The Library
Because there is nothing quite like it in human experience and because there is no opposite in the entire cosmos from which it can be differentiated, the Absolute Being remains utterly incomprehensible to the human intellect.
16.28.2.42Listen It is the topic most worth writing about yet least understood. Whoever has entered into a partial understanding--it would be too much to demand more--of it, bears some responsibility. He must communicate with his fellows.
16.28.2.60Listen ... The mysterious Godhead has provided a witness to its sacred existence, a Deputy to evidence its secret rulership. And that Witness and Deputy can be found for it sits imperishable in the very heart of man himself. It is indeed his true self, his immortal soul, his Overself...
16.28.2.79,Listen … We may fittingly compare the Overself with any catalytic agent of chemistry which, unaltered itself, activates other substances by its presence …
16.28.2.81,Listen The inability of little man to enter into the knowledge of transcendent God does not doom him to perpetual ignorance. For God, being present in all things, is present in him too. The flame is still in the spark. Here is his hope and chance. Just as he knows his own personal identity, so God knows God in him as the Overself. This divine knowing is continually going on, whether he is awake or asleep, whether he is an atheist or a saint…
16.28.2.89,Listen The divine essence is Unknowable to the finite intellect, but knowable, in a certain sense, by the deepest intuition. And this sense can arise to the man previously prepared by instruction and purification, or by studied knowledge and purification, if he puts away thoughts, even those about the essence, or lets them lapse of their own accord, and awaits its self-disclosure patiently, reverently, lovingly--three conditions of high importance.
16.28.2.90Listen Philosophic meditation will show him that his own existence is rooted in that of a higher power, while philosophic study will explain some of the laws governing his experiences from birth to death. But at the bottom of existence and experience is ineffable incomprehensible Mystery.
16.28.2.96Listen Neither 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 ... The mystery of Mind is a theme upon which no aspirant can ever reflect enough: first, because of its importance, and second, because of its capacity to unfold his latent spirituality...
16.28.2.100,... This is the Principle which forever remains what it was and will be. It is in the universe and yet the universe is in it too. It never evolves, for it is outside time. It has no shape, for it is outside space. It is beyond man’s consciousness, for it is beyond both his thoughts and sense-experience, yet all consciousness springs mysteriously out of it...
16.28.2.100,Listen There is only this one Mind. All else is a seeming show on its surface. To forget the ego and think of this infinite and unending reality is the highest kind of meditation.
16.28.2.102Listen First, remember that It is appearing as ego; then remember to think that you are It; finally cease to think of It so you may be free of thoughts to be It!
16.28.2.103Listen In a world of constantly changing scenes, fortunes, health, and relationships, a precious possession is the knowledge that there is the unseen Unchanging Real. Still more precious is awareness within oneself of ITS ever-presence.
16.28.2.105Listen In the moment that there dawns on his understanding the fact of Mind's beginninglessness and deathlessness, he gains the second illumination, the first being that of the ego's illusoriness and transiency.
16.28.2.106Listen He will have gone far intellectually when he can understand the statement that mind is the seeker but Mind is the sought.
16.28.2.108Listen He who puts his mind on the Unlimited instead of on the little parts, who does not deal with fractions but with the all-absorbing Whole, gains some of Its power.
16.28.2.109Listen What we need to grasp is that although our apprehension of the Real is gradual, the Real is nonetheless with us at every moment in all its radiant totality. Modern science has filled our heads with the false notion that reality is in a state of evolution, whereas it is only our mental concept of reality which is in a state of evolution.
16.28.2.110Listen Thinking can, ordinarily, only produce more thoughts. Even thinking about truth, about reality, however correct it be, shares this limitation. But if properly instructed it will know its place and understand the situation, with the consequence that at the proper moment it will make no further effort, and will seek to merge into meditation. When the merger is successfully completed, a holy silence will pervade the consciousness which remains. Truth will then be revealed of its own accord.
16.28.2.111Listen The ”Void” means void of all mental activity and productivity. It means that the notions and images of the mind have been emptied out, that all perceptions of the body and conceptions of the brain have gone.
16.28.2.115Listen Master Huang Po: “This Mind is here, now. But as soon as any thought arises you miss it. It is like space . . . unthinkable.”
16.28.2.116Listen Mentalism is the study of Mind and its product, thoughts. To separate the two, to disentangle them, is to become aware of Awareness itself. This achievement comes not by any process of intellectual activity but by the very opposite--suspending such activity. And it comes not as another idea but as extremely vivid, powerfully compelling insight.
16.28.2.119Listen Mind in its most unlimited sense is reality. A man can know it only by the intuitive process of being it, in the same manner in which he knows his name, which is not an intellectual process but an immediate one.
16.28.2.121Listen Those 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 Consciousness is the best witness to its own existence.
16.28.2.133Listen When thought of the little self vanishes ... and That which is behind or beyond it in utter stillness is alone felt and known, then he is said to experience the touch of the Untouchable, as ancient sages called it.
16.28.2.137,Listen If you believe that you have had the ultimate experience, it is more likely that you had an emotional, or mental, or mystic one. The authentic thing does not enter consciousness. You do not know that it has transpired. You discover it is already here only by looking back at what you were and contrasting it with what you now are; or when others recognize it in you and draw attention to it; or when a situation arises which throws up your real status. It is a permanent fact, not a brief mystic ”glimpse.”
16.28.2.139Listen ... This is what I found: The ego vanished; the everyday ”I” which the world knew and which knew the world, was no longer there. But a new and diviner individuality appeared in its place, a consciousness which could say ”I AM” and which I recognized to have been my real self all along. It was not lost, merged, or dissolved: it was fully and vividly conscious that it was a point in universal Mind and so not apart from that Mind itself. Only the lower self, the false self, was gone but that was a loss for which to be immeasurably grateful.
16.28.2.142,When you speak of ”an experience” you imply that first, there is an experiencer and second, there is an object of which he has an experience. That is, you refer to the realm of duality. It may be lofty, inspiring, unusual, but it is an event with a beginning and an ending; it is inside time, however variously the sense of time changes. It is not to be identified with the Real.
16.28.2.143,Listen The final grade of inner experience, the deepest phase of contemplation, is one where the experiencer himself disappears, the meditator vanishes, the knower no longer has an object--not even the Overself--to know for duality collapses. Because this grade is beyond the supreme ”Light” experience where the Overself reveals its presence visually as a dazzling mass, shaft, ball, or ray of unearthly radiance which is seen whether the bodily eyes are open or closed, it has been called the divine darkness.
16.28.2.147In this astonishing revelation, he discovers that he himself is the seeker, the teacher, and the sought-for goal.
16.28.2.153Listen
21 Mar 2014
4 Feb 2016
28 Feb 2013
22 Jan 2024
28 Dec 2012
16 Mar 2016
16 Jul 2011
6 Jun 2013
18 Apr 2011
10 Oct 2011
15 Apr 2013
26 Oct 2012
6 Jun 2016
16 Nov 2011
6 Apr 2024
29 Oct 2017
1 Aug 2011
31 Aug 2011
6 Jul 2016
17 Nov 2022
4 Aug 2011
9 Oct 2017
21 Jul 2022
5 Mar 2022
17 Apr 2014
28 Jul 2011
14 Mar 2011
9 May 2016
28 Jan 2011
13 Jul 2022
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