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#3733 - Thursday, December 3, 2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Nonduality Highlights -
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

Optimism—The Lesson of the Ages

 

by Benjamin Paul Blood

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979998913?ie=UTF8&tag=nondualitysal-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0979998913


Eirini Press has released a reprint of one of the first non-dual treatises written by an American: Benjamin Paul Blood. Published in 1860, on the eve of one of the darkest periods in American history, Optimism is a stirring practical guide to faith in, and acceptance toward, whatever life delivers. Impassioned by his own mystical experiences, Blood’s distinctly American voice had a profound effect on William James, whose last published essay was a tribute to his mystical mentor. As pessimism again darkens America, Optimism shines a dazzling guiding light on wholeness: “We easily conceive ourselves invested in bodies or spheres of palpitating, ethereal lightness, which may fly, at will, around the pendant world; yet the sense in which we were independent of God’s consciousness in our own world would be as mysterious as now. However we exist, doubtless we shall feed only upon his bounty, and shall never inspire ourselves.”


"I have always held the opinion that one of the first duties of a good reader is to summon other readers to the enjoyment of any unknown author of rare quality whom he may discover in his explorations. Now for years my own taste, literary as well as philosophic, has been exquisitely titllated by...Benjamin Paul Blood." — William James

 

Optimism-The Lesson of Ages by Benjamin Paul Blood
Excerpts

 

He is the One-the original-the all in all. All creeds acknowledge him. His name needs no interpreter when they say "God created." Boundless and incomprehensible, yet indisputable, the key of all mystery, without form, without centre or circumference, beginning or end, the life, space, and atmosphere wherein all being dwells, words were not made to present him; we cannot show him to another, nor another to us; yet in the human soul he has said immemorially, "I am! And there is none beside me!"

~ ~ ~

 

We easily conceive ourselves invested in bodies or spheres of palpitating, ethereal lightness, which may fly, at will, around the pendant world; yet the sense in which we were independent of God's consciousness in our own world would be as mysterious as now. However we exist, doubtless we shall feed only upon his bounty, and shall never inspire ourselves.

~ ~ ~


Not God himself can be supposed to transcend his nature; nor can any being that he has created: only the forced positions of an erroneous system ever could have driven men to the invention of a free will-free of the world, free of its creator, and free of its own construction, without bounds or definition.

~ ~ ~


Tear away bravely the frightful background that fear has painted in life's picture, and send your gaze out unobstructed through the blue of eternal time.

~ ~ ~


Could we have proof of God's existence, there were no God worthy to be proved. Proof shifts its object into other essence, or other truth: but that which is infinite cannot be shifted to aught that is within our capacity. Incomprehensible as eternity, against what background shall our God stand relieved? Say space is filled, and time is filled, and we are a portion of that filling; how shall a part contain the whole?-how shall that which cannot be compassed be known, whether it be entirely proved or not? The poet cannot teach his poetry to a stone; nor can God condense his being to a picture in our souls; he were not God, nor we men. Yet God is in us, the assurance of his presence, whose majesty is the birth of reason. He is not afar, that we should see him. He is in the light of the eye, and in the object that it shines on. He is not a curiosity, a member of a species, or a thing to be represented by any device. He is the One-the original-the all in all. All creeds acknowledge him. His name needs no interpreter when they say "God created." Boundless and incomprehensible, yet indisputable, the key of all mystery, without form, without centre or circumference, beginning or end, the life, space, and atmosphere wherein all being dwells, words were not made to present him; we cannot show him to another, nor another to us; yet in the human soul he has said immemorially, "I am! and there is none beside me!"

 

Optimism—The Lesson of the Ages

 

by Benjamin Paul Blood

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979998913?ie=UTF8&tag=nondualitysal-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0979998913

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