Authorship of Action

The authorship of action does not in reality belong to the ‘I’.  It is a mistake to understand that ‘I’ do this, ‘I’ experience this and ‘I’ know this.  All this is basically untrue.  The ‘I’ in its essential nature, is uncreated; it belongs to the field of the Absolute; whereas action, its fruits and the relationship between the doer and his action, belong to the relative field, to the field of the three gunas.  Therefore all action is performed by the three gunas born of Nature.  The attribution of authorship to the ‘I’ is only due to ignorance of the real nature of the ‘I’ and of action.

-- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, On the Bhagavad Gita

Gaining transcendent awareness

The first step is to bring the mind to the Transcendent. Through transcendent meditation, the attention is brought from gross experience to subtler fields of experience until the subtlest experience is transcended and the state of transcendental consciousness is gained. The march of the mind in this direction is so simple as to be automatic; as it enters into experience of a subtler nature, the mind feels increased charm because it is proceeding towards absolute bliss. Once the mind reaches transcendent consciousness, it no longer remains a conscious mind; it gains the status of absolute Being.

-- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, On The Bhagavad Gita

Rejection and Acceptance

To reject the unreal is ordinary wisdom, but to be open to accepting what is truly real requires more than ordinary wisdom.

-- Anon.

Shams-i Tabriz I

One can postpone the obligatory ritual prayer but one cannot postpone the company of the dervish.

-- Shams-i Tabriz (1184-1248), Persian Sufi mystic and master of Rumi

Philokalia I

The limit or the acme of faith is purely immersion of one's mind in God.

-- Diadochus of Photiki (5th cent.), On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination

Renunciation of the Saints

To be a saint means to renounce not only everything earthly but also everything divine.

-- Nikos Kazantzakis, from God's Pauper: St. Francis of Assisi

Death of 'I' as material for work

"If a man were deprived of his illusions and all that prevents him from seeing reality -- if he were deprived of his interests, his cares, his expectations and hopes -- all his strivings would collapse, everything would become empty and there would remain an empty being, an empty body, only physiologically alive. This would be the death of 'I,' the death of everything it consisted of, the destruction of everything false collected through ignorance or inexperience. All this will remain in him merely as material, but subject to selection. Then a man will be able to choose for himself and not have imposed on him what others like."

-- Gurdjieff, from Views from the Real World

Use of an ego

It doesn't take an ego to do most anything does it?

Universal nature (Aurelius)

All things come to their fulfillment as the one universal nature directs; for there is no rival nature, whether containing her from without, or itself contained within her, or even existing apart and detached from her.

-- Marcus Aurelius, from Meditations 6:9

Finite and Infinite Games (II)

Art is not art except as it leads to an engendering creativity in its beholders. Whoever takes possession of the objects of art has not taken possession of the art. Since art is never possession, and always possibility, nothing possessed can have the status of art.

Poets do not "fit" into society, not because a place is denied them, but because they do not take their "places" seriously. They openly see society's roles as theatrical, its styles as poses, its clothing costumes, its rules conventional, its crises arranged, its conflicts performed, and its metaphysics ideological.

-- James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games