Day by day
When it is declared that the ego is a fictitious entity, what is meant is that it does not exist as a real entity. Nevertheless, it does exist as a thought.
6.8.2.32Listen 1 Apr 2018That which delays the expression of a man's dynamic thought in modifications of his environment or alterations of his character is the weight of his own past karma. But it only delays; if he keeps up the pressure of concentration and purpose, his efforts must eventually show their fruit.
6.9.3.544Listen 2 Apr 2018The quadrangle of religious devotion, metaphysical study, mystical meditation, and inspired action makes the tool for philosophic work.
13.20.3.174Listen 3 Apr 2018If the strong yearning for truth be absent, a man may meet a thousand masters of the quest but he will neither recognize them for what they are nor experience any exaltation in their presence. This yearning must indeed be as strong as the hunger of a starving man or the desperation of a traveller lost in the desert.
2.1.6.121Listen 4 Apr 2018The egocentric view of ordinary men is not final. One day they will evolve to the cosmic view.
6.8.1.120Listen 5 Apr 2018The problem has two faces. The first is how to preserve even a stunted inner life from vanishing when the outer life is drawing all our time thought energies and feelings. The second is how to create the beginnings of such an inner life for those who have never known it.
8.12.4.151Listen 6 Apr 2018Some self other than his familiar one will rise up within him, some force — ennobling, masterful, and divine — will control him.
14.22.2.76Listen 7 Apr 2018The follower of a fleshless diet who throws his principles to the four winds in a trying situation lest he be thought peculiar, eccentric, different is more eager to please other men than the Overself, more interested in what their opinion is of him than in the success of his quest…
4.5.3.83, ExcerptListen 8 Apr 2018A work of art which awakens in its beholder or hearer or reader a deep feeling of reverential worship or inner strength or mental tranquillity thereby gives him a blessing. It enables him to share the artist's inspiration.
9.14.1.39Listen 9 Apr 2018Those who try to grasp Tao, lose it, declared Lao Tzu. Why? Because they are using willpower, personal willpower, instead of becoming passive and letting the Tao use them, their minds and bodies, as if they were its instruments. This elimination of the self-will is what Jesus meant when he counselled his followers to lose their life in order to find life.
15.24.3.199Listen 10 Apr 2018The subjugation of his ego is a Grace to be bestowed on him, not an act which can be done by him.
6.8.4.413Listen 11 Apr 2018When a man's strivings mature, the insight dawns of itself. Yet he cannot tell which day this is to be, cannot precipitate the wondrous event by his own will. For this depends on grace.
12.18.5.125Listen 12 Apr 2018Man's experience is so limited and his mental equipment so small that his attempt to understand the universe would seem impertinent were it not for the assurance of great prophets and seers that where intellect and sense fail, intuition succeeds.
16.26.4.84Listen 13 Apr 2018So long as those who lead nations or rule peoples have wholly or partially inadequate understanding of the profounder significance of human existence, so long will those nations and peoples be led from one painful blunder to another.
7.11.3.319Listen 14 Apr 2018It is not easy for a man to believe that a greater wisdom may be received by his mind if he keeps it still than if he stirs it into activity.
4.4.7.38Listen 15 Apr 2018… After all, the personality is only a series of continuous thoughts, strongly held and centered around a particular body. He who can win the power to free himself from all thoughts, wins the power to free himself from the personal I-thoughts. Only such a man has really obeyed Jesus' injunction to lose his life…
6.8.4.483, ExcerptListen 16 Apr 2018When a man's consciousness is turned upside-down by a glimpse, when what he thought most substantial is revealed as least so, when his values are reversed and the Good takes on a new definition, he writes that day down as his spiritual birthday.
14.22.4.88Listen 17 Apr 2018Most men devalue themselves, although they do not know it. A part of them is divine, but it is ignored and neglected.
2.1.2.357Listen 18 Apr 2018Only when the ego, thwarted and disappointed, hurt and suffering, finds that it cannot sufficiently change its own character, is it ready to beg, out of its helplessness, for Grace. So long as it believed that by its own power it could do so, it failed. And the way to ask for Grace is to sit perfectly still, to do nothing at all, since all previous doing failed.
12.18.5.121Listen 19 Apr 2018Putting aside one's own internal and personal pressures is a precondition which sooner or later lets in the Overself's peace.
15.24.4.100Listen 20 Apr 2018… He has transferred the object of his attentions from the worldly sphere to the spiritual sphere, but the ego is still active. When his meditation comes to the threshold of Truth, he stops, terrified by the feeling that he is losing his very self. His little personal world is the subject that really interests him.
6.8.4.271, ExcerptListen 21 Apr 2018When the inner voice says what we do not like to hear, we are apt to ignore it.
14.22.1.154Listen 22 Apr 2018Such is the wonderful infinitude of the soul that the man who succeeds in identifying his everyday consciousness with it, succeeds also in making his influence and inspiration felt in any part of the world where there is someone who puts faith in him and gives devotion to him. His bodily presence or visitation is not essential. The soul is his real self and operates on subconscious levels. Whoever recognizes this truth and humbly, harmoniously, places himself in a passive receptive attitude towards the spiritual adept, finds a source of blessed help outside his own limited powers.
16.25.4.249Listen 23 Apr 2018When the ego has dwindled away into nothingness, the Overself takes over.
6.8.4.446Listen 24 Apr 2018There is a single Consciousness without beginning or end, ever the same in itself, beyond and behind which there is nothing else.
16.28.1.125Listen 25 Apr 2018The modern man suffers from a certain physical sickness and some mental ailments which are of his own making. This is because his thoughts are forever centering in his personal ego, his emotions forever revolving round his little self. He can help to free himself from the one and heal himself of the other if he will create an oasis in this desert by daily and purposely withdrawing into the impersonal atmosphere of the higher nature.
7.10.2.32Listen 26 Apr 2018The Overself takes over his identity not by obliterating it but by including it through its surrender.
14.22.6.30Listen 27 Apr 2018… Prayer and meditation lead to the cultivation of intuition and aspiration--and these, at the same time, must be accompanied by the strengthening of will, plus study and reflection. All efforts should be made side by side, so to speak, to lead to a balanced psyche--the philosophic ideal.
13.20.3.180, ExcerptListen 28 Apr 2018If he comes to the quest with his whole being, turning every side of it to the quest's light and discipline, he may confidently expect the full insight, the full transformation…
2.1.5.353, ExcerptListen 29 Apr 2018… We are at the end of an epoch. The old world is dying before our eyes. But death is only a transition — the joyous springtime of vital renewal always follows the freezing wintertime of outlived forms. A new epoch is indeed at hand, with fresh ideas to lead us and fresh ideals to sustain us. Only the mentally blind now fail to anticipate it…
9.13.4.133, ExcerptListen 30 Apr 2018
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