' The Supreme '...

Even the glimpse is so dazzling that it can never be forgotten and will tend gradually to reorientate the whole life.

Henceforth this new element with all the immense assurance it conveys will characterize his inner life.

Thus his outward life becomes a consecrated one.

He feels safely held by a power higher than his own.

He becomes strong enough to meet life face to face, not suborned by its hardships any more than by its happinesses.

"The life of that person is beautiful and blessed who has properly and adequately known the Mind which exists within the mind," says an old text, The Yoga of the Sage Vasistha.

The quest is not a coldly intellectual affair nor a vaguely dream-life one.

He who has adequately comprehended its significance is stirred to his innermost depths with a devotion to it, a reverence for the Real which spreads outward and in time comes to animate both his feelings and his activities.

If the Supreme escapes all definition, it does not escape life.



-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 1:
Toward Defining Philosophy > # 207 Paul Brunton