Day by day
He has to train himself to catch what the soul intuits as clearly as he can already catch what the intellect thinks and the body reports.
3.2.5.153Listen 1 Oct 2013Let him picture his own self as if it were at the end of its quest. Let him see it enthroned on the summit of power and engaged in tranquil meditation for his own joy and for mankind's welfare.
15.23.6.125Listen 2 Oct 2013When the Overself is present in a man's consciousness, It is present in all his thoughts and actions. They are then under Its rule, they proceed from It. The man does not have to seek for any particular virtues, for all can and will then come of themselves as needed…
15.23.5.155, ExcerptListen 3 Oct 2013Neither deep sleep nor brain concussion prevents us from recovering the sense of I when they end.
6.8.1.98Listen 4 Oct 2013There is no need to yield to the fear of the void, which comes in the deepest meditation. That is merely the personal ego offering its resistance to the higher self. That same fear of never being able to come back has to be faced by all advanced mystics when they reach this stage of meditation, but it is utterly groundless and is really a test of faith in God to protect them in a most laudable endeavour: to come closer to him and to advance farther from their lower self…
15.23.8.62, ExcerptListen 5 Oct 2013When the goddess Athena, in Greek mythology, says that ”some things you will think of for yourself, and others a god will put into your heart,” this is her way of describing what we, more simply, would call inspiration.
14.22.2.2Listen 6 Oct 2013It is a Short Path attitude to avoid censorious reproaches and condemnatory speech--these as a part of its larger rejection of negatives and preference for positives.
15.23.1.112Listen 7 Oct 2013It is important for the study of philosophy and especially for the practice of its Short Path to avoid negative thoughts and feelings, to rebut them as soon and as often as they arise. This is not only a moral necessity but also a practical one. Such avoidance helps the mind to reach or keep the delicate condition of intuitive transcendent understanding.
3.2.4.89Listen 8 Oct 2013The constant movement of thoughts and the ego's fascination with itself hide from us the divine Overself, from which both are derived.
6.8.4.82Listen 9 Oct 2013Man 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 10 Oct 2013... Philosophy aims at producing a group of men and women trained in mind control, accustomed to subordinate immediate interests to ultimate ends, sincerely desirous of serving humanity in fundamental ways, and possessed of philosophic knowledge which will make them valuable citizens…
13.20.1.397, ExcerptListen 11 Oct 2013A life that is not directed towards this higher goal, a mind that is entirely uninterested in becoming a participant in the Overself consciousness--these failures will silently censure a man both during his bodily tenancy and his post-mortem existence.
6.9.3.60Listen 12 Oct 2013Before passing into a higher phase of his development, the disciple is usually confronted by life with a situation which will test his fitness for it. His success in meeting this test will open a gate leading to the next degree.
3.2.3.99Listen 13 Oct 2013You may rightly consider that you have mastered meditation when it becomes easy and natural.
4.4.2.156Listen 14 Oct 2013Here, on this Short Path, he is to direct his yearnings and seekings, his hopes and thoughts, solely to the Overself. Nothing and nobody, not even a guru, is to come between them.
15.23.1.85Listen 15 Oct 2013Trace consciousness back to itself, unmixed with bodily sense-reports, emotional moods, or mental thoughts. This can be done successfully only by withdrawing it inwards as you analyse. The process becomes a meditation. In the final term you are aware of nothing else, that is, of nothing but being aware. But at this point you cannot know it as a second thing, an object, but only by being it.
15.23.7.208Listen 16 Oct 2013Before the Overself can stay with you, the feelings must be brought to a condition of calm, the thoughts must be turned inwards and centered there. Otherwise the outer difficulties will not let go of your attention…
15.24.2.164, ExcerptListen 17 Oct 2013... There is not one fixed rule for everyone. One person is suited for a little of the Short Path and more or longer of the Long Path; with the other person it is vice versa. With most people the combination is the best way…
3.2.1.209, ExcerptListen 18 Oct 2013Moral disciplines have a definite place in life to make us better human beings but they do not lift us to the Overself's level. The Long Path, to which they belong, has a humanitarian value but not a magically transcendent one.
15.23.2.150Listen 19 Oct 2013To cast out tensions of body and mind and keep relaxed is to keep free and open and receptive to the higher forces--and especially to the intuitive ones.
3.3.3.78Listen 20 Oct 2013... When we understand the philosophic doctrine aright, that mind constructs its experience, its environment, its world, we understand the implication that an amendment in our environment can come only through amendment in our thinking. Thought is creative, and we are continually building both ourselves and our environment by the characteristics and qualities of our thoughts.
13.21.5.45, ExcerptListen 21 Oct 2013He will be forced to admit, with sorrowful head, that he had been too busy with the trivial matters of the moment to break through the mysterious barriers that bar our human way out of the prison of time and space.
3.2.8.13Listen 22 Oct 2013It is the unique contribution of the Short Path that it takes advantage of the Overself's ever-present offer of Grace.
15.23.1.134Listen 23 Oct 2013The first part of the exercise requires him to banish all thoughts, feelings, images, and energies which do not belong to the subject, prayer, ideal, or problem he chooses as a theme. Nothing else may be allowed to intrude into consciousness or, having intruded by the mind's old restlessness, it is to be blotted out immediately. Such expulsion is always to be accompanied by an exhaling of the breath. Each return of attention to the selected theme is to be accompanied by an inhaling of the breath.
4.4.3.21Listen 24 Oct 2013Pain and suffering belong only to this physical world and its shadow-spheres. There is a higher world, where joy and happiness alone are man's experience.
16.26.1.50Listen 25 Oct 2013... The personality is but a transient shadow; a shadow presupposes a light; the light of the real self exists; renounce living in the shadow and move over to the light…
3.2.3.29, ExcerptListen 26 Oct 2013... When a man has made sufficient advance to become aware of inner promptings from his higher self, he should allow them to become active in guiding him and should let them take him freely on his spiritual life course.
3.2.9.3, ExcerptListen 27 Oct 2013A good deal of achievement goes on in the silent solitude of our own hearts, unnoticed and unknown to other men; one day it blossoms into irresistible action, and then the world wonders why.
14.22.2.43Listen 28 Oct 2013We fulfil life when we find ourselves in the divine presence unendingly, aware of it and expressing it.
14.22.2.45Listen 29 Oct 2013Even if he has no spiritual experience at all but only complete faith in it, even if he cannot live the role of the illumined fulfilled man, then let him act it. This is an exercise to be practised. Let him try to think and behave as if his quest is successful, let him copy the fulfilled philosopher.
15.23.6.121Listen 30 Oct 2013Despite all the talk disparaging the ego, it is not wrong but praiseworthy to develop the best personality one can and then use it. Its character can be purified, its passions controlled, its weaknesses overcome, its ignorance dispelled. New virtues can be introduced and new power developed. One can then make better use of such a personality--for one's own advantage and for service of others--and one should.
6.8.1.159Listen 31 Oct 2013
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