Day by day
When it is said that separateness is the great sin, this does not refer to one's relation with other human beings. It refers to having separated oneself in thought from one's higher self.
6.8.1.107Listen 1 Oct 2015A man's attitude toward the question of free will changes after he has surrendered to the Overself. It has to change. For henceforth he is to be loyal not to the ego's desires but to the Overself's injunctions. If the two coincide, it is well and pleasant for him. If not, and he obeys his higher self as he must, then it can no longer be said that he has full freedom of will. But neither can it be said that he has not. For the Overself is in him, not outside, not something alien and apart; it is indeed himself at his best and highest level…
6.9.4.140, ExcerptListen 2 Oct 2015Having worked to the utmost upon himself, but finding that a stable spiritual consciousness still eludes him, he has no recourse except to submit his further development to a higher power than his own will and then wait and let it work upon him.
12.18.4.20Listen 3 Oct 2015... The ego is surrounded by truth and goodness. Why not reach out and up to the Overself?
6.9.4.159, ExcerptListen 4 Oct 2015There is something in each man which says ”I.” Is it the body? Usually he thinks so. But if he could set up a deeper analysis, he would find that consciousness would carry him away from the body-thought into itself. There, in its own pure existence, he would find the answer to his question, ”Who am I?”
6.8.1.69Listen 5 Oct 2015One day he will feel utterly tired of the ego, will see how cunningly and insidiously it has penetrated all his activities, how even in supposedly spiritual or altruistic activities he was merely working for the ego. In this disgust with his earthly self, he will pray for liberation from it…
6.8.4.357, ExcerptListen 6 Oct 2015If the Long Path equips him with the necessary strength, purity, and concentration, the Short Path makes use of this equipment to unite his consciousness directly with the Overself.
15.23.4.11Listen 7 Oct 2015So many mystics are quite unnecessarily frightened by this concept of the Void that it is necessary to reassure them. They halt on the very threshold of their high attainment and go no farther, because they fear they will be extinguished, annihilated. The truth is that this will happen only to their lower nature. They themselves will remain very much alive…
15.23.8.57, ExcerptListen 8 Oct 2015Follow the ”I” back to its holy source.
15.23.7.220Listen 9 Oct 2015The world abruptly vanishes from his ken. He is poised for a few minutes in No-thing, the same great Void in which God is eternally poised. His contemplation has succeeded and, succeeding, has led him from self to Overself.
15.23.8.94Listen 10 Oct 2015... Do not praise the ego for having found God. It was Grace which brought about the discovery. It was not the ego. It is true that the beginner needs humility but it is even more true that the advanced man needs even more humility.
12.18.3.42, ExcerptListen 11 Oct 2015What the ego thinks and feels and does is to reflect the Overself's dominion. The ego itself is now to be subsidiary. Every thought or feeling or act is to be a dedicated one, every place where it finds itself a consecrated one.
14.22.2.68Listen 12 Oct 2015If, in the act of falling asleep, he invites the higher self through aspiration, he may one day find that in the act of waking up an inner voice begins to speak to him of high and holy things. And with the voice comes the inspiration, the strength, and the desire to live up to them.
13.19.3.162Listen 13 Oct 2015If the earlier experiences of life are intended to develop the ego from the primitive animalistic to the fully humanistic stage, the later experiences are intended to induce the man to give the ego as an offering to the Overself.
6.8.1.174Listen 14 Oct 2015A man is not necessarily unspiritual if he lives fully in the world, engaging in its activities and appreciating its satisfactions. Only, he must remember constantly who and what he really is and never forget his ultimate purpose.
15.24.3.148Listen 15 Oct 2015... On the Long Path the aspirant tries to improve himself. He experiences successes and failures, ups and downs. When he is disappointed, he gets melancholy. On the Short Path such a situation cannot arise, because he has faith like a little child. He has given up all his future to Overself-God and he has enough faith to trust to it. He knows he has made the right decision and therefore is always happy. He depends on this GRACE, he knows It, that It comes from the wisest being behind the world. Whatever will come, it will be the best…
3.2.1.209, ExcerptListen 16 Oct 2015... If it be asked, How can anyone who is attuned to such impersonality be also benevolent? the answer is that because he is also attuned to the real Giver of all things, he need not struggle against anyone nor possess anything. Hence he can afford to be generous as the selfish cannot. And because the Overself's very nature is harmony and love, he seeks the welfare of others alongside of his own.
5.6.1.387, ExcerptListen 17 Oct 2015Every outward experience has its inward benefits, if only we will look for them with ego-free eyes. And this is true even when the experience involves suffering. Behind suffering we may learn to find some lesson to profit by, some purificatory discipline to be undergone, some ignored fact to be faced, or some wisdom to be gleaned.
9.13.1.283Listen 18 Oct 2015His behaviour is spontaneous, but not through mere impulse nor through unused intellect. It is the spontaneity, the forthrightness of an inspired man who knows where he is going and what he is doing, who is directly guided in his relations with other men by a higher will than his own ego's.
14.22.2.51Listen 19 Oct 2015It is not the five senses which know the world outside, since they are only instruments which the mind uses. It is not even the intellect, since that merely reproduces the image formed out of the total sense reports. They are not capable of functioning by themselves. It is the principle of Consciousness which is behind both, and for which they are simply agents, that really makes awareness of the world at all possible. It is like the sun, which lights up the existence of all things.
13.21.1.56Listen 20 Oct 2015Men will moan about their unhappy past, and ache because they cannot undo it; but they forget to undo the unhappy future which they are now busy making.
6.9.3.106Listen 21 Oct 2015... Very few have become aware of Awareness itself, which is the highest achievement possible to any human being…
8.12.4.3, ExcerptListen 22 Oct 2015The philosopher more than other men is a cosmopolitan creature. He scorns the fierce nationalisms which run riot in the world and feels the truth of Jesus' message of goodwill towards all men.
13.20.5.143Listen 23 Oct 2015... He is being called indeed, to die to his ego, to take the desires and passions, the greeds and hates out of his life, to learn the art of living in utter independence of externals and in utter dependence on the Overself. And this is that same call which Jesus uttered when he said: ”He that loseth his life shall find it.” Thus the sorrows of life on earth are but a transient means to an eternal end, a process through which we have to learn how to expand awareness from the person to the Overself.
2.1.2.170, ExcerptListen 24 Oct 2015Just as the human embryo is nourished and kept alive in complete dependence upon the mother inside whose body it is carried, its consciousness being in dreamless slumber like a hibernating animal, so the human adult is in reality just as dependent for his own existence on the Overself...
12.17.1.9, ExcerptListen 25 Oct 2015The way to the goal does not lie through a cleansing of the ego alone: it lies also through a desertion of it. The first way is necessary only because it helps to make the second one possible.
15.23.4.19Listen 26 Oct 2015Drowning persons who were saved and survived have told of the feeling of time slipping backward and their whole lifetime being replayed. This is an experience which is not theirs alone; it happens to all who pass through the portal of death.
6.9.1.126Listen 27 Oct 2015When it is said that we lose our individuality on entering Nirvana, words are being used loosely and faultily. So long as a man, whether he be Buddha or Hitler, has to walk, eat, and work, he must use his individuality. What is lost by the sage is his attachment to individuality with its desires, hates, angers, and passions.
16.25.2.190Listen 28 Oct 2015The means needed for the quest have been listed in Buddha's eightfold path: (1) right belief, (2) right decision, (3) right words, (4) right dealings, (5) right livelihood, (6) right tendency, (7) right thinking, (8) right meditative immersion into oneself.
3.2.5.32Listen 29 Oct 2015The Long Path is taught to beginners and others in the earlier and middle stages of the quest. This is because they are ready for the idea of self-improvement and not for the higher one of the unreality of the self. So the latter is taught on the Short Path, where attention is turned away from the little self and from the idea of perfecting it, to the essence, the real being.
15.23.4.6Listen 30 Oct 2015In those first moments when awakening from the nightly sleep, we may enter a heavenly thought-free state. Or, if we cannot reach so high, we may receive thoughts which give guidance, tell us what to do, warn us against wrong decisions, or foretell the future.
13.19.3.159Listen 31 Oct 2015
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