The power of your Dharma surpasses all beings and bestows on them the wealth of the Law. With great skill your discernment all while unmoved in...
(13) The power of your Dharma surpasses all beings and bestows on them the wealth of the Law. With great skill your discernment all while unmoved in Reality.
When you mount the steed of this true knowledge, If you drink not His cup, how will you escape lusts? You, who seek no more of Him than to name His...
(10) When you mount the steed of this true knowledge, If you drink not His cup, how will you escape lusts? You, who seek no more of Him than to name His name? What do His name and fame suggest? The idea of Him. Know you a guide without something to which it guides? Know you a name without a thing answering to it? Have you ever plucked a rose (Gul) from Gaf and Lam? You name His name; go, seek the reality named by it! Look for the moon in heaven, not in the water!
I have heard from men like you, that he who knows the Self overcomes grief. I am in grief. Do, Sir, help me over this grief of mine.' Sanatkumâra, sai...
(3) 'But, Sir, with all this I know the Mantras only, the sacred books, I do not know the Self. I have heard from men like you, that he who knows the Self overcomes grief. I am in grief. Do, Sir, help me over this grief of mine.' Sanatkumâra, said to him: 'Whatever you have read, is only a name.
Direct not thy mind to the vast surfaces of the Earth; for the Plant of Truth grows not upon the ground. Nor measure the motions of the Sun,...
(144) Direct not thy mind to the vast surfaces of the Earth; for the Plant of Truth grows not upon the ground. Nor measure the motions of the Sun, collecting rules, for he is carded by the Eternal Will of the Father,. and not for your sake alone. Dismiss (from your mind) the impetuous course of the Moon, for she moveth always by the power of necessity. The progression of the Stars was not generated for your sake. The wide aërial flight of birds gives no true knowledge nor the dissection of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys, the basis of mercenary fraud:, flee from these if you would enter the sacred paradise of piety, where Virtue, Wisdom, and Equity are assembled.
Chapter 7: Of the Court, Place and Dwelling, also of the Government of Angels, how these things stood at the Beginning, after the Creation, and how they became as they are. (17)
Neither have I any purpose to consider of it further, much less to write; but my revelation reacheth even into the three kingdoms, like an angelical...
(17) Neither have I any purpose to consider of it further, much less to write; but my revelation reacheth even into the three kingdoms, like an angelical knowledge.
It may be urged that all the multiplicity and development are the work of Nature, but that, since there is wisdom within the All, there must be also,...
(12) It may be urged that all the multiplicity and development are the work of Nature, but that, since there is wisdom within the All, there must be also, by the side of such natural operation, acts of reasoning and of memory.
But this is simply a human error which assumes wisdom to be what in fact is unwisdom, taking the search for wisdom to be wisdom itself. For what can reasoning be but a struggle, the effort to discover the wise course, to attain the principle which is true and derives from real-being? To reason is like playing the cithara for the sake of achieving the art, like practising with a view to mastery, like any learning that aims at knowing. What reasoners seek, the wise hold: wisdom, in a word, is a condition in a being that possesses repose. Think what happens when one has accomplished the reasoning process: as soon as we have discovered the right course, we cease to reason: we rest because we have come to wisdom. If then we are to range the leading principle of the All among learners, we must allow it reasonings, perplexities and those acts of memory which link the past with the present and the future: if it is to be considered as a knower, then the wisdom within it consists in a rest possessing the object .
Again, if the leading principle of the universe knows the future as it must- then obviously it will know by what means that future is to come about; given this knowledge, what further need is there of its reasoning towards it, or confronting past with present? And, of course, this knowledge of things to come- admitting it to exist- is not like that of the diviners; it is that of the actual causing principles holding the certainty that the thing will exist, the certainty inherent in the all-disposers, above perplexity and hesitancy; the notion is constituent and therefore unvarying. The knowledge of future things is, in a word, identical with that of the present; it is a knowledge in repose and thus a knowledge transcending the processes of cogitation.
If the leading principle of the universe does not know the future which it is of itself to produce, it cannot produce with knowledge or to purpose; it will produce just what happens to come, that is to say by haphazard. As this cannot be, it must create by some stable principle; its creations, therefore, will be shaped in the model stored up in itself; there can be no varying, for, if there were, there could also be failure.
The produced universe will contain difference, but its diversities spring not from its own action but from its obedience to superior principles which, again, spring from the creating power, so that all is guided by Reason-Principles in their series; thus the creating power is in no sense subjected to experimenting, to perplexity, to that preoccupation which to some minds makes the administration of the All seem a task of difficulty. Preoccupation would obviously imply the undertaking of alien tasks, some business- that would mean- not completely within the powers; but where the power is sovereign and sole, it need take thought of nothing but itself and its own will, which means its own wisdom, since in such a being the will is wisdom. Here, then, creating makes no demand, since the wisdom that goes to it is not sought elsewhere, but is the creator's very self, drawing on nothing outside- not, therefore, on reasoning or on memory, which are handlings of the external.
In the beginning this world was just the Self (Atman), one only. He wished; c Would that I had a wife; then I would procreate. Would that I had...
(1) In the beginning this world was just the Self (Atman), one only. He wished; c Would that I had a wife; then I would procreate. Would that I had wealth; then I would offer sacrifice.' So great, indeed, is desire. Not even if one desired, would he get more than that. Therefore even today when one is lonely one wishes: ' Would that I had a wife, then I would procreate. Would that I had wealth, then I would offer sacrifice. So far as he does not obtain any one of these, he thinks that he is, assuredly, incomplete. Now his complete- ness is as follows: his mind truly is his self (dtmaii); his voice is his wife; his breath is his offspring; his eye is his worldly wealth, for with his eye he finds; his ear is his heavenly [wealth], for with his ear he hears it, his body (dtman\ indeed, is his work, for with his body he performs work. The sacrifice is fivefold. The sacrificial animal is fivefold. A person is fivefold. This whole world, whatever there is, is fivefold. He obtains this whole world who knows this.
An astronomer who, by his knowledge, can map the stars and describe their courses, derives more pleasure from his knowledge than the chess player...
(15) An astronomer who, by his knowledge, can map the stars and describe their courses, derives more pleasure from his knowledge than the chess player from his. Seeing, then, that nothing is higher than God, how great must be the delight which springs from the true knowledge of Him!
That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, who is the Intellectual-Principle as being the offspring or exuberance of God. For here i...
(4) But there is yet another way to this knowledge:
Admiring the world of sense as we look out upon its vastness and beauty and the order of its eternal march, thinking of the gods within it, seen and hidden, and the celestial spirits and all the life of animal and plant, let us mount to its archetype, to the yet more authentic sphere: there we are to contemplate all things as members of the Intellectual- eternal in their own right, vested with a self-springing consciousness and life- and, presiding over all these, the unsoiled Intelligence and the unapproachable wisdom.
That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, who is the Intellectual-Principle as being the offspring or exuberance of God. For here is contained all that is immortal: nothing here but is Divine Mind; all is God; this is the place of every soul. Here is rest unbroken: for how can that seek change, in which all is well; what need that reach to, which holds all within itself; what increase can that desire, which stands utterly achieved? All its content, thus, is perfect, that itself may be perfect throughout, as holding nothing that is less than the divine, nothing that is less than intellective. Its knowing is not by search but by possession, its blessedness inherent, not acquired; for all belongs to it eternally and it holds the authentic Eternity imitated by Time which, circling round the Soul, makes towards the new thing and passes by the old. Soul deals with thing after thing- now Socrates; now a horse: always some one entity from among beings- but the Intellectual-Principle is all and therefore its entire content is simultaneously present in that identity: this is pure being in eternal actuality; nowhere is there any future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for nothing there has ever ceased to be; everything has taken its stand for ever, an identity well pleased, we might say, to be as it is; and everything, in that entire content, is Intellectual-Principle and Authentic Existence; and the total of all is Intellectual-Principle entire and Being entire. Intellectual-Principle by its intellective act establishes Being, which in turn, as the object of intellection, becomes the cause of intellection and of existence to the Intellectual-Principle- though, of course, there is another cause of intellection which is also a cause to Being, both rising in a source distinct from either.
Now while these two are coalescents, having their existence in common, and are never apart, still the unity they form is two-sided; there is Intellectual-Principle as against Being, the intellectual agent as against the object of intellection; we consider the intellective act and we have the Intellectual-Principle; we think of the object of that act and we have Being.
Such difference there must be if there is to be any intellection; but similarly there must also be identity
Thus the Primals are seen to be: Intellectual-Principle; Existence; Difference; Identity: we must include also Motion and Rest: Motion provides for the intellectual act, Rest preserves identity as Difference gives at once a Knower and a Known, for, failing this, all is one, and silent.
So too the objects of intellection - identical in virtue of the self-concentration of the principle which is their common ground- must still be distinct each from another; this distinction constitutes Difference.
The Intellectual Kosmos thus a manifold, Number and Quantity arise: Quality is the specific character of each of these ideas which stand as the principles from which all else derives.
World Honoured One, if there are people who receive, uphold, read, recite and practice this sutra, I and my followers will provide them with all the...
(2) World Honoured One, if there are people who receive, uphold, read, recite and practice this sutra, I and my followers will provide them with all the necessaries of life. If this sutra is kept in a town or a hamlet, in a grove or a desert, I and my followers will come to the place of the preacher to listen to its Dharma. I shall cause the unbelievers to develop faith in this sutra. As to the believers of it I shall protect them.”
Nakiketas said: 'On this point even the gods have doubted indeed, and thou, Death, hast declared it to be not easy to understand, and another teacher...
(22) Nakiketas said: 'On this point even the gods have doubted indeed, and thou, Death, hast declared it to be not easy to understand, and another teacher like thee is not to be found:--surely no other boon is like unto this.'
Man is not the insignificant creature that he appears to be; his physical body is not the true measure of his real self. The invisible nature of man...
(36) Man is not the insignificant creature that he appears to be; his physical body is not the true measure of his real self. The invisible nature of man is as vast as his comprehension and as measureless as his thoughts. The fingers of his mind reach out and grasp the stars; his spirit mingles with the throbbing life of Cosmos itself. He who has attained to the state of understanding thereby has so increased his capacity to know that he gradually incorporates within himself the various elements of the universe. The unknown is merely that which is yet to be included within the consciousness of the seeker. Philosophy assists man to develop the sense of appreciation; for as it reveals the glory and the sufficiency of knowledge, it also unfolds those latent powers and faculties whereby man is enabled to master the secrets of the seven spheres.
Book I: Instructions on the Symptoms of Death, or the First Stage of the Chikhai Bardo: The Primary Clear Light Seen at the Moment of Death (1.30)
Thine own consciousness, not formed into anything, in reality void, and the intellect, shining and blissful, — these two, — are inseparable. The...
(1) Thine own consciousness, not formed into anything, in reality void, and the intellect, shining and blissful, — these two, — are inseparable. The union of them is the Dharma-Kaya state of Perfect Enlightenment.
Book II: The Bardo Body: Its Birth and Its Supernormal Faculties (23.9)
Up to the other day thou wert unable to recognize the Chonyid Bardo and hast had to wander down this far. Now, if thou art to hold fast to the real...
(23) Up to the other day thou wert unable to recognize the Chonyid Bardo and hast had to wander down this far. Now, if thou art to hold fast to the real Truth, thou must allow thy mind to rest undistractedly in the nothing-to-do, nothing-to-hold condition of the unobscured, primordial, bright, void state of thine intellect, to which thou hast been introduced by the guru. [Thereby] thou wilt obtain Liberation without having to enter the door of the womb. But if thou art unable to know thyself, then, whosoever may be thy tutelary deity and thy guru, meditate on them, in a state of intense fondness and humble trust, as overshadowing the crown of thy head. This is of great importance. Be not distracted.
What good will thy knowledge do thee, if thou wilt not strive and fight therein? It is just as if one knew of a great treasure, and would not go for...
(20) What good will thy knowledge do thee, if thou wilt not strive and fight therein? It is just as if one knew of a great treasure, and would not go for it; but, though he knoweth he might have it, would rather starve for hunger in the bare knowing of it.
They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years. Then Pragâpati asked them: 'For what purpose have you both dwelt here?' They replied: 'A saying of...
(3) They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years. Then Pragâpati asked them: 'For what purpose have you both dwelt here?' They replied: 'A saying of yours is being repeated, viz. "the Self which is free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that it is which we must search out, that it is which we must try to understand. He who has searched out that Self and understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires." Now we both have dwelt here because we wish for that Self.' Pragâpati said to them: 'The person that is seen in the eye , that is the Self. This is what I have said. This is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.' They asked: 'Sir, he who is perceived in the water, and he who is perceived in a mirror, who is he?' He replied: 'He himself indeed is seen in all these .'