Vera Stanley Alder Quotes

Can we grasp, for instance, that in spite of weather vagaries, even in spite of present soil erosion, there is and could be more than enough produced to-day to allow everyone everywhere a fair standard of living, without entailing drudgery for anybody?

Conversely, a shallow, quick breath only half-nourishes, and is the partner of fear, nervousness and self-consciousness; whilst the uneven uncontrolled breath allows the person to become ‘beside themselves* with the emotional disturbance and indecision.

There are those who stand in the vanguard, those who huddle ineffectively in the centre, and those who definitely hold progress back.

The Spiritual Cabinet will encourage the Research Panel to do much work on this subject, until finally they are able to prove the truth of many revolutionary ideas to the Agricultural Council and to mankind. The Earth, is indeed, a living entity in a certain sense of the word, a Being who pursues His course of evolution and achievement as courageously and as inevitably as do all other living creatures. They will prove also that man bears a very special, intimate and fundamental relationship to the life of the planet—that there is a close interdependance between the morals, motives and acts of mankind and the reactions in climatic terms, of the planet to themselves.

We can get on top of the world in most circumstances if we know and practice correct breathing, but without it we will always be working on one cylinder, and at the bottom of our form. For correct breathing feeds our minds as well as our bodies.

By this time... the living through and the acting out of spiritual or ethical principles would have begun to be an intrinsic part of people’s lives, and orthodoxy as we now know it would have ceased to exist. Religion would no longer be an ‘aspect’ of human living but the almost unconscious foundation of every activity.

Does he ‘live in his emotions’? Is he ‘earth to earth’? Is he ‘highly strung’ (etherically or nervously focussed)? Is he a ‘practical man’ (concrete mental)? Is he an intellectual (abstract mind)?... Does he suffer from ‘divine discontent’? Is he an ‘adrenal type’ a ‘thyroid type’ or a ‘pituitary type’ — or a mixture of all of them, and in what degree? According to where and how his life forces are focussed so should be the method of healing adopted for him.

A Yogi, or eastern sage, who wishes to perfect himself begins with the breath, and by its means obtains control over every nerve and function in the body, and finally arrives at super-normal experiences and an ecstasy... Whereas a citizen of Western civilization is usually brought up without any knowledge of the science of breathing whatsoever, his breath being successively restricted by taboos and inhibitions throughout childhood, adolescence, and finally by the anxieties, depressions, bad air and smells, and the nervous rush of modern life. The final result is that the average person hardly breathes at all (compared with what he should do) and therefore is relatively half-conscious most of his days.

The Principle of Sharing which will eventually rule all these arrangements will produce an attitude to property and possessions impossible to visualize to-day. If a person has more than his share he will feel as uncomfortable and ashamed as one now does who has insufficient. The misfortune of not knowing how to give and to share will produce the inferiority complex of the future. The Christian admonition that “if a person ask of thee thy coat give him thy cloak also” will be understood by all. Those who need something will not rob, but will state their need at their Community Centre and will thereby be given by their neighbors a much greater choice of goods than they could attain by attempted theft. Furthermore, tastes and requirements will become successively reduced and simplified in measure as peoples’ needs become choice and few.

It is beginning to be realized, not by a few idealists but by numbers of the general public, that in spite of the countless triumphs of science and industry there has been something about humanity’s way of living that is proving to be suicidal. Fear, want, disease and war have been increasing in a steady crescendo until they have nearly engulfed the world altogether. This terrible state of affairs has, in spite of all the amenities of progress, been undermining the health, energy and mind-power of all the public everywhere, until most of them have been dulled into a blind acceptance.

Such an ideology has always been available... It is embodied either in the true Christian or the true Buddhist faith, but it has never yet been put into practice. It could provide the scientific and practical basis for world regeneration. It embodies the principle of unity, of sharing and of cooperation.

The difference between the Teaching in its past and in its modern guise is that in the olden days it was used principally for the self-development of the few, whereas at present humanity is considered to have moved forward to the point where the theories and ideals of the Mystery Teaching may soon be put into practice in the life of the community as a whole, because a sufficiently large number of people are now so advanced as to make this possible.

Is there a succeeding evolutionary step to be taken which would bring order out of chaos, and which would be the natural sequence of all that has gone before?...

Men are realizing that although this has been the case for some time, want, fear, disease and war are still allowed to make havoc of their lives, and that therefore someone or something is betraying them even unto death. They are becoming aware that they themselves are allowing this to happen, and are therefore somehow guilty, because in reality they, the people, are all powerful.

When fine new laws are made, only half the battle is won. If people do not understand their value and feel no personal responsibility, they go against these laws with every subtle act and thought in their power, often producing new complications and conditions worse than those which it is being attempted to improve. Only when man begins to feel a personal obligation towards his host, the planet, and cultivates an honourable consideration in all his acts for^ the good of the earth as well as for his own benefit, will real harmony begin to exist between humanity and the elements, especially in respect of those subtle conditions which produce some of the diseases and epidemics which are continuing to baffle science.