The state of craving blocks all deeper experience

The state of craving for anything blocks all deeper experience. Nothing of value can happen to a mind which knows exactly what it wants. For nothing the mind can visualize and want is of much value.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

Making the river Ganges flow uphill

The difficulty in weaning the mind from objects and fixing it on God is the same as in making the river Ganges flow uphill towards its source instead of its natural flow towards the ocean. Through strenuous efforts and renunciation, the mind must be trained to flow towards God, much against its will, if you want to free yourself from birth and death. There is no other way if you want to escape from worldly miseries and tribulations.

-Sivananda

Sensitivity - You must not be afraid to suffer

The more sensitive you become, the more likely you are to suffer over all that you see and hear around you. But should we become insensitive in order to avoid suffering? No, with such reasoning, we would quickly become as hard as rock. You must not be afraid to suffer, and in this regard, suffering must not even be given much consideration. It is preferable to enhance one's sensitivity, even if we have to suffer, because it is the degree of sensitivity which determines the grandeur, the nobility of the human being.

You must not, however, confuse sensitivity with sentimentality. According to initiatic science, to be sensitive is to be able to open oneself more and more to the splendour and wealth of heaven, to capture the marvels of the divine world to the point of barely sensing the stupidity, the vulgarity, and the meanness of human beings. The great masters, and above them the angels and archangels, do not suffer over ugliness; they no longer notice it. They see only beauty, and they live in unceasing joy.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

With the least effort one can obtain a vegetable diet

You know how repulsive the very sight of meat becomes to the organism accustomed to a vegetable diet. Thus, in practice one must accustom oneself to refinement and remember that even an elephant increases his strength through plants alone. One should not think that people eat meat because of poverty. With the least effort one can obtain a vegetable diet; besides, many nourishing herbs and roots are not utilized.

-Agni Yoga

How to find your soul mate

You are all seeking this love of the so-called soul mate. Well, if you want to find your soul mate, above all, do not look for it. Concern yourself only with living a pure, intense, and luminous life. Simply live this life and let it take its course; it is this that will attract your soul mate to you. You do not yet know what such a life can do to bring you the beings who have an affinity with you. One day you will say: 'I did not seek my soul mate, I did not go searching for my beloved, and yet she came...from the far reaches of the universe.'

To find this soul mate, many people put advertisements in the papers and go to all kinds of receptions and night-clubs, but what do they find? Is it so difficult to understand that it is by nourishing something vital and luminous within ourselves every day that we end by attracting this marvellous being we have hoped for?

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Sacrifice of the lower nature

People speak of sacrificing themselves as if it were a matter of giving up or losing something. When we make a sacrifice, we do not sacrifice 'ourselves', but rather something useless, harmful or inferior, in order to obtain something great, powerful and precious. It is impossible to escape this law: our divine nature cannot live if we do not sacrifice our lower nature.

-Aivanhov

No more holy function than that of the sex relation between man and woman

There is no more holy, sacred function than that of the sex relation between man and woman; nothing more god-like than the right use of the great creative principle, and nothing more fiendish in its final results than the abuse and misuse of the same. It matters not what forms and ceremonies or customs may be used to hedge the guilty, a marriage without true love, confidence and perfect trust, is only one form of prostitution.

-Hilarion, TT

No true Teacher collects sheep around himself

A disciple must prove that he has 'independence of action.' No true Teacher collects sheep around himself. He collects disciples. A disciple is one who can think and take action. He is not a sheep; he is not a blind follower; he is not a machine. A real disciple initiates actions, projects, and plans. He cultivates ideas and visions in his own way, in his own proper time, and at his own speed.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The causes of the maladies

What are the causes of the maladies afflicting people today? Impure air, polluted water, adulterated foodstuffs, etc. Even the minds are polluted. Most of the diseases are caused by aberrations of the mind. Ninety per cent of the diseases are psychological. Constant thinking about one's health is also the cause of many diseases. When the mind is directed towards sacred things, everything in a man's life becomes sacred.

-Sai Baba

The real significance of sex has been lost

Man has prostituted the truth, and the real significance of sex has been lost. Sex now means the satisfaction of the male desire for sensuous pleasure, and the assuaging of a physical appetite through the prostitution of the feminine aspect to that desire and appetite. This relation leads to no result as intended, but to a momentary second of satisfaction, and all of it is confined to the animal nature and the physical plane.

- Alice Bailey, EPI 299

The fear of death

All this concentration upon disaster is nothing new. You see, when humans are consumed with the end of the world, this is merely symbolic of their true fear. Their fear of death. Understand? The body will become no-thing. No matter what we do or how we shall prepare, the final disaster can not be overcome. Understand this and you will understand most of human thought, emotion, and activity.

-Babaji

Waste of sexual energy

Sex energy is a very valuable energy because it proceeds to become vitality, sensitivity in the brain cells, impressionability in the aura, creativity in the mind, magnetism and healing radiation in the centers. Through it we provide the materials or substance to build our higher vehicles on individual and global scales. For this reason it should not be wasted, but should be used for procreative purposes, and to create beauty, transmutation and bliss. When wasted in massive quantities by nations or large groups of human beings, the entire mechanism of human beings or nations cannot respond to creative energies, but rather distorts them, causing imbalance which invites destruction. Many nations and groups have been destroyed in this way.

People sometimes think that the source of energy is inexhaustible. This is true if you are at a stage in which you do not use the energy for any personal pleasure and satisfaction, but use it only to further the Divine Purpose. Below this level, your quota of energy is limited. This accounts for the fact that when people feel a lack of sexual energy, they consume more food and use more alcohol or other stimulants to fill the vacuum.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Voluntary Service - Agni Yoga

We say that life is service for evolution. One might find it simpler to say that life is evolution, but We emphasize the idea of service. Indeed, everything is in the process of evolution, but life's full expression can come only under conditions of voluntary service. It is the voluntary quality of service that indicates the rightness of the path.

In general, people dislike the concept of service. They dream about a time when there will be no need for it, and would be horrified to learn that all of life is unending service. They prefer to hear about Us, about Our labor and Our joy, and puzzled, they ask, “What kind of continual service is it when one can hear singing in the Brotherhood?”

People cannot understand that We use singing not as a pastime, but as a method for achieving harmony. It is hard for them to understand that art is a refined aid for evolution, and that We recommend the mastery of any art or craft as a rapid approach to service. A master will willingly agree to perpetual service in the perfection of his art, and feels no need to count the hours of labor.

Our life is a voluntary mastership and is not concerned with limits. Even on Earth it is possible to almost forget time, and service becomes joy. I affirm that one can prepare oneself for such service under all circumstances. One need not be a sage to accept life as something important and responsible. There are examples of even simple farmers who were ready to devote themselves to the idea of service. It was the loss of this concept of service that turned earthly life into slavery and insanity. But the time is approaching when people will be looking, even unwittingly, for the purpose of life. They will first refer to evolution in scientific terms, but the next step will be the acceptance of service as the right approach to life.

The Thinker taught that the concept of service can solve the riddles of life.

-Agni Yoga

The only value of the world

Use the world as a training ground for sacrifice, service, expansion of the heart and cleansing of the emotions. That is the only value it has.

-Sai Baba

To be loved, learn to live a poetic life

In their lives, most people are cold, stiff, dull, prosaic and unimaginative; nothing subtle emanates from them. They need to be loved, they need good relationships, but they seem to do everything possible to repel each other by remaining closed, gloomy and ponderous. How can anyone so unpleasant be loved? To be loved, you must learn to live a poetic life so you can bring warmth and light to others.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Live in Love

Start the day with Love. Live the day with Love. Fill the day with Love. Spend the day with Love. End the day with Love. Love calls; love responds. Live in Love. This is the way to God.

-Sai Baba

True Regret

When we meditate, things from the past come up. We may remember times when we treated others horribly -hurting their feelings, deceiving, manipulating them. While regret is necessary to purify these karmas, we often fall into guilt instead. Guilt and shame are obstacles, because they keep us trapped in our self-centered melodrama entitled "How Bad I Am." Regret, on the other hand, motivates us to refrain from acting like that again.

-Dalai Lama

Do you want to know if you truly love others?

Do you want to know if you truly love others? Then, here is a simple criterion: do you feel grateful to them? If you ask nothing of them, if you are moved to thank them in words - or merely in your thoughts - simply because they are there, because they exist, then yes, you can be sure that you love them. Otherwise, describe your feelings however you wish, but this is not love.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Building our Future

It is very important that we control our future. In what way? By living in a way that will lead us to our future. For example, if you want to have a great mind in the future, you must work on your mind now. If you want to have a healthy mind, you must think healthy thoughts. If you want to have a beautiful physical body, you must perform only those actions, emotions and mental activities that are in harmony with each other, and this harmony will create a harmonious body in the future.

People are very careful about putting money in the bank. They say, "Twenty years later I will have 20,000 dollars." But they do not think about what bank they are putting their thoughts into and what kind of thoughts they are putting into it. There is a more important bank than the bank where we are putting our dollars. In that bank you are putting all your capital; you are building the capital of your future and it will create earthly joys and heavenly joys. If you deposit material money and do not pay attention to your future becomingness, then you are losing whatever you build here. Your unfoldment of the future is like a garden in which you are going to bloom.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Meat eating makes man descend to the demonic level

I have been stressing the vital importance of people giving up this habit of eating non-vegetarian food even from my boyhood days. Meat eating fosters animal qualities in man making him descend to the demonic level; it is a heart-rending sight to see cows being slaughtered to serve as food for man. Violence in any form is evil and to kill innocent animals in tantamount to blatant savagery.

-Sai Baba