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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.
One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
And watch two men washing clothes, one makes dry clothes wet. The other makes wet clothes dry. They seem to be thwarting each other, but their work is a perfect harmony. Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine and practice, but there’s really only one work.
When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And When his wings enfold you yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And When he speaks to you believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth… All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
I will not move until I have the highest command… Your virtuous projects, so called, do not cheer me. I know that which shall come will cheer me. If I cannot work, at least I need not lie. All that is clearly due today is not to lie.
A great spirit is above insult, injustice, grief, and mockery.
The world is not a collection of separate objects but rather appears as a web of relations between the various parts of a unified whole.
I don’t want to think a place for you.
Speak to me from everywhere.
Your Gospel can be comprehended
without looking for its source.
Love, true love, which is the very essence of the human soul — that love which is revealed by Christ’s teaching — precludes the possibility of any idea of any kind of violence.
I would study, I would know, I would admire forever. These works of thought have been the entertainments of the human spirit in all ages.
His individual dignity, not derived from birth, from success, from wealth, from outward show, but consisting in the indestructible principles of his soul — this ought to enter into his habitual consciousness.
Truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.
Those for whom the world smells only of matter, smell themselves only; those that see nothing but passing phenomena, see themselves and no deeper. Not in contemplation of the stars that wheel across the sky shall we discover Thee, O God, Thou who didst enrich with madness Don Quixote! The discovery comes by watching, from the depths of our hearts, the soaring of love’s aspirations. Love is the fairest and most profitable guest that a reasonable creature can entertain. To God it is the most acceptable and pleasing of all things. Not only does it comfort the spirit with sweetness and wisdom, and make her one with God, but it doth so constrain flesh and blood that a man slip never into the snare of trivial beguilements. In the light and warmth of love our life grows strong and comely; a better dwelling, nor a sweeter, never I found.
Inspired merit so by breath is barr’d:
It is not so with Him that all things knows
As ’tis with us that square our guess by shows;
But most it is presumption in us when
The help of heaven we count the act of men.
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality. This is exhilarating and sublime.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Reality is simply the loss of ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. Because the ego is no entity it will automatically vanish and reality will shine forth by itself.
Then flows into us knowledge — an inner revelation which preserves our spirit open, and, lifting us above all images and all disturbance, brings us to an inward silence. Here the divine inspiration is a secret whispering in the inner ear.
Know to what extent the Creator has honored you above all the rest of creation. The sky is not an image of God, nor is the moon, nor the sun, nor the beauty of the stars, nor anything of what can be seen in creation. You alone have been made the image of the Reality that transcends all understanding, the likeness of imperishable beauty, the imprint of true divinity, the recipient of beatitude, the seal of the true light.
When you turn to Him you become that which he is Himself… There is nothing so great among beings that it can be compared with your greatness. God is able to measure the whole heaven with his span. The earth and the sea are enclosed in the hollow of his hand. And although he is so great and holds all creation in the palm of his hand, you are able to hold him, he dwells in you and moves within you without constraint, for he has said, “I will live and move among them.”
It is required,
You do awake your faith.
Then all stand still.
On those that think it is unlawful business I am about,
let them depart.
Happiness is not something you acquire. Love is not something you produce. Love is not something that you have. Love is something that has you.
If ever two were one, then surly we.
As ever man is loved by God, then truly me.
God calls the heart and makes it exult; then he disappears; and then he reveals himself again. By the test of renunciation and a more lively “feeling” of God, a person escapes gradually from the attacks of evil: light penetrates and protects his or her nature more and more. But God refuses to provide an overwhelming proof of his presence. If he did, he would actually be destroying the very possibility of a meeting and the free offer of his love. God introduces the soul that has been made holy to a rhythm of alternate ecstasy and contentment and of a yearning for an irreducible otherness, so that the soul does not cease to renew its love and spread itself in the inexhaustible store of God’s riches.
Somewhere about this time I was very much struck by a talk about the sun, the planets, and the moon. I do not remember how this talk began. But I remember that G. drew a small diagram and tried to explain what he called the “correlation of forces in different worlds.” This was in connection with the previous talk, that is, in connection with the influences acting on humanity. The idea was roughly this: humanity, or more correctly, organic life on earth, is acted upon simultaneously by influences proceeding from various sources and different worlds; influences from the planets, influences from the moon, influences from the sun, influences from the stars. All these influences act simultaneously; one influence predominates at one moment and another influence at another moment. And for man there is a certain possibility of making a choice of influences; in other words, of passing from one influence to another.
