Obedience is detachment from the self. This is the most radical detachment of all. But what is the self? The self is the principle of reason and responsibility in us. It is the root of freedom, it is what makes us men.
BEDE GRIFFITHSIt is no longer a question of a Christian going about to convert others to the faith, but of each one being ready to listen to the other and so to grow together in mutual understanding.
More Bede Griffiths Quotes
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The main theme of the Bible is the restoration of humanity and, through humanity, of the whole of creation to its original harmony.
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I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God.
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The body itself is undergoing great changes. My problem before was that I was living largely from the head; and then after the stroke I got down into the heart.
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This was the very purpose of creation that each unique, individual being should participate in its own way in the divine Being, should realize its eternal ‘idea’ in God, should ‘become’ God by participation, God expressing himself through that unique being.
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The one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
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I had made myself the center of my own existence and had my back turned to God.
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This process of change since my stroke has been very gradual. It is going on all the time… It is partly a physical transformation.
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This is criterion by which the Church is to be judged, not by the forms of its doctrine or ritual, but by the reality of the reality of the love which it manifests.
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You must be ready to give up everything, not only material attachments but also human attachments – father, mother, wife, children – everything that you have. But the one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
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God has graced every tradition with insight into the divine mystery, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated-each has a gift to bring to the world.
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…the need to overawe people and demand obedience from them is powerful and seductive. It is a part of that world that the kingdom of heaven is not of.
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I am rediscovering the whole sexual dimension of life at the age of 86, really. And that also means discovering the feminine. So the whole of this dimension, which I had been seeking for a very long time, is now sort of opening itself up to me.
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It is no longer a question of a Christian going about to convert others to the faith, but of each one being ready to listen to the other and so to grow together in mutual understanding.
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Perseverance is the essential requirement in the practice of yoga. It has to be done day by day, week by week, year by year, until the mind is brought to the ‘still point’ where it is open to the grace of God.
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There is a beautiful expression of this in the Chandogya Upanishad: ‘There is this City of Brahman, (that is the body), and in this city there is a shrine, and in that shrine there is a small lotus, and in that lotus there is a small space, (akasa).
BEDE GRIFFITHS