This activating power is grace.
12.18.5.110Listen 27 Jan 2024… For the Overself to give itself wholly and perpetually to a man is a rare and wonderful event. Most often it gives itself only for a short time. This serves to intensify and enlarge his love and attraction for it, and to provide him with beautiful memories to support and sustain him in faithfulness to the quest in the fatiguing long-drawn years of struggle and darkness …
14.22.8.107, ExcerptListen 28 Jan 2024The holy trinity is truth, goodness, and beauty. For they are leading attributes of the divine soul in man.
16.28.1.56Listen 29 Jan 2024One 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 30 Jan 2024When enlightenment comes through philosophic preparation for it, the experience is sudden, direct, unexpected, and spontaneous.
16.25.2.64Listen 31 Jan 2024
The notebooks are copyright © 1984-1989 The Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation
This site is run by Paul Brunton-stiftelsen · info@paulbruntondailynote.se