Great Throughts Treasury

"We all think, experience, feel, and identify with the ?I.? But who really knows what it is? To do this we need to look inside the mind, not at what it contains, as psychologists do, but at what it is in itself. If we persevere, we may find the ?I? behind the ?I.?"

"We are but fragments of mind thrown into momentary consciousness."

"We begin and end the study of philosophy by a consideration of the subject of ethics. Without a certain ethical discipline to start with, the mind will distort truth to suit its own fancies. Without a mastery of the whole course of philosophy to its very end the problem of the significance of good and evil cannot be solved."

"We cannot see the Truth and still be what we were before we saw it. That is why Truth comes in glimpses, for we cannot sustain staying away from ourselves too long, that is to say, from our egos."

"We daily dissipate our mental energies and throw our thoughts to the fickle winds. We debauch the potent power of Attention and let it waste daily away into the thousand futilities that fill our time."

"We do not claim that an entirely new teaching has been given to the world. But we do claim that a teaching and a praxis which we found in a primitive antique form have been brought up to date and given a scientific modern expression, that some parts of it which were formerly half-hidden and others wholly so, have been completely revealed and made accessible to everyone who cares for such things."

"We do not dream the waking world as we dream during sleep. For the latter is spun out of the individual mind alone, whereas the former is spun out of the cosmic mind and presented to the individual mind. However, ultimately, and on realization, both minds are found to be one and the same, just as a sun ray is found to be the same as the sun ultimately. The difference which exists is fleeting and really illusory but so long as there is bodily experience it is observable."

"We do not feel the need of hallowing our days. That is our great loss."

"We have to accept the presence of this pseudo-entity, the ego--this mental thing born of many many earth-lives--so long as we have to dwell in that other mental thing, the body. But we do not have to accept its dominance; we do not have to perpetuate its rule, for all is in the Mind. Where then are the reincarnatory experiences? Appearances which were like cinema shows. They happened in a time and space which were in the mind. The individual who emerged, lost the individuality and merged in the timelessness of eternity. This is the unchanging indestructible Consciousness, the Overself."

"We have to overcome the habitual custom of thinking that the ?I? is one thing and that its experience in a world totally outside it is another. Both are mental."

"We may begin by asking what this philosophy offers us. It offers those who pursue it to the end a deep understanding of the world and a satisfying explanation of human experience. It offers them the power to penetrate appearances and to discover the genuinely real from the mere appearance of reality; it offers satisfaction of that desire which everyone, everywhere, holds somewhere in his heart?the desire to be free."

"We must withdraw everything and thought from the mind except this single thought of trying to achieve the absence of what is not the Absolute. This is called Gnana Yoga: "Neti, Neti" (It is not this), as Sankara called it. And he must go on with this negative elimination until he reaches the stage where a great Void envelops him. If he can succeed in holding resolutely to this Void in sustained concentration -- and he will discover it is one of the hardest things in the world to do so -- he will abruptly find that it is not a mere mental abstraction but something real, not a dream but the most concrete thing in his experience. Then and then only can he declare positively, "It is This." For he has found the Overself."

"We need religion, most assuredly, but we need it freed from superstition."

"What better death than to be drawn into the divine being, lost in its peace and radiance! What more miserable than to be wrenched away from earthly attachments while trying to clutch them!"

"What is Mind? It is that in us which thinks, which is aware, and which knows."

"What is the final call of true art? Not to the work which expresses it but to the spirit which inspires it, the divine source of which it reminds us."

"What may be true on the ultimate level ? the non-existence of evil, the reality of the Good, the True, the Beautiful ? becomes false on the level of duality. Here the twofold powers, the opposites, do exist, do hold the world in their sway. To deny relative evil here is to confuse different planes of being."

"What they seldom see is that spiritual illumination and psychical error can and do exist in the same mind at the same time."

"What we are is what we are conscious of. The mind makes its own reality. Consciousness is king."

"What we were in the past is not important. What we are now is important. What we intend to make of ourselves in the future is vitally important."

"Whatever thought, idea, image, or remembrance comes to us is not separate from our mind and consequently from us. And because every object, thing, or creature in the world around us is only a thought, idea, image, or remembrance to us, it is likewise not separate from us."

"Whatever we call it, most people feel ? whether vaguely or strongly ? that there must be a God and that there must be something that God has in view in letting the universe come into existence. This purpose I call the World-Idea, because to me God is the World?s Mind. This is a thrilling conception. It was an ancient revelation which came to the first cultures, the first civilizations, of any importance, as it has come to all others which have appeared, and it is still coming today to our own. With this knowledge, deeply absorbed and properly applied, man comes into harmonious alignment with his Source."

"When a certain balance of forces is achieved, something happens that can only be called ?the birth of insight.?"

"When a man becomes tired of hearing someone else tell him that he has a soul, and sets out to gain first-hand experience of it for himself, he becomes a mystic. But unfortunately, few men ever reach this point."

"When a man feels imperatively the need of respecting himself he has heard a faint whisper from his Overself. Henceforth he begins to seek out ways and means of earning that respect."

"When devotion worship and reverence are fortified by knowledge, they can one day reach a stage where notably less is desired or demanded and peace then naturally arises. Nor is a measure of peace the only gain. Virtue later follows after it, quietly and effortlessly growing."

"When he temporarily achieves this lofty condition, he ceases to think, for his mind becomes inarticulate with heavenly peace."

"When his last thought at night and first thought in the morning refers to the Overself, he may appraise his progress as excellent."

"When we comprehend what it is that must go into the making of a sage, how many and how diverse the experiences through which he has passed in former incarnations, we realize that such a man?s wisdom is part of his bloodstream."

"When you awaken to truth as it really is, you will have no occult vision, you will have no astral experience, no ravishing ecstasy. You will awaken to it in a state of utter stillness, and you will realize truth was always there within you and that reality was always there around you. Truth was not something which has grown and developed through your efforts. it is not something which has been achieved or attained by laboriously adding up those efforts. it is not something which has to be made more and more perfect each year. And once your mental eyes are opened to truth they can never be closed again."

"When you begin to seek the Knower, who is within you, and to sever yourself from the seen, which is both without and within you, you begin to pass from illusion to reality."

"When you have trained yourself to empty your consciousness of its thoughts at will, your worries will naturally be emptied along with them. This is one of the valuable practical fruits of yoga."

"Whereas we can reach the intellect only through thinking, we can reach the spirit only through intuition. The practice of meditation is simply the deepening, broadening and strengthening of intuition. A mystical experience is simply a prolonged intuition."

"Whether he enters birth in penurious squalor or in palatial grandeur, he will come to his own SPIRITUAL level again in the end. Environment is admittedly powerful to help or hinder, but the Spirit?s antecedents are still more powerful and finally INDEPENDENT OF IT."

"While the mind remains so fixed in its own personal affairs, be they little or large, it has no chance to open up its higher levels. When attention and emotion are kept so confined, the chance they offer of this higher use is missed. The peace, truth, and goodness which could be had are untouched."

"Within his heart, he may call or keep nothing as his own, not even his spirituality. If he really does not want to cling to the ego, he must cling to nothing else. He is to have no sense of inner greatness, no distinct feeling of having attained some degree of holiness."

"Writing, which is an exercise of the intellect to some, is an act of worship to me. I rise from my desk in the same mood as that in which I leave an hour of prayer in an old cathedral, or of meditation in a little wood."

"Yes, it's [the world] a state of continual crisis. The world is revolting. One can?t focus on it too much or one would go mad. There's too much ego. All the problems could be solved in twenty-four hours if people would deal with them honestly and openly but many diplomats are hypocritical and greedy and full of desires. There's never been a Utopia on earth and never can be because of ego, the clash of egos. Utopias are only mythological."

"Yes, there is odious evil in the world?much of it petty but some of it quite monstrous. it takes its genesis in the thoughts of men."

"You may be familiar with the contents of a hundred books on mysticism and yet not be familiar with mysticism itself. For it concerns the intuition, not the intellect."

"You may eradicate as many prejudices and eliminate as many illusions as you wish or can, but if their source?the ego?still remains, new ones will spring up to take their place."

"You must plant your feet firmly on one definite purpose. Opposition will whirl around you, but hold on. Perverted `man is full of prejudice, and ninety-nine out of every one hundred you meet will unconsciously or consciously attempt to deflect you from your divine purpose."