Selected from
The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga
by Paul Brunton
QUOTES FROM THE HIDDEN TEACHING BEYOND YOGA by Paul Brunton
Dear Reader: This 9th PB e-teaching from The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga widens the perspective of the earlier presentations. PB writes that “whereas western thinkers usually claimed that nobody had discovered ultimate truth, the authors of old Asiatic books claimed that ultimate truth was certainly discoverable and that a few sages had definitely known it.” The HTBY explains the steps the student should develop to prepare for the study of Philosophy, the love of truth. The result of this work brings not only the feeling of having reached truth but also gives the irrefutable knowledge of truth and arises out of the balance between knowledge and feeling. The following quotes give the student some ideas of the material, but devoted study and practice of these ideas are necessary to grasp the benefits.
Quotes from The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga
Every writer or teacher must perforce take up a different position according to the grade of development of the mind with which he is dealing… The purpose of these pages should not be misconstrued, They are designed to show a yoga-path suited to Western people… they show how to achieve certain satisfactions, but they do not attempt at this stage to solve the mystery of the universe… When peace of mind and concentration of thought have been gained, then only will one be fit and ready to embark on the quest of Ultimate Truth. We are still in the process of unveiling a subtle and startling wisdom which not one person in a million has yet grasped.
– Quote appears in both The Quest of the Overself and The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga
The sage has sought and found his basic happiness in the Mind, which is his inalienable possession and of which no catastrophe can rob him.
We may accumulate wealth if we wish to, possess property and estimate the usefulness of money, love, and family and friends, but the moment we permit these things to absorb our whole time so that we have neither mind nor time to give to the quest of understanding what we are here for, then they become a disguised curse and a source of latent suffering.
Struggle must continue while the world lasts but it will gradually be refined, modified, dignified and purged of its physical brutality. We must therefore admit with Socrates: “Evil, O Glaucon, will not vanish from the earth. How should it, if it is the name of the imperfection through whose defeat the perfect types acquire their value?” and with Buddha: “Struggle there must be, for all life is a struggle of some kind.” But Buddha also pointed out that the conflict in life is not really between good and evil but between knowledge and ignorance. We must remember that the sages refuse to recognize evil as a positive independent existence but place it in the limited view of the man who believes in it. Our task is to learn wisdom from all experience, from pain as from pleasure, from cruelty as from kindness, and to express in the arena of everyday life just what we have learnt. In this way everything that happens gives us a better foothold for future living.
The practical lesson is: Change the prevailing tenor of your thoughts and you will help to change, in time, the prevailing condition of your affairs. Correct your mental and ethical errors and the correction will ultimately tend to become apparent in better character and improved environment. To a considerable extent man builds and changes his environment, constructs the history of his life and shapes his own circumstances by the simple power of mind for destiny is ultimately self-earned and mind- made. Karma shows how this can be so, and the doctrine of mentalism shows why this must be so.
Lastly we must learn through yoga-practice and philosophic reflection the art of being unruffled. For troubles must come, but as they come so will they go. The same power that brought them will also take them away. Fortune is a turning wheel. Meanwhile the mind should remain firmly anchored where it belongs – in truth, not in illusion. p. 390