divine magnetism and the peace of iron filings

   

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 There is something in personal love, caresses, 
and the magnetic flood of sympathy and friendship, that does, 
in its way, more good than all the medicine in the world.
 

—Walt Whitman

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The Self is like a powerful magnet within us. It draws us gradually to itself, though we imagine we are going to It of our own accord: when we are near enough, It puts an end to our activities, makes us still, and then swallows up our personal current, thus killing our wrong personality. It overwhelms the intellect and over floods the whole being. 

We think we are meditating upon It and developing towards It, whereas the truth is that we are iron filings and It is the Atman-magnet that is pulling us towards Itself. Thus the process of finding the Self is a form of Divine magnetism.


—Sri Ramana Maharshi

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... everything can have an effect on us. And all things affect us from a distance, the near as well as the remote things, nothing touches us; everything reaches us across divisions. And just as the most remote stars cannot enter us, the ring on my hand cannot do so either: everything that reaches us can do so only the way a magnet summons and aligns the forces in some susceptible object; in this way, all things can effect a new alignment within us. And in view of this insight, do proximity and distance not simply vanish?


—Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters on Life

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The chooser's happiness lies in his congruence with the chosen, The peace of iron filings, obedient to the forces of the magnetic field.

Calm is the soul that is emptied of all self,
In the eternal moment of co-inherence.
A happiness within you - but not yours.


—Dag Hammarskjöld

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