It was the very essence of Gurdjieff’s teaching that the pupil must stand on his own feet and he took every measure, sometimes apparently harsh and brutal, to break down any tendency towards dependence upon himself. He would go to the length of depriving himself of much-needed helpers in his work rather than allow a relationship of dependence, or subordination. […]
Do not despair or cast aside every good hope because your present state is quite unenviable. Rather, turn your thoughts to the blessings already granted you by God and to those reserved by promise for the future. Basil the Great (329 – 379)
True prudence is the knowledge of what to do and what not to do. One who possesses it never refrains from virtuous works and is never pierced by the deadly arrow of vice. Thus, he who understands words of prudence knows the difference between what is insidious, structured for deception and what reminds us quietly about the best way to […]
In the solitary life, what I at hand becomes useless to us and what is wanting cannot be provided, since God the Creator decreed that we should require the help of one another, as it is written in scripture, so that we might associate with one another. Basil the Great (329 – 379)
History is the display of the supposed advantages of power and intelligence which some men possess over others, of the struggle for existence hypocritically described by ideologists as the struggle for justice and freedom of the ebb and flow of old and new forms of human righteousness, each vying with the rest in solemnity and triviality… Yet one drop of […]
The brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational, but he whose noble soul subdues its fear and bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from. Joanna Baillie (1762 – 1851)
A fundamental teaching of Baha’u’llah is the oneness of the world of humanity. Addressing mankind, he says, “Ye are all leaves of one tree and the fruits of one branch.” By this it is meant that the world of humanity is like a tree, the nations or peoples are the different limbs or branches of that tree, and the individual […]
The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens. Baha’i Faith
My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting. Baha’i Faith
Only the illimitable permanent is here. A peace stupendous, featureless, still replaces all, what once was I, in it a silent unnamed emptiness content either to fade in the unknowable or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite. Sri Aurobindo (1872 – 1950)
