Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation homepage > Notebooks of Paul Brunton



The required condition of balance as the price of illumination refers also to correcting the lopsidedness of letting the conscious ego direct the whole man while resisting the super-conscious spiritual forces. In other words, balance is demanded between the intellect which seeks deliberate control of the psyche and the intuition which must be invited by passivity and allowed to manifest in spontaneity. When a man has trained himself to turn equally from the desire to possess to the aspiration to being possessed, when he can pass from the solely personal attitude to the one beyond it, when the will to manage his being and his life for himself and by himself is compensated by the willingness to let himself and his life be quiescent, then his being and his life are worked upon by higher forces. This is the kind of balance and completeness which the philosophic discipline must lead to so that the philosophic illumination may give him his second birth.

-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 3 : Its Requirements > # 278


-- Perspectives > Chapter 20: What Is Philosophy? > # 58