Day by day
The unit of mind is differentiated out and undergoes its long evolution through numerous changes of state, not to merge so utterly in its source again as to be virtually annihilated, but to be consciously harmonized with that source whilst yet retaining its individuality.
16.25.2.204Listen 1 Mar 2023The Short Path advocates who decry the need of the Long Path altogether because, being divine in essence, we have only to realize what we already are, are misled by their own half-truth. What we actually find in the human situation is that we are only potentially divine. The work of drawing out and developing this potential still needs to be done. This takes time, discipline, and training, just as the work of converting a seed into a tree takes time.
15.23.2.12Listen 2 Mar 2023By forming clearer ideas of the Overself’s activity, he can better co-operate with it, and more effectually remove the obstacles which obstruct that activity within him.
5.7.2.2Listen 3 Mar 2023When he has reached the stage of advancement the rules prescribed for beginners and intermediates do not necessarily apply to him. He can now meditate whether sitting upright, as the prescription usually counsels, or lying limp on his back. His mind is not now so bound by these external conditions.
15.23.6.37Listen 4 Mar 2023In this third phase, contemplation, there is a feeling of being surrounded by the immensity of infinite space with one’s own being somehow connected with it.
15.23.7.90Listen 5 Mar 2023Parents may do what they wish to encourage the good and discourage the evil in the characters of their offspring, but in bringing them into the world they took a chance. For the children brought their own characters with them from previous incarnations.
6.9.2.12Listen 6 Mar 2023With this experience of his own divinity, he discovers a meaning in life. Henceforth, he is able to take part consciously in the higher evolution which is inherent in it.
14.22.6.297Listen 7 Mar 2023… Again and again seekers after truth have been counselled to practise the art of bringing together and balancing the different elements of their nature, the different factors of the quest, the different demands of everyday living. Philosophy is able to give us peace because it incorporates this art.
13.20.3.334, ExcerptListen 8 Mar 2023He tries to avoid recognizing that he is held prisoner in ignorance and in suffering by his own ego, that its condition is unhealthy and unbalanced, and that he must find some way to liberate himself from its thraldom.
6.8.4.114Listen 9 Mar 2023The quest begins with prayer and even ends with it too. No man, whether novice or proficient, can afford to throw away this valuable means of communion, adoration, worship, and request.
12.18.2.3Listen 10 Mar 2023Most people live upon the mere surface of their consciousness, knowing nothing of the great Power and intelligence which support it.
9.13.2.88Listen 11 Mar 2023Deeper than all other desires is this need to gain consciousness of the Overself. Only it is unable to express itself directly at first, so it expresses itself in the only ways we permit it to—first the physical, then the emotional and intellectual quest of happiness.
2.1.2.244Listen 12 Mar 2023If no one in this world can achieve perfection but only approach it, the personal realization of this fact at the proper time and after many efforts will lead to a deep humility and surrender. This may open the door of one’s being to Grace, and thence to the beatific experience of the Overself, the Ever-Perfect.
12.18.5.230Listen 13 Mar 2023Once a man has had this sacred experience he will naturally want to provoke it again. But how? He will find meditation to be part of the answer.
14.22.5.28Listen 14 Mar 2023When science leads man to deny his sacred source and to decry all personal testimonies to experience of its existence, science is no longer serving man but seriously crippling him.
5.7.6.64Listen 15 Mar 2023A Glimpse gives him the confidence that he is walking the right road and encourages him to go forward.
14.22.7.179Listen 16 Mar 2023To the work of reshaping character and extending consciousness, the practice of meditation is indispensable.
4.4.1.27Listen 17 Mar 2023The sun’s warmth and beauty brings out the flower’s growth. It does not strive, struggle, or push. This is a good simile of the Short Path’s final phase, taught also in the Chinese doctrine of wu-wei (inaction) and the Indian doctrine of asparsa yoga (without-effort method).
15.23.5.207Listen 18 Mar 2023If a state of vacant mind be deliberately and successfully induced, one of the chief conditions requisite to temporary awareness of the soul will then exist.
15.23.7.157Listen 19 Mar 2023The owl, which sees clearly at midnight, is an old and good symbol of the sage whose mind is ever at rest in, and lighted by, the Infinite Mind.
16.25.2.307Listen 20 Mar 2023The revelation of truth may come directly from within himself because of the presence of the divine spark within himself.
14.22.3.88Listen 21 Mar 2023The Short Path is content with exercises done for their own sake, not for the sake of the results they bring. In this it is the opposite of the Long Path, which does them for results, and is attached to those results.
15.23.5.59Listen 22 Mar 2023We reincarnate in part through the pressure of accumulated karma and in part through the pressure of habitual tendencies.
6.9.2.15Listen 23 Mar 2023The consciousness beyond the usual everyday consciousness can be reached only after a disciplined training of the mind. This suppresses its activity in thinking and banishes its extroverted worldliness of character.
4.4.1.5Listen 24 Mar 2023What the thinking intellect in him cannot receive, the mystical intuition can.
14.22.1.57Listen 25 Mar 2023It is true that enlightenment can remove our accumulated moral defects all at once in a sudden and single joyous experience. But it is also true that we are unlikely to get more than the first degree if we have not previously worked upon ourselves to prepare properly for it.
15.23.2.85Listen 26 Mar 2023It is not enough to be a collector of other men’s ideas. He must also be an original generator of his own. He must go into the pure silence to think independently, to analyse problems and consider them for himself, and to pray for enlightenment.
5.7.3.30Listen 27 Mar 2023Plato’s precepts to Aristotle: “Do not sleep until you have put three questions to yourself: (a) Have I committed any sin? (b) Have I omitted any duty by accident? (c) Have I left anything undone intentionally?”
13.19.3.163Listen 28 Mar 2023Often the guidance does not come till the time when it is needed, the answer to our questioning does not make itself heard until the eleventh hour. Until then we must learn to wait in hopeful patience and in trustful expectation.
9.13.2.238Listen 29 Mar 2023He should make it an unfailing practice to turn inwards in moments of need for help and in moments of perplexity for direction.
9.13.2.224Listen 30 Mar 2023The anonymous young airman who wrote to his mother just before he was killed in battle: “I have no fear of death; only a queer elation,” possessed something more than mere courage. For the time at least he had passed over from self-identification with the body to self-identification with the mind.
6.9.1.85Listen 31 Mar 2023
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