Volume
Vol. 3, Character and Personality
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The Law of Renunciation
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Sub-Heading
2. Renunciation - Voluntary
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Vol. 3, Character and Personality
The Law of Renunciation
2. Renunciation - Voluntary
Those in the East who have renounced pleasure, comfort, riches, possessions, from a mystical point of view, have not renounced because they were too weak to hold them or because they did not desire them, but because they wished to renounce them before they passed from their hands. All things one possesses in life one has attracted to oneself; and when one loses them, it shows that the power of attraction is lost; and that, if one can renounce them before that power of attraction is lost, one rises above them.
All things that are in a person's hold are not really his own, although for the moment he may think so; when he loses them he realizes that they were not his own. Therefore the only possible way of everlasting happiness is to realize that what one possesses is not one's own, and to renounce in time, before all that one possesses renounces one. The law of renunciation is great; and it is the only way of happiness there is.
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