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Share in the accounts and discoveries of the many individuals who, just like you, set out to find new, true answers that could stand up to the test of passing time with its ever-changing conditions. Welcome these inward and uplifting thoughts as if they were your own, for in one sense… they are.
When admitting, “I just don’t know the answer,” you are doing something far more profound than you think. You place yourself at the foot of the stairs that leads upward to a world far higher than the intellect. When saying, “I just don’t know the answer,” you are coming to an end of the self-conceit and self-deceit that occupies the level of the intellect. You have qualified yourself for leaving the self-centered world and approaching the lofty universal world.
To know means to know all. Not to know all means not to know. In order to know all, it is only necessary to know a little. But in order to know this little, it is first necessary to know pretty much.
The union of the soul with soul and spirit with spirit in accordance with the sowing of the word brings growth to the seed sown and produces life. Everyone who is educated in obedience to his educator becomes a son.
Choose always the way that seems right, however rough it may be. Practice will make it easy and pleasant.
The kingdom of Heaven is within you, and whosoever knoweth himself shall find it.
During the gap — infinitesimal though it be — between two thoughts, the ego vanishes. Hence it may truly be said that with each thought it reincarnates anew. There is no real need to wait for the series of long-lived births to be passed through before liberation can be achieved. The series of momentary births also offers this opportunity, provided a man knows how to use it.
If men could see their true position and could understand all the horror of it, they would be unable to remain where they are even for one second. They would begin to seek a way out and they would quickly find it, because there is a way out, but men fail to see it simply because they are hypnotized. Kundalini is the force that keeps them in a hypnotic state. “To awaken” for man means to be “dehypnotized.”
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
Every great mind seeks to labor for eternity. All men are captivated by immediate advantage; great minds alone are excited by the prospect of distant good.
All the various ideas that arise making us believe that we require something external to make us happy are obstructions to that perfection.
Eternity alone understands about compassion. If you therefore wish to learn to understand compassion, you must learn it from eternity. But if you wish to understand the eternal, then there must be quiet about you, while you absolutely center your attention on inwardness.
Emulate your forefathers, your ancestors… You see, their words remain in their writings open, that you may read and copy their wisdom.
The force of necessity is irresistible.
There is no death… Only a change of worlds.
It is not necessary to go off on a tour of great cathedrals in order to find the Deity. Look within. You have to sit still to do it.
We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started,
And to know that place for the first time.
A man should orient his will and all his works to God and having only God in view go forward unafraid, not thinking, “Am I right or am I wrong?” One who worked out all the chances before starting his first fight would never fight at all. And if, going to someplace, we must think how to set the front foot down, we shall never get there. It is our duty to do the next thing: go straight on, that is the right way.
The custom of frequent reflection will keep their minds from running adrift, and call their thoughts home from useless, inattentive roving.
Hardly one in ten thousand will have the strength of mind to ask himself seriously and earnestly, “Is that true?”
In yourself lies the sweetness of your charm, from you does it blossom, in you it sojourns, within you it rests, in your own self you must search for the jubilant quality of your conscience. For that reason Solomon says, “Drink water out of your own cistern and the streams out of your own well.”
Begin to search and dig in your own field for this pearl of eternity… and when you have found it you will know that all which you have sold or given away for it is as mere a nothing as a bubble upon the water.
The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive… We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough.
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.
No one rises above who he or she has been without first having fallen down.
