Day by day
... He will abruptly find that it is not a mere mental abstraction but something real, not a dream but the most concrete thing in his experience. Then and then only can he declare positively, ”It is This.” For he has found the Overself.
15.23.8.118, ExcerptListen 1 Aug 2015The words of the book can carry you to a certain point in consciousness. When this is reached you can go farther and higher only by closing the book! It has served you well but you must turn now to a new source. Let thoughts come into quietude; intuition will take their place: a holy presence will be felt: surrender to it.
5.7.3.271Listen 2 Aug 2015The worst result of all this hurry and tumult and preoccupation with externals is that it leaves no time for intuitive living.
15.24.2.56Listen 3 Aug 2015Some Questers become depressed and discouraged when they learn that grace is the final essential ingredient for success on the Quest. This seems to put the issue out of their hands and to make it a matter of luck. They are taking too negative an attitude. It is true that grace is not subject to their command, but the atmosphere which attracts it, the conditions in which it can most easily enter, are subject to him.
12.18.5.165Listen 4 Aug 2015If he wants the grace he must do something to earn it, such as attend to the wastage of time on trivial or even harmful (because negative) gossip and activities; purify his character; study the revelations of sages; reflect on the course of his life; practise mind-stilling and emotional discipline.
12.18.5.174Listen 5 Aug 2015When the masculine and feminine temperaments within us are united, completed, and balanced, when masculine power and feminine passivity are brought together inside the person and knowledge and reverence encircle them both, then wisdom begins to dawn in the soul…
16.25.2.120, ExcerptListen 6 Aug 2015Karma expresses itself through events which may seem to be accidents. But they are so only on the surface.
6.9.3.231Listen 7 Aug 2015... It is natural for the ego to assert itself and it will continue to do so even if he retires from the world. Only when the ego loses the power to rule the affairs of a man does the Overself step in and rule them for him, but this position is not reached merely by saying or wishing that it should be reached. It represents the culmination of a lifelong struggle...
3.2.9.66, ExcerptListen 8 Aug 2015It was an ill and suffering Handel, an ageing and impoverished man, who gave the world its greatest oratorio. How did he do it? He sat immobile, staring vacantly into space until the inspiring choruses burst upon his inner ears, and then he wrote feverishly for hours at a time. This went on for three weeks. So was born the Messiah.
9.14.4.329Listen 9 Aug 2015Wherever they happen to be, in wide-scattered countries, widely different climates, and far-apart centuries, men have experienced this divine presence. What does this show? That it is not dependent on place and hour, not subject to the laws of space-time.
14.22.3.230Listen 10 Aug 2015When the actions or words of others provoke us, it is easy to become irritable, resentful, or indignant; it is hard to practise a bland patience and exercise a philosophic tolerance. But that is just what the aspirant must do.
5.6.5.144Listen 11 Aug 2015If we search into the innermost part of our self, we come in the end to an utter void where nothing from the outside world can reflect itself, to a divine stillness where no image and no form can be active. This is the essence of our being. This is the true Spirit.
15.23.7.149Listen 12 Aug 2015The seeker who has a strong yearning for Truth and who has a sense of correct values already possesses some of the indispensable qualifications for this path, and should go far upon it. However, the will to continue despite all obstacles, together with a special kind of patience, is also essential--particularly in the earlier stages.
2.1.2.61Listen 13 Aug 2015... Thought and action are reflected back by karma…
2.1.2.439, ExcerptListen 14 Aug 2015Philosophy will show a man how to find his better self, will lead him to cultivate intuition, will guide him to acquire sounder values and stronger will, will train him in right thinking and wise reflection, and, lastly, will give him correct standards of ethical rightness or wrongness…
13.20.1.337, ExcerptListen 15 Aug 2015Although It is at the very heart of human beings, the Overself is very far from their present level of consciousness. Nothing could be closer, yet this is the supreme paradox of our existence and the strangest enigma confronting our thought.
14.22.3.6Listen 16 Aug 2015Whatever name be given to this exercise, whether ”As If” or another, its essence is to consider the goal as already reached, to convert the end of the quest into the beginning…
15.23.6.120, ExcerptListen 17 Aug 2015The need to make a rapid decision may create panic in an uncertain mind. Here again the best counsel is to go into the calm Silence, push aside the insistent thoughts of pressure, and wait in patience for mental quiet to manifest itself. Then only can intuitive guidance emerge.
9.13.2.279Listen 18 Aug 2015There is a teaching principle in every man which can provide him with whatever spiritual knowledge he needs. But he must first take suitable measures to evoke it. These include cleansing of body and mind, aspiration of feeling and thought, silencing of intellect and ego.
2.1.3.73Listen 19 Aug 2015... ”Nothing for nothing” is Nature's law. They must give if they want to get--give up some of the barriers to enlightenment which exist in their own ego and to which they cling.
15.23.2.79, ExcerptListen 20 Aug 2015... When a man begins his spiritual quest, it is solely by his own strivings that he makes his initial progress. The time comes, however, when this progress seems to stop and when he seems to stagnate. He has come to the end of a stage which was really a preparatory one. The stagnation indicates that the path of self-effort is no longer sufficient and that he must now enter upon the path of reliance upon Grace...
2.1.3.314, ExcerptListen 21 Aug 2015It is only by constant use that intuition can mature into mystical enlightenment.
14.22.1.292Listen 22 Aug 2015Those who are asking the Overself to give them its greatest blessing, its grace, should ask themselves what they have been willing to give the Overself--how much time, love, self-sacrifice, and self-discipline.
12.18.5.183Listen 23 Aug 2015When he has fully accomplished this passing-over, all the elements of his lower nature will then have been fully eliminated. The ego will be destroyed. Instead of being enslaved by its own senses and passions, blinded by its own thoughts and ignorance, his mind will be inspired, enlightened, and liberated by the Overself. Yet life in the human self will not be destroyed because he has entered life in the divine Overself. But neither will it continue in the old and lower way. That self will henceforth function as a perfectly obedient instrument of the soul and no longer of the animal body or intellectual nature. No evil thought and no animal passion can ever again take hold of his mind. What remains of his character is therefore the incorruptible part and the immortal part. Death may rob him of lesser things, but not of the thing which he cherishes most. Having already parted in his heart with what is perishable, he can await it without perturbation and with sublime resignation.
16.25.3.168Listen 24 Aug 2015All men at some time or other receive intuitive suggestions from within, whilst a few men receive them constantly. It is not therefore that intuition is such a rare and extraordinary manifestation. What is rare and extraordinary is its pure reception, its correct comprehension…
14.22.1.194, ExcerptListen 25 Aug 2015A callous egotism is a bad-paying investment. For it means that in time of need, there will be none to help; in the hour of distress, none to console. What we give out we get back.
6.9.3.228Listen 26 Aug 2015When control is so perfect that he can never again raise his voice in anger, he need turn attention to only one other passion--the sexual.
5.6.4.38Listen 27 Aug 2015To the extent that a man keeps inwardly still, to that extent he unfolds himself and lets the ever-perfect Overself shine forth.
15.24.4.93Listen 28 Aug 2015The first contact of the student with the Void will probably frighten him. The sense of being alone--a disembodied spirit--in an immense abyss of limitless space gives a kind of shock to him unless he comes well prepared by metaphysical understanding and well fortified by a resolve to reach the supreme reality. His terror is, however, unjustified…
15.23.8.35, ExcerptListen 29 Aug 2015... In the earlier stage, the Ego was the agent for all his spiritual activities, whilst it provided the motives which impelled him into these activities. But the Ego can never be really sincere in desiring its own destruction, nor can it ever draw from its own resources the power to rise above itself. So it must reach this point where it ceases self-effort and surrenders itself to the higher power which may be variously named God or the Higher Self, and relies on that power for further progress…
2.1.3.314, ExcerptListen 30 Aug 2015... God is literally in me. His ”I” makes my ”I” possible…
16.25.1.3, ExcerptListen 31 Aug 2015
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