If we wish to unfold the mind in our children we do not leave them to their own uncultivated taste in all these things, but we try to help them to train that taste, whether it be in art, in music or in literature.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterIt is abundantly evident that, however natural it may be for us to feel sorrow at the death of our relatives, that sorrow is an error and an evil, and we ought to overcome it. There is no need to sorrow for them, for they have passed into a far wider and happier life. If we sorrow for our own fancied separation from them, we are in the first place weeping over an illusion, for in truth they are not separated from us; and secondly, we are acting selfishly, because we are thinking more of our own apparent loss than of their great and real gain.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterHow shall we define occultism? The word is derived from the Latin occultus, hidden; so that it is the study of the hidden laws of nature. Since all the great laws of nature are in fact working in the invisible world far more than in the visible, occultism involves the acceptance of a much wider view of nature than that which is ordinarily taken. The occultist, then, is a man who studies all the laws of nature that he can reach or of which he can hear, and as a result of his study he identifies himself with these laws and devotes his life to the service of evolution.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterIt has been the sad experience of many that much of the best and the most beautiful is lost to those whose mental food consists exclusively of the sensational paper or the cheap novel, or of that frothy mass of waste material which is thrown up like scum upon the molten metal of life--novelettes, serials, and fragments of a type which neither teach the ignorant, nor strengthen the weak, nor develop the immature.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterTry to comprehend the unity of all; there is one God, and all are one in Him. If we can but bring home to ourselves the unity of that Eternal Love, there will be no more sorrow for us; for we shall realize, not for ourselves alone but for those whom we love, that whether we live or die, we are the Lord's, and that in Him we live and move and have our being, whether it be in this world or in the world to come.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterThe clairvoyant is simply a man who develops within himself the power to respond to another octave out of the stupendous gamut of possible vibrations, and so enables himself to see more of the world around him than those of more limited perception.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterThe chakras or force-centers are points of connection at which energy flows from one body of a man to another...all these wheels are perpetually rotating, and into the hub or open mouth of each a force from a higher world is always flowing.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterIt has not been the fashion to be scientific about religion, but it is necessary that we should be scientific; it is time that we examined ourselves as to our faith and tried to know what we believe and why, and on what we base our belief.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterWe know that all must, in the end, stand by the side of the Divine. There is no escape from it, because that is His will.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterVegetables contain more nutriment than an equal amount of dead flesh. This will sound a surprising and incredible statement to many people, because they have been brought up to believe that they cannot exist unless they defile themselves with flesh, and this delusion is so widely spread that it is difficult to awaken the average man from it.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterThe attitude of mourning is a faithless attitude, an ignorant attitude. The more we know, the more fully we shall trust, for we shall feel with utter certainty that we and our dead are alike in the hands of perfect Power and perfect Wisdom, directed by perfect Love.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterThere are some whose Karma is such as to enable them to develop the purely spiritual faculties first of all -- to overleap the astral plane for the time, as it were; and when afterwards they make its acquaintance they have, if their spiritual development has been perfect, the immense advantage of dipping into it from above, with the aid of a spiritual insight which cannot be deceived and a spiritual strength which nothing can resist.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterIf we love a person, we love him, and whatever he may do will not affect our love. It may cause us pain if he does evil, because we love him; it may cause us sorrow and suffering; but it cannot affect our love.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterWe must beware of falling into the fatally common error of supposing that what we see is all there is to see.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterThe idea of God holding a grudge against us and needing to be asked to forgive us is an outrage on the Fatherhood of God.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterThe records of every great religion show the presence of such Supermen, so full of the Divine Life that again and again they have been taken as the very representatives of God Himself.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterIt is one of the commonest of our mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all that there is to perceive.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterWe are called upon to obey and follow our Lord the Christ, but it is not because of any fear of Him or of the consequences if we did not follow; it is the love of Christ which constraineth us, as we are told in the Epistle for the first Sunday of Lend. It is because of our love and gratitude to Him that we must follow Him, that we must strain every nerve to make ourselves like Him. That is our reason--not fear but love.
Charles Webster Leadbeater