But if I do not strive, who will? Sometimes it locks up truths which were once well known, but have been forgotten. Our personal goals all lead to the same end. Scientific method itself has been called a Christian method of discovering God's mind.”, “The world is order or cosmos rather than chaos, one that is alive as an organism and at the same time governed by law.”, “Those who harbour illusions about the possibility of a purely political struggle and the power of this or that formula or system, with no new human quality as its exact counterpart, have learned no lessons from the past.”, “It must never be forgotten that for non-modern man - whether he be ancient or contemporary - the very stuff of the Universe has a sacred aspect. The cosmos speaks to man and all of its phenomena contain meaning. Initiation is a way adolescent naivete and dependency ends as we develop a sense of mastery, meaning, and purpose and are reborn as adults and active, contributing members of the tribe. “For to search and to learn,” said the poet-philosopher, “is reminiscence all.” At the bottom of every religious theory, however wild and savage, lies a perception—dim perhaps, and distorted, but still a perception—of God and immortality.”, “Unborn, never died, ever alive - thus is the Ultimate Reality. Of God. The period during which one is veiled does not belong to one’s life.’” On another occasion someone knocked at the saint’s door and cried, “Is Bayazid here?” Bayazid answered, “Is anybody here except God?”, “The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground”, “What could begin to deny self, if there were not something in man different from self? At least to some extent, the collective conduct of a nation is a test of the religion prevailing within it, a criterion by which we may legitimately judge the doctrinal validity of that religion and its practical efficiency in helping individuals to advance towards the goal of human existence.”, “The doctrine that God can be incarnated in human form is found in most of the principal historic expositions of the Perennial Philosophy—in Hinduism, in Mahayana Buddhism, in Christianity and in the Mohammedanism of the Sufis, by whom the Prophet was equated with the eternal Logos. The Perennial Philosophy includes selections from Meister Eckhart, Rumi, and Lao Tzu, as well as the Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Diamond Sutra, and Upanishads, among many others. Social and political context. No wonder, then, if the biographies of such men and women remain unread. For the human being, Truth is the direct experience of Divine Presence. Prince, what would you think of such citizens? Through masters, saints and prophets, through sacred texts and oral tradition, humanity has been reminded and warned. He may begin by looking inwards into his own particular thou and, by a process of "dying to self" --- self in reasoning, self in willing, self in feeling --- come at last to knowledge of the self, the kingdom of the self, the kingdom of God that is within. “Take that” ”—a sword-thrust through the body. While my adventures in Christianity of the last two years introduced me for the first time to Christian wisdom and grace, I still have a deep sense of the richness of other traditions. “The man who wishes to know the "that" which is "thou" may set to work in any one of three ways. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven. It is a matter of the heart. The superstitions of the East, and the mythologies of the North—the beautiful Fables of old Greece, and the bold investigations of modern science—all tend to elucidate the same principles; all take their root in those promptings and questionings which are innate in the brain and heart of man. Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! The cultivated and the mentally active have an insatiable appetite for novelty, diversity and distraction. During the experience, the initiate would fast. It empowers each human Soul to live with the principles and laws that order the universe. We dispute not only of the way to Christ, but of his relation to God the Father, of the Trinity, of predestination, of free will, of the nature of God, of the angels, of the condition of the soul after death”—of a multitude of matters that are not essential to salvation; matters, moreover, which can never be known until our hearts are pure; for they are things which must be spiritually perceived. “Śrīla Guru Mahārāj once gave a lecture in the library of Dhanbad before a gathering of many highly qualified paṇḍits and wealthy persons. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it that you had rather suffer the flames of hell than willingly be guilty of their error. (p. 12)”, “Knowledge of the Supreme brings immortality. Illumination says: „Let‘s see what God does, what God does is always beautiful.“ when the heart is purified, Truth becomes an objective reality that can be known by human beings. Or else he may begin with the thous existing outside himself, and may try to realize their essential unity with God and, through God, with one another and with his own being. Cosmic intelligence has continually been in communication with us; now the burden of responsibility rests on each human heart. “It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. When perfect Enlightenment shines, it is neither bondage nor deliverance. He would experience himself confronting the Universe alone. Otherwise, it is hopeless to expect to live in harmony with that grand theophany which is virgin nature, while remaining oblivious and indifferent to the Source of that theophany both beyond nature and at the centre of man's being. From the point of view of the Bodhisattva, this is like suffering the torture of hell. Whatever else it is, The Perennial Philosophy is an extraordinary work of synthesis, and it injected a global spirituality into mainstream Western culture. The Greek prefix dys- (as in dyspepsia) and the Latin dis- (as in dishonorable) are both derived from “duo.” The cognate bis- gives a pejorative sense to such modern French words as bévue (“blunder,” literally “two-sight”). No books — the only book is the manuscript of nature, the lesson is life itself. Because, until he actually lay dying, Johnson indulged himself in the most fascinating of multiple personalities; whereas Law, for all the superiority of his talents was almost absurdly simple and single-minded. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. There is real wisdom available from so many years of seeking and trial and error.”, “Śrīla Guru Mahārāj once gave a lecture in the library of Dhanbad before a gathering of many highly qualified paṇḍits and wealthy persons. The Perennial Philosophy treats mainly with eastern rather than western sources as Aldous Huxley hoped to present readers with quotations that were unfamiliar. And if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine everlasting Beauty.”, “Knowledge is a function of being. It is for this reason that all the masters of the spiritual life insist so strongly upon the importance of little things.”, “Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray. EMBED. In the ordinary circumstances of average sensual life these potentialities of the mind remain latent and unmanifested. When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing.”, “Religious beliefs and practices are certainly not the only factors determining the behaviour of a given society. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks.” And”, “The politics of those whose goal is beyond time are always pacific; it is the idolaters of past and future, of reactionary memory and Utopian dream, who do the persecuting and make the wars.”, “When Bayazid was asked how old he was, he replied, ‘Four years.’ They said, ‘How can that be?’ He answered, ‘I have been veiled from God by the world for seventy years, but I have seen Him during the last four years. For one who has died before death, the death of the body is merely a formality. Prunabuddha-sutra”, “In the course of history it has often happened that one or other of the imperfect religions has been taken too seriously and regarded as good and true in itself, instead of as a means to the ultimate end of all religion. He started his lecture with this verse. Nonetheless, to seeing eyes it is plain to see that all of the world‘s great faiths harbor at their core the same message of love […] Through whichever channel Providence pours it out to the thirsty, the divine love that flows through revelation is from first to last a single substance. The very structure of the cosmos contains a spiritual message for man and is thereby a revelation coming from the same source as religion itself. It is the most difficult because human nature is forgetfulness of God.”, “The esoteric finds the Absolute within the traditions, as poets find poetry within the poems.”. The perennial philosophy refers to the spiritual truths that underlie human existence in all cultures through all time, transmitted through Jungian archetypes, the `morphic field' and … Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it; and more rejoice in the palace of your glory than if it had been made today morning. When the going is easy, there is nothing to make us forget our precious selfness, nothing (except our own will to mortification and the knowledge of God) to distract our minds from the distractions with which we have chosen to be identified; we are at perfect liberty to wallow in our personality to our heart's content. Better then to desist and strive no more. Legion prefers to read about Legion. Thomas Traherne Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father’s palace; and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys; having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. Browse the Best Quotes through this powerful quotations collection here at The Perennial Quote. Common examples include Melville’s Moby Dick, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Dickens’s Great Expectations, and Dante’s Inferno. How can we feel the beauty and understand the glory of religion if our hearts are presently as filthy as a dustbin? And what especially would you say if they debated not only with words, but with blows of fist and sword strokes, and if some succeeded in killing and destroying others who differed from them? He who knows the nature Of my task and my holy birth Is not reborn When he leaves this body; He comes to Me. He may begin by looking inwards into his own particular thou and, by a process of "dying to self" --- self in reasoning, self in willing, self in feeling --- come at last to knowledge of the self, the kingdom of the self, the kingdom of God that is within. Perennial Wisdom is a global spirituality. Islam is the perspective of “omnipresence” (“God is everywhere”), which coincides with that of “simultaneity” (“Truth has always been”); it aims at avoiding any “particularization” or “condensation”, any “unique fact” in time and space, although as a religion it necessarily includes an aspect of “unique fact”, without which it would be ineffective or even absurd. The Perennial Philosophy Quotes Showing 1-30 of 102. EMBED (for wordpress.com hosted blogs and archive.org item tags) Want more? Who said that this path should be so serious that there is no joy in it? The Perennial Philosophy was first published in 1945 immediately after the Second World War by Harper & Brothers in the United States (1946 by Chatto & Windus in the United Kingdom). But the saints, however commanding their talents and whatever the nature of their professional activities, are all incessantly preoccupied with only one subject—spiritual Reality and the means by which they and their fellows can come to the unitive knowledge of that Reality. Bunyan has his Mr. Facing-both-ways, and modern American slang its “two-timers.” Obscurely and unconsciously wise, our language confirms the findings of the mystics and proclaims the essential badness of division—a word, incidentally, in which our old enemy “two” makes another decisive appearance.”, “The Sravaka (literally ‘hearer,’ the name given by Mahayana Buddhists to contemplatives of the Hinayana school) fails to perceive that Mind, as it is in itself, has no stages, no causation. And it is only by making psychological and moral experiments that we can discover the intimate nature of mind and its potentialities. Welcome back. The Perennial philosophy also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom is a perspective in spirituality that views all of the world’s religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine have grown.. “To be fully human is to fulfill our spiritual destiny.”, “We may summarize the essence of the wisdom our Lord seeks to impart unto us through all His revelations in one word: Unity.”, “Beauty always represents an inward and inexhaustible equilibrium of forces; and this overwhelms our soul, since it can neither be calculated nor mechanically produced. He explained that people think religion is found in books and that those books are written in particular languages, but that religion does not actually come from books or languages: religion is communicated through the transcendental language of heart transaction. But why deny the thousands of years of experience found in religion? He would be out there for a number of days. However enlightened in this way, the Sravaka is not at all on the right track. The Gita is one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the Perennial Philosophy ever to have been made. Vaughan. But specialization always leads into blind alleys. (p. 255)”, Gnosis: Divine Wisdom: A New Translation with Selected Letters, The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation, Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on the Traditional Science and Sacred Art, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man, Sufi Sage of Arabia: Imam Abdallah ibn Alawi al-Haddad, Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self, Holistic Islam: Sufism, Transformation, and the Needs of Our Time, The Phantom Coach: Collected Ghost Stories, Autumn Leaves & The Ring: Poems By Frithjof Schuon, Love is the Wine: Talks of a Sufi Master in America, Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human, Grace & Grit: Spirituality & Healing in the Life & Death of Treya Killam Wilber, In the House of Remembering: The Living Tradition of Sufi Teaching, Mingled Waters: Sufism and the Mystical Unity of Religions. (A Universe within, p. 79)”, “In certain ancient civilizations and indigenous cultures there was often a process of initiation that young people would go through before they became adults. Refresh and try again. So what can we say about religion? “If”, “One Reality, all-comprehensive, contains within itself all realities.”, “Among the cultivated and mentally active, hagiography is now a very unpopular form of literature. More Perennial Quotes The genius is childlike. (S. 44 Holistic Islam)”, “All tradition,’ said the Professor, ‘is a type of spiritual truth. Perennial works are those considered as important and applicable today as they were when they were written, and are often referred to as great books. The Perennial Philosophy is Divine Love Wisdom and Power planted in every human soul as a seed. Quotes. Because our hearts are impure we must try to understand religion from a cleanhearted sādhu. “The Perennial Philosophy is the core synthesis of religious thought that Huxley drew from mystical thinkers among the world’s great religions.” ( Washington … In other cases it holds the germs of truths which, though they were never plainly discerned, the genius of its framers caught a glimpse of in a happy moment of divination.” For example, how significant it is that in the Indo-European languages, as Darmsteter has pointed out, the root meaning “two” should connote badness. First, unlike many pluralists, perennial philosophers do not believe that every religious tradition is valid, but distinguish between true religions and their human or Students of Perennial Philosophy, the core mystical teachings that are the same in all religions and forgotten by many or most adherents, might agree that two verses from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita constitute a simple, beautiful and perfect summary of the Perennial Philosophy teachings; “Like two birds of golden plumage, inseparable companions, the individual self… The Perennial Philosophy respects the theologies of the great religious traditions, but points out to us that these all are various "colors," to use Stoddart's image, derived from the same uncolored Source. The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, Harper & Brothers, 1945; HarperCollins 2009, 324 ff. This would open up the initiate to a direct experience of something beyond the usual egoic mind and all of its concerns. The initiate would be thrust into an experience that would take him beyond his small, limited self. No_Favorite. Or, finally (and this is doubtless the best way), he may seek to approach the ultimate That both from within and from without, so that he comes to realize God experimentally as at once the principle of his own thou and of all other thous, animate and inanimate.”, “Spiritual realization is theoretically the easiest thing and in practice the most difficult thing there is. The Republic of Plato The quotes from The Republic of Plato come from the translation attributable to J.L. Before your true nature is understood all those ideas and concepts must melt away. It is only by remaining precariously generalized that an organism can advance towards that rational intelligence which is its compensation for not having a body and instincts perfectly adapted to one particular kind of environment.”, “Great truths do not take hold of the hearts of the masses. How much can we understand it? Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you can never enjoy the world. According to Aldous Huxley, who popularized the idea of a perennial philosophy with a larger audience, In Huxley’s 19… These rites of passage awaken and develop latent human capacities as they mark and safely ritualize the process of maturity, empowerment, and agency among members of a group. Perennial quotes for Instagram plus a big list of quotes including Folly is perennial, yet the human race has survived. Traces of that “second which leads you astray” can be found in “dubious,” “doubt” and Zweifel—for to doubt is to be double-minded. Quotes By Aldous Huxley. But, no less certainly, they are among the determining factors. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. To live in God is to live an endless Life. Summary: Sunday, November 20-Friday, November 25, 2016. For them, the important thing is that individual men and women should come to the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, and what interests them in regard to the social environment is not its progressiveness or non-progressiveness (whatever those terms may mean), but the degree to which it helps or hinders individuals in the their advance towards man's final end.”, “Agitaion over happenings which we are powerless to modify, either because they have not occured, or else are occuring at an inaccesible distance from us, achieves nothing beyond the onoculation of here and now with the remote or anticipated evil that is the object of our distress.”, “God, if I worship Thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell. Is the educational philosophy that the importance of certain works transcends time. The illuminated heart sees the Divine Reality, the Balance in all things; it sees with the impartial light of Allah. Live passionately! He received direct revelation and inspiration through this practice. All Quotes There is only one truth. Hence its enduring value, not only for Indians, but for all mankind. Title: The Perennial Philosophy: … How dreadful is this place! “It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world. (p. 164)”, “An illuminated heart is rare; opinion is all too common. Perennial Quotes Quotations list about perennial, geraniums and perpetual captions for Instagram citing Bertrand Russell, Edward Abbey and Josiah Gilbert Holland enervating sayings. It is the easiest because it is enough to think of God. Similarly, nothing in our everyday experience gives us much reason for supposing that the mind of the average sensual man has, as one of its constituents, something resembling, or identical with, the Reality substantial to the manifold world; and yet, when that mind is subjected to certain rather drastic treatments, the divine element, of which it is in part at least composed, becomes manifest, not only to the mind itself, but also, by its reflection in external behaviour, to other minds.”, “The difference between the mortified but still proud and self-centred stoic and the unmortified hedonist consists in this : the latter, being flabby, shiftless and at heart rather ashamed of himself, lacks the energy and the motive to do much harm except to his own body, mind and spirit; the former, because he has all the secondary virtues and looks down on those who are not like himself, is morally equipped to wish and to be able to do harm on the very largest scale and with a perfectly untroubled conscience.”, “It is only by making physical experiments that we can discover the intimate nature of matter and its potentialities. 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