Browse by: Quotation Source | The Seeker | The Search | The Sacred
Browse through the Newest Additions to the One Journey Living Book
Arranged by date, with the most recent entry appearing first…
Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.
But to come to the land of love, you must pass through the pains of death, for to love persons means to die to the need for persons, and to be utterly alone.
We don’t have to quarrel about a word because “God” is only a word, a concept. One never quarrels about reality. We only quarrel about opinions, about concepts, about judgments. Drop your concepts, drop your opinions, drop your prejudices, drop your judgments, and you will see that.
“Don’t look for God,” the Master said. “Just look, and all will be revealed.”
“But how is one to look?”
“Each time you look at anything, see only what is there and nothing else.”
The disciples were bewildered, so the Master made it simpler: “For instance: when you look at the moon, see the moon and nothing else.”
“What else could one see except the moon when one looks at the moon?”
“A hungry person could see a ball of cheese. A lover, the face of his beloved.”
“Is there anything that I can do to make myself enlightened?”
“As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.”
“Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?”
“To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.”
It is very rare to find ground which produces nothing. If it is not covered with flowers, fruit trees, and grains, it produces briars and pines. It is the same with man. If he is not virtuous, he becomes vicious.
From all these discoveries, each of which plunges him a little deeper into the ocean of energy, the mystic derives an unalloyed delight, and his thirst for them is unquenchable.
So many things which once had distressed or revolted him — the speeches and pronouncements of the learned, their assertions and their prohibitions, their refusal to allow the universe to move — are seemed to him now merely ridiculous, non-existent, compared with the Majestic Reality, the flood of energy, which now revealed itself to him: omnipresent, unalterable in its truth, relentless in its development, untouchable in its serenity, maternal and unfailing in its protectiveness.
When your presence flooded me with its light I hoped that within it I might find Ultimate Reality at its most tangible. But now that I have in fact laid hold on you, you who are utter consistency, and feel myself borne by you, I realize that my deepest hidden desire was not to possess you, but to be possessed.
Like the monist I plunge into the all-inclusive One. But the one is so perfect that as it receives me and I lose myself in it, I can find in it the ultimate perfection of my own individuality.
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
We must try to penetrate our most secret self, and examine our being from all sides… And so, for the first time in my life perhaps (although I am supposed to meditate every day!), I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came — arising I know not from where — the current which I dare to call my life.
But what is the secret of finding this treasure? There isn’t one. This treasure is everywhere. It is offered to us all the time and wherever we are. All creatures, friends or foes, pour it out in abundance, and it flows through every fiber of our body and soul until it reaches the very core of our being. God’s activity runs through the universe. It wells up around and penetrates every created being. Where they are, there it is also. It goes ahead of them, it is with them, and it follows them. All they have to do is let its waves sweep them onward, fulfill the simple duties of their religion and state, cheerfully accept all the troubles they meet, and submit to God’s will in all they have to do. This is true spirituality, which is valid for all times and for everyone. We cannot become truly good in a better, more marvelous, and yet easier way than by the simple use of the means offered us by God: the ready acceptance of all that comes to us at each moment of our lives.
Man judges all things by his abstractions — good, evil, virtue, crime. His formulas of right are his scales, and his justice is blind. The justice of God sees — in that is everything.
The love of God, unutterable and perfect, flows into a pure soul the way light rushes into a transparent object.
Drink from your own cistern, and make use of your own resources. You are not merely watering the earth but enlightening human souls.
Come hither, eat your bread with joy, that is the mystical bread.
You who love instruction and are eager to listen, receive once again the sacred words: delight yourselves in the honey of wisdom, for it is written, “Good words are honeycombs and their sweetness is the healing of the soul.”
Only the merciful can merit God’s mercy.
