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Here you will read the innermost thoughts and feelings of inspired seekers who have gone before you. Some names you may know… others you will be glad to meet!
Discovering this the mind becomes whole: the split between I and me, man and the world, the ideal and the real, comes to an end. Paranoia, the mind beside itself, becomes metanoia, the mind with itself and so free from itself.
Bring all opposites inside yourself and reconcile them. Understand that you are everywhere: on the land, in the sea, in the sky. Realize that you haven’t yet been begotten, that you are still in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you are dead, that you are in the world beyond the grave. Hold all this in your mind, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes. Then you can perceive God.
You have not known what you are, you have slumbered upon yourself all your life… Whoever you are! Claim your own.
The spiritual life justifies itself to those who live it, but what can we say to those who do not understand? This, at least, we can say: that it is a life whose experiences are proved real to their possessor, because they remain with him when brought closest into contact with the objective realities of life. Dreams cannot stand this test. We wake from them to find that they are but dreams. Wanderings of an overwrought brain do not stand this test. These highest experiences that I have had of God’s presence have been rare and brief — flashes of consciousness which have compelled me to exclaim with surprise, “God is here!”
William James (1842 – 1910), from The Varieties of Religious Experience, attributed to J. Trevor
I would have nobody to control me; I would be absolute… Now, he that is absolute can do what he likes; he that can do what he likes can take his pleasure; he that can take his pleasure can be content; and he that can be content has no more to desire. So the matter is over, and come what will, I am satisfied.
I long to accomplish a great and noble task. But it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
The man who comes into the world with the notion that he is really going to instruct it in matters of the highest importance, may thank his stars if he escapes with a whole skin.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.
The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.
Give me health and a day, and I will make ridiculous the pomp of emperors.
Be a philosopher… but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.
For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
He who reforms himself has done more towards reforming the public than a crowd of noisy, impotent patriots.
The Fourth Striving: From the beginning of one’s existence, to pay as quickly as possible for one’s arising and individuality, in order afterward to be free to lighten as much as possible the sorrow of our Common Father.
Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.
I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.
Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.
There are latent, in every heart, songs as yet unsung, anthems as yet unheard, chords which, if but struck, would fill this old world of ours with music, thrill the soul of man with joy, string his heart and nerves with strength, exalt his life with hope, sweeten it with gladness, and set his whole being atingle with nobleness and love.
