Great Throughts Treasury

"Healing is but a mere incident in the work of a sage. Such a one will always keep as his foremost purpose the opening of the spiritual heart of man."

"Heredity can answer for a man?s face and form and nervous type, but it cannot answer for his genius. Here it is necessary to bring in something quite different ? the development of his talent through repeated earth lives."

"His eyes shine with astonishing brilliance. Strange sensations begin to arise in me. Those lustrous orbs seem to be peering into the inmost recesses of my soul . . . I become aware that he is definitely linking my own mind with his that he is provoking my heart into that state of starry calm which he seems perpetually to enjoy."

"His failure falls inevitably from his attempts to follow two masters. The ego is strong and cunning and clamant. The Overself is silent and patient and remote. In every battle the dice are loaded in the ego?s favor. In every battle high principle runs counter to innate prejudice."

"His first mental act is to think himself into being. He is the maker of his own ?I.? This does not mean that the ego is his own personal invention alone. The whole world process brings everything about, including the ego?s own self-making."

"Holding on to the future in anxiety and apprehension must be abandoned. It must be committed to the Higher Power completely and faithfully. Calmness comes easily to the man who really trusts the Higher Power. This is unarguable."

"Hope is the scaffolding of life. But unless the hands go out in action we may stand upon it forever yet the building will never be erected. That is why we who seek for truth must work interiorly and work intensely among the common mortar and bricks of human existence. Our dreams of a diviner life are prophetic, but we turn them to realities when we turn our hands to the tasks and disciplines presented by the world."

"I am alone with the Maharishi! Never before has this happened. His eyes begin to change; they narrow down to pin-points. The effect is curiously like the "stopping-down" in the focus of a camera lens. There comes a tremendous increase in the intense gleam which shines between the lids, now almost closed. Suddenly, my body seems to disappear, and we are both out in space!"

"I believe that there is a soul in man. This is a blank if commonplace avowal. Yet as I look again at these words, I find a false modesty in them. It is a poor tribute to truth to hesitate timidly in making the open declaration that I know there is a soul because I daily commune with it as a real living presence."

"I cannot reiterate enough that the fortunes, events, and experiences of human existence are controlled by higher laws, that there is meaning and purpose in them, and that it is the business of human intelligence to seek out and learn the reasons for them."

"I do not claim sahaja yields ultimate reality: I only claim that it yields the ultimate so far known to man."

"I find myself outside the rim of world consciousness. The planet which has so far harbored me disappears. I am in the midst of an ocean of blazing light. The latter, I feel rather than think, is the primeval stuff out of which worlds are created, the first state of matter. It stretches away into untellable infinite space, incredibly alive."

"I fold a thin cotton blanket upon the floor and sit down, gazing expectantly at the silent figure in such a rigid attitude upon the couch . . . If he is aware of my presence, he betrays no hint, gives no sign. His body is supernaturally quiet, as steady as a statue. Not once does he catch my gaze, for his eyes continue to look into remote space, and infinitely remote it seems"

"I have written this book because in an age when the two opposed conceptions of man are throwing the world into strife and revolution and war, there is a clear need of personal testimony from those who know the truth, rather than those who believe in it."

"I remember the first time I had this astonishing experience. I was fond of disappearing from London whenever the weather allowed and wandering alongside the river Thames in its more picturesque country parts. If the day was sunny I would stretch my feet out, lie down in the grass, pull out notebook and pen from my pocket--knowing that thoughts would eventually arise that would have for me an instructive or even revelatory nature, apart from those ordinary ones which were merely expressive. One day, while I was waiting for these thoughts to arise, I lost the feeling that I was there at all. I seemed to dissolve and vanish from that place, but not from consciousness. Something was there, a presence, certainly not me, but I was fully aware of it. It seemed to be something of the highest importance, the only thing that mattered. After a few minutes I came back, discovered myself in time and space again; but a great peace had touched me and a very benevolent feeling was still with me. I looked at the trees, the shrubs, the flowers, and the grass and felt a tremendous sympathy with them and then when I thought of other persons a tremendous benevolence towards them."

"I write for those who have felt the truth in intuitive flashes as well as for those who must be argued into it by intellectual reasonings."

"If he accepts this tenet of karma coupled with rebirth, then his awakening to a sense of responsibility for his life, and the course it takes should lead in turn to the need for self-discipline."

"If he has succeeded in holding his mind somewhat still and empty, his next step is to find his center."

"If he is to keep his inner peace he must always keep the innermost part of himself aloof and deny the world any intimacy with it."

"If I make a first formal appearance as a teacher, it is only in deference to the mission now imposed on me and the mandate now given me. I prefer anonymity for my work but fate has ignored my preference."

"If it is any matter in which you will get involved in a transaction where they are trying to get your cooperation and you suspect they may try to use their powers to get you to be under their influence, then you must be careful to suspect hypnotism. They may try to use this so you have to be alert. Try to keep positive and get away as soon as you can."

"If someone is into occult practices tries to hypnotize you don?t look into both their eyes at the same time. The person will have trouble getting your full attention if you don?t look into both their eyes."

"If the mind can reach a state where it is free from its own ideas, projections, and wishes, it can reach true happiness."

"If the quest is to be an integral one, as it must be to be a true one, it should continue through all four spheres of a man?s being: the emotional, the intellectual, the volitional and the intuitional. Such a fourfold character makes it a more complicated affair than many mystics believe it to be."

"If the voices which he hears are audible in the same way that one hears the voices of people through the ears, it is merely psychic and undesirable. If, however, it is a very strong mental impression and also very clear, then it is the mystic phenomenon known as the ?Interior Word? which is on a truly spiritual plane and therefore is desirable."

"If there is any law connected with grace, it is that as we give love to the Overself so do we get grace from it. But that love must be so intense, so great, that we willingly sacrifice time and thought to it in a measure which shows how much it means to us. In short, we must give more in order to receive more. And love is the best thing we can give."

"If you have difficulty concentrating, and until you become a master of meditation, prayer is important, too. Pray to the God within, to your own higher Self. Admit your failure to solve the problem and turn it over to That. The best time to pray is in the evening before retiring. Listen for an answer to your prayers in the first thoughts you have upon awakening. Such an answer usually comes after a deep, dreamless sleep rather than after a dream."

"If you want to know where you will go after you are dead, I shall tell you for I have been there. You go nowhere, no place. As awareness of this earth and the earthly body fade away, soon after dying, you will simply enter the condition of awareness to which your character entitles you."

"In all these studies the principal concept should be returned to again and again: the entire universe, everything ? objects and creatures ? is in Mind. I hold all the objects of my experience in my consciousness but I myself am held, along with them, in an incredibly greater consciousness, the World-Mind?s."

"In observation a scientist, at heart is a religious devotee, in thought a metaphysician, in secret a mystic, and in public an efficient and honorable useful citizen?this is the kind of man philosophy produces."

"In the adoration of his higher self he reaches the apex of existence. It proves that he has found out the secret of his own personality and solved the mystery of his relation to God"

"In the heart's deepest place, where the burden of ego is dropped and the mystery of soul is penetrated, a man finds the consciousness there not different in any way from what all other men may find. The mutuality of the human race is thus revealed as existing only on a plane where its humanness is transcended. This is why all attempts to express it in political and economic terms, no less than the theosophic attempts to form a universal brotherhood, being premature, must be also artificial. This is why they failed."

"In the moment that there dawns on his understanding the fact of Mind?s beginninglessness and deathlessness, he gains the second illumination, the first being that of the ego?s illusoriness and transiency."

"In the third stage, contemplation, the mind ceases to think and simply, without words, worships loves and adores the Divine."

"Insight is a function of the entire psyche and not of any single part of it."

"Intuition tells us what to do. Reason tells us how to do it. Intuition points direction and gives destination. Reason shows a map of the way there."

"It is a common mistake among artists and writers to regard inflammation as inspiration, and to take inflamed feelings for inspired revealings."

"It is a generative idea. Here is a whole philosophy congealed into a single phrase: the world is an idea."

"It is a grave misconception to regard the mystical process as passing through mostly ecstasies and raptures. On the contrary, it passes just as much through broken hearts and bruised emotions, through painful sacrifices and melancholy renunciations."

"IT is a means of severing attention from its ever-changing objects, and then enabling the freed mental force to study its own source."

"It is a mystery of Grace that it will come looking for one who is not pursuing truth, not looking for holiness, not even stumbling towards any interest in spirituality. And it will capture that person so completely that the character will totally change, as in Francis of Assisi's case, or the world view will totally change, as in Simone Weil's case."

"It is a rare moment when he looks upon Beauty itself rather than upon the forms of beauty."

"It is a whisper which comes out of the utter silence, a light which glimmers where all was sable night. It is the mysterious herald of the Overself."

"It is as blasphemous to ignore, decry, or dismiss the physical side of human life as unimportant as it is to deny that the universe is a divine projection."

"It is best to find the peace within yourself because you will then improve the aura of the world."

"It is easier to glimpse the truth than to stay in it. For the first, it is often enough to win a single battle; for the second, it is necessary to win a whole war."

"It is not because a thing is existent that you think it but because you think it, even if involuntarily, that it is existent. And this thought of it is a part of your own consciousness, not outside you."

"It is not enough for parents to protect a child ? they should also encourage and stimulate it to awaken spiritually."

"It is not enough to achieve peace of mind. He must penetrate the Real still further and achieve peace of heart."

"It is not enough to attain knowledge of the soul; any mystic may do that. It is necessary to attain clear knowledge. Only the philosophic mystic may do that. This emphasis on clarity is important. It implies the removal of all the obstructions in feeling, the complexes in mind, and obfuscations in ego which prevent it. When this is done, the aspirant beholds truth as it really is."