Day by day
… At the present stage of human existence, there is no other way to durable spiritual development than through physical embodiments. The total sum of its varied experiences offer us the chance at first to learn and thus to progress, and later to overcome ourselves and thus to attain spiritual awareness…
4.5.1.1, ExcerptListen 1 Jan 2017Only he is able to think his own thought, uninfluenced by others, who has trained himself to enter the Stillness, where alone he is able to transcend all thought.
15.24.3.6Listen 2 Jan 2017… It was one of the special tasks of Jesus to make known that compassion (or love, as the original word was translated) is a primary attribute of God and that Grace, pardon, and redemption are consequently primary features of God's active relation to man…
3.2.9.67, ExcerptListen 3 Jan 2017… For meditation will have calmed his temperament and disciplined his character; the metaphysics of truth will have sharpened his intelligence, protected him against error, and balanced his outlook; the philosophic ethos will have purified his motives and promoted his altruism, whilst the philosophic insight will have made him forever aware that he is an inhabitant of the country of the Overself…
13.20.1.173, ExcerptListen 4 Jan 2017… The particular help he needs at a particular stage will come naturally. It may take the form of a change in outward circumstances or a meeting with a more developed person, of a printed book or a written letter, of a sudden unexpected emotional inspiration or an illuminating intellectual intuition…
3.2.9.67, ExcerptListen 5 Jan 2017It is true that the Long Path is only a preliminary one and that the Short Path is certainly a more advanced one. But it is also true that each is incomplete without the other. The best plan is to adopt as much of both paths as the aspirant can.
15.23.5.168Listen 6 Jan 2017When thinking has done its best work, reached its loftiest point, it should relax and cease its activity. If all else has prepared the way, the mind will be ready to enter the silence, to accept a take-over by the Overself.
4.4.4.6Listen 7 Jan 2017What has been called ”purgation of the intellect, memory, and will” actually happens in the deep contemplative state. The faculty of thinking temporarily ceases to function, the awareness of personal identity vanishes for a time, and the ability to direct the muscular movements of the body stops as in a paralysed man. These changes last only for the hour of his meditation practice and are responsible for much interior growth in the shifting of consciousness from the lower nature to the higher self…
15.24.3.2, ExcerptListen 8 Jan 2017The extroversions of the ego block the communication of the Overself.
3.3.2.113Listen 9 Jan 2017To understand the mysterious language of the Silence, and to bring this understanding back into the world of forms through work that shall express the creative vitality of the Spirit, is one way in which you may serve mankind.
13.20.4.262Listen 10 Jan 2017Let go, let thoughts come to rest, let the ego go. This is the best preparation to receive the glimpse, to invite and feel its bliss, wiping out the memories of suffering.
14.22.5.115Listen 11 Jan 2017The way to use a philosophic book is not to expect to understand all of it at the first trial, and consequently not to get disheartened when failure to understand is frequent. Using this cautionary approach, he should carefully note each phrase or paragraph that brings an intuitive response in his heart's deep feeling (not to be confused with an intellectual acquiescence in the head's logical working). As soon as, and every time, this happens, he should stop his reading, put the book momentarily aside, and surrender himself to the activating words alone. Let them work upon him in their own way. He is merely to be quiet and be receptive. For it is out of such a response that he may eventually find that a door opens to his inner being and a light shines where there was none before. When he passes through that doorway and steps into that light, the rest of the book will be easy to understand.
9.14.4.149Listen 12 Jan 2017He who puts himself at the Overself's disposal will find that the Overself will in turn put him where he may best fulfil his own divine possibilities.
12.18.4.144Listen 13 Jan 2017It is easy to attain a kind of artificial serenity while seated in the comfort of an armchair and reading a philosophic book, but to keep calm in the midst of provocation or peril is the test. So the would-be philosopher will try to keep an even mind at all times, to chill its passions and control its agitations.
15.24.2.16Listen 14 Jan 2017Take attention away from the everyday egoistic self and you may open a gate to the Overself. This is one method--and the harder one. Let attention be held by a glimpse so that the everyday self drifts out of focus. This is another method--and the easier…
15.23.7.209, ExcerptListen 15 Jan 2017Meditation is not achieved if the concentrated mind is directed toward a subject of personal and worldly nature. Reflecting on the subject will give a deeper knowledge of it and a fuller perception of its meaning, but it will not give anything more. However concentrated the mind may become, it will not escape from the ego, nor does it seek to do so. Meditation is achieved if the concentrated mind is used to reflect on the Overself or the way to it.
4.4.4.102Listen 16 Jan 2017When a certain depth is reached and the concentration remains unflagging, the ego begins to sink back into its source, to dissolve into and unite with that holy source. It is then indeed as near to God's presence as it can get.
15.23.7.205Listen 17 Jan 2017So long as men love only the ephemeral and lose themselves in it, so long will they continue to suffer from that portion of their troubles which is avoidable. This was a chief element in the Buddha's message twenty-five hundred years ago and it is still as true today.
6.9.3.109Listen 18 Jan 2017The situation may be summed up thus: If the activity of thinking is directed towards external objects and inspired by the desire to attain or retain them, it binds a man to his spiritual ignorance. If however it is directed towards God or his divine soul and is inspired by the desire to attain it, then it leads him to spiritual intuitions.
5.7.1.124Listen 19 Jan 2017It is not merely an intellectual exercise. All the piety and reverence and worship gained from religion are needed here too. We must pray constantly to the Soul to reveal itself.
4.4.4.5Listen 20 Jan 2017Wherever and whenever meatless diet becomes the rule, and not the rarity that it is today, we may expect violence and crime to abate markedly.
4.5.3.72Listen 21 Jan 2017Intellect obstructs the light of the Overself.
5.7.1.34Listen 22 Jan 2017Even stars must die one day, more violently and dramatically than most human beings, for even they come under the law that whatever had a beginning must also have an ending.
6.9.1.7Listen 23 Jan 2017The books which live are those written out of this deep union with the true self by men who had overcome the false self. One such book is worth a thousand written out of the intellect alone or the false ego alone. It will do more good to more people for more years. The student may use such a work, therefore, as a basis for a meditation exercise. Its statements, its ideas, should be taken one by one, put into focus for his mind to work on.
4.4.4.19Listen 24 Jan 2017If at any time he feels the touch of Peace, he should stay where he is, forget all else, and surrender to it.
15.24.2.39Listen 25 Jan 2017A man is made up of several different factors: what he has inherited from his parents; what he has picked up from his surroundings; what he has brought over from previous reincarnations; what he thinks, feels and does; what his reactions are to other people. It is the combination of all these elements which make one man.
6.8.3.21Listen 26 Jan 2017This narrow fragment of consciousness which is the person that I am hides the great secret of life at its core.
6.8.1.111Listen 27 Jan 2017But finding the higher presence within the heart is only the first step. The next is to surrender oneself to it, to be passive in its hands, to let it direct the course of thought, feeling, and conduct. This is a task which is not less hard, and will take not less time, than the first one. It is indeed an art to be learnt by unremitting practice.
3.2.5.202Listen 28 Jan 2017We are regarded as odd people because we trouble our heads with the search for an intangible reality. But it never occurs to our critics that it is much more odd that they should go on living without pausing to inquire if there be any purpose in life at all.
2.1.1.174Listen 29 Jan 2017We need to meditate more often on these reminding statements of the sages, to become more concerned with our higher interests.
4.4.4.99Listen 30 Jan 2017His own power will bring him to a certain point but it will not be able to bring him farther along. When this is reached, he has no alternative than to surrender patiently, acquiescently, and wait. By such submission he shows his humility and takes one step in becoming worthy of grace.
15.23.7.254Listen 31 Jan 2017
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