The Living Book

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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.

Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910)

It is only a religious mind, a mind that is enquiring into itself, that is aware of its own movements, its own activity, which is the beginning of self-knowledge — it is only such a mind that is a revolutionary mind. And a revolutionary mind is a mutating mind is the religious mind.

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 – 1986)

Each man in his perception of truth is like a traveller who walks by aid of a lantern whose light is cast before him: he does not see what as yet has not been revealed by the beams, he does not see the path he has left behind… but at any given step he sees that which the lantern reveals, and he is always at liberty to choose one side of the road or the other.

Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910)

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

There are varying degrees of spiritual illumination, which accounts both for the varying outlooks to be found among mystics and for the different kinds of glimpses among aspirants. All illuminations and all glimpses free the man from his negative qualities and base nature, but in the latter case only temporarily. He is able as a result, to see into his higher nature. In the first degree, it is as if a window covered with dirt were cleaned enough to reveal a beautiful garden outside it. He is still subject to the activity of thinking, the emotion of joy, and the discrimination between X and Y.

In the next and higher degree, it is as if the window were still more cleaned so that still more beauty is revealed beyond it. Here there are no thoughts to intervene between the seer and the seen. In the third degree, it is as if the window were thoroughly cleaned. Here there is no longer even a rapturous emotion but only a balanced happiness, a steady tranquility which, being beyond the intellect, cannot properly be described by the intellect.

Gregory of Nyssa (circa 335 – 395)

In antiquity those that excelled in warfare first made themselves unconquerable in order to await (the moment when) the enemy could be conquered. Being unconquerable lies with yourself. Being conquerable lies with the enemy.

Sun Tzu (545 – 470 B.C.E.)