Day by day
This is philosophy which opens the way to bigger thoughts, wider minds, and finer ideals; which makes the quest for truth an inner adventure and a religious duty; and which finally points to a supernal divine stillness as the place where the revelation must be made.
13.20.1.68Listen 1 Jul 2022Socrates got his wisdom from within himself. He had no master.
16.25.1.45Listen 2 Jul 2022Socrates: “I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make your first and chief concern . . . for the highest welfare of your inner selves.”
2.1.1.95, ExcerptListen 3 Jul 2022Mind, which forever is, can undergo no change in itself and no multiplication of itself. If it could, it would not be what it is—the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, and the Unique. Nor, being perfect, complete, could it have desire, purpose, aim, or motive for itself. Therefore it could not have projected the universe on account of any benefit sought or gain needed. There is no answer to the question why the universe was sent forth.
16.28.1.65Listen 4 Jul 2022Every person who is important to him, every relationship that arouses emotion or thought is there for a meaning.
9.13.2.422Listen 5 Jul 2022It is not possible for men to live together amicably while the ego rules them. All they can do until this source of all disharmony is itself ruled is to reduce their friction to a minimum by reducing its chief provocations.
6.8.4.25Listen 6 Jul 2022… War can change its form, can lose its brutality, can be lifted to a higher level altogether where words displace weapons, and this will certainly happen. But war at worst, friction at best, will not disappear so long as the ego in man with its negative emotions is his ruler.
5.6.7.39, ExcerptListen 7 Jul 2022In the study of modern science, in all laboratory analysis or examination of natural phenomena, great stress is laid upon the necessity for strict impersonality and freedom from every trace of wishful thinking, personal emotion, and prejudice. This is of equal necessity to the student of philosophy.
13.20.3.30Listen 8 Jul 2022He lives every moment in the awareness of his higher self. Yet this does not oppose nor interfere with, the awareness of his lower one.
16.25.2.208Listen 9 Jul 2022What a relief he feels when the strain and tension of the Long Path give place to the sweetness and detachment of the Short one!
15.23.4.78Listen 10 Jul 2022It is only on the Long Path that a man seeks so desperately for truth and insight. All that feverish ambition fades away on the Short Path, where he learns to hold himself in peace and patience.
15.23.5.96Listen 11 Jul 2022Even if the glimpse does not heighten the feeling that here is a signal from something real, his own further or deeper study and the testimony of historic figures will show him that he is on the right track.
14.22.7.191Listen 12 Jul 2022In this astonishing revelation, he discovers that he himself is the seeker, the teacher, and the sought-for goal.
16.28.2.153Listen 13 Jul 2022Only the deepest kind of reflection, or the most exciting kind of mystical experience, or the compelling force of a prophet’s revelation can bring a man to the great discovery that his personal ego is not the true centre of his being.
6.8.4.265Listen 14 Jul 2022We must pay homage to the Overself, and pay it daily…
4.4.2.391, ExcerptListen 15 Jul 2022It is proper to defend one’s life when it is menaced by aggressive men or by wild beasts, but it is against philosophic ethics to take life without a just cause, as when one kills animals for food—still more when one kills them wantonly for sport. Every higher instinct urges us to substitute compassion for cruelty in our dealings with the lower kingdom.
4.5.3.90Listen 16 Jul 2022The Short Path rejects duality, acknowledges only identity with Perfect Being, and tries to achieve its aim by recognizing this identity. The Long Path accepts duality and tries to achieve the same aim by mastering the ego.
15.23.5.50Listen 17 Jul 2022The ego does not rule men through their animalistic and materialistic desires only. It takes charge, and actively manages, their spiritual aspirations also!
1.8.0.60Listen 18 Jul 2022He must be willing and even determined to think and feel differently from those around him. How can it be otherwise when his goal is different from theirs, too?
2.1.3.23Listen 19 Jul 2022Every form of existence can be reduced to a form of consciousness. The final essence of all these consciousnesses is God.
16.27.3.16Listen 20 Jul 2022Those who look to God as a healer, or as a mother, or as a father, or as a teacher are still looking for God within the ego. They are thinking of God only in relation to themselves because their first interest is in themselves. But those who look to God in the Void, and not in any relationship or under any image or idea, really find God. Therefore they really find “the peace which passeth understanding.”
16.28.2.125Listen 21 Jul 2022We must indeed make a distinction between the conscious self which is so tied to the body and the superconscious self which is not got at or grasped by the bodily senses.
6.8.1.82Listen 22 Jul 2022It comes with time and practice, this ability to move at will from activity to meditation, from working or walking to stillness or worship.
15.23.6.225Listen 23 Jul 2022This divine self is the unkillable and unlosable soul, forever testifying to the source, whence it came.
14.22.3.321Listen 24 Jul 2022It is the unexpected situation, when there is no time to calculate a response or prepare a reply, that reveals what measure of strength we can rise to. It is in the sudden crisis—which is only a situation pushed to a complete extreme—when there is no chance to escape altogether or to evade partially, that what wisdom we have, or lack, shows itself.
9.13.1.93Listen 25 Jul 2022The ego is so taken up with itself that the time of meditation, which ought to be its gradual emptying-out, remains merely another field for its own activity.
4.4.2.338Listen 26 Jul 2022Pacifism is a natural and inevitable consequence of the monkish and mystic view of life. Monks may rightly submit to martyrdom, but philosophers must resist the evil forces and even fight them to the end.
5.6.7.45Listen 27 Jul 2022Here is the focal point of all spiritual searching, here man meets God.
14.22.3.316Listen 28 Jul 2022…The ego may stay in its proper place attending to the needs and sustenance of his body and intellect, but always as a subordinate to the higher self and obeisant to the higher will.
6.8.1.201, ExcerptListen 29 Jul 2022During these wonderful glimpses ordinary existence seems suspended.
14.22.6.234Listen 30 Jul 2022The quest we teach is no less than a quest for knowledge in completeness and a search for awareness of this Universal Self, a vast undertaking to which all men are committed whether they are aware of it or not.
2.1.1.14Listen 31 Jul 2022
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