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December 14, 2021 - March 26, 2022
God stands for our need to know ourselves, and as awareness evolves, so does God.
Then Job knew that Satan’s greatest power was not that he could inflict evil. His greatest power was to make the sons of God forget who they were.
One of the most profound truths in the world’s spiritual traditions holds that the good in life cannot be meaningful unless the bad is also.
it defeats truth to use words, since words imply that you know what you are looking for. Instead, truth is an experience.
“Know thyself” is extremely subversive in the end. To take it seriously means that you will go on a search for God that enters the inner world and places a lower value on the outer world. It means that you will be in the world but not of it, that you will become the light of the world rather than hiding your light under a bushel basket. I can use phrases associated with Jesus because the link to Platonism is quite strong.
“One spark is enough to burn down the whole forest.” Which is to say, once you’ve glimpsed the light, eventually the darkness will be conquered.
Reality is the light, and the light can only be found in ourselves. In the words “Know thyself” is buried a new belief, that human nature is capable of reaching God without dogma, authority, and fear. The inner journey is afoot, and God has become the highest goal: complete self-knowledge. To quote another Indian saying, “This is wisdom you cannot learn; you must become it.”
“He’s a man of reason, a sensible man,” the local brothers said. The worst kind, Paul thought, but kept it to himself.
As Einstein said, either nothing is a miracle or everything is. That may seem like one person’s belief system competing with countless others. Yet Paul added another argument for all the mystics to come. Miraculous worlds only await the touch of awareness.
“Your problem,” Nisargadatta replied, “is that you think you were born. Whatever is born must die, and this knowledge gives rise to fear. But why do you accept that you were born? Because your parents told you so, and you believed them, just as they believed their parents. Look inside. Try to imagine nonexistence. You cannot, hard as you try. That’s because reality lies beyond birth and death. Realize this truth, and your fear of death will be no more.”
God has done the same thing. According to Shankara, the only God that could exist is not a person, even a vast, superhuman person, but something invisible and yet alive, a kind of infinite potential that can create, govern, control, and bring to fruition everything that exists. This God cannot be limited; therefore, he cannot be described. Not that “he” or “she” or even “it” is correct. No single quality can define God, who like the air we breathe is mixed into every cell without being detectable.
Giordano Bruno,
But if God is pure potential, things change radically. Potential is infinitely flexible. A God of potentiality doesn’t need to be obeyed, feared, or placated. He exists to unfold anything and everything. Our agonies arise because we do not realize the divine potential in ourselves, which can alter our fate. If you realize this fact, you may seek only to wake up from the horrors of the dream. In that case, your goal will be to return to the light, where total peace and complete absence of pain exist. Or you could decide to fulfill your divine potential here and now. In that case, God becomes
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Shankara describes a permanent state that is very similar, in which you fully participate in the world, but you faintly know that you are dreaming. This state of so-called witnessing is the Vedic version of what Jesus names as being in the world, but not of it. It’s a very desirable state, because you become creative instead of passive.
Allah didn’t always choose to make his words clear, and if he contradicted himself, that was his prerogative. The children of God aren’t babies to be spoon-fed. Who could complain? However knotty the Holy Book was, to complain was a grievous sin.
the same longing we have for a God who disappears, not because he hates us, but because all of life is a search—for love, for truth, for beauty.
The idol of yourself is the mother of all idols. Fortunate is he who does not walk with envy as his companion. You’re misled if you think the self is easy to subdue.
The goal is still unity consciousness. However, instead of examining the obstacles that exist in our consciousness, which is the path of contemplation, or sorting out the real from the unreal by intellectual focus, which is the path of knowledge, devotion is an all-consuming love affair.
“Too many people have told you that your soul was in danger. Before you believe anyone, ask if they have ever seen their own souls.”
You bless yourself. Your soul will never take rest in things that are beneath itself.”
‘Take up twelve stones from the river Jordan’
Your fellow man is your mirror. If your own face is clean, the image you perceive will also be flawless.
But should you look upon your fellow man and see a blemish, it is your own imperfection that you are encountering—you are being shown what it is that you must correct within yourself.
Leviticus: Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. (19:18)
When a father punishes his child, the suffering he inflicts on himself is greater than anything experienced by the child. So it is with God: His pain is greater than our pain.
The wholesome simplicity of the simple Jew touches on the utterly simple essence of God. . . . When you hold a part of the essence, you hold all of it.
Everything is by Divine Providence. If a leaf is turned over by a breeze, it is only because this has been specifically ordained by God.
What do I long for? Something that is felt in the night But not seen in the day.
“Love is not a mere impulse. It must contain truth, which is law.”
“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged about mankind.
“We live in the world when we love it.”
‘We come nearest to greatness when we are great in humility.’
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
“Love is not a mere impulse. It must contain truth, which is law.”
we only know what is real through our consciousness. If anything is real outside our awareness, it will remain unknown. Because consciousness is so central—letting us see, hear, touch, taste, and smell the world—we must find out where it came from. Otherwise, we are like dreamers wandering in a world they take to be real, because no one has told them that they are asleep.
the human mind reflects the divine mind.
“The world is as you are.” There is no separation between what happens “in here” and “out there.” Behind the shifting appearance of the Many—the wildly diverse activity in nature—stands the One. The One is higher reality. We see, because It sees. We are moved by beauty, because It contains infinite beauty. When we feel that we know something to be true, our minds have touched, just barely and for an instant, the endless scope of absolute Truth.
God once walked in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening, but no more. Ever since, the deity has left invisible footprints—until now, perhaps. Brain research has gotten sophisticated enough to peer into the working of minute areas of the brain, and neuroscience makes maps of regions that used to be terra incognita. Such maps can tell you which areas of the cortex light up when a person feels compassion, possesses strong faith, has a holy vision, hears voices, or prays. “You are the light of the world,” which Jesus said to his disciples, suddenly has a literal meaning. In fact, the
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