Browse by: Quotation Source | Entire Living Book | The Seeker | The Sacred
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.
To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
Jews call this Word the Law; Christians call it the Logos or the blueprint; Taoists call it the Eternal Tao; Buddhists call it Emptiness or the Great Compassion; Hindus call it Brahman; Sufi Muslims call it the dance; and science speaks of universal theories. But we are all pointing to one underlying truth that we all strive toward in ten thousand ways. We all somehow believe it is a coherent and even a benevolent universe. Maybe that is the very heart of the meaning of faith. It is surely the Perennial Tradition discovered by all people of goodwill and sincere search.
No one is so accursed by fate, no one is so utterly desolate, but some heart, though unknown, responds unto his own.
Philosophy is the art of living.
Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding, and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy and mastery.
When it’s easier to do evil, but you choose to do good, you are a true hero.
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.”
The new birth, as signifying only a change of moral behaviour, is not only thus false and absurd in itself, but is also exceedingly prejudicial to true conversion, and saps the foundation of our redemption.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of art.
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough.
If we cannot find contentment in ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
But ’tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.
By neglecting self-interest we achieve self-interest.
Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.
As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other more real life and then return after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the very real life of God.
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.
If you devote your time to study, you will avoid all the irksome things of life, and you will not long for the approach of night, being tired of the day, and you will not be a burden to yourself, and your company will be acceptable to others.
To live in the light of the universal order is to be awake. To turn aside into our own microcosm is to go to sleep.
By far the best proof is experience.
What you are looking for is what is looking.
Chief among the causes of liberty is devotion, the watchfulness of the spirit towards its own nature.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
Learn avidly. Question repeatedly what you have learned. Analyze it carefully. Then put what you have learned into practice intelligently.
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.”
