Become What You Are: Expanded Edition

For reason operates only on the surface of the mind, and however purely rational a man may suppose himself to be, when he sleeps he is caught unawares by the thoughts that he believes to have vanished.

Indeed, whoever imagines he has explained Zen has in fact only explained it away; it can no more be bound by a definition than the wind can be shut in a box without ceasing to be wind.

Kena Upanishad: “Brahman is unknown to those who know It, and is known to those who do not know It at all.” This knowing of Reality by unknowing is the psychological state of the man whose ego is no longer split or dissociated from its experiences, who no longer feels himself as an isolated embodiment of logic and consciousness, separate from the “

Nothing is easier than to give up the world because one is incompetent in the affairs of the world. There is no wisdom in scorning riches simply because one is unable to obtain them, nor in despising the pleasures of the senses because one has not the means of fulfilling them. If the desire for these things exists, and if that desire is thwarted by

In spite of all, however, psychoanalysis has a definite and valuable contribution for students of religion in our time. I say “in our time” because psychoanalysis is essentially a modern remedy for a modern ill; it exists for that period in human history for which the unconscious is a problem, and a problem it has been since man began to imagine th

Spiritual illumination is often described as absolute freedom of the soul, and we have seen that the One Reality is all-inclusive. Is the mind of the mystic singularly free and all-inclusive? If so, it would seem that his spirituality does not depend on thinking any special kinds of thoughts, on having a particular feeling ever in the background of

In fact, all the deities of the ancient theologies were known to the initiated as the inhabitants not of Olympus but of the human soul. They were not mere products of man’s imagination any more than his heart, lungs, and stomach are products of his imagination. On the contrary, they were very real forces belonging both to nature (the macrocosm), an

The snow is falling on the windowsill. Is this the activity of God? Maybe. But if anyone watches it in order to see God he will surely be disappointed. “No man hath seen God.” No, and in looking for God he may fail to see the snow. “Thou art Brahman!

You say you do not feel this abandonment right now. What do you expect to feel? It is not a feeling; it is feeling. It is not a thought; it is thinking. If it were a particular thought or feeling there could be coming into it and going out of it; but God is One and all-inclusive, and here there can be neither coming nor going, inside or outside. Mo

In fact you have always had this freedom, for the state of union with Brahman can neither be attained nor lost; all men and all things have it, in spite of themselves. It can only be realized, which is to say made real to you, by letting life live you for a while instead of trying to make yourself live life. You will soon reach the point where you