The realization of our soul has its moral and its spiritual side. The moral side represents training of unselfishness, control of desire; the spiritual side represents sympathy and love. They should be taken together and never separated. The cultivation of the merely moral side of our nature leads us to the dark region of narrowness and hardness of heart, to the intolerant arrogance of goodness; and the cultivation of the merely spiritual side of our nature leads us to a still darker region of revelry in intemperance of imagination.
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As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with this dominating force which I hold in my hand.
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Under all that we think, lives all we believe, like the ultimate veil of our spirits.
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To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art -- that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts.
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You cannot travel on the path until you become the path itself.
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At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.
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The same person has come to Me seeking success at the examination, then a job, then a father-in-law, then a child, then a rise in the salary, a transfer in a cheaper place and a seat in the Medical College for his son - a never ending series of wants, until at last he comes seeking My Grace for an end to worldly pursuits and for initiation into the path of spirituality.
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What I am trying to do is to unmuddle the metaphysical.
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O Krishna, the stillness of divine union which you describe is beyond my comprehension. How can the mind, which is so restless, attain lasting peace? Krishna, the mind is restless, turbulent, powerful, violent; trying to control it is like trying to tame the wind.
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His spiritual life has been exaggerated by a chronic attack of mental gallstones.
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But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo; the splendor of fame fades into nothing; but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.
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Transformation literally means going beyond your form.
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There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan. Invocation of God, or Spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent.
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It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.
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Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.
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If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old.
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There can be no spirituality, no sanctity, no truth without the female sex.
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Religion is confining and imprisoning and toxic because it is based on ideology and dogma. But spirituality is redeeming and universal.
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The mind that does not understand is the Buddha. There is no other.
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What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful that the garment with which it is clothed?
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Whatever befalls the earth befalls the son of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
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You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be a failure.
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Transcending the world does not mean to withdraw from the world, to no longer take action, or to stop interacting with people. Transcendence of the world is to act and to interact without any self-seeking. In other words, it means to act without seeking to enhance one's sense of self through one's actions or one's interactions with people. Ultimately, it means not needing the future anymore for one's fulfillment or for one's sense of self or being. There is no seeking through doing, seeking an enhanced, more fulfilled, or greater sense of self in the world. When that seeking isn't there anymore, then you can be in the world but not be of the world. You are no longer seeking for anything to identify with out there.
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Sages speak of the immutable Tree of Life, with its tape root above and its branches below.
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One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.
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No thought, no reflection, no analysis, no cultivation, no intention; let it settle itself.
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The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one.
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Whether we name divine presence synchronicity, serendipity, or graced moment matters little. What matters is the reality that our hearts have been understood. Nothing is as real as a healthy dose of magic which restores our spirits.
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The downside of spiritual education is the buildup of the vanity of 'I know' and the devaluation of people who are 'not spiritual'. Therefore it is important as a foundation to spiritual training and education to learn how consciousness manifests as the ego and its mechanisms.
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The man or woman who concentrated on Things can hardly be trusted to use those things for the essential good of mankind. Only those who have guided the development of their spirit as well as their mind are really; qualified to use wisely the things that man's reason has enabled him to fashion out of nature's raw materials.
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