November 2020, #81 Living Wisdom
The book, Living Wisdom, is a collection of selected quotes by Paul Brunton and comments about the quotes from Anthony Damiani and class members at Wisdom’s Goldenrod. Several books have been published from these classes, namely, Looking into Mind, Standing in Your Own Way, and Living Wisdom. I’ve found they bear reading more than once because of the depth of the material. Currently I’m studying Living Wisdom and I’ve come across the following quote and the response from Anthony.
PB: “Philosophy will show a man how to find his better self, will lead him to cultivate intuition, will guide him to acquire sounder values and stronger will, will train him in right thinking and wise reflection, and, lastly will give him correct standards of ethical rightness or wrongness. If its theoretical pursuit is so satisfying that it can be an end and a reward in itself, its practical application to current living is immeasurably useful, valuable, and helpful.” (v.13, 20:1.337)
Anthony comments: “If the world is a product of wisdom, and your mind is constantly manifesting the world, then your mind is going to get acquainted with wisdom, and become wisdom, whether it likes it or not. That follows the premise that the mind is becoming the universe; the mind’s assimilation of those wisdom principles is a necessary consequence.”
S: “Are you saying that the point of identity between the individual mind and the cosmos is what will leave you with this wisdom?”
A: “Yes, we can say that the individual mind receives the World-Idea, portrays the World-Idea, then inhabits part of the World-Idea, and experiences it in a sensible way. It’s like when we say your mind is where the cloud is, because the whiteness of the cloud belongs to the mind and is a manifestation of a sensation that belongs to the mind. And obviously your mind is learning how clouds are being formed. That is why they keep telling you: All wisdom is within you. It’s within your mind….
“As long as we are prisoners of our past, our memories, our thoughts, we will never have a bright, happy, new thought. It will always be a rehashing of the same thing…. If you cancel out expectation, anticipation, the past, and the future, then you become a receptacle. There will spontaneously come to you thoughts which aren’t yours, which are bright, happy intuitions, and they actually do tell you something new. That’s what PB represents…. PB made that very clear. ..
“The wrong patterns or habits of thought must be broken if we are to approach wisdom. You can’t really approach wisdom as long as you are a prisoner or a pensioner of your past…. Universalization of your mind is taking place. Youare that which is getting metamorphosed into the world that you experience. And in that process, you imbibe the wisdom that’s inherent in the World-Idea. There’s no “me,” no “I,” nothing. You. The only you that’s there. The only you that I’m speaking to. If there’s another, let me know… “
“…You have to wait until the time comes…. When the time comes, the question will come up in the specifics that the circumstances of life provide for you. You cannot conceptualize that question. You can’t imagine it. …These words are only an expediency. But it is not a concept that’s available yet, to say that the individual mind is universalizing itself. Potentially it’s becoming universalized, because it’s becoming the World-Idea, and through that process of becoming universalized, it is assimilating wisdom. This is not something to talk about. This is something you’ve got to go home and think about for a long, long time.” (pp. 58-63)
PB: “NOT TO ESCAPE life, but to articulate it, is philosophy’s practical goal. Not to take the aspirant out of circulation, but to give him something worth doing is philosophy’s sensible ideal.” (v13, 20:1.340 and Perspectives, p. 261)
– Barbara P.
PBPF Board Member