Great Throughts Treasury

"It is not enough to seek stillness for the body and mind alone: the attention and intention must be directed at the same time to that Overself which transcends body and mind."

"It is not only a path to be followed but one to be followed with good humor and graciousness."

"It is not possible for sincere scrupulous thinking to admit, and never possible to prove, the existence of a world outside of, and separate from, its consciousness. The faith by which we all conventionally grant such existence is mere superstition."

"It is not without much reluctance that I have ventured to betray aloud the intimate experiences received in secret and solitary communion with nature. I would fain have harbored them until this body was gone, when their fate would carry no concern for me. But the bidding of my spiritual Guides was such that these words have gone out into print."

"IT is the principle behind both consciousness and unconsciousness, making the first possible and the second significant. Yet neither consciousness nor unconsciousness, as we humans know them, resembles it."

"It is the unique not only because of what IT is but also because two statements concerning IT can be quite contradictory, yet each can still be correct."

"It may be asked why I insist on using the word ?philosophy? as a self-sufficient name without prefixing it with some descriptive term or person?s name when it has held different meanings in different centuries, or been associated with different points of view ranging from the most materialistic to the most spiritualist. The question is well asked, although the answer may be quite satisfactory. I do so because I want to restore this world to its ancient dignity. I want it used for the highest kind of insight into the Truth of things, which means into the Truth of the unique reality. I want the philosopher to be equated with the sage, the man who not only knows this Truth, has this insight, and experiences this Reality in meditation, but also, although in a modified form, in action amid the world?s turmoil."

"It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard."

"It may be easier to get the worldly, the practical message of particular experiences, but it is not so easy to get the higher, the spiritual message they contain. This is because we habitually look at them from the ego?s standpoint, especially when personal feelings are strongly involved. Truth calls for a transfer of the inner center of gravity."

"It must be clearly understood that it is only the philosophical quest, the path of the Bodhisattva, which we advocate here, which is threefold. The mystical quest is not. It is simpler. It requires only a single qualification ? meditation practice. But it gives only a single fruit ? inner peace ? whereas the threefold quest yields a threefold fruit. (1) peace, (2) the intellectual ability to instruct others, (3) service. If therefore philosophy calls for a greater effort than mysticism, it compensates by its greater result. And whereas the mystical result is primarily an individual benefit, the philosophical result is both an individual and social one."

"It would be completely false to regard the Void as being a nothing and containing nothing. It is Being itself, and contains reality behind all things. Nor is it a kind of inertia, of paralysis. All action springs out of it, all the world-forces derive from it."

"Judge a work of art by analyzing its effect. Does it leave you feeling better or worse, inspired or disturbed, calmed or restless, perceptive or dulled? For every opportunity to behold great paintings or listen to inspired music or read deeply discerning literature is itself a kind of Grace granted to us."

"Let it be stated clearly that mysticism is an a-rational type of experience, and in some degree common to all men. It is an intuitive, self-evident, self-recognized knowledge which comes fitfully to man. It should not be confounded with the instinctive and immediate knowledge possessed by animals and used by them in their adaptations to environment. The average man seldom pays enough attention to his slight mystical experiences to profit or learn from them. Yet his need for them is evidenced by his incessant seeking for the thrills, sensations, uplifts, and so on, which he organizes for himself in so many ways--the religious way being only one of them. In fact, the failure of religion--in the West, at any rate--to teach true mysticism, and its overlaying of the deeply mystic nature of its teachings with a pseudo-rationalism and an unsound historicity may be the root cause for driving people to seek for things greater than they feel their individual selves to be in the many sensation-giving activities in the world today."

"Life remains what it is ? deathless and unbound. We shall all meet again. Know what you are and be free. The best counsel today is, keep calm, aware. Don?t let the pressure of mental environment break into what you know and what is real and ultimately true. This is your magic talisman to safeguard you: cling to it. The last word is ? Patience! The night is darkest before dawn. But dawn comes."

"Look how the smaller birds greet the sun, with so much merry chirruping and so much outpouring of song! It is their way of expressing worship for the only Light they can know, an outer one. But man can also know the inner Sun, the Light of the Overself. How much more reason has he to chirp and sing than the little birds! Yet how few men feel gratitude for such privilege. God needs no worship, no praise, no thanksgiving. It is man himself who needs the benefit to be derived from these activities."

"Love is both sunshine for the seed and fruit from the tree. it is a part of the way to self-realization and also a result of reaching the goal itself."

"Make it a definite rule in every single instance to check your intuition by the light of reason."

"Meditation must become a daily rite, a part of the regime which is, like lunch or dinner, not to be missed, but regarded with a sacredness the body?s feeding does not have."

"Meditation on oneself was a necessary and admirable pursuit, but it did not constitute the entire activity which life was constantly asking of man. It was good, but it proved to be not enough. For the efflux of time had shown me the limitations of mystics, and more time showed that those limitations were accountable by the one-sidedness of their outlook and the incompleteness of their experience."

"Men ask, ?What is truth?? But in reply truth itself questions them, ?Who are you to ask that? Have you the competence, the faculty, the character, the judgment, the education and the preparation to recognize truth?? If not, first go and acquire them, not forgetting the uplift of character."

"Mentalism is the study of Mind and its products, thoughts. To separate the two, to disentangle them is to become aware of Awareness itself. This achievement comes not by any process of individual activity but by the very opposite ? suspending such activity. And it comes not as another idea but as extremely vivid, powerfully compelling insight."

"Mentalism says that most of one?s misery is inflicted on one?s self by accepting and holding negative thoughts. they cover and hide the still center of one?s being, which is infinite happiness."

"Mentalism teaches us that it is our thought activity which brings the whole world into our consciousness, and that when this thought activity comes to an end, the world also comes to an end for us. It teaches that there is no other object than the thought itself."

"Method and technique are necessary in themselves but incomplete; inspiration and intuition should shine behind them."

"Mind is the essence of all manifested things as World-Mind and the Mystery behind unmanifest Nothing."

"Mind is the power to be conscious, to think, and to imagine. It is not the fleshly brain."

"Mind must precede any thought, any knowing. It must be there to make any thinking possible at all."

"Most forms of occupying leisure periods ease either the pace or stress of life by relaxing a part of the brain, the instrument of thought; or a part of the body, those muscles and organs most used; or the emotions and passional nature; but the deeper kind of meditation brings peace to a man?s whole being."

"My thought is that society has to make laws. As long as the laws exist, whatever they happen to be within that society, you should have to abide by those laws. If you don?t agree with them, then you should work to change the laws but you don?t go against the laws if you choose to live in that society."

"Much of what was pertinent to the Quest was left unmentioned in the earlier books, partly through reluctance to speak of certain matters, partly through the writer?s own need of further personal development to attain irrefragable conclusions about other matters. The reluctance has now been overcome and the development has been achieved."

"My work is a ?prophetic? message to our times, a religious revelatory work. An academic seal would put it on an intellectual and consequently lower plane."

"No announcements tell the world that he has come into enlightenment. No herald blows the trumpets proclaiming man's greatest victory - over himself. This is in fact the quietest moment of his whole life."

"No one can explain what the Overself is, for it is the origin, the mysterious source of the explaining mind, and beyond all its capacities. But what can be explained are the effects of standing consciously in its presence, the conditions under which it manifests, the ways in which it appears in human life and experience, the paths which lead to its realization."

"No one need find himself faced with the choice between Orient and Occident in his search for truth. It is a false choice?the real one is within himself."

"No pleasure which is brief, sensual, and fugitive is worth exchanging for equanimity and peace, not even if it is multiplied a thousand times during a lifetime?s course."

"Not one but several minds will be needed to labor at the metaphysical foundation of the twentieth century structure of philosophy. I can claim the merit only of being among the earliest of these pioneers. There are others yet to appear who will unquestionably do better and more valuable work."

"Not to escape life, but to articulate it, is philosophy?s practical goal. Not to take the aspirant out of circulation, but to give him something worth doing is philosophy?s sensible ideal."

"Nothing matters so much that we should throw ourselves into a state of panic about it. No happening is so important that we should let ourselves be exiled from inner peace and mental calm for its sake."

"On the Long Path he trains himself to detect and reject the lower impulses, egoisms and desires. On the Short Path he trains himself to be open to the higher impulses or intuitions and to absorb them."

"Only he is able to think his own thought, uninfluenced by others, who has trained himself to enter the Stillness, where alone he is able to transcend all thought."

"Only when the Overself has illumined every side of his personal being can he be said to have a complete illumination. Only then has he attained the sagehood of philosophy."

"Our advice is ?- study metaphysics to its bottom and then make good your escape from it before you become a mere metaphysician! Once you start metaphysical jargon you are lost."

"Our elders are worthy of respect, but their counsel is worthy of heeding only if they are old in soul as well as body, only if they have extracted through many lifetimes all the wisdom possible from each one. Experience without reflection misses most of its value, reflection without depth misses much of its value; depth without impartiality may miss the chief point. For all our experience, our life in the body and world is a device to bring out our soul."

"Peace is a costly privilege?to be fought for, attained and won. It comes only from a conquered mind."

"People read in the books, "hearing, reflection and one-pointedness are necessary." They think they must pass through savikalpa samadhi and nirvikalpa samadhi before attaining realization. Hence all these questions. Why should they wander in that maze? What do they gain in the end? It is only the cessation of the trouble of seeking. They find that the Self is eternal and self-evident. Why should they not get that repose even this very moment?""

"Pessimism is practical defeatism and psychological suicide. It is the child of despair and the parent of dissolution."

"Philosophy takes its votaries on a holy pilgrimage from ordinary life in the physical senses through mystical life in the sense-freed spirit to divinized life back in the same senses."

"Philosophy uses the attained man not as a god for groveling worship and blind obedience, but as an ideal for effectual admiration and relevant analysis."

"Poverty is a stiff test of moral fiber."

"Pray by listening inwardly for intuitive feeling, light, strength, not by memorized form or pauperized begging."