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object:1.027 - The Ant
class:chapter
book class:Quran
author class:Muhammad
subject class:Islam
translator class:Talal Itani

In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful.

1. Ta, Seen. These are the Signs of the Quran—a book that makes things clear.

2. Guidance and good news for the believers.

3. Those who observe the prayers, and give charity regularly, and are certain of the Hereafter.

4. As for those who do not believe in the Hereafter: We made their deeds appear good to them, so they wander aimlessly.

5. It is they who will receive the grievous punishment—and in the Hereafter they will be the greatest losers.

6. You are receiving the Quran from an All-Wise, All-Knowing.

7. When Moses said to his family, “I have glimpsed a fire. I will bring you some news from it; or bring you a firebrand, that you may warm yourselves.”

8. Then, when he reached it, he was called: “Blessed is He who is within the fire, and He who is around it, and glorified be God, Lord of the Worlds.

9. O Moses, it is I, God, the Almighty, the Wise.

10. Throw down your staff.” But when he saw it quivering, as though it were a demon, he turned around not looking back. “O Moses, do not fear; the messengers do not fear in My presence.

11. But whoever has done wrong, and then substituted goodness in place of evil. I am Forgiving and Merciful.

12. Put your hand inside your pocket, and it will come out white, without blemish—among nine miracles to Pharaoh and his people, for they are immoral people.”

13. Yet when Our enlightening signs came to them, they said, “This is obvious witchcraft.”

14. And they rejected them, although their souls were certain of them, out of wickedness and pride. So see how the outcome was for the mischief-makers.

15. And We gave David and Solomon knowledge. They said, “Praise God, who has favored us over many of His believing servants.”

16. And Solomon succeeded David. He said, “O people, we were taught the language of birds, and we were given from everything. This is indeed a real blessing.”

17. To the service of Solomon were mobilized his troops of sprites, and men, and birds—all held in strict order.

18. Until, when they came upon the Valley of Ants, an ant said, “O ants! Go into your nests, lest Solomon and his troops crush you without noticing.”

19. He smiled and laughed at her words, and said, “My Lord, direct me to be thankful for the blessings you have bestowed upon me and upon my parents, and to do good works that please You. And admit me, by Your grace, into the company of Your virtuous servants.”

20. Then he inspected the birds, and said, “Why do I not see the hoopoe? Or is he among the absentees?

21. I will punish him most severely, or slay him, unless he gives me a valid excuse.”

22. But he did not stay for long. He said, “I have learnt something you did not know. I have come to you from Sheba, with reliable information.

23. I found a woman ruling over them, and she was given of everything, and she has a magnificent throne.

24. I found her and her people worshiping the sun, instead of God. Satan made their conduct appear good to them, and diverted them from the path, so they are not guided.

25. If only they would worship God, who brings to light the mysteries of the heavens and the earth, and knows what you conceal and what you reveal.

26. God—There is no god but He, the Lord of the Sublime Throne.”

27. He said, “We will see, whether you have spoken the truth, or whether you are a liar.

28. Go with this letter of mine, and deliver it to them; then withdraw from them, and see how they respond.”

29. She said, “O Counselors, a gracious letter was delivered to me.

30. It is from Solomon, and it is, ‘In the Name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful.

31. Do not defy me, and come to me submissively.’”

32. She said, “O counselors, advise me in this matter of mine. I never make a decision unless you are present.”

33. They said, “We are a people of might and great courage, but the decision is yours, so consider what you wish to command.”

34. She said, “When kings enter a city, they devastate it, and subjugate its dignified people. Thus they always do.

35. I am sending them a gift, and will see what the envoys bring back.”

36. When he came to Solomon, he said, “Are you supplying me with money? What God has given me is better than what He has given you. It is you who delight in your gift.

37. Go back to them. We will come upon them with troops they cannot resist; and we will expel them from there, disgraced and humiliated.”

38. He said, “O notables, which one of you will bring me her throne before they come to me in submission?”

39. An imp of the sprites said, “I will bring it to you before you rise from your seat. I am strong and reliable enough to do it.”

40. He who had knowledge from the Book said, “I will bring it to you before your glance returns to you.” And when he saw it settled before him, he said, “This is from the grace of my Lord, to test me, whether I am grateful or ungrateful. He who is grateful, his gratitude is to his own credit; but he who is ungrateful—my Lord is Independent and Generous.”

41. He said, “Disguise her throne for her, and we shall see whether she will be guided, or remains one of the misguided.”

42. When she arrived, it was said, “Is your throne like this?” She said, “As if this is it.” “We were given knowledge before her, and we were submissive.”

43. But she was prevented by what she worshiped besides God; she belonged to a disbelieving people.

44. It was said to her, “Go inside the palace.” And when she saw it, she thought it was a deep pond, and she bared her legs. He said, “It is a palace paved with glass.” She said, “My Lord, I have done wrong to myself, and I have submitted with Solomon, to God, Lord of the Worlds.”

45. And We sent to Thamood their brother Saleh: “Worship God.” But they became two disputing factions.

46. He said, “O my people, why are you quick to do evil rather than good? If only you would seek God’s forgiveness, so that you may be shown mercy.”

47. They said, “We consider you an ill omen, and those with you.” He said, “Your omen is with God. In fact, you are a people being tested.”

48. In the city was a gang of nine who made mischief in the land and did no good.

49. They said, “Swear by God to one another that we will attack him and his family by night, and then tell his guardian, 'We did not witness the murder of his family, and we are being truthful.'“

50. They planned a plan, and We planned a plan, but they did not notice.

51. So note the outcome of their planning; We destroyed them and their people, altogether.

52. Here are their homes, in ruins, on account of their iniquities. Surely in this is a sign for people who know.

53. And We saved those who believed and were pious.

54. And Lot, when he said to his people, “Do you commit lewdness with open eyes?

55. Do you lust after men instead of women? You are truly ignorant people.”

56. But the only response of his people was to say, “Expel the family of Lot from your town. They are purist people.”

57. So We saved him and his family, except for his wife, whom We destined to be among the laggards.

58. And We rained upon them a rain. Miserable was the rain of those forewarned.

59. Say, “Praise God, and peace be upon His servants whom He has selected. Is God better, or what they associate?”

60. Or, who created the heavens and the earth, and rains down water from the sky for you? With it We produce gardens full of beauty, whose trees you could not have produced. Is there another god with God? But they are a people who equate.

61. Or, who made the earth habitable, and made rivers flow through it, and set mountains on it, and placed a partition between the two seas? Is there another god with God? But most of them do not know.

62. Or, who answers the one in need when he prays to Him, and relieves adversity, and makes you successors on earth? Is there another god with God? How hardly you pay attention.

63. Or, who guides you through the darkness of land and sea, and who sends the winds as heralds of His mercy? Is there another god with God? Most exalted is God, above what they associate.

64. Or, who originates the creation and then repeats it, and who gives you livelihood from the sky and the earth? Is there another god with God? Say, “Produce your evidence, if you are truthful.”

65. Say, “No one in the heavens or on earth knows the future except God; and they do not perceive when they will be resurrected.”

66. In fact, their knowledge of the Hereafter is confused. In fact, they are in doubt about it. In fact, they are blind to it.

67. Those who disbelieve say, “When we have become dust, and our ancestors, shall we be brought out?

68. We were promised that before, we and our ancestors—these are nothing but legends of the ancients.”

69. Say, travel through the earth, and observe the fate of the guilty.”

70. But do not grieve over them, and do not be troubled by what they plot.

71. And they say, “When is this promise, if you are truthful?”

72. Say, “Perhaps some of what you are impatient for has drawn near.”

73. Your Lord is gracious towards humanity, but most of them are not thankful.

74. And your Lord knows what their hearts conceal, and what they reveal.

75. There is no mystery in the heaven and the earth, but it is in a Clear Book.

76. This Quran relates to the Children of Israel most of what they differ about.

77. And it is guidance and mercy for the believers.

78. Your Lord will judge between them by His wisdom. He is the Almighty, the All-Knowing.

79. So rely on God. You are upon the clear truth.

80. You cannot make the dead hear, nor can you make the deaf hear the call if they turn their backs and flee.

81. Nor can you guide the blind out of their straying. You can make no one listen, except those who believe in Our verses; for they are Muslims.

82. And when the Word has fallen on them, We will bring out for them from the earth a creature which will say to them that the people are uncertain of Our revelations.

83. On the Day when We gather from every community a group of those who rejected Our revelations; and they will be restrained.

84. Until, when they arrive, He will say, “Did you reject My revelations without comprehending them? Or what is it you were doing?”

85. The Word will come down upon them for their wrongdoing, and they will not speak.

86. Do they not see that We made the night for them to rest therein, and the day for visibility? Surely in that are signs for people who believe.

87. On the Day when the Trumpet is blown, everyone in the heavens and the earth will be horrified, except whomever God wills; and everyone will come before Him in humility.

88. And you see the mountains, and imagine them fixed, yet they pass, as the passing of the clouds—the making of God, who has perfected everything. He is fully Informed of what you do.

89. Whoever brings a virtue will receive better than it—and they will be safe from the horrors of that Day.

90. But whoever brings evil—their faces will be tumbled into the Fire. Will you be rewarded except for what you used to do?

91. “I was commanded to worship the Lord of this town, who has sanctified it, and to Whom everything belongs; and I was commanded to be of those who submit.

92. And to recite the Quran.” Whoever is guided—is guided to his own advantage. And whoever goes astray, then say, “I am one of the warners.”

93. And say, “Praise belongs to God; He will show you His signs, and you will recognize them. Your Lord is not heedless of what you do.”


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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

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SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.027_-_The_Ant

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
1.027_-_The_Ant

PRIMARY CLASS

chapter
SIMILAR TITLES

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH


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QUOTES [4 / 4 - 101 / 101]


KEYS (10k)

   1 Muammar Gaddafi?
   1 Friedrich Nietzsche
   1 Epictetus
   1 1 John :2:22

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   3 Ralph Waldo Emerson
   3 Ezra Pound
   3 Epictetus
   2 Robin Sharma
   2 Rabih Alameddine
   2 Gustave Flaubert
   2 Gabrielle Union
   2 Aristotle
   2 Anonymous

1:Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise. ~ Proverbs XVII. 6, the Eternal Wisdom
2:The ant loses its life in the syrup but never leaves it. So the Bhakta cleaves unto God forever and leaves all else ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
3:Sugar and sand may be mixed together, but the ant rejects the sand and carries away the grains of sugar. So the holy Paramahamsas and pious men successfully sift the good from the bad. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
4:Pride is not for our clay; the earth, not heaven was our mother
And we are even as the ant in our toil and the beast in our dying;
Only who cling to the hands of the gods can rise up from the earth-mire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Sugar and sand may be mixed together, but the ant rejects the sand and goes off with the sugar grain; so pious men lift the good from the bad. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove
2:Now I know that patience and time can do more than even strength and passion. The years of frustration are ready to be harvested. All that I have managed to accomplish, and all that I hope to accomplish, has been and will be by that plodding, patient, persevering process which builds the ant heap, particle by particle, thought by thought, step by step. ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove
3:You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream - the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:The ant's a centaur in his dragon world. ~ Ezra Pound,
2:The ant finds kingdoms in a foot of ground. ~ Stephen Vincent Ben t,
3:Go to k the ant, O l sluggard; consider her ways, and  m be wise. ~ Anonymous,
4:Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise. ~ Proverbs XVII. 6,
5:The ant is knowing and wise, but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation. ~ Clarence Day,
6:The ant world is a tumult, a noisy world of pheromones being passed back and forth. ~ E O Wilson,
7:But what the ant knew is that your muscles don’t always determine what you can do. ~ Annie F Downs,
8:Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake? ~ Toni Morrison,
9:Was he the woman with no clue where the ant was or the ant, unaware it was on the woman? ~ Jeff VanderMeer,
10:The ant is a collectively intelligent and individually stupid animal; man is the opposite. ~ Karl von Frisch,
11:Man is the ant of the Universe; He is not an important creature, at least at the moment! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
12:How narrow is the vision that exalts the busyness of the ant above the singing of the grasshopper. ~ Khalil Gibran,
13:The elephant needs a thousand times more food than the ant but that is not an indication of inequality. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
14:I mean, doesn’t it change history even if you just tread on an ant?’ ‘For the ant, certainly,’ said Qu. ~ Terry Pratchett,
15:Sugar and sand may be mixed together, but the ant rejects the sand and goes off with the sugar grain; so pious men lift the good from the bad. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
16:The mere physical man is like the ant crawling on the paper, who observes black lettering and attributes its production to the pen and nothing more. ~ Al-Ghazali,
17:Rose had a kitchen that was so completely alphabetized, you’d find the allspice next to the ant poison. She was a fine one to talk about the Leary men. ~ Anne Tyler,
18:freedom is attained only when the ant of the self—that small, blind, crumb-seeking part of ourselves—casts off slavery and its legacy, becoming a huge brave ox. ~ Z Z Packer,
19:These Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon—probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena dancing at my side! ~ H G Wells,
20:So, the ant way of life is very ancient and very successful. As far as human beings are concerned, we've been around for only one million years--too soon be sure. ~ E O Wilson,
21:These Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon--probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena dancing at my side! "Then ~ H G Wells,
22:Go to  k the ant, O  l sluggard;         consider her ways, and  m be wise. 7     n Without having any chief,          o officer, or ruler, 8    she prepares her bread  p in summer ~ Anonymous,
23:And they discovered something very interesting: when it comes to walking, most of the ant's thinking and decision-making is not in its brain at all. It's distributed. It's in its legs. ~ Kevin Kelly,
24:Sugar and sand may be mixed together, but the ant rejects the sand and carries away the grains of sugar. So the holy Paramahamsas and pious men successfully sift the good from the bad. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
25:Look to the ant, thou sluggard; Consider her ways and be wise: Which having no chief, overseer, or ruler, Provides her meat in the summer, And gathers her food in the harvest. —PROVERBS 6:6–8 ~ Steven Johnson,
26:As the elephant is powerless to think in the terms of the ant, in spite of the best intentions in the world, even so is the Englishman powerless to think in the terms of, or legislate for, the Indian. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
27:The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use. But the bee gathers its materials from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. ~ Leonardo da Vinci,
28:The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use. But the bee...gathers its materials from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. ~ Leonardo da Vinci,
29:God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I'm the ant. He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather tear off my feelers and watch me squirm. ~ "Bruce Nolan" in Bruce Almighty (2003),
30:Their version of rock-paper-scissors was elephant—fist, mouse—palm, and ant—little finger. The elephant crushed the mouse, the mouse squashed the ant, and the ant crawled up the elephant’s trunk and paralyzed his brain. ~ Colin Cotterill,
31:We need to be like the ant. We need to be the kind of people who are self-motivated and self-disciplined, those who do what is right because it is right, not because someone may be looking or because someone is making us do it. ~ Joyce Meyer,
32:We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster. ~ Mark Twain,
33:But my mind keeps on thinking,” Connla offered hopefully. “As long as I am thinking, I must be alive.”  The ant pondered this. “There are many who never think, yet are considered to be alive,” it said.  “Then what is ‘being alive’? ~ Morgan Llywelyn,
34:Because “we human beings are imaginative by nature, we cannot choose to live by the routine of the ant-heap. If deprived of the imagery of virtue” — imaginative depictions of the truly good life — “we will seek out the imagery of vice. ~ Russell Kirk,
35:Pride is not for our clay; the earth, not heaven was our mother
And we are even as the ant in our toil and the beast in our dying;
Only who cling to the hands of the gods can rise up from the earth-mire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
36:The ant continued its climb, threading the maze of Ye Wenjie’s name on her gravestone. Its species had been living on the Earth a hundred million years before the emergence of this gambler who now leaned on the stone. Even though it had no care for ~ Liu Cixin,
37:The performance group The Ant Farm redoing JFK's assassination in Dallas was an event that struck a chord with me, especially when one of the members said they'd only intended to do it once, but the Dallas audience insisted they repeat the performance. ~ Laura Mullen,
38:As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized! ~ Mark Twain,
39:The ant, who has toiled and dragged a crumb to his nest, will furiously defend the fruit of his labor, against whatever robber assails him. So plain, that the most dumb and stupid slave that ever toiled for a master, does constantly know that he is wronged. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
40:Ignorant have always the tendency to see the donkey as the noble horse, to see the pig as the lion! Ignore the judgements of the ignorant, because ignorant makes the ant elephant; he declares the stupid as the intelligent; he carries the silly on his shoulders! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
41:The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ants; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
42:Glass is sand and sand is glass!
The ant dancing blind as blind ants do
on the lip of the rim and the rim of the lip.

White in the night and grey in the day-
smiling spider she never smiles but smile she does
though the ant never sees, blind as it is-

and now was! ~ Steven Erikson,
43:The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course, it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. ~ Francis Bacon,
44:The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. ~ Francis Bacon,
45:The classic example from biology is the huge, towerlike structure that is built by some ant and termite species. These structures only emerge when the ant colony reaches a certain size (more is different) and could never be predicted by studying the behavior of single insects in small colonies. ~ Michael S Gazzaniga,
46:Just because there are celebrities in a movie, it doesn't mean anything. I don't think The Ant Bully did all that well the first week at the box office. Compare the movies that have a lot of celebrities with the Jimmy Neutron movie, which had no celebrity voices and grossed almost one hundred million dollars. ~ Rob Paulsen,
47:I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation. And we must continue to understand where we are. And we stand between the mountain and the ant, somewhere and there only, as part of the Creation. ~ Oren Lyons,
48:The ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance. ~ Ezra Pound,
49:The
instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ant’s; but the
moment a ray of relation is seen to extend from it to man, and the little drudge
is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits,
even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
50:Gross and subtle, pure and mixed, simple and complex - in the end that there is no place where God is not. In every atom, He alone is present. From the ant to the universe, He spreads. The Lord who cares equally for all, the compassionate one who is all knowledge, tenderness, skill, holiness and beauty - He stands on all sides everywhere. ~ Vinoba Bhave,
51:Personally, I would rather climb in the high mountains. I have always abhorred the tremendous heat, the dirt-filled cracks, the ant-covered foul-smelling trees and bushes which cover the cliffs, the filth and noise of Camp 4 (the climbers' campground), and worst of all, the multitudes of tourists which abound during the weekends and summer months. ~ Yvon Chouinard,
52:From........Witches' Song
The owl is abroad,the bat and the toad,
And so is the cat-a mountain,
The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,
And frog peeps out o'the fountain;
The dogs they do bay,and the timbrels play,
The spindle is now a-turning;
The moon it is red,and the stars are fled,
And all the sky is a-burning.
~ Ben Jonson,
53:Now I know that patience and time can do more than even strength and passion. The years of frustration are ready to be harvested. All that I have managed to accomplish, and all that I hope to accomplish, has been and will be by that plodding, patient, persevering process which builds the ant heap, particle by particle, thought by thought, step by step. ~ Og Mandino,
54:What does a man’s life amount to? What does the life of a thousand, a billion? What is an ant’s life worth? I see now that the answer is irrelevant. It’s the question that matters. Should the ant let itself die, crushed under the weight of its own insignificance? Or should it live, fight giants, and build magnificent cities underground? What do I choose? ~ Sylvain Neuvel,
55:For a long time we have thought we were better than the living world, and now some of us tend to think we are worse, that everything we touch turns to soot. But neither perspective is healthy. We have to remember how it feels to have equal standing in the world, to be "between the mountain and the ant . . . part and parcel of creations," as the Iroquois traditionalist Oren Lyons says. ~ Janine Benyus,
56:ANT Species of ANT Kill the ANT You never listen to me. “Always/Never” Thinking I get frustrated when you don’t listen to me, but I know you have listened to me and will again. The boss doesn’t like me. Mind Reading I don’t know that. Maybe she’s just having a bad day. Bosses are people, too. The whole class will laugh at me. Fortune-telling I don’t know that. Maybe they’ll really like my speech. ~ Daniel G Amen,
57:You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order --or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. ~ Ronald Reagan,
58:Master Dongguo asked Zhuangzi, "This thing called the Way - where does it exist?"

Zhuangzi said, "There's no place it doesn't exist."

"Come," said Master Dongguo, "you must be more specific!"

"It is in the ant."

"As low a thing as that?"

"It is in the panic grass."

"But that's lower still!"

"It is in the tiles and shards."

"How can it be so low?"

"It is in the piss and shit! ~ Zhuangzi,
59:Attenborough’s perfectly pitched voice, honey from an English country garden, described with incongruous gentleness how Ophiocordyceps spores lie dormant on the forest floor in humid environments such as the South American rainforest. Foraging ants pick them up, without noticing, because the spores are sticky. They adhere to the underside of the ant’s thorax or abdomen. Once attached, they sprout mycelial threads which penetrate the ant’s body and attack its nervous system. The ~ M R Carey,
60:Call for the robin-red-breast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flow'rs do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field-mouse and the mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And (when gay tombs are robbed) sustain no harm,
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.
Let holy Church receive him duly,
Since he paid the church-tithes truly. ~ John Webster,
61:Fourth Theory.—Man has free will; it is therefore intelligible that the Law contains commands and prohibitions, with announcements of reward and punishment. All acts of God are due to wisdom; no injustice is found in him, and he does not afflict the good. The Mu'tazila profess this theory, although they do not believe in man's absolute free will. They hold that God takes notice of the falling of the leaf and the destruction of the ant, and that his Providence extends over all beings. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190),
62:...Axelrod also pointed out that TIT FOR TAT interactions lead to cooperation in the natural world even without the benefit of intelligence. Examples include lichens, in which a fungus extracts nutrients from the underlying rock while providing a home for algae that in turn provide the fungus with photosynthesis; the ant-acacia tree, which houses and feeds a type of ant that in turn protects the tree; and the fig tree whose flowers serve as food for fig wasps that in turn pollinate the flowers and scatter the seeds. ~ M Mitchell Waldrop,
63:Now you must leave the safety of the ant colony and the hive. You are to become a loner, an outcast, cut off from the very thing that defines what many of us believe we are. What is the first question usually asked by strangers of each other? Right, it’s “What do you do?” In some cultures, the way of answering may be different; but it nearly always relates to work in the West: “I’m a teacher; I’m in banking; I’m a dairy farmer; I’m an HR administrator; I’m a sound engineer.” Our job defines us. But it cannot define you. Not anymore. ~ Felix Dennis,
64:Evolution, he explained, is a form of long-term, genetic optimization; the same process of trial and error takes place. And, as Darwin showed, in the great universal act of streamlining, even the errors are essential. If some ants weren’t error-prone, the ant trail would never straighten out. The scouts may be the genius architects who blaze the trails, but any rogue worker can be the one who stumbles upon a shortcut. Everyone optimizes, whether we are pioneering or perpetuating, making rules or breaking them, succeeding or screwing up. ~ Robert Moor,
65:The diversity of mankind is a basic postulate of our knowledge of human beings. But if mankind is diverse and individuated, then how can anyone propose equality as an ideal? Every year, scholars hold Conferences on Equality and call for greater equality, and no one challenges the basic tenet. But what justification can equality find in the nature of man? If each individual is unique, how else can he be made 'equal' to others than by destroying most of what is human in him and reducing human society to the mindless uniformity of the ant heap? ~ Murray Rothbard,
66:Yoga is asking us to pay attention to the nature of all of our relationships and to apply the yamas and the niyamas to them. Whether it is our relationship to our breath, the bottoms of our feet, the ant crawling across the kitchen floor, our families, or to God, we are being asked to pay attention. The aim of yogic practice is to free us from the endless distractions of the kleshas—fear, pride, desire, and ignorance—and to teach us to bring a focused mind to bear on the nature of our relationships. Our time spent on the mat is dedicated to that end. ~ Rolf Gates,
67:An expedition was organized at once, but despite the most scrupulous searching no one could find the Cape Arid colony. Subsequent searches came up equally empty-handed. Almost half a century later, when word got out that a team of American scientists was planning to search for the ant, almost certainly with the kind of high-tech gadgetry that would make the Australians look amateurish and underorganized, government scientists in Canberra decided to make one final, pre-emptive effort to find the ants alive. So a party of them set off in convoy across the country. ~ Bill Bryson,
68:According to string theory, which Professor Tamashi and other scientists have been using to try to solve the Big Bang, in addition to the four dimensions of spacetime we know, there are six of these very small, curled-up dimensions, making ten all told. And the strings, which are little strands of energy, wiggle around vibrating in these ten dimensions.’

‘Like Dennis’s mother,’ Mario, seeking vengeance for the ant slur, interjects, ‘wiggling around vibrating with her vibrator, because she is a famous slut, and also, she has ten dimensions because she is a fat bitch. ~ Paul Murray,
69:Why did you not die?”  He searched his memory, trying to find an answer for her. “When the sword bit through my neck, I thought surely I was dead. Then—then a sort of strength seemed to come to me, from somewhere. And I found myself having a strange conversation with an ant about life and death. The ant claimed one does not die as long as one is being remembered—”  “—and loved,” Blathine finished for him. “That is how it is with mortals, Finvarra! I see what has happened here. Someone in the world from which I brought Connla Fiery Hair is still thinking about him and loving him. ~ Morgan Llywelyn,
70:This is what metaphor is. It is not saying that an ant is an elephant. Perhaps; both are alive. No. Metaphor is saying the ant is an elephant. Now, logically speaking, I know there is a difference. If you put elephants and ants before me, I believe that every time I will correctly identify the elephant and the ant. So metaphor must come from a very different place than that of the logical, intelligent mind. It comes from a place that is very courageous, willing to step out of our preconceived ways of seeing things and open so large that it can see the oneness in an ant and in an elephant. ~ Natalie Goldberg,
71:And my dream is to recapture the art of loving and of being seduced; the habit of the stroll and of reading in cafes; the practice, endorsed by Dante and Baudelaire, of building, repairing, and living in cities; the exhilaration of a speech (at their purest depths, the languages of Europe have never been anything other than this) that no sooner encounters the desert than it discovers the delight of filling it with song; the taste for a beautiful "now" that, when it offers itself for the taking, is an almost perfect treasure, as the grasshopper might have replied to the ant in the fable; in sum, the art and the inclination that were the voice, the flavour, and the colour of Europe. ~ Bernard Henri L vy,
72:Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. ~ Francis Bacon,
73:Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can’t sustain that level of intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.

The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He is the ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not the hare... The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it's a novel or kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality. ~ Steven Pressfield,
74:Third Charm from Masque of Queens
The owl is abroad, the bat, and the toad,
And so is the cat-a-mountain,
The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,
And the frog peeps out o' the fountain;
The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play,
The spindle is now a turning;
The moon it is red, and the stars are fled,
But all the sky is a-burning:
The ditch is made, and our nails the spade,
With pictures full, of wax and of wool;
Their livers I stick, with needles quick;
There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood.
Quickly, Dame, then bring your part in,
Spur, spur upon little Martin,
Merrily, merrily, make him fail,
A worm in his mouth, and a thorn in his tail,
Fire above, and fire below,
With a whip in your hand, to make him go.
~ Ben Jonson,
75:In a famous passage of his book The Sciences of the Artificial, AI pioneer and Nobel laureate Herbert Simon asked us to consider an ant laboriously making its way home across a beach. The ant’s path is complex, not because the ant itself is complex but because the environment is full of dunelets to climb and pebbles to get around. If we tried to model the ant by programming in every possible path, we’d be doomed. Similarly, in machine learning the complexity is in the data; all the Master Algorithm has to do is assimilate it, so we shouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be simple. The human hand is simple—four fingers, one opposable thumb—and yet it can make and use an infinite variety of tools. The Master Algorithm is to algorithms what the hand is to pens, swords, screwdrivers, and forks. ~ Pedro Domingos,
76:Si vous m'accordez que l'homme a une âme - je veux que les bêtes en aient, toutes les bêtes - à commencer par le pourceau pour finir à la fourmi, aux animaux microscopiques. Si l'homme est libre les animaux sont libres, ils seront comme lui récompensés ou punis, que d'âmes diverses, que d'enfers, que de paradis eût dit Voltaire - cette réflexion est humiliante - elle conduit au matérialisme et au nihilisme.

(If you grant me that man has a soul, I like to think that animals have souls, too-all animals, from the pig to the ant, even the microscopic animals. If man is free, animals are free; like him they will be rewarded or punished. So many different souls, so many hells, so many heavens, Voltaire would have said. This reflection is humiliating. It leads to materialism or to nihilism.) ~ Gustave Flaubert,
77:But the remarkable thing about the beetles was their sensitivity to all the grammar and directives and slogans and even unstated desires of the ant world, which they learned to manipulate. They first memorized the proper antenna-vibration and foreleg-tap which the ants themselves used to request food. The poor workers, busy going here and there and back again all day and never getting a chance to think, automatically assumed that these fearsome strangers had been authorized by the Central Committee since they knew the password, and so they regurgitated a drop or two of fruit juice on cue, much the same as when one is traveling across Europe or Asia on the train and a person in uniform requests one’s passport, one’s ticket, takes them away, and comes back, or else does not come back, having sold them; a badge and a superior manner can obtain anything in this world. ~ William T Vollmann,
78:Please, everyone, let us keep our calm!” The Chief Scientist of the Ant Coalition, Professor Joyah, waved her feelers to quell the uproar. “Recall that the symbiotic relationship of ants and dinosaurs has lasted for more than two millennia. In all those years, the alliance of dinosaurs and ants has been the backbone of our world's civilizations; it is what supports our own civilization. If this alliance should fall and dinosaurs are destroyed, ask yourselves if our society could really continue to exist on its own. You know it is very easy to see the concrete benefits that the ants bring to the ant dinosaur alliance. What the dinosaurs bring to the table beyond basic material goods, however, is far more immaterial; it is their ideas and scientific knowledge – and that is the core of the issue for us ants. We may make remarkable engineers, but we will never be scientists! The raw physiology of our brains ensures that we will never possess two of the dinosaurs' traits: Curiosity and imagination. ~ Liu Cixin,
79:Everybody sees the ants?"
He looks at me and says, "Well, how many people do you think live perfect lives, son? Aren't we all victims of something at some time or another?"
"I don't follow."
"Left hand red!" he says. Two ants fall on this turn, and the ant laughter gets louder. "Well, think about it. How many bad things can be done to a person? You got murder and assault, rape and robbery for starters. Just with those you're looking at some big numbers of how many people see the ants." He calls, "Left foot blue!"
I say, "Huh," because I'm not sure how many people he means.
"There's battery, conspiracy, extortion, slander, defamation and harassment, child abuse, stalking-the list is long, isn't it? Don't forget that every crime has hundreds of victims-everyone who knew and loved the victim and the criminal. That shit can trickle down."
"All those people see the ants?"
"Yep. Right hand green!"
"Wow."
"Yeah," he says. "If there are people who don't see 'em, I'd say we outnumber them a million to one. ~ A S King,
80:The second most frequently asked question is, “What can we learn of moral value from the ants?” Here again I will answer definitively. Nothing. Nothing at all can be learned from ants that our species should even consider imitating. For one thing, all working ants are female. Males are bred and appear in the nest only once a year, and then only briefly. They are unappealing, pitiful creatures with wings, huge eyes, small brain, and genitalia that make up a large portion of their rear body segment. They do no work while in the nest and have only one function in life: to inseminate the virgin queens during the nuptial season when all fly out to mate. They are built for their one superorganismic role only: robot flying sexual missiles. Upon mating or doing their best to mate (it is often a big fight for a male just to get to a virgin queen), they are not admitted back home, but instead are programmed to die within hours, usually as victims of predators. Now for the moral lesson: although like almost all well-educated Americans I am a devoted promoter of gender equality, I consider sex practiced the ant way a bit extreme. ~ Edward O Wilson,
81:Things Of Great Worth Shall Come To Pass...
Things of great worth shall come to pass
By true foreknowledge and in fact,—
Names worthier than mine in fame
And words which earned me men's esteem.
Here breakers roar across the bay;
Wave follows wave unchangeably,
Their tracks, like letters traced in sand,
Erased by ebbing lines of foam.
So yet you're here at this resort.
I should have found you in this hall
At five, instead of vain small talk
I shared and wagging of my tongue.
I would have warned you, one so fair,
Mature, a woman brave and calm,
About the death in life-and bounds
No higher than the ant's low life.
Great poets, through experience,
Find words so simple and restrained
That in the end they can't do more
Than wait in silence and in awe.
In faith and kinship with real life
And with the future knit as one,
We're bound to find immortal words
Of unbelievable simplicity.
Yet keep them holy in your hearts
Or we shall not be spared at all.
Men quickly grasp the complex schemes
When simplicity's their greater need.
~ Boris Pasternak,
82:Domesticating the ant was no easy matter. The little red scientists had not even believed such creatures were possible, because of surface area-to-volume constraints, but there they were, clumping around like intelligent robots, so the little red scientists had to explain them. To get some help they climbed up into the humans' reference books, and read up on ants. They learned about the ants' pheromones, and they synthesized the ones they needed to control the soldier ants of a particularly small docile red species, and after that, they were in business. Little red cavalry. They charged around everywhere on antback, having a fine old time, twenty or thirty of them on each ant, like pashas on elephants. Look close at enough ants and you'll see them, right there on top.
But the little red scientists continued to read the texts, and learned about human pheromones. They went back to the rest of the little red people, awestruck and appalled. Now we know why these humans are such trouble, they reported. Humans have no more will than these ants we are riding around on. They are giant meat ants. The little red people tried to comprehend such a travesty of life. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson,
83:All existent things are the words of Allah which are inexhaustible (18) because they are from
"kun" and "kun" is the word of Allah. Is the word ascribed to Him according to what He
really is? His what-ness is not known. Or is it that Allah descends to the form of the one who
says, "kun", and so the word "kun" is the reality of that form to which he descended or in
which He is manifest? Some of the gnostics take one side and some take the other side, and
some of them are bewildered in the business and do not know. This is a question which can
only be recognised by taste (dhawq), as was the case with Abu Yazid al-Bistami when he
breathed into the ant which he had killed and it returned to life. He knew in that action by
Whom he had breathed, and that was an 'Isawian witnessing. As for the revival of meaning
by knowledge, that is the divine life, essential, eternal, sublime, and luminous, about which
Allah said, "Is someone who was dead and whom We brought to life, supplying him with a
light by which to walk among the people..." (6:123) Whoever gives life to a dead soul by the
life of knowledge in a particular problem connected to knowledge of Allah, has brought him
to life by it, and it is "a light for him by which he walks among the people, i.e. among his
likes in form. ~ Ibn Arabi,
84:The Four Winds
The South wind said to the palms:
My lovers sing me psalms;
But are they as warm as those
That Laylah's lover knows?
The North wind said to the firs:
I have my worshippers;
But are they as keen as hers?
The East wind said to the cedars:
My friends are no seceders;
But is their faith to me
As firm as his faith must be?
The West wind said to the yews:
My children are pure as dews;
But what of her lover's muse?
So to spite the summer weather
The four winds howled together.
But a great Voice from above
Cried: What do you know of love?
Do you think all nature worth
The littlest life upon earth?
I made the germ and the ant,
The tiger and elephant.
In the least of these there is more
Than your elemental war.
And the lovers whom ye slight
Are precious in my sight.
Peace to your mischief-brewing!
I love to watch their wooing.
64
Of all this Laylah heard
Never a word.
She lay beneath the trees
With her lover at her knees.
He sang of God above
And of love.
She lay at his side
Well satisfied,
And at set of sun
They were one.
Before they slept her pure smile curled;
"God bless all lovers in the World!"
And so say I the self-same word;
Nor doubt God heard.
~ Aleister Crowley,
85: The South wind said to the palms:
My lovers sing me psalms;
But are they as warm as those
That Laylah's lover knows?

The North wind said to the firs:
I have my worshippers;
But are they as keen as hers?

The East wind said to the cedars:
My friends are no seceders;
But is their faith to me
As firm as his faith must be?

The West wind said to the yews:
My children are pure as dews;
But what of her lover's muse?

So to spite the summer weather
The four winds howled together.

But a great Voice from above
Cried: What do you know of love?

Do you think all nature worth
The littlest life upon earth?

I made the germ and the ant,
The tiger and elephant.

In the least of these there is more
Than your elemental war.

And the lovers whom ye slight
Are precious in my sight.

Peace to your mischief-brewing!
I love to watch their wooing.

Of all this Laylah heard
Never a word.

She lay beneath the trees
With her lover at her knees.

He sang of God above
And of love.

She lay at his side
Well satisfied,

And at set of sun
They were one.

Before they slept her pure smile curled;
"God bless all lovers in the World!"

And so say I the self-same word;
Nor doubt God heard.
~ Aleister Crowley, The Four Winds
,
86:Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson performed a rather bizarre experiment on ants that may supplement Paul’s illustration (Rom 6:1-14). After noticing that it took ants a few days to recognize one of their crumpled nestmates as having died, he determined that ants identified death by clues of smell, not visually. As the ant’s body began to decompose, other ants would infallibly carry it out of the nest to a refuse pile. After many tries, Wilson narrowed down the precise chemical clue to oleic acid. If the ants smelled oleic acid, they would carry out the corpse; any other smell, they ignored. Their instinct was so strong that if Wilson daubed oleic acid on bits of paper, other ants would dutifully carry the paper to the ant cemetery.
In a final twist, Wilson painted oleic acid on the bodies of living ants. Sure enough, their nestmates seized them and marched them, their legs and antennae wriggling in protest, out to the ant cemetery. Thus deposited, the indignant 'living dead' cleaned themselves off before returning to the nest. If they did not remove every trace of the oleic acid, the nestmates would promptly seize them again and return them to the cemetery. They had to be certifiably alive, judged solely by smell, before being accepted back into the nest.
I think of that image, 'dead' ants acting very much alive, when I read Paul’s first illustration in Romans 6. Sin may be dead, but it stubbornly wriggles back to life. ~ Philip Yancey,
87:From the past they turn to the future. Ah! at the close of the last century, the future seemed a thing tangible,—it was woven up in all men's fears and hopes of the present. At the verge of that hundred years, Man, the ripest born of Time, (“An des Jahrhunderts Neige, Der reifste Sohn der Zeit.” “Die Kunstler.”) stood as at the deathbed of the Old World, and beheld the New Orb, blood-red amidst cloud and vapour,—uncertain if a comet or a sun. Behold the icy and profound disdain on the brow of the old man,—the lofty yet touching sadness that darkens the glorious countenance of Zanoni. Is it that one views with contempt the struggle and its issue, and the other with awe or pity? Wisdom contemplating mankind leads but to the two results,—compassion or disdain. He who believes in other worlds can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist on the revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth to Infinity,—what its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much greater is the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child of heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some star hereafter wilt thou look back on the ant-hill and its commotions, from Clovis to Robespierre, from Noah to the Final Fire. The spirit that can contemplate, that lives only in the intellect, can ascend to its star, even from the midst of the burial-ground called Earth, and while the sarcophagus called Life immures in its clay the everlasting! ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton,
88:The odors perceived by the ant seem to lead to a highly standardized course of conduct; but the value of a simple stimulus, such as an odor, for conveying information depends not only on the information conveyed by the stimulus itself but on the whole nervous constitution of the sender and receiver of the stimulus as well. Suppose I find myself in the woods with an intelligent savage who cannot speak my language and whose language I cannot speak. Even without any code of sign language common to the two of us, I can learn a great deal from him. All I need to do is to be alert to those moments when he shows the signs of emotion or interest. I then cast my eyes around, perhaps paying special attention to the direction of his glance, and fix in my memory what I see or hear. It will not be long before I discover the things which seem important to him, not because he has communicated them to me by language, but because I myself have observed them. In other words, a signal without an intrinsic content may acquire meaning in his mind by what he observes at the time, and may acquire meaning in my mind by what I observed at the time. The ability that he has to pick out the moments of my special, active attention is in itself a language as varied in possibilities as the range of impressions that the two of us are able to encompass. Thus social animals may have an active, intelligent, flexible means of communication long before the development of language. ~ Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics - Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948),
89:The Evening Quatrains
THE Day's grown old, the fainting Sun
Has but a little way to run,
And yet his steeds, with all his skill,
Scarce lug the chariot down the hill.
With labour spent, and thirst opprest,
Whilst they strain hard to gain the West,
From fetlocks hot drops melted light,
Which turn to meteors in the Night.
The shadows now so long do grow,
That brambles like tall cedars show,
Mole-hills seem mountains, and the ant
Appears a monstrous elephant.
A very little little flock
Shades thrice the ground that it would stock;
Whilst the small stripling following them
Appears a mighty Polypheme.
These being brought into the fold,
And by the thrifty master told
, [counted]
He thinks his wages are well paid,
Since none are either lost or stray'd.
Now lowing herds are each-where heard,
Chains rattle in the villian's
yard, [farmer]
The cart's on tail set down to rest,
Bearing on high the cuckold's crest.
The hedge is stripp'd, the clothes brought in,
Nought's left without should be within,
The bees are hiv'd, and hum their charm,
Whilst every house does seem a swarm.
The cock now to the roost is press'd:
For he must call up all the rest;
The sow's fast-pegg'd within the sty,
To still her squeaking progeny.
Each one has had his supping mess*, [meal]
The cheese is put into the press,
The pans and bowls are scalded all,
Rear'd up against the milk-house wall.
And now on benches all are sat
In the cool air to sit and chat,
Till Phoebus, dipping in the West,
Shall lead the World the way to rest.
~ Charles Cotton,
90:But despite the Secret Service–like behavior, and the regal nomenclature, there’s nothing hierarchical about the way an ant colony does its thinking. “Although queen is a term that reminds us of human political systems,” Gordon explains, “the queen is not an authority figure. She lays eggs and is fed and cared for by the workers. She does not decide which worker does what. In a harvester ant colony, many feet of intricate tunnels and chambers and thousands of ants separate the queen, surrounded by interior workers, from the ants working outside the nest and using only the chambers near the surface. It would be physically impossible for the queen to direct every worker’s decision about which task to perform and when.” The harvester ants that carry the queen off to her escape hatch do so not because they’ve been ordered to by their leader; they do it because the queen ant is responsible for giving birth to all the members of the colony, and so it’s in the colony’s best interest—and the colony’s gene pool—to keep the queen safe. Their genes instruct them to protect their mother, the same way their genes instruct them to forage for food. In other words, the matriarch doesn’t train her servants to protect her, evolution does. Popular culture trades in Stalinist ant stereotypes—witness the authoritarian colony regime in the animated film Antz—but in fact, colonies are the exact opposite of command economies. While they are capable of remarkably coordinated feats of task allocation, there are no Five-Year Plans in the ant kingdom. The colonies that Gordon studies display some of nature’s most mesmerizing decentralized behavior: intelligence and personality and learning that emerges from the bottom up. ~ Steven Johnson,
91:Ants have a powerful caste system. A colony typically contains ants that carry out radically different roles and have markedly different body structures and behaviors. These roles, Reinberg learned, are often determined not by genes but by signals from the physical and social environment. 'Sibling ants, in their larval stage, become segregated into the different types based on environmental signals,' he said. 'Their genomes are nearly identical, but the way the genes are used—turned on or off, and kept on or off—must determine what an ant "becomes." It seemed like a perfect system to study epigenetics. And so Shelley and I caught a flight to Arizona to see Jürgen Liebig, the ant biologist, in his lab.'

The collaboration between Reinberg, Berger, and Liebig has been explosively successful—the sort of scientific story ('two epigeneticists walk into a bar and meet an entomologist') that works its way into a legend. Carpenter ants, one of the species studied by the team, have elaborate social structures, with queens (bullet-size, fertile, winged), majors (bean-size soldiers who guard the colony but rarely leave it), and minors (nimble, grain-size, perpetually moving foragers). In a recent, revelatory study, researchers in Berger’s lab injected a single dose of a histone-altering chemical into the brains of major ants. Remarkably, their identities changed; caste was recast. The major ants wandered away from the colony and began to forage for food. The guards turned into scouts. Yet the caste switch could occur only if the chemical was injected during a vulnerable period in the ants’ development.

[...] The impact of the histone-altering experiment sank in as I left Reinberg’s lab and dodged into the subway. [...] All of an ant’s possible selves are inscribed in its genome. Epigenetic signals conceal some of these selves and reveal others, coiling some, uncoiling others. The ant chooses a life between its genes and its epigenes—inhabiting one self among its incipient selves. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee,
92:I will persist until I succeed.
I was not delivered unto this world in defeat, nor does failure course in my veins. I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd. I am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheep. I will hear not those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious. Let them join the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny.
I will persist until I succeed.
The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning; and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner.
Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult.
I will persist until I succeed.
Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today.
I will be liken to the rain drop which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.
I will persist until I succeed.
I will never consider defeat and I will remove from my vocabulary such words and phrases as quit, cannot, unable, impossible, out of the question, improbable, failure, unworkable, hopeless, and retreat; for they are words of fools. I will avoid despair but if this disease of the mind should infect me then I will work on in despair. I will toil and I will endure. I will ignore the obstacles at my feet and keep mine eyes on the goals above my head, for I know that where dry desert ends, green grass grows.
I will persist until I succeed.

The Greatest Salesman in the World
Og Mandino ~ Og Mandino,
93:A Hermit Thrush
Nothing's certain. Crossing, on this longest day,
the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up
the scree-slope of what at high tide
will be again an island,
to where, a decade since well-being staked
the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us
back, year after year, lugging the
makings of another picnic—
the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctified
fig newtons—there's no knowing what the slamming
seas, the gales of yet another winter
may have done. Still there,
the gust-beleaguered single spruce tree,
the ant-thronged, root-snelled moss, grass
and clover tuffet underneath it,
edges frazzled raw
but, like our own prolonged attachment, holding.
Whatever moral lesson might commend itself,
there's no use drawing one,
there's nothing here
to seize on as exemplifying any so-called virtue
(holding on despite adversity, perhaps) or
any no-more-than-human tendency—
stubborn adherence, say,
to a wholly wrongheaded tenet. Though to
hold on in any case means taking less and less
for granted, some few things seem nearly
certain, as that the longest day
will come again, will seem to hold its breath,
the months-long exhalation of diminishment
again begin. Last night you woke me
for a look at Jupiter,
that vast cinder wheeled unblinking
in a bath of galaxies. Watching, we traveled
toward an apprehension all but impossible
to be held onto—
that no point is fixed, that there's no foothold
but roams untethered save by such snells,
such sailor's knots, such stays
and guy wires as are
mainly of our own devising. From such an
empyrean, aloof seraphic mentors urge us
to look down on all attachment,
on any bonding, as
in the end untenable. Base as it is, from
year to year the earth's sore surface
mends and rebinds itself, however
and as best it can, with
thread of cinquefoil, tendril of the magenta
beach pea, trammel of bramble; with easings,
mulchings, fragrances, the gray-green
bayberry's cool poultice—
and what can't finally be mended, the salt air
proceeds to buff and rarefy: the lopped carnage
of the seaward spruce clump weathers
lustrous, to wood-silver.
Little is certain, other than the tide that
circumscribes us that still sets its term
to every picnic—today we stayed too long
again, and got our feet wet—
and all attachment may prove at best, perhaps,
a broken, a much-mended thing. Watching
the longest day take cover under
a monk's-cowl overcast,
with thunder, rain and wind, then waiting,
we dropp everything to listen as a
hermit thrush distills its fragmentary,
hesitant, in the end
unbroken music. From what source (beyond us, or
the wells within?) such links perceived arrive—
diminished sequences so uninsistingly
not even human—there's
hardly a vocabulary left to wonder, uncertain
as we are of so much in this existence, this
botched, cumbersome, much-mended,
not unsatisfactory thing.
~ Amy Clampitt,
94:One," said the recording secretary.

"Jesus wept," answered Leon promptly.

There was not a sound in the church. You could almost hear the butterflies pass. Father looked down and laid his lower lip in folds with his fingers, like he did sometimes when it wouldn't behave to suit him.

"Two," said the secretary after just a breath of pause.

Leon looked over the congregation easily and then fastened his eyes on Abram Saunders, the father of Absalom, and said reprovingly: "Give not sleep to thine eyes nor slumber to thine eyelids."

Abram straightened up suddenly and blinked in astonishment, while father held fast to his lip.

"Three," called the secretary hurriedly.

Leon shifted his gaze to Betsy Alton, who hadn't spoken to her next door neighbour in five years.

"Hatred stirreth up strife," he told her softly, "but love covereth all sins."

Things were so quiet it seemed as if the air would snap.

"Four."

The mild blue eyes travelled back to the men's side and settled on Isaac Thomas, a man too lazy to plow and sow land his father had left him. They were not so mild, and the voice was touched with command: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise."

Still that silence.

"Five," said the secretary hurriedly, as if he wished it were over. Back came the eyes to the women's side and past all question looked straight at Hannah Dover.

"As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman without discretion."

"Six," said the secretary and looked appealingly at father, whose face was filled with dismay.

Again Leon's eyes crossed the aisle and he looked directly at the man whom everybody in the community called "Stiff-necked Johnny."

I think he was rather proud of it, he worked so hard to keep them doing it.

"Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck," Leon commanded him.

Toward the door some one tittered.

"Seven," called the secretary hastily.

Leon glanced around the room.

"But how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity," he announced in delighted tones as if he had found it out by himself.

"Eight," called the secretary with something like a breath of relief.

Our angel boy never had looked so angelic, and he was beaming on the Princess.

"Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee," he told her.

Laddie would thrash him for that.

Instantly after, "Nine," he recited straight at Laddie: "I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?"

More than one giggled that time.

"Ten!" came almost sharply.

Leon looked scared for the first time. He actually seemed to shiver. Maybe he realized at last that it was a pretty serious thing he was doing. When he spoke he said these words in the most surprised voice you ever heard: "I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly."

"Eleven."

Perhaps these words are in the Bible. They are not there to read the way Leon repeated them, for he put a short pause after the first name, and he glanced toward our father: "Jesus Christ, the SAME, yesterday, and to-day, and forever!"

Sure as you live my mother's shoulders shook.

"Twelve."

Suddenly Leon seemed to be forsaken. He surely shrank in size and appeared abused.

"When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up," he announced, and looked as happy over the ending as he had seemed forlorn at the beginning.

"Thirteen."

"The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can man do unto me?" inquired Leon of every one in the church. Then he soberly made a bow and walked to his seat. ~ Gene Stratton Porter,
95:The Ginestra,
OR THE FLOWER OF THE WILDERNESS.
Here, on the arid ridge
Of dead Vesuvius,
Exterminator terrible,
That by no other tree or flower is cheered,
Thou scatterest thy lonely leaves around,
O fragrant flower,
With desert wastes content. Thy graceful stems
I in the solitary paths have found,
The city that surround,
That once was mistress of the world;
And of her fallen power,
They seemed with silent eloquence to speak
Unto the thoughtful wanderer.
And now again I see thee on this soil,
Of wretched, world-abandoned spots the friend,
Of ruined fortunes the companion, still.
These fields with barren ashes strown,
And lava, hardened into stone,
Beneath the pilgrim's feet, that hollow sound,
Where by their nests the serpents coiled,
Lie basking in the sun,
And where the conies timidly
To their familiar burrows run,
Were cheerful villages and towns,
With waving fields of golden grain,
And musical with lowing herds;
Were gardens, and were palaces,
That to the leisure of the rich
A grateful shelter gave;
Were famous cities, which the mountain fierce,
Forth-darting torrents from his mouth of flame,
Destroyed, with their inhabitants.
Now all around, one ruin lies,
Where thou dost dwell, O gentle flower,
And, as in pity of another's woe,
A perfume sweet thou dost exhale,
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To heaven an offering,
And consolation to the desert bring.
Here let him come, who hath been used
To chant the praises of our mortal state,
And see the care,
That loving Nature of her children takes!
Here may he justly estimate
The power of mortals, whom
The cruel nurse, when least they fear,
With motion light can in a moment crush
In part, and afterwards, when in the mood,
With motion not so light, can suddenly,
And utterly annihilate.
Here, on these blighted coasts,
May he distinctly trace
'The princely progress of the human race!'
Here look, and in a mirror see thyself,
O proud and foolish age!
That turn'st thy back upon the path,
That thought revived
So clearly indicates to all,
And this, thy movement retrograde,
Dost _Progress_ call.
Thy foolish prattle all the minds,
Whose cruel fate thee for a father gave,
Besmear with flattery,
Although, among themselves, at times,
They laugh at thee.
But I will not to such low arts descend,
Though envy it would be for me,
The rest to imitate,
And, raving, wilfully,
To make my song more pleasing to thy ears:
But I will sooner far reveal,
As clearly as I can, the deep disdain
That I for thee within my bosom feel;
Although I know, oblivion
Awaits the man who holds his age in scorn:
But this misfortune, which I share with thee,
My laughter only moves.
Thou dream'st of liberty,
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And yet thou wouldst anew that thought enslave,
By which alone we are redeemed, in part,
From barbarism; by which alone
True progress is obtained,
And states are guided to a nobler end.
And so the truth of our hard lot,
And of the humble place
Which Nature gave us, pleased thee not;
And like a coward, thou hast turned thy back
Upon the light, which made it evident;
Reviling him who does that light pursue,
And praising him alone
Who, in his folly, or from motives base,
Above the stars exalts the human race.
A man of poor estate, and weak of limb,
But of a generous, truthful soul,
Nor calls, nor deems himself
A Croesus, or a Hercules,
Nor makes himself ridiculous
Before the world with vain pretence
Of vigor or of opulence;
But his infirmities and needs
He lets appear, and without shame,
And speaking frankly, calls each thing
By its right name.
I deem not _him_ magnanimous,
But simply, a great fool,
Who, born to perish, reared in suffering,
Proclaims his lot a happy one,
And with offensive pride
His pages fills, exalted destinies
And joys, unknown in heaven, much less
On earth, absurdly promising to those
Who by a wave of angry sea,
Or breath of tainted air,
Or shaking of the earth beneath,
Are ruined, crushed so utterly,
As scarce to be recalled by memory.
But truly noble, wise is _he_,
Who bids his brethren boldly look
Upon our common misery;
85
Who frankly tells the naked truth,
Acknowledging our frail and wretched state,
And all the ills decreed to us by Fate;
Who shows himself in suffering brave and strong,
Nor adds unto his miseries
Fraternal jealousies and strifes,
The hardest things to bear of all,
Reproaching man with his own grief,
But the true culprit
Who, in our birth, a mother is,
A fierce step-mother in her will.
_Her_ he proclaims the enemy,
And thinking all the human race
Against her armed, as is the case,
E'en from the first, united and arrayed,
All men esteems confederates,
And with true love embraces all,
Prompt and efficient aid bestowing, and
Expecting it, in all the pains
And perils of the common war.
And to resent with arms all injuries,
Or snares and pit-falls for a neighbor lay,
Absurd he deems, as it would be, upon
The field, surrounded by the enemy,
The foe forgetting, bitter war
With one's own friends to wage,
And in the hottest of the fight,
With cruel and misguided sword,
One's fellow soldiers put to flight.
When truths like these are rendered clear,
As once they were, unto the multitude,
And when that fear, which from the first,
All mortals in a social band
Against inhuman Nature joined
Anew shall guided be, in part,
By knowledge true, then social intercourse,
And faith, and hope, and charity
Will a far different foundation have
From that which silly fables give,
By which supported, public truth and good
Must still proceed with an unstable foot,
As all things that in error have their root.
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Oft, on these hills, so desolate,
Which by the hardened flood,
That seems in waves to rise,
Are clad in mourning, do I sit at night,
And o'er the dreary plain behold
The stars above in purest azure shine,
And in the ocean mirrored from afar,
And all the world in brilliant sparks arrayed,
Revolving through the vault serene.
And when my eyes I fasten on those lights,
Which seem to them a point,
And yet are so immense,
That earth and sea, with them compared,
Are but a point indeed;
To whom, not only man,
But this our globe, where man is nothing, is
Unknown; and when I farther gaze upon
Those clustered stars, at distance infinite,
That seem to us like mist, to whom
Not only man and earth, but all our stars
At once, so vast in numbers and in bulk,
The golden sun himself included, are
Unknown, or else appear, as they to earth,
A point of nebulous light, what, then,
Dost _thou_ unto my thought appear,
O race of men?
Remembering thy wretched state below,
Of which the soil I tread, the token bears;
And, on the other hand,
That thou thyself hast deemed
The Lord and end of all the Universe;
How oft thou hast been pleased
The idle tale to tell,
That to this little grain of sand, obscure,
The name of earth that bears,
The Authors of that Universe
Have, at thy call, descended oft,
And pleasant converse with thy children had;
And how, these foolish dreams reviving, e'en
This age its insults heaps upon the wise,
Although it seems all others to excel
In learning, and in arts polite;
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What can I think of thee
Thou wretched race of men?
What thoughts discordant then my heart assail,
In doubt, if scorn or pity should prevail!
As a small apple, falling from a tree
In autumn, by the force
Of its own ripeness, to the ground,
The pleasant homes of a community
Of ants, in the soft clod
With careful labor built,
And all their works, and all the wealth,
Which the industrious citizens
Had in the summer providently stored,
Lays waste, destroys, and in an instant hides;
So, falling from on high,
To heaven forth-darted from
The mountain's groaning womb,
A dark destructive mass
Of ashes, pumice, and of stones,
With boiling streams of lava mixed,
Or, down the mountain's side
Descending, furious, o'er the grass,
A fearful flood
Of melted metals, mixed with burning sand,
Laid waste, destroyed, and in short time concealed
The cities on yon shore, washed by the sea,
Where now the goats
On this side browse, and cities new
Upon the other stand, whose foot-stools are
The buried ones, whose prostrate walls
The lofty mountain tramples under foot.
Nature no more esteems or cares for man,
Than for the ant; and if the race
Is not so oft destroyed,
The reason we may plainly see;
Because the ants more fruitful are than we.
Full eighteen hundred years have passed,
Since, by the force of fire laid waste,
These thriving cities disappeared;
And now, the husbandman,
His vineyards tending, that the arid clod,
88
With ashes clogged, with difficulty feeds,
Still raises a suspicious eye
Unto that fatal crest,
That, with a fierceness not to be controlled,
Still stands tremendous, threatens still
Destruction to himself, his children, and
Their little property.
And oft upon the roof
Of his small cottage, the poor man
All night lies sleepless, often springing up,
The course to watch of the dread stream of fire
That from the inexhausted womb doth pour
Along the sandy ridge,
Its lurid light reflected in the bay,
From Mergellina unto Capri's shore.
And if he sees it drawing near,
Or in his well
He hears the boiling water gurgle, wakes
His sons, in haste his wife awakes,
And, with such things as they can snatch,
Escaping, sees from far
His little nest, and the small field,
His sole resource against sharp hunger's pangs,
A prey unto the burning flood,
That crackling comes, and with its hardening crust,
Inexorable, covers all.
Unto the light of day returns,
After its long oblivion,
Pompeii, dead, an unearthed skeleton,
Which avarice or piety
Hath from its grave unto the air restored;
And from its forum desolate,
And through the formal rows
Of mutilated colonnades,
The stranger looks upon the distant, severed peaks,
And on the smoking crest,
That threatens still the ruins scattered round.
And in the horror of the secret night,
Along the empty theatres,
The broken temples, shattered houses, where
The bat her young conceals,
Like flitting torch, that smoking sheds
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A gloom through the deserted halls
Of palaces, the baleful lava glides,
That through the shadows, distant, glares,
And tinges every object round.
Thus, paying unto man no heed,
Or to the ages that he calls antique,
Or to the generations as they pass,
Nature forever young remains,
Or at a pace so slow proceeds,
She stationary seems.
Empires, meanwhile, decline and fall,
And nations pass away, and languages:
She sees it not, or _will_ not see;
And yet man boasts of immortality!
And thou, submissive flower,
That with thy fragrant foliage dost adorn
These desolated plains,
Thou, too, must fall before the cruel power
Of subterranean fire,
Which, to its well-known haunts returning, will
Its fatal border spread
O'er thy soft leaves and branches fine.
And thou wilt bow thy gentle head,
Without a struggle, yielding to thy fate:
But not with vain and abject cowardice,
Wilt thy destroyer supplicate;
Nor wilt, erect with senseless haughtiness,
Look up unto the stars,
Or o'er the wilderness,
Where, not from choice, but Fortune's will,
Thy birthplace thou, and home didst find;
But wiser, far, than man,
And far less weak;
For thou didst ne'er, from Fate, or power of thine,
Immortal life for thy frail children seek.
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,
96:Jubilate Agno: Fragment A
Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues; give the glory to the Lord, and the Lamb.
Nations, and languages, and every Creature, in which is the breath of Life.
Let man and beast appear before him, and magnify his name together.
Let Noah and his company approach the throne of Grace, and do homage to the
Ark of their Salvation.
Let Abraham present a Ram, and worship the God of his Redemption.
Let Isaac, the Bridegroom, kneel with his Camels, and bless the hope of his
pilgrimage.
Let Jacob, and his speckled Drove adore the good Shepherd of Israel.
Let Esau offer a scape Goat for his seed, and rejoice in the blessing of God his
father.
Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter, bind a Leopard to the altar, and consecrate his
spear to the Lord.
Let Ishmael dedicate a Tyger, and give praise for the liberty, in which the Lord
has let him at large.
Let Balaam appear with an Ass, and bless the Lord his people and his creatures
for a reward eternal.
Let Anah, the son of Zibion, lead a Mule to the temple, and bless God, who
amerces the consolation of the creature for the service of Man.
Let Daniel come forth with a Lion, and praise God with all his might through faith
in Christ Jesus.
Let Naphthali with an Hind give glory in the goodly words of Thanksgiving.
Let Aaron, the high priest, sanctify a Bull, and let him go free to the Lord and
Giver of Life.
32
Let the Levites of the Lord take the Beavers of the brook alive into the Ark of the
Testimony.
Let Eleazar with the Ermine serve the Lord decently and in purity.
Let Ithamar minister with a Chamois, and bless the name of Him, which
cloatheth the naked.
Let Gershom with an Pygarg Hart bless the name of Him, who feedeth the
hungry.
Let Merari praise the wisdom and power of God with the Coney, who scoopeth
the rock, and archeth in the sand.
Let Kohath serve with the Sable, and bless God in the ornaments of the Temple.
Let Jehoida bless God with an Hare, whose mazes are determined for the health
of the body and to parry the adversary.
Let Ahitub humble himself with an Ape before Almighty God, who is the maker of
variety and pleasantry.
Let Abiathar with a Fox praise the name of the Lord, who ballances craft against
strength and skill against number.
Let Moses, the Man of God, bless with a Lizard, in the sweet majesty of goodnature, and the magnanimity of meekness.
Let Joshua praise God with an Unicorn -- the swiftness of the Lord, and the
strength of the Lord, and the spear of the Lord mighty in battle.
Let Caleb with an Ounce praise the Lord of the Land of beauty and rejoice in the
blessing of his good Report.
Let Othniel praise God with the Rhinoceros, who put on his armour for the reward
of beauty in the Lord.
Let Tola bless with the Toad, which is the good creature of God, tho' his virtue is
in the secret, and his mention is not made.
Let Barak praise with the Pard -- and great is the might of the faithful and great
is the Lord in the nail of Jael and in the sword of the Son of Abinoam.
33
Let Gideon bless with the Panther -- the Word of the Lord is invincible by him
that lappeth from the brook.
Let Jotham praise with the Urchin, who took up his parable and provided himself
for the adversary to kick against the pricks.
Let Boaz, the Builder of Judah, bless with the Rat, which dwelleth in hardship and
peril, that they may look to themselves and keep their houses in order.
Let Obed-Edom with a Dormouse praise the Name of the Lord God his Guest for
increase of his store and for peace.
Let Abishai bless with the Hyaena -- the terror of the Lord, and the fierceness, of
his wrath against the foes of the King and of Israel.
Let Ethan praise with the Flea, his coat of mail, his piercer, and his vigour, which
wisdom and providence have contrived to attract observation and to escape it.
Let Heman bless with the Spider, his warp and his woof, his subtlety and
industry, which are good.
Let Chalcol praise with the Beetle, whose life is precious in the sight of God, tho
his appearance is against him.
Let Darda with a Leech bless the Name of the Physician of body and soul.
Let Mahol praise the Maker of Earth and Sea with the Otter, whom God has given
to dive and to burrow for his preservation.
Let David bless with the Bear -- The beginning of victory to the Lord -- to the
Lord the perfection of excellence -- Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from
the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in
sweetness magnifical and mighty.
Let Solomon praise with the Ant, and give the glory to the Fountain of all
Wisdom.
Let Romamti-ezer bless with the Ferret -- The Lord is a rewarder of them, that
diligently seek him.
Let Samuel, the Minister from a child, without ceasing praise with the Porcupine,
34
which is the creature of defence and stands upon his arms continually.
Let Nathan with the Badger bless God for his retired fame, and privacy
inaccessible to slander.
Let Joseph, who from the abundance of his blessing may spare to him, that
lacketh, praise with the Crocodile, which is pleasant and pure, when he is
interpreted, tho' his look is of terror and offence.
Let Esdras bless Christ Jesus with the Rose and his people, which is a nation of
living sweetness.
Let Mephibosheth with the Cricket praise the God of chearfulness, hospitality,
and gratitude.
Let Shallum with the Frog bless God for the meadows of Canaan, the fleece, the
milk and the honey.
Let Hilkiah praise with the Weasel, which sneaks for his prey in craft, and
dwelleth at ambush.
Let Job bless with the Worm -- the life of the Lord is in Humiliation, the Spirit
also and the truth.
Let Elihu bless with the Tortoise, which is food for praise and thanksgiving.
Let Hezekiah praise with the Dromedary -- the zeal for the glory of God is
excellence, and to bear his burden is grace.
Let Zadoc worship with the Mole -- before honour is humility, and he that looketh
low shall learn.
Let Gad with the Adder bless in the simplicity of the preacher and the wisdom of
the creature.
Let Tobias bless Charity with his Dog, who is faithful, vigilant, and a friend in
poverty.
Let Anna bless God with the Cat, who is worthy to be presented before the
throne of grace, when he has trampled upon the idol in his prank.
Let Benaiah praise with the Asp -- to conquer malice is nobler, than to slay the
35
lion.
Let Barzillai bless with the Snail -- a friend in need is as the balm of Gilead, or as
the slime to the wounded bark.
Let Joab with the Horse worship the Lord God of Hosts.
Let Shemaiah bless God with the Caterpiller -- the minister of vengeance is the
harbinger of mercy.
Let Ahimelech with the Locust bless God from the tyranny of numbers.
Let Cornelius with the Swine bless God, which purifyeth all things for the poor.
Let Araunah bless with the Squirrel, which is a gift of homage from the poor man
to the wealthy and increaseth good will.
Let Bakbakkar bless with the Salamander, which feedeth upon ashes as bread,
and whose joy is at the mouth of the furnace.
Let Jabez bless with Tarantula, who maketh his bed in the moss, which he
feedeth, that the pilgrim may take heed to his way.
Let Jakim with the Satyr bless God in the dance. -Let Iddo praise the Lord with the Moth -- the writings of man perish as the
garment, but the Book of God endureth for ever.
Let Nebuchadnezzar bless with the Grashopper -- the pomp and vanities of the
world are as the herb of the field, but the glory of the Lord increaseth for ever.
Let Naboth bless with the Canker-worm -- envy is cruel and killeth and preyeth
upon that which God has given to aspire and bear fruit.
Let Lud bless with the Elk, the strenuous asserter of his liberty, and the
maintainer of his ground.
Let Obadiah with the Palmer-worm bless God for the remnant that is left.
Let Agur bless with the Cockatrice -- The consolation of the world is deceitful,
and temporal honour the crown of him that creepeth.
36
Let Ithiel bless with the Baboon, whose motions are regular in the wilderness,
and who defendeth himself with a staff against the assailant.
Let Ucal bless with the Cameleon, which feedeth on the Flowers and washeth
himself in the dew.
Let Lemuel bless with the Wolf, which is a dog without a master, but the Lord
hears his cries and feeds him in the desert.
Let Hananiah bless with the Civet, which is pure from benevolence.
Let Azarias bless with the Reindeer, who runneth upon the waters, and wadeth
thro the land in snow.
Let Mishael bless with the Stoat -- the praise of the Lord gives propriety to all
things.
Let Savaran bless with the Elephant, who gave his life for his country that he
might put on immortality.
Let Nehemiah, the imitator of God, bless with the Monkey, who is work'd down
from Man.
Let Manasses bless with the Wild-Ass -- liberty begetteth insolence, but necessity
is the mother of prayer.
Let Jebus bless with the Camelopard, which is good to carry and to parry and to
kneel.
Let Huz bless with the Polypus -- lively subtlety is acceptable to the Lord.
Let Buz bless with the Jackall -- but the Lord is the Lion's provider.
Let Meshullam bless with the Dragon, who maketh his den in desolation and
rejoiceth amongst the ruins.
Let Enoch bless with the Rackoon, who walked with God as by the instinct.
Let Hashbadana bless with the Catamountain, who stood by the Pulpit of God
against the dissensions of the Heathen.
Let Ebed-Melech bless with the Mantiger, the blood of the Lord is sufficient to do
37
away the offence of Cain, and reinstate the creature which is amerced.
Let A Little Child with a Serpent bless Him, who ordaineth strength in babes to
the confusion of the Adversary.
Let Huldah bless with the Silkworm -- the ornaments of the Proud are from the
bowells of their Betters.
Let Susanna bless with the Butterfly -- beauty hath wings, but chastity is the
Cherub.
Let Sampson bless with the Bee, to whom the Lord hath given strength to annoy
the assailant and wisdom to his strength.
Let Amasiah bless with the Chaffer -- the top of the tree is for the brow of the
champion, who has given the glory to God.
Let Hashum bless with the Fly, whose health is the honey of the air, but he feeds
upon the thing strangled, and perisheth.
Let Malchiah bless with the Gnat -- it is good for man and beast to mend their
pace.
Let Pedaiah bless with the Humble-Bee, who loves himself in solitude and makes
his honey alone.
Let Maaseiah bless with the Drone, who with the appearance of a Bee is neither a
soldier nor an artist, neither a swordsman nor smith.
Let Urijah bless with the Scorpion, which is a scourge against the murmurers -the Lord keep it from our coasts.
Let Anaiah bless with the Dragon-fly, who sails over the pond by the wood-side
and feedeth on the cressies.
Let Zorobabel bless with the Wasp, who is the Lord's architect, and buildeth his
edifice in armour.
Let Jehu bless with the Hornet, who is the soldier of the Lord to extirpate
abomination and to prepare the way of peace.
Let Mattithiah bless with the Bat, who inhabiteth the desolations of pride and
38
flieth amongst the tombs.
Let Elias which is the innocency of the Lord rejoice with the Dove.
Let Asaph rejoice with the Nightingale -- The musician of the Lord! and the
watchman of the Lord!
Let Shema rejoice with the Glowworm, who is the lamp of the traveller and mead
of the musician.
Let Jeduthun rejoice with the Woodlark, who is sweet and various.
Let Chenaniah rejoice with Chloris, in the vivacity of his powers and the beauty of
his person.
Let Gideoni rejoice with the Goldfinch, who is shrill and loud, and full withal.
Let Giddalti rejoice with the Mocking-bird, who takes off the notes of the Aviary
and reserves his own.
Let Jogli rejoice with the Linnet, who is distinct and of mild delight.
Let Benjamin bless and rejoice with the Redbird, who is soft and soothing.
Let Dan rejoice with the Blackbird, who praises God with all his heart, and
biddeth to be of good cheer.
~ Christopher Smart,
97:The Bounty
[for Alix Walcott]
Between the vision of the Tourist Board and the true
Paradise lies the desert where Isaiah's elations
force a rose from the sand. The thirty-third canto
cores the dawn clouds with concentric radiance,
the breadfruit opens its palms in praise of the bounty,
bois-pain, tree of bread, slave food, the bliss of John Clare,
torn, wandering Tom, stoat-stroker in his county
of reeds and stalk-crickets, fiddling the dank air,
lacing his boots with vines, steering glazed beetles
with the tenderest prods, knight of the cockchafer,
wrapped in the mists of shires, their snail-horned steeples
palms opening to the cupped pool—but his soul safer
than ours, though iron streams fetter his ankles.
Frost whitening his stubble, he stands in the ford
of a brook like the Baptist lifting his branches to bless
cathedrals and snails, the breaking of this new day,
and the shadows of the beach road near which my mother lies,
with the traffic of insects going to work anyway.
The lizard on the white wall fixed on the hieroglyph
of its stone shadow, the palms' rustling archery,
the souls and sails of circling gulls rhyme with:
"In la sua volont è nostra pace,"
In His will is our peace. Peace in white harbours,
in marinas whose masts agree, in crescent melons
left all night in the fridge, in the Egyptian labours
of ants moving boulders of sugar, words in this sentence,
shadow and light, who live next door like neighbours,
57
and in sardines with pepper sauce. My mother lies
near the white beach stones, John Clare near the sea-almonds,
yet the bounty returns each daybreak, to my surprise,
to my surprise and betrayal, yes, both at once.
I am moved like you, mad Tom, by a line of ants;
I behold their industry and they are giants.
ii
There on the beach, in the desert, lies the dark well
where the rose of my life was lowered, near the shaken plants,
near a pool of fresh tears, tolled by the golden bell
of allamanda, thorns of the bougainvillea, and that is
their bounty! They shine with defiance from weed and flower,
even those that flourish elsewhere, vetch, ivy, clematis,
on whom the sun now rises with all its power,
not for the Tourist Board or for Dante Alighieri,
but because there is no other path for its wheel to take
except to make the ruts of the beach road an allegory
of this poem's career, of yours, that she died for the sake
of a crowning wreath of false laurel; so, John Clare, forgive me,
for this morning's sake, forgive me, coffee, and pardon me,
milk with two packets of artificial sugar,
as I watch these lines grow and the art of poetry harden me
into sorrow as measured as this, to draw the veiled figure
of Mamma entering the standard elegiac.
No, there is grief, there will always be, but it must not madden,
like Clare, who wept for a beetle's loss, for the weight
of the world in a bead of dew on clematis or vetch,
and the fire in these tinder-dry lines of this poem I hate
as much as I love her, poor rain-beaten wretch,
redeemer of mice, earl of the doomed protectorate
of cavalry under your cloak; come on now, enough!
58
iii
Bounty!
In the bells of tree-frogs with their steady clamour
in the indigo dark before dawn, the fading morse
of fireflies and crickets, then light on the beetle's armour,
and the toad's too-late presages, nettles of remorse
that shall spring from her grave from the spade's heartbreak.
And yet not to have loved her enough is to love more,
if I confess it, and I confess it. The trickle of underground
springs, the babble of swollen gulches under drenched ferns,
loosening the grip of their roots, till their hairy clods
like unclenching fists swirl wherever the gulch turns
them, and the shuddering aftermath bends the rods
of wild cane. Bounty in the ant's waking fury,
in the snail's chapel stirring under wild yams,
praise in decay and process, awe in the ordinary
in wind that reads the lines of the breadfruit's palms
in the sun contained in a globe of the crystal dew,
bounty in the ants' continuing a line of raw flour,
mercy on the mongoose scuttling past my door,
in the light's parallelogram laid on the kitchen floor,
for Thine is the Kingdom, the Glory, and the Power,
the bells of Saint Clement's in the marigolds on the altar,
in the bougainvillea's thorns, in the imperial lilac
and the feathery palms that nodded at the entry
into Jerusalem, the weight of the world on the back
of an ass; dismounting, He left His cross there for sentry
and sneering centurion; then I believed in His Word,
in a widow's immaculate husband, in pews of brown wood,
when the cattle-bell of the chapel summoned our herd
59
into the varnished stalls, in whose rustling hymnals I heard
the fresh Jacobean springs, the murmur Clare heard
of bounty abiding, the clear language she taught us,
"as the hart panteth," at this, her keen ears pronged
while her three fawns nibbled the soul-freshening waters,
"as the hart panteth for the water-brooks" that belonged
to the language in which I mourn her now, or when
I showed her my first elegy, her husband's, and then her own.
iv
But can she or can she not read this? Can you read this,
Mamma, or hear it? If I took the pulpit, lay-preacher
like tender Clare, like poor Tom, so that look, Miss!
the ants come to you like children, their beloved teacher
Alix, but unlike the silent recitation of the infants,
the choir that Clare and Tom heard in their rainy county,
we have no solace but utterance, hence this wild cry.
Snails move into harbour, the breadfruit plants on the Bounty
will be heaved aboard, and the white God is Captain Bligh.
Across white feathery grave-grass the shadow of the soul
passes, the canvas cracks open on the cross-trees of the Bounty,
and the Trades lift the shrouds of the resurrected sail.
All move in their passage to the same mother-country,
the dirt-clawing weasel, the blank owl or sunning seal.
Faith grows mutinous. The ribbed body with its cargo
stalls in its doldrums, the God-captain is cast adrift
by a mutinous Christian, in the wake of the turning Argo
plants bob in the ocean's furrows, their shoots dip and lift,
and the soul's Australia is like the New Testament
after the Old World, the code of an eye for an eye;
the horizon spins slowly and Authority's argument
60
diminishes in power, in the longboat with Captain Bligh.
This was one of your earliest lessons, how the Christ-Son
questions the Father, to settle on another island, haunted by Him,
by the speck of a raging deity on the ruled horizon,
diminishing in meaning and distance, growing more dim:
all these predictable passages that we first disobey
before we become what we challenged; but you never altered
your voice, either sighing or sewing, you would pray
to your husband aloud, pedalling the hymns we all heard
in the varnished pew: "There Is a Green Hill Far Away,"
"Jerusalem the Golden." Your melody faltered
but never your faith in the bounty which is His Word.
All of these waves crepitate from the culture of Ovid,
its sibilants and consonants; a universal metre
piles up these signatures like inscriptions of seaweed
that dry in the pungent sun, lines ruled by mitre
and laurel, or spray swiftly garlanding the forehead
of an outcrop (and I hope this settles the matter
of presences). No soul was ever invented,
yet every presence is transparent; if I met her
(in her nightdress ankling barefoot, crooning to the shallows),
should I call her shadow that of a pattern invented
by Graeco-Roman design, columns of shadows
cast by the Forum, Augustan perspectives—
poplars, casuarina-colonnades, the in-and-out light of almonds
made from original Latin, no leaf but the olive's?
Questions of pitch. Faced with seraphic radiance
(don't interrupt!), mortals rub their skeptical eyes
that hell is a beach-fire at night where embers dance,
with temporal fireflies like thoughts of Paradise;
61
but there are inexplicable instincts that keep recurring
not from hope or fear only, that are real as stones,
the faces of the dead we wait for as ants are transferring
their cities, though we no longer believe in the shining ones.
I half-expect to see you no longer, then more than half,
almost never, or never then—there I have said it—
but felt something less than final at the edge of your grave,
some other something somewhere, equally dreaded,
since the fear of the infinite is the same as death,
unendurable brightness, the substantial dreading
its own substance, dissolving to gases and vapours,
like our dread of distance; we need a horizon,
a dividing line that turns the stars into neighbours
though infinity separates them, we can think of only one sun:
all I am saying is that the dread of death is in the faces
we love, the dread of our dying, or theirs;
therefore we see in the glint of immeasurable spaces
not stars or falling embers, not meteors, but tears.
vi
The mango trees serenely rust when they are in flower,
nobody knows the name for that voluble cedar
whose bell-flowers fall, the pomme-arac purples its floor.
The blue hills in late afternoon always look sadder.
The country night waiting to come in outside the door;
the firefly keeps striking matches, and the hillside fumes
with a bluish signal of charcoal, then the smoke burns
into a larger question, one that forms and unforms,
then loses itself in a cloud, till the question returns.
Buckets clatter under pipes, villages begin at corners.
A man and his trotting dog come back from their garden.
62
The sea blazes beyond the rust roofs, dark is on us
before we know it. The earth smells of what's done,
small yards brighten, day dies and its mourners
begin, the first wreath of gnats; this was when we sat down
on bright verandahs watching the hills die. Nothing is trite
once the beloved have vanished; empty clothes in a row,
but perhaps our sadness tires them who cherished delight;
not only are they relieved of our customary sorrow,
they are without hunger, without any appetite,
but are part of earth's vegetal fury; their veins grow
with the wild mammy-apple, the open-handed breadfruit,
their heart in the open pomegranate, in the sliced avocado;
ground-doves pick from their palms; ants carry the freight
of their sweetness, their absence in all that we eat,
their savour that sweetens all of our multiple juices,
their faith that we break and chew in a wedge of cassava,
and here at first is the astonishment: that earth rejoices
in the middle of our agony, earth that will have her
for good: wind shines white stones and the shallows' voices.
vii
In spring, after the bear's self-burial, the stuttering
crocuses open and choir, glaciers shelve and thaw,
frozen ponds crack into maps, green lances spring
from the melting fields, flags of rooks rise and tatter
the pierced light, the crumbling quiet avalanches
of an unsteady sky; the vole uncoils and the otter
worries his sleek head through the verge's branches;
crannies, culverts, and creeks roar with wrist-numbing water.
Deer vault invisible hurdles and sniff the sharp air,
squirrels spring up like questions, berries easily redden,
63
edges delight in their own shapes (whoever their shaper).
But here there is one season, our viridian Eden
is that of the primal garden that engendered decay,
from the seed of a beetle's shard or a dead hare
white and forgotten as winter with spring on its way.
There is no change now, no cycles of spring, autumn, winter,
nor an island's perpetual summer; she took time with her;
no climate, no calendar except for this bountiful day.
As poor Tom fed his last crust to trembling birds,
as by reeds and cold pools John Clare blest these thin musicians,
let the ants teach me again with the long lines of words,
my business and duty, the lesson you taught your sons,
to write of the light's bounty on familiar things
that stand on the verge of translating themselves into news:
the crab, the frigate that floats on cruciform wings,
and that nailed and thorn riddled tree that opens its pews
to the blackbird that hasn't forgotten her because it sings.
~ Derek Walcott,
98:The Spooniad
[The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River, planned The
Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to
complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by
William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of
December 18th, 1914.]
Of John Cabanis' wrath and of the strife
Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat
Who led the common people in the cause
Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall
Of Rhodes' bank that brought unnumbered woes
And loss to many, with engendered hate
That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands
To burn the court-house, on whose blackened wreck
A fairer temple rose and Progress stood -Sing, muse, that lit the Chian's face with smiles,
Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl
About Scamander, over walls, pursued
Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres
And sacred hecatombs, and first because
Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy
As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus' son,
Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil
Of war, and dearest concubine.
Say first,
Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes
No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one,
What bred 'twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis
The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she,
Returning from her wandering with a troop
Of strolling players, walked the village streets,
Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings
And words of serpent wisdom and a smile
Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes,
Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well,
Made known his disapproval of the maid;
And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes
Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew
285
They feared her and condemned.
But them to flout
She gave a dance to viols and to flutes,
Brought from Peoria, and many youths,
But lately made regenerate through the prayers
Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls,
Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance,
Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes
Down straying might survey the snowy swale
Till it was lost in whiteness.
With the dance
The village changed to merriment from gloom.
The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill
Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress
Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks
And chests were opened for their store of laces
And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding
And all the youths fastidious grew of dress;
Notes passed, and many a fair one's door at eve
Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged
About the hills that overlooked the river.
Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed,
One of God's chosen lifted up his voice:
"The woman of Babylon is among us; rise,
Ye sons of light, and drive the wanton forth!"
So John Cabanis left the church and left
The hosts of law and order with his eyes
By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause
Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty
To vanquish A. D. Blood.
But as the war
Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew
About the bank, and of the heavy loans
Which Rhodes' son had made to prop his loss
In wheat, and many drew their coin and left
The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk
Among the liberals of another bank
Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst
'Mid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed
And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held
Wise converse and inspiriting debate.
High on a stage that overlooked the chairs
286
Where dozens sat, and where a pop-eyed daub
Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man
Of Christian Dallmann, brow and pointed beard,
Upon a drab proscenium outward stared,
Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence,
By merit raised in ribaldry and guile,
And to the assembled rebels thus he spake:
"Whether to lie supine and let a clique
Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms,
Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain
Our little hoards for hazards on the price
Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath
The shadow of a spire upreared to curb
A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank
Coadjutor in greed, that is the question.
Shall we have music and the jocund dance,
Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam
These hills about the river, flowering now
To April's tears, or shall they sit at home,
Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see,
I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o'er
And riots 'gainst this regimen of gloom,
Shall we submit to have these youths and maids
Branded as libertines and wantons?"
Ere
His words were done a woman's voice called "No!"
Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when
The numerous swine o'er-run the replenished troughs;
And every head was turned, as when a flock
Of geese back-turning to the hunter's tread
Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall
With riotous laughter, for with battered hat
Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist
Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood.
Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall
Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman's rights,
Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard.
Then 'mid applause she hastened toward the stage
And flung both gold and silver to the cause
And swiftly left the hall.
Meantime upstood
287
A giant figure, bearded like the son
Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch,
And spoke in thunder: "Over there behold
A man who for the truth withstood his wife -Such is our spirit -- when that A. D. Blood
Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro --"
Quick
Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard
Obtained the floor and spake: "Ill suits the time
For clownish words, and trivial is our cause
If naught's at stake but John Cabanis' wrath,
He who was erstwhile of the other side
And came to us for vengeance. More's at stake
Than triumph for New England or Virginia.
And whether rum be sold, or for two years
As in the past two years, this town be dry
Matters but little -- Oh yes, revenue
For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough!
I wish to God this fight were now inspired
By other passion than to salve the pride
Of John Cabanis or his daughter. Why
Can never contests of great moment spring
From worthy things, not little? Still, if men
Must always act so, and if rum must be
The symbol and the medium to release
From life's denial and from slavery,
Then give me rum!"
Exultant cries arose.
Then, as George Trimble had o'ercome his fear
And vacillation and begun to speak,
The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf,
Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet,
Entered and cried: "The marshal's on his way
To arrest you all. And if you only knew
Who's coming here to-morrow; I was listening
Beneath the window where the other side
Are making plans."
So to a smaller room
To hear the idiot's secret some withdrew
Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself
And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier,
And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch,
288
Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James
And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler,
Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde
And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene,
And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones,
Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier
By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note,
And secretly conferred.
But in the hall
Disorder reigned and when the marshal came
And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out
And locked them up.
Meanwhile within a room
Back in the basement of the church, with Blood
Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first,
Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins
And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes
And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard,
A traitor to the liberals, who with lip
Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer:
"Such strife about an insult to a woman -A girl of eighteen" -- Christian Dallman too,
And others unrecorded. Some there were
Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule
Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom
And lust of life it symbolized.
Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky
Flung like an orange at a festival
The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds
Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets
Resounded to the rattle of the wheels
That drove this way and that to gather in
The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains
Who manned the battle. But at ten o'clock
The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls
The rival candidates growled and came to blows.
Then proved the idiot's tale of yester-eve
A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets
Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills
That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed.
No man of this degenerate day could lift
The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke
289
The windows rattled, and beneath his brows,
Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black,
His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar.
And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked
A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came,
The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned
To terrify the liberals. Many fled
As when a hawk soars o'er the chicken yard.
He passed the polls and with a playful hand
Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against,
As though he were a child, the wall; so strong
Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled.
For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk,
Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in
By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one,
To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce
Three-fourths the other's bulk, but steel his arms,
And with a tiger's heart. Two men he killed
And many wounded in the days before,
And no one feared.
But when the hog-eyed one
Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark,
The bristles o'er his red eyes twitched with rage,
The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round
The court-house paced he, followed stealthily
By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step:
"Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward!
Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak!
Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can!
Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason
To draw and kill you. Take your billy out;
I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!"
But never a word the hog-eyed one returned
But trod about the court-house, followed both
By troops of boys and watched by all the men.
All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo
Stood with reluctant look above the hills
As fain to see the end, and all the votes
Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door
Of Trainor's drug store Bengal Mike, in tones
That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt:
290
"Who was your mother, hog-eyed?" In a trice,
As when a wild boar turns upon the hound
That through the brakes upon an August day
Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog-eyed one
Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike
And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven
The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men
Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike
Moved this way and now that, drew in his head
As if his neck to shorten, and bent down
To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one;
'Twixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength
Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest
Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in
To part them, others stayed them, and the fight
Spread among dozens; many valiant souls
Went down from clubs and bricks.
But tell me, Muse,
What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike?
With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp
The murderous hands and turning kick his foe.
Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all
The strength from hog-eyed Allen, at his side
Sank limp those giant arms and o'er his face
Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread.
And those great knees, invincible but late,
Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion
Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike
Smite with a rock the temple of his foe,
And down he sank and darkness o'er his eyes
Passed like a cloud.
As when the woodman fells
Some giant oak upon a summer's day
And all the songsters of the forest shrill,
And one great hawk that has his nestling young
Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash
The leafy branches through the tangled boughs
Of brother oaks, so fell the hog-eyed one
Amid the lamentations of the friends
Of A. D. Blood.
Just then, four lusty men
Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face
291
The purple pall of death already lay,
To Trainor's drug store, shot by Jack McGuire.
And cries went up of "Lynch him!" and the sound
Of running feet from every side was heard
Bent on the
~ Edgar Lee Masters,
99:The Kalevala - Rune Xxxii
KULLERVO AS A SHEPHERD.
Kullerwoinen, wizard-servant
Of the blacksmith, Ilmarinen,
Purchased slave from Untamoinen,
Magic son with sky-blue stockings.,
With a head of golden ringlets,
In his shoes of marten-leather,
Waiting little, asked the blacksmith,
Asked the host for work at morning,
In the evening asked the hostess,
These the words of Kullerwoinen:
'Give me work at early morning,
In the evening, occupation,
Labor worthy of thy servant.'
Then the wife of Ilmarinen,
Once the Maiden of the Rainbow,
Thinking long, and long debating,
How to give the youth employment,
How the purchased slave could labor;
Finally a shepherd made him,
Made him keeper of her pastures;
But the over-scornful hostess,
Baked a biscuit for the herdsman,
Baked a loaf of wondrous thickness,
Baked the lower-half of oat-meal,
And the upper-half of barley,
Baked a flint-stone in the centre,
Poured around it liquid butter,
Then she gave it to the shepherd,
Food to still the herdsman's hunger;
Thus she gave the youth instructions:
'Do not eat the bread in hunger,
Till the herd is in the woodlands!'
Then the wife of Ilmarinen
Sent her cattle to the pasture,
Thus addressing Kullerwoinen:
'Drive the cows to yonder bowers,
509
To the birch-trees and the aspens,
That they there may feed and fatten,
Fill themselves with milk and butter,
In the open forest-pastures,
On the distant hills and mountains,
In the glens among the birch-trees,
In the lowlands with the aspens,
In the golden pine-tree forests,
In the thickets silver-laden.
'Guard them, thou O kind Creator,
Shield them, omnipresent Ukko,
Shelter them from every danger,
And protect them from all evil,
That they may not want, nor wander
From the paths of peace and plenty.
As at home Thou didst protect them
In the shelters and the hurdles,
Guard them now beneath the heavens,
Shelter them in woodland pastures,
That the herds may live and prosper
To 'the joy of Northland's hostess,
And against the will of Lempo.
'If my herdsman prove unworthy,
If the shepherd-maids seem evil,
Let the pastures be their shepherds,
Let the alders guard the cattle,
Make the birch-tree their protector,
Let the willow drive them homeward,
Ere the hostess go to seek them,
Ere the milkmaids wait and worry.
Should the birch-tree not protect them,
Nor the aspen lend assistance,
Nor the linden be their keeper,
Nor the willow drive them homeward,
Wilt thou give them better herdsmen,
Let Creation's beauteous daughters
Be their kindly shepherdesses.
Thou hast many lovely maidens,
Many hundreds that obey thee,
In the Ether's spacious circles,
Beauteous daughters of creation.
'Summer-daughter, magic maiden,
510
Southern mother of the woodlands,
Pine-tree daughter, Kateyatar,
Pihlayatar, of the aspen,
Alder-maiden, Tapio's daughter,
Daughter of the glen, Millikki,
And the mountain-maid, Tellervo,
Of my herds be ye protectors,
Keep them from the evil-minded,
Keep them safe in days of summer,
In the times of fragrant flowers,
While the tender leaves are whispering,
While the Earth is verdure-laden.
'Summer-daughter, charming maiden,
Southern mother of the woodlands,
Spread abroad thy robes of safety,
Spread thine apron o'er the forest,
Let it cover all my cattle,
And protect the unprotected,
That no evil winds may harm them,
May not suffer from the storm-clouds.
Guard my flocks from every danger,
Keep them from the hands of wild-beasts,
From the swamps with sinking pathways,
From the springs that bubble trouble,
From the swiftly running waters,
From the bottom of the whirlpool,
That they may not find misfortune,
May not wander to destruction,
In the marshes sink and perish,
Though against God's best intentions,
Though against the will of Ukko.
'From a distance bring a bugle,
Bring a shepherd's horn from heaven,
Bring the honey-flute of Ukko,
Play the music of creation,
Blow the pipes of the magician,
Play the flowers on the highlands,
Charm the hills, and dales, and mount
Charm the borders of the forest,
Fill the forest-trees with honey,
Fill with spice the fountain-borders.
'For my herds give food and shelter,
511
Feed them all on honeyed pastures,
Give them drink at honeyed fountains
Feed them on thy golden grasses,
On the leaves of silver saplings,
From the springs of life and beauty,
From the crystal-waters flowing,
From the waterfalls of Rutya,
From the uplands green and golden,
From the glens enriched in silver.
Dig thou also golden fountains
On the four sides of the willow,
That the cows may drink in sweetness,
And their udders swell with honey,
That their milk may flow in streamlets;
Let the milk be caught in vessels,
Let the cow's gift be not wasted,
Be not given to Manala.
'Many are the sons of evil,
That to Mana take their milkings,
Give their milk to evil-doers,
Waste it in Tuoni's empire;
Few there are, and they the worthy,
That can get the milk from Mana;
Never did my ancient mother
Ask for counsel in the village,
Never in the courts for wisdom;
She obtained her milk from Mana,
Took the sour-milk from the dealers,
Sweet-milk from the greater distance,
From the kingdom of Manala,
From Tuoni's fields and pastures;
Brought it in the dusk of evening,
Through the by-ways in the darkness,
That the wicked should not know it,
That it should not find destruction.
'This the language of my mother,
And these words I also echo:
Whither does the cow's gift wander,
Whither has the milk departed?
Has it gone to feed the strangers,
Banished to the distant village,
Gone to feed the hamlet-lover,
512
Or perchance to feed the forest,
Disappeared within the woodlands,
Scattered o'er the hills and mountains,
Mingled with the lakes and rivers?
It shall never go to Mana,
Never go to feed the stranger,
Never to the village-lover;
Neither shall it feed the forest,
Nor be lost upon the mountains,
Neither sprinkled in the woodlands,
Nor be mingled with the waters;
It is needed for our tables,
Worthy food for all our children.'
Summer-daughter, maid of beauty,
Southern daughter of Creation,
Give Suotikki tender fodder,
To Watikki, give pure water,
To Hermikki milk abundant,
Fresh provisions to Tuorikki,
From Mairikki let the milk flow,
Fresh milk from my cows in plenty,
Coming from the tips of grasses,
From the tender herbs and leaflets,
From the meadows rich in honey,
From the mother of the forest,
From the meadows sweetly dripping,
From the berry-laden branches,
From the heath of flower-maidens,
From the verdure. maiden bowers,
From the clouds of milk-providers,
From the virgin of the heavens,
That the milk may flow abundant
From the cows that I have given
To the keeping of Kullervo.
'Rise thou virgin of the valley,
From the springs arise in beauty,
Rise thou maiden of the fountain,
Beautiful, arise in ether,
Take the waters from the cloudlets,
And my roaming herds besprinkle,
That my cows may drink and flourish,
May be ready for the coming
513
Of the shepherdess of evening.
'O Millikki, forest-hostess,
Mother of the herds at pasture,
Send the tallest of thy servants,
Send the best of thine assistants,
That my herds may well be guarded,
Through the pleasant days of summer,
Given us by our Creator.
'Beauteous virgin of the woodlands,
Tapio's most charming daughter,
Fair Tellervo, forest-maiden,
Softly clad in silken raiment,
Beautiful in golden ringlets,
Do thou give my herds protection,
In the Metsola dominions,
On the hills of Tapiola;
Shield them with thy hands of beauty,
Stroke them gently with thy fingers,
Give to them a golden lustre,
Make them shine like fins of salmon,
Grow them robes as soft as ermine.
'When the evening star brings darkness,
When appears the hour of twilight,
Send my lowing cattle homeward,
Milk within their vessels coursing,
Water on their backs in lakelets.
When the Sun has set in ocean,
When the evening-bird is singing,
Thus address my herds of cattle:
'Ye that carry horns, now hasten
To the sheds of Ilmarinen;
Ye enriched in milk go homeward,
To the hostess now in waiting,
Home, the better place for sleeping,
Forest-beds are full of danger;
When the evening comes in darkness,
Straightway journey to the milkmaids
Building fires to light the pathway
On the turf enriched in honey,
In the pastures berry-laden!
'Thou, O Tapio's son, Nyrikki,
Forest-son, enrobed in purple,
514
Cut the fir-trees on the mountains,
Cut the pines with cones of beauty,
Lay them o'er the streams for bridges,
Cover well the sloughs of quicksand,
In the swamps and in the lowlands,
That my herd may pass in safety,
On their long and dismal journey,
To the clouds of smoke may hasten,
Where the milkmaids wait their coming.
If the cows heed not this order,
Do not hasten home at evening,
Then, O service-berry maiden,
Cut a birch-rod from the glenwood,
From the juniper, a whip-stick,
Near to Tapio's spacious mansion,
Standing on the ash-tree mountain,
Drive my wayward, ]owing cattle,
Into Metsola's wide milk-yards,
When the evening-star is rising.
'Thou, O Otso, forest-apple,
Woodland bear, with honeyed fingers,
Let us make a lasting treaty,
Make a vow for future ages,
That thou wilt not kill my cattle,
Wilt not eat my milk-providers;
That I will not send my hunters
To destroy thee and thy kindred,
Never in the days of summer,
The Creator's warmest season.
'Dost thou hear the tones of cow-bells,
Hear the calling of the bugles,
Ride thyself within the meadow,
Sink upon the turf in slumber,
Bury both thine ears in clover,
Crouch within some alder-thicket
Climb between the mossy ledges,
Visit thou some rocky cavern,
Flee away to other mountains,
Till thou canst not hear the cow-bells,
Nor the calling of the herdsmen.
'Listen, Otso of the woodlands,
Sacred bear with honeyed fingers,
515
To approach the herd of cattle
Thou thyself art not forbidden,
But thy tongue, and teeth, and fingers,
Must not touch my herd in summer,
Must not harm my harmless creatures.
Go around the scented meadows,
Amble through the milky pastures,
From the tones of bells and shepherds.
should the herd be on the mountain,
Go thou quickly to the marshes;
Should my cattle browse the lowlands,
Sleep thou then within the thicket;
Should they feed upon the uplands,
Thou must hasten to the valley;
Should the herd graze at the bottom,
Thou must feed upon the summit.
'Wander like the golden cuckoo,
Like the dove of silver brightness,
Like a little fish in ocean;
Ride thy claws within thy hair-foot,
Shut thy wicked teeth in darkness,
That my herd may not be frightened,
May not think themselves in danger.
Leave my cows in peace and plenty,
Let them journey home in order,
Through the vales and mountain by-ways,
Over plains and through the forest,
Harming not my harmless creatures.
'Call to mind our former pledges,
At the river of Tuoni,
Near the waterfall and whirlpool,
In the ears of our Creator.
Thrice to Otso was it granted,
In the circuit of the summer,
To approach the land of cow-bells,
Where the herdsmen's voices echo;
But to thee it was not granted,
Otso never had permission
To attempt a wicked action,
To begin a work of evil.
Should the blinding thing of malice
Come upon thee in thy roamings,
516
Should thy bloody teeth feel hunger,
Throw thy malice to the mountains,
And thy hunger to the pine-trees,
Sink thy teeth within the aspens,
In the dead limbs of the birches,
Prune the dry stalks from the willows.
Should thy hunger still impel thee,
Go thou to the berry-mountain,
Eat the fungus of the forest,
Feed thy hunger on the ant-hills,
Eat the red roots of the bear-tree,
Metsola's rich cakes of honey,
Not the grass my herd would feed on.
Or if Metsola's rich honey
Should ferment before the eating,
On the hills of golden color,
On the mountains filled with silver,
There is other food for hunger,
Other drink for thirsting Otso,
Everlasting will the food be,
And the drink be never wanting.
'Let us now agree in honor,
And conclude a lasting treaty
That our lives may end in pleasure,
May be, merry in the summer,
Both enjoy the woods in common,
Though our food must be distinctive
Shouldst thou still desire to fight me,
Let our contests be in winter,
Let our wars be, on the snow-fields.
Swamps will thaw in days of summer,
Warm, the water in the rivers.
Therefore shouldst thou break this treaty,
Shouldst thou come where golden cattle
Roam these woodland hills and valleys,
We will slay thee with our cross-bows;
Should our arrow-men be absent,
We have here some archer-women,
And among them is the hostess,
That can use the fatal weapon,
That can bring thee to destruction,
Thus will end the days of trouble
517
That thou bringest to our people,
And against the will of Ukko.
'Ukko, ruler in the heavens,
Lend an ear to my entreaty,
Metamorphose all my cattle,
Through the mighty force of magic,
Into stumps and stones convert them,
If the enemy should wander,
Near my herd in days of summer.
'If I had been born an Otso,
I would never stride and amble
At the feet of aged women;
Elsewhere there are hills and valleys,
Farther on are honey-pastures,
Where the lazy bear may wander,
Where the indolent may linger;
Sneak away to yonder mountain,
That thy tender flesh may lessen,
In the blue-glen's deep recesses,
In the bear-dens of the forest,
Thou canst move through fields of acorns,
Through the sand and ocean-pebbles,
There for thee is tracked a pathway,
Through the woodlands on the sea-coast,
To the Northland's farthest limits,
To the dismal plains of Lapland,
There 'tis well for thee to lumber,
There to live will be a pleasure.
Shoeless there to walk in summer,
Stockingless in days of autumn,
On the blue-back of the mountain,
Through the swamps and fertile lowlands.
'If thou canst not journey thither,
Canst not find the Lapland-highway,
Hasten on a little distance,
In the bear-path leading northward.
To the grove of Tuonela,
To the honey-plains of Kalma,
Swamps there are in which to wander,
Heaths in which to roam at pleasure,
There are Kiryos, there are Karyos,
And of beasts a countless number,
518
With their fetters strong as iron,
Fattening within the forest.
Be ye gracious, groves and mountains,
Full of grace, ye darksome thickets,
Peace and, plenty to my cattle,
Through the pleasant days of summer,
The Creator's warmest season.
'Knippana, O King of forests,
Thou the gray-beard of the woodlands,
Watch thy dogs in fen and fallow,
Lay a sponge within one nostril,
And an acorn in the other,
That they may not scent my cattle;
Tie their eyes with silken fillets,
That they may not see my herdlings,
May not see my cattle grazing.
'Should all this seem inefficient,
Drive away thy barking children,
Let them run to other forests,
Let them hunt in other marshes,
From these verdant strips of meadow,
From these far outstretching borders,
Hide thy dogs within thy caverns,
Firmly tie thy yelping children,
Tie them with thy golden fetters,
With thy chains adorned with silver,
That they may not do me damage,'
May not do a deed of mischief.
Should all this prove inefficient,
Thou, O Ukko, King of heaven.
Wise director, full of mercy,
Hear the golden words I utter,
Hear a voice that breathes affection,
From the alder make a muzzle,
For each dog, within the kennel;
Should the alder prove too feeble,
Cast a band of purest copper;
Should the copper prove a failure,
Forge a band of ductile iron;
Should the iron snap asunder,
In each nose a small-ring fasten,
Made of molten gold and silver,
519
Chain thy dogs in forest-caverns,
That my herd may not be injured.
Then the wife of Ilmarinen,
Life-companion of the blacksmith,
Opened all her yards and stables,
Led her herd across the meadow,
Placed them in the herdman's keeping,
In the care of Kullerwoinen.
~ Elias Lönnrot,
100:

Book II: The Book of the Statesman



Now from his cycle sleepless and vast round the dance of the earth-globe
Gold Hyperion rose in the wake of the dawn like the eyeball
Flaming of God revealed by his uplifted luminous eyelid.
Troy he beheld and he viewed the transient labour of mortals.
All her marble beauty and pomp were laid bare to the heavens.
Sunlight streamed into Ilion waking the voice of her gardens,
Amorous seized on her ways, lived glad in her plains and her pastures,
Kissed her leaves into brightness of green. As a lover the last time
Yearns to the beauty desired that again shall not wake to his kisses,
So over Ilion doomed leaned the yearning immense of the sunrise.
She like a wordless marble memory dreaming for ever
Lifted the gaze of her perishable immortality sunwards.
All her human past aspired in the clearness eternal,
Temples of Phryx and Dardanus touched with the gold of the morning,
Columns triumphant of Ilus, domes of their greatness enamoured,
Stones that intended to live; and her citadel climbed up to heaven
White like the soul of the Titan Laomedon claiming his kingdoms,
Watched with alarm by the gods as he came. Her bosom maternal
Thrilled to the steps of her sons and a murmur began in her high-roads.
Life renewed its ways which death and sleep cannot alter,
Life that pursuing her boundless march to a goal which we know not,
Ever her own law obeys, not our hopes, who are slaves of her heart-beats.
Then as now men walked in the round which the gods have decreed them
Eagerly turning their eyes to the lure and the tool and the labour.
Chained is their gaze to the span in front, to the gulfs they are blinded
Meant for their steps. The seller opened his shop and the craftsman
Bent oer his instruments handling the work he never would finish,
Busy as if their lives were for ever, today in its evening
Sure of tomorrow. The hammers clanged and the voice of the markets
Waking desired its daily rumour. Nor only the craftsman,
Only the hopes of the earth, but the hearts of her votaries kneeling
Came to her marble shrines and upraised to our helpers eternal
Missioned the prayer and the hymn or silent, subtly adoring
Ventured upwards in incense. Loud too the clash of the cymbals
Filled all the temples of Troy with the cry of our souls to the azure.
Prayers breathed in vain and a cry that fell back with Fate for its answer!
Children laughed in her doorways; joyous they played, by their mothers
Smiled on still, but their tender bodies unknowing awaited
Grecian spearpoints sharpened by Fate for their unripe bosoms,
Tasks of the slave in Greece. Like bees round their honey-filled dwellings
Murmuring swarmed to the well-heads the large-eyed daughters of Troya,
Deep-bosomed, limbed like the gods,glad faces of old that were sentient
Rapturous flowers of the soul, bright bodies that lived under darkness
Nobly massed of their locks like day under night made resplendent,
Daughters divine of the earth in the ages when heaven was our father.
They round Troys well-heads flowerlike satisfied morn with their beauty
Or in the river baring their knees to the embrace of the coolness
Dipped their white feet in the clutch of his streams, in the haste of Scamander,
Lingering this last time with laughter and talk of the day and the morrow
Leaned to the hurrying flood. All his swiftnesses raced down to meet them,
Crowding his channel with dancing billows and turbulent murmurs.
Xanthus primaeval met these waves of our life in its passing
Even as of old he had played with Troys ancient fair generations
Mingling his deathless voice with the laughter and joy of their ages,
Laughter of dawns that are dead and a joy that the earth has rejected.
Still his whispering trees remembered their bygone voices.
Hast thou forgotten, O river of Troy? Still, still we can hear them
Now, if we listen long in our souls, the bygone voices.
Earth in her fibres remembers, the breezes are stored with our echoes.
Over the stone-hewn steps for their limpid orient waters
Joyous they leaned and they knew not yet of the wells of Mycenae,
Drew not yet from Eurotas the jar for an alien master,
Mixed not Peneus yet with their tears. From the clasp of the current
Now in their groups they arose and dispersed through the streets and the byways,
Turned from the freedom of earth to the works and the joy of the hearthside,
Lightly they rose and returned through the lanes of the wind-haunted city
Swaying with rhythmical steps while the anklets jangled and murmured.
Silent temples saw them passing; you too, O houses
Built with such hopes by mortal man for his transient lodging;
Fragrant the gardens strewed on dark tresses their white-smiling jasmines
Dropped like a silent boon of purity soft from the branches:
Flowers by the wayside were budding, cries flew winged round the tree-tops.
Bright was the glory of life in Ilion city of Priam.
Thrice to the city the doom-blast published its solemn alarum;
Blast of the trumpets that call to assembly clamoured through Troya
Thrice and were still. From garden and highway, from palace and temple
Turned like a steed to the trumpet, rejoicing in war and ambition,
Gathered alert to the call the democracy hated of heaven.
First in their ranks upbearing their age as Atlas his heavens,
Eagle-crested, with hoary hair like the snow upon Ida,
Ilions senators paced, Antenor and wide-browed Anchises,
Athamas famous for ships and the war of the waters, Tryas
Still whose name was remembered by Oxus the orient river,
Astyoches and Ucalegon, dateless Pallachus, Aetor,
Aspetus who of the secrets divine knew all and was silent,
Ascanus, Iliones, Alcesiphron, Orus, Aretes.
Next from the citadel came with the voice of the heralds before him
Priam and Priams sons, Aeneas leonine striding,
Followed by the heart of a nation adoring her Penthesilea.
All that was noble in Troy attended the regal procession
Marching in front and behind and the tramp of their feet was a rhythm
Tuned to the arrogant fortunes of Ilion ruled by incarnate
Demigods, Ilus and Phryx and Dardanus, Tros of the conquests,
Tros and far-ruling Laomedon who to his souls strong labour
Drew down the sons of the skies and was served by the ageless immortals.
Into the agora vast and aspirant besieged by its columns
Bathed and anointed they came like gods in their beauty and grandeur.
Last like the roar of the winds came trampling the surge of the people.
Clamorous led by a force obscure to its ultimate fatal
Session of wrath the violent mighty democracy hastened;
Thousands of ardent lives with the heart yet unslain in their bosoms
Lifted to heaven the voice of man and his far-spreading rumour.
Singing the young men with banners marched in their joyous processions,
Trod in martial measure or dancing with lyrical paces
Chanted the glory of Troy and the wonderful deeds of their fathers.
Into the columned assembly where Ilus had gathered his people,
Thousands on thousands the tramp and the murmur poured; in their armoured
Glittering tribes they were ranked, an untameable high-hearted nation
Waiting the voice of its chiefs. Some gazed on the greatness of Priam
Ancient, remote from their days, the last of the gods who were passing,
Left like a soul uncompanioned in worlds where his strength shall not conquer:
Sole like a column gigantic alone on a desolate hill-side
Older than mortals he seemed and mightier. Many in anger
Aimed their hostile looks where calm though by heaven abandoned,
Left to his soul and his lucid mind and its thoughts unavailing,
Leading the age-chilled few whom the might of their hearts had not blinded,
Famous Antenor was seated, the fallen unpopular statesman,
Wisest of speakers in Troy but rejected, stoned and dishonoured.
Silent, aloof from the people he sat, a heart full of ruins.
Low was the rumour that swelled like the hum of the bees in a meadow
When with the thirst of the honey they swarm on the thyme and the linden,
Hundreds humming and flitting till all that place is a murmur.
Then from his seat like a tower arising Priam the monarch
Slowly erect in his vast tranquillity silenced the people:
Lonely, august he stood like one whom death has forgotten,
Reared like a column of might and of silence over the assembly.
So Olympus rises alone with his snows into heaven.
Crowned were his heights by the locks that swept like the mass of the snow-swathe
Clothing his giant shoulders; his eyes of deep meditation,
Eyes that beheld now the end and accepted it like the beginning
Gazed on the throng of the people as on a pomp that is painted:
Slowly he spoke like one who is far from the scenes where he sojourns.
Leader of Ilion, hero Deiphobus, thou who hast summoned
Troy in her people, arise; say wherefore thou callest us. Evil
Speak thou or good, thou canst speak that only: Necessity fashions
All that the unseen eye has beheld. Speak then to the Trojans;
Say on this dawn of her making what issue of death or of triumph
Fate in her suddenness puts to the unseeing, what summons to perish
Send to this nation men who revolt and gods who are hostile.
Rising Deiphobus spoke, in stature less than his father,
Less in his build, yet the mightiest man and tallest whom coursers
Bore or his feet to the fight since Ajax fell by the Xanthus.
People of Ilion, long have you fought with the gods and the Argives
Slaying and slain, but the years persist and the struggle is endless.
Fainting your helpers cease from the battle, the nations forsake you.
Asia weary of strenuous greatness, ease-enamoured
Suffers the foot of the Greek to tread on the beaches of Troas.
Yet have we striven for Troy and for Asia, men who desert us.
Not for ourselves alone have we fought, for our life of a moment!
Once if the Greeks were triumphant, once if their nations were marshalled
Under some far-seeing chief, Odysseus, Peleus, Achilles,
Not on the banks of Scamander and skirts of the azure Aegean
Fainting would cease the audacious emprise, the Titanic endeavour;
Tigris would flee from their tread and Indus be drunk by their coursers.
Now in these days when each sun goes marvelling down that Troy stands yet
Suffering, smiting, alive, though doomed to all eyes that behold her,
Flinging back Death from her walls and bronze to the shock and the clamour,
Driven by a thought that has risen in the dawn from the tents on the beaches
Grey Talthybius chariot waits in the Ilian portals,
Voice of the Hellene demigod challenges timeless Troya.
Thus has he said to us: Know you not Doom when she walks in your heavens?
Feelst thou not then thy set, O sun who illuminedst Nature?
Stripped of helpers you stand alone against Doom and Achilles,
Left by the earth that served you, by heaven that helped you rejected:
Death insists at your gates and the flame and the sword are impatient.
None can escape the wheel of the gods and its vast revolutions!
Fate demands the joy and pride of the earth for the Argive,
Asias wealth for the lust of the young barbarian nations.
City divine, whose fame overroofed like heaven the nations,
Sink eclipsed in the circle vast of my radiance; Troya,
Joined to my northern realms deliver the East to the Hellene;
Ilion, to Hellas be yoked; wide Asia, fringe thou Peneus.
Lay down golden Helen, a sacrifice lovely and priceless
Cast by your weakness and fall on immense Necessitys altar;
Yield to my longing Polyxena, Hecubas deep-bosomed daughter,
Her whom my heart desires. She shall leave with you peace and her healing
Joy of mornings secure and death repulsed from your hearthsides.
Yield these and live, else I leap on you, Fate in front, Hades behind me.
Bound to the gods by an oath I return not again from the battle
Till from high Ida my shadow extends to the Mede and Euphrates.
Let not your victories deceive you, steps that defeat has imagined;
Hear not the voice of your heroes; their fame is a trumpet in Hades:
Only they conquer while yet my horses champ free in their stables.
Earth cannot long resist the man whom Heaven has chosen;
Gods with him walk; his chariot is led; his arm is assisted.
High rings the Hellene challenge, earth waits for the Ilian answer.
Always mans Fate hangs poised on the flitting breath of a moment;
Called by some word, by some gesture it leaps, then tis graven, tis granite.
Speak! by what gesture high shall the stern gods recognise Troya?
Sons of the ancients, race of the gods, inviolate city,
Firmer my spear shall I grasp or cast from my hand and for ever?
Search in your hearts if your fathers still dwell in them, children of Teucer.
So Deiphobus spoke and the nation heard him in silence,
Awed by the shadow vast of doom, indignant with Fortune.
Calm from his seat Antenor arose as a wrestler arises,
Tamer of beasts in the cage of the lions, eyeing the monsters
Brilliant, tawny of mane, and he knows if his courage waver,
Falter his eye or his nerve be surprised by the gods that are hostile,
Death will leap on him there in the crowded helpless arena.
Fearless Antenor arose, and a murmur swelled in the meeting
Cruel and threatening, hoarse like the voice of the sea upon boulders;
Hisses thrilled through the roar and one man cried to another,
Lo he will speak of peace who has swallowed the gold of Achaia!
Surely the people of Troy are eunuchs who suffer Antenor
Rising unharmed in the agora. Are there not stones in the city?
Surely the steel grows dear in the land when a traitor can flourish.
Calm like a god or a summit Antenor stood in the uproar.
But as he gazed on his soul came memory dimming the vision;
For he beheld his past and the agora crowded and cheering,
Passionate, full of delight while Antenor spoke to the people,
Troy that he loved and his fatherl and proud of her eloquent statesman.
Tears to his eyes came thick and he gripped at the staff he was holding.
Mounting his eyes met fully the tumult, mournful and thrilling,
Conquering mens hearts with a note of doom in its sorrowful sweetness.
People of Ilion, blood of my blood, O race of Antenor,
Once will I speak though you slay me; for who would shrink from destruction
Knowing that soon of his city and nation, his house and his dear ones
All that remains will be a couch of trampled ashes? Athene,
Slain today may I join the victorious souls of our fathers,
Not for the anguish be kept and the irremediable weeping.
Loud will I speak the word that the gods have breathed in my spirit,
Strive this last time to save the death-destined. Who are these clamour
Hear him not, gold of the Greeks bought his words and his throat is accursd?
Troy whom my counsels made great, hast thou heard this roar of their frenzy
Tearing thy ancient bosom? Is it thy voice, heaven-abandoned, my mother?
O my country, O my creatress, earth of my longings!
Earth where our fathers lie in their sacred ashes undying,
Memoried temples shelter the shrines of our gods and the altars
Pure where we worshipped, the beautiful children smile on us passing,
Women divine and the men of our nation! O land where our childhood
Played at a mothers feet mid the trees and the hills of our country,
Hoping our manhood toiled and our youth had its seekings for godhead,
Thou for our age keepst repose mid the love and the honour of kinsmen,
Silent our relics shall lie with the city guarding our ashes!
Earth who hast fostered our parents, earth who hast given us our offspring,
Soil that created our race where fed from the bosom of Nature
Happy our children shall dwell in the storied homes of their fathers,
Souls that our souls have stamped, sweet forms of ourselves when we perish!
Once even then have they seen thee in their hearts, or dreamed of thee ever
Who from thy spirit revolt and only thy name make an idol
Hating thy faithful sons and the cult of thy ancient ideal!
Wake, O my mother divine, remember thy gods and thy wisdom,
Silence the tongues that degrade thee, prophets profane of thy godhead.
Madmen, to think that a man who has offered his life for his country,
Served her with words and deeds and adored with victories and triumphs
Ever could think of enslaving her breast to the heel of a foeman!
Surely Antenors halls are empty, he begs from the stranger
Leading his sons and his childrens sons by the hand in the market
Showing his rags since his need is so bitter of gold from the Argives!
You who demand a reply when Laocoon lessens Antenor,
Hush then your feeble roar and your ear to the past and the distance
Turn. You fields that are famous for ever, reply for me calling,
Fields of the mighty mown by my swords edge, Chersonese conquered,
Thrace and her snows where we fought on the frozen streams and were victors
Then when they were unborn who are now your delight and your leaders.
Answer return, you columns of Ilus, here where my counsels
Made Troy mightier guiding her safe through the shocks of her foemen.
Gold! I have heaped it up high, I am rich with the spoils of your haters.
It was your fathers dead who gave me that wealth as my guerdon,
Now my reproach, your fathers who saw not the Greeks round their ramparts:
They were not cooped by an upstart race in the walls of Apollo,
Saw not Hector slain and Troilus dragged by his coursers.
Far over wrathful Jaxartes they rode; the shaken Achaian
Prostrate adored your strength who now shouts at your portals and conquers
Then when Antenor guided Troy, this old man, this traitor,
Not Laocoon, nay, not even Paris nor Hector.
But I have changed, I have grown a niggard of blood and of treasure,
Selfish, chilled as old men seem to the young and the headstrong,
Counselling safety and ease, not the ardour of noble decisions.
Come to my house and behold, my house that was filled once with voices.
Sons whom the high gods envied me crowded the halls that are silent.
Where are they now? They are dead, their voices are silent in Hades,
Fallen slaying the foe in a war between sin and the Furies.
Silent they went to the battle to die unmourned for their country,
Die as they knew in vain. Do I keep now the last ones remaining,
Sparing their blood that my house may endure? Is there any in Troya
Speeds to the front of the mellay outstripping the sons of Antenor?
Let him arise and speak and proclaim it and bid me be silent.
Heavy is this war that you love on my heart and I hold you as madmen
Doomed by the gods, abandoned by Pallas, by Hera afflicted.
Who would not hate to behold his work undone by the foolish?
Who would not weep if he saw Laocoon ruining Troya,
Paris doomed in his beauty, Aeneas slain by his valour?
Still you need to be taught that the high gods see and remember,
Dream that they care not if justice be done on the earth or oppression!
Happy to live, aspire while you violate man and the immortals!
Vainly the sands of Time have been strewn with the ruins of empires,
Signs that the gods had left, but in vain. For they look for a nation,
One that can conquer itself having conquered the world, but they find none.
None has been able to hold all the gods in his bosom unstaggered,
All have grown drunken with force and have gone down to Hell and to Ate.
All have been thrust from their heights, say the fools; we shall live and for ever.
We are the people at last, the children, the favourites; all things
Only to us are permitted. They too descend to the silence,
Death receives their hopes and the void their stirrings of action.
Eviller fate there is none than life too long among mortals.
I have conversed with the great who have gone, I have fought in their war-cars;
Tros I have seen, Laomedons hand has dwelt on my temples.
Now I behold Laocoon, now our greatest is Paris.
First when Phryx by the Hellespont reared to the cry of the ocean
Hewing her stones as vast as his thoughts his high-seated fortress,
Planned he a lair for a beast of prey, for a pantheress dire-souled
Crouched in the hills for her bound or self-gathered against the avenger?
Dardanus shepherded Asias coasts and her sapphire-girt islands.
Mild was his rule like the blessing of rain upon fields in the summer.
Gladly the harried coasts reposed confessing the Phrygian,
Caria, Lycias kings and the Paphlagon, strength of the Mysian;
Minos Crete recovered the sceptre of old Rhadamanthus.
Ilus and Tros had strength in the fight like a far-striding Titans:
Troy triumphant following the urge of their souls to the vastness,
Helmeted, crowned like a queen of the gods with the fates for her coursers
Rode through the driving sleet of the spears to Indus and Oxus.
Then twice over she conquered the vanquished, with peace as in battle;
There where discord had clashed, sweet Peace sat girded with plenty,
There where tyranny counted her blows, came the hands of a father.
Neither had Teucer a soul like your chiefs who refounded this nation.
Such was the antique and noble tradition of Troy in her founders,
Builders of power that endured; but it perishes lost to their offspring,
Trampled, scorned by an arrogant age, by a violent nation.
Strong Anchises trod it down trampling victorious onwards
Stern as his sword and hard as the silent bronze of his armour.
More than another I praise the man who is mighty and steadfast,
Even as Ida the mountain I praise, a refuge for lions;
But in the council I laud him not, he who a god for his kindred,
Lives for the rest without bowels of pity or fellowship, lone-souled,
Scorning the world that he rules, who untamed by the weight of an empire
Holds allies as subjects, subjects as slaves and drives to the battle
Careless more of their wills than the coursers yoked to his war-car.
Therefore they fought while they feared, but gladly abandon us falling.
Yet had they gathered to Teucer in the evil days of our nation.
Where are they now? Do they gather then to the dreaded Anchises?
Or has Aeneas helped with his counsels hateful to wisdom?
Hateful is this, abhorred of the gods, imagined by Ate
When against subjects murmuring discord and faction appointed
Scatter unblest gold, the heart of a people is poisoned,
Virtue pursued and baseness triumphs tongued like a harlot,
Brother against brother arrayed that the rule may endure of a stranger.
Yes, but it lasts! For its hour. The high gods watch in their silence,
Mute they endure for a while that the doom may be swifter and greater.
Hast thou then lasted, O Troy? Lo, the Greeks at thy gates and Achilles.
Dream, when Virtue departs, that Wisdom will linger, her sister!
Wisdom has turned from your hearts; shall Fortune dwell with the foolish?
Fatal oracles came to you great-tongued, vaunting of empires
Stretched from the risen sun to his rest in the occident waters,
Dreams of a city throned on the hills with her foot on the nations.
Meanwhile the sword was prepared for our breasts and the flame for our housetops.
Wake, awake, O my people! the fire-brand mounts up your doorsteps;
Gods who deceived to slay, press swords on your childrens bosoms.
See, O ye blind, ere death in pale countries open your eyelids!
Hear, O ye deaf, the sounds in your ears and the voices of evening!
Young men who vaunt in your strength! when the voice of this aged Antenor
Governed your fathers youth, all the Orient was joined to our banners.
Macedon leaned to the East and her princes yearned to the victor,
Scythians worshipped in Ilions shrines, the Phoenician trader
Bartered her tokens, Babylons wise men paused at our thresholds;
Fair-haired sons of the snows came rapt towards golden Troya
Drawn by the song and the glory. Strymon sang hymns unto Ida,
Hoarse Chalcidice, dim Chersonesus married their waters
Under the oerarching yoke of Troy twixt the term-posts of Ocean.
Meanwhile far through the world your fortunes led by my counsels
Followed their lure like women snared by a magical tempter:
High was their chant as they paced and it came from continents distant.
Turn now and hear! what voice approaches? what glitter of armies?
Loud upon Trojan beaches the tread and the murmur of Hellas!
Hark! tis the Achaians paean rings oer the Pergaman waters!
So wake the dreams of Aeneas; reaped is Laocoons harvest.
Artisans new of your destiny fashioned this far-spreading downfall,
Counsellors blind who scattered your strength to the hooves of the Scythian,
Barren victories, trophies of skin-clad Illyrian pastors.
Who but the fool and improvident, who but the dreamer and madman
Leaves for the far and ungrasped earths close and provident labour?
Children of earth, our mother gives tokens, she lays down her signposts,
Step by step to advance on her bosom, to grow by her seasons,
Order our works by her patience and limit our thought by her spaces.
But you had chiefs who were demigods, souls of an earth-scorning stature,
Minds that saw vaster than life and strengths that Gods hour could not limit!
These men seized upon Troy as the tool of their giant visions,
Dreaming of Africas suns and bright Hesperian orchards,
Carthage our mart and our feet on the sunset hills of the Latins.
Ilions hinds in the dream ploughed Libya, sowed Italys cornfields,
Troy stretched to Gades; even the gods and the Fates had grown Trojan.
So are the natures of men uplifted by Heaven in its satire.
Scorning the bit of the gods, despisers of justice and measure,
Zeus is denied and adored some shadow huge of their natures
Losing the shape of man in a dream that is splendid and monstrous.
Titans, vaunting they stride and the world resounds with their footsteps;
Titans, clanging they fall and the world is full of their ruin.
Children, you dreamed with them, heard the roar of the Atlantic breakers
Welcome your keels and the Isles of the Blest grew your wonderful gardens.
Lulled in the dream, you saw not the black-drifting march of the storm-rack,
Heard not the galloping wolves of the doom and the howl of their hunger.
Greece in her peril united her jarring clans; you suffered
Patient, preparing the north, the wisdom and silence of Peleus,
Atreus craft and the Argives gathered to King Agamemnon.
But there were prophecies, Pythian oracles, mutterings from Delphi.
How shall they prosper who haste after auguries, oracles, whispers,
Dreams that walk in the night and voices obscure of the silence?
Touches are these from the gods that bewilder the brain to its ruin.
One sole oracle helps, still armoured in courage and prudence
Patient and heedful to toil at the work that is near in the daylight.
Leave to the night its phantoms, leave to the future its curtain!
Only today Heaven gave to mortal man for his labour.
If thou hadst bowed not thy mane, O Troy, to the child and the dreamer,
Hadst thou been faithful to Wisdom the counsellor seated and ancient,
Then would the hour not have dawned when Paris lingered in Sparta
Led by the goddess fatal and beautiful, white Aphrodite.
Man, shun the impulses dire that spring armed from thy natures abysms!
Dread the dusk rose of the gods, flee the honey that tempts from its petals!
Therefore the black deed was done and the hearth that welcomed was sullied.
Sin-called the Fury uplifted her tresses of gloom oer the nations
Maddening the earth with the scream of her blood-thirst, bowelless, stone-eyed,
Claiming her victims from God and bestriding the hate and the clamour.
Yet midst the stroke and the wail when mens eyes were blind with the blood-mist,
Still had the high gods mercy recalling Teucer and Ilus.
Just was the heart of their anger. Discord flaming from Ida,
Hundred-voiced glared from the ships through the camp of the victor Achaians,
Love to that discord added her flowerlike lips of Briseis;
Faltering lids of Polyxena conquered the strength of Pelides.
Vainly the gods who pity open the gates of salvation!
Vainly the winds of their mercy brea the on our fevered existence!
Man his passions prefers to the voice that guides from the heavens.
These too were here whom Hera had chosen to ruin this nation:
Charioteers cracking the whips of their speed on the paths of destruction,
Demigods they! they have come down from Heaven glad to that labour,
Deaf is the world with the fame of their wheels as they race down to Hades.
O that alone they could reach it! O that pity could soften
Harsh Necessitys dealings, sparing our innocent children,
Saving the Trojan women and aged from bonds and the sword-edge!
These had not sinned whom you slay in your madness! Ruthless, O mortals,
Must you be then to yourselves when the gods even faltering with pity
Turn from the grief that must come and the agony vast and the weeping?
Say not the road of escape sinks too low for your arrogant treading.
Pride is not for our clay; the earth, not heaven was our mother
And we are even as the ant in our toil and the beast in our dying;
Only who cling to the hands of the gods can rise up from the earth-mire.
Children, lie prone to their scourge, that your hearts may revive in their sunshine.
This is our lot! when the anger of heaven has passed then the mortal
Raises his head; soon he heals his heart and forgets he has suffered.
Yet if resurgence from weakness and shame were withheld from the creature,
Every fall without morrow, who then would counsel submission?
But since the height of mortal fortune ascending must stumble,
Fallen, again ascend, since death like birth is our portion,
Ripening, mowed, to be sown again like corn by the farmer,
Let us be patient still with the gods accepting their purpose.
Deem not defeat I welcome. Think not to Hellas submitting
Death of proud hope I would seal. Not this have I counselled, O nation,
But to be even as your high-crested forefa thers, greatest of mortals.
Troya of old enringed by the hooves of Cimmerian armies
Flamed to the heavens from her plains and her smoke-blackened citadel sheltered
Mutely the joyless rest of her sons and the wreck of her greatness.
Courage and wisdom survived in that fall and a stern-eyed prudence
Helped her to live; disguised from her mightiness Troy crouched waiting.
Teucer descended whose genius worked at this kingdom and nation,
Patient, scrupulous, wise, like a craftsman carefully toiling
Over a helmet or over a breastplate, testing it always,
Toiled in the eye of the Masters of all and had heed of its labour.
So in the end they would not release him like souls that are common;
They out of Ida sent into Ilion Pallas Athene;
Secret she came and he went with her into the luminous silence.
Teucers children after their sire completed his labour.
Now too, O people, front adversity self-gathered, silent.
Veil thyself, leonine mighty Ilion, hiding thy greatness!
Be as thy father Teucer; be as a cavern for lions;
Be as a Fate that crouches! Wordless and stern for your vengeance
Self-gathered work in the night and secrecy shrouding your bosoms.
Let not the dire heavens know of it; let not the foe seize a whisper!
Ripen the hour of your stroke, while your words drip sweeter than honey.
Sure am I, friends, you will turn from death at my voice, you will hear me!
Some day yet I shall gaze on the ruins of haughty Mycenae.
Is this not better than Ilion cast to the sword of her haters,
Is this not happier than Troya captured and wretchedly burning,
Time to await in his stride when the southern and northern Achaians
Gazing with dull distaste now over their severing isthmus
Hate-filled shall move to the shock by the spur of the gods in them driven,
Pelops march upon Attica, Thebes descend on the Spartan?
Then shall the hour now kept in heaven for us ripen to dawning,
Then shall Victory cry to our banners over the Ocean
Calling our sons with her voice immortal. Children of Ilus,
Then shall Troy rise in her strength and stride over Greece up to Gades.
So Antenor spoke and the mind of the hostile assembly
Moved and swayed with his words like the waters ruled by Poseidon.
Even as the billows rebellious lashed by the whips of the tempest
Curvet and rear their crests like the hooded wrath of a serpent,
Green-eyed under their cowls sublime,unwilling they journey,
Foam-bannered, hoarse-voiced, shepherded, forced by the wind to the margin
Meant for their rest and can turn not at all, though they rage, on their driver,
Last with a sullen applause and consenting lapse into thunder,
Where they were led all the while they sink down huge and astonished,
So in their souls that withstood and obeyed and hated the yielding,
Lashed by his censure, indignant, the Trojans moved towards his purpose:
Sometimes a roar arose, then only, weakened, rarer,
Angry murmurs swelled between sullen stretches of silence;
Last, a reluctant applause broke dull from the throats of the commons.
Silent raged in their hearts Laocoons following daunted;
Troubled the faction of Paris turned to the face of their leader.
He as yet rose not; careless he sat in his beauty and smiling,
Gazing with brilliant eyes at the sculptured pillars of Ilus.
Doubtful, swayed by Antenor, waited in silence the nation.
***
~ Sri Aurobindo, 2 - The Book of the Statesman
,
101: Book VIII: The Book of the Gods

So on the earth the seed that was sown of the centuries ripened;
Europe and Asia, met on their borders, clashed in the Troad.
All over earth men wept and bled and laboured, world-wide
Sowing Fate with their deeds and had other fruit than they hoped for,
Out of desires and their passionate griefs and fleeting enjoyments
Weaving a tapestry fit for the gods to admire, who in silence
Joy, by the cloud and the sunbeam veiled, and men know not their movers.
They in the glens of Olympus, they by the waters of Ida
Or in their temples worshipped in vain or with heart-strings of mortals
Sated their vast desire and enjoying the world and each other
Sported free and unscourged; for the earth was their prey and their playground.
But from his luminous deep domain, from his estate of azure
Zeus looked forth; he beheld the earth in its flowering greenness
Spread like an emerald dream that the eyes have enthroned in the sunlight,
Heard the symphonies old of the ocean recalling the ages
Lost and dead from its marches salt and unharvested furrows,
Felt in the pregnant hour the unborn hearts of the future.
Troubled kingdoms of men he beheld, the hind in the furrow,
Lords of the glebe and the serf subdued to the yoke of his fortunes,
Slavegirls tending the fire and herdsmen driving the cattle,
Artisans labouring long for a little hire in mens cities,
Labour long and the meagre reward for a toil that is priceless.
Kings in their seats august or marching swift with their armies
Founded ruthlessly brittle empires. Merchant and toiler
Patiently heaped up our transient wealth like the ants in their hillock.
And to preserve it all, to protect this dust that must perish,
Hurting the eternal soul and maiming heaven for some metal
Judges condemned their brothers to chains and to death and to torment,
Criminals scourgers of crime, for so are these ant-heaps founded,
Punishing sin by a worse affront to our crucified natures.
All the uncertainty, all the mistaking, all the delusion
Naked were to his gaze; in the moonlit orchards there wandered
Lovers dreaming of love that endurestill the moment of treason;
Helped by the anxious joy of their kindred supported their anguish
Women with travail racked for the child who shall rack them with sorrow.
Hopes that were confident, fates that sprang dire from the seed of a moment,
Yearning that claimed all time for its date and all life for its fuel,
All that we wonder at gazing back when the passion has fallen,
Labour blind and vain expense and sacrifice wasted,
These he beheld with a heart unshaken; to each side he studied
Seas of confused attempt and the strife and the din and the crying.
All things he pierced in us gazing down with his eyelids immortal,
Lids on which sleep dare not settle, the Father of men on his creatures;
Nor by the cloud and the mist was obscured which baffles our eyeballs,
But he distinguished our source and saw to the end of our labour.
He in the animal racked knew the god that is slowly delivered;
Therefore his heart rejoiced. Not alone the mind in its trouble
God beholds, but the spirit behind that has joy of the torture.
Might not our human gaze on the smoke of a furnace, the burning
Red, intolerable, anguish of ore that is fused in the hell-heat,
Shrink and yearn for coolness and peace and condemn all the labour?
Rather look to the purity coming, the steel in its beauty,
Rather rejoice with the master who stands in his gladness accepting
Heat of the glorious god and the fruitful pain of the iron.
Last the eternal gaze was fixed on Troy and the armies
Marching swift to the shock. It beheld the might of Achilles
Helmed and armed, knew all the craft in the brain of Odysseus,
Saw Deiphobus stern in his car and the fates of Aeneas,
Greece of her heroes empty, Troy enringed by her slayers,
Paris a setting star and the beauty of Penthesilea.
These things he saw delighted; the heart that contains all our ages
Blessed our toil and grew full of its fruits, as the Artist eternal
Watched his vehement drama staged twixt the sea and the mountains,
Phrased in the clamour and glitter of arms and closed by the firebrand,
Act itself out in blood and in passions fierce on the Troad.
Yet as a father his children, who sits in the peace of his study
Hearing the noise of his brood and pleased with their play and their quarrels,
So he beheld our mortal race. Then, turned from the armies,
Into his mind he gazed where Time is reflected and, conscient,
Knew the iron knot of our human fates in their warfare.
Calm he arose and left our earth for his limitless kingdoms.
Far from this lower blue and high in the death-scorning spaces
Lifted oer mortal mind where Time and Space are but figures
Lightly imagined by Thought divine in her luminous stillness,
Zeus has his palace high and there he has stabled his war-car.
Thence he descends to our mortal realms; where the heights of our mountains
Meet with the divine air, he touches and enters our regions.
Now he ascended back to his natural realms and their rapture,
There where all life is bliss and each feeling an ecstasy mastered.
Thence his eagle Thought with its flashing pinions extended
Winged through the world to the gods, and they came at the call, they ascended
Up from their play and their calm and their works through the infinite azure.
Some from our mortal domains in grove or by far-flowing river
Cool from the winds of the earth or quivering with perishable fragrance
Came, or our laughter they bore and the song of the sea in their paces.
Some from the heavens above us arrived, our vital dominions
Whence we draw breath; for there all things have life, the stone like the ilex,
Clay of those realms like the children of men and the brood of the giants.
There Enceladus groans oppressed and draws strength from his anguish
Under a living Aetna and flames that have joy of his entrails.
Fiercely he groans and rejoices expecting the end of his foemen
Hastened by every pang and counts long Time by his writhings.
There in the champaigns unending battle the gods and the giants,
There in eternal groves the lovers have pleasure for ever,
There are the faery climes and there are the wonderful pastures.
Some from a marvellous Paradise hundred-realmed in its musings,
Million-ecstasied, climbed like flames that in silence aspire
Windless, erect in a motionless dream, yet ascending for ever.
All grew aware of the will divine and were drawn to the Father.
Grandiose, calm in her gait, imperious, awing the regions,
Hera came in her pride, the spouse of Zeus and his sister.
As at her birth from the foam of the spaces white Aphrodite
Rose in the cloud of her golden hair like the moon in its halo.
Aegis-bearing Athene, shielded and helmeted, answered
Rushing the call and the heavens thrilled with the joy of her footsteps
Dumbly repeating her name, as insulted and trampled by beauty
Thrill might the soul of a lover and cry out the name of its tyrant.
Others there were as mighty; for Artemis, archeress ancient,
Came on her sandals lightning-tasselled. Up the vast incline
Shaking the world with the force of his advent thundered Poseidon;
Space grew full of his stride and his cry. Immortal Apollo
Shone and his silver clang was heard with alarm in our kingdoms.
Ares impetuous eyes looked forth from a cloud-drift of splendour;
Themis steps appeared and Ananke, the mystic Erinnys;
Nor was Hephaestus flaming strength from his father divided.
Even the ancient Dis to arrive dim-featured, eternal,
Seemed; but his rays are the shades and his voice is the call of the silence.
Into the courts divine they crowded, radiant, burning,
Perfect in utter grace and light. The joy of their spirits
Calls to eternal Time and the glories of Space are his answer:
Thence were these bright worlds born and persist by the throb of their heart-beats.
Not in the forms that mortals have seen when assisted they scatter
Mists of this earthly dust from their eyes in their moments of greatness
Shone those unaging Powers; nor as in our centuries radiant
Mortal-seeming bodies they wore when they mixed with our nations.
Then the long youth of the world had not faded still out of our natures,
Flowers and the sunlight were felt and the earth was glad like a mother.
Then for a human delight they were masked in this denser vesture
Earth desires for her bliss, thin veils, for the god through them glimmered.
Quick were mens days with the throng of the brilliant presences near them:
Gods from the wood and the valley, gods from the obvious wayside,
Gods on the secret hills leaped out from their light on the mortal.
Oft in the haunt and the grove they met with our kind and their touches
Seized and subjected our clay to the greatness of passions supernal,
Grasping the earthly virgin and forcing heaven on this death-dust.
Glorifying human beauty Apollo roamed in our regions
Clymene when he pursued or yearned in vain for Marpessa;
Glorifying earth with a human-seeming face of the beauty
Brought from her heavenly climes Aphrodite mixed with Anchises.
Glimpsed in the wilds were the Satyrs, seen in the woodlands the Graces,
Dryad and Naiad in river and forest, Oreads haunting
Glens and the mountain-glades where they played with the manes of our lions
Glimmered on death-claimed eyes; for the gods then were near us and clasped us,
Heaven leaned down in love with our clay and yearned to its transience.
But we have coarsened in heart and in mood; we have turned in our natures
Nearer our poorer kindred; leaned to the ant and the ferret.
Sight we have darkened with sense and power we have stifled with labour,
Likened in mood to the things we gaze at and are in our vestures:
Therefore we toil unhelped; we are left to our weakness and blindness.
Not in those veils now they rose to their skies, but like loose-fitting mantles
Dropped in the vestibules huge of their vigorous realms that besiege us
All that reminded of earth; then clothed with raiment of swiftness
Straight they went quivering up in a glory like fire or the storm-blast.
Even those natural vestures of puissance they leave when they enter
Minds more subtle fields and agree with its limitless regions
Peopled by creatures of bliss and forms more true than earths shadows,
Mind that pure from this density, throned in her splendours immortal
Looks up at Light and suffers bliss from ineffable kingdoms
Where beyond Mind and its rays is the gleam of a glory supernal:
There our sun cannot shine and our moon has no place for her lustres,
There our lightnings flash not, nor fire of these spaces is suffered.
They with bodies impalpable here to our touch and our seeing,
But for a higher delight, to a brighter sense, with more sweetness
Palpable there and visible, thrilled with a lordlier joyance,
Came to the courts of Zeus and his heavens sang to their footsteps.
Harmonies flowed through the blissful coils of the kingdoms of rapture.
Then by his mighty equals surrounded the Thunderer regnant
Veiled his thought in sound that was heard in their souls as they listened.
Veiled are the high gods always lest there should dawn on the mortal
Light too great from the skies and men to their destiny clear-eyed
Walk unsustained like the gods; then Night and Dawn were defeated
And of their masks the deities robbed would be slaves to their subjects.
Children of Immortality, gods who are joyous for ever,
Rapture is ours and eternity measures our lives by his aeons.
For we desireless toil who have joy in the fall as the triumph,
Knowledge eternal possessing we work for an end that is destined
Long already beyond by the Will of which Time is the courser.
Therefore death cannot alter our lives nor pain our enjoyment.
But in the world of mortals twilight is lord of its creatures.
Nothing they perfectly see, but all things seek and imagine,
Out of the clod who have come and would climb from their mire to our heavens.
Yet are the heavenly seats not easy even for the chosen:
Rough and remote is that path; that ascent is too hard for the death-bound.
Hard are Gods terms and few can meet them of men who are mortal.
Mind resists; their breath is a clog; by their tools they are hampered,
Blindly mistaking the throb of their mortal desires for our guidance.
How shall they win in their earth to our skies who are clay and a life-wind,
But that their hearts we invade? Our shocks on their lives come incessant,
Ease discourage and penetrate coarseness; sternness celestial
Forces their souls towards the skies and their bodies by anguish are sifted.
We in the mortal wake an immortal strength by our tortures
And by the flame of our lightnings choose out the vessels of godhead.
This is the nature of earth that to blows she responds and by scourgings
Travails excited; pain is the bed of her blossoms of pleasure.
Earth that was wakened by pain to life and by hunger to thinking
Left to her joys rests inert and content with her gains and her station.
But for the unbearable whips of the gods back soon to her matter
She would go glad and the goal would be missed and the aeons be wasted.
But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurrings
Soon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;
Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud.
This by pain we prevent; we compel his feet to the journey.
But in their minds to impression made subject, by forms of things captured
Blind is the thought and presumptuous the hope and they swerve from our goading;
Blinded are human hearts by desire and fear and possession,
Darkened is knowledge on earth by hope the helper of mortals.
Now too from earth and her children voices of anger and weeping
Beat at our thrones; tis the grief and the wrath of fate-stricken creatures,
Mortals struggling with destiny, hearts that are slaves to their sorrow.
We unmoved by the cry will fulfil our unvarying purpose.
Troy shall fall at last and the ancient ages shall perish.
You who are lovers of Ilion turn from the moans of her people,
Chase from your hearts their prayers, blow back from your nostrils the incense.
Let not one nation resist by its glory the good of the ages.
Twilight thickens over man and he moves to his winter of darkness.
Troy that displaced with her force and her arms the luminous ancients,
Sinks in her turn by the ruder strength of the half-savage Achaians.
They to the Hellene shall yield and the Hellene fall by the Roman.
Rome too shall not endure, but by strengths ill-shaped shall be broken,
Nations formed in the ice and mist, confused and crude-hearted.
So shall the darker and ruder always prevail oer the brilliant
Till in its turn to a ruder and darker it falls and is shattered.
So shall mankind make speed to destroy what twas mighty creating.
Ever since knowledge failed and the ancient ecstasy slackened,
Light has been helper to death and darkness increases the victor.
So shall it last till the fallen ages return to their greatness.
For if the twilight be helped not, night oer the world cannot darken;
Night forbidden how shall a greater dawn be effected?
Gods of the light who know and resist that the doomed may have succour,
Always then shall desire and passion strive with Ananke?
Conquer the cry of your heart-strings that man too may conquer his sorrow,
Stilled in his yearnings. Cease, O ye gods, from the joy of rebellion.
Open the eye of the soul, admit the voice of the Silence.
So in the courts of Heaven august the Thunderer puissant
Spoke to his sons in their souls and they heard him, mighty in silence.
Then to her brother divine the white-armed passionless Hera:
Zeus, we remember; thy sons forget, Apollo and Ares.
Hera, queen of the heavens, they forget not, but choose to be mindless.
This is the greatness of gods that they know and can put back the knowledge;
Doing the work they have chosen they turn not for fruit nor for failure,
Griefless they walk to their goal and strain not their eyes towards the ending.
Light that they have they can lose with a smile, not as souls in the darkness
Clutch at every beam and mistake their one ray for all splendour.
All things are by Time and the Will eternal that moves us,
And for each birth its hour is set in the night or the dawning.
There is an hour for knowledge, an hour to forget and to labour.
Great Cronion ceased and high in the heavenly silence
Rose in their midst the voice of the loud impetuous Ares
Sounding far in the luminous fields of his soul as with thunder.
Father, we know and we have not forgotten. This is our godhead,
Still to strive and never to yield to the evil that conquers.
I will not dwell with the Greeks nor aid them save forced by Ananke
And because lives of the great and the blood of the strong are my portion.
This too thou knowest, our nature enjoys in mankind its fulfilment.
War is my nature and greatness and hardness, the necks of the vanquished;
Force is my soul and strength is my bosom; I shout in the battle
Breaking cities like toys and the nations are playthings of Ares:
Hither and thither I shove them and throw down or range on my table.
Constancy most I love, nobility, virtue and courage;
Fugitive hearts I abhor and the nature fickle as sea-foam.
Now if the ancient spirit of Titan battle is over,
Tros fights no more on the earth, nor now Heracles tramples and struggles,
Bane of the hydra or slaying the Centaurs oer Pelion driven,
Now if the earth no more must be shaken by Titan horsehooves,
Since to a pettier framework all things are fitted consenting,
Yet will I dwell not in Greece nor favour the nurslings of Pallas.
I will await the sons of my loins and the teats of the she-wolf,
Consuls browed like the cliffs and plebeians stern of the wolf-brood,
Senates of kings and armies of granite that grow by disaster;
Such be the nation august that is fit for the favour of Ares!
They shall fulfil me and honour my mother, imperial Hera.
Then with an iron march they shall move to their world-wide dominion,
Through the long centuries rule and at last because earth is impatient,
Slowly with haughtiness perish compelled by mortalitys transience
Leaving a Roman memory stamped on the ages of weakness.
But to his son far-sounding the Father high of the Immortals:
So let it be since such is the will in thee, mightiest Ares;
Thou shalt till sunset prevail, O war-god, fighting for Troya.
So he decreed and the soul of the Warrior sternly consented.
He from his seats arose and down on the summits of Ida
Flaming through Space in his cloud in a headlong glory descended,
Prone like a thunderbolt flaming down from the hand of the Father.
Thence in his chariot drawn by living fire and by swiftness,
Thundered down to earths plains the mighty impetuous Ares.
Far where Deiphobus stern was labouring stark and outnumbered
Smiting the Achaian myriads back on the right of the carnage,
Over the hosts in his car he stood and darkened the Argives.
But in the courts divine the Thunderer spoke to his children:
Ares resisting a present Fate for the hope of the future,
Gods, has gone forth from us. Choose thou thy paths, O my daughter,
More than thy brother assailed by the night that darkens oer creatures.
Choose the silence in heaven or choose the struggle mid mortals,
Golden joy of the worlds, O thou roseate white Aphrodite.
Then with her starry eyes and bosom of bliss from the immortals
Glowing and rosy-limbed cried the wonderful white Aphrodite,
Drawing her fingers like flowers through the flowing gold of her tresses,
Calm, discontented, her perfect mouth like a rose of resistance
Chidingly budded gainst Fate, a charm to their senses enamoured.
Well do I know thou hast given my world to Hera and Pallas.
What though my temples shall stand in Paphos and island Cythera
And though the Greek be a priest for my thoughts and a lyre for my singing,
Beauty pursuing and light through the figures of grace and of rhythm,
Forms shall he mould for mens eyes that the earth has forgotten and mourns for,
Mould even the workings of Pallas to commune with Paphias sweetness,
Mould Hephaestus craft in the gaze of the gold Aphrodite,
Only my form he pursues that I wear for a mortal enchantment,
He to whom now thou givest the world, the Ionian, the Hellene,
But for my might is unfit which Babylon worshipped and Sidon
Palely received from the past in images faint of the gladness
Once that was known by the children of men when the thrill of their members
Was but the immortal joy of the spirit overflowing their bodies,
Wine-cups of Gods desire; but their clay from my natural greatness
Falters betrayed to pain, their delight they have turned into ashes.
Nor to my peaks shall he rise and the perfect fruit of my promptings,
There where the senses swoon but the heart is delivered by rapture:
Never my touch can cling to his soul nor reply from his heart-strings.
Once could my godhead surprise all the stars with the seas of its rapture;
Once the world in its orbit danced to a marvellous rhythm.
Men in their limits, gods in their amplitudes answered my calling;
Life was moved by a chant of delight that sang from the spaces,
Sang from the Soul of the Vast, its rapture clasping its creatures.
Sweetly agreed my fire with their soil and their hearts were as altars.
Pure were its crests; twas not dulled with earth, twas not lost in the hazes
Then when the sons of earth and the daughters of heaven together
Met on lone mountain peaks or, linked on wild beach and green meadow,
Twining embraced. For I danced on Taygetus peaks and oer Ida
Naked and loosing my golden hair like a nimbus of glory
Oer a deep-ecstasied earth that was drunk with my roses and whiteness.
There was no shrinking nor veil in our old Saturnian kingdoms.
Equals were heaven and earth, twin gods on the lap of Dione.
Now shall my waning greatness perish and pass out of Nature.
For though the Romans, my children, shall grasp at the strength of their mother,
They shall not hold the god, but lose in unsatisfied orgies
Yet what the earth has kept of my joy, my glory, my puissance,
Who shall but drink for a troubled hour in the dusk of the sunset
Dregs of my wine Pandemian missing the Uranian sweetness.
So shall the night descend on the greatness and rapture of living;
Creeds that refuse shall persuade the world to revolt from its mother.
Pallas adorers shall loa the me and Heras scorn me for lowness;
Beauty shall pass from mens work and delight from their play and their labour;
Earth restored to the Cyclops shall shrink from the gold Aphrodite.
So shall I live diminished, owned but by beasts in the forest,
Birds of the air and the gods in their heavens, but disgraced in the mortal.
Then to the discontented rosy-mouthed Aphrodite
Zeus replied, the Father divine: O goddess Astarte,
What are these thoughts thou hast suffered to wing from thy rose-mouth immortal?
Bees that sting and delight are the words from thy lips, Cytherea.
Art thou not womb of the world and from thee are the thronging of creatures?
And didst thou cease the worlds too would cease and the aeons be ended.
Suffer my Greeks; accept who accept thee, O gold Dionaean.
They in the works of their craft and their dreams shall enthrone thee for ever,
Building thee temples in Paphos and Eryx and island Cythera,
Building the fane more enduring and bright of thy golden ideal.
Even if natures of men could renounce thee and God do without thee,
Rose of love and sea of delight, O my child Aphrodite,
Still wouldst thou live in the worship they gave thee protected from fading,
Splendidly statued and shrined in mens works and mens thoughts, Cytherea.
Pleased and blushing with bliss of her praise and the thought of her empire
Answered, as cries a harp in heaven, the gold Aphrodite:
Father, I know and I spoke but to hear from another my praises.
I am the womb of the world and the cause of this teeming of creatures,
And if discouraged I ceased, Gods world would lose heart and would perish.
How will you do then without me your works of wisdom and greatness,
Hera, queen of heaven, and thou, O my sister Athene?
Yes, I shall reign and endure though the pride of my workings be conquered.
What though no second Helen find a second Paris,
Lost though their glories of form to the earth, though their confident gladness
Pass from a race misled and forgetting the sap that it sprang from,
They are eternal in man in the worship of beauty and rapture.
Ever while earth is embraced by the sun and hot with his kisses
And while a Will supernal works through the passions of Nature,
Me shall men seek with my light or their darkness, sweetly or crudely,
Cold on the ice of the north or warm in the heats of the southland,
Slowly enduring my touch or with violence rapidly burning.
I am the sweetness of living, I am the touch of the Master.
Love shall die bound to my stake like a victim adorned as for bridal,
Life shall be bathed in my flames and be purified gold or be ashes.
I, Aphrodite, shall move the world for ever and ever.
Yet now since most to me, Father of all, the ages arriving,
Hostile, rebuke my heart and turn from my joy and my sweetness,
I will resist and not yield, nor care what I do, so I conquer.
Often I curbed my mood for your sakes and was gracious and kindly,
Often I lay at Heras feet and obeyed her commandments
Tranquil and proud or oercome by a honeyed and ancient compulsion
Fawned on thy pureness and served thy behests, O my sister Pallas.
Deep was the love that united us, happy the wrestle and clasping;
Love divided, Love united, Love was our mover.
But since you now overbear and would scourge me and chain and control me,
War I declare on you all, O my Father and brothers and sisters.
Henceforth I do my will as the joy in me prompts or the anger.
Ranging the earth with my beauty and passion and golden enjoyments
All whom I can, I will bind; I will drive at the bliss of my workings,
Whether mens hearts are seized by the joy or seized by the torture.
Most I will plague your men, your worshippers and in my malice
Break up your works with confusion divine, O my mother and sister;
Then shall you fume and resist and be helpless and pine with my torments.
Yet will I never relent but always be sweet and malignant,
Cruel and tyrannous, hurtful and subtle, a charm and a torture.
Thou too, O father Zeus, shalt always be vexed with my doings;
Called in each moment to judge thou shalt chafe at our cry and our quarrels,
Often grope for thy thunderbolt, often frown magisterial
Joining in vain thy awful brows oer thy turbulent children.
Yet in thy wrath recall my might and my wickedness, Father;
Hurt me not then too much lest the world and thyself too should suffer.
Save, O my Father, life and grace and the charm of the senses;
Love preserve lest the heart of the world grow dulled and forsaken.
Smiling her smile immortal of love and of mirth and of malice
White Aphrodite arose in her loveliness armed for the conflict.
Golden and careless and joyous she went like a wild bird that winging
Flits from bough to bough and resumes its chant interrupted.
Love where her white feet trod bloomed up like a flower from the spaces;
Mad round her touches billowed incessantly laughter and rapture.
Thrilled with her feet was the bosom of Space, for her amorous motion
Floated, a flower on the wave of her bliss or swayed like the lightning.
Rich as a summer fruit and fresh as Springs blossoms her body
Gleaming and blushing, veiled and bare and with ecstasy smiting
Burned out rosy and white through her happy ambrosial raiment,
Golden-tressed and a charm, her bosom a fragrance and peril.
So was she framed to the gaze as she came from the seats of the Mighty,
So embodied she visits the hearts of men and their dwellings
And in her breathing tenement laughs at the eyes that can see her.
Swift-footed down to the Troad she hastened thrilling the earth-gods.
There with ambrosial secrecy veiled, admiring the heroes
Strong and beautiful, might of the warring and glory of armour,
Over her son Aeneas she stood, his guard in the battle.
But in the courts divine the Thunderer spoke mid his children:
Thou for a day and a night and another day and a nightfall,
White Aphrodite, prevail; oer thee too the night is extended.
She has gone forth who made men like gods in their glory and gladness.
Now in the darkness coming all beauty must wane or be tarnished;
Joy shall fade and mighty Love grow fickle and fretful;
Even as a child that is scared in the night, he shall shake in his chambers.
Yet shall a portion be kept for these, Ares and white Aphrodite.
Thou whom already thy Pythoness bears not, torn by thy advent,
Caverned already who sittest in Delphi knowing thy future,
What wilt thou do with the veil and the night, O burning Apollo?
Then from the orb of his glory unbearable save to immortals
Bright and austere replied the beautiful mystic Apollo:
Zeus, I know that I fade; already the night is around me.
Dusk she extends her reign and obscures my lightnings with error.
Therefore my prophets mislead mens hearts to the ruin appointed,
Therefore Cassandra cries in vain to her sire and her brothers.
All I endure I foresee and the strength in me waits for its coming;
All I foresee I approve; for I know what is willed, O Cronion.
Yet is the fierce strength wroth in my breast at the need of approval
And for the human race fierce pity works in my bosom;
Wroth is my splendid heart with the cowering knowledge of mortals,
Wroth are my burning eyes with the purblind vision of reason.
I will go forth from your seats and descend to the night among mortals
There to guard the flame and the mystery; vast in my moments
Rare and sublime to sound like a sea against Time and its limits,
Cry like a spirit in pain in the hearts of the priest and the poet,
Cry against limits set and disorder sanities bounded.
Jealous for truth to the end my might shall prevail and for ever
Shatter the moulds that men make to imprison their limitless spirits.
Dire, overpowering the brain I shall speak out my oracles splendid.
Then in their ages of barren light or lucidity fruitful
Whenso the clear gods think they have conquered earth and its mortals,
Hidden God from all eyes, they shall wake from their dream and recoiling
Still they shall find in their paths the fallen and darkened Apollo.
So he spoke, repressing his dreadful might in his bosom,
And from their high seats passed, his soul august and resplendent
Drawn to the anguish of men and the fierce terrestrial labour.
Down he dropped with a roar of light invading the regions,
And in his fierce and burning spirit intense and uplifted
Sure of his luminous truth and careless for weakness of mortals
Flaming oppressed the earth with his dire intolerant beauty.
Over the summits descending that slept in the silence of heaven,
He through the spaces angrily drew towards the tramp and the shouting
Over the speeding of Xanthus and over the pastures of Troya.
Clang of his argent bow was the wrath restrained of the mighty,
Stern was his pace like Fates; so he came to the warfare of mortals
And behind Paris strong and inactive waited Gods moment
Knowing what should arrive, nor disturbed like men by their hopings.
But in the courts of Heaven Zeus to his brother immortal
Turned like a menaced king on his counsellor smiling augustly:
Seest thou, Poseidon, this sign that great gods revolting have left us,
Follow their hearts and strive with Ananke? Yet though they struggle,
Thou and I will do our will with the world, O earth-shaker.
Answered to Zeus the besieger of earth, the voice of the waters:
This is our strength and our right, for we are the kings and the masters.
Too much pity has been and yielding of Heaven to mortals.
I will go down with my chariot drawn by my thunder-maned coursers
Into the battle and thrust down Troy with my hand to the silence,
Even though she cling round the snowy knees of our child Aphrodite
Or with Apollos sun take refuge from Night and her shadows.
I will not pity her pain, who am ruthless even as my surges.
Brother, thou knowest, O Zeus, that I am a king and a trader;
For on my paths I receive earths skill and her merchandise gather,
Traffic richly in pearls and bear the swift ships on my bosom.
Blue are my waves and they call mens hearts to wealth and adventure.
Lured by the shifting surges they launch their delight and their treasures
Trusting the toil of years to the perilous moments of Ocean.
Huge mans soul in its petty frame goes wrestling with Nature
Over her vasts and his fragile ships between my horizons
Buffeting death in his solitudes labour through swell and through storm-blast
Bound for each land with her sons and watched for by eyes in each haven.
I from Tyre up to Gades trace on my billows their trade-routes
And on my vast and spuming Atlantic suffer their rudders.
Carthage and Greece are my children, the marts of the world are my term-posts.
Who then deserves the earth if not he who enriches and fosters?
But thou hast favoured thy sons, O Zeus; O Hera, earths sceptres
Still were denied me and kept for strong Ares and brilliant Apollo.
Now all your will shall be done, so you give me the earth for my nations.
Gold shall make men like gods and bind their thoughts into oneness;
Peace I will build with gold and heaven with the pearls of my caverns.
Smiling replied to his brothers craft the mighty Cronion:
Lord of the boundless seas, Poseidon, soul of the surges,
Well thou knowest that earth shall be seized as a booth for the trader.
Rome nor Greece nor France can drive back Carthage for ever.
Always each birth of the silence attaining the field and the movement
Takes from Time its reign; for it came for its throne and its godhead.
So too shall Mammon take and his sons their hour from the ages.
Yet is the flame and the dust last end of the silk and the iron,
And at their end the king and the prophet shall govern the nations.
Even as Troy, so shall Babylon flame up to heaven for the spoiler
Wailed by the merchant afar as he sees the red glow from the ocean.
Up from the seats of the Mighty the Earth-shaker rose. His raiment
Round him purple and dominant rippled and murmured and whispered,
Whispered of argosies sunk and the pearls and the Nereids playing,
Murmured of azure solitudes, sounded of storm and the death-wail.
Even as the march of his waters so was the pace of the sea-god
Flowing on endless through Time; with the glittering symbol of empire
Crowned were his fatal brows; in his grasp was the wrath of the trident,
Tripled force, life-shattering, brutal, imperial, sombre.
Resonant, surging, vast in the pomp of his clamorous greatness
Proud and victorious he came to his home in the far-spuming waters.
Even as a soul from the heights of thought plunges back into living,
So he plunged like a rock through the foam; for it falls from a mountain
Overpeering the waves in some silence of desolate waters
Left to the wind and the sea-gull where Ocean alone with the ages
Dreams of the calm of the skies or tosses its spray to the wind-gods,
Tosses for ever its foam in the solitude huge of its longings
Far from the homes and the noises of men. So the dark-browed Poseidon
Came to his coral halls and the sapphire stables of Nereus
Ever where champ their bits the harnessed steeds of the Ocean
Watched by foam-white girls in the caverns of still Amphitrite.
There was his chariot yoked by the Tritons, drawn by his coursers
Born of the fleeing sea-spray and shod with the northwind who journey
Black like the front of the storm and clothed with their manes as with thunder.
This now rose from its depths to the upper tumults of Ocean
Bearing the awful brows and the mighty form of the sea-god
And from the roar of the surges fast oer the giant margin
Came remembering the storm and the swiftness wide towards the Troad.
So among men he arrived to the clamorous labours of Ares,
Close by the stern Diomedes stood and frowned oer the battle.
He for the Trojan slaughter chose for his mace and his sword-edge
Iron Tydeus son and the adamant heart of young Pyrrhus.
But in the courts divine the Father high of the immortals
Turned in his heart to the brilliant offspring born of his musings,
She who tranquil observes and judges her father and all things.
What shall I say to the thought that is calm in thy breasts, O Athene?
Have I not given thee earth for thy portion, throned thee and armoured,
Darkened Cypris smile, dimmed Heras son and Latonas?
Swift in thy silent ambition, proud in thy radiant sternness,
Girl, thou shalt rule with the Greek and the Saxon, the Frank and the Roman.
Worker and fighter and builder and thinker, light of the reason,
Men shall leave all temples to crowd in thy courts, O Athene.
Go then and do my will, prepare mans tribes for their fullness.
But with her high clear smile on him answered the mighty Athene,
Wisely and soberly, tenderly smiled she chiding her father
Even as a mother might rail at her child when he hides and dissembles:
Zeus, I see and I am not deceived by thy words in my spirit.
We but build forms for thy thought while thou smilest down high oer our toiling;
Even as men are we tools for thee, who are thy children and dear ones.
All this life is thy sport and thou workst like a boy at his engines
Making a toil of the game and a play of the serious labour.
Then to that play thou callest us wearing a sombre visage,
This consulting, that to our wills confiding, O Ruler;
Choosing thy helpers, hastened by those whom thou lurest to oppose thee
Guile thou usest with gods as with mortals, scheming, deceiving,
And at the wrath and the love thou hast prompted laughest in secret.
So we two who are sisters and enemies, lovers and rivals,
Fondled and baffled in turn obey thy will and thy cunning,
I, thy girl of war, and the rosy-white Aphrodite.
Always we served but thy pleasure since our immortal beginnings,
Always each other we helped by our play and our wrestlings and quarrels.
This too I know that I pass preparing the paths of Apollo
And at the end as his sister and slave and bride I must sojourn
Rapt to his courts of mystic light and unbearable brilliance.
Was I not ever condemned since my birth from the toil of thy musings
Seized like a lyre in my body to sob and to laugh out his music,
Shake as a leaf in his fierceness and leap as a flame in his splendours!
So must I dwell overpowered and so must I labour subjected
Robbed of my loneliness pure and coerced in my radiant freedom,
Now whose clearness and pride are the sovereign joy of thy creatures.
Such the reward that thou keepst for my labour obedient always.
Yet I work and I do thy will, for tis mine, O my father.
Proud of her ruthless lust of thought and action and battle,
Swift-footed rose the daughter of Zeus from her sessions immortal:
Breasts of the morning unveiled in a purity awful and candid,
Head of the mighty Dawn, the goddess Pallas Athene!
Strong and rapacious she swooped on the world as her prey and her booty
Down from the courts of the Mighty descending, darting on Ida.
Dire she descended, a god in her reason, a child in her longings,
Joy and woe to the world that is given to the whims of the child-god
Greedy for rule and play and the minds of men and their doings!
So with her aegis scattering light oer the heads of the nations
Shining-eyed in her boyish beauty severe and attractive
Came to the fields of the Troad, came to the fateful warfare,
Veiled, the goddess calm and pure in her luminous raiment
Zoned with beauty and strength. Rejoicing, spurring the fighters
Close oer Odysseus she stood and clear-eyed governed the battle.
Zeus to Hephaestus next, the Cyclopean toiler
Turned, Hephaestus the strong-souled, priest and king and a bond-slave,
Servant of men in their homes and their workshops, servant of Nature,
He who has built these worlds and kindles the fire for a mortal.
Thou, my son, art obedient always. Wisdom is with thee,
Therefore thou knowst and obeyest. Submission is wisdom and knowledge;
He who is blind revolts and he who is limited struggles:
Strife is not for the infinite; wisdom observes to accomplish.
Troy and her sons and her works are thy food today, O Hephaestus.
And to his father the Toiler answered, the silent Seer:
Yes, I obey thee, my Father, and That which than thou is more mighty;
Even as thou obeyest by rule, so I by my labour.
Now must I heap the furnace, now must I toil at the smithy,
I who have flamed on the altar of sacrifice helping the sages.
I am the Cyclops, the lamester, who once was pure and a high-priest.
Holy the pomp of my flames ascendant from pyre and from altar
Robed mens souls for their heavens and my smoke was a pillar to Nature.
Though I have burned in the sight of the sage and the heart of the hero,
Now is no nobler hymn for my ear than the clanging of metal,
Breath of human greed and the dolorous pant of the engines.
Still I repine not, but toil; for to toil I was yoked by my Maker.
I am your servant, O Gods, and his of whom you are servants.
But to the toiler Zeus replied, to the servant of creatures:
What is the thought thou hast uttered betrayed by thy speech, O Hephaestus?
True is it earth shall grow as a smithy, the smoke of the furnace
Fill mens eyes and their souls shall be stunned with the clang of the hammers;
Yet in the end there is rest on the peak of a labour accomplished.
Nor shall the might of the thinker be quelled by that iron oppression,
Nor shall the soul of the warrior despair in the darkness triumphant;
For when the night shall be deepest, dawn shall increase on the mountains
And in the heart of the worst the best shall be born by my wisdom.
Pallas thy sister shall guard mans knowledge fighting the earth-smoke.
Thou too art mighty to live through the clamour even as Apollo.
Work then, endure; expect from the Silence an end and thy wages.
So King Hephaestus arose and passed from the courts of his father;
Down upon earth he came with his lame omnipotent motion;
And with uneven steps absorbed and silent the Master
Worked employed mid the wheels of the cars as a smith in his smithy,
But it was death and bale that he forged, not the bronze and the iron.
Stark, like a fire obscured by its smoke, through the spear-casts he laboured
Helping Ajax war and the Theban and Phocian fighters.
Zeus to his grandiose helper next, who proved and unmoving,
Calm in her greatness waited the mighty comm and of her husband:
Hera, sister and spouse, what my will is thou knowest, O consort.
One are our blood and our hearts, nor the thought for the words of the speaker
Waits, but each other we know and ourselves and the Vast and the heavens,
Life and all between and all beyond and the ages.
That which Space not knows nor Time, we have known, O my sister.
Therefore our souls are one soul and our minds become mirrors of oneness.
Go then and do my will, O thou mighty one, burning down Troya.
Silent she rose from the seats of the Blissful, Hera majestic,
And with her flowing garment and mystical zone through the spaces
Haloed came like the moon on an evening of luminous silence
Down upon Ida descending, a snow-white swan on the greenness,
Down upon Ida the mystic haunted by footsteps immortal
Ever since out of the Ocean it rose and lived gazing towards heaven.
There on a peak of the mountains alone with the sea and the azure
Voiceless and mighty she paused like a thought on the summits of being
Clasped by all heaven; the winds at play in her gust-scattered raiment
Sported insulting her gracious strength with their turbulent sweetness,
Played with their mother and queen; but she stood absorbed and unheeding,
Mute, with her sandalled foot for a moment thrilling the grasses,
Dumbly adored by a soul in the mountains, a thought in the rivers,
Roared to loud by her lions. The voice of the cataracts falling
Entered her soul profound and it heard eternitys rumour.
Silent its gaze immense contained the wheeling of aeons.
Huge-winged through Time flew her thought and its grandiose vast revolutions
Turned and returned. So musing her timeless creative spirit,
Master of Time, its instrument, grieflessly hastening forward
Parted with greatnesses dead and summoned new strengths from their stables;
Maned they came to her call and filled with their pacings the future.
Calm, with the vision satisfied, thrilled by the grandeurs within her,
Down in a billow of whiteness and gold and delicate raiment
Gliding the daughter of Heaven came to the earth that received her
Glad of the tread divine and bright with her more than with sunbeams.
King Agamemnon she found and smiling on Spartas levies
Mixed unseen with the far-glinting spears of haughty Mycenae.
Then to the Mighty who tranquil abode and august in his regions
Zeus, while his gaze over many forms and high-seated godheads
Passed like a swift-fleeing eagle over the peaks and the glaciers
When to his eyrie he flies alone through the vastness and silence:
Artemis, child of my loins and you, O legioned immortals,
All you have heard. Descend, O ye gods, to your sovereign stations,
Labour rejoicing whose task is joy and your bliss is creation;
Shrink from no act that Necessity asks from your luminous natures.
Thee I have given no part in the years that come, O my daughter,
Huntress swift of the worlds who with purity all things pursuest.
Yet not less is thy portion intended than theirs who oerpass thee:
Helped are the souls that wait more than strengths soon fulfilled and exhausted.
Archeress, brilliance, wait thine hour from the speed of the ages.
So they departed, Artemis leading lightning-tasselled.
Ancient Themis remained and awful Dis and Ananke.
Then mid these last of the gods who shall stand when all others have perished,
Zeus to the Silence obscure under iron brows of that goddess,
Griefless, unveiled was her visage, dire and unmoved and eternal:
Thou and I, O Dis, remain and our sister Ananke.
That which the joyous hearts of our children, radiant heaven-moths
Flitting mid flowers of sense for the honey of thought have not captured,
That which Poseidon forgets mid the pomp and the roar of his waters,
We three keep in our hearts. By the Light that I watch for unsleeping,
By thy tremendous consent to the silence and darkness, O Hades,
By her delight renounced and the prayers and the worship of mortals
Making herself as an engine of God without bowels or vision,
Yet in that engine are only heart-beats, yet is her riddle
Only Love that is veiled and pity that suffers and slaughters,
We three are free from ourselves, O Dis, and free from each other.
Do then, O King of the Night, observe then with Time for thy servant
Not my behest, but What she and thou and I are for ever.
Mute the Darkness sat like a soul unmoved through the aeons,
Then came a voice from the silence of Dis, from the night there came wisdom.
Yes, I have chosen and that which I chose I endure, O Cronion,
Though to the courts of the gods I come as a threat and a shadow,
Even though none to their counsels call me, none to their pastime,
None companions me willingly; even thy daughter, my consort,
Trembling whom once from our sister Demeter I plucked like a blossom
Torn from Sicilian fields, while Fate reluctant, consenting,
Bowed her head, lives but by her gasps of the sun and the azure;
Stretched are her hands to the light and she seeks for the clasp of her mother.
I, I am Night and her reign and that of which Night is a symbol.
All to me comes, even thou shalt come to me, brilliant Cronion.
All here exists by me whom all walk fearing and shunning;
He who shuns not, He am I and thou and Ananke.
All things I take to my bosom that Life may be swift in her voyage;
For out of death is Life and not by birth and her motions
And behind Night is light and not in the sun and his splendours.
Troy to the Night I will gather a wreath for my shadows, O grower.
So in his arrogance dire the vast invincible Death-god
Triumphing passed out of heaven with Themis and silent Ananke.
Zeus alone in the spheres of his bliss, in his kingdoms of brilliance
Sat divine and alarmed; for even the gods in their heavens
Scarce shall live who have gazed on the unveiled face of Ananke,
Heard the accents dire of the Darkness that waits for the ages.
Awful and dull grew his eyes and mighty and still grew his members.
Back from his nature he drew to the passionless peaks of the spirit,
Throned where it dwells for ever uplifted and silent and changeless
Far beyond living and death, beyond Nature and ending of Nature.
There for a while he dwelt veiled, protected from Dis and his greatness;
Then to the works of the world he returned and the joy of his musings.
Life and the blaze of the mighty soul that he was of Gods making
Dawned again in the heavenly eyes and the majestied semblance.
Comforted heaven he beheld, to the green of the earth was attracted.
But through this Space unreal, but through these worlds that are shadows
Went the awful Three. None saw them pass, none felt them.
Only in the heavens was a tread as of death, in the air was a winter,
Earth oppressed moaned long like a woman striving with anguish.
Ida saw them not, but her grim lions cowered in their caverns,
Ceased for a while on her slopes the eternal laughter of fountains.
Over the ancient ramparts of Dardanus high-roofed city
Darkening her victor domes and her gardens of life and its sweetness
Silent they came. Unseen and unheard was the dreadful arrival.
Troy and her gods dreamed secure in the moment flattered by sunlight.
Dim to the citadel high they arrived and their silence invaded
Pallas marble shrine where stern and white in her beauty,
Armed on her pedestal, trampling the prostrate image of darkness
Mighty Athenes statue guarded imperial Troya.
Dim and vast they entered in. Then through all the great city
Huge a rushing sound was heard from her gardens and places
And in their musings her seers as they strove with night and with error
And in the fane of Apollo Laocoon torn by his visions
Heard aghast the voice of Troys deities fleeing from Troya,
Saw the flaming lords of her households drive in a death-rout
Forth from her ancient halls and their noble familiar sessions.
Ghosts of her splendid centuries wailed on the wings of the doom-blast.
Moaning the Dryads fled and her Naiads passed from Scamander
Leaving the world to deities dumb of the clod and the earth-smoke,
And from their tombs and their shrines the shadowy Ancestors faded.
Filled was the air with their troops and the sound of a vast lamentation.
Wailing they went, lamenting mortalitys ages of greatness,
Ruthless Anankes deeds and the mortal conquests of Hades.
Then in the fane Palladian the shuddering priests of Athene
Entered the darkened shrine and saw on the suffering marble
Shattered Athenes mighty statue prostrate as conquered,
But on its pedestal rose oer the unhurt image of darkness
Awful shapes, a Trinity dim and dire unto mortals.
Dumb they fell down on the earth and the life-breath was slain in their bosoms.
And in the noon there was night. And Apollo passed out of Troya.
***

~ Sri Aurobindo, 8 - The Book of the Gods
,

IN CHAPTERS [300/383]



  108 Integral Yoga
   68 Poetry
   36 Occultism
   33 Psychology
   31 Fiction
   29 Christianity
   25 Philosophy
   11 Yoga
   8 Science
   7 Integral Theory
   4 Hinduism
   4 Cybernetics
   3 Theosophy
   3 Mysticism
   2 Sufism
   2 Mythology
   1 Thelema
   1 Philsophy
   1 Islam
   1 Education
   1 Baha i Faith
   1 Alchemy


   95 Sri Aurobindo
   35 Carl Jung
   23 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   22 H P Lovecraft
   19 The Mother
   16 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   11 Walt Whitman
   11 Satprem
   10 Percy Bysshe Shelley
   8 William Wordsworth
   8 Plato
   6 Sri Ramakrishna
   6 Plotinus
   6 Friedrich Nietzsche
   5 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   5 Robert Browning
   5 John Keats
   5 James George Frazer
   5 Aleister Crowley
   4 Norbert Wiener
   4 Jorge Luis Borges
   4 Friedrich Schiller
   3 Swami Vivekananda
   3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   3 Paul Richard
   3 Jordan Peterson
   3 Aldous Huxley
   3 A B Purani
   2 Vyasa
   2 Swami Krishnananda
   2 Rudolf Steiner
   2 Joseph Campbell
   2 Jean Gebser
   2 George Van Vrekhem
   2 Alice Bailey


   43 Record of Yoga
   22 Lovecraft - Poems
   18 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   11 Whitman - Poems
   10 Shelley - Poems
   8 Wordsworth - Poems
   8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   7 The Phenomenon of Man
   7 Collected Poems
   7 Aion
   6 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   6 The Secret Doctrine
   6 The Future of Man
   6 Savitri
   5 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   5 The Life Divine
   5 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   5 The Golden Bough
   5 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   5 Keats - Poems
   5 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   5 Browning - Poems
   5 5.1.01 - Ilion
   4 Schiller - Poems
   4 On the Way to Supermanhood
   4 Cybernetics
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   4 City of God
   3 Twilight of the Idols
   3 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
   3 The Secret Of The Veda
   3 The Perennial Philosophy
   3 Talks
   3 Questions And Answers 1953
   3 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   3 Maps of Meaning
   3 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
   3 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   3 Essays Divine And Human
   3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
   2 Vishnu Purana
   2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   2 The Human Cycle
   2 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
   2 The Ever-Present Origin
   2 The Divine Comedy
   2 The Bible
   2 Raja-Yoga
   2 Questions And Answers 1955
   2 Preparing for the Miraculous
   2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
   2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
   2 Liber ABA
   2 Letters On Yoga I
   2 Let Me Explain
   2 Essays On The Gita
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   2 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
   2 Agenda Vol 04
   2 Agenda Vol 03
   2 Agenda Vol 01


0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It was at this point that we met Mother, at this intersection of The Anthropoid rediscovered and the 'something' that had set in motion this unfinished invention momentarily ensnared in a gilded machine. For nothing was finished, and nothing had been invented, really, that would instill peace and wideness in this heart of no species at all.
  And what if man were not yet invented? What if he were not yet his own species?

0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
   In the beginning of September 1885 Sri Ramakrishna was moved to Syampukur. Here Narendra organized the young disciples to attend the Master day and night. At first they concealed the Master's illness from their guardians; but when it became more serious they remained with him almost constantly, sweeping aside the objections of their relatives and devoting themselves whole-heartedly to the nursing of their beloved guru. These young men, under the watchful eyes of the Master and the leadership of Narendra, became The Antaranga bhaktas, the devotees of Sri Ramakrishna's inner circle. They were privileged to witness many manifestations of the Master's divine powers. Narendra received instructions regarding the propagation of his message after his death.
   The Holy Mother — so Sarada Devi had come to be affectionately known by Sri Ramakrishna's devotees — was brought from Dakshineswar to look after the general cooking and to prepare the special diet of the patient. The dwelling space being extremely limited, she had to adapt herself to cramped conditions. At three o'clock in the morning she would finish her bath in the Ganges and then enter a small covered place on the roof, where she spent the whole day cooking and praying. After eleven at night, when the visitors went away, she would come down to her small bedroom on the first floor to enjoy a few hours' sleep. Thus she spent three months, working hard, sleeping little, and praying constantly for the Master's recovery.

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
           The Ante Primal Triad which is
                 NOT-GOD
  --
           COMMENTARY (The Ante Primal Triad)
     This is the negative Trinity; its three statements are, in an
  --
              THE BATTLE OF The AntS
       That is not which is.
  --
    title suggests war. The Ants are chosen as small busy
    objects.
  --
    refreshed by hearing The Anthems in this chief of the
    architectural glories of his Alma Mater.
  --
     5. The battle of The Ants.
     6. Caviar.

01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  And The Anthem of the superconscient light.
  All was revealed there none can here express;

01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Night shall awake to The Anthem of the stars,
  The days become a happy pilgrim march,

01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   And still this was not the lastit could not be the lastanti thesis that had to be synthetized. The dialectical movement led to a more serious and fiercer contradiction. The Buddhistic schism was after all a division brought about from within: it could be said that the two terms of The Antinomy belonged to the same genus and were commensurable. The idea or experience of Asat and Maya was not unknown to the Upanishads, only it had not there the exclusive stress which the later developments gave it. Hence quite a different, an altogether foreign body was imported into what was or had come to be a homogeneous entity, and in a considerable mass.
   Unlike the previous irruptions that merged and were lost in the general life and consciousness, Islam entered as a leaven that maintained its integrity and revolutionized Indian life and culture by infusing into its tone a Semitic accent. After the Islamic impact India could not be what she was beforea change became inevitable even in the major note. It was a psychological cataclysm almost on a par with the geological one that formed her body; but the spirit behind which created the body was working automatically, inexorably towards the greater and more difficult synthesis demanded by the situation. Only the thing is to be done now consciously, not through an unconscious process of laissez-faire as on the inferior stages of evolution in the past. And that is the true genesis of the present conflict.

01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The angels weave the symphony that is creation. They represent the various notes and rhythmsin their higher and purer degrees that make up the grand harmony of the spheres. It is magnificent, this music that moves the cosmos, and wonderful the glory of God manifest therein. But is it absolutely perfect? Is there nowhere any flaw in it? There is a doubting voice that enters a dissenting note. That is Satan, The Antagonist, the Evil One. Man is the weakest link in the chain of the apparently all-perfect harmony. And Satan boldly proposes to snap it if God only let him do so. He can prove to God that the true nature of his creation is not cosmos but chaos not a harmony in peace and light, but a confusion, a Walpurgis Night. God acquiesces in the play of this apparent breach and proves in the end that it is part of a wider scheme, a vaster harmony. Evil is rounded off by Grace.
   The total eradication of Evil from the world and human nature and the remoulding of a terrestrial life in the substance and pattern of the Highest Good that is beyond all dualities is a conception which it was not for Goe the to envisage. In the order of reality or existence, first there is the consciousness of division, of trenchant separation in which Good is equated with not-evil and evil with not-good. This is the outlook of individualised consciousness. Next, as the consciousness grows and envelops the whole existence, good and evil are both embraced and are found to form a secret and magic harmony. That is the universal or cosmic consciousness. And Goethe's genius seems to be an outflowering of something of this status of consciousness. But there is still a higher status, the status of transcendence in which evil is not simply embraced but dissolved and even transmuted into a supreme reality of which it is an aberration, a reflection or projection, a lower formulation. That is the mystery of a spiritual realisation to which Goe the aspired perhaps, but had not the necessary initiation to enter into.

0 1958 12 - Floor 1, young girl, we shall kill the young princess - black tent, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Two or three days after I retired to my room upstairs,1 early in the night I fell into a very heavy sleep and found myself out of the body much more materially than I do usually. This degree of density in which you can see the material surroundings exactly as they are. The part that was out seemed to be under a spell and only half conscious. When I found myself at the first floor where everything was absolutely black, I wanted to go up again, but then I discovered that my hand was held by a young girl whom I could not see in the darkness but whose contact was very familiar. She pulled me by the hand telling me laughingly, No, come, come down with me, we shall kill the young princess. I could not understand what she meant by this young princess and, rather unwillingly, I followed her to see what it was. Arriving in The Anteroom which is at the top of the staircase leading to the ground floor, my attention was drawn in the midst of all this total obscurity to the white figure of Kamala2 standing in the middle of the passage between the hall and Sri Aurobindos room. She was as it were in full light while everything else was black. Then I saw on her face such an expression of intense anxiety that to comfort her I said, I am coming back. The sound of my voice shook off from me the semi-trance in which I was before and suddenly I thought, Where am I going? and I pushed away from me the dark figure who was pulling me and in whom, while she was running down the steps, I recognized a young girl who lived with Sri Aurobindo and me for many years and died five years back. This girl during her life was under the most diabolical influence. And then I saw very distinctly (as through the walls of the staircase) down below a small black tent which could scarcely be perceived in the surrounding darkness and standing in the middle of the tent the figure of a man, head and face shaved (like the sannyasin or the Buddhist monks) covered from head to foot with a knitted outfit following tightly the form of his body which was tall and slim. No other cloth or garment could give an indication as to who he could be. He was standing in front of a black pot placed on a dark red fire which was throwing its reddish glow on him. He had his right arm stretched over the pot, holding between two fingers a thin gold chain which looked like one of mine and was unnaturally visible and bright. Shaking gently the chain he was chanting some words which translated in my mind, She must die the young princess, she must pay for all she has done, she must die the young princess.
   Then I suddenly realized that it was I the young Princess and as I burst into laughter, I found myself awake in my bed.

0 1959-01-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I am taking advantage of this situation to work. I have chosen the articles for the Bulletin. They are as follows: 1) Message. 2) To keep silent. 3) Can there be intermediary states between man and super-man? 4) The Anti-Divine. 5) What is the role of the spirit? 6) Karma (I have touched this one up to make it less personal). 7) The Worship of the Supreme in Matter. Now I would like to prepare the first twelve Aphorisms3 for printing. But as you have not yet revised the last two, I am sending them to you. Could you do them when you have finished what you are doing for the Bulletin? It is not urgent, take your time. Do not disturb your real work for this in any way. For, in my eyes, this work of inner liberation is much more important.
   You will find in this letter a little money. I thought you might need it for your stamps, etc.

0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Generally speaking, The Antidivine is easily understood, but in the minute details of daily life, how do you choose between this and that? What is the truth behind the thing you choose and the one you dont choose? And you know, my standpoint is totally beyond any question of egoistic, individual will that isnt the problem here. Its not that.
   As soon as you try to say it, it evaporates.

0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Thats how you can cure somebody, if hes able to receive it. Its The Antidote to disorder, the perfect antidote to disorder.
   Yes, one leaves that state refreshed, rested.

0 1963-01-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Night shall awake to The Anthem of the stars,
   The days become a happy pilgrim march,

0 1963-08-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You know, a naturalist once said that if man didnt destroy The Ant, The Ant would drive man off the earth.
   Well, thats the point!

02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Modern thinkers do not speak of the Asura the Demon or the Titanalthough the religiously minded sometimes refer to The Anti-Christ; but the real, the inner significance of the terms, is lost to a mind nurtured in science and empiricism; they are considered as more or less imaginative symbols for certain undesirable qualities of nature and character. Yet some have perceived and expressed the external manifestation and activities of the Asura in a way sufficient to open men's eyes to the realities involved. Thus they have declared that the present war is a conflict between two ideals, to be sure, but also that the two ideals are so different that they do not belong to the same plane or order; they belong to different planes and different orders. On one side the whole endeavour is to bring man down from the level to which he has arisen in the course of evolution to something like his previous level and to keep him imprisoned there. That this is really their aim, the protagonists and partisans themselves have declared frankly and freely and loudly enough, without any hesitation or reservation. Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' has become the Scripture of the New Order; it has come with a more categorical imperative, a more supernal authority than the Veda, the Bible or the Koran.
   When man was a dweller of the forest,a jungle man,akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an uprush of similar forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new order asks only one thing of man, namely, to be strong and powerful, that is to say, fierce, ruthless, cruel and regimented. Regimentation can be said to be the very characteristic of the order, the regimentation of a pack of wild dogs or wolves. A particular country, nation or raceit is Germany in Europe and, in her wake, Japan in Asiais to be the sovereign nation or master race (Herrenvolk); the rest of mankindo ther countries and peoplesshould be pushed back to the status of servants and slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. What the helots were in ancient times, what the serfs were in the mediaeval ages, and what the subject peoples were under the worst forms of modern imperialism, even so will be the entire mankind under the new overlordship, or something still worse. For whatever might have been the external conditions in those ages and systems, the upward aspirations of man were never doubted or questioned they were fully respected and honoured. The New Order has pulled all that down and cast them to the winds. Furthermore in the new regime, it is not merely the slaves that suffer in a degraded condition, the masters also, as individuals, fare no better. The individual here has no respect, no freedom or personal value. This society or community of the masters even will be like a bee-hive or an ant-hill; the individuals are merely functional units, they are but screws and bolts and nuts and wheels in a huge relentless machinery. The higher and inner realities, the spontaneous inspirations and self-creations of a free soulart, poetry, literaturesweetness and light the good and the beautifulare to be banished for ever; they are to be regarded as things of luxury which enervate the heart, diminish the life-force, distort Nature's own virility. Man perhaps would be the worshipper of Science, but of that Science which brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life.

02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The next stage of devolution is the Mind proper. There or perhaps even before, on the lower reaches of the Overmind, the gods have become all quite separate, self-centred, each bounded in his own particular sphere and horizon. The overmind gods the true godsare creators in a world of balanced or harmoniously held difference; they are powers that fashion each a special fulfilment, enhancing one another at the same time (parasparam bhvayantah). Between the Overmind and the Mind there is a class of lesser godsthey have been called formateurs; they do not create in the strict sense of the term, they give form to what The Anterior gods have created and projected. These form-makers that consolidate the encasement, fix definitely the image, have most probably been envisaged in the Indian dhynamrtis. But in the Mind the gods become still more fixed and rigid, stereotyped; the mental gods inspire exclusive systems, extreme and abstract generalisations, theories and principles and formulae that, even when they seek to force and englobe all in their cast-iron mould, can hardly understand or tolerate each other.
   Mind is the birth-place of absolute division and exclusivismit is the own home of egoism. Egoism is that ignorant modea twist or knot of consciousness which cuts up the universal unity into disparate and antagonistic units: it creates isolated, mutually exclusive whorls in the harmonious rhythm and vast commonalty of the one consciousness or conscious existence. The Sankhya speaks of the principle of ego coming or appearing after the principle of vastness (mahat). The Vast is the region above the Mind, where the unitary consciousness is still intact; with the appearance of the Mind has also appeared an intolerant self-engrossed individualism that culminates, as its extreme and violent expression, in the asuraAsura, the mentalised vital being.

02.06 - Vansittartism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This is the very core of the matter. Germany stands for a philosophy of life, for a definite mode of human values. That philosophy was slowly developed, elaborated by the German mind, in various degrees and in various ways through various thinkers and theorists and moralists and statesmen, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. The conception of the State as propounded even by her great philosophers as something self-existent, sacrosanct and almost divineaugust and grim, one has to addis profoundly significant of the type of the subconscient dynamic in the nation: it strangely reminds one of the state organised by the bee, The Ant or the termite. Hitler has only precipitated the idea, given it a concrete, physical and dynamic form. That philosophy in its outlook has been culturally anti-Latin, religiously anti-Christian. Germany cherishes always in her heart the memory of the day when her hero Arminius routed the Roman legions of Varus. Germany stands for a mode of human consciousness that is not in line with the major current of its evolutionary growth: she harks back to something primeval, infra-rational, infra-human.
   Such is the position taken up by Lord Vansittart who has given his name to the new ideology of anti-Germanism. Vansittartism (at least in its extreme variety) has very little hope for the mending of Germany, it practically asks for its ending.

02.09 - The Paradise of the Life-Gods, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Curing The Antithesis twixt heaven and hell.
  All life's high visions are embodied there,

03.01 - The New Year Initiation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The scope of this New Year Prayer does not limit itself only to our individual sadhanait embraces also the collective consciousness which is specially the field of its application. It is the muffled voice of entire humanity in its secret aspiration that is given expression here. It is by the power of this mantra, protected by this invulnerable armour,if we choose to accept it as such,that the collective life of man will attain its fulfilment. We have often stated that the outstanding feature of the modern world is that it has become a Kurukshetra of Gods and Titans. It is no doubt an eternal truth of creation, this conflict between the divine and The Anti-divine, and it has been going on in the heart of humanity since its advent upon earth. In the inner life of the world this is a fact of the utmost importance, its most significant principle and mystery. Still it must be said that never in the annals of the physical world has this truth taken such momentous proportions as in the grim present. It is pregnant with all good and evil that may make or mar human destiny in the near future. Whether man will transcend his half-animal state and rise to the full height of his manhood, nay even to the godhead in him, or descend back to the level of his gross brute naturethis is the problem of problems which is being dealt with and solved in the course of the mighty holocaust of the present World War.
   In her last year's message1 the Mother gave a clear warning that we must have no more hesitation, that we must renounce one side, free ourselves from all its influence and embrace the other side without hesitation, without reservation. At the decisive moment in the life of the world and of mankind, one must definitely, irrevocably choose one's loyalty. It will not do to say, like the over-wise and the over-liberal, that both sides the Allies and the Axis Powersare equalequally right or equally wrong and that we can afford to be outside or above the prejudices or interests of either. There is no room today for a neutral. He who pretends to be a neutral is an enemy to the cause of truth. Whoever is Dot with us is against us.

03.02 - The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   I wonder why Philosophy has never been considered as a variety of Art. Philosophy is admired for the depth and height of its substance, for its endeavour to discover the ultimate Truth, for its one-pointed adherence to the supremely Real; but precisely because it does so it is set in opposition to Art which is reputed as the domain of the ideal, the imaginative or the fictitious. Indeed it is The Antagonism between the two that has always been emphasised and upheld as an axiomatic truth and an indisputable fact. Of course, old Milton (he was young, however, when he wrote these lines) says that philosophy is divine and charming:
   Not harsh, and crabbed as dull fools suppose,

03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Above blind fate and The Antagonist powers
  Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will;

03.08 - The Spiritual Outlook, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   When the Divine acts, it acts always in and through this transcendental and innermost truth of things. When it helps the seeker, it touches and inspires the secret soul in himhis truthnot like the human teacher or reformer who addresses himself to the outer personality, to laws and codes, prohibitions and injunctions, reward and punishment, for the education and instruction of his pupil. Indeed, the Divine chastises also in the same way. The Asura or The Anti-divine he does not kill with one blow nor even with many blows of his thunderbolt or burn away with his red wrath. The image of Zeus or Jehovah is a human figuration: it depicts the human way of dealing with one's enemies. The Divine deals with the undivine in the divine way, for the undivine too is not something outside the Divine. The Asura also has; his truth, his truth in the Divine, only it has been degraded and deformed under circumstances. The Divine simply disengages, picks up that core of truth and takes it away so that it can no longer be appropriated and deformed by the Asura who now losing the secret support of his truth automatically crumbles to pieces as mere husk and chaff. If there is something more than the merely human in the image of Durga, the Goddess transfixing her lance right into the heart of the Asura may be taken as indicative of this occult truth.
   There is then this singular and utter harmony in the divine consciousness resolving all contraries and incompatibles. Neha nnsti kicana, there is no division or disparity here. Established in this consciousness, the spiritual man naturally and inevitably finds that he is in all and all are in him and that he is all and all are he, for all and he are indivisibly that single (yet multiple) reality. The brotherhood of man is only a derivative from the more fundamental truth of the universal selfhood of man.

03.15 - Origin and Nature of Suffering, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Suffering there is, some say, because the soul takes delight in it: if there was not the soul's delight behind, there would not be any suffering at all. There are still two other positions with regard to suffering which we do not deal with in the present context, namely, (1) that it does not exist at all, the absolute Ananda of the Brahman being the sole reality, suffering, along with the manifested world of which it is a part, is illusion pure and simple, (2) that suffering exists, but it comes not from soul or God but from The Anti-divine: it is at the most tolerated by God and He uses it as best as He can for His purpose. That, however, is not our subject here. We ask then what delight can the soul take when the body is suffering, say, from cancer. If it is delight, it must be of a perverse variety. Is it not the whole effort of mankind to get rid of pain and suffering, make of our life and of the world, if possible, a visible play of pure and undefiled Ananda?
   On the other hand, we do find that suffering is not always mere suffering, that it can be turned into a thing of joy; it is a fact proved in the lives of many a martyr and many a saint. Many indeed are those who have not only borne suffering passively but have welcomed it and courted it with happiness and delight. If it is said it is a perverse kind of pleasure, and if one wishes to hang it by calling it masochism, well, we do not solve the problem in that way, we seek to hide it behind a big word; it is at the most a point of view. What agrees with one's temperament (or prejudices) one calls natural and what one does not like appears to him perverse. Another person may have a different temperament and accordingly a different vocabulary.

04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In other words, it can be said that the older humanity was intuitive and instinctive, while modern humanity is rationalistic. Now it has been questioned whether this change or reorientation is a sign of progress, whether it has not been at the most a mixed blessing. Many idealists and reformers frankly view the metamorphosis with anxiety. Gerald Heard vehemently declares that the rationalism of the modern age is a narrowing down of the consciousness to a superficial movement, a foreshortening, and a top-heavy specialisation which means stagnation, decay and death. He would rather release the tension in the strangulation of consciousness, even if it means a slight coming down to The Anterior level of instinct and intuition, but of more plasticity and less specialisation: it is, he says, only in conditions of suppleness and variability, of life organised yet sufficiently free that the forces of evolution can act fruitfully. It has also been pointed out that homo sapiens is not a direct descendant of homo neanderthalis who was already a far too specialised being, but of a stock anterior to it which was still uncertain, wavering, groping towards a definite emergence.
   Now, these two positionsof Jung and of Heardoffer us a good basis upon which we can try to estimate the nature of man's progress in historical times. Both refer to a crucial change in human consciousness, a far-reaching change having no parallel since it invented the metal tool. The change means the appearance of pure intelligence in man, a change, as we may say, in modern terms, in the system of reference, from biological co-ordinates to those of pure reason. Only Jung thinks that the reorganisation of the human consciousness is to happen precisely round the focus of pure reason, while Gerald Heard is doubtful about the efficacy of this facultyof directive thinking, as Jung puts it-if it is to lead to overspecialisation, which means the swelling of one member and atrophy of the rest; a greater and supreme direction he seeks elsewhere in a transcendence of intelligence and reason which, besides, is bound to happen in the course of evolution.
  --
   The present age which ushers a fourth stagesignificantly called turiya or the transcendent, in Indian terminologyis pregnant with a fateful crisis. The stage of self-consciousness to which scientific development has arrived seems to land in a cul-de-sac, a blind alley: Science also is faced, almost helplessly, with The Antinomies of reason that Kant discovered long ago in the domain of speculative philosophy. The way out, for a further growth and development and evolution, lies in a supersession of the self-consciousness, an elevation into a super-consciousnessas already envisaged by Yogis and Mystics everywherewhich will give a new potential and harmony to the human consciousness.
   This super consciousness is based upon a double movement of sublimation and integration which are precisely the two things basically aimed at by present-day psychology to meet the demands of new facts of consciousness. The rationalisation, specialisation or foreshortening of consciousness, mentioned above, is really an attempt at sublimation of the consciousness, its purification and ascension from baseranimal and vegetalconfines: only, ascension does not mean alienation, it must mean a gathering up of the lower elements also into their higher modes. Integration thus involves a descent, but it has to be pointed out, not merely or exclusively that, as Jung and his school seem to say. Certainly one has to see and recognise the aboriginal, the infra-rational elements imbedded in our nature and consciousness, the roots and foundations that lie buried under the super-structure that Evolution has erected. But that recognition must be accompanied by an upward look and sense: indeed it is healthy and fruitful only on condition that it occurs in a consciousness open to an infiltration of light coming from summits not only of the mind but above the mind. If we go back, it must be with a light that is ahead of us; that is the sense of evolution.

05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   What is the world that we see really like? Is it mental, is it material? This is a question, we know, philosophers are familiar with, and they have answered and are still answering, each in his own way, taking up one side or other of The Antinomy. There is nothing new or uncommon in that. The extraordinary novelty comes in when we see today even scientists forced to tackle the problem, give an answer to it,scientists who used to smile at philosophers, because they seemed to assault seriously the windmills of abstract notions and airy concepts, instead of reposing on the terra firmaof reality. The tables are turned now. The scientists have had to start the same business the terra firmaon which they stood as on the securest rock of ages is slipping away under their feet and fast vanishing into smoke and thin air. Not only that, it is discovered today that the scientist has always been a philosopher,' without his knowledgea crypto-philosopher,only he has become conscious of it at last. And furthermirabile dictum!many a scientist is busy demonstrating that the scientist is, in his essence, a philosopher of the Idealist school!
   Physical Science in the nineteenth century did indeed develop or presuppose a philosophy of its own; it had, that is to say, a definite outlook on the fundamental quality of things and the nature of the universe. Those were days of its youthful self-confidence and unbending assurance. The view was, as is well-known, materialistic and deterministic. That is to say, all observation and experiment, according to it, demonstrated and posited:
  --
   Things need not, however, be so dismal looking. The difficulty arises because of a fundamental attitude the attitude of a purely reasoning being. But Reason or Mind is only one layer or vein of the reality, and to see and understand and explain that reality through one single track of approach will naturally bias the view, it will present only what is real or immediate to it, and all the rest will appear as secondary or a formation of it. That is, of course, a truth that has been clearly brought out by The Anti-intellectualist. But the vitalist's view is also likewise vitiated by a similar bias, as he contacts reality only through this prism of vital force. It is the old story of the Upanishad in which the seeker takes the Body, the Life and the Mind one after another and declares each in its turn to be the only and ultimate reality, the Brahman.
   The truth of the matter is that the integral reality is to be seized by an integral organon. To an integralised consciousness the integral reality is directly and immediately presented, each aspect is apprehended in and through its own truth and substance. The synthesis or integration is reached by a consciousness which is the basis and continent of all, collectively and severally, and of which all are various formations and expressions on various levels and degrees. This is the knowledge and experience given by the supreme spiritual consciousness.

05.29 - Vengeance is Mine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   One who seeks to live in God's consciousness cannot take the law into his own hands; he must leave it all to God. When he takes up the self-appointed task of remedying the situation, "resisting evil" as Christ termed it, he invites resistance from the other side which takes up its own counter-measures. The principle of revancheor vendetta, practised by nations and families, has not been a success, as history has amply proved. It is a seesaw movement, a vicious circle without issue. Not only so, the movement gathers momentum and increases in violence and confusion the farther it proceeds on its career. That is why Christ uttered his warning: and Buddha too declared that enmity cannot be appeased by enmity, it can be appeased only by the want of enmity. The truth is true not only in respect of two enemy forces of the same quality and on the same plane, but also with regard to The Antagonism between higher and lower forces, between Good and Evil.
   Do we then propose taking it all lying down, it may be asked? Is martyrdom then our ideal? Not so, for we do not believe that evil forces can be appeased or conquered or transformed by yielding to them, letting them free to have their own way. Otherwise Krishna would not have enjoined and inspired (almost incited) Arjuna to enter on a bloody battle. Still forces, whether good or bad, are conquered or quelled or transformed truly and permanently by forces that belong not to the same level of being or consciousness, but to a higher one. Instead of working in a parallelogram of forces, we must take recourse, as it were, to a pyramid of forces. We know of the ideal of soul-force standing against and seeking to persuade or peacefully subdue brute force. It is not an impossibility; only we must be able really to get to the true soul and not a semblance or substitute of it. The true soul is .man's spiritual or divine being the consciousness in which man is one in substance and nature with God. It is not a mere thought formation, a mental and moral ideal. The only force that can succeed against a lower or undivine force is God's own force and the success can be complete and absolute by the calling in or intervention of God's force in its highest status. Anything less than that will be no more than a temporary lull or adjustment.

06.02 - Darkness to Light, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Darkness is the measure of the Light. The world as it is is exactly the opposite of what it has to be and shall be. And in order to be what it shall be it had to become what it is now, just not that which it will be. The Antipodes go together unavoidably: the depth of the precipice is the precise measure of the height. Man's fall represents the ascent he has to make, he is destined to make. .
   Hurdles and obstacles are put there in the way: not merely to test your strength, but to train it, to increase it, to discipline it. Difficulties abound precisely because by overcoming them you attain to the fullness of your perfection. You have been built with elements and forces that are exactly in keeping with what you are expected to do with them: you are placed in the midst of conditions and circumstances that are absolutely in proportion to what you have to realise. Indeed you carry within yourself all the difficulties that are necessary to make your realisation perfection itself.

06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Chanted The Anthem of eternal love.
  END OF CANTO TWO

07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I have studied the methods of The Ant and ape
  And the behaviour learned of man and worm.

07.19 - Bad Thought-Formation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   What is instinct exactly? It is Nature's consciousness. Nature is conscious of her action; it is not an individual consciousness. It is a global or collective consciousness. There is also a consciousness of the species. Each species has its consciousness which is called sometimes the spirit of the species, that is to say, a conscious being presiding over a particular species. Nature is conscious in the sense that she knows what she wants, she knows her whither and her how, her end and the way to go towards it. To man much of Nature seems incoherent, because his consciousness is narrow and he has not an overall vision. When you look at the small details, the little fragments, you do not understand; you do not find any link, sequence, sense. But Nature has a conscious will, she is a conscious being. Perhaps the word being is too human. When we speak of Nature's being, we naturally think of the human being, only a little bigger, or perhaps much bigger but working more or less in the same way. But it is not so. Instead of the word being, I would prefer the word entity. The conscious entity that is Nature has a conscious will and it does things much more deliberately and purposively than map, and it has formidable forces at its disposal. Man speaks of blind and violent Nature. But it is man who is blind and violent, not nature. You say an earthquake is a terrible affair. Thousands of houses crash into dust, millions of people are killed, whole cities devastated, entire portions of earth are swallowed up etc., etc. Yes, from the human point of view Nature seems monstrous. But what has she done after all? When you get a knock on your body somewhere there appears a blue patch. Are you worried about it? Your earthquake is nothing more than a reshuffling of a cell in your body. You destroy thousands of cells every moment of your life. You are monstrous! That is the relative proportion. And consider, we are speaking of earth alone and earthly events. But what is this earth itself in the bosom of the universe? A point, a zero. You are walking on the ground and are not looking down. You place one step forward and then another and you trample thousands of innocent ants under your feet. If you were an ant you would have cried out, what a cruel and stupid force! Imagine other forces stalking about much bigger than yourself and under their casual steps millions of creatures like you are crushed, continents are pressed down and mountains kicked up. They do not even notice such catastrophic happenings! The only difference between man and ant is that man knows what happens to him and The Ant does not. But even there are you sure?
   ***

07.34 - And this Agile Reason, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Reason is an agility gymnast. It can move in all varieties of ways, make infinite twists, the most impossible contortions with equal ease and skill. It does not seek the truth, although it may pretend to do so; for it cannot find the truth. The law of uncertainty or indeterminacy seems also to be the last word of modern Science. What Reason does and can do is to justify, find arguments for whatever position it is put in or called upon to support. Its business is to supply proofs: it can do so as the spider brings out of itself the whole warp and woof of the cobweb. There is no truth, that is to say, no conclusion which it cannot demonstrate and all with equal cogency. That was indeed the great discovery of the great Kant who described it as The Antinomies of Reason. Reason finds it infinitely exhilarating to pirouette ad infinitum, i.e., beating about the bush without caring to look for the fact or reality hidden in the bush.
   Is it then to say that this faculty is a falsehood and that it can lead you only to falsehood? Not necessarily. It becomes a falsehood when you try to live according to it, according to an idea or ideas it has taken a fancy to; for then it is bound to land you in contradictions. Otherwise, if it is not a question of practical application, if it is merely a play or playfulness in the mental world, it is harmless acrobatics; and even in its own way it can be of some use in making your brain sharp, alert, strong and supple.

08.32 - The Surrender of an Inner Warrior, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It means the vital when it is converted. The converted vital is for the Divine like a warrior. The vital in man is the region of power and it is that which drives him to fight, to fight and conquer. It is the most difficult element to deal with: for it is this capacity to fight that also produces in the vital the spirit of revolt and independence, the will to follow its own will. But when the vital understands and is converted, if it is truly surrendered to the Divine Will, then its fighting capacity turns against anti-divine forces, the forces of obscurity that prevent the transformation: the powers of the vital are strong enough to conquer the enemies. The Anti-divine forces are in the vital world: from there they spread upon the physical. But their own seat is in the vital and it is the converted vital that can effectively deal with them. But the conversion is difficult.
   The higher vital finds it much less difficult to surrender, for it is under the influence of the mind and sometimes even of the psychic; it understands them more easily. It is less difficult than the lower vital, for the latter is essentially the stronghold of desires and blind impulsions. The lower vital, even when it surrenders, when it does what it is asked to do, is not wholly happy, it suffers and only pushes down the impulse to revolt, it obeys unwillingly and does not collaborate. Unless it collaborates in joy and true love, nothing can be done, the transformation cannot come.

10.01 - A Dream, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Harimohon saw again that the ascetic had been starving for many days, and for the last two his body had experienced extreme suffering because of hunger and thirst. Reproachingly Harimohon asked, Whats this, Keshta? Babaji loves you so much and still he has to suffer from hunger and thirst? Have you no common sense? Who shall feed him in this lonely forest home of tigers? The boy answered, I will feed him. But look here for another bit of fun. Harimohon saw the tiger go straight to an ant-hill which was close by and break it with a single stroke of the paw. Hundreds of ants scurried out and began stinging the ascetic angrily. The ascetic remained plunged in meditation, undisturbed, unmoved. Then the boy sweetly breathed in his ears, Beloved! The ascetic opened his eyes. At first he felt no pain from the stings; the all-enchanting flute-call which the whole world longs for, was still ringing in his earsas it had once rung in Radhas ears at Vrindavan. At last, the innumerable repeated stings made him conscious of his body. But he did not stir. Astonished, he began muttering to himself, How strange! I have never known such things! Obviously it is Sri Krishna who is playing with me. In the guise of these insignificant ants he is stinging me. Harimohon saw that the burning sensation no longer reached the ascetics mind. Rather every sting produced in him an intense ecstasy all over his body, and, drunk with that ecstasy, he began to dance, clapping his hands and singing the praise of Sri Krishna. The Ants dropped down from his body and fled.
  Stupefied, Harimohon exclaimed, Keshta, what is this spell? The boy clapped now his hands, swung round twice on his foot and laughed aloud, I am the only magician on earth. None shall understand this spell. This is my supreme riddle. Did you see it? Amid this agony also he could think only of me. Look again. The ascetic sat down once more, self-composed; his body went on suffering hunger and thirst, but his mind merely perceived the suffering and did not get involved in it or affected by it. At this moment, a voice, sweeter than a flute, called out from the hill, Beloved! Harimohon was startled. It was the very voice of Shyamsunder, sweeter than a flute. Then he saw a beautiful dusky-complexioned boy come out from behind the rocks, carrying in a dish excellent food and some fruits. Harimohon was dumb-founded and looked towards Sri Krishna. The boy was standing beside him, yet the boy who was coming resembled Sri Krishna in every detail! This boy came and throwing a light on the ascetic, said, See what I have brought for you. The ascetic smiled and asked, Oh, you have come? Why did you keep me starving so long? Well, take your seat and dine with me. The ascetic and the boy started eating the food from the dish, feeding each other, snatching away each others share. After the meal was over, the boy took the dish and disappeared into the darkness.

1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
    "Go to The Ant thou sluggard!
    Consider her ways and be ."
  I am sure that Solomon was too good a poet, and too experienced a Guru, to tail off with The Anticlimax "wise."
  6. Minerval. What is the matter? All you have to do is understand it: just a dramatization of the process of incarnation. Better run through it with me: I'll make it clear, and you can make notes of your troubles and their solution for the use of future members.

1.00d - DIVISION D - KUNDALINI AND THE SPINE, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  The other fire of matter (the dual fire) is attracted upward, and merges with the fire of mind through a junction effected at the alta major centre. This centre is situated at the base of the skull, and there is a slight gap between this centre and the point at which the fires of matter issue from the spinal channel. Part of the work the man who is developing thought power has to do, is to build a temporary channel in etheric matter to bridge the gap. This channel is the reflection in physical matter of The Antaskarana [lxv]63 that the Ego has to build in order to bridge the gap between the lower and higher mental, between the causal vehicle on the third subplane of the mental plane, and the manasic permanent atom on the first subplane. This is the work that all advanced thinkers are unconsciously doing now. When the gap is completely [138] bridged, man's body becomes co-ordinated with the mental body and the fires of mind and of matter are blended. It completes the perfecting of the personality life, and as earlier said, this perfecting brings a man to the portal of initiationinitiation being the seal set upon accomplished work; it marks the end of one lesser cycle of development, and the beginning of the transference of the whole work to a still higher spiral.
  We must always bear in mind that the fires from the base of the spine and the splenic triangle are fires of matter. We must not lose this recollection nor get confused. They have no spiritual effect, and concern themselves solely with the matter in which the centres of force are located. These centres of force are always directed by manas or mind, or by the conscious effort of the indwelling entity; but that entity is held back in the effects he seeks to achieve until the vehicles through which he is seeking expression, and their directing, energising centres, make adequate response. Hence it is only in due course of evolution, and when the matter of these vehicles is energised sufficiently by its own latent fires that he can accomplish his long-held purpose. Hence again the need of the ascension of the fire of matter to its own place, and its resurrection from its long burial and seeming prostitution before it can be united with its Father in Heaven, the third Logos, Who is the Intelligence of matter itself. The correspondence, again, holds good. Even the atom of the physical plane has its goal, its initiations and its ultimate triumph.
  --
  No more can be imparted concerning this subject. He who directs his efforts to the control of the fires of matter, is (with a dangerous certainty) playing with a fire that may literally destroy him. He should not cast his eyes backwards, but should lift them to the plane where dwells his immortal Spirit, and then by self-discipline, mind-control and a definite refining of his material bodies, whether subtle or physical, fit himself to be a vehicle for the divine birth, and participate in the first Initiation. When the Christ-child (as the Christian so beautifully expresses it) has been born in the cave of the heart, then that divine guest can consciously control the lower material bodies by means of consecrated mind. Only when buddhi has assumed an ever-increasing control [140] of the personality, via the mental plane (hence the need of building The Antaskarana), will the personality respond to that which is above, and the lower fires mount and blend with the two higher. Only when Spirit, by the power of thought, controls the material vehicles, does the subjective life assume its rightful place, does the God within shine and blaze forth till the form is lost from sight, and "The path of the just shine ever more and more until the day be with us."

1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  These are an ability to expand our mental concept and to build The Antaskarana, or that bridge which all who seek to function in the buddhic vehicle must build between higher and lower mind; hence the necessity for the use of the imagination (which is the astral equivalent to mental discrimination), and its ultimate transmutation into intuition.
  All teachers, who have taken pupils in hand for training, and who seek to use them in world service, follow the method of imparting a fact (oft veiled in words and blinded by symbol) and then of leaving the pupil to follow his own deductions. Discrimination is thereby developed, and discrimination is the main method whereby the Spirit effects its liberation from the trammels of matter, and discerns between illusion and that which is veiled by it.

1.01 - A NOTE ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  uinely new species other than The Anthropoids. This again may be
  explained by the extreme brevity of the Miocene as compared

1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  existed there were The Antique mysteries, and these reach back
  into the grey mists of neolithic prehistory. Mankind has never

1.01 - Fundamental Considerations, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
  Scarcely five hundred years ago, during the Renaissance, an unmistakable reorganization of our consciousness occurred: the discovery of perspective which opened up the three-dimensionality of space. This discovery is so closely linked with the entire intellectual attitude of the modern epoch that we have felt obliged to call this age the age of perspectivity and characterize the age immediately preceding it as the unperspectival age. These definitions, by recognizing a fundamental characteristic of these eras, lead to the further appropriate definition of the age of the dawning new consciousness as the aperspectival age, a definition supported not only by the results of modern physics, but also by developments in the visual arts and literature, where the incorporation of time as a fourth dimension into previously spatial conceptions has formed the initial basis for manifesting the new.Aperspectival is not to be thought of as merely the opposite or negation of perspectival; The Antithesis of perspectival is unperspectival. The distinction in meaning suggested by the three terms unperspectival, perspectival, and aperspectival is analogous to that of the terms illogical, logical, and alogical or immoral, moral, and amoral. We have employed here the designation aperspectival to clearly emphasize the need of overcoming the mere antithesis of affirmation and negation. The so-called primal words (Urworte), for example, evidence two antithetic connotations: Latin altus meant high as well as low; sacer meant sacred as well as cursed. Such primal words as these formed an undifferentiated psychically-stressed unity whose bivalent nature was definitely familiar to the early Egyptians and Greeks. This is no longer the case with our present sense of language; consequently, we have required a term that transcends equally the ambivalence of the primal connotations and the dualism of antonyms or conceptual opposites.
  Hence we have used the Greek prefix a- in conjunction with our Latin-derived word perspectival in the sense of an alpha privativum and not as an alpha negativum, since the prefix has a liberating character (privativum, derived from Latin privare, i.e., to liberate). The designation aperspectival, in consequence, expresses a process of liberation from the exclusive validity of perspectival and unperspectival, as well as pre-perspectival limitations. Our designation, then, does not attempt to unite the inherently coexistent unperspectival and perspectival structures, nor does it attempt to reconcile or synthesize structures which, in their deficient modes, have become irreconcilable. If aperspectival were to represent only a synthesis it would imply no more than perspectival-rational and it would be limited and only momentarilyvalid, inasmuch as every union is threatened by further separation. Our concern is with integrality and ultimately with the whole; the word aperspectival conveys our attempt to deal with wholeness. It is a definition which differentiates a perception of reality that is neither perspectivally restricted to only one sector nor merely unperspectivally evocative of a vague sense of reality.
  --
  It is perhaps unnecessary to reiterate that we cannot employ the methods derived from and dependent an our present consciousness structure to investigate different structures of consciousness, but will have to adapt our method to the specific structure under investigation. Yet if we relinquish a unitary methodology we do not necessarily regress to an unmethodological or irrational attitude, or to a kind of conjuration or mystical contemplation. Contemporary methods employ predominantly dualistic procedures that do not extend beyond simple subject-object relationships; they limit our understanding to what is commensurate with the present Western mentality. Even where the measurements of contemporary methodologies are based primarily an quantitative criteria, they are all vitiated by the problem of The Antithesis between measure and mass (as we will discuss later in detail). Our method is not just a measured assessment, but above and beyond this an attempt at diaphany or rendering transparent. With its aid, whatever lies behind (past) and ahead of (future) the currently dominant mentality becomes accessible to the new subject-object relationship. Although this new relationship is no longer dualistic, it does not threaten man with a loss of identity, or with his being equated with an object.
  Although this new method is still in its infancy, we are nevertheless compelled to make use of it.

1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  The erroneous assumption here arises from The Antithesis of law and faith as set Up by St. Paul's proselytising men- tality (and in a lesser degree by the rationalist efforts of
  Maimonides to square everything with formal Aristotelean principles), falsely stamping Judaism as a religion of un- relieved legalism. Mysticism is the irreconcilable enemy of purely religious legalism.

1.01 - Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
  limits, and find out what The Antecedent conditions were a given
  time ago. However, for a system starting from an unknown posi-
  --
  Newton, but it is something quite as remote from The Anthropo-
  morphizing desires of the vitalists. The chance of the quantum

1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
  The science of the structure of the body is called anatomy : it is a great science, but most men are heedless of it. If any study it, it is only for the purpose of acquiring skill in medicine, and not for the sake of becoming acquainted with the perfection of the power of God. But whoever will occupy himself with anatomy, and therein contemplate the wonders of the works of God, will reap three advantages. The first advantage will be, that in learning the composition of the thing made, and thereby gaining a comprehensive and condensed view of all other things like it he will see that it is impossible to discover imperfection or incompetence in the being who has created him in such perfection. The Creator himself will be acknowledged to be almighty and perfect. The second advantage will be, that he will see that it is impossible that a being who has created an organization so intelligent, capable of comprehension, endowed with beauty, and useful, should be otherwise than perfect in knowledge himself. And lastly, we shall understand the mercy, favor and perfect compassion of God towards us. Nothing that is either useful or ornamental has been omitted in the framing of our bodies, whether it be such things as are the sources of life, like the spirit and the head; or such as sustain life, as the hand, the foot, the mouth and the teeth : or such as are a means of ornament, as the beard, elegance of form, black hair and the lips. It is to be observed that similar organs have been provided not only for man, but for all creatures, so that nothing is wanting to initiate and sustain life in the mouse, the wasp, the snake and The Ant. God has done all things perfectly, and may his name be glorified !
    The investigator of truth this fact well knows,

1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Even when we think of the Creator as a transcendent father, The Anthropomorphic idea still persists and stultifies the aim at introducing a higher quality of thought into the concept of God. That is why we are unhappy even in meditation, even in our highest spiritual exalted moods. Even when we are exalted, we are quantitatively exalted; qualitatively, we are very poor. We are unhappy in some way or the other, and no one can make us happy. A tremendous effort is necessary to introduce a superior quality in the concept of reality. The difficulty lies in the mind being the only instrument that we have for doing anything whatsoever, and who is it who will introduce a higher order of value or a greater quality into this concept, other than the mind itself? But how can we expect the mind to conceive of a higher quality of reality other than the one in which it has found itself at the present moment? How can we jump over our own skin? Is it possible? How can we expect the mind to think of a reality superior in quality to the one in which it is living at present, and with which it is identified wholly? An immediate answer to this question cannot be given. However, there is an answer.
  Sadhana is a very mysterious process. It is not like the ordinary efforts that we put forth into our workaday life. Every effort, even the first effort in the practice of sadhana, brings about an improvement. The impetus that is created by the first step that we take will carry us forward with a greater impetus towards the next step by the generation of a force which is superior to the powers of the mind in its ordinary operations. Also, there is a peculiar something in human nature which is called 'aspiration'. It is difficult to understand what it actually means. It is not merely a hoping for something in the ordinary sense. It is a surge of the soul's force from within, and we must underline these words, 'soul's force', for it is not merely the mental faculties. The soul's force rises up, wells up within us in a totality of action, drawing forth the whole value that we are at present, and pointing to something which is wholly other than the present whole from which the soul is being drawn.

1.027 - The Ant, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.027 - The Ant
  class:chapter

1.02 - In the Beginning, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  The Antecedent of the manifested universe is the non-manifested universe. And if it is that which is called God, God does not create the world, He becomes the world.
  If then a necessity in the human mind compels it to postulate behind all plurality a simple principle of unicity, that unicity, containing in itself all possibilities, has nothing in common with our mathematical concept of unity; it is an absolute unknowable by our thought.

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  development in homo sapiens. This is true, in particular, of the motor unit,92 which comprises The Anterior
  or forward half of the comparatively newer neocortex (and which is composed of the motor, premotor and

1.02 - Prayer of Parashara to Vishnu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [30]: It is impossible not to refer this notion to the same origin as the widely diffused opinion of antiquity, of the first manifestation of the world in the form of an egg. "It seems to have been a favourite symbol, and very ancient, and we find it adopted among many nations." Bryant, III. 165. Traces of it occur amongst the Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians; and besides the Orphic egg amongst the Greeks, and that described by Aristophanes, Τέκτεν πρώτιστον ὑπηνέμιον νὺξ ἡ μελανόπτερος ὠόν part of the ceremony in the Dionysiaca and other mysteries consisted of the consecration of an egg; by which, according to Porphyry, was signified the world: Ἑρμηνεὺει δὲ τὸ ὠὸν τὸν κόσμον. Whether this egg typified the ark, as Bryant and Faber suppose, is not material to the proof of The Antiquity and wide diffusion of the belief that the world in the beginning existed in such a figure. A similar account of the first aggregation of the elements in the form of an egg is given in all the Purāṇas, with the usual epithet Haima or Hiranya, 'golden,' as it occurs in Manu, I. 9.
  [31]: Here is another analogy to the doctrines of antiquity relating to the mundane egg: and as the first visible male being, who, as we shall hereafter see, united in himself the nature of either sex, abode in the egg, and issued from it; so "this firstborn of the world, whom they represented under two shapes and characters, and who sprung from the mundane egg, was the person from whom the mortals and immortals were derived. He was the same as Dionusus, whom they styled, πρωτόγονον διφνῆ τρίγονον Βακχεῖον Ἄνακτα Ἄγριον ἀρρητὸν κρύφιον δικέρωτα δίμοφον:" or, with the omission of one epithet, , ###.

1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  8:The difficulty of the task has led naturally to the pursuit of easy and trenchant solutions; it has generated and fixed deeply' the tendency of religions and of schools of Yoga to separate the life of the world from the inner life. The powers of this world and their actual activities, it is felt, either do not belong to God at all or are for some obscure and puzzling cause, Maya or another, a dark contradiction of the divine Truth. And on their own opposite side the powers of the Truth and their ideal activities are seen to belong to quite another plane of consciousness than that, obscure, ignorant and perverse in its impulses and forces, on which the life of the earth is founded. There appears at once The Antinomy of a bright and pure kingdom of God and a dark and impure kingdom of the devil; we feel the opposition of our crawling earthly birth and life to an exalted spiritual God-consciousness; we become readily convinced of the incompatibility of life's subjection to Maya with the soul's concentration in pure Brahman existence. The easiest way is to turn away from all that belongs to the one and to retreat by a naked and precipitous ascent into the other. Thus arises the attraction and, it would seem, the necessity of the principle of exclusive concentration which plays so prominent a part in the specialised schools of Yoga; for by that concentration we can arrive through an uncompromising renunciation of the world at an entire self-consecration to the One on whom we concentrate. It is no longer incumbent on us to compel all the lower activities to the difficult recognition of a new and higher spiritualised life and train them to be its agents or executive powers. It is enough to kill or quiet them and keep at most the few energies necessary, on one side, for the maintenance of the body and, on the other, for communion with the Divine.
  9:The very aim and conception of an integral Yoga debars us from adopting this simple and strenuous high-pitched process. The hope of an integral transformation forbids us to take a short cut or to make ourselves light for the race by throwing away our impediments. For we have set out to conquer all ourselves and the world for God; we are determined to give him our becoming as well as our being and not merely to bring the pure and naked spirit as a bare offering to a remote and secret Divinity in a distant heaven or abolish all we are in a holocaust to an immobile Absolute. The Divine that we adore is not only a remote extracosmic Reality, but a half-veiled Manifestation present and near to us here in the universe. Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet complete: here, in life, on earth, in the body, -- ihaiva, as the Upanishads insist, -- we have to unveil the Godhead; here we must make its transcendent greatness, light and sweetness real to our consciousness, here possess and, as far as may be, express it. Life then we must accept in our Yoga in order utterly to transmute it; we are forbidden to shrink from the difficulties that this acceptance may add to our struggle. Our compensation is that even if the path is more rugged, the effort more complex and bafflingly arduous, yet after a point we gain an immense advantage. For once our minds are reasonably fixed in the central vision and our wills are on the whole converted to the single pursuit. Life becomes our helper. Intent, vigilant, integrally conscious, we can take every detail of its forms and every incident of its movements as food for the sacrificial Fire within us. Victorious in the struggle, we can compel Earth herself to be an aid towards our perfection and can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the powers that oppose us.

1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
  Let me share with you an interesting PC experience I had with one of my daughters. We were planning a private date, which is something I enjoy regularly with each of my children. We find that The Anticipation of the date is as satisfying as the realization.
  So I approached my daughter and said, "Honey, tonight's your night. What do you want to do?"

1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
  We can find remarkable illustrations of this attitude. Id like to mention one, but only parenthetically. Theres a chapter (incidentally, a very interesting chapter in some ways) in Mau- rice Maeterlincks new book The Great Riddle. 4 Its subject is The Anthroposophical method of viewing the world. He discusses anthroposophy, and he also discusses me (if youll forgive a per- sonal reference). He has read many of my books and makes a very interesting comment. He says that, at the beginning of my books, I seem to have a levelheaded, logical, and shrewd mind. In the later chapters, however, it seems as if I had lost my mind. It may very well appear this way to Maeterlinck; subjectively he has every right to his opinion. Why shouldnt I seem levelheaded, logical and scientific to him in the first chapters, and insane in later ones?
  Of course, Maeterlinck has a right to think this way, and nobody wants to dispute that. The question is, however, whether such an attitude isnt really absurd. Indeed, it does become absurd when you consider this: I have, unfortunately, written a great many books in my life (as you can see from the unusual appearance of the book table here). No sooner have I finished writing one, than I begin another. When Maurice Maeterlinck reads the new book, hell discover once again that in the first chapters I am shrewd, levelheaded and scientific, and then I lose my mind later on. Then I begin to write a third book; the first chapters again are reasonable and so forth. Consequently, if nothing else, I seem to have mastered the art of becoming at will a completely reasonable human being in the early part of a book andequally by choicea lunatic later, only to return to reason when I write the next book. In this way, I take turns being reasonable and a lunatic. Naturally, Maeterlinck has every right to find this; but he misses the absurdity of such an idea. A modern man of his importance thus falls into absurdities; but this, as I say, is only a little parenthetical remark.

1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Kant's perception of The Antinomies of Reason would have been thrown overboard.
  C. G. Jung, the eminent European psycho-analyst, writes in Wilhelm's Secret of the Golden Flower: "Therefore, I can only take the reaction which begins in the West against the intellect in favour of intuition, as a mark of cultural advance, a widening of consciousness beyond the too narrow limits set by a tyrannical intellect" (p. 82).

1.02 - THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  as a decadent development. The Anthropologists among the criminal
  specialists declare that I the typical criminal is ugly: _monstrum

1.02 - THE QUATERNIO AND THE MEDIATING ROLE OF MERCURIUS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [12] In addition, we learn from the scholia that the circle and the Hermetic vessel are one and the same, with the result that the mandala, which we find so often in the drawings of our patients, corresponds to the vessel of transformation. Consequently, the usual quaternary structure of the mandala57 would coincide with the alchemists quaternio of opposites. Lastly, there is the interesting statement that an Ecclesia spiritualis above all creeds and owing allegiance solely to Christ, The Anthropos, is the real aim of the alchemists endeavours. Whereas the treatise of Hermes is, comparatively speaking, very old, and in place of the Christian Anthropos mystery58 contains a peculiar paraphrase of it, or rather, its antique parallel,59 the scholia cannot be dated earlier than the beginning of the seventeenth century.60 The author seems to have been a Paracelsist physician. Mercurius corresponds to the Holy Ghost as well as to The Anthropos; he is, as Gerhard Dorn says, the true hermaphroditic Adam and Microcosm:
  Our Mercurius is therefore that same [Microcosm], who contains within him the perfections, virtues, and powers of Sol [in the dual sense of sun and gold], and who goes through the streets [vicos] and houses of all the planets, and in his regeneration has obtained the power of Above and Below, wherefore he is to be likened to their marriage, as is evident from the white and the red that are conjoined in him. The sages have affirmed in their wisdom that all creatures are to be brought to one united substance.61

1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
  Perspectival vision and thought confine us within spatial limitations. Elsewhere we have alluded to The Antithesis inherent in perspective: it locates and determines the observer as well as the observed. The positive result is a concretion of man and space; the negative result is the restriction of man to a limited segment where he perceives only one sector of reality.
  Like Petrarch, who separated landscape from land, man separates from the whole only that part which his view or thinking can encompass, and forgets those sectors that lie adjacent, beyond, or even behind. One result is The Anthropocentrism that has displaced what we might call the the ocentrism previously held. Man, himself a part of the world, endows his sector of awareness with primacy; but he is, of course, only able to perceive a partial view. The sector is given prominence over the circle; the part outweighs the whole. As the whole cannot be approached from a perspectival attitude to the world, we merely superimpose the character of wholeness onto the sector, the result being the familiar "totality."
  It is no accident that the ambivalence inherent in the (Latin) primal word totusis evident in the word "totality." Although in more recent times the word totushasmeant "all" or "whole," it would earlier have meant "nothing." In any event, theaudial similarity between totus and [German] tot, "dead," is readily apparent. But let us forget the totality with its nefarious character; it is not the whole. Andal though the whole can no longer even be approached from the perspectival position, the whole, as we shall see further on, is again being approached in novel ways from the aperspectival attitude.
  --
  This brings us back to our thesis about The Antithetical nature of perspective; it locates the observer as well as the observed. Panofsky too underscores this dualistic, antithetical character: "The history of perspective [may be] considered equally as a triumph of the Sense of reality with its detachment and objectivation, and as a triumph of human striving for power with its negation of distances, just as it can be Seen as a process of establishing and systematization of the external world and an expansion of the ego sphere." Let us for now postpone a discussion of his critical term "power expansion," although he has here noted an essential aspect of perspectival man, and turn back to Leonardo da Vinci on whom Drer (as Heinrich Wlfflin points out) indirectly based his understanding.
  With Leonardo the perspectival means and techniques attain their perfection. His Trattatodella Pittura (a collection of his writings assembled by others after his death based on a mid-sixteenth-century compilation known as the Codex Vaticanus Urbinas 1270) is the first truly scientific and not merely theoretical description of all possible types of perspective. It is the first detailed discussion of light as the visible reality of our eyes and not, as was previously believed, as a symbol of the divine spirit. This emergent illumination dispels any remaining obscurities surrounding perspective, and reveals Leonardo as the courageous discoverer of aerial and color, as opposed to linear, perspective. Whereas linear perspective created the perspectival illusion on a plane surface by the projections of technical drafting, aerial and color perspective achieve their comprehension and rendering of space by techniques of gradation of color and hue, by the use of shadow, and by the chromatic treatment of the horizon.

10.35 - The Moral and the Spiritual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Indian consciousness did not consider anything essentially evil, anything irrevocably and eternally condemned to perdition. Even the Asura, The Anti-Divine is viewed, in the last analysis of things, also as an aspect, a formation of the Divine himself. Diti and Aditi are sisters, twin aspects of the same Supreme Being. All the legends in narrating the life history of the Asura describe his end as a submission to the Divine Will and a merging in Him. An entire life of bitter hostility culminates in the same degree of love for the Divine. The process of enmity seems to have a deeper occult meaning conducive to the more perfect union with the Divine. We know in Savitri how Sri Aurobindo speaks of Death as only a mask of Immortality.
   In fact, evil, as we usually know it, as human mind construes it, is only a misplacement of a thing, a thing not in its placea thing need not be essentially wrong, it is wrong because it is not in its right place. Even things considered reprehensible by the moral sense are not so when they are viewed from another standpoint.

1.037 - Preventing the Fall in Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  In the list Patanjali mentions, the first obstacle is physical disease. His sutra runs thus: vydhi styna saaya pramda lasya avirati bhrntidarana alabdhabhmikatva anavasthitatvni cittavikepa te antary (I.30). The Antarayah or impediments which cause distraction of the mind are ninefold, of which physical illness is the first. When we have a splitting headache, we will not know why it has come; we may attri bute it to heat of the sun, or wrong diet, or sleeplessness, and so on and so forth, which ordinarily are the usual causes. But when the practice becomes intense, the physical body may not be able to tolerate the intensity of the practice and there can be a revolutionary condition set up in the physical system, in the whole anatomy and the physiological functions, and painful illnesses may become the result thereof. I myself have seen some of these sincere students of yoga suffering from peculiar types of physical illness which cannot be cured by ordinary medicines. No medicine will work at that time, because the illness is not caused merely by certain physical causes; the causes are very deep-rooted. They are thrown out by the pranamaya kosha, or even something deeper than that, we may say; and the remedy is yoga practice itself.
  We have to cure these reactions of yoga only through yoga. Drugs will not cure these illnesses. If a headache is caused by intense meditation, it cannot be cured by an aspirin tablet, because it is a result of an intense pressure that we have exerted upon the mind, the nerves and the pranas, and that pressure can be lifted up only by another type of meditation, of which we have to gain the knowledge only through the Guru who has initiated us. It is not an easy thing to understand. Sometimes there can be such disturbance of the digestive system that we will have diarrhoea for days or months, and we cannot stop it with medicine. Headache, giddiness and diarrhoea are generally supposed to be the immediate reactions of intense concentration of the mind. We will feel as if the mountains are revolving when we stand up. This is giddiness, and we cannot easily know why this is happening. Sometimes we may be under the impression that we are practising a wrong type of meditation, due to which these reactions are set up. It is not necessarily so. Our meditation may be correct, and yet the reactions can be there.

1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  means the provision of determinate meaning, as The Antidote to excruciating ignorance and exposure to
  chaos.

1.03 - Man - Slave or Free?, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is from these false and dangerous doctrines of materialism which tend to subvert mans future and hamper his evolution, that Yoga gives us a means of escape. It asserts on the contrary mans freedom from matter and gives him a means of asserting that freedom. The first great fundamental discovery of the Yogins was a means of analysing the experiences of the mind and the heart. By Yoga one can isolate mind, watch its workings as under a microscope, separate every minute function of the various parts of The Antakaraa, the inner organ, every mental and moral faculty, test its isolated workings as well as its relations to other functions and faculties and trace backwards the operations of mind to subtler and ever subtler sources until just as material analysis arrives at a primal entity from which all proceeds, so Yoga analysis arrives at a primal spiritual entity from which all proceeds. It is also able to locate and distinguish the psychical centre to which all psychical phenomena gather and so to fix the roots of personality. In this analysis its first discovery is that mind can entirely isolate itself from external objects and work in itself and of itself. This does not, it is true, carry us very far because it may be that it is merely using the material already stored up by its past experiences. But the next discovery is that the farther it removes itself from objects, the more powerfully, surely, rapidly can the mind work with a swifter clarity, with a victorious and sovereign detachment. This is an experience which tends to contradict the scientific theory, that mind can withdraw the senses into itself and bring them to bear on a mass of phenomena of which it is quite unaware when it is occupied with external phenomena. Science will naturally challenge these as hallucinations. The answer is that these phenomena are related to each other by regular, simple and intelligible laws and form a world of their own independent of thought acting on the material world. Here too Science has this possible answer that this supposed world is merely an imaginative reflex in the brain of the material world and to any arguments drawn from the definiteness and unexpectedness of these subtle phenomena and their independence of our own will and imagination it can always oppose its theory of unconscious cerebration and, we suppose, unconscious imagination. The fourth discovery is that mind is not only independent of external matter, but its master; it can not only reject and control external stimuli, but can defy such apparently universal material laws as that of gravitation and ignore, put aside and make nought of what are called laws of nature and are really only the laws of material nature, inferior and subject to the psychical laws because matter is a product of mind and not mind a product of matter. This is the decisive discovery of Yoga, its final contradiction of materialism. It is followed by the crowning realisation that there is within us a source of immeasurable force, immeasurable intelligence, immeasurable joy far above the possibility of weakness, above the possibility of ignorance, above the possibility of grief which we can bring into touch with ourselves and, under arduous but not impossible conditions, habitually utilise or enjoy. This is what the Upanishads call the Brahman and the primal entity from which all things were born, in which they live and to which they return. This is God and communion with Him is the highest aim of Yogaa communion which works for knowledge, for work, for delight.
  ***

1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  into the water, all was well; but if it were exposed and The Ants
  ran over it, the natives believed that the boy would suffer from a

1.03 - Tara, Liberator from the Eight Dangers, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
  or suffering, is The Antidote to anger. Patience does not mean passively giving in or foolishly condoning harm. Rather, it produces a certain mental stability so that our compassion and open-mindedness remain steady. Patience
  calms our mind so that with clarity and wisdom we can consider various
  --
  dissatisfaction. Starkly seeing this, we will want to apply The Antidotes to it.
  For example, since we know how harmful a thief can be, when one enters
  --
  Non-clinging and generosity are The Antidotes to miserliness. With nonclinging we dont conceive of material possessions as a reliable source of happiness or as the meaning of success. More balanced within ourselves, we
  discover contentment, a rare commodity in our materialistic society. Contentment allows us to cultivate the love that wishes others to have happiness
  --
  To release the eight dangers, we may do analytical meditation, contemplating their disadvantages and The Antidotes to each as described above. We
  may also visualize Tara in front of us, radiating green light. This light ows
  --
  By doing Tara practice and applying The Antidotes to the eight dangers in
  order to benet all beings, we have created tremendous positive potential.

1.03 - THE EARTH IN ITS EARLY STAGES, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  line of a special envelope, The Antithesis, we might say, of the first
  four : the temperate zone of polymerisation, in which water,

1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  roptera and The Ant hill and the bee colony out of independent hy-
  menoptera. A similar impulse of group formation seems to have
  --
  could be more deplorable. The Ant toils without respite until it dies
  of exhaustion in a state of complete self-detachment whose ab-
  --
  are like The Ant that slaves itself to death that its fellow slaves may
  live! Is not each of us therefore a dupe, a Sisyphus? For centuries

1.03 - THE ORPHAN, THE WIDOW, AND THE MOON, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [22] In this psychologem all the implications of the Sol-Luna allegory are carried to their logical conclusion. The daemonic quality which is connected with the dark side of the moon, or with her position midway between heaven and the sublunary world,155 displays its full effect. Sun and moon reveal their antithetical nature, which in the Christian Sol-Luna relationship is so obscured as to be unrecognizable, and the two opposites cancel each other out, their impact resultingin accordance with the laws of energeticsin the birth of a third and new thing, a son who resolves The Antagonisms of the parents and is himself a united double nature. The unknown author of the Consilium156 was not conscious of the close connection of his psychologem with the process of transubstantiation, although the last sentence of the text contains clearly enough the motif of teoqualo, the god-eating of the Aztecs.157 This motif is also found in ancient Egypt. The Pyramid text of Unas (Vth dynasty) says: Unas rising as a soul, like a god who liveth upon his fathers and feedeth upon his mothers.158 It should be noted how alchemy put in the place of the Christian sponsus and sponsa an image of totality that on the one hand was material, and on the other was spiritual and corresponded to the Paraclete. In addition, there was a certain trend in the direction of an Ecclesia spiritualis. The alchemical equivalent of the God-Man and the Son of God was Mercurius, who as an hermaphrodite contained in himself both the feminine element, Sapientia and matter, and the masculine, the Holy Ghost and the devil. There are relations in alchemy with the Holy Ghost Movement which flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was chiefly connected with the name of Joachim of Flora (11451202), who expected the imminent coming of the third kingdom, namely that of the Holy Ghost.159
  [23] The alchemists also represented the eclipse as the descent of the sun into the (feminine) Mercurial Fountain,160 or as the disappearance of Gabricus in the body of Beya. Again, the sun in the embrace of the new moon is treacherously slain by the snake-bite (conatu viperino) of the mother-beloved, or pierced by the telum passionis, Cupids arrow.161 These ideas explain the strange picture in Reusners Pandora,162 showing Christ being pierced with a lance by a crowned virgin whose body ends in a serpents tail.163 The oldest reference to the mermaid in alchemy is a quotation from Hermes in Olympiodorus: The virginal earth is found in the tail of the virgin.164 On the analogy of the wounded Christ, Adam is shown in the Codex Ashburnham pierced in the side by an arrow.165

1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  " Mind-born sons of Brahma " ; which may explain why the Hindu gods of Mind and Intelligence are represented by so, apparently, an unintelligent beast as The Anthropoid.
  Its plant is Moly, and its vegetable drug Anhalonium

1.03 - The Uncreated, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  But it is not in a negation that we shall discover the positive relation of cause, nor is it in The Antinomy of opposites that we can find the secret of the Beginning.
  The idea of the relative excludes every antecedent which does not itself contain at least some virtual element of relativity. Between the Absolute and the relative there can be no point of origin, kinship or dependence. They affirm each other, no doubt, like all contraries, but they can exist only by a mutual exclusion.

1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "As the All-pervading Spirit He exists in all beings, even in The Ant. But the manifestations of His Power are different in different beings; otherwise, how can one person put ten to flight, while another can't face even one? And why do all people respect you? Have you grown a pair horns? (Laughter.) You have more compassion and learning. Therefore people honour you and come to pay you their respects. Don't you agree with me?"
  Vidyasagar smiled.

1.04 - ALCHEMY AND MANICHAEISM, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [33] In the Manichaean system matter (hyle) is personified by the dark, fluid, human body of the evil principle. As St. Augustine says, the substance of evil had its own hideous and formless bulk, either gross which they called earth, or thin and tenuous like the air; for they imagine it to be some malignant mind creeping over the earth.222 The Manichaean doctrine of The Anthropos shares the dual form of its Christ figure with alchemy, in so far as the latter also has a dualistic redeemer: Christ as saviour of man (Microcosm), and the lapis Philosophorum as saviour of the Macrocosm. The doctrine presupposes on the one hand a Christ incapable of suffering (impatibilis), who takes care of souls, and on the other hand a Christ capable of suffering (patibilis),223 whose role is something like that of a spiritus vegetativus, or of Mercurius.224 This spirit is imprisoned in the body of the princes of darkness and is freed as follows by angelic beings who dwell in the sun and moon: assuming alternately male and female form they excite the desires of the wicked and cause them to break out in a sweat of fear, which falls upon the earth and fertilizes the vegetation.225 In this manner the heavenly light-material is freed from the dark bodies and passes into plant form.226
  [34] The inflammation by desire has its analogy in the alchemists gradual warming of the substances that contain the arcanum. Here the symbol of the sweat-bath plays an important role, as the illustrations show.227 Just as for the Manichaeans the sweat of the archons signified rain,228 so for the alchemists sweat meant dew.229 In this connection we should also mention the strange legend reported in the Acta Archelai, concerning the apparatus which the son of the living Father invented to save human souls. He constructed a great wheel with twelve buckets which, as they revolved, scooped up the souls from the deep and deposited them on the moon-ship.230 In alchemy the rota is the symbol of the opus circulatorium. Like the alchemists, the Manichaeans had a virago, the male virgin Joel,231 who gave Eve a certain amount of the light-substance.232 The role she plays in regard to the princes of darkness corresponds to that of Mercurius duplex, who like her sets free the secret hidden in matter, the light above all lights, the filius philosophorum. I would not venture to decide how much in these parallels is to be ascribed directly to Manichaean tradition, how much to indirect influence, and how much to spontaneous revival.

1.04 - A Leader, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  We went out to meet him, and in The Anteroom we saw a man whose clean but very worn clothes, arms held close to his sides, pale face steadfastly turned towards the ground and half-concealed by a black felt hat, made him look like a hunted animal.
  At our approach he removed his hat and looked up to cast us a brief, frank glance.

1.04 - Feedback and Oscillation, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
  tion of the gun and The Anticipated position of the target. Any
  system of anti-­aircraft fire control must meet the same problem.

1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  How can Shih-kuang recognize the mysterious tune? Shih-kuang was the son of Ching-kuang of Chin in the province of Chiang under the Chou dynasty. His other name was Tzu-yeh. He could thoroughly distinguish the five sounds and the six notes; he could even hear The Ants fighting on the other side of a hill. When Chin and Chu were at war, Shih-kuang could tell, just by softly fingering the strings of his lute, that the engagement would surely be unfavourable for Chu. In spite of his extraordinary sensitiveness Seccho declares that he is unable to recognize the mysterious tune. After all, one who is not at all deaf is really deaf. The most exquisite note in the higher spheres is beyond the hearing of Shih-kuang. Says Seccho, I am not going to be a Li-lou, nor a Shih-kuang; for
  What life can compare with this? Sitting quietly by the window,

1.04 - The 33 seven double letters, #Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice, #Anonymous, #Various
  Seven double letters serve to signify The Antithesis to which human life is exposed. The Antithesis of wisdom is foolishness; of wealth, poverty; of fruitfulness, childlessness; of life, death; of dominion, dependence; of peace, war; and of beauty, ugliness.
   .

1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  cerned with the coming of The Antichrist: "This is Antichrist,
  who denieth the Father and the Son." x "Every spirit that dis-
  --
  and his adversary, The Antichrist? Our discourse necessarily
  brings us to Christ, because he is the still living myth of our
  --
  figure of Antichrist. The Antichrist develops in legend as a per-
  verse imitator of Christ's life. He is a true avn/u/xov wvevfia, an
  --
  psychic manifestation of the self, then The Antichrist would cor-
  respond to the shadow of the self, namely the dark half of the
  --
  the problem of The Antichrist is a hard nut to crack. It is noth-
  ing less than the counterstroke of the devil, provoked by God's
  --
  was called Satanael. 25 The coming of The Antichrist is not just a
  prophetic prediction- it is an inexorable psychological law
  --
  newal of The Antique spirit. We know today that this spirit was
  chiefly a mask; it was not the spirit of antiquity that was reborn,
  --
  ing of The Antichrist," just as if a partition of worlds and epochs
  had taken place between two royal brothers. The meeting with
  --
  type. The other half appears in The Antichrist. The latter is
  just as much a manifestation of the self, except that he consists
  --
  sequence is anticipated in the figure of The Antichrist and is
  reflected in the course of contemporary events, whose nature is
  --
  side, to represent The Antichrist. The resultant quaternion of
  opposites is united on the psychological plane by the fact that

1.05 - Computing Machines and the Nervous System, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
  synapses, combined with The Antecedent state of the outgoing
  neuron itself, which determines whether it will fire or not. If it is

1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    2. O Fire, kindled by man's fires, priest of the call who comest with thy light, priest of the many flame-armies, hearken to The Anthem our thoughts strain out pure to the godhead like pure clarified butter,10 even as Mamata chanted to him her paean.
      9 The word Suvrikti corresponds to the Katharsis of the Greek mystics - the clearance, riddance or rejection of all perilous and impure stuff from the consciousness. It is Agni Pavaka, the purifying Fire who brings to us this riddance or purification, "Suvrikti".

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  force behind the hea then kingdoms is called in Christianity The Antichrist, the earthly ruler demanding
  divine honors.467
  --
  We waited in a shed which seemed to be The Anteroom to the disinfecting chamber. SS men appeared
  and spread out blankets into which we had to throw all our possessions, all our watches and jewellry.
  --
  equivalent to the self. Production of this condition the lapis philosophorum constitutes The Antidote
  for the corruption of the world, attendant upon the Fall [attendant upon the emergence of (partial) selfconsciousness]. The lapis is agent of transformation, equivalent to the mythological redemptive hero
  --
  Nietzsche, F. (1981). Twilight of the idols/The Anti-Christ (R.J. Hollingdale, Trans.). New York: Penguin
  Classics.
  --
  must be, from the New Testaments point of view, The Antitype of the Exodus. The life of Christ as presented in the
  Gospels becomes less puzzling when we realize that it is being presented in this form.

1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  observances, which are intended to prevent rain, form The Antithesis
  of the Indian observances, which aim at producing it. The Indian

1.05 - Vishnu as Brahma creates the world, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  khya system mean disabilities, as defects of the senses, blindness, deafness, &c.; and defects of intellect, discontent, ignorance, and the like. S. Kārikā, p. 148, 151. In place of Badha, however, the more usual reading, as in the Bhāgavata, Vārāha, and Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇas, is Vidha, 'kind,' 'sort,' as ###, implying twenty-eight sorts of animals. These are thus specified in the Bhāgavata, III. 10: Six kinds have single hoofs, nine have double or cloven hoofs, and thirteen have five claws or nails instead of hoofs. The first are the horse, the mule, the ass, the yak, the sarabha, and the gaura, or white deer. The second are the cow, the goat, the buffalo, the hog, the gayal, the black deer, The Antelope, the camel, and the sheep. The last are the dog, shacal, wolf, tiger, cat, hare, porcupine, lion, monkey, elephant, tortoise, lizard, and alligator.
  [6]: Ūrddha, 'above,' and Srotas, as before; their nourishment being derived from the exterior, not from the interior of the body: according to the commentator; ### as a text of the Vedas has it; 'Through satiety derived from even beholding ambrosia.'

1.06 - A Summary of my Phenomenological View of the World, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  appears among The Anthropoids towards the end of the
  Tertiary period, psychic reflection - not simply knowing, but

1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  formed by a higher Consciousness. The Anthropocentric il
  lusion will then be changed into a divine Reality. Which is

1.06 - LIFE AND THE PLANETS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  man state of The Ant hill or the termitary, it is not the principle of
  totalization that is at fault but the clumsy and incomplete way in

1.06 - The Breaking of the Limits, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  Our look is false because it perceives everything through the distorting prism of its routine, which is multifarious and subtle, made of thousands of years of habits which are as distorting in their deviltry as they are in their wisdom. This is the residue of The Anthropoid, which had to erect barriers to protect his little life, his little family, his little clan, draw a line here, a line there, boundary markers, and generally insure his precarious existence by encasing it in a shell of individual and collective self. It follows that there is good and evil, right and wrong, useful and harmful, dos and don'ts we have slowly become entangled in a huge police network in which we scarcely have the spiritual freedom to brea the and even that air is polluted by countless decalogues that are barely one step above the pollution by the carbon monoxide of our engines. In short, we are forever correcting the world. But we are beginning to realize that this correction is not all that straight. Never for a moment do we stop putting our multicolored glasses on things in order to see them in the blue of our hopes, the red of our desires, the yellow of our morals and ready-made laws, and in black, in the endless grayness of a machinery that keeps grinding and grinding forever. The look the true look that will have the power to break free from this mental spell is therefore the one that will be able to cast itself on things clearly, without immediately correcting them: to rest here, upon this face, that circumstance or object the way one gazes at the infinite sea, without trying to solidify something to let itself be carried by that tranquil and fluid infinity, to ba the in what we see, to sink into the thing, until slowly, as if from far away, from the depths of a tranquil sea, there emerges a perception of the thing seen, of the puzzling circumstance or face near us; a perception that is not a thought, not a judgment, hardly a sensation, but is like the true vibratory content of the thing, its special mode of being, its quality of being, its innermost music, its relation with the great Rhythm that flows everywhere. Then, slowly, the seeker of the new world will see a sort of little spark of pure truth in the heart of the object, circumstance, face or accident, a little cry of true being, a true vibration beneath all the black and yellow and blue and red coatings something that is the truth of each thing, each being, each circumstance, each accident, as if the truth were everywhere, every instant, every step, only coated in black. The seeker will thus have put his finger on the second rule of the passage and the greatest of all the simple secrets: Look at the truth that is everywhere.
  Armed with these two rules, firmly established in his sunlit position, that quiet clearing, the seeker of the new world moves within a greater self, perhaps infinite, which embraces this street and these beings and all the little gestures of the hour; he moves steadily on, as though carried by a great rhythm, which also carries the beings and things around him, the thousands of encounters sprung from nowhere and disappearing into the distance; he looks at this little walking shadow, which seems to have walked so long, walked for many lives perhaps, repeated the same small gestures, stumbled here and there, exchanged the same comments on the mood of the times; and it all seems so similar, so mixed with sweetness that this street and these beings and passing encounters seem to be cast from the same mold, issued from the depths of night, recalled from the same identical story, under the sky of Egypt or India or Vermont, today, yesterday or five thousand years ago and what has really changed? There is a little being walking with his fire of truth, his fire of need, so intense amid the turmoil of time a fire is perhaps the only thing that is truly he, a call of being from the depths of time, an unchanging cry amid the immense flow of things. And what is he calling for, this being; what is he crying for? Is he not in that vast and growing sunlight, in that rhythm carrying everything? He is and he is not. He has one foot in an untroubled eternity and the other stumbling and groping in the dark the other in a little self of fire yearning to fill this second of time, this empty gesture, this step among thousands of similar steps, with a fullness of true existence as complete as all the millennia put together, with as unfailing an exactness as the crisscrossing of the stars above our heads; yearning for everything to be true, true, completely true and filled with meaning, in this enormous whirlwind of vanity; yearning for this line he crosses, this street he goes down, this hand he extends, this word he utters to be linked to the great flowing of the worlds, to the rhythm of the stars, to the lines, the countless lines that furrow this universe and form a total song, a truth filled with the whole and each fragment of the whole. So he looks at all these little passing things, he fills them with his fire of entreaty, he looks and looks at that little truth everywhere as if it were going to burst out, forced into being by his fire.

1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  U 6 2 , Christianity in if 6 S , and The Antichrist in U 6 d . 35
  Megarian philosopher Diodoros. But the reason for the Saturn-ass analogy prob-
  --
  The Antithetical nature of the Fishes is the Talmud. This says:
  Four thousand two hundred and ninety-one years after the Creation
  --
  secondly because it is probably the oldest testimony to The Anti-
  thetical nature of the fishes. From about this period, too- the
  --
  high." This story, despite the obscurity of its origins, points to The Antithetical
  nature of Gog and Magog, who thus form a parallel to the Fishes. Augustine
  --
  for The Antichrist legend. With reference to Augustine it says (Libell. 7, cap. 11)
  that Gog means "occultatio" (concealment), Magog "detectio" (revelation). This
  corroborates The Antithetical nature of Gog and Magog at least for the Middle
  Ages. It is another instance of the motif of the hostile brothers, or of duplication.
  --
  expression of The Antichristian psychology that was then dawn-
  ing. At any rate the Church's condemnation is thoroughly under-
  --
  Christ and Antichrist in the eleventh century. The Antichristian
  era is to blame that the spirit became non-spiritual and that the
  --
  first fish, the vertical one. Christ is followed by The Antichrist, at
  the end of time. The beginning of the enantiodromia would fall,

1.06 - Wealth and Government, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  A day shall come when all the wealth of this world, freed at last from the enslavement to The Antidivine forces, offers itself spontaneously and fully to the service of the Divines Work upon earth.1
  6 January 1955

1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  quility and The Anticipation of finally going home. The ex-
  periencers who have gone that far do not want to return to

1.07 - Raja-Yoga in Brief, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
  There was a great god-sage called Nrada. Just as there are sages among mankind, great Yogis, so there are great Yogis among the gods. Narada was a good Yogi, and very great. He travelled everywhere. One day he was passing through a forest, and saw a man who had been meditating until the white ants had built a huge mound round his body so long had he been sitting in that position. He said to Narada, "Where are you going?" Narada replied, "I am going to heaven." "Then ask God when He will be merciful to me; when I shall attain freedom." Further on Narada saw another man. He was jumping about, singing, dancing, and said, "Oh, Narada, where are you going?" His voice and his gestures were wild. Narada said, "I am going to heaven." "Then, ask when I shall be free." Narada went on. In the course of time he came again by the same road, and there was the man who had been meditating with The Ant-hill round him. He said, "Oh, Narada, did you ask the Lord about me?" "Oh, yes." "What did He say?" "The Lord told me that you would attain freedom in four more births." Then the man began to weep and wail, and said, "I have meditated until an ant-hill has grown around me, and I have four more births yet!" Narada went to the other man. "Did you ask my question?" "Oh, yes. Do you see this tamarind tree? I have to tell you that as many leaves as there are on that tree, so many times, you shall be born, and then you shall attain freedom." The man began to dance for joy, and said, "I shall have freedom after such a short time!" A voice came, "My child, you will have freedom this minute." That was the reward for his perseverance. He was ready to work through all those births, nothing discouraged him. But the first man felt that even four more births were too long. Only perseverance, like that of the man who was willing to wait aeons brings about the highest result.

1.07 - The Fire of the New World, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  We suggest that there is a better materialism, less impoverishing, and that matter is less stupid than is usually said. Our materialism is a relic of the age of religions, one could almost say its inevitable companion, like good and evil, black and white, and all the dualities stemming from a linear vision of the world which sees one tuft of grass after another, a bump after a hole, and sets the mountains against the plains, without realizing that everything together is equally and totally true and makes a perfect geography in which there is not a single hole to fill, a single bump to take away, without impoverishing all the rest. There is nothing to suppress; there is everything to view in the global truth. There are no contradictions; there are only limited visions. We thus claim that matter our matter is capable of greater wonders than all the mechanical miracles we try to wrest from it. Matter is not coerced with impunity. It is more conscious than we believe, less closed than our mental fortress it goes along for a while, because it is slow, then takes its revenge, mercilessly. But one has to know the right lever. We have tried to find that lever by dissecting it scientifically or religiously; we have invented microscopes and scalpels, and still more microscopes that probed deeper, saw bigger, and discovered smaller and smaller and still smaller reality, which always seemed to be the coveted key but merely opened the door onto another, smaller existence, endlessly pushing back the limits enclosed in other limits that enclosed other limits and the key kept escaping us, even as it let loose a few monsters on us in the process. We peered at an ant that was growing bigger and bigger but kept perpetually having six legs despite the superacids and superparticles we discovered in its ant belly. Perhaps we will be able to manufacture another one, even a three-legged ant. Some breakthrough! We do not need another ant, even an improved one. We need something else. Religiously, too, we have tried to dissect matter, to reduce it to a fiction of God, a vale of transit, a kingdom of the devil and the flesh, the thousand and one particles of our theological telescopes. We peered higher and higher into heaven, more and more divinely, but The Ant kept painfully having six legs or three between one birth and another, eternally the same. We do not need an ant's salvation; we need something other than an ant. Ultimately, we may not need to see bigger or higher or farther, but simply here, under our nose, in this small living aggregate which contains its own key, like the lotus seed in the mud, and to pursue a third path, which is neither that of science nor that of religion although it may one day combine both within its rounded truth, with all our whites and blacks, goods and evils, heavens and hells, bumps and holes, in a new human or superhuman geography that all these goods and evils, holes and bumps were meticulously and accurately preparing.
  This new materialism has a most powerful microscope: a ray of truth that does not stop at any appearance but travels far, far, everywhere, capturing the same frequency of truth in all things, all beings, under all the masks or scrambling interferences. It has an infallible telescope: a look of truth that meets itself everywhere and knows, because it is what it touches. But that truth has first to be unscrambled in ourselves before it can be unscrambled everywhere; if the medium is clear, everything is clear. As we have said, man has a self of fire in the center of his being, a little flame, a pure cry of being under the ruins of the machine. This fire is the one that clarifies. This fire is the one that sees. For it is a fire of truth in the center of the being, and there is one and the same Fire everywhere, in all beings and all things and all movements of the world and the stars, in this pebble beside the path and that winged seed wafted by the wind. Five thousand years ago the Vedic Rishis were already singing its praises: O Fire, that splendour of thine, which is in heaven and which is in the earth and in growths and its waters... is a brilliant ocean of light in which is divine vision...9 He is the child of the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things stable and the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there for man, he is there in the middle of his house...10 O Fire... thou art the navel-knot of the earths and their inhabitants.11 That fire the Rishis had discovered five thousand years before the scientists they had found it even in water. They called it the third fire, the one that is neither in the flame nor in lightning: saura agni, the solar fire,12 the sun in darkness.13 And they found it solely by the power of direct vision of Truth, without instruments, solely by the knowledge of their own inner Fire from the like to the like. While through their microscopes the scientists have only discovered the material support the atom of that fundamental Fire which is at the heart of things and the beginning of the worlds. They have found the effect, not the cause. And because they have found only the effect, the scientists do not have the true mastery, or the key to transforming matter our matter and making it yield the real miracle that is the goal of all evolution, the point of otherness that will open the door to a new world.
  --
  But, at first, this self of fire is mixed with its obscure undertakings; it toils and desires, struggles and strains; it crawls with the worm, sniffs the wind for the scent of its prey. It has to keep alive, to survive. It feels the world with its small antennae; it sees in fragments, according to its needs. In man, the conscious animal, it widens its scope; it still feels, adds up its pieces, systematizes its data: it makes laws, scholarly treatises, gospels. Yet, behind, there is that self of fire pushing, the something that will not quit, that grows impatient with laws and systems and gospels, that senses a wall behind each captured truth, each framed law, that senses a trap closing on each discovery, as if capturing were to be captured, trapped; there is the something that directs The Antenna, which grows impatient even with The Antenna, impatient with levers and all the machinery for apprehending the world, as if that machinery and that antenna and that look draped one last veil over the world and prevented it from attaining its naked reality. There is that cry of being in the depths which yearns to see, which really so much needs to see and come out in the open at last: the master of The Antenna and not its slave. As if, really, a master had been confined there forever, arduously casting out its pseudopods, its tentacles and all its multicolored nets to try to join with the outside. Then, one day, under the pressure of that fire of need, the machinery begins to crack. Everything cracks: laws, gospels, knowledge and all the jurisprudence of the world. We've had enough! Even of the best we've had enough. It is still a prison, a trap thoughts, books, art and our-Father-which-art-in-heaven. Something else, something else! Oh, something we so much need, which is without a name, except for its blind need!... So we demechanize with the same fury with which we had mechanized. Everything is burned, nothing is left, save that pure fire. That fire which does not know, does not see anything, nothing at all anymore, not even the little fragments it had so conscientiously gathered together. It is an almost painful fire. It struggles and toils and searches and bumps into things; it wants truth, it wants the other thing, as once it wanted objects, the millions of objects of this world, and strained to get. And little by little, everything is consumed. Even the desire for the other thing, even the hope of ever clasping that impossible pure truth, even personal effort melts away; everything slips between our fingers.
  A pure little flame is left.

1.07 - The Mantra - OM - Word and Wisdom, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
   "As one lump of clay being known, all things of clay are known", so the knowledge of the microcosm must lead to the knowledge of the macrocosm. Now form is the outer crust, of which the name or the idea is the inner essence or kernel. The body is the form, and the mind or The Antahkarana is the name, and sound-symbols are universally associated with Nma (name) in all beings having the power of speech. In the individual man the thought-waves rising in the limited Mahat or Chitta (mindstuff), must manifest themselves, first as words, and then as the more concrete forms.
  In the universe, Brahm or Hiranyagarbha or the cosmic Mahat first manifested himself as name, and then as form, i.e. as this universe. All this expressed sensible universe is the form, behind which stands the eternal inexpressible Sphota, the manifester as Logos or Word. This eternal Sphota, the essential eternal material of all ideas or names is the power through which the Lord creates the universe, nay, the Lord first becomes conditioned as the Sphota, and then evolves Himself out as the yet more concrete sensible universe. This Sphota has one word as its only possible symbol, and this is the (Om). And as by no possible means of analysis can we separate the word from the idea this Om and the eternal Sphota are inseparable; and therefore, it is out of this holiest of all holy words, the mother of all names and forms, the eternal Om, that the whole universe may be supposed to have been created. But it may be said that, although thought and word are inseparable, yet as there may be various word-symbols for the same thought, it is not necessary that this particular word Om should be the word representative of the thought, out of which the universe has become manifested. To this objection we reply that this Om is the only possible symbol which covers the whole ground, and there is none other like it. The Sphota is the material of all words, yet it is not any definite word in its fully formed state.

1.07 - The Prophecies of Nostradamus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  the law of The Antichrist. 6
  l 54 In connection with the calculation of the year 1693, Pierre
  --
  logically influenced, and especially the coming of The Anti-
  christ. 8
  --
  an anticipation of The Antichristian trend that was pursued from
  then onwards.
  --
  1789 signalizes- by inference- the coming of The Antichrist.
  Fantasy could do the rest, for the archetype had long been ready
  --
  we consider that The Antichrist is something infernal, the devil
  or the devil's son, and is therefore Typhon or Set, who has his
  --
  telling the coming of The Antichrist. Even before the Reforma-
  tion The Antichrist was a popular figure in folklore, as the
  numerous editions of the "Entkrist" 31 in the second half of the
  --
  about to begin. Luther was promptly greeted as The Antichrist,
  and it is possible that Nostradamus calls The Antichrist who was
  to appear after 1792 the "second Antichrist" because the first
  --
  firmly in The Antichristian phase and served as its mouthpiece.
  !6i After this excursion, let us turn back to our fish symbolism.

1.08 - Adhyatma Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
  25. Behold only the One Atman or the Self in all beingsin The Ants, dogs, cows, horses, elephants and outcastes. This is equal vision or Sama Drishti.
  26. Give the mind to the Lord and the hands for the service of humanity. Always think of Lord only. You will soon attain God-realisation easily.

1.08 - Independence from the Physical, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  submerged in Matter, has grown accustomed to depending upon outer organs and antennas to perceive the world; and since we have seen The Antennas appear before the master of The Antennas, we have childishly concluded that The Antennas have created the master, and that without antennas there is no master, no perception of the world. But this is an illusion. Our dependence upon the senses is merely a habit true, a millenary one, but no more inescapable than the flintstone implements of the Chellean man: It is possible for the mind and it would be natural for it, if it could be persuaded to liberate itself from its consent to the domination of matter, to take direct cognizance of the objects of sense without the aid of the sense-organs.91 We can see and feel across continents as if distances did not exist, because distance is an obstacle only to the body and its organs, not to consciousness, which can reach anywhere it wishes in a second, provided it has learned to expand itself; there is another, lighter space where all is together in a flash point. Here we might expect to receive some "recipe" for clairvoyance or ubiquity, but recipes are just another kind of machinery, which is why we are so fond of them. True, hatha yoga can be effective, as can many other kinds of yogic exercises, such as concentrating on a lighted candle (tratak), evolving infallible diets,
  doing breathing exercises and choking scientifically (pranayama).

1.08 - Information, Language, and Society, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
  and literature, and very much besides. With The Ants, it probably
  does not cover much more than a few smells. It is very improba-
  --
  Within a few outside reactions of this kind, The Ant seems to
  have a mind almost as patterned, chitin-­bound, as its body. It
  --
  The odors perceived by The Ant seem to lead to a highly stan-
  dardized course of conduct; but the value of a simple stimulus,

1.08 - Phlegyas. Philippo Argenti. The Gate of the City of Dis., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
  The Antique prow goes on its way, dividing
  33

1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Within the general population, as we have seen, variation is continuous, and in most people the three components are fairly evenly mixed. Those exhibiting extreme predominance of any one component are relatively rare. And yet, in spite of their rarity, it is by the thought-patterns characteristic of these extreme individuals that theology and ethics, at any rate on the theoretical side, have been mainly dominated. The reason for this is simple. Any extreme position is more uncompromisingly clear and therefore more easily recognized and understood than the intermediate positions, which are the natural thought-pattern of the person in whom the constituent components of personality are evenly balanced. These intermediate positions, it should be noted, do not in any sense contain or reconcile the extreme positions; they are merely other thought-patterns added to the list of possible systems. The construction of an all-embracing system of metaphysics, ethics and psychology is a task that can never be accomplished by any single individual, for the sufficient reason that he is an individual with one particular kind of constitution and temperament and therefore capable of knowing only according to the mode of his own being. Hence the advantages inherent in what may be called The Anthological approach to truth.
  The Sanskrit dharmaone of the key words in Indian formulations of the Perennial Philosophyhas two principal meanings. The dharma of an individual is, first of all, his essential nature, the intrinsic law of his being and development. But dharma also signifies the law of righteousness and piety. The implications of this double meaning are clear: a mans duty, how he ought to live, what he ought to believe and what he ought to do about his beliefs these things are conditioned by his essential nature, his constitution and temperament. Going a good deal further than do the Catholics, with their doctrine of vocations, the Indians admit the right of individuals with different dharmas to worship different aspects or conceptions of the divine. Hence the almost total absence, among Hindus and Buddhists, of bloody persecutions, religious wars and proselytizing imperialism.

1.08 - The Historical Significance of the Fish, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  the coming of The Antichrist receives but scant mention in the
  Apocalypse. The seven-horned ram is just about everything that
  --
  could not be described as The Antichrist, who is a creature of
  Satan. For although the monstrous, warlike lamb is a shadow-
  --
  The Antichrist would have to be. The duplication of the Christ-
  figure cannot, therefore, be traced back to this split between
  Christ and Antichrist, but is due rather to The Anti-Roman re-
  sentment felt by the Jewish Christians, who fell back on their
  --
  Armilus will kill him. Armilus is The Anti-Messiah, whom
  Satan begot on a block of marble. 19 He will be killed by Messiah
  --
  Tabari, the commentator on the Koran, mentions that The Anti-
  christ will be a king of the Jews, 21 and in Abarbanel's Mashmi'a
  Yeshu'ah the Messiah ben Joseph actually is The Antichrist. So he
  is not only characterized as the suffering Messiah in contrast to
  --
  19 Armilus or Armillus - "PwfivXos, The Antichrist. Methodius: "Romulus, who
  is also Armaeleus." 20 Wunsche, p. 120.
  --
  22 Bousset, The Antichrist Legend, p. 111.
  zzPahlavi Texts, trans, by E. W. West, p. 193.
  --
  The early Christian prophecy concerning The Antichrist, and
  certain ideas in late Jewish theology, could have suggested to us
  --
  allotted to The Antichrist. There are, in short, no grounds what-
  ever for supposing that the zodion of the Fishes could have

1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
  A good deal of explanation is necessary here. We have to understand what Chitta is, and what the Vrittis are. I have eyes. Eyes do not see. Take away the brain centre which is in the head, the eyes will still be there, the retinae complete, as also the pictures of objects on them, and yet the eyes will not see. So the eyes are only a secondary instrument, not the organ of vision. The organ of vision is in a nerve centre of the brain. The two eyes will not be sufficient. Sometimes a man is asleep with his eyes open. The light is there and the picture is there, but a third thing is necessary the mind must be joined to the organ. The eye is the external instrument; we need also the brain centre and the agency of the mind. Carriages roll down a street, and you do not hear them. Why? Because your mind has not attached itself to the organ of hearing. First, there is the instrument, then there is the organ, and third, the mind attached to these two. The mind takes the impression farther in, and presents it to the determinative faculty Buddhi which reacts. Along with this reaction flashes the idea of egoism. Then this mixture of action and reaction is presented to the Purusha, the real Soul, who perceives an object in this mixture. The organs (Indriyas), together with the mind (Manas), the determinative faculty (Buddhi), and egoism (Ahamkra), form the group called The Antahkarana (the internal instrument). They are but various processes in the mind-stuff, called Chitta. The waves of thought in the Chitta are called Vrittis (literally "whirlpool") . What is thought? Thought is a force, as is gravitation or repulsion. From the infinite storehouse of force in nature, the instrument called Chitta takes hold of some, absorbs it and sends it out as thought. Force is supplied to us through food, and out of that food the body obtains the power of motion etc. Others, the finer forces, it throws out in what we call thought. So we see that the mind is not intelligent; yet it appears to be intelligent. Why? Because the intelligent soul is behind it. You are the only sentient being; mind is only the instrument through which you catch the external world. Take this book; as a book it does not exist outside, what exists outside is unknown and unknowable. The unknowable furnishes the suggestion that gives a blow to the mind, and the mind gives out the reaction in the form of a book, in the same manner as when a stone is thrown into the water, the water is thrown against it in the form of waves. The real universe is the occasion of the reaction of the mind. A book form, or an elephant form, or a man form, is not outside; all that we know is our mental reaction from the outer suggestion. "Matter is the permanent possibility of sensations," said John Stuart Mill. It is only the suggestion that is outside. Take an oyster for example. You know how pearls are made. A parasite gets inside the shell and causes irritation, and the oyster throws a sort of enamelling round it, and this makes the pearl. The universe of experience is our own enamel, so to say, and the real universe is the parasite serving as nucleus. The ordinary man will never understand it, because when he tries to do so, he throws out an enamel, and sees only his own enamel. Now we understand what is meant by these Vrittis. The real man is behind the mind; the mind is the instrument his hands; it is his intelligence that is percolating through the mind. It is only when you stand behind the mind that it becomes intelligent. When man gives it up, it falls to pieces and is nothing. Thus you understand what is meant by Chitta. It is the mind-stuff, and Vrittis are the waves and ripples rising in it when external causes impinge on it. These Vrittis are our universe.
  The bottom of a lake we cannot see, because its surface is covered with ripples. It is only possible for us to catch a glimpse of the bottom, when the ripples have subsided, and the water is calm. If the water is muddy or is agitated all the time, the bottom will not be seen. If it is clear, and there are no waves, we shall see the bottom. The bottom of the lake is our own true Self; the lake is the Chitta and the waves the Vrittis. Again, the mind is in three states, one of which is darkness, called Tamas, found in brutes and idiots; it only acts to injure. No other idea comes into that state of mind. Then there is the active state of mind, Rajas, whose chief motives are power and enjoyment. "I will be powerful and rule others." Then there is the state called Sattva, serenity, calmness, in which the waves cease, and the water of the mind-lake becomes clear. It is not inactive, but rather intensely active. It is the greatest manifestation of power to be calm. It is easy to be active. Let the reins go, and the horses will run away with you. Anyone can do that, but he who can stop the plunging horses is the strong man. Which requires the greater strength, letting go or restraining? The calm man is not the man who is dull. You must not mistake Sattva for dullness or laziness. The calm man is the one who has control over the mind waves. Activity is the manifestation of inferior strength, calmness, of the superior.

1.09 - Saraswati and Her Consorts, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   bring to birth for man the Bliss, Mayas. I have already insisted on the constant relation, as conceived by the Vedic seers, between the Truth and the Bliss or Ananda. It is by the dawning of the true or infinite consciousness in man that he arrives out of this evil dream of pain and suffering, this divided creation into the Bliss, the happy state variously described in Veda by the words bhadram, mayas (love and bliss), svasti (the good state of existence, right being) and by others less technically used such as varyam, rayih., rayah.. For the Vedic Rishi Truth is the passage and The Antechamber, the Bliss of the divine existence is the goal, or else Truth is the foundation, Bliss the supreme result.
  Such, then, is the character of Saraswati as a psychological principle, her peculiar function and her relation to her most immediate connections among the gods. How far do these shed any light on her relations as the Vedic river to her six sister streams?

1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  What is the meaning of The Antithetical concepts _Apollonian_ and
  _Dionysian_ which I have introduced into the vocabulary of sthetic, as
  --
  by Kant, The Antipodes of Goethe); he disciplined himself into a
  harmonious whole, he _created_ himself. Goe the in the midst of an age

1.09 - The Absolute Manifestation, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  The Antecedent of the manifested world would be, then, not the state of pure and indiscernable unity, but, on the contrary, a state of perfect solidarity, of constant reciprocity of all the possibles, a state of impersonal manifestation, as it were, foreign to all desire of individual existence.
  It is difficult indeed for us to form and still more to express any idea of such a condition of things. In order to understand, we should need to have the power of representing to ourselves what would be our actual world if each of its elements, each of the consciousnesses which compose it instead of being an exclusive consciousness which possesses only a limited and arbitrary mental representation of all the others, were able at each moment to reflect all in itself and to reflect itself in all by a perfect exchange by a reciprocal interpenetration incessantly repeated and renewed.

1.09 - The Pure Existent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2:For this boundless Movement does not regard us as unimportant to it. Science reveals to us how minute is the care, how cunning the device, how intense the absorption it bestows upon the smallest of its works even as on the largest. This mighty energy is an equal and impartial mother, samam brahma, in the great term of the Gita, and its intensity and force of movement is the same in the formation and upholding of a system of suns and the organisation of the life of an ant-hill. It is the illusion of size, of quantity that induces us to look on the one as great, the other as petty. If we look, on the contrary, not at mass of quantity but force of quality, we shall say that The Ant is greater than the solar system it inhabits and man greater than all inanimate Nature put together. But this again is the illusion of quality. When we go behind and examine only the intensity of the movement of which quality and quantity are aspects, we realise that this Brahman dwells equally in all existences. Equally partaken of by all in its being, we are tempted to say, equally distributed to all in its energy. But this too is an illusion of quantity. Brahman dwells in all, indivisible, yet as if divided and distributed. If we look again with an observing perception not dominated by intellectual concepts, but informed by intuition and culminating in knowledge by identity, we shall see that the consciousness of this infinite Energy is other than our mental consciousness, that it is indivisible and gives, not an equal part of itself, but its whole self at one and the same time to the solar system and to The Ant-hill. To Brahman there are no whole and parts, but each thing is all itself and benefits by the whole of Brahman. Quality and quantity differ, the self is equal. The form and manner and result of the force of action vary infinitely, but the eternal, primal, infinite energy is the same in all. The force of strength that goes to make the strong man is no whit greater than the force of weakness that goes to make the weak. The energy spent is as great in repression as in expression, in negation as in affirmation, in silence as in sound.
  3:Therefore the first reckoning we have to mend is that between this infinite Movement, this energy of existence which is the world and ourselves. At present we keep a false account. We are infinitely important to the All, but to us the All is negligible; we alone are important to ourselves. This is the sign of the original ignorance which is the root of the ego, that it can only think with itself as centre as if it were the All, and of that which is not itself accepts only so much as it is mentally disposed to acknowledge or as it is forced to recognise by the shocks of its environment. Even when it begins to philosophise, does it not assert that the world only exists in and by its consciousness? Its own state of consciousness or mental standards are to it the test of reality; all outside its orbit or view tends to become false or non-existent. This mental self-sufficiency of man creates a system of false accountantship which prevents us from drawing the right and full value from life. There is a sense in which these pretensions of the human mind and ego repose on a truth, but this truth only emerges when the mind has learned its ignorance and the ego has submitted to the All and lost in it its separate self-assertion. To recognise that we, or rather the results and appearances we call ourselves, are only a partial movement of this infinite Movement and that it is that infinite which we have to know, to be consciously and to fulfil faithfully, is the commencement of true living. To recognise that in our true selves we are one with the total movement and not minor or subordinate is the other side of the account, and its expression in the manner of our being, thought, emotion and action is necessary to the culmination of a true or divine living.

1.10 - Harmony, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  But wrong thoughts, too, are a surprising source of discoveries. As a matter of fact, more and more, he realizes that this kind of distinction is meaningless. What, in the end, is not for our own good? What does not ultimately turn out to be our greater good? The wrong paths are part of the right one and pave a broader way, a larger view of our indivisible estate. The only wrong is not to see; it is the vast grayness of the terra incognita of our limited maps. And we indeed limit our maps. We have attributed those thoughts, feelings, reactions and desires to the little Mississippi flowing through our lands, to the thriving Potomac rivers lined with stone buildings and fortresses and indeed, they have got into the habit of running through those channels, cascading here or there, boiling a little farther below, or disappearing into our marshes. It is a very old habit, going back even before us or the ape, or else a scarcely more recent one going back to our schooldays, our parents or yesterday's newspaper. We have opened paths, and the current follows them it follows them obstinately. But for the demechanized seeker, the meanders and points of entry begin to become more visible. He begins to distinguish various levels in his being, various channeling centers, and when the current passes through the solar plexus or through the throat, the reactions or effects are different. But, mostly, he discovers with surprise that it is one and the same current everywhere, above or below, right or left, and those which we call thought, desire, will or emotion are various infiltrations of the same identical thing, which is neither thought nor desire nor will nor anything of the sort, but a trickle, a drop or a cataract of the same conscious Energy entering here or there, through our little Potomac or muddy Styx, and creating a disaster or a poem, a millipede's quiver, a revolution, a gospel or a vain thought on the boulevard we could almost say at will. It all depends on the quality of our opening and its level. But the fundamental fact is that this is an Energy, in other words, a Power. And thus, very simply, quite simply, we have the all-powerful source of all possible changes in the world. It is as we will it! We can tune in either here or there, create harmony or cacophony; not a single circumstance in the world, not one fateful event, not one so-called ineluctable law, absolutely nothing can prevent us from turning The Antenna one way or the other and changing this muddy and disastrous flood into a limpid stream, instantly. We just have to know where we open ourselves. At every moment of the world and every second, in the face of every dreadful circumstance, every prison we have locked ourselves alive in, we can, in one stroke, with a single cry for help, a single burst of prayer, a single true look, a single leap of the little flame inside, topple all our walls and be born again from top to bottom. Everything is possible. Because that Power is the supreme Possibility.
  But if we believe only in our little Mississippi or our little Potomac, it is clearly hopeless. And we do indeed believe passionately, millennially in the virtue of our old ways. They also hold an immense power that of habit. It is remarkable, for they seem as solid as concrete, as convincing as all the old reasons of the world, the old habits of flowing in one direction or another, as irrefutable as Newton's apple, and yet, for the eye beginning to lose its scales, as unsubstantial as a cloud one blows on them and they fall away. This is the mental Illusion, the formidable illusion that is blinding us.

1.10 - Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  by which The Anthropomorphic spirit of vegetation is often denoted,
  show that the idea of the spirit of vegetation is blent with a
  --
  the parallelism holds between The Anthropomorphic and the vegetable
  representation of the tree-spirit, for we have seen above that trees

1.10 - THE FORMATION OF THE NOOSPHERE, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  mitary, The Ant hill, the hive). With man, thanks to the extraordi-
  nary agglutinative property of thought, she has at last been able to

1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But in spite of this great downfall the ancient tradition, the ancient sanctity survived. The people knew not what Veda might be; but the old idea remained fixed that Veda is always the fountain of Hinduism, the standard of orthodoxy, the repository of a sacred knowledge; not even the loftiest philosopher or the most ritualistic scholar could divest himself entirely of this deeply ingrained & instinctive conception. To complete the degradation of Veda, to consummate the paradox of its history, a new element had to appear, a new form of intelligence undominated by the ancient tradition & the mediaeval method to take possession of Vedic interpretation. European scholarship which regards human civilisation as a recent progression starting yesterday with the Fiji islander and ending today with Haeckel and Rockefeller, conceiving ancient culture as necessarily primitive culture and primitive culture as necessarily half-savage culture, has turned the light of its Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology on the Veda. The result we all know. Not only all vestige of sanctity, but all pretension to any kind of spiritual knowledge or experience disappears from the Veda. The old Rishis are revealed to us as a race of ignorant and lusty barbarians who drank & enjoyed and fought, gathered riches & procreated children, sacrificed and praised the Powers of Nature as if they were powerful men & women, and had no higher hope or idea. The only idea they had of religion beyond an occasional sense of sin and a perpetual preoccupation with a ritual barbarously encumbered with a mass of meaningless ceremonial details, was a mythology composed of the phenomena of dawn, night, rain, sunshine and harvest and the facts of astronomy converted into a wildly confused & incoherent mass of allegorical images and personifications. Nor, with the European interpretation, can we be proud of our early forefa thers as poets and singers. The versification of the Vedic hymns is indeed noble and melodious,though the incorrect method of writing them established by the old Indian scholars, often conceals their harmonious construction,but no other praise can be given. The Nibelungenlied, the Icelandic Sagas, the Kalewala, the Homeric poems, were written in the dawn of civilisation by semi-barbarous races, by poets not superior in culture to the Vedic Rishis; yet though their poetical value varies, the nations that possess them, need not be ashamed of their ancient heritage. The same cannot be said of the Vedic poems presented to us by European scholarship. Never surely was there even among savages such a mass of tawdry, glittering, confused & purposeless imagery; never such an inane & useless burden of epithets; never such slipshod & incompetent writing; never such a strange & almost insane incoherence of thought & style; never such a bald poverty of substance. The attempt of patriotic Indian scholars to make something respectable out of the Veda, is futile. If the modern interpretation stands, the Vedas are no doubt of high interest & value to the philologist, The Anthropologist & the historian; but poetically and spiritually they are null and worthless. Its reputation for spiritual knowledge & deep religious wealth, is the most imposing & baseless hoax that has ever been worked upon the imagination of a whole people throughout many millenniums.
  Is this, then, the last word about the Veda? Or, and this is the idea I write to suggest, is it not rather the culmination of a long increasing & ever progressing error? The theory this book is written to enunciate & support is simply this, that our forefa thers of early Vedantic times understood the Veda, to which they were after all much nearer than ourselves, far better than Sayana, far better than Roth & Max Muller, that they were, to a great extent, in possession of the real truth about the Veda, that that truth was indeed a deep spiritual truth, karmakanda as well as jnanakanda of the Veda contains an ancient knowledge, a profound, complex & well-ordered psychology & philosophy, strange indeed to our modern conception, expressed indeed in language still stranger & remoter from our modern use of language, but not therefore either untrue or unintelligible, and that this knowledge is the real foundation of our later religious developments, & Veda, not only by historical continuity, but in real truth & substance is the parent & bedrock of all later Hinduism, of Vedanta, Sankhya, Nyaya, Yoga, of Vaishnavism & Shaivism&Shaktism, of Tantra&Purana, even, in a remoter fashion, of Buddhism & the later unorthodox religions. From this quarry all have hewn their materials or from this far-off source drawn unknowingly their waters; from some hidden seed in the Veda they have burgeoned into their wealth of branchings & foliage. The ritualism of Sayana is an error based on a false preconception popularised by the Buddhists & streng thened by the writers of the Darshanas,on the theory that the karma of the Veda was only an outward ritual & ceremony; the naturalism of the modern scholars is an error based on a false preconception encouraged by the previous misconceptions of Sayana,on the theory of the Vedas [as] not only an ancient but a primitive document, the production of semi-barbarians. The Vedantic writers of the Upanishads had alone the real key to the secret of the Vedas; not indeed that they possessed the full knowledge of a dialect even then too ancient to be well understood, but they had the knowledge of the Vedic Rishis, possessed their psychology, & many of their general ideas, even many of their particular terms & symbols. That key, less & less available to their successors owing to the difficulty of the knowledge itself & of the language in which it was couched and to the immense growth of outward ritualism, was finally lost to the schools in the great debacle of Vedism induced by the intellectual revolutions of the centuries which immediately preceded the Christian era.

1.11 - The Seven Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The rest of the passage describes the ascent of this divine conscious-force, Agni, this Immortal in mortals who in the sacrifice takes the place of the ordinary will and knowledge of man, from the mortal and physical consciousness to the immortality of the Truth and the Beatitude. The Vedic Rishis speak of five births for man, five worlds of creatures where works are done, panca janah., panca kr.s.t.h. or ks.ith.. Dyaus and Prithivi represent the pure mental and the physical consciousness; between them is The Antariksha, the intermediate or connecting level of the vital or nervous consciousness. Dyaus and Prithivi are Rodasi, our two firmaments; but these have to be overpassed, for then we find admission to another heaven than that of the pure mind - to the wide, the Vast which is the basis, the foundation (budhna) of the infinite consciousness, Aditi. This Vast is the Truth which supports the supreme triple world, those highest steps or seats
  (padani, sadamsi) of Agni, of Vishnu, those supreme Names of the Mother, the cow, Aditi. The Vast or Truth is declared to be

1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  arrives at it by The Antithesis of one governing self-existence to
  all this that exists variously by another power of being than its

1.12 - The Office and Limitations of the Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The truth is that upon which we are now insisting, that reason is in its nature an imperfect light with a large but still restricted mission and that once it applies itself to life and action it becomes subject to what it studies and the servant and counsellor of the forces in whose obscure and ill-understood struggle it intervenes. It can in its nature be used and has always been used to justify any idea, theory of life, system of society or government, ideal of individual or collective action to which the will of man attaches itself for the moment or through the centuries. In philosophy it gives equally good reasons for monism and pluralism or for any halting-place between them, for the belief in Being or for the belief in Becoming, for optimism and pessimism, for activism and quietism. It can justify the most mystic religionism and the most positive atheism, get rid of God or see nothing else. In aesthetics it supplies the basis equally for classicism and romanticism, for an idealistic, religious or mystic theory of art or for the most earthy realism. It can with equal power base austerely a strict and narrow moralism or prove triumphantly the thesis of The Antinomian. It has been the sufficient and convincing prophet of every kind of autocracy or oligarchy and of every species of democracy; it supplies excellent and satisfying reasons for competitive individualism and equally excellent and satisfying reasons for communism or against communism and for State socialism or for one variety of socialism against another. It can place itself with equal effectivity at the service of utilitarianism, economism, hedonism, aestheticism, sensualism, ethicism, idealism or any other essential need or activity of man and build around it a philosophy, a political and social system, a theory of conduct and life. Ask it not to lean to one idea alone, but to make an eclectic combination or a synthetic harmony and it will satisfy you; only, there being any number of possible combinations or harmonies, it will equally well justify the one or the other and set up or throw down any one of them according as the spirit in man is attracted to or withdraws from it. For it is really that which decides and the reason is only a brilliant servant and minister of this veiled and secret sovereign.
  This truth is hidden from the rationalist because he is supported by two constant articles of faith, first that his own reason is right and the reason of others who differ from him is wrong, and secondly that whatever may be the present deficiencies of the human intellect, the collective human reason will eventually arrive at purity and be able to found human thought and life securely on a clear rational basis entirely satisfying to the intelligence. His first article of faith is no doubt the common expression of our egoism and arrogant fallibility, but it is also something more; it expresses this truth that it is the legitimate function of the reason to justify to man his action and his hope and the faith that is in him and to give him that idea and knowledge, however restricted, and that dynamic conviction, however narrow and intolerant, which he needs in order that he may live, act and grow in the highest light available to him. The reason cannot grasp all truth in its embrace because truth is too infinite for it; but still it does grasp the something of it which we immediately need, and its insufficiency does not detract from the value of its work, but is rather the measure of its value. For man is not intended to grasp the whole truth of his being at once, but to move towards it through a succession of experiences and a constant, though not by any means a perfectly continuous self-enlargement. The first business of reason then is to justify and enlighten to him his various experiences and to give him faith and conviction in holding on to his self-enlargings. It justifies to him now this, now that, the experience of the moment, the receding light of the past, the half-seen vision of the future. Its inconstancy, its divisibility against itself, its power of sustaining opposite views are the whole secret of its value. It would not do indeed for it to support too conflicting views in the same individual, except at moments of awakening and transition, but in the collective body of men and in the successions of Time that is its whole business. For so man moves towards the infinity of the Truth by the experience of its variety; so his reason helps him to build, change, destroy what he has built and prepare a new construction, in a word, to progress, grow, enlarge himself in his self-knowledge and world-knowledge and their works.

1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  The first wave of this new consciousness is quite visible. It is perfectly chaotic. It has caught human beings unawares. Its ebb and flow can be seen everywhere: men have been seized with errantry, or aberrancy. They have set out in search of something they did not understand, but which pushed and prodded them inside; they have taken to the road to anywhere, knocked on every door, the good as well as the bad, broken through walls and windmills, or, suddenly seized with laughter, they have left bag and baggage and said goodbye to the old establishment. It is natural that the first reaction is aberrant, since by definition it leaves the old circuit, as the primate suddenly left the instinctive wisdom of the herd. Each transition to a higher equilibrium is at first a dis-equilibrium and total disruption of the old equilibrium. Therefore, these apprentice supermen, who do not even know each other, will more likely be found among the unorthodox elements of society, the so-called misfits, the bastards, the recalcitrants of the general prison, the rebels against they don't know what except they have had enough of it. They are the new crusaders without a crusade, the partisans without a party, The Antis who are so much against that they no longer want any against or for; they want something else altogether, without plus or minus, offensive or defensive, without black, good, yes or no, something completely different and completely free from all the twists and turns of the Machine, which still would like to catch them in the nets of its negations as in the nets of its affirmations. Or else, at the opposite end of the spectrum, these apprentice supermen will perhaps be found among those who have traveled the long road of the mind, its labyrinths, its endless grind, its answers that answer nothing, that raise another question and still another, its solutions that solve nothing, and its whole painful round its sudden futility at the end of the road, after a thousand questions and a thousand triumphs ever ruined, that little cry, at the end, of a man gaping at nothing and suddenly becoming like a helpless child again, as if all those days and years and labor had never been, as if nothing had happened, not a single real second in thirty years! These too, then, set out on the road. There, too, there is a crack for the Possible.
  But the very conditions of the uprooting of the old order may for a long time falsify the quest for the new order. And at first, this new order does not exist; it has to be made. A whole world has to be invented. And the aspiring superman or let us simply say the aspirant to something else must confront a primary reality: the law of freedom is a very demanding one, infinitely more demanding than all the laws imposed by the Machine. It is not a coasting into just anything, but a methodical uprooting from thousands of little slaveries; it does not mean abandoning everything, but, on the contrary, taking charge of everything, since we no longer want to depend on anybody or anything. It is a supreme apprenticeship of responsibility that of being oneself, which in the end is being all. It is not an escape, but a conquest; not a vacation from the Machine, but a great Adventure into man's unknown. And anything that may hamper this supreme freedom, at whatever level or under whatever appearance, must be fought as fiercely as the police or lawmakers of the old world. We are not leaving the slavery of the old order to fall into the worse slavery of ourselves the slavery of drugs, of a party, of one religion or another, one sect or another, a golden bubble or a white one. We want the one freedom of smiling at everything and being light everywhere, identical in destitution and pomp, in prison and palace, in emptiness and fullness and everything is full because we burn with the one little flame that possesses everything forever.

1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  the innumerable Gnostic designations for The Anthropos, which
  make it quite obvious what is meant: the greater, more com-
  --
  The Antithesis of the subjective ego-psyche, is what I have called
  the self, and this corresponds exactly to the idea of the An-
  --
  you." As The Anthropos he corresponds to what is empirically
  the most important archetype and, as judge of the living and
  --
  the figure of The Anthropos, the incarnate God, who was then in
  the forefront of religious interest. He was, in Origen's words,
  --
  The Antique revelation depicts the birth of Eve from Adam on
  70 Gregory the Great, Expositiones in librum I Regum, Lib. I, cap. I (Migne,

1.14 - Bibliography, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  Bousset, Wilhelm. The Antichrist Legend. Translated by A. H.
  Keane. London, 1896. (Original: Der Antichrist. Gottingen, 1895.)

1.14 - The Mental Plane, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
  Simultaneously, the mental sphere is the sphere of thoughts which have their origin in the world of ideas, consequently in the spiritual akasa. Each thought is preceded by a basic idea which, according to its property, accepts a definite form, and arrives to the consciousness of the ego through the etheric principle, consequently the mental matrix, as expression of the thought in the shape of a plastic picture. Therefore Man himself is not the founder of the thoughts, but the origin of each thought is to be sought in the supreme akasa sphere or the mental plane. Mans spirit, as it were, is the receiver, The Antenna of thoughts from the world of ideas, according to the situation in which Man happens to be. The world of ideas being all in all, each new idea, new invention -- in short, all Man believes to have created by himself -- has been brought out of this world of ideas. This production of new ideas depends on the maturity and attitude of the spirit. Each thought involves an absolutely pure element, especially if the thought implies abstract ideas. If the thought is based on several combinations of the ideal world, different elements are effective in their form as well as in their mutual emanation. Only abstract ideas have pure elements and pure polar emanations, as they descend directly from the causal world of an idea.
  From this cognition we may draw the conclusion that there are pure electric, pure magnetic, indifferent and neutral ideas from the standpoint of their effect. According to the idea, each thought in the mental sphere has its own form, colour and vibration.

1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  of The Anthropos with the ithyphallic Hermes.) It was, more-
  over, the Gnostics- e.g., Basilides- who exhaustively discussed
  --
  A. The Anthropos Quaternio
  The lower Jethro
  --
  a forerunner of man or a distant copy of The Anthropos, and
  how justified is the equation Naas = Nous = Logos r= Christ
  --
  The Anthropos Quaternio, represents the world of the spirit, or
  metaphysics, while the second, the Shadow Quaternio, repre-
  --
  expectation, should be a counterpart of The Anthropos is cor-
  roborated by the fact- of especial significance for the Middle
  --
  further counterpart of The Anthropos.
  As already mentioned, the constitution of the lapis rests on
  --
  of The Anthropos, and at the same time the universe in its
  smallest and most material form. So it is easy to see why the first
  --
  enough, for it misses out The Antagonistic, feminine element. 71
  69 "Psychology of the Transference," par. 438.
  --
  384 Whereas the first double pyramid, The Anthropos Quaternio,
  corresponds to the Gnostic model, the second one is a construc-
  --
  3 8 5 Now just as The Anthropos Quaternio finds its symmetrical
  complement in the lower Adam, so the lower Adam is balanced
  --
  the Original Man, The Anthropos.
  3 8 9 Accordingly our four double pyramids would arrange them-
  --
  relationship to The Anthropos. That is obvious in alchemy, but
  occurs also in the history of religion, where the metals grow
  --
  bolizes the strongest polarity into which The Anthropos falls
  when he descends into Physis. The ordinary man has not
  --
  cept of the atom. The Antinomial development of the concepts
  is in keeping with the paradoxical nature of alchemy.
  --
  a "kingdom of this world." The transition from The Anthropos
  to the Shadow Quaternio illustrates an historical development
  --
  The Anthropos.
  With this insight the ring of the uroboros closes, that symbol
  --
  mandala, 105 The Antithetical play of complementary (or com-
  pensatory) processes, then the apocatastasis, i.e., the restoration
  --
  one. The Anthropos A descends from above through his Shadow
  B into Physis C ( = serpent), and, through a kind of crystalliza-

1.14 - TURMOIL OR GENESIS?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  we fall into The Anthropomorphic illusions which cause us to be amazed at the
  phenomena of mimetism, or by mechanical arrangements which we ourselves

1.16 - The Suprarational Ultimate of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What account are the higher parts of mans being, those finer powers in him that more openly tend to the growth of his divine nature, to make with this vital instinct or with its gigantic modern developments? Obviously, their first impulse must be to take hold of them and dominate and transform all this crude life into their own image; but when they discover that here is a power apart, as persistent as themselves, that it seeks a satisfaction per se and accepts their impress to a certain extent, but not altogether and, as it were, unwillingly, partially, unsatisfactorily,what then? We often find that ethics and religion especially, when they find themselves in a constant conflict with the vital instincts, the dynamic life-power in man, proceed to an attitude of almost complete hostility and seek to damn them in idea and repress them in fact. To the vital instinct for wealth and wellbeing they oppose the ideal of a chill and austere poverty; to the vital instinct for pleasure the ideal not only of self-denial, but of absolute mortification; to the vital instinct for health and ease the ascetics contempt, disgust and neglect of the body; to the vital instinct for incessant action and creation the ideal of calm and inaction, passivity, contemplation; to the vital instinct for power, expansion, domination, rule, conquest the ideal of humility, self-abasement, submission, meek harmlessness, docility in suffering; to the vital instinct of sex on which depends the continuance of the species, the ideal of an unreproductive chastity and celibacy; to the social and family instinct The Anti-social ideal of the ascetic, the monk, the solitary, the world-shunning saint. Commencing with discipline and subordination they proceed to complete mortification, which means when translated the putting to death of the vital instincts, and declare that life itself is an illusion to be shed from the soul or a kingdom of the flesh, the world and the devil,accepting thus the claim of the unenlightened and undisciplined life itself that it is not, was never meant to be, can never become the kingdom of God, a high manifestation of the Spirit.
  Up to a certain point this recoil has its uses and may easily even, by tapasy, by the law of energy increasing through compression, develop for a time a new vigour in the life of the society, as happened in India in the early Buddhist centuries. But beyond a certain point it tends, not really to kill, for that is impossible, but to discourage along with the vital instincts the indispensable life-energy of which they are the play and renders them in the end inert, feeble, narrow, unelastic, incapable of energetic reaction to force and circumstance. That was the final result in India of the agelong pressure of Buddhism and its supplanter and successor, Illusionism. No society wholly or too persistently and pervadingly dominated by this denial of the life dynamism can flourish and put forth its possibilities of growth and perfection. For from dynamic it becomes static and from the static position it proceeds to stagnation and degeneration. Even the higher being of man, which finds its account in a vigorous life dynamism, both as a fund of force to be transmuted into its own loftier energies and as a potent channel of connection with the outer life, suffers in the end by this failure and contraction. The ancient Indian ideal recognised this truth and divided life into four essential and indispensable divisions, artha, kma, dharma, moka, vital interests, satisfaction of desires of all kinds, ethics and religion, and liberation or spirituality, and it insisted on the practice and development of all. Still it tended not only to put the last forward as the goal of all the rest, which it is, but to put it at the end of life and its habitat in another world of our being, rather than here in life as a supreme status and formative power on the physical plane. But this rules out the idea of the kingdom of God on earth, the perfectibility of society and of man in society, the evolution of a new and diviner race, and without one or other of these no universal ideal can be complete. It provides a temporary and occasional, but not an inherent justification for life; it holds out no illumining fulfilment either for its individual or its collective impulse.

1.18 - The Human Fathers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  (or, actively-moving) mares which bear the hero. Seated, I call the births divine" (verse 2). What path is this? It is the path between the home of the gods and our earthly mortality down which the gods descend through The Antariks.a, the vital regions, to the earthly sacrifice and up which the sacrifice and man by the sacrifice ascends to the home of the gods. Agni yokes his mares, his variously-coloured energies or flames of the divine
  Force he represents, which bear the Hero, the battling power within us that performs the journey. And the births divine are at once the gods themselves and those manifestations of the divine life in man which are the Vedic meaning of the godheads. That this is the sense becomes clear from the fourth Rik. "When the

1.19 - ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD OF US OF AN ULTRA-HUMAN, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  Phylum X, shall we say, preceding The Anthropoids, had suceeded
  in passing the barrier separating reflective consciousness from di-

1.19 - Tabooed Acts, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  him, and he had to sting them all with The Ants on their faces,
  thighs, and other parts of their bodies. Sometimes, when he applied
  The Ants too tenderly, they called out "More! more!" and were not
  satisfied till their skin was thickly studded with tiny swellings

12.01 - This Great Earth Our Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The earth is well-known for its force of gravitation, the force that pulls things downward and at best allows a horizontal trajectory, that is the apparent movement. But it also has another, a contrary movement, The Anti-gravity force, the force of levitation and ascension. Earth, clay, never had a warm reception at the hands of spiritual persons or even of ordinary people who lay the whole blame upon this poor element for all the misfortunes of life here belowprecisely because of the earth's gravitating pull. The earth is considered as the very nursery of sin; the consciousness of sin however began with the advent of man upon earth. The creation was governed at the beginning and for long by an eternal unchangeable law, and man came in as an intervention, a breach of the law; He came with the knowledge and force of division and distinction, that between the right and the wrong. He brought in him the will independent of the eternal lawto discover a law of his own. That has been called transgression; in the popular style, that is sin. Apart from the obloquy that the term sin carries with it, it is at bottom, however, the sense of ambiguity, the sense of choice, the sense of liberty. Man has been given this sense so that he may find out that the customary, the habitual, the millennial is not the only rhythm or line of movement but that he may look beyond and find other lines which open the way to progress, which are not bound to mere reiteration. A new sense of direction is behind the spirit of independence that appears as transgression or sinit is this which the human consciousness aims at in the movement. It is an opportunity to move away and upward, to fresh dimensions of consciousness and being.
   Progress takes place through a process of dialectics, that is to say, by way of choice between two opposites. The established harmony and uniformity becomes rigid and unalterable, has to be broken in order to start a move towards another harmony richer and higher, and this is done in the human consciousness by the growth of a free will in the individual that disobeys the established law. That is the great Disobedience of which Milton speaks so thunderingly in his famous epic poem and which is at the very centre of the Christian religion. It means a Fall: the sense of separation itself is a falla separate egoism standing out against all and everyone, including God Himself. But this has been necessary to replace the blind obedience of an automaton by the willing and happy collaboration of a free being. That is the psychic with its free choice. The choice lies, as the Upanishad says, between 'reyas' and 'preyas'; the deliberate choice of the 'reyas' by the psychic being at every step is the great dialectic movement of evolution through which the consciousness moves forward and upward towards the supreme reality. The initial separation, disobedience or sin is the price that the individual human being has to pay in order to move towards its final destiny, the freedom and the integrality of its supreme divine fulfilment. Egoism, the fount and origin of sin, is the mask, the camouflage over the visage of God, the Individual.

12.09 - The Story of Dr. Faustus Retold, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   I will tell you now the moral of it. Each one of us, each human being has, or rather is, a soul. In reality we have or are two beingsan external outside being with its outward body and heart and mind, with all their ordinary desire movements and within that as under a cover lies your true being, your soul, that is made not of desire but of Truth. The outer person of desire is made of ignorance and unconsciousness, the true person or soul is made of truth and consciousness. Always there is a struggle between the two, the inner being, your true divine being is always trying to express itself through the lower and outward limbs, impress itself upon them but normally with very little result. These outer limbs are more obedient to the world forces of ignorance and falsehood, their lord is The Anti-Divine, whose name is Satan. A legend says that at the beginning of creation there was a wager between God and Satan. Satan said: "I am here to win away your children from you and make of them my slaves." God said: "My sons can never be your bond-slaves. You may test and try them, you may believe for a time you have won but your trials and ordeals only make them stronger in their inner being and they all come back to me."
   The soul is never lost, there is no eternal hell.

1.20 - CATHEDRAL, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
  Dissolved by The Anthem!
  CHORUS

1.22 - ON THE GIFT-GIVING VIRTUE, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  of the priest in The Antichrist five years later.
  5. On the Virtuous: A typology of different conceptions of

1.22 - On the many forms of vainglory., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  With regard to its form, vainglory is a change of nature, a perversion of character, a note of blame. And with regard to its quality, it is a dissipation of labours, a waste of sweat, a betrayal of treasure, a child of unbelief, the precursor of pride, shipwreck in harbour, an ant on the threshing-floor which, though small, has designs upon all ones labour and fruit. The Ant waits for the gathering of the wheat, and vainglory for the gathering of the riches of virtue; for the one loves to steal and the other to squander.
  The spirit of despair rejoices at the sight of increasing vice, and the spirit of vainglory at the sight of increasing virtue. The door of the first is a multitude of wounds, and the door of the second is a wealth of labours.

1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi give lac, the honey bee which builds the comb, The Ants which build cities, and the spider its web?"
  Bhagavan then began to describe their activities.
  --
  The roof was pulled down and the walls demolished to get rid of the mud which harboured The Ants. Sri Bhagavan saw that the hollows protected by stones were made into towns. These were skirted by walls plastered black, and there were roads to neighbouring cities which were also similarly skirted with black plastered walls. The roads were indicated by these walls. The interior of the town contained holes in which ants used to live. The whole wall was thus tenanted by white ants which ravaged the roofing materials above.
  Sri Bhagavan had also watched a spider making its web and described it. It is seen in one place, then in another place, again in a third place. The fibre is fixed at all these points. The spider moves along it, descends, ascends and goes round and round and the web is finished. It is geometrical. The net is spread out in the morning and rolled up in the evening.
  --
  Although the dream-creations are subtle as compared with the gross world of the wakeful state, yet the dream-creations are gross compared to tanmatras. Tanmatras after panchikarana give rise to the form of The Antahkarnas (inner organ, mind). There too, by the different sets
  265

1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi give lac, the honey bee which builds the comb, The Ants which build cities, and the spider its web?
  Bhagavan then began to describe their activities.
  --
  The roof was pulled down and the walls demolished to get rid of the mud which harboured The Ants. Sri Bhagavan saw that the hollows protected by stones were made into towns. These were skirted by walls plastered black, and there were roads to neighbouring cities which were also similarly skirted with black plastered walls. The roads were indicated by these walls. The interior of the town contained holes in which ants used to live. The whole wall was thus tenanted by white ants which ravaged the roofing materials above.
  Sri Bhagavan had also watched a spider making its web and described it. It is seen in one place, then in another place, again in a third place. The fibre is fixed at all these points. The spider moves along it, descends, ascends and goes round and round and the web is finished. It is geometrical. The net is spread out in the morning and rolled up in the evening.
  --
  Although the dream-creations are subtle as compared with the gross world of the wakeful state, yet the dream-creations are gross compared to tanmatras. Tanmatras after panchikarana give rise to the form of The Antahkarnas (inner organ, mind). There too, by the different sets
  Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi of operating causes. Influenced by satva the predominance of ether
  --
  The Antagonists point to his illustration of rajju sarpa (rope snake).
  This is unconditioned superimposition. After the truth of the rope is known, the illusion of snake is removed once for all.
  --
  The Antagonists continue: With the conditioned as well as the unconditioned illusions considered, the phenomenon of water in mirage is purely illusory because that water cannot be used for any purpose. Whereas the phenomenon of the world is different, for it is purposeful. How then does the latter stand on a par with the former?
  A phenomenon cannot be a reality simply because it serves a purpose or purposes. Take a dream for example. The dream
  --
  M.: We call it Mayakarana as opposed to The Antahkarana to which we are accustomed in our other states. The same instruments are called differently in the different states, even as the anandatman of sleep is termed the vijnanatman of the wakeful state.
  D.: Please furnish me with an illustration for the mayakarana experiencing the ananda.
  --
  In the present stanza the tiny dot = the ego; the tiny dot made up of darkness = the ego consisting of latent tendencies, the seer or the subject or the ego rising, it expands itself as the seen, the object or The Antahkaranas (the inner organs). The light must be dim in order to enable the ego to rise up. In broad daylight a rope does not look like a snake. The rope itself cannot be seen in thick darkness; so there is no chance of mistaking it for a snake. Only in dim light, in the dusk, in light darkened by shadows or in darkness lighted by dim light does the mistake occur of a rope seeming a snake. Similarly it is for the
  Pure Radiant Being to rise up as the Ego - it is possible only in Its
  --
  You; having now realised my Self I see that you are my Self. How will this fit in with qualified monism? It must be explained thus: Pervading my Self you remain as The Antaryamin (Immanent Being). Thus I am a part of your body and you are the owner of the body (sariri)
  Having given up ones own body as not being oneself why should one become anothers (Gods) body? If ones body is not the Self other bodies also are non-self.
  --
  A Parsi lady from the audience intervened: If they are not apart, do we not feel the sting of The Ants?
  M.: Whom does The Ant sting? It is the body. You are not the body.
  So long as you identify yourself with the body, you see The Ants, plants, etc. If you remain as the Self, there are not others apart from the Self.
  D.: The body feels the pain of the sting.
  --
  D.: May we take it to be the source of The Antahkaranas?
  M.: The inner organs (antakaranas) are classified as five: (1)
  --
  Ahankara, the ego; still others say The Antahkarana is only one whose different functions make it appear differently and hence its different names. Heart is thus the source of The Antahkaranas.
  There is the body which is insentient; there is the Self which is eternal and self-luminous; in between the two there has arisen a phenomenon, namely the ego, which goes under these different names, mind
  --
  Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi power (sakti), life current (prana), etc. Seek your source; the search takes you to the Heart automatically. The Antahkaranas are only ideas (kalpana) to explain the subtle body (sukshma sarira). The physical body (sarira) is made up of the elements: earth, air, fire, water and ether; it is insentient. The Self is pure and self-luminous and thus self-evident. The relation between the two is sought to be established by positing a subtle body, composed of the subtle aspects of the five elements on the one hand, and the reflected light of the Self on the other. In this way the subtle body which is synonymous with the mind, is both sentient and insentient, i.e., abhasa. Again, by the play of the pure quality (satva guna) on the elements, their brightness (satva aspect) manifests as the mind
  (manas), and the senses (jnanendriyas); by the play of rajas (active quality), the raja (active) aspect manifests as life (prana) and limbs
  --
  The Antahkarana thinks, desires, wills, reasons, etc., and each function is attri buted to one name such as mind, intellect, etc. Has anyone seen the pranas or The Antahkaranas? Have they any real
  Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi existence? They are mere conceptions. When and where will such conceptions end?
  --
  Jnani. The ego is simply wrong identity of the Self with the non-self, as in the case of a colourless crystal and its coloured background. The crystal though colourless appears red because of its background. If the background is removed the crystal shines in its original purity. So it is with the Self and The Antahkaranas.
  Still again the illustration is not quite appropriate. For the ego has its source from the Self and is not separate like the background from the crystal. Having its source from the Self, the ego must only be retraced in order that it might merge in its source.

1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  That very large numbers of men and women have an ineradicable desire for rites and ceremonies is clearly demonstrated by the history of religion. Almost all the Hebrew prophets were opposed to ritualism. Rend your hearts and not your garments. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. I hate, I despise your feasts; I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. And yet, in spite of the fact that what the prophets wrote was regarded as divinely inspired, the Temple at Jerusalem continued to be, for hundreds of years after their time, the centre of a religion of rites, ceremonials and blood sacrifice. (It may be remarked in passing that the shedding of blood, ones own or that of animals or other human beings, seems to be a peculiarly efficacious way of constraining the occult or psychic world to answer petitions and confer supernormal powers. If this is a fact, as from The Anthropological and antiquarian evidence it appears to be, it would supply yet another cogent reason for avoiding animal sacrifices, savage bodily austerities and even, since thought is a form of action, that imaginative gloating over spilled blood, which is so common in certain Christian circles.) What the Jews did in spite of their prophets, Christians have done in spite of Christ. The Christ of the Gospels is a preacher and not a dispenser of sacraments or performer of rites; he speaks against vain repetitions; he insists on the supreme importance of private worship; he has no use for sacrifices and not much use for the Temple. But this did not prevent historic Christianity from going its own, all too human, way. A precisely similar development took place in Buddhism. For the Buddha of the Pali scriptures, ritual was one of the fetters holding back the soul from enlightenment and liberation. Nevertheless, the religion he founded has made full use of ceremonies, vain repetitions and sacramental rites.
  There would seem to be two main reasons for the observed developments of the historical religions. First, most people do not want spirituality or deliverance, but rather a religion that gives them emotional satisfactions, answers to prayer, supernormal powers and partial salvation in some sort of posthumous heaven. Second, some of those few who do desire spirituality and deliverance find that, for them, the most effective means to those ends are ceremonies, vain repetitions and sacramental rites. It is by participating in these acts and uttering these formulas that they are most powerfully reminded of the eternal Ground of all being; it is by immersing themselves in the symbols that they can most easily come through to that which is symbolized. Every thing, event or thought is a point of intersection between creature and Creator, between a more or less distant manifestation of God and a ray, so to speak, of the unmanifest Godhead; every thing, event or thought can therefore be made the doorway through which a soul may pass out of time into eternity. That is why ritualistic and sacramental religion can lead to deliverance. But at the same time every human being loves power and self-enhancement, and every hallowed ceremony, form of words or sacramental rite is a channel through which power can flow out of the fascinating psychic universe into the universe of embodied selves. That is why ritualistic and sacramental religion can also lead away from deliverance.

1.26 - The Eighth Bolgia Evil Counsellors. Ulysses and Diomed. Ulysses' Last Voyage., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
  Then of The Antique flame the greater horn,
  Murmuring, began to wave itself about

1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  The Antagonists point to his illustration of rajju sarpa (rope snake).
  This is unconditioned superimposition. After the truth of the rope is known, the illusion of snake is removed once for all.
  --
  The Antagonists continue: With the conditioned as well as the unconditioned illusions considered, the phenomenon of water in mirage is purely illusory because that water cannot be used for any purpose. Whereas the phenomenon of the world is different, for it is purposeful. How then does the latter stand on a par with the former?
  A phenomenon cannot be a reality simply because it serves a purpose or purposes. Take a dream for example. The dream
  --
  M.: We call it Mayakarana as opposed to The Antahkarana to which we are accustomed in our other states. The same instruments are called differently in the different states, even as the anandatman of sleep is termed the vijnanatman of the wakeful state.
  D.: Please furnish me with an illustration for the mayakarana experiencing the ananda.
  --
  In the present stanza the tiny dot = the ego; the tiny dot made up of darkness = the ego consisting of latent tendencies, the seer or the subject or the ego rising, it expands itself as the seen, the object or The Antahkaranas (the inner organs). The light must be dim in order to enable the ego to rise up. In broad daylight a rope does not look like a snake. The rope itself cannot be seen in thick darkness; so there is no chance of mistaking it for a snake. Only in dim light, in the dusk, in light darkened by shadows or in darkness lighted by dim light does the mistake occur of a rope seeming a snake. Similarly it is for the
  Pure Radiant Being to rise up as the Ego - it is possible only in Its
  --
  You; having now realised my Self I see that you are my Self". How will this fit in with qualified monism? It must be explained thus: "Pervading my Self you remain as The Antaryamin (Immanent Being). Thus I am a part of your body and you are the owner of the body (sariri)"
  Having given up one's own body as not being oneself why should one become another's (God's) body? If one's body is not the Self other bodies also are non-self.
  --
  A Parsi lady from the audience intervened: If they are not apart, do we not feel the sting of The Ants?
  M.: Whom does The Ant sting? It is the body. You are not the body.
  So long as you identify yourself with the body, you see The Ants, plants, etc. If you remain as the Self, there are not others apart from the Self.
  D.: The body feels the pain of the sting.
  --
  D.: May we take it to be the source of The Antahkaranas?
  M.: The inner organs (antakaranas) are classified as five: (1)
  --
  Ahankara, the ego; still others say The Antahkarana is only one whose different functions make it appear differently and hence its different names. Heart is thus the source of The Antahkaranas.
  There is the body which is insentient; there is the Self which is eternal and self-luminous; in between the two there has arisen a phenomenon, namely the ego, which goes under these different names, mind
  --
  Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi power (sakti), life current (prana), etc. Seek your source; the search takes you to the Heart automatically. The Antahkaranas are only ideas (kalpana) to explain the subtle body (sukshma sarira). The physical body (sarira) is made up of the elements: earth, air, fire, water and ether; it is insentient. The Self is pure and self-luminous and thus self-evident. The relation between the two is sought to be established by positing a subtle body, composed of the subtle aspects of the five elements on the one hand, and the reflected light of the Self on the other. In this way the subtle body which is synonymous with the mind, is both sentient and insentient, i.e., abhasa. Again, by the play of the pure quality (satva guna) on the elements, their brightness (satva aspect) manifests as the mind
  (manas), and the senses (jnanendriyas); by the play of rajas (active quality), the raja (active) aspect manifests as life (prana) and limbs
  --
  The Antahkarana thinks, desires, wills, reasons, etc., and each function is attri buted to one name such as mind, intellect, etc. Has anyone seen the pranas or The Antahkaranas? Have they any real
  375
  --
  Jnani. The ego is simply wrong identity of the Self with the non-self, as in the case of a colourless crystal and its coloured background. The crystal though colourless appears red because of its background. If the background is removed the crystal shines in its original purity. So it is with the Self and The Antahkaranas.
  381

13.02 - A Review of Sri Aurobindos Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   First of alllet us begin from the very beginning. The very first step or turn he took in his early childhood was in fact a complete about turn The Antipodes of what he was and where he was. For, he was almost uprooted from his normal surroundings and removed across far seas to a distant land. From out of an Indian Bengali family he was thrown into the midst of a British Christian family. He was made to forget his native language, his country's traditions, his people's customs and manners, he had to adopt an altogether different mode of life and thinking, a thoroughly Europeanised style and manner. Naturally being a baby this was an occasion, the earliest when he had not his choice, his own deliberate decision but had to follow the choice of his father the choice perhaps of his secret soul and destiny. His father meant well, for he wanted his children to be not only good but great according to his conception of goodness and greatness. Now, in that epoch when the British were the masters of India and we their slaves, in those days the ideal for a person of intelligence and promise, the ideal of success was to become a high government official, a district magistrate or a district judge; that was the highest ambition of an Indian of that time and naturally Sri Aurobindo's parents and well-wishers thought of Sri Aurobindo in that line, he would become a very famous district magistrate or a Commissioner even, the highest position that an Indian could achieve. So he had to appear at an examination for that purpose, it was calledthose glittering letters to Indian eyes: I.C.S. (Indian Civil Service). Now here was the very first deliberate choice of his own, the first radical turn he tookto cut himself away from the normally developing past. He turned away from that line of growth and his life moved on to a different scale. His parents and friends were mortified such a brilliant boy come to nought but he had pushed away the past as another vision allured him and he stuck to his decision.
   Next as you all know, he came to Baroda, entered the State serviceas Secretary to the Maharaja and professor of the College. That life was also externally a very normal and ordinary lifean obscure life, so to say, but he preferred obscurity for the sake of his inner development and growth. Still he continued in that obscure position that was practically what we call the life of a clerk. He continued it for sometime, although sometime meant twelve years, the same length as his previous stage. Then a moment came when he changed all that. Another volte-face. If he continued he might have advanced, progressed in his career, that is to say, become Principal of the College, even the Dewan of Baroda, a very lofty position, a very lofty position indeed for an Indian, become another R. C. Dutt. But he threw all that overboard, wiped off the twelve years of his youthful life and came to Bengal as a national leader, a leader of the new movement that wanted freedom for India, freedom from the domination of Britain. He jumped into this dangerous life the uncertain life of a servant of the country, practically without a home, without resources of his own. He ran the risk of being caught by the British, put into prison or shot or hanged even but he chose that life. That was a great decision he took, a turn about entirely changing the whole mode of his life. Eventually as a natural and inevitable result of his political .activities he was arrested by the British and put into prison. He had to pass a whole year in the prison. And this led to another break from the past, ushering in quite another way of life. The course of his life turned inward and moved from depth to depth.

1.62 - The Fire-Festivals of Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  be similar. On the night of Christmas Eve, says The Antiquary John
  Brand, "our ancestors were wont to light up candles of an uncommon

1951-01-20 - Developing the mind. Misfortunes, suffering; developed reason. Knowledge and pure ideas., #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It is very necessary that one should consider everything from as many points of view as possible. There is an exercise in this connection which gives great suppleness and elevation to thought; it is as follows. A clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed The Antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection, the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
  The Science of Living, On Education
  --
  X: In my thesis I spoke of ordinary men. In The Antithesis I speak of extraordinary men.
  Yes, but you believe that extraordinary men do not have their cross! Even higher beings have their cross to bear.

1951-03-05 - Disasters- the forces of Nature - Story of the charity Bazar - Liberation and law - Dealing with the mind and vital- methods, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This is partly true. But I dont think Nature has this feeling. When there is an earthquake, for instance, or a volcano erupts, if there are men staying nearby and these events cause their death, obviously it is for these men a catastrophe, but we could very well imagine that for Nature it is good fun! We say, What a terrible wind! Naturally, for men it is terrible, but not for Nature. It is a question of proportion, isnt it? I dont know if it is necessary to bring into the picture a higher force wanting to manifest and a resistance from Nature; it is possible, but not indispensable. It can be understood quite easily that it is the play of Nature with tremendous forces and that for her it is only a diversion; in any case, nothing catastrophic. For the consciousness of Nature or the material consciousness, physical forms and humanity upon earth are like ants. You yourself, when you walk, you do not find it necessary to move out of the way to avoid crushing The Ants! unless you are a stubborn non-violent fellow. You walk, and if you crush a few hundred ants, it cant be helped! Well, it is the same with Nature. She goes on, and if in the course of her march she destroys a few thousand men, it is not of much importance for her, she can make again a few millions! It is not difficult.
   This reminds me of what happened in Paris when I was seventeen or eighteen. There was a charity bazaar. This charity bazaar was a place where men from all over the world came to buy and sell all kinds of things, and the proceeds of the sale went to works of charity (it was meant more for amusement than for doing good, but still, charitable works profited by it). All the elegance, all the refinement of high society was gathered there. Now, the bazaar was very beautiful but not solidly built, because it was to last only for three or four days. The roof was of painted tarpaulin which had been suspended. Everything was lighted by electricity; the work was more or less decently done, but naturally with the idea that it was only for a few days. There was a short-circuit, everything began to blaze up; the roof caught fire and suddenly collapsed upon the people. As I said, all the lite of society were there for them, from the human point of view, it was a frightful catastrophe. There were people near the entrance who tried to escape; others, all ablaze, also tried to reach the door and run away. It was a veritable scuffle! All these elegant, refined people, who usually were so well-mannered, began to fight like street rowdies. There was even a Count of something or other, a very well-known man, a poet, a man of perfect elegance, who carried a silver-knobbed stick, and he was surprised in the act of hitting women on the head with his stick, and trying to push forward! Indeed, it was a fine sight, something most elegant! Afterwards, lamentations in society, big funerals and many stories. Now, a Dominican, a well-known orator, was asked to give a speech over the tombs of the unfortunate who had perished in the fire. He said something to this effect: It serves you right. You did not live according to the law of God and He has punished you by burning you.

1951-05-14 - Chance - the play of forces - Peace, given and lost - Abolishing the ego, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   We do not see it harming anyone or anything simply because we do not have sufficient data. We cannot judge circumstances, for we do not know the world. What do we know about it? Our vision is so short and so limited. Just think, a man can never know what lies beyond his hundred and twenty years, at the maximum, and I am putting a very big limit, and I count the first years of his existence, though generally he does not remember what has happened then. What does one know about the world in so short a time and about the consequences of things? Nothing at all. And even granting that one can remember sufficiently well to know the result or antecedent of a so-called chance, it is altogether a local knowledge. What does one know about what is happening at The Antipodes or in a million other places on the earth at the same moment? We know nothing about it. And as we know that all that happens is linked, that all things are closely linked, consciously, that there cannot be a vibration in one place without there being its consequences in another, how can we tell whether our chance is not harmful to someone, though it be favourable for us? I think it is impossible to form a judgment (how shall I put it?) a correct judgment about things, for one does not know what is going on in the world. We do not know the whole, we know nothing of the play of forces. And we say that chance is the result of a play of forces; only, instead of being the expression of divine harmony, it is the expression of conflicting wills. These wills are not all necessarily bad or hostile but they are always ignorant. Each one tries to realise his own will and the victory is to the strongest the strongest is not necessarily the best in this field. When one thing is realised, how many others could have been realised, which were not, because this one was realised? And all these things, we do not know. We cannot compare what is with what could have been. No, I have not said anywhere that chance was necessarily the work of hostile forces, but it is certainly the work of ignorant forces.
   From a scientific point of view chance is considered as something without a cause or as the result of a number of small causes which intervene and are more or less independent of each other, giving rise to the notion of disorder. But how to know whether a thing, an event, etc is due to chance or not? The word chance is rather a way of speaking, isnt it?

1953-06-17, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Who will propose the thesis? Ah! I am going to propose this immediately: Man is mortal. The Antithesis is: Man is immortal. Now find the place where the two agree: the synthesis.
   It is ignorance that prevents man from uniting with immortality.

1953-07-08, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Both are good exercises. Try to compare them, youll see: you are walking on a street, there is an army of ants going from one nest to another (you do not look down, you are talking with someone); very negligently you put one foot and then the other, and you crush hundreds of ants without even being aware of it. If you were an ant, you would say: What a wicked and beastly force! You are just walking. You have not paid attention. But suppose there are beings of this kind for whom we are just tiny little ants. They put one foot and then the other and millions of people are killed. They are not even aware of it! They have not done it on purpose. They were just walking along, thats all. The only difference you could make (and yet I am not quite sure), the only difference between The Ant and man is that man is able to think of what happens to him, and perhaps The Ant is not conscious of it? I dont know at all. I dont guarantee it. Voil.
   ***

1953-09-16, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It is perhaps their way of progressing! (Laughter) You do not progress always in an apparently harmonious way. All who do Yoga know that it is not a thing that always goes on in peace and harmony, that sometimes there are inner battles, you have to give battle to enemies within you who want to prevent you from progressing. That means war. Well, when it is the whole earth thats progressing and there are things that resist and do not want to move, sometimes you have to give battle and that means war. You must not believe that progress consists in sitting down and meditating! There are difficulties to be conquered. To conquer, what does it mean?To fight against something. When you fight, it means war. There are small wars, there are big wars; but what is this war of men upon earth, if seen, for example, by Titans to whom men are no bigger than ants? When you look at a war of ants, you find it quite natural! You can even look at it with interest and smile and say: Look, The Ants are having a fight. Well, to the titanic forces of the universe, men fighting on earth are like ants fighting, it is nothing at all. You must not judge things according to the measure of human consciousness. For man Nature is a monstrous thing. It is so formidable, all the forces at her disposal, all the movements she creates. And what we know is only what is happening on earth! You know, directly or indirectly, by a kind of speculative knowledge, what is happening in the rest of the universe; but these are conflicts and plays of forces that are formidable in proportion to human consciousness. These are things that in comparison with human duration last almost eternally. So, in time it is immensity, in space it is immensity, and for the human consciousness it is something almost incomprehensible. But to these forces, human dimensions and movements have truly almost the same proportions as (perhaps are even less than) the consciousness of the swarming ant-world for us; it is the same thing. There are Nordic legendsSwedish and Norwegianabout these mighty universal Titans who are like that. And so stories are told naturally so that children may understand. It is said that there were two Titans sitting on some summit in the universe, not on earth, and then one Titan breathed a sigh. Then a thousand years pass, and the other asks, Why do you sigh? Another thousand years pass and the first one replies: I am bored! Yet another thousand years pass. They try to give an idea. Probably the Titans took some hundreds of years to say, I am bored. It is a question of proportions!
   Is it not possible, by yogic force, to prevent the body from being rigid?

1954-07-07 - The inner warrior - Grace and the Falsehood - Opening from below - Surrender and inertia - Exclusive receptivity - Grace and receptivity, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It is the vital being when it is converted. The vital turned completely to the Divine is like a warrior. It has even the appearance of a warrior. The vital is the place of power and it is this power which impels it to fight, which can fight and conquer, and of all things this is the most difficult, for it is precisely these very qualities of fighting which create in the vital the see of revolt, independence, the will to carry out its own will. But if the vital understands and is converted, if it is truly surrendered to the divine Will, then these fighting capacities are turned against The Anti-divine forces and against all the darkness which prevents their transformations. And they are all-powerful and can conquer the adversaries. The Anti-divine forces are in the vital world; from there, naturally, they have spread out into the physical, but their true seat is in the vital world, and it is the converted vital force which has the true power to vanquish them. But of all things this conversion is the most difficult.
  What are subterfuges?

1955-07-06 - The psychic and the central being or jivatman - Unity and multiplicity in the Divine - Having experiences and the ego - Mental, vital and physical exteriorisation - Imagination has a formative power - The function of the imagination, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  A lot. Otherwise they would never discover anything. In fact, what is called imagination is a capacity to project oneself outside realised things and towards things realisable, and then to draw them by the projection. One can obviously have progressive and regressive imaginations. There are people who always imagine all the catastrophes possible, and unfortunately they also have the power of making them come. Its like The Antennae going into a world thats not yet realised, catching something there and drawing it here. Then naturally it is an addition to the earth atmosphere and these things tend towards manifestation. It is an instrument which can be disciplined, can be used at will; one can discipline it, direct it, orientate it. It is one of the faculties one can develop in himself and render serviceable, that is, use it for definite purposes.
  Sweet Mother, can one imagine the Divine and have the contact?

1955-10-12 - The problem of transformation - Evolution, man and superman - Awakening need of a higher good - Sri Aurobindo and earths history - Setting foot on the new path - The true reality of the universe - the new race - ..., #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Perhaps if those who from the beginning have proclaimed that it would be, those very people say, It is going to be, after all, perhaps they are the best informed. I am considering how from the beginning of the earths history (we shall not go farther back to The Antecedents, you know, for we have already enough to do with the earth), from the beginning of the earths history, in one form or another, under one name or another, Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great terrestrial transformations; and so when he tells you, Well, this is the right time, perhaps he knows. Thats all that I can say.
  So, if it is the right time, this is how the problem is put: there are people who are ready or will become ready, and these precisely will be the first to start on the new path. There are others who, perhaps, will become aware of it too late, who will have missed the opportunity; I think there will be many of this kind. But in any case, my point of view is this: even if there should be only half a chance, it would be worth the trouble of trying. For after all I dont know I told you just now, there is a moment when life such as it is, the human consciousness such as it is, seems something absolutely impossible to bear, it creates a kind of disgust, repugnance; one says, No, it is not that, it is not that; it cant be that, it cant continue. Well, when one comes to this, there is only to throw in ones allall ones effort, all ones strength, all ones life, all ones beinginto this chance, if you like, or this exceptional opportunity that is given to cross over to the other side. What a relief to set foot on the new path, that which will lead you elsewhere! This is worth the trouble of casting behind much luggage, of getting rid of many things in order to be able to take that leap. Thats how I see the problem.

1956-08-15 - Protection, purification, fear - Atmosphere at the Ashram on Darshan days - Darshan messages - Significance of 15-08 - State of surrender - Divine Grace always all-powerful - Assumption of Virgin Mary - SA message of 1947-08-15, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  And I would add this: that fear is an impurity, one of the greatest impurities, one of those which come most directly from The Anti-divine forces which want to destroy the divine action on earth; and the first duty of those who really want to do yoga is to eliminate from their consciousness, with all the might, all the sincerity, all the endurance of which they are capable, even the shadow of a fear. To walk on the path, one must be dauntless, and never indulge in that petty, small, feeble, nasty shrinking back upon oneself, which is fear.
  An indomitable courage, a perfect sincerity and a sincere self-giving, so that one does not calculate or bargain, does not give with the idea of receiving, does not trust with the idea of being protected, does not have a faith which asks for proofsit is this that is indispensable in order to walk on the path, and it is this alone which can truly shelter you from all danger.

1958-04-02 - Correcting a mistake, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  When you make a mistake because you dont know that it is a mistake, through ignorance, it is obvious that when you learn that it is a mistake, when the ignorance has gone and you have goodwill, you dont make the mistake any more, and so you come out of the condition in which you could make it. But if you know it is a mistake and make it, this means that there is something perverse in you which has deliberately chosen to be on the side of confusion or bad will or even The Anti-divine forces.
  And it is quite obvious that if one chooses to be on the side of The Anti-divine forces or is so weak and inconsistent that one cant resist the temptation to be on their side, it is infinitely more serious from the psychological point of view. This means that somewhere something has been corrupted: either an adverse force is already established in you or else you have an innate sympathy for these forces. And it is much more difficult to correct that than to correct an ignorance.
  Correcting an ignorance is like eliminating darkness: you light a lamp, the darkness disappears. But to make a mistake once again when you know it is a mistake, is as if someone lighted a lamp and you deliberately put it out. That corresponds exactly to bringing the darkness back deliberately. For the argument of weakness does not hold. The divine Grace is always there to help those who have decided to correct themselves, and they cannot say, I am too weak to correct myself. They can say that they still havent taken the resolution to correct themselves, that somewhere in the being there is something that has not decided to do it, and that is what is serious.

1969 11 16, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   201Mediaeval Christianity said to the race, Man, thou art in thy earthly life an evil thing and a worm before God; renounce then egoism, live for a future state and submit thyself to God and His priest. The results were not over-good for humanity. Modern knowledge says to the race, Man, thou art an ephemeral animal and no more to Nature than The Ant and the earthworm, a transitory speck only in the universe. Live then for the State and submit thyself antlike to the trained administrator and the scientific expert. Will this gospel succeed any better than the other?
   202Vedanta says rather, Man, thou art of one nature and substance with God, one soul with thy fellow-men. Awake and progress then to thy utter divinity, live for God in thyself and in others. This gospel which was given only to the few, must now be offered to all mankind for its deliverance.

1.ac - The Four Winds, #Crowley - Poems, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  I made the germ and The Ant,
  The tiger and elephant.

1f.lovecraft - Ashes, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   He went into The Anteroom and, from the chest where you found me, took
   out the glass casket. At least, it seemed a casket to my

1f.lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   various parts of The Antarctic continent, aided by the remarkable drill
   devised by Prof. Frank H. Pabodie of our engineering department. I had
  --
   knowledge of the earths past. That The Antarctic continent was once
   temperate and even tropical, with a teeming vegetable and animal life
  --
   from The Antarctic.
   The public knows of the Miskatonic Expedition through our frequent
  --
   vertical sidesand just before reaching The Antarctic Circle, which we
   crossed on October 20 with appropriately quaint ceremonies, we were
  --
   deal of Poe. I was interested myself because of The Antarctic scene of
   Poes only long storythe disturbing and enigmatical Arthur Gordon Pym.
  --
   the case might be. If we wintered in The Antarctic we would probably
   fly straight from Lakes base to the Arkham without returning to this
  --
   world; much like The Ants and bees of today. It reproduced like the
   vegetable cryptogams, especially the pteridophytes; having spore-cases
  --
   It was risky business sailing over The Antarctic in a single aroplane
   without any line of bases, but no one drew back from what seemed like
  --
   dissuaded, they will get to the innermost nucleus of The Antarctic and
   melt and bore till they bring up that which may end the world we know.
  --
   place of advent to the planet was The Antarctic Ocean, and it is likely
   that they came not long after the matter forming the moon was wrenched
  --
   farther and farther from The Antarctic as aeons passed. Another map
   shews a vast bulk of dry land around the south pole, where it is
  --
   land cities were foundedthe greatest of them in The Antarctic, for
   this region of first arrival was sacred. From then on, as before, the
  --
   Europe through Greenland, and of South America with The Antarctic
   continent through Graham Land. In the Carboniferous map the whole
  --
   toward The Antarctic became very plain. The final Pliocene specimen
   shewed no land cities except on The Antarctic continent and the tip of
   South America, nor any ocean cities north of the fiftieth parallel of
  --
   Wilkes and Mawson at The Antarctic Circle.
   Yet even more monstrous exaggerations of Nature seemed disturbingly
  --
   Just when this tendency began in The Antarctic it would be hard to say
   in terms of exact years. Nowadays we set the beginning of the general
  --
   with the sea-bottom cities off The Antarctic coast. By this time the
   ultimate doom of the land city must have been recognised, for the
  --
   terrible and prodigious significance connected with The Antarctic and
   screamed eternally by the gigantic, spectrally snowy birds of that

1f.lovecraft - Ex Oblivione, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   valley and the shadowy groves; and when I came this time to The Antique
   wall, I saw that the small gate of bronze was ajar. From beyond came a

1f.lovecraft - Out of the Aeons, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   newspaper publicity given to that hellish mummy, The Antique and
   terrible rumours vaguely linked with it, the morbid wave of interest

1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   interested in The Antiquities he knew so well. He had, it appears, lost
   his regard for them through sheer familiarity; and all his final
  --
   belonging as much to the past as The Antiquities he loved so keenly. In
   the autumn of 1918, and with a considerable show of zest in the
  --
   The Antiquarian lore which at last crowded the modern world from
   Charles Wards mind; and illustrate the mental soil upon which fell, in
  --
   perturbation for which even The Antiquarian and genealogical
   significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he
  --
   for The Antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic,
   occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence
  --
   was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or The Antiquarian,
   beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new

1f.lovecraft - The Horror at Red Hook, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   The Antique witcheries and grotesque marvels discernible to sensitive
   eyes amidst the poison cauldron where all the varied dregs of

1f.lovecraft - The Hound, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; The Antique
   ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the livid sky; the
  --
   bats, The Antique church, the dancing death-fires, the sickening
   odours, the gently moaning night-wind, and the strange, half-heard,

1f.lovecraft - The Last Test, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   California to study the plague and investigate The Anti-fever bacillus
   which Clarendon was so rapidly isolating and perfecting. These doctors
  --
   leash. His secrecy regarding The Antitoxin they deemed quite
   justifiable, since its public diffusion in unperfected form could not
  --
   attention to the state legislature; lining up The Anti-Clarendonists
   and the governors old enemies with great shrewdness, and preparing to

1f.lovecraft - The Lurking Fear, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   years The Antique, grove-circled stone house had been the subject of
   stories incredibly wild and monstrously hideous; stories of a silent
  --
   festered in The Antediluvian forest darkness, I could trace the
   sinister outlines of some of those low mounds which characterised the

1f.lovecraft - The Music of Erich Zann, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   deeply into all The Antiquities of the place; and have personally
   explored every region, of whatever name, which could possibly answer to

1f.lovecraft - The Nameless City, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   saw a storm of sand stirring among The Antique stones though the sky
   was clear and the vast reaches of the desert still. Then suddenly above
  --
   the city. And as I went outside The Antique walls to sleep, a small
   sighing sandstorm gathered behind me, blowing over the grey stones
  --
   promise further traces of The Antediluvian people. Hewn rudely on the
   face of the cliff were the unmistakable facades of several small, squat

1f.lovecraft - The Picture in the House, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   confronted with no refuge save The Antique and repellent wooden
   building which blinked with bleared windows from between two huge
  --
   relics of the past, but here The Antiquity was curiously complete; for
   in all the room I could not discover a single article of definitely

1f.lovecraft - The Quest of Iranon, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   of the mountain Sidrak that lies across The Antique bridge of stone.
   The men of Teloth are dark and stern, and dwell in square houses, and

1f.lovecraft - The Rats in the Walls, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   and encouraged by Capt. Norrys and The Antiquarians who surrounded and
   aided me. When the task was done, over two years after its
  --
   abounded with inscriptions familiar to The Antiquarians who had
   repeatedly explored the placethings like P.GETAE. PROP . . .
  --
   When Dr. Trask, The Anthropologist, stooped to classify the skulls, he
   found a degraded mixture which utterly baffled him. They were mostly
  --
   thousand years ago. It was The Antechamber of hell, and poor Thornton
   fainted again when Trask told him that some of the skeleton things must
  --
   of the diet of The Antediluvian cult which the priests of Cybele found
   and mingled with their own. Norrys, used as he was to the trenches,

1f.lovecraft - The Shadow out of Time, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   star-headed Old Ones who centred in The Antarctic, was infrequent
   though infinitely devastating. An enormous army, using camera-like

1f.lovecraft - The Shadow over Innsmouth, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested The Anthropoid,
   while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes

1f.lovecraft - The Shunned House, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   ten feet by The Antique shingled bulk of the house proper.
   The farm-like grounds extended back very deeply up the hill, almost to
  --
   Above The Anthropomorphic patch of mould by the fireplace it rose; a
   subtle, sickish, almost luminous vapour which as it hung trembling in
  --
   states. The Anthropomorphic patch of mould on the floor, the form of
   the yellowish vapour, and the curvature of the tree-roots in some of

1f.lovecraft - The Tree on the Hill, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   by The Antique crystals lens or prism-like power was not, I felt
   curiously certain, anything that a normal brain ought to be called upon

1f.lovecraft - Till A the Seas, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   the northland and The Antarctic went those who could; the rest lingered
   for years in an incredible saturnalia, vaguely doubting the forthcoming

1f.lovecraft - Under the Pyramids, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   overlooking The Antediluvian plateau of Gizeh under the wan moon of the
   pallid small hours appealed to every fibre of imagination in me. A
  --
   to be more of a centre of notice than The Antagonists; and from my
   smattering of Arabic I judged that they were discussing my professional

1f.lovecraft - Winged Death, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Jan. 7Mevana is no better, though I have injected all The Antitoxins I
   know of. He has fits of trembling, in which he rants affrightedly about

1.fs - Friendship, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
   Return to darkness, and The Antique waste
  To chaos shocked, let warring atoms be,

1.fs - The Antiques At Paris, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
  object:1.fs - The Antiques At Paris
  author class:Friedrich Schiller

1.fs - The Antique To The Northern Wanderer, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
  object:1.fs - The Antique To The Northern Wanderer
  author class:Friedrich Schiller

1.fs - The Count Of Hapsburg, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
     In pursuit of The Antelope flying.
    His hunting-spear bearing, there came in his train

1.jk - Endymion - Book IV, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Up which he had not fear'd The Antelope;
  And not a tree, beneath whose rooty shade

1.jk - Hyperion, A Vision - Attempted Reconstruction Of The Poem, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Onward from The Antechamber of this dream,
  Where, even at the open doors, awhile

1.jk - Otho The Great - Act II, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Here in The Ante-room; that may be a trifle.
  You see now how I dance attendance here,

1.jk - Sonnet. Written In Answer To A Sonnet By J. H. Reynolds, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  'The sonnet of John Hamilton Reynolds to which this is a reply appeared in 1821 in The Garden of Florence &c. From a letter signed "A. J. Horwood" which was published in The Anthenoeum of the 3rd of June 1876, it would seem that this poem, like many others, must have been written out more than once by Keats; for, in a copy of The Garden of Florence mentioned in that letter, Keats's sonnet is transcribed, seemingly, from a different manuscript from that used by Lord Houghton when he gave the sonnet in the Life, Letters and Literary Remains (Vol. II, page 295) in 1848. ...Lord Houghton dates the sonnet February 1818.'
  ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

1.jk - The Gadfly, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  (stanza 10): The reference is probably to the hero of Scott's novel The Antiquary, properly the Honourable William Geraldin, heir of the Earl of Glenallan, but known throughout the book as Mr. Lovel.
  (stanza 12): Perhaps the reference is to Psalm cix, verse 164, "Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgements;" but there is certainly no intentional disrespect to David, the word 'chouse' being the exclusive property of the pious scold.'

1.kbr - I Talk To My Inner Lover, And I Say, Why Such Rush?, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
  birds and animals and The Ants
  perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you

1.lovecraft - Ex Oblivione, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Last night I swallowed the drug and floated dreamily into the golden valley and the shadowy groves; and when I came this time to The Antique wall, I saw that the small gate of bronze was ajar. From beyond came a glow that weirdly lit the giant twisted trees and the tops of the buried temples, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the glories of the land from whence I should never return.
  But as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of the drug and the dream pushed me through, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for in that new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and illimitable space. So, happier than I had ever dared hope to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.

1.pbs - Adonais - An elegy on the Death of John Keats, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  The Ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;
  Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier;

1.pbs - Charles The First, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  The Anti-masque, and serves as discords do
  In sweetest music. Who would love May flowers

1.pbs - Chorus from Hellas, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  the idolatry of China, India, The Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of
  America...."

1.pbs - Epipsychidion, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  For all The Antique and learnd imagery
  Has been erased, and in the place of it

1.pbs - Epipsychidion (Excerpt), #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  For all The Antique and learned imagery
  Has been eras'd, and in the place of it

1.pbs - Matilda Gathering Flowers, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Such space within The Antique wood, that I
  Perceived not where I entered any more,--

1.pbs - Peter Bell The Third, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  First, The Antenatal Peter,
  Wrapped in weeds of the same metre,

1.pbs - The Cenci - A Tragedy In Five Acts, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Were panic-stricken by The Antelope's eye,
  If she escape me.

1.pbs - The Revolt Of Islam - Canto I-XII, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
   The Antique sculptured roof, and many a tome
  Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become.
  --
   Regions which groan beneath The Antarctic stars,
     The green lands cradled in the roar
  --
   The Antelopes who flocked for food have spoken
    With happy sounds, and motions, that avail

1.pbs - The Witch Of Atlas, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  With The Antarctic constellations paven,
   Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake
  --
   Outspeeds The Antelopes which speediest are,
  In her light boat; and many quips and cranks

1.poe - The Coliseum, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Type of The Antique Rome! Rich reliquary
     Of lofty contemplation left to Time

1.rb - Caliban upon Setebos or, Natural Theology in the Island, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
   But will not eat The Ants; The Ants themselves
   That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks

1.rb - Fra Lippo Lippi, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
   Scrawled them within The Antiphonary's marge,
   Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,

1.rb - Sordello - Book the First, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Striving to name afresh The Antique bliss,
  Instead of saying, neither less nor more,

1.rb - Sordello - Book the Fourth, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Novel in The Anticipated sight
  Of all these livers upon all delight?

1.rb - Women And Roses, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  You, great shapes of The Antique time!
  How shall I fix you, fire you, freeze you,

1.rt - Fireflies, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
  through The Antagonism of clouds.
  My heart to-day smiles at its past night of tears

1.rwe - The Titmouse, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  To find The Antidote of fear,
  Now hear thee say in Roman key,

1.tm - A Practical Program for Monks, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   Original Language English 1 Each one shall sit at table with his own cup and spoon, and with his own repentance. Each one's own business shall be his most important affair, and provide his own remedies. They have neglected bowl and plate. Have you a wooden fork? Yes, each monk has a wooden fork as well as a potato. 2 Each one shall wipe away tears with his own saint, when three bells hold in store a hot afternoon. Each one is supposed to mind his own heart, with its conscience, night and morning. Another turn on the wheel: ho hum! And observe the Abbot! Time to go to bed in a straw blanket. 3 Plenty of bread for everyone between prayers and the psalter: will you recite another? Merci, and Miserere. Always mind both the clock and the Abbot until eternity. Miserere. 4 Details of the Rule are all liquid and solid. What canon was the first to announce regimentation before us? Mind the step on the way down! Yes, I dare say you are right, Father. I believe you; I believe you. I believe it is easier when they have ice water and even a lemon. Each one can sit at table with his own lemon, and mind his own conscience. 5 Can we agree that the part about the lemon is regular? In any case, it is better to have sheep than peacocks, and cows rather than a chained leopard says Modest, in one of his proverbs. The monastery, being owner of a communal rowboat, is The Antechamber of heaven. Surely that ought to be enough. 6 Each one can have some rain after Vespers on a hot afternoon, but ne quid nimis, or the purpose of the Order will be forgotten. We shall send you hyacinths and a sweet millennium. Everything the monastery provides is very pleasant to see and to sell for nothing. What is baked smells fine. There is a sign of God on every leaf that nobody sees in the garden. The fruit trees are there on purpose, even when no one is looking. Just put the apples in the basket. In Kentucky there is also room for a little cheese. Each one shall fold his own napkin, and neglect the others. 7 Rain is always very silent in the night, under such gentle cathedrals. Yes, I have taken care of the lamp, Miserere. Have you a patron saint, and an angel? Thank you. Even though the nights are never dangerous, I have one of everything. [1499.jpg] -- from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton <
1.wby - From The Antigone, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
  object:1.wby - From The Antigone
  author class:William Butler Yeats

1.whitman - As A Strong Bird On Pinious Free, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   With thee Time voyages in trustThe Antecedent nations sink or swim
      with thee;

1.whitman - Passage To India, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Our modern wonders, (The Antique ponderous Seven outvied,)
   In the Old World, the east, the Suez canal,

1.whitman - Prayer Of Columbus, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  fancy. See, The Antillean Island, with its florid skies and rich foliage
  and scenery, the waves beating the solitary sands, and the hulls of the

1.whitman - Salut Au Monde, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
      The Antelope, and the burrowing wolf.
  I see the high-lands of Abyssinia;

1.whitman - Song of Myself, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  I find one side a balance and The Antipodal side a balance,
  Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,
  --
  Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of The Antique wars,
  Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,

1.whitman - Song Of Myself- XLI, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of The Antique wars,
  Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,

1.whitman - Song Of Myself- XXII, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  I find one side a balance and The Antipodal side a balance,
  Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,

1.whitman - Song Of The Broad-Axe, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  The Antique European warrior with his axe in combat,
  The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,

1.whitman - Starting From Paumanok, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  In the name of These States, shall I scorn The Antique?
  Why These are the children of The Antique, to justify it.
  Dead poets, philosophs, priests,

1.whitman - The Sleepers, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  The Antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark,
  I swear they are averaged nowone is no better than the other,

1.whitman - Washingtons Monument, February, 1885, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  (Greets The Antique the hero new? tis but the samethe heir
  legitimate, continued ever,

1.ww - Book Second [School-Time Continued], #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  The Druids worshipped, or The Antique walls
  Of that large abbey, where within the Vale

1.ww - Book Seventh [Residence in London], #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  The Antics striving to outstrip each other,
  Were all received, the least of them not lost,

1.ww - Book Tenth {Residence in France continued], #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Had seen The Anticipated quarry turned
  Into avengers, from whose wrath they fled

1.ww - Book Third [Residence at Cambridge], #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  The Antechapel where the statue stood          
  Of Newton with his prism and silent face,

1.ww - Composed Near Calais, On The Road Leading To Ardres, August 7, 1802, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  From hour to hour The Antiquated Earth
  Beat like the heart of Man: songs, garlands, mirth,

1.ww - The Excursion- II- Book First- The Wanderer, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  In The Antique market-village where was passed
  My school-time, an apartment he had owned,

1.ww - The Excursion- IV- Book Third- Despondency, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  The Antiquarian humour, and am pleased
  To skim along the surfaces of things,

1.ww - The Fary Chasm, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  No fiction was it of The Antique age:
  A sky-blue stone, within this sunless cleft,

2.01 - On the Concept of the Archetype, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  The Antithesis is: we accept as valid anything that comes from
  inside and cannot be verified. The hopelessness of this position

2.01 - The Road of Trials, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  tively, together represent, according to The Antique manner of
  symbolization, the one goddess in two aspects; and their con

2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If we admit the Divine Being, the supreme Person and AllPerson as the Ishwara, a difficulty arises in understanding his rule or government of world-existence, because we immediately transfer to him our mental conception of a human ruler; we picture him as acting by the mind and mental will in an omnipotent arbitrary fashion upon a world on which he imposes his mental conceptions as laws, and we conceive of his will as a free caprice of his personality. But there is no need for the Divine Being to act by an arbitrary will or idea as an omnipotent yet ignorant human being - if such an omnipotence were possible - might do: for he is not limited by mind; he has an all-consciousness in which he is aware of the truth of all things and aware of his own all-wisdom working them out according to the truth that is in them, their significance, their possibility or necessity, the imperative selfness of their nature. The Divine is free and not bound by laws of any making, but still he acts by laws and processes because they are the expression of the truth of things, - not their mechanical, mathematical or other outward truth alone, but the spiritual reality of what they are, what they have become and have yet to become, what they have it within themselves to realise. He is himself present in the working, but he also exceeds and can overrule it; for on one side Nature works according to her limited complex of formulas and is informed and supported in their execution by the Divine Presence, but on the other side there is an overseeing, a higher working and determination, even an intervention, free but not arbitrary, often appearing to us magical and miraculous because it proceeds and acts upon Nature from a divine Supernature: Nature here is a limited expression of that Supernature and open to intervention or mutation by its light, its force, its influence. The mechanical, mathematical, automatic law of things is a fact, but within it there is a spiritual law of consciousness at work which gives to the mechanical steps of Nature's forces an inner turn and value, a significant rightness and a secretly conscious necessity, and above it there is a spiritual freedom that knows and acts in the supreme and universal truth of the Spirit. Our view of the divine government of the world or of the secret of its action is either incurably anthropomorphic or else incurably mechanical; both The Anthropomorphism and mechanism have their elements of truth, but they are only a side, an aspect, and the real truth is that the world is governed by the One in all and over all who is infinite in his consciousness and it is according to the law and logic of an infinite consciousness that we ought to understand the significance and building and movement of the universe.
  If we regard this aspect of the one Reality and put it in close connection with the other aspects, we can get a complete view of the relation between the eternal Self-Existence and the dynamics of the Consciousness-Force by which it manifests the universe.

2.02 - THE EXPANSION OF LIFE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  remains painfully noticeable to the end. The Antinomy only
  clears up with the appearance of mind where it attains its paroxysm
  --
  and The Antilopidae to say nothing of other less vigorous stems
  which are nevertheless as differentiated and as interesting to the
  --
  of structure in these four appendices ? In The Anterior pair, the
  single humerus, then the two bones of the forearm and the five
  --
  feather, and beak ; by The Antelopes of every coat, carriage, and
  diadem. And so on, and so on. And for each word, which brings

2.02 - THE SCINTILLA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [50] In Khunrath113 the scintilla is the same as the elixir: Now the elixir is well and truly called a shining splendour, or perfect scintilla of him who alone is the Mighty and Strong. . . . It is the true Aqua Permanens, eternally living.114 The radical moisture is animated . . . by a fiery spark of the World-Soul, for the spirit of the Lord filleth the whole world.115 He also speaks of a plurality of sparks: There are . . . fiery sparks of the World-Soul, that is of the light of nature, dispersed or scattered at Gods comm and in and through the fabric of the great world into all fruits of the elements everywhere.116 The scintilla is associated with the doctrine of The Anthropos: The Son of the Great World . . . is filled, animated and impregnated . . . with a fiery spark of Ruach Elohim, the spirit, breath, wind or blowing of the triune God, from . . . the Body, Spirit, and Soul of the World, or . . . Sulphur and Salt, Mercury and the universal fiery spark of the light of nature.117 The fiery sparks of the World-Soul were already in the chaos, the prima materia, at the beginning of the world.118 Khunrath rises to Gnostic heights when he exclaims: And our Catholick Mercury, by virtue of his universal fiery spark of the light of nature, is beyond doubt Proteus, the sea god of the ancient pagan sages, who hath the key to the sea and . . . power over all things: son of Oceanos and Tethys.119 Many centuries lie between Monomos and Khunrath. The teachings of Monomos were completely unknown in the Middle Ages,120 and yet Khunrath hit upon very similar thoughts which can hardly be ascribed to tradition.

2.03 - DEMETER, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  After all The Ants and termites succeed in fitting out their warriors
  and their workers with an exterior suited to their instincts.
  --
  prime towards the end of the Eocene age. As for The Anthro-
  poids, we find them in Africa from the Oligocene onwards.

2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  Self pure, calm and eternal, and as The Antaryamin or Watcher
  within, the Knower with all thought, action and existence for
  --
  a par with that of the beehive and The Ant-hill.
  The tamasic state of society reaches its highest development

2.03 - THE ENIGMA OF BOLOGNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [89] If we are not, as Malvasius was, convinced of The Antiquity of the Aelia inscription, we must look round in the medieval literature for possible sources or at least analogies. Here the motif of the triple prediction, or triple cause, of death might put us on the right trail.235 This motif occurs in the Vita Merlini in the old French romance Merlin, as well as in its later imitations in the Spanish and English literature of the fifteenth century. But the most important item, it seems to me, is the so-called Epigram of the Hermaphrodite, attri buted to Mathieu de Vendme (ca. 1150):
  When my pregnant mother bore me in her womb,

2.04 - The Secret of Secrets, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Arjuna, the divine Teacher sets out by removing the source of two remaining difficulties, The Antinomy between the impersonal self and the human personality and The Antinomy between the self and Nature. While these two antinomies last, the Godhead in Nature and man remains obscure, irrational and unbelievable.
  Nature has been represented as the mechanical bondage of the gunas, the soul as the egoistic being subject to that bondage.

2.05 - Apotheosis, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  the Bo Tree (supra, pp. 31-32) The Antagonist of the Future
  Buddha was Kama-Mara, literally "DesireHostility," or "Love

2.05 - The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But the subconscious is not our sole dream-builder. The subconscious in us is the extreme border of our secret inner existence where it meets the Inconscient, it is a degree of our being in which the Inconscient struggles into a half consciousness; the surface physical consciousness also, when it sinks back from the waking level and retrogresses towards the Inconscient, retires into this intermediate subconscience. Or, from another view-point, this nether part of us may be described as The Antechamber of the
  Inconscient through which its formations rise into our waking or our subliminal being. When we sleep and the surface physical part of us, which is in its first origin here an output from the

2.05 - VISIT TO THE SINTHI BRAMO SAMAJ, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "What are you saying? Do you mean to say that the moon and a glowworm are the same, though both give light? Iswar Vidysgar asked me the same question. He said, 'Is it a fact, sir, that God gives more power to one and less to another?' 'God', I said, 'exists in every being as the All pervading Spirit. He is in The Ant as well as in me.
  But there are different manifestations of His Power in different beings. If all are the same, then why have we come here to see you, attracted by your renown? Have you grown a pair of horns? Oh, no! It is not that. You have compassion; you have scholarship; there is a greater degree of these virtues in you than in others. That is the reason you are so well known.' Don't you see that there are men who, single-handed, can defeat a hundred persons? Again, one man takes to his heels in fear of another; you see such a person, too. If there are not different manifestations of power in different beings, then why did people respect Keshab Sen so much?

2.09 - Memory, Ego and Self-Experience, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Time and Space and as the result a constant modification of the mental personality which is the form of our superficial or apparent self. All this change of circumstance is summed up in philosophical language as causality; for in this stream of the cosmic movement The Antecedent state seems to be the cause of a subsequent state, or else this subsequent state seems to be the
  532

2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes. It demands a mental faith which is The Anticipation of the knowledge that is coming. Vital faith anticipates the effectuation that is coming. Faith in the physical anticipates what is going to be realised.
   Disciple: Is there a difference between effectuation and realisation?

2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  object:2.0 - The AntICHRIST
  class:chapter
  --
  The AntICHRIST
  An Attempted Criticism of Christianity
  --
  psychological exposition of the idea of The Antithesis noble and
  _resentment-morality,_ the latter having arisen out of an attitude

2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  - Unless indeed he turned aside from his destiny, became a two-legged termite content with a perfectly arranged or sufficiently comfortable material order. He would [ . . . . . . ] exist, deteriorate or become stable like The Ant or the dung-beetle or after attaining complete efficiency, disappear like the sloth, the mammoth, the pterodactyl or the dinosaur. His innate reason for existence would have ceased and with it his necessity for being.
  Man and Superman

2.12 - The Way and the Bhakta, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   and the limited action which is the knot of the Ignorance. He can act in the power of the Light, no longer in twilight or darkness, and a divine sanction upholds every step of his conduct. The difficulty which had been raised by The Antinomy between the freedom of the Spirit and the bondage of the soul in Nature, has been solved by a luminous reconciliation of Spirit with Nature.
  That antinomy exists for the mind in the ignorance; it ceases to exist for the spirit in its knowledge.

2.13 - On Psychology, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Idon't admit that. Even dogs have some sort of 'patriotism'. What man has done is that he has woven a lot of things round all the animal impulses of nature. Ordinarily, what men call patriotism is nothing more than the instinct of the herd. The bees and The Ants are also patriotic, they fight for preserving the herd and there also the individuals sacrifice their lives in order that the community may live.
   Disciple: Only, they do it without delivering lectures! (Laughter)

2.13 - THE MASTER AT THE HOUSES OF BALARM AND GIRISH, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "Let me give an illustration. A natmandir has pillars inside and outside. An antaranga is like the inside pillars. Those who always live near the guru are The Antarangas.
  (To Mahimacharan) "The Jnni wants neither a form of God nor His Incarnation. While wandering in the forest, Ramachandra saw a number of rishis. They welcomed Him to their rama with great love and said to Him: 'O Rma, today our life is blessed because we have seen You. But we know You as the son of Daaratha. Bharadvaja and other sages call You a Divine Incarnation; but that is not our view. We meditate on the Indivisible Satchidananda.' Rma was pleased with them and smiled.

2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: We read in the papers about the conversion of John Middleton Murry to theism. It was Hitler's statement after the purge that he "embodies Justice and Law", that he dispenses with "trials", which made Murry consider him as The Anti-Christ. It seems Gandhian non-violence has also appealed to Hitler. He wants to become a village pastor and stop the flow of villagers to the cities. Gandhi has written about Hitler's regime that the sufferings of Bishop Niemoller are not in vain. He has covered himself with glory. Hitler's heart may be harder than stone, but non-violence has power to generate heat that can melt the stoniest heart. What do you think of that?
   Sri Aurobindo: I am afraid, it would require quite a furnace! (Laughter) Gandhi has mainly to deal with Englishmen and the English want to have their conscience at ease. Besides, the Englishman wants to satisfy his self-esteem and wants world-esteem. But if Gandhi had to deal with the Russian Nihilists not the Bolsheviks or the German Nazis then they would have long ago put him out of their way.

2.2.01 - The Outer Being and the Inner Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Inner Being, The Antaratma and the Atman
  The word Antaratma is very vaguely used like the word soul

2.2.02 - Consciousness and the Inconscient, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  And again in this reading of the universe, more baffling than any unbelievable belief - credo quia incredibile, - with which ever dogmatic theology or mystic philosophy has challenged us, man loses all his cosmic value. An infinitesimal little creature on a tiny speck of matter lost amidst a whirling multitude of stupendous universes most or all of them perhaps vacant of life and thought and made for no other end but simply to whirl, he is (justifying Scripture) even as the worm is - only an edition de luxe, with copious developments and commentaries, of the same laborious but useless text, the same minute, careful, well-arranged, painstaking but insignificant script that we see already in The Ant and the termite. Individual man lasts for a few years which are in the aimless vastness of the universe of no more matter than the few days or weeks or months of the insect. The race indeed has endured for millions of years and may endure for some centuries, some thousands, myriads or millions of years longer; but what are these millions in the incalculable aeons of the cosmos? The termite perhaps was before man and may be there when he has
  Consciousness and the Inconscient

2.2.03 - The Psychic Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Antaratman is the soul, the portion of the Divine that is at the inmost basis of the evolving individual and supports the mind and life and body which are the instrumental parts of nature through which it tries to grow from the material Inconscience towards the divine Light and Immortality which are its proper being. The limitations of its instruments impose upon it an acceptance of the lower movements and a compromise between soul and nature which retard this movement even while it gets its means of advance from that interchange. The psychic being is the soul-form or soul-personality developing through this evolution and passing from life to life till all is ready for the higher evolution beyond the Ignorance.
  The psychic being is the Soul, the Purusha in the secret heart

2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  (To Dr. Sarkar) "There are three kinds of devotees: superior, mediocre, and inferior. The inferior devotee says, 'God is out there.' According to him God is different from His creation. The mediocre devotee says: 'God is The Antaryami, the Inner Guide. God dwells in everyone's heart. The mediocre devotee sees God in the heart. But the superior devotee sees that God alone has become everything; He alone has become the twenty-four cosmic principles. He finds that everything, above and below, is filled with God.
  "Read the Git, the Bhagavata, and the Vednta, and you will understand all this. Is not God in His creation?"
  --
  MASTER (smiling): "This world is a mixture of sand and sugar. Like The Ant, one should discard the sand and eat the sugar. He who can eat the sugar is clever indeed. Build a quiet place for thinking of God-a place for your meditation. Have it ready. I shall visit it."
  SHYAM: "Sir, is there such a thing as reincarnation? Shall we be born again?"

2.27 - The Gnostic Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In all spiritual living the inner life is the thing of first importance; the spiritual man lives always within, and in a world of the Ignorance that refuses to change he has to be in a certain sense separate from it and to guard his inner life against the intrusion and influence of the darker forces of the Ignorance: he is out of the world even when he is within it; if he acts upon it, it is from the fortress of his inner spiritual being where in the inmost sanctuary he is one with the Supreme Existence or the soul and God are alone together. The gnostic life will be an inner life in which The Antinomy of the inner and the outer, the self and the world will have been cured and exceeded. The gnostic being will have indeed an inmost existence in which he is alone with God, one with the Eternal, self-plunged into the depths of the Infinite, in communion with its heights and its luminous abysses of secrecy; nothing will be able to disturb or to invade these depths or bring him down from the summits, neither the world's contents nor his action nor all that is around him. This is the transcendence aspect of the spiritual life and it is necessary for the freedom of the spirit; for otherwise the identity in Nature with the world would be a binding limitation and not a free identity. But at the same time God-love and the delight of God will be the heart's expression of that inner communion and oneness, and that delight and love will expand itself to embrace all existence. The peace of God within will be extended in the gnostic experience of the universe into a universal calm of equality not merely passive but dynamic, a calm of freedom in oneness dominating all that meets it, tranquillising all that enters into it, imposing its law of peace on the supramental being's relations with the world in which he is living. Into all his acts the inner oneness, the inner communion will attend him and enter into his relations with others, who will not be to him others but selves of himself in the one existence, his own universal existence. It is this poise and freedom in the spirit that will enable him to take all life into himself while still remaining the spiritual self and to embrace even the world of the Ignorance without himself entering into the Ignorance.
  For his experience of cosmic existence will be, by its form of nature and by an individualised centration, that of one living in the universe but, at the same time, by self-diffusion and extension in oneness, that of one who carries the universe and all its beings within him. This extended state of being will not only be an extension in oneness of self or an extension in conceptive idea and vision, but an extension of oneness in heart, in sense, in a concrete physical consciousness. He will have the cosmic consciousness, sense, feeling, by which all objective life will become part of his subjective existence and by which he will realise, perceive, feel, see, hear the Divine in all forms; all The Gnostic Being forms and movements will be realised, sensed, seen, heard, felt as if taking place within his own vast self of being. The world will be connected not only with his outer but with his inner life. He will not meet the world only in its external form by an external contact; he will be inwardly in contact with the inner self of things and beings: he will meet consciously their inner as well as their outer reactions; he will be aware of that within them of which they themselves will not be aware, act upon all with an inner comprehension, encounter all with a perfect sympathy and sense of oneness but also an independence which is not overmastered by any contact. His action on the world will be largely an inner action by the power of the spirit, by the spiritual-supramental idea-force formulating itself in the world, by the secret unspoken word, by the power of the heart, by the dynamic life-force, by the enveloping and penetrating power of the self one with all things; the outer expressed and visible action will be only a fringe, a last projection of this vaster single total of activity.

2 - Other Hymns to Agni, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  21. What is eaten by The Ant, what the white ant overruns, let
  all that be to thee as if thy food of light.31

3.01 - THE BIRTH OF THOUGHT, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  anatomically from The Anthropoids that the modern classifications
  made by zoologists return to the position of Linnaeus and include
  --
  When The Anthropoid, so to speak, had been brought ' mentally '
  to boiling point some further calories were added. Or, when the
  --
  Is it possible to deny that in the fan of The Anthropoids he isolated
  himself in this subject to the laws of all animate matter as a
  --
  W. K. Gregory, regard it as a branching off from The Anthropoid
  verticil as late as the Pliocene age ?

3.02 - King and Queen, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  knowledge of the Gnostic doctrine of The Anthropos, I should be inclined
  to think that the alchemists were keeping up a secret tradition, although the
  --
  The revelation of The Anthropos is associated with no ordinary
  religious emotion; it signifies much the same thing as the vision of Christ
  --
  expression of an endopsychic antithesis. The Antithesis can be formulated
  as the masculine ego versus the feminine other, i.e., conscious versus

3.02 - SOL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [117] Generally Sol is regarded as the masculine and active half of Mercurius, a supraordinate concept whose psychology I have discussed in a separate study.34 Since, in his alchemical form, Mercurius does not exist in reality, he must be an unconscious projection, and because he is an absolutely fundamental concept in alchemy he must signify the unconscious itself. He is by his very nature the unconscious, where nothing can be differentiated; but, as a spiritus vegetativus (living spirit), he is an active principle and so must always appear in reality in differentiated form. He is therefore fittingly called duplex, both active and passive. The ascending, active part of him is called Sol, and it is only through this that the passive part can be perceived. The passive part therefore bears the name of Luna, because she borrows her light from the sun.35 Mercurius demonstrably corresponds to the cosmic Nous of the classical philosophers. The human mind is a derivative of this and so, likewise, is the diurnal life of the psyche, which we call consciousness.36 Consciousness requires as its necessary counterpart a dark, latent, non-manifest side, the unconscious, whose presence can be known only by the light of consciousness.37 Just as the day-star rises out of the nocturnal sea, so, ontogenetically and phylogenetically, consciousness is born of unconsciousness and sinks back every night to this primal condition. This duality of our psychic life is the prototype and archetype of the Sol-Luna symbolism. So much did the alchemist sense the duality of his unconscious assumptions that, in the face of all astronomical evidence, he equipped the sun with a shadow: The sun and its shadow bring the work to perfection.38 Michael Maier, from whom this saying is taken, avoids the onus of explanation by substituting the shadow of the earth for the shadow of the sun in the forty-fifth discourse of his Scrutinium. Evidently he could not wholly shut his eyes to astronomical reality. But then he cites the classical saying of Hermes: Son, extract from the ray its shadow,39 thus giving us clearly to understand that the shadow is contained in the suns rays and hence could be extracted from them (whatever that might mean). Closely related to this saying is the alchemical idea of a black sun, often mentioned in the literature.40 This notion is supported by the self-evident fact that without light there is no shadow, so that, in a sense, the shadow too is emitted by the sun. For this physics requires a dark object interposed between the sun and the observer, a condition that does not apply to the alchemical Sol, since occasionally it appears as black itself. It contains both light and darkness. For what, in the end, asks Maier, is this sun without a shadow? The same as a bell without a clapper. While Sol is the most precious thing, its shadow is res vilissima or quid vilius alga (more worthless than seaweed). The Antinomian thinking of alchemy counters every position with a negation and vice versa. Outwardly they are bodily things, but inwardly they are spiritual, says Senior.41 This view is true of all alchemical qualities, and each thing bears in itself its opposite.42
  [118] To the alchemical way of thinking the shadow is no mere privatio lucis; just as the bell and its clapper are of a tangible substantiality, so too are light and shadow. Only thus can the saying of Hermes be understood. In its entirety it runs: Son, extract from the ray its shadow, and the corruption that arises from the mists which gather about it, befoul it and veil its light; for it is consumed by necessity and by its redness.43 Here the shadow is thought of quite concretely; it is a mist that is capable not only of obscuring the sun but of befouling it (coinquinarea strong expression). The redness (rubedo) of the suns light is a reference to the red sulphur in it, the active burning principle, destructive in its effects. In man the natural sulphur, Dorn says, is identical with an elemental fire which is the cause of corruption, and this fire is enkindled by an invisible sun unknown to many, that is, the sun of the Philosophers. The natural sulphur tends to revert to its first nature, so that the body becomes sulphurous and fitted to receive the fire that corrupts man back to his first essence.44 The sun is evidently an instrument in the physiological and psychological drama of return to the prima materia, the death that must be undergone if man is to get back to the original condition of the simple elements and attain the incorrupt nature of the pre-worldly paradise. For Dorn this process was spiritual and moral as well as physical.

3.02 - THE DEPLOYMENT OF THE NOOSPHERE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  features so reminiscent of The Anthropoids, the prc-hominids
  were psychologically much nearer to us and thus phylctically
  --
  globe. No less is The Anthropologist bewildered when he discovers,
  superimposed upon each other, hardly separated in the caves

3.02 - The Soul in the Soul World after Death, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
   desires which have remained from physical life furnish the points of attack. The sympathy of such souls extends only to what can nourish their selfish natures; it is greatly exceeded by The Antipathy which floods everything else. Now the desires aim at physical enjoyments which cannot be satisfied in the soul world. The craving is intensified to its highest degree by this impossibility of satisfaction. But at the same time owing to this impossibility it is forced to die out gradually. The burning lusts gradually exhaust themselves, and the soul has learned by experience that the only means of preventing the suffering that must come from such longings lies in killing them out. During the physical life satisfaction is constantly being repeated. By this means the pain of the burning lusts is covered over by a kind of illusion. After death, in the "fire cleansing," the pain comes into evidence quite unveiled. The most fearful sufferings are laid bare. A dark, gloomy state is it in which the soul thus finds itself. Of course only those persons whose desires are directed during physical life to the coarsest things can fall into this condition. Natures
   p. 121

3.03 - SULPHUR, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [152] The causa efficiens et finalis of this lack of freedom lies in the unconscious and forms that part of the personality which still has to be added to the conscious man in order to make him whole. At first sight it is but an insignificant fragmenta lapis exilis, in via eiectus, and often inconvenient and repellent because it stands for something that demonstrates quite plainly our secret inferiority. This aspect is responsible for our resistance to psychology in general and to the unconscious in particular. But together with this fragment, which could round out our consciousness into a whole, there is in the unconscious an already existing wholeness, the homo totus of the Western and the Chn-yn (true man) of Chinese alchemy, the round primordial being who represents the greater man within, The Anthropos, who is akin to God. This inner man is of necessity partly unconscious, because consciousness is only part of a man and cannot comprehend the whole. But the whole man is always present, for the fragmentation of the phenomenon Man is nothing but an effect of consciousness, which consists only of supraliminal ideas. No psychic content can become conscious unless it possesses a certain energy-charge. If this falls, the content sinks below the threshold and becomes unconscious. The possible contents of consciousness are then sorted out, as the energy-charge separates those capable of becoming conscious from those that are not. This separation gives rise on the one hand to consciousness, whose symbol is the sun, and on the other hand to the shadow, corresponding to the umbra solis.
  [153] Compulsion, therefore, has two sources: the shadow and The Anthropos. This is sufficient to explain the paradoxical nature of sulphur: as the corrupter it has affinities with the devil, while on the other hand it appears as a parallel of Christ.

3.03 - THE MODERN EARTH, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  way to The Anticipations of a faith, do our perplexities legitimately
  and indeed inevitably begin. Tomorrow ? But who can guaran-

3.04 - LUNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [206] It is obviously a moment of supreme possibilities both for good and for evil. Usually, however, it is first one and then the other: the good man succumbs to evil, the sinner is converted to good, and that, to an uncritical eye, is the end of the matter. But those endowed with a finer moral sense or deeper insight cannot deny that this seeming one-after-another is in reality a happening of events side-by-side, and perhaps no one has realized this more clearly than St. Paul, who knew that he bore a thorn in the flesh and that the messenger of Satan smote him in the face lest he be exalted above measure.351 The one-after-another is a bearable prelude to the deeper knowledge of the side-by-side, for this is an incomparably more difficult problem. Again, the view that good and evil are spiritual forces outside us, and that man is caught in the conflict between them, is more bearable by far than the insight that the opposites are the ineradicable and indispensable preconditions of all psychic life, so much so that life itself is guilt. Even a life dedicated to God is still lived by an ego, which speaks of an ego and asserts an ego in Gods despite, which does not instantly merge itself with God but reserves for itself a freedom and a will which it sets up outside God and against him. How can it do this against the overwhelming might of God? Only through self-assertion, which is as sure of its free will as Lucifer. All distinction from God is separation, estrangement, a falling away. The Fall was inevitable even in paradise. Therefore Christ is without the stain of sin, because he stands for the whole of the Godhead and is not distinct from it by reason of his manhood.352 Man, however, is branded by the stain of separation from God. This state of things would be insupportable if there were nothing to set against evil but the law and the Decalogue, as in pre-Christian Judaismuntil the reformer and rabbi Jesus tried to introduce the more advanced and psychologically more correct view that not fidelity to the law but love and kindness are The Antithesis of evil. The wings of the dove temper the malignity of the air, the wickedness of the aerial spirit (the prince of the power of the airEphesians 2 : 2), and they alone have this effect.
  quod per poros facile ingreditur adolescens, concutit statim (terrae sedes), nubemque tetricam suscitat.
  --
  [211] The eye that hitherto saw only the darkness and danger of evil turns towards the circle of the moon, where the ethereal realm of the immortals begins, and the gloomy deep can be left to its own devices, for the spirit now moves it from within, convulses and transforms it. When consciousness draws near to the unconscious not only does it receive a devastating shock but something of its light penetrates into the darkness of the unconscious. The result is that the unconscious is no longer so remote and strange and terrifying, and this paves the way for an eventual union. Naturally the illumination of the unconscious does not mean that from now on the unconscious is less unconscious. Far from it. What happens is that its contents cross over into consciousness more easily than before. The light that shines at the end is the lux moderna of the alchemists, the new widening of consciousness, a further step in the realization of The Anthropos, and every one of these steps signifies a rebirth of the deity.
  [212] Herewith we end our contemplation of the text. The question now arises: Did the alchemists really have such thoughts and conceal them in their ornate metaphors? In other words, did Philaletha, the pseudonymous author of our text, have anything like the thoughts and ideas which I have put forward by way of interpretation? I regard this as out of the question, and yet I believe that these authors invariably said the best, most apposite, and clearest thing they could about the matter in hand. For our taste and our intellectual requirements this performance is, however, so unsatisfactory that we ourselves feel compelled to make a renewed attempt to say the same thing in still clearer words. It seems obvious to us that what we think about it was never thought by the alchemists, for if it had been it would doubtless have come out long ago. The philosophers took the greatest pains to unearth and reveal the secret of the stone, accusing the ancients of having written too copiously and too obscurely. If they, on their own admission, wrote typice, symbolice, metaphorice, this was the best they could do, and it is thanks to their labours that we are today in a position to say anything at all about the secrets of alchemy.

3.05 - SAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [285] Maiers Erythraean quadruped, the Ortus, corresponds to the four-wheeled chariot of Pseudo-Aristotle. The tetramorph, too, is a product of early medieval iconography,528 combining the four winged creatures of Ezekiels vision into a four-footed monster. The interpretation of the Ortus as the phoenix connects it with Christ, whose coming was prophesied by the Sibyl; for the phoenix is a well-known allegory of the resurrection of Christ and of the dead in general.529 It is the symbol of transformation par excellence. In view of this well-known interpretation of the phoenix and of the Erythraean oracle, it is amazing that any author at the beginning of the seventeenth century should dare to ask the sibyl, not to show him the way to Christ, but to tell him where he could find Mercurius! This passage offers another striking proof of the parallelism between Mercurius and Christ. Nor does the phoenix appear here as a Christ allegory but as the bearer and birthplace of the universal medicine, the remedy against wrath and pain. As the sibyl once foretold the coming of the Lord, so now she is to point the way to Mercurius. Christ is The Anthropos, the Primordial Man; Mercurius has the same meaning, and the Primordial Man stands for the round, original wholeness, long ago made captive by the powers of this world. In Christs case the victory and liberation of the Primordial Man were said to be complete, so that the labours of the alchemists would seem to be superfluous. We can only assume that the alchemists were of a different opinion, and that they sought their remedy against wrath and pain in order to complete what they considered to be Christs unfinished work of redemption.
  [286] It is characteristic of Maiers views that the idea of most importance is not Mercurius, who elsewhere appears strongly personified, but a substance brought by the phoenix, the bird of the spirit. It is this inorganic substance, and not a living being, which is used as a symbol of wholeness, or as a means towards wholeness, a desideratum apparently not fulfilled by the Christ-symbol.530 Involuntarily one asks oneself whether the intense personalization of the divine figures, as is customary in Christianity and quite particularly in Protestantism,531 is not in the end compensated, and to some extent mitigated, by a more objective point of view emanating from the unconscious.

3.06 - Death, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  adept, however, the hopeful side of things is shown in The Anticipated
  appearance of the hermaphrodite, though the psychological meaning of
  --
  philosophorum, a peculiar variation of the doctrine of The Anthropos.
  Procreation through incest is a royal or divine prerogative whose

3.07 - The Ascent of the Soul, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  and hermaphroditic First Man, The Anthropos. Originally he fell into the
  clutches of Physis, but now he rises again, freed from the prison of the

3.09 - The Return of the Soul, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  Rosarium says that The Antiqui Philosophi tam obscure quam confuse
  scripserunt, so that they only baffled the reader or put him off altogether.

31.03 - The Trinity of Bengal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Thus, in Rammohan is visible the primal stage of the consciousness of Bengal. It is he who may be called in this sense the psychic being or the causal being of modern Bengal. He alone before all others has brought forward the consciousness of Bengal to the free air and light of the modern era from The Antiquity, the mediaevalism of the past. He has initiated the country into the religion of the new era. In him sprouted the first seeds of all future creations. Each flash of consciousness, intense with a deep and pregnant meaning, that sprung in his intuition gradually blossomed into a lush of foliage and flowers and fruits. He brought a new birth, a new life and a new' creation everywhere in all the fields of the collective life of state, society, religion, culture, literature and language. He made the fundamental scheme, the blue-print for the future fulfilment of the country. It is he who laid down the first principles. The future architects have made a new and solid structure on these as their basis. Rammohan was indeed the soul in the heart. The Upanishad says that the nerves of the body-vessel are assembled in this heart-centre and from here they go out everywhere in all directions. Likewise in Rammohan too a new orientation in the mind and life of the nation, the modern consciousness in all its branches of culture has centred and from him all flow out into activities and enterprises of a new achievement. When the truth takes birth and grows considerably in the soul then only it can reveal itself in the mental plane. Reason and intelligence seize on h and apprehend it to know its meaning and endeavour to bring it to the fore of the critical perception of an enlightened intelligence.
   We have already said that the mental being (Manomaya Purusha) of the country awoke in Bankimchandra. It is he who gave a fluent expression, in thought and in an outer attractive language, to her hopes, aspirations and inner feelings. And it is in him that the first revelation of a new curiosity, inquisitiveness and sensitiveness is to be found. His was the inspiration and channel for an unceasing quest, a many-sided research through mental seeking and logic and argument which inundated the entire country like a flood. Many are the lines of investigation and imaginative display that bear testimony to the mind's manifold inquisitiveness. A deep longing, a luminous perception of the Soul developed and expanded in hundred branches. The mind's business is to manifest and apply a soul-intuition in as many fields and forms, in as many directions as possible and one form through which mind finds expression is literature.

3.10 - The New Birth, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  We have proved to our satisfaction that The Antithetical nature of the goal
  largely accounts for the monstrosity of the corresponding symbol. But this

3.14 - Of the Consecrations, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  of The Ant and the stars. Their light is no swifter than that of a spark.
  In every operation of Magick the link must be properly made. The

3.18 - Of Clairvoyance and the Body of Light, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  probability on the observed facts. Some force might interfere with The Anticipated
  movement.
  --
  beyond us as we are beyond The Ant; but for all we know, the
  knowledge of HRU is excelled by some mightier mind in the same

3.3.1 - Illness and Health, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is the final discovery that one makes that in this world everything depends upon consciousness and its movements, even the things that seem not to do so. In these matters of illness, vital trouble etc., that resolves itself into suggestion (hostile) and auto-suggestion. Cou, though he did not know these things, had the brilliant intuition of adopting the contrary method of curative auto-suggestion and giving it a thorough and systematic application. Here it does not succeed so well because The Anti-Cou spirit is very strong in many, the habit of entertaining hostile suggestions or this openness to them. Yet in Yoga also faith and right auto-suggestion are of great use until the point comes when no suggestion is necessary because the Truth-consciousness acts automatically and produces its natural results.
  ***

3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  At the right, our figure represents the multiversity's product: specialists. That is to say, mental parts which have not been designed for assembly and for which it has no assembly plant. You will, of course, note two exceptions: the products of the departments of ecology and paleontology, who are incipient generalists. They are incipient because they are unassemblable parts; nonetheless, the systems they study do encompass all their colleagues' subject matters. Yet they have no way of assembling them, no ef1'ective assembly plant or technique. And their specialized colleagues, for reasons shortly to appear, have no way of grasping the ecologists' (as also The Anthropologists', historians', and atomic physicists') basic differentness. So they see and treat these near generalists simply as somewhat special or peculiar colleagues, and go on as before.
  The profound difference between these two groups--between what Sonnemann calls legitimate and illegitimate specialisms--will shortly be diagrammed. "No wrong attaches to any specialization, any concentration on a particular subject matter, or realm of subject matters," he points out, "which, in setting its method of analytic attack, closely follows the given structure of the subject. If the subject happens to be a whole [system], such as the whole subject matter of entomology, or of its self articulated subdivisions [which is ecology], the wholeness of the subject implies at once the universality of good order constituent of nature throughout, and a distinct separateness from other subject matters of nature: a separateness which, in favoring the concentration of the scientists' focus upon it, legitimizes, at the same time, its specialistic restriction.

3.6.01 - Heraclitus, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The philosophy and thought of the Greeks is perhaps the most intellectually stimulating, the most fruitful of clarities the world has yet had. Indian philosophy was intuitive in its beginnings, stimulative rather to the deeper vision of things,-nothing more exalted and profound, more revelatory of the depths and the heights, more powerful to open unending vistas has ever been conceived than the divine and inspired Word, the mantra of Veda and Vedanta. When that philosophy became intellectual, precise, founded on the human reason, it became also rigidly logical, enamoured of fixity and system, desirous of a sort of geometry of thought. The ancient Greek mind had instead a kind of fluid precision, a flexibly inquiring logic; acuteness and the wide-open eye of the intellect were its leading characteristics and by this power in it it determined the whole character and field of subsequent European thinking. Nor is any Greek thinker more directly stimulating than the aphoristic philosopher Heraclitus; and yet he keeps and adds to this more modern intellectual stimulativeness something of The Antique psychic and intuitive vision and word of the older Mystics. The trend to rationalism is there, but not yet that fluid clarity of the reasoning mind which was the creation of the Sophists.
  Professor R. D. Ranade has recently published a small treatise on the philosophy of Heraclitus. From the paging of the treatise it seems to be an excerpt, but from what there is nothing to tell. It is perhaps too much to hope that it is from a series of essays on philosophers or a history of philosophy by this perfect writer and scholar. At any rate such a work from such a hand would be a priceless gain. For Professor Ranade possesses in a superlative degree the rare gift of easy and yet adequate exposition; but he has more than this, for he can give a fascinating interest to subjects like philology and philosophy which to the ordinary reader seem harsh, dry, difficult and repellent. He joins to a luminous clarity, lucidity and charm of expression an equal luminousness and just clarity of presentation and that perfect manner in both native to the Greek and French language and mind, but rare in the English tongue. In these seventeen pages he has presented the thought of the old enigmatic Ephesian with a clearness and sufficiency which leaves us charmed, enlightened and satisfied.

3.7.1.01 - Rebirth, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  After all, most of the things that we accept as truths are really no more than moral certitudes. We have all the profoundest unshakable faith that the earth revolves on its own axis, but as has been pointed out by a great French mathematician, the fact has never been proved; it is only a theory which accounts well for certain observable facts, no more. Who knows whether it may not be replaced in this or another century by a betteror a worse? All observed astronomical phenomena were admirably accounted for by theories of spheres and I know not what else, before Galileo came in with his And yet it moves, disturbing the infallibility of Popes and Bibles and the science and logic of the learned. One feels certain that admirable theories could be invented to account for the facts of gravitation if our intellects were not prejudiced and prepossessed by The Anterior demonstrations of Newton.1 This is the ever-perplexing and inherent plague of our reason; for it starts by knowing nothing and has to deal with infinite possibilities, and the possible explanations of any given set of facts, until we actually know what is behind them, are endless. In the end, we really know only what we observe and even that subject to a haunting question, for instance, that green is green and white is white, although it appears that colour is not colour but something else that creates the appearance of colour. Beyond observable fact we must be content with reasonable logical satisfaction, dominating probability and moral certitude,at least until we have the sense to observe that there are faculties in us higher than the sense-dependent reason and awaiting development by which we can arrive at greater certainties.
  We cannot really assert as against the sceptic any such dominant probability or any such certitude on behalf of the theory of rebirth. The external evidence yet available is in the last degree rudimentary. Pythagoras was one of the greatest of sages, but his assertion that he fought at Troy under the name of The Antenorid and was slain by the younger son of Atreus is an assertion only and his identification of the Trojan shield will convince no one who is not already convinced; the modern evidence is not as yet any more convincing than the proof of Pythagoras. In absence of external proof which to our matter-governed sensational intellects is alone conclusive, we have the argument of the reincarnationists that their theory accounts for all the facts better than any other yet advanced. The claim is just, but it does not create any kind of certitude. The theory of rebirth coupled with that of Karma gives us a simple, symmetrical, beautiful explanation of things; but so too the theory of the spheres gave us once a simple, symmetrical, beautiful explanation of the heavenly movements. Yet we have now got quite another explanation, much more complex, much more Gothic and shaky in its symmetry, an inexplicable order evolved out of chaotic infinities, which we accept2 as the truth of the matter. And yet, if we will only think, we shall perhaps see that even this is not the whole truth; there is much more behind we have not yet discovered. Therefore the simplicity, symmetry, beauty, satisfactoriness of the reincarnation theory is no warrant of its certitude.
  When we go into details, the uncertainty increases. Rebirth accounts, for example, for the phenomenon of genius, inborn faculty and so many other psychological mysteries. But then Science comes in with its all-sufficient explanation by heredity,though, like that of rebirth, all-sufficient only to those who already believe in it. Without doubt, the claims of heredity have been absurdly exaggerated. It has succeeded in accounting for much, not all, in our physical make-up, our temperament, our vital peculiarities. Its attempt to account for genius, inborn faculty and other psychological phenomena of a higher kind is a pretentious failure. But this may be because Science knows nothing at all that is fundamental about our psychology,no more than primitive astronomers knew of the constitution and law of the stars whose movements they yet observed with a sufficient accuracy. I do not think that even when Science knows more and better, it will be able to explain these things by heredity; but the scientist may well argue that he is only at the beginning of his researches, that the generalisation which has explained so much may well explain all, and that at any rate his hypothesis has had a better start in its equipment of provable facts than the theory of reincarnation.

3.7.1.11 - Rebirth and Karma, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  And on the side of Karma, if we give to that its integral and not a truncated meaning, we must admit rebirth for the sufficient field of its action. For Karma is not quite the same thing as a material or substantial law of cause and effect, The Antecedent and its mechanical consequence. That would perfectly admit of a Karma which could be carried on in time and the results come with certainty in their proper place, their just degree by a working out of the balance of forces, but need not in any way touch the human originator who might have passed away from the scene by the time the result of his acts got into manifestation. A mechanical Nature could well visit the sins of the fathers not on them, but on their fourth or their four-hundredth generation, as indeed this physicalNature does, and no objection of injustice or any other mental or moral objection could rise, for the only justice or reason of a mechanism is that it shall work according to the law of its structure and the fixed eventuality of its force in action. We cannot demand from it a mind or a moral equity or any kind of supraphysical responsibility. The universal energy grinds out inconsciently its effects and individuals are only fortuitous or subordinate means of its workings; the soul itself, if there is a soul, makes only a part of the mechanism of Nature, exists not for itself, but as a utility for her business. But Karma is more than a mechanical law of antecedent and consequence. Karma is action, there is a thing done and a doer and an active consequence; these three are the three joints, the three locks, the three sandhis of the connexus of Karma. And it is a complex mental, moral and physical working; for the law of it is not less true of the mental and moral than of the physical consequence of the act to the doer. The will and the idea are the driving force of the action, and the momentum does not come from some commotion in my chemical atoms or some working of ion and electron or some weird biological effervescence. Therefore the act and consequence must have some relation to the will and the idea and there must be a mental and moral consequence to the soul which has the will and idea. That, if we admit the individual as a real being, signifies a continuity of act and consequence to him and therefore rebirth for a field of this working. It is evident that in one life we do not and cannot labour out and exhaust all the values and powers of that life, but only carry on a past thread, weave out something in the present, prepare infinitely more for the future.
  This consequence of rebirth would not follow from the very nature of Karma if there were only an All-Soul of the universe. For then it would be that which is carrying on in myriads of forms its past, working out some present result, spinning yarn of karma for a future weft of consequence. It is the All-Soul which would be the originator, would upbear the force of the act, would receive and exhaust or again take up for farther uses the returning force of the consequence. Nothing essential would depend on its doing all these things through the same individual mask of its being. For the individual would only be a prolonged moment of the All-Soul, and what it originated in this moment of its being which I call myself, might very well produce its result on some other moment of the same being which from the point of view of my ego would be somebody quite different from and unconnected with myself. There would be no injustice, no unreason in such an apparently vicarious reaping of the fruit or suffering of the consequence; for what has a mask, though it be a living and suffering mask, to do with these things? And, in fact, in the nature of life in the material universe a working out of the result of the action of one in the lives of many others, an effect of the individuals action on the group or the whole is everywhere the law. What I sow in this hour, is reaped by my posterity for several generations and we can then call it the karma of the family. What the men of today as community or people resolve upon and execute, comes back with a blessing or a sword upon the future of their race when they themselves have passed away and are no longer there to rejoice or to suffer; and that we can speak of as the karma of the nation. Mankind as a whole too has a karma; what it wrought in its past, will shape its future destiny; individuals seem only to be temporary units of human thought, will, nature who act according to the compulsion of the soul in humanity and disappear; but the karma of the race which they have helped to form continues through the centuries, the millenniums, the cycles.

3.7.2.01 - The Foundation, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It may therefore serve a partial purpose but can be of little eventual advantage to try to cut the knot of the riddle by reducing to the law of one form of energy alone all the apparent tangle of the cosmic action. The universe is not solely an ethical proposition, a problem of The Antinomy of the good and the evil; the Spirit of the universe can in no way be imagined as a rigid moralist concerned only with making all things obey the law of moral good, or a stream of tendency towards righteousness attempting, hitherto with only a very poor success, to prevail and rule, or a stern Justicer rewarding and punishing creatures in a world that he has made or has suffered to be full of wickedness and suffering and evil. The universal Will has evidently many other and more supple modes than that, an infinity of interests, many other elements of its being to manifest, many lines to follow, many laws and purposes to pursue. The law of the world is not this alone that our good brings good to us and our evil brings evil, nor is its sufficient key the ethical-hedonistic rule that our moral good brings to us happiness and success and our moral evil brings to us sorrow and misfortune. There is a rule
  The Foundation

3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  gether = The Antariksha. sD-T
  sense of world. This sD-T is the world or seat of the waters and

4.02 - BEYOND THE COLLECTIVE - THE HYPER-PERSONAL, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  fetters. So we get the crystal instead of the cell ; The Ant-hill
  instead of brotherhood. Instead of the upsurge of consciousness
  --
  self up at The Antipodes of the All. In the opposite direction we
  conceive the ' ego ' to be diminishing and eliminating itself,

4.02 - Humanity in Progress, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  leading shoot, and The Anthropoids are the bud in
  which the shoot ends.

4.03 - Prayer to the Ever-greater Christ, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  of The Anthropoids
  Preliminary Remarks. The Launching Platform of Life:

4.04 - Conclusion, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  The Antique statue of a woman. A naked young girl with a
  wreath of flowers in her hair appears, riding on a white bull.
  --
  339 The Antique Mother-image is not exhausted with the figure
  of Demeter. It also expresses itself in Cybele-Artemis. The next

4.04 - THE REGENERATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [397] The cauda pavonis announces the end of the work, just as Iris, its synonym, is the messenger of God. The exquisite display of colours in the peacocks fan heralds the imminent synthesis of all qualities and elements, which are united in the rotundity of the philosophical stone. For seventeen hundred years, as I have shown in Psychology and Alchemy, the lapis was brought into more or less clear connection with the ancient idea of The Anthropos. In later centuries this relationship extended to Christ, who from time immemorial was this same Anthropos or Son of Man, appearing in the gospel of St. John as the cosmogonie Logos that existed before the world was: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. According to the teachings of the Basilidians, the God who is not cast down a certain seed which, like a grain of mustard-seed, contained the whole plant, or, like a peacocks egg, had in itself a varied multitude of colours.129 In this seed was a threefold sonship, consubstantial with the God who is not. In alchemy, the end of the work announced by the cauda pavonis was the birth of the filius regius. The display of colours in the Basilidian doctrine therefore occurred at the right place. Again one must ask: traditionor spontaneous generation?
  [398] The peacock is an attribute of Juno, and one of the cognomens of Iris is Junonia. Just as the Queen Mother or the mother of the gods grants renewal, so the peacock annually renews his plumage, and therefore has a relation to all the changes in nature. De Gubernatis says:
  --
  [405] Besides the green lion there was also, in the later Middle Ages, a red lion.157 Both were Mercurius.158 The fact that Artefius mentions a magic use of the lion (and of the snake) throws considerable light on our symbol: he is good for battle,159 and here we may recall the fighting lions and the fact that the king in the Allegoria Merlini began drinking the water just when he was venturing forth to war. We shall probably not be wrong if we assume that the king of beasts, known even in Hellenistic times as a transformation stage of Helios,160 represents the old king, The Antiquus dierum of the Cantilena, at a certain stage of renewal, and that perhaps in this way he acquired the singular title of Leo antiquus.161 At the same time he represents the king in his theriomorphic form, that is, as he appears in his unconscious state. The animal form emphasizes that the king is overpowered or overlaid by his animal side and consequently expresses himself only in animal reactions, which are nothing but emotions. Emotionality in the sense of uncontrollable affects is essentially bestial, for which reason people in this state can be approached only with the circumspection proper to the jungle,162 or else with the methods of the animal-trainer.
  [406] According to the statements of the alchemists the king changes into his animal attri bute, that is to say he returns to his animal nature, the psychic source of renewal. Wieland made use of this psychologem in his fairytale Der Stein der Weisen,163 in which the dissipated King Mark is changed into an ass, though of course the conscious model for this was the transformation of Lucius into a golden ass in Apuleius.164
  --
  [412] This region, if still seen as a spectral land beyond, appears to be a whole world in itself, a macrocosm. If, on the other hand, it is felt as psychic and inside, it seems like a microcosm of the smallest proportions, on a par with the race of dwarfs in the casket, described in Goethes poem The New Melusine, or like the interior of the cucurbita in which the alchemists beheld the creation of the world, the marriage of the royal pair, and the homunculus.178 Just as in alchemical philosophy The Anthroparion or homunculus corresponds, as the lapis, to The Anthropos, so the chymical weddings have their dogmatic parallels in the marriage of the Lamb, the union of sponsus and sponsa, and the hierosgamos of the mother of the gods and the son.
  [413] This apparent digression from our theme seemed to me necessary in order to give the reader some insight into the intricate and delicate nature of the lion-symbol, whose further implications we must now proceed to discuss.
  --
  [427] But why should such an unpalatable diet be prescribed for the queen? Obviously because the old king lacked something, on which account he grew senile: the dark, chthonic aspect of nature. And not only this but the sense that all creation was in the image of God, The Antique feeling for nature, which in the Middle Ages was considered a false track and an aberration. Dark and unfathomable as the earth is, its theriomorphic symbols do not have only a reductive meaning, but one that is prospective and spiritual. They are paradoxical, pointing upwards and downwards at the same time. If contents like these are integrated in the queen, it means that her consciousness is widened in both directions. This diet will naturally benefit the regeneration of the king by supplying what was lacking before. Contrary to appearances, this is not only the darkness of the animal sphere, but rather a spiritual nature or a natural spirit which even has its analogies with the mystery of faith, as the alchemists were never tired of emphasizing.
  [428] During her pregnancy, therefore, the queen undergoes something akin to a psycho therapeutic treatment, whereby her consciousness is enriched by a knowledge of the collective unconscious and, we may assume, by her inner participation in the conflict between her spiritual and chthonic nature. Often the law governing the progressive widening of consciousness makes the evaluation of the heights and depths into a moral task transcending the limits of convention. Failure to know what one is doing acts like guilt and must be paid for as deariy. The conflict may even turn out to be an advantage since, without it, there could be no reconciliation and no birth of a supraordinate third thing. The king could then be neither renewed nor reborn. The conflict is manifested in the long sickness of the queen.

4.05 - THE DARK SIDE OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [466] The seven stars are a reference to Rev. 1 : 16: And he had in his right hand seven stars. He who held them was like unto the Son of man, in agreement with the puellus regius in the Introitus. The king sinking in the sea is the arcane substance, which Maier calls The Antimony of the philosophers. 280 The arcane substance corresponds to the Christian dominant, which was originally alive and present in consciousness but then sank into the unconscious and must now be restored in renewed form. Antimony is associated with blackness: antimony trisulphide is a widely used Oriental hair-dye (kohl). On the other hand antimony pentasulphide, gold-sulphur (Sulphur auratum antimonii) is orange-red.
  [467] The sunken king of alchemy went on living as the metal king, the regulus of metallurgy. This is the name for the lumps of metal formed beneath the slag in melting and reducing ores. The term Sulphur auratum antimonii, like gold-sulphur, indicates the strong predominance of sulphur in combination with antimony. Sulphur, as we have seen, is the active substance of Sol and is foul-smelling: sulphur dioxide and sulphuretted hydrogen give one a good idea of the stink of hell. Sulphur is an attribute of Sol as Leo is of Rex. Leo, too, is ambiguous: on the one hand he is an allegory of the devil and on the other is connected with Venus. The Antimony compounds known to the alchemists (Sb2S5, Sb2S3) therefore contained a substance which clearly exemplified the nature of Rex and Leo, hence they spoke of the triumph of antimony.281
  [468] As I have shown in Psychology and Alchemy,282 the sunken king forms a parallel to Parable VII of Aurora Consurgens:282a Be turned to me with all your heart and do not cast me aside because I am black and swarthy, because the sun hath changed my colour and the waters have covered my face and the land hath been polluted and defiled in my works; for there was darkness over it, because I stick fast in the mire of the deep and my substance is not disclosed. Wherefore out of the depths have I cried, and from the abyss of the earth with my voice to all you that pass by the way. Attend and see me, if any shall find one like unto me, I will give into his hand the morning star.
  --
  The comparison of the god to a snake reminds us of his chthonic form in the underworld, just as the rejuvenated phoenix (falcon) first takes the form of a worm.328 As Christianity borrowed a good deal from the Egyptian religion it is not surprising that the allegory of the snake found its way into the world of Christian ideas (John 3 : 14) and was readily seized on by the alchemists.329 The dragon is an allegory of Christ as well as of The Antichrist.330 A remarkable parallel occurs in the anonymous treatise, De promissionibus (5th cent.).331 It concerns a version of the legend of St. Sylvester, according to which this saint imprisoned a dragon in the Tarpeian Rock and so rendered him harmless. The other version of this story is related by a certain monk who discovered that the alleged dragon, to whom offerings of virgins were made, was nothing but a mechanical device. St. Sylvester locked the dragon up with a chain, as in Rev. 20 : 1; but in the parallel story the artificial dragon brandished a sword in its mouth, like the Son of Man in Rev. 1 : 16.332

4.06 - Purification-the Lower Mentality, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Since we are the spirit enveloped in mind, a soul evolved here as a mental being in a living physical body, it must naturally be in the mind, The Antahkarana, that we must look for this desideratum. And in the mind it is evidently by the Buddhi, the intelligence and the will of the intelligence that the human being is intended to do whatever work is not done for him by the physical or nervous nature as in the plant and the animal. Pending the evolution of any higher supramental power the intelligent will must be our main force for effectuation and to purify It becomes a very primary necessity. Once our intelligence and will are well purified of all that limits them and gives them a wrong action or wrong direction, they can easily be perfected, can be made to respond to the suggestions of Truth, understand themselves and the rest of the being, see clearly and with a fine and scrupulous accuracy what they are doing and follow out the right way to do it without any hesitating or eager error or stumbling deviation. Eventually their response can be opened up to the perfect discernings, intuitions, inspirations, revelations of the supermind and proceed by a more and more luminous and even infallible action. But this purification cannot be effected without a preliminary clearing of its natural obstacles in the other lower parts of The Antahkarana, and the chief natural obstacle running through the whole action of the ahtahkarana, through the sense, the mental sensation, emotion, dynamic impulse, intelligence, will, is the intermiscence and the compelling claim of the psychic Prana. This then must be dealt with, its dominating intermiscence ruled out, its claim denied, itself quieted and prepared for purification.
  Each instrument has, it has been said, a proper and legitimate action and also a deformation or wrong principle of its proper action. The proper action of the psychic Prana is, pure possession and enjoyment, bhoga. To enjoy thought, will, action, dynamic impulse, result of action, emotion, sense, sensation, to enjoy too by their means objects, persons, life, the world, is the activity for which this Prana gives us a psycho-physical basis. A really perfect enjoyment of existence can only come when what we enjoy is not the world in itself or for itself, but God in the world, when it is not things, but the Ananda of the spirit in things that forms the real, essential object of our enjoying and things only as form and symbol of the spirit, waves of the ocean of Ananda. But this Ananda can only come at all when we can get at and reflect in our members the hidden spiritual being, and its fullness can only be had when we climb to the supramental ranges. Meanwhile there is a just and permissible, a quite legitimate human enjoyment of these things, which is, to speak in the language of Indian psychology, predominantly sattwic in its nature. It is an enlightened enjoyment principally by the perceptive, aesthetic and emotive mind, secondarily only by the sensational nervous and physical being, but all subject to the clear government of the Buddhi, to a right reason, a right will, a right reception of the life impacts, a right order, a right feeling of the truth, law, ideal sense, beauty, use of things. The mind gets the pure taste of enjoyment of them, rasa, and rejects whatever is perturbed, troubled and perverse. Into this acceptance of the clear and limpid rasa, the psychic Prana has to bring in the full sense of life and the occupying enjoyment by the whole being, bhoga, without which the acceptance and possession by the mind, rasagrahana, would not be concrete enough, would be too tenuous to satisfy altogether the embodied soul. This contri bution is its proper function.
  --
  To rid the Prana of desire and incidentally to reverse the ordinary poise of our nature and turn the vital being from a troublesomely dominant power into the obedient instrument of a free and unattached mind, is then the first step in purification. As this deformation of the psychical Prana is corrected, the purification of the rest of the intermediary parts of The Antahkarana is facilitated, and when that correction is completed, their purification too can be easily made absolute. These intermediary parts are the emotional mind, the receptive sensational mind and the active sensational mind or mind of dynamic impulse. They all hang together in a strongly knotted interaction. The deformation of the emotional mind hinges upon the duality of liking and disliking, raga-dvesa, emotional attraction and repulsion. All the complexity of our emotions and their tyranny over the soul arise from the habitual responses of the soul of desire in the emotions and sensations to these attractions and .repulsions. Love and hatred, hope and fear, grief and joy all have their founts in this one source. We like, love, welcome, hope for, joy in whatever our nature, the first habit of our being, or else a formed (often perverse) habit, the second nature of our being, presents to the mind as pleasant, priyam; we hate, dislike, fear, have repulsion from or grief of whatever it presents to us as unpleasant, apriyam. This habit of the emotional nature gets into the way of the intelligent will and makes it often a helpless slave of the emotional being or at least prevents it from exercising a free judgment and government of the nature. This deformation has to be corrected. By getting rid of desire in the psychic Prana and its intermiscence in the emotional mind, we facilitate the correction. For then attachment, which is the strong bond of the heart, falls away from the heart-strings; the involuntary habit of ragadvesa remains, but, not being made obstinate by attachment, it can be dealt with more easily by the will and the intelligence. The restless heart can be conquered and get rid of the habit of attraction and repulsion.
  But then if this is done, it may be thought, as with regard to desire, that this will be the death of the emotional being. It will certainly be so, if the deformation is eliminated but not replaced by the right action of the emotional mind; the mind will then pass into a neutral condition of blank indifference or into a luminous state of peaceful impartiality with no stir or wave of emotion. The former state is in no way desirable; the latter may be the perfection of a quietistic discipline, but in the integral perfection which does not reject love or shun various movement of delight, it can be no more than a stage which has to be overpassed, a preliminary passivity admitted as a first basis for a right activity. Attraction and repulsion, liking and disliking are a necessary mechanism for the normal man, they form a first principle of natural instinctive selection among the thousand flattering and formidable, helpful and dangerous impacts of the world around him. The Buddhi starts with this material to work on and tries to correct the natural and instinctive by a wiser reasoned and willed selection; for obviously the pleasant is not always the right thing, the object to be preferred and selected, nor the unpleasant the wrong thing, the object to be shunned and rejected; the pleasant and the good, preyas and sreyas, have to be distinguished, and right reason has to choose and not the caprice of emotion. But this it can do much better when the emotional suggestion is withdrawn and the heart rests in a luminous passivity. Then too the right activity of the heart can be brought to the surface; for we find then that behind this emotion-ridden soul of desire there was waiting all the while a soul of love and lucid joy and delight, a pure psyche, which was clouded over by the deformations of anger, fear, hatred, repulsion and could not embrace the world with an impartial love and joy. But the purified heart is rid of anger, rid of fear, rid of hatred, rid of every shrinking and repulsion: it has a universal love, it can receive with an untroubled sweetness and clarity the various delight which God gives it in the world. But it is not the lax slave of love arid delight; it does not desire, does not attempt to impose itself as the master of the actions. The selective process necessary to action is left principally to the Buddhi and, when the Buddhi has been overpassed, to the spirit in the supramental will, knowledge and Ananda.

4.06 - THE KING AS ANTHROPOS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [487] In this and my other writings I have constantly stressed the peculiar nature of the alchemists statements and need not recapitulate what I have said. I should only like to point out that the central idea of the filius philosophorum is based on a conception of The Anthropos in which the Man or the Son of Man does not coincide with the Christian, historical redeemer figure. The alchemical Anthropos comes closer to the Basilidian conception of him as reported by Hippolytus: For he [the Redeemer] . . . is in their view the inner spiritual man in the psychic . . . which is the Sonship that left the soul here not to die but to remain according to its nature, just as the first Sonship left behind on high the Holy Ghost, who is conterminous with him, in the appropriate place, clothing himself in his own soul. 342
  [488] The inner spiritual man bears a resemblance to Christ that is the unconscious premise for the statements about the filius regius.343 This idea contradicts the dogmatic view and therefore has every reason to be repressed and projected. At the same time it is the logical consequence of a spiritual situation in which the historical figure had long since disappeared from consciousness, while his spiritual presence was stressed all the more strongly in the form of the inner Christ or God who is born in the soul of man. The outward fact of the dogmatic Christ was answered from within by that inner primordial image which had produced a Purusha or a Gayomart long before the Christian era and made the assimilation of the Christian revelation possible. The ultimate fate of every dogma is that it gradually becomes soulless. Life wants to create new forms, and therefore, when a dogma loses its vitality, it must perforce activate the archetype that has always helped man to express the mystery of the soul. Note that I do not go so far as to say that the archetype actually produces the divine figure. If the psychologist were to assert that, he would have to possess a sure knowledge of the motives that underlie all historical development and be in a position to demonstrate this knowledge. But there is no question of that. I maintain only that the psychic archetype makes it possible for the divine figure to take form and become accessible to understanding. But the supremely important motive power which is needed for this, and which sets the archetypal possibilities in motion at a given historical moment, cannot be explained in terms of the archetype itself. Only experience can establish which archetype has become operative, but one can never predict that it must enter into manifestation. Who, for instance, could logically have foretold that the Jewish prophet Jesus would give the decisive answer to the spiritual situation in the age of Hellenistic syncretism, or that the slumbering image of The Anthropos would waken to world dominion?
  [489] The limitations of human knowledge which leave so many incomprehensible and wonderful things unexplained do not, however, exempt us from the task of trying to understand the revelations of the spirit that are embodied in dogma, otherwise there is a danger that the treasures of supreme knowledge which lie hidden in it will evaporate into nothing and become a bloodless phantom, an easy prey for all shallow rationalists. It would be a great step forward, in my opinion, if at least it were recognized how far the truth of dogma is rooted in the human psyche, which is not the work of human hands.
  [490] The inner spiritual man of the Gnostics is The Anthropos, the man created in the image of the Nous, the
   (true man).344 He corresponds to the chn-yn (true man) of Chinese alchemy. The chn-yn is the product of the opus. On the one hand he is the adept who is transformed by the work,345 on the other he is the homunculus or filius of Western alchemy, who also derives from the true man.346 The treatise of Wei Po-yang says:
  --
  [491] The true man expresses The Anthropos in the individual human being. Compared with the revelation of the Son of Man in Christ this seems like a retrograde step, for the historical uniqueness of the Incarnation was the great advance which gathered the scattered sheep about one shepherd. The Man in the individual would mean, it is feared, a scattering of the flock. This would indeed be a retrograde step, but it cannot be blamed on the true man; its cause is rather all those bad human qualities which have always threatened and hindered the work of civilization. (Often, indeed, the sheep and the shepherd are just about equally inept.) The true man has nothing to do with this. Above all he will destroy no valuable cultural form since he himself is the highest form of culture. Neither in the East nor in the West does he play the game of shepherd and sheep, because he has enough to do to be a shepherd to himself.
  [492] If the adept experiences his own self, the true man, in his work, then, as the passage from the Aquarium sapientum shows, he encounters the analogy of the true manChristin new and direct form, and he recognizes in the transformation in which he himself is involved a similarity to the Passion. It is not an imitation of Christ but its exact opposite: an assimilation of the Christ-image to his own self, which is the true man.349 It is no longer an effort, an intentional straining after imitation, but rather an involuntary experience of the reality represented by the sacred legend. This reality comes upon him in his work, just as the stigmata come to the saints without being consciously sought. They appear spontaneously. The Passion happens to the adept, not in its classic formotherwise he would be consciously performing spiritual exercises but in the form expressed by the alchemical myth. It is the arcane substance that suffers those physical and moral tortures; it is the king who dies or is killed, is dead and buried and on the third day rises again. And it is not the adept who suffers all this, rather it suffers in him, it is tortured, it passes through death and rises again. All this happens not to the alchemist himself but to the true man, who he feels is near him and in him and at the same time in the retort. The passion that vibrates in our text and in the Aurora is genuine, but would be totally incomprehensible if the lapis were nothing but a chemical substance. Nor does it originate in contemplation of Christs Passion; it is the real experience of a man who has got involved in the compensatory contents of the unconscious by investigating the unknown, seriously and to the point of self-sacrifice. He could not but see the likeness of his projected contents to the dogmatic images, and he might have been tempted to assume that his ideas were nothing else than the familiar religious conceptions, which he was using in order to explain the chemical procedure. But the texts show clearly that, on the contrary, a real experience of the opus had an increasing tendency to assimilate the dogma or to amplify itself with it. That is why the text says that Christ was compared and united with the stone. The alchemical Anthropos showed itself to be independent of any dogma.350
  [493] The alchemist experienced The Anthropos in a form that was imbued with new vitality, freshness and immediacy, and this is reflected in the enthusiastic tone of the texts. It is therefore understandable that every single detail of the primordial drama would be realized in quite a new sense. The nigredo not only brought decay, suffering, death, and the torments of hell visibly before the eyes of the alchemist, it also cast the shadow of its melancholy over his own solitary soul.351 In the blackness of a despair which was not his own, and of which he was merely the witness, he experienced how it turned into the worm and the poisonous dragon.352 From inner necessity the dragon destroyed itself (natura naturam vincit) and changed into the lion,353 and the adept, drawn involuntarily into the drama, then felt the need to cut off its paws354 (unless there were two lions who devoured one another). The dragon ate its own wings as the eagle did its feathers.355 These grotesque images reflect the conflict of opposites into which the researchers curiosity had led him. His work began with a katabasis, a journey to the underworld as Dante also experienced it,356 with the difference that the adepts soul was not only impressed by it but radically altered. Faust I is an example of this: the transformation of an earnest scholar, through his pact with the devil, into a worldly cavalier and crooked careerist. In the case of the fanciful Christian Rosencreutz the descent to Venus led only to his being slightly wounded in the hand by Cupids arrow. The texts, however, hint at more serious dangers. Olympiodorus says:357 Without great pains this work is not perfected; there will be struggles, violence, and war. And all the while the demon Ophiuchos358 instils negligence (
  ), impeding our intentions; everywhere he creeps about, both within and without, causing oversights, anxiety, and unexpected accidents, or else keeping us from the work by harassments (

4.07 - THE RELATION OF THE KING-SYMBOL TO CONSCIOUSNESS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [498] The apotheosis of the king, the renewed rising of the sun, means, on our hypothesis, that a new dominant of consciousness has been produced and that the psychic potential is reversed. Consciousness is no longer under the dominion of the unconscious, in which state the dominant is hidden in the darkness, but has now glimpsed and recognized a supreme goal. The apotheosis of the king depicts this change, and the resultant feeling of renewal is expressed nowhere more plainly than in some of our loveliest chorals. Ripleys Cantilena includes mother Luna, the maternal aspect of night, in this transfiguration, which reminds us of the apotheosis at the end of Faust II. It is as though the moon had risen in the night with as much splendour as the sun. And just as the Queen flows with all delicious unguent so, in the Acts of Thomas,378 a sweet smell pours from the heavenly goddess. She is not only the mother but the Kore, daughter of the light. She is the Gnostic Sophia,379 who corresponds to the alchemical mother. If our interpretation of King Sol is correct,380 then the apotheosis must also have made mother Luna visible, that is to say made the unconscious conscious. What at first sight seems a contradiction in terms resolves itself, on closer examination, as the coming into consciousness of an essential content of the unconscious. It is primarily the feminine element in man, the anima,381 that becomes visible; secondly the moonlight, which enables us to see in the dark, and represents an illumination of the unconscious, or its permeability to light; and thirdly, the moon stands for the rotundum, about which I have written in Psychology and Alchemy.382 In the sublunary world her roundness (plenilunium, circulus lunaris)383 corresponds, as the mirror-image of the sun, to The Anthropos, the psychological self, or psychic totality.
  [499] The moon is the connecting-link between the concept of the Virgin Mother and that of the child, who is round, whole, and perfect. The new birth from the moon can therefore be expressed as much by the Christians joy at Eastertide as by the mystic dawn, the aurora consurgens; for the risen king is the soul, which is infused into the dead stone.384 The idea of roundness is also found in the crown, symbol of kingship. Corona regis is cited as synonymous with ashes, body, sea, salt, mother and Blessed Virgin,385 and is thus identified with the feminine element.

4.08 - THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE KINGS RENEWAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [518] What the nature is of that unity which in some incomprehensible way embraces The Antagonistic elements eludes our human judgment, for the simple reason that nobody can say what a being is like that unites the full range of consciousness with that of the unconscious. Man knows no more than his consciousness, and he knows himself only so far as this extends. Beyond that lies an unconscious sphere with no assignable limits, and it too belongs to the phenomenon Man. We might therefore say that perhaps the One is like a man, that is, determined and determinable and yet undetermined and indeterminable. Always one ends up with paradoxes when knowledge reaches its limits. The ego knows it is part of this being, but only a part. The symbolic phenomenology of the unconscious makes it clear that although consciousness is accorded the status of spiritual kingship with all its attendant dangers, we cannot say what kind of king it will be. This depends on two factors: on the decision of the ego and the assent of the unconscious. Any dominant that does not have the approval of the one or the other proves to be unstable in the long run. We know how often in the course of history consciousness has subjected its highest and most central ideas to drastic revision and correction, but we know little or nothing about the archetypal processes of change which, we may suppose, have taken place in the unconscious over the millennia, even though such speculations have no firm foundation. Nevertheless the possibility remains that the unconscious may reveal itself in an unexpected way at any time.*
  [519] The alchemical figure of the king has provoked this long discussion because it contains the whole of the hero myth including the kingsand Godsrenewal, and on the other hand because, as we conjecture, it symbolizes the dominant that rules consciousness. King Sol is not a pleonasm; it denotes a consciousness which is not only conscious as such but is conscious in a quite special way. It is controlled and directed by a dominant that, in the last resort, is the arbiter of values. The sun is the common light of nature, but the king, the dominant, introduces the human element and brings man nearer to the sun, or the sun nearer to man.399
  [520] Consciousness is renewed through its descent into the unconscious, whereby the two are joined. The renewed consciousness does not contain the unconscious but forms with it a totality symbolized by the son. But since father and son are of one being, and in alchemical language King Sol, representing the renewed consciousness, is the son, consciousness would be absolutely identical with the King as dominant. For the alchemists this difficulty did not exist, because the King was projected into a postulated substance and hence behaved merely as an object to the consciousness of the artifex. But if the projection is withdrawn by psychological criticism, we encounter the aforesaid difficulty that the renewed consciousness apparently coincides with the renewed king, or son. I have discussed the psychological aspect of this problem in the second of the Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, in the chapter on the mana personality. The difficulty cannot be resolved by purely logical argument but only by careful observation and analysis of the psychic state itself. Rather than launch out into a detailed discussion of case-histories I would prefer to recall the well-known words of Paul, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal. 2 : 20), which aptly describe the peculiar nature of this state. From this we can see that that other, earlier state, when the king aged and disappeared, is marked by a consciousness in which a critical ego knowingly took the place of the sick king, looking back to an earlier mythical time when this ego still felt absolutely dependent on a higher and mightier non-ego. The subsequent disappearance of the feeling of dependence and the simultaneous streng thening of criticism are felt as progress, enlightenment, liberation, indeed as redemption, although a one-sided and limited being has usurped the throne of a king. A personal ego seizes the reins of power to its own destruction; for mere egohood, despite possessing an anima rationalis, is not even sufficient for the guidance of personal life, let alone for the guidance of men. For this purpose it always needs a mythical dominant, yet such a thing cannot simply be invented and then believed in. Contemplating our own times we must say that though the need for an effective dominant was realized to a large extent, what was offered was nothing more than an arbitrary invention of the moment. The fact that it was also believed in goes to prove the gullibility and cluelessness of the public and at the same time the profoundly felt need for a spiritual authority transcending egohood. An authority of this kind is never the product of rational reflection or an invention of the moment, which always remains caught in the narrow circle of ego-bound consciousness; it springs from traditions whose roots go far deeper both historically and psychologically. Thus a real and essentially religious renewal can be based, for us, only on Christianity. The extremely radical reformation of Hinduism by the Buddha assimilated the traditional spirituality of India in its entirety and did not thrust a rootless novelty upon the world. It neither denied nor ignored the Hindu pantheon swarming with millions of gods, but boldly introduced Man, who before that had not been represented at all. Nor did Christ, regarded simply as a Jewish reformer, destroy the law, but made it, rather, into a matter of conviction. He likewise, as the regenerator of his age, set against the Greco-Roman pantheon and the speculations of the philosophers the figure of Man, not intending it as a contradiction but as the fulfilment of a mythologem that existed long before him the conception of The Anthropos with its complex Egyptian, Persian, and Hellenistic background.
  [521] Any renewal not deeply rooted in the best spiritual tradition is ephemeral; but the dominant that grows from historical roots act like a living being within the ego-bound man. He does not possess it, it possesses him; therefore the alchemists said that the artifex is not the master but rather the minister of the stoneclearly showing that the stone is indeed a king towards whom the artifex behaves as a subject.

4.12 - The Way of Equality, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The integral Yoga will make use of both the passive and the active methods according to the need of the nature and the guidance of the inner spirit, The Antaryamin. It will not limit itself by the passive way, for that would lead only to some individual quietistic salvation or negation of an active and universal spiritual being which would be inconsistent with the totality of its aim. It will use the method of endurance, but not stop short with a detached strength and serenity, but move rather to a positive strength and mastery, in which endurance will no longer be needed, since the self will then be in a calm and powerful spontaneous possession of the universal energy and capable of determining easily and happily all its reactions in the oneness and the Ananda. It will use the method of impartial indifference, but not end in an aloof indifference to all things, but rather move towards a high-seated impartial acceptance of life strong to transform all experience into the greater values of the equal spirit. It will use too temporarily resignation and submission, but by the full surrender of its personal being to the Divine it will attain to the all-possessing Ananda in which there is no need of resignation, to the perfect harmony with the universal which is not merely an acquiescence, but an embracing oneness, to the perfect instrumentality and subjection of the natural self to the Divine by which the Divine also is possessed by the individual spirit. It will use fully the positive method, but will go beyond any individual acceptance of things which would have the effect of turning existence into a field only of the perfected individual knowledge, power and Ananda. That it will have, but also it will have the oneness by which it can live in the existence of others for their sake and not only for its own and for their assistance and as one of their means, an associated and helping force in the movement towards the same perfection. It will live for the Divine, not shunning world-existence, not attached to the earth or the heavens, not attached either to a supracosmic liberation, but equally one with the Divine in all his planes and able to live in him equally in the Self and in the manifestation.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

4.13 - ON THE HIGHER MAN, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  prudences, the grain-of-sand consideration, The Ants' riffraff, the wretched contentment, the "happiness of the
  288

4.1 - Jnana, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  His priest." The results were not over-good for humanity. Modern knowledge says to the race, "Man, thou art an ephemeral animal and no more to Nature than The Ant & the earthworm,
  - a transitory speck only in the universe. Live then for the State

4.2.02 - An Image, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Trilling The Anthem of bridal bliss, the chant hymeneal;
  Round him the warriors fell like flowers strewn at a bridal

5.04 - THE POLARITY OF ADAM, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [590] As the first man, Adam is the homo maximus, The Anthropos, from whom the macrocosm arose, or who is the macrocosm. He is not only the prima materia but a universal soul which is also the soul of all men.179 According to the Mandaeans he is the mystery of the worlds.180 The conception of The Anthropos first penetrated into alchemy through Zosimos, for whom Adam was a dual figure the fleshly man and the man of light.181 I have discussed the significance of The Anthropos idea at such length in Psychology and Alchemy that no further documentation is needed here. I shall therefore confine myself to material that is of historical interest in following the thought-processes of the alchemists.
  [591] Already in Zosimos182 three sources can be distinguished: Jewish, Christian, and pagan. In later alchemy the pagan-syncretistic element naturally fades into the background to leave room for the predominance of the Christian element. In the sixteenth century, the Jewish element becomes noticeable again, under the influence of the Cabala, which had been made accessible to a wider public by Johann Reuchlin183 and Pico della Mirandola.184 Somewhat later the humanists then made their contri bution from the Hebrew and Aramaic sources, and especially from the Zohar. In the eighteenth century an allegedly Jewish treatise appeared, Abraham Eleazars Uraltes Chymisches Werck,185 making copious use of Hebraic terminology and claiming to be the mysterious Rindenbuch of Abraham the Jew, which, it was said, had revealed the art of gold-making to Nicholas Flamel (13301417).186 In this treatise there is the following passage:

5.05 - Origins Of Vegetable And Animal Life, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
  Cunning the foxes, flight The Antlered stags.
  Light-sleeping dogs with faithful heart in breast,

5.05 - THE OLD ADAM, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [600] The old Adam, evidently, can come forth again from the Shulamite, the black mother, only because he had once got into her in some way. But that can only have been the old, sinful Adam, for the blackness of the Shulamite is an expression for sin, the original sin, as the text shows. Behind this idea lies the archetype of The Anthropos who had fallen under the power of Physis, but it seems doubtful whether our author had any conscious knowledge of this myth. Had he really been familiar with Cabalistic thought he would have known that Adam Kadmon, the spiritual First Man, was an Idea in the Platonic sense, which could never be confused with the sinful man. By his equation old Adam = Adam Kadmon the author has contaminated two opposites. The interpretation of this passage must therefore be: from the black Shulamite comes forth The Antithesis old Adam: Adam Kadmon. Her obvious connection with the earth as the mother of all living things makes it clear that her son was the sinful Adam, but not Adam Kadmon, who, as we have seen, is an emanation of En Soph. Nevertheless, by contaminating the two, the text makes both of them issue from the Shulamite. The old Adam and the Primordial Man appear to be identical, and the author could excuse himself by saying that by old he meant the first or original Adama point which it is not easy to deny.
  [601] As high as the Primordial Man stands on the one side, so low on the other is the sinful, empirical man. The phenomenon of contamination, which we meet so frequently in the psychology of dreams and of primitives, is no mere accident but is based on a common denominator; at some point the opposites prove to be identical, and this implies the possibility of their contamination. One of the commonest instances of this is the identity of the god and his animal attribute. Such paradoxes derive from the non-human quality of the gods and the animals psychology. The divine psyche is as far above the human as the animal psyche reaches down into subhuman depths.
  --
  [605] Just as the rice spoils in the defective state, so too man degenerates, whether from the malignity of the gods or from his own stupidity or sin, and comes into conflict with his original nature. He forgets his origination from the human ancestor, and a ritual anamnesis is therefore required. Thus the archetype of Man, The Anthropos, is constellated and forms the essential core of the great religions. In the idea of the homo maximus the Above and Below of creation are reunited.

5.1.01.1 - The Book of the Herald, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Gleaming and clanging the gods of The Antique ages descended.
  Hidden from human knowledge the brilliant shapes of Immortals
  --
  Lightly the wheels leap onward chanting The Anthem of Ares,
  Death is at work in his fields and the heart is enamoured of danger?
  --
  Ever the wounded are borne like the stream of The Ants when they forage
  Past my ships, and they hush their moans as they near and in silence

5.1.01.2 - The Book of the Statesman, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Such was The Antique and noble tradition of Troy in her founders,
  Builders of power that endured; but it perishes lost to their offspring,
  --
  And we are even as The Ant in our toil and the beast in our dying;
  Only who cling to the hands of the gods can rise up from the earth-mire.

5.1.01.3 - The Book of the Assembly, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Tell us then what was the sin of The Antelope, wherefore they doomed her,
  Wroth at her many crimes? Come, justify God to his creatures!

5.1.01.4 - The Book of Partings, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Cypris son to The Antenorid: Thee I have sought and thy brothers,
  Bough of Antenor; sore is our need today of thy counsels,
  --
  Late The Antenorids learn to flinch from the spears of the Argives,
  Even this boy of their blood has Polydamas heart and his valour.
  --
  Till at Troys upward curve he found The Antenorid crestward
  Mounting the steep incline that climbed to the palace of Priam

5.1.01.8 - The Book of the Gods, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Patiently heaped up our transient wealth like The Ants in their hillock.
  And to preserve it all, to protect this dust that must perish,
  --
  Nearer our poorer kindred; leaned to The Ant and the ferret.
  Sight we have darkened with sense and power we have stifled with labour,

5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Eternally. The Anthem buoyant rides
  For ever on the seas of Space and Time

5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  itself. In contradiction to this view there stands The Antithesis:
  spirit and nature. Here the concept of spirit is restricted to the
  --
  reason the classical antithesis of matter The Antithesis, that is,
  of its stasis and inertia. Basically it is the contrast between life
  --
  the clearest elaboration of The Antinomies of the unconscious.
  420 Although the old man has, up to now, looked and behaved

6.01 - THE ALCHEMICAL VIEW OF THE UNION OF OPPOSITES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [658] The coniunctio does not always take the form of a direct union, since it needsor occurs ina medium: Only through a medium can the transition take place,27 and, Mercurius is the medium of conjunction.28 Mercurius is the soul (anima), which is the mediator between body and spirit.29 The same is true of the synonyms for Mercurius, the green lion30 and the aqua permanens or spiritual water,31 which are likewise media of conjunction. The Consilium coniugii mentions as a connective agent the sweet smell or smoky vapour,32 recalling Basilides idea of the sweet smell of the Holy Ghost.33 Obviously this refers to the spiritual nature of Mercurius, just as the spiritual water, also called aqua aris (aerial water or air-water), is a life principle and the marriage maker between man and woman.34 A common synonym for the water is the sea, as the place where the chymical marriage is celebrated. The Tractatus Micreris mentions as further synonyms the Nile of Egypt, the Sea of the Indians, and the Meridian Sea. The marvels of this sea are that it mitigates and unites the opposites.35 An essential feature of the royal marriage is therefore the sea-journey, as described by Christian Rosencreutz.36 This alchemical motif was taken up by Goe the in Faust II, where it underlies the meaning of the Aegean Festival. The archetypal content of this festival has been elaborated by Kernyi in a brilliant amplificatory interpretation. The bands of nereids on Roman sarcophagi reveal the epithalamic and the sepulchral element, for basic to The Antique mysteries . . . is the identity of marriage and death on the one hand, and of birth and the eternal resurgence of life from death on the other.37
  [659] Mercurius, however, is not just the medium of conjunction but also that which is to be united, since he is the essence or seminal matter of both man and woman. Mercurius masculinus and Mercurius foemineus are united in and through Mercurius menstrualis, which is the aqua.38 Dorn gives the philosophical explanation of this in his Physica Trismegisti: In the beginning God created one world (unus mundus).39 This he divided into twoheaven and earth. Beneath this spiritual and corporeal binarius lieth hid a third thing, which is the bond of holy matrimony. This same is the medium enduring until now in all things, partaking of both their extremes, without which it cannot be at all, nor they without this medium be what they are, one thing out of three.40 The division into two was necessary in order to bring the one world out of the state of potentiality into reality. Reality consists of a multiplicity of things. But one is not a number; the first number is two, and with it multiplicity and reality begin.

6.08 - THE CONTENT AND MEANING OF THE FIRST TWO STAGES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [748] This raised the question of the way in which the coniunctio could be effected. Dorn answered this by proposing, instead of an overcoming of the body, the typical alchemical process of the separatio, solutio, incineratio, sublimatio, etc. of the red or white wine, the purpose of this procedure being to produce a physical equivalent of the substantia coelestis, recognized by the spirit as the truth and as the image of God innate in man. Whatever names the alchemists gave to the mysterious substance they sought to produce, it was always a celestial substance, i.e., something transcendental, which, in contrast to the perishability of all known matter, was incorruptible, inert as a metal or a stone, and yet alive, like an organic being, and at the same time a universal medicament. Such a body was quite obviously not to be met with in experience. The tenacity with which the adepts pursued this goal for at least seventeen hundred years can be explained only by the numinosity of this idea. And we do indeed find, even in the ancient alchemy of Zosimos, clear indications of the archetype of The Anthropos,221 as I have shown in Psychology and Alchemy; an image that pervades the whole of alchemy down to the figure of the homunculus in Faust. The idea of The Anthropos springs from the notion of an original state of universal animation, for which reason the old Masters interpreted their Mercurius as the anima mundi; and just as the original animation could be found in all matter, so too could the anima mundi. It was imprinted on all bodies as their raison dtre, as an image of the demiurge who incarnated in his own creation and got caught in it. Nothing was easier than to identify this anima mundi with the Biblical imago Dei, which represented the truth revealed to the spirit. For the early thinkers the soul was by no means a merely intellectual concept; it was visualized sensuously as a breath-body or a volatile but physical substance which, it was readily supposed, could be chemically extracted and fixed by means of a suitable procedure. This intention was served by the preparation of the phlegma vini. As I pointed out earlier, this was not the spirit and water of the wine but its solid residue, the chthonic and corporeal part which would not ordinarily be regarded as the essential and valuable thing about the wine.
  [749] What the alchemist sought, then, to help him out of his dilemma was a chemical operation which we today would describe as a symbol. The procedure he followed was obviously an allegory of his postulated substantia coelestis and its chemical equivalent. To that extent the operation was not symbolical for him but purposive and rational. For us, who know that no amount of incineration, sublimation, and centrifuging of the vinous residue can ever produce an air-coloured quintessence, the entire procedure is fantastic if taken literally. We can hardly suppose that Dorn, either, meant a real wine but, after the manner of the alchemists, vinum ardens, acetum, spiritualis sanguis, etc., in other words Mercurius non vulgi, who embodied the anima mundi. Just as the air encompasses the earth, so in the old view the soul is wrapped round the world. As I have shown, we can most easily equate the concept of Mercurius with that of the unconscious. If we add this term to the recipe, it would run: Take the unconscious in one of its handiest forms, say a spontaneous fantasy, a dream, an irrational mood, an affect, or something of the kind, and operate with it. Give it your special attention, concentrate on it, and observe its alterations objectively. Spare no effort to devote yourself to this task, follow the subsequent transformations of the spontaneous fantasy attentively and carefully. Above all, dont let anything from outside, that does not belong, get into it, for the fantasy-image has everything it needs.222 In this way one is certain of not interfering by conscious caprice and of giving the unconscious a free hand. In short, the alchemical operation seems to us the equivalent of the psychological process of active imagination.

6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  opus alchymicum, the homunculus emerges, that is, The Anthro-
  pos, the spiritual, inner and complete man, who in Chinese
  --
  round, original form of The Anthropos (or uroixdov o-rpoyyvAov,
  'round element,' as Zosimos calls it). This is an idea that has
  been associated with The Anthropos since ancient times. 3 The
  soul, too, according to tradition, has a round form. As the Monk
  --
  of the homo altus or maximus, that is, with The Anthropos. 75
  Equally, one must stand amazed at the fact that here too the
  --
  symbolization of an extremely spiritual idea like The Anthropos
  by a corporeal, indeed metallic, substance (gold). One can
  --
  in a universal human sense, representing The Anthropos. 10 We
  find this motif, too, in alchemy. The four animals remind us
  --
  ture recalls The Antique symbolism found, for instance, in
  Plutarch: 40 The soul is only partly in the body, the other part

7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  happens to him and The Ant does not. But even there
  are you sure?
  --
  who described it as The Antinomies of Reason. Reason
  finds it infinitely exhilarating to pirouette ad infinitum,

Apology, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  The second question, whether Plato meant to represent Socrates as braving or irritating his judges, must also be answered in the negative. His irony, his superiority, his audacity, regarding not the person of man, necessarily flow out of the loftiness of his situation. He is not acting a part upon a great occasion, but he is what he has been all his life long, a king of men. He would rather not appear insolent, if he could avoid it (ouch os authadizomenos touto lego). Neither is he desirous of hastening his own end, for life and death are simply indifferent to him. But such a defence as would be acceptable to his judges and might procure an acquittal, it is not in his nature to make. He will not say or do anything that might pervert the course of justice; he cannot have his tongue bound even in the throat of death. With his accusers he will only fence and play, as he had fenced with other improvers of youth, answering the Sophist according to his sophistry all his life long. He is serious when he is speaking of his own mission, which seems to distinguish him from all other reformers of mankind, and originates in an accident. The dedication of himself to the improvement of his fellow-citizens is not so remarkable as the ironical spirit in which he goes about doing good only in vindication of the credit of the oracle, and in the vain hope of finding a wiser man than himself. Yet this singular and almost accidental character of his mission agrees with the divine sign which, according to our notions, is equally accidental and irrational, and is nevertheless accepted by him as the guiding principle of his life. Socrates is nowhere represented to us as a freethinker or sceptic. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity when he speculates on the possibility of seeing and knowing the heroes of the Trojan war in another world. On the other hand, his hope of immortality is uncertain;he also conceives of death as a long sleep (in this respect differing from the Phdo), and at last falls back on resignation to the divine will, and the certainty that no evil can happen to the good man either in life or death. His absolute truthfulness seems to hinder him from asserting positively more than this; and he makes no attempt to veil his ignorance in mythology and figures of speech. The gentleness of the first part of the speech contrasts with the aggravated, almost threatening, tone of the conclusion. He characteristically remarks that he will not speak as a rhetorician, that is to say, he will not make a regular defence such as Lysias or one of the orators might have composed for him, or, according to some accounts, did compose for him. But he first procures himself a hearing by conciliatory words. He does not attack the Sophists; for they were open to the same charges as himself; they were equally ridiculed by the Comic poets, and almost equally hateful to Anytus and Meletus. Yet incidentally The Antagonism between Socrates and the Sophists is allowed to appear. He is poor and they are rich; his profession that he teaches nothing is opposed to their readiness to teach all things; his talking in the marketplace to their private instructions; his tarry-at-home life to their wandering from city to city. The tone which he assumes towards them is one of real friendliness, but also of concealed irony. Towards Anaxagoras, who had disappointed him in his hopes of learning about mind and nature, he shows a less kindly feeling, which is also the feeling of Plato in other passages (Laws). But Anaxagoras had been dead thirty years, and was beyond the reach of persecution.
  It has been remarked that the prophecy of a new generation of teachers who would rebuke and exhort the Athenian people in harsher and more violent terms was, as far as we know, never fulfilled. No inference can be drawn from this circumstance as to the probability of the words attri buted to him having been actually uttered. They express the aspiration of the first martyr of philosophy, that he would leave behind him many followers, accompanied by the not unnatural feeling that they would be fiercer and more inconsiderate in their words when emancipated from his control.

Appendix 4 - Priest Spells, #Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E, #unset, #Zen
        The Anti-plant shell spell creates an invisible, mobile barrier that keeps all creatures within the shell protected from attacking plants or vegetable creatures such as shambling mounds or treants. Any attempt to force the barrier against such creatures shatters the barrier immediately. The spell lasts for one turn for each experience level of the caster.
      SPELL - Atonement (Abjuration)
  --
        By casting this spell, the caster brings into being a hemispherical force field that prevents the entrance of any sort of living creature that is wholly or partially animal (not magical or extraplanar). Thus a sprite, a giant, or a chimera would be kept out, but undead or conjured creatures could pass through the shell of force, as could such monsters as aerial servants, imps, quasits, golems, elementals, etc. The Anti-animal shell functions normally against crossbreeds, such as cambions, and lasts for one turn for each level of experience the caster has attained. Forcing the barrier against creatures strains and ultimately collapses the field.
        The spell requires the caster's holy symbol and a handful of pepper.

Avatars of the Tortoise, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  them, I believe, in The Antinomies of Kant and in the dialectic of Zeno.
  "The greatest magician (Novalis has memorably written) would be the

Blazing P3 - Explore the Stages of Postconventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  individuals become aware of The Anthropocentric self-importance of the earlier stance. They
  may feel torn between high and low self-esteem. As Pascal expressed this paradox, [Man] is

BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  Strange to say, the Occult teaching reverses the characters; it is The Anthropomorphous archangel with
  the Christians, and the man-like God with the Hindus, which represent matter in this case; and the
  --
  along with it all the patriarchs -- The Antediluvian and pre-Atlantean Titans. As now discovered and
  proven, Cain is Mars, the god of power and generation, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.** TubalCain is a Kabir, "an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron"; or -- if this will please better -- he is
  --
  children of Bharata Varsha, or India; The Ante- and the post-diluvians of the Bible.
  Gyan (or rather Gnan, true or occult Wisdom and knowledge), also called Gian-ben-Gian (or Wisdom,
  --
  one of the seven regions of Patala (The Antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford* shows, the Puranas place it
  "on
  --
  Atlantis, before the latter sank finally. The word Patala, meaning both The Antipodal countries and
  infernal regions, thus became synonymous in ideas and attri butes as well as in name.
  --
  by The Anthropomorphised Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers, will have begotten in
  Time (Kronos) a progeny -- Dionysos-Bacchus or the "dark Epaphos," the "mighty one" -- the race that
  --
  remained, the bottom of the Earth (the lands of The Antipodes) remained dry. There dwelt those who
  escaped; the men of the yellow-faces and of the straight eye (the frank and sincere people).
  --
  will hardly satisfy the doubters. The Antiquity of the Zodiac in Egypt is much doubted, and it is denied
  point-blank with regard to India. "Your conclusions are often excellent, but your premises are always
  --
  forgotten -- of Patala (The Antipodes, or the Nether World, as America is called in India), whose
  mission and Karma it is, to sow the seeds for a forthcoming, grander, and far more glorious Race than

BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  ------III. THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND The AntHROPOID APE ... 675
  Western Evolutionism: the comparative Anatomy of Man and Ape ... 680
  Darwinism and The Antiquity of Man: The Anthropoids and their Ancestry ... 685
  http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-3-01.htm (1 von 12) [06.05.2003 03:37:25]
  --
  axis of the skull in the cases of Man and The Anthropoids, is fairly discussed by Schmidt ("Doctrine of
  Descent and Darwinism," p. 290). He admits that "the ape as he grows becomes more bestial; man . . .
  --
  lobe, make their appearance and are completed before The Anterior convolutions which form the frontal
  lobe. In man, the frontal convolutions are, on the contrary, the first to appear, and those of the middle
  --
  student than the great quadrumana (The Anthropoids), bearing such a striking resemblance to the
  human form as to have justified the epithet of anthropomorphic being conferred on them. . . . But all
  --
  It will -- undeniably -- and thus vindicate The Anthropology of the Occultists. Meanwhile, in his
  eagerness to vindicate Mr. Darwin's Descent of Man, Mr. Boyd Dawkins believes he has all but found
  --
  The Anthropoids, appears in those strata, what is the natural inference? That the Darwinians are in a
  quandary. The very manlike Gibbon is still in the same low grade of development, as it was when it coexisted with Man at the close of the Glacial Period. It has not appreciably altered since the Pliocene
  --
  that in Eocene strata The Anthropoid fossils are as conspicuous by their absence, as is the fabulous
  pithecanthropus of Haeckel. Is an exit out of this cul de sac to be found by an appeal to the
  --
  submerged continents.") "The period during which the evolution of The Anthropoid apes into apelike
  men took place was probably the last part of the tertiary period, the Pliocene Age, and perhaps the
  --
  The AntHROPOID IN NO WAY A CONFIRMATION OF DARWINISM.
  We are told that while every other heresy against modern science may be disregarded, this, our denial
  --
  man and The Anthropomorphous ape have become so glaring and absurd of late, that even Mr. Huxley
  found himself forced to protest against the too sanguine expectations. It was that great anatomist
  --
  In its youth The Anthropoid is far more intelligent and good-natured, while with age it becomes duller;
  and, as its skull recedes and seems to diminish as it grows, its facial bones and jaws develop, the brain
  --
  DARWINISM AND The AntIQUITY OF MAN: The AntHROPOIDS
  AND THEIR ANCESTRY.
  --
  Nevertheless, while the majority of The Anthropologists carry back the existence of man only into the
  period of the post-glacial drift, or what is called the Quaternary period, those of them who, as
  --
  ("Man's Place in Nature," p. 159) that the most liberal estimates for The Antiquity of Man must be still
  further extended.
  --
  scientific reasons to trace the ape from man than man from The Anthropoid. With this exception science
  has not one single valid argu- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
  --
  [[Footnote continued from previous page]] ment to offer against The Antiquity of man. But in this case
  modern Evolution demands far more than the fifteen million years of Croll for the Tertiary period, for
  --
  The Anthropologist.
  The pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now finally emancipated herself from
  --
  conceivable . . . " !! The Anthropology of the secret volumes is, however, the best possible answer to
  such a worthless contention.
  --
  CYCLES, AND The AntIQUITY OF MAN.
  MILLIONS of years have dropped into Lethe, leaving no more recollection in the memory of the
  --
  All depends on the proofs found for The Antiquity of the Human Race. If the still-debated man of the
  Pliocene or even the Miocene period was the Homo primigenius, then science may be right (argumenti
  --
  strata, but no fossil ape, thereby proving the existence of man prior to The Anthropoid -- then
  Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in another direction. And it is said in well-informed
  --
  reference to The Antiquity of the Mediterranean race, "it is generally believed to have made its
  appearance during the later decline of the continental glaciers." Yet, he adds, this "does not concern,
  however, The Antiquity of the Black and Brown races, since there are numerous evidences of their
  existence in more southern regions, in times remotely pre-glacial" (p. 379).
  --
  present European Humanity is the fifth; (d) The Antiquity of Man in this (Fourth) Round; and finally
  (e) that as these Races evolve from ethereality to materiality, and from the latter back again into
  --
  opposed the doctrine of the earth's rotundity, on the ground that the nations at The Antipodes would be
  outside the pale of salvation; and again how long it took for a nascent science to break down the idea
  --
  others, the ranks of The Anti-Darwinists growing stronger with every year;* and (b) truth to be worthy
  of its name, and remain truth and fact, hardly needs to beg for support from any class or sect. For were
  --
  extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of The Antiquity of man." But
  when we are told that this man is a product of the natural forces inherent in matter, force, according to
  --
  deer on The Antler, as be told that this bit of workmanship was done by a savage of such a kind.
  [[Vol. 2, Page]] 723 ENTRAPPED BY THE REINDEER.
  --
  sculptured the reindeer over the brook, on The Antler as shown above. In all cases we meet with the
  same evidence that, from historic to Neolithic and from Neolithic to Palaeolithic man, things slope
  --
  it may be, fossil man in Europe can neither prove nor disprove The Antiquity of man on this Earth nor
  the age of his earliest civilizations.
  --
  Scientists at any rate. As to the proof for The Antiquity which they claim for man, they have, moreover,
  Darwin himself and Lyell. The latter confesses that they (the naturalists) "have already obtained
  --
  what it is now -- thus leaving an enormous margin for The Antiquity of
  [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
  --
  President of The Anthropological Society, makes it 9,000,000 years. This man of science, at any rate,
  makes some approach to our esoteric computation, if we leave the first two semi-human, ethereal
  --
  The Antiquity of their race had to be referred to a people or a race still more ancient and more learned
  than were even the Brahmans themselves.**
  --
  So evident does The Antiquity of man become with every day that even the Church is preparing an
  honourable surrender and retreat. The learned Abbe Fabre, professor at the Sorbonne, has
  --
  * The ingenious author of "Atlantis, The Ante-diluvian World," in discussing the origin of various
  Grecian and Roman institutions, expresses his conviction that "the roots of the institutions of to-day
  --
  "were carved by the Dryopi thecus monkey"; or, with the Occultist, that The Anthro[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
  * "The flints of Thenay bear unmistakable trace of the work of human hands." (G. de Mortillet,
  --
  came The Anthropomorphous monkey (pliopi thecus antiquus); therefore, later than man." (See Comptes
  Rendus of the "Prehistoric Congress" of 1867 at Paris.)
  --
  And if all this may be said of European man, how great is The Antiquity of the Lemuro-Atlantean and
  of the Atlanto-Aryan man? Every educated person who follows the progress of Science, knows how all
  --
  ** The Antiquity of the Human Race in "Men before Metals," by M. Joly, Professor at the Science
  Faculty of Toulouse, p. 184.
  --
  traces. In the journal of The Anthropological Institute (Vol. 1871, art. by Dr. C. Carter Blake) such a
  race is shown as having existed at Palmyra and possibly in Midian, exhibiting cranial forms quite
  --
  gigantic race, The Antithesis of cultured civilization in the Odyssey -- is an allegorical record of the
  gradual passage from the Cyclopean civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the more sensual
  --
  The allegory about The Antediluvian giants and their achievements in Sorcery is no myth. Biblical
  events are revealed indeed. But it is neither by the voice of God amid thunder and lightning on Mount
  --
  ever the same. Therefore northern Asia is called the "eternal or perpetual land," and The Antarctic the
  "ever living" and "the concealed"; while the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific and other regions
  --
  by which (according to The Anti-Atlantean and Lemurian hypotheses of Wallace) the
  floras of South America and Australia are supposed to have mingled, is beset by almost
  --
  * Donnelly, "Atlantis; The Ante-Diluvian World," p. 480.
  [[Vol. 2, Page]] 794 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
  --
  between 10 million and 1,000 million of years* (a trifling difference, verily!): and The Anthropologists
  to vary their divergence of opinion as to the appearance of man -- between 25,000 and 500,000 of
  --
  Cosmogony and then of The Anthropogenesis of mankind, it was necessary to show that no religion,
  since the very earliest, has ever been entirely based on fiction, as none was the object of special

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  the fourth Adam, or Race, is represented by a Priapean monster. The latter -- a post-Christian fancy -is the degraded copy of The Ante-Christian Gnostic symbol of the "Good One," or "He, who created
  before anything existed," the Celestial Priapus -- truly born from Venus and Bacchus when that God
  --
  * The author of the "Qabbalah" makes several attempts to prove conclusively The Antiquity of the
  Zohar. Thus he shows that Moses de Leon could not be the author or the forger of the Zoharic works in
  --
  ranged around these types. . . . " (The President's address at The Anthrop. Inst. of Great Britain, etc.)
  Considering that our Race has reached its Fifth Sub-race, how can it be otherwise?
  --
  Master of apocalyptic prediction, who prophesied in the name of The Antediluvian Patriarch." (INT.
  xxxv.)
  --
  supposed to contain the germs of night and day -- has now been turned into The Antithetical shadow of
  God, and has become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of despotic human dogma. After
  --
  cunningly fabricated shadow for the reality, The Anthropomorphized generative symbol for the one
  Secondless Reality, the ever unknowable cause of all. As a logical sequence the Church, for purposes
  --
  The Antetype of the Roman Catholic Madonna, is a later anthropomorphized form of Aditi. The latter is
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  --
  ethnological, astronomical, and psychic -- with a touch of theogony out of The Antediluvian records.
  The Book of this mysterious personage is referred to and quoted copiously in the Pistis Sophia, and
  --
  [[Vol. 2, Page]] 541 The AntIQUITY OF THE CROSS.
  In the Ophite gems of King ("Gnostics") we find the name of IAO repeated, and often
  --
  circle than in any other work we know of. He who would fain have proofs of The Antiquity of the Cross
  is referred to these two volumes. The author shows that "the circle and the cross are inseparable. . . .
  --
  Anugita, The Antiquity and importance of which MS. (an episode from the Mahabharata) one can learn
  in the "Sacred Books of the East," edited by Prof. Max Muller.** Narada is discussing upon the
  --
  [[Vol. 2, Page]] 571 The AntIQUITY OF THE KAPILAS.
  since the whole meaning rests in his being placed on the line of Garuda's descendants. Then, again,
  --
  But the best evidence to The Antiquity of the cross is that which is brought forward by the author of
  Natural Genesis on page 433.
  --
  decussated circle of Plato, the Pagan, not The Antitype of circumcision, as Christian (St.) Augustine
  did,* is forthwith regarded by the Church as a hea then: by Science, as a lunatic. This because, while
  --
  three Septenary primeval Races, and shows The Antiquity of the Vedas, who knew of no other,
  probably in this earliest oral teachings; and also
  --
  of Arjuna going over to Patala (The Antipodes, America) and there marrying Ulupi, the daughter of the
  Naga (or rather Nargal) King? But to the Zuni priests.
  --
  Massey, the proofs of The Antiquity of the doctrine under analysis become positively overwhelming.
  That the belief of the author differs from ours can hardly invalidate the facts. He views the symbol

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  The Antiquity of Documents and MSS. ... xxiii.
  What the Book is intended to do ... xxviii.
  --
  The Antediluvian Buddhas ... 339
  ------CYCLOPEAN RUINS AND COLOSSAL STONES AS WITNESSES TO GIANTS ... 341
  --
  ------III. THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND The AntHROPOID APE ... 675
  Insurmountable difficulties for the Darwinians ... 677
  --
  ------------IV. DURATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL PERIODS, RACE CYCLES, AND The AntIQUITY OF
  MAN ... 690
  --
  became with them The Anthropomorphic God of the Christians -- the male Jehovah, roaring amid
  thunder and lightning. In its turn, rationalistic science greets the Buddhists and the Svabhavikas as the
  --
  [[Vol. 1, Page]] 117 The AntIQUITY OF PHYSICAL SCIENCES.
  tendency, from the first awakening of Kosmos to a new "Day," to circular movement. The "Deity
  --
  [[Vol. 1, Page]] 133 THE GOD OF MAN AND THE GOD OF The Ant.
  They are Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they
  must appear as Gods, and collectively -- GOD. But so we, mortal men, must appear to The Ant, which
  reasons on the scale of its special capacities. The Ant may also, for all we know, see the avenging
  finger of a personal God in the hand of the urchin who, in one moment, under the impulse of mischief,
  destroys its anthill, the labour of many weeks -- long years in the chronology of insects. The Ant,
  feeling it acutely, and attri buting the undeserved calamity to a combination of Providence and sin, may
  --
  man, their last descendants being The Anthropoid and other apes. These "human presentments" are in
  truth only the distorted copies of the early humanity. But this will receive full attention in the next
  --
  exception of the highest mammals after man, The Anthropoids destined to die out in this our race, when
  their monads will be liberated and pass into the astral human forms (or the highest elementals) of the
  --
  * Nature never repeats herself, therefore The Anthropoids of our day have not existed at any time since
  the middle of the Miocene period; when, like all cross breeds, they began to show a tendency, more
  --
  belief of The Antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual society, in Spiritualism,
  http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-11.htm (19 von 22) [06.05.2003 03:31:18]
  --
  man and The Ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle -whether you call it organic or inorganic -- is a life. Every atom and molecule in the Universe is both
  life-giving and death-giving to that form, inasmuch as it builds by aggregation universes and the
  --
  ** Now, what "god" is meant here? Not God "the Father," The Anthropomorphic fiction; for that god is
  the Elohim collectively, and has no being apart from the Host. Besides, such a god is finite and

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  races) had discovered The Antiquated "fallacy" and exposed it. And now modern science vindicates,
  http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-3-04.htm (5 von 10) [06.05.2003 03:33:15]
  --
  this we reply: "We deny The Anthropomorphic god of the Monotheists, but never the Divine Principle
  in nature. We combat Protestants and Roman Catholics on a number of dogmatic theological beliefs of
  --
  Philosophy rejects one finite and imperfect God in the universe, as The Anthropomorphic deity of the
  monotheist is represented by his followers. It repudiates in its name of Philo-Theo-Sophia the
  --
  elective or propulsive, all the receptive force and all The Antagonistic force that
  characterises a planet of the largest magnitude; consequently, as the accumulation goes
  --
  Thus it is only in The Anthropomorphised systems (such as the Kabala has now greatly become) that
  Shekinah-Sakti is feminine. As such she becomes the Duad of Pythagoras, the two straight lines of the
  --
  to The Antiquity of the Zodiac. Thanks to the hobby of some German Orientalists, English and
  American Sanskritists have accepted Professor Weber's opinion that the peoples of India had no idea
  --
  interfere with the validity of his proof as to The Antiquity of the Zodiac.* Even accepting, for
  argument's sake, his cautious 3700 years B.C. as the correct age of the science, this date proves in the
  --
  prove The Antiquity of the Indian Zodiac, in the signs of which were found the root and philosophy of
  all the most important religious festivals of that country, the origin of which religious ceremonies goes
  --
  accumulated knowledge; and prolonged experience produced wisdom. It is The Antiquity of the nations
  of the East which has erected their scientific fame.
  --
  but it still differs from its future progeny. The Antediluvian ancestors of the present
  elephant and lizard were, perhaps, the mammoth and the plesiosaurus; why should not
  --
  this Round, preceded every mammalian -- The Anthropoids included -- in the animal kingdom.*
  [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
  --
  ancient nations, the Bible included, as we proceed. Meanwhile, before we turn to The Anthropogenesis
  of the prehistoric Races, it may be useful to agree upon the names to be given to the Continents on
  --
  V. The Fifth Continent was America; but, as it is situated at The Antipodes, it is Europe and Asia
  Minor, almost coeval with it, which are generally referred to by the Indo-Aryan Occultists as the fifth.

BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  In the relics of ancient Egypt, the greater The Antiquity of the votive symbols and emblems of the
  objects exhumed, the oftener are the lotus flowers and the water found in connection with the Solar
  --
  modern Papal conception. With the former, the ever-youthful mother nature, The Antitype of her
  prototypes, the sun and moon, generates and brings forth her "mind-born" son, the Universe. The Sun
  --
  It is The Anthropomorphised Demiurge, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, when separated from the
  collective Hosts of his fellow-Creators, whom, so to speak, he represents and synthesizes. It is now the
  --
  Uranian Titans, The Antediluvian giants (also Titans), and those post-diluvian giants in whom they (the
  Roman Catholics) will see the descendants of the mythical Ham. In clearer words, there is a difference
  --
  he has read Book II., and understood well The Anthropogenesis of the Esoteric doctrine.
  Ildabaoth is a copy of Manu. The latter boasts, "Oh, best of twice-born men! Know that I (Manu) am
  --
  and infinite God, The Anthropomorphic "Jehovah" of the Jews.
  What were some of the alleged "superstitions"? Hesiod believed, for instance, that "the winds were

Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  means goes both ways. In The Antilles and in certain parts
  of America, the name is given to a reptile commonly known
  --
  tree. All over heaven Tunk-poj hunted The Antelope. The
  beast, tired out, fell to the ground, and Tunk-poj cut off its
  --
  words The Ant-lion perisheth for lack of prey grew a fantasy (translated below by T. H. White) that medieval bestiaries succeeded in multiplying:
  The Physiologus said: It had the face (or fore-part) of a
  --
  but its mother grains. If then they engender The Ant-lion,
  they engender a thing of two natures, such that it cannot
  --
  below the constellations of The Antipodes. The Etruscans had
  books of fate that taught divination and books of Acheron

BOOK VI. - Of Varros threefold division of theology, and of the inability of the gods to contri bute anything to the happiness of the future life, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  3. Varro's distribution of his book which he composed concerning The Antiquities of human and divine things.
  He wrote forty-one books of antiquities. These he divided into human and divine things. Twenty-five he devoted to human things, sixteen to divine things; following this plan in that division,namely, to give six books to each of the four divisions of human things. For he directs his attention to these considerations: who perform, where they perform, when they perform, what they perform. Therefore in the first six books he wrote concerning men; in the second six, concerning places; in the third six, concerning times; in the fourth and last six, concerning things. Four times six, however, make only twenty-four. But he placed at the head of them one separate work, which spoke of all these things conjointly.

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