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Knowing
"The knowledge of plurality begins life; but in the consciousness of unity is life's culmination."
- Sufi Hazrat Inayat Kahn
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When the mind is silent, beyond weakness or non concentration,
then it can enter into a world which is far beyond the mind:
the highest End.
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Upanishads (c. B.C. 800)
Contemplative prayer is silence, or "silent love".
In this (inner) silence, unbearable to the "outer" man,
the Father speaks to us His incarnate Word.
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Catechism of the Catholic Church: 2717.
Knowledge that is aquired
via the physical senses and discursive thought
veils a deeper knowing,
which is not aquired but revealed.
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- Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Many people were going to see an elephant
which was on display in a dark house.
Since seeing with the eye was impossible,
each one was feeling it with the palm of his hand.
One felt the trunk, saying "it's like a water pipe!"
Another touched the ear: "it's like a fan!"
Another felt the leg: "it's like a pillar!"
Another felt it's back: "it's like a throne!"
Whatever any of them heard about the elephant
they understood in light of the part he had touched.
Because of their diverse experiences
their speech was contradictory:
one called the elephant "straight" another "crooked".
If the light had been turned on
the differences would have dissapeared.
The eye of sense-perception is limited like the palm of the hand:
it has no capacity to encompass the entirety...
To the extent that we are able to receive unveiled light
we may behold with the eye of the vast Ocean of Reality
that which is now hidden from the eye of phenomena.
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- Jellaludin Rumi, Mathnawi III:1253->
Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.
To you is revealed the mystery of the Kingdom of God,
but to outsiders everything has to be explained by parables.
For seeing they see, and yet do not perceive;
and hearing they hear, and yet do not understand.
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- Jesus Christ, Matt 4:11-12
This secret Self in all beings is not apparent,
but it is seen by means of the supreme reason, the subtle,
by those who have the subtle vision.
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Katha Upanishad: I. 3. 12.
Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more,
but you will see me;
because I live, you will live also.
In that day you will know that I am in the Father,
and you in Me, and I in you.
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Jesus Christ
The one means that we have available in our mentality
( for attaining to universal truth )
is an extension of that form of knowledge by identity
which gives us the awareness of our own existence
( i.e. the self-awareness upon which
the knowledge of the contents of the self is based ).
If then we can extend our faculty of mental self-awareness
to awareness of the Self beyond and outside us
( Atman or Brahman of the Upanishads )
we may become possessors in experience of the truths
which form the contents of the Atman or Brahman in the universe.
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Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, Ch. VIII.
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