Mystics

"To a visitor who asked to become his disciple the Master said, "You may live with me, but don't become my follower." "Whom, then, shall I follow?" "No one. The day you follow someone you cease to follow Truth.""

"To a disciple who was forever complaining about others the Master said, "If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth.""

"This is what Wisdom means: To be changed without the slightest effort on your part, to be transformed, believe it or not, merely by waking to the reality that is not words, that lies beyond the reach of words. If you are fortunate enough to be Awakened thus, you will know why the finest language is the one that is not spoken, the finest action is the one that is not done and the finest change is the one that is not willed."

"What, concretely, is Enlightenment?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they believe it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around."

"The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet's greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation; but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you will not find God, any more than you will find the soul through careful examination of your body."

"Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know — all mystics — Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion — are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare."

"I wish to become a teacher of the Truth." "Are you prepared to be ridiculed, ignored and starving till you are forty-five?" "I am. But tell me: What will happen after I am forty-five?" "You will have grown accustomed to it."

"It was in the cause of his activities in the interest of peace that the late Dag Hammarskjöld lost his life. Of his work a great deal has been written, but I wish to take this opportunity to say how much I regret that he is not with us to receive the encouragement of this service he has rendered mankind. ... How many times his decisions helped to avert a world catastrophe will never be known. But there are many of such occasions, I am sure. But there can be no doubt that he steered the United Nations through one of the most difficult phases in its history. His absence from our midst today should be an enduring lesson for all peace-lovers, and a challenge to the nations of the world to eliminate those conditions in Africa, nay, anywhere, which brought about the tragic and untimely end to his life. This, the devoted Chief Executive of the world."

"I realise now that in comparison to him, I am a small man. He was the greatest statesman of our century."

"We meet in an hour of grief and challenge. Dag Hammarskjold is dead. But the United Nations lives. His tragedy is deep in our hearts, but the task for which he died is at the top of our agenda. A noble servant of peace is gone. But the quest for peace lies before us. The problem is not the death of one man — the problem is the life of this organization. It will either grow to meet the challenges of our age, or it will be gone with the wind, without influence, without force, without respect. Were we to let it die, to enfeeble its vigor, to cripple its powers, we would condemn our future. For in the development of this organization rests the only true alternative to war — and war appeals no longer as a rational alternative. Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer concern the great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war — or war will put an end to mankind. So let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjold did not live, or die, in vain. Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war."

"He has a physical stamina unique in the world, a man who night after night has gone with one or two hours of sleep and worked all day intelligently and devotedly."

"He would remind us how man once organized himself in families, how families joined together in tribes and villages, and how tribes and villages developed into peoples and nations. But the nation could not be the end of such development. In the Charter of the United Nations he saw a guide to what he called an organized international community.With an intensity that grew stronger each year, he stressed in his annual reports to the General Assembly that the United Nations had to be shaped into a dynamic instrument in the service of development. In his last report, in a tone of voice penetrating because of its very restraint, he confronted those member states which were clinging to "the time-honored philosophy of sovereign national states in armed competition, of which the most that may be expected is that they achieve a peaceful coexistence". This philosophy did not meet the needs of a world of ever increasing interdependence, where nations have at their disposal armaments of hitherto unknown destructive strength. The United Nations must open up ways to more developed forms of international cooperation."

"Forty years ago today, the [Nobel Peace] Prize for 1961 was awarded for the first time to a Secretary-General of the United Nations — posthumously, because Dag Hammarskjöld had already given his life for peace in Central Africa."

"It will not surprise you to hear that Dag Hammarskjöld is a figure of great importance for me — as he must be for any Secretary-General. His life and his death, his words and his action, have done more to shape public expectations of the office, and indeed of the Organisation, than those of any other man or woman in its history.His wisdom and his modesty, his unimpeachable integrity and single-minded devotion to duty, have set a standard for all servants of the international community — and especially, of course for his successors — which is simply impossible to live up to. There can be no better rule of thumb for a Secretary-General, as he approaches each new challenge or crisis, than to ask himself, “how would Hammarskjöld have handled this?”"

"The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have."

"Creative people have to be fed from the divine source."

"The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside."

"It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses."

"If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party."

"Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up."

"I don't know Who — or what — put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal."

"Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who 'forgives' you — out of love — takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice."

"Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons."

"In the faith which is "God's marriage to the soul", you are one in God, and God is wholly in you, just as, for you, He is wholly in all you meet. With this faith, in prayer you descend into yourself to meet the Other."

"Your body must become familiar with its death — in all its possible forms and degrees — as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life."

"In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us … Hence too the necessity of preparing for it."

"Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment."

""To forgive oneself"—? No, that doesn't work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive."

"You are not the oil, you are not the air — merely the point of combustion, the flash-point where the light is born. You are merely the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency — your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end and remain purely as a means."

"The myths have always condemned those who "looked back." Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision."

"Destiny is something not be to desired and not to be avoided...it is a mystery not contrary to reason, for it implies that the world, and the course of human history, have meaning."

"I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive."

"To love life and men as God loves them — for the sake of their infinite possibilities, to wait like Him, to judge like Him, without passing judgment, to obey the order when it is given and never look back — Then He can use you — then, perhaps, He will use you."

"Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean."

"In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action."

"Le courage de nos différences. Without becoming irresponsible, to accept what divides us — with humility and with pride. It is by the 'new' that mankind is saved or betrayed."

"Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity — intellectual, emotional, and moral. Respect for the word — to employ it with scrupulous care and in incorruptible heartfelt love of truth — is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race. To misuse the word is to show contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the long path of his evolution. "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men speak...""

"A task becomes a duty from the moment you suspect it to be an essential part of that integrity which alone entitles a man to assume responsibility."

"The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others."

"Godhet är något så enkelt: att alltid finnas för andra, att aldrig söka sig själv."

"Give me a pure heart — that I may see Thee. A humble heart — that I may hear Thee, A heart of love — that I may serve Thee, A heart of faith — that I may abide in Thee."

"Maturity: among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play, who takes it for granted that he is at one with his play-mates."

"He who has surrendered himself to it knows that the Way ends on the Cross — even when it is leading him through the jubilation of Gennesaret or the triumphal entry into Jerusalem."

"Att vara fri, att kunna stå upp och lämna allt — utan att se sig tillbaka. Att säga ja —"

"For all that has been — Thanks! To all that shall be — Yes!"

"It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy — from lack of character."

"What makes loneliness an anguish Is not that I have no one to share my burden, But this: I have only my own burden to bear."

"Jag kämpar för det omöjliga: att mitt liv skall få en mening. Jag vågar inte, vet inte hur jag skulle kunna tro: att jag inte är ensam."

"Bed att din ensamhet blir sporren att finna något att leva för, stort nog att dö för."

"Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions."