He is beginning to master wisdom when he tries to learn how not to try.
The first is the art of mind-stilling, of emptying consciousness of every thought and form whatsoever. This is mysticism or Yoga.
The second is to grasp the essential nature of the ego and of the universe and to obtain direct perception that both are nothing but a series of ideas which unfold themselves within our minds.
What is the key to the Short Path? It is threefold. First, stop searching for the Overself since it follows you wherever you go. Second, believe in its Presence, with and within you. Third, keep on trying to understand its truth until you can abandon further thoughts about it. You cannot acquire what is already here. So drop the ego’s false idea and affirm the real one.
War is still going on in the hearts and minds of men. This is where it must first be stopped, for it is there that the explosives, whether they later take the form of small bullets or tremendously destructive atom bombs, begin their existence.
It does not lie within man’s power to gain more than a glimpse of this diviner life.
Saint John of the Cross gave the following advice: “Enter into your heart and labour in the presence of God who is always present there to help you. Fix your loving attention upon Him without any desire to feel or hear anything of God.
So the first Seers, watching the wanderings of thought within their own minds, discovered that there was something which came into action when thinking momentarily stopped. That Something was the first faint intimation of the soul. Thus the science of soul-discovery was born and the ancients began to teach men how to know the truth about themselves. In.
During the closing decades of the eighteenth century, and the opening decades of the nineteenth, a constellation of literary and scientific luminaries appeared in the European sky which indicated and inaugurated the Age of Reason. God was dethroned and Reason became the throned sovereign of philosophy. Now science receives our highest worship. The scientist is the pope of today and sits in the Vatican of world authority. We.
The key to the whole problem of this ancient Mystery-Institution was given by Plutarch when he wrote: ‘At the moment of death the soul experiences the same impressions as those who are initiated into the great Mysteries.’ Scholars.
We must first create within ourselves a true humility before we can know the liberating truth. We.
The tranquil passivity he sets out to reach, will eventually deepen and deepen until a point is felt where thinking is still and the mind emptied. Into this inner silence there enters, we know not how, the Overself’s godlike consciousness.
A half-hour, stolen from the day’s activities or the night’s rest, set apart for meditation in his own house, will in the end yield a good result.
The fruit of such meditations comes in the form of brief glimpses of the soul’s flower-like beauty.
We need these oases of calm in a world of storm. There are times when withdrawal to retreat for such a purpose is not desertion but wisdom, not weakness but strength.
The world suddenly vanished from view like a morning mist. I was left alone with Reality.
1. Do all meditation work with open eyes, with the Buddhic smile. 2. Keep attention inside on the No-thought state and refrain from unnecessary talk. 3. When residual impressions from the last incarnation come in, ignore them. 4. Kill out the mind. Be free from its activity. Stay in the Void.
It is often advisable to be one’s own guide, studying worthy books, using prayer and reflection, and following the intuitive guidance of one’s Higher Self.
The divinity is there, within you; have faith that it is so and entrust yourself to it.
How can he have fears for his future who knows that he is related to God, and that God is the same yesterday, and today, and forever?
The ego self is the creature born out of man’s own doing and thinking, slowly changing and growing. The Overself is the image of God, perfect, finished, and changeless. What he has to do, if he is to fulfil himself, is to let the one shine through the other.