The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive.
An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
You can take away a man’s gods, but only to give him others in return.
Yoga in Mayfair or Fifth Avenue, or in any other place which is on the telephone, is a spiritual fake.
Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other.
When we consider the infinite variety of dreams, it is difficult to conceive that there could ever be a method or a technical procedure which would lead to an infallible result. It is, indeed, a good thing that no valid method exists, for otherwise the meaning of the dream would be limited in advance and would lose precisely that virtue which makes dreams so valuable for therapeutic purposes—their ability to offer new points of view.
We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only a half-truth, and must, if it is honest, also admit its inadequacy.
We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.
To me dreams are a part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive, but expresses something as best it can.
To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.
There was need of a phantastic, indestructible optimism, and one far removed from all sense of reality, in order, for example, to discover In the shameful death of Christ really the highest salvation and the redemption of the world.