The Inner Reality: Jesus, Krishna, and the Way of Awakening by Paul Brunton

Author:Paul Brunton [Brunton, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy / Eastern [PHI003000]
ISBN: 9781623170165
Google: h6zPCwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1623170168
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2016-04-04T22:00:00+00:00

But if I do not advocate a cowardly renunciation of the world—which is indeed utterly impossible to ninety-five percent of Westerners—I do advocate that one should place one’s worldly life on the most solid of all foundations. Our own active life takes up so much time and energy that it does render the spiritual relaxation difficult.

You should seek to simplify existence, to cut down your wants, and to diminish your cares, that more time and energy may be found for a divinely lived leisure.

If you have such a passion for truth that you find certain social duties are standing in the way, then they ought to go. But so far as is possible, let them stay. If they become an obstacle, then they must go, because truth comes first. It is unnecessary to relinquish all social formalities. However, it is wise to eliminate the nonessential ones. Let your life be as simple as possible within your station, then you will have the mind freer to reflect. If your mind is wholly taken up with other things, how can you think about truth? To live more simply does not mean to become a barbarian. Try to find the golden mean and live free from useless desires. The moment you become obsessed by desires to play a part in society, there is always the danger that those desires will keep you too busy to attend to quiet thought and higher study. Do what you must do, but not a bit more.

You need a sense of proportion. The forces of creation did not bring this wide-flung universe into being because of one single person—yourself. Your presence is not necessary to the functioning of the universal machine. Similarly, society and civilization can very well get along without one for a time, and both will be the better for the change.

The first and foremost necessity in learning to control your mind is to have definite periods of spiritual retreat, to withdraw into solitude from habitual personal activities. Such withdrawals need last only a day or a weekend at a time. On the other hand, they may extend to a month or six months, or even to a year or two. The period cannot be predetermined or prescribed, but if you are progressing you will, at some time or other, feel a pressing inner urge to throw off the shackles of constant absorption in daily routine. You have heard someone say—or you have said it yourself—“I wish I could take a trip for a month or so and get away from everything.” That is a pressing inner urge, a spiritual desire to unfold. Whenever possible, you should seize an opportunity for freedom should it present itself, or better still, you should endeavour to create it, even if it be only for a few hours.

Men have become so steeped in material living, in the struggle to earn a livelihood, and in the distracting environment of great cities in which they find themselves forced to live, that in the last half-century they have become more and more obsessed by their material bodies.

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