Great Throughts Treasury

"The idea of man which exists in and is eternally known by the World-Mind is a master idea."

"The ignorance which accepts matter as a reality rather than as an idea can be overcome only by a course of emotional purification, mystical contemplation, and metaphysical reflection."

"The immediate present is not the eternal NOW."

"The Infinite Power can never become exhausted. It is self-sustaining."

"The inner movement is like no other which he has experienced for it must guide itself, must move forward searchingly into darkness without knowing where it will arrive. He must take some chances here, yet he need not be afraid. They will be reasonable and safe chances if he abides by the advice given in these pages."

"The intellect?s finest function is to point the way to this actual living awareness of the Overself that is beyond itself. This it does on the upward path. But it has a further function to perform after that awareness has been successfully gained. That is to translate that experience into its own terms, and hence ordinarily comprehensible ones, both for its own and other people?s benefits."

"The intuition comes from and leads to, the Overself."

"The intuitive faculty can be deliberately cultivated and consciously trained."

"The Law of Karma makes each man responsible for his own life. The materialist who denies karma and places all the blame and burden upon the shoulders of environment and heredity denies responsibility. He begins and ends with an illusion."

"The Light of the World-Mind is the Source of the physical universe; the Love of the World-Mind is its structural basis."

"The Long Path idea of reincarnation is illusory. The Short Path idea of it is that it is an undulatory wave, a ripple, a movement upward onward and downward. Since there is no ego in reality, there can be no rebirth of it. But we do have the appearance of a rebirth. Note that this applies to both the mind and body part of ego: they are like a bubble floating on a stream and then vanishing or like a knot which is untied and then vanishes too."

"The Long Path is taught to beginners and others in the earlier and middle stages of the Quest. This is because they are ready for the idea of self-improvement and not for the higher one of the unreality of the self. So the latter is taught on the Short Path, where attention is turned away from the little self and from the idea of perfecting it, to the essence, the real being."

"The Long Path represents the earlier stages through which all seekers after the higher wisdom will have to pass; they cannot leap up to the top. Therefore those stages will always remain valuable."

"The longing for peace may be kept inside a man for many years, repressed and ignored, but in the end it has to come out."

"The love which he is to bring as sacrificial offering to the Overself must take precedence of all other loves. It must penetrate the heart?s core to a depth where the best of them fails to reach."

"The lower nature is incurably hostile to the higher one. It prefers its fleeting joys with their attendant miseries, its ugly sins with their painful consequences, because this spells life to it."

"The mind deals directly with its objects and not through the intermediary working of ideas for the ideas are its only objects."

"The mind has the power to externalize the very thing it perceives."

"The Mind?s first expression is the Void. The second and succeeding is the Light; that is the World-Mind. This is followed by the third, the World-Idea. Finally comes the fourth; manifestation of the world itself."

"The mistake of the analyst is to treat rightly what ought to be taken seriously, to regard as a parental fixation or sex repression what is really the peep spiritual malady of our times ?? emptiness of soul."

"The most valuable metaphysical fruit of the quantum theory is its finding that the processes of the universe which occur in time and space, emanate from what is fundamentally not in space and time."

"The one infinite life-power which reveals itself in the cosmos and manifests itself through time and space, cannot be named. It is something that is. For a name would falsely separate it from other thigs when the truth is that it is those things, all things. Nor would we know what to call it, since we know nothing about its real nature."

"The One Mind is experiencing itself in us, less in the ego-shadow and fully in the Overself, hardly aware in that shadow and self-realized in the light that casts it."

"The Oriental use of the term ?wisdom? not only includes our Occidental notion of Solomonic judgement in dealing with a situation, but ranges far enough to include the capacity to understand the universe as it really is in depth, and not merely in terms of sensory experience."

"The Overself is the point where the One MInd is received into consciousness. It is the ?I? freed from narrowness, thoughts, flesh, passion and emotion?that is, from the personal ego."

"The Overself is utterly above all personality yet it is not bereft of a kind of individuality."

"The Overself is with him here and now. It has never left him at any time. It sits everlastingly in the heart. It is indeed his innermost being, his truest self. Were it something different and apart from him, were it a thing to be gained and added to what he already is or has, he would stand the risk of losing it again. For whatever may be added to him may also be subtracted from. Therefore, the real task of this quest is less to seek anxiously to possess it than to become aware that it already and always possesses him."

"The Overself remains always the same and never changes in any way. It is the hunger for this quality, thought of as ?peace of mind,? which drives men to seek the Overself amid the vicissitudes of health or fortune which they experience."

"The philosophic search for enlightenment and the artist?s search for perfection of work can meet and unite."

"The philosophical discipline seeks to build up a character which no weakness can undermine and from which all negative characteristics have been thrown out."

"The practice of philosophy is an essential part of it and not only consists in applying its principles and its wisdom to everyday active living, but also in realizing the divine presence deep, deep within the heart where it abides in tremendous stillness."

"The practice of the impersonal point of view under the guidance of mentalism leads in time to the discovery that the ego is an image formed in the mind, mind-made, an image with which we have got inextricably intertwined. But this practice begins to untie us and set us free."

"The present day needs not only a synthesis of Oriental and Occidental ideas, but also a new creative universal outlook that will transcend both. A world civilization will one day come into being through inward propulsion and outward compulsion. And it will be integral; it wei;; engage all sides of human development, not merely one side as hitherto."

"The principle of balance is one of the most important of philosophic principles."

"The psychological causes of disease have only recently come under investigation by the strict methods of modern science, but the general fact of their existence was known thousands of years ago. Plato, for instance said, ?This is the great error of our day, that physicians separate the inner being from the body.?"

"The public demonstration of one?s religion in church or temple does not appeal to all temperaments. Some can find holiest feelings only in private. Those in the first group should not attempt to impose their will on the others. Those in the second group should not despise the followers of conventional communion. More understanding between the two may be hard to arrive at, but more tolerance would be a sign that the personal religious feeling is authentic."

"The purpose of these pages is not to attack but to explain, to appeal, and to suggest. Their criticism is constructive and untouched by malice. It comes from a well-wisher and not from an opponent of religion: therefore it ought not to be resented."

"The Quest of the Overself is none other than the final stage of mankind?s pursuit of happiness."

"The real bar to the entry of grace is simply the preoccupation of his thoughts with himself. For then the Overself must leave him to his cares."

"The reason why this silent, inward, and pictureless initiation in the stillness is so much more powerful ultimately, is that it reaches the man himself, whereas all other kinds reach only his instruments or vehicles or bodies."

"The relativity theory brings space and time together as having no existence independent of each other. Mentalism explains why this is so. They are both inherent in one and the same thing?imagination; they are two ways in which the creative aspect of mind functions simultaneously."

"The seeker after stillness should be told that the stillness is always there. Indeed it is in every man. But he has to learn, first, to let it in and, second, how to do so. The first beginning of this is to remember. The second is to recognize the inward pull. For the rest, the stillness itself will guide and lead him to itself."

"The soul in man, the Overself, is linked with, or rooted in, the soul in the universe, the World-Mind"

"The space in which the process of thinking takes place, is time. It could not exist without the dimension of time. If thought is ever transcended, time is transcended along with it. Such an achievement throws the mind into the pure present, the eternal now, ?the presence of God? of all mystics."

"The Supreme Godhead is unindividualized. The World-Mind is individuated (but not personalized) into emanated Overselves. The Overself is an individual, but not a person. The ego is personal."

"The time-space-causality reference is an essential part of human nature, a governing law of human thinking. These three hold good only within such thinking and can have no possible or proper application outside it. Man does not consciously or arbitrarily impose them upon his thought; it is beyond his individual power to reject them."

"The transcendental being is not an unconscious one. The absolute consciousness could not be other than self-conscious in its own impersonal way. Hence the fourth state is not the same as deep sleep."

"The truth needed for immediate and provisional use may be learned from books and teachers but the truth of the ultimate revelation can be learned only from and within oneself by meditation."

"The truth of paradox is possibly is possibly too deep for most persons to accept; apparently it is too self-contradictory. This is why the balanced mind is needed to understand that the contradiction is joined with complementary roles."

"The unity between our character and our destiny is inseparable; the connection between our way of thinking and the course of events is unerring."