#spiritual quotes
With all our studies we must be not only mystically aware of the Plan, but also practically aware that to serve the universe more adequately we must function within the limited area of our own understanding. The moment we depart from experience we depart from Reality.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization(1942)
As personal beings, we are merely shadows cast by the Self. As mortal creatures, we are the instruments by which the Self accomplishes its purposes. Illumination comes when the instrument begins to discover the reason for which it was fashioned.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization(1942)
The East places the highest stamp of approval upon evidence of realization in action. Whereas the West rewards activity according to the measure of its intensity, the East honours action in terms of its quality. The Westerner is termed active if he appears to be in a continuous state of motion and agitation. The cause of the agitation and the direction of the motion are seldom considered. The Easterner regards agitation with definite distrust; and motion without direction as a total loss. The performance of unnecessary action is recognized as a proof of ignorance.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization(1942)
Never interpret veneration as a mere acceptance of the sanctity of some object, person, or belief. Veneration is much more. It is a gentleness toward all life; a realization of the intrinsic nobility in all living things. It does not cause the disciple to fall on his knees in blind adoration. Rather, it inspires a desire to love, to serve, and to protect all life.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization(1942)
Realization cannot be tinged with emotionalism. Religion, as interpreted in the lives of most people, is a series of emotional experiences in which feeling dominates and conditions the fact. As the mind can affirm goodness, emotion can affirm it by a series of pleasure reflexes. These include violent desires to possess the universal good, and such devotional reflexes as comfort, pleasure, happiness, security, and similar satisfying moods. These have their origin not in the more profound parts of the Self, but in the superficial emotional structure. They are a kind of smugness which, if encouraged, will lead to inertia. They are compensations for the disquietudes of mortal vicissitudes; escapes from the strains of conflict.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization(1942)
Each right action performed establishes the foundation for future right action, and reveals the direction in which this action should proceed. Thus realization is said to flow. It moves upon and within itself, and is its own impulse.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization(1942)
There is no need for prodding the consciousness toward the quest for the Overself. Man’s spiritual nature is not a lazy schoolboy who must be browbeaten into a state of learning. It is the impulse of the Self to flow toward the Real. There is no need to stimulate this impulse. All that is necessary is to remove the artificial impediments and obstacles set up by the chemistry of the physical personality. As the bird flies from the cage when the door is opened because the bird belongs to the air, so consciousness flies to the Real when the cage of material limitation is opened.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization(1942)
In advising the discipline of retrospection I recommend a specially modified form of the exercise. This would agree almost exactly with the original Pythagorean formula. Appoint a few moments at the close of the day, become silent, relax, and permit the incidents of the day to flow through you as a series of pictures. It is customary in retrospection to reverse the order of the images, moving backward from last occurrences toward the beginning of the day. This is done in order that the relationship of effect and cause may be rendered more obvious by observing effects first and then tracing the causes of those effects backward along the line of incidents.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization(1942)
Instead of worrying about our own soul growth; instead of being possessed by the desperate delusion of growing; instead of longing after some Elysian field, we should become aware of the workings of an ever-flowing Law by which all finite natures are being impelled and propelled.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization(1942)
In everything which occurs to you as incident or circumstance, recognize symbols of the formless. Realize that all visible physical bodies and all tangible, conceivable forms of knowledge are indeed the many-coloured fringe on the robes of the Infinite.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization (1942)
The serious studies of the metaphysician usually begin after he has reached those years when energy is not too abundant. The exuberance of youth is over, toil and responsibility have exacted their toll, and it is necessary to organize resources and conserve all life for the principal purpose of living and enlightenment.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization(1942)
Be thoughtful then in small things, especially in the inconsequential happenings which make up the day. Be observant in all that you do; seek to find the Law at work in all the diversified phases of living.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization (1942)
Practice the realization of uninterrupted motion. Perceive the relationship between the incidents of daily action, and attempt to flow from one mode of experience to another without any appreciable interval of adjustment. For example, if the telephone rings while you are engaged in the contemplation of some abstract truth do not permit this incident to be regarded, even for a moment, as an interruption. Include it in the meditation itself as a phase or part of soul-experience.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization (1942)
Law is the will of the universe for itself and its creations. … The Law is the unchanging fact of existence. … The Law serves no individual; all life serves Law. … The Law is the inevitable, complete, and sufficient Truth by which all things were created, by which all things are sustained, and by which all things ultimately achieve their purposes. The Law is ever-flowing Reality, the ever-flowing Truth, the Rightness in everything which enfolds everything. If you walk down the street surrounded by a seething mass of humanity, all appears to be chaos; but to the inward perception it is evident that each human being in the mass is fulfilling his own destiny according to Law. … The Law is life; it is eternal self-living truth; it is the source and cause of all the countless forms of life, but it is itself universal and indivisible. Man’s inward nature abides in and with the Law. It is only to the degree that his outward senses obscure this fact that his mind dwells in the sphere of uncertainty.
— Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization (1942)
When your intellect crosses the mire of delusion, then you shall attain impassiveness as to what has been heard and what is yet to be heard. — Bhagavad Gita 2.52
Self-realization surpasses all external learning. The flower falls after the fruit stage is reached. The way is yoga—getting attuned to the note of the universe, attainment of harmony with the rest. Once it is achieved, one may become unconcerned to textual knowledge and also whatever remains to be heard and studied. The boat is dispensable once the river is crossed.
— C. Radhakrishnan, Bhagavad Gita: Modern Reading and Scientific Study(2016)
A Buddhist saint once wrote: “Men drown in water and live by breathing air; fish drown in air and live by breathing the water.” This is a symbolic effort to express the mystery of realization. A condition which is death to one order of life is security to another. Realization causes man to change the order of his life. The enlightened and illumined soul belongs to a race apart. He lives in a different element. Therefore, to him the laws of life are different. He transcends the world by transcending the world thought in himself. When he accomplishes this, he fulfills the admonition of the Eastern classic: “Take the sword of right and slay the slayer.”
—Manly P. Hall, Self Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization (1942)
Though Vedanta is generally considered very tough to grasp, it is in fact a simple concept. Its central idea can be accomplished through logical answers to four easy questions. Question one: Isn’t it logical to assume that there is a unified force forever basic behind our vast, complex and ever changing universe? The obvious answer is yes. Question two: Where does that force reside – in some nook or corner of the universe or everywhere at the same time? The latter would be the logical answer. Question three: As we are in the universe, aren’t we too part of that force? Again, the answer is yes. And the last question: Whatever else we are—body, mind and intellect—being perishable, isn’t this factor the only permanent thing in us? Again, simple logic demands a positive response. The moment this question is answered in the affirmative we arrive at the first of the four ‘great statements’ (mahavakyas) of Vedanta, namely ‘Tat twam asi’ (‘That is you’).
C. Radhakrishnan, Bhagavad Gita: Modern Reading and Scientific Study(2016)
It is only due to the imprints of karmic habit that one reconstructs a self after every death. Within the mind’s pure nature, there is no self or other to be found. While abiding in that nature, one loses the “I.” As soon as one emerges from that, the “I” is reassembled. So, one is recreating it moment by moment.
Garchen Rinpoche
Modern scientific myth … imagines that consciousness is a product of enigmatic physical evolution. Massive clouds of energy condense into galaxies, our scientists assert, and from chemical reactions there develop molecular seeds that eventually evolve consciousness as animals and human beings. Plotinus would suggest that such a view is the opposite of what is actually the case. Not physical energy but Consciousness is the primary reality, the One. Within the One, though not in any spatial sense, evolve various planes of Being. On the most limited of these planes appear the swirling clouds of galactic energy that we call the universe, where biological structures evolve to express the One, or Consciousness.
— Lex Hixon, Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions (1978)
Plotinus undercuts any approach to the One based on ordinary thinking, which always tends to separate us from the Ultimate. Writes Plotinus: “We investigate Its presence and Its existence as if It were a stranger, projected into our imaginary ‘place’ from some depth or height.” We may imagine that the One, since It is absolute, must be distant from us spiritually or even spatially—that we must bridge some impassable gulf to touch the One or that the One must descend into our mind to reveal Itself. We forget that the absoluteness of the One includes absolute immanence, or omnipresence. Thus the One is here and now, not a stranger, not even an other, but the very nature of what we are. And Plotinus speaks of mundane existence as our imaginary place, because we are not fundamentally situated in space any more than the One is. We do not really have a place, because we are essentially nothing but the One overflowing Itself into experience.
— Lex Hixon, Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions(1978)
