I had made myself the center of my own existence and had my back turned to God.
BEDE GRIFFITHSObedience 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.
More Bede Griffiths Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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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The one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
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Above all we have to go beyond words and images and concepts. No imaginative vision or conceptual framework is adequate to the great reality.
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Stillness within one individual can affect society beyond measure.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
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.
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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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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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God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.
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In his (Christ’s) surrender on the cross all the pain and agony of mankind was concentrated at a single point, and passed through from death to immortality.
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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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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.
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It was God’s purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things on heaven and things on earth’.
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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.
BEDE GRIFFITHS