6/9/13 Spiritual Practice Class Excerpts
Page 119
The concept is not the same as the reality. They're different. That's why I said to you earlier that the final barrier to finding God is the word "God' itself and the concept of God. It gets in the way if you're not careful. It was meant to be a help; it can be a help, but i can also be a barrier.
Page 122
The moment you put things into a concept, they stop flowing; they become static, dead. A frozen wave is not a wave. A wave is essentially movement; action; when you freeze it, it is not a wave. Concepts are always frozen. Reality flows. finally, if we are to believe the mystics (and it doesn't take too much of an effort to understand this, or even believe it, no one can see it at once), reality is a whole, but words and concepts fragment reality.
Page 126
We need to put off the old man, the old nature, the conditioned self, and return to the state of the child but without being a child. When we start off in life, we look at reality with wonder, but it isn't the intelligent wonder of the mystics; it's the formless wonder of the child. Then wonder dies and is replaced by boredom, as we develop language and words and concepts. Then hopefully, if we're lucky, we'll return to wonder again.