Soul Awareness
THE SELF-EVOLVING CIRCLE
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he
look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all
his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new
idea which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving
circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides
outward to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent
to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go,
depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For, it is the
inert effort of each thought having formed itself into a circular
wave of circumstance, as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, a
local usage, a religious rite, to heap itself on that ridge, and to
solidify, and hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong it
bursts over that boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on
the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt
again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in
its first and narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast
force, and to immense and innumerable expansions.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
VISION OF UNITY
Soul must see in its own way; this is by coalescence,
unification; but in seeking thus to know the Unity, it is prevented by
that very unification from recognizing that it has found; it cannot
distinguish itself from the object of this intuition. Nonetheless,
this is our one resource if our philosophy is to give us knowledge of
the Unity.
We are in search of unity; we are to come to know the principle
of all, the Good and First; therefore we may not stand away from the
realm of Firsts and lie prostrate among the last: we must strike for
those Firsts, rising from things of sense which are the lasts.
Cleared of all evil in our intention towards the Good, we must ascend
to the Principle within ourselves; from many, we must become one;
only so do we attain to knowledge of that which is Principle and
Unity. We shape ourselves into the Divine Mind; we make over our soul
in trust to the Divine Mind and set it firmly in That; thus what That
sees, the soul will waken to see: it is through the Divine Mind that
we have this vision of the Unity.
PLOTINUS
CITY OF THE SOUL
Holy men dance and wheel on the spiritual battlefield.
They dance in their own blood.
When they are freed from the dominion of self, they clap a hand;
When they transcend their own imperfection, they make a dance.
From within them musicians strike the tambourine:
At their ecstasy the sea bursts into foam.
You see nothing, but for them leaves on branches are clapping hands.
You see not the clapping of the leaves:
One must have spiritual ears, not the ear of body.
Close the head's ears to jesting and falsehood,
That you may see the resplendent city of the soul.
JALALUDDIN RUMI
THE GOD WITHIN
Those of you who would know yourselves in the spirit of truth,
learn to live alone even amidst the great crowds which may sometimes
surround you. Seek communion and intercourse only with the God within
your own soul; heed only the praise or blame of that deity which can
never be separated from your true self, as it is verily that God
itself: called the HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS. Put without delay your good intentions into practice, never leaving a single one to remain only
an intention - expecting, meanwhile, neither reward nor even
acknowledgment for the good you may have done. Reward and
acknowledgment are in yourself and inseparable from you, as it is
your Inner Self alone which can appreciate them at their true degree
and value. For each one of you contains within the precincts of his
inner tabernacle the Supreme Court - prosecutor, defence, jury and
judge - whose sentence is the only one without appeal; since none can
know you better than you do yourself, when once you have learnt to
judge that Self by the never wavering light of the inner divinity -
your higher Consciousness.
MAHATMA K. H.
THE POINT IN THE HEART
The point in the heart grows luminous, and when it has grown
luminous, it lights the soul upon its way: from the head or from the
eye or from other parts of the body. And as the soul rises upwards
the life-breath rises upwards with it; and as the life-breath rises
upwards with it, the powers rise up with the life-breath. The soul
becomes conscious and enters into Consciousness.
Then his wisdom and works take him by the hand, and the knowledge
gained of old. Then as a caterpillar when it comes to the end of a
leaf, reaching forth to another foothold, draws itself over to it, so
the soul, leaving the body, and putting off unwisdom, reaching
another foothold there, draws itself over to it.
As a worker in gold, taking an ornament, moulds it to another
form newer and fairer; so in truth the soul, leaving the body here,
and puffing off unwisdom, makes for itself another form newer and
fairer; a form like the forms of departed souls, or of the seraphs,
or of the gods, or of the creators, or of the Eternal, or of other
beings.
The soul of man is the Eternal. It is made of consciousness, it
is made of feeling, it is made of life, it is made of vision, it is
made of hearing; it is made of the earth, it is made of the waters,
it is made of the air, it is made of the ether, it is made of the
radiance and what is beyond the radiance; it is made of desire and
what is beyond desire, it is made of wrath and what is beyond wrath,
it is made of the law and what is beyond the law; it is made of the
All. The soul is made of this world and of the other world....
As they said of old: Man verily is formed of desire; as his
desire is, so is his will; as his will is, so he works; and whatever
work he does, in the likeness of it he grows.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
