Day by day
The voice of the Overself is as clear as the voice of Jesus: Go and sin no more, thy sins are forgiven thee. Do not weigh yourself down with perpetual self-reproach and recurring feelings of guilt.
15.23.5.213Listen 1 Jun 2013If the problem is really handed over to the Higher Power he is released from it. This lifts the feeling of being burdened with it. But if the feeling still remains, then he has deceived himself, has not truly committed it except outwardly in mumbled words.
12.18.4.48Listen 2 Jun 2013... The mind's dwelling on personal weaknesses and shortcomings in the ego must be compensated by its remembrance of the strength and harmony in the Overself. It is as needful for the aspirant to practise disidentifying himself from the ego as it is to practise identifying himself with the Overself.
15.23.5.161, ExcerptListen 3 Jun 2013The first great error to be thrown away is a common one--acceptance of the physical body as the real self when it is only an expression and channel, instrument and vehicle of the self.
6.8.1.59Listen 4 Jun 2013Time is like a great treasury. Put nothing of value into it and you will get nothing out. Put philosophic study and self-training into it and at the very least you will draw out a measure of peace and understanding, at the most you may enter into realization of the Truth.
3.2.8.8Listen 5 Jun 2013Neither the senses nor the intellect can tell us anything about the intrinsic nature of this Infinite Mind. Nevertheless we are not left in total ignorance about it. From its manifestation, the cosmos, we may catch a hint of its Intelligence. From its emanation, the soul, we may catch more than a hint of its Beneficence. More than, I say, because the emanation may be felt within us as our very being whereas the manifestation is outside us and is apart.
16.28.2.97Listen 6 Jun 2013The message for this age must satisfy its primary needs, hence must contain three elements. First, the doctrine that there is a divine soul in man. Second the gospel that it is possible through prayer and meditation and study to commune with this soul. Third, the fact of the Law of Recompense and hence the necessity of good thoughts and righteous deeds.
12.17.7.147 Jun 2013Whatever path a man starts with, he must at the end of it come to the entrance of this path - the destruction of the illusion of the ego and giving up identification with it.
15.23.0.2Listen 8 Jun 2013There are moments when the Overself gets at a man's consciousness, and rarer moments when he gets at Its consciousness. It is his profit to extend them, if he can, or to dwell long and often on their memory, if he cannot... Whenever he notices the very slightest indrawing to the Overself, whenever the least feeling of Its onset appears, he should at once begin to wrap himself around with the felt influence to the exclusion of everything else.
14.22.5.114, ExcerptListen 9 Jun 2013... The Overself is only an object of meditation so long as he knows it only as something apart from himself. That is good but not good enough. For he is worshipping a graven image, not the sublime reality. He has to rise still higher and reach it, not as a separate other, but as his very self.
4.4.5.73, ExcerptListen 10 Jun 2013To know what his real I is not, is a first and most important step toward knowing what it really is. Indeed, it has a liberating effect.
6.8.4.372Listen 11 Jun 2013He sees the truth as with a jolt. There it is, within his own being, lying deep down but still in his own self. There never was any need to travel anywhere to find it; no need to visit anyone who was supposed to have it already, and sit at his feet; not even to read any book, however sacred or inspired. Nor could another person, place, or writing give it to him--he would have to unveil it for himself in himself. The others could direct him to look inwards, thus saving all the effort of looking elsewhere. But he himself would have to give the needful attention to himself. The discovery must be his own, made within the still centre of his being.
15.23.1.79Listen 12 Jun 2013A part of the Short Path work is intellectual study of the metaphysics of Truth. This is needful to expose the ego's own illusoriness, as a preliminary to transcending it, and to discriminate its ideas, however spiritual, from reality.
15.23.1.99Listen 13 Jun 2013If philosophy begins with doubt and wonder, it ends by taking away whatever doubts are left in the mind and converting the wonder into holy reverence.
13.20.1.178Listen 14 Jun 2013... The Long Path is simply what is normally associated with yoga: the exercises to practise concentration, attention, relaxation of the body and the mind, ascetic self-discipline, self-control. These are taught in most of the schools; however, there is no set of rules that is studied. Basically it involves getting your thoughts under control and controlling your body, your thoughts, feelings, and will…
15.23.5.56, ExcerptListen 15 Jun 2013Those who have followed the Quest in previous lives will generally receive a glimpse at least twice during the present one. They will receive it in early life during their teens or around the threshold of adult life. This will inspire them to seek anew. They will receive it again in late life during the closing years of the reincarnation. This will be bestowed as a Grace of the Overself…
14.22.4.48, ExcerptListen 16 Jun 2013While giving all attention to the Overself, or to its remembrance, or to its various aspects, or to the idea of it, he forgets himself. This makes it possible to transcend the ego. And this is why the Short Path must be travelled if the preparatory work of the other Path is to be completed.
15.23.4.2Listen 17 Jun 2013The commonest error is to try to produce and manufacture intuition. That can't be done. It is something which comes to you. Hence don't expect it to appear when concentrating on a problem, but if at all after you've dismissed the problem. Even then it is a matter of grace--it may or may not come.
14.22.1.73Listen 18 Jun 2013... These new ideas will assume the characteristics of seeds, which under the water of the student's own aspiration and the sunshine of visible and invisible forces, will grow gradually into fruitful understanding and deeds. For the karmic consequence of such interest will be one day birth into a family where every opportunity for advancement will be found.
2.1.2.416, ExcerptListen 19 Jun 2013This is the concept which governs the Short Path: that he is in the Stillness of central being all the time whether he knows it or not, that he has never left and can never leave it. And this is so, even in a life passed in failure and despair.
15.23.1.8Listen 20 Jun 2013Rich are those possible experiences when one sits and gazes at the western horizon before eventide, the sun going out of sight, the heart open to beauty and grace as it longs for the Overself.
3.3.7.23Listen 21 Jun 2013So long as he is more afraid of giving up the ego than he is desirous of gaining the consciousness beyond it, so long will he dwell in its gloom.
12.18.4.18Listen 22 Jun 2013The interval between the coming and the going of an intuitive thought is so short that he must immediately and alertly respond to it. If he misses it, he will find that the mind can go back to it only with difficulty and uncertainty.
14.22.1.101Listen 23 Jun 2013This experience of the ultimate oneness of all things and of one's own part in that oneness is, of course, well known in mystical experience--especially in nature mysticism but also in some kinds of religious mysticism, and certainly in philosophic mysticism. The first effect is to make one feel that one is not alone, that the universe is behind one and that one does not need to be crushed by anxieties, worries, and fears--all pertaining to the little self. Such an experience is indeed an excellent counter to them.
14.22.6.364Listen 24 Jun 2013... To destroy the ego completely would necessarily mean to destroy the physical body, which is a part of it, and to remove his particular individuality which sets him apart from others. This cannot be done, but what can be done is to render the ego subservient to the higher self, an obedient instrument of the higher will.
6.8.1.197, ExcerptListen 25 Jun 2013... The giving up of thoughts leads to the giving up of the personal self. In his quietest moments a man hears in the depths of his being a voice which tells him that he comes from a country to which one day he must return…
3.2.3.29, ExcerptListen 26 Jun 2013... It is a fact worth speculating upon that many groups of early Christians were both mystical and vegetarian. Had they not been ousted by the Emperor Constantine--whose imperialistic political purpose they did not serve--from the official Christianity which he (and not Jesus) established, we might today have seen half the Christian world holding a faith in mystical beliefs and eating fleshless foods...
4.5.3.3, ExcerptListen 27 Jun 2013If we succeed in detaching ourselves from the claims of past memories and the anticipations of future results, we succeed in detaching ourselves from the ego…
6.8.4.150, ExcerptListen 28 Jun 2013For if we are divine and timeless beings now (and who can gainsay it that has had a glimpse of that starry state memorably vouchsafed to him?) then we have always been such. How can we evolve who are already self-existent, perfect beings? Does it not seem more probable that something alien has accreted around us, covering up the sublimer consciousness; that Time's work is not to raise us but to free us; that our search is not for a loftier state but for our pristine state, to recover our former grandeur? What we need is not to grow but to know. Evolution cannot help us, but self-knowledge can.
15.23.1.7Listen 29 Jun 2013Where is any man's biography which is more than fragmentary, opinionated, and biased? For without the background picture of earlier lives in other bodies the materials are thinner than the compiler believes them to be.
6.9.2.103Listen 30 Jun 2013
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