Paul Brunton Daily Note
The ego constantly invents ways and means to defeat the quest's objective. And it does this more indefatigably and more cunningly than ever when it pretends to co-operate with the quest and share its experiences.
| … All things dissolve in the end, but man alone dissolves consciously into a higher Consciousness.
| When the sun dips low and vanishes, when dusk begins to fall and the colours darken and merge, the mind can move with Nature into its great pause. A man whose temperament is sensitive, aesthetic, religious, psychic, or Nature-loving can profit by this passage from day to night and come closer to awareness of his soul.
| What is the best charity, the truest philanthropy? It is so to enlighten a man that thereafter he will find within himself all the resources he needs to manage his life so as to bring him the greatest happiness.
| He begins to look on the world afresh, as if for the first time. But it is the beauties, the harmonies, the inner meanings, and the higher purposes that he now sees. He becomes more attentive to the attractiveness of Nature, observes her colourings and forms with new delight.
| … The highest possibility which separates man from beast is attainment of insight into truth, experience of his divine source.
| If the divine activity ceases in one universe it continues at the same time in another. If our World-Mind returns to its source in the end, there are other World-Minds and other worlds which continue. Creation is a thing without beginning and without end, but there are interludes and periods of rest just as there are in the individual's own life in and outside the body.
| The notion that the fortunes and misfortunes of life should be of little importance to a philosopher is not a correct one. To practise a calm detachment is not to ignore worldly values.
| This lesson, that a man is not his body, will be learnt in modern times through his reasoning intelligence as it was learnt in former times through his believing feelings.
| In his practical life he will evidence a compassionate heart but a clear head, a strong will but a sensitive intuition.
| … The meditator whose mind is centered on his own working of the meditation technique is like the karate pupil who want to cut through a brick with a single blow of the outside edge of the hand and who fixes his mind on the brick. This is a mistake. But the meditator who fixes his mind on the Overself is like the pupil who concentrates his thought on the ground below the brick itself, and this is what leads to success. Obviously, such advice is not suited to the early or elementary stages of meditation where concentration is required. On the contrary, it belongs to the more advanced stage where success comes not from trying but from letting go, relaxing.
| A mighty longing for liberation from one's present condition is a prerequisite for the philosophic quest.
| The position of the impersonal observer is only a tentative one, assumed because it is a practical help perhaps midway toward the goal. For when it is well-established in understanding, outlook, and practice, something happens by itself: the observer and the observed ego with its body and world become swallowed up in the undivided Mind.
| The fruits of the Spirit are several but the list begins with inner peace. The agitation and anxiety, the desires and passions are enfeebled or extinguished.
| All scientific evidence indicates that there is a single power which presides over the entire universe, and all religious mystic experience and philosophic insight confirms it. Not only is this so, but this power also maintains the universe; its intelligence is unique, matchless, incredible. This power is what I call the World-Mind.
| … He must begin with the axiom that the ego is ceaselessly deceiving him, misleading him, ruling him…
| The claims that these simpler paths like devotion or repeating a declaration can lead to the goal, are neither true nor untrue. For they lead to the philosophic path which, in its own turn, leads directly to the goal.
| But if the universe has no internal purpose for the World-Mind, it has one for every living entity within it and especially for every self-conscious entity such as man…
| He has to learn how to surrender his egotism and swallow his pride. He has to cleanse his heart of impurity and then open it to divinity.
| Your handicap is the strong ego, the I which stands in the path and must be surrendered by emotional sacrifice in the blood of the heart. But once out of the way, you will feel a tremendous relief and gain peace.
| Shen-Hui declared, in a sermon, that Enlightenment came as suddenly as a baby's birth. But what about the nine long months of development which precedes the birth?
| The man whose idea of himself is strictly limited to his little ego, and who is excessively attached to it, will naturally tend to form an idea of God as being a kind of gigantic person.
| The only kind of service he may render is unpaid service. This condition he cheerfully accepts. For whatever he does to help others, he does out of love of the deed itself.
| At present this mystic experience is a fugitive one in the human species. But because it is also the ultimate experience of that species, there is no reason why it should not become a common one in the course of evolutionary development.
| However much we pry into the future we do not come a bit nearer real peace, whereas faithfully seeking and abiding in Overself gradually brings undying light and life.
| … There is no way to realize the Self which does not include going inside consciousness. Thinking, however metaphysical, cannot do it. Action, however self-denying, cannot do it. It must be found inside in the heart. The other things are needful but secondary…
| People have curious ideas about what grace really is. So few, for instance, seem to see that in opening themselves up to the beauties of nature or of music and art they would be inviting the attention of grace too…
| The aspiration has gotten into his bloodstream and every act, every thought follows inevitably from this one primal fact.
| Inner strength, divine joy, deep understanding, and unspeakable tranquillity will pervade him always and not be limited to the hours of solitary meditation. This is so because the Overself whence these things come is always with all men. Only, they know it not, whereas he has awakened to its abiding presence.
| Until he learns that his enemy is the ego itself, with all the mental and emotional attitudes that go with it, his efforts to liberate himself spiritually merely travel in a circle.
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