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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.

Bede Griffiths

To know all things in the Word is thus to know all the suffering of the world transfigured by the resurrection, somehow reconciled and atoned in eternal life.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Eternal Life Resurrection Suffering World
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.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Christian Together Understanding
The main theme of the Bible is the restoration of humanity and, through humanity, of the whole of creation to its original harmony.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Humanity Restoration Spiritual
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.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Age Long Mean
I was being called to surrender the very citadel of my self. I was completely in the dark. I did not really know what repentance was or what I was required to repent of. It was indeed the turning point of my life.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Dark Self Surrender
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

Beautiful Discovery Heart
This process of change since my stroke has been very gradual. It is going on all the time… It is partly a physical transformation.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Body Change Heart
There is no pain of any creature from the beginning to the end of time which was not ‘known’ at this point and thus transmuted.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Beginning Point Transmuted
The one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Abandonment One Self Thing
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.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Ideas Spiritual Unique
Stillness within one individual can affect society beyond measure.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Individual Society Stillness
…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.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

People Powerful Spiritual
Now what exists within that small space, that is to be sought, that is to be understood.’ This is the great discovery of the Upanishads, this inner shrine, this guha, or cave of the heart, where the inner meaning of life, of all human existence, is to be found.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Attachment Cave Guha Human
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.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Church Reality Spiritual
Above all we have to go beyond words and images and concepts. No imaginative vision or conceptual framework is adequate to the great reality.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Adequate Reality Vision
I had made myself the center of my own existence and had my back turned to God.
BEDE GRIFFITHS

Existence Made Own

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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