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Who keeps one thing in view makes all things serve.
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware.
In order to become mature, in short, we must not only reject the authority of our parents — but at the same time, in order to replace them, we must kill off our fantasy selves. Only by killing this fantasy self can a man become fully mature. Unless he does so, he is still in a state of rebellion, a perpetual state of immaturity…
Ultimately, to overcome our fantasy self is the supreme contribution that a man can make to mankind. All the fantasies that are around us, that infect the collective human organism, are in the end just one fantasy, made up of all the separate unresolved images and acts of self assertion that are fed into it from each individual fantasy-self of all the thousands of millions of human beings on earth…
Every man who asserts his ego against the general framework in any way, however small, or adds to the sum of unresolved imagery, however idly, is playing his tiny part in increasing the sum of the world’s discords and miseries…
However much one wishes to change the outside world, the only thing one can change or have any control over is ultimately oneself. Which is why the greatest good any man can do to change the world is the least dramatic act of all — to withdraw his own contribution from the general sum of evil.
The highest good can only be beheld by those who are very pure in spirit, and can only be tasted when the passions are as they should be. This is why Saint Augustine prays: “O Lord, let me taste in my will what I know in my mind, and feel through love what I grasp through awareness.”
Everything I say must be understood not as an affirmation but as a question.
Whatever you think appears in consciousness as a show. That’s the way thought works to display its content, as a show of imagination. Therefore if you think the observer is separate from the observed, it’s going to appear in consciousness as two different entities. The point is that the words will seem to be coming from the observer who knows, who sees, and therefore they are the truth, they are a description of the truth. That’s the illusion.
But by never coming to an end it seems to make some attempt at rivialing that which it can never fully realize in its being.
Follow my advice, and leave off your difficult seeking for the knowledge of God by means of your selfish will and reasoning. Throw away that imaginary reason, which your mortal self thinks to possess, and your will shall then be the will of God. If He finds His will to be in His, then will is will become manifest in your will as in His own property. He is All, and whatever you wish to know in the All is in Him. There is nothing hidden before Him, and you will see in His own light.
When thou art gone forth wholly from the creature, and from that which is visible, and art become nothing to all that is nature and creature, then thou art in that Eternal One which is God himself. And then thou shalt perceive and feel in thy interior the highest virtue of love… Whosoever finds it, finds all things.
It is not “man” in the abstract who recognizes anything. It is always a certain principle, having become active in him, that recognizes its own counterpart in external nature, when it comes in contact with it. Only he in whom is light can see the light; only the element of love can feel love; only the divinity in man can know God in and through man.
He to whom time is like eternity, and eternity like time, is free.
But if you keep quiet, and desist from thinking and feeling with your own personal selfhood, then will the eternal hearing, seeing, and speaking become revealed to you, and God will see and hear and perceive through you.
All we taste, against all we lack, is like a single drop of water against the whole sea… for we feed upon His Immensity, which we cannot devour, and we yearn after His Infinity, which we cannot attain.
Blessed art thou therefore if that thou canst stand still from self-thinking and self-willing, and canst stop the wheel of they imagination and senses… forasmuch as hereby thou mayest arrive at length to see the great Salvation of God being made capable of all manner of Divine sensations and Heavenly communications. Since it is nought indeed but thine own hearing and willing that do hinder thee, so that thou dost not see and hear God.
For when your spirit within yourself is able to penetrate inward through and beyond your own flesh and life, and is able to catch hold of the innermost moving of God, then you are clearly in Heaven.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
Energy is Eternal Delight.
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.
