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The decrease of the general cause of suffering — illusion — is the only pleasant work which lies before a man, and gives him that true happiness in which his life consists.
Who has hired you as a nurse to this sick society?
The worst of human errors spring in most cases from the fact that men who stand on a low intellectual level, when they encounter events of a higher order, instead of trying to rise to the higher level from which these events can be rightly viewed, and making an effort to understand them, judge them by their own low standards, and the less they know of what they speak, the more arrogant and fixed are their judgements.
I have no inclination to assault myself; it would be of no use. You may do it yourselves if you choose — I refuse.
Man need not perform any acts or exploits, but has only to make an intense effort at consciousness.
If men who do not understand life would only approach nearer to the phantoms which alarm them, and would examine them, they would see that they are only phantoms, and not realities.
Men have but to understand this: they must cease to care for material and external matters… let them apply one hundredth part of the energy now used by them in outward concerns to those in which they are free — to the recognition and profession of the truth that confronts them, to the deliverance of themselves and others form the falsehoods which conceal the truth. Then the false system of life which now torments us, which threatens us with still greater suffering, will be destroyed at once without struggle, then the Kingdom of Heaven, at least in that first stage… will be established.
Men, attached by habit to the existing order, shrink from attempting to change it, therefore they agree to consider this doctrine as a mass of revelations and laws that may be accepted without making any change in one’s life: whereas the doctrine… is not a doctrine of rules for men to obey, but unfolds a new life-conception, meant as a guide for men who are now entering upon a new life, one entirely different from the past.
I knew not the light, and I thought there was no sure truth in life; but when I perceived that only light enables men to live, I sought to find the sources of the light… And when I reached this source of light I was dazzled with the splendour, and I found there full answers to my questions as to the purpose of the lives of myself and others.
As a man in his sleep doubts the reality of his nightmares and yearns to awaken and return to real life, so the average man of our day cannot, in the depths of his heart, believe the terrible condition in which he finds himself — and which is growing worse and worse — to be a reality. He yearns to attain to a higher reality, the consciousness of which is already within him… Our average man has but to make a conscious effort and ask himself, “Is not all this an illusion?” in order to feel like an awakened sleeper, transported from a hypocritical and horrible nightmare-world into a living, peaceful, and joyous world of reality.
This power demands of us what alone is certain and rational and possible… which is possible only in the truth, and, therefore, in the recognition of the truth revealed to us, and the profession of that truth.
All the ills of mankind appear, according to Lao Tzu, not from man’s neglect of the necessary, but because he does what is unnecessary. If men would practice what Lao Tzu calls non-action, they would be free not only of their personal difficulties, but also of those residing in every form of government.
The principles of this authentic religion are entirely natural to man, so that the instant they are communicated to him they are received as ideas long familiar and self-evident… These principles are quite simple, understandable, and few in number.
Man’s life begins only with the appearance of rational consciousness.
A horse which is harnessed to a wagon along with other horses is not free… The same situation is true of man.
But maybe I have overlooked something, or misunderstood certain ideas. It cannot be possible that this condition of despair is natural to man.
Whoever you are, who read these lines, think about your position and your duties, not upon your position as landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, clergyman, priest, or soldier, which temporarily call you, nor of the imaginary duties which these positions impose upon you, but think about your real and eternal condition as a human being.
In fearing to make an effort to escape from conditions that are fatal to us, because the future is obscure and unknown, we are like passengers on a sinking ship, who crowd into the cabin and refuse to leave it, because they have not the courage to enter the boat that would carry them to shore.
(If people changed inwardly) They would be different, richer, and higher, but would not at all be discontinued. What would be destroyed is whatever is false in them, while whatever is true in them would blossom and grow stronger.
There are some men — but the smaller number — who instantly, and as though by prophetic intuition, perceive the truth, surrender themselves to its influence, and live up to its precepts. Others — and they are the majority — are brought to the knowledge of the truth and the necessity for its adoption, by a long series of errors, by experience and suffering.
