“One in self with all, the supramental being will seek the delight of self-manifestation of the Spirit in himself but equally the delight of the Divine in all: he will have the cosmic joy and will be a power for bringing the bliss of the spirit, the joy of being to others; for their joy will be part of his own joy of existence. To be occupied with the good of all beings, to make the joy and grief of others one's own has been described as a sign of the liberated and fulfilled spiritual man. The supramental being will have no need for that, of an altruistic self-effacement, since this occupation will be intimate to his self-fulfillment, the fulfilment of the One in all, and there will be no contradiction or strife between his own good and the good of others: nor will he have any need to acquire a universal sympathy by subjecting himself to the joys and griefs of creatures in the Ignorance; his cosmic sympathy will be part of his inborn truth of being and not dependent on a personal participation in the lesser joy and suffering; it will transcend what it embraces and in that transcendence will be its power. His feeling of universality, his action of universality will be always a spontaneous state and natural movement, an automatic expression of the Truth, an act of the joy of the spirit's self-existence. There could be in it no place for limited self or desire or for the satisfaction or frustration of the limited self or the satisfaction or frustration of desire, no place for the relative and dependent happiness and grief that visit and afflict our limited nature; for these are things that belong to the ego and the Ignorance, not to the freedom and truth of the Spirit . . . The gnostic existence and delight of existence is a universal and total being and delight, and there will be the presence of that totality and universality in each separate movement: in each there will be, not a partial experience of self or a fractional bit of its joy, but the sense of the whole movement of an integral being and the presence of its entire and integral bliss of being, Ananda.”
                                       

“Because the point of reference of any experience must be oneself, this integral vision of reality must first be seen with reference to oneself, only in the second place with reference to God. Knowledge of the true self-in-itself precedes knowledge of God: as the Muslims tradition puts it: 'Who knows himself, knows his Lord.' ”
                                       

“The soul radiates love, is a child of God going through its evolutionary process of growing up into the image and likeness of the Lord. Goodness and mercy, compassion and caring are the intrinsic, inherent or indwelling nature of the soul. Wisdom and pure knowledge, happiness and joy are the intrinsic nature of the soul. Can we believe the soul is anything but goodness itself, purity and all the refined qualities found within superconsciousness? When God is everywhere, how can there be a place for evil? The soul is constantly one with God in its ever-present Satchidananda state at every point in its evolution. How, then, arises the concept of evil and suffering? Anava, karma and maya, the play toys of the soul, are the source of this seeming suffering. Like a child, we play with the toys of anava in the playground of maya, fall and are bruised by karma, then run to our loving Lord for solace and release into spiritual maturity. The Vedas pointedly state, "As the sun, the eye of the whole world, is not sullied by the external faults of the eyes, so the one inner soul of all things is not sullied by the sorrow in the world, being external to it." Aum.”
                                       

“Fruits of the Search

Let me reiterate that there are many reasons why the religious base of society should be investigated, not the least of which is to understand our national origins and institutional operations. The pursuit has implications beyond the personal realm. It is a corporate concern because all of us have a need to believe in something beyond ourselves, a goal, a set of values, a caring Being. Religion gives us a framework within which to deal with experiences beyond our control. We all have to deal with crises at sometime or other, and it is then that religion helps us adjust. Why should a loved one die young? Why must we suffer illness? Why should a person go on living when his or her love is not returned? Such questions demand meaningful answers. Following up on one’s faith quest, therefore, is not an irrational activity. The 13th century philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, tried to show that the existence of God could almost be proven by rational means. He has been quoted a lot since, and by a wide variety of religionists, so there must be something to his argument.

Faith seekers and worshippers of the supernatural have no reason to apologize for their endeavors, nor do they have to leave their intellectual capacities in the church narthex when they worship. Seeking for God is a noble activity. On the other hand, a certain amount of analysis should also go into the study of faith pursuits, particularly when one considers taking up (or transferring) allegiance to an already established form of religion. When this tack is assumed it will not take long to discover that the framers of that creed will already have built into the schematic a certain amount of rationalized justification for the system. But surely it is not necessary to accept their rationale in blind faith? Why not do a little personal investigating, preferably before joining? This orientation should not be resisted by the authorities; after all, nearly every religion makes a case for their encouragement of individuality within its own confines. . . . .

Finally, we are constantly bombarded with the presupposition that the current generation is enlightened; this is the thinking generation. The upbeat citizen of today expects proof for claims made, and they are not willing to accept things at face value. If this is so, it may be possible that religious claims are being more closely scrutinized today than in the past. Modern seekers want to know the nature of the underlying rationale for what they are being told (and sold).”
                                       

“The spiritual fullness of the being is eternity; if one has not the consciousness of timeless eternal being, if one is dependent on body or embodied mind or embodied life, or dependent on this world or that world or on this condition of being or that condition of being, that is not the reality of self, not the fullness of our spiritual existence. To live only as a self of body or be only by the body is to be an ephemeral creature, subject to death and desire and pain and suffering and decay and decadence. To transcend, to exceed consciousness of body, not to be held in the body or by the body, to hold the body only as an instrument, a minor outward formation of self, is a first condition of divine living. Not to be a mind subject to ignorance and restriction of consciousness, to transcend mind and handle it as an instrument, to control it as a surface formation of self, is a second condition. To be by the self and spirit, not to depend upon life, not to be identified with it, to transcend it and control and use it as an expression and instrumentation of the self, is a third condition.

[The individual] must enter into the supreme divine Reality, feel his oneness with it, live in it, be its self-creation: all his mind, life, physicality must be converted into terms of its Supernature; all his thought, feelings, actions must be determined by it and be it, its self-formation. All this can become complete in him only when he has evolved out of the Ignorance into the Knowledge and through the Knowledge into the supreme Consciousness and its dynamics and supreme delight of existence; but some essentiality of these things and their sufficient instrumentation can come with the first spiritual change and culminate in the life of the gnostic supernature.

This realization demands a turning of the consciousness inward. The ordinary human consciousness is turned outward and sees the surface of things only. It recoils from entering the inner depths which appear dark and where it is afraid of losing itself. Yet the entry into this obscurity, this void, this silence is only the passage to a greater existence.”
                                       

“Divine knowledge is a fathomless ocean. But glimpses of it can be obtained by any individual sincerely searching for the Truth. Their progress will be in grades. If they ask questions, and answers are then furnished to them, they are more likely to apprehend the Truth, as they have already explored the territory in which they are interested. In the same way, when concrete questions arise by logic of events and they are answered not only for the occasion, but from a general stand-point, the teaching has a far greater chance of penetrating the human intelligence and taking shape in practical conduct. And this is the way of instruction of the Qur’an.”
                                       

“There is the possibility that in the swing back from a mechanistic idea of life and society the human mind may seek refuge in a return to the religious idea and a society governed or sanctioned by religion. But organized religion, though it can provide a means of inner uplift for the individual and preserve in it or behind it a way for his opening to spiritual experience, has not changed human life and society; it could not do so because, in governing society, it had to compromise with the lower parts of life and could not insist on the inner change of the whole being; it could insist only on a credal adherence, a formal acceptance of its ethical standards and a conformity to institution, ceremony and ritual. Religion so conceived can give a religio-ethical colour or surface tinge, — sometimes, if it maintains a strong kernel of inner experience, it can generalize to some extent an incomplete spiritual tendency; but it does not transform the race, it cannot create a new principle of the human existence. A total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself. Another possible conception akin to the religious solution is the guidance of society by men of spiritual attainment, the brotherhood or unity of all in the faith or in the discipline, the spiritualization of life and society by the taking up of the old machinery of life into such a unification or inventing a new machinery. This too has been attempted before without success; it was the original founding idea of more than one religion: but the human ego and vital nature were too strong for a religious idea working on the mind and by the mind to overcome its resistance. It is only the full emergence of the soul, the full descent of the native light and power of the Spirit and the consequent replacement or transformation and uplifting of our insufficient mental and vital nature by a spiritual and supramental supernature that can effect this evolutionary miracle.”