Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 11, 2025
What are the over-personal spiritual norms and standards but stars by which to steer the direction of our course over the tempestuous sea of time? Everyone who guides his life in connection with reason guides it by means of some norm or other. Even the daily avocation requires this in order to be fulfilled.
It is the beyond, over-personal element which has kept them alive, and this element has always had a hard struggle to overcome and transform the here-and-now elements. Whenever the historical religions are traced back to their sources, there is discovered an element above the world in the souls of their founders and of their immediate followers.
Thus, religion becomes a personal task something that can never be realised until the whole nature comes to constant decisions of its own and acts upon those decisions in the light of what has expressed itself in the form of those over-personal norms which have further developed into a conception of, and communion with, the Godhead.
All over-personal ideals cannot connote the good of all, but the good of all must be present as possessing a validity of its own before any lower over-personal ideal can prevent landing men in disaster. The over-personal ideals which do not include the good of all often represent the good of a section alone, and all other sections have to become convinced that this is a good.
That we cannot locate in space this over-personal aspect of the ideal is probably a disadvantage. The same may be said of the content of individual experience, even when it does not for the time being hold before itself any ideal. But such over-personal elements mean more than was to be found on the level of knowing the world.
The vision at this higher stage constitutes not only the certainty of a path for man a path which leads to higher regions but brings forth hidden energies in order to start him on the enterprise. The whole vision is now seen to be possible of realisation only through personal decisions of the whole nature in the direction of the over-personal values which present themselves.
New convictions and new points of view have now actually occurred within his soul; man has become conscious of a spiritual inwardness, brought forth through the presence of an over-personal spiritual life coupled with his own spiritual needs. With the possession of such spiritual elements, how is it possible for him any more to look upon the world and human life with the same eyes as before?
At this level the spiritual life has gained a reality which is over-personal as well as personal. It is true that this over-personal reality is in the mind of the individual; but that does not mean that the reality is no more than a private experience. Its content is clearly now higher and more significant than the individual's own life.
If any one in this world," he added, "should be without them, it should be you." He looked at her respectfully yet with an admiration which he made no effort to conceal. There was nothing in the look over-personal. She accepted it with gratitude. "You are always kind," she murmured.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking