Day by day
The work begins by removing whatever obstructs the mind from viewing the truth, those qualities and conditions which made it impossible to see reality as it is.
6.8.4.186Listen 1 Aug 2020The belief that a change of city or land may lead to a change of mental condition is not altogether without basis, even though we still take the ego and its thoughts with us wherever we go.
9.13.2.371Listen 2 Aug 2020He is asked to turn his back on what he gave so much of his time and thought and feeling to for so long and to give them henceforth to a totally transcendent level--the Short Path.
15.23.1.72Listen 3 Aug 2020Changes of circumstances which bring uncertainty of the future will not frighten him. They will interest him. He will seek to discover if they point the way to an incoming of new forces of experience necessary for his further development.
2.1.5.216Listen 4 Aug 2020… if he really does not want to cling to the ego, he must cling to nothing else. He is to have no sense of inner greatness, no distinct feeling of having attained some high degree of holiness.
12.18.4.140, ExcerptListen 5 Aug 2020It is easy to fall into the error that spirituality means stagnation, that transcending the worldly life means abandoning it. This error arises because it is not clearly comprehended that the operative principle is what one does with his thoughts, not with his things. For the second activity is always a result of the first.
3.2.7.144Listen 6 Aug 2020We may have the intuitive assurance that this higher power does exist even when we have no personal experience of it and no direct knowledge of its nature.
14.22.3.59Listen 7 Aug 2020It is a valuable exercise to review at night the events of the past day or to review in the morning those which can be expected in the coming day.
15.23.6.72Listen 8 Aug 2020The Glimpse will be at its best when his ego is not present to interfere with it. Such interference can not only come from its misinterpretations and distortions, against which philosophy so constantly warns its disciples, but also from the self-consciousness which wants him to notice how the experience is happening, to analyse what effect it is having, and to observe the reactions of other people to it. All these may be done but not then, not at the same time as the glimpse itself. Instead, they may be studied afterwards, when his consciousness has resumed its ordinary state. During the glimpse, he must let himself be completely surrendered to it.
14.22.5.165Listen 9 Aug 2020This surrender of the future does not imply idleness and lethargy. It does imply the giving up of useless worry, the abandonment of needless anxiety.
12.18.4.37Listen 10 Aug 2020The impulse which puts a man's feet on this path, is not always an explicable one. It is sometimes hard to say why he obeys it, when it will hinder his ego's natural cravings at the very start and lead to an unnatural self-effacement at the very end. All he knows is that something in him bids him begin the journey and keeps him on it despite its hurts to his pride, his passion, and his ego.
2.1.2.245Listen 11 Aug 2020Hitherto he has been only partially himself. Now, with this radiant entry into the eternal, he is completely himself. Now, he can speak to others, move in the world, and work out relationships, solely from his center, straight from his core: no distortions, no hypocrisies, no insincerities.
16.25.2.14Listen 12 Aug 2020… when the thoughts lapse and the finited personality goes, will the man be bereft of all consciousness? No--he will still possess pure consciousness, the deeper life that supports the finited self and sustains its very thoughts.
6.8.4.483, ExcerptListen 13 Aug 2020To all those who come to such a teacher for lessons in philosophy, he makes it plain that unless they are willing to discipline themselves on all three levels--physical, emotional, mental--he cannot teach them; that is, unless they are willing to follow the Long Path also.
15.23.5.175Listen 14 Aug 2020When Christ called his hearers to repentance, he did not mean that they should leave their present state of sin and return to a previous state supposedly virtuous. He meant that they should leave the old altogether and go forward into something entirely new.
12.18.5.214Listen 15 Aug 2020… the fact remains that past tendencies of thought rise up after every Glimpse and overpower the mind, causing it to lose this insight and putting it back on the quest again. While this happens he must continue the search, with this difference, that he no longer searches blindly, as in earlier days, believing that he is an ego trying to transform itself into the Overself, trying to reach a new attainment in time by evolutionary stages…
15.23.6.110, ExcerptListen 16 Aug 2020The quest is not a thing to be played with; that is only for those who merely talk about it. To engage in it is of necessity to devote one's entire life to it.
12.18.1.61Listen 17 Aug 2020Since the real essence of philosophy has only an inner content, which must be felt intuitively and grasped intellectually, but no outer form, it cannot become material for a cult, an organized group. It must lead each person on his own individual way, letting him grow naturally from within…
2.1.3.141, ExcerptListen 18 Aug 2020This mystical glimpse comes to most men only at death, or at the fraction of a fraction of a second during the highest pitch of sexual intercourse.
14.22.4.54Listen 19 Aug 2020There are exquisite moments when all existence seems elevated to a higher plane, when one's individual being is absorbed in a harmony with all things.
14.22.6.97Listen 20 Aug 2020In all situations he must strive to distinguish and follow the lead of the Soul, subduing the clamour of the ego. The former will so guide him that all things will work out for the best in his spiritual welfare, the latter may merely make bad situations worse.
6.8.4.179Listen 21 Aug 2020It is real, it is present and active in our very midst, its power and its guidance can be felt and recognized.
14.22.7.172Listen 22 Aug 2020Concentrate on reliving in intense memorized detail former moments of egoless illumination.
15.23.6.185Listen 23 Aug 2020Ambition wears thin with time or even wears out altogether. The hour may come when it means nothing and when a man feels nothing of it. Only the young are so eager to risk the perils of upward flight to fame. The reflective man is indifferent to worldly ambitions as the aged man is tired of them. Philosophy leads its votaries to a somewhat similar detachment, but, by supplying new incentives, does not lead to negative results.
5.6.2.198Listen 24 Aug 2020A factor in the integral path… is self-recollection, the frequent remembrance of the Overself at all times of the day and amidst all kinds of situations…
4.4.6.4, ExcerptListen 25 Aug 2020The battle to secure mental stillness must first be fought and won before the battle of the ego can be brought to an end. For it is only in that deep state wherein all other thoughts are put to rest that the single thought of ”I” as ego can be isolated, faced, fought until its strength is pitilessly squeezed out and destroyed at last…
13.20.1.13, ExcerptListen 26 Aug 2020... as a sister exercise to the ordinary meditations, the mantram will be useful to many students — whilst as a means to replace them for those students who find formal meditation too difficult or too inconvenient, it is most valuable…
4.4.6.4, ExcerptListen 27 Aug 2020If a man could withdraw sufficiently from his ego to stop letting its interests and desires overpower him, he would thereby let peace come to triumph in his heart …
6.8.1.208, ExcerptListen 28 Aug 2020Although personal effort and the will toward self-mastery do much to advance him on this quest, it is grace, and grace alone, which can advance him to the goal in the last stages or assist him out of an impasse in the earlier ones.
12.18.5.157Listen 29 Aug 2020Even when no longer afraid of others, a man should yet be afraid of himself--so one of the thinkers of old Rome advised. Until the ego is thoroughly conquered, vigilance will always be necessary.
6.8.4.235Listen 30 Aug 2020The working of a man's karma would never come to an end if his egoism never came to an end. It would be a vicious circle from which there would be no escape. But when the sense of personal selfhood, which is its cause and core, is abandoned, the unfulfilled karma is abandoned too.
6.9.3.578Listen 31 Aug 2020
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