Peace it seems is not to be had for the asking. Perhaps if enough ask, we shall have it, but not without some modifications to our thinking. This idea of thought and whether it can be modified is, I feel, the root of the matter. This question has absorbed me for a very long time; mainly, I think, because I have been keenly aware of the great discrepancy between the idea and the reality. There are moments of truth in the lives of all people which differ from our habitual states of consciousness. Life provides these opportunities and, if we were wiser, such moments would constitute the rule and not the exception. I used to think that wisdom could be obtained from books; now I realize that such knowledge embraces all aspects of life, and that we can learn only to the extent that we are filled with awareness. Experience, as such, is essential if this faculty is to be used.
This idea affects every aspect of life, and to me, this is the essence of wisdom. Its practical application and the fruits of it will perhaps be fueled by its modifying effects on the thinking principle of men and women — in short, "right thinking" without which nothing can be achieved. I believe that the greatest discoveries are yet to come, in the understanding of the mind.
These questions have posed many problems, none of which I can answer. Yet the answer is here and always has been. The confusion of the world mirrors the confusion of the mind at every level, national, international, and personal; but sometimes I suspect that like a child I delight in confusion, creating it as a web in which my gnat's-brain becomes entangled. There are rare moments of perception (all too rare) when the jabberings of the mind are silenced. The disunity is momentarily eclipsed, and that aggregate of parts we call a human being becomes a component of something for which there is no name, but which in itself is the world and greater than the world.
(From Sunrise magazine, February/March 2003; copyright © 2003 Theosophical University Press)