Latest / Byways to Blessedness / Byways to Blessedness

Transcript

Byways to Blessedness · Byways to Blessedness

• 0:00
  By Ways to Blessedness by James Allen Forward. Along the highways of Burmah,
• 0:07
  there is placed, at regular distances, away from the dust of the road,
• 0:12
  and under the cool shade of a group of trees, a small wooden
• 0:16
  building called a rest house, where the weary traveler may rest, awhile and
• 0:21
  allay his thirst in hunger and fatigue by partaking of the food and water which
• 0:26
  the kindly inhabitants place there as a religious duty. Along the great highway of
• 0:32
  life there are such resting places, away from the heat of passion and the
• 0:38
  dust of disappointment, under the cool and refreshing shade of lowly wisdom, are
• 0:43
  the humble, unimposing rest houses of peace, and the little, almost unnoticed
• 0:50
  by ways of blessedness, where alone the weary and footsore can find strength and
• 0:55
  healing. Nor can these byways be ignored without suffering. Along the great road
• 1:00
  of life, hurrying and eager to reach some elusive goal, presses the multitude,
• 1:07
  despising the apparently insignificant rest houses of true thought, not heeding the narrow,
• 1:12
  little by ways of blessed action which they regard as unimportant, and hour
• 1:18
  by hour men are fainting and falling, and numbers that cannot be counted,
• 1:23
  perish of heart hunger, heart thirst, and heart fatigue. But he who
• 1:29
  will step aside from the passionate press, and will notice and enter the byeways
• 1:34
  which are here presented, his dusty feet shall press the incomparable flowers of blessedness.
• 1:40
  His eyes be gladden with their beauty, his mind refreshed with their sweet
• 1:44
  perfume. Rested and sustained, he will escape the fever in the delirium of
• 1:49
  life, and strong and happy. He will not fall fainting in the dust,
• 1:55
  nor perish by the way, but will successfully accomplish his journey. James
• 2:01
  Allen, end of forward right beginnings, all common things, each day's events
• 2:10
  that with the hour begin and end. Our pleasures and our discontents are rounds
• 2:16
  by which we may ascend. We have not wings, we cannot soar,
• 2:22
  but we have feet to scale and climb. Longfellow for common life, its
• 2:29
  wants and ways, would I set forth in beauteous hues Browning. Life is
• 2:37
  full of beginnings. They are presented every day and every hour to every person.
• 2:43
  Most beginnings are small and appear trivial and insignificant. But in reality they
• 2:49
  are the most important things in life. See how in the material world everything
• 2:53
  proceeds from small beginnings. The mightiest river is at first a rivulet over which
• 3:00
  the grasshopper could leap. The great flood commences with a few drops of rain.
• 3:06
  The sturdy oak which has endured the storms of a thousand winters, was
• 3:10
  once an acorn, And the smoldering match carelessly dropped may be the means of
• 3:17
  devastating a whole town by fire. Consider also how in the spiritual world the
• 3:24
  greatest things proceed from smallest beginnings. A light fancy may be the inception of
• 3:31
  a wonderful invention or an immortal work of art. A spoken sentence may turn
• 3:38
  the tide of history. A pure thought entertained may lead to the exercise of
• 3:44
  a world wide regenerative power. And a momentary animal impulse may lead to the
• 3:50
  darkest crime. Have you yet discovered the vast importance of beginnings? Do you
• 3:57
  really know what is involved in a beginning? Do you know the number of
• 4:00
  beginnings you are continuously making and realize their full import If not, come with
• 4:08
  me for a short time and thoughtfully explore this much ignored by way of blessedness,
• 4:14
  for blessed it is when wisely resorted to, and much strength and comfort
• 4:18
  it holds. For the understanding mind, a beginning is a cause, and
• 4:24
  as such it must be followed by an effect or a train of effects,
• 4:30
  and the effect will always be the same nature as the cause. The nature
• 4:34
  of an initial impulse will always determine the body of its results. A beginning
• 4:41
  also presupposes an ending, a consummation, achievement, or goal. A gate
• 4:46
  leads to a path, and the path leads to some particular destination. So
• 4:53
  a beginning leads to results, and results lead to a completion. There are
• 4:58
  right beginnings and wrong beginning, which are followed by effects of like nature.
• 5:03
  You can, by careful thought, avoid wrong beginnings and make right beginnings,
• 5:09
  and so escape evil results and enjoy good results. There are beginnings over which
• 5:15
  you have no control and authority. These are without in the universe, in
• 5:19
  the world of nature around you, and in other people who have the same
• 5:25
  liberty as yourself. Do not concern yourself with these beginnings, but direct your
• 5:30
  energies and attention to those beginnings over which you have complete control and authority,
• 5:35
  and which bring about the complicated web of results which compose your life. These
• 5:42
  beginnings are to be found in the realm of your thoughts and actions, in
• 5:46
  your mental attitude, under the variety of circumstances through which you pass in your
• 5:53
  conduct day by day, In short, in your life as you make it,
• 5:58
  which is your world of good or ill? In aiming at the life
• 6:01
  of blessedness. One of the simplest beginnings to be considered and rightly made is
• 6:08
  that which we all make every day, namely, the beginning of each day's
• 6:13
  life. How do you begin each day? At what hour do you rise?
• 6:18
  How do you commence your duties? In what frame of mind do you
• 6:23
  enter upon the sacred life of a new day? What answer can you give
• 6:28
  your heart to these important questions. You will find that much happiness or unhappiness
• 6:33
  follows upon the right or wrong beginning of the day, and that when every
• 6:39
  day is wisely begun, happy and harmonious sequences will mark its course, and
• 6:44
  life in its totality will not fall short of the idle blessedness. It is
• 6:49
  a right and strong beginning to the day to rise at an early hour,
• 6:55
  even if your worldly duty does not demand it. It is wise to make
• 6:59
  of it a douce and begin the day strongly by shaking off indolence. How
• 7:03
  are you to develop strength of will and mind and body if you begin every
• 7:09
  day by yielding to weakness. Self indulgence is always followed by unhappiness. People
• 7:15
  who lie abed till a late hour are never bright and cheerful and fresh,
• 7:19
  but are the prey of irritabilities, depressions, debilities, nervous disorders, abnormal
• 7:27
  fancies, and all unhappy moods. This is the heavy price which they pay
• 7:32
  for their daily indolence. Yet so blinding is the pandering to self that the
• 7:39
  drunkard who takes his daily dram in the belief that it is bracing up the
• 7:43
  nerves which it is all the time shattering. So the lie of bed is
• 7:47
  convinced that long hours of ease are necessary for him as a possible remedy for
• 7:53
  those very moods and weaknesses and disorders of which his indolence is the cause.
• 7:59
  Men and women are are totally unaware of the great losses which they entail by
• 8:03
  this common indolence. Loss of strength of both mind and body, loss of
• 8:09
  prosperity, loss of knowledge, and loss of happiness. Begin the day.
• 8:13
  Then, by rising early, if you have no object in doing so,
• 8:18
  never mind, get up and go out for a gentle walk among the beauties
• 8:22
  of nature, and you will experience a buoyancy, a freshness, and a
• 8:26
  delight, not to say, a peace of mind, which will amply reward
• 8:31
  you for your effort. One good effort is followed by another. And when
• 8:35
  a man begins the day by rising early, even though with no other purpose
• 8:41
  in view, he will find that the silent early hour is conducive to clearness
• 8:46
  of mind and calmness of thought, and that his early morning walk is enabling
• 8:50
  him to become a consecutive thinker, and so to see life and its problems,
• 8:56
  as well as himself and his affairs in a clearer life. And so
• 9:01
  in time he will rise early with the express purpose of preparing and harmonizing his
• 9:05
  mind to meet any in every difficulty with wisdom and calm strength. There is
• 9:13
  indeed a spiritual influence in the early morning hour, a divine silence, an
• 9:18
  inexpressible repose. And he who purposeful and strong throws off the mantle of ease
• 9:26
  and climbs the hills to greet the morning sun, will thereby climb no inconsiderable
• 9:31
  distance up the hills of blessedness and truth. The right beginning of the day
• 9:37
  will be followed by cheerfulness at the morning meal, permeating the household with a
• 9:41
  sunny influence, and the tasks and duties of the day will be undertaken in
• 9:46
  a strong and confident spirit, and the whole day will be well lived.
• 9:52
  Then there is a sense in which every day must be regarded as the beginning
• 9:56
  of new life, in which one can think, act, and live newly
• 10:01
  and in a wiser and better spirit. Every day is a fresh beginning.
• 10:07
  Every morn is the world made new. You, who are weary of sorrow
• 10:11
  and sinning, here is a beautiful hope for you, a hope for me,
• 10:16
  and a hope for you. Do not dwell upon the sins and mistakes
• 10:22
  of yesterday so exclusively as to have no energy in mind left for living rightly
• 10:28
  to day. And do not think that the sins of yesterday can prevent you
• 10:33
  from living purely to day. Begin to day aright and aided by the accumulated
• 10:39
  experiences of all your past days, live it better than any of your previous
• 10:45
  days. But you cannot possibly live it better unless you begin it better.
• 10:50
  The character of the whole day depends upon the way it begins. Another beginning,
• 10:56
  which is of great importance, is the beginning of any particular and responsible
• 11:01
  undertaking. How does a man begin the building of a house? He first
• 11:05
  secures a plan of the proposed edifice, and then proceeds to build according to
• 11:09
  the plan, scrupulously following it in every detail, beginning with the foundation.
• 11:16
  Should he neglect the beginning, namely the obtaining of a mathematical plan, his
• 11:22
  labor would be wasted, and his building, should it reach completion without tumbling
• 11:26
  to pieces, would be insecure and worthless. The same law holds good in
• 11:33
  any important work. The right beginning and first essential is a definite mental plan
• 11:39
  on which to build. Nature will have no slipshod work, no slovenliness,
• 11:45
  and she annihilates confusion, or rather confusion is in itself annihilation. Order,
• 11:52
  purpose eternally and universally prevail, And he who in his operations ignores the mathematical
• 12:00
  elements at once deprives himself of sustainability, completeness, and success. Life without
• 12:07
  a plan, as useless as the moment it began, serves merely as a
• 12:13
  soil for discontent to thrive in an encumbrance ere half spent. Let a man
• 12:20
  start in business without having in his mind a perfectly formed plan to systematically pursue,
• 12:28
  and he will be incoherent in his efforts and will fail in his business
• 12:31
  operations. The laws which must be observed in the building of a house also
• 12:37
  operate in the building up of a business. A definite plan is followed by
• 12:43
  coherent effort, and coherent effort is followed by well knit and orderly results to
• 12:50
  wit, completeness, perfection, success, happiness. But not only mechanical and
• 12:56
  commercial enterprise. All under tis takings of whatsoever nature come under this law.
• 13:03
  The author's book, the artist's picture, the order's speech, the reformer's work,
• 13:09
  the inventor's machine, the general's campaign are all carefully planned in the mind
• 13:16
  before the attempt to actualize the miscommenced, and in accordance with the unity,
• 13:20
  solidarity, and perfection of the original mental plan, will be the actual and
• 13:26
  ultimate success of the undertaking. Successful men, influential men, good men are
• 13:33
  those who, amongst other things, have learned the value and utilized the power
• 13:39
  which lies in those obscure beginnings which the foolish man passes by as insignificant.
• 13:46
  But the most important beginning of all, that upon which affliction or blessedness inevitably
• 13:52
  depends, yet is most neglected and least understood, is the inception of a
• 13:56
  thought in the hidden but casual region of the mind. Your whole life is
• 14:03
  a series of effects, having their cause in thought. In your own thought,
• 14:09
  all conduct is made and melded by thought. All deeds, good or
• 14:13
  bad, are thoughts made visible. A seed put into the ground is the
• 14:18
  beginning of a plant or tree. The seed germinates, the plant or tree
• 14:24
  comes forth into the light and evolves. A thought put into the mind is
• 14:30
  the beginning of a line of conduct. The thought first sends down its roots
• 14:35
  into the mind, and then pushes forth into the light in the forms of
• 14:39
  action or conduct, which evolve into character and destiny. Hateful, angry,
• 14:46
  envious, and impure thoughts are wrong beginnings which lead to painful results. Loving,
• 14:54
  gentle kind, unselfish, and pure thoughts are right beginnings, wh which
• 15:00
  lead to blissful results. This is so simple, so plain, so absolutely
• 15:05
  true, and yet how neglected, how evaded, and how little understood.
• 15:11
  The gardener who most carefully studies how when and where to put his seeds,
• 15:16
  obtains the best results and gains the greater horticulture knowledge. The best crops gladden
• 15:24
  the soul of him who makes the best beginning. The man who patiently studies
• 15:28
  how to put into his mind the seeds of strong, wholesome, and charitable
• 15:33
  thoughts will obtain the best results in life, and will gain greater knowledge of
• 15:39
  truth. The greatest blessedness comes to him who infuses into his mind the purest
• 15:46
  and noblest thoughts. None but right acts can follow right thoughts. None but
• 15:52
  a right life can follow right acts, And by living a right life,
• 15:56
  all blessedness is achieved. He who considers the nature in import of his thoughts,
• 16:03
  who strives daily to eliminate bad thoughts and supplant them with good, comes
• 16:08
  at last to see that thoughts are the beginnings of results which affect every fiber
• 16:14
  of his being, which potently influence every event and circumstance of his life.
• 16:21
  And when he thus sees, he thinks only right thoughts, chooses to make
• 16:26
  only those mental beginnings which lead to peace and blessedness. Wrong thoughts are painful
• 16:33
  in their inception, painful in their growth, and painful in their frutage.
• 16:37
  Right thoughts are blissful in their inception, blissful in their growth, and blissful
• 16:44
  in their frutage. Many are the right beginnings which a man must discover and
• 16:48
  adopt on his way to wisdom. But that which is first and last most
• 16:53
  important in all embracing, which is the source and fountain of all abiding happiness,
• 17:00
  is the right beginning of the mental operations. This implies the steady development
• 17:06
  of self control, will, power, steadfastness, strength, purity, gentleness,
• 17:14
  insight, and comprehension. It leads to the perfecting of life. For
• 17:18
  he who thinks perfectly has abolished all unhappiness. Every moment of his life is
• 17:26
  peaceful, His years are rounded with bliss. He has attained to the complete
• 17:30
  and perfect blessedness. Small tasks and duties wrapped in our nearest duty is the
• 17:38
  key which shall unlock for us the heavenly gait, unveiled the heavenly vision.
• 17:45
  He shall see as pain and bliss. Who cometh not too early or too
• 17:51
  late, like the star that shines afar, without haste and without rest,
• 17:59
  Let each man wheel with steady sway round the task that rules the day,
• 18:03
  and do his best Gotha. As pain and bliss inevitably follow on wrong and
• 18:11
  right beginnings, so unhappiness and blessedness are inseparably bound up with small tasks and
• 18:18
  duties. Not that a duty has any power of itself to bestow happiness or
• 18:22
  the reverse. This is contained in the attitude of the mind which is assumed
• 18:27
  towards the duty, and everything depends upon the way in which it is approached
• 18:32
  and done. Not only great happiness, but great power, arises from doing
• 18:37
  little things unselfishly, wisely, and perfectly. For life in its totality is
• 18:42
  made up of little things. Wisdom adheers in the common details of everyday existence,
• 18:49
  and when the parts are made perfect, the whole will be without blemish.
• 18:55
  Everything in the universe is made up of little things, and the perfection
• 18:59
  of the great is based upon the perfection of the small. If any detail
• 19:03
  of the universe were imperfect, the whole would be imperfect. If any particle
• 19:08
  were omitted, the aggregate would cease to be. Without a grain of dust,
• 19:14
  there could be no world. And the world is perfect because the grain
• 19:18
  of dust is perfect. Neglect of the small is confusion of the grate.
• 19:23
  The snowflake is as perfect as the star. The dewdrop is as symmetrical as
• 19:29
  the planet. The microbe is not less mathematically proportioned than the man. By
• 19:36
  laying stone upon stone, plumbing and fitting each with perfect adjustment, the temple
• 19:41
  at last stands forth in all its architectural beauty. The small precedes the grate.
• 19:48
  The small is not merely the apologetic attendant of the grate. It is
• 19:52
  its master and informing genius. Vain men are ambitious to be great and look
• 20:00
  to do some great thing, ignoring and despising the little tasks which call for
• 20:04
  immediate attention, and in doing in which there is no vain glory. Regarding
• 20:11
  such trivialities as beneath the notice of great men, the fool lacks knowledge because
• 20:17
  he lacks humility, and inflated with the thought of self importance, he aims
• 20:22
  at impossible things. The great man has become such by the scrupulous and unselfish
• 20:29
  attention which he has given to small duties. He has become wise and powerful
• 20:33
  by sacrificing ambition and pride in the doing of those necessary things which evoke no
• 20:41
  applause and promise no reward. He never sought greatness. He sought faithfulness,
• 20:47
  unselfishness, integrity, truth, and in finding these in the common round of
• 20:53
  small tasks and duties, he unconsciously ascended to the level of greatness. The
• 21:00
  ape man knows the vast value that inheres in moments, words, greetings,
• 21:04
  meals, apparel, correspondence, rest, work, detached efforts, fleeting obligations
• 21:12
  in the thousand and one little things which press upon him for attention. Briefly
• 21:18
  in the common details of life, he sees everything is divinely aproportioned, needing
• 21:23
  only the application of dispassionate thought and action on his part to render life blessed
• 21:30
  and perfect. He neglects nothing, does not hurry, seeks to escape nothing
• 21:34
  but error and folly, attends to every duty as it is presented to him,
• 21:40
  and does not postpone in regret. By giving himself unreservedly to his nearest
• 21:45
  duty forgetting alike pleasure and pain, he attains to that combined childlike simplicity and
• 21:52
  unconscious power which is greatness. The advice of Confucius to his disciples eat at
• 21:59
  your your own table as you would at the table of a king emphasizes the
• 22:04
  immeasurable importance of little things as also does that aphorism of another great teacher,
• 22:11
  Buddha. If anything is to be done, let a man do it,
• 22:15
  Let him attack it vigorously. To neglect small tasks or to execute them in
• 22:21
  a perfunctory or slovenly manner is a mark of weakness and folly. The giving
• 22:26
  of one's entire and unselfish attention to every duty in its proper place evolves by
• 22:33
  a natural growth higher and even higher combinations of duties. Because it evolves power
• 22:38
  and develops talent, genius, goodness, character. A man ascends into greatness
• 22:45
  as naturally and unconsciously as the plant evolves into a flower, and in the
• 22:52
  same manner, by fitting with unabated energy and diligence every effort and detail in
• 22:57
  its proper place, thus harmonizing his life and character without friction or waste of
• 23:03
  power. Of the almost innumerable recipes for the development of will, power and
• 23:10
  concentration which are now scattered abroad, one looks almost in vain for any wholesome
• 23:15
  hint applicable to vital experience. Breathings, postures, visualings, occult methods are
• 23:23
  practices as delusive as they are artificial and remote from all that is real and
• 23:29
  essential in life. While the true path, the path of duty of earnest
• 23:34
  and undivided application to one's daily task, along with alone will power and concentration
• 23:41
  of thought, can be wholesomely and normally developed, remains unknown, untrodden,
• 23:48
  unexplored, even by the elect. All unnatural forcing and straining in order to
• 23:55
  gain power should be abandoned. There is no way from childhood to manhood but
• 24:00
  by growth, Nor is there any other way from folly to wisdom, from
• 24:03
  ignorance to knowledge, from weakness to strength. A man must learn how to
• 24:08
  grow, little by little, and day after day, by adding thought to
• 24:12
  thought, effort to effort, deed to deed. It is true the Fakir
• 24:18
  gained some sort of power by his long persistence in postures and mortifications. But
• 24:25
  it is a power which is brought at a heavy price, and that price
• 24:29
  is an equal loss of strength in another direction. He is never a strong,
• 24:33
  useful character, but a mere fantastic specialist in some psychological trick. He
• 24:41
  is not a developed man. He is a maimed man. True will power
• 24:45
  consists in overcoming the irritabilities, follies, rash impulses, and moral lapses which
• 24:52
  accompany the daily life of the individual, and which are apt to manifest themselves
• 24:59
  on every slight pri and in developing calmness, self possession and dispassionate action,
• 25:06
  in the press and heat of worldly duties, and in the midst of the
• 25:10
  passionate and unbalanced throng. Anything short of this is not true power, and
• 25:15
  this can only be developed along the normal pathway of steady growth, in executing
• 25:22
  evermore and more masterfully, unselfishly and perfectly the daily round of legitimate tasks and
• 25:30
  pressing obligations. The master is not he whose psychological accomplishments, rounded by mystery
• 25:37
  and wonder, leave him at unguarded moments, the prey of irritability, of
• 25:41
  regret, of peevishness, or other petty folly or vice. But he whose
• 25:48
  mastery is manifested in fortitude, non resentment, steadfastness, calmness, and infinite
• 25:56
  patience. The true master is master of himself. Anything other than this is
• 26:02
  not mastery but delusion. The man who sets his whole mind on the doing
• 26:07
  of each task as it is presented, who puts into it energy and intelligence,
• 26:12
  shutting all else out from his mind, and striving to do that one
• 26:17
  thing. No matter how small, completely and perfectly detaching himself from all reward
• 26:23
  in his task. That man will every day be acquiring greater command over his
• 26:29
  mind, and will, by ever ascending degrees, become at last a man
• 26:33
  of power, a master. Put yourself unreservedly into your present task, and
• 26:41
  so work, act live, that you shall leave each task a finished piece
• 26:47
  of labor. This is the very true way to the acquisition of will,
• 26:51
  power, concentration of thought, and conservation of energy. Look not about for
• 26:56
  magical formulas for strained in our artificial methods. Every resource is already with you
• 27:03
  and within you. You have but to learn how wisely to apply yourself in
• 27:08
  that place which you now occupy. Until this is done, those other and
• 27:15
  higher places which are waiting for you cannot be taken, possession of cannot be
• 27:19
  reached. There is no way to strengthen wisdom but by acting strongly and wisely
• 27:26
  in the present moment, and each present moment reveals its task. The great
• 27:32
  man, the wise man, does small things greatly, regarding nothing as trivial
• 27:37
  that is necessary. The weak man, the foolish man, does small things
• 27:42
  carelessly and meaningly, hankering the while after some greater work, for which,
• 27:48
  in his neglect and inability in small matters, he is ceaselessly advertising his incapacity.
• 27:56
  The man who least governs himself is always more in to govern others and
• 28:00
  assume important responsibilities. Whoso neglects a thing which he suspects he ought to do
• 28:07
  because it seems too small a thing is deceiving himself. It is not too
• 28:12
  little, but too great for him that he doth it not. And just
• 28:18
  as the strong doing of small tasks leads to greater strength, so the doing
• 28:23
  of those tasks weakly leads to greater weakness. What a man is in his
• 28:29
  fractional duties that he is in the aggregate of his character. Weakness is as
• 28:34
  great a source of suffering as sin, And there can be no true blessedness
• 28:40
  until some measure of strength of character is evolved. The weak man becomes strong
• 28:45
  by attaching value to little things and doing them accordingly. The strong man becomes
• 28:51
  weak by falling into looseness and neglect concerning small things, thereby forfeiting his simple
• 28:57
  wisdom and squandering his onmy energy. Herein we see the beneficent operation of that
• 29:03
  law of growth which is expressed in the little understood words to him that hath
• 29:08
  shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away,
• 29:14
  even that which he hath Man instantly gains or loses by every thought he thinks,
• 29:21
  every word he says, every act he does, and every work to
• 29:26
  which he puts heart and hand. His character, from moment to moment is
• 29:30
  a graduating quantity to or from which some measure of good is added or subtracted
• 29:37
  during every moment, and the gain or loss is involved even to absoluteness in
• 29:42
  each thought, word, and deed. As these follow each other in rapid
• 29:48
  sequence, he who masters the small becomes the rightful possessor of the great.
• 29:53
  He who is mastered by the small can achieve no superlative victory. Life is
• 30:00
  a kind of co operative trust, in which the whole is the nature of
• 30:04
  and dependent upon the unit. A successful business, a perfect machine, a
• 30:11
  glorious temple, or a beautiful character is evolved from the perfect adjustment of a
• 30:17
  multiplicity of parts. The foolish man thinks that little faults, little indulgences,
• 30:23
  little sins are of no consequence. He persuades himself that, so long as
• 30:29
  he does not commit flagrant immoralities, he is virtuous and even holy. But
• 30:34
  he is thereby deprived of virtue and holiness, and the world knows him accordingly.
• 30:41
  It does not reverence, adore, and love him. It passes him
• 30:45
  by. He is reckoned of no account. His influence is destroyed. The
• 30:51
  efforts of such a man to make the world virtuous. His exhortions to his
• 30:55
  fellow men to abandon great vices are empty of substance and barren of fruitage.
• 31:02
  The insignificance which he attaches to his small vices permeates his whole character and is
• 31:08
  the measure of his manhood. He is regarded as an insignificant man. The
• 31:14
  levity with which he commits his errors and publishes his weaknesses comes back to him
• 31:19
  in the form of neglect and loss of influence and respect. He is not
• 31:25
  sought after, for who will seek to be taught of folly? His work
• 31:29
  does not prosper, For who will lean up a read his words fall on
• 31:33
  deaf ears, for they are void of practice, wisdom, and experience.
• 31:40
  And who will go after an echo? The wise man, or he who
• 31:44
  is becoming wise, sees the danger which lurks in those common personal faults which
• 31:49
  men mostly commit thoughtlessly and with impunity. He also sees the salvation which inheres
• 31:56
  in the abandonment of those faults, as well as in the practice of virtuous
• 32:01
  thoughts and acts, which the majority disregard is unimportant, and in those quiet
• 32:07
  but momentous daily quests over self which are hidden from others eyes. He who
• 32:14
  regards his molessed delinquencies as of the gravest nature becomes a saint. He sees
• 32:20
  the far reaching influence, good or bad, which extends from his every thought
• 32:24
  and act, and how he himself is made or unmade by the soundness or
• 32:30
  unsoundness of those innumerable details of conduct which combine to form his character in life.
• 32:37
  And so he watches, guards, purifies, and protects himself, little
• 32:44
  by little and step by step. As the ocean is composed of drops,
• 32:50
  the earth of grains, and the stars of points of light, so is
• 32:53
  life composed of thoughts and acts. Without these, life would not be.
• 33:00
  Every man's life therefore is what his apparently detached thoughts and acts make it their
• 33:07
  combination, is himself. As the year consists of a given number of sequential
• 33:13
  moments, so a man's character in life consists of a given number of sequential
• 33:17
  thoughts and deeds, and the finished whole will bear the impress of the parts.
• 33:23
  All sorts of things in weather must be taken in together to make up
• 33:29
  a year and a sphere. Little kindnesses, generosities, and sacrifices make up
• 33:36
  a kind and generous character. Little renunciations, endurances, and victories over self
• 33:43
  make up a strong and noble character. The truly honest man is honest in
• 33:47
  the minutest details of his life. The noble man is noble in every little
• 33:53
  thing he says and does. It is a fatal delusion with men to think
• 33:59
  that life is detached from the momentary thought in act, and not to understand
• 34:05
  that the passing thought indeed is the foundation and substance of life. When this
• 34:10
  is fully understood, all things are seen as sacred, and every act becomes
• 34:15
  religious. Truth is wrapped up in infidecimal details. Thoroughness is genius. Possessions
• 34:24
  vanish, and opinions change, and passions hold a fluctuating seat. But by
• 34:30
  the storms of circumstance, unshaken and subject neither to eclipse nor wane, duty
• 34:37
  exists. You do not live your life in the mass. You live it
• 34:43
  in the fragments, and from these the mass emerges. You can will to
• 34:47
  live each fragment nobly if you choose, and this being done, there can
• 34:53
  be no particles of baseness in the finished whole. The saying, take care
• 34:59
  of the pen and the pounds will take care of themselves is seen to be
• 35:04
  more than worldly wise when applied spiritually. For to take care of the present
• 35:08
  passing act, knowing that by doing the total sum, an amount of life
• 35:14
  and character will be safely preserved, is to be divinely wise. Do not
• 35:20
  long to do great and laudable things, these will do themselves. If you
• 35:23
  do your present task nobly. Do not chafe at the restrictions and limitations of
• 35:30
  your present duty, but be nobly unselfish in the doing of it, putting
• 35:36
  aside discontent, listlessness, and the foolish contemplation of great deeds which lie beyond
• 35:43
  you, and lo already the greatness for which you sighe begins to appear.
• 35:49
  There is no weakness like peevishness. Aspire to the attainment of inward nobility,
• 35:54
  not outward glory, and begin to attain it where you are now, the
• 36:00
  irksome and sting which you feel to be in your task are in your mind,
• 36:05
  Only alter your attitude of mind towards it, and at once the crooked
• 36:09
  path is made straight. The unhappiness has turned to joy. See that your
• 36:15
  every fleeting moment is strong, pure and purposeful. Put earnestness and unselfishness into
• 36:22
  every passing task and duty. Make your every thought word indeed sweet and true.
• 36:29
  Thus, learning by practice and experience the inestimable value of the small things
• 36:35
  of life, you will gather, little by little, abundant and enduring blessedness,
• 36:43
  transcending difficulties and perplexities. Man whom man would be, must rule the
• 36:50
  empire of himself in it, must be supreme, establishing his throne on vanquished
• 36:57
  will, quelling the anarchy of hopes and fears, being himself alone. Shelley,
• 37:06
  have you missed your aim while the mark is still shining? Did you
• 37:10
  faint in the race? Will take breath for the next? Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
• 37:19
  To suggest that any degree of blessedness may be extracted from difficulties and perplexities
• 37:25
  will doubtless appear absurd to many. But truth is ever paradoxical, and the
• 37:30
  curses of the foolish are the blessings of the wise. Difficulties arise in ignorance
• 37:37
  and weakness, and they call for the attainment of knowledge and the acquisition of
• 37:40
  strength, as understanding is acquired by right living. Difficulties become fewer, and
• 37:47
  perplexities gradually fade away, like the perishable mists which they are. Your difficulty
• 37:53
  is not contained primarily in the situation which gave rise to it, but in
• 37:59
  the mental state with which you regard that situation and which you bring to bear
• 38:02
  upon it. That which is difficult to a child presents no difficulty to the
• 38:07
  matured mind of the man, And that which, to the mind of an
• 38:12
  unintelligent man is surrounded with perplexity, would afford no ground for perplexity to an
• 38:17
  intelligent man, to the untutored and undeveloped mind of the child. How great
• 38:23
  and apparently insurmountable appear the difficulties which are involved in the learning of some simple
• 38:30
  lesson, How many anxious and laborious hours and days or even months its solution
• 38:37
  costs, and frequently how many tears are shed in hopeless contemplation of the unmastered
• 38:45
  and apparently insurmountable wall of difficulty. Yet the difficulty is in the ignorance of
• 38:51
  the child only, and its conquest in solution is absolutely necessary for the development
• 38:58
  of intelligence and for the the ultimate welfare, happiness, and usefulness of the
• 39:02
  child. Even so, it is with difficulties of life with which older children
• 39:07
  are confronted, and which it is imperative for their own growth and development,
• 39:13
  that they should solve and surmount. And each difficulty solved means so much more
• 39:17
  experience gained, so much more insight and wisdom acquired. It means a valuable
• 39:23
  lesson learned, with the added gladness and freedom of a task successfully accomplished.
• 39:30
  What is the real nature of a difficulty? Is it not a situation which
• 39:35
  is not fully grasped and understood in all its bearings. As such, it
• 39:39
  calls for the development and exercise of a deeper insight and broader intelligence than has
• 39:45
  hitherto been exercised. It is an urgent necessity, calling forth unused energy and
• 39:52
  demanding the expression and employment of latent power in hidden resources. It is there
• 40:00
  therefore a good angel, albeit disguised a friend a teacher, and when calmly
• 40:06
  listened to and rightly understood, leads to larger blessedness and higher wisdom. Without
• 40:13
  difficulties, there could be no progress, no unfoldment, no evolution. Universal
• 40:17
  stagnation would prevail, and humanity would perish of anui. Let a man rejoice
• 40:23
  when he is confronted with obstacles, for it means that he has reached the
• 40:29
  end of some particular line of indifference or folly, and is now called upon
• 40:32
  to summon up all his energy and intelligence in order to extricate himself and to
• 40:38
  find a better way. That the powers within him are crying out for greater
• 40:43
  freedom, for enlarged exercise and scope. No situation can be difficult of itself.
• 40:50
  It is the lack of insight into its centricities and the want of wisdom
• 40:54
  in dealing with it, which give rise to the difficulty. In measure.
• 41:00
  Therefore is the gain of a difficulty transcended. Difficulties do not spring into existence
• 41:06
  arbitrarily and accidentally. They have their causes, and they are called forth by
• 41:12
  the law of evolution itself, by the growing necessities of the man's being.
• 41:16
  Herein resides their blessedness. There are ways of conduct which end inevitably in complications
• 41:23
  and perplexities, and there are ways of conduct which lead just as inevitably out
• 41:29
  of troublesome complexities. Howsoever tightly a man may have bound himself round, he
• 41:36
  can always unbind himself into whatsoever morasses of trouble and trackless waste of perplexity he
• 41:43
  may have ignorantly wandered. He can always find his way out again. He
• 41:47
  can always recover the lost highway of uninvolved simplicity, which leads straight and clear
• 41:53
  to the sunny city of wise and blessed action. But he will never do
• 41:59
  this by sitting down and weeping in despair, nor by complaining and worrying and
• 42:02
  aimlessly wishing he were differently situated. His dilemma calls for alertness, logical thought,
• 42:09
  and calm calculation. His position requires that he shall strongly command himself,
• 42:16
  that he shall think and search, and rouse himself to strenuous and unremitting exertion
• 42:22
  in order to regain himself. Worry and anxiety only serve to heighten the gloom
• 42:29
  and exaggerate the magnitude of the difficulty. If he will but quietly take himself
• 42:35
  to task and retrace in thought the more or less intricate way by which he
• 42:39
  has come to his present position, he will soon perceive where he made mistakes,
• 42:45
  will discover those places where he took a false turn, and where a
• 42:50
  little more thoughtfulness, judgment, economy, or self denial would have saved him.
• 42:55
  He will see how step by step he has involved himself, and how
• 43:00
  a riper judgment and clearer wisdom would have enabled him to take an altogether different,
• 43:06
  in truer course. Having proceeded thus far and extracted from his past conduct
• 43:13
  this priceless grain of golden wisdom, his difficulty will have already assumed less impregnable
• 43:20
  proportions, and he will then be able to bring to bear upon it the
• 43:23
  searchlight of dispassionate thought, to thoroughly anatomize it, to comprehend it in all
• 43:30
  its details, and to perceive the relation with which those details bear to the
• 43:36
  motive source of action and conduct within himself. This being done, the difficulty
• 43:43
  will have ceased, for the straight way out of it will plainly appear,
• 43:46
  and the man will have thus learned for all time his lesson, will have
• 43:52
  gained an idea of wisdom and a measure of blessedness of which he can never
• 43:57
  again be deprived. Just as there are ways of ignorance, selfishness, folly,
• 44:01
  and blindness, which end in confusion and perplexity. So there are ways
• 44:07
  of knowledge, self denial, wisdom, and insight which lead to pleasant and
• 44:13
  peaceful consummations. He who knows this will meet difficulties in a courageous spirit,
• 44:20
  and in overcoming them, will evolve truth out of error, bliss out of
• 44:23
  pain, and peace out of perturbation. No man can be confronted with a
• 44:29
  difficulty which he has not the strength to meet and subdue. Worry is not
• 44:35
  merely useless, it is a folly, for it defeats that power and intelligence
• 44:39
  which is otherwise equal to the task. Every difficulty can be overcome if rightly
• 44:45
  dealt with. Anxiety is therefore unnecessary. The task, which cannot be overcome
• 44:52
  ceases to be a difficulty and become an impossibility, And anxiety is still unnecessary,
• 44:58
  for there is only one way of dealing with an impossibility, namely to
• 45:02
  submit to it. The inevitable is the best. Heartily know, where half
• 45:09
  gods go, the gods arrive. And just as domestic, social, and
• 45:15
  economic difficulties are born of ignorance and lead to riper knowledge, So every religious
• 45:22
  doubt, every mental perplexity, every heart but clouding shadow presages greater spiritual gain,
• 45:30
  is prophetic of a brighter dawn of intelligence. For him on whom it
• 45:35
  falls, it is a great day in the life of a man, though
• 45:38
  at the time he knows it not, when bewildering perplexities concerning the mystery of
• 45:44
  life take possession of his mind, for it signifies that his era of dead
• 45:50
  indifference, of animal sloth, of mere vegetative happiness has come to an end,
• 45:57
  and that henceforth he is to live as an aspiring, self evolving.
• 46:00
  Being no longer a mere human animal. He will now begin to live as
• 46:06
  a man, exerting all his mental energies to the solution of life's problems,
• 46:10
  to the answering of those haunting perplexities which are the sentinels of truth, and
• 46:15
  which stand at the gate and threshold of the Temple of wisdom. He it
• 46:21
  is who, when great trials come, nor seeks nor shuns them, but
• 46:27
  doth calmly stay. Nor will he ever rest again in selfless ease and listless
• 46:32
  ignorance, nor sleekly state himself upon the swine's husks of fleshly pleasures, nor
• 46:39
  find a hiding place from the ceaseless whisperings of his heart's dark and indefinable interrogatories.
• 46:49
  The divine within him has awakened. A sleeping god is shaking off the
• 46:52
  incoherent visions of the night, never again to slumber, never again to rest,
• 46:59
  un till his eyes rest upon the full broad day of truth. It
• 47:04
  is impossible for such a man to hush for any length of time the call
• 47:08
  to his higher purposes and achievements which are aroused within him, for the awakened
• 47:14
  faculties of his being will ceaselessly urge him on to the unraveling of his perplexities.
• 47:21
  For him there is no peace and sin, no more rest and error,
• 47:25
  no final refuge. But in wisdom right will be the blessedness of such
• 47:31
  a man. When conscious of the ignorance of which his doubts and perplexities are
• 47:36
  born, and acknowledging and understanding that ignorance, not striving to hide himself from
• 47:42
  it, he earnestly applies himself to its removal, seeks unremittingly day after day
• 47:49
  for that pathway of light which shall enable him to dispel all dark shadows,
• 47:53
  dissolve all his doubts, and find the solution to all his pressing problems,
• 48:00
  and as a child is glad when it has mastered a lesson long toiled over.
• 48:05
  Just so a man's heart becomes light and free when he has satisfactorily met
• 48:10
  some worldly difficulty. Even so, but to a far greater degree, is
• 48:16
  the heart of a man rendered joyous and peaceful when some vital and eternal question,
• 48:22
  which has been long brooded over and grappled with, is at last completely
• 48:28
  answered, and its darkness is forever dispelled. Do not regard your difficulties and
• 48:32
  perplexities as portentous of ill. By doing so you will make them ill.
• 48:38
  But regard them as prophetic of good, which indeed they are. Do not
• 48:44
  persuade yourself that you can evade them. You cannot. Do not try to
• 48:49
  run from them. This is impossible, for wherever you go, they will
• 48:53
  still be there with you. But meet them calmly and bravely. Confront them
• 48:59
  with all all the dispassion and dignity which you can command. Weigh up their
• 49:04
  proportions, analyze them, grasp their details, measure their strength, understand them,
• 49:12
  attack them, and finally vanquish them. Thus will you develop strength and
• 49:17
  intelligence. Thus will you enter into one of those by ways of blessedness which
• 49:24
  are hidden from the superficial gaze. Burden dropping. This to me is life.
• 49:30
  That if life be a burden, I will join to make it,
• 49:35
  but the burden of a song bailey. Have you heard that it was good
• 49:39
  to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall. Battles
• 49:45
  are lost in the same spirit in which they are won, Walt Whitman.
• 49:51
  We hear and read much about burden bearing, but of the better way of
• 49:54
  burden dropping, very little is heard or known. Yet, why should you
• 49:59
  go go about with an oppressive weight at your heart when you might relieve yourself
• 50:04
  of it and move amongst your fellows heart free and cheerful. No man carries
• 50:08
  a burden upon his back, except to necessarily transfer something from one place to
• 50:14
  another. He does not saddle his shoulders with a perpetual burden and then regard
• 50:19
  himself as a martyr for his pains. And why should you impose upon your
• 50:23
  mind a useless burden and then add to its weight the miseries of self condolence
• 50:29
  and self pity. Why not abandon both your load and your misery, and
• 50:34
  thus add to the gladness of the world By first making yourself glad. No
• 50:38
  reason can justify, and no logic can support the ceaseless carrying of a grievous
• 50:45
  load. As in things material, a load is only undertaken as a necessary
• 50:51
  means of transference, and is never a source of sorrow. So in things
• 50:55
  spiritual, a burden should only be taken up as a means towards some good
• 51:00
  and necessary end, which, when attained, the burden is put aside.
• 51:05
  And the carrying of such a burden, far from being a source of grief,
• 51:09
  would be a cause for rejoicing. We say, the bodily mortifications which
• 51:15
  some religious ascetics inflict upon themselves are unnecessary in vain. And are the mental
• 51:22
  mortifications which so many people inflict upon themselves less unnecessary and vain. Where is
• 51:29
  the burden which should cause unhappiness and sorrow? It does not exist. If
• 51:34
  a thing is to be done, let it be done cheerfully, and not
• 51:37
  with the inward groanings and lamentations. It is of the highest wisdom to embrace
• 51:43
  necessity as a friend and guide. It is of the greatest folly to scalp
• 51:47
  upon necessity as an enemy, and to wish or try to overcome or avoid
• 51:52
  her. We need our own at every turn, and duties only become oppressive
• 51:58
  loads when we refuse to recognize and embrace them. He who does any necessary
• 52:04
  thing in a niggardly and complaining spirit, hunting the while after unnecessary pleasures,
• 52:10
  lashes himself with the scorpions of misery and disappointment, and imposes upon himself a
• 52:16
  doubly weighted burden of weariness and unrest, under which he incessantly groans. Wake
• 52:23
  thou, o self to better things, to yonder heights, uplift thy wings,
• 52:29
  Take up the psalm of life anew, sing the good sing of the
• 52:32
  true, Sing a full victory over wrong. Make thou a richer, sweeter
• 52:38
  song. Out of thy doubting care and pain. Weave thou a joyous glad
• 52:44
  refrain, out of thy thorns a crown. Weave thou of rare rejoicing.
• 52:50
  Sing thou, Now, I will give my cheerful, unselfish and undivided attention
• 52:55
  to the doing of all those things which enter into my compact with life.
• 53:01
  And though I walk under colossal responsibilities, I shall be unconscious of any troublesome
• 53:07
  weight or grievous burden. You may say a certain thing, a duty,
• 53:12
  a companionship, or a social obligation troubles you, is burdensome, and you
• 53:19
  resign yourself to oppression with the thought I have entered into this and will go
• 53:23
  through it. But it is heavy and grievous work. But is the thing
• 53:29
  really burdensome? Or is it your selfishness that is oppressing you? I tell
• 53:34
  you that the very thing with which you regard as so imprisoning a restriction,
• 53:37
  is the first gateway to your emancipation. That work, which you regard as
• 53:43
  a perpetual curse contains for you the actual blessedness which you vainly persuade yourself lies
• 53:50
  in another, in unapproachable direction. All things are mirrors in which you see
• 53:54
  yourself reflected. And the gloom which you perceive in your work is but a
• 54:00
  reflection of that mental state which you bring to it. Bring a right and
• 54:05
  unselfish state of heart to the thing, and lo it is at once transformed
• 54:10
  and becomes a means of strength and blessedness, reflecting back that which you have
• 54:15
  brought to it. If you bring a scowling face to your looking glass,
• 54:20
  will you complain of the glass that it glowers upon you with a deformed visage,
• 54:25
  or will you put your face right and so get back from the reflector
• 54:30
  a more pleasing countenance. It is right and necessary that a thing should be
• 54:35
  done when the doing of it is good, and can only become burdensome in
• 54:39
  wishing not to do it. The selfish wish makes the thing appear evil.
• 54:45
  It is neither right nor necessary that a thing should be done, then the
• 54:50
  doing of it in order to gain some coveted pleasure is folly, which can
• 54:54
  only lead to burden some issues. The duty which you shirk is your most
• 55:00
  reproving angel. The pleasure which you race after is your most flattering enemy.
• 55:06
  Foolish man, when will you turn around and be wise? It is the
• 55:10
  beneficence of the universe that is everywhere and at all times, urging its creatures
• 55:16
  to wisdom, as it demands coherence of its atoms. The folly and selfishness
• 55:22
  entails. Suffering in ever increasing degrees of intensity is preservative and good, for
• 55:29
  agony is the enemy of apathy in the herald of wisdom, what is painful,
• 55:35
  what is grievous? What is burdensome? Passion is painful, Folly is
• 55:40
  grievous. Selfishness is burdensome. It is the dark idolatry of self, which,
• 55:47
  when our thoughts and actions once are done, demands that man should weep
• 55:52
  and bleed and groan. Eliminate passion, folly, and selfishness from your mind
• 55:59
  and conduct, and you will eliminate suffering from your life. Burden dropping consists
• 56:04
  in abandoning the inward selfishness and putting pure love in its place. Go to
• 56:09
  your task with love in your heart, and you will go to it light
• 56:14
  hearted and cheerful. The mind, through ignorance, creates its own burdens and
• 56:19
  inflicts its own punishments. No one is doomed to carry any load. Sorrow
• 56:24
  is not arbitrarily imposed. These things are self made. Reason is the rightful
• 56:30
  monarch of the mind, and anarchy reigns in his spiritual kingdom. When his
• 56:36
  throne is unsurped by passion. When love of pleasure is the foe, heaviness
• 56:42
  and anguish compose the rear. You are free to choose. Even if you
• 56:46
  are bound by passion and feel helpless. You have bound yourself and are not
• 56:51
  helpless. Where you have bound, you can unbind. You have come to
• 56:55
  your present state by degrees, and you can recover yourself by degrees, can
• 57:00
  reinstate reason and dethrone passion. The time to avoid evil is before pleasure is
• 57:07
  embraced, but once embraced, its train of consequences should teach you wisdom.
• 57:14
  The time to decide is before responsibilities are adopted, but once adopted, all
• 57:20
  selfish considerations, with their attendant grumblings, whinings, and complainings, should be
• 57:25
  religiously excluded from the heart. Responsibilities lose their weight when carried lovingly and wisely.
• 57:34
  What heavy burden is a man weighted with which is not made heavier and
• 57:37
  more unendurable by weak thoughts of selfish desires. If your circumstances are trying,
• 57:45
  it is because you need them and can evolve the strength to meet them.
• 57:49
  They are trying because there is some weak spot within you, and they will
• 57:52
  continue to be trying until that spot is eradicated. Be glad that you have
• 57:58
  the opportunity of becoming stronger and wiser. No circumstances can be trying to wisdom.
• 58:04
  Nothing can weary love. Stop brooding over your own trying circumstances, and
• 58:08
  contemplate the lives of some of those about you. Here is a woman with
• 58:14
  a large family who has to make ends meet on a pound a week.
• 58:19
  She performs all her domestic duties down to the washing, finds time to attend
• 58:23
  on sick neighbors, and manages to keep entirely out of the two common quagmires,
• 58:30
  debt and despondency. She is cheerful from morning to night, and never
• 58:35
  complains of her trying circumstances. She is perennially cheerful because she is unselfish.
• 58:42
  She is happy in the thought that she is the means of happiness to others.
• 58:46
  Were she to brood upon the holidays, the pretty bobbles, the lazy
• 58:51
  hours of which she is deprived, the plays she cannot see, the music
• 58:55
  she cannot hear, the books she cannot read, the parties she cannot attend,
• 59:01
  the good she might do, the friendship she is debarred from forming,
• 59:06
  of the many pleasures which might only be hers if the circumstances were more favorable.
• 59:13
  If she brooded. Thus, what a miserable creature she would be,
• 59:16
  How unbearably laborious her work would become, How every little domestic duty would hang
• 59:22
  like a millstone about her neck, dragging her down to the grave, which
• 59:27
  unless she altered her state of mind, she would quickly reach killed by selfishness.
• 59:34
  But in not living in the vain desires for herself, she is relieved
• 59:38
  of all burdens and is happy. Cheerfulness and unselfishness are sworn friends. Love
• 59:45
  knows no heavy toil. Here is another woman with a private income which is
• 59:52
  much more sufficient, combined with leisure and luxury. Yet she has called upon
• 59:57
  to forfeit a portion of her time, pleasure, and money to discharge some
• 1:00:01
  obligation which she wishes to be rid of, and which should be to her
• 1:00:06
  work, a loving service, or fostering in her heart some ungratified desire.
• 1:00:12
  She is perpetually discontented and unhappy, and complains of trying circumstances. Discontent and
• 1:00:19
  selfishness are inseparable companions. Self love knows no joyful labor of the two sets
• 1:00:27
  of circumstances above depicted, and life is crowded with such contrasted instances, which
• 1:00:34
  are the trying conditions. Is it not true that neither of them are trying,
• 1:00:37
  and that both are blessed or unblest It accordance with the measure of love
• 1:00:43
  or selfishness, which is infused into them. Is it not the root of
• 1:00:47
  the whole matter in the mind of the individual, and not the circumstance When
• 1:00:52
  a man who has recently taken up the study of some branch of theology,
• 1:00:57
  religion, or occultism says, if I had not burdened myself with a wife
• 1:01:00
  and family, I could have done a great work. And had I known
• 1:01:05
  years ago what I know now, I never would have married. I know
• 1:01:09
  that that man has not yet found the commonest and broadest way of wisdom,
• 1:01:15
  for there is no greater folly than regret, and he is incapable of the
• 1:01:19
  great work which he is so ambitious to perform. If a man has such
• 1:01:23
  a deep love for his fellow men that he is anxious to do a great
• 1:01:27
  work for humanity, he will manifest that surpassing love always, and in the
• 1:01:32
  place where he now is. His home will be filled with it, and
• 1:01:37
  the beauty and sweetness and peace of his unselfish love will follow wherever he goes,
• 1:01:42
  making happy those about him and transmuting all things into good. The love
• 1:01:47
  that goes abroad to air itself and is undiscoverable at home is not love.
• 1:01:53
  It is vanity. Have I not seen o pitiful sight, the cheerless home
• 1:01:59
  in the neglected children of the misguided missioner and religionist. It is on such
• 1:02:05
  self delusion as this, that self pity and self martyrdom ever wait, and
• 1:02:10
  its self inflicted misery is regarded by the deluded one as holy in religious burden
• 1:02:15
  which he or she is called upon to bear. Only a great man can
• 1:02:20
  do great work, and he will be great wherever he is, and will
• 1:02:23
  do his noble work under whatsoever circumstances he may find himself when he has unfolded
• 1:02:30
  and revealed that work. Thou, who art so anxious to work for humanity,
• 1:02:36
  to help thy fellow men, begin that work at home, Help thyself,
• 1:02:40
  thy neighbor, thy wife, thy child. Do not be deluded,
• 1:02:45
  and tell thou doest with utmost faithfulness, the nearer and the lesser Thou canst
• 1:02:52
  not do the farther and greater. If a man has lived many years of
• 1:02:57
  his life in lust, in selfish pleasure, it is the order of things
• 1:03:01
  that his accumulated errors should weigh at last heavily upon him, as until they
• 1:03:07
  are thus brought home to him, he will not abandon them, he will
• 1:03:10
  not exert himself to find a better life. But whilst he regards his self
• 1:03:15
  made self impose burdens as holy crosses imposed upon him by the Supreme, or
• 1:03:22
  as marks of spiritual virtue, or as loads with fate circumstances or other people
• 1:03:29
  have heaped undeservedly and unjustly upon him, he is but lengthening out his folly,
• 1:03:35
  increasing the weight of his burdens, and multiplying his pains and sorrows.
• 1:03:39
  Only when such a man wakes up to the truth that his burdens are of
• 1:03:44
  his own making, that they are the accumulated effects of his own acts,
• 1:03:49
  will he cease from unmanly self pity and find the better way of burden dropping.
• 1:03:54
  Only when he opens his eyes to see that every thought in act is
• 1:04:00
  another brick, another stone, built into the temple of his life, will
• 1:04:04
  he develop the insight which will enable him to recognize his own unstable handiwork,
• 1:04:11
  the unflinching manling as to acknowledge it, and the courage to build more nobly
• 1:04:15
  and enduringly. Painful burdens are necessary, but only so long as we lack
• 1:04:20
  love and wisdom. The temple of blessedness lies beyond the outer courts of suffering
• 1:04:27
  and humiliation, and to reach it the pilgrim must pass through the outer courts.
• 1:04:32
  For a time, he will linger in the outer, but only so
• 1:04:35
  long as, through his own imperfect understanding he mistakes it for the inner.
• 1:04:42
  While he pities himself and confound suffering with holiness, he will remain in suffering.
• 1:04:47
  But when casting off the last unholy rag of self pity, he perceives
• 1:04:53
  that suffering is a means and not an end, that it is a state,
• 1:04:57
  self originated and self propagated. Then converted and right minded, he will
• 1:05:01
  rapidly pass through the outer courts and reach the inner abode of peace. Suffering
• 1:05:08
  does not originate in the perfect, but in the imperfect. It does not
• 1:05:12
  mark the complete, but the incomplete. It can therefore be transcended, Its
• 1:05:17
  self borne cause can be found, investigated, comprehended, and forever removed.
• 1:05:24
  It is true, therefore, that we must pass through agony to rest,
• 1:05:28
  through loneliness to peace. But let the sufferer not forget it is a passing
• 1:05:32
  through, that the agony is a gateway and not a habitation, that the
• 1:05:39
  loneliness is a pathway and not a destination, And that a little farther on
• 1:05:45
  he will come to the painless and blissful repose. Little by little is a
• 1:05:48
  burden accumulated imperceptibly, and by degrees is its weight increased. A thoughtless impulse,
• 1:05:58
  a gross self indulgence, a blind passion yielded to and gratified again and
• 1:06:02
  again, an impure thought fostered, a cruel word uttered, a foolish thing
• 1:06:09
  done time after time, and at last the gathered weight of many follies becomes
• 1:06:13
  oppressive. At first, and for a time the weight is not felt,
• 1:06:17
  but it is being added to day after day. And the time comes when
• 1:06:21
  the accumulated burden is felt in all its galling weight, when the bitter fruits
• 1:06:27
  of selfishness are gathered, and the heart is troubled with the weariness of life.
• 1:06:31
  When this period arrives, let the sufferer look to himself. Let him
• 1:06:36
  search for the blessed way of burden dropping, finding which he will find wisdom
• 1:06:42
  to live better, purity to live, sweeter, love to live nobler,
• 1:06:46
  will find in the reversal of that conduct by which his burdens were accumulated.
• 1:06:51
  Light hearted nights and days, cheerful action, and unclouded joy come out of
• 1:06:59
  the world, come above it, up over its crosses and graves. Though
• 1:07:04
  the green earth is fair and I love it, we must love it as
• 1:07:09
  masters, not slaves. Come up where the dust never rises, but only
• 1:07:15
  the perfume of flowers, and your life shall be glad with surprises of beautiful
• 1:07:20
  hours, hidden sacrifices. What need hath Man of Eden, past or paradise
• 1:07:29
  to come? When Heaven is round us and within ourselves? Lowliness is the
• 1:07:34
  base of every virtue. Who goes the lowest builds doubt, not the safest
• 1:07:42
  bailey. Truth is within ourselves. It takes no rise from outward things,
• 1:07:49
  whatever you may believe browning. It is one of the paradoxes of truth that
• 1:07:57
  we gain by giving up, by greedily grasping. Every gain in virtue necessitates
• 1:08:03
  some loss and vice. Every ascension of holiness means some selfish pleasure yielded up,
• 1:08:11
  And every forward step on the path of truth demands the forfeit of some
• 1:08:15
  self assertive error. He who would be clothed in new garments must first cast
• 1:08:20
  away the old, and he who would find the true must sacrifice the faults.
• 1:08:27
  The gardener digs in the woods in order that they may feed with their
• 1:08:30
  decay. The plants which are good for food, and the tree of wisdom
• 1:08:35
  can only flourish on the compost of uprooted follies. Growth gain necessitate sacrifice loss.
• 1:08:45
  The true life, the blessed life, the life that is not tormented
• 1:08:49
  with passions and pains, is reached only through sacrifice, not necessarily the sacrifice
• 1:08:57
  of outward things, but the sacrifice of the inward errors and defilements. For
• 1:09:02
  it is these, and these only which bring misery into life. It is
• 1:09:08
  not the good and true that needs to be sacrificed, but the evil and
• 1:09:12
  false. Therefore, all sacrifice is ultimately gain, and there is no essential
• 1:09:17
  loss. Yet at first the loss seems great, and the sacrifice is painful.
• 1:09:25
  But this is because of the self delusion and spiritual blindness, which always
• 1:09:29
  accompanies selfishness, and pain must always accompany the cutting away of some selfish portion
• 1:09:34
  of one's nature. When the drunkard resolves to sacrifice his lust for strong drink,
• 1:09:41
  he passes through a period of great suffering, and he feels that he
• 1:09:45
  is forfeiting a great pleasure. But when his victory is complete, when the
• 1:09:49
  lust is dead and his mind is calm and sober, then he knows that
• 1:09:55
  he has gained incalculably by the giving up of his selfish animal pleasure. What
• 1:10:00
  he has lost was evil and false and not worth keeping. Nay, its
• 1:10:05
  keeping entailed continual misery. But what he has gained in character, in self
• 1:10:12
  control, in soberness, had greater peace of mind, is good and true,
• 1:10:17
  and it was necessary that he should acquire it. So it is with
• 1:10:23
  all true sacrifice. It is at first, and it is until completed painful.
• 1:10:29
  And this is why men shrink from it. They cannot see any purpose
• 1:10:32
  in abstaining from an overcoming selfish gratification. It seems to them like losing so
• 1:10:39
  much that is sweet, seems to them like courting misery and giving up all
• 1:10:44
  happiness and pleasure. And this must be so, for if a man could
• 1:10:48
  know that by giving up his particular forms of selfishness, his gain in happiness
• 1:10:54
  would be immeasurably greater. Unselfishness, which is now so difficult to attaining,
• 1:11:00
  would then be rendered indefinitely more difficult of achievement. For his desire for the
• 1:11:04
  greater gain his selfishness would thereby be greatly intensified. No man can become unselfish
• 1:11:14
  and thereby arrive at the highest bliss until he is willing to lose, looking
• 1:11:18
  for neither gain nor reward. It is this state of mind which constitutes unselfishness.
• 1:11:26
  A man must be willing to humbly sacrifice his selfish habits and practices because
• 1:11:30
  they are untrue and unworthy, and for the happiness of those about him,
• 1:11:35
  without expecting any reward or looking for any good to accrue to himself. He
• 1:11:42
  must be prepared to lose for himself, to forfeit pleasure and happiness, even
• 1:11:46
  life itself, if by so doing he can make the world more beautiful and
• 1:11:51
  happy. But does he lose? Does the miser lose when he gives up
• 1:11:57
  his lust for gold? Does the thief lose when he abandons stealing? Does
• 1:12:02
  libertine lose when he sacrifices his unworthy pleasures? No man loses by the sacrifice
• 1:12:10
  of self or some portion of self. Nevertheless, he thinks he will lose
• 1:12:15
  by so doing, And because he thinks so, he suffers. And this
• 1:12:19
  is where the sacrifice comes in. This is where he gains by losing.
• 1:12:25
  All true sacrifice is within. It is spiritual and hidden, and is prompted
• 1:12:30
  by deep humility. Of heart. Nothing but the sacrifice of self can avail,
• 1:12:35
  and to this must all men come, sooner or later during their spiritual
• 1:12:40
  evolution. But in what does this self abnegation consist? How is it practice?
• 1:12:47
  Where is it sought and found? It consists in overcoming the daily proneness
• 1:12:54
  to selfish thoughts and acts. It is practiced in our common intercourse with others,
• 1:13:00
  when it is found in the hour of tumult and temptation. There are
• 1:13:04
  hidden sacrifices of the heart, which are infinitely blessed, both to Him that
• 1:13:10
  makes them and those for whom they are made, Albeit their making cost much
• 1:13:15
  effort and some pain. Men are anxious to do some great thing, to
• 1:13:19
  perform some great sacrifice which lies beyond the necessities of their experience, while all
• 1:13:26
  the time, perhaps they are neglecting the one thing needful, are blind to
• 1:13:30
  that sacrifice which, by its very nearness is rendered imperative. What lurks your
• 1:13:36
  besetting sin? Where lies your weakness? Where does temptation assail you most strongly?
• 1:13:45
  There shall you make your first sacrifice, and shall find thereby the way
• 1:13:48
  unto your peace. Perhaps it is anger or unkindness. Are you prepared to
• 1:13:55
  sacrifice the angry impulse and word the unkind thought. Indeed, are you prepared
• 1:14:00
  to silently endure abuse, attack, accusation, and unkindness, refusing to pay
• 1:14:08
  back these in their own coin? Are you prepared to give in return for
• 1:14:13
  these dark follies kindness and loving protection? If so, then you are ready
• 1:14:18
  to make those hidden sacrifices which lead to beautiful bliss. If you are given
• 1:14:24
  to anger or unkindness, offer it up. These hard, cruel and wrong
• 1:14:29
  conditions of mind never brought you any good. They can never bring you anything
• 1:14:33
  but unrest, misery, and spiritual blindness. Nor can they ever bring to
• 1:14:40
  others anything but unhappiness. Perhaps you will say, but he was unkind to
• 1:14:45
  me first, he treated me unjustly. Perhaps so, But what a poor
• 1:14:49
  excuse is this? What an unmanly and ineffectual refuge? For If his unkindness
• 1:14:57
  towards you is so wrong and hurtful, yours to him must be equally so.
• 1:15:01
  Because another is unkind to you is no justification for your own unkindness,
• 1:15:08
  but is rather a call for the exercise of great kindness on your part.
• 1:15:12
  Can the pouring in of more water prevent a flood? Neither can unkindness lessen.
• 1:15:17
  Unkindness can fire quench fire. Neither can anger overcome anger. Offer up
• 1:15:25
  all unkindness all anger. It takes two to make a quarrel. Don't be
• 1:15:30
  the other one. If one is angry or unkind to you. Try to
• 1:15:33
  find out where you have acted wrongly, and whether you have acted wrongly or
• 1:15:38
  not. Do not throw back the angry word or unkind act. Remain silent,
• 1:15:44
  self contained, and kindly disposed, and learn, by continual effort and
• 1:15:49
  right doing, to have compassion upon the wrongdoer. Perhaps you are habitually impatient
• 1:15:56
  and irritable, Know then the hidden sacrifice which it is needful that you should
• 1:16:00
  make. Give up your impatience, overcome it there where it is wont to
• 1:16:06
  assert itself, Resolve that you will yield no longer to its tyrannical sway,
• 1:16:13
  but will conquer it and cast it out. It is not worth keeping a
• 1:16:16
  single hour, nor would it dominate you for another moment if you were not
• 1:16:20
  laboring under the delusion that the follies and perversities of others render impatience on your
• 1:16:27
  part necessary. Whatever others may do or say, even though they may mock
• 1:16:31
  and taunt you, impatience is not only unnecessary, it can never do any
• 1:16:38
  other than aggravate the evil which it seeks to remove. Calm, strong,
• 1:16:43
  and deliberate action can accomplish much, but impatience and its accompanying irritability are always
• 1:16:49
  indications of weakness and inefficiency. And what do they bestow upon you? Do
• 1:16:56
  they bestow rest, peace, happiness, or bring these to those about you?
• 1:17:01
  Do they not rather make you and those about you wretched? But though
• 1:17:06
  your impatience may hurt others, it certainly hurts and wounds and impoverishes yourself most
• 1:17:13
  of all. Nor can the impatient man know aught of true blessedness, for
• 1:17:18
  he is a continual source of trouble and unrest to himself. The calm,
• 1:17:24
  beauty and perpetual sweetness of patience are unknown to him, and peace cannot draw
• 1:17:29
  near to soothe and comfort him. There is no blessedness anywhere until impatience is
• 1:17:35
  sacrificed, and its sacrifice means the development of endurance, the practice of forbearance,
• 1:17:43
  and the creation of a new and gentler habit of mind. When impatience
• 1:17:46
  and irritability are entirely put away, are finally offered up on the altar of
• 1:17:51
  unselfishness. Then is realized and enjoyed the blessedness of a strong, quiet and
• 1:17:59
  peaceful mind. Each hour we think of others more than self, that hour
• 1:18:05
  we live again, and every lowly sacrifice we make for others good shall make
• 1:18:12
  life more than self, and open the windows of thy soul to light from
• 1:18:16
  higher spheres. So hail thy lot, with lot, with joy. Then
• 1:18:23
  there are little selfish indulgences, some of which appear harmless and are commonly fostered.
• 1:18:30
  But no selfish indulgence can be harmless, and men and women do not
• 1:18:33
  know what they lose by repeatedly and habitually succumbing to effeminine and selfish gratifications.
• 1:18:41
  If the god in man is to rise strong and triumphant, the beast in
• 1:18:45
  man must perish. The pandering to the animal nature, even when it appears
• 1:18:50
  innocent and seems sweet, leads away from truth and blessedness. Each time you
• 1:18:57
  give way to the animal within, you feed and ratify him, he waxes
• 1:19:01
  stronger and more rebellious, and takes firmer possession of your mind, which should
• 1:19:06
  be in keeping of truth. Not until a man has sacrificed some apparently trivial
• 1:19:13
  indulgence, does he discover what strength, what joy, what poise of character
• 1:19:18
  and holy influence he has all along been losing by that gratification. Not until
• 1:19:25
  a man sacrifices his hankering for pleasure does he enter into the fullness of abiding
• 1:19:30
  joy. By his personal indulgences, a man demeans himself forfeit self respect to
• 1:19:36
  the extent and frequency of his indulgence, and deprives himself of the exemplary influence
• 1:19:44
  and the power to accomplish lasting good in his work in the world. He
• 1:19:47
  also, by allowing himself to be led by blind desire, increases his mental
• 1:19:54
  blindness and fails of the ultimate clearness of vision, that clarified percipia, which
• 1:20:00
  pierces to the heart of things and comprehends the real and the true animal indulgence
• 1:20:05
  is alien to the perception of truth. By the sacrifice of his indulgences,
• 1:20:12
  man rises above confusion and doubt and arrives at the possession of insight and surety.
• 1:20:18
  Sacrifice you're cherished and coveted indulgence. Fix your mind on something higher,
• 1:20:24
  nobler, and more enduring than ephemeral pleasure. Live superior to the craving for
• 1:20:30
  sense excitement, and you will live neither vainly nor uncertainly, very far reaching
• 1:20:35
  in its effect upon others the rich with the revelations of truth. For him
• 1:20:41
  who makes it is the sacrifice of self assertion, the giving up of all
• 1:20:45
  interference with the lives, views, or religions of other people, substituting for
• 1:20:53
  it and understanding love and sympathy. Self assertion or opinionativeness is as the form
• 1:21:00
  of egotism or selfishness, most generally found in connection with intellectualism and dialectical skill.
• 1:21:08
  It is blindly presumptive and uncharitable, and more often than not is regarded
• 1:21:14
  as a virtue. But once the mind has open to perceive the way of
• 1:21:17
  gentleness and self sacrificing love, then the ignorance, deformity, and painful nature
• 1:21:25
  of self assertion become apparent. The victim of self assertion setting up his own
• 1:21:31
  opinions as a standard of right and the measure of judgment, regards all those
• 1:21:36
  as wrong whose lives and opinions run counter to his own, and being eager
• 1:21:42
  to put others right, is thereby prevented from putting himself right. His attitude
• 1:21:47
  of mind brings about him opposition and contradiction from people who are anxious to put
• 1:21:53
  him right, and this wounds his vanity and makes him miserable, so that
• 1:21:58
  he lives in an almost constant fever of unhappy, resentful, and uncharitable thoughts.
• 1:22:04
  There can be no peace for such a man, no true knowledge,
• 1:22:08
  and no advancement until he sacrifices his desire to bend others to his own way
• 1:22:14
  of thinking and acting. Nor can he understand the hearts of others and enter
• 1:22:18
  lovingly into their strivings and aspirations. His mind is cramped and embittered, and
• 1:22:26
  he is shut out from all sweet sympathy and spiritual communion. He who sacrifices
• 1:22:30
  the spirit of self assertion, who, in his daily contact with others,
• 1:22:35
  put aside his prejudices and opinions, and strives both to learn from others and
• 1:22:42
  to understand them as they are, Who allows to others perfect liberty, such
• 1:22:46
  as he exercises himself to choose their own opinions, their own way of life.
• 1:22:53
  Such a man will acquire a deeper insight, a broader charity, and
• 1:22:58
  a richer bliss than he has his hitherto experienced and will strike a by way
• 1:23:02
  of blessedness from which he is formerly shut out. Then there is a sacrifice
• 1:23:08
  of greed in all greedy thoughts. The willingness that others should possess rather than
• 1:23:14
  we, the not coveting of things for ourselves, but rejoicing that they are
• 1:23:18
  possessed and enjoyed by others, that they bring happiness to others. The ceasing
• 1:23:24
  to claim one's own, and the giving up to others, unselfishly and without
• 1:23:29
  malice, that which they exact. This attitude of mind is a source of
• 1:23:34
  deep peace and great spiritual strength. It is the sacrifice of self interest.
• 1:23:41
  Material possessions are temporary, and in this sense we cannot truly call them our
• 1:23:45
  own. They are merely in our keeping for a short time. But spiritual
• 1:23:50
  possessions are eternal and must ever remain with us. Unselfishness is a spiritual possession
• 1:23:58
  which is only secured by ceasing to covet material possessions and enjoyments, by ceasing
• 1:24:03
  to regard things as for our own special and exclusive pleasure, and by our
• 1:24:09
  readiness to yield them up for the good of others. The unselfish man,
• 1:24:14
  even though he finds himself involved in riches, stands aloof in his mind from
• 1:24:19
  the idea of exclusive possession, and so escapes the bitterness and fear and anxiety
• 1:24:27
  which ever accompany the cavetuous spirit. He does not regard any of his outward
• 1:24:31
  accretions as being too valuable to lose, but he regards the true virtue of
• 1:24:38
  unselfishness as being too valuable in the world, too suffering humanity to lose or
• 1:24:44
  cast away. And who is the blessed man? He who is ever hankering
• 1:24:48
  after more possessions, thinking only of the personal pleasure he can get out of
• 1:24:54
  them, Or he who is ready to give up what he has for the
• 1:24:57
  good and happiness of others. By greed, happiness is destroyed. By not
• 1:25:02
  greed, happiness is restored. Another hidden sacrifice, one of great spiritual beauty
• 1:25:10
  and of powerful efficacy in the healing of human sorrows, is the sacrifice of
• 1:25:15
  hatred, the giving up of all bitter thoughts against others, of all malice,
• 1:25:20
  dislike, and resentment. Bitter thoughts and blessedness cannot dwell together. Hatred
• 1:25:27
  is a fierce fire that scorches up in the heart of him who harbors it
• 1:25:31
  all the sweet flowers of peace and happiness, and makes a hell of every
• 1:25:35
  place where it comes. Hatred has many names and many forms, but only
• 1:25:41
  one essence, namely burning thoughts of resentment against others. It is sometimes by
• 1:25:47
  its blind votaries called by the name of religion, causing them to attack,
• 1:25:53
  slander, and persecute each other because they will not accept each other's views of
• 1:25:58
  life and death, thus filling the earth with miseries and tears. All resentment,
• 1:26:04
  dislike ill thinking, and ill speaking of others as hatred. And where
• 1:26:09
  there is hatred, there is always unhappiness. No one has conquered hatred while
• 1:26:14
  thoughts of resentment toward others spring up in his mind. This sacrifice is not
• 1:26:19
  complete until a man can think kindly of those who try to do him wrong.
• 1:26:25
  Yet it must be made before true blessedness can be realized and known.
• 1:26:30
  Beyond the hard, cruel, steely gates of hatred waits the divine Angel of
• 1:26:34
  Love, ready to reveal herself to him, who will subdue and sacrifice his
• 1:26:40
  hateful thoughts and conduct him to his peace. Whatever others may say of you,
• 1:26:46
  whatever they may do to you, never take offense, Do not return
• 1:26:50
  hatred with hatred. If another hates you, perhaps you have consciously or unconsciously
• 1:26:58
  failed somewhere in your conduct. Or there may be some misunderstanding which the exercise
• 1:27:02
  of a little gentleness and reason may remove. But under all circumstances, Father,
• 1:27:09
  forgive them is infinitely better, sweeter, and nobler than I will have
• 1:27:15
  nothing more to do with them. Hatred is so small and poor, so
• 1:27:19
  blind and wretched. Love is so great and rich, so far seeing and
• 1:27:26
  blissful. The highest culture is to speak no ill. The best reformer is
• 1:27:31
  the man whose eyes are quick to see all beauty and all worth, and
• 1:27:35
  by his own discreet, well ordered life alone reproves the erring sacrifice all hatred.
• 1:27:44
  Slay it upon the holy altar of devotion, devotion to others. Think
• 1:27:49
  no more of injury to your own petty self, but see to it that
• 1:27:54
  henceforth you injure and wound no other. Open the floodgates of your heart for
• 1:27:59
  the inpour of that sweet, great, beautiful love which embraces all with strong
• 1:28:03
  yet tender thoughts of protection and peace, leaving not one, not even he
• 1:28:09
  who hates or despises or slanders you out in the cold then there is the
• 1:28:15
  hidden sacrifice of impure desires of weak self, pity and degrading self, praise
• 1:28:20
  of vanity and pride. For these are unblessed attitudes of mind deformities of heart.
• 1:28:28
  He who makes them one by one, gradually subduing and overcoming them,
• 1:28:32
  will, according to the measure of his success, rise above weakness and suffering
• 1:28:38
  and sorrow, and will comprehend and enjoy the perfect and imperishable blessedness. Now
• 1:28:44
  all these hidden sacrifices which are here mentioned are pure, humble heart offerings.
• 1:28:50
  They are made within, are offered up on the sacred, lowly unseen altar
• 1:28:56
  of one's own heart. Not one of them can be made, and till
• 1:29:00
  the fault is first silently acknowledged and confessed, no man can sacrifice an error
• 1:29:05
  until he first of all confesses to himself, I am in error. When
• 1:29:13
  yielding it up, he will perceive and receive the truth which his error formally
• 1:29:16
  obscured. The Kingdom of Heaven cometh not by observation and the silent sacrifice of
• 1:29:25
  self for the good of others. The daily giving up of one's egotistic tendencies
• 1:29:30
  is not seen and rewarded of men and brings no loud blazon of popularity in
• 1:29:34
  praise. It is hidden away from the eyes of the world, even from
• 1:29:40
  the gaze of those who are nearest to you, for no eyes of flesh
• 1:29:44
  can perceive its spiritual beauty. But think not that because it is unperceived,
• 1:29:49
  it is therefore feudle. Its blissful radiance is enjoyed by you, and its
• 1:29:55
  power for good over others is great and far reaching. For though they cannot
• 1:30:00
  see it, nor perhaps understand it, yet they are unconsciously influenced by it.
• 1:30:05
  They will not know what silent battles you are fighting, what eternal victories
• 1:30:10
  over self you are achieving. But they will feel your altered attitude, your
• 1:30:15
  new mind, wrought of the fabric of love and loving thoughts, and will
• 1:30:19
  share somewhat in its happiness and bliss. They will know nothing of the frequent
• 1:30:25
  fierceness of the fight you are waging, of the wounds you receive in the
• 1:30:29
  healing balm you apply, of the anguish and the after piece. But they
• 1:30:33
  will know that you have grown sweeter and gentler, stronger and more silently self
• 1:30:39
  reliant, more patient and pure, and that they are rested and helped by
• 1:30:44
  your presence. What rewards can compare with this? Beside the fragrant offices of
• 1:30:50
  love, the praises of men are gross and fulsome, and in the pure
• 1:30:56
  flame of a selfless heart, the flatteries of the world are turned to ashes.
• 1:31:00
  Love is its own reward, its own joy, its own satisfaction.
• 1:31:05
  It is the final refuge and resting place of passion tortured souls. The sacrifice
• 1:31:12
  of self and the acquisition of the supreme knowledge and bliss which it confers,
• 1:31:17
  is not accomplished by one great and glorious act, but by a series of
• 1:31:21
  lesser and successive sacrifices in the ordinary life of the world, by a succession
• 1:31:28
  of steps in the daily conquest of truth over selfishness. He who each day
• 1:31:33
  accomplishes some victory over himself, who subdues and puts behind him some unkind thought,
• 1:31:41
  some impure desire, some tendency to sin, is every day growing stronger,
• 1:31:46
  purer, and wiser, and every dawn finds him nearer to that final
• 1:31:51
  glory of truth, which each self sacrificing act reveals. In part. Look
• 1:31:58
  not outside thee nor beyond thee, for the light and blessedness of truth.
• 1:32:02
  But look within, thou wilt find it within the narrow sphere of thy duty,
• 1:32:09
  even in the humble and hidden sacrifices of thine own heart. Sympathy,
• 1:32:16
  when thy gaze turns it on thine own soul, be most severe. But
• 1:32:21
  when it falls upon a fellow man, let kindliness control it and refrain from
• 1:32:27
  that belittling censure that brings forth from common lips like weeds from marshy soil,
• 1:32:33
  Ellow Wheeler, Wilcox, I do not ask the wounded person how he feels.
• 1:32:41
  I myself become the wounded person, Walt Whitman. We can only sympathize
• 1:32:47
  with others in so far as we have conquered ourselves. We cannot think and
• 1:32:53
  feel for others while we are engaged in condoling with and pitying ourselves. Cannot
• 1:32:59
  deal tenderly and lovingly with others while we are anxious for our own pre eminence,
• 1:33:04
  or for the exclusive preservation of ourselves, our opinions, or our own
• 1:33:10
  generally, what is sympathy but thoughtfulness for others in the forgetfulness of self.
• 1:33:16
  To sympathize with others, we must first understand them, And to understand them,
• 1:33:21
  we must put away all our personal preconceptions concerning them, and must see
• 1:33:27
  them as they are. We must enter into their inner state and become one
• 1:33:31
  with them, looking through their mental eyes and comprehending the range of their experience.
• 1:33:39
  You cannot, of course, do this with a being whose wisdom and
• 1:33:42
  experience are greater than your own, nor can you do it with any if
• 1:33:46
  you regard yourself as being on a higher plane than others. For egotism and
• 1:33:51
  sympathy cannot dwell together, But you can practice it with all those who are
• 1:33:57
  involved in sins and sufferings from which you have successfully extricated yourself. And though
• 1:34:02
  your sympathy cannot embrace and overshadow the man whose greatness is beyond you, you
• 1:34:09
  can place yourself in such an attitude towards him as to receive the protection of
• 1:34:14
  his larger sympathy, and so make for yourself an easier way out of the
• 1:34:17
  sins and sufferings by which you are still in chained. Prejudice and ill will
• 1:34:24
  are complete barriers to the giving of sympathy, while pride and vanity are total
• 1:34:29
  barriers to its reception. You cannot sympathize with a person for whom you have
• 1:34:33
  conceived a hatred. You cannot enjoy the sympathy of one whom you envy.
• 1:34:40
  You cannot understand the person whom you dislike, or he for whom, through
• 1:34:45
  animal impulse, you have framed an ill formed affection. You do not cannot
• 1:34:50
  see him as he really is, but only see your own imperfect notions of
• 1:34:55
  him, see only a distorted image of him through the exactay medium of your
• 1:35:00
  ill grounded opinions. To see others as they are, you must not allow
• 1:35:06
  impulsive likes and dislikes, powerful prejudices, or egotistic considerations to come between you
• 1:35:14
  and them. You must not resent their actions or condemn their beliefs and opinions.
• 1:35:19
  You must leave yourself entirely out, and must, for the time being,
• 1:35:25
  assume their position. Only in this way can you become in rapport with
• 1:35:30
  them and so fathom their life, their experience, and understand it. And
• 1:35:35
  when a man is understood, it becomes impossible to condemn him. Men misjudge,
• 1:35:42
  condemn, and avoid each other because they do not understand each other,
• 1:35:45
  and they do not understand each other because they have not overcome and purified themselves.
• 1:35:53
  Life is growth, development, evolution, and there is no essential distinction
• 1:35:58
  between the sinner and the saint. There is only a difference in degree.
• 1:36:02
  The saint was once a sinner. The sinner will one day be a saint.
• 1:36:06
  The sinner is the child. The saint is the grown man. He
• 1:36:11
  who separates himself from sinners, regarding them as wicked men to be avoided.
• 1:36:16
  Is like a man avoiding contact with little children because they are unwise, disobedient,
• 1:36:23
  and play with toys. All life is one, but it has a
• 1:36:27
  variety of manifestations. The grown flower is not something distinct from the tree,
• 1:36:32
  it is a part of it. It is only another form of leaf.
• 1:36:36
  Steam is not something apart from water, but it is another form of water,
• 1:36:42
  and in like manner, good is transmuted evil. The saint is the
• 1:36:46
  sinner, developed and transformed. The sinner is one whose understanding is undeveloped,
• 1:36:54
  and he ignorantly chooses wrong modes of action. The saint is one whose understanding
• 1:36:59
  is right, and he chooses right modes of action. The sinner condemns the
• 1:37:04
  sinner, condemnation being a wrong mode of action. The saint never condemns the
• 1:37:11
  sinner, remembering that he himself formally occupied the same place, but thinks of
• 1:37:15
  him with deep sympathy, regarding him in the light of a younger brother or
• 1:37:19
  a friend. For sympathy is a right and enlightened mode of action. The
• 1:37:25
  perfected saint, who gives sympathy to all needs it of none, for he
• 1:37:30
  has transcended sin and suffering and lives in the enjoyment of lasting bliss. But
• 1:37:35
  all who suffer needs sympathy, and all whose sin must suffer. When a
• 1:37:42
  man comes to understand that every sin, whether of thought or deed, receives
• 1:37:46
  his just quote of suffering, he ceases to condemn and begins to sympathize,
• 1:37:51
  seeing the sufferings which sin entails. And he comes to such understanding by purifying
• 1:37:58
  himself as a man, purges himself of passions. As he transmutes his selfish
• 1:38:03
  desires and puts underfoot his egotistic tendencies. He sounds the depths of all human
• 1:38:10
  experiences, all sins and sufferings and sorrows, all motives and thoughts and deeds,
• 1:38:16
  and comprehends the moral law in its perfection. Complete self conquest is perfect
• 1:38:23
  knowledge, perfect sympathy. And he who views men with a stainless vision of
• 1:38:28
  a pure heart views them with a pitying heart, sees them as a part
• 1:38:31
  of himself, not as something defiled and separate and distinct, but as his
• 1:38:38
  very self, sinning as he has sinned, suffering as he has suffered,
• 1:38:43
  sorrowing as he has sorrowed, and yet withal glad in the knowledge that they
• 1:38:47
  will come as he has come, to perfect peace at last. The truly
• 1:38:53
  good and wise man cannot be a passionate partisan, but extends his sympathy to
• 1:38:59
  all, beeing no evil in others, to be condemned and resisted, but
• 1:39:02
  seeing the sin which is pleasant to the sinner, and the after sorrow and
• 1:39:08
  pain which the sinner does not see, and when it overtakes him, does
• 1:39:13
  not understand. A man's sympathy extends just so far as his wisdom reaches,
• 1:39:18
  and no further, And a man only grows wiser as he grows tenderer and
• 1:39:24
  more compassionate. To narrow one's sympathy is to narrow one's heart, and so
• 1:39:29
  to darken and embitter one's life. To extend and broaden one's sympathy is to
• 1:39:34
  enlighten and gladden one's life, and to make plainer to others the way of
• 1:39:39
  light and gladness. To sympathize with another is to receive his being into our
• 1:39:45
  own, to become one with him. For unselfish love unites, and he
• 1:39:49
  whose sympathy reaches out to and embraces all human kind and all living creatures,
• 1:39:56
  has realized his identity and oneness with all, and comprehends the universal love and
• 1:40:02
  law and wisdom. Man is shut out from heaven and peace and truth only
• 1:40:08
  in so far as he shuts out others from his sympathy. Where his sympathy
• 1:40:13
  ends, his darkness and torment and turmoil begins. For to shut others out
• 1:40:17
  from our love is to shut ourselves out from the blessedness of love, and
• 1:40:23
  to become cramped in the dark prison of self. Whoever walks affurlong without sympathy
• 1:40:30
  walks to his own funeral dressed in a shroud. Only when one's sympathy is
• 1:40:35
  unlimited is the eternal light of truth revealed. Only in the love that knows
• 1:40:41
  no restriction. Is the boundless bliss Enjoyed sympathy is bliss in it is revealed
• 1:40:48
  the highest, purest blessedness. It is divine, For in its reciprocal light,
• 1:40:55
  all thought of self is lost, and there remains only the pure joy
• 1:40:59
  of oneness with others, the ineffitable communion of spiritual identity. Where a man
• 1:41:04
  ceases to sympathize, he ceases to live, ceases to see and realize and
• 1:41:11
  know. One cannot truly sympathize with others until all selfish considerations concerning them are
• 1:41:17
  put away. And he who does this and strives to see others as they
• 1:41:23
  are, strives to realize their particular sins, temptations and sorrows, their beliefs,
• 1:41:30
  opinions, and prejudices, comes at last to see exactly where they stand
• 1:41:34
  in their spiritual evolution, comprehends the arc of their experience, and knows that
• 1:41:40
  they cannot, for the present act otherwise than they do. He sees that
• 1:41:45
  their thoughts and acts are prompted by the extent of their knowledge or their lack
• 1:41:49
  of knowledge, and that if they act blindly and foolishly, it is because
• 1:41:54
  their knowledge and experience are immature, and they can only come to act more
• 1:41:59
  wisely by gradual growth into more enlightened states of mind. He also sees that
• 1:42:05
  though this growth can be encouraged, helped, and stimulated by the influence of
• 1:42:11
  a riper example, by seasonable words and well timed instruction. It cannot be
• 1:42:15
  unnaturally forced. The flowers of love and wisdom must have time to grow,
• 1:42:21
  and the barren branches of hatred and folly cannot be cut away all at once.
• 1:42:28
  Such a man finds the doorway into the inner world of those with whom
• 1:42:30
  he comes in contact, and he opens it and enters in and dwells with
• 1:42:35
  them in the hidden and sacred sanctuary of their being. And he finds nothing
• 1:42:41
  to hate, nothing to revile, nothing to condemn in that sacred place,
• 1:42:45
  but something to love and tend and in his own heart room only for greater
• 1:42:50
  pity, greater patience, greater love. He sees that he is one with
• 1:42:57
  them, but that they are another aspect of him, that their natures are
• 1:43:01
  not different from his own, except in modification and degree, but they are
• 1:43:05
  identical with it. If they are acting out certain sinful tendencies, he has
• 1:43:12
  but to look within to find the same tendencies in himself, albeit perhaps restrained
• 1:43:17
  or purified. If they are manifesting certain holy and divine qualities, he finds
• 1:43:23
  the same pure spirit within himself, though perhaps in a lesser degree of power
• 1:43:29
  and development. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. The sin
• 1:43:33
  of one is the sin of all. The virtue of one is the virtue
• 1:43:39
  of all. No man can be separate from another. There is no difference
• 1:43:43
  of nature, but only difference of condition. If a man thinks he is
• 1:43:47
  separated from another by virtue of his superior holiness, he is not so separated,
• 1:43:54
  and his darkness and delusion are very great. Humanity is one, and
• 1:43:59
  in the holy sanctuary of sympathy, saint and sinner meet and unite. It
• 1:44:04
  is said of Jesus that he took upon himself the sins of the whole world.
• 1:44:10
  That is, he identified himself with those sins, and did not regard
• 1:44:14
  himself as essentially separate from sinners, but as being of a like nature with
• 1:44:18
  them. And his realization of his oneness with all men was manifested in his
• 1:44:24
  life as profound sympathy for those who, for their deep sins were avoided and
• 1:44:30
  cast off by others. And who is it that is in the greatest need
• 1:44:33
  of sympathy, Not the saint, not the enlightened seer, not the perfect
• 1:44:40
  man. It is the sinner, the unenlightened man, the imperfect one,
• 1:44:45
  and the greater the sin. The greater is the need. I came not
• 1:44:48
  to call the righteousness, but sinners to repentance is the statement of one who
• 1:44:53
  has comprehended all human needs. The righteous man does not need your sympathy,
• 1:44:59
  but the unrighteous, he who by his wrongdoing is laying up for himself long
• 1:45:04
  periods of suffering and woe, is in need of it. The flagrantly unrighteous
• 1:45:10
  man is condemned, despised, and avoided by those who are living in a
• 1:45:14
  similar condition to himself, though for the time being they may not be subject
• 1:45:19
  to his particular form of sin. For that withholding of sympathy and that mutual
• 1:45:25
  condemnation, which are so rife, is the commonest manifestation of that lack of
• 1:45:30
  understanding in which all sin takes its rise. While a man is involved in
• 1:45:35
  sin, he will condemn others who are likewise involved, And the deeper and
• 1:45:41
  greater his sin, the more severe will be his condemnation of others. It
• 1:45:45
  is only when a man begins to sorrow for his sin, and so to
• 1:45:49
  rise above it and into the clearer light of purity and understanding, that he
• 1:45:55
  ceases from condemning others and learns to sympathize with them. But this ceaseless condemnation
• 1:46:00
  of each other by those who are involved in the fierce play of the passions
• 1:46:05
  must needs be, for it is one of the modes of operation of the
• 1:46:10
  great law which universally and eternally obtains. And the unrighteous one who falls under
• 1:46:16
  the condemnation of his fellows will the more rapidly reach a higher and nobler condition
• 1:46:21
  of heart and life, if he humbly accepts the censure of others as the
• 1:46:26
  effect of his own sin, and resolves henceforward to refrain from all condemnation of
• 1:46:31
  others. The truly good and wise man condemns none. Having put away all
• 1:46:38
  blind passion and selfishness, he lives in the calm regions of love and peace,
• 1:46:43
  and understands all modes of sin with their consequent sufferings and sorrows. Enlightened
• 1:46:48
  and awakened, freed from all selfish bias. In seeing men as they are,
• 1:46:55
  his heart responds and holy sympathy withal. Should any condemn abuse or slander
• 1:47:01
  him, he throws them around the kindly protection of his sympathy, seeing the
• 1:47:06
  ignorance which prompts them to so act, and knowing that they alone will suffer
• 1:47:11
  for their wrong acts. Learn by self conquest and the acquisition of wisdom,
• 1:47:16
  to love him whom you now condemn. To sympathize with those who condemn you,
• 1:47:23
  Turn your eyes away from their condemnation, and search your own heart to
• 1:47:28
  find, perchance some hard, unkind or wrong thoughts, which, when discovered
• 1:47:33
  and understood, you will condemn yourself. Much that is commonly called sympathy is
• 1:47:40
  personal affection. To love them who love us is human bias and inclination,
• 1:47:45
  But to love them who do not love us is divine sympathy. Sympathy is
• 1:47:51
  needed because of the prevalence of suffering, For there is no being or creature
• 1:47:56
  who has not suffered through suffering. Sympathy is evolved. Not in a year
• 1:48:01
  or a life or an age. Is the human heart purified and softened by
• 1:48:06
  suffering, But after many lives of intermittent pain, after many ages of ever
• 1:48:13
  recurring sorrow, man reaps the golden harvest of his experiences and garners in the
• 1:48:18
  rich ripe sheafs of love and wisdom, And when he understands an understanding,
• 1:48:26
  he sympathizes. All suffering is the result of ignorantly violated law, and after
• 1:48:32
  many repetitions of the same wrong act, the same kind of suffering resulting from
• 1:48:38
  that act, knowledge of the law is acquired, and the higher state of
• 1:48:43
  obedience and wisdom is reached. Then there blossoms the pure and perfect flower of
• 1:48:47
  sympathy. One aspect of sympathy is that of pity, pity for the distressed
• 1:48:54
  or pain stricken, with a desire to alleviate or help them bear their sufferings.
• 1:49:00
  The world needs more of this divine quality, for pity makes the world
• 1:49:04
  soft to the weak and noble for the strong. But it can only be
• 1:49:09
  developed by eradicating all hardness and unkindness, all accusation and resentment. He who,
• 1:49:16
  when he sees another suffering for his sin, hardens his heart and thinks
• 1:49:20
  or says it serves him right. Such a one cannot exercise pity nor apply
• 1:49:27
  its healing balm. Every time a man acts cruelly towards another, be it
• 1:49:32
  only a dumb creature, or refuses to bestow needed sympathy, he dwarfs himself,
• 1:49:39
  deprives himself of ineffitable blessedness, and prepares himself for suffering. Another form
• 1:49:45
  of sympathy is that of rejoicing with those who are more successful than ourselves,
• 1:49:50
  as though their success were our own. Blessed indeed is he who is free
• 1:49:55
  from all envy and malice, and can rejoice and be glad when he hears
• 1:50:00
  of the good fortune of those who regard him as an enemy. The protecting
• 1:50:03
  of creatures weaker and more indefensible than oneself is another form in which this divine
• 1:50:10
  sympathy is manifested. The helpless frailty of the dumb creation calls for the exercise
• 1:50:16
  of the deepest sympathy. The glory of superior strength resides in its power to
• 1:50:21
  shield, not to destroy, not by the callous destruction of weaker things,
• 1:50:28
  as life truly lived, but by their preservation. All life is linked and
• 1:50:33
  kin, and the lowest creature is not separated from the highest by greater weakness,
• 1:50:39
  but by lesser intelligence. When we pity and protect, we reveal and
• 1:50:44
  enlarge the divine life and joy within ourselves. When we thoughtlessly or callously inflict,
• 1:50:49
  suffering, or destroy, then our divine life becomes obscured, and its
• 1:50:55
  joy fades and dies. Bodies may feed bodies and pasts, but man's divine
• 1:51:00
  nature is only nurtured, sustained and developed by kindness, love, sympathy,
• 1:51:08
  and all pure and unselfish acts. By bestowing sympathy on others, we increase
• 1:51:14
  our own. Sympathy given can never be wasted. Even the meanest creature will
• 1:51:18
  respond to its heavenly touch, for it is the universal language which all creatures
• 1:51:24
  understand. I have recently heard a true story of a Dartmoor convict, whose
• 1:51:30
  terms of incarceration in various convict stations extended to over forty years. As a
• 1:51:36
  criminal, he was considered one of the most callous and hopelessly abandoned, and
• 1:51:42
  the warders found him almost intractable. But one day he caught a mouse,
• 1:51:46
  a weak, terrified, hunted thing like himself, and its helpless frailty in
• 1:51:51
  the similarity of its condition with his own, appealed to him and started into
• 1:51:58
  flame the divine spark of sympathy which smoldered in his crime hardened heart, and
• 1:52:02
  which no human touch had ever wakened into life. He kept the mouse in
• 1:52:06
  an old boot in his cell, fed, tended it, and loved it,
• 1:52:12
  And in his love for the weak and helpless, he forgot and lost
• 1:52:15
  his hatred for the strong, his heart and hand were no longer against his
• 1:52:19
  fellows. He became tractable and obedient to the uttermost the warders could not understand
• 1:52:26
  his change. It seemed to them little short of miraculous that this most hardened
• 1:52:30
  of all criminals should be suddenly transformed into the likeness of a gentle, obedient
• 1:52:36
  child. Even the expression of his features altered remarkably. A pleasing smile began
• 1:52:43
  to play around the mouth, which had formerly been moved to nothing better than
• 1:52:46
  a cruel grin, and the implacable hardness of his eyes disappeared and gave place
• 1:52:53
  to a soft, deep, mellow light. The criminal was a criminal no
• 1:52:58
  longer. He was saved, inverted, clothed, and in his right mind,
• 1:53:02
  restored to humaneness and to humanity, and set firmly on the pathway to
• 1:53:08
  divinity by pitying and caring for a defenseless creature. All this was made known
• 1:53:14
  to the warder shortly afterwards, when on his discharge he took the mouse away
• 1:53:18
  with him. Thus, sympathy bestowed increases its store in our own hearts,
• 1:53:25
  and enriches and fruitifies our own life. Sympathy given is blessedness received. Sympathy
• 1:53:31
  withheld is blessedness forfeited in the measure that a man increases and enlarges his sympathy
• 1:53:39
  so much nearer does he approach the ideal life, the perfect blessedness. And
• 1:53:45
  when his heart has become so mellowed that no hard, bitter or cruel thought
• 1:53:48
  can enter and attract from its permanent sweetness, then indeed is he richly and
• 1:53:55
  divinely blessed forgiveness. If men only understood all the emptiness and acting of the
• 1:54:03
  sleeping and the waking of the souls they judge so blindly, of the hearts
• 1:54:10
  they pierce so unkindly, they with gentler words and feeling, would apply the
• 1:54:15
  balm of healing. If they only understood kindness nobler ever than revenge Shakespeare.
• 1:54:25
  The remembering of injuries is spiritual darkness. The fostering of resentment is spiritual suicide.
• 1:54:32
  To resort to the spirit and practice of forgiveness is the beginning of enlightenment.
• 1:54:38
  It is also the beginning of peace and happiness. There is no rest
• 1:54:43
  for him who broods over slights and injuries and wrongs, no quiet repose of
• 1:54:47
  mind for him who feels that he has been unjustly treated, and who schemes
• 1:54:53
  how best to act for the discomfiture of his enemy. How can happiness dwell
• 1:54:58
  in a heart that is so stir by ill will do birds resort to a
• 1:55:02
  burning bush wherein to build and sing. Neither can happiness inhabit in that breast
• 1:55:09
  that is aflame with burning thoughts of resentment. Nor can wisdom come and dwell
• 1:55:14
  where such folly resides. Revenge seems sweet only to the mind that is unacquainted
• 1:55:19
  with the spirit of forgiveness. But when the sweetness of forgiveness is tasted,
• 1:55:25
  then the extreme bitterness of revenge is known. Revenge seems to lead to happiness
• 1:55:30
  to those who are involved in the darkness of passion. But when the violence
• 1:55:35
  of passion is abandoned and the mildness of forgiveness is restored to then it is
• 1:55:41
  seen that revenge leads to suffering. Revenge is a virus which eats into the
• 1:55:46
  very vitals of the mind and poisons the entire spiritual being. Resentment is a
• 1:55:53
  mental fever which burns up the wholesome energies of the mind, and taking offense
• 1:55:59
  is a form of moral sickness which SAPs the healthy flow of kindliness and good
• 1:56:03
  will, and from which men and women should seek to be delivered. The
• 1:56:09
  unforgiving and resentful spirit is a source of great suffering and sorrow, and he
• 1:56:15
  who harbors and encourages it, who does not overcome and abandon it, forfeits
• 1:56:19
  much blessedness, and does not obtain any measure of true enlightenment. To be
• 1:56:26
  hard hearted is to suffer, to be deprived of light and comfort. To
• 1:56:31
  be tender hearted is to be serenely glad, is to receive light and be
• 1:56:36
  well comforted. It will seem strange to many to be told that the hard
• 1:56:42
  hearted and unforgiving suffer most. Yet it is profoundly true. For not only
• 1:56:47
  do they, by the law of attraction, draw to themselves the revengeful passions
• 1:56:53
  in other people, but their hardness of heart itself is a continual source of
• 1:56:57
  suffering. Every time a man hardens his heart against a fellow being, he
• 1:57:02
  inflicts upon himself five kinds of suffering, namely, the suffering of loss of
• 1:57:09
  love, the suffering of lost communion and fellowship, the suffering of a troubled
• 1:57:15
  and confused mind, the suffering of wounded passion or pride, and the suffering
• 1:57:20
  of punishment inflicted by others. Every act of unforgiveness entails upon the doer of
• 1:57:27
  that act these five sufferings, whereas every act of forgiveness brings to the doer
• 1:57:32
  five kinds of blessedness. The blessedness of love, the blessedness of increased communion
• 1:57:39
  and fellowship, the blessedness of a calm and peaceful mind, the blessedness of
• 1:57:45
  passion stilled and pride overcome, And the blessedness and kindness and good will bestowed
• 1:57:50
  by others. Numbers of people are today suffering the fiery torments of an unforgiving
• 1:57:58
  spirit, And only when they may effort to overcome that spirit can they know
• 1:58:01
  what a cruel and exacting taskmaster they are serving. Only those who have abandoned
• 1:58:09
  the service of such a master for that of a nobler master of forgiveness can
• 1:58:14
  realize and know how grievous a service is the one, how sweet the other.
• 1:58:18
  Let a man contemplate the strife of the world, how individuals and communities,
• 1:58:24
  neighbors and nations leaving continual retaliations towards each other. Let him realize the
• 1:58:30
  heartaches, the bitter tears, the grievous partings and misunderstandings, even the bloodshed
• 1:58:38
  and woe which spring from that strife, And thus realizing he will never again
• 1:58:44
  yield to ignoble thoughts of resentment, never again take offense at the actions of
• 1:58:48
  others, never again live an unforgiveness towards any being, Have good will to
• 1:58:55
  all that lives, letting unkindness die and greed in wrath, so that your
• 1:59:00
  lives be made like soft airs passing by. When a man abandons retaliation for
• 1:59:08
  forgiveness, he passes from darkness to light. So dark and ignorant is unforgiveness
• 1:59:14
  that no being who is at all wise or enlightened could descend to it.
• 1:59:18
  But its darkness is not understood and known until left behind, and the better
• 1:59:23
  and nobler course of conduct is sought and practiced. Man is blinded and deluded
• 1:59:29
  only by his own dark and sinful tendencies. And the giving up of all
• 1:59:33
  unforgiveness means the giving up of pride. In certain forms of passion, the
• 1:59:39
  abandonment of the deeply rooted idea of the importance of one's self and of the
• 1:59:44
  necessity for protecting and defending that self. And when that is done the higher
• 1:59:49
  life, greater wisdom and pure enlightenment, which pride and passion completely obscured,
• 1:59:56
  are revealed in all their light and beauty. When there are petty offenses,
• 2:00:00
  little spites, and passing slights, which, while of a less serious nature
• 2:00:05
  than the deep seated hatreds and revenges, dwarf the character and cramp the soul.
• 2:00:12
  They are due to the sin of self and self importance, and thrive
• 2:00:15
  on vanity. Whosoever is blinded and deluded by vanity will continually see something in
• 2:00:21
  the actions in the attitudes of others towards him, at which to take offense.
• 2:00:27
  And the more there is a vanity, the more greatly will the imaginary
• 2:00:30
  slight or wrong be exaggerated. Moreover, to live in the frequent indulgence of
• 2:00:36
  petty resentments increases the spirit of hatred and leads gradually downward to greater darkness,
• 2:00:44
  suffering, and self delusion. Don't take offense or allow your feelings to be
• 2:00:48
  hurt, which means get rid of pride and vanity. Don't give occasion for
• 2:00:55
  offense or hurt the feelings of others, which means be gently conci conate,
• 2:01:00
  forgiving and charitable towards all. The giving up, the total uprooting of vanity
• 2:01:06
  and pride is a great task, but it is a blessed task, and
• 2:01:11
  it can be accomplished by constant practice in non resentment, and by meditating upon
• 2:01:16
  one's thoughts and actions so as to understand and purify them. And the spirit
• 2:01:21
  of forgiveness is perfected in one in the measure that pride and vanity are overcome
• 2:01:27
  and abandoned. The not taking offense and the not giving offense go together.
• 2:01:33
  When a man ceases to resent the actions of others, he is already acting
• 2:01:38
  kindly towards them, considering them before himself or his own defense. Such a
• 2:01:44
  man will be gentle in what he says and does, will arouse love and
• 2:01:47
  kindness in others, and not stir them to ill will and strife. He
• 2:01:51
  will also be free from all fear concerning the actions of others towards him,
• 2:01:57
  for he who hurts none fears none but the unforgiving man. He who is
• 2:02:02
  eager to pay back some real or imaginary slight or injury, will not be
• 2:02:08
  considerate towards others, for he considers himself first and is continually making enemies.
• 2:02:15
  He also loves in the fear of others, thinking that they are trying to
• 2:02:18
  do towards him as he is doing towards them. He who contrives the hurt
• 2:02:24
  of others fears others. There is a beautiful story of Prince de Hayu,
• 2:02:30
  which was told by an ancient Indian teacher to his disciples in order to impress
• 2:02:34
  them with the truth of the sublime precept that hatred ceases not by hatred.
• 2:02:41
  At any time, hatred ceases by non hatred. The story is as follows.
• 2:02:46
  Brahmadada, a powerful king of Benarez, made war upon Durkheti, the
• 2:02:53
  king of Cossila, in order to annex his kingdom, which was much smaller
• 2:02:58
  than his own. Burghetti, seeing that it was impossible for him to resist
• 2:03:02
  the greater power of Brahmadada, fled and left his kingdom in his enemy's hands.
• 2:03:10
  For some time, he wandered from place to place in disguise, and
• 2:03:13
  at last settled down with his queen in an artisan's cottage, and the queen
• 2:03:16
  gave birth to a son, whom they called Drhayu. Now King Brahmadada was
• 2:03:23
  anxious to discover the hiding place of Dirghetti in order to put to death the
• 2:03:28
  conquered king, for he thought, seeing that I have deprived him of his
• 2:03:32
  kingdom, he may some day treacherously kill me if I do not kill him.
• 2:03:38
  But many years passed by, and Dirkhetty devoted himself to the education of
• 2:03:42
  his son, and by diligent application, became learned and skillful and wise.
• 2:03:48
  And after a time Dirghetti's secret became known, and he, fearing that Brahmadada
• 2:03:55
  would discover him and slay all three, and thinking more of the life of
• 2:03:59
  his life and his own, sent away the prince. Soon after the exile,
• 2:04:04
  the king fell into the hands of Brahmadada and was, along with his
• 2:04:09
  queen executed. Now Brahmadada thought, I have got rid of Dirkhetti and his
• 2:04:15
  queen, But their son, Prince Dirkhayu, lives, and he will be
• 2:04:19
  sure to contrive some means of affecting my assassination. Yet he is unknown to
• 2:04:25
  any and I have no means of discovering him. So the king lived in
• 2:04:29
  great fear and continual distress of mind. Soon after the execution of his parents,
• 2:04:35
  Dr Khayu, under an assumed name, sought employment in the king's stables,
• 2:04:41
  and was engaged by the master of elephants. Dr Khayu quickly endeared himself
• 2:04:46
  to all, and his superior abilities came at last under the notice of the
• 2:04:50
  King, who had the young man brought before him, and was so charmed
• 2:04:55
  with him that he employed him in his own castle. And he proved to
• 2:04:59
  be so able in diligent that the king shortly placed him in a position of
• 2:05:02
  great trust under himself. One day, the king went on a long hunting
• 2:05:06
  expedition and became separated from his retinue. Dr Khayu alone remaining with him,
• 2:05:14
  and the king, being fatigued with his exertions, lay down and slept with
• 2:05:17
  his head on Durkhayu's lap. Then Dr Kayu thought, this king has greatly
• 2:05:23
  wronged me. He robbed my father of his kingdom and slew my parents,
• 2:05:28
  and he is now entirely in my power. And he drew his sword,
• 2:05:31
  thinking to slay Bermadada, but remembering how his father had taught him never to
• 2:05:36
  seek revenge, but to forgive to the uttermost, he sheathed his sword.
• 2:05:43
  At last, the king awoke out of a disturbed sleep, and the youth
• 2:05:45
  inquired of him why he looked so frightened my sleep, said the king is
• 2:05:50
  always restless, for I frequently dreamed that I am in the power of young
• 2:05:56
  dr Hayu, and that he is alone to slay me. While here I
• 2:06:00
  again dreamed that with greater vividness than ever before, and it has filled me
• 2:06:04
  with dread and terror. Then the youth, drawing his sword, said,
• 2:06:10
  I am Prince dir Khayu, and you are in my power. The time
• 2:06:15
  of vengeance has arrived. Then the king fell upon his knees and begged Urkhayu
• 2:06:19
  to spare his life. And Dirkhayu said, it is you, o King,
• 2:06:24
  who must spare my life. For many years, you have wished to
• 2:06:28
  find me in order that you might kill me. And now that you have
• 2:06:31
  found me, let me beg of you to grant me my life. And
• 2:06:34
  there and then Dibrahma Dada and Dirkhayu grant each other life, took hands and
• 2:06:42
  solemnly vowed never to harm each other. And so overcome was the king by
• 2:06:46
  the noble and forgiving spirit of Dirghayu, that he gave him his daughter in
• 2:06:51
  marriage and restored him to his father's kingdom. Thus hatred ceases by not hatred
• 2:06:59
  by forgiveness, which is very beautiful and is sweeter and more effective than revenge.
• 2:07:04
  It is the beginning of love, of that divine love that does not
• 2:07:09
  seek its own, And he who practices it, he who perfects in it,
• 2:07:14
  comes at last to realize that blessed state, wherein the torments of pride
• 2:07:18
  and vanity, and hatred and retaliation are forever dispelled, and good will and
• 2:07:25
  peace are unchanging and unlimited. In that state of calm, silent bliss,
• 2:07:30
  even forgiveness passes away and is no longer needed. For he who has reached
• 2:07:35
  it sees no evil to resent, but only ignorance and illusion on which to
• 2:07:41
  have compassion, And forgiveness is only needed so long as there is any tendency
• 2:07:45
  to resent, retaliate, and take offense. Equal love towards all is the
• 2:07:51
  perfect law, the perfect state to which all lesser states find their completion.
• 2:07:58
  Forgiveness is one of the doorways in the faultless temple of love divine, seeing
• 2:08:03
  no evil, the solid, solid universe is pervious to love. With bandaged
• 2:08:11
  eyes. He never errs around below above his blinding light. His flingeth white
• 2:08:18
  on God's and Satan's brood and reconciles by mystic wiles the evil and the good.
• 2:08:26
  Emerson. If thou thinkest evil, be thou sure thine acte will bear
• 2:08:33
  the shadow of the stain. And if thy thought be perfect, then thy
• 2:08:37
  deed will be as of the perfect, true and pure. After Confucius,
• 2:08:45
  after much practice and forgiveness, and having cultivated the spirit of forgiveness up to
• 2:08:50
  a certain point, knowledge of the actual nature of good and evil, dawns
• 2:08:54
  upon the mind, and a man begins to understand how thoughts and motives are
• 2:09:00
  formed in the human heart, how they develop, and how they take birth
• 2:09:03
  in the form of actions. This marks the opening of a new vision in
• 2:09:07
  the mind, the commencement of a nobler, higher, diviner life. For
• 2:09:13
  the man now begins to perceive that there is no necessity to resist or resent
• 2:09:18
  the actions of others towards him, whatever those actions may be, and that
• 2:09:22
  all along his resentment has been caused by his own ignorance, and that his
• 2:09:28
  own bitterness of spirit is wrong. Having arrived thus far, he will take
• 2:09:33
  himself with some questionings as these, Why this continual retaliation and forgiveness, Why
• 2:09:41
  this tormenting anger against another? And then this repentance and forgiveness is not forgiveness
• 2:09:46
  the taking back of one's anger, the giving up of one's resentment. And
• 2:09:50
  if anger and resentment are good and necessary, why repent of them and give
• 2:09:56
  them up? If it is so beautiful, so sweet, so peaceful,
• 2:10:01
  to get rid of all feelings of bitterness and to utterly and wholly forgive,
• 2:10:05
  would it not still be more beautiful and sweet and peaceful, Never to grow
• 2:10:09
  bitter at all, never to no anger, never to resent as evil the
• 2:10:15
  action of another, but always to live in the experience of that calm,
• 2:10:20
  pure, blissful love which is known when an act of forgiveness is done and
• 2:10:24
  all unruly passion towards another is put away. If another has done me wrong,
• 2:10:31
  is not my hatred towards him wrong? And can one wrong right another?
• 2:10:35
  Moreover, has he, by his wrong really injured me? Or has
• 2:10:41
  he injured himself? Am I not injured by my own wrong rather than by
• 2:10:46
  his? Why? Then do I grow angry? Why do I resent,
• 2:10:50
  retaliate and engage in bitter thoughts? Is it not because my pride is piqued,
• 2:10:56
  or my vanity wounded, or my selfishness ordered? Is it not because
• 2:11:01
  my blind animal passions are aroused and allowed to subdue my better nature. Seeing
• 2:11:07
  that I am hurt by another person's attitude towards me because of my own pride
• 2:11:11
  or vanity or ungoverned and unpurified passions, would it not be better to look
• 2:11:18
  to the wrong in myself rather than the wrong in another, to get rid
• 2:11:22
  of pride and vanity and passion, and so avoid being hurt at all by
• 2:11:26
  such self questionings and their elucidation in the light of mild thoughts in dispassionate conduct,
• 2:11:33
  a man gradually overcoming passion and rising out of the ignorance which gave rise
• 2:11:39
  to passion, will at last reach that blessed state in which he will cease
• 2:11:43
  to see evil in others, and will dwell in universal good will and love
• 2:11:48
  in peace. Not that he will cease to see ignorance and folly, not
• 2:11:54
  that he will cease to see suffering and sorrow and misery, Not that he
• 2:11:58
  will cease to distinguish between acts that are pure and impure, right and wrong.
• 2:12:03
  For having put away passion and prejudice, he will see these things in
• 2:12:07
  full clear light of knowledge, and exactly as they are. But he will
• 2:12:11
  cease to see anything, any evil power in another which can do him injury,
• 2:12:18
  which he must violently oppose and strive to crush, and against which he
• 2:12:22
  must guard himself. Having arrived at right understanding of evil by purging it away
• 2:12:28
  from his own heart, he sees that it is a thing that does not
• 2:12:31
  call for hatred and fear and resentment, but for consideration, compassion, and
• 2:12:37
  love. Shakespeare, through one of his characters, says, there is no
• 2:12:41
  darkness but ignorance. All evil is ignorance, is dense darkness of mind,
• 2:12:48
  and the removal of sin from one's mind is coming out of darkness into spiritual
• 2:12:54
  light. Evil is the negation of good, just as darkness is the negation
• 2:13:00
  or absence of light. And what is there in a negation to arouse anger
• 2:13:03
  or resentment when night settles down upon the world. Who is so foolish as
• 2:13:09
  to rail at the darkness? The enlightened man likewise does not accuse or condemn
• 2:13:16
  the spiritual darkness in men's hearts, which is manifested in the form of sin,
• 2:13:20
  though by gentle reproof he may sometimes point out where the light lies now.
• 2:13:26
  The ignorance to which I refer as evil, or as the source of
• 2:13:30
  evil is twofold. There is wrong doing which is committed without any knowledge of
• 2:13:35
  good and evil, and where there is no choice, this is unconscious wrongdoing.
• 2:13:41
  Then there is wrong doing which is done in the knowledge that it ought
• 2:13:45
  not to be done. This is conscious wrongdoing. But both unconscious and conscious
• 2:13:50
  wrongdoing arise in ignorance, that is, ignorance of the real nature and painful
• 2:13:58
  consequences of the wrong doing. Why does a man continue to do certain things
• 2:14:03
  which he feels he ought not to do if he knows that what he is
• 2:14:07
  doing is wrong? Where lies the ignorance? He continues to do those things
• 2:14:11
  because his knowledge of them is incomplete. He only knows he ought not to
• 2:14:16
  do them by certain precepts, without any qualms of conscience within. But he
• 2:14:22
  does not fully and completely understand what he is doing. He knows that certain
• 2:14:26
  acts bring him immediate pleasure, and so, in spite of the troubled conscience
• 2:14:31
  which follows that pleasure, he continues to commit them. He is convinced that
• 2:14:37
  the pleasure is good and desirable, and therefore to be enjoyed. He does
• 2:14:41
  not know that pleasure and pain are one, but thinks he can have the
• 2:14:45
  one without the other He has no knowledge of the law which governs human actions.
• 2:14:50
  He never thinks of associating his sufferings with his own wrongdoing, but believes
• 2:14:56
  they are caused by the wrongdoing of others, or are the mista serious dispensations
• 2:15:01
  of providence, and therefore not to be inquired into or understood. He is
• 2:15:07
  seeking happiness and does those things which he believes will bring him most enjoyment.
• 2:15:13
  But he acts in entire ignorance of the hidden and inevitable consequences which attached to
• 2:15:18
  his actions. Set a man to me once, who was the victim of
• 2:15:22
  a bad habit. I know the habit is a bad one, and that
• 2:15:26
  it does me more harm than good. And I said, if you know
• 2:15:31
  what you are doing is bad and harmful, why do you continue to do
• 2:15:35
  it? And he replied, because it is pleasant and I like it.
• 2:15:39
  This man, of course, did not really know that his habit was bad.
• 2:15:45
  He had been told that it was, and he thought he knew or
• 2:15:48
  believed it was, But in reality he thought it was good and that it
• 2:15:52
  was conducive to his happiness and well being, and therefore he continued to practice
• 2:15:56
  it. When a man knows by experience that a thing is bad, and
• 2:16:01
  that every time he does it he injures his body, mind, or both.
• 2:16:05
  When his knowledge of that thing is so complete that he is acquainted with
• 2:16:09
  its whole train of baneful effects, then he cannot only not do it any
• 2:16:15
  longer, he cannot even desire to do it, and even the pleasure that
• 2:16:18
  was formerly in that thing becomes painful. No man would put a venomous snake
• 2:16:24
  in his pocket because it is prettily colored. He knows that a deadly sting
• 2:16:28
  lurks in those beautiful markings. Nor when a man knows the unavoidable pain and
• 2:16:35
  hurt which lie hidden in wrong thoughts and actions, does he continue to think
• 2:16:39
  and commit them. Even the immediate pleasure which formerly he greedily sought is gone
• 2:16:46
  from them, their surface attractiveness has vanished. He is no longer ignorant concerning
• 2:16:50
  their true nature. He sees them as they are. I knew a young
• 2:16:56
  man who was in business, and although a member of a church and occupying
• 2:17:01
  the position a voluntary religious instructor, he told me that it was absolutely necessary
• 2:17:05
  to practice lying and deception in business, otherwise sure and certain ruin would follow.
• 2:17:11
  He said he knew lying was wrong, but while he remained in business,
• 2:17:16
  he must continue to do it. Upon questioning him, I found,
• 2:17:20
  of course that he never tried truth and honesty in his business, had not
• 2:17:24
  even thought of trying the better way. So firmly convinced was he that it
• 2:17:30
  was not possible for him to know whether it would be productive or ruin.
• 2:17:35
  Now did this young man know that lying was wrong? There was a perceptual
• 2:17:39
  sense only in which he knew, But there was a deeper and more real
• 2:17:43
  sense in which he did not know. He had been taught to regard lying
• 2:17:48
  as wrong, and his conscience bore out that teaching. But he believed that
• 2:17:52
  it brought him profit, prosperity, and happiness, and that honesty would bring
• 2:17:56
  him loss, poverty, and misery. In a word, he regarded lying
• 2:18:01
  deep in his heart as the right thing to do, and honesty as the
• 2:18:07
  wrong practice. He had no knowledge whatever of the real nature of the act
• 2:18:11
  of lying, how it is on the instant of its committal loss of character,
• 2:18:16
  loss of self respect, loss of power, usefulness and influence, and
• 2:18:22
  loss of blessedness, And how it unerringly leads to the loss of reputation and
• 2:18:28
  loss of material profit and prosperity. Only when such a man begins to consider
• 2:18:33
  happiness of others, prefers to embrace the loss which he fears, rather than
• 2:18:39
  clutch at the gain which he desires, will he obtain that real knowledge which
• 2:18:43
  lofty moral conduct alone can reveal. And then, experiencing the greater blessedness,
• 2:18:50
  he will see how all along he has been deceiving and defrauding himself rather than
• 2:18:56
  others, has been living in darkest ignorance and self delusion. These two common
• 2:19:01
  instances of wrongdoing will serve to illustrate and make plainer to those of my readers,
• 2:19:07
  who, while searching for truth, are as yet doubtful, uncertain,
• 2:19:13
  and confused. The deep truth that all sin or evil is a condition of
• 2:19:18
  ignorance, and therefore to be dealt with in a loving and not a hateful
• 2:19:22
  spirit. And as with bad habits and lying, so with all sin,
• 2:19:28
  with lust, hatred, malice, envy, pride, vanity, self indulgence,
• 2:19:33
  and selfishness in all its forms. It is a state of spiritual darkness,
• 2:19:39
  the absence of the light of truth in the heart, the negation of
• 2:19:43
  knowledge. Thus, when by overcoming the wrong condition in one's heart, the
• 2:19:50
  nature of evil is fully realized, and near belief gives place to living knowledge.
• 2:19:54
  Evil can no longer be hatefully condoned and violently resisted, and the wrongdoer
• 2:20:01
  is thought of with tender compassion. And this brings us to another aspect of
• 2:20:05
  evil, namely that of individual freedom, the right of every person to choose
• 2:20:11
  his own actions. Along with the seeing of evil and others, is the
• 2:20:16
  desire to convert or coerce others into one's own ways of thinking and acting.
• 2:20:22
  Probably the commonest delusion in which men are involved is that of thinking that what
• 2:20:28
  they themselves believe in, think, and do is good, and all that
• 2:20:31
  is otherwise is evil, and therefore to be powerfully condemned and resisted. It
• 2:20:37
  is out of this delusion that all persecution springs. There are Christians who regard
• 2:20:43
  all atheists as men wholly evil, as given up to the service of an
• 2:20:48
  evil power, and there are atheists who firmly believe that all Christians are doing
• 2:20:54
  the greatest harm to the whole human race by their superstitious and false doctrines.
• 2:21:01
  The truth is that neither the Christian nor the atheist is evil, nor in
• 2:21:05
  the service of evil, but each is choosing his own way and is pursuing
• 2:21:09
  that course which he is convinced is right. Let a man quietly contemplate the
• 2:21:15
  fact that numbers of followers of various religions the world over are as they ever
• 2:21:20
  were, engaged in condemning each other as evil and wrong and regarding themselves as
• 2:21:26
  good and right, and it will help him to realize how all evil is
• 2:21:31
  merely ignorance, spiritual darkness, and earnest meditation on that fact will be found
• 2:21:37
  to be one of the greatest aids in developing greater kindness, charity, insight,
• 2:21:43
  and breath of mind. The truly wise and good man sees good in
• 2:21:48
  all, evil in none. He has abandoned the folly of wanting others to
• 2:21:52
  think and act as he thinks and acts, for he sees men are variously
• 2:21:56
  constituted, are at different points in their spiritual evolution, and must, of
• 2:22:03
  necessity think and act differently. Having put away hatred, condemnation, egotism,
• 2:22:09
  and prejudice, he has become enlightened, and he sees that purity, love,
• 2:22:15
  compassion, gentleness, patience, humility, and unselfishness are manifestations of light
• 2:22:22
  and knowledge, while in purity, hatred cruelty, passion, darkness, and
• 2:22:28
  ignorance, and that whether men are living in light or darkness, they are
• 2:22:33
  one in all doing that which they think is necessary, are acting in accordance
• 2:22:39
  with their own measure of light or darkness. The wise man understands, and
• 2:22:43
  understanding he ceases from all bitterness and accusation. Every man acts in accordance with
• 2:22:50
  his nature, with his own sense of right and wrong, and is surely
• 2:22:54
  gathering in the results of his own experience. There is once a supreme right
• 2:23:00
  which every being possesses to think and act as he chooses. If he chooses
• 2:23:05
  to think and act selfishly, thinking of his own immediate happiness only, and
• 2:23:11
  not that of others, then he will rapidly bring upon himself, by the
• 2:23:16
  action of the moral law of cause and effect, such afflictions as will cause
• 2:23:20
  him to pause and consider, and so find a better way. There is
• 2:23:26
  no teacher to compare with experience, no chastisement so corrective and purifying as that
• 2:23:33
  which men ignorantly inflict upon themselves. The selfish man is the ignorant man.
• 2:23:39
  He chooses his own way, but it is a way which leads to suffering,
• 2:23:43
  and through suffering to knowledge. And bliss. The good man is the
• 2:23:48
  wise man. He likewise chooses his own way, but he chooses it in
• 2:23:52
  the full light of knowledge, having passed through the stages of ignorance and suffering
• 2:23:58
  and arrived at notae and bliss. A man begins to understand what seeing no
• 2:24:03
  evil is when putting away all personal desires in his judgments of others, so
• 2:24:09
  considers them from his own standpoint, and judges their actions not from his own
• 2:24:15
  standard, but from theirs. It is because men set up arbitrary standards of
• 2:24:20
  right and wrong, and are anxious that all should conform to their particular standard,
• 2:24:24
  that they see evil in each other. A man is only rightly judged
• 2:24:28
  when he is not judged from my standard or yours, but from his own.
• 2:24:33
  And to deal with him thus is not judgment, but it is love.
• 2:24:37
  It is only when we look through the eyes of the impersonal love that
• 2:24:41
  we become enlightened and see others as they really are. And a man is
• 2:24:46
  approaching that love when he can say in his heart, who am I that
• 2:24:50
  I should judge another? Am I so pure and sinless that I arraign men
• 2:24:56
  and pass the judgment of evil upon them? Rather, let me humble myself
• 2:25:01
  and correct my own errors, before assuming the position of supreme judge of those
• 2:25:05
  other men. It was said by one of old to those who were about
• 2:25:11
  to stone as evil a woman taken in the act of committing one of the
• 2:25:16
  darkest sins, he that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.
• 2:25:22
  And though he who said it was without sin, yet he took up
• 2:25:26
  no stone, nor passed any bitter judgment, but said, with infinite gentleness
• 2:25:31
  and compassion, neither do I condemn thee go and sin no more. In
• 2:25:39
  the pure heart, there is no room left where personal judgments and hatreds can
• 2:25:43
  find lodgment, for it is filled to overflowing with tenderness and love. It
• 2:25:48
  sees no evil. And only as men succeed in seeing no evil in others
• 2:25:54
  will they become free from sin and sorrow and suffering. No man sees evil
• 2:26:00
  in himself or his own acts, except the man who is becoming enlightened,
• 2:26:05
  and then he abandons those acts which he has come to see are wrong.
• 2:26:09
  Every man justifies himself in what he does, and however evil others may regard
• 2:26:16
  his conduct, he himself thinks it to be good and necessary. If he
• 2:26:20
  did not he would not and could not do it. The angry man always
• 2:26:26
  justifies his anger, the covechuous man his greed, the impure man his unchastity.
• 2:26:33
  The liar considers that his lying is altogether necessary. The slanderer believes that
• 2:26:39
  in vilifying the characters of those whom he dislikes and warning other people against their
• 2:26:45
  evil natures, he is doing well. The thief is convinced that stealing is
• 2:26:50
  the shortest and best way to plenty, prosperity, and happiness. And even
• 2:26:54
  the murderer thinks there is a ground of justification for his deed. Every man's
• 2:27:01
  deeds are in accordance with the measure of his own light or darkness, and
• 2:27:05
  no man can live higher than he is or act beyond the limits of his
• 2:27:09
  knowledge. Nevertheless, he can improve himself and thereby gradually increase his light and
• 2:27:16
  extend the range of his knowledge. The angry man indulges in abuse because his
• 2:27:22
  knowledge does not extend to forbearance and patience. Not having practiced gentleness, he
• 2:27:28
  does not understand it and cannot choose it, nor can he know by its
• 2:27:33
  comparison with the light of gentleness the darkness of anger. It is the same
• 2:27:37
  with the lyre, the slanderer, and the thief. He lives in this
• 2:27:41
  dark condition of mind and action because he is limited to it by his own
• 2:27:46
  immature knowledge and experience, because never having lived in the higher conditions, he
• 2:27:52
  has no knowledge of them, and it is to him as if they were
• 2:27:56
  non existent. The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it
• 2:28:01
  not, Nor can he understand even the conditions in which he is living,
• 2:28:07
  because being dark, they are necessarily devoid of all knowledge. When a man
• 2:28:13
  is driven by repeated sufferings to at last reflect upon his conduct and comes to
• 2:28:18
  see that his anger are lying, or whatever ignorant condition he may have been
• 2:28:22
  living in is productive only of trouble and sorrow, he then abandons it and
• 2:28:28
  commences to search for and practice the opposite and enlightened condition. And when he
• 2:28:35
  is firmly established in the better way, so that his knowledge of both conditions
• 2:28:39
  is complete, then he realizes in what great darkness he has formerly lived.
• 2:28:45
  This knowledge of good and evil by experience constitutes enlightenment. When a man begins
• 2:28:50
  to look, as it were, through the eyes of others, and to
• 2:28:54
  measure them by their own standard and not by his then he sees from seeing
• 2:29:00
  of evil in others, For he knows that every man's perception and standard of
• 2:29:05
  good and evil is different. That there is no vice so low but some
• 2:29:09
  men regarded as good, no virtue so high, but some men regarded as
• 2:29:13
  evil. And what a man regards as good, that to him is good,
• 2:29:18
  what he regards as evil, that to him is evil. Nor will
• 2:29:22
  the purified man, who has ceased to see evil in others have any desire
• 2:29:26
  to win men to his own ways or opinions, but will rather help them
• 2:29:31
  in their own particular groove, knowing that an enlarged experience only, and not
• 2:29:37
  merely change of opinion, can lead to higher knowledge and greater blessedness. It
• 2:29:43
  will be found that men see evil in those who differ from them, good
• 2:29:46
  in those who agree with them. The man who greatly loves himself and is
• 2:29:52
  enamored of his opinions, will love all those who agree with him, and
• 2:29:56
  will dislike all those who disagree with him. If ye ye love them that
• 2:30:01
  ye love ye, what reward have ye love your enemies? Do good to
• 2:30:07
  them that hate you. Egotism and vanity make men blind men of opposing religious
• 2:30:13
  views, hate and persecute each other. Men of opposing political views fight and
• 2:30:18
  condemn each other. The partisan measures all men by his own standard, and
• 2:30:24
  sets up his judgments accordingly. So convinced is he that he is right and
• 2:30:28
  others wrong, that he at last persuades himself that to inflict cruelty on others
• 2:30:33
  is both good and necessary, in order to coerce them into his way of
• 2:30:37
  thinking and acting, and so bring them to the right, his right,
• 2:30:43
  against their own reason and will. Men hate, condemn, resist, and
• 2:30:48
  inflict suffering upon each other, not because they are intrinsically evil, not because
• 2:30:54
  they are deliberately wicked and are doing, in the full light of truth what
• 2:30:58
  they know to be wrong, but because they regard such conduct as necessary.
• 2:31:03
  In right, all men are intrinsically good, but some are wiser than others,
• 2:31:09
  are older in experience than others. I recently heard in substance the following
• 2:31:15
  conversation between two men whom I will call D and E. The third person
• 2:31:20
  referred to as X, is a prominent politician. E. Every man reaps
• 2:31:26
  the result of his own thoughts and deeds, and suffers for his own wrong
• 2:31:31
  D. If that is so, and if no man can escape from the
• 2:31:35
  penalty of his evil deeds. What an inferno some of our men in power
• 2:31:39
  must be preparing for themselves. E. Whether a man is in power or
• 2:31:46
  not, so long as he lives in ignorance and sin, he will reap
• 2:31:50
  sorrow and suffering. D Look, for instance, at X, a man
• 2:31:56
  totally evil, given up entirely to selfishness as an ambition. Surely great torments
• 2:32:01
  are reserved for such an unprincipled man. E. But how do you know
• 2:32:07
  he is so evil? D by his works, his fruits. When I
• 2:32:13
  see a man doing evil, I know that he is evil, and I
• 2:32:16
  cannot even think of X. But I burn with righteous indignation. I am
• 2:32:22
  sometimes inclined to doubt that there is an overruling power for good. When I
• 2:32:26
  see such a man in a position where he can do so much harm to
• 2:32:28
  others, E, What evil is he committing? D? His whole policy
• 2:32:37
  is evil. He will ruin the country if he remains in power. E.
• 2:32:43
  But while there are large numbers of people who think of X as you
• 2:32:46
  do, there are also large numbers equally intelligent who look on him as good
• 2:32:52
  and able, who admire him for his excellent qualities. And regard his policy
• 2:32:56
  as beneficent and making for national progress. He owes his position to these people,
• 2:33:03
  Are they all so evil? D? They are deceived and misled?
• 2:33:09
  And this only makes Xes evil all the greater, and that he can so
• 2:33:13
  successfully employ his talents in deceiving others in order to gain his own selfish ends.
• 2:33:18
  I hate this man. E. May it not be possible that you
• 2:33:24
  are deceived? D? In what way? E? Hatred is self deception,
• 2:33:33
  love is self enlightenment. No man can see either himself or others clearly
• 2:33:37
  until he ceases from hatred and practices love. D. That sounds very beautiful,
• 2:33:45
  but it is impractical. When I see a man doing evil to others
• 2:33:48
  and deceiving and misleading them, I must hate him. It is right,
• 2:33:52
  and I should do so. X is without a spark of conscience. E.
• 2:34:00
  X may or may not be all you believe to be. But even
• 2:34:03
  if he is, according to your own words, should he be pitied and
• 2:34:07
  not condemned? D? How so E you say he is without a conscience?
• 2:34:18
  D entirely so? E? Then he is a mental cripple. Do
• 2:34:24
  you hate the blind because they cannot see? That dumb because they cannot speak?
• 2:34:28
  Or the deaf because they cannot hear. When a captain has lost his
• 2:34:31
  rudder or broken his compass, do you condemn him because he did not keep
• 2:34:35
  his ship off the rocks? Do you hold him responsible for the loss of
• 2:34:39
  life? If a man is totally devoid of conscience, he is without the
• 2:34:43
  means of moral guidance, and all his selfishness must perforce appear to him good
• 2:34:50
  and right and proper. X may appear evil to you, But is he
• 2:34:54
  evil to himself? Does he regard his own conduct as evil? D?
• 2:35:01
  Whether he regards himself as evil or not, he is evil? E.
• 2:35:07
  If I were to regard you as evil because of your hatred for X,
• 2:35:09
  should I be right? D? No? E? Why not D?
• 2:35:18
  Because in such a case hatred is necessary, justifiable and righteous. There is
• 2:35:24
  such a thing as righteous anger, righteous hatred. E. Is there such
• 2:35:30
  a thing as righteous selfishness, righteous ambition? Righteous evil? I should be
• 2:35:35
  quite wrong in regarding you as evil, because you are doing what you are
• 2:35:39
  convinced is right, because you regard your hatred for X as part of your
• 2:35:43
  duty as a man and citizen. Nevertheless, there is a better way than
• 2:35:48
  that of hatred, and it is the knowledge of this better way that prevents
• 2:35:52
  me from hating X as you do, because however wrong his conduct might appear
• 2:35:56
  to me, it is not wrong to him nor to his supporters. Moreover,
• 2:36:03
  all men reap as they sow. D. What then, is that
• 2:36:07
  better way? E? It is the way of love, the ceasing to
• 2:36:13
  regard others as evil. It is a blessed and peaceful state of heart.
• 2:36:18
  D. Do you mean that there is a state which a man can reach
• 2:36:22
  wherein he will grow angry when he sees people doing evil? E? No,
• 2:36:28
  I do not mean that, for while a man regards others as evil,
• 2:36:33
  he will continue to grow angry with them. But I mean that a
• 2:36:35
  man can reach a state of calm, insight and spotless love, wherein he
• 2:36:39
  sees no evil to grow angry with, wherein he understands the various natures of
• 2:36:46
  men, how they are prompted to act, and how they reap as the
• 2:36:50
  harvest of their own thoughts and deeds, the terrors of sufferings and the corn
• 2:36:54
  of bliss. To reach that state is to regard all men with compassion and
• 2:37:00
  love. D. The state that you picture is a very high one.
• 2:37:05
  It is, no doubt, a very holy and beautiful one. But it
• 2:37:09
  is a state that I should be sorry to reach, and I should pray
• 2:37:13
  to be preserved from a state of mind where I could not hate a man
• 2:37:16
  like X with an intense hatred. Thus, by this conversation it will be
• 2:37:22
  seen that D regarded his hatred as good. Even so, all men regard
• 2:37:26
  that which they do as necessary to be done. The things which men habitually
• 2:37:31
  practice are those things that they believe in. When faith in a thing holy
• 2:37:37
  ceases, it ceases to be practiced. D's individual liberty is equal to that
• 2:37:43
  of other men, and he has a right to hate another if he so
• 2:37:46
  wishes. Nor will he abandon his hatred until he discovers, by the sorrow
• 2:37:50
  and unrest which it entails, how wrong and foolish and blind it is,
• 2:37:56
  and how by its practice he is injuring himself. A great teacher was once
• 2:38:01
  asked by one of his disciples to explain the distinction between good and evil,
• 2:38:07
  And holding his hand with his fingers pointing downward, he said, where is
• 2:38:11
  my hand pointing? And the disciple replied, it is pointing downward. Then
• 2:38:18
  turning his hand upward, the teacher asked, where is my hand pointing?
• 2:38:24
  And the disciple answered, it is pointing upward, that said the teacher,
• 2:38:30
  is the distinction between evil and good. By this simple illustration, he indicated
• 2:38:35
  that evil is merely wrongly directed energy, and good rightly directed energy. And
• 2:38:43
  the so called evil man becomes good by reversing his conduct. To understand the
• 2:38:48
  true nature of evil, by living in the good, is to cease to
• 2:38:52
  see other men as evil. Blessed is he who, turning from the evil
• 2:38:56
  in others, exerts himself in the pure vocation of his own heart. He
• 2:39:01
  shall one day become of two pure eyes to behold evil. Knowing the nature
• 2:39:07
  of evil, what does it behoove a man to do? It behooves him
• 2:39:11
  to live only in that which is good. Therefore, if a man condemned
• 2:39:16
  me, I will not condemn him in return. If he revile me,
• 2:39:20
  I will give him kindness. If he slander me, I will speak of
• 2:39:24
  his good qualities. If he hate me, then he greatly needs and shall
• 2:39:28
  receive my love. With the impatient, I will be patient. With the
• 2:39:33
  greedy, I will be generous. And with the violent and quarrelsome, I
• 2:39:37
  will be mild and peaceable, Seeing no evil, whom should I hate?
• 2:39:43
  Or who should I regard as my enemy, were mankind, murderous or jealous
• 2:39:48
  upon you, my brother, my sister, I am so sorry for you.
• 2:39:54
  They are not murderous or jealous upon me. All has been gentle with
• 2:39:58
  me. I keep no accout with lamentation. What have I to do with
• 2:40:03
  lamentation? He who sees man as evil imagines that behind those acts which are
• 2:40:09
  called wicked, there is a corporate and substantial evil prompting those particular sins.
• 2:40:15
  But he is stainless vision sees the deeds themselves is evil, and knows that
• 2:40:20
  there is no evil power, no evil soul or man behind those deeds.
• 2:40:24
  The substance of the universe is good. There is no substance of evil.
• 2:40:30
  Good alone is permanent. There is no fixed or permanent evil. As brothers
• 2:40:35
  and sisters, born of the same parents and being of one household, love
• 2:40:39
  each other through all vicissitudes, see no evil in each other, but overlook
• 2:40:45
  all errors and cling together in the strong bonds of affection. Even so,
• 2:40:50
  the good man sees humanity as one spiritual family, born of the same father
• 2:40:56
  and mother, being of the same essence, and making fears the same goal.
• 2:41:01
  And he regards all men and women as his brothers and sisters, makes
• 2:41:05
  no divisions and distinctions, seese none is evil, but is it peace withal?
• 2:41:11
  Happy is he who attains to this blessed state, abiding joy, who
• 2:41:18
  carry music in their heart through dusky lane and wrangling mart plying their daily toil
• 2:41:24
  with busier feet because their secret souls a holier repeat. Serene will be our
• 2:41:31
  days, and bright and happy will our nature be? When love is an
• 2:41:35
  unerring light and joy its own security, wordsworth, abiding joy. Is there
• 2:41:43
  such a thing? Where is it who possesses it? Yes, there is
• 2:41:48
  such a thing. It is where there is no sin. It is possessed
• 2:41:54
  by the pure hearted. As darkness is a passing shadow, and light is
• 2:41:58
  subs that remains. So sorrow is fleeting, but joy abides forever. No
• 2:42:05
  true thing can pass away and become lost. No false thing can remain and
• 2:42:11
  be preserved. Sorrow is false, it cannot live. Joy is true,
• 2:42:16
  and it cannot die. Joy may become hidden for a time, but it
• 2:42:20
  can always be recovered. Sorrow may remain for a period, but it can
• 2:42:26
  be transcended and dispersed. Do not think your sorrow will remain. It will
• 2:42:31
  pass away like a cloud do not believe that the torments of sin are ever
• 2:42:37
  your portion. They will vanish like a hideous nightmare. Awake, Arise,
• 2:42:43
  be holy and joyful. You are the creator of your own shadows. You
• 2:42:48
  desire, and then you grieve, renounce, and then you all rejoice.
• 2:42:54
  You are not the impotent slave of sorrow. The never ending gladness awaits your
• 2:42:58
  homecoming, not the helpless prisoner of the darkness and dreams of sin. Even
• 2:43:03
  now, the beautiful light of holiness shines upon your sleeping lids, ready to
• 2:43:07
  greet your awakening vision. In the heavy, troubled sleep of sin and self,
• 2:43:13
  the abiding joy is lost and forgotten. Its undying music is no more
• 2:43:18
  heard, and the fragrance of its fadeless flowers no longer cheers the heart of
• 2:43:22
  the wayfarer. But when sin and self are abandoned, when the clinging to
• 2:43:28
  things for personal pleasure is put away, then the shadows of grief disappear,
• 2:43:33
  and the heart is restored to its imperishable joy. Joy comes and fills the
• 2:43:37
  self emptied heart. It abides with the peaceful, Its rain is with the
• 2:43:43
  pure. Joy flees from the selfish, It deserts the quarrelsome. It is
• 2:43:48
  hidden from the impure. Joy is as an angel, so beautiful and delicate
• 2:43:54
  in chaste, that she can only dwell with holiness. She cannot remain with
• 2:43:58
  selfishness. She is wedded to love. Every man is truly happy in so
• 2:44:05
  far as he is unselfish, he is miserable in so far as he is
• 2:44:09
  selfish. All truly good men, and by good men I mean those who
• 2:44:13
  have fought victoriously the battle against self, are men of joy. How great
• 2:44:20
  is the jubulation of the saint. No true teacher promises sorrow as the ultimate
• 2:44:24
  of life. He promises joy. He points to sorrow, but only as
• 2:44:30
  a process which sin has rendered necessary. Where self ends, grief passes away.
• 2:44:35
  Joy is the companion of righteousness in the divine life. Tender compassion fills
• 2:44:41
  the place where weeping sorrow sat. During the process of becoming unselfish, there
• 2:44:46
  are periods of deep sorrow. Purification is necessarily severe. All becoming is painful.
• 2:44:54
  Abiding joy is its completion, realized only in the perfection of And this
• 2:45:01
  is a state where all is loveliness and power and love, with all sublimeness
• 2:45:07
  qualities of mind, where all enjoyed dominion over themselves, acts, feelings,
• 2:45:13
  thoughts, conditions, qualities. Consider how a flower evolves and becomes. At
• 2:45:20
  first, there is a little germ groping its way in the dark soil towards
• 2:45:24
  the upper light. Then the plant appears, and leaf is added unto leaf,
• 2:45:28
  and finally the perfected flower appears in the sweet perfume and chaste beauty of
• 2:45:33
  which all effort ceases. So with human life. At first the blind groping
• 2:45:39
  for the light in the dark soil of selfishness and ignorance, Then the coming
• 2:45:45
  into the light, and the gradual overcoming of selfishness with its accompanying pain and
• 2:45:50
  sorrow, and finally the perfect flower of a pure, unselfish life, giving
• 2:45:56
  forth without effort the perfume of holiness and the beauty of joy. The good,
• 2:46:03
  the pure are superatively happy. However man may argumentatively deny or qualify this,
• 2:46:09
  humanity instinctively knows it to be true. Do not men everywhere picture their
• 2:46:15
  angels as the most joyful of beings? There are joyful angels and bodies of
• 2:46:18
  flesh, we meet them and pass on. And how many of those who
• 2:46:24
  come in contact with them are sufficiently pure to see the vision within the form,
• 2:46:28
  to see the incorruptible angel in its common instrument of clay. They needs
• 2:46:33
  must grow. Who cannot see the blade before the ear must be The outward
• 2:46:39
  symbols disappear from him whose inward sight is clear. Yes, the pure are
• 2:46:46
  joyful. We look almost in vain for any expressions of sorrow. In the
• 2:46:50
  words of Jesus, the man of sorrows is only completed in the man of
• 2:46:54
  joy. I Buddha, who wept with all my brothers, tears whose heart
• 2:47:01
  was broken by a whole world's woe. Laugh and am glad, for there
• 2:47:05
  is liberty in sin, and in the struggle against sin. There is unrest
• 2:47:11
  in affliction. But in the perfection of truth, in the path of righteousness,
• 2:47:16
  there is abiding joy. Enter the path. There spring the healing streams,
• 2:47:22
  quenching all thirst. There bloom the immortal flowers, carpeting all the way
• 2:47:26
  with joy, their throng, swiftest and sweetest hours. Tribulation lasts only so
• 2:47:33
  long as there remains some chaff of self which needs to be removed. The
• 2:47:39
  tribulation or threshing machine ceases to work when all the grain is separated from the
• 2:47:43
  chaff, and when the last impurities are blown away from the soul. Tribulation
• 2:47:50
  has completed its work, and there is no more need for it. Then
• 2:47:54
  abiding joy is realized. All the saints and prophets and saviors of the race
• 2:48:00
  have proclaimed with rejoicing the Gospel or the good news. All men know what
• 2:48:05
  good news is. An impending calamity avoided, a disease, cured, friends
• 2:48:11
  arrived or returned in safety, difficulties overcome, success in some enterprise assured.
• 2:48:18
  But what is the good news of the saintly ones? This that there is
• 2:48:24
  peace for the troubled, healing for the afflicted, gladness for the grief stricken,
• 2:48:28
  victory for the sinful, a homecoming for the wanderer, and joy for
• 2:48:33
  the sorrowing and broken hearted. Not that these beautiful realities shall be in some
• 2:48:39
  future world, but they are here and now that they are known and realized
• 2:48:43
  and enjoyed. And therefore proclaim that all may accept them who break the galling
• 2:48:48
  bonds of self and rise into the glorious liberty of unselfish love. Seek the
• 2:48:54
  highest good, and you will find it as you practice it and realize it.
• 2:49:00
  You will taste the deepest, sweetest joy as you succeed in forgetting your
• 2:49:03
  own selfish desires, and your thoughtfulness for others, in your care for others,
• 2:49:09
  in your service for others. Just so far and no further will you
• 2:49:13
  find and realize the abiding joy in life. Inside the gateway of unselfishness lies
• 2:49:20
  the asylum of abiding joy. And whosoever will may enter in, whosoever doubts,
• 2:49:26
  let him come and see, and knowing this, that selfishness leads to
• 2:49:31
  misery, unselfishness to joy. Not merely for one's self alone, For if
• 2:49:37
  this were all, how unworthy could be our endeavors, but for the whole
• 2:49:41
  world. And because all with whom we live in come in contact, will
• 2:49:46
  be the happier and truer for our unselfishness, because humanity is one, and
• 2:49:50
  the joy of one is the joy of all. Knowing this, let us
• 2:49:56
  scatter flowers and not thorns in the common ways of life. Y, yes,
• 2:50:00
  even in the highway of our enemies, let us scatter the blossoms of
• 2:50:03
  unselfish love. So shall the pressure in their footprints fill the air with the
• 2:50:09
  perfume of holiness, and gladden the world with the aroma of joy. Silentness
• 2:50:16
  be still. The crown of life is silentness. Give thou a quiet hour
• 2:50:20
  to each long day. Too much of time we spend in profitless and foolish
• 2:50:26
  talk. Too little do we say, if thou wouldst gather words that shall
• 2:50:31
  avail learning a wisdom worthy to express, Leave for a while thy chat and
• 2:50:37
  empty tale. Study the golden speech of silentness, a l salmon. Be
• 2:50:46
  still, my soul, rest awhile from the feverish activities in which you lose
• 2:50:50
  yourself. Be not afraid to be left alone with yourself for one short hour,
• 2:50:58
  Ernest Crossley. In the words of a wise man, there is great
• 2:51:03
  power, but his silence is more powerful. Still. The greatest men teach
• 2:51:07
  us most effectively when they are purposely silent. The silent attitude of the great
• 2:51:13
  Man, noted perhaps by one or two of his disciples, only, is
• 2:51:18
  recorded and preserved through the ages, while the obtrusive words of the merely clever
• 2:51:22
  talker, heard perhaps by thousands and at once popularized, are neglected and forgotten
• 2:51:30
  in at most a few generations. The silence of Jesus, when asked by
• 2:51:35
  Pilate, what is truth, is the impressive, the awful silence of profound
• 2:51:41
  wisdom. It is pregnant with humility, and reproof and perpetually rebukes that shallowness,
• 2:51:48
  that illustrating the truth that fools step in where angels fear to tread,
• 2:51:54
  would, in terms of triteness, parcel out the universe or think to utter
• 2:51:58
  the beating all and the end all of the mystery of things in some textual
• 2:52:03
  formula or theological platitude. When plied with questions about Brahma God by the argumentative
• 2:52:11
  Brahmans, Buddha remained silent. He taught them better than they knew. And
• 2:52:16
  if by his silence he failed to satisfy the foolish, he thereby profoundly instructed
• 2:52:22
  the wise. Why all this ceaseless talk about God, with its accompaniment of
• 2:52:26
  intolerance, Let men practice some measure of kindliness and good will, and thereby
• 2:52:33
  acquaint themselves with the simple rudiments of wisdom. Why all this speculative argument about
• 2:52:39
  the nature of God, Let us first understand somewhat of ourselves. There is
• 2:52:45
  no greater mark of folly and moral immaturity than a reverence in presumption, no
• 2:52:50
  greater manifestations of wisdom and moral maturity than reverence and humility. Lautza, in
• 2:52:58
  his own life exemplified his teaching that the wise man teaches without words. Disciples
• 2:53:05
  were attracted to him by the power which ever accompanies a wise reserve, living
• 2:53:11
  in comparatively obscurity and silence, not courting the ear of men, and never
• 2:53:16
  going out to teach, men sought him out and learned of his wisdom.
• 2:53:22
  The silent acts of the great ones are beacons to the wise, illuminating their
• 2:53:26
  pathway with no uncertain radiance. For he who would attain to virtue and wisdom
• 2:53:31
  must learn not only when to speak and what to say, but also when
• 2:53:37
  to remain silent and what not to say. The right control of the tongue
• 2:53:41
  is the beginning of wisdom. The right control of the mind is a consummation
• 2:53:46
  of wisdom. By curbing his tongue, a man gains possession of his mind,
• 2:53:52
  And to have complete possession of one's mind is to be the master of
• 2:53:56
  silence. The fool babbles, gods, argues, and bandy's words. He
• 2:54:03
  glories in the fact that he has had the last word and has silenced his
• 2:54:05
  opponent. He exults in his own folly, is ever on the defensive,
• 2:54:11
  and wastes his energies and unprofitable channels. He is like a gardener who continues
• 2:54:16
  to dig and plant in unproductive soil. The wise man avoids idle words,
• 2:54:24
  gossip, vain argument, and self defense. He is content to appear defeated,
• 2:54:30
  rejoices when he is defeated, knowing that having found and removed another error
• 2:54:35
  in himself, he has thereby become wiser. Blest is he who does not
• 2:54:39
  strive for the last word backward. I see in my own days where I
• 2:54:43
  sweated through fog with linguists and contenders. I have no mockings or arguments.
• 2:54:50
  I witness and wait. Silence under provocation is the mark of a cultured and
• 2:54:56
  sympathetic soul. The thoughtless and unkind are stirred by every slight provocation, and
• 2:55:03
  will lose their mental balance by even the appearance of a personal encroachment. The
• 2:55:07
  self possession of Jesus is not a miracle. It is the flower of culture,
• 2:55:13
  the diadem of wisdom. When we read of Jesus that he answered never
• 2:55:18
  a word, and of Buddha that he remains silent, we get a glimpse
• 2:55:22
  of the vast power of silence, of the silent majesty of true greatness.
• 2:55:28
  The silent man is the powerful man. Every mechanic knows that before a force
• 2:55:35
  can be utilized and definitely directed, it must be conserved and stored. And
• 2:55:39
  the wise man is a spiritual mechanic who conserves the energies of his mind,
• 2:55:45
  holds them in masterful abeyance, ready at any moment to direct them with effective
• 2:55:50
  purpose to the accomplishment of some necessary work. The true strength is in silentness.
• 2:55:58
  It is well said that the dog that barks does not bite. The
• 2:56:03
  grim and rarely broken silence of the bulldog is the necessary adjunct to that powerfully
• 2:56:07
  concentrated and effectual action for which the animal is known and feared. This,
• 2:56:13
  of course, is a lower form of silentness, but the principle is the
• 2:56:18
  same. The boaster fails, his mind is diverted from the main purpose,
• 2:56:24
  and his energies are frittered away upon self glorification. His forces are divided between
• 2:56:30
  his task and the reward to himself, the greater portion going to feed the
• 2:56:35
  lust of the reward. He is like an unskillful general who loses the battle
• 2:56:39
  through dividing his forces instead of concentrating them upon a point. Or he is
• 2:56:46
  like a careless engineer who leaves open the waste valve of his engine and allows
• 2:56:50
  the steam to run down. The modest, silent, earnest man succeeds,
• 2:56:56
  freed from vanity and avoiding the dissipation of self glorification. All his powers are
• 2:57:03
  concentrated upon the successful performance of his task. Even while the other man is
• 2:57:07
  talking about his powers, he is already about his work, and so much
• 2:57:13
  nearer than the other to its completion. It is a law everywhere and always
• 2:57:18
  that energy distributed is subject unto energy conserved. The noisy and boasting Charles will
• 2:57:24
  ever be thrown by the quiet in modest Orlando. It is a law universally
• 2:57:31
  applicable that quietness is strength. The business man who succeeds never talks about his
• 2:57:35
  plans, methods, and affairs, And should he turn giddy by success,
• 2:57:41
  begin to do this, he will then commence to fail. The man of
• 2:57:46
  great moral influence never talks about himself and his spiritual victories, for should he
• 2:57:50
  do so, in that moment, his moral power and influence would be gone,
• 2:57:56
  and like Samson, he would be shorn of his strength. Success worldly
• 2:58:01
  or spiritual is the willing servant of strong, steady, silent, unflinching purpose.
• 2:58:09
  The most powerful, disintegrating forces. Make no noise. The greatly overcoming
• 2:58:13
  mind works silently. If you would be strong, useful, and self reliant,
• 2:58:20
  learn the value and power of silentness. Do not talk about yourself.
• 2:58:26
  The world instinctively knows that the vain talker is weak and empty, and so
• 2:58:30
  it leaves him to his own vanity. Do not talk about what you are
• 2:58:33
  going to do, but do it, and let your finished work speak for
• 2:58:37
  itself. Do not waste your forces in criticizing and disparaging the work of others,
• 2:58:43
  but set about to do your own work thoroughly and well. The worst
• 2:58:48
  work, with earnestness and sweetness behind it, is altogether better than barking at
• 2:58:52
  others. While you are disparaging the work of others, you are neglecting your
• 2:58:56
  own. If others are due badly help and instruct them by doing better yourself.
• 2:59:03
  Neither abuse others nor account their abuse of any weight. When attacked,
• 2:59:09
  remains silent. In this way you will conquer yourself, and will, without
• 2:59:13
  the use of words, teach others. But the true silence is not merely
• 2:59:20
  a silent tongue. It is a silent mind. To merely hold one's tongue
• 2:59:24
  and yet to carry about a disturbed and rankling mind. Is no remedy for
• 2:59:30
  weakness, and no source of power. Silentness. To be powerful must envelop
• 2:59:35
  the whole mind, must permeate every chamber of the heart. It must be
• 2:59:39
  the silence of peace. To this broad, deep, abiding silentness a man
• 2:59:46
  attains only in the measure that he conquers himself. While passions, temptations,
• 2:59:50
  and sorrows disturb the holier, profounder depths of silence are yet to be sounded.
• 2:59:58
  Too smart under the words actions of others means that you are yet weak,
• 3:00:03
  uncontrolled, and unpurified. So richer heart of the disturbing influences of vanity
• 3:00:09
  and pride and selfishness, that no petty spite can reach you, No slander
• 3:00:13
  or abuse disturb your serene repose. As the storm wages ineffectually against a well
• 3:00:20
  built house, while its occupant sits composed and happy by his fireside within,
• 3:00:26
  so no evil can disturb or harm him who is well fortified with wisdom,
• 3:00:31
  self governed, and silent, he remains at peace within. To this great
• 3:00:37
  silence, the self conquered man attains envy and calumny, and hate and pain
• 3:00:43
  and that unrests which men miscall delight, can touch him not nor torture him.
• 3:00:48
  Again, there is no commoner air amongst men than that of supposing that
• 3:00:54
  nothing can be accomplished without much talking and much noise. The busy, shallow
• 3:01:00
  talker regards the quiet thinker or silent doer as a man wasted. He thinks
• 3:01:05
  silentness means doing nothing, and that hurrying, bustling, and ceaseless talking means
• 3:01:11
  doing much. He also confounds popularity with power. But the thinker and doer
• 3:01:18
  is the real effectual worker. His work is at the root and core and
• 3:01:22
  substance of things, and as nature silently, yet with hidden and wondrous alchemy,
• 3:01:28
  transmutes the rude elements of earth and air into tender leaves, beautiful flowers,
• 3:01:35
  delectable fruits, yes, into a myriad form of beauty. Even so
• 3:01:39
  does the silent, purposeful worker transform the ways of men and the face of
• 3:01:45
  the world by the might and magic of his silently directed energy. He wastes
• 3:01:50
  no time and force in tinkering with the ever changing and artificial surface of things,
• 3:01:56
  but goes to the living, vital center and works therefrom in theirs and
• 3:02:01
  in due season. Perhaps when his perishable form is withdrawn from the world,
• 3:02:05
  the fruits of his obscure but imperishable labors come forth to gladden the world.
• 3:02:11
  But the words of the talker perish. The world reaps no harvest from the
• 3:02:16
  sowing of sound. He who conserves his mental forces also conserves his physical forces.
• 3:02:22
  The strongly, quiet, calm man lives to a greater age and in
• 3:02:28
  possession of better health than the hurrying, noisy man. Quiet subdued mental harmony
• 3:02:33
  is conducive to physical harmony and health. The followers of George Fox are today
• 3:02:39
  the healthiest, longest lived, and most successful portion of the British community.
• 3:02:46
  And they live quiet, unostentatious, purposeful lives, avoiding all worldly excitements and
• 3:02:52
  unnecessary words. They are silent people, all their meetings being conducted on the
• 3:02:58
  principle that silence is power. Silentness is powerful because it is the outcome of
• 3:03:05
  self conquest. And the more successfully a man governs himself, the more silent
• 3:03:11
  he becomes. As he succeeds in living to a purpose and not to the
• 3:03:16
  pleasure of self, he withdraws himself from the outer discords of the world and
• 3:03:20
  reaches to the inward music of peace. And when he speaks there is purpose
• 3:03:26
  and power behind his words, And when he maintains silence, there is an
• 3:03:31
  equal or even greater power therein. He does not utter that which is followed
• 3:03:37
  by pain and tears, does not do that which is productive of sorrow and
• 3:03:41
  remorse, but saying and doing those things only which are ripe with thoughtfulness.
• 3:03:48
  His conscience is quiet, in all his days are blessed solitude. Why idly
• 3:03:56
  seek from outward things? The answer inward silence rings? Why climb the far
• 3:04:01
  off hills and pain a nearer view of heaven to gain In lowliest depths of
• 3:04:07
  Bosky Dells, the hermit contemplation dwells whence piercing heaven with screened sight, he
• 3:04:16
  sees at noon the stars whose light shall glorify the coming night. Wittier in
• 3:04:22
  the still hour, when passion is at rest, gather up stores of wisdom
• 3:04:28
  in thy breast wordsworth Man's essential being is inward, invisible, spiritual, and
• 3:04:37
  as such it derives its life strength from within, not from without. Outward
• 3:04:43
  things are channels through which its energies are expended, But for renewal it must
• 3:04:48
  fall back on the inward silence. In so far as man strives to drown
• 3:04:52
  this silence in the noisy pleasures of the senses, and endeavors to live in
• 3:04:58
  the conflicts of outward things, just so much does he reap the experiences of
• 3:05:03
  pain and sorrow, which, becoming at last intolerable, drive him back to
• 3:05:09
  the feet of inward comforter, to the shrine of the peaceful solitude within.
• 3:05:15
  As the body cannot thrive on empty husks, neither can the spirit be sustained
• 3:05:20
  on empty pleasures. If not regularly fed, the body loses its vitality,
• 3:05:24
  and, pained with hunger and thirst, cries out for food and drink.
• 3:05:30
  It is the same with the spirit. It must be regularly nourished in solitude
• 3:05:35
  on pure and holy thoughts, or it will lose its freshness and strength,
• 3:05:39
  and will at last cry out in its painful and utter starvation. The yearning
• 3:05:45
  of an anguish stricken soul for lighting consolation is the cry of a spirit that
• 3:05:50
  is perishing of hunger and thirst. All pain and sorrow is spiritual starvation,
• 3:05:56
  and aspiration is the cry for food. It is a prodigal son who,
• 3:06:01
  perishing of hunger, turns his face longingly towards his father's home. The pure
• 3:06:07
  life of the spirit cannot be found, but is lost in the life of
• 3:06:11
  the senses. The lower desires are ever clamorous for more, and they afford
• 3:06:18
  no rest. The outward world of pleasure, personal contact, and noisy activities
• 3:06:24
  is a sphere of wear and tear, which necessitates the counterbalancing effect of solitude.
• 3:06:30
  Just as the body requires rest for the recuperation of its forces, so
• 3:06:35
  the spirit requires solitude for the renewal of its energies. Solitude is as indispensable
• 3:06:41
  to man's spiritual welfare as sleep is to his bodily well being, and pure
• 3:06:46
  thought or meditation, which is evoked in solitude is to the spirit what activity
• 3:06:52
  is to the body. As the body breaks down when deprived of the needful
• 3:06:56
  rest and sleep, so do the spirits of men break down, being deprived
• 3:07:01
  of the necessary silence and solitude. Man, as a spiritual being cannot be
• 3:07:07
  maintained in strength, uprightness, and peace, except if he periodically withdraws himself
• 3:07:13
  from the outer world of perishable things and reaches inward towards the abiding and imperishable
• 3:07:20
  realities. The consolations of the creeds are derived from the solitude which those creeds
• 3:07:28
  enforce. The regular observance of the ceremonies of formal religion, attended as they
• 3:07:33
  are, with concentrated silence and freedom from worldly distractions, compels men to do
• 3:07:39
  unconsciously that which they have not yet learned to do consciously, namely, to
• 3:07:46
  concentrate the mind periodically on the inward silence, and meditate, though very briefly,
• 3:07:52
  on high and holy things. The man who has not learned to control
• 3:07:56
  and purify his mind in season of chosen solitude, yet whose awakening aspirations grow
• 3:08:03
  for something higher and nobler than he possesses, feels the necessity for the aid
• 3:08:09
  of ceremonial religion. But he who has taken himself in hand with a view
• 3:08:13
  to self conquest, who withdraws into solitude in order to grapple with his lower
• 3:08:20
  nature and masterfully bend his mind in holy directions, requires no further aid from
• 3:08:26
  book or priest or church. The Church does not exist for the pleasure of
• 3:08:31
  the saint, but for the evaluation of the sinner. In solitude, a
• 3:08:35
  man gathers strength to meet the difficulties and temptations of life, knowledge to understand
• 3:08:41
  and conquer them, and wisdom to transcend them. As a building is preserved
• 3:08:46
  and sustained by virtue of the foundation, which is hidden and unobserved, so
• 3:08:52
  a man is maintained perpetually in strength and peace by virtue of his lonely hour
• 3:08:56
  of intense thought, which no eyes beholds. It is in solitude only that
• 3:09:03
  a man can be truly revealed to himself, that he can come to understand
• 3:09:07
  his real nature, with all its powers and possibilities. The voice of the
• 3:09:13
  spirit is not heard in the hubbub of the world, and amid the clamors
• 3:09:18
  of conflicting desires, there can be no spiritual growth without solitude. There are
• 3:09:24
  those who shrink from too close a scrutiny of themselves, who dread too complete
• 3:09:28
  a self revelation, and who fear that solitude would leave them alone with their
• 3:09:33
  thoughts and call up before their mental vision the wrath of their desires. And
• 3:09:39
  so they go where the din of pleasure is loudest, and where the reproving
• 3:09:43
  voice of truth is drowned. But he who loves truth, who desires and
• 3:09:48
  seeks wisdom, will be much alone. He will seek the fullest, clearest
• 3:09:54
  revelation of himself, will avoid the haunts of frivilty and noise, and will
• 3:09:58
  go where the sweet, tender voice of the spirit of truth can speak within
• 3:10:03
  him and be heard. Men go after much company and seek out new excitements,
• 3:10:09
  but they are not acquainted with peace. In diverse paths of pleasure,
• 3:10:13
  they search for happiness, but they do not come to rest. Through diverse
• 3:10:18
  ways of laughter and feverish delirium, they wander after gladness in life, but
• 3:10:24
  their tears are many and grievous, and they do not escape death. Drifting
• 3:10:30
  upon the ocean of life in search of selfish indulgences, men are caught in
• 3:10:33
  its storms, and only after many tempests and much privation do they fly to
• 3:10:39
  the rock of refuge, which rests in the deep silence of their own being.
• 3:10:45
  While a man is absorbed in outward activities, he is giving out his
• 3:10:50
  energies and is becoming spiritually weaker, And in order to retain his moral vigor,
• 3:10:56
  he must resort to solitary meditation. Soul. Is this that he who
• 3:11:01
  neglects it loses or does not attain the right knowledge of life, Nor does
• 3:11:07
  he comprehend and overcome those most deeply rooted and subtlest of sins, which appear
• 3:11:13
  like virtues, deceiving the elect, and to which all but the truly wise
• 3:11:16
  succumb. True dignity abides with him alone, who, in the silent hour
• 3:11:22
  of inward thought, can still suspect and still revere himself in lowliness of heart.
• 3:11:31
  He who lives without ceasing in outward excitement, lives most in disappointments and
• 3:11:35
  griefs, where the sounds of pleasure are greatest. Heart emptiness is the keenest
• 3:11:41
  and deepest. He also, whose whole life, even if not one of
• 3:11:46
  lust for pleasure, is centered in outward works, who deals only with the
• 3:11:52
  changing panorama of visible things, never falling back in solitude upon the inner and
• 3:11:58
  invisible world permanent being. Such a man does not attain knowledge and wisdom,
• 3:12:03
  but remains empty. He cannot aid the world, cannot feed it aspirations,
• 3:12:09
  for he has no food to offer it, his spiritual store being empty.
• 3:12:15
  But he who courts solitude in order to search for the truth of things,
• 3:12:18
  who subdues his senses and makes quiet his desires, such a man is daily
• 3:12:24
  attaining knowledge and wisdom. He becomes filled with the spirit of truth. He
• 3:12:30
  can aid the world, for his spiritual store is full and is kept well
• 3:12:35
  replenished. While a man is absorbed in the contemplation of inward realities, he
• 3:12:41
  is receiving knowledge and power. He opens himself like a flower to the universal
• 3:12:46
  light of truth and receives and drinks in its life imparting rays. He also
• 3:12:52
  goes to the eternal foundation of knowledge and quenches his thirst in its inspiring waters.
• 3:12:58
  Such a man gains, in one hour of concentrated thought, more essential
• 3:13:03
  knowledge than a whole year's reading could impart. Being is infinite, and knowledge
• 3:13:09
  is illimitable, and its source inexhaustible. And he who draws upon the innermost
• 3:13:15
  depths of his being drinks from the spring of divine wisdom, which can never
• 3:13:20
  run dry, and quafts the waters of immortality. It is this habitual association
• 3:13:26
  with the deep realities of being, this continual drinking in of the water of
• 3:13:31
  life and its perennial source, that constitutes genius. The resources of genius are
• 3:13:37
  inexhaustible because they are drawn from the original and universal source, and for the
• 3:13:43
  same reason the works of genius are ever new and fresh. The more a
• 3:13:46
  genius gives out the fuller he becomes with the accomplishment of every work. His
• 3:13:52
  mind extends and expands, reaches out more vastly, and sees wider and ever
• 3:13:58
  wider range of power. The genius is inspired. He has bridged the gulf
• 3:14:05
  between the finite and the infinite. He needs no secondary aids, but draws
• 3:14:09
  from that universal spring which is the source of every noble work. The difference
• 3:14:16
  between a genius and an ordinary man is this. The one lives in inward
• 3:14:20
  realities, the other in outward appearances. The one goes after pleasure, the
• 3:14:26
  other after wisdom. The one relies on books, the other relies upon his
• 3:14:33
  own being. Book learning is good when its true place is understood, but
• 3:14:37
  is not the source of wisdom. The source of wisdom is in life itself,
• 3:14:43
  and is comprehended by effort, practice, and experience. Books give information,
• 3:14:48
  but they cannot bestow knowledge. They can simulate, but cannot accomplish.
• 3:14:54
  You must put forth effort and achieve for yourself. The man who relies entirely
• 3:14:58
  of upon books and does not go to the silent resources within himself is superficial
• 3:15:05
  and becomes rapidly exhausted. He is uninspired, though he may be extremely clever,
• 3:15:13
  for he soon reaches the end of his stock of information, and so
• 3:15:16
  becomes void and repetitious. His work lacks the sweet spontaneity of life and ever
• 3:15:22
  renewed freshness of inspiration. Such a man has cut himself off from the infinite
• 3:15:28
  supply and deals not with life itself, but with dead or decaying appearances.
• 3:15:35
  Information is limited, knowledge is boundless. The inspiration of genius and greatness is
• 3:15:41
  fostered, evolved, and finally completed in solitude. The most ordinary man,
• 3:15:48
  who conceives a noble purpose, and, summoning all his energies and will,
• 3:15:52
  broods upon and ripens his purpose in solitude, will accomplish his object and become
• 3:15:58
  a genius. The man who renounces the pleasure of the world, who avoids
• 3:16:03
  popularity and fame, and who works in obscurity and thinks in solitude for the
• 3:16:09
  accomplishment of a lofty ideal for the human race, becomes a seer and a
• 3:16:13
  prophet. He who silently sweetens his heart, who attunes his mind to that
• 3:16:18
  which is pure and beautiful and good, who, in long hours of lonely
• 3:16:24
  contemplation, strives to reach the central in eternal heart of things, brings himself
• 3:16:30
  in touch with the inaudible harmonies of being, opens himself for the reception of
• 3:16:35
  the cosmic song, and becomes at last a singer and a poet. And
• 3:16:41
  so with all genius it is the child of Solitude, a very simple hearted
• 3:16:46
  child, wide eyed and listening and beautiful, yet withal to the noise enamored
• 3:16:50
  world in incomprehensible mystery of which it is only now and then a glimpse from
• 3:16:56
  beyond the well guarded portals of sel in man's self arise august anticipations, symbols,
• 3:17:05
  types of a dim splendor ever on before. In that eternal circle,
• 3:17:09
  life pursues Saint Paul, the cruel persecutor and blind bigot, after spending three
• 3:17:16
  years alone in the desert, comes forth a loving apostle, an inspired seer,
• 3:17:22
  Gaetamas Sidahartha, the man of the world, after six years in the
• 3:17:26
  forest of lonely struggle with his passions and intense meditation upon the deep mysteries of
• 3:17:33
  his nature, becomes Buddha, the Enlightened One, the embodiment of calm,
• 3:17:37
  serene wisdom, to whom a heart thirsty world turns to refreshing waters of immortality.
• 3:17:45
  Lao Tazu, an ordinary citizen filling a worldly office in his search for
• 3:17:50
  knowledge, courts solitude and discovers the Tao, the supreme reason, by virtue
• 3:17:56
  of which he becomes a world teacher. Jesus the unlettered carpenter, after many
• 3:18:03
  years of solitary communion upon the mountains, with the unfailing love and wisdom,
• 3:18:09
  comes forth a blessed savior of mankind. Even after they had attained and had
• 3:18:15
  scaled the lofty heights of divine knowledge, these great souls were much alone and
• 3:18:20
  retired frequently for brief seasons of solitude. The greatest man will fall from his
• 3:18:26
  moral height and lose his influence if he neglects that renewal of power which can
• 3:18:31
  only be obtained in solitude. These masters attained their power by consciously harmonizing their
• 3:18:37
  thoughts and lives with the creative energies within themselves, and by transcending individuality and
• 3:18:45
  sinking their petty personal will into the universal will. They became masters of creative
• 3:18:50
  thought and stand as the loftiest instruments for the outer working of cosmic evolution.
• 3:18:56
  And this is not miraculous, It is a matter of law. It is
• 3:19:01
  not mysterious, except in so far as law is mysterious. Every man becomes
• 3:19:05
  a creative master in so far as he subordinate himself to the universally good and
• 3:19:11
  true. Every poet, painter, saint, and sage is the mouthpiece of
• 3:19:16
  the eternal. The perfection of the message varies with the measure of individual selflessness.
• 3:19:24
  In so far as self intervenes, the distinctness of the work and message
• 3:19:28
  becomes blurred. Perfect selflessness is the acme of genius. The consummation of power.
• 3:19:35
  Such self abdignation can only be begun, pursued, and completed in solitude.
• 3:19:41
  A man cannot gather together and concentrate his spiritual forces when he is engaged
• 3:19:46
  in spending those forces in worldly activities. And although after power is attained the
• 3:19:52
  balance of forces can be maintained under all circumstances, even in the midst of
• 3:19:58
  antagonists throng, such power is only secured after many years of frequent and habitual
• 3:20:05
  solitude. Man's true home is in the great silence. This is the source
• 3:20:11
  of all that is real and abiding within him. His present nature, however,
• 3:20:16
  is dual, and outer activities are necessary. Neither entire solitude nor entire
• 3:20:22
  action is the true life in the world. But that is the true life,
• 3:20:26
  which gathers in solitude, strength and wisdom to rightly perform the activities of
• 3:20:33
  life. And as a man returns to his home in the evening, weary
• 3:20:37
  from labour, for that sweet rest and refreshment which will prepare him for another
• 3:20:41
  day's toil, so must he would not break down in the labour of life,
• 3:20:46
  come away from the noise and toil of the world's great workshop, and
• 3:20:50
  rest for brief periods in his abiding home in the silence. He who does
• 3:20:56
  this, spending some portion of each day in the sacred and purposeful solitude,
• 3:21:01
  will become strong and useful and blessed. Solitude is for the strong, for
• 3:21:07
  those who are ready to become strong. When a man is becoming great,
• 3:21:11
  he becomes solitary. He goes in solitude to seek, and not which he
• 3:21:16
  seeks, he finds. For there is a way to all knowledge, all
• 3:21:22
  wisdom, all truth, all power, and the way is forever open.
• 3:21:26
  But it lies through soundless solitudes and the unexplored silences of man's being standing alone
• 3:21:35
  by all means used to be alone. Salute thyself, see what thy soul
• 3:21:41
  doth wear George Herbert, he that has light within his own clear breast may
• 3:21:48
  sit in the center and enjoy bright day Milton. In the life of blessedness,
• 3:21:56
  self reliance is of the utmost importance. If there is no peace,
• 3:22:01
  there must be strength. If there is to be security, there must be
• 3:22:05
  stability. If there is to be lasting joy, there must be no leaning
• 3:22:11
  upon things which at any moment may be snatched away forever. A man does
• 3:22:16
  not commence to truly live until he finds an immovable center within himself on which
• 3:22:22
  to stand, by which to regulate his life, and from which to draw
• 3:22:26
  his peace. If he trusts to that which fluctuates, he will also fluctuate.
• 3:22:31
  If he leans upon that which may be withdrawn, he will fall and
• 3:22:35
  be bruised. If he looks for satisfaction imperishable accumulations, he will starve for
• 3:22:41
  happiness in the midst of plenty. Let a man learn to stand alone,
• 3:22:48
  looking to no one for support, expecting no favors, craving no personal advantages,
• 3:22:54
  not begging nor complaining, not craving nor regretting, but relying upon the
• 3:22:58
  truth within himself, deriving his satisfaction and comfort from the integrity of his own
• 3:23:05
  heart. If a man can find no peace within himself, where shall he
• 3:23:09
  find it? If he dreads to be alone with himself, what steadfastness shall
• 3:23:15
  he find in company? If he can find no joy in communion with his
• 3:23:18
  own thoughts, how shall he escape misery in his contact with others. The
• 3:23:24
  man who has yet found nothing within himself upon which to stand, will nowhere
• 3:23:28
  find a place of constant rest. Men everywhere are deluded by the superstition that
• 3:23:35
  their happiness rests with other people and with outward things, and as a result
• 3:23:39
  they live in continual disappointments, regrets, and lamentations. The man who does
• 3:23:45
  not look for happiness to any others or to external things, but finds within
• 3:23:50
  himself its inexhaustible source, will be self contained and serene under all circumstances,
• 3:23:56
  and will never become the helpless victim of misery and greed. The man who
• 3:24:01
  looks to others for support, who measures his happiness by the conduct of others
• 3:24:05
  and not by his own, who depends upon their co operation for his peace
• 3:24:09
  of mind. Such a man has no spiritual foothold. His mind is tossed
• 3:24:15
  hither and thither with the continual changes going on around him, and he lives
• 3:24:20
  in that ceaseless ebb and flow of the spirits, which is wretchedness and unrest.
• 3:24:26
  He is a spiritual cripple, and has yet to learn how to maintain
• 3:24:30
  his mental center of gravity, and so go without the aid of crutches.
• 3:24:35
  As a child learns to walk in order to go about from place to place
• 3:24:39
  of itself strong and unaided, so should a man learn to stand alone,
• 3:24:43
  to judge and think and act for himself, and to choose in the strength
• 3:24:48
  of his own mind the oath way which he should walk without his change and
• 3:24:54
  decay, and insecurity. Within is all surety and blessedness. The and soul
• 3:25:00
  is sufficient of itself. Where the need is there, the abundant supply.
• 3:25:05
  Your eternal dwelling place is within. Go there and take possession of your mansion.
• 3:25:11
  There you are a king. Everywhere you are a vassal. Be contended
• 3:25:16
  that others shall manage or mismanage their own little kingdom, And see to it
• 3:25:20
  that you reign strongly over your own. Your entire well being in the well
• 3:25:24
  being of the whole world lies there. You have a conscience, follow it.
• 3:25:30
  You have a mind clarify it. You have judgment, use and improve
• 3:25:35
  it. You have a will, employ and strengthen it. You have knowledge,
• 3:25:41
  increase it. There is a light within your soul. Watch it,
• 3:25:45
  tend it, encourage it, shield it from the winds of passion, and
• 3:25:50
  help it to burn with a steadier and even steadier radiance. Leave the world
• 3:25:54
  and come back to yourself. Think as a man, Act as a man,
• 3:26:00
  Live as a man. Be rich in yourself, Be complete in yourself.
• 3:26:05
  Find the abiding center within you, and obey it. The earth is
• 3:26:09
  maintaining its orbit by its obedience to its center the sun. Obey the center
• 3:26:13
  of light that is within you. Let others call it darkness if they will.
• 3:26:18
  You are responsible for yourself. Are accountable to yourself. Therefore, rely
• 3:26:24
  upon yourself. If you fear yourself, who will place confidence in you?
• 3:26:30
  If you are untrue to yourself, where shall you find the sweet satisfaction of
• 3:26:33
  truth. The great man stands alone in the simple dignity of independent manhood.
• 3:26:39
  He pursues his own path fearlessly and does not apologize or beg leave. Criticism
• 3:26:46
  and applause are no more to him than dust upon his coat, of which
• 3:26:50
  he shakes himself free. He is not guided by the changing opinions of men,
• 3:26:54
  but guides himself by the light of his own mind. Other Men ardor
• 3:27:00
  away their manhood for messes of flattery or fashion. Until you can stand alone
• 3:27:05
  looking for guidance, neither to spirits nor mortals, gods nor men, but
• 3:27:11
  guiding yourself by the light of truth within you. You are not unfettered and
• 3:27:16
  free, not altogether blessed. But do not mistake pride for self reliance.
• 3:27:22
  To attempt to stand upon the crumbling foundation of pride is to be already fallen.
• 3:27:28
  No man depends upon others more than the proud man. He drinks in
• 3:27:31
  their approbation and resents their censure. He mistakes flattery for sound judgment, and
• 3:27:37
  is most easily heard or pleased by the opinions of others. His happiness is
• 3:27:43
  entirely in the hands of others. But the self reliant man stands not upon
• 3:27:48
  personal pride, but on an abiding law, principle, ideal reality within himself.
• 3:27:56
  Upon this he poises himself, refusing to be swept from his strong foothold,
• 3:28:01
  either by the waves of passion within or the storms of opinion without.
• 3:28:05
  But should he at any time lose his balance, he quickly regains himself and
• 3:28:11
  is fully restored. His happiness is entirely in his own hands. Find your
• 3:28:16
  center of balance and succeed in standing alone. And whatever your work in life
• 3:28:22
  may be, you will succeed. You will accomplish what you set your mind
• 3:28:26
  upon. For the truly self reliant man is the invincible man. But though
• 3:28:31
  you do not rely upon others, learn of them. Never cease to increase
• 3:28:35
  in knowledge, and be ever ready to receive that which is good and useful.
• 3:28:41
  You cannot have too much humility. The most self reliant men are the
• 3:28:45
  most humble. No aristocrat, no prince born to the purple, can begin
• 3:28:50
  to compare with the self respect of the saint. Why is he lowly but
• 3:28:54
  that he knows that he can well afford it, resting on the largness of
• 3:28:58
  God in him. Learn of all men, and especially of the masters of
• 3:29:03
  truth, But do not lose your hold upon the truth that the ultimate guidance
• 3:29:09
  is in yourself. A master can say, here is the path, but
• 3:29:13
  he can neither compel you to walk it, nor can walk it for you.
• 3:29:18
  You must put forth your own efforts, must achieve by your own strength,
• 3:29:22
  must make his truth your truth. By your own unaided exertions. You
• 3:29:28
  must implicitly trust yourself. This thing is God. To be man with thy
• 3:29:33
  might, to grow great in the strength of thy spirit, and live out
• 3:29:39
  thy life as the light. You are to be the master of yourself,
• 3:29:43
  lord over yourself, not fawning and imitating, but doing your work as a
• 3:29:48
  living, vital portion of the universe, giving love but not expecting it,
• 3:29:54
  giving sympathy but not craving for it, giving aid but not depending upon it.
• 3:30:00
  If men should censure your work, heed them not. If suffice that
• 3:30:03
  your work be true, rest you in this sufficiency. Do not ask will
• 3:30:09
  my work please? But rather is it real? If your work be true,
• 3:30:16
  the criticism of men cannot touch it. If it be false, their
• 3:30:20
  disapproval will not slay it quicker than it will die of itself. The words
• 3:30:24
  and acts of truth cannot pass away until their work is fully accomplished. The
• 3:30:31
  words and acts of error cannot remain, for they have no work to do.
• 3:30:35
  Criticism and resentment are alike superfluous. Free yourself from the self imposed tyranny
• 3:30:41
  of slavish dependence and stand alone, not as an isolated unit, but as
• 3:30:46
  a sympathetic portion of the whole, find the joy that results from well earned
• 3:30:50
  freedom, the peace that flows from wise self possession, the blessedness that inheres
• 3:30:56
  in its native strength. Honor to him who self complete. If lone carves
• 3:31:03
  to the grave one pathway, all his own, and heeding not that men
• 3:31:07
  may think or say asks, but his soul. If doubtful of the way
• 3:31:13
  understanding the simple laws of life, watch narrowly the demonstration of a truth its
• 3:31:18
  birth, and you trace back the effelence to its spring and source within us,
• 3:31:26
  browning. More is the treasure of law than gems, sweeter than comb
• 3:31:31
  its sweetness, its delights, delightful past. Compare the light of Asia.
• 3:31:39
  Walking those byways which I have so far pointed out, resting in their beauty,
• 3:31:45
  and drinking in their blessedness. The pilgrim along life's broad highway will in
• 3:31:50
  due time come to one wherein his last burden will fall from him, where
• 3:31:54
  all his weariness will pass away, where he will drink of light hearted liberty
• 3:32:00
  and rest in perpetual peace. And this most blessed of spiritual byways, the
• 3:32:05
  richest source of strength and comfort, I call the right understanding of the simple
• 3:32:11
  laws of life. He who comes to it leaves behind all lack and longing,
• 3:32:16
  all doubt and perplexity, all sorrow and uncertainty. He lives in the
• 3:32:22
  fullness of satisfaction, in light and knowledge, in gladness and surety. He
• 3:32:28
  who comprehends the utter simplicity of life, who obeys its laws, and does
• 3:32:31
  not step aside into the dark paths in complex mazes of selfish desire, stands
• 3:32:37
  where no harm can reach him, where no enemy can lay him low,
• 3:32:43
  and he doubts desires and sorrows. No more doubt ends where reality begins,
• 3:32:50
  painful desire ceases, where the fullness of joy is perpetual and complete, And
• 3:32:54
  when the unfailing and eternal good is realized, what room is there for so
• 3:32:58
  sorrow. Human life, when rightly lived, is simple, with a beautiful
• 3:33:03
  simplicity. But it is not rightly lived while it is bound to a complexity
• 3:33:09
  of lust, desires, and wants. These are not the real life,
• 3:33:13
  but the burning, fever and painful disease which originate in an unenlightened condition of
• 3:33:18
  mind. The curtailing of one's desires is the beginning of wisdom. Their entire
• 3:33:24
  mastery is its consummation. This is so because life is bounded by law,
• 3:33:28
  and being inseparable from law, life has no need that is not already supplied.
• 3:33:35
  Now, lust or desire is not need but a rebellious superfluity, and
• 3:33:41
  as such it leads to deprivation and misery. The prodigal son, while in
• 3:33:46
  his father's house, not only had all he required, but was surrounded by
• 3:33:50
  superabundance. Desire was not necessary because all things were at hand. But when
• 3:33:56
  desire entered his heart, he went into to a far country and began to
• 3:34:01
  be in want. And it was only when he became reduced to the utmost
• 3:34:05
  extremity of starvation that he turned with longing towards his father's home. This parable
• 3:34:11
  is symbolical of the evolution of the individual and the race man has come into
• 3:34:16
  such a complexity of cravings that he lives in continual discomfort, dissatisfaction, want,
• 3:34:22
  and pain, and his only cure lies in a return to the father's
• 3:34:26
  home, that is, to actual living, or being as distinguished from desiring.
• 3:34:33
  But a man does not do this until he is reduced to the last
• 3:34:37
  extremity of spiritual starvation. He has then reaped the experience of pain and sorrow
• 3:34:43
  as the result of desire and looks back with longing towards the true life of
• 3:34:48
  peace and plenty. And so he turns round and begins his toilsome journey back
• 3:34:52
  towards home, towards that rich life of simple being, wherein is emancipation from
• 3:34:58
  the thrall and fever and hunger of desire. And this longing for the true
• 3:35:03
  life, for truth reality should not be confunded with desire. It is an
• 3:35:09
  aspiration. Desire is the craving for possession. Aspiration is the hunger of the
• 3:35:16
  heart for peace. The craving for things leads ever farther and farther from peace,
• 3:35:22
  and not only ends in deprivation, but is in itself a state of
• 3:35:26
  perpetual want until it comes to an end. Rest satisfaction is an impossibility.
• 3:35:35
  The hunger for things can never be satisfied, but the hunger for peace can,
• 3:35:39
  and the satisfaction of peace is found and fully possessed. When all selfish
• 3:35:45
  desire is abandoned, then there is a fullness of joy, abounding plenty and
• 3:35:50
  rich and complete blessedness. In this supremely blessed state, life is comprehended in
• 3:35:58
  its perfect symmetry and simplicity city and the acme of power and usefulness is attained.
• 3:36:03
  Then even the hunger for peace ceases, for peace becomes the normal condition,
• 3:36:09
  is fully possessed, constant, and never varying. Men immersed in desire
• 3:36:15
  ignorantly imagine that the conquest of desire leads to inactivity, loss of power,
• 3:36:20
  and lifelessness. Instead, it leads to highly concentrated activity, to the full
• 3:36:26
  employment of power, and to a life so rich, so glorious, and
• 3:36:31
  so abundantly blessed as to be incomprehensible to those who hunger for pleasures and possessions
• 3:36:39
  of this life. Only can it be said, here are no sounds of
• 3:36:43
  discord, no profane or senseless gossip of unworthy things, only the songs of
• 3:36:50
  chisels and of pens, of busy brushes, and ecstatic strains of souls surcharged
• 3:36:56
  with music most divine. Here is no idle sorrow, no poor grief for
• 3:37:01
  any day or object left behind, for time is counted precious. And herein
• 3:37:07
  is such complete abandonment of self that tears turn into rainbows and enhance the beauty
• 3:37:13
  of the land where all is fair. When a man is rescued from selfish
• 3:37:18
  desire. His mind is unencumbered, and he is free to work for humanity,
• 3:37:24
  no longer racing after those gratifications which will leave him hungry. Still,
• 3:37:28
  all his powers are at his immediate command. Seeking no rewards, he can
• 3:37:33
  concentrate all his energies upon the faultless completion of his duties, and so accomplish
• 3:37:39
  all things and fulfill all righteousness. The fully enlightened and fully blessed man is
• 3:37:46
  not prompted to action be desire, but works from knowledge. The man of
• 3:37:52
  desire needs the promise of reward to urge him to action. He is a
• 3:37:56
  child working for the possession of a toy. But the man of knowledge,
• 3:38:01
  living in the fullness of life and power, can at any moment bring his
• 3:38:05
  energies into requisition for the accomplishment of that which is necessary. He is spiritually
• 3:38:11
  a full grown man. For him all rewards have ceased to him, All
• 3:38:16
  occurrences are good. He lives always in complete satisfaction. Such a man has
• 3:38:22
  attained to life and his delight, and it is a sweet, perpetual and
• 3:38:26
  never failing delight. Is in obedience to the simple demands of exact and never
• 3:38:31
  failing law. But this life of supreme blessedness is an end, and the
• 3:38:37
  pilgrim who is striving towards it, the prodigal returning to it, must travel
• 3:38:41
  hither and employ means to get there. He must pass through the country of
• 3:38:48
  his animal desires, disentangling himself from their intricacies, simplifying them, overcoming them.
• 3:38:56
  This is the way, and he has no enemies, but what spring
• 3:39:00
  within himself. At first, the way seems hard, because blinded by desire,
• 3:39:05
  he does not perceive the simple structure of life, and its laws are
• 3:39:09
  hidden from him. But as he becomes more simple in his mind, the
• 3:39:13
  direct laws of life become unfolded to his spiritual perception, and at once the
• 3:39:18
  point is reached where these laws begin to be understood and obeyed. Then the
• 3:39:24
  way becomes plain and easy. There is no more uncertainty in darkness, but
• 3:39:28
  all is seen in the clear light of knowledge. It will help to accelerate
• 3:39:33
  the progress of the searcher for the true and blessed life if we now turn
• 3:39:37
  to a consideration of some of these simple laws, which are rigidly mathematical in
• 3:39:43
  their operations. The elementary laws never apologize all life is one, though it
• 3:39:50
  has a diversity of manifestations. All law is one, but it is applicable
• 3:39:56
  and operative in a variety of ways. There is not one law for matter
• 3:40:01
  and another for mind, not one for the material and visible and another for
• 3:40:05
  the spiritual and invisible. There is the same law throughout. There is not
• 3:40:11
  one kind of logic for the world and another for the spirit, but the
• 3:40:15
  same logic is applicable to both. Men faithfully and with unerring worldly wisdom observe
• 3:40:22
  certain laws or rules of action in material things, knowing that to ignore disobey
• 3:40:28
  them would be great folly on their part, ending in disaster for themselves and
• 3:40:33
  confusion for society in the state. But they err in supposing and believing that
• 3:40:37
  the same rules do not apply to spiritual things, and thereby suffer for their
• 3:40:41
  ignorance and disobedience. It is a law on worldly things that a man shall
• 3:40:48
  support himself, that he shall earn a living, and that he that will
• 3:40:52
  not work, neither shall he eat. Men observe this law, recognizing its
• 3:40:58
  justice and goodness, and so earn the necessary material sustenance. But in spiritual
• 3:41:03
  things, men, broadly speaking, deny and ignore the operation of this law.
• 3:41:09
  They think that while it is absolutely just that a man should earn his
• 3:41:15
  material bread, and that the man who shirks this law should wander in rags
• 3:41:18
  and want. It is right that they should beg for their spiritual bread.
• 3:41:22
  Think it to be just that they should receive all spiritual blessings without either deserving
• 3:41:28
  or attempting to earn them. The result is that most men wander in spiritual
• 3:41:33
  beggary and want, that is, in suffering and sorrow, deprived of spiritual
• 3:41:39
  sustenance of joy and knowledge and peace. If you are in need of any
• 3:41:45
  worldly thing food, clothing, furniture, or other necessity, you do not
• 3:41:50
  beg of the storekeeper to give it to you. You ask the price of
• 3:41:54
  it, pay for it with your money, and then it becomes your own.
• 3:41:58
  You recognize the perfect justice in giving an equivalent for what you receive,
• 3:42:03
  and would not wish it to be otherwise. The same just law prevails in
• 3:42:07
  spiritual things. If you are in need of any spiritual thing, joy,
• 3:42:13
  assurance, peace, or what else soever, you can only come into full
• 3:42:18
  possession of it by giving an equivalent. You must pay the price for it,
• 3:42:22
  as you must give a portion of your material substance for a worldly thing.
• 3:42:26
  So you must give a portion of your immaterial substance for a spiritual thing.
• 3:42:31
  You must yield up some passion or lust, or vanity or indulgence before
• 3:42:37
  that spiritual possession can be yours. The miser who clings to his money and
• 3:42:43
  will not give up any of it because of the pleasure which its possession affords
• 3:42:46
  him cannot have any of the material comforts of life. He lives in continual
• 3:42:52
  want and discomfort in spite of all his wealth. The man who will not
• 3:42:56
  give up his passions, who clings to anger, unkindness, sensuality, pride,
• 3:43:03
  vanity, self indulgence for the momentary pleasure which their gratification affords him,
• 3:43:09
  is a spiritual miser. He cannot have any spiritual comforts and suffers continual spiritual
• 3:43:16
  want and uneasiness in spite of the wealth of worldly pleasures which he fondly hugs
• 3:43:22
  and refuses to give up. The man who is wise and worldly things neither
• 3:43:26
  begs nor steals, but labors and purchases, and the world honors him for
• 3:43:31
  his uprightness. The man who is wise and spiritual things neither begs nor steals,
• 3:43:37
  but labors in his own inner world and purchases his spiritual possessions him the
• 3:43:43
  whole universe honors for his righteousness. It is another law in worldly things that
• 3:43:48
  a man who engages himself to another in any form of employment shall be content
• 3:43:54
  with the wages upon which he agreed. If at the end of his week's
• 3:43:58
  work, and on receiving his wages, he were to ask his employer for
• 3:44:01
  a larger sum, pleading that though he could not justly claim it and did
• 3:44:07
  not really deserve it, yet he expected it, he would not only not
• 3:44:11
  receive the larger sum, but would doubtless be discharged from his post. Yet,
• 3:44:16
  in spiritual things, men do not think it to be either foolish or
• 3:44:20
  selfish to ask for those blessings spiritual wages upon which they never agreed, for
• 3:44:26
  which they never labored, and which they do not deserve. Every man gets
• 3:44:31
  from the law of the universe that upon which he agrees and for which he
• 3:44:35
  works, no more, no less, And he is continually entering into agreements
• 3:44:41
  with the supreme Law, the Master of the universe. For every thought and
• 3:44:46
  act which he gives, he receives its just equivalent. For all work done
• 3:44:52
  in the form of deeds, he receives the wages due to him. Knowing
• 3:44:56
  this, the enlightened man is always content, always satisfied, and in perfect
• 3:45:01
  peace, knowing that whatever he receives, be it that men call misfortune or
• 3:45:07
  good fortune, he has earned. The great Law never cheats any man of
• 3:45:11
  his just due. But it says to the railer and the complainer, friend,
• 3:45:16
  didst thou not agree with me for a penny a day? Again?
• 3:45:22
  If a man would grow rich in worldly goods, he must economize and husband
• 3:45:26
  his financial resources until he has accumulated sufficient capital to invest in some branch of
• 3:45:33
  industry. Then he must judiciously invest his little store of capital, neither holding
• 3:45:37
  it too tightly nor letting it go carelessly. He thus increases both in worldly
• 3:45:43
  wisdom and worldly riches. The idle spendthrift cannot grow rich. He is wasteful
• 3:45:50
  and riotous. He who would grow rich in spiritual things must also economized and
• 3:45:56
  husband his mental resources. He must cur or his tongue in his impulses,
• 3:46:01
  not wasting his energy in idle gossip, vain argument, or excesses of temper.
• 3:46:07
  In this way he will accumulate a little store of wisdom, which is
• 3:46:11
  his spiritual capital, and this he must send out into the world for the
• 3:46:16
  good of others, and the more he uses it, the richer he will
• 3:46:20
  become. Thus does a man increase in both heavenly wisdom and heavenly riches.
• 3:46:26
  The man who follows his blind impulses and desires, and does not control and
• 3:46:31
  govern his mind is a spiritual spendthrift. He can never become rich in divine
• 3:46:35
  things. It is a physical law that if we would reach the summit of
• 3:46:41
  a mountain, we must climb thither. The path must be sought and then
• 3:46:45
  carefully followed, and the climber must not give up and go back because of
• 3:46:50
  the labor involved in the difficulties to be overcome, nor on account of aching
• 3:46:54
  climes. Otherwise his object cannot be accomplished. And this law is also spiritual.
• 3:47:01
  He who would reach the high altitudes of moral or intellectual grandeur must climb
• 3:47:05
  thither by his own efforts. He must seek out the pathway and then assiduously
• 3:47:11
  follow it, not giving up and turning back, but surmounting all difficulties and
• 3:47:16
  enduring for a time trials, temptations, and heartaches, and at last he
• 3:47:22
  will stand upon the glorious summit of moral perfection, the world of passion,
• 3:47:26
  temptation, and sorrow beneath his feet, and the boundless heavens of dignity stretching
• 3:47:31
  vast and silent above his head. If a man would reach a distant city,
• 3:47:37
  or any place of destination, he must travel. There is no law
• 3:47:41
  by which he can be instantly transported there. He can only get there by
• 3:47:46
  putting forth the necessary exertion. If he walks, he will put forth great
• 3:47:52
  exertion, but it will cost him nothing in money. If he drives or
• 3:47:56
  takes train, there will be less actual labor, but he must pay in
• 3:48:01
  money for which he has labored. To reach any place requires labor. This
• 3:48:05
  cannot be avoided. It is law equally so spiritually. He who would reach
• 3:48:11
  any spiritual destination, such as purity, compassion, wisdom, or peace,
• 3:48:18
  must travel, and must labor to get there. There is no law by
• 3:48:22
  which he can suddenly be transported to any of these beautiful spiritual cities. He
• 3:48:28
  must find the most direct route, and then put forth the necessary labor,
• 3:48:31
  and at last he will come to the end of his journey. These are
• 3:48:35
  but a few of the many laws or manifestations of the one great Law,
• 3:48:41
  which are to be understood applied and obeyed before the full manhood and maturity of
• 3:48:46
  spiritual life and blessedness can be attained. There is no worldly or physical law
• 3:48:52
  which is not operative with equal exactness in the spiritual realm, that is,
• 3:48:58
  the inner and invisible world of manas man's beings. Just as physical things are
• 3:49:03
  the shadows and types of spiritual realities, so worldly wisdom is the reflected image
• 3:49:07
  of divine wisdom. All those simple operations of human life in worldly things which
• 3:49:13
  men never question but follow and obey implicitly because of their obvious plainness and exactness
• 3:49:20
  obtain in spiritual things with the same unerring accuracy. And when this is understood,
• 3:49:26
  and these laws are as implicitly obeyed in spiritual as in worldly matters,
• 3:49:33
  then has a man reached the firm standing ground of exact knowledge. His sorrows
• 3:49:37
  are at an end, and he can doubt no more. Life is involved
• 3:49:43
  uncompromising justice. Its operations are simple, invincible logic. Law reigns forever,
• 3:49:50
  and the heart of law is love. Favoritism and caprice are the reverse of
• 3:49:56
  both law and love. The universe has no favorites. It is supremely just
• 3:50:01
  and gives to every man his rightful earnings. All is good because all his
• 3:50:07
  according to law, and because all his according to law, man can find
• 3:50:13
  the right way in life, and, having found it, can rejoice and
• 3:50:16
  be glad. The Father of Jesus is the unfailing good, which is embodied
• 3:50:22
  in the law of things. No evil can happen to a good man,
• 3:50:26
  either in life or death. Jesus recognized the good in his own faith and
• 3:50:31
  exonerated all his persecutors from blame. No man, he declared, taketh my
• 3:50:37
  life from me, but I lay it down of myself. That is,
• 3:50:41
  he himself had brought about his own end. He who has, by simplifying
• 3:50:46
  his life and purifying his mind, arrived at an understanding of the beautiful simplicity
• 3:50:52
  of being, perceives the unvarying operation of law in all things, and knows
• 3:50:58
  the result of all his life, thoughts and deeds upon himself in the world,
• 3:51:01
  knows what effects are bound up with the mental causes which he sets in
• 3:51:05
  motion. He then thinks and does only those thoughts and deeds that are blessed
• 3:51:11
  in their inception, blest in their growth, and blest in their completion,
• 3:51:16
  humbly accepting the lawful results of all the deeds done. When in a state
• 3:51:20
  of ignorance, he neither complains, nor fears, nor questions, but is
• 3:51:26
  at rest in obedience, is perfectly blest in his knowledge of the good law.
• 3:51:31
  The tissue of our life to be we weave with colors all our own.
• 3:51:37
  And in the field of destiny we reap as we have sown. And
• 3:51:41
  if we reap as we have sown, and take the dole we deal.
• 3:51:46
  The law of pain is love alone. The wounding is to heal. Happy
• 3:51:52
  endings. Such is the law which moves to righteousness, which none at last
• 3:51:58
  can turn aside or sinday. The heart of it is love, and the
• 3:52:03
  end of it is peace and consummation. Sweet obey the light of Asia.
• 3:52:11
  So haply, when thy task shall end, the wrong shall lose itself and
• 3:52:15
  right, and all thy weak day sabbath splend with the long sabbath of the
• 3:52:20
  light. Wittier life has many happy endings because it has much that is noble
• 3:52:30
  and pure and beautiful. Although there is much sin and ignorance in the world,
• 3:52:35
  many tears, and much pain and sorrow, there is also much purity
• 3:52:39
  and knowledge, many smiles, and much healing and gladness. No pure thought,
• 3:52:45
  no unselfish deed can fall short of its felicitous result, And every such
• 3:52:50
  result is a happy consummation. A pleasant home is a happy ending. A
• 3:52:56
  successful life is a happy ending. The task well and faithfully done is a
• 3:53:01
  happy ending. To be surrounded by kind friends is a happy ending. A
• 3:53:07
  quarrel put away, grudges wiped out, unkind words confessed and forgiven, friend
• 3:53:13
  restored to friend, These are all happy endings. To find that which one
• 3:53:18
  has long and tediously sought, to be restored from tears, to gladness,
• 3:53:24
  to awaken in the bright sunlight, out of the painful nightmare of sin,
• 3:53:28
  to strike after much searching, the heavenly way in life. These are indeed
• 3:53:35
  blessed consummations. He who looks for finds and enters the byways which I have
• 3:53:41
  indicated, will come to this one without seeking it, for his whole life
• 3:53:46
  will be filled with happy endings. He who begins right and continues right does
• 3:53:52
  not need to desire and search for felicitous results. They are already at hand.
• 3:53:58
  They follow as a consequence. They are the certainties, the realities of
• 3:54:03
  life. There are happy endings which belong solely to the material world, These
• 3:54:09
  are transient, and they pass away. There are happy endings which belong to
• 3:54:13
  the spiritual world. These are eternal, and they do not pass away.
• 3:54:18
  Sweet are companionships, pleasures, and material comforts, but they change and fade
• 3:54:24
  away. Sweeter still are purity, wisdom, and the knowledge of truth,
• 3:54:30
  and these never change nor fade away. Wherever a man in this world can
• 3:54:35
  take his worldly possessions with him, but he soon must part company with them.
• 3:54:39
  And if he stands upon these alone, deriving all his happiness from them,
• 3:54:45
  he will come to a spiritual ending of great emptiness and want. But
• 3:54:48
  he who has attained to the possession of spiritual things can never be deprived of
• 3:54:54
  his source of happiness. He will never have to part company with it.
• 3:54:58
  And wherever he goes in the whole universe, he will carry his possessions with
• 3:55:03
  him. His spiritual end will be the fullness of joy. Happy in the
• 3:55:07
  eternal happiness. Is he who has come to that life form which the thought
• 3:55:13
  of self is abolished. Already even now and in this life, has entered
• 3:55:18
  into the Kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana, Paradise, the New Jerusalem, the
• 3:55:24
  Olympus of Jupiter, the Valhalla of the gods. He knows the final unity
• 3:55:30
  of life, the great reality of which these fleeting and changing names are but
• 3:55:33
  feeble utterances. He is at rest on the bosom of the infinite. Sweet
• 3:55:39
  is the rest and deep the bliss of him who has freed his heart from
• 3:55:43
  its lusts and hatreds and dark desires. And he who, without any shadow
• 3:55:48
  of bitterness or selfishness, resting upon him and looking out upon the world with
• 3:55:54
  boundless compassion and love, can breathe in his inmost heart the bl blessing peace,
• 3:56:01
  unto all living things, making no exceptions or distinctions. Such a man
• 3:56:07
  has reached that happy ending which can never be taken away. For this is
• 3:56:11
  the perfection of life, the fullness of peace, and the consummation of perfect blessedness.