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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.
Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present, and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.
Man need not perform any acts or exploits, but has only to make an intense effort at consciousness.
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
Despair is the greatest of our errors.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
Watchfulness is the path of immortality; unwatchfulness is the path of death. Those who are watchful never die; those who do not watch are already as dead.
When he tries to extend his power over objects
Those objects gain control of him.
He who is controlled by objects
Loses possession of his inner self.
If he no longer values himself,
How can he value others?
If he no longer values others,
He is abandoned.
He has nothing left.
Your friends will tell you that they are sincere; your enemies are really so. Let your enemies’ criticism be like a bitter medicine, to be used as a means of self-knowledge.
You have no freedom or power of will to assume any holy temper, or take hold of such degrees of goodness, as you have a mind to have… But you have a true and full freedom of will and choice… to leave and give up your helpless self to the operation of God on your soul. This is the truth of the freedom of your will.
What we do during our working hours determines what we have. What we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.
Everyone, and especially the young, should understand that to devote your lives, or even to occupy yourselves with arranging by violence the lives of others according to your own ideas, is not only a crude superstition, but is an evil, criminal business, pernicious to the soul. Understand that the desire of an enlightened human soul for the good of others, is not satisfied by the vanity of organizing their lives by means of violence, but only by that inner labor with one’s own self, wherein alone a man is free and powerful. Only that work which increases love within one, can satisfy this desire. Understand that all activity directed to organizing the life of others by violence, cannot serve the welfare of mankind, but is always more or less consciously a hypocritical deception, hiding low passions — ambition, pride or cupidity — under the mask of service to man. Understand it, especially you, the young generation of the future, and leave off doing what most of you now are doing — cease to seek for imaginary happiness in shaping the welfare of the people by means of participation in Government, in Law Courts, by teaching other people, and (in order to do that) by entering institutions that — by accustoming you to idleness, conceit and pride — deprave you, namely, all sorts of Grammar Schools and Universities.
But I remember now
I am in this earthly world; where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly.
Nor do we think that many of our insoluble difficulties, perplexities, and unanswered questions necessarily exist because of the kind of consciousness we naturally possess, and that a new degree of consciousness would either cause our awareness of them to disappear or bring about an entirely new relation to them.
Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
It is the abuse of our faculties which make us wicked and miserable. Our cares, our anxieties, our griefs, are all owing to ourselves… If we could be contented with being what we are, we should have no inducement to lament our fate; but we inflict on ourselves a thousand real evils in seeking after an imaginary happiness.
Some sleep when they should keep awake, and some forget when they should remember. And this is the very cause why often at the resting-places some pilgrims, in some things, come off losers. Pilgrims should watch, and remember what they have already received.
Wisdom consists in performing only useful actions.
Everyone foolishly assumes that his clock alone tells correct time. Christians claim to possess exclusive truth. Countless varieties of Hindus insist that their sect, no matter how small and insignificant, expresses the ultimate position. Devout Muslims maintain that Koranic revelation supersedes all others. The entire world is being driven insane by this single phrase: “My religion alone is true.” O Mother, you have shown me that no clock is entirely accurate. Only the transcendent sun of knowledge remains on time. Who can make a system from Divine Mystery? But if any sincere practitioner, within whatever culture or religion, prays and meditates with great devotion and commitment to Truth alone, Your Grace will flood his mind and heart, O Mother. His particular sacred tradition will be opened and illuminated. He will reach the one goal of spiritual evolution.
The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
Where there is honey, there are bees.
We must fight the fight! We only find rest in effort.
It is most important for anyone who is capable of higher and nobler thoughts to keep his mind from being so completely engrossed with private affairs and ungracious troubles as to let them take up all his attention and crowd out worthier matters, for that is, in a very real sense, to lose sight of the true end of life.
But if you keep quiet, and desist from thinking and feeling with your own personal selfhood, then will the eternal hearing, seeing, and speaking become revealed to you, and God will see and hear and perceive through you.
To assist human beings in their search for wisdom was the purpose of the incarnation.
