Day by day
… It is not pride that makes me say that the volume—The Wisdom of the Overself—which follows The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga is the first methodical embodiment in a modern language of this tradition, as well as the first synthetic explanation of it in scientific terminology …
8.12.4.5, ExcerptListen 1 Dec 2023While fulfilling its own purpose, karma cannot help fulfilling another and higher one; it brings us what is essential to our development.
6.9.3.270Listen 2 Dec 2023… The self-consciousness thus developed will not be dissolved, extinguished, or re-absorbed into the Whole again, leaving not a trace behind. Rather will it begin a new spiral of evolution towards higher altitudes of consciousness and diviner levels of being …
16.26.4.257, ExcerptListen 3 Dec 2023… As regards Enlightenment, this is not coming from self-willed effort; it is coming only by what the Overself does to him. It is a matter of Grace—unpredictable …
3.2.1.209, ExcerptListen 4 Dec 2023Meditation proves its worth, shows its best value, and merges into contemplation, when it is deepest. For then thoughts cease to flutter, the ego is lulled, the world vanishes, and the burden of the flesh with it.
4.4.1.341Listen 5 Dec 2023… The art of mental quiet can be pushed to a deep inner stillness and by practice can be inwardly maintained in the midst of outward activity. This is why the value placed on keeping calm is very high in both yoga and philosophy.
15.24.3.309, ExcerptListen 6 Dec 2023Plotinus even made the point that it is better for a man not to be aware that he is acting virtuously, courageously, wisely, or practising contemplation beautifully, free from interfering mental images or thoughts. For then, if he does not know that he—the person—is doing so, no egoism will taint his consciousness …
16.25.2.89, ExcerptListen 7 Dec 2023It is the power of the Other which pulls him upward out of his attachments to body and earth, cajoling him to do what he cannot do of himself—let go. This power, when so felt, we call grace.
12.18.5.106Listen 8 Dec 2023The real work on the Quest has to be carried out within and by the mind, not the body. The aspirant must try to live his outward life as normally as possible and avoid making a public spectacle of the fact he is following the spiritual path.
3.2.8.36Listen 9 Dec 2023What is sin? It may be defined, first, as any act which harms others; second, as any act which harms oneself; third, as any thought or emotion which has these consequences.
5.6.1.371Listen 10 Dec 2023A further difference between prayer and meditation is that in prayer, when successful, there is felt an intimacy with the Holy but not an identity with it, as is the case in the latter.
12.18.2.182Listen 11 Dec 2023Without this conquest of the lower nature no enlightenment can remain either a lasting or an unmixed one. And without suitable disciplines, no such conquest is possible. This is one reason why it is not enough to travel the Short Path.
15.23.5.171Listen 12 Dec 2023All the forces of a man have to be mobilized in the search for higher consciousness. He cannot leave sex-force out, for example.
4.5.7.153Listen 13 Dec 2023It is not that truth has to be made practical, for it is the most practical thing which exists. It is that men have to become better instructed in it, as well as in the higher laws which reflect it, and then live out what they have learned.
13.20.1.338Listen 14 Dec 2023The aggressive world of our time needs to learn how to get out of time. The active world needs to learn to sit still, mentally and physically, without becoming bored.
3.3.1.8Listen 15 Dec 2023He is open-eyed enough to see men as they are, but also generous enough to see them as they must one day become.
5.6.5.31Listen 16 Dec 2023The enforced cessation from external activity which imprisonment may bring could be a help to spiritual awakening. A few months before he died Oscar Wilde said, “I have lived all there was to live. I found the sweet bitter and the bitter sweet. I was happy in prison because there I found my soul.”
3.3.5.60Listen 17 Dec 2023It is not enough to become detached from the world, not even enough to meditate intermittently on the Overself. A man must remain every hour, every day, established in the fundamental attitude produced by the other two.
15.24.3.322Listen 18 Dec 2023Since the Overself is outside time it is also outside events. Nothing happens in it or to it.
6.9.1.53Listen 19 Dec 2023The aspirant who fails to practise non-injury sets up an evil relationship which will have to be worked out later, a relationship which will block his entry into the state of lasting enlightenment until it is so worked out. The unnecessary taking of animal life for his food is one form, although a common one, of violation of this ethic.
4.5.3.91Listen 20 Dec 2023When he can bring himself to look upon his own actions from the outside just as he does those of other men, he will have satisfied the philosophic ideal.
5.6.1.488Listen 21 Dec 2023If meditation is to be mastered, two fundamental conditions must be remembered. The first is, ever and again bring attention back from its straying. The second is, ever probe with it deeper and deeper, until the still Void is entered. At the end let yourself become one with the Void.
4.4.1.145Listen 22 Dec 2023Love of the divine is our primary duty. Love of our neighbour is only a secondary one.
5.6.2.130Listen 23 Dec 2023Do not expect to find more truth and meaning in the world outside than you can find inside yourself.
2.1.5.62Listen 24 Dec 2023When I enter the solitude of my room, whether it be in a resplendent city hotel or in a peasant's dirty hut, and close the door and sink into a chair or squat on the ground, letting off thoughts of the world without in order to penetrate the world within, I know that I am entering a holy state.
4.4.2.109Listen 25 Dec 2023From this inner stillness the highest truths have come forth and passed into human knowledge.
15.24.4.139Listen 26 Dec 2023“Are you happy?” is a question people often ask him. But he has not sought happiness. He has sought to find out why he is here and to fulfil that purpose.
5.6.2.271Listen 27 Dec 2023The Power to whom prayer should be addressed—for Its Grace, Its Self-Revelation and Guidance—is one’s own higher self, the Overself.
12.18.2.201Listen 28 Dec 2023Do not interrupt those wonderful moments, when all is still, by descending to trivial doings, or even necessary ones. Let them wait, let brain and body rest, let the world go, and give this fraction of time to the Timeless.
3.3.3.63Listen 29 Dec 2023Not until the ego is completely deflated and falls into the Void will he know, feel, and fully realize the blissfulness of salvation.
6.8.4.447Listen 30 Dec 2023Philosophy combines a lofty idealism with an intense practicality.
13.20.1.326Listen 31 Dec 2023
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