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Despite the many differences that seem to exist between peoples the world over — regardless of culture, tradition, environment, or heredity — there is but one seeker, one search, and one sacred object of our desire. The celestial source of this sacred being doesn’t just live within us… we are, in fact, one with it.
There isn’t a thought large enough to hold what the heart knows without thinking.
It is useless for the “self” to try to “purify itself,” or for the “self” to “make a place in itself” for God.
In the future you will not clothe the naked, because everyone will be clothed in eternal light. You will not bury the dead because everyone wil be living life without end.
It is useless quibbling over a mere word, even if that word is God. To accept or reject it, when we have no knowledge of what it may represent, is equally inappropriate. God is a mystery, and the mystery remains, whatever name we give to it.
Hakim Sanai (circa 1080 – 1141), from The Walled Garden of Truth
So do Thou my Lord,
Thou and I never apart,
Wave of the sea dissolve in the sea,
I am the bubble, make me the sea,
Oh I am the bubble, make me the sea.
My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son.
When a farmer is irrigating his field the water is already in the canals, only there are gates which keep the water in. The farmer opens these gates, and the water flows in by itself, by the law of gravitation. So, all human progress and power are already in everything; this perfection is every man’s nature, only it is barred in and prevented from taking its proper course. If anyone can take the bar off, in rushes nature. Then the man attains the powers which are his already.
Nothing leads to good which is not natural.
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.
God is able to do more than man can understand.
Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.
If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man, how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position… how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious.
More than all things, love silence. It brings you a fruit that tongue cannot describe. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence. May God give you an experience of this “something” that is born of silence. If you only practice this, untold light will dawn on you in consequence. After a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of this exercise and the body is drawn almost by force to remain in silence.
I will walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts.
It is not necessary to think of revelation as a source of knowledge which is either contrary to reason or above reason… On the contrary, it would not be difficult to show that the true idea of revelation, that which is most honouring to God, is at the same time that which is most ennobling to man — the idea, that is, of a revelation which addresses itself, not to the ear or the logical understanding only, but to the whole spiritual nature.
Freedom has a thousand charms to show, that slaves, however contented, never know.
Love is the fulfilling of the law.
It is wonderful, Lord! It is wonderful, Lord! It is as if, Lord, one might set upright that which had been upturned, or might reveal what was hidden, or might point out the path to one who had gone astray, or might bring an oil lamp into the darkness so that those with eyes might see material shapes.
One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so: for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.
All natural results are spontaneous. The diamond sparkles without effort, and the flowers open impulsively beneath the summer rain. And true religion is a spontaneous thing — as natural as it is to weep, to love, or to rejoice.
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
There is nothing pleasurable except what is in harmony with the utmost depths of our divine nature.
The being who has attained harmony, and every being may attain it, has found his place in the order of the universe and represents the divine thought as clearly as a flower or a solar system. Harmony seeks nothing outside itself. It is what it ought to be; it is the expression of right, order, law and truth; it is greater than time, and represents eternity.
From unreality lead me to the real, from darkness to the light, from death to immortality.
Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.
