The one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
BEDE GRIFFITHSIt 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’.
More Bede Griffiths Quotes
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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).
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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 -
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’.
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.
BEDE GRIFFITHS