Insight

Dimensions are limitless; time is endless. Conditions are not invariable; terms are not final. Thus, the wise man looks into space, and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too much; for he knows that there is no limit to dimension. He looks back into the past, and does not grieve over what is far off, nor rejoice over what is near; for he knows that time is without end. He investigates fulness and decay, and does not rejoice if he succeeds, nor lament if he fails; for he knows that conditions are not invariable. He who clearly apprehends the scheme of existence does not rejoice over life, nor repine at death; for he knows that terms are not final.

Now if any one would search the divine ground, that is, the divine revelation, he must first consider with himself for what end he desires to know such things.

This alchemy may be briefly described as turning away from the world to God, and its constituents are four: The knowledge of self, The knowledge of God, The knowledge of this world as it really is, The knowledge of the next world as it really is.

Now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere and have seen the great ocean, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak to you of great principles.

Do things from outside break in to distract you? Give yourself a time of quiet to learn some new good thing and cease to wander out of your course. But, when you have done that, be on your guard against a second kind of wandering. For those who are sick to death in life, with no mark on which they direct every impulse or in general every imagination, are triflers, not in words only but also in their deeds.

The laws of phenomena must be constant, or there could be no such thing as science; but it is a great error to mistake the slaves for the master.

By and by comes the Great Awakening, and then we find out that this life is really a great dream. Fools think they are awake now, and flatter themselves they know if they are really princes or peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who say you are dreams,—I am but a dream myself. This is a paradox. To-morrow a sage may arise to explain it; but that tomorrow will not be until ten thousand generations have gone by.

Any one who will look into the matter will see that happiness is necessarily linked with the knowledge of God.

For in one only substance, wherein there is no variation or division, but is only one, there can be no knowledge; and if there were knowledge, it could know but one thing, itself: but if it parts itself, then the dividing will goes into multiplicity and variety; and each parting works in itself.

The ancient Rabbins among the Jews have partly understood it; for they have said that this name is the highest, and most holy name of God by which they understand the working Deity in sense.

Of man's life, his time is a point, his existence a flux, his sensation clouded, his body's entire composition corruptible, his vital spirit an eddy of breath, his fortune hard to predict, his fame uncertain. Briefly, all the things of the body, a river; all the things of the spirit, dream and delirium; his life a warfare and a sojourn in a strange land, his after-fame oblivion. What then can be his escort through life? One thing and one thing only, Philosophy.

But real self-knowledge consists in knowing the following things: What art thou in thyself, and from whence hast thou come? Whither art thou going, and for what purpose hast thou come to tarry here awhile, and in what does thy real happiness and misery consist?

The wisdom is the great Mystery of the divine nature; for in her the powers, colors, and virtues are made manifest.

She is the true divine chaos, wherein all things lie, a divine imagination, in which the ideas of angels and souls have been seen from eternity, in a divine type and resemblance; yet not then as creatures, but in resemblance, as when a man beholds his face in a glass.

Every human being has in the depths of his consciousness heard the question "Am I not your Lord?" and answered "Yes" to it.

Yet we cannot say that the spiritual world has had any beginning, but has been manifested from eternity out of that chaos; for the light has shone from eternity in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it; as day and night are in one another, and are two, though in one.

For the carrying on of this spiritual warfare by which the knowledge of oneself and of God is to be obtained, the body may be figured as a kingdom, the soul as its king, and the different senses and faculties as constituting an army.

Once upon a time, I, Chuang dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awaked, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a barrier. The transition is called metempsychosis.

Observe well, on every occasion, what I am going to tell you: Do not let any man either by his words, or by his deeds, ever seduce you. Nor lure you to say or to do what is not profitable for yourself. Consult and deliberate before you act, that you may not commit foolish actions. For it is the part of a miserable man to speak and to act without reflection. But do the thing which will not afflict you afterwards, nor oblige you to repentance. Never do anything which you do not understand. But learn all you ought to know, and by that means you will lead a very pleasant life.

By the word center, we understand the first beginning to nature, the most inward ground, wherein the self-raised will brings itself, by a reception, into a something.

His five senses are like five doors opening on the external world; but, more wonderful than this, his heart has a window which opens on the unseen world of spirits.

I showed myself to him just now as Tao appeared before time was. I was to him as a great blank, existing of itself. He knew not who I was. His face fell. He became confused. And so he fled.

This journey of man through the world may be divided into four stages--the sensuous, the experimental, the instinctive, the rational.

The Fourth property is the fire, in which the Unity appears, and is seen in the light, that is, in a burning love.

Only do the things that cannot hurt you, and deliberate before you do them. Never allow sleep to close your eyelids, after you went to bed, Until you have examined all your actions of the day by your reason. In what have I done wrong? What have I done? What have I omitted that I ought to have done? If in this examination you find that you have done wrong, reprove yourself severely for it; And if you have done any good, rejoice.

For that which the desire compresses and makes to be something, the motion cuts asunder and divides, so that it comes into forms and images; between these two properties arises the bitter woe, that is, the sting of perception and feeling.

And this feelingness is the cause of the fire, and also of the mind and senses; for the own natural will is made volatile by it, and seeks rest; and thus the separation of the will goes out from itself, and pierces through the properties, from whence the taste arises, so that one property tastes and feels the other.

In that flash the Unity feels the sensibility, and the will receives the soft tranquil Unity; and so the Unity becomes a shining glance of fire, and the fire becomes a burning love, for it receives the ens and power from the soft Unity : in this kindling the darkness of the magnetical compressure is pierced through [permeated] with the light, so that it is no more known or discerned, although it remains in itself eternally in the compressure.

Now two eternal Principles arise here, viz. the darkness, harshness, sharpness, and pain dwelling in itself; and the feeling, power and virtue of the Unity in the light; upon which the scripture says, that God (that is, the eternal Unity) dwells in a light to which none can come.

And thus you may here perceive two Principles: the first is the ground of the burning of the fire, viz. the sharp, moving, perceivable, painful darkness in itself; and the second is the light of the fire, wherein the Unity comes into mobility and joy; for the fire is an object of the great love of God's Unity.

And in this fiery will of the eternal nature stands the soul of man, and also the angels; this is their ground and center; therefore, if any soul breaks itself off from the light and love of God, and enters into its own natural desire, then the ground of this darkness and painful property will be manifest in it; and this is the hellish fire, and the anger of God, when it is made manifest, as may be seen in Lucifer; and whatsoever can be thought to have a being anywhere in the creature, the same is likewise without the creature everywhere; for the creature is nothing else but an image and figure of the separable and various power and virtue of the universal Being.

The doctor, physicist, and astrologer are doubtless right each in his particular branch of knowledge, but they do not see that illness is, so to speak, a cord of love by which God draws to Himself the saints.

Now the Fifth property is the fire of love, or the world of power and light; which in the darkness dwells in itself, and the darkness comprehends it not, as it is written, John 1. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not: Also, the Word is in the light, and in the Word is the true understanding life of man, the true spirit which God breathed into man for a creaturely life.

You must understand, in the spiritual fire of the will, the true desirous soul out of the eternal ground; and in the power and virtue of the light, the true understanding spirit, in which the Unity of God dwells and is manifest, as our Lord Christ says, The kingdom of God is within you; and Paul says, You are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who dwells in you; this is the place of the divine inhabiting and revelation.

The Sixth property of the eternal nature is the sound, noise, voice, or understanding; for when the fire flashes, all the properties together sound: the fire is the mouth of the essence, the light is the spirit, and the sound is the understanding wherein all the properties understand one another.

Always make a figure or outline of the imagined object as it occurs, in order to see distinctly what it is in its essence, naked, as a whole and parts; and say to yourself its individual name and the names of the things of which it was compounded and into which it will be broken up. What is this which now creates an image in me, what is its composition? How long will it naturally continue, what virtue is of use to meet it; for example, gentleness, fortitude, truth, good faith, simplicity, self-reliance, and the rest?

And the true Sage, taking his stand upon the beauty of the universe, pierces the principles of created things.

Apparently destroyed, yet really existing; the material gone, the immaterial left,—such is the law of creation, which passeth all understanding. This is called the root, whence a glimpse may be obtained of God.

Now nothing is nearer to thee than thyself, and if thou knowest not thyself how canst thou know anything else?

We may very well observe and consider the hidden spiritual world by the visible world: for we see that fire, light, and air, are continually begotten in the deep of this world; and that there is no rest or cessation from this begetting; and that it has been so from the beginning of the world; and yet men can find no cause of it in the outward world, or tell what the ground of it should be: but reason says, God has so created it, and therefore it continues so.

For what the invisible world is, in a spiritual working, where light and darkness are in one another, and yet the one not comprehending the other.

How may Light be described to a man born blind, how sugar to a man who has never tasted anything sweet, how harmony to one born deaf?

But reason will say, "To what end has the Creator made this manifestation"? I answer, there is no other cause, but that the spiritual world might thereby bring itself into a visible form or image, that the inward powers and virtues might have a form and image.

Call to mind the whole of Substance of which you have a very small portion, and the whole of time whereof a small hair's breadth has been determined for you, and of the chain of causation whereof you are how small a link.

Therefore man, who is so noble an image, having his ground in time and eternity, should well consider himself, and not run headlong in such blindness, seeking his native country afar off from himself, when it is within himself, though covered with the grossness of the elements by their strife.

The inward eternal working is hidden in the visible world; and it is in everything, and through everything, yet not to be comprehended by anything in the thing's own power; the outward powers and virtues are but passive, and the house in which the inward work.

In the place of this world, heaven and hell are present everywhere, but according to the inward ground. Inwardly, the divine working is manifest in God's children; but in the wicked, the working of the painful darkness.

Here is a man whose disposition is naturally of a low order. To let him take his own unprincipled way is to endanger the State. To try to restrain him is to endanger one's personal safety. He has just wit enough to see faults in others, but not to see his own. I am consequently at a loss what to do.

Unhappy they are! They neither see nor understand that their good is near them. Few know how to deliver themselves out of their misfortunes. Such is the fate that blinds humankind, and takes away his senses. Like huge cylinders they roll back and forth, and always oppressed with innumerable ills. For fatal strife, natural, pursues them everywhere, tossing them up and down; nor do they perceive it.

For man's intellect, however keen, face to face with the countless evolutions of things, their death and birth, their squareness and roundness,— can never reach the root. There creation is, and there it has ever been.

The more a man purifies himself from fleshly lusts and concentrates his mind on God, the more conscious will he be of such intuitions. Those who are not conscious of them have no right to deny their reality.

Men look for retreats for themselves, the country, the seashore, the hills; and you yourself, too, are peculiarly accustomed to feel the same want. Yet all this is very unlike a philosopher, when you may at any hour you please retreat into yourself. For nowhere does a man retreat into more quiet or more privacy than into his own mind, especially one who has within such things that he has only to look into, and become at once in perfect ease.

Things do not take hold upon the mind, but stand without unmoved, and that disturbances come only from the judgement within; the second, that all that your eyes behold will change in a moment and be no more; and of how many things you have already witnessed the changes, think continually of that. The Universe is change, life is opinion.

The ultimate end is God. He is manifested in the laws of nature. He is the hidden spring. At the beginning, he was. This, however, is inexplicable. It is unknowable. But from the unknowable we reach the known.

Which of these is lovely because it is praised or corrupted because it is blamed? Does an emerald become worse than it was, if it be not praised? And what of gold, ivory, purple, a lute, a sword- blade, a flower-bud, a little plant?

The potter says: "I can do what I will with clay. If I want it round, I use compasses; if rectangular, a square." The carpenter says: "I can do what I will with wood. If I want it curved, I use an arc; if straight, a line." But on what grounds can we think that the natures of clay and wood desire this application of compasses and square, of arc and line?

Does not universal love contradict itself? Is not your elimination of self a positive manifestation of self?

When a man considers himself he knows that there was a time when he was non-existent.

As are your repeated imaginations so will your mind be, for the soul is dyed by its imaginations.

For travelling by water there is nothing like a boat. For travelling by land there is nothing like a cart. This because a boat moves readily in water; but were you to try to push it on land you would never succeed in making it go.

Thus the occupations and businesses of the world have become more and more complicated and troublesome, chiefly owing to the fact that men have forgotten that their real necessities are only three--clothing, food, and shelter, and that these exist only with the object of making the body a fit vehicle for the soul in its journey towards the next world.

Why do the ignorant and unlearned confound men of knowledge and learning? What soul has knowledge and learning? That which knows the beginning and end and the reason which informs the whole substance and through all eternity governs the Whole according to appointed cycles.

The governing principle it is which wakes itself up and adapts itself, making itself of whatever kind it wills and making all that happens to it appear to be of whatever kind it wills.

But no visions are necessary to prove what will occur to every thinking man, that when death has stripped him of his senses and left him nothing but his bare personality, if while on earth he has too closely attached himself to objects perceived by the senses, such as wives, children, wealth, lands, slaves, male and female, etc., he must necessarily suffer when bereft of those objects.

Whenever you are obliged by circumstances to be in a way troubled, quickly return to yourself, and do not, more than you are obliged, fall out of step; for you will ​be more master of the measure by continually returning to it.

Surely it is an excellent plan, when you are seated before delicacies and choice foods, to impress upon your imagination that this is the dead body of a fish, that the dead body of a bird or a pig; and again, that the Falernian wine is grape juice and that robe of purple a lamb's fleece dipped in a shellfish's blood; and in matters of sex intercourse, that it is attrition of an entrail and a convulsive expulsion of mere mucus. Surely these are excellent imaginations, going to the heart of actual facts and penetrating them so as to see the kind of things they really are. You should adopt this practice all through your life, and where things make an impression which is very plausible, uncover their nakedness, see into their cheapness, strip off the profession on which they vaunt themselves. For pride is an arch-seducer of reason, and just when you fancy you are most certainly busy in good works, then you are most certainly the victim of imposture.

Some things are hastening to be, others to have come and gone, and a part of what is coming into being is already extinct. Flux and change renew the world incessantly, as the unbroken passage of time makes boundless eternity ever young. In this river, therefore, on which he cannot stand, which of these things that race past him should a man greatly prize? As though he should begin to set his heart on one of the little sparrows that fly past, when already it has gone away out of his sight. Truly the life of every man is itself as fleeting as the exhalation of spirit from his blood or the breath he draws from the atmosphere. For just as it is to draw in a single breath and to return it, which we do every moment, so is it to render back the whole power of respiration, which you acquired but yesterday or the day before, at birth, to that other world from which you first drew it in.

He who knows what God is, and who knows what Man is, has attained. Knowing what God is, he knows that he himself proceeded therefrom. Knowing what Man is, he rests in the knowledge of the known, waiting for the knowledge of the unknown.

All things come from that other world, starting from that common governing principle, or else are secondary consequences of it. Thus, even the lion's jaws, deadly poison, and every injurious thing, like a thistle or a bog, are by-products from those august and lovely principles. Do not, then, imagine them to be contrary to what you reverence, but reflect upon the fountain of all things.

He who sees what is now has seen all things, whatsoever came to pass from everlasting and whatsoever shall be unto unlimited time. For all things are of one kin and of one kind.

Whatever anyone may do or say, I am bound to be good; exactly as if gold or emerald or purple were continually to say this: 'whatever anyone may do or say, I am bound to be an emerald and to keep the colour that is mine.

In the heart of the enlightened man there is a window opening on the realities of the spiritual world, so that he knows, not by hearsay or traditional belief, but by actual experience, what produces wretchedness or happiness in the soul just as clearly and decidedly as the physician knows what produces sickness or health in the body.

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.

When a man offends against you, think at once what conception of good or ill it was which made him offend. And, seeing this, you will pity him, and feel neither surprise nor anger. For you yourself still conceive either the same object as he does to be good, or something else of the same type; you are bound, therefore, to excuse him. If, on the other hand, you no longer conceive things of that kind to be goods or ills, you will the more easily be kind to one whose eye is darkened.

A man does not seek to see himself in running water, but in still water. For only what is itself still can instil stillness into others.

Man is capable of existing on several different planes, from the animal to the angelic, and precisely in this lies his danger of falling to the very lowest. In the Koran it is written, "We proposed the burden (responsibility or free-will) to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, and they refused to undertake it. But man took it upon himself: Verily he is ignorant." Neither animals nor, angels can change their appointed rank and place. But man may sink to the animal or soar to the angel, and this is the meaning of his undertaking that "burden" of which the Koran speaks.

A man who knows that he is a fool is not a great fool.

Wipe away the impress of imagination. Stay the impulse which is drawing you. Define the time which is present. Recognize what is happening to yourself or another. Divide and separate the event into its causal and material aspects. Dwell in thought upon your last hour. Leave the wrong done by another where the wrong arose.

Man was intended to mirror forth the light of the knowledge of God, but if he arrives in the next world with his soul thickly coated with the rust of sensual indulgence he will entirely fail of the object for which he was made.

Direct your thought to what is being said. Let your mind gain an entrance into what is occurring and who is producing it.

And every one who attaches importance to the external, becomes internally without resource.

Many profess to love God, but a man may easily test himself by watching which way the balance of his affection inclines when the commands of God come into collision with some of his desires.

As to what the world does and the way in which people are happy now, I know not whether such happiness be real happiness or not.

It is absurd that a man's expression should obey and take a certain shape and fashion of beauty at the bidding of the mind, whereas the mind itself is not shaped and fashioned to beauty by itself.

Live out your life without restraint in entire gladness even if all men shout what they please against you, even if wild beasts tear in pieces the poor members of this lump of matter that has hardened about you. For, in the midst of all this, what hinders the mind from preserving its own self in tranquillity, in true judgement about what surrounds it and ready use of what is submitted to it, so that judgement says to what befalls it: 'this is what you are in reality, even if you seem other in appearance'.

Some Sufis have had the unseen world of heaven and hell revealed to them when in a state of death-like trance. On their recovering consciousness their faces betray the nature of the revelations they have had by marks of joy or terror.

It is ridiculous not to flee from one's own wickedness, which is possible, but to flee from other men's wickedness, which is impossible.

Wipe out impressions by continually saying to yourself: it is in my power now not to allow any wickedness to be in this soul of mine, any appetite or disturbance at all, but seeing what is the character of them all I employ each according to its worth. Remember this power as Nature requires.

The men of this world all rejoice in others being like themselves, and object to others not being like themselves.

If you suffer pain because of some external cause, what troubles you is not the thing but your decision about it, and this it is in your power to wipe out at once. But if what pains you is something in your own disposition, who prevents you from correcting your judgement? And similarly, if you are pained because you fail in some particular action which you imagine to be sound, why not continue to act rather than to feel pain? 'But something too strong for you opposes itself. Then do not be pained, for the reason why the act is not done does not rest with you. 'Well, but if this be left undone, life is not worth living? Depart then from life in a spirit of good will, even as he dies who achieves his end, contented, too, with what opposes you.

Each should watch for whatever may be revealed to his own heart, and not make any movements from mere self-conscious impulse.

The raison d’être of a fish-trap is the fish. When the fish is caught, the trap may be ignored. The raison d’être of a rabbit-snare is the rabbit. When the rabbit is caught, the snare may be ignored. The raison d’être of language is an idea to be expressed. When the idea is expressed, the language may be ignored.

He who does not know that the Universe exists, does not know where he is. He who does not know the purpose of the Universe, does not know who he is nor what the Universe is. He who fails in any one of these respects could not even declare the purpose of his own birth. What then do you imagine him to be, who shuns or pursues the praises of men who applaud, and yet do not know either where they are or who they are?

Music and dancing do not put into the heart what is not there already, but only fan into a flame dormant emotions.

The sun appears to be poured down and indeed is poured in every direction but not poured out. For this pouring is extension, and so its beams are called rays from their being extended. Now you may see what kind of thing a ray is by observing the sun's light streaming through a chink into a darkened room. For it is stretched in a straight line, and rests so to speak upon any solid body that meets it and cuts off the flow of air beyond. It rests there and does not glide off or fall. The pouring and diffusion of the understanding then should be similar, in no way a pouring out, but an extension, and it should not rest forcibly or violently on obstacles that meet it nor yet fall down, but stand still and illuminate the object that receives it; for that which does not reflect it will rob itself of the light.

All things are the same: familiar in experience, transient in time, sordid in their material; all now such as in the days of those whom we have buried.

To live with your wife, exclaimed Hui Tzŭ, and see your eldest son grow up to be a man, and then not to shed a tear over her corpse,—this would be bad enough. But to drum on a bowl, and sing; surely this is going too far. Not at all, replied Chuang Tzŭ. When she died, I could not help being affected by her death. Soon, however, I remembered that she had already existed in a previous state before birth, without form, or even substance; that while in that unconditioned condition, substance was added to spirit; that this substance then assumed form; and that the next stage was birth. And now, by virtue of a further change, she is dead, passing from one phase to another like the sequence of spring, summer, autumn and winter. And while she is thus lying asleep in Eternity, for me to go about weeping and wailing would be to proclaim myself ignorant of these natural laws.

All that your eyes behold will very quickly pass away, and those who saw it passing will themselves also pass away very quickly; and he who dies in extreme age will be made equal in years with the infant who meets an untimely end.

You not being a fish yourself," said Hui Tzŭ, "how can you possibly know in what consists the pleasure of fishes?" "And you not being I," retorted Chuang Tzŭ, "how can you know that I do not know?" "If I, not being you, cannot know what you know," urged Hui Tzŭ, "it follows that you, not being a fish, cannot know in what consists the pleasure of fishes.

One vital spirit is distributed in irrational creatures: one mind spirit is divided in rational creatures; just as one element earth is in all earthy things and we see by one light and breathe one atmosphere, all that have sight and vital spirit.

These harmonies are echoes of that higher world of beauty which we call the world of spirits; they remind man of his relationship to that world, and produce in him an emotion so deep and strange that he himself is powerless to explain it.

Those who deny the reality of the ecstasies and other spiritual experiences of the Sufis merely betray their own narrow-mindedness and shallow insight.

Today I escaped all circumstance, or rather I cast out all circumstance, for it was not outside me, but within, in my judgements.

Every evening he should examine his heart as to what he has done to see whether he has gained or lost in his spiritual capital.

Things stand outside our doors, themselves by themselves, neither knowing nor reporting anything about themselves. What then does report about them? The governing self.

You have the power to strip off many superfluities which trouble you and are wholly in your own judgement; and you will make a large room at once for yourself by embracing in your thought the whole Universe, grasping ever-continuing Time and pondering the rapid change in the parts of each object, how brief the interval from birth to dissolution, and the time before birth a yawning gulf even as the period after dissolution equally boundless.

What governing selves are theirs, what mean ends have they pursued, for what mean reasons do they give love and esteem! Accustom yourself to look at their souls in nakedness. When they fancy that their blame hurts or their praise profits, how great their vanity.

It is in your power to convert the man who has gone astray, for every man who does wrong is going wrong from the goal set before him and has gone astray. And what harm have you suffered? For you will find that none of those with whom you are angry has done the kind of thing by which your understanding was likely to become worse and it is there that your ills and harms have their entire existence.

But the delight of knowledge still falls short of the delight of vision, just as our pleasure in thinking of those we love is much less than the pleasure afforded by the actual sight of them.

God is one, but He will be seen in many different ways, just as one object is reflected in different ways by different mirrors, some showing it straight, and some distorted, some clearly and some dimly.

Contemplate, therefore, in thought what comes to pass in such a hidden way, and see the force which makes things gravitate or tend upwards, not with the eyes, but none the less clearly.

The intention will reveal itself, it ought to be graven on the forehead; the tone of voice should give that sound at once; the intention should shine out in the eyes at once, as the beloved at once reads the whole in the glances of lovers.

If then, when you arrive at last at your final exit, resigning all else, you honour your governing self alone and the divine element within you, if what you dread is not that some day you will cease to live, but rather never to begin at all to live with Nature, you will be a man worthy of the Universe that gave you birth, and will cease to be a stranger in your own country, surprised by what is coming to pass every day, as at something you did not look to see, and absorbed in this thing or in that. 2 God beholds the governing selves of all men stripped of their material vessels and coverings and dross; for with His own mind alone He touches only what has flowed and

Consider the causes of reality stripped of their covering; the relations of your actions; the nature of pain, pleasure, death, fame; who is not the author of his own unrest; how none is hindered by his neighbour; that all things are what we judge them to be.

Whatever we love in any one we love because it is a reflection of Him.

In the case of one who gives the impression that he did wrong, how do I know that this was a wrong? And, if he certainly did wrong, how do I know that he was not condemning himself, and so what he did was like tearing his own face? One who wants an evil man not to do wrong is like a man who wants a fig tree not to produce its acrid juice in the figs, and infants not to cry, and a horse not to neigh, and whatever else is inevitable. With that kind of disposition what else can he do? Very well then, if you are man enough, cure this disposition.

If it is not right, don't do it: if it is not true, don't say it. Let your impulse be to see always and entirely what precisely it is which is creating an impression in your imagination, and to open it up by dividing it into cause, matter, relation, and into the period within which it will be bound to have ceased.

Perceive at last that you have within yourself something stronger and more divine than the things which create your passions and make a downright puppet of you. What is my consciousness at this instant? Fright, suspicion, appetite? Some similar evil state?

All things are what we judge them to be, and that rests with you. Put away, therefore, when you will, the judgement; and, as though you had doubled the headland, there is calm, 'all smoothly strewn and a waveless bay.

How is the governing self employing itself? For therein is everything. The rest are either within your will or without it, ashes and smoke.

Jesus said, "The kingdom is like a man who had a hidden treasure in his field without knowing it. And after he died, he left it to his son. The son did not know (about the treasure). He inherited the field and sold it. And the one who bought it went plowing and found the treasure. He began to lend money at interest to whomever he wished."

The prevailing opinion among theologians as well as in the mind of the ordinary man seems to be that Judaism and mysticism stand at the opposite poles of thought, and that, therefore, such a phrase as Jewish mysticism is a glaring and indefensible contradiction in terms.

The Principle of Polarity: Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.

He has the immediate vision; he hears the still small voice speaking clearly to him in the silence of his soul.

Eager to escape sorrow, men rush into sorrow; from desire of happiness they blindly slay their own happiness, enemies to themselves; they hunger for happiness and suffer manifold pains.

They seem to have lived on the borderland of an unusual ecstasy, experiencing extraordinary invasions of the Divine, hearing mystic sounds and seeing mystic visions which, to them, were the direct and immediate revelations of the deepest and most sacred truths.

The whole of Jewish mysticism is really nothing but a commentary on the Jewish Bible, an attempt to pierce through to its most intimate and truest meaning; and what is the Bible to the Jew but the admonisher to be loyal to the traditions of his fathers?

The Hermetic Philosophy is the only Master Key which will open all the doors of the Occult Teachings!

The legends of the "Philosopher's Stone" which would turn base metal into Gold, was an allegory relating to Hermetic Philosophy, readily understood by all students of true Hermeticism.

The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of Understanding.

The Principle of Correspondence: As above, so below; as below, so above.

The Principle of Mentalism: THE ALL IS MIND; The Universe is Mental.

The Principle of Vibration: Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.

The Principles of Truth are Seven; he who knows these, understandingly, possesses the Magic Key before whose touch all the Doors of the Temple fly open.

All thinkers, in all lands and in all times, have assumed the necessity for postulating the existence of this Substantial Reality.

Nothing stands still - everything is being born, growing, dying - the very instant a thing reaches its height, it begins to decline--the law of rhythm is in constant operation--there is no reality, enduring quality, fixity, or substantiality in anything -- nothing is permanent but Change.

Mastery consists not in abnormal dreams, visions and fantastic imaginings or living, but in using the higher forces against the lower--escaping the pains of the lower planes by vibrating on the higher. Transmutation, not presumptuous denial, is the weapon of the Master.

So, finally, students all, grasp the advantage of Mentalism, and learn to know, use and apply the laws resulting therefrom. But do not yield to the temptation which, as The Kybalion states, overcomes the half-wise and which causes them to be hypnotized by the apparent unreality of things, the consequence being that they wander about like dream-people dwelling in a world of dreams, ignoring the practical work and life of man, the end being that "they are broken against the rocks and torn asunder by the elements, by reason of their folly."

To all that is Finite, the Universe must be treated as Real, and life, and action, and thought, must be based thereupon, accordingly, although with an ever understanding of the Higher Truth.

Heat and Cold are identical in nature, the differences being merely a matter of degrees. Light and Darkness are poles of the same thing, with many degrees between them.

What Hermetists know as "the Law of Paradox" is an aspect of the Principle of Polarity. The Hermetic writings are filled with references to the appearance of the Paradox in the consideration of the problems of Life and Being. The Teachers are constantly warning their students against the error of omitting the "other side" of any question. And their warnings are particularly directed to the problems of the Absolute and the Relative, which perplex all students of philosophy, and which cause so many to think and act contrary to what is generally known as "common sense."

While All is in THE ALL, it is equally true that THE ALL is in ALL. To him who truly understands this truth hath come great knowledge.

According to the Principle of Correspondence, which embodies the truth: "As Above so Below; as Below, so Above," all of the Seven Hermetic Principles are in full operation on all of the many planes, Physical Mental and Spiritual.

Only the most advanced Hermetists are able to grasp the Inner Teachings regarding the state of existence, and the powers manifested on the Spiritual Planes.

This Fourth Dimension may be called "The Dimension of Vibration".

All manifestation of thought, emotion, reason, will or desire, or any mental state or condition, are accompanied by vibrations, a portion of which are thrown off and which tend to affect the minds of other persons by "induction."

By a knowledge of the Principle of Vibration, as applied to Mental Phenomena, one may polarize his mind at any degree he wishes, thus gaining a perfect control over his mental states, moods, etc.

The Universal Ether, which is postulated by science without its nature being understood clearly, is held by the Hermetists to be but a higher manifestation of that which is erroneously called matter--that is to say, Matter at a higher degree of vibration--and is called by them "The Ethereal Substance."

Good and Bad are not absolute--we call one end of the scale Good and the other Bad, or one end Good and the other Evil, according to the use of the terms.

He will see that these states are all matters of degree, and seeing thus, he will be able to raise or lower the vibration at will--to change his mental poles, and thus be Master of his mental states, instead of being their servant and slave.

THE ALL and The Many are the same, the difference being merely a matter of degree of Mental Manifestation.

The change is not in the nature of a transmutation of one thing into another thing entirely different - but is merely a change of degree in the same things, a vastly important difference.

The importance of this will be appreciated by any thinking person who realizes what creatures of moods, feelings and emotion the majority of people are, and how little mastery of themselves they manifest.

The man who enjoys keenly, is subject to keen suffering; while he who feels but little pain is capable of feeling but little joy.

A careful examination will show that what we call "Chance" is merely an expression relating to obscure causes; causes that we cannot perceive; causes that we cannot understand.

There is a relation existing between everything that has gone before, and everything that follows.

We are able to see now, with eyes made clear by knowledge, that everything is governed by Universal Law in - that the infinite number of laws are but manifestations of the One Great Law-the LAW which is THE ALL.

The Cathode pole is the Mother of all of the strange phenomena which have rendered useless the old textbooks, and which have caused many long accepted theories to be relegated to the scrap-pile of scientific speculation.

The latest word of science is that the atom is composed of a multitude of corpuscles, electrons, or ions revolving around each other and vibrating at a high degree and intensity.

The so-called Negative pole of the battery is really the pole in and by which the generation or production of new forms and energies is manifested.

The purpose of this work is not to give an extended account of psychic phenomena but rather to give to the student a master-key whereby He may unlock the many doors leading into the parts of the Temple of Knowledge which he may wish to explore.

Rhythm may be neutralized by an application of the Art of Polarization.

Not every one who speaketh in the spirit is a prophet, but he is so who hath the disposition of the Lord; by their disposition they therefore shall be known, the false prophet and the prophet.

Let every one that cometh in the name of the Lord be received, but afterwards ye shall examine him and know his character, for ye have knowledge both of good and evil.

Ezekiel's image of Yahve riding upon the chariot of the 'living creatures,' accompanied by sights and voices, movements and upheavals in earth and heaven, lying outside the range of the deepest ecstatic experiences of all other Old Testament personages, was for the Jewish mystic a real opening, an unveiling, of the innermost and impenetrable secrets locked up in the interrelation of the human and the divine.

The human movement from within is but a response to a larger Divine movement from without.

One can see quite clearly how its governing idea is based on a conception general to all the mystics, that the quest for the ultimate Reality is a kind of pilgrimage, and the seeker is a traveller towards his home in God.

It appears to have been a confused angelology, one famous angel Metatron playing a conspicuous part.

As Evelyn Underhill says: "Mysticism shows itself not merely as an attitude of mind and heart, but as a form of organic life.

The mediæval Christian mystics - Ruysbroeck, Catherine of Genoa, Jacob Boehme, and others - appeal constantly to the same figure for the expression of their deepest thoughts on the relations between man and the Godhead.

The choice of the metaphor probably rests on the fact that 'fire' can be adapted to symbolise either or both of the following truths: (a) the brightness, illumination which comes when the goal has been reached, when the quest for the ultimate reality has at last been satisfied; (b) the all-penetrating, all-encompassing, self-diffusing force of fire is such a telling picture of the mystic union of the soul and God.

This Thought of Enlightenment has arisen within me I know not how, even as a gem might be gotten by a blind man from a dunghill.

And now that thou hast made diligent search and found therein nothing essential, say wherefore thou still clingest to the body.

While being external to man, it is, in a sense, internal too, Sa‘adiah being of opinion that they were visions seen during prophetic ecstasy rather than outward realities.

The Passions lie not in the objects of sense, nor in the sense-organs, nor between them, nor elsewhere; where do they lie?

In like manner the forces without me I cannot control; but I will control the thought within me, and what need have I for control of the rest?

The Rabbi, however, who stayed on and succeeded in eliciting from the Shechinah a promise that the ministering angels should henceforth cease from troubling him, is the type of the mystic who feels the mental and physical elation, the joy, the rapture, the triumph consequent upon the conviction of his having, at last, reached the goal of his quest - the sight, sound and touch of the Ultimate Reality.

Writers on mysticism, no matter to what school of religious thought they may happen to belong, familiarise us with the great fact that the mystic, by reason of the high levels of spiritual intensity on which his life is lived, experiences certain physical sensations which enable him to see or to hear something of the mystery of the Divine Presence.

His whole life is, as it were, a response to it, infected with it, absorbed in it.

One of the distinguishing features of the mystical temperament is the contrast in the effects which this sudden invasion of a Divine Presence had upon the objects of the visitation. The two Rabbis who left the synagogue did so, most probably, as the result of the fearful weakening and depressing effect of the vision. The Rabbi, however, who stayed on and succeeded in eliciting from the Shechinah a promise that the ministering angels should henceforth cease from troubling him, is the type of the mystic who feels the mental and physical elation, the joy, the rapture, the triumph consequent upon the conviction of his having, at last, reached the goal of his quest - the sight, sound and touch of the Ultimate Reality.

The Shechinah is for Israel only. The Shechinah is primarily for Israel. God is near to the Jew, far from the non-Jew. These are seemingly natural and correct deductions from the Rabbinic records. If so, is not the term 'mysticism' as applied to the Shechinah a misnomer, seeing that the primal assumption of mysticism is the truth that every soul, notwithstanding race or religion, can have intimate intercourse with the Divine? The answer is this: The title 'Jew' or 'Israelite' is frequently used by the Rabbis in a more comprehensive sense than they are usually given credit for.

The Speaker of the Truth has said that from thought alone come all our countless terrors and griefs.

All this has sprung from the sinful thought, as the Saint's song tells; thus in the threefold world there is no foe to fear save the thought.

It is a mystical philosophy drawn from the sounds, shapes, relative positions, and numerical values of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

In all probability it originated with the Rabbis of the Talmud in the first three centuries of the Christian era. Thus, a passage in T.B. Ḥaggigah, speaks of the "Ten agencies through which God created the world, wisdom, insight, cognition, strength, power, inexorableness, justice, right, love, mercy."

In no place and by naught can the mind be destroyed, for it is unembodied; but from imaginations clinging to the body it suffers with the body's hurt.

Can the ill-will of others towards me touch me in this life or in births to come, that I should dislike it?

All are under the sway of their own works; who am I to undo this?

All offences, all the various sins, spring of necessity from outer forces; none are self-guided.

I seek not suffering, yet in my folly seek the cause of suffering; since my pain comes from my own offence, why shall I be wroth with another?

Thou hast framed the Thought of Enlightenment in desire to make all creatures happy: then why now art thou wroth with creatures who of themselves find happiness?

"Nay, I am glad, forsooth, because my neighbour is pleased with me." But what is it to me whether my neighbour is pleased with me or with another? the joy is his; not the smallest share of it is mine.

They who rise against me to crush my glory and honour are in truth working to save me from falling into hell.

Woe unto the man," says Simeon ben Yoḥai," who sees in the Torah nought but simple narratives and ordinary words. The narratives (or words) of the Law are the garment of the Law. Woe unto him who takes this garment for the Law itself!

The idea of God using the Heavenly Man (Adam ‘Ilā-ā) as a chariot on which to descend indicates a noteworthy identity of teaching in the Zohar and Plotinus.

The idea of the Heavenly Man, or Adam Kadmon ('First' or 'Original' Man), or Shechinta Tā-tā-ā ('Lower' or 'Terrestrial' Shechinah), is vital to an understanding of the Zohar and of all Kabbalistic literature.

For, inside man, there is the secret of the Heavenly Man. . . . Everything below takes place in the same manner as everything above.

In the firmament above which covers all things, signs are engraven in which are fixed hidden things and secrets.

The Ancient One, the most Hidden of the hidden, is a high beacon, and we know Him only by His lights, which illuminate our eyes so abundantly. His Holy Name is no other thing than these lights.

These three, father, mother, son (i.e. the two Sefirot, viz. Wisdom and Intelligence, and their offspring Reason), hold and unite in themselves all that which has been, which is, and which will be.

The universal infiltration of the light of the En-Sof, its diffusion throughout all the Sefirot, gave rise to the idea of the existence of a changeable and an unchangeable element in each of the Sefirot.

Passion is overcome only by him who has won through stillness of spirit the perfect vision.

Neoplatonism gave to the Zohar the idea of the soul as an emanation from the 'Overmind' of the universe. There was originally one 'Universal Soul,' or 'Over-soul,' which, as it were, broke itself up and encased itself in individual bodies. All individual souls are, hence, fragments of the 'Oversoul,' so that although they are distinct from one another they are, in reality, all one.

All souls must undergo transmigration; and men do not understand the ways of the Holy One (blessed be He). They know not that they are brought before the tribunal both before they enter into this world and after they leave it. They know not the many transmigrations and hidden trials which they have to undergo, nor do they know the number of souls and spirits (Ruaḥ and Nefesh) which enter into the world, and which do not return to the Palace of the Heavenly King. Men do not know how the souls revolve like a stone which is thrown from a sling. But the time is drawing nigh when these hidden things will be revealed.

Would that my fellow-creatures should understand that all is as the void!

In life are oceans of sorrow, fierce and boundless beyond compare, a scant measure of power, a brief term of years; our years are spent in vain strivings for existence and health, in hunger, faintness, and labour, in sleep, in vexation, in fruitless commerce with fools, and discernment is hard to win.