Oversoul (R.W.Emerson)

"BUT souls that of his own good life partake,
He loves as his own self; dear as his eye

They are to Him: He'll never them forsake:

When they shall die, then God himself shall die:

They live, they live in blest eternity."
Henry More.

Space is ample, east and west,

But two cannot go abreast,
Cannot travel in it two:
Yonder masterful cuckoo
Crowds every egg out of the nest,
Quick or dead, except its own;
A spell is laid on sod and stone,
Night and Day 've been tampered with,
Every quality and pith
Surcharged and sultry with a power
That works its will on age and hour

THERE is a difference between one and another hour of life in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith
comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to
ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

For this reason the argument which is always forthcoming to silence those who conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely the appeal to experience, is for ever invalid andvain.

We give up the past to the objector, and yet we hope. He must explain this hope. We grant that human life is mean, but how did we find out that it was mean? What is the ground of this uneasiness of ours; of this old discontent?

What is the universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine innuendo by which the soul makes its enormous claim? Whydo men feel that the natural history of man has never been written, but he is always leaving behind what you have said of him, and it becomes old, and books of metaphysics worthless?

The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. In its
experiments there has always remained, in the last analysiss a residuum it could not resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence.

Master-teacher

Listen. The present – right now – is before time was, and will be when time is no more. In it are all things that are eternal, and they are one. Their continuity is timeless and their communication is unbroken, for they are not separated by the past. Only the past can separate, and it is nowhere.

Did you hear that? Did you hear the simple statement of the idea – shall we share it when you came into this continuum? – say to me: Time is not passing.

Will you share this with me now as what we term a Master Teacher?
I appear to be, and many of you describe me as an occupant of this idea of body association within how you find your correspondence in the idea of sequential time. Look with me.

As a body there, as you identify yourself, you cannot not believe in the passage of time, which you then utilize
within your own body structure to make predictions concerning the future, which inevitably would have to be covering the moment of the power of my mind that I am offering you – practice – here and now. Practice:

Say to me: Here and now. Here and now? Now that was an accomplishment of the healing. That was an accomplishment despite all the apparent conceptual ideas you have about yourself in this body form, that all around you is a single moment in all of space/time of the power of light coming from Creative Source, instantly converting the fabric of the previous self-identity you have given to yourself in that body formulation

SRI AUROBINDO (FROM SAVITRI):

 “UNHAPPY IS THE MAN OR THE NATION WHICH, WHEN THE DIVINE MOMENT ARRIVES, IS FOUND SLEEPING OR UNPREPARED TO USE IT, BECAUSE THE LAMP HAS NOT BEEN KEPT TRIMMED FOR THE WELCOME AND THE EARS ARE SEALED TO THE CALL.”

RALPH WALDO EMERSON’S ESSAYS:

THE OVER-SOUL:

"A THRILL PASSES THROUGH ALL MEN AT THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH, OR AT THE PERFORMANCE OF A GREAT ACTION, WHICH COMES OUT OF THE HEART OF NATURE. IN THESE COMMUNICATIONS THE POWER TO SEE IS NOT SEPARATED FROM THE WILL TO DO, BUT THE INSIGHT PROCEEDS FROM OBEDIENCE, AND THE OBEDIENCE PROCEEDS FROM A JOYFUL PERCEPTION.”


CIRCLES: “THE EYE IS THE FIRST CIRCLE; THE HORIZON WHICH IT FORMS
IS THE SECOND; AND THROUGHOUT NATURE THIS PRIMARY FIGURE IS
REPEATED WITHOUT END. IT IS THE HIGHEST EMBLEM IN THE CIPHER OF
THE WORLD.”

Master Jesus

"How can a wrong way be recognized?"


"It is impossible to recognize a wrong way without knowing the right way. This means that it is no use troubling oneself how to recognize a wrong way. One must think of how to find the right way.
 
For example, you can see that the teacher always corresponds to the level of the pupil. The higher the pupil, the higher can be the teacher. But a pupil of a level which is not particularly high cannot count on a teacher of a very high level.
 
Actually a pupil can never see the level of the teacher. This is a law. No one can see higher than his own level. But usually people not only do not know this, but, on the contrary, the lower they are themselves, the higher the teacher they demand. The right understanding of this point is already a very considerable understanding.
 
But it occurs very seldom. Usually the man himself is not worth a brass farthing but he must have as teacher no other than Jesus Christ. To less he will not agree. And it never enters his head that even if he were to meet such a teacher as Jesus Christ, taking him as he is described in the Gospels, he would never be able to follow him because it would be necessary to be on the level of an apostle in order to be a pupil of Jesus Christ.
 
Here is a definite law. The higher the teacher, the more difficult for the pupil. And if the difference in the levels of the teacher and pupil go beyond a certain limit, then the difficulties in the path of the pupil become insuperable. It is exactly in connection with this law that there occurs one of the fundamental rules of the fourth way. On the fourth way there is not one teacher.
 
Whoever is the elder, he is the teacher. And as the teacher is indispensable to the pupil, so also is the pupil indispensable to the teacher. The pupil cannot go on without the teacher, and the teacher cannot go on without the pupil or pupils. And this is not a general consideration but an indispensable and quite concrete rule on which is based the law of a man's ascending.

(From Gurdjieff's "Views from the Real World," )

The more a man studies the obstacles and deceptions which lie in wait for him at every step in this realm, the more convinced he becomes that it is impossible to travel the path of self-development on the chance instructions of chance people, or the kind of information culled from reading and casual talk.

At the same time he gradually sees more clearly--first a feeble glimmer, then the clear light of truth which has illumined mankind throughout the ages.

The beginnings of initiation are lost in the darkness of time, where the long chain of epochs unfolds. Great cultures and civilizations loom up, dimly arising from cults and mysteries, ever changing, disappearing and reappearing.

Remember

Remember nothing that you taught yourself, for you were badly taught. And who would keep a senseless lesson in his mind, when he can learn and can preserve a better one?

When ancient memories of hate appear, remember that their cause is gone. And so you cannot understand what they are for.
 Let not the cause that you would give them now be what it was that made them what they were, or seemed to be.

Be glad that it is gone, for this is what you would be pardoned from. And see, instead, the new effects of cause accepted now, with consequences here.

They will surprise you with their loveliness. The ancient new ideas they bring will be the happy consequences of a Cause so ancient that it far exceeds the span of memory which your perception sees.