Some extracts from the books
of Svetoslav Roerich

How wonderful it is that we, with our physical eye, can look into the infinite expanse of our Universe where Infinity shows itself to us and speaks to us through the myriad of stars and worlds! It is as if we could hear infinite voices from the Great Void which contains, and carries, and is Everything there was, is and will be. – The stars speak to us through the infinity of their rays and place us face with the greatest of all mysteries – Infinity.

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It is useless and futile to clog our brain with endless facts and data. We must strive to build up the correct understanding of the phenomena which surround us in order to understand life. Details will only tend to take us away from the essentials and, while giving us no solutions, will retard our understanding.

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We must try to instill beauty and harmony into all our actions. When our thoughts shall be perfectly balanced, then our outer behavior and actions shall be perfectly harmonized. And when our inner and outer behavior shall be perfectly harmonized, then the higher vibrations shall manifest themselves through us.

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The striving towards the Beautiful must become our normal everyday attitude to life. And in that striving we shall find the highest fulfillment.

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To transcend the everyday, to progress onto the next step, is the task we must set ourselves to achieve.

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The prerequisite for success is the unflinching determination to succeed. Just like along a rough and stony road we stumble and may even fall down, likewise along the road of life there will be innumerable obstacles, and we may even ask ourselves at times – is there a chance to succeed, is there a way out of all these crowding and threatening obstacles?

But like a bright light, like a guiding thread our determination will always lead us out onto the clear path and show the way. Only not to give up, not to feel defeated, but to fight on and to build.

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Great trials, great upheavals – they come to us often just before something like a new life or phase had to begin for us. A release from the old, a new step successfully ascended.

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The desire to be better, the desire to become a better person must be like a constant inner urge that would affect all our actions, all our thoughts and efforts like a burning flam. We can gradually make the desire a part of our life and we shall be transformed by it into whatever we have for our ideal.

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If we could only remember, that whatever we do must be done better than what has already been done by us, and that our passage through life must be a constant becoming. By widening constantly our horizons and eschewing all small, petty and selfish thoughts, we are laying the foundations of a more beautiful tomorrow. We must realize that nothing belongs to us and nothing is bound to us, nothing but our own self and actions. Freedom is born of this realization that the greatest wealth, the greatest treasure, lies within our own self. Independent of anyone, free and limitlessly great.

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A beautiful life. – What a great and lofty concept! To build by means of the beautiful is the sacred command given to us by the Great Leaders of evolution. Beauty is Harmony, and Harmony is the advanced state we all should have before us at least as an object of striving. Beauty is the sacred stone of the philosophers transmuting baser metals into pure gold, Beauty is fulfillment, and Beauty is the ultimate goal.

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By taking the life of a great man as an example and by building our character around this ideal, we can readily rise and improve ourselves. An actual example gives us the necessary pattern which can be adopted and will save us endless perplexities of behavior. There are problems so complex, so involved that to grapple with these problems successfully with our limited means is almost futile and would only lead us into an inextricable maze of unresolvable sequences.

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To be true to the type we have chosen and want to emulate is great virtue, the best line of action and the shortest path to achievement and success.

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Thus day by day, step by step we can build our moral strength. Let us nurture the greatest of plans, the greatest ideals to follow, and life will help us and place new opportunities before us.

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Let us always strive towards something that is beautiful, let us shun the little, grey everyday which covers all with its grey, dusty covers. Heroic deeds and plans make our spirit grow. They build a greater future and attract success. No matter how small the deed we have to perform, let us carry it out as if it were only a small, but very essential step towards a great future. By surrounding ourselves by an aura of greater striving, we only release a latent energy and increase our chances of success.

By expanding our perimeter of activity we grow, by contracting it we shrink and lose the grip of success.

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Illumination seldom, if ever, comes suddenly, in a flash. Usually it comes on gradually like a light growing in intensity. It is a slow inner process. We often think that for the mere effort we can achieve the hardest of all things to achieve, inner growth, inner illumination. The gradual unfolding of our self is a process similar to that of any growth. It can be hastened, but it must follow certain lines of development.

Every day in a thousand ways life places before us problems which we must solve. By always holding to the principle of goodness, by always viewing a problem from a constructive point of view of expediency, we learn to build up a definite point of view which will help us to resolve the problems in a constructive way.

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Often we ask ourselves: Where to start? How to proceed? The start is our firm resolve to change and pursue a new course in life. The actual course must be our desire for self-improvement as it will lead us to the right course of actions. Nature and life are so finely adjusted that circumstances form themselves around us, attracted to us and marshaled by the forces we have generated. Let us not worry too much as to the path we should follow. As long as we have made up our mind and determined to live a new life, the path will open up and will become more and more clear to us as we proceed. This Universe, this life are all interlinked by the finest thread of sympathetic currents. And the moment we tune in, so to say, we link up with a whole new plane of existence.

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Let us ponder sometimes what are the qualities we would expect of a superior man, what sort of behavior, what sort of attitude and reactions. Let us take various qualities one by one and try to visualize the superior type as having those qualities. Let us try to visualize various behavior and try to imagine this person behaving in one or another manner. By comparing and analyzing various behavior, we come to visualize more clearly the qualities that go to the making a great man, and we can, in turn, emulate them and make them a part of our character.

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The power to realize is the power of faith. It is that inner immutable conviction and absolute knowledge that something is a reality, more real and more immediate than the outer plane which surrounds us.