TOPICS
SEE ALSO
AUTH
BOOKS
IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.028_-_History
IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME
IN CHAPTERS TEXT
1.028_-_History
PRIMARY CLASS
chapter
SIMILAR TITLES
TERMS STARTING WITH
TERMS ANYWHERE
KEYS (10k)
8 The Mother
6 Carl Sagan
5 Ken Wilber
5 Sri Aurobindo
4 Joseph Campbell
4 Jorge Luis Borges
4 Aleister Crowley
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
2 Thomas Carlyle
2 Saint Ambrose
2 Robert Heinlein
2 Peter J Carroll
2 Manly P Hall
2 Ken Wilber?
2 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 Friedrich Nietzsche
2 Alfred Korzybski
1 Waking Life
1 Virginia Woolf
1 Vicktor Hugo
1 Timothy Snyder
1 Thomas Keating
1 Thomas Jefferson
1 Susan Sontag
1 Stephen Hawkings
1 Stephen Covey
1 Schelling
1 Saul Williams
1 Saint Leo
1 Robert Fulghum
1 Robert F. Kennedy
1 Remember two inevitable tendencies in history: one
1 R Buckminster Fuller
1 Pope Pius XII
1 Paul Ricoeur
1 Parmenides
1 Oscar Wilde
1 Noam Chomsky
1 Mortimer J Adler
1 Martin Heidegger
1 Lewis Carroll
1 Leo Tolstoy
1 Julian Huxley
1 Jordan Peterson
1 John Adams
1 Joan Rivers
1 Jean Danielou
1 James S A Corey
1 James P. Carse
1 Jack Kerouac
1 G. W. F. Hegel
1 Giordano Bruno
1 Étienne Gilson
1 Emilia Fox
1 Eliphas Levi
1 C S Lewis
1 Carl Jung
1 Buckminster Fuller
1 Bill Hicks
1 Augustus De Morgan
1 Attack On Titan
1 Anthony Robbins
1 Allen Ginsberg
1 Albert Camus
1 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
1 Rudolf Steiner
1 Confucius
1 A E van Vogt
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
31 Hourly History
17 Anonymous
15 Voltaire
15 Ralph Waldo Emerson
14 Will Durant
13 Thomas Carlyle
13 Karl Marx
9 George W Bush
8 Oscar Wilde
8 Napoleon Bonaparte
7 Adolf Hitler
6 Terence McKenna
6 Napol on Bonaparte
6 Leo Tolstoy
6 James Joyce
5 Toba Beta
5 Susan Sontag
5 Stephen King
5 Novalis
5 Mark Twain
1:For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. ~ Virginia Woolf, #KEYS
2:Live out of your imagination, not your history. ~ Stephen Covey, #KEYS
3:The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
~ Oscar Wilde,#KEYS
4:History of the world is but the biography of great men.
~ Thomas Carlyle,#KEYS
5:I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #KEYS
6:Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
7:Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, today is God's gift, that why we call it the present." ~ Joan Rivers, #KEYS
8:Mikasa Ackerman. A master of all subjects and widely considered one of the best in our history.
~ Attack On Titan,#KEYS
9:The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,#KEYS
10:Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with A Thousand Faces, #KEYS
11:We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
12:It is the soul within us that decides, that makes our history, that determines Fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The 7th of August, #KEYS
13:As the essence of Matter is Gravity, so, on the other hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is Freedom
~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History,#KEYS
14:Constituting does not mean producing in the sense of making and fabricating; it means letting the entity be seen in its objectivity. ~ Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time, 76, #KEYS
15:Philosophy is free thought applied to the conditions of possibility of politics and history, as we have known it since Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Ethics and Politics. ~ Paul Ricoeur, #KEYS
16:Now, if you don't like that, Berrigan, that's the history of my family. They don't take no shit from nobody. In due time I ain't going to take no shit from nobody. You can record that. ~ Jack Kerouac, #KEYS
17:The history of the cycles of man is a progress towards the unveiling of the Godhead in the soul and life of humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Theory of the Vibhuti, #KEYS
18:Philosophy properly speaking begins in the ninth century with John Scottus Erigena. ~ G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: The Lectures of 1825-1826. Volume III: Medieval and Modern Philosophy, #KEYS
19:It is certain that whoever could write the history of his own life from its very ground, would have thereby grasped in a brief conspectus the entire history of the universe. ~ Schelling, Ages of the World (1811), #KEYS
20:Since the beginning of earth history, Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great earthly transformations, under one form or another, one name or another.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS
21:If someone wants to study the deeds of our ancestors and imitate the best of them, he can find a single psalm that contains the whole of their history, a complete treasury of past memories in just one short reading. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
22:Remember two inevitable tendencies in history: one, that no system, however perfect, however glorious, however far reaching, can go on for 2000 years (or 200 for that matter) without enormous changes being made in it simply by time; #KEYS
23:The history of the living world can be summarised as the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes within a cosmos in which there is always something more to be seen. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS
24:The superior man does not set his mind either for or against anything." ~ Confucius, (551-479) a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history, Wikipedia., #KEYS
25:It is simply wrong to say without further ado that metaphysics is essentially limited to the knowledge of being and that it must go beyond that to reach being. Philosophy invents itself; the history of philosophy informs." ~ Étienne Gilson, #KEYS
26:Psychotherapy is what God has been secretly doing for centuries by other names; that is, he searches through our personal history and heals what needs to be healed - the wounds of childhood or our own self-inflicted wounds. ~ Thomas Keating, #KEYS
27:I never feel lonely if Ive got a book - theyre like old friends. Even if youre not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. And theyre part of your history. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life
~ Emilia Fox,#KEYS
28:Always go too far because that is where you will find the truth." ~ Albert Camus, (1913 - 1960) French philosopher, author, and journalist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44 in 1957, the second youngest recipient in history, Wikipedia., #KEYS
29:And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history-money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery-the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
~ C S Lewis,#KEYS
30:Einstein's use of the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass to derive his principle of equivalence, and eventually all of general relativity, amounts to a relentless march of logical reasoning unmatched in the history of human thought. ~ Stephen Hawkings, #KEYS
31:God is the Being in Whom being anything means being everything." ~ Parmenides, (late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek, considered the founder of metaphysics or ontology and has influenced the whole history of Western philosophy, Wikipedia., #KEYS
32:To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844 - 1900) German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history, Wikipedia., #KEYS
33:To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated." ~ James P. Carse, Professor Emeritus of history and literature of religion at New York University. His book "Finite and Infinite Games", (1986), was widely influential, Wikipedia, #KEYS
34:Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,#KEYS
35:When a Nietzsche, a Dostoyevsky, a Kierkegaard uncovers a human universe for us, when the material universe displays [before us] the depths of the history of the earth or spaces between the stars, theological thought is obliged to broaden itself to their measure. ~ Jean Danielou, #KEYS
36:And so all that the Son of God did and taught for the world's reconciliation is not for us simply a matter of past history. Here and now we experience his power at work among us. Born of a virgin mother by the action of the Holy Spirit, Christ keeps his Church spotless. ~ Saint Leo, #KEYS
37:History instructs us, the law teaches, prophecy foretells, correction punishes, morality persuades; but the book of psalms goes further. It is medicine for our spiritual health. Whoever reads it will find in it a medicine to cure the wounds caused by his own passions. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
38:I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death. ~ Robert Fulghum, #KEYS
39:In the region of politics faith is the result of imagination working in the light of history; it takes its stand on reason and experience and aspires into the future from the firm ground of the past. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Leverage of Faith, #KEYS
40:The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay; also see all as a dream and stay out of it. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
41:Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past nor to history.
Sri Aurobindo is the Future advancing towards its realisation.
Thus we must shelter the eternal youth required for a speedy advance, in order not to become laggards on the way. 2 April 1967
~ The Mother, On Education, 210,#KEYS
42:The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
43:Is it necessary to write out the geography and history lessons? I can study them by reading.
One learns things better if one writes them.
My hand often gets tired while writing.
You can simply rest a minute or two and then continue.
18 October 1936 ~ The Mother, More Answers From The Mother,#KEYS
44:Those who pursue attentively their contemplation have no sorrow to fear, nor can any vicissitude of Fate affect them . They contemplate this history written in ourselves to guide us in the execution of the divine laws which, equally, are engraved in our hearts. ~ Giordano Bruno, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
45:In ancient times, anterior to our history, the temples of the spirit were also outwardly visible; today, because our life has become so unspiritual, they are not to be found in the world visible to external sight; yet they are present spiritually everywhere, and all who seek may find them. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #KEYS
46:There is, however, one form of miracle which certainly happens, the influence of the genius. There is no known analogy in Nature. One cannot even think of a super-dog transforming the world of dogs, whereas in the history of mankind this happens with regularity and frequency.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS
47:The remainder of the long story of Kamar al-Zaman is a history of the slow yet wonderful operation of a destiny that has been summoned into life. Not everyone has a destiny: only the hero who has plunged to touch it, and has come up again-with a ring. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, #KEYS
48:The complete attempt to deal with the term is would go to the form and matter of every thing in existence, at least, if not to the possible form and matter of all that does not exist, but might. As far as it could be done, it would give the grand Cyclopaedia, and its yearly supplement would be the history of the human race for the time. (354) ~ Augustus De Morgan, #KEYS
49:The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.
Here we face a critical branch point in history, what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants.
In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours. ~ Carl Sagan,#KEYS
50:The crisis we are experiencing is unique in history. It is a world which must burst out of a crucible in which so many different energies are working. Let us thank God that He makes us live among the present problems... it is no longer permitted to anyone to be mediocre. All men have the imperative duty to remember that they have a mission to fulfill, that of doing the impossible. ~ Pope Pius XII, #KEYS
51:History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973).,#KEYS
52:God made Himself totally a man but a man to the point of infamy, a man to the point of reprobation and the abyss. To save us, He could have chosen *any* of the destinies which make up the complex web of history; He could have been Alexander or Pythagoras or Rurik or Jesus; He chose the vilest destiny of all: He was Judas.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
53:It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. ~ Robert F. Kennedy, #KEYS
54:The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure--be it a daemon, a human being, or a process--that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure. In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history. ~ Carl Jung, #KEYS
55:You assume far too readily that man is a paragon of justice, forgetting, apparently, that he has a long and savage history. He has killed other animals not only for meat but for pleasure; he has enslaved his neighbors, murdered his opponents, and obtained the most unholy sadistical joy from the agony of others. It is not impossible that we shall, in the course of our travels, meet other intelligent creatures far more worthy than man to rule the universe. ~ A E van Vogt, #KEYS
56:Paul Brunton in his book A Search in Secret Egypt repeatedly speaks of Atlantis. I always thought that belief in Atlantis was only an imagination of the Theosophists. Is there any truth in the belief?
Atlantis is not an imagination. Plato heard of this submerged continent from Egyptian sources and geologists are also agreed that such a submersion was one of the great facts of earth history. 22 June 1936 ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Poetry And Art,#KEYS
57:Why does an apple fall when it is ripe? Is it brought down by the force of gravity? Is it because its stalk withers? Because it is dried by the sun, because it grows too heavy, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause.... Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordained from all eternity.
~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace,#KEYS
58:Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism -- victimless collecting, as it were... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments. ~ Susan Sontag, #KEYS
59:The most preposterous notion that H. Sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all of history.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks Of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973).,#KEYS
60:So the call of the Nondual traditions is: Abide as Emptiness, embrace all Form. The liberation is in the Emptiness, never in the Form, but Emptiness embraces all forms as a mirror all its objects. So the Forms continue to arise, and, as the sound of one hand clapping, you are all those Forms. You are the display. You and the universe are One Taste. Your Original Face is the purest Emptiness, and therefore every time you look in the mirror, you see only the entire Kosmos. ~ Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, p. 240, #KEYS
61:I AM NOW CLOSE TO 88 and I am confident that the only thing important about me is that I am an average healthy human. I am also a living case history of a thoroughly documented, half-century, search-and-research project designed to discover what, if anything, an unknown, moneyless individual, with a dependent wife and newborn child, might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity that could not be accomplished by great nations, great religions or private enterprise, no matter how rich or powerfully armed. ~ Buckminster Fuller, 1983, #KEYS
62:What is history? What is its significance for humanity? Dr. J. H. Robinson gives us a precise answer: "Man's abject dependence on the past gives rise to the continuity of history. Our convictions, opinions, prejudices, intellectual tastes; our knowledge, our methods of learning and of applying for information we owe, with slight exceptions, to the past-often to the remote past. History is an expansion of memory, and like memory it alone can explain the present and in this lies its most unmistakable value. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
63:Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
64:I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted: a fireman, a policeman, a doctor - even President, it seemed. And for the first time in the history of mankind, something new, called an astronaut. But like so many kids brought up on a steady diet of Westerns, I always wanted to be the avenging cowboy hero - that lone voice in the wilderness, fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go, in my endless ride into the setting sun. ~ Bill Hicks, #KEYS
65:Today's news consists of aggregates of fragments. Anyone who has taken part in any event that has subsequently appeared in the news is aware of the gross disparity between the actual and the reported events. We also learn frequently of prefabricated and prevaricated evens of a complex nature purportedly undertaken for the purposes wither of suppressing or rigging the news, which in turn perverts humanity's tactical information resources. All history becomes suspect. Probably our most polluted resource is the tactical information to which humanity spontaneously reflexes. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #KEYS
66:There in the Heart, where the couple finally unite, the entire game is undone, the nightmare of evolution, and you are exactly where you were prior to the beginning of the whole show. With a sudden shock of the entirely obvious, you recognize your own Original Face, the face you had prior to the Big Bang, the face of utter Emptiness that smiles as all creation and sings as the entire Kosmos - and it is all undone in that primal glance, and all that is left is the smile, and the reflection of the moon on a quiet pond, late on a crystal clear night. ~ Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, p. 43, #KEYS
67:Man came silently into the world. As a matter of fact he trod so softly that, when we first catch sight of him as revealed by those indestructible stone instruments, we find him sprawling all over the old world from the Cape of Good Hope to Peking. Without doubt he already speaks and lives in groups ; he already makes fire. After all, this is surely what we ought to expect. As we know, each time a new living form rises up before us out of the depths of history, it is always complete and already legion. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon Of Man, The Birth of Thought, 186, #KEYS
68:This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with the splendor of the captain. Hence a truer measure in the final judgment of the nations. Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form. ~ Vicktor Hugo, #KEYS
69:Creative artists … are mankind's wakeners to recollection: summoners of our outward mind to conscious contact with ourselves, not as participants in this or that morsel of history, but as spirit, in the consciousness of being. Their task, therefore, is to communicate directly from one inward world to another, in such a way that an actual shock of experience will have been rendered: not a mere statement for the information or persuasion of a brain, but an effective communication across the void of space and time from one center of consciousness to another. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Volume IV: Creative Mythology, #KEYS
70:The other day I happened to be reading a careful, interesting account of the state of British higher education. The government is a kind of market-oriented government and they came out with an official paper, a 'White Paper' saying that it is not the responsibility of the state to support any institution that can't survive in the market. So, if Oxford is teaching philosophy, the arts, Greek history, medieval history, and so on, and they can't sell it on the market, why should they be supported? Because life consists only of what you can sell in the market and get back, nothing else. That is a real pathology. ~ Noam Chomsky, #KEYS
71:The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. ~ John Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife, #KEYS
72:For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the great Men sent into the world: the soul of the world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.
~ Thomas Carlyle, 1966, p. 1,#KEYS
73:Magic never in its wildest dreams thought that it would be trumped by mythic. And the mythic gods and goddesses never imagined that reason could and would destroy them. And here we sit, in our rational worldview, all smug and confident that nothing higher will sweep out of the heavens and completely explode our solid perceptions, undoing our very foundations. And yet surely, the transrational lies in wait. It is just around the corner, this new dawn. Every stage transcends and includes, and thus inescapably, unavoidably it seems, the sun will rise on a world tomorrow that in many ways transcends reason. ~ Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, #KEYS
74:Drugs have a long history of use in magic in various cultures, and usually in the context of either ecstatic communal rituals or in personal vision quests. However compared to people in simple pastoral tribal situations most people in developed countries now live in a perpetual state of mental hyperactivity with overactive imaginations anyway, so throwing drugs in on top of this usually just leads to confusion and a further loss of focus. Plus as the real Shamans say, if you really do succeed in opening a door with a drug it will thereafter open at will and most such substances give all they will ever give on the first attempt.
~ Peter J Carroll, The Octavo,#KEYS
75:Jordan Peterson's Book List
1. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
2. 1984 - George Orwell
3. Road To Wigan Pier - George Orwell
4. Crime And Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. Beyond Good And Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
7. Ordinary Men - Christopher Browning
8. The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski
9. The Rape of Nanking - Iris Chang
10. Gulag Archipelago (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, & Vol. 3) - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
11. Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
12. Modern Man in Search of A Soul - Carl Jung
13. Maps Of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief - Jordan B. Peterson
14. A History of Religious Ideas (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3) - Mircea Eliade
15. Affective Neuroscience - Jaak Panksepp ~ Jordan Peterson,#KEYS
76:Certainly we have had our Napoleons and our Hitlers, but we have also had Jesus and Buddha. We have had tyrants, but also great humanitarians. We have had corrupt politicians, but also noble rulers. Even in the most selfish of times, the world has brought forth idealists, philanthropists, great artists, musicians, and poets. If we have inherited ages of feuding and intolerance, we have also inherited the magnificence of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. For each tyrant who has profaned the pages of history, there have been thousands, even millions, of gentle people who have lived unhonored and unknown, keeping principles and living convictions under the most difficult situations. To see this good, and to know it, is to find a new courage and a new faith. ~ Manly P Hall, PRS Journal Summer 1961, p.7, #KEYS
77:Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity - a total embrace of the entire Kosmos - a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It is at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane? ~ Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, p. 38-39, #KEYS
78:From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
79:Finally, in terms of overall spiritual intelligence-which we have been briefly tracking-on the other side of the leading edge of evolution we have 3 or 4 higher, at this point mostly potential, levels of development, including levels of spiritual intelligence. Individually, their basic strcture-rungs are referred to as para-mind, meta-mind, overmind, and supermind; collectively, they are called 3rd tier. What all 3rd-tier structures have in common is some degree of direct transpersonal identity and experience. Further, each 3rd-tier structure of consciousness is integrated, in some fashion, with a particular state of consciousness (often, para-mental with the gross, meta-mental with subtle, overmind with causal/Witnessing, and supermind with nondual, although this varies with each individual's actual history).
~ Ken Wilber?,#KEYS
80:THE TRUE STUDENT OF OCCULT SCIENCE
The White Magician uses none of the powers of the animal world in his work, but rather seeks to transmute the poles of the beast within himself into higher and finer qualities. The White Magician labors entirely with the finer forces of the elemental planes. He is a builder--not a destroyer--and seeks to liberate rather than to dominate his fellow creatures. The White Magician has dedicated his soul to the immortal light, while the Black Magician has sold his for mortal glory. The Grimores of the Middle Ages are filled with chants and charms for the invoking of spirits. History is filled with stories of Black Magicians but the true student of occult science must have nothing to do with these things other than to protect himself against them. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Natural Occultism, 28,#KEYS
81:The hero of a David Lodge novel says that you don't know, when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time. Voting is like that. Some of the Germans who voted for the Nazi Party in 1932 no doubt understood that this might be the last meaningfully free election for some time, but most did not. Some of the Czechs and Slovaks who voted for the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1946 probably realized that they were voting for the end of democracy, but most assumed they would have another chance. No doubt the Russians who voted in 1990 did not think that this would be the last free and fair election in their country's history, which (thus far) it has been. Any election can be the last, or at least the last in the lifetime of the person casting the vote. ~ Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, #KEYS
82:There are periods in the history of the world when the unseen Power that guides its destinies seems to be filled with a consuming passion for change and a strong impatience of the old. The Great Mother, the Adya Shakti, has resolved to take the nations into Her hand and shape them anew. These are periods of rapid destruction and energetic creation, filled with the sound of cannon and the trampling of armies, the crash of great downfalls, and the turmoil of swift and violent revolutions; the world is thrown into the smelting pot and comes out in a new shape and with new features. They are periods when the wisdom of the wise is confounded and the prudence of the prudent turned into a laughing-stock.... ~ Sri Aurobindo, in a statement of 16 April 1907, as published in India's Rebirth : A Selection from Sri Aurobindo's Writings, Talks and Speeches 3rd Edition (2000) #KEYS
83:From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols (a number which, though extremely vast, is not infinite): in other words, all that it is given to express, in all languages. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogue of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, #KEYS
84:He told me that in 1886 he had invented an original system of numbering and that in a very few days he had gone beyond the twenty-four-thousand mark. He had not written it down, since anything he thought of once would never be lost to him. His first stimulus was, I think, his discomfort at the fact that the famous thirty-three gauchos of Uruguayan history should require two signs and two words, in place of a single word and a single sign. He then applied this absurd principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen he would say (for example) Maximo Pérez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Railroad; other numbers were Luis Melian Lafinur, Olimar, sulphur, the reins, the whale, the gas, the caldron, Napoleon, Agustin de Vedia. In place of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a kind of mark; the last in the series were very complicated...~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
85:Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history, what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants, it is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition or greed or stupidity we could plunge our world into a time of darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilisation and the Italian Renaissance. But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
86:Oi, Pampaw," Diogo said as the door to the public hall slid open. "You hear that Eros started talking?"
Miller lifted himself to one elbow.
"Sí," Diogo said. "Whatever that shit is, it started broadcasting. There's even words and shit. I've got a feed. You want a listen?"
No, Miller thought. No, I have seen those corridors. What's happened to those people almost happened to me. I don't want anything to do with that abomination.
"Sure," he said.
Diogo scooped up his own hand terminal and keyed in something. Miller's terminal chimed that it had received the new feed route. "Chica perdída in ops been mixing a bunch of it to bhangra," Diogo said, making a shifting dance move with his hips. "Hard-core, eh?"
Diogo and the other OPA irregulars had breached a high-value research station, faced down one of the most powerful and evil corporations in a history of power and evil. And now they were making music from the screams of the dying. Of the dead. They were dancing to it in the low-rent clubs. What it must be like, Miller thought, to be young and soulless. ~ James S A Corey, Leviathan Wakes,#KEYS
87:The key one and threefold, even as universal science. The division of the work is sevenfold, and through these sections are distributed the seven degrees of initiation into is transcendental philosophy.
The text is a mystical commentary on the oracles of Solomon, ^ and the work ends with a series of synoptic schedules which are the synthesis of Magic and the occult Kabalah so far as concerns that which can be made public in writing. The rest, being the esoteric and inexpressible part of the science, is formulated in magnificent pantacles carefully designed and engraved. These are nine in number, as follows
(1) The dogma of Hermes;
(2) Magical realisation;
(3) The path of wisdom and the initial procedure in the work
(4) The Gate of the Sanctuary enlightened by seven mystic rays;
(5) A Rose of Light, in the centre of which a human figure is extending its arms in the form of a cross;
(6) The magical laboratory of Khunrath, demonstrating the necessary union of prayer and work
(7) The absolute synthesis of science;
(8) Universal equilibrium ;
(9) A summary of Khunrath's personal embodying an energetic protest against all his detractors. ~ Eliphas Levi, The History Of Magic,#KEYS
88:Raise Your Standards
Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards. When people ask me what really changed my life eight years ago, I tell them that absolutely the most important thing was changing what I demanded of myself. I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming.
Think of the far-reaching consequences set in motion by men and women who raised their standards and acted in accordance with them, deciding they would tolerate no less. History chronicles the inspiring examples of people like Leonardo da Vinci, Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Albeit Einstein, Cesar Chavez, Soichiro Honda, and many others who took the magnificently powerful step of raising their standards. The same power that was available to them is available to you, if you have the courage to claim it. Changing an organization, acompany, a country-or a world-begins with the simple step of changing yourself.
STEP TWO
Change Your Limiting Beliefs ~ Anthony Robbins, How to take Immediate Control of Your Mental Emotional Physical and Financial Destiny,#KEYS
89:The third operation in any magical ceremony is the oath or proclamation. The Magician, armed and ready, stands in the centre of the Circle, and strikes once upon the bell as if to call the attention of the Universe. He then declares who he is, reciting his magical history by the proclamation of the grades which he has attained, giving the signs and words of those grades. He then states the purpose of the ceremony, and proves that it is necessary to perform it and to succeed in its performance. He then takes an oath before the Lord of the Universe (not before the particular Lord whom he is invoking) as if to call Him to witness the act. He swears solemnly that he will perform it-that nothing shall prevent him from performing it-that he will not leave the operation until it is successfully performed-and once again he strikes upon the bell. Yet, having demonstrated himself in that position at once infinitely lofty and infinitely unimportant, the instrument of destiny, he balances this by the Confession, in which there is again an infinite exaltation harmonised with an infinite humility. He admits himself to be a weak human being humbly aspiring to something higher; a creature of circumstance utterly dependent-even for the breath of life-upon a series of fortunate accidents.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS
90:Part 1 - Departure
1. The Call to Adventure ::: This first stage of the mythological journey-which we have designated the "call to adventure"-signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of grav ity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown. This fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight. The hero can go forth of his own volition to accomplish the adventure, as did Theseus when he arrived in his father's city, Athens, and heard the horrible history of the Minotaur; or he may be carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent, as was Odysseus, driven about the Mediterranean by the winds of the angered god, Poseidon. The adventure may begin as a mere blunder, as did that of the princess of the fairy tale; or still again, one may be only casually strolling, when some passing phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away from the frequented paths of man. Examples might be multiplied, ad infinitum, from every corner of the world. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces,#KEYS
91:38 - Strange! The Germans have disproved the existence of Christ; yet his crucifixion remains still a greater historic fact than the death of Caesar. - Sri Aurobindo.
To what plane of consciousness did Christ belong?
In the Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo mentions the names of three Avatars, and Christ is one of them. An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.
I heard Sri Aurobindo himself say that Christ was an emanation of the Lord's aspect of love.
The death of Caesar marked a decisive change in the history of Rome and the countries dependent on her. It was therefore an important event in the history of Europe.
But the death of Christ was the starting-point of a new stage in the evolution of human civilisation. This is why Sri Aurobindo tells us that the death of Christ was of greater historical significance, that is to say, it has had greater historical consequences than the death of Caesar. The story of Christ, as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of the divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human ignorance and suffering in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which they live and because of which they die.
16 June 1960 ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.61-62),#KEYS
92:The great men of the past have given us glimpses of what is possible in the way of personality, of intellectual understanding, of spiritual achievement, of artistic creation. But these are scarcely more than Pisgah glimpses. We need to explore and map the whole realm of human possibility, as the realm of physical geography has been explored and mapped. How to create new possibilities for ordinary living? What can be done to bring out the latent capacities of the ordinary man and woman for understanding and enjoyment; to teach people the techniques of achieving spiritual experience (after all, one can acquire the technique of dancing or tennis, so why not of mystical ecstasy or spiritual peace?)...
The zestful but scientific exploration of possibilities and of the techniques for realizing them will make our hopes rational, and will set our ideals within the framework of reality, by showing how much of them are indeed realizable. Already, we can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted. We are already justified in the conviction that human life as we know it in history is a wretched makeshift, rooted in ignorance; and that it could be transcended by a state of existence based on the illumination of knowledge and comprehension, just as our modern control of physical nature based on science transcends the tentative fumblings of our ancestors, that were rooted in superstition and professional secrecy. ~ Julian Huxley, Transhumanism,#KEYS
93:Supermind, on the other hand, as a basic structure-rung (conjoined with nondual Suchness) can only be experienced once all the previous junior levels have emerged and developed, and as in all structure development, stages cannot be skipped. Therefore, unlike Big Mind, supermind can only be experienced after all 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-tier junior stages have been passed through. While, as Genpo Roshi has abundantly demonstrated, Big Mind state experience is available to virtually anybody at almost any age (and will be interpreted according to the View of their current stage), supermind is an extremely rare recognition. Supermind, as the highest structure-rung to date, has access to all previous structures, all the way back to Archaic-and the Archaic itself, of course, has transcended and included, and now embraces, every major structural evolution going all the way back to the Big Bang. (A human being literally enfolds and embraces all the major transformative unfoldings of the entire Kosmic history-strings to quarks to subatomic particles to atoms to molecules to cells, all the way through the Tree of Life up to its latest evolutionary emergent, the triune brain, the most complex structure in the known natural world.) Supermind, in any given individual, is experienced as a type of omniscience-the supermind, since it transcends and includes all of the previous structure-rungs, and inherently is conjoined with the highest nondual Suchness state, has a full and complete knowledge of all of the potentials in that person. It literally knows all, at least for the individual.
~ Ken Wilber?,#KEYS
94:The whole history of mankind and especially the present condition of the world unite in showing that far from being merely hypothetical, the case supposed has always been actual and is actual to-day on a vaster scale than ever before. My contention is that while progress in some of the great matters of human concern has been long proceeding in accordance with the law of a rapidly increasing geometric progression, progress in the other matters of no less importance has advanced only at the rate of an arithmetical progression or at best at the rate of some geometric progression of relatively slow growth. To see it and to understand it we have to pay the small price of a little observation and a little meditation.
Some technological invention is made, like that of a steam engine or a printing press, for example; or some discovery of scientific method, like that of analytical geometry or the infinitesimal calculus; or some discovery of natural law, like that of falling bodies or the Newtonian law of gravitation. What happens? What is the effect upon the progress of knowledge and invention? The effect is stimulation. Each invention leads to new inventions and each discovery to new discoveries; invention breeds invention, science begets science, the children of knowledge produce their kind in larger and larger families; the process goes on from decade to decade, from generation to generation, and the spectacle we behold is that of advancement in scientific knowledge and technological power according to the law and rate of a rapidly increasing geometric progression or logarithmic function. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity,#KEYS
95:39 - Sometimes one is led to think that only those things really matter which have never happened; for beside them most historic achievements seem almost pale and ineffective. - Sri Aurobindo
I would like to have an explanation of this aphorism.
Sri Aurobindo, who had made a thorough study of history, knew how uncertain are the data which have been used to write it. Most often the accuracy of the documents is doubtful, and the information they supply is poor, incomplete, trivial and frequently distorted. As a whole, the official version of human history is nothing but a long, almost unbroken record of violent aggressions: wars, revolutions, murders or colonisations. True, some of these aggressions and massacres have been adorned with flattering terms and epithets; they have been called religious wars, holy wars, civilising campaigns; but they nonetheless remain acts of greed or vengeance.
Rarely in history do we find the description of a cultural, artistic or philosophical outflowering.
That is why, as Sri Aurobindo says, all this makes a rather dismal picture without any deep significance. On the other hand, in the legendary accounts of things which may never have existed on earth, of events which have not been declared authentic by "official" knowledge, of wonderful individuals whose existence is doubted by the scholars in their dried-up wisdom, we find the crystallisation of all the hopes and aspirations of man, his love of the marvellous, the heroic and the sublime, the description of everything he would like to be and strives to become.
That, more or less, is what Sri Aurobindo means in his aphorism.
22 June 1960 ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.62),#KEYS
96:The capacity for visions, when it is sincere and spontaneous, can put you in touch with events which you are not capable of knowing in your outer consciousness.... There is a very interesting fact, it is that somewhere in the terrestrial mind, somewhere in the terrestrial vital, somewhere in the subtle physical, one can find an exact, perfect, automatic recording of everything that happens. It is the most formidable memory one could imagine, which misses nothing, forgets nothing, records all. And if you are able to enter into it, you can go backward, you can go forward, and in all directions, and you will have the "memory" of all things - not only of things of the past, but of things to come. For everything is recorded there.
In the mental world, for instance, there is a domain of the physical mind which is related to physical things and keeps the memory of physical happenings upon earth. It is as though you were entering into innumerable vaults, one following another indefinitely, and these vaults are filled with small pigeon-holes, one above another, one above another, with tiny doors. Then if you want to know something and if you are conscious, you look, and you see something like a small point - a shining point; you find that this is what you wish to know and you have only to concentrate there and it opens; and when it opens, there is a sort of an unrolling of something like extremely subtle manuscripts, but if your concentration is sufficiently strong you begin to read as though from a book. And you have the whole story in all its details. There are thousands of these little holes, you know; when you go for a walk there, it is as though you were walking in infinity. And in this way you can find the exact facts about whatever you want to know. But I must tell you that what you find is never what has been reported in history - histories are always planned out; I have never come across a single "historical" fact which is like history.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951, 109 [T7],#KEYS
97:There is one point in particular I would like to single out and stress, namely, the notion of evolution. It is common to assume that one of the doctrines of the perennial philosophy... is the idea of involution-evolution. That is, the manifest world was created as a "fall" or "breaking away" from the Absolute (involution), but that all things are now returning to the Absolute (via evolution). In fact, the doctrine of progressive temporal return to Source (evolution) does not appear anywhere, according to scholars as Joseph Campbell, until the axial period (i.e. a mere two thousand years ago). And even then, the idea was somewhat convoluted and backwards. The doctrine of the yugas, for example, sees the world as proceeding through various stages of development, but the direction is backward: yesterday was the Golden Age, and time ever since has been a devolutionary slide downhill, resulting in the present-day Kali-Yuga. Indeed, this notion of a historical fall from Eden was ubiquitous during the axial period; the idea that we are, at this moment, actually evolving toward Spirit was simply not conceived in any sort of influential fashion.
But sometime during the modern era-it is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly-the idea of history as devolution (or a fall from God) was slowly replaced by the idea of history as evolution (or a growth towards God). We see it explicitly in Schelling (1775-1854); Hegel (1770-1831) propounded the doctrine with a genius rarely equaled; Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) made evolution a universal law, and his friend Charles Darwin (1809-1882) applied it to biology. We find it next appearing in Aurobindo (1872-1950), who gave perhaps its most accurate and profound spiritual context, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) who made it famous in the West.
But here is my point: we might say that the idea of evolution as return-to-Spirit is part of the perennial philosophy, but the idea itself, in any adequate form, is no more than a few hundred years old. It might be 'ancient' as timeless, but it is certainly not ancient as "old."...
This fundamental shift in the sense or form of the perennial philosophy-as represented in, say, Aurobindo, Hegel, Adi Da, Schelling, Teilhard de Chardin, Radhakrishnan, to name a few-I should like to call the "neoperennial philosophy." ~ Ken Wilber, The Eye Of Spirit,#KEYS
98:The last sentence: "...in the Truth-Creation the law is that of a constant unfolding without any Pralaya." What is this constant unfolding?
The Truth-Creation... it is the last line? (Mother consults the book) I think we have already spoken about this several times. It has been said that in the process of creation, there is the movement of creation followed by a movement of preservation and ending in a movement of disintegration or destruction; and even it has been repeated very often: "All that begins must end", etc., etc.
In fact in the history of our universe there have been six consecutive periods which began by a creation, were prolonged by a force of preservation and ended by a disintegration, a destruction, a return to the Origin, which is called Pralaya; and that is why this tradition is there. But it has been said that the seventh creation would be a progressive creation, that is, after the starting-point of the creation, instead of its being simply followed by a preservation, it would be followed by a progressive manifestation which would express the Divine more and more completely, so that no disintegration and return to the Origin would be necessary. And it has been announced that the period we are in is precisely the seventh, that is, it would not end by a Pralaya, a return to the Origin, a destruction, a disappearance, but that it would be replaced by a constant progress, because it would be a more and more perfect unfolding of the divine Origin in its creation.
And this is what Sri Aurobindo says. He speaks of a constant unfolding, that is, the Divine manifests more and more completely; more and more perfectly, in a progressive creation. It is the nature of this progression which makes the return to the Origin, the destruction no longer necessary. All that does not progress disappears, and that is why physical bodies die, it's because they are not progressive; they are progressive up to a certain moment, then there they stop and most often they remain stable for a certain time, and then they begin to decline, and then disappear. It's because the physical body, physical matter as it is at present is not plastic enough to be able to progress constantly. But it is not impossible to make it sufficiently plastic for the perfecting of the physical body to be such that it no longer needs disintegration, that is, death.
Only, this cannot be realised except by the descent of the Supermind which is a force higher than all those which have so far manifested and which will give the body a plasticity that will allow it to progress constantly, that is, to follow the divine movement in its unfolding. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 207-209,#KEYS
99:The madman.-
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place. and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him-you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward. forward. in all directions? be there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too. decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us-for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then: "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars-and yet they have done it themselves... It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his reqttiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Kaufmann,#KEYS
100:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
~ Mortimer J Adler,#KEYS
101:PRATYAHARA
PRATYAHARA is the first process in the mental part of our task. The previous practices, Asana, Pranayama, Yama, and Niyama, are all acts of the body, while mantra is connected with speech: Pratyahara is purely mental.
And what is Pratyahara? This word is used by different authors in different senses. The same word is employed to designate both the practice and the result. It means for our present purpose a process rather strategical than practical; it is introspection, a sort of general examination of the contents of the mind which we wish to control: Asana having been mastered, all immediate exciting causes have been removed, and we are free to think what we are thinking about.
A very similar experience to that of Asana is in store for us. At first we shall very likely flatter ourselves that our minds are pretty calm; this is a defect of observation. Just as the European standing for the first time on the edge of the desert will see nothing there, while his Arab can tell him the family history of each of the fifty persons in view, because he has learnt how to look, so with practice the thoughts will become more numerous and more insistent.
As soon as the body was accurately observed it was found to be terribly restless and painful; now that we observe the mind it is seen to be more restless and painful still. (See diagram opposite.)
A similar curve might be plotted for the real and apparent painfulness of Asana. Conscious of this fact, we begin to try to control it: "Not quite so many thoughts, please!" "Don't think quite so fast, please!" "No more of that kind of thought, please!" It is only then that we discover that what we thought was a school of playful porpoises is really the convolutions of the sea-serpent. The attempt to repress has the effect of exciting.
When the unsuspecting pupil first approaches his holy but wily Guru, and demands magical powers, that Wise One replies that he will confer them, points out with much caution and secrecy some particular spot on the pupil's body which has never previously attracted his attention, and says: "In order to obtain this magical power which you seek, all that is necessary is to wash seven times in the Ganges during seven days, being particularly careful to avoid thinking of that one spot." Of course the unhappy youth spends a disgusted week in thinking of little else.
It is positively amazing with what persistence a thought, even a whole train of thoughts, returns again and again to the charge. It becomes a positive nightmare. It is intensely annoying, too, to find that one does not become conscious that one has got on to the forbidden subject until one has gone right through with it. However, one continues day after day investigating thoughts and trying to check them; and sooner or later one proceeds to the next stage, Dharana, the attempt to restrain the mind to a single object.
Before we go on to this, however, we must consider what is meant by success in Pratyahara. This is a very extensive subject, and different authors take widely divergent views. One writer means an analysis so acute that every thought is resolved into a number of elements (see "The Psychology of Hashish," Section V, in Equinox II).
Others take the view that success in the practice is something like the experience which Sir Humphrey Davy had as a result of taking nitrous oxide, in which he exclaimed: "The universe is composed exclusively of ideas."
Others say that it gives Hamlet's feeling: "There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so," interpreted as literally as was done by Mrs. Eddy.
However, the main point is to acquire some sort of inhibitory power over the thoughts. Fortunately there is an unfailing method of acquiring this power. It is given in Liber III. If Sections 1 and 2 are practised (if necessary with the assistance of another person to aid your vigilance) you will soon be able to master the final section. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS
102:Coded Language
Whereas, breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diasporic community to its drum woven past
Whereas the quantised drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to calculate the ever changing distance between rock and stardom.
Whereas the velocity of the spinning vinyl, cross-faded, spun backwards, and re-released at the same given moment of recorded history , yet at a different moment in time's continuum has allowed history to catch up with the present.
We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.
Statements, such as, "keep it real", especially when punctuating or anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or physically or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as retro-active and not representative of the individually determined is.
Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness of this state of being and the lessened distance between thought patterns and their secular manifestations, the role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased by a number no less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal aggressors.
Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize
We have found evidence that hip hops standard 85 rpm when increased by a number as least half the rate of it's standard or decreased at ¾ of it's speed may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.
Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.
Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season
Our cyclical relationship to phenomenon has encouraged scholars to erase the centers of periods, thus symbolizing the non-linear character of cause and effect
Reject mediocrity!
Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given for you to understand.
The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the diet of an infant.
The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and deformative symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce and crushed pears
Light years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness.
The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.
Thus, in the name of:
ROBESON, GOD'S SON, HURSTON, AHKENATON, HATHSHEPUT, BLACKFOOT, HELEN
LENNON, KHALO, KALI, THE THREE MARIAS, TARA, LILITH, LOURDE, WHITMAN
BALDWIN, GINSBERG, KAUFMAN, LUMUMBA, GHANDI, GIBRAN, SHABAZZ, SIDDHARTHA
MEDUSA, GUEVARA, GURDJIEFF, RAND, WRIGHT, BANNEKER, TUBMAN, HAMER, HOLIDAY
DAVIS, COLTRANE, MORRISON, JOPLIN, DUBOIS, CLARKE, SHAKESPEARE, RACHMANINOV
ELLINGTON, CARTER, GAYE, HATHAWAY, HENDRIX, KUTI, DICKINSON, RIPPERTON
MARY, ISIS, THERESA, HANSBURY, TESLA, PLATH, RUMI, FELLINI, MICHAUX, NOSTRADAMUS, NEFERTITI
LA ROCK, SHIVA, GANESHA, YEMAJA, OSHUN, OBATALA, OGUN, KENNEDY, KING, FOUR
LITTLE GIRLS, HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, KELLER, BIKO, PERÓN, MARLEY, MAGDALENE, COSBY
SHAKUR, THOSE WHO BURN, THOSE STILL AFLAME, AND THE COUNTLESS UNNAMED
We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter.
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone
Our music is our alchemy
We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down supply the percussion factor of forever.
If you must count to keep the beat then count.
Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious.
Curve you circles counterclockwise
Use your cipher to decipher, Coded Language, man made laws.
Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.
Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry, crafts, love, and love.
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference.
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
~ Saul Williams,#KEYS
103:AUGOEIDES:
The magicians most important invocation is that of his Genius, Daemon, True Will, or Augoeides. This operation is traditionally known as attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It is sometimes known as the Magnum Opus or Great Work.
The Augoeides may be defined as the most perfect vehicle of Kia on the plane of duality. As the avatar of Kia on earth, the Augoeides represents the true will, the raison detre of the magician, his purpose in existing. The discovery of ones true will or real nature may be difficult and fraught with danger, since a false identification leads to obsession and madness. The operation of obtaining the knowledge and conversation is usually a lengthy one. The magician is attempting a progressive metamorphosis, a complete overhaul of his entire existence. Yet he has to seek the blueprint for his reborn self as he goes along. Life is less the meaningless accident it seems. Kia has incarnated in these particular conditions of duality for some purpose. The inertia of previous existences propels Kia into new forms of manifestation. Each incarnation represents a task, or a puzzle to be solved, on the way to some greater form of completion.
The key to this puzzle is in the phenomena of the plane of duality in which we find ourselves. We are, as it were, trapped in a labyrinth or maze. The only thing to do is move about and keep a close watch on the way the walls turn. In a completely chaotic universe such as this one, there are no accidents. Everything is signifcant. Move a single grain of sand on a distant shore and the entire future history of the world will eventually be changed. A person doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the universe and seems possessed of amazing good luck. In beginning the great work of obtaining the knowledge and conversation, the magician vows to interpret every manifestation of existence as a direct message from the infinite Chaos to himself personally.
To do this is to enter the magical world view in its totality. He takes complete responsibility for his present incarnation and must consider every experience, thing, or piece of information which assails him from any source, as a reflection of the way he is conducting his existence. The idea that things happen to one that may or may not be related to the way one acts is an illusion created by our shallow awareness.
Keeping a close eye on the walls of the labyrinth, the conditions of his existence, the magician may then begin his invocation. The genius is not something added to oneself. Rather it is a stripping away of excess to reveal the god within.
Directly on awakening, preferably at dawn, the initiate goes to the place of invocation. Figuring to himself as he goes that being born anew each day brings with it the chance of greater rebirth, first he banishes the temple of his mind by ritual or by some magical trance. Then he unveils some token or symbol or sigil which represents to him the Holy Guardian Angel. This symbol he will likely have to change during the great work as the inspiration begins to move him. Next he invokes an image of the Angel into his minds eye. It may be considered as a luminous duplicate of ones own form standing in front of or behind one, or simply as a ball of brilliant light above ones head. Then he formulates his aspirations in what manner he will, humbling himself in prayer or exalting himself in loud proclamation as his need be. The best form of this invocation is spoken spontaneously from the heart, and if halting at first, will prove itself in time. He is aiming to establish a set of ideas and images which correspond to the nature of his genius, and at the same time receive inspiration from that source. As the magician begins to manifest more of his true will, the Augoeides will reveal images, names, and spiritual principles by which it can be drawn into greater manifestation. Having communicated with the invoked form, the magician should draw it into himself and go forth to live in the way he hath willed.
The ritual may be concluded with an aspiration to the wisdom of silence by a brief concentration on the sigil of the Augoeides, but never by banishing. Periodically more elaborate forms of ritual, using more powerful forms of gnosis, may be employed. At the end of the day, there should be an accounting and fresh resolution made. Though every day be a catalog of failure, there should be no sense of sin or guilt. Magic is the raising of the whole individual in perfect balance to the power of Infinity, and such feelings are symptomatic of imbalance. If any unnecessary or imbalanced scraps of ego become identified with the genius by mistake, then disaster awaits. The life force flows directly into these complexes and bloats them into grotesque monsters variously known as the demon Choronzon. Some magicians attempting to go too fast with this invocation have failed to banish this demon, and have gone spectacularly insane as a result.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
104:Death & Fame
When I die
I don't care what happens to my body throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But I want a big funeral St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister-in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters their grandchildren, companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--
Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche, there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting America, Satchitananda Swami Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche, Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau Roshis, Lama Tarchen --
Then, most important, lovers over half-century Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousandday retreat --"
"I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he loved me"
"I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone"
"We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly arms round each other"
"I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my skivvies would be on the floor"
"Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master"
"We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then sleep in his captain's bed."
"He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy"
"I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my stomach shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- "
"All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth & fingers along my waist"
"He gave great head"
So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin-gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997 and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!"
"I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me."
"I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head, my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick, tickled with his tongue my behind"
"I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a pillow --"
Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear
"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his walk-up flat, seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him again never wanted to... "
"He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made sure I came first"
This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--
Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con-ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum-peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto-harp pennywhistles & kazoos
Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India, Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massa-chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American provinces
Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio-philes, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex
"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved him anyway, true artist"
"Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me from suicide hospitals"
"Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my studio guest a week in Budapest"
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures
Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo-graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural historians come to witness the historic funeral Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph-hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers
Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive
February 22, 1997
~ Allen Ginsberg,#KEYS
105:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants#KEYS
106:Chapter 18 - Trapped in a Dream
(A guy is playing a pinball machine, seemingly the same guy who rode with him in the back of the boat car. This part is played by Richard Linklater, aka, the director.)
Hey, man.
Hey.
Weren't you in a boat car? You know, the guy, the guy with the hat? He gave me a ride in his car, or boat thing, and you were in the back seat with me?
I mean, I'm not saying that you don't know what you're talking about, but I don't know what you're talking about.
No, you see, you guys let me off at this really specific spot that you gave him directions to let me off at, I get out, and end up getting hit by a car, but then, I just woke up because I was dreaming, and later than that, I found out that I was still dreaming, dreaming that I'd woken up.
Oh yeah, those are called false awakenings. I used to have those all the time.
Yeah, but I'm still in it now. I, I can't get out of it. It's been going on forever, I keep waking up, but, but I'm just waking up into another dream. I'm starting to get creeped out, too. Like I'm talking to dead people. This woman on TV's telling me about how death is this dreamtime that exists outside of life. I mean, (desperate sigh) I'm starting to think that I'm dead.
I'm gonna tell you about a dream I once had. I know that's, when someone says that, then usually you're in for a very boring next few minutes, and you might be, but it sounds like, you know, what else are you going to do, right? Anyway, I read this essay by Philip K. Dick.
What, you read it in your dream?
No, no. I read it before the dream. It was the preamble to the dream. It was about that book, um Flow My Tears the Policeman Said. You know that one?
Uh, yeah yeah, he won an award for that one.
Right, right. That's the one he wrote really fast. It just like flowed right out of him. He felt he was sort of channeling it, or something. But anyway, about four years after it was published, he was at this party, and he met this woman who had the same name as the woman character in the book. And she had a boyfriend with the same name as the boyfriend character in the book, and she was having an affair with this guy, the chief of police, and he had the same name as the chief of police in his book. So she's telling him all of this stuff from her life, and everything she's saying is right out of his book. So that's totally freaking him out, but, what can he do?
And then shortly after that, he was going to mail a letter, and he saw this kind of, um, you know, dangerous, shady looking guy standing by his car, but instead of avoiding him, which he says he would have usually done, he just walked right up to him and said, "Can I help you?" And the guy said, "Yeah. I, I ran out of gas." So he pulls out his wallet, and he hands him some money, which he says he never would have done, and then he gets home and thinks, wait a second, this guy, you know, he can't get to a gas station, he's out of gas. So he gets back in his car, he goes and finds the guy, takes him to the gas station, and as he's pulling up at the gas station, he realizes, "Hey, this is in my book too. This exact station, this exact guy. Everything."
So this whole episode is kind of creepy, right? And he's telling his priest about it, you know, describing how he wrote this book, and then four years later all these things happened to him. And as he's telling it to him, the priest says, "That's the Book of Acts. You're describing the Book of Acts." And he's like, "I've never read the Book of Acts." So he, you know, goes home and reads the Book of Acts, and it's like uncanny. Even the characters' names are the same as in the Bible. And the Book of Acts takes place in 50 A.D., when it was written, supposedly. So Philip K. Dick had this theory that time was an illusion and that we were all actually in 50 A.D., and the reason he had written this book was that he had somehow momentarily punctured through this illusion, this veil of time, and what he had seen there was what was going on in the Book of Acts.
And he was really into Gnosticism, and this idea that this demiurge, or demon, had created this illusion of time to make us forget that Christ was about to return, and the kingdom of God was about to arrive. And that we're all in 50 A.D., and there's someone trying to make us forget that God is imminent. And that's what time is. That's what all of history is. It's just this kind of continuous, you know, daydream, or distraction.
And so I read that, and I was like, well that's weird. And than that night I had a dream and there was this guy in the dream who was supposed to be a psychic. But I was skeptical. I was like, you know, he's not really a psychic, you know I'm thinking to myself. And then suddenly I start floating, like levitating, up to the ceiling. And as I almost go through the roof, I'm like, "Okay, Mr. Psychic. I believe you. You're a psychic. Put me down please." And I float down, and as my feet touch the ground, the psychic turns into this woman in a green dress. And this woman is Lady Gregory.
Now Lady Gregory was Yeats' patron, this, you know, Irish person. And though I'd never seen her image, I was just sure that this was the face of Lady Gregory. So we're walking along, and Lady Gregory turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. Now Philip K. Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 A.D. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to, you know, be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.' And so time is actually just this constant saying 'No' to God's invitation. I mean that's what time is. I mean, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's two thousand and one. And there's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in."
And then she tells me that actually this is the narrative of everyone's life. That, you know, behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from the "no" to the "yes." All of life is like, "No thank you. No thank you. No thank you." then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in. Yes, I accept. Yes, I embrace." I mean, that's the journey. I mean, everyone gets to the "yes" in the end, right?
Right.
So we continue walking, and my dog runs over to me. And so I'm petting him, really happy to see him, you know, he's been dead for years. So I'm petting him and I realize there's this kind of gross oozing stuff coming out of his stomach. And I look over at Lady Gregory, and she sort of coughs. She's like [cough] [cough] "Oh, excuse me." And there's vomit, like dribbling down her chin, and it smells really bad. And I think, "Well, wait a second, that's not just the smell of vomit," which is, doesn't smell very good, "that's the smell of like dead person vomit." You know, so it's like doubly foul. And then I realize I'm actually in the land of the dead, and everyone around me is dead. My dog had been dead for over ten years, Lady Gregory had been dead a lot longer than that. When I finally woke up, I was like, whoa, that wasn't a dream, that was a visitation to this real place, the land of the dead.
So what happened? I mean how did you finally get out of it?
Oh man. It was just like one of those like life altering experiences. I mean I could never really look at the world the same way again, after that.
Yeah, but I mean like how did you, how did you finally get out of the dream? See, that's my problem. I'm like trapped. I keep, I keep thinking that I'm waking up, but I'm still in a dream. It seems like it's going on forever. I can't get out of it, and I want to wake up for real. How do you really wake up?
I don't know, I don't know. I'm not very good at that anymore. But, um, if that's what you're thinking, I mean you, you probably should. I mean, you know if you can wake up, you should, because you know someday, you know, you won't be able to. So just, um ... But it's easy. You know. Just, just wake up. ~ Waking Life,#KEYS
107:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
108:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.
The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.
The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.
It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.
As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.
And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.
It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!
This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.
My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?
A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.
Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.
Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.
If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.
First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!
Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"
I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.
Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.
These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."
Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.
If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'
The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passage
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae.
Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?
And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?
And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.
I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!
"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,
'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'
Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,
Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vain
Upon the axis of its pain,
Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,
Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."
Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!
One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.
But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!
'Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:History is merely gossip. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 2:History is more or less bunk. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 3:History! Read it and weep! ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 4:Happy people have no history. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 5:History: gossip well told. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 6:History is the new poetry. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 7:We cannot escape history. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 8:History - the devil's scripture ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 9:War is not women's history. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 10:History is not was, it is. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 11:History is a great dust heap. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 12:Kings are the slaves of history. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 13:All history was at first oral. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 14:A turning point in modern history. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 15:History develops, art stands still. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 16:History: A distillation of rumor. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 17:Well behaved women do not make history. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 18:History: a collection of epitaphs. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 19:History should be written as philosophy. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 20:Biography is the only true history. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 21:History paints the human heart. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 22:Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 23:Biography is the best form of history. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 24:History after all is the true poetry. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 25:History is written by the victors. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 26:Don't forget your history nor your destiny ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 27:History is the distillation of rumour. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 28:History is written by the winners. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 29:Blood alone moves the wheels of history. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 30:History is a vast early warning system. ~ norman-cousins, @wisdomtrove 31:History is a pack of lies we play on the dead. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 32:History's just one darn thing after another. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 33:History is a set of lies agreed upon. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 34:History takes time. History makes memory. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 35:In Jewish history there are no coincidences. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 36:Language is the archives of history. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 37:All history . . . is an inarticulate Bible. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 38:History has its truth; and so has legend hers. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 39:History is a story written by the finger of God. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 40:History is the invention of historians. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 41:What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 42:What is history but a fable agreed upon? ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 43:History as the slaughter-bench ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 44:History can be well written only in a free country. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 45:History is philosophy teaching by experience. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 46:The Fed is the greatest hedge fund in history. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 47:History is just new people making old mistakes. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 48:Learn from your history, but don’t live in it. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 49:History is a myth that men agree to believe. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 50:the history of melancholia includes all of us. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 51:History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 52:The greatest man in history was the poorest. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 53:Don't let your history interfere with yourdestiny. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 54:History is the essence of innumerable biographies. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 55:History, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 56:The mystery of history is an insoluble problem. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 57:History will never accept difficulties as an excuse. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 58:The most important history is the history we make today. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 59:This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 60:World history is a court of judgment. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 61:Does the business have a consistent operating history? ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 62:Each book has a secret history of ways and means. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 63:History would be a wonderful thing if it were only true. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 64:Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 65:History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 66:History would be an excellent thing if only it were true. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 67:Knowledge and history are the enemies of religion. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 68:A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 69:History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 70:Philosophy is the history of philosophy. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 71:Someone calls biography the home aspect of history. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 72:The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 73:Don't be misled by History, or any other unreliable source. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 74:Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 75:Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 76:Every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 77:Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History Books! ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 78:History is the discovering of the principles of human nature. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 79:We are not makers of history. We are made by history. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 80:Your requests change history because your prayers change God! ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 81:If we don't know our own history, we are deemed to live it. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 82:Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 83:The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 84:Assassination has never changed the history of the world. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 85:History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 86:In Him (God), history and prophecy are one and the same. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 87:The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 88:The history of art is a sequence of successful transgressions. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove 89:The history of the world is the history of the privileged few. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 90:The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 91:History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 92:The stop-watch of history is running. The race is on . . . ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 93:Trust the people - that is the crucial lesson of history. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 94:History casts its shadow far into the land of song. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 95:If we could read the secret history of our enemies. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 96:I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 97:Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 98:The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 99:Your history of work is as important as the work you'll do tomorrow. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 100:History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 101:History is the long, difficult and confused dream of Mankind. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 102:If knowing history made you rich, librarians would be billionaires. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 103:It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 104:“Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 105:the history of the world records is the fact of-Christ's birth." ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 106:There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 107:What we learn from history is that people don't learn from history. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 108:History is too much about wars; biography too much about great men. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 109:Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable? ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 110:Don't do business with anyone who has a history of suing people. ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 111:Scared is the price brave people pay to enjoy lives that make history. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 112:This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 113:Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 114:We have had to learn that history is neither a God nor a redeemer. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 115:Energy deregulation will be the largest transfer of wealth in history. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 116:Presidents come and go. History comes and goes, but principles endure. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 117:The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 118:Women with pasts interest men because they hope history will repeat itself. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 119:History is the myth, the true myth, of man's fall made manifest in time. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 120:History teaches us that man learns nothing from history ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 121:If we want to know history, I would think there would be every reason to. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 122:I'm history! No, I'm mythology! Nah, I don't care what I am, I'm free! ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 123:It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 124:She was old too, when she went to school they didn't have history. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 125:Things have never been more like the way they are today in history. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 126:We learn from history that we do not learn from history ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 127:Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 128:History has thrust something upon me from which I cannot turn away. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 129:History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 130:We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 131:guilt is the cause of more marauders than history's most obscene disauders ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove 132:The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 133:They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 134:Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 135:History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 136:History is the product of vast, amorphous and indecipherable social movements. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 137:Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 138:The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 139:You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 140:Don't hesitate to learn the most painful aspects of our history, understand it. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 141:I did not say history was bunk. It was bunk to me . . I did not need it very bad. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 142:Records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 143:We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors' wisdom. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 144:History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 145:History may never have all the facts, but history always has the last word. ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 146:It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 147:Mona Lisa is the only beauty who went through history and retained her reputation. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 148:Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 149:We've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion, but what's important. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 150:History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 151:History is not just the evolution of technology; it is the evolution of thought. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 152:History often resembles myth, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 153:History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 154:We are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 155:So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 156:The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 157:He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 158:If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 159:Like many people who live in the South, I'm drawn to the history of the Civil War. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 160:Maxwell's Equations have had a greater impact on human history than any ten presidents. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 161:The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 162:All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 163:The story [of the Sacrifice of Isaac ] is much more a part of theology than of history. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 164:We learn from history that man can never learn anything from history. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 165:Hiding from your history only shackles you to it. Instead, face it and free yourself. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 166:History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 167:If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 168:The theater, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 169:Time travel, by its very nature, was invented in all periods of history simultaneously. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 170:What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 171:History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 172:No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 173:I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 174:I think so. 9/11 has been a turning point in American history, there's no doubt about that. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 175:Jesus was the most active resister known to history. His was nonviolence par excellence. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 176:There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 177:History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 178:The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice - their choice ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 179:The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice! ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 180:We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poorhouse in an automobile. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 181:History is a record of the incessant struggle of humanity against ignorance and oppression. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 182:I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents. ~ pablo-picasso, @wisdomtrove 183:I know so little about any history. How little do I know even about the history of myself. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 184:Those who do not forgive history are assigned to repeat it until compassion replaces judgment. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove 185:Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 186:From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 187:History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 188:I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 189:The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 190:What want these outlaws conquerors should have but history's purchased page to call them great? ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 191:A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 192:Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 193:I can't understand why I flunked American history. When I was a kid there was so little of it. ~ george-burns, @wisdomtrove 194:Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own history based on, but not limited by, facts. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 195:The child ever dwells in the mystery of ageless time,unobscured by the dust of history. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 196:There is no record in human history of a happy philosopher: they exist only in romantic legend. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 197:Africa has no history and did not contribute to anything that mankind enjoyed. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 198:History has to move in a certain direction, even if it has to be pushed that way by neurotics. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 199:History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 200:If history tells us anything, it is that human culture and knowledge are constantly evolving. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 201:George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 202:History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 203:If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 204:if we do not know our own history, we are doomed to live it as though it were our private fate. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 205:Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 206:The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 207:If I could have dinner with anyone who lived in history, it would depend on the restaurant. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 208:No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 209:The study of history, while it does not endow with prophecy, may indicate lines of probability. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 210:All the true heroes of history will be forgotten and all the villains will be remembered as heroes. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 211:History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 212:Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 213:Some women's faces are, in their brightness, a prophecy; and some, in their sadness, a history. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 214:The history of what the law has been is necessary to the knowledge of what the law is. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 215:To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 216:Madam, you're making history, in fact, you're making me, and I wish you'd keep my hands to yourself ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 217:A History of Western Philosophy. Book by Bertrand Russell, Book Three, Part I, Chapter 17. Hume, 1945. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 218:If every man could act as he chose, the whole of history would be a tissue of disconnected accidents. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 219:I am not a victim. No matter what I have been through, I'm still here. I have a history of victory. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 220:If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 221:History is not the soil of happiness. The periods of happiness are blank pages in it. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 222:In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other force in human history. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 223:the late twentieth century will go down in history, i'm sure, as an era of pharmaceutical buffoonery. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 224:If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 225:The U.S. incarcerates more of its people than any nation in the world, or any nation in history. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 226:American history is not something dead and over. It is always alive,always growing, always unfinished. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 227:History doesn't mean dates and wars and textbooks to me; it means the unconquerable pioneer spirit of man. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 228:I almost never do anything for Black History Month, because I feel it's just another way to separate us. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 229:The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 230:Successful people pay more attention to their visions and goals than to history and the opinions of others. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove 231:The Bible teaches that history began in the Middle East, and someday history will end in the Middle East. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 232:The history of our spiritual life is a continuing search for the unity between ourselves and the world. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 233:Through the history of our nation, Americans have always extended their hands in gestures of assistance. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 234:Worms have played a more important part in the history of the world than humans would at first suppose. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 235:America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 236:Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 237:He only deserves to be remembered by posterity who treasures up and preserves the history of his ancestors. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 238:History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 239:We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 240:... what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be told truthfully. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 241:It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 242:No matter what your history has been, your destiny is what you create today. What are you going to create? ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 243:The history of the world is none other than the progress of the , consciousness of freedom. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 244:This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time, no one knew what was coming. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 245:History is little more than the story of man's sin, and the daily newspaper a running commentary on it. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 246:It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 247:One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 248:The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 249:The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 250:What history teaches us is that neither nations nor governments ever learn anything from it. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 251:Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 252:Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 253:Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 254:History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 255:History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 256:It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 257:The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 258:The history of most women is hidden either by silence, or by flourishes and ornaments that amount to silence. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 259:What keeps you from... living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy? ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 260:How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared? ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 261:If you study the history and records of the world you must admit that the source of justice was the fear of injustice. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 262:The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 263:According to the history of human progress, it is disobedience to nature that has constituted that progress. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 264:India has created a special momentum in world history as a country to be searched for knowledge. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 265:Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom had no such torment in its painted history of suffering. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 266:Not that which men do worthily, but that which they do successfully, is what history makes haste to record. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 267:That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 268:There is no record in the history of a nation that ever gained anything valuable by being unable to defend itself. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 269:The resurrection is a fact better attested than any event recorded in any history, whether ancient or modern. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 270:Witchcraft was hung, in History, But History and I Find all the Witchcraft that we need Around us, every Day - ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 271:History and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 272:In tragedy great men are more truly great than in history. We see them only in the crises which unfold them. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 273:Good women are no fun... The only good woman I can recall in history was Betsy Ross. And all she ever made was a flag. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 274:History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 275:How lucky we are to live in this time / the first moment in human history / when we are in fact visiting other worlds ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 276:I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 277:Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 278:The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 279:We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 280:Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 281:History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man's power in the world. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 282:There certainly are moments in history when poets and painters connect so closely as to be one and the same person, ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 283:Before the end of Time will be the end of History. Before the end of History will be the end of Art. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 284:This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning. History does not end so. It is the way its chapters open. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 285:A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 286:A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 287:A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 288:Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 289:Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 290:An educated man is not one whose memory is trained to carry a few dates in history - he is one who can accomplish things. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 291:In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 292:The birth of Christ is the central event in the history of the earth& 293:In the whole history of the world there is but one thing that money cannot buy... to wit& 294:To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove 295:To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 296:In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 297:The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 298:This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 299:History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 300:Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 301:One little person, giving all of her time to peace, makes news. Many people, giving some of their time, can make history. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 302:If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience! ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 303:Neither a wise nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 304:The better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 305:The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 306:And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 307:The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed and hopes that have been disappointed. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 308:We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 309:A broader reading of history shows that appeasement, no matter how it is labeled, never fulfills the hopes of the appeasers. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 310:iPerceptive is centred around the wisdom of history and the empowerment of consciousness through direct experience and mysticism. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 311:It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 312:We are living at an extraordinary time in human history. And for many of us things are great. Things are great for me. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 313:If history teaches us anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 314:If you look throughout human history ... the central epiphany of every religious tradition always occurs in the wilderness. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 315:The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular. ~ brian-eno, @wisdomtrove 316:& 317:All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 318:Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a deal breaker. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 319:History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 320:It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of human history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 321:Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 322:All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 323:As Michael (Chekhov)'s pupil, I learned more about acting. I learned psychology, history, and the good manners of art - taste. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 324:If at times our actions seem to make life difficult for others, it is only because history has made life difficult for us all. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 325:In human history there has been a continuous and growing impulse toward the regeneration and transformation of humanity. ~ barbara-marx-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 326:I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 327:No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 328:Stern accuracy in inquiring, bold imagination in describing, these are the cogs on which history soars or flutters and wobbles. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 329:The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 330:If you know your history, then you would know where you coming from, then you wouldn't have to ask me, who the heck do I think I am. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 331:You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, I'll rise. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 332:Also, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous pedantry dig up from the past time and name it History. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 333:The history of the human race is the history of ordinary people who have overcome their fears and accomplished extraordinary things. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 334:Throughout our history, We Americans have been willing to meet great challenges and do what is right when our destiny demanded it. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 335:Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 336:History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 337:The conviction that everything that happens on earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 338:The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 339:The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 340:We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 341:A boy is a piece of existence quite separate from all things else, and deserves separate chapters in the natural history of men. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 342:History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea is Space. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 343:I'm of the glamorous ladies At whose beckoning history shook. But you are a man, and see only my pan, So I stay at home with a book. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 344:One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 345:After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 346:Faith and force ... are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 347:Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 348:The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 349:History is not the study of the past but the study of change. How people human societies and political systems and economies change. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 350:In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 351:Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 352:On the stage on which we are observing it, ‚Äî Universal History ‚Äî Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 353:I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 354:Men have discovered other philosophical and ethical systems, but they have not found another Jesus Christ. No one in history can match Him. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 355:The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 356:History is an account mostly false of events mostly unimportant which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves and soldiers mostly fools. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 357:Never question the power of one! Throughout history it has been the actions of only one person who has in inspired the movement of change. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 358:The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 359:Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 360:History has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 361:Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 362:The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification ofthe spirit. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 363:The United States was the first country in the history of the world to be consciously created out of an idea - and the idea was liberty. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 364:Yes, your family history has some sad chapters. But your history doesn't have to be your future. The generational garbage can stop here and now. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 365:People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 366:What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind? ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 367:History has repeatedly been changed by people who had the desire and the ability to transfer their convictions and emotions to their listeners. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 368:The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 369:Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature. ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove 370:If the parents in each generation always or often knew what really goes on at their sons' schools, the history of education would be very different. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 371:Let us resolve to be masters, not the victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 372:Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery. ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove 373:If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences. ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove 374:Man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 375:The good things in history are usually of very short duration, but afterward have a decisive influence on what happens over long periods of time. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 376:The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 377:If you learn music, you'll learn history. If you learn music, you'll learn mathematics. If you learn music, you'll learn most all there is to learn. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 378:In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 379:The human intellect has not been able to conceive of anything more noble and sublime in the history of the world than the teachings of the Upanishads. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 380:We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 381:While my interest in natural history has added very little to my sum of achievement, it has added immeasurably to my sum of enjoyment in life. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 382:At the bottom there is no perfect history; there is none such conceivable. All past centuries have rotted down, and gone confusedly dumb and quiet. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 383:Christ is the great central fact in the world's history. To Him everything looks forward or backward. All the lines of history converge upon Him. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 384:Great men are the inspired texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 385:History is the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instructor of the present, and monitor to the future. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 386:Knowing how to deal with change effectively is a primary requirement for living successfully in perhaps the most exciting time in all of human history ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 387:In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 388:Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 389:The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 390:Because Fascism is a lie, it is condemned to literary sterility. And when it is past, it will have no history, except the bloody history of murder. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 391:Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 392:History isn’t a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 393:If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 394:They did not know what we can now guess at, contemplating the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it appears in ordinary existence. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 395:We're both [with Elie Wiesel] a long way from the position of the so-called Biblical minimalists. Some of them see no history in the Bible until Josiah. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 396:It would be wryly interesting if in human history the cultivation of marijuana led generally to the invention of agriculture, and thereby to civilization. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 397:As you know, I describe Shirat ha-Yam as part of an epic story that has qualities of history and which also has qualities of the mythological, of an epic. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 398:Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 399:The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 400:As a Christian I take it for granted that human history will some day end; and I am offering Omniscience no advice as to the best date for that consummation. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 401:Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 402:America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 403:As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a history of bad times and bad men. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 404:Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 405:If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 406:Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 407:There is an awful lot of difference between reading something and actually seeing it, for you can never tell, till you see it, just how big a liar History is. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 408:You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 409:Books tap the wisdom of our species - the greatest minds, the best teachers - from all over the world and from all our history. And they're patient. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 410:Never, in the history of the world, has there been such abundant opportunity as there is now for the person who is willing to serve before trying to collect. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 411:Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, & 412:It may be doubted that there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 413:The history of my life is the history of the struggle between an overwhelming urge to write and a combination of circumstances bent on keeping me from it. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 414:All human history attests That happiness for man, - the hungry sinner! - Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner. ~Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIII, stanza 99 ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 415:For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 416:All that is observable in a man-that is to say his actions and such of his spiritual existence as can be deduced from his actions-falls into the domain of history. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 417:I have tried and I cannot find, either in scripture or in history, a strong-willed individual whom God used greatly until He allowed them to be hurt deeply. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 418:In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not keep the world from what it wants. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 419:The history of our spiritual life is a continuing search for the unity between ourselves and the world. Religion, art, and science follow, one and all, this aim. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 420:From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 421:Prayer is the forerunner of mercy. Turn to sacred history, and you will find that scarecely ever did a great mercy come to this world unheralded by supplication. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 422:Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 423:History, as it lies at the root of all science, is also the first distinct product of man's spiritual nature, his earliest expression of what may be called thought. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 424:Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 425:Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 426:You identify with your self. You have a personal history. You have commitments. There are things that you want to experience and other things that you want to avoid. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 427:And like no other sculpture in the history of art, the dead engine and dead airframe come to life at the touch of a human hand, and join their life with the pilot's own. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 428:The epitaph that I would write for history would say: I conceal nothing. It is not enough not to lie. One should strive not to lie in a negative sense by remaining silent. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 429:The only event in the history of our species that compares with this one is Genesis. And this is a new kind of Genesis, the Genesis of our species into conscious awareness. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 430:To write history one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary must be free from all preoccupation of interest or vanity. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 431:After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions Guides us by vanities. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 432:History comes and history goes, but principles endure, and ensure future generations will defend liberty not as a gift from government but as a blessing from our Creator. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 433:I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 434:It must be recognized that the real truths of history are hard to discover. Happily, for the most part, they are rather matters of curiosity than of real importance. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 435:Now I basically just read spy stories because they're about solving a puzzle within the constraints of history. It's the tick tock, the clockwork that I'm interested in. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 436:... one may say anything about the history of the world - anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can't say is that it's rational. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 437:[Shirat ha-Yam ] is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, pieces of Biblical literature that we possess. It is much closer to history than later traditions of the Exodus. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 438:In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 439:As people get more desperate, history suggests that they're not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They're gonna turn on each other. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 440:Sooner I'd try to change history than turn political, than try convincing others to write letters or to vote or to march or to do something they didn't already feel like doing. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 441:The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 442:The idea that any one of our religions represents the infallible word of the One True God requires an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology, and art even to be entertained. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 443:The liberality of sentiment toward each other, which marks every political and religious denomination of men in this country, stands unparalleled in the history of nations. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 444:... It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 445:The Holocaust is the most documented tragedy in recorded history. And therefore, later on, if there will be a later on, anyone wishing to know will know where to go for knowledge. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 446:Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species - back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire - has been ethically ambiguous. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 447:We are living through the most exciting, challenging and most critical time in human history. Never before has so much been possible; and never before has so much been at stake. ~ peter-russell, @wisdomtrove 448:The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 449:What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials? ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 450:Man, as man, has never realized himself. The greater part of him, his potential being, has always been submerged. What is history if not the endless story of his repeated failures? ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 451:When the Sun shrinks to a dull red dwarf, it will not be dying. It will just be starting to live and everything that has gone before will merely be a prelude to its real history. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 452:Who do you suppose invented computers? Speaking in terms relevant to you, in terms of earth history, let alone other worldly history, the computer, of course, came from Atlantis. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 453:For words are magical formulae. They leave finger marks be hind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye become the footprints of history. One ought to watch one' s every word. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 454:History is in a manner a sacred thing, so far as it contains truth; for where truth is, the supreme Father of it may also be said to be, at least, inasmuch as concerns truth. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 455:History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 456:At my age I'm exactly the kind of person who has lived through one of the most quickly changing periods known to history. Surely there could never be in seventy years so much change. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 457:It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 458:LSD reinforced my sense of what was important-creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove 459:In terms of evolutionary history, it was only yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get in trouble thinking complicated thoughts. So don't worry, you'll burn out. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 460:And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ringÔªø passed out of all knowledge. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 461:History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 462:If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run-and often in the short one-the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 463:One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 464:Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in... . The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 465:We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 466:I have scary eyes. I look like the guy in & 467:Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 468:No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 469:Disneyland is often called a magic kingdom because it combines fantasy and history, adventure and learning, together with every variety of recreation and fun designed to appeal to everyone. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 470:For my part, I love to give myself up to the illusion of poetry. A hero of fiction that never existed is just as valuable to me as a hero of history that existed a thousand years ago. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 471:History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 472:And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 473:History may be servitude. History may be freedom. See, now they vanish. The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them, to become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 474:The entire sweep of human history from the dark ages into the unknown future was considerably less important at the moment than the question of a certain girl and her feelings toward him. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 475:Now, when I hear that Christians are getting together in order to defend the people of Israel, of course it brings joy to my heart. And it simply says, look, people have learned from history. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 476:Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 477:In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 478:Since we do not take a man on his past history, we do not refuse him because of his past history. I never met a man who was thoroughly bad. There is always some good in him if he gets a chance. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 479:The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 480:A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 481:Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 482:Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-men is ever new, ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 483:The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar; particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 484:All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 485:But all history has taught us the grim lesson that no nation has ever been successful in avoiding the terrors of war by refusing to defend its rights - by attempting to placate aggression. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 486:Do what experts since the dawn of recorded history have told you you must do: pay the price by becoming the person you want to become. It's not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully. ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 487:In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 488:The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 489:and Mrs. Boffin sat staring at mid-air, and Mrs. Wilfer sat silently giving them to understand that every breath she drew required to be drawn with a self-denial rarely paralleled in history. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 490:A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 491:In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility - I welcome it. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 492:I try not to think about legacy because it is all folly. If you study history, even recent history, you'll find many people who were quite significant in their time but are completely forgotten. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 493:It will be one of the tragedies of Christian history if future historians record that at the height of the twentieth century the church was one of the greatest bulwarks of white supremacy. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 494:Go over to Greece with the Iliad and Odyssey. These have elements of history, and they have non-historical elements. It's very difficult to pull them apart. And I think there's not much reason to. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 495:No amphibious attack in history has approached this one in size. Along miles of coastline there were hundreds of vessels and small boats afloat and ant-like files of advancing troops ashore. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 496:The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man's intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 497:To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 498:History, that is to say, the unconscious, universal life of humanity, in the aggregate, every moment profits by the life of kings for itself, as an instrument for the accomplishment of its own ends. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 499:We should consider the histories of Christ three manner of ways; first, as a history of acts or legends; second, as a gift or a present; thirdly, as an example, which we should believe and follow. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 500:Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one's fine feelings, on one's indomitable optimism and trust in life. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:history of heredity ~ Carl Zimmer, #NFDB
2:history. Henry Ford ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
3:History is not hatred. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
4:was a risky move, ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
5:History is a needle ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
6:I am a fan of history. ~ Tom T Hall, #NFDB
7:A people without history ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
8:History is His story. ~ James Packer, #NFDB
9:History is Storytelling. ~ Yaa Gyasi, #NFDB
10:History's a resource. ~ Laura Linney, #NFDB
11:History – the new sex. ~ Jodi Taylor, #NFDB
12:Desire has no history. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
13:History is only gossip. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
14:No future without history ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
15:Strip malls are history. ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
16:All history is a lie! ~ Robert Walpole, #NFDB
17:Freedom has no history. ~ Andrew Cohen, #NFDB
18:History is merely gossip ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
19:History is never tidy. ~ Antony Beevor, #NFDB
20:History repeats itself. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
21:It's up to history to judge. ~ Pol Pot, #NFDB
22:Men make their own history ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
23:Desire has no history... ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
24:History is also a river. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
25:History teaches us hope. ~ Robert E Lee, #NFDB
26:You can't buy history new. ~ N D Wilson, #NFDB
27:A king is history's slave. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
28:History is story, too. ~ Thomas C Foster, #NFDB
29:Not a stone but has its history. ~ Lucan, #NFDB
30:The dignity of history. ~ Henry Fielding, #NFDB
31:The history of the cosmos ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
32:was needed. Businessmen ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
33:History always mattered. ~ Erika Johansen, #NFDB
34:History is fables agreed upon. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
35:History repeats herself. ~ Jennifer Stone, #NFDB
36:It's history. It's poetry. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
37:It’s history. It’s poetry. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
38:I wish to work miracles. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
39:The victors rewrite history ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
40:The Virgin of the Rocks, ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
41:Yesterday is history ~ Justin Timberlake, #NFDB
42:History is more or less bunk. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
43:History! Read it and weep! ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
44:No history is ever unbiased. ~ Ann Aguirre, #NFDB
45:Secret History of the Mongols: ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
46:diluted the silver content ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
47:DNA isn’t destiny—it’s history. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
48:Glimpses of World History, ~ Fareed Zakaria, #NFDB
49:Happy people have no history. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
50:History doesn't have a curfew. ~ John Green, #NFDB
51:History is a bath of blood. ~ William James, #NFDB
52:History is a ghost story. ~ Cressida Cowell, #NFDB
53:History is the new poetry. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
54:History is the third parent. ~ Nadeem Aslam, #NFDB
55:History is written by winners. ~ Alex Haley, #NFDB
56:Humans don't learn from history ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
57:It's all a matter of history. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
58:It wasn’t my history to tell. ~ Violet Duke, #NFDB
59:Progress is hard on history. ~ Justina Chen, #NFDB
60:We cannot escape history. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
61:a history teacher. I work, ~ Danielle Monsch, #NFDB
62:History: gossip well told. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
63:History in live performance. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
64:History is a quest for truth. ~ S L Bhyrappa, #NFDB
65:History is coming for the empire. ~ Kem Nunn, #NFDB
66:History is still happening ~ Godfried Bomans, #NFDB
67:History - the devil's scripture ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
68:War is not women's history. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
69:Well, everybody has a history. ~ Saul Bellow, #NFDB
70:God cannot act in history—that ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
71:History is a bucket of ashes. ~ Samuel Butler, #NFDB
72:History is irony on the move. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
73:History is not was, it is. ~ William Faulkner, #NFDB
74:I'm not sure history has ended. ~ John Bolton, #NFDB
75:My history defines who I am. ~ Simone Elkeles, #NFDB
76:SIXTEEN YEARS AGO IN HISTORY ~ Chris Crutcher, #NFDB
77:St. Jerome in the Wilderness ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
78:Destiny and history are untidy. ~ Djuna Barnes, #NFDB
79:History is a great dust heap. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
80:History is all about 'what ifs ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
81:History made when mindset changed. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
82:History will treat me right. ~ Ralph Abernathy, #NFDB
83:I'd prefer her story than history. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
84:I'm a big stupid history nerd. ~ Emilie Autumn, #NFDB
85:Kings are the slaves of history. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
86:only the victors wrote history. ~ Gina LaManna, #NFDB
87:Work Hard, have fun, make history ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
88:A King should die on his feet. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
89:All history is biography. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
90:All history was at first oral. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
91:Black history is black horror. ~ Tananarive Due, #NFDB
92:History is a stern judge. ~ Svetlana Alliluyeva, #NFDB
93:History seems to be so clumsy. ~ Robert Johnson, #NFDB
94:Homo Deus: A Brief History of ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
95:Read about the history of magic. ~ Andrew Mayne, #NFDB
96:The first rough draft of history. ~ Ben Bradlee, #NFDB
97:The process of history is combustion. ~ Novalis, #NFDB
98:War makes rattling good history. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
99:World history is tragic. ~ Friedrich Durrenmatt, #NFDB
100:You can't outrun the history train ~ Paul Simon, #NFDB
101:Grace can and does have a history. ~ Karl Rahner, #NFDB
102:History always repeats itself ~ Gerald J Kubicki, #NFDB
103:History is absolutely my thing. ~ Sharon Cameron, #NFDB
104:History is a symptom of our disease ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
105:History is filled with fictional people. ~ Robyn, #NFDB
106:History is no criminal court ~ Leopold von Ranke, #NFDB
107:history is the negation of nature. ~ John Zerzan, #NFDB
108:I'm a golfer not a history major. ~ Bubba Watson, #NFDB
109:Landscape is history made visible. ~ J B Jackson, #NFDB
110:s past history and stand alone. ~ Marion Woodman, #NFDB
111:The camera is the eye of history. ~ Mathew Brady, #NFDB
112:There is no humorist like history. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
113:A turning point in modern history. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
114:History belongs to the intercessors ~ Walter Wink, #NFDB
115:History develops, art stands still. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
116:History is a relay of revolutions. ~ Saul Alinsky, #NFDB
117:History is rooted in the future ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
118:History is the memory of a nation ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
119:Human history is a Gaian dream. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
120:Politics is history in the making. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
121:We are all citizens of history. ~ Clifton Fadiman, #NFDB
122:America has always imported history. ~ Helmut Jahn, #NFDB
123:History: A distillation of rumor. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
124:History is a madman's museum. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
125:History is as Old as My Grandfather ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
126:History is only a value of relation. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
127:History is simply what's behind us. ~ Brad Meltzer, #NFDB
128:History is the key to citizenship. ~ Taylor Branch, #NFDB
129:History is the memory of States. ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
130:History is the seed bed of the future. ~ Leo Booth, #NFDB
131:History is written by the winners ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
132:History passes the final judgment ~ Sidney Poitier, #NFDB
133:I have been all men known to history, ~ R S Thomas, #NFDB
134:Im sick of making bloody history. ~ Patrick Rafter, #NFDB
135:Institutions do live on their history. ~ Bob Hawke, #NFDB
136:I think you can learn from history. ~ Chuck Norris, #NFDB
137:I want to go down in history. ~ Haile Gebrselassie, #NFDB
138:Learning never exhausts the mind. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
139:Our past has gone into history. ~ William McKinley, #NFDB
140:Sometimes - history needs a push. ~ Vladimir Lenin, #NFDB
141:There is no history, only histories. ~ Karl Popper, #NFDB
142:When literacy died, so had history. ~ Walter Tevis, #NFDB
143:Work hard, have fun and make history. ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
144:You can't just wipe away your history. ~ T J Klune, #NFDB
145:Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Annie ~ Greg Iles, #NFDB
146:Each day is a drive through history. ~ Jim Morrison, #NFDB
147:History: a collection of epitaphs. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
148:History has failed us, but no matter. ~ Min Jin Lee, #NFDB
149:History is the lie commonly agreed upon. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
150:History is the lies of the victors. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
151:History is time that won't quit. ~ Suzan Lori Parks, #NFDB
152:History should be written as philosophy. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
153:No generation can escape history. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
154:Stand up and walk out of your history ~ Phil McGraw, #NFDB
155:The Virgin and Child with St. Anne ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
156:And thus did Storyville become history. ~ Gary Krist, #NFDB
157:A revolution is not a bed of roses. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
158:Biography is the only true history. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
159:Fiction is the history of the obscure. ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
160:History does not unfold: it piles up. ~ Robert Adams, #NFDB
161:History is a lie commonly agreed upon. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
162:History is cyclic, not repetitive. ~ Samuel R Delany, #NFDB
163:History is happening here and now. ~ Paul Fleischman, #NFDB
164:History is the memory of States. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
165:History is the study of the world's crime ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
166:History is written by the victors. ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
167:History paints the human heart. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
168:Ideals are peaceful. History is violent. ~ Brad Pitt, #NFDB
169:I did not come to NASA to make history. ~ Sally Ride, #NFDB
170:I normally ignore the History Channel. ~ Diablo Cody, #NFDB
171:Much more than memoir; it's history. ~ Russell Banks, #NFDB
172:Patterns repeat themselves in history ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
173:Throughout history, ideas need patrons. ~ Matt Kibbe, #NFDB
174:Who writes history? I thought. I do. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
175:4.2-kiloyear BP aridification event, ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
176:History could make a stone weep. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
177:History is an accumulation of error. ~ Norman Cousins, #NFDB
178:History isn't through with me yet. ~ Ferdinand Marcos, #NFDB
179:HISTORY Sunday, November 13th, 2016 My ~ Adam Silvera, #NFDB
180:History teaches, but has no pupils. ~ Antonio Gramsci, #NFDB
181:I do not love fiction, I love history. ~ Duane Hanson, #NFDB
182:instead of being in history he was in love ~ Mal Peet, #NFDB
183:It feels good to be a part of history. ~ Kevin Durant, #NFDB
184:It is history that teaches us to hope. ~ Robert E Lee, #NFDB
185:Literature is the history of the soul. ~ Barry Hannah, #NFDB
186:Longing on a large scale makes history. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
187:My inspiration is love and history. ~ Waris Ahluwalia, #NFDB
188:People butcher history all the time, ~ Rebecca Skloot, #NFDB
189:People who behave rarely make history. ~ Josh Linkner, #NFDB
190:Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~ Plato, #NFDB
191:The best fiction is truer than history ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
192:the history; that was the glory of Miss ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
193:The longest suicide note in history. ~ Gerald Kaufman, #NFDB
194:All history is contemporary history. ~ Benedetto Croce, #NFDB
195:Art history is always changing too. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi, #NFDB
196:But I regret not having liked history. ~ Eva Herzigova, #NFDB
197:History after all is the true poetry. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
198:History and man made each other. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
199:History doesn't repeat itself; it rhymes. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
200:History gets written by the winners. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
201:History is riddled with blood and sin. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
202:History is the best guide to the future. ~ Bill Dedman, #NFDB
203:History is the teacher of life ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
204:History is written by the victor. ~ Guillermo del Toro, #NFDB
205:History is written by the victors. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
206:History provides no precise guidelines. ~ Douglas Hurd, #NFDB
207:history takes a long time to happen. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
208:I loved psychology and I loved history. ~ Joely Fisher, #NFDB
209:In France, history is paralyzing. ~ Jean Paul Gaultier, #NFDB
210:I studied film history at Colombia ~ John Joseph Adams, #NFDB
211:Journalism is the first draft of history ~ Phil Graham, #NFDB
212:Live in the moment. Moments make history. ~ Nikki Sixx, #NFDB
213:Patriotism ruins history. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
214:Politics is history in the present tense. ~ John Avlon, #NFDB
215:The curves of your lips rewrite history. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
216:There are no inevitabilities in history ~ Paul Johnson, #NFDB
217:This is history written in lightning. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
218:Thomas Macaulay’s History of England ~ Michael Shelden, #NFDB
219:Well-behaved women seldom make history. ~ Chris Colfer, #NFDB
220:What man is, only his history tells. ~ Wilhelm Dilthey, #NFDB
221:A lot of things in history change over time. ~ Jeb Bush, #NFDB
222:An individual is no match for history. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
223:As an actor, you have to have your history. ~ Nora Dunn, #NFDB
224:Beneath every history, another history. ~ Hilary Mantel, #NFDB
225:Blood alone moves the wheels of history ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
226:Don't forget your history nor your destiny ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
227:History always catches up with rebels. ~ Lucy R Lippard, #NFDB
228:History can only hurt us if we let it. ~ Louise Douglas, #NFDB
229:History has to live with what was here, ~ Robert Lowell, #NFDB
230:History is a collection of agreed upon lies. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
231:History is a long time in the making. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
232:History is a ship forever setting sail. ~ Tracy K Smith, #NFDB
233:History is biology's dumping ground ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
234:History is clarified experience. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
235:History is full of surprises. ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, #NFDB
236:History is one damn thing after another. ~ H A L Fisher, #NFDB
237:History is Philosophy teaching by example. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
238:History is the distillation of rumour. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
239:History is written by the winners. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
240:History is written by the winners. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
241:History remembers the darkest moments. ~ Scott Reintgen, #NFDB
242:I try to put my own history in my work. ~ Molly Shannon, #NFDB
243:Most of us get our history through story. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
244:[News is] a first rough draft of history. ~ Phil Graham, #NFDB
245:Our best history is still poetry. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
246:Revolutions are the locomotives of history. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
247:The history of mankind is a history of war. ~ Mike Love, #NFDB
248:Today is reality. Yesterday is history. ~ Prince Andrew, #NFDB
249:What is history but a fable agreed upon? ~ Heidi Heilig, #NFDB
250:World history is the world's court ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
251:You make history when you do business. ~ Barbara Kruger, #NFDB
252:Alternative history is a parlor game. ~ Richard A Clarke, #NFDB
253:Blood alone moves the wheels of history. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
254:Happy is the nation without a history. ~ Cesare Beccaria, #NFDB
255:Her need to shape memory into history. ~ Charles Frazier, #NFDB
256:History always catches up with rebels". ~ Lucy R Lippard, #NFDB
257:History doesn't crawl; it leaps. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
258:History gets written by the winners... ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
259:history is a living thing that never dies. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
260:History is a set of lies agreed upon. ~ Jonathan Maberry, #NFDB
261:History is a vast early warning system. ~ Norman Cousins, #NFDB
262:History is littered with dead good men ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
263:History is the science of people. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
264:History is the siren song of the soul. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
265:History needs shepherds, not butchers. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
266:History never repeats itself; man always does ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
267:History works itself out in the living. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
268:I am not a Virginian, I am an American. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
269:Ideas shape the course of history. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
270:I don't have a strong interest in history. ~ Larry Niven, #NFDB
271:Memoirs are the backstairs of history. ~ George Meredith, #NFDB
272:My motto is "more mystery, less history". ~ Adam Carolla, #NFDB
273:Only the vanquished remember history. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
274:People make trouble, trouble makes history ~ John Graves, #NFDB
275:Shuttles in the rocking loom of history, ~ Robert Hayden, #NFDB
276:Something had changed. History resumed. ~ Stephen Baxter, #NFDB
277:We are at an inflection point in history. ~ Joel Garreau, #NFDB
278:We cannot change the history of the past. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
279:False history gets made all day, any day, ~ Adrienne Rich, #NFDB
280:History can be rewritten, but at what cost? ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
281:History is a pack of lies we play on the dead. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
282:History is littered with dead good men. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
283:History is not a science, it's an art. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
284:History is on the side of the regulators. ~ Ha Joon Chang, #NFDB
285:History may not repeat, but it often rhymes. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
286:History never repeats itself. Man always does. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
287:History's just one darn thing after another. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
288:History, we know, is apt to repeat itself. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
289:Home is where we have a history. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
290:Like mold on books, grow myths on history. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
291:My heart broke open and history fell in. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
292:Never in history has distance meant less. ~ Alvin Toffler, #NFDB
293:[...] no man is free of his own history. ~ Anita Brookner, #NFDB
294:Novels arise out of the shortcoings of history. ~ Novalis, #NFDB
295:Out of the huts of history's shame I rise. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
296:Patriotism corrupts history. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
297:That only made it worst. They had history. ~ Ellen Connor, #NFDB
298:That's the thing about history: YOU make it. ~ John Green, #NFDB
299:the history of a tough motherfucker he ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
300:Time was the greatest murderer in history. ~ Cameron Jace, #NFDB
301:You want to hear my history? Ask the sea. ~ Derek Walcott, #NFDB
302:All good human work remembers its history. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
303:History forgives the winner a lot of things. ~ Yoon Ha Lee, #NFDB
304:History is a graveyard of aristocracies. ~ Vilfredo Pareto, #NFDB
305:History is a set of lies agreed upon. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
306:History is a set of lies agreed upon. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
307:History is filled with fictional people. ~ Robyn Schneider, #NFDB
308:History is like a constantly changing tree. ~ David Irving, #NFDB
309:History is rarely made by reasonable men. ~ Terry Goodkind, #NFDB
310:history is what it is. it knows what it did. ~ Danez Smith, #NFDB
311:History's greatest monster. ~ Christopher Michael Cillizza, #NFDB
312:History takes time. History makes memory. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
313:Human rights takes history out of justice. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
314:If you believe people have no history ~ William Loren Katz, #NFDB
315:I guess love laughs at history a little. ~ Sebastian Barry, #NFDB
316:In Jewish history there are no coincidences. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
317:I wanted to be a part of the Disney history. ~ Tia Carrere, #NFDB
318:Kant is the most evil man in mankind's history. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
319:Language is the archives of history. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
320:My history's not very good, but did David win? ~ Andy Gray, #NFDB
321:Neutrals and lukewarms do not make history. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
322:Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history. ~ Novalis, #NFDB
323:Shared history was the coin of the realm. ~ Chris Matthews, #NFDB
324:the past is history, the future's a mystery ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
325:There is no history; only biography. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
326:When history gives out, fiction takes over. ~ Edmund White, #NFDB
327:Whoever won the war, would revise the history. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
328:You have to be a little bad to make history. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
329:American history is parking lots. ~ William Least Heat Moon, #NFDB
330:Free people will set the course of history. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
331:History - a vast Mississippi of falsehoods ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
332:History is a burden. Stories can make us fly. ~ Mark Gatiss, #NFDB
333:History is a myth men want to believe. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
334:History is at once freedom and necessity. ~ Antonio Gramsci, #NFDB
335:History is nothing if not far-fetched. ~ Albert O Hirschman, #NFDB
336:History is only a catalogue of the forgotten. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
337:History is the angle at which realities meet. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
338:History marched to the drums of a clear idea... ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
339:History remembers the velvet hearted. ~ Elizabeth McCracken, #NFDB
340:Human history is littered with might-have-beens. ~ Zo Sharp, #NFDB
341:I am the history of the rejection of who I am ~ June Jordan, #NFDB
342:my one chance in all of history to be alive. ~ Allen Eskens, #NFDB
343:Silence ensures that history repeats itself. ~ Erin Gruwell, #NFDB
344:SILENCE. The most loaded sound in human history. ~ L J Shen, #NFDB
345:The past is history, the future's a mystery. ~ James Toback, #NFDB
346:They were lucky. They'd been given history. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
347:Yes, world history is indeed such an onion! ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
348:All history . . . is an inarticulate Bible. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
349:All history is the history of thought. ~ Robin G Collingwood, #NFDB
350:All human history moves towards one great goal ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
351:History has its truth; and so has legend hers. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
352:History is a record of many such irrationalities. ~ Suki Kim, #NFDB
353:History is a story written by the finger of God. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
354:History is but a confused heap of facts. ~ Lord Chesterfield, #NFDB
355:History is seasonal, and winter is coming. ~ William Strauss, #NFDB
356:History is the autobiography of a madman. ~ Alexander Herzen, #NFDB
357:History is the invention of historians. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
358:History is the same thing over and over again. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
359:History is the stories we tell about the past. ~ Thomas King, #NFDB
360:History repeats itself and that's just how it goes. ~ J Cole, #NFDB
361:History should be studied but not worshipped. ~ Magnus Flyte, #NFDB
362:History, sir, will tell lies as usual. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
363:History!” writes Bokonon. “Read it and weep! ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
364:I am responsible only to God and history. ~ Francisco Franco, #NFDB
365:It's a very good historical book about history. ~ Dan Quayle, #NFDB
366:I write and film history; I don't make it. ~ Jean Luc Godard, #NFDB
367:Men make history, not the other way around. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
368:Our history is an aggregate of last moments ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
369:the history is there, but it’s not visible. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
370:There is a history in all men's lives. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
371:to come as lodestones for the history we have ~ Peter D Ward, #NFDB
372:What if history was changed? slavery reversed ~ Fredro Starr, #NFDB
373:What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
374:Do we have the will to make poverty history? ~ Edward de Bono, #NFDB
375:Harlem is filled with moments of history. ~ Cheo Hodari Coker, #NFDB
376:History books are being re-written all the time ~ Andy Warhol, #NFDB
377:History does not end; it runs in cycles. The ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
378:History happens one person at a time. ~ Patricia Stephens Due, #NFDB
379:History is not just cruel. It is witty. ~ Charles Krauthammer, #NFDB
380:History is the shank of the social sciences. ~ C Wright Mills, #NFDB
381:History is the zoology of the human race. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
382:History is usually a random, messy affair’, ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
383:Human history is, in essence, a history of ideas. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
384:Idlers do not make history: they suffer it! ~ Peter Kropotkin, #NFDB
385:I had a long history of calamitous mishaps. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
386:I'm a big sports history buff. I love sports. ~ Kenny Chesney, #NFDB
387:Imagine a history teacher making history. ~ Christa McAuliffe, #NFDB
388:Indifference is the dead weight of history. ~ Antonio Gramsci, #NFDB
389:Journalism is in fact history on the run. ~ Thomas B Griffith, #NFDB
390:Learning never exhausts the mind.” —Leonardo ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
391:That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
392:the history of Denmark has much to teach us all. ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
393:The lesson of history is that no one learns. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
394:The only new thing is history we don't know. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
395:There is more to Jewish history than Auschwitz. ~ Romain Gary, #NFDB
396:The study of History is the beginning of wisdom. ~ Jean Bodin, #NFDB
397:The white race is the cancer of human history. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
398:We are choked with News and starved of History. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
399:Weiner, T.: Legacy of Ashes (The history of CIA). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
400:What is history but a fable agreed upon? ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
401:Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
402:A book brings its own history to the reader. ~ Alberto Manguel, #NFDB
403:Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
404:And I thought:History is like a horror story. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
405:Can history disappear if it’s written in blood? ~ Ruta Sepetys, #NFDB
406:Don’t believe that your history is your destiny. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
407:Either our history shall with full mouth ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
408:History as the slaughter-bench ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
409:History begins in novel and ends in essay. ~ Thomas B Macaulay, #NFDB
410:history could be a mighty weapon of reform. By ~ Joyce Appleby, #NFDB
411:History does not repeat, but it does instruct ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
412:History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
413:History is a light that illuminates the past, ~ Runoko Rashidi, #NFDB
414:History is an excellent teacher with few pupils. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
415:History is change happening one person at a time. ~ Matt Damon, #NFDB
416:History is one long processional of crazy ideas. ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB
417:History is philosophy teaching by examples. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
418:History is philosophy teaching by experience. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
419:History is the memory of things said and done. ~ Carl L Becker, #NFDB
420:History is the propaganda of the victors. ~ Louis de Berni res, #NFDB
421:History's a bitch when you're in the middle of it. ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
422:I don't know anything about the history of music. ~ Sia Furler, #NFDB
423:I feel like I'm part of television history. ~ Henry Ian Cusick, #NFDB
424:In counterfactual history, nothing is certain. ~ Robert Dallek, #NFDB
425:In the future history will be made only by us. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
426:Soap operas got nothing on my family history. ~ Kiersten White, #NFDB
427:that's me. ancient history." [Poseidon to Paul] ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
428:The man makes History, the woman is History. ~ Oswald Spengler, #NFDB
429:The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
430:tumultuous history of the lost kingdom of Bunyoro, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
431:What is history but a fable agreed upon ? ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
432:What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on... ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
433:While we read history we make history. ~ George William Curtis, #NFDB
434:Dead Max was the biggest oxymoron in history. ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
435:for starving people to death by diverting food ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
436:Give it enough time, brother, and gossip’s history. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
437:Going down in history is a dead end pursuit ~ Benny Bellamacina, #NFDB
438:Harry, did you ever even open A History of Magic? ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
439:History does not repeat, but it does instruct. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
440:History doesn't pass the dishes again. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine, #NFDB
441:History is, as we know, written by the winners. ~ Rachel Martin, #NFDB
442:History is everything that has ever happened. ~ Stephen Ambrose, #NFDB
443:History is just new people making old mistakes. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
444:History is just one fucking thing after another. ~ Alan Bennett, #NFDB
445:history is neither for excuses nor for revenge ~ Shashi Tharoor, #NFDB
446:"History is the biography of the human race." ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
447:History is written by those who hang heroes. ~ Robert the Bruce, #NFDB
448:History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
449:History remembers most what you did last. ~ Christopher Plummer, #NFDB
450:It had to be the best bargain in Toyota history, ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
451:Learn from your history, but don’t live in it. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
452:LEGEND IS HISTORICAL, JUST AS HISTORY IS LEGENDARY. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
453:Let’s just hope history forgets the snafus. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
454:Live out of your imagination, not your history. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
455:Making history was so much better than writing it. ~ Kate Quinn, #NFDB
456:That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue. 3 ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
457:The Fed is the greatest hedge fund in history. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
458:The hottest year in global [sic] history was 1934. ~ Glenn Beck, #NFDB
459:The major force in world history is sheer dumbness. ~ Eric Wolf, #NFDB
460:The midwife of history is violence. ~ Franz Joseph I of Austria, #NFDB
461:The words of history are also the words of war. ~ Peter Hessler, #NFDB
462:Things that change history tend to be organized. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
463:those who win wars are those who write history. ~ Susan Dennard, #NFDB
464:We are the makers of history, not its victims. ~ John Heilemann, #NFDB
465:What's hit's history: what's missed's mystery. ~ Arthur Ransome, #NFDB
466:But doesn’t the new information change the history? ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
467:despite the anti-Semitic attitudes of Vienna at ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
468:History at its best is a gritty, dirty business. ~ Sara Sheridan, #NFDB
469:History is mostly guessing, the rest is prejudice. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
470:History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
471:History is not history unless it is the truth. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
472:History -- its what those bitter old men write. ~ Jackie Kennedy, #NFDB
473:History punishes those that come late to it. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev, #NFDB
474:History's just been made for sale to an inside deal. ~ Ken Burns, #NFDB
475:Holidays, if you enjoy them, have no history. ~ Rosamond Lehmann, #NFDB
476:I did not live my life as history is written. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
477:If you think you have it tough, read history books. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
478:It is the winners who write history - their way. ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
479:Live out of your imagination, not your history. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
480:Morison’s The Oxford History of the American People, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
481:Movies are like writing history with lightning. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
482:Neuer is one of the best goalkeepers in history. ~ Pep Guardiola, #NFDB
483:Newspapers are the second hand of history. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
484:The history of every individual man should be a Bible. ~ Novalis, #NFDB
485:There is room in history for all of us. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
486:War makes good history but peace is poor reading. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
487:Well-behaved women seldom make history. ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, #NFDB
488:A child is never the author of his own history. ~ Sebastian Barry, #NFDB
489:All history, of course, is the history of wars. ~ Penelope Lively, #NFDB
490:Ancient history is oddly short on incorrect omens. ~ Stacy Schiff, #NFDB
491:Can't disagree with the need for a grasp of history. ~ Gwen Ifill, #NFDB
492:Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. ~ Edward R Murrow, #NFDB
493:have a history of reacting poorly when shouted at, ~ Mackenzi Lee, #NFDB
494:History admires the wise, but elevates the brave. ~ Edmund Morris, #NFDB
495:History has shown there are no invincible armies. ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
496:History is a myth that men agree to believe. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
497:History is a tragegy, not a morality tale. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
498:History is but the polemics of the victor. ~ William F Buckley Jr, #NFDB
499:History is changed by martyrs who tell the truth. ~ Miguel Syjuco, #NFDB
500:History is humankind trying to get a grip. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
501:History is never surprising after it happens. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
502:"History is the biography of the human race." ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
503:History is the love that enters us through death. ~ Anne Michaels, #NFDB
504:History is the science of what never happens twice. ~ Paul Val ry, #NFDB
505:History knows no resting places and no plateaus ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
506:History may be accurate. But archaeology is precise. ~ Doug Scott, #NFDB
507:history proves that anything can be proved by history. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
508:History repeats because we do not learn from it, ~ Meredith Duran, #NFDB
509:History repeats, but science reverberates. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
510:History was badly plotted and written by committee. ~ Eliot Peper, #NFDB
511:I feel like I'm too busy writing history to read it. ~ Kanye West, #NFDB
512:I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from. ~ Eddie Izzard, #NFDB
513:I know I'm one of the biggest busts in NBA history... ~ Greg Oden, #NFDB
514:I loved learning about the history of things ~ Michael Gates Gill, #NFDB
515:In all history, art has been the food of the poor, ~ Cameron Jace, #NFDB
516:I never thought my cotton gin would change history. ~ Eli Whitney, #NFDB
517:I think fiction recues history from its confusions. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
518:I want to write for history, not for the moment. ~ David Maraniss, #NFDB
519:Learn from history or you're doomed to repeat it. ~ Jesse Ventura, #NFDB
520:Live out of your imagination, not your history. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
521:Men make history. History does not make the man. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
522:Partitioning Iraq is inevitable, as shown by history. ~ Joe Biden, #NFDB
523:People have different ways of interpreting history. ~ Nate Silver, #NFDB
524:Scars are stories, history written on the body ~ Kathryn Harrison, #NFDB
525:The facts of history have been too well rehearsed. ~ John Ashbery, #NFDB
526:the history of melancholia includes all of us. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
527:The horror of our history has purged me of opinions. ~ John Barth, #NFDB
528:Their history, mine, yours... A story of... choises. ~ J J Abrams, #NFDB
529:The motive force of history is truth and not lies. ~ Leon Trotsky, #NFDB
530:The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
~ Oscar Wilde,#NFDB
531:The study of History is the best medicine for a sick mind. ~ Livy, #NFDB
532:The world's history is the world's judgment. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
533:The Youngest World Heavyweight Champion in History! ~ Randy Orton, #NFDB
534:We are exactly what our history made us to be. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
535:Who needs normal, anyway. Normal never makes history. ~ Amo Jones, #NFDB
536:Who will dare to write a history of human goodness? ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
537:… you were better making history than studying it. ~ Irvine Welsh, #NFDB
538:Aesthetically, I love the whole history of the music. ~ Jon Gordon, #NFDB
539:A man without any history is like a tree without roots ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
540:A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal. ~ Abba Eban, #NFDB
541:Aren’t you two ever going to read Hogwarts: A History? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
542:But then history does not only consist of documents. ~ John Lukacs, #NFDB
543:Cut, Cap and Balance is worst legislation in history. ~ Harry Reid, #NFDB
544:Don't know much about history Don't know much biology. ~ Sam Cooke, #NFDB
545:events are shaped by history rather than vice versa. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
546:Give that bully that is history a bleeding lip. ~ Kathy Hepinstall, #NFDB
547:History depends on who is telling the story. ~ James O Shaughnessy, #NFDB
548:History does not repeat, but it does instruct. As ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
549:History has not come to an end with Western rule. The ~ Ian Morris, #NFDB
550:History is but the unrolled scroll of prophecy. ~ James A Garfield, #NFDB
551:history is neither for excuses nor for revenge 1. ~ Shashi Tharoor, #NFDB
552:History is no more than memories refreshed. ~ Peter Charles Newman, #NFDB
553:History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
554:History is still in large measure poetry to me. ~ Jacob Burckhardt, #NFDB
555:History shows that there are no invincible armies. ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
556:History teaches us the mistakes we are going to make. ~ Jean Bodin, #NFDB
557:History, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
558:Honest history is the weapon of freedom. ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, #NFDB
559:If history repeats itself, I am so getting a dinosaur! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
560:Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
561:People need history in order to know themselves, ~ Douglas Preston, #NFDB
562:People regard art too highly, and history not enough ~ John Irving, #NFDB
563:Study the history of the form you want to master. ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
564:That started an exchange about the early history ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
565:The ages live in history through their anachronisms. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
566:The greatest man in history was the poorest. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
567:The Holocaust marooned the Jewish people in history. ~ Steve Stern, #NFDB
568:The mistakes of history bring relentless reprisals. ~ Pearl S Buck, #NFDB
569:The only history that matters is the history we know. ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
570:The poet writes the history of his own body. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
571:The supreme purpose of history is a better world. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
572:what could be its biggest round of layoffs in history. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
573:You don't think history gets rewritten, sometimes? ~ Tamora Pierce, #NFDB
574:Don’t we all make up history to suit the present? ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
575:Either you can have life or you can be remembered in history ~ Osho, #NFDB
576:Few characters in history are indispensable. ~ Albert Bushnell Hart, #NFDB
577:Gratitude belongs to history & not to politics, ~ Sonia Purnell, #NFDB
578:Great writing can be done in biography, history, art. ~ V S Naipaul, #NFDB
579:HISTORY IS A bath of blood,” wrote William James, ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
580:History is a better guide than good intentions. ~ Jeane Kirkpatrick, #NFDB
581:History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
582:History is a record of human nature in action. ~ James Carlos Blake, #NFDB
583:History is a series of lies on which we agree. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
584:History is a set of skills rather than a narrative. ~ Hilary Mantel, #NFDB
585:History is full of examples of slaughter and victory. ~ Bobby Adair, #NFDB
586:History is the essence of innumerable biographies. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
587:History knows no resting places and no plateaus ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
588:History only exists, in the final analysis, for God. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
589:History, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
590:Idealism often rewrites history to suit her narrative. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
591:I have a history of disregarding orders. - Mitch Rapp ~ Vince Flynn, #NFDB
592:Images have an advanced religion; they bury history. ~ Alfredo Jaar, #NFDB
593:Natural history is not about producing fables. ~ David Attenborough, #NFDB
594:Rhetoric is what shapes history, if not truth. ~ Anna Deavere Smith, #NFDB
595:The history of liberty is a history of resistance. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
596:There have been three pivotal events in human history. ~ A G Riddle, #NFDB
597:The reign of imagagology begins where history ends. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
598:There is no history of how bad became better. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
599:There is properly no history, only biography. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
600:There is properly no history; only biography. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
601:The tears of God are the meaning of history ~ Nicholas Wolterstorff, #NFDB
602:The transcendental promises a vacation from history. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
603:Those that don’t know history aren’t poisoned by it. ~ Scott Sigler, #NFDB
604:What is history, indeed, but a record of change? ~ Jawaharlal Nehru, #NFDB
605:Your birth may be common, But death must be history. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
606:Your history doesn't need to dictate your destiny ~ Christine Caine, #NFDB
607:Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up. ~ Ronald Wright, #NFDB
608:Edinburgh has history the way cats have bad breath. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
609:Every generation tailors history to its taste. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable, #NFDB
610:Everyone has a place in history. Mine is clouds. ~ Richard Brautigan, #NFDB
611:Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
612:he can’t see past his own history to let us have ours. ~ Nicola Yoon, #NFDB
613:Hiding from my history won't change who or what I am. ~ Brenda Novak, #NFDB
614:History breaks down into images, not into stories. ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
615:History does not belong to us; we belong to it. ~ Hans Georg Gadamer, #NFDB
616:History happens while you're making other plans, ~ John Joseph Adams, #NFDB
617:History is a pathetic junkyard of broken treaties. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
618:History is the footsteps of free men towards destiny. ~ Ernst J nger, #NFDB
619:History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
620:History is the same story with different costumes. ~ Stefan Molyneux, #NFDB
621:History is written by the dreamers, not the doubters. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
622:History teaches everything, even the future. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine, #NFDB
623:History teaches that nations do not learn from history. ~ Bruce Fein, #NFDB
624:History, that excitable and unreliable old lady. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
625:History was gathering itself to deliver another blow ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
626:I love history, doesn't matter what era, I'm fascinated. ~ Tom Petty, #NFDB
627:I'm aware enough, I guess, of American labor history. ~ Ani DiFranco, #NFDB
628:I'm tired of reading about history, I want to make it. ~ Mario Savio, #NFDB
629:It's true that history seems denser than it really is. ~ Tommy Lapid, #NFDB
630:I want to write a book which is the history of comedy. ~ John Cleese, #NFDB
631:Living in your genome is the history of our species. ~ Barry Schuler, #NFDB
632:Louvre museum where the esteemed Mona Lisa resides. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
633:Muhammad is the greatest man that history ever knew ~ Gustave Le Bon, #NFDB
634:Nature is actually the goal at the end of history. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
635:Nothing capable of being memorized is history. ~ Robin G Collingwood, #NFDB
636:Politics is always related to the history and genealogy. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
637:Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances ~ Robert E Lee, #NFDB
638:The history of ideas is like a drama in many acts. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
639:The mystery of history is an insoluble problem. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
640:There is no life that does not contribute to history. ~ Dorothy West, #NFDB
641:The tears of God are the meaning of history. ~ Nicholas Wolterstorff, #NFDB
642:This opens the door on another chapter of history. ~ Walter Cronkite, #NFDB
643:Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
644:To be a successful soldier, you must know history. ~ George S Patton, #NFDB
645:World history is a court of judgment ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
646:Your history does not need to define your destiny. ~ Christine Caine, #NFDB
647:And history becomes legend and legend becomes history. ~ Jean Cocteau, #NFDB
648:A people denied history is a people deprived of dignity. ~ Ali Mazrui, #NFDB
649:Blood alone literally moves the wheels of history. ~ Benito Mussolini, #NFDB
650:Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up. ~ James Maxwell, #NFDB
651:His history is redeemed not in minutes but in lifetimes. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
652:History does not have sides, although historians do. ~ Jay Nordlinger, #NFDB
653:History is a vision of God's creation on the move. ~ Arnold J Toynbee, #NFDB
654:History is not written in the interests of morality. ~ Agnes Repplier, #NFDB
655:History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent. ~ M L Stedman, #NFDB
656:History is the story of events, with praise or blame. ~ Cotton Mather, #NFDB
657:History must stay open, it is all humanity. ~ William Carlos Williams, #NFDB
658:History plays for keeps; individuals play for time. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
659:History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
660:History's lessons don't expire after a few decades. ~ Thomas F Madden, #NFDB
661:History will never accept difficulties as an excuse. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
662:Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history. ~ Pierre de Coubertin, #NFDB
663:I'm finishing my Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance history. ~ Peter Weller, #NFDB
664:I'm not here to make money, I'm here to make history. ~ Lenny Dykstra, #NFDB
665:In history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
666:It is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history. ~ Iris Chang, #NFDB
667:Let me repeat what history teaches. History teaches. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
668:No great leader in history fought to prevent change. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
669:that's me. ancient history."
[Poseidon to Paul] ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
670:The altar, as in pre-history, is anywhere you kneel. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
671:The biggest day in the history of Kentucky's program. ~ John Calipari, #NFDB
672:The history of mankind is his character. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
673:the history of melancholia
includes all of us. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
674:The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes. ~ Czes aw Mi osz, #NFDB
675:The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes. ~ Czeslaw Milosz, #NFDB
676:the main thing is to make history not to write it ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
677:The most important history is the history we make today. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
678:The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History . ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
679:There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
680:This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
681:To write good history is the noblest work of man. ~ John Dickson Carr, #NFDB
682:To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history. ~ Elizabeth Kostova, #NFDB
683:Was I changing history, or had I always been part of it? ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
684:We are not makers of history. We are made by history. ~ DK Publishing, #NFDB
685:Whenever you move, I think you lose your history. ~ Calista Flockhart, #NFDB
686:World history is a court of judgment. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
687:Write about daily life as you would write history. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
688:Writing helps us clarify our thoughts and record history; ~ Sam Barry, #NFDB
689:You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
690:all of us have a place in history. mine is clouds. ~ Richard Brautigan, #NFDB
691:and perhaps they too would one day be lost to history. ~ Susan Dennard, #NFDB
692:Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
693:But I am the greatest sister in the history of the world. ~ Judy Blume, #NFDB
694:By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
695:Catherine was formally crowned on September 22, 1762, ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
696:Each book has a secret history of ways and means. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
697:Each of us is born with a history already in place ~ Walter Dean Myers, #NFDB
698:History is an omlette. THe eggs are already broken. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
699:History is everywhere, all the fragments of the past… ~ Rebecca McNutt, #NFDB
700:History is, indeed, an argument without end. ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, #NFDB
701:History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
702:History is really a study of the future, not the past. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
703:History is the nothing people write about a nothing. ~ William Golding, #NFDB
704:History is too important to be left to the historians. ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
705:History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor. ~ Mahmoud Darwish, #NFDB
706:History shows that people are as changeable as rivers. ~ Andr s Neuman, #NFDB
707:History - that little sewer where man loves to wallow. ~ Francis Ponge, #NFDB
708:Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
709:I'm a history major, baby. I know tons of useless facts ~ Elle Kennedy, #NFDB
710:I think that America has an obsession with history, really. ~ JJ Feild, #NFDB
711:Marilyn was history's most phenomenal love goddess. ~ Philippe Halsman, #NFDB
712:Other than fiction and poetry I tend to read history. ~ Stephen Dobyns, #NFDB
713:Salomé...possibly the least successful play in history. ~ Julie Powell, #NFDB
714:Salvation history reveals sin as literally a broken home. ~ Scott Hahn, #NFDB
715:[S]heer stupidity — that much underrated force in history. ~ Peter Gay, #NFDB
716:Sometimes history takes things into its own hands. ~ Thurgood Marshall, #NFDB
717:The great thing about history is that it is adaptable. ~ Peter Ustinov, #NFDB
718:The history of a man is in his character. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
719:The history of discovery is full of creative serendipity. ~ Tom Kelley, #NFDB
720:The history of empires is the history of human misery. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
721:The history of the bow and arrow is the history of mankind ~ Fred Bear, #NFDB
722:The history of Wall Street is inseparable from New York. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
723:The main thing is to make history, not to write it ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
724:Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
725:We can’t change history, but we can create the future. ~ Erwin McManus, #NFDB
726:We learn from history that we don't learn from history! ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
727:Women often get dropped from memory, and then history. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
728:A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art does not. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
729:As history shows, dead metaphors make good idols. ~ Elizabeth A Johnson, #NFDB
730:A thing of beauty is never perfect.” —Egyptian Proverb ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
731:Barca is nothing but a small part of Real Madrid’s history ~ Marco Reus, #NFDB
732:Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me. ~ Fidel Castro, #NFDB
733:Does the business have a consistent operating history? ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
734:Each life contains as much meaning as all of history. ~ Catherine Chung, #NFDB
735:First governor in Arkansas history to ever lower taxes. ~ Mike Huckabee, #NFDB
736:history becomes fiction in the…act of being written down ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
737:History books that contain no lies are extremely dull. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
738:History can only teach its lesson if it is remembered. ~ Jason Reynolds, #NFDB
739:History, gentlefriends, is not without a sense of irony. ~ Jay Kristoff, #NFDB
740:History had its fascinations, but could be burdensome. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
741:History, in the end, becomes a form of irony. ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, #NFDB
742:History is not a fixed truth. It changes with the speaker. ~ Jenn Reese, #NFDB
743:History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
744:history itself arises out of the adjacent possible. ~ Stuart A Kauffman, #NFDB
745:History never repeats itself; at best it sometimes rhymes. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
746:History proves nothing because it contains everything. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
747:History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other. ~ Philip Guedalla, #NFDB
748:History should be about every generation's will to power. ~ Cody Wilson, #NFDB
749:History would be an excellent thing if only it were true. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
750:If you don't remember history accurately, how can you learn? ~ Maya Lin, #NFDB
751:I made more lousy pictures than any actor in history. ~ Humphrey Bogart, #NFDB
752:I'm just the smallest dot in a big map of human history. ~ Ben Casnocha, #NFDB
753:I really want to help write women back into history. ~ Anita Sarkeesian, #NFDB
754:I study history because I am interested in the future. ~ Peter Rachleff, #NFDB
755:It is not the neutrals or the lukewarm who make history. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
756:It's great to be a part of the greatest jackoff in history. ~ Tom Wolfe, #NFDB
757:It was the mantra of every dark operative in history. He ~ Abigail Roux, #NFDB
758:Knowledge and history are the enemies of religion. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
759:law, in violation of his parole. And he had a history of ~ Lisa Jackson, #NFDB
760:Learning from history helps us avoid repeating its mistakes. ~ T A Uner, #NFDB
761:Most important pursuit in history: the search for meaning. ~ John Green, #NFDB
762:Mrs. Friedman lived in a happy snow globe of AP History. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
763:The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
764:The first lesson of history is that evil is good. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
765:...the history of all love is writ with one pen. ~ William Hope Hodgson, #NFDB
766:The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
767:The main thing is to make history, not to write it. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
768:The only figure in history who endures is Jesus. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
769:The whole history of life is a record of cycles. ~ Ellsworth Huntington, #NFDB
770:Things look different when history is seen as His-story. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
771:To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. ~ John Henry Newman, #NFDB
772:Very often history is a means of denying the past. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
773:You have to look at history as an evolution of society. ~ Jean Chretien, #NFDB
774:A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. ~ Washington Irving, #NFDB
775:Biography is history seen through the prism of a person. ~ Louis Fischer, #NFDB
776:by Nikil Saval in “Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
777:(for most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice), ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
778:History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
779:History is a myth shaped by the tongues of conquerors. ~ Roshani Chokshi, #NFDB
780:History ... is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
781:History is not what happened but what is written down ~ Kathleen McGowan, #NFDB
782:History my god. An incurable diarrhea of dead immortals. ~ Robert Coover, #NFDB
783:History repeats itself, the first as tragedy, then as farce. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
784:History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
785:History would be a wonderful thing – if it were only true. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
786:I guess if I weren't an actor, I'd be a history professor ~ Tom Berenger, #NFDB
787:Is your Christianity ancient history--or current events? ~ Sam Shoemaker, #NFDB
788:It is upon the rubble of ancient history that today stands ~ Jan Ellison, #NFDB
789:legends to surround it—giving history to what had just ~ Tracie Peterson, #NFDB
790:Mourinho is the best coach in the history of football. ~ Mario Balotelli, #NFDB
791:My administration will be the most transparent in history ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
792:No other single innovation had so much impact on history. ~ Rodney Stark, #NFDB
793:No spoilers!” “It’s history!” “History that I don’t know. ~ Adam Silvera, #NFDB
794:Official history is believing the murderers at their word. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
795:Our ignorance of history makes us vilify our own age. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
796:Philosophy is the history of philosophy. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
797:Progress is man's indifference to the lessons of history. ~ Len Deighton, #NFDB
798:Reducing military presence has never in history won a war. ~ John McCain, #NFDB
799:Serious history was the West, and the West was white. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
800:She has to be written out of history and written into myth. ~ Hal Duncan, #NFDB
801:Someone calls biography the home aspect of history. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
802:The National Football league is on the wrong side of history. ~ Tom Cole, #NFDB
803:The normal make a living. The deranged make history. ~ Christopher Titus, #NFDB
804:The right to revolt has sources deep in our history. ~ Max Allan Collins, #NFDB
805:The right to revolt has sources deep in our history. ~ William O Douglas, #NFDB
806:The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
807:The system gives you two minutes to phrase a whole history. ~ Raoul Peck, #NFDB
808:To be deep in history, is to cease to be Protestant. ~ John Henry Newman, #NFDB
809:Wasn't history full of the destruction of precious things? ~ Henry James, #NFDB
810:Web standards keep you out of the dustbin of history. ~ Joshua Greenberg, #NFDB
811:We'll have a baby who stutters repeatedly We'll name him history ~ Jay Z, #NFDB
812:When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased. ~ Ma Jian, #NFDB
813:Wise men read books about history. Strong men write them. ~ Pierce Brown, #NFDB
814:You can make history, or you will be vilified by it. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio, #NFDB
815:You can't escape the influence of architectural history. ~ Richard Meier, #NFDB
816:A/C was the greatest invention in the history of mankind ~ Mark Childress, #NFDB
817:All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
818:Be suspicious of history that is written by the conquerors. ~ Jack Gantos, #NFDB
819:But man is not only made by history—history is made by man. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
820:Don't be shocked when your history book mentions me. ~ Lin Manuel Miranda, #NFDB
821:Ghosts are both remnants of history and witnesses to it. ~ Katherine Howe, #NFDB
822:He who doesn't understand history is doomed to repeat it. ~ Pittacus Lore, #NFDB
823:History always happens to us and nothing ever stays the same. ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
824:History can be a weapon, and it can be used against you. ~ James W Loewen, #NFDB
825:History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. —Mark Twain ~ Peter Mallouk, #NFDB
826:History is a conveyor belt of corpses because of Adam's sin. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
827:History is that nightmare from which there is no awakening. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
828:History is written by those who win and those who dominate. ~ Edward Said, #NFDB
829:History seemed meaningless here, or at least bewildered. ~ China Mi ville, #NFDB
830:Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
831:If reason ruled the world would history even exist? ~ Ryszard Kapu ci ski, #NFDB
832:if reason ruled the world would history even exist? ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski, #NFDB
833:I love history, so I do a lot of movies about history. ~ Steven Spielberg, #NFDB
834:James Lipton: The most pompous arrogant failure in history. ~ David Cross, #NFDB
835:Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
836:Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years. ~ Gavin Bryars, #NFDB
837:My history is the history of things imagined and not-happened. ~ Sam Pink, #NFDB
838:Oh, come on. You eye-hump him all through British History. ~ Cynthia Hand, #NFDB
839:People need their history like they need air and food. ~ Randall Robinson, #NFDB
840:poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
841:Surely every band wants to be a pivotal point in history. ~ Alex Kapranos, #NFDB
842:The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. ~ Dan Quayle, #NFDB
843:The most important time in history is - NOW - the present, ~ Talib Kweli, #NFDB
844:There is no law of history any more than of a kaleidoscope. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
845:This being understood, let us proceed with our history. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
846:Those who ignore history are doomed to get their nuts cut. ~ Carl Hiaasen, #NFDB
847:To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant. ~ John Henry Newman, #NFDB
848:To discover the various use of things is the work of history. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
849:We cannot erase the past, but we can accept it as history. ~ Gary Chapman, #NFDB
850:Well, the whole history of Star Trek is the market demand. ~ George Takei, #NFDB
851:What if we are just a digression in someone else's history? ~ Nicola Yoon, #NFDB
852:You can be a slave to current magazines or a slave to history ~ Mary Karr, #NFDB
853:All history is the history of unintended consequences. ~ T J Jackson Lears, #NFDB
854:Before the tears that tore us, when our history was before us. ~ Lang Leav, #NFDB
855:Every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
856:Every pandemic in the history of the world has come from China. ~ Lisa See, #NFDB
857:Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History Books! ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
858:Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
859:He [the Statist] is unmoved by reason, evidence, and history. ~ Mark Levin, #NFDB
860:History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
861:History goes out of control almost as often as nature does. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
862:History has repeated itself many times througout the ages. ~ Billy Sheehan, #NFDB
863:History is full of decapitations, and Iowa is no exception. ~ Andrew Smith, #NFDB
864:History is remembered by its art, not its war machines. ~ James Rosenquist, #NFDB
865:History is the discovering of the principles of human nature. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
866:History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
867:History will prove me right. This is an exercise in folly. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
868:History will remember this," she says. "I do not need to. ~ Michelle Moran, #NFDB
869:History works itself out by an inevitable internal logic. ~ Terry Eagleton, #NFDB
870:If you don't own Gold, you know neither history nor economics. ~ Ray Dalio, #NFDB
871:I have a well-documented history of trouble with intimacy. ~ Matthew Perry, #NFDB
872:I just couldn't move. History had me glued to the seat. ~ Claudette Colvin, #NFDB
873:In the history of art, late works are the catastrophes. ~ Theodor W Adorno, #NFDB
874:In war, morale and opinion are more than half the battle. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
875:Jesus Christ is the only God who has a date in history. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
876:Much of what we call History is the success stories of madmen. ~ John Holt, #NFDB
877:Part of history is tracing artifacts and looking at patterns. ~ A G Riddle, #NFDB
878:Plot makes the character just as history makes the man. ~ Thomas Steinbeck, #NFDB
879:Psychology has a long past, but only a short history. ~ Hermann Ebbinghaus, #NFDB
880:[Read] anything but history,.. for history must be false. ~ Robert Walpole, #NFDB
881:Reality ensures that the end of history will never come. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
882:takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
883:The dawn of history reveals a humanity already civilized. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
884:The history of the world is but a biography of great men. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
885:The laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history. ~ Ariel Durant, #NFDB
886:The Official History of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, ~ Rick Beyer, #NFDB
887:The power of belief alone could change the course of history. ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
888:There are many names in history, but none of them are ours ~ Richard Siken, #NFDB
889:Trust the people -- that is the crucial lesson of history. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
890:Under the same star... A history from love. i love the romances ~ Tim Lott, #NFDB
891:Unprecedented amnesty in history of Georgia took place ~ Vano Merabishvili, #NFDB
892:We are not just studying human history, we are shaping it. ~ Jason Russell, #NFDB
893:We are pioneers and the history of pioneers is not that good. ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
894:While history never repeats itself, political patterns do. ~ Eric Alterman, #NFDB
895:You can't escape yourself,' Nic says. 'Everyone has a history. ~ A M Homes, #NFDB
896:Your requests change history because your prayers change God! ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
897:All eras of history are an equal distance from eternity. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
898:And on a difference of three minutes, all of history changes. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
899:Book Twelve CORINTH I HISTORY OF CORINTH SINCE ITS FOUNDATION ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
900:Darwin has interested us in the history of nature's technology. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
901:Either all of us are accidents of history or none of us are. ~ Dani Shapiro, #NFDB
902:Focus on the play like it has a history and a life of its own. ~ Nick Saban, #NFDB
903:Geography is history in place, history is geography in time ~ lis e Reclus, #NFDB
904:History...a release from the troublesome promiscuous present. ~ Tod Wodicka, #NFDB
905:History engineered if the facts couldn't be generally accepted. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
906:History is an angel being blown backwards into the future ~ Laurie Anderson, #NFDB
907:History is furious debate informed by evidence and reason. ~ James W Loewen, #NFDB
908:History is only a tiresome repetition of one story. ~ William Graham Sumner, #NFDB
909:history is the story of liberty becoming conscious of itself. ~ Clive James, #NFDB
910:History might cough, but in a day or so, it will feel just fine. ~ J D Horn, #NFDB
911:History of the world is but the biography of great men.
~ Thomas Carlyle,#NFDB
912:History opens up new worlds to film-makers all the time. ~ Steven Spielberg, #NFDB
913:History remains with the people who will appreciate it most. ~ Adam Silvera, #NFDB
914:History shows you don't know what the future brings. ~ G Richard Wagoner Jr, #NFDB
915:How ignorant a man can become on a diet of managed history. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
916:I don't have a long family history of good cooks in my family. ~ Bobby Flay, #NFDB
917:If we don't know our own history, we are deemed to live it. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
918:I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
919:I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
920:In history people dressed much better than we do today. ~ Vivienne Westwood, #NFDB
921:is the most pitiful word in history, and it’s a lame excuse, ~ Cameron Jace, #NFDB
922:It's History that's caused all the troubles in the past. ~ Michael Moorcock, #NFDB
923:It’s not you. The stupidest line in the history of lines. ~ Kristan Higgins, #NFDB
924:It's time to stop letting your history control your destiny. ~ Andy Andrews, #NFDB
925:It was an era when history butted up against mythology, ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
926:I want history to jump on Canada's spine with sharp skates. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
927:Just as all politics is local, all good history is personal. ~ Marcia Clark, #NFDB
928:Keep people from their history, and they are easily controlled. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
929:Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
930:Light will be thrown on the origin of men and his history. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
931:No one sees clearly during a war. History gives perspective ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB
932:One [has] to sense the trend of history and precede it. ~ Elsa Schiaparelli, #NFDB
933:One of the worst Oscar nods in history, if you ask me.” I ~ Ellie Alexander, #NFDB
934:p4- the history that now effects everyman is world history ~ C Wright Mills, #NFDB
935:Reading history while you make history can teach you a lot. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
936:Shame, shame, shame—that is the history of the human! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
937:Some of the most famous people in history never got a dinner! ~ Red Buttons, #NFDB
938:Some people make headlines while others make history. ~ Philip Elmer DeWitt, #NFDB
939:The 2000 election exposed some ugly history in our country. ~ Donna Brazile, #NFDB
940:The easiest way of change history is to become a historian. ~ Jerry Falwell, #NFDB
941:The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
942:The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it. ~ Laurence Sterne, #NFDB
943:The history of life is written in terms of negative entropy. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
944:the main lesson of history is: humans don’t learn from history. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
945:The trial of Ernst Zundel has gone down in Canadian history. ~ Ernst Zundel, #NFDB
946:Voters, like history, are under no obligation to make sense. ~ Evan Mandery, #NFDB
947:We're going to have to change our traditions, our history. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
948:What do you mean to do?'
'Make literary history, I guess. ~ Paula McLain,#NFDB
949:When a history book contains no lies it is always tedious. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
950:Who are we to combat poisons older than history and mankind ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
951:Woe unto the defeated, whom history treads into the dust. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
952:You cannot afford to rely on history, you have to make it. ~ Martin O Neill, #NFDB
953:You have the best wild west rancher cowboy name in history ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
954:Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors. ~ Nicolas Chamfort, #NFDB
955:Among famous traitors of history one might mention the weather. ~ Ilka Chase, #NFDB
956:A shared history does not entitle you to a future, my friend. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
957:a storyteller’s tale may end, but history goes on always. ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
958:Death decayed into history decayed into poolside anecdote. ~ Brooke Bolander, #NFDB
959:Don't ever forget the history. It will make and change who we are. ~ Sukarno, #NFDB
960:For feeling, not events, is to me the essence of history. ~ Christopher Pike, #NFDB
961:History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
962:History and memory are very important to me. - Madame George ~ Richard Rubin, #NFDB
963:History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London. ~ Helene Hanff, #NFDB
964:History doesn't proceed in incremental little notches. ~ Frances Moore Lappe, #NFDB
965:History honors the unique minority the majority cannot forget. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
966:History is an alternating series of frying pans and fires. ~ P ter Esterh zy, #NFDB
967:History is like a clock, it tells you your time of day. ~ John Henrik Clarke, #NFDB
968:History isn’t a tale told once, it’s a series of revisions. ~ Victor LaValle, #NFDB
969:History is the chronicle of divorces between creed and deed. ~ Louis Fischer, #NFDB
970:History repeats itself because nobody listens the first time. ~ Erik Qualman, #NFDB
971:History took hold of me and never let me go thereafter. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
972:How many forgotten heroes sleep in history's great cemetery? ~ Laurent Binet, #NFDB
973:I do not see why man should not be just as cruel as nature. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
974:If you are a black woman, you get two history months in a row. ~ Artie Lange, #NFDB
975:I got a call to come in and meet Fox, and the rest is history. ~ Paula Abdul, #NFDB
976:I shall do down in history as the man who opened a door! ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
977:I think all presidents should take the long view of history. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
978:I think literature reveals more about us than history does. ~ Susan Meissner, #NFDB
979:[I want to build] the biggest apparel company in human history. ~ Kanye West, #NFDB
980:Men, like planets, have both a visible and invisible history. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
981:My history is really playing live - not writing or recording. ~ Squarepusher, #NFDB
982:No spoilers!” “It’s history!” “History that I don’t know. ~ Becky Albertalli, #NFDB
983:NOTHING HAS EVER LOOKED LIKE THAT EVER IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY, ~ John Green, #NFDB
984:Nothing has ever looked like that ever in all of human history. ~ John Green, #NFDB
985:Nothing moves me more than the history of the United States. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
986:Nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
987:Our family history was erased and rewritten a thousand times. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
988:Russia is tough. The history, the land, the people - brutal. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
989:That we have some history together that hasn’t happened yet. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
990:The future of history belongs to the poor and exploited. ~ Gustavo Gutierrez, #NFDB
991:The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
992:The history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
993:The men who make history have not time to write it. ~ Klemens von Metternich, #NFDB
994:There is properly no history; only biography. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, History, #NFDB
995:the Southern soldier will go down in history dishonored. ~ James M McPherson, #NFDB
996:The student is to read history actively not passively. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
997:To become a future-teller, one needs only to study history. ~ Marjorie M Liu, #NFDB
998:To understand a science it is necessary to know its history. ~ Auguste Comte, #NFDB
999:truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1000:Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk. ~ Dolores Huerta, #NFDB
1001:we can move past our history, but we can never truly erase it. ~ Susan Wiggs, #NFDB
1002:We were the only band in history that was directed by an ass. ~ Scotty Moore, #NFDB
1003:What is a history teacher? He's someone who teaches mistakes. ~ Graham Swift, #NFDB
1004:What to do then, when the only history you have is collage? ~ Fatimah Asghar, #NFDB
1005:Who are we to combat poisons older than history and mankind? ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
1006:Women have been sexual slaves for most of recorded history. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1007:Women love hairy men. Cavemen were the sexiest men in history. ~ Leslie Mann, #NFDB
1008:Women's history is the primary tool for women's emancipation. ~ Gerda Lerner, #NFDB
1009:You can't live in history. You've got to build for the future. ~ Ruud Gullit, #NFDB
1010:You don't want to trash what you've done; that's your history. ~ Pat Benatar, #NFDB
1011:Your family's history does not have to be your future legacy! ~ Jayce O Neal, #NFDB
1012:A dream of tenderness
wrestles with all I know of history ~ Adrienne Rich,#NFDB
1013:Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
1014:Assassination has never changed the history of the world. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
1015:Equality under the law is the slow triumph of hope over history. ~ Jim Cooper, #NFDB
1016:Even the great bad guys in cinema history, they're likable. ~ Balthazar Getty, #NFDB
1017:Gilles was the fastest driver in the history of motor racing ~ Jody Scheckter, #NFDB
1018:History does not usually make real sense until long afterward. ~ Bruce Catton, #NFDB
1019:History has always existed, but not always in a historical form. ~ Guy Debord, #NFDB
1020:History holds up one side of our lives and fiction the other. ~ Samantha Hunt, #NFDB
1021:History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1022:History is the ship carrying living memories to the future. ~ Stephen Spender, #NFDB
1023:History remains with the people who will appreciate it most. I ~ Adam Silvera, #NFDB
1024:History remembered the villains even better than the saints. ~ Meredith Duran, #NFDB
1025:History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself... ~ A S Byatt, #NFDB
1026:human memory is short, and history always repeats itself. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1027:I am fascinated by history and particularly the Victorian era. ~ Annie Lennox, #NFDB
1028:If you don't know history, it is as if you were born yesterday. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
1029:I love every period in design history. Even the ugly ones. ~ Catherine Martin, #NFDB
1030:In literary history, generation follows generation in a rage. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
1031:In the history of the world, a whole story has never been told. ~ Meghan Daum, #NFDB
1032:It's funny how the history of Jeb Bush is going to be rewritten. ~ Chuck Todd, #NFDB
1033:Look at history. It's not the account of a species at peace. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1034:Luce recognized her from European history class. Amy Something. ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
1035:Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1036:My favourite finds are often antique pieces with a history. ~ Alice Temperley, #NFDB
1037:My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history. ~ Russell Banks, #NFDB
1038:Mythology can be defined as the sacred history of humankind. ~ Gerald Hausman, #NFDB
1039:No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong. ~ Maureen Johnson, #NFDB
1040:People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1041:People never mentioned in history books still made history. ~ Katherine Locke, #NFDB
1042:Photography's history is bound to the mistake, to the accident. ~ Taryn Simon, #NFDB
1043:Shall I go down in history as a death bringer or a privy cleaner? ~ Paul Dale, #NFDB
1044:the artes liberales: music, mathematics, history, and so on. ~ Elizabeth Moon, #NFDB
1045:[The Balkans] produce more history than they can consume. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1046:The Beatles are the most credible band in the history of music. ~ Ryan Tedder, #NFDB
1047:The history of art is a sequence of successful transgressions. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
1048:The history of the world is the history of the privileged few. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
1049:...the main lesson of history is humans don't learn from history. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
1050:The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
1051:There are moments in history that people should be reminded of. ~ Jim Sanborn, #NFDB
1052:There has not been a beautiful death in the history of mankind. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
1053:The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology. ~ Bernard Malamud, #NFDB
1054:To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. ~ Saint John Henry Newman, #NFDB
1055:Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
1056:Unix is not so much an operating system as an oral history. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
1057:We are not makers of history. We are made by history. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1058:We have history, you and I. You just don’t know it yet. ~ Sarah Addison Allen, #NFDB
1059:With black people, there are 50 Hitlers over the course of history. ~ Chuck D, #NFDB
1060:All history is but the lengthened shadow of a great man. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1061:All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1062:But I can't rewrite history. I can love only with what's left. ~ Suzanne Young, #NFDB
1063:But I can't rewrite history. I can only live with what's left. ~ Suzanne Young, #NFDB
1064:Does American history prove these truths, or does it belie them? ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
1065:From the Battle of Clontarf to Stalingrad: history brought to life ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1066:have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
1067:Histories themselves become history before they reach the shelves. ~ John Keay, #NFDB
1068:History - a biography of a few stout and earnest persons ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1069:History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant ~ John Barth, #NFDB
1070:History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1071:History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
1072:History, history! We fools, what do we know or care. ~ William Carlos Williams, #NFDB
1073:History indulges strange whims in the way it dresses its women. ~ Michel Faber, #NFDB
1074:History in the storyteller's hand was a potent force indeed,.... ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
1075:History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1076:History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
1077:History is anomalous, and there is no way to get used to it. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
1078:History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1079:History is nothing except monsters or victims. Or witnesses. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1080:History is scholarship. It is also art, and it is literature. ~ Stephen J Pyne, #NFDB
1081:History is scraps of evidence joined by the glue of imagination. ~ Subhash Kak, #NFDB
1082:History is what the evidence compels us to believe. ~ Michael Joseph Oakeshott, #NFDB
1083:I am a part of history whether people want to take it seriously or not. ~ Cher, #NFDB
1084:I think the materialist conception of history is valid. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
1085:I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die, ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
1086:It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
1087:I would love to see the Church on the right side of history. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
1088:Jeff Bridges is one of my favorite actors in the history of ever. ~ Ben Barnes, #NFDB
1089:Karachi has had an overdose of history, too much has happened. ~ Steve Inskeep, #NFDB
1090:Man in a word has no nature; what he has... is history. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
1091:Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
1092:Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history. ~ Vernor Vinge, #NFDB
1093:No life had ever been truly saved, not in the history of mankind. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
1094:Not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. ~ Elizabeth Kostova, #NFDB
1095:Nowhere in history has the white man been brotherly toward anyone. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
1096:Obviously, the history of the franchise is a history of anomalies. ~ Peter Gay, #NFDB
1097:Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1098:The dirty secret about history is how much of it is conjecture. ~ Erika Swyler, #NFDB
1099:The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
1100:The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1101:The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
1102:The history of mankind is the history of money losing value. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
1103:The history of the world is the world's court of justice. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
1104:The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know. ~ Harry Truman, #NFDB
1105:The only thing that's really new is the history you don't know. ~ Harry Truman, #NFDB
1106:There is no better time in history to be an idiot than right now. ~ A J Jacobs, #NFDB
1107:The sea is nothing but a library of all the tears in history. ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
1108:The writing of history is often another way of defining chaos. ~ Peter Ackroyd, #NFDB
1109:Throughout history, great leaders have known the power of humor. ~ Allen Klein, #NFDB
1110:To be deep in history, is to cease to be Protestant. ~ Saint John Henry Newman, #NFDB
1111:Tolstoy said, “History would be a very good thing if it were true. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1112:Voltaire once said? ‘History is the lie commonly agreed upon. ~ Oliver P tzsch, #NFDB
1113:want to change history?” Luke made a stab at humor. ~ Margaret Peterson Haddix, #NFDB
1114:When history looks back, it will prove what I'll die knowing. ~ Jack Kevorkian, #NFDB
1115:Yesterday's History. Tomorrow's a Mystery. So live for today. ~ Carroll Shelby, #NFDB
1116:Zionism is the most stupendous fallacy in Jewish history ~ Henry Morgenthau Sr, #NFDB
1117:A. RONCAGLIA The Wealth of Ideas: A History of Economic Thought ~ Ha Joon Chang, #NFDB
1118:At least Satan fell; he has a history, and it's one of revenge. ~ Ian McDiarmid, #NFDB
1119:Broken:
Never underestimate the power of a shared history. ~ Karin Slaughter,#NFDB
1120:Bush, Sharon, Blair and Rice are names that history will damn. ~ George Clooney, #NFDB
1121:Every new generation must rewrite history in its own way. ~ Robin G Collingwood, #NFDB
1122:for evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
1123:Going from--toward; it is the history of every one of us. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1124:history, as they say, will always be written by the victors. ~ Anthony Bourdain, #NFDB
1125:History demonstrates that racism never goes away; it just adapts. ~ Jemar Tisby, #NFDB
1126:History doesn't turn on a dime; it turns on a plugged nickel. ~ Jeff Greenfield, #NFDB
1127:History, in general, only informs us what bad government is. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1128:History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
1129:History sits on our shoulders, while reading opens our hearts. ~ Jerry Spinelli, #NFDB
1130:History tends to change people who think they're changing it. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1131:... history - the lamp which illumines national character... ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
1132:I believe that when you’re making a mix, you’re making history. ~ Rob Sheffield, #NFDB
1133:If history is a record of survivors, Poetry shelters other voices. ~ Susan Howe, #NFDB
1134:I half cherish the hope that the end of history will be Swissness. ~ Jan Morris, #NFDB
1135:I have a history of saving animals. I started years ago with a cow. ~ Peter Max, #NFDB
1136:I hope to make the most expensive movie in history at some point! ~ Dean Devlin, #NFDB
1137:In life you have to rely on the past, and that's called history. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
1138:It is not I who have been consigned to the bedroom of history. ~ Corazon Aquino, #NFDB
1139:Losers don’t write history. They’re burned, buried, and forgotten. ~ A G Riddle, #NFDB
1140:Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
1141:My other bodily ailments have become mere matters of history. ~ William Banting, #NFDB
1142:Never in the history of human credit has so much been owed. ~ Margaret Thatcher, #NFDB
1143:No land was ever acquired honestly in the history of the earth. ~ Philipp Meyer, #NFDB
1144:No time in history has the Church of Jesus Christ gone down! ~ Loren Cunningham, #NFDB
1145:Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1146:People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
1147:So study your rock history, son. That be the Bible of the Blues. ~ Steven Tyler, #NFDB
1148:The history of American women is all about leaving home—crossing ~ Gail Collins, #NFDB
1149:The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
1150:The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie. ~ Joseph Brodsky, #NFDB
1151:There is no inevitability in history except as men make it. ~ Felix Frankfurter, #NFDB
1152:This in no life for man or woman, insults and hatred and history. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
1153:To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant. ~ Saint John Henry Newman, #NFDB
1154:Very few of us ever see the history of our own time happening. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1155:Was never secret history but birds tell it in the bowers. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1156:We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
1157:We must resist the temptation to romanticize history's losers. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
1158:When the train of history hits a curve, the intellectuals fall off. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
1159:A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke ~ Max Eastman, #NFDB
1160:As the Chinese will tell you, history depends on your point of view. ~ Tim Allen, #NFDB
1161:Cameras miniaturize experience, transform history into spectacle. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
1162:Crim has baggage: expectation, history, responsibility. ~ Lee Patrick Mastelotto, #NFDB
1163:Democracy is but an experiment in the long history of the world. ~ Mark McKinnon, #NFDB
1164:Dictators seem to learn from history much better than democrats ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
1165:Donald Trump will be a tragedy, a sad joke in American history. ~ Jonathan Chait, #NFDB
1166:Dragons in History by Eleanor Lock (Border Press, London, 1999) ~ Matthew Reilly, #NFDB
1167:Graphic designers should be literate in graphic design history. ~ Steven Heller, #NFDB
1168:History casts its shadow far into the land of song. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
1169:History favors the underfoot and the oppressed, Your Majesty, ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
1170:History is like a mirror, capable of showing what a man really is ~ Qiu Xiaolong, #NFDB
1171:History is nothing if not an epic tale of missed opportunities. ~ Graydon Carter, #NFDB
1172:History is the guess of old men, sometimes they get it wrong. ~ Steven J Carroll, #NFDB
1173:History is the narrative of people searching for a place to go. ~ J R Moehringer, #NFDB
1174:History’s lesson is that bullies ultimately defeat themselves. ~ Howard Jacobson, #NFDB
1175:history teaches us that visions come most quickly to lone obsessives. ~ Alex Mar, #NFDB
1176:History, well read, is simply humility well told, in many manners. ~ Adam Gopnik, #NFDB
1177:Human history was the story of increasingly disoriented hunger. ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
1178:If we could read the secret history of our enemies. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
1179:I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
1180:I'm not keen on history being tampered with... to any extent. ~ Daniel Day Lewis, #NFDB
1181:Inertia is the first law of history, as it is of physics. ~ Morris Raphael Cohen, #NFDB
1182:In truth history does not belong to us but rather we to it. ~ Hans Georg Gadamer, #NFDB
1183:I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
1184:Knowing your history can give you the tools to shape your future. ~ Gloria Feldt, #NFDB
1185:Man's most intelligent age may have gotten lost in history. ~ John Henrik Clarke, #NFDB
1186:No man in the history of baseball had as much power as . No man. ~ Mickey Mantle, #NFDB
1187:No man in the history of ever has turned down a blowjob,” he gritted. ~ Amy Lane, #NFDB
1188:Only give them history books. Men should read nothing else. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
1189:Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1190:Television and film are our libraries now. Our history books. ~ David Strathairn, #NFDB
1191:That's the history of the world. His story is told, hers isn't. ~ Dolores Huerta, #NFDB
1192:The elderly have so much to offer. They're our link with history. ~ John Cusack, #NFDB
1193:The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
1194:The history of literature is the history of the human mind. ~ William H Prescott, #NFDB
1195:The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people. ~ Benito Mussolini, #NFDB
1196:The laws of animality govern almost the whole of history. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
1197:The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from. ~ Philip Sugden, #NFDB
1198:The queens in history compare favorably with the kings. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
1199:The stop-watch of history is running. The race is on . . . ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
1200:The student is to read history actively and not passively. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1201:The World Has Divided into Rich and Poor as at No Time in History ~ Maude Barlow, #NFDB
1202:Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
1203:Women’s history is the
primary tool for women’s emancipation. ~ Gerda Lerner,#NFDB
1204:You have no dominion greater or lesser than that over yourself. ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
1205:A criminal is more vulnerable in his history than his future, ~ Michelle McNamara, #NFDB
1206:A generation which ignores history has no past—and no future. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1207:America is the greatest force for good in the history of the world. ~ John McCain, #NFDB
1208:An artist should know art history. Shock value only lasts so long. ~ Robert Longo, #NFDB
1209:And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history. ~ Stacy Schiff, #NFDB
1210:A racist is a man who believes in history, genetics, and his eyes! ~ Tom Anderson, #NFDB
1211:As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1212:Does history record any case in which the majority was right? ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1213:For with but one generation, History and truth are lost forever. ~ Mary E Pearson, #NFDB
1214:grab my (white) American History book and stuff it in my backpack. ~ Angie Thomas, #NFDB
1215:He is the purest figure in history. About George Washington ~ William E Gladstone, #NFDB
1216:History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another. ~ Max Beerbohm, #NFDB
1217:History fancies itself linear - but yields to a cyclical temptation. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
1218:History is a series of approximations of the final singularity. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
1219:History itself is only ever a story, told by the ones who survive it. ~ C J Tudor, #NFDB
1220:...history lives in the gap between the information and the truth ~ Dexter Palmer, #NFDB
1221:History never really says goodbye. History says, see you later. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
1222:History tends to be rather dry
but everyone enjoys a story ~ Patrick Rothfuss,#NFDB
1223:Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1224:Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1225:How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another ~ Alan Bennett, #NFDB
1226:How do you build a history based on ceaseless self-slaughter? ~ Peter Pomerantsev, #NFDB
1227:I am glad you appreciate the past. History helps make the present, ~ Karen Harper, #NFDB
1228:I'd rather be making messes, and making history while I'm at it. ~ Sophia Amoruso, #NFDB
1229:If you can't trust the Bible's history, how can you trust its morality? ~ Ken Ham, #NFDB
1230:I'm excited we can be part of making the death penalty history. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
1231:I'm headed towards greatness. I think I'm making history in hip-hop. ~ Soulja Boy, #NFDB
1232:In the history of humanity, there's never been a country like America. ~ Ted Cruz, #NFDB
1233:I shall be the first composer in history not to have a biography. ~ Pierre Boulez, #NFDB
1234:I think that an obsession with art history gave rise to the work. ~ Kehinde Wiley, #NFDB
1235:Love is the final end of the world's history, the Amen of the universe. ~ Novalis, #NFDB
1236:Nowadays people think that history is what was on TV last night. ~ Michael Dibdin, #NFDB
1237:One cannot take revenge upon history; history is its own revenge ~ Shashi Tharoor, #NFDB
1238:[R]acial supremacy is merely a matter of dates in history. ~ James Weldon Johnson, #NFDB
1239:Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. ~ William James, #NFDB
1240:Sharman Apt Russell, author of Hunger: An Unnatural History. ~ Daniel James Brown, #NFDB
1241:Slavery is not African history. Slavery interrupted African history. ~ Mutabaruka, #NFDB
1242:The accidents of history are everywhere. The carnage all around us. ~ Sari Wilson, #NFDB
1243:The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history. ~ Robert Rauschenberg, #NFDB
1244:The audience cheered. I died a little inside. The rest is history. ~ Mark Kermode, #NFDB
1245:The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons. ~ Edwin Powell Hubble, #NFDB
1246:The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people. ~ Montesquieu, #NFDB
1247:The history of mathematics is a history of horrendously difficult ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
1248:The mists remain of the false glory that erupts from history. ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
1249:The most important events in every age never reach the history books. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1250:The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift. ~ Lisa Unger, #NFDB
1251:There's only one spot in history for the first ever of anything. ~ Nathan Fillion, #NFDB
1252:There, tonight. The eternity of that. Swan logic. Swan history. ~ Laura Kasischke, #NFDB
1253:The trouble with history is that there are too many people involved ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
1254:Time creates a collage with layers of history—family and events. ~ Patricia Sands, #NFDB
1255:Today is a reality, tomorrow's a promise, and yesterday's history! ~ Billy Blanks, #NFDB
1256:Under every roof, a story, just as behind every brow, a history ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
1257:We have this history of impossible solutions to insoluble problems. ~ Will Eisner, #NFDB
1258:We see now that the abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all. ~ Paul Val ry, #NFDB
1259:What I am is a thinking, feeling human being compelled by history. ~ Avery Brooks, #NFDB
1260:What we learn from History is that no one learns from History ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
1261:You cannot embrace your destiny if you do not let go of your history. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
1262:Your history of work is as important as the work you'll do tomorrow. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
1263:Ah, my darling. But there is no such thing [as a nice safe history]. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
1264:A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions.” —Marcus Aurelius ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
1265:Before history is written down in books, it is written in courage. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1266:Destiny can sometimes be history coming back to bite you in the arse. ~ Hal Duncan, #NFDB
1267:Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. ~ John Knowles, #NFDB
1268:Every word I say, you can document it and put it in the history books. ~ Riff Raff, #NFDB
1269:Golf is something I love. It's been a part of my family's history. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1270:History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
1271:History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1272:History is a capricious creature. It depends on who writes it. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev, #NFDB
1273:History is always a grand fantasy... To reconstruct is to invent. ~ E a de Queir s, #NFDB
1274:History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1275:History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1276:history is like a mirror that helps you to see through yourself. ~ Yang Jwing Ming, #NFDB
1277:History is much more the product of chaos than of conspiracy ~ Zbigniew Brzezi ski, #NFDB
1278:History is nothing but good people dying for the wrong reasons. ~ Aleksandr Voinov, #NFDB
1279:History is not what happened. History is what was written down. ~ Kathleen McGowan, #NFDB
1280:History written in pencil is easily erased, but crayon is forever. ~ Emilie Autumn, #NFDB
1281:Hopefully one day I can be up there with Peyton in terms of history. ~ Andrew Luck, #NFDB
1282:how far history is distorted by the dubious benefit of hindsight. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
1283:I have been looking all my life for history and have yet to find it. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
1284:I'm going down in history with Star Trek. It's a great feeling. ~ Persis Khambatta, #NFDB
1285:In terms of history and sports, I don't think people will forget. ~ Kristine Lilly, #NFDB
1286:It is not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes. ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
1287:It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1288:It's very important to know the history and region going into it. ~ Danny Burstein, #NFDB
1289:It will be as if we never existed if our history cannot be read. ~ Minette Walters, #NFDB
1290:Jews have been the most successful and productive nation in history. ~ H W Charles, #NFDB
1291:Poetry,
like history, is made;
poetry,
like truth, is seen. ~ Octavio Paz,#NFDB
1292:The arch of History is long, but it bends towards justice. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1293:The first female captain in the history of the Star Trek franchise, ~ Kate Mulgrew, #NFDB
1294:The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. ~ Samuel Marinus Zwemer, #NFDB
1295:The ifs and buts of history...form an insubstantial if intoxicating diet. ~ Vikram, #NFDB
1296:The more history I learn, the more the world fills up with stories. ~ Sarah Vowell, #NFDB
1297:There is no history of artthere is the history of artists. ~ Marianne von Werefkin, #NFDB
1298:The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1299:The victors' view of history rarely matches that of the vanquished. ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
1300:This is the trouble with history. You can't see what's not there. ~ Naomi Alderman, #NFDB
1301:Those who do not know history will forever remain children ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1302:To remain ignorant of history is to remain forever a child ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1303:To try to expunge an individual's history is a terrible violation. ~ Helen Dunmore, #NFDB
1304:We are caught in a secret history, in a forest of symbols. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty, #NFDB
1305:Whatever can be noted historically can be found within history. ~ Martin Heidegger, #NFDB
1306:Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1307:Your genome knows much more about your medical history than you do. ~ Danny Hillis, #NFDB
1308:A basic rule of history is that the inevitable eventually happens. ~ William S Lind, #NFDB
1309:A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1310:All history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
1311:all, humans had a history of behaving badly in order to make a buck. ~ Stuart Gibbs, #NFDB
1312:Arabic equals Sanskrit plus history, equals Greek minus tragedy ~ Abdal Hakim Murad, #NFDB
1313:A single event can shape our lives or change the course of history. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1314:CHAPTER XXV WHEREIN THIS HISTORY REVERTS TO MR. FAGIN AND COMPANY ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1315:He used to pimp and pull shakedowns. Now he rode shotgun to History. ~ James Ellroy, #NFDB
1316:History dressed up in the glow of love’s kiss turned grief into beauty. ~ Aberjhani, #NFDB
1317:History has an author who fills time and eternity with His purpose. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1318:History is always entirely different to what has happened. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness, #NFDB
1319:History is entirely created by the person who tells the story. ~ Lin Manuel Miranda, #NFDB
1320:History is littered with the wars everybody knew could never happen. ~ Enoch Powell, #NFDB
1321:History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
1322:[History]... is nothing else but the rise and disappearance of races. ~ Arthur Kemp, #NFDB
1323:History is not just about the past. It also reveals the present. ~ David Von Drehle, #NFDB
1324:History is riddled with deaths. We’re all here because of ghosts. ~ Katherine Locke, #NFDB
1325:History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
1326:History is the key to everything: politics, religion, even fashion. ~ Eva Herzigova, #NFDB
1327:History is the long, difficult and confused dream of Mankind. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
1328:History is written not only by posterity, but for posterity as well. ~ Stacy Schiff, #NFDB
1329:History never repeats itself—but historical situations recur.” As ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
1330:History repeats itself is another way of saying the past harmonizes. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1331:History taught that the cover-up was always worse than the crime. ~ Lisa Scottoline, #NFDB
1332:I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.... ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1333:Imagine if Congress were actually knowledgeable of American history. ~ Jim Harrison, #NFDB
1334:In history, good intentions do not always make good consequences ~ Alija Izetbegovi, #NFDB
1335:Is history to be considered the property of the participants only? ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1336:It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
1337:it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours— ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1338:I was worried about being the nut that ruined 40 years of Bond history. ~ Rick Yune, #NFDB
1339:Jason Witten will go down as one of the best tight ends in history. ~ Deion Sanders, #NFDB
1340:Madness slunk in through a chink in History. It only took a moment. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
1341:No back in the history of football was ever worth two fumbles a game. ~ Woody Hayes, #NFDB
1342:One should never underestimate the role of stupidity in history ~ Ervand Abrahamian, #NFDB
1343:Only a fraction of the history of literacy has been typographic. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
1344:Our citizenship is in eternity; history is our temporary residence. ~ Erwin McManus, #NFDB
1345:Our own story is even more important for us to know than history. ~ Kristin Cashore, #NFDB
1346:Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through history. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1347:Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
1348:Slavery isn’t Black history,’ I point out. ‘It’s everyone’s history. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1349:Slavery isn’t Black history,” I point out. “It’s everyone’s history. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1350:The arc of history does not bend toward justice unless we bend it. ~ Adam Benforado, #NFDB
1351:The city appeared to be an educational diorama: the History of Mess. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
1352:The "end of history" has been proclaimed many times, always falsely. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1353:The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
1354:The highest of distinctions is service to others.” —King George VI ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
1355:The man of genius in tune with nature will bend history to his will. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1356:The most ethical administration in the history of the Republic. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
1357:The most revolutionary statement in history is "Love thine enemy ~ Eldridge Cleaver, #NFDB
1358:The prophet is appointed to oppose the kind, and even more: history. ~ Martin Buber, #NFDB
1359:There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
1360:The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, #NFDB
1361:Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1362:To become aware of our history is to become aware of our singularity. ~ Octavio Paz, #NFDB
1363:To some extent the history of plagiarism is a history of notebooks. ~ Thomas Mallon, #NFDB
1364:We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that? ~ Joseph Fink, #NFDB
1365:We human beings do real harm. History could make a stone weep. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
1366:Well, I’ve spoken to Dr. Schelling, and we reviewed your history. ~ Natasha S Brown, #NFDB
1367:What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
1368:What you do is your history. What you set in motion is your legacy. ~ Leonard Sweet, #NFDB
1369:Will sex between humans ever lose its endlessly repeated history? ~ Samuel R Delany, #NFDB
1370:women are the only group in history to be idealized into powerlessness ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
1371:Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. ~ Jennifer Niven, #NFDB
1372:George, this is history," Lacon protested weakly. "This is not today. ~ John le Carr, #NFDB
1373:George W. Bush is the worst President
in all of American history. ~ Helen Thomas,#NFDB
1374:History cannot be reduced to a set of statistics and probabilities. ~ Alan Greenspan, #NFDB
1375:History has shown charm to be the final ambition of the leisure class. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
1376:History has shown that the less people read, the more books they buy. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1377:History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women. ~ O Henry, #NFDB
1378:History isn’t something you study. It’s something you should just know. ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
1379:History is too much about wars; biography too much about great men. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
1380:history’s just old news, prophecy that’s well past its sell-by date. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
1381:History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
1382:history textbooks need to disabuse students of the flat-earth myth. ~ James W Loewen, #NFDB
1383:History: the category of human phenomena which tends to catastrophe. ~ Jules Romains, #NFDB
1384:I do love violets; they tell the history of woman's love. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon, #NFDB
1385:I don't worry about long-term history. I won't be around to read it. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1386:If cats could write history, their history would be mostly about cats. ~ Eugen Weber, #NFDB
1387:If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes. ~ Agnes Repplier, #NFDB
1388:If knowing history made you rich, librarians would be billionaires. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1389:Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1390:Indeed, no one should see too much of their own history or future. ~ Kristen Britain, #NFDB
1391:I never see a forest that does not bear a mark or a sign of history. ~ Anselm Kiefer, #NFDB
1392:In history, good intentions do not always make good consequences ~ Alija Izetbegovic, #NFDB
1393:In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car. ~ Lawrence Summers, #NFDB
1394:In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1395:In the last 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 have seen no war ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1396:Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable? ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1397:It's not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
1398:It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
1399:[James Mattis] is a student of history. He's a strategic thinker. ~ Michele Flournoy, #NFDB
1400:Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history. ~ Pat Metheny, #NFDB
1401:Majority doesn't rule. One person can change the history of the world. ~ Paul Mooney, #NFDB
1402:Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history. ~ Norman Borlaug, #NFDB
1403:maybe that’s all history was: a succession of bullies and thieves, each ~ Eric Flint, #NFDB
1404:Official history is a matter of believing murderers on their own word. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
1405:Of such things, petty annoyance and aimless thrusts, is history made. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
1406:Once you get into this great stream of history, you can't get out. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
1407:People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story". ~ Ken Burns, #NFDB
1408:So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1409:STORY” is more than half of the word “HISTORY”. And that’s no accident. ~ Glenn Beck, #NFDB
1410:The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. ~ Various, #NFDB
1411:The Declaration of Independence is a sacred part of American history. ~ Paul Gillmor, #NFDB
1412:The greatest history book ever written is the one hidden in our DNA. ~ Spencer Wells, #NFDB
1413:The greatest work of an artist is the history of a painting. ~ Leon Battista Alberti, #NFDB
1414:The history of architecture is the history of the struggle for light. ~ Le Corbusier, #NFDB
1415:The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman. ~ Willa Cather, #NFDB
1416:The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
1417:The history of literature is very far from being one of simple progress. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1418:The history of things that didn't happen has never been written. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
1419:The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
1420:The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves. ~ James A Garfield, #NFDB
1421:The most beautiful inciting incident in the history of inciting incidents ~ Zoe Sugg, #NFDB
1422:There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know. ~ Harry Truman, #NFDB
1423:There's a lot of revisionist history that goes on these days about Iraq. ~ Joe Biden, #NFDB
1424:The stability of species represented the bedrock of natural history. ~ David Quammen, #NFDB
1425:The state is the soul of man enlarged under the microscope of history. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1426:We study history in order to intervene in the course of history. ~ Adolf von Harnack, #NFDB
1427:What was the point of living through history if you didn't record it? ~ Tatjana Soli, #NFDB
1428:What we learn from history is that people don't learn from history. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1429:When unique voices are united in a common cause, they make history. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
1430:Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
1431:And for what portion of human history had people even had desk jobs? ~ Rebecca Makkai, #NFDB
1432:Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1433:Buddhism wasn’t responsible for the insane atrocities of human history ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
1434:By changing our history and our memory, they try to erase all our shame. ~ Ruth Ozeki, #NFDB
1435:Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1436:Concerning the Investigation of Super-History’ (Urgeschichte) (pp. 20–8) ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
1437:EMBRACING THE EXISTING Japanese perspective on urban history and context ~ Kengo Kuma, #NFDB
1438:Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. ~ Margaret Thatcher, #NFDB
1439:Even the bands I dig don't have a history of attaining mass consumption. ~ Evan Dando, #NFDB
1440:Every weekend in history has worked for movies if the movie connects. ~ Todd Phillips, #NFDB
1441:for evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” More ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
1442:ghosts. He had learned a little of the history of Halyn House ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley, #NFDB
1443:Growing up, I got inspired by the history of the place,” Jobs said. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1444:Happy people don't make history. Happy people make children, then die. ~ Neil Hilborn, #NFDB
1445:History employs evolution to structure biological events in time. ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB
1446:History is a wheel. This sort of world can't go on for ever either. ~ Anthony Burgess, #NFDB
1447:History is not a suicide note -- it is a record of our survival. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1448:History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
1449:History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1450:History mattered. But it could not guarantee what might happen next. ~ Michelle Gable, #NFDB
1451:History: the lies of the victors, the self-delusions of the defeated. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
1452:Human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself. ~ Julio Cortazar, #NFDB
1453:If you don't pay attention to history, you're destined to repeat it. ~ Clint Eastwood, #NFDB
1454:I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood. ~ Rebecca West, #NFDB
1455:I loved history because to me, history was like watching a movie. ~ Quentin Tarantino, #NFDB
1456:My mother took my picture to a model agency and the rest is history. ~ Angie Everhart, #NFDB
1457:One’s own life seemed puny against the background of so much history. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
1458:Pascal said, "All history is one immortal man who continually learns. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1459:Please don't be mad at me for reliving it. History is all you left me. ~ Adam Silvera, #NFDB
1460:Scared is the price brave people pay to enjoy lives that make history. ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
1461:Shawn Michaels is quite simply the greatest performer in WWE history. ~ Chris Jericho, #NFDB
1462:That's the problem with this generation; they don't know their history. ~ Paul Beatty, #NFDB
1463:The hypothetical has its charm, but actual government is history. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
1464:The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1465:The only person in history who did not deserve to suffer, suffered most. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1466:The policy of appeasement is always fatal. Always. History teaches us. ~ Bodie Thoene, #NFDB
1467:There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
1468:The unconscious is the unwritten history of mankind from time unrecorded. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1469:This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1470:Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1471:thousands of years of history under their feet, and definitely unaware ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1472:Truth and History. 21 Men. The Boy Bandit King - He Died As He Lived. ~ Billy the Kid, #NFDB
1473:We have had to learn that history is neither a God nor a redeemer. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
1474:We tap into a lot of things from musical history when making the songs. ~ Chris Stein, #NFDB
1475:Whatever we do or fail to do will influence the course of history. ~ Arthur Henderson, #NFDB
1476:what knowledge haunts each body, what history, what phantom ache? ~ Natasha Trethewey, #NFDB
1477:All empires eventually destroy themselves. That's the record of history. ~ Ralph Nader, #NFDB
1478:Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, #NFDB
1479:A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine. ~ Steven Biko, #NFDB
1480:as the human race is incapable of learning anything from history. ~ Louis de Berni res, #NFDB
1481:Do not read history. Read biography for it is life without theory. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
1482:For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, #NFDB
1483:Gentlemen, you are about to witness the most famous victory in history. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1484:greatest abundance assets in history: specialization and exchange. ~ Peter H Diamandis, #NFDB
1485:He looked a lot like the drawings of Benjamin Franklin in my history book. ~ R L Stine, #NFDB
1486:History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1487:History is man-made, like this pair of shoes, though it pinches more. ~ George Steiner, #NFDB
1488:History offers examples of winning in diplomacy after losing in war. ~ Shigeru Yoshida, #NFDB
1489:History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history. ~ Clarence Darrow, #NFDB
1490:History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats. ~ Elvis Costello, #NFDB
1491:History shows that anything conducive to our national stability is good. ~ Jiang Zemin, #NFDB
1492:--History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
1493:If history teaches us one thing, than that history teaches us nothing. ~ Peter Ustinov, #NFDB
1494:I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up. ~ Rosa Parks, #NFDB
1495:I long for the day that "Roe v. Wade" is sent to the ash heap of history. ~ Mike Pence, #NFDB
1496:It is not observed in history that families improve with time. ~ George William Curtis, #NFDB
1497:It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
1498:Men make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
1499:No real change in history has ever been achieved by discussions. ~ Subhas Chandra Bose, #NFDB
1500:Religion is the most inflammatory enemy-labelling device in history. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
293 Integral Yoga
103 Poetry
91 Occultism
73 Christianity
54 Philosophy
43 Psychology
41 Fiction
28 Science
14 Yoga
12 Mysticism
12 Integral Theory
9 Hinduism
6 Education
5 Philsophy
5 Mythology
5 Islam
3 Theosophy
2 Cybernetics
2 Buddhism
1 Sufism
1 Alchemy
141 The Mother
96 Sri Aurobindo
84 Satprem
82 Nolini Kanta Gupta
43 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
43 Carl Jung
36 H P Lovecraft
35 Aleister Crowley
27 James George Frazer
26 William Wordsworth
22 Saint Augustine of Hippo
22 Jorge Luis Borges
17 Aldous Huxley
15 A B Purani
13 Friedrich Nietzsche
12 Walt Whitman
11 George Van Vrekhem
10 Li Bai
8 William Butler Yeats
7 Vyasa
7 Sri Ramakrishna
7 Plato
7 Nirodbaran
6 Jordan Peterson
6 Henry David Thoreau
5 Swami Krishnananda
5 Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 Percy Bysshe Shelley
5 Muhammad
5 Franz Bardon
4 Swami Vivekananda
4 Rudolf Steiner
4 Rabindranath Tagore
4 Joseph Campbell
3 Symeon the New Theologian
3 Robert Browning
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Plotinus
3 Paul Richard
3 John Keats
3 Aristotle
2 Saint John of Climacus
2 Norbert Wiener
2 Lewis Carroll
2 Ken Wilber
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 Jean Gebser
2 Edgar Allan Poe
2 Bokar Rinpoche
2 Alice Bailey
36 Lovecraft - Poems
27 The Golden Bough
26 Wordsworth - Poems
21 Magick Without Tears
20 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
20 City of God
18 The Future of Man
18 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
17 The Perennial Philosophy
17 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
16 Liber ABA
15 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
15 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
14 Labyrinths
13 The Human Cycle
13 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
12 Whitman - Poems
12 The Practice of Psycho therapy
12 The Phenomenon of Man
12 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
11 Mysterium Coniunctionis
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
10 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
10 Li Bai - Poems
10 Let Me Explain
10 Aion
10 Agenda Vol 08
9 Twilight of the Idols
9 Letters On Yoga II
9 Agenda Vol 02
8 Yeats - Poems
8 Words Of Long Ago
8 The Life Divine
8 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
7 Vishnu Purana
7 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
7 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
7 Borges - Poems
7 Agenda Vol 10
7 Agenda Vol 03
6 Walden
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 Questions And Answers 1956
6 Questions And Answers 1953
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
6 Agenda Vol 13
6 Agenda Vol 05
6 Agenda Vol 04
5 The Study and Practice of Yoga
5 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
5 The Bible
5 Shelley - Poems
5 Savitri
5 Quran
5 Questions And Answers 1955
5 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
5 On Education
5 Essays Divine And Human
5 Emerson - Poems
5 Agenda Vol 12
5 Agenda Vol 09
5 Agenda Vol 06
5 Agenda Vol 01
4 Words Of The Mother I
4 Vedic and Philological Studies
4 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
4 The Practice of Magical Evocation
4 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
4 Tagore - Poems
4 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
3 The Synthesis Of Yoga
3 The Secret Of The Veda
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Some Answers From The Mother
3 Record of Yoga
3 Questions And Answers 1954
3 Poetics
3 Letters On Yoga I
3 Keats - Poems
3 Hymn of the Universe
3 Essays On The Gita
3 Collected Poems
3 Browning - Poems
2 The Problems of Philosophy
2 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
2 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
2 Tara - The Feminine Divine
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Selected Fictions
2 Raja-Yoga
2 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
2 Letters On Yoga IV
2 Letters On Poetry And Art
2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
2 Isha Upanishad
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Cybernetics
2 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
2 Alice in Wonderland
2 Agenda Vol 11
2 Agenda Vol 07
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the History of evolution, the History of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to brea the the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the History of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
It is ironic that a period of the most tremendous technological advancement known to recorded History should also be labeled the Age of Anxiety. Reams have been written about modern man's frenzied search for his soul-and, indeed, his doubt that he even has one at a time when, like castles built on sand, so many of his cherished theories, long mistaken for verities, are crumbling about his bewildered brain.
The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species.
--
A good many attri butions in other symbolic areas, I feel are subject to the same criticism. The Egyptian Gods have been used with a good deal of carelessness, and without sufficient explanation of motives in assigning them as I did. In a recent edition of Crowley's masterpiece Liber 777 (which au fond is less a reflection of Crowley's mind as a recent critic claimed than a tabulation of some of the material given piecemeal in the Golden Dawn knowledge lectures), he gives for the first time brief explanations of the motives for his attri butions. I too should have been far more explicit in the explanations I used in the case of some of the Gods whose names were used many times, most inadequately, where several paths were concerned. While it is true that the religious coloring of the Egyptian Gods differed from time to time during Egypt's turbulent History, nonetheless a word or two about just that one single point could have served a useful purpose.
Some of the passages in the book force me today to emphasize that so far as the Qabalah is concerned, it could and should be employed without binding to it the partisan qualities of any one particular religious faith. This goes as much for Judaism as it does for Christianity. Neither has much intrinsic usefulness where this scientific scheme is concerned. If some students feel hurt by this statement, that cannot be helped. The day of most contemporary faiths is over; they have been more of a curse than a boon to mankind. Nothing that I say here, however, should reflect on the peoples concerned, those who accept these religions. They are merely unfortunate. The religion itself is worn out and indeed is dying.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
spherical Planet Earth's surface. All the great empires of written History before A.D.
1500 lay well within that "known" flat world: it was and as yet remains the
--
000.103 When the archaeologists' artifact-proven History of mathematics opens
4,000 years ago in Babylon and Mesopotamia, it is already a very sophisticated
--
first in History of which it could be said that the Sun never set.
000.107 As professor of economics at the East India Company College in 1810
--
History.
000.121 During this 10-year period we can also phase out all further use of fossil
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
When Ramkumar reprimanded Gadadhar for neglecting a "bread-winning education", the inner voice of the boy reminded him that the legacy of his ancestors — the legacy of Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Sankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya — was not worldly security but the Knowledge of God. And these noble sages were the true representatives of Hindu society. Each of them was seated, as it were, on the crest of the wave that followed each successive trough in the tumultuous course of Indian national life. All demonstrated that the life current of India is spirituality. This truth was revealed to Gadadhar through that inner vision which scans past and future in one sweep, unobstructed by the barriers of time and space. But he was unaware of the History of the profound change that had taken place in the land of his birth during the previous one hundred years.
Hindu society during the eighteenth century had been passing through a period of decadence. It was the twilight of the Mussalman rule. There were anarchy and confusion in all spheres. Superstitious practices dominated the religious life of the people. Rites and rituals passed for the essence of spirituality. Greedy priests became the custodians of heaven. True philosophy was supplanted by dogmatic opinions. The pundits took delight in vain polemics.
--
Thus the insane priest was by verdict of the great scholars of the day proclaimed a Divine Incarnation. His visions were not the result of an over-heated brain; they had precedent in spiritual History. And how did the proclamation affect Sri Ramakrishna himself? He remained the simple child of the Mother that he had been since the first day of his life. Years later, when two of his householder disciples openly spoke of him as a Divine Incarnation and the matter was reported to him, he said with a touch of sarcasm: "Do they think they will enhance my glory that way? One of them is an actor on the stage and the other a physician. What do they know about Incarnations? Why, years ago pundits like Gauri and Vaishnavcharan declared me to be an Avatar. They were great scholars and knew what they said. But that did not make any change in my mind."
Sri Ramakrishna was a learner all his life. He often used to quote a proverb to his disciples: "Friend, the more I live the more I learn." When the excitement created by the Brahmani's declaration was over, he set himself to the task of practising spiritual disciplines according to the traditional methods laid down in the Tantra and Vaishnava scriptures. Hitherto he had pursued his spiritual ideal according to the promptings of his own mind and heart. Now he accepted the Brahmani as his guru and set foot on the traditional highways.
--
The Divine Mother asked Sri Ramakrishna not to be lost in the featureless Absolute but to remain, in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness, the border line between the Absolute and the Relative. He was to keep himself at the "sixth centre" of Tantra, from which he could see not only the glory of the seventh, but also the divine manifestations of the Kundalini in the lower centres. He gently oscillated back and forth across the dividing line. Ecstatic devotion to the Divine Mother alternated with serene absorption in the Ocean of Absolute Unity. He thus bridged the gulf between the Personal and the Impersonal, the immanent and the transcendent aspects of Reality. This is a unique experience in the recorded spiritual History of the world.
--- TOTAPURI'S LESSON
--
About spirituality in general the following were his conclusions: First, he was firmly convinced that all religions are true, that every doctrinal system represents a path to God. He had followed all the main paths and all had led him to the same goal. He was the first religious prophet recorded in History to preach the harmony of religions.
Second, the three great systems of thought known as Dualism, Qualified Non-dualism, and Absolute Non-dualism — Dvaita, Visishtadvaita, and Advaita — he perceived to represent three stages in man's progress toward the Ultimate Reality. They were not contradictory but complementary and suited to different temperaments. For the ordinary man with strong attachment to the senses, a dualistic form of religion, prescribing a certain amount of material support, such as music and other symbols, is useful. A man of God-realization transcends the idea of worldly duties, but the ordinary mortal must perform his duties, striving to be unattached and to surrender the results to God. The mind can comprehend and describe the range of thought and experience up to the Visishtadvaita, and no further. The Advaita, the last word in spiritual experience, is something to be felt in samadhi. for it transcends mind and speech. From the highest standpoint, the Absolute and Its manifestation are equally real — the Lord's Name, His Abode, and the Lord Himself are of the same spiritual Essence. Everything is Spirit, the difference being only in form.
--
Mahendranath Gupta, better known as "M.", arrived at Dakshineswar in March 1882. He belonged to the Brahmo Samaj and was headmaster of the Vidyasagar High School at Syambazar, Calcutta. At the very first sight the Master recognized him as one of his "marked" disciples. Mahendra recorded in his diary Sri Ramakrishna's conversations with his devotees. These are the first directly recorded words, in the spiritual History of the world, of a man recognized as belonging in the class of Buddha and Christ. The present volume is a translation of this diary. Mahendra was instrumental, through his personal contacts, in spreading the Master's message among many young and aspiring souls.
--- NAG MAHASHAY
--
Narendra was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics, and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, a love of truth, a passion for purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, History, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete support to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
IN THE History of the arts, genius is a thing of very rare occurrence. Rarer still, however, are the competent reporters and recorders of that genius. The world has had many hundreds of admirable poets and philosophers; but of these hundreds only a very few have had the fortune to attract a Boswell or an Eckermann.
When we leave the field of art for that of spiritual religion, the scarcity of competent reporters becomes even more strongly marked. Of the day-to-day life of the great theocentric saints and contemplatives we know, in the great majority of cases, nothing whatever. Many, it is true, have recorded their doctrines in writing, and a few, such as St. Augustine, Suso and St. Teresa, have left us autobiographies of the greatest value.
--
May this translation of the first book of its kind in the religious History of the world, being the record of the direct words of a prophet, help stricken humanity to come nearer to the Eternal Verity of life and remove dissension and quarrel from among the different faiths!
May it enable seekers of Truth to grasp the subtle laws of the supersensuous realm, and unfold before man's restricted vision the spiritual foundation of the universe, the unity of existence, and the divinity of the soul!
--
Sri Mahendra Nath Gupta, familiary known to the readers of the Gospel by his pen name M., and to the devotees as Master Mahashay, was born on the 14th of July, 1854 as the son of Madhusudan Gupta, an officer of the Calcutta High Court, and his wife, Swarnamayi Devi. He had a brilliant scholastic career at Hare School and the Presidency College at Calcutta. The range of his studies included the best that both occidental and oriental learning had to offer. English literature, History, economics, western philosophy and law on the one hand, and Sanskrit literature and grammar, Darsanas, Puranas, Smritis, Jainism, Buddhism, astrology and Ayurveda on the other were the subjects in which he attained considerable proficiency.
He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the managements on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, History and economics. In his later days he took over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third floor of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting education through the medium of the mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the Morton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession ; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of man a calling for which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be moved very much by Sdhus, temples and Durga Puja celebrations. The piety and eloquence of the great Brahmo leader of the times, Keshab Chander Sen, elicited a powerful response from the impressionable mind of Mahendra Nath, as it did in the case of many an idealistic young man of Calcutta, and prepared him to receive the great Light that was to dawn on him with the coming of Sri Ramakrishna into his life.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
Intellectually advantaged with no more than the child's facile, lucid eagerness to understand constructively and usefully the major transformational events of our own times, it probably is synergetically advantageous to review swiftly the most comprehensive inventory of the most powerful human environment transforming events of our totally known and reasonably extended History. This is especially useful in winnowing out and understanding the most significant of the metaphysical revolutions now recognized as swiftly tending to reconstitute History. By such a comprehensively schematic review, we might identify also the unprecedented and possibly heretofore overlooked pivotal revolutionary events not only of today but also of those trending to be central to tomorrow's most cataclysmic changes.
It is synergetically reasonable to assume that relativistic evaluation of any of the separate drives of art, science, education, economics, and ideology, and their complexedly interacting trends within our own times, may be had only through the most comprehensive historical sweep of which we are capable.
--
Today's news consists of aggregates of fragments. Anyone who has taken part in any event that has subsequently appeared in the news is aware of the gross disparity between the actual and the reported events. The insistence by reporters upon having advance "releases" of what, for instance, convocation speakers are supposedly going to say but in fact have not yet said, automatically discredits the value of the largely prefabricated news. We also learn frequently of prefabricated and prevaricated events of a complex nature purportedly undertaken for purposes either of suppressing or rigging the news, which in turn perverts humanity's tactical information resources. All History becomes suspect. Probably our most polluted resource is the tactical information to which humanity spontaneously reflexes.
Furthermore, today's hyperspecialization in socioeconomic functioning has come to preclude important popular philosophic considerations of the synergetic significance of, for instance, such historically important events as the discovery within the general region of experimental inquiry known as virology that the as-yet popularly assumed validity of the concepts of animate and inanimate phenomena have been experimentally invalidated. Atoms and crystal complexes of atoms were held to be obviously inanimate; the protoplasmic cells of biological phenomena were held to be obviously animate. It was deemed to be common sense that warm- blooded, moist, and soft-skinned humans were clearly not to be confused with hard, cold granite or steel objects. A clear-cut threshold between animate and inanimate was therefore assumed to exist as a fundamental dichotomy of all physical phenomena. This seemingly placed life exclusively within the bounds of the physical.
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
History of the living world can be summarised as the elaboration
of ever more perfect eyes within a cosmos in which there is
--
whole History of the struggles of the mind :
A sense of spatial immensity, in greatness and smallness, dis-
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
This possibility of the human touching and manifesting the Divine has been realised during the course of human History whenever a great spiritual Light has appeared on earth. One of the purposes of this book is to show how Sri Aurobindo himself reflected the unlimited Beyond in his own self.
Greatness is magnetic and in a sense contagious. Wherever manifested, greatness is claimed by humanity as something that reveals the possibility of the race. The highest utility of greatness is not merely to attract us but to inspire us to follow it and rise to our own highest spiritual stature. To the majority of men Truth remains abstract, impersonal and far unless it is seen and felt concretely in a human personality. A man never knows a truth actively except through a person and by embodying it in his own personality. Some glimpse of the Truth-Consciousness which Sri Aurobindo embodied may be caught in these Evening Talks.
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
headed! The final collapse, the general bankruptcy seems obvious enough... unless... There is always an "unless" in the History
of the earth; and always, when confusion and destruction seem
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
by yoga that one can do it. There have been, throughout the spiritual History of humanity, many methods of yoga - which Sri
Aurobindo has described and explained for us in The Synthesis
--
there is entirely inactive and hidden. The History of the earth
begins with this inconscience.
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Whisper their History, and I knew the Word
That forth was cast
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The philosophical trend in poetry has an interesting History with a significant role: it has acted as a force of purification, of sublimation, of katharsis. As man has risen from his exclusively or predominantly vital nature into an increasing mental poise, in the same way his creative activities too have taken this new turn and status. In the earlier stages of evolution the mental life is secondary, subordinate to the physico-vital life; it is only subsequently that the mental finds an independent and self-sufficient reality. A similar movement is reflected in poetic and artistic creation too: the thinker, the philosopher remains in the background at the outset, he looks out; peers through chinks and holes from time to time; later he comes to the forefront, assumes a major role in man's creative activity.
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the History of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
But should there be an inherent incompatibility between spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the normally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the levels simultaneouslyabove, he is conscious of the source and origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of the working of the instrument, how the vehicle transcribes and embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it werethere is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also the sense of dynamism, of conscious agency as in his secret being he is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirerin other words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).
--
Whether the original and true source of the poet's inspiration lies deep within or high above, all depends upon the mediating instrument the mind (in its most general sense) and speech for a successful transcription. Man's ever-growing consciousness demanded also a conscious development and remoulding of these two factors. A growth, a heightening and deepening of the consciousness meant inevitably a movement towards the spiritual element in things. And that means, we have said, a twofold change in the future poet's make-up. First as regards the substance. The revolutionary shift that we notice in modern poets towards a completely new domain of subject-matter is a signpost that more is meant than what is expressed. The superficialities and futilities that are dealt with do not in their outward form give the real trend of things. In and through all these major and constant preoccupation of our poets is "the pain of the present and the passion for the future": they are, as already stated, more prophets than poets, but prophets for the moment crying in the wildernessalthough some have chosen the path of denial and revolt. They are all looking ahead or beyond or deep down, always yearning for another truth and reality which will explain, justify and transmute the present calvary of human living. Such an acute tension of consciousness has necessitated an overhauling of the vehicle of expression too, the creation of a mode of expressing the inexpressible. For that is indeed what human consciousness and craft are aiming at in the present stage of man's evolution. For everything, almost everything that can be normally expressed has been expressed and in a variety of ways as much as is possible: that is the History of man's aesthetic creativity. Now the eye probes into the unexpressed world; for the artist too the Upanishadic problem has cropped up:
By whom impelled does the mind fall to its target, what is the agent that is behind the eye and sees through the eyes, what is the hearing and what the speech that their respective sense organs do not and cannot convey and record adequately or at all?
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And the secret code of the History of the world
And Nature's correspondence with the soul
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is asked of us why do we preach a man and not purely and solely a principle. Our ideal being avowedly the establishment and reign of a new principle of world-order and not gathering recruits for the camp of a sectarian teacher, it seems all the more inconsistent, if not thoroughly ruinous for our cause, that we should lay stress upon a particular individual and incur the danger of overshadowing the universal truths upon which we seek to build human society. Now, it is not that we are unconscious or oblivious of the many evils attendant upon the system of preaching a man the History of the rise and decay of many sects and societies is there to give us sufficient warning; and yet if we cannot entirely give the go-by to personalities and stick to mere and bare principles, it is because we have clear reasons for it, because we are not unconscious or oblivious either of the evils that beset the system of preaching the principle alone.
Religious bodies that are formed through the bhakti and puja for one man, social reconstructions forced by the will and power of a single individual, have already in the inception this grain of incapacity and disease and death that they are not an integrally self-conscious creation, they are not, as a whole, intelligent and wide awake and therefore constantly responsive to the truths and ideals and realities for which they exist, for which at least, their founder intended them to exist. The light at the apex is the only light and the entire structure is but the shadow of that light; the whole thing has the aspect of a dark mass galvanised into red-hot activity by the passing touch of a dynamo. Immediately however the solitary light fails and the dynamo stops, there is nothing but the original darkness and inertiatoma asit tamasa gudham agre.
01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
History abounds in instances of racial and cultural immixture. Indeed, all major human groupings of today are invariably composite formations. Excepting, perhaps, some primitiveaboriginal tribes there are no pure races existent. The Briton, the Dane, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Norman have combined to form the British; a Frenchman has a Gaul, a Roman, a Frank in him; and a Spaniard's blood would show an Iberian, a Latin, a Gothic, a Moorish element in it. And much more than a people, a culture in modern times has been a veritable cockpit of multifarious and even incongruous elements. There are instances also in which a perfect fusion could not be accomplished, and one element had to be rejected or crushed out. The complete disappearance of the Aztecs and Mayas in South America, the decadence of the Red Indians in North America, of the Negroes in Africa as a result of a fierce clash with European peoples and European culture illustrate the point.
Nature, on the whole, has solved the problem of blood fusion and mental fusion of different peoples, although on a smaller scale. India today presents the problem on a larger scale and on a higher or deeper level. The demand is for a spiritual fusion and unity. Strange to say, although the Spirit is the true bed-rock of unitysince, at bottom, it means identityit is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect solution of this supreme problem.
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It might be objected here however that actually in the History of humanity the conception of Duty has been no less pugnacious than that of Right. In certain ages and among certain peoples, for example, it was considered the imperative duty of the faithful to kill or convert by force or otherwise as many as possible belonging to other faiths: it was the mission of the good shepherd to burn the impious and the heretic. In recent times, it was a sense of high and solemn duty that perpetrated what has been termed "purges"brutalities undertaken, it appears, to purify and preserve the integrity of a particular ideological, social or racial aggregate. But the real name of such a spirit is not duty but fanaticism. And there is a considerable difference between the two. Fanaticism may be defined as duty running away with itself; but what we are concerned with here is not the aberration of duty, but duty proper self-poised.
One might claim also on behalf of the doctrine of Right that the right kind of Right brings no harm, it is as already stated another name for liberty, for the privilege of living and it includes the obligation to let live. One can do what one likes provided one does not infringe on an equal right of others to do the same. The measure of one's liberty is equal to the measure of others' liberty.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
.History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The call that stirred a Western soul, made him a wanderer over the world in quest of the Holy Grail and finally lodged him in the Home of the Snows is symbolic of a more than individual destiny. It is representative of the secret History of a whole culture and civilisation that have been ruling humanity for some centuries, its inner want and need and hankering and fulfilment. The West shall come to the East and be reborn. That is the prophecy of occult seers and sages.
I speak of Roerich as a Western soul, but more precisely perhaps he is a soul of the mid-region (as also in another sense we shall see subsequently) intermediary between the East and the West. His external make-up had all the characteristic elements of the Western culture, but his mind and temperament, his inner soul was oriental. And yet it was not the calm luminous staticancientsoul that an Indian or a Chinese sage is; it is a nomad soul, newly awakened, young and fresh and ardent, something primitive, pulsating with the unspoilt green sap of life something in the manner of Whitman. And that makes him all the more representative of the young and ardent West yearning for the light that was never on sea or land.
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We are at a moment of transition in the History of the earth.
It is merely a moment in eternal time, but this moment is long
--
We are at a decisive hour in the History of the earth. It is preparing for the coming of the superman and because of this the old
way of life is losing its value. We must strike out boldly on the
0 1958-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
7) But even in the event you have not made the irrevocable decision at the outset, should you have the good fortune to live during one of these unimaginable hours of universal History when the Grace is present, embodied upon earth, It will offer you, at certain exceptional moments, the renewed possibility of making a final choice that will lead you straight to the goal.
That was the message of hope.
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The link between the two worlds has not yet been built, but it is in the process of being built; this was the meaning of the experience of February 3 1958, 1: to build a link between the two worlds. For both worlds are indeed therenot one above the other, but within each other, in two different dimensions. Only, there is no communication between them; they overlap, as it were, without being connected. In the experience of February 3, I saw certain people from here (and from elsewhere) who already belong to the supramental world in a part of their being, but there is no connection, no link. But now the hour has come in universal History for this link to be built.
What is the relationship between this experience of February 3 and that of November 7 (the almighty spring)? Is what you found in the depths of the Inconscient this same Supramental?
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
As soon as you had left, and since I was following you, I saw that nothing of the kind was going to happen, but rather something very superficial which would not be of much use. And when I received your letters and saw that you were in difficulty, I did something. There are places that are favorable for occult experiences. Benares is one of these places, the atmosphere there is filled with vibrations of occult forces, and if one has the slightest capacity, it spontaneously develops there, in the same way that a spiritual aspiration develops very strongly and spontaneously as soon as one lands in India. These are Graces. Graces, because it is the destiny of the country, it has been so throughout its History, and because India has always been turned much more towards the heights and the inner depths than towards the outer world. Now, it is in the process of losing all that and wallowing in the mud, but thats another story it was like that and it is still like that. And in fact, when you returned from Rameswaram with your robes, I saw with much satisfaction that there was still a GREAT dignity and a GREAT sincerity in this endeavor of the Sannyasis towards the higher life and in the self-giving of a certain number of people to realize this higher life. When you returned, it had become a very concrete and a very real thing that immediately commanded respect. Before, I had seen only a copy, an imitation, an hypocrisy, a pretentionnothing that was really lived. But then, I saw that it was true, that it was lived, that it was real and that it was still Indias great heritage. I dont believe it is very prevalent now, but in any case, it is still there, and as I told you, it commands respect. And then, as I felt you in difficulty and as the outer conditions were not only veiling but spoiling the inner, well, on that day I wrote you a short note I no longer recall when it was exactly, but I wrote you just a word or two, which I put in an envelope and sent you I concentrated very strongly upon those few words and sent you something. I didnt note the date, I dont remember when it was, but its likely that it happened as I wished when you were in Benares; and then you had this experience.
But when you returned the second time, from the Himalayas, you didnt have the same flame as when you returned the first time. And I understood that this kind of difficult karma still clung to you, that it had not been dissolved. I had hoped that your contact with the mountains but in a true solitude (I dont mean that your body had to be all alone, but there should not have been all kinds of outer, superficial things) Anyway, it didnt happen. So it means that the time had not come.
0 1960-08-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
You alone have convinced me that the History of the way might be of some interest, so Im letting you do it Ive taken a very, very handsome file upstairs with all your notes in it.8 Its filling up; its going to be formidable! (Mother laughs) a frightful documentation.
Not at all!
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
To have the exact curve or the REAL History, wed have to note down everything at each minute, for its a CONSTANT work thats taking place. You see, the outer activities are becoming almost automatic, whereas this goes on behind Im speaking, yet at the same time this is going on behind.
Its a sort of oscillationreally, its so interestingbetween two extremes, one of which is the all-powerfulness and capital or primordial importance of the Physical, and the other its utter unreality.
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, yesterday or the day before, I had the occasion to write a sentence about Sri Aurobindo. It was in English and went something like this: In the worlds History, what Sri Aurobindo represents is not a teaching nor even a revelation, but a decisive ACTION direct from the Supreme.
(silence)
0 1961-02-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then the reply came to me very strongly; something took hold of me and I was, so to say, obliged to write: What Sri Aurobindo represents in the worlds History is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.2
Its not from me. It came from there (gesture upwards). But it pleased me.
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From an historical viewpoint (not psychological, but historical), based on my memories (only I cant prove it, nothing can be proved, and I dont believe any truly historical proof has come down to usor in any case, it hasnt been found yet), but according to my memories. (Mother shuts her eyes as if she were going off in search of her memories; she will speak all the rest of the time with eyes closed.) Certainly at one period of the earths History there was a kind of earthly paradise, in the sense that there was a perfectly harmonious and perfectly natural life: the manifestation of Mind was in accordwas STILL in complete accord and in total harmony with the ascending march of Nature, without perversion or deformation. This was the first stage of Minds manifestation in material forms.
How long did it last? Its hard to say. But for man it was a life like a sort of flowering of animal life. My memory is of a life where the body was perfectly adapted to its natural surroundings. The climate was in harmony with the needs of the body, the body with the demands of the climate. Life was wholly spontaneous and natural, as a more luminous and conscious animal life would be, with absolutely none of the complications and deformations brought in later by the mind as it developed.
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I remember a good-hearted priest in Pau [Southern France] who was an artist and wanted to have his church decorateda tiny cathedral. He consulted a local anarchist (a great artist) about it. The anarchist was acquainted with Andrs father and me. He told the priest, I recommend these people to do the paintings they are true artists. He was doing the mural decorationsome eight panels in all, I believe. So I set to work on one of the panels. (The church was dedicated to San Juan de Compostello, a hero of Spanish History; he had appeared in a battle between the Christians and the Moors and his apparition vanquished the Moors. And he was magnificent! He appeared in golden light on a white horse, almost like Kalki.6) All the slaughtered and struggling Moors were depicted at the bottom of the painting, and it was I who painted them; it was too hard for me to climb high up on a ladder to paint, so I did the things at the bottom! But anyway, it all went quite well. Then, naturally, the priest received us and invited us to dinner with the anarchist. And he was so nicereally a kind-hearted man! I was already a vegetarian and didnt drink, so he scolded me very gently, saying, But its Our Lord who gives us all this, so why shouldnt you take it? I found him charming. And when he looked at the paintings, he tapped Morisset on the shoulder (Morisset was an unbeliever), and said, with the accent of Southern France, Say what you like, but you know Our Lord; otherwise you could never have painted like that!
Well.
--
Bulletin of April 1961: 'What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's History is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.'
Ganesh (or Ganapati): The first son of the Supreme Mother, represented with an elephant trunk and an ample belly. Ganesh is the god who presides over material realizations (over money in particular). He is also known as the scribe of divine knowledge.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, reincarnate from now, so to speak, into a past epoch of History.
This, too, is a manner of speaking.
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Take the experience of Mind, for example: Mind, in the evolution of Nature, gradually emerging from its involution; well and this is a very concrete experience these initial mentalized forms, if we can call them that, were necessarily incomplete and imperfect, because Natures evolution is slow and hesitant and complicated. Thus these forms inevitably had an aspiration towards a sort of perfection and a truly perfect mental state, and this aspiration brought the descent of already fully conscious beings from the mental world who united with terrestrial formsthis is a very, very concrete experience. What emerges from the Inconscient in this way is an almost impersonal possibility (yes, an impersonal possibility, and perhaps not altogether universal, since its connected with the History of the earth); but anyway its a general possibility, not personal. And the Response from above is what makes it concrete, so to speak, bringing in a sort of perfection of the state and an individual mastery of the new creation. These beings in corresponding worlds (like the gods of the overmind,4 or the beings of higher regions) came upon earth as soon as the corresponding element began to evolve out of its involution. This accelerates the action, first of all, but also makes it more perfectmore perfect, more powerful, more conscious. It gives a sort of sanction to the realization. Sri Aurobindo writes of this in SavitriSavitri lives always on earth, with the soul of the earth, to make the whole earth progress as quickly as possible. Well, when the time comes and things on earth are ready, then the divine Mother incarnates with her full powerwhen things are ready. Then will come the perfection of the realization. A splendor of creation exceeding all logic! It brings in a fullness and a power completely beyond the petty shallow logic of human mentality.
People cant understand! To put oneself at the level of the general public may be all very well5 (personally I have never found it so, although its probably inevitable), but to hope that they will ever understand the splendor of the Thing. They have to live it first!
--
Yes. The earth is a representative and symbolic world, a kind of crystallization and concentration of the evolutionary labor giving it a more concrete reality. It has to be taken like this: the History of the earth is a symbolic History. And it is on earth that this Descent takes place (its not the History of the universal but of the terrestrial creation); the Descent occurs in the individual TERRESTRIAL being, in the individual terrestrial atmosphere.
Lets take Savitri, which is very explicit on this: the universal Mother is universally present and at work in the universe, but the earth is where concrete form is given to all the work to be done to bring evolution to its perfection, its goal. Well, at first theres a sort of emanation representative of the universal Mother, which is always on earth to help it prepare itself; then, when the preparation is complete, the universal Mother herself will descend upon earth to finish her work. And this She does with SatyavanSatyavan is the soul of the earth. She lives in close union with the soul of the earth and together they do the work; She has chosen the soul of the earth for her work, saying, HERE is where I will do my work. Elsewhere (Mother indicates regions of higher Consciousness), its enough just to BE and things Simply ARE. Here on earth you have to work.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When he first read the Vedastranslated by Western Sanskritists or Indian pandits they appeared to Sri Aurobindo as an important document of [Indian] History, but seemed of scant value or importance for the History of thought or for a living spiritual experience.2 Fifteen years later, however, Sri Aurobindo would reread the Vedas in the original Sanskrit and find there a constant vein of the richest gold of thought and spiritual experience.3 Meanwhile, Sri Aurobindo had had certain psychological experiences of my own for which I had found no sufficient explanation either in European psychology or in the teachings of Yoga or of Vedanta, and which the mantras of the Veda illuminated with a clear and exact light.4 And it was through these experiences of his own that Sri Aurobindo came to discover, from within, the true meaning of the Vedas (and especially the most ancient of the four, the Rig-veda, which he studied with special care). What the Vedas brought him was no more than a confirmation of what he had received directly. But didnt the Rishis themselves speak of Secret words, clairvoyant wisdoms, that reveal their inner meaning to the seer (Rig-veda IV, 3.16)?
It is not surprising, therefore, that exegetes have seen the Vedas primarily as a collection of propitiatory rites centered around sacrificial fires and obscure incantations to Nature divinities (water, fire, dawn, the moon, the sun, etc.), for bringing rain and rich harvests to the tribes, male progeny, blessings upon their journeys or protection against the thieves of the sunas though these shepherds were barbarous enough to fear that one inauspicious day their sun might no longer rise, stolen away once and for all. Only here and there, in a few of the more modern hymns, was there the apparently inadvertent intrusion of a few luminous passages that might have justifiedjust barely the respect which the Upanishads, at the beginning of recorded History, accorded to the Veda. In Indian tradition, the Upanishads had become the real Veda, the Book of Knowledge, while the Veda, product of a still stammering humanity, was a Book of Worksacclaimed by everyone, to be sure, as the venerable Authority, but no longer listened to. With Sri Aurobindo we might ask why the Upanishads, whose depth of wisdom the whole world has acknowledged, could claim to take inspiration from the Veda if the latter contained no more than a tapestry of primitive rites; or how it happened that humanity could pass so abruptly from these so-called stammerings to the manifold richness of the Upanishadic Age; or how we in the West were able to evolve from the simplicity of Arcadian shepherds to the wisdom of Greek philosophers. We cannot assume that there was nothing between the early savage and Plato or the Upanishads.5
***
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theon knew something about it, and he called it the new world or the new creation on earth and the glorified body (I dont remember his exact terminology); but he knew of the Superminds existenceit had been revealed to him and he announced its coming. He said it would be reached THROUGH the discovery of the God within. And for him, as I told you the other day, this meant a greater densitywhich seems to be a correct experience. Well, on my side, I have made investigations and had innumerable visions concerning the earths History, and I spoke about it a good deal with Sri Aurobindo.
(silence)
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here, just to give you an example: when I first began to work (not with Theon personally but with an acquaintance of his in France, a boy4 who was a friend of my brother), well, I had a series of visions (I knew nothing about India, mind you, nothing, just as most Europeans know nothing about it: a country full of people with certain customs and religions, a confused and hazy History, where a lot of extraordinary things are said to have happened. I knew nothing.) Well, in several of these visions I saw Sri Aurobindo just as he looked physically, but glorified; that is, the same man I would see on my first visit, almost thin, with that golden-bronze hue and rather sharp profile, an unruly beard and long hair, dressed in a dhoti with one end of it thrown over his shoulder, arms and chest bare, and bare feet. At the time I thought it was vision attire! I mean I really knew nothing about India; I had never seen Indians dressed in the Indian way.
Well, I saw him. I experienced what were at once symbolic visions and spiritual FACTS: absolutely decisive spiritual experiences and facts of meeting and having a united perception of the Work to be accomplished. And in these visions I did something I had never done physically: I prostrated before him in the Hindu manner. All this without any comprehension in the little brain (I mean I really didnt know what I was doing or how I was doing itnothing at all). I did it, and at the same time the outer being was asking, What is all this?!
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And nothing, nothing imaginable in the eternal History of the universe can be compared to that shock: to have lived a perfect divine life as something completely natural and everyday, something OBVIOUS (it was never even in question), and then all of a sudden, physicallyyour base is snatched away. Well, to stay on after that! You just go, quite naturally: the base goes, you go.
(silence)
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Had I kept it, oh I would have become one of those world-renowned phenomena, turning the course of the earths History upside down! A stupendous power! Stupendous, unheard-of. But it meant stopping there, accepting that experience as final I went on.
Well. So now, what can I tell you thats interestingeverything Ive just said is a sort of miscellany, and three-fourths unusable.
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, on Earth; its the Earths History thats in question.
Now?
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, mon petit, I said one day that in the History of earth, wherever there was a possibility for the Consciousness to manifest, I was there1; this is a fact. Its like the story of Savitri: always there, always there, always there, in this one, that oneat certain times there were four emanations simultaneously! At the time of the Italian and French Renaissance. And again at the time of Christ, then too. Oh, you know, I have remembered so many, many things! It would take volumes to tell it all. And then, more often than not (not always, but more often than not), what took part in this or that life was a particular yogic formation of the vital beingin other words something immortal.2 And when I came this time, as soon as I took up the yoga, they came back again from all sides, they were waiting. Some were simply waiting, others were working (they led their own independent lives) and they all gathered together again. Thats how I got those memories. One after the other, those vital beings camea deluge! I had barely enough time to assimilate one, to see, situate and integrate it, and another would come. They are quite independent, of course, they do their own work, but they are very centralized all the same. And there are all kindsall kinds, anything you can imagine! Some of them have even been in men: they are not exclusively feminine.
At first, I used to think they were fantasies.
Before I met Sri Aurobindo they would come and come and come to me, night after night and sometimes during the daya mass of things! Afterwards I told Sri Aurobindo about it, and he explained to me that it was quite natural. And indeed, it is quite natural: with the present incarnation of the Mahashakti (as he described it in Savitri), whatever is more or less bound up with Her wants to take part, thats quite natural. And its particularly true for the vital: there has always been a preoccupation with organizing, centralizing, developing and unifying the vital forces, and controlling them. So theres a considerable number of vital beings, each with its own particular ability, who have played their role in History and now return.
But this one [the tall white Being] is not of human origin; it was not formed in a human life: it is a being that had already incarnated, and is one of those who presided over the formation of this present being [Mother]. But, as I said, I saw it: it was sexless, neither male nor female, and as intrepid as the vital can be, with a calm but absolute power. Ah, I found a very good description of it in one of Sri Aurobindos plays, when he speaks of the goddess Athena (I think its in Perseus, but I am not sure); she has that kind of its an almighty calm, and with such authority! Yes, its in Perseuswhen she appears to the Sea-God and forces him to retreat to his own domain. Theres a description there that fits this Being quite well.3
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As a child, when I was around ten or twelve years old, I had some rather interesting experiences which I didnt understand at all. I had some History booksyou know, the textbooks they give you to learn History. Well, Id read and suddenly the book would seem to become transparent, or the printed words would become transparent, and Id see other words or even pictures. I hadnt the faintest idea what was happening to me! And it appeared so natural to me that I thought it was the same for everybody. But my brother and I were great chums (he was only a year and a half older), so I would tell him: They talk nonsense in History, you knowit is LIKE THIS; it isnt like that: it is LIKE THIS! And several times the corrections I got on one person or another turned out to be quite exact and detailed. And (I see it now I understood it later on) they were certainly memories. About some passages I would even say, How stupid! It was never that; THIS is what was said. It never happened like that; THIS is how it happened. And the book was simply open before me; I was just reading along like any other child and suddenly something would occur. It was something in me, of course, but I used to think it was in the book!
I found out many, many things about Joan of Arcmany things. And with stunning precision, which made it extremely interesting. I wont repeat them because I dont remember with exactness, and these things have no value unless they are exact. And then, for the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa; and for the French Renaissance: Franois I, Marguerite de Valois,2 and so forth.
--
But I have often sensed that there wasnt merely ONE embodiment, that the course of History may have crystallized around this or that person, but there were other embodiments less (how to put it?) less conspicuous, somewhere else.
They are the different aspects of the Mother.
--
Human experience, with this direct incarnation of the Supreme,9 is ultimately a UNIQUE experience, which has given a new orientation to universal History. Sri Aurobindo speaks of thishe speaks of the difference between the Vedic era, the Vedic way of relating to the Supreme, and the advent of Vedanta (I think its Vedanta): devotion, adoration, bhakti, the God within.10 Well, this aspect of rapport with the Supreme could exist ONLY WITH MAN, because man is a special being in universal History the divine Presence is in him. And several of those great gods have taken human bodies JUST TO HAVE THAT.11 But not many of themthey were so fully aware of their own perfect independence and their almightiness that they didnt NEED anything (unlike man, you see, struggling to escape his slavery): they were absolutely free.
And thats why. How many times Durga came! She would always come, and I had my eye on her (!), because in her presence I could clearly sense that there wasnt that rapport with the Supreme (she just didnt need it, she didnt need anything). And it wasnt that something acted on her consciously, deliberately, to obtain that result: it has been a contagion. I remember how she used to come, and my aspiration would be so intense, my inner attitude so concentrated and one day there was such a sense of power, of immensity, of ineffable bliss in the contact with the Supreme (it was a day when Durga was there), and she seemed to be taken and absorbed in it. And through that bliss she made her surrender.
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All this is now ancient HistoryVERY old. Its not like that at all any more.
Oh, we make things complicated for nothing!
0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All the same, Satprem did keep this conversation, being unable to censor Mother's words or to delete them from History for where is the borderline between censorship and falsehood?
Seven weeks after India's Independence and the creation of Pakistan, Pakistan invaded Kashmir.
0 1963-05-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Putting it differently, you must become the Supreme in order to help in His action, in the changing of the world; you must have the supreme Vibration in order to participate in that Movement, which I am now beginning to feel in the bodys cellsa Movement which is a sort of eternal Vibration, without beginning or end. It has no beginning (the earth has a beginning, so that makes it easy; with the earths beginning, we have the beginning of the earths History, but thats not the case here), it has no beginning, it is something existing from all eternity, for all eternity, and without any division of time: its only when it is projected onto a screen that it begins to assume the division of time. But you cant say a second, or an instant. Its hard to explain. No sooner do you begin to feel it than its gone: something boundless, without beginning or end, a Movement so totaltotal and constant, constant that it is perceived as total immobility.
Absolutely indescribable. Yet it is the Origin and Support of the whole terrestrial evolution.
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every time a new truth has attempted to manifest upon earth, it has been immediately attacked, corrupted and diverted by pseudo-spiritual forceswhich did represent a certain spirituality at a given time, but precisely the one that the new truth wants to go beyond. To give but one example of those sad spiritual diversions which clutter History, Buddhism was largely corrupted in a sizable part of Asia by a whole Tantric and magic Buddhism. The falsity lies not in the old spirituality which the new truth seeks to go beyond, but in the eternal fact that the Past clings to its powers, its means and its rule. As Mother said in her simple language, Whats wrong is to remain stuck there. And Sri Aurobindo with his ever-present humor: The traditions of the past are very great in their own place, in the past. We could expect the phenomenon to recur today. In India, Tantrism represents a powerful discipline from the Past and it was inevitable that Mother should experience the better and the worse of that system in her attempt to transform all the means and elements of the old earththis Agenda has made abundant mention of a certain X, symbol of Tantrism. Now, as it happens, we are witnessing the same phenomenon of diversion, and today this same Tantrism is seeking to divert the new truth by convincing as many adepts as possible not to say Mothers Mantra, which is too advanced for ordinary mortals, and to say Tantric mantras in its stead. This is purely and simply an attempt to take Mothers place. One has to be quite ignorant of the mechanism of forces not to understand that saying a mantra of the old gods puts you under the influence and into the orbit of precisely that which resists the new truth. Mother had foreseen the phenomenon and forewarned me in the following conversation. Unfortunately, until recently, I always wanted to believe that Tantrism would be converted. Nothing of the sort. It is attempting to take Mothers place and lead astray those who are not sincere enough to want ONE SINGLE THING: the new world.
***
0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, concerning government, the issue is still undecided, and yet Only, there are so many things that tend, that draw near, and then they go off at a tangent thats the trouble, for when they go off at a tangent, then they go very far away (gesture showing the possibility coming very close to crossing History, then moving away along an immense circle backward, to return again) and they take a very long time to return.3
Something is being attempted now: there are some people who are in contact with us and are conscious; they have a possibility of action and they are trying. They have caught an idea: to bring Russia and America together so that the two powers united will be the agents of peace on earth. Its an EXCELLENT idea. Well see whats going to happen.
0 1963-11-13, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding an old Playground Talk of January 8, 1951, in which Mother said: "The History of the earth seems to be a History of victories followed by defeats, and not of defeats followed by victories.... [ But ] in truth, the movements of Nature are like those of the tides: things go forward, then backward, then forward, then backward... which implies, in universal life, even in earthly life, a progressive advance though apparently broken with retreats. But those retreats are only an appearance, as when you take a run in order to jump. You seem to move back, but it's only to enable you to jump higher. You may tell me that this is all very well, but how do you give a child the certainty that truth will triumph? For when he learns History, he will see that things do not always end well.")
(Mother remains pensive)
--
The entire process of development, at least on the earth (I dont know how it is on other planets) is that way. And perhaps (I dont know very much about the History of astronomy) universes toodo they know if universes perish physically, if the physical History of the end of a universe has been recorded? Traditions tell us that a universe is created, then withdrawn into pralaya, and then a new one comes; and according to them, ours is the seventh universe, and being the seventh universe, it is the one that will not return to pralaya but will go on progressing, without retreat. This is why, in fact, there is in the human being that need for permanence and for an uninterrupted progressits because the time has come.
(Mother remains in contemplation)
0 1963-11-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He was one of the instruments for the establishment of peaceits a setback for the entire political History of the earth.
But probably, it means basically that things werent ready: some parts would have been overlooked.
0 1963-12-07 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The way to get faith and all things else is to insist on having them and refuse to flag or despair or give up until one has themit is the way by which everything has been got since this difficult earth began to have thinking and aspiring creatures upon it. It is to open always, always to the Light and turn ones back on the Darkness. It is to refuse the voices that say persistently, You cannot, you shall not, you are incapable, you are the puppet of a dream,for these are the enemy voices, they cut one off from the result that was coming, by their strident clamour and then triumphantly point to the barrenness of the result as a proof of their thesis. The difficulty of the endeavour is a known thing, but the difficult is not the impossibleit is the difficult that has always been accomplished and the conquest of difficulties makes up all that is valuable in the earths History. In the spiritual endeavour also it shall be so.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1964-01-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, no! The British (laughing) the only thing that rehabilitated them in the worlds History is that Sri Aurobindo went to study in their country! But he clearly said that during his studies there, his whole feeling of intimacy was with France, not England.
Oh, the British No, the British haughtiness certainly isnt just a legend. What gave them that? Where does it come from? Because, basically, they are Normans, arent they.
0 1964-06-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The following note has a curious History. Satprem had gone off on a journey to see his brother and upon his return, reaching the coast of Brittany, he saw in the sky what Breton sailors call a wind foot, an immense white cloud shaped like an archangel with wings spread and no head. Satprem was so struck by that cloud, without knowing why, that he told his brother, Look at that victorious angel coming our way! Then they went inside. This letter from Mother was awaiting Satprem:)
Take heart, my dear little child,
0 1964-09-16, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
103Vivekananda, exalting Sannyasa,1 has said that in all Indian History there is only one Janaka.2 Not so, for Janaka is not the name of a single individual, but a dynasty of self-ruling kings and the triumph-cry of an ideal.
104In all the lakhs of ochre-clad Sannyasins,3 how many are perfect? It is the few attainments and the many approximations that justify an ideal.
0 1964-10-17, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is an entire part of the earths past History that, ultimately, is totally unknown to us. They have indeed made so-called discoveries, but all those stories, I dont know how much of them is true.
Have they really discovered? I dont know. Do you?
We probably know a little bit of History starting from a particular cataclysm. But how many cataclysms have there been?
Yes, how many cataclysms have there been?
--
Old for our History.
Its not old. Obviously, there was no cinema and no newspapers! But newspapers and all paper things cant last very long. In America, they have made underground shelters for booksthey take all the best, then they store it under certain conditions. But what if the earth and the continents move! And anyway, who will be able to read? Even the Assyrian inscriptions, which arent old, are still a riddle. They dont really know: they imagine they know. The names we were taught when we were small and the names todays children are taught are totally different, because they hadnt found the phonetic notation.
0 1964-10-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And that wisdom! Its an almost cellular wisdom (its odd). For instance, I was looking at the relationship I had with all those great beings of the Overmind and higher, the perfectly objective and very familiar relationship I had with all those beings and the inner perception of being the eternal Motherall that is very well, but for me its almost ancient History! The me that exists now is HERE, its at ground level, in the body; its the body, its Matter; its at ground level; and to tell the truth, it doesnt care much about the intervention of all those beings who ultimately know nothing at all! They dont know the true problem: they live in a place where there are no problems. They dont know the true problem the true problem is here.
Its an amused way of looking at religions and all the gods the way you would look at they are like theater performances. Theyre pastimes; but thats not what can teach you to know yourself, not at all, not at all! You must go right down to the bottom.
0 1964-12-02, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, thats just what I thought! There is in the Illustrated Weekly the History of those Eucharistic Congresses, and it seems a French lady was behind the origin of the first Congress (not so long ago, in the last century, I believe). And then (Mother smiles), theres a magnificent portrait of the Pope with a message he wrote specially for the Weeklys readers, in which he took great care not to use Christian words. He wishes them I dont know what, and (its written in English) a celestial grace. Then I saw (he tried to be as impersonal as possible), I saw that in spite of everything, the Christians greatest difficulty is that their happiness and fulfillment are in heaven.
Instead of a celestial grace, they read to me, or I heard, a terrestrial grace! When I heard that, something in me started vibrating: What! But this man has been converted! Then I had it repeated and heard it wasnt that but really a celestial grace.
0 1965-04-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If I am given some prediction, its in a very symbolic form, or in a curious form: a form I could call analogous, meaning that I am shown analogous facts that occurred in the History of the earth (sometimes the History of the earth that isnt historical, thats prehistorical), and with a special coloration, a little more internal than the plain stark fact; there is along with it a vibration which is at the same time a mixture of thought, feeling and especially forcea force of action. It comes like that with a sort of power of projection into the future (Mother draws a trajectory going from the past event into the future), and in between the two, there is the curve resulting from the terrestrial progress. So, basically, it would be rather interesting provided there is nothing else to be done!
But its clearly visible: for instance, a word or a sentence or a gesture or a thought or an impulse that has its vibratory point specifically somewhere [in the past], and then its whole line of consequences (same gesture of trajectory), its whole curve of consequences. The whole thing, seen at a glance (Mother depicts a screen on which a picture is suddenly frozen). The curve: such and such a thing goes brrt! over there. But the outcome (which would give a spectacular and high-sounding value producing a considerable effect) is never given to me. No, what would make a reputation of great prophet is never given to me (thats not what I am after, but its never given). Simply (same gesture of trajectory), such and such a thing will go this way, brrt! and then all this is going to happen, here, here (Mother marks various points along the trajectory); but as for the outcomesilence.
0 1965-08-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For what Sri Aurobindo represents in the worlds History is not a teaching, not even a revelation: it is an action.5 Sri Aurobindo is not a thinker or a sage, not a mystic or a dreamer. He is a force of the future that takes hold of the present and leads us towards,
The miracle for which our life was made.6
0 1965-09-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but it acts, only its an infinitesimal action. Thats why millions of years are nothing. This stagnation, for instance, exists only for our consciousness; its because the human consciousness, after all, measures everything on its own scale. For it, the History of the earth is an infiniteit isnt so in universal History, but for the human being, the impression is of an infinite (he knows very well that it isnt so, but thats theoretical knowledge), so then, on this scale, nothing changes but thats not true.
Yes, but it should be done in the space of one lifetime.
0 1965-11-13, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It must be ancient History. Doesnt it seem dated?
No, not at all!
0 1965-12-15, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But this king1 is a remarkable man. He has a remarkable History, but it would be too long to tell. I was in contact with him before (gesture of mental communication), and I had said, I wont speak and I didnt speak. When he came he looked at me, then suddenly (he was standing), he remained standing in meditation, he closed his eyes and remained motionless. And then he asked me his questions mentally I received them. And the answer came from up above, magnificent. An answer with a golden, superb force, and a power telling him that he had a great role to play and had to be strong and so on.
A very, very intelligent man.
0 1966-01-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Just two days ago, I wrote to someone (someone who is a bit under the influence of ascetic ideas), and I told that person, Those thoughtsthose thoughts and that type of actionbelong, from the spiritual standpoint, to the ascetic belief, but it-is-no-longer-true. And I said it with terrible force: IT-IS-NO-LONGER-TRUE. And I saw that at one point in the History of the earth it was necessary to obtain a certain result, but now ITS NO LONGER TRUE. Voil. It has given way to a higher and more complete truth. From that point of view, your book can obviously be the expression of this new force.
Its possible, its by no means impossible.
0 1966-12-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A child from the School asked me, How can mathematics, History or sciences help me to find you?
I found that quite amusing!
0 1967-02-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(As late as 1960, Mother intended to give a class on the History of religions, as the following letter in answer to a question from a teacher at the School bears witness.)
And finally, what was the occult influence of this Judaism on human evolution? The more I think about it, the more the threads of it all appear to me so tied up and entangled together that only a knowledge in overview seems capable of helping to bring out the essential. Well, Mother, I leave it all to you. I hope you will be able to tell me the way in which we here should approach the question and to give me the few major elements on which I will be able to build my exposition.
--
What I asked for was to give the students, as a preparation, a class on the History of religions, from the purely historical, external and intellectual standpoint. There is no question of dealing with the subject from the spiritual angle.
At any rate, nothing useful can be done before carefully reading all that Sri Aurobindo has said on the subject (Synthesis of Yoga: in the Yoga of Knowledge he deals with religions; the first chapters of Essays on the Gita; Foundations of Indian Culture; Thoughts and Aphorisms, and many others too). Therefore start reading first.
0 1967-04-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Spiritual things! They teach History OR spiritual things, they teach Science OR spiritual things. Thats what is idiotic! In History, there is the Spirit; in Science, there is the Spirit the Truth is everywhere. And what is needed is to teach it not in an untruthful but in a true way.
They cant get that into their heads.
--
(Mothers answer in English to the School teachers when she was told that the new special afternoon classes at the library had chosen as a first research theme Indias Spiritual History.)
No! It wont do. It is not to be done that way. You should begin with a big BANG!
You were trying to show the continuity of History, with Sri Aurobindo as the outcome, the culminationit is false, entirely.
Sri Aurobindo does not belong to History; he is outside and beyond History.
Till the birth of Sri Aurobindo, religions and spiritualities were always centered on past figures, and they were showing as the goal the negation of life upon earth. So, you had a choice between two alternatives: either a life in this world with its round of petty pleasures and pains, joys and sufferings, threatened by hell if you were not behaving properly; or an escape into another world, heaven, nirvana, moksha [liberation].
--
Then, when this is told, strongly, squarely, and there is no doubt about itand then onlyyou can go on and amuse them with the History of religions and religious or spiritual leaders.
Then and then onlyyou will be able to show the seed of weakness and falsehood that they have harbored and proclaimed.
--
Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past nor to History.
Sri Aurobindo is the future advancing towards its realization.
0 1967-05-10, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I know I was his mother; at that moment I knew who I was, because I know that Amenhotep is so and sos son (and also I looked it up in History books). Otherwise theres no connection: a blank.
I always admire those mediums (they generally are very simple people) who have the exact memory of the sound and can tell you, This and that is what I said. That way we could have a phonetic notation. If I remembered the sounds I uttered we would have the notation, but I dont.
I remember these questions: I suddenly thought, How interesting it would be to hear that language! And then, being curious, How did they rediscover the pronunciation? How? Besides, all the names of ancient History we were taught when we were very small have been changed now. They said they had rediscovered the sounds, or rather they claimed they did. But I dont know.
Its the same thing with ancient Babylon: I have extremely precise and perfectly objective memories, but when I speak I dont remember the sounds I utter, there is only the mental transcription.
0 1967-05-24, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And at the same time, when there was that look at the something which had to be defined, there was a great silence everywhere and a great aspiration (gesture like a rising flame), and all the forms that that aspiration has taken. It was very interesting. The History of the aspiration of the earth towards the marvellous Unknown we want to become.
And each oneeach one who was destined to effect the junctionbelieves in his simplicity that the bridge he has walked is the only one. The result: religions, philosophies, dogmas, creedsbattle.
--
I know it is the Russian explanation of the recent trend to spirituality and mysticism that it is a phenomenon of capitalist society in its decadence. But to read an economic cause, conscious or unconscious, into all phenomena of mans History is part of the Bolshevik gospel born of the fallacy of Karl Marx. Mans nature is not so simple and one-chorded as all thatit has many lines and each line produces a need of his life. The spiritual or mystic line is one of them and man tries to satisfy it in various ways, by superstitions of all kinds, by ignorant religionism, by spiritism, demonism and what not, in his more enlightened parts by spiritual philosophy, the higher occultism and the rest, at his highest by the union with the All, the Eternal or the Divine. The tendency towards the search of spirituality began in Europe with a recoil from the nineteenth centurys scientific materialism, a dissatisfaction with the pretended all-sufficiency of the reason and the intellect and a feeling out for something deeper. That was a pre-war [of 1914] phenomenon, and began when there was no menace of Communism and the capitalistic world was at its height of insolent success and triumph, and it came rather as a revolt against the materialistic bourgeois life and its ideals, not as an attempt to serve or sanctify it. It has been at once served and opposed by the post-war disillusionmentopposed because the post-war world has fallen back either on cynicism and the life of the senses or on movements like Fascism and Communism; served because with the deeper minds the dissatisfaction with the ideals of the past or the present, with all mental or vital or material solutions of the problem of life has increased and only the spiritual path is left. It is true that the European mind having little light on these things dallies with vital will-o-the-wisps like spiritism or theosophy or falls back upon the old religionism; but the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by them or pass through them in search of a greater Light. I have had contact with many and the above tendencies are very clear. They come from all countries and it was only a minority who hailed from England or America. Russia is differentunlike the others it has lingered in mediaeval religionism and not passed through any period of revoltso when the revolt came it was naturally anti-religious and atheistic. It is only when this phase is exhausted that Russian mysticism can revive and take not a narrow religious but the spiritual direction. It is true that mysticism revers, turned upside down, has made Bolshevism and its endeavour a creed rather than a political theme and a search for the paradisal secret millennium on earth rather than the building of a purely social structure. But for the most part Russia is trying to do on the communistic basis all that nineteenth-century idealism hoped to get atand failedin the midst of or against an industrial competitive environment. Whether it will really succeed any better is for the future to decide for at present it only keeps what it has got by a tension and violent control which is not over.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1967-07-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The experience lasted for half an hour, but everything, everything was differentdifferent not in its appearance, different in its deeper significance. Was the difference in my active consciousness? I dont know. I mean, did I make contact with a region of consciousness that was new to me? Possibly. But it seemed to me a wholly different vision of the earth and mans History.
During the experience I remembered what Sri Aurobindo had written: Men love suffering, therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem.1 And that was like (smiling) a sort of froth of thought quite on the surface, all the way up, bathed in the light from above, and like the intellectual way of expressing what I was seeing (gesture from above downward), which came from above. From the point of view of light, it was a very interesting experience.
--
And so the conclusion. Ive always heard it said (I dont know if its true) that men think in a certain way and women in another. On an external level, the difference is not visible, but the attitude the mental attitudeis perhaps different. The mental attitude on the Prakriti side is always action, always action; the mental attitude on the Purusha3 side is conception: conception, overall vision, and also observation, as though it observed what the Prakriti had done and saw how it was done. Now I understand that. Thats how it is. Naturally, no man (here on earth) is exclusively masculine and no woman is exclusively feminine, because it has all been mixed together again and again. Similarly, I dont think any one race is absolutely pure: all that is over, its been mingled together (it is another way to re-create Oneness). But there have been TENDENCIES; Its like that note about Israelites and Muslims, its just a manner of speaking; if I were told, This is what you said, I would reply, Yes, I said that, but I can also say something else and many other things! Its a way of selecting certain things and bringing them to the fore with an action in view (its always with an action in view). But for the moment, everything is like that, everywhere mixed and mingled together with a view to general unificationno one nationality is pure and separate from the others, that no longer exists. But to a certain vision, each thing has its essential role, its raison dtre, its place in universal History. Its like that very strong impression that the Chinese are lunar, that when the moon grew cold, some beings managed to come to the earth, and those beings are at the origin of the Chinese nation; but now there only remains a tracea trace which is the memory of that distinctiveness. And its everywhere the same thing: if you look at the individuals of every nation, you find in every nation that everything is there, but with the memory the memory of a specificness which has been its raison dtre in the great terrestrial unfolding.
(Mother goes into contemplation)
0 1967-08-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, it came to me as a discovery. The whole religion, instead of being seen like this (gesture from below), was seen like that (gesture from above). Here is what I mean: the ordinary idea of Christianity is that the son (to use their language), the son of God came to give his message (a message of love, unity, fraternity and charity) to the earth; and the earth, that is, those who govern, who werent ready, sacrificed him, and his Father, the supreme Lord, let him be sacrificed in order that his sacrifice would have the power to save the world. That is how they see Christianity, in its most comprehensive idea the vast majority of Christians dont understand anything whatsoever, but I mean that among them there may be (perhaps, its possible), among the cardinals for instance who have studied occultism and the deeper symbols of things, some who understand a little better anyway. But according to my vision (Mother points to her note on Christianity), what happened was that in the History of the evolution of the earth, when the human race, the human species, began to question and rebel against suffering, which was a necessity to emerge more consciously from inertia (its very clear in animals, it has become very clear already: suffering was the means to make them emerge from inertia), but man, on the other hand, went beyond that stage and began to rebel against suffering, naturally also to revolt against the Power that permits and perhaps uses (perhaps uses, to his mind) this suffering as a means of domination. So that is the place of Christianity. There was already before it a fairly long earth Historywe shouldnt forget that before Christianity, there was Hinduism, which accepted that everything, including destruction, suffering, death and all calamities, are part of the one Divine, the one God (its the image of the Gita, the God who swallows the world and its creatures). There is that, here in India. There was the Buddha, who on the other hand, was horrified by suffering in all its forms, decay in all its forms, and the impermanence of all things, and in trying to find a remedy, concluded that the only true remedy is the disappearance of the creation. Such was the terrestrial situation when Christianity arrived. So there had been a whole period before it, and a great number of people beginning to rebel against suffering and wanting to escape from it like that. Others deified it and thus bore it as an inescapable calamity. Then came the necessity to bring down on earth the concept of a deified, divine suffering, a divine suffering as the supreme means to make the whole human consciousness emerge from Unconsciousness and Ignorance and lead it towards its realization of divine beatitude, but notnot by refusing to collaborate with life, but IN life itself: accepting suffering (the crucifixion) in life itself as a means of transformation in order to lead human beings and the entire creation to its divine Origin.
That gives a place to all religions in the development from the Inconscient to the divine Consciousness.
--
Instead of looking at it from below, there was all of a sudden an overall vision from right above of how it was all organized with such a clear consciousness, such a clear will, each thing coming just when it was necessary so nothing would be overlooked and everything might come out, emerge from that Unconsciousness, and become increasingly conscious. And so, in this immense History, the earth History, Christianity finds its placeits legitimate place. That has a double advantage: for those who despise it its value is restored, and as for those who believe its the unique truth, they are made to see that its only one element among others in the whole. There.
Thats why I found it interestingbecause it was the result of a vision, and that vision came because I started concerning myself with religions (started again, to tell the truth, because I was very familiar with that subject in the past). And when I was asked questions on the Israelites and the Muslims, I looked and said, Here is their place. Here is their place and their raison dtre. Then, one day I said to myself, Well, it is true! Seen in that way, its obvious: Christianity is like a rehabilitation of suffering as a means of development of the consciousness.
0 1967-08-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Afterwards, there was a slight flagging, because there came I cant say the memory (it wasnt a memory), but all the complaints: the same thing as at the balcony on the darshan day the human attitude towards the Supreme is only to complain and demand complain and demand and complain Thats all. It came back. Before, the whole vision was there like that (gesture from high to low), it was magnificent, magnificent: each and every thing, the entire human History, the entire History of intellectual and material evolution, everything, everything like that, everything in its place. It was really fine. And afterwards, there came that wave of complaints.
It was as if the body were asking, What attitude (thats what provided the link), What attitude should I have? What should I do? Because there was the vision of life, death, of all occurences, everything was there. The full knowledge of everything. Oh, all the stories of death were very, very interesting, and how mankind has tried to understand, and how there have been all kinds of solutions (that is, partial attitudes), and all of it, all of it was part of the Whole.
0 1967-10-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That was when I declared that I wanted to be Indian, to have dual nationality. The government of India told me it was a memorable day in Indias History. I wasnt aware of it!1
(Mother studies the photo) Its amusing. When I look back at all those things, I have a very acute sensation of looking at my childhood, it all seems to me so childish! Still in the illusion of the world.
0 1967-10-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
World Union! They really did imagine they were going to make humanity progress! But when I tell people that the creation of a city like Auroville has more weight in the earths History than all the groups in the world, they dont believe me. They dont believe me, to them its totally unimportant, a fancy.
Once I asked Sri Aurobindo (because we had talked about Auroville a great deal, there were lots of difficulties), I asked him (because it was an idea I hadnot an idea but a need that expressed itself some thirty years agomore than thirty, almost forty years ago), so I asked him, and he answered me this (I think I told you): It is the best chance men have to avoid a general conflict.1 There.
0 1967-11-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body, you see, theyve asked for a prayer of the BODY. They have come to understand that the body must begin to transform itself into something else. Previously, they were all full of the whole History of physical culture in every country, in which country its most developed, the use of the body as it is, and and so on. Anyway, it was the Olympic ideal. Now, they have leaped beyond: that is the past, now they want the transformation.
You understand, people were asking to be divine in their mind and vital that is, the whole ancient History of spirituality, the same old theme for centuries but now, its the BODY. Its the body that asks to participate. Its certainly a progress.
Yes, but one can see how, in the mind, the aspiration sustains itself, how it lives by itself. In the heart too, one can see how the aspiration lives. But in the body? How can one awaken that aspiration in the body?
0 1968-02-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the clear vision: the same thing which in the History of the universe made the earth the symbolic representation of the universe so as to concentrate the work on one point, the same phenomenon is now taking place: India is the representation of all human difficulties on earth, and it is in India that the cure will be found. And then, that is whyTHAT IS WHY I was made to start Auroville.
It came and it was so clear, so tremendously powerful!
0 1968-04-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its quite (it remained for hours), quite unaccustomed: something far exceeding human individualities, and it was the beginning of something very important in the History of the earths evolution.
The last time I saw him, he asked me how he should get himself received by the Pope. I said to him, Its very simple, its Sri Aurobindos name that will open the door for you; just write the Pope, I come from Sri Aurobindos Ashram and I would like to see you.
0 1968-05-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But one cannot express that, words cant. While I was speaking, it was that Consciousness which spoke. And the two experiences together (the childrens notes, I read them yesterday evening; as for D., I had seen her in the morning), the two together gave me the detachment (its not detachment: its a liberation) from the phenomenon of death in such an absolute way that I was able to look throughout History, far into the past, at the whole human tragedy. That is to say, death is a natural phenomenon in the creation on earth, but as a means of TRANSITIONI clearly saw why it had become necessary, how, with the human consciousness and mental development, it had been turned into a tragedy, and how it was becoming again merely a means of transition (a clumsy means, we might say), which was now becoming unnecessary again.
There was that whole, overall vision of the History of the creation. It was really interesting. Interesting because whew! you felt so free! So free, so peaceful, so smiling! And at the same time, with such a certitude that everything is moving towards a more harmonious, less chaotic, less painful manifestation and that there is only one more step to be made in the creation.
What I admired (I often admire this) was that its often apparently mediocre or rather unimportant things (all that people regard as insignificant), its generally what brings on the most considerable progress. In the course of yesterday, and apparently (I know its only an appearance), apparently through D.s visit and those childrens answers, that entire phase of the manifestation became clear, found its place and lost all its power of influence and all its grip on the consciousness. It was as if the consciousness rose wholly free and luminous, joyous, above all that.
--
This morning, after I wrote this, I happened to look back on this bodys History, just like that, its whole History at a glance (gesture like a beacon), with bewildered eyes. How many emotions, experiences, discoveries, oh (I cant say dramas, because it was never much inclined to drama), but how many experiences, discoveries (Mother speaks in a grandiloquent tone), revelations it has gone though (laughing) to rediscover what was always known!
Its amusing.
0 1968-05-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If we consider that a child must only learn, know and be aware of what can keep him pure of all lower, crude, violent and degrading movements, then we should eliminate at one stroke the entire contact with the rest of mankind, beginning with all those accounts of wars, murders, conflicts and deceits that are called History; we should eliminate the present contact with family, parents and friends; and we should constantly control the childs contact with all the vital impulses of his own being.
This idea is what led to monastic life shut in a convent, or to ascetic life in the cave or the forest.
0 1968-07-06, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A page in the History of the world has been turned, the conversion of all of Christendom to the new Truth (Agenda of April 3, 1968).
A few days later, P.L. sent Mother a telegram asking for her protection, as he had received an "order from above" to undergo a Collegiate medical examination presided over by the Pope's physician. Thus the situation seemed to have been reversed. Mother's answer was: "The best protection is an unshakable faith in the divine Grace."
0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All religions seen like that in the whole, and in their History.
And since it isnt thought, of courseits SEEN, its a vision, a vision seen in the consciousness one would have to say ten words at the same time. Its impossible to express, impossible to describe. If one starts describing one thing after another, it no longer makes sense.
0 1969-04-05, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I canceled my ticket for Pondicherry, I felt a spell of giddiness as when one receives a sharp blow to the head and ones balance seems lost. I was summoned to the Vatican and told to remain at the entire disposal of the Holy Father, who entrusts me with a grave and difficult question concerning the president of the Italian Episcopal Conference: I am asked to solve that problem. The Pope is counting on my skill, and so on. I was questioned about the reasons for my remarks of February 24 (on March 24, I did not open my mouth), for there had just been a bombshell: two young Latin American bishops (from Peru and Chile) had left the Church-the first such cases in History, of course after the well-known and unique case of Talleyr and (for other reasons). They were my fellow students at the Rome University. They are leaving the Church because of a religious crisis. Yet they had everything the Church could give: honors, money; one was made a bishop at the age of thirty-three, the other two years ago. My remarks of February 24 were therefore prophetic. The reason for their running away? I have just said it.
I do not feel inclined to go on giving you the detailed chronology of these facts.
0 1969-04-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
9) The Mother said that the new Consciousness that has descended on the 1st of January is very active, and that we have come to a very critical time in the History of the world, and it is most interesting to watch how things are happening. This new Consciousness is preparing for the Superman and so there are big changes happening all around. When the first man developed, the animal had no mind and could not appreciate the evolution. Man has mind and can appreciate the evolution. That is why this is the most interesting time in History. If one can stand in that consciousness and watch the happenings from above, one can see how small and futile they are and one can then act upon them with a great Power.
10) The Mother said to N.S. that She wants Indira to continue in her present position because the Mother is able to work through her as she is sincerely trying to serve the country.
0 1969-05-10, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A disciple once put this question to Sri Aurobindo: "is it true that the same consciousness that took the form of Leonardo da Vinci had previously manifested as Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome? If so, will you please tell me what exactly Augustus Caesar stood for in the History of Europe and how Leonardo's work was connected with his?" Sri Aurobindo replied: "Augustus Caesar organised the life of the Roman Empire and it was this that made the framework of the first transmission of the Graeco-Roman civilisation to Europehe came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci, who took up again the work and summarised in himself the seeds of modern Europe."
(Life, Literature and Yoga, p. 6, July 29, 1937)
0 1969-07-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the secret code of the History of the world
And Natures correspondence with the soul
0 1969-09-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And five months after he was nominated, he abdicatedcausing a scandal unique in the History of the Church and his successor had him imprisoned straight away. Later on, by the way, he was canonized. But in actual fact, since then the cardinals have always elected the Pope from among themselves.
Theyre too scared!
0 1969-09-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Right now, for three days he has been fasting; hes stopped eating. He said, Ill go and see Mother like this, without having taken any food. So for three days he has been taking nothing but water The wonderful thing is that there isnt an atom of mentalization, its all an experience that springs forth. And all that youve said, all that Sri Aurobindo said, he has experienced. He is conscious of the Moment in the History of the earth, he feels all that. So he wants to participate in the Work.
(after a silence)
0 1970-01-10, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, Mother, we should keep it, and one day, for the sake of History, all this might be worth publishing.
Yes, thats right: from the historical point of view, its amusing.
0 1970-05-02, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Religions make up part of the History of mankind and it is in this guise that they will be studied at Aurovillenot as beliefs to which one ought or ought not to fasten, but as part of a process in the development of human consciousness which should lead man towards his superior realisation.
So then, Programme [Mother laughs]:
0 1971-01-16, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but that note is already ancient History, because I have started to see again, but in another way. I have started to see and hear again.
In essence, you see and hear according to what is necessary.
0 1971-04-21, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
An impression of something that belongs to someone elseits quite curious. Usually its the body that retains the continuity of the being, but that continuity belongs to such a material and superficial realm that (Mother shakes her head) unbelievable. All that seems its as if I were speaking of someone else. Its curious. No senseno sense at all of the personality. Someone whose History I know well, thats all. Its quite curious. I didnt know it had gone so far.
By boat.
0 1971-05-15, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Behind the jostle of temporary points of view and instant interests there are the Eternal Landmarks. To lose sight of them is to lose ones very way and steer onto the reefs of expediency and comfortable compromise upon which we shall founder a moment later. Behind the little frontal events is the greater tide of History and to lose sight of it is to lose ones direction and the golden thread that leads to our perfect fulfillment, be it individual or national. Those who have left their unique mark upon the labyrinth of History are the very ones who have seized the golden thread and affirmed the Greater History and the Greater Meaning against all the instant arguments and fleeting expediencies.
The Greater History tells us that the whole earth is a single body with a single destiny, but that within that single destiny each part of the greater body, each nation, has its special role to play and its rare moments of choice when it must make the decisive gesture, its true gesture in the total movement of the great Eternal History. Each nation is a symbol. Each gesture of each nation potentially represents a little victory in the total victory or a little defeat in the total defeat. And sometimes the whole of our History is at stake at a symbolic point of the earth; and, a little gesture, a tiny turn to the right or left, has repercussions, either good or bad, down the ages and over the entire earth body.
India is precisely such a symbol and Bangladesh is another, a little turning point in the great course of events of the earth. The time has come to consider the eternal Landmarks and read the greater tide in the small eddies. Now, the greater tide tells us that Indias role is to be the spiritual heart of the terrestrial body just as, for example, the role of France is to express clarity of intellect, or that of Germany to express skill, Russia the brotherhood of man and the United States enthusiasm for adventure and practical organization, etc. But only if India is ONE can she fulfill this role, for how can one who is herself divided lead others? Thus the division of India is the first Falsehood that must disappear, for it is the symbol of the earths division. As long as India is not one, the world cannot be one. Indias striving for unity is the symbolic drama of the worlds striving for unity.
--
The Great History tells us that India must again be one, and that particular current of History is so imperative that twice already Destiny has managed to put India before the possibility of her reunification. The first time was in 1965 when Pakistans foolish aggressiveness enabled India to counterattack and carry the battle right into the suburbs of Lahore and up to Karachi had she but had the courage to seize boldly her destiny. The hour was indeed for a decisive choice. The Mother declared categorically: India is fighting for the triumph of Truth, and She must fight until India and Pakistan become ONE again, for such is the truth of their being. At Tashkent, we yielded on the crest of a petty compromise which was to lead us into a second, more bloody and painful reef, Bangladesh. There too destiny graciously arranged to enable India to hasten to the aid of her massacred brethreneven the famous skyjacking incident of January4 was, as it were, arranged by the Grace so as to spare India from delaying her intervention until it was too late (or to spare her the shame of not intervening at all and allowing Pakistans planes to fly over her head loaded with weaponry and murderers to slaughter her brothers). But there again, yielding to the demands of the moment and to the small, shortsighted interests, we refused to accept the challenge of the Great Direction of our History, and we now find ourselves on the brink of a new compromise which will lead us inevitably to a third and even more disastrous and bloody reef. For one day India must inevitably face that which twice she has fled. Only each time the conditions are more disastrous for her and for the worldperhaps so disastrous that the whole earth will even be engulfed in another general conflict, while the whole story could have been resolved at the little symbolic point that is Bangladesh, at the right hour, with the right gesture and a minimum of suffering.
For let there be no doubt about it, the Bangladesh affair is not an Indian event, it is a world event. The division of India is not a local incident, it is a terrestrial Falsehood which must disappear if the division of the world is to disappear. And here again we hear the voice of Sri Aurobindo, six months before his passing, referring to yet another phenomenon which then seemed of such slight importance, so remote, a trifling local affair at the other end of the world: the invasion of South Korea in 1950, twenty-one years ago. And yet that small Korean symbol, like the small symbol of Bangladesh (or the one of Czechoslovakia in 1938), contained in seed the whole fatal course which is still carrying the world toward a sinister destiny: The affair of Korea, wrote Sri Aurobindo, is the first move in the Communist plan of campaign to dominate and take possession first of these northern parts and then of South East Asia as a preliminary to their manoeuvres with regard to the rest of the continentin passing, Tibet as a gate opening to India. Now, twenty-one years later, we see that Tibet and the whole of South East Asia have been swallowed up and the gate into India has truly been opened wide by the wound of the Pakistani Falsehoodalready, or very shortly, the Chinese are, or will be, in Khulna, some eighty miles from Calcutta, to help Yahya Khan to pacify Bengal. And Sri Aurobindo added, If they succeed, there is no reason why domination of the whole world should not follow by steps until they are ready to deal with America.
This is where we are today. That which we want to avoid returns upon us with tenfold force. The hour for political calculation, for the pros and cons of our petty mathematics of expediency (which always goes awry) is past. The time has come to rediscover the Great Direction of India, which is really the Great Direction of the world, and to place our faith in the Spirit that guides her Destiny, rejecting petty fears of a phantom world opinion and doing away with the little supports which only lend support to the Enemy. Tomorrow America will perhaps resume her economic aid to Pakistan on the pretext of counteracting the Chinese presence. The Bangladesh slaughter will be honorably justified by a pseudoregime which will operate with the blessings of the international community. But one does not cheat the tide of History: for the third time our little compromises will crumble and we will find ourselves confronted with a terrible ordeal, its intensity nourished by our own successive failures in the past. The sooner not only India, but America and Russia too, understand the unreality of Pakistan and the magnitude of what is at stake at the borders of India, the sooner may the looming catastrophe be halted before it becomes totally and definitely irrevocable. One thing is certain, wrote Sri Aurobindo a few months before his passing, that if there is too much shilly-shallying and if America gives up now her defence of Korea [we could say even more: the defense of Bangladesh] she may be driven to yield position after position until it is too late: at one point or another she will have to stand and face the necessity of drastic action even if it leads to war.
For the battle of India is the battle of the world. This is where the worlds tragic destiny is brewing, or its last-minute burst of hope into a new world of Truth and Light, for it is said that the deepest darkness lies nearest the most luminous light.
0 1971-11-20, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We are at a moment of transition in the History of the earth. It is a moment only in terms of the eternity of time. But compared to human life this moment is long. Matter is in the process of changing to prepare for a new manifestation; but the human body is not sufficiently plastic and offers resistance. This is why the number of incomprehensible disorders and diseases is increasing and becoming a problem for medical science.
The remedy lies in union with the divine forces which are at work and in a confident and quiet receptivity that facilitates the process.
0 1971-12-29a, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We are at a decisive hour in the History of the earth. The earth is preparing for the advent of the supramental being, and because of this the old way of living loses its value. One must launch oneself consciously on the path of the future in spite of the new exigencies. The pettinesses tolerable at one time are no more so; one must widen oneself to receive that which shall be born.
***
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Unfortunately, nothing came of it. The narrow-mindedness of the Paris "Study Center" discouraged Malraux once and for all. The bridge that Y.L. and Satprem had so painstakingly built since 1955 with Satprem's first letter to Malraux was instantly shattered. Strange how on all sides Mother was surrounded by such a global incomprehension of the deep significance of the History, as if all this were merely a parochial story, or even an "ashram" story. For the record, we publish in the Addendum Satprem's first letter to Malraux in 1955, along with Malraux's reply.
Essays on the Gita, XIII.367-368.
0 1972-04-05, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But tragedy is afterwards, when its too late. At the time, there are only people coming and going, with their everyday gestures, their empty words and simmering little desires, no worse or better than anybody else, and who dont really know what they are doing or where they are going. And yet the tragedy is already sealed in this little gesture, that careless action, those few fleeting words. Was the Trojan War not taking place every day? Did Alexander not die on one fine day? Destiny seizes upon a few beings and abruptly crystallizes a great moment in History, but the players are neither cruel nor gentle they are much like everyday people, but with only a tiny distinction in their hearts. Each player plays his part, in black or white, for an unfathomable goal where everything is reconciled
But in the meantime.
0 1972-07-22, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Thus, I sent to SABDA and All India Press the note signed by Mother. As was to be expected, the reaction was swift: I was accused of being after money. Mother well knew the hornets nest I was about to stir up, and the day before she had written me a letterwhich I did not understandto try and tell me to move to a higher plateau, to another consciousness, instead of struggling against crooks. The following conversation is the saddest memory of my seventeen years of meetings with Mother. It was so painful to see her weariness yet have to fight to unmask that falsehoodas if she didnt know it! But we are writing History here and we are trying to give as factual an account as possible and to describe the characters just as they were.)
What did I write you?
0 1972-08-02, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Herein, we are therefore trying to find out what happened on November 17, 1973: the why of things. A tragedy does not occur at a particular minute or hour in History. It is the result of all the hours and little minutes that have prepared that particular minute or made it inevitable. As I said earlier, I was thunderstruck on that November 18, 1973. I was certainly the blindest of all the characters taking part in the tragedy, for they all seemed to know in advance that she was going to dieat least those in her immediate entourage. But that knowing in advance bears a terrible implication. Here we put our finger on the formation of death Mother was imbibing dailya perpetual discomfort, she used to say. In those repeated little minutes we can pinpoint the cause of what happened at 7:25 p.m. on November 17,1973.
There is no better eyewitness than Pranab, Mothers bodyguard since he was almost constantly physically present and even slept in Mothers room. Asked about the cause of Mothers departure, this is what he stated in a public speech on December 4, 1973 [in English]:
--
As in all tragedies in human History, there is not a particular person to blame. Humans only incarnate certain types of force or character they come, die, triumph and vanish but the forces remain and continue to animate millions and millions of unknown little humans here and there, who are silently responsible and the invisible actors in the drama. There is no one to put on trial hereexcept millions who are but ourselves. It would therefore be absurd to say that Pranab was the author, or the sole author, of that formation (Everywhere, there are wills that it [the body] should die! she said), but he certainly fostered it and transmitted it, and because he was physically present all the time, Mother had to brea the that horror constantly. Ultimately there remains this haunting question, the only one perhaps: Could it have been otherwise?
***
0 1973-01-20, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We are at a very what we could call an unpleasant moment of the History of the earth. It is interesting because the action is very powerful, but I cant call it pleasant.
But I have told you that already; I wrote it.3
0 1973-04-14, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A particular fact has haunted me for the past seven years, a particular passage in Pranabs speech which he delivered a few days after Mothers departure. (Once again, I am not accusing anyone: I am chronicling History; I would like to report the facts, the words, the characters as accurately as I can I am Mothers scribe, that is all and I love her, because its lovely to love.) Now, in that speech, we find a small remark, the kind of remark one makes in passing, as the most natural thing in the world. Pranab is describing the last days. You call them the last days AFTERWARDS, when the story is overin the meantime, its just life as usual:
(original English)
02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Fire then is the energy of consciousness secreted in the heart of things. It is that which moves the creation upward, produces the unfolding evolution that is History, both individual and collective. It is kindled, it increases in volume and strength and purity and effectiveness, as and when a lower element is offered and submitted to a higher reality and this higher reality impinges upon the lower one (which is what the rubbing of the arai or the pressing of the soma symbolises); the limitation is broken, the small enters into and becomes the vast, the crooked is straightened and leng thened out, what was hidden becomes manifest. This is described as the progression of the sacrifice (adhvaraadvanceon the path). That is also the victorious battle waged against the dark forces of Ignorance. The goal, the purpose is the descent and manifestation of the gods here upon earth in human vehicles.
But this Fire is not normally available. It is lost, imbedded in the thick petrified folds of unconsciousness and inconscience. Man's soul is not an apparent reality. It has to be found out, called forth, brought to the front. Even so, in the normal consciousness, the soul, the divine fire is a flickering, twinkling, hesitating spark; it is not sure of itself, not certain of its destiny. Yet when the time is ripe and the call comes, the gods, the luminous forces from above descend with all their insistence and meet the hidden godhead: Agni is reminded of his work and destiny which nothing can frustrate or cancel. He has to consent and undertake his sacrificial labour.
02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In this age we stand at some such critical juncture in Nature's evolutionary History. Its full implications, the exact degree of the immediate achievement, the form and manner of the Descent are things that remain veiled till the fact is accomplished. Something of it is revealed, however, to the eye of vision and the heart of faith, something of it is seized by those to whom it chooses to disclose itself
Yamevaia vute tena labhya5
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"Since the end of the Middle Ages, conquerors did harm perhaps to civilization, but they never claimed to bring it into question. They ascribed their excesses and crimes to motives of necessity, but never dreamed for a moment to hold them up as exemplary actions on which subject nations were called upon to fashion their morality, their code, their gospel.. . Since the dawn of modern times the accidents of military History in Europe have never meant for her the end of her most precious spiritual and moral values and a sudden annulment of all the work done by the past generations in the direction of mutual respect, equity, goodwillor, to put all into a single word, in the direction of humanity."
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.
02.02 - The Message of the Atomic Bomb, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man's invention of death-dealing weapons has an interesting History. It is, curious to say, the History of his progress and growing civilisation. The primitive man fought with the strength of his God-given limbstooth and nailto which he subsequently added the crudest of weapons, clubs, of wood or flint. A revolution was brought about when iron was discovered and archery invented. Next revolution came with the appearance of gunpowder on the stage. And then the age of gun-cotton and T.N.T. which held sway till the other day. An interim period of poison gas and chemical warfare was threatened, but everything now has gone overboard with the advent of the atomic bomb and the threatened advent of the Cosmic Death-Ray.
In one sense certainly there has been a progress. This march of machinery, this evolution of tools means man's increasing mastery over Nature, even though physical nature. The primitive man like the animal is a slave, a puppet driven helplessly by Nature's forces. Both lead more or less a life of reflex action: there is here no free, original initiation of action or movement. The slow discovery of Nature's secrets, the gradual application and utilisation of these secrets in actual life meant, first, a liberation of man's conscious being originally imbedded in Nature's inertial movements, and then, a growing power to react upon Nature and mould and change it according to the will of the conscious being. The result at the outset was a release and organisation on the mental level, in the domain of reason and intelligence. Of course, man found at once that this increasing self-consciousness and self-power meant immense possibilities for good, but, unfortunately, for evil also. And so to guard against the latter contingency, rules and regulations were framed to control and canalise the new-found capacities. The Dharma of the Kshatriya, the honour of the Samurai, the code of Chivalry, all meant that. The power to kill was sought to be checked and restrained by such injunctions as, for example, not to hit below the belt, not to fight a disarmed or less armed opponent and so on. The same principle of morals and manners was maintained and continued through the centuries with necessary changes and modifications in application and finds enshrined today in International Covenants and Conventions.
02.03 - National and International, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Kurukshetra is a turning-point in History. The battle was between an old order that had to go and a new order that was taking birth. The old order was supported, on the one hand, by Bhishma and Drona, personating its codes and laws, its morals, and, on the other, by Duryodhana and Sisupala as its dynamic actors and executors. The new order was envisaged by Krishna and its chief protagonists were the five brothers. The old order meant the supremacy of the family and the clan: that was the central unit round which society grew and was held together. Krishna came to break that mould and evolve a higher and larger unit of collective life. It was not yet the nation, but an intermediary stage something like a League of clans, (as we in our day are trying another higher stage in the League of Nations). The Rajasuya celebrates the establishment of this New Order of a larger, a greater human organisation, Dharmarajya, as it was called.
We have just passed through another, a far greater, a catastrophic Kurukshetra, the last Act (Shanti Parvam) of which we are negotiating at the present moment. The significance of this cataclysm is clear and evident if we only allow ourselves to be led by the facts and not try to squeeze the facts into the groove of our past prejudices and set notions. All the difficulties that are being encountered on the way to peace and reconstruction arise mainly out of the failure to grasp what Nature has forced upon us. It is as simple as the first axiom of Euclid: Humanity is one and all nations are free and yet interdependent members of that one and single organism. No nation can hope henceforth to stand in its isolated grandeurnot even America or Russia. Subject or dependent nations too who are struggling to be free will be allowed to work out their freedom and independence, on condition that the same is worked out in furtherance and in collaboration with the ideal of human unity. That ideal has become dynamic and insistent the more man refuses to accept it, the more he will make confusion worse confounded.
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Each volume of her effort's History.
A limping Yes through the aeons journeys still
02.08 - The Basic Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In such a predicament the vision of a prophet counts more than the arguments of a political huckster. That an Indian consciousness is there and has grown and taken more and more concrete shape through the ages is a fact to which History bears testimony and honest commonsense pays homage.
***
02.12 - The Ideals of Human Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nationhood, however, developed into such a firm, solid, self-conscious and selfishly aggressive entity that it has now become almost a barrier to a further enlargement of the unit towards a still greater and wider unification of mankind. But nature cannot be baulked, its straight urge hampered; it takes to by-ways and indirect routes and roundabout channels for its fulfilment. On three different lines a greater and larger unification of mankind has been attempted that goes beyond the unification brought about by the ideal of the country or people or nation. First, the political, that leads to the formation of Empires. But the faults and errors in this type of larger unit have been made very evident. It acts as a steam-roller, no doubt, crushing out and levelling parochial differences and local narrownesses; but it also means the overgrowth of a central organismcalled the metropolisat the expense of other member organisms forming part of the larger collectivity, viz., colonies and dependencies and subject races, which must in the end bring about a collapse and disruption of the whole structure. The Roman Empire was the typical example of this experiment. Next, there was what can be called the racial line. Many attempts have been made in this direction, but nothing very successful has taken shape. Pan-Slavism, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Jewry are some of the expressions of this movement. It has the fatal fault of a basis that is uncertain and doubtful: for a pure race is a myth and in modern conditions the cry must necessarily be a cry in the wilderness. Many races and peoples have in the course of human History been thrown together, they have to live together, are compelled to lead a common social, political, economic and cultural life. That indeed was the genesis of nationhood. The hegemony of a so-called Nordic race over the world was one of the monsters produced by this attempt, a reductio ad absurdum of the principle.
The third is the religious principle. Religion, that is to say, institutional religion has also sought to unify mankind on a larger basis, as large indeed as the world itself. The aim of Christendom, of Islam was frankly a conquest of the whole human race for the one jealous Lord. Buddhism and Hinduism did not overtly or with a set purpose attempt any such worldwide proselytism, but their influence and actual working had almost a similar effect:at least in the case of the former, it was like a flood throwing down many local boundaries, overflooding distant countries, and peoples, giving them all one unified religious life and culture. But here too we meet the same objectionable feature as there is in the attempt at unity through the racial principle. For religious imperialism cannot succeed in unifying humanity, as amply demonstrated by the Roman Catholic Church; and like political imperialism it was more or less an experiment in the line, effecting nothing beyond a moral atmosphere. Even a federation of religions, contemplated by some idealists, seems hardly a practicable proposition; for it is only a mental conception and has no compelling vital force in it. At best it is only a sign-post, a pointer to the goal Nature and humanity have been endeavouring to evolve and realise.
02.13 - Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And both had the vision of a greater Tomorrow for their Motherl and and that was why both regarded her freedom as the basic necessity for the recovery of her greatness. How the inspired songs and speeches of Rabindranath and the flaming utterances of Sri Aurobindo created a psychological revolution almost overnight in the mind and heart of the people during the Swadeshi days forms a glorious chapter in the History of India's freedom movement. Profoundly touched by Sri Aurobindo's soul-stirring lead to the country, Rabindranath wrote a memorable poem, addressing Sri Aurobindo, which is still enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen. Rabindranath himself called on Sri Aurobindo and read out to him his heart's homage. We remember with thrill the majestic opening lines:
Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee!
03.03 - Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The History of the emancipation of the different psychological domains in man is an interesting and instructive study. For the heart and the mind too were not always free and autonomous. An old-world consciousness was ruled or inspired by another faculty the religious sense. It is a sense, a faculty that has its seat neither in the mind nor even in the heart proper. Some would say it is in an inmost or topmost region, the Self, while others would relegate it to something quite the opposite, the lowest and most external strand in the human consciousness, viz., that of unconsciousness or infra-consciousness, ignorance, fear, superstition.
The domination of the religious sense reached its apogee in the Middle Ages when it almost swallowed up and annihilated all other faculties and movements in man. The end of that epoch and the first beginnings of the Modern Age were signalised by the Mind, i.e. the Reason, declaring its independence. This was the Renaissance; and it was then that the seed was sown of modern science and scientism.
03.04 - The Other Aspect of European Culture, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In this connection the History of Ireland's destiny affords an instructive study, since it is symbolic also of Europe's life-course. It was the natural idealism, the inborn spiritual outlook which Ireland possessed of yore the Druidic Mysteries were more ancient than the Greek culture and formed perhaps the basis of the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysterieswhich impelled her foremost to embrace the new revelation brought on by Christianity. As she was among the pioneers to champion the cause of the Christ, she became also the fortress where the new cult found a safe refuge when the old world was being overwhelmed and battered to pieces by the onrush of peoples of a dense and rough-hewn nature. When continental Europe lay a desert waste under the heels of the barbarians that almost wiped away the last vestiges of the Classical Culture, it was Ireland who nursed and reared the New Child in her bosom and when the time came sent Him out again to reconquer and revivify Europe. Once more when the tide of Modernism began to rise and swell and carry everything before it, Ireland stood firm and threw up an impregnable barrier. The story of Ireland's struggle against Anglo-Saxon domination is at bottom the story of the struggle between Europe's soul power and body power. Ireland was almost slain in the combat, physically, but would not lose her soul. And now she rises victorious at long last, her ancient spirit shines resplendent, the voice of the Irish Renaissance that speaks through Yeats and Russell1 heralds a new dawn for her and who knows if not for Europe and the whole West?
Is it meant that "Mediaeval obscurantism" was Europe's supreme ideal and that the cry should be: "Back to the Dark Age, into the gloom of Mystic superstitions and Churchian dogmas?" Now, one cannot deny that there was much of obscurantism and darkness in that period of Europe's evolution. And the revolt launched against it by the heralds of the Modern Age was inevitable and justified to some extent; but to say that unadulterated superstition was what constituted the very substance of Middle Age Culture and that the whole thing was more or less a nightmare, is only to land into another sort of superstition and obscurantism. The best when corrupt does become the worst. The truth of the matter is that in its decline the Middle Age clung to and elaborated only the formal aspect of its culture, leaving aside its inner realisation, its living inspiration. The Renaissance was a movement of reaction and correction against the lifeless formalism, the dry scholasticism of a decadent Middle Age; it sought to infuse a new vitality, by giving a new outlook and intuition to Europe's moribund soul. But, in fact, it has gone a little too far in its career of correction. In its violent enthusiasm to pull down the worn-out edifice of the past and to build anew for the future, it has almost gone to the length of digging up the solid foundation and erasing the fundamental ground-plan upon which Europe's real life and culture reposed and can still safely repose.
03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And India is pre-eminently fitted to discover this pattern of spiritual values and demonstrate how our normal lifeindividual and collectivecan be moulded and built according to that pattern. It has been India's special concern throughout the millenaries of her History to know and master the one thing needful (tamevaikam jnatha tmnam any vaco vimucatha), knowing which one knows all (tasmin vijte sarvam vijtam). She has made countless experiments in that line and has attained countless achievements. Her resurgence can be justified and can be inevitable only if she secures the poise and position which will enable her to impart to the world this master secret of life, this art of a supreme savoir vivre. A new India in the old way of the nations of the world, one more among the already too many has neither sense nor necessity. Indeed, it would be the denial of what her soul demands and expects to be achieved and done.
***
03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There was no department of life or culture in which it could be said of India that she was not great, or even, in a way, supreme. From hard practical politics touching our earth, to the nebulous regions of abstract metaphysics, everywhere India expressed the power of her genius equally well. And yet none of these, neither severally nor collectively, constituted her specific genius; none showed the full height to which she could raise herself, none compassed the veritable amplitude of her innermost reality. It is when we come to the domain of the Spirit, of God-realisation that we find the real nature and stature and genius of the Indian people; it is here that India lives and moves as in her own home of Truth. The greatest and the most popular names in Indian History are not names of warriors or statesmen, nor of poets who were only poets, nor of mere intellectual philosophers, however great they might be, but of Rishis, who saw and lived the Truth and communed with the gods, of Avataras who brought down and incarnated here below something of the supreme realities beyond.
The most significant fact in the History of India is the unbroken continuity of the line of her spiritual masters who never ceased to appear even in the midst of her most dark and distressing ages. Even in a decadent and fast disintegrating India, when the whole of her external life was a mass of ruins, when her political and economical and even her cultural life was brought to stagnation and very near to decomposition, this undying Fire in her secret heart was ever alight and called in the inevitable rebirth and rejuvenation. Ramakrishna, with Vivekananda as his emanation in life dynamic and material, symbolises this great secret of India's evolution. The promise that the Divine held out in the Gita to Bharata's descendant finds a ready fulfilment in India, in Bharata's land, more perhaps than anywhere else in the world; for in India has the. Divine taken birth over and over again to save the pure in heart, to destroy the evil-doer and to establish the Right Law of life.
Other peoples may be the arms and the feet and the head of Humanity, but India is its heart, its soul for she cherishes always within her the Truth that lives for ever, the flaming God-head, the Immortal awake in mortality, as say the Vedas, amto martyeu tv .
03.10 - The Mission of Buddhism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Buddhism came as a blaze of lightning across the sky of India's tradition; it was almost a fiery writing on the wall, bearing the doom of a world. Buddhism opposed and denied some of the very fundamental principles upon which the old world rested. It was perhaps the greatest iconoclastic movement ever thrown up by the human consciousness. First of all, it denied the tradition itself; it did not recognise the authority and sanctity of the prve pitara, the ancient fathers, nor their revealed knowledge, the Veda. Buddhism enjoined the priority and supremacy of the individual's own consciousness, own effort and own realisation. Be thou thy own light. Work out thy own salvation. That was the injunction given. Not to take anything for grantednot even God or Brahman but to judge and see for yourself where and what is the truth. It was the first protestant reaction recorded in human History.
Buddhism has sometimes been called the rebel child of Hinduism. The word need not be a term of abuse. A rebel is not always a mere destroyer, a pure negator. A negation can be only a form of stating something positive, an affirmation of a truth and reality. Not unoften a rebel means a call back to a truth that has been neglected, inadequately treated or completely omitted and by-passed; it is an urgent demand that that which has been forgotten and left behind, uncared for and undeveloped, must now be taken up again and brought forward, made a full-grown and mature element in a greater and more perfect organisation of human consciousness.
03.11 - The Language Problem and India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The cultivation of a world language need not mean a neglect or discouragement of the national or regional language. Between the two instead of there being a relation of competition there can be a relation of mutual aid and helpfulness. The world language can influence the local language in the way of its growth and development and can itself be influenced and enriched in the process. The History of the relation of English and the Indian languages, especially Bengali, is an instance in point.
A question has been raised with regard to the extent of that influence, involving a very crucial problem: the problem of Indian writers in English. Itis said Indians have become clever writers in English because of English domination. Now that India is free and that domination gone, the need of English will be felt less and less and finally it may even totally disappear from the Indian field. What has become of the Persian language in India? There were any numbers of Indian writers in Persian but with the disappearance of the Muslim rule the supremacy, even the influence of that imperial language has disappeared. At the most English may remain as the necessary medium for international affairs, cultivated, that is to say, just learnt by a comparatively few for the minimum business transaction. The heart of the country cannot express itself in that foreign tongue and no literature of the Indo-Anglian type can grow permanently here.
03.13 - Human Destiny, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Human History has shown that man is capable of facing catastrophic changes and himself undergoing such changes. At this critical turn of human History where we stand today, man has to choose his destinyei ther the Capitol or the Tarpeian Rock, as in the classical phrase. Either he becomes a new man with a new consciousness or he goes down into inconscience and is no more man.
The Immense Journey, by Loren Eise Iey.
03.14 - From the Known to the Unknown?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
For may not the contrary motto" from the unknown to the known"be equally valid, both as a matter of fact and as a matter of principle? Do we not, sometimes at least, take for granted and start with the unknown number x to find out the solution to our problem? Why go far, the very first step that the child takes in his adventurous journey of life, is it not a veritable step into the unknown? Indeed, many, in fact most of the scientific laws the Laws of Natureare they strictly the result of calculation and deduction from known and observed data or are they not rather "brilliant surmises", "sudden revelations" that overwhelm by their un-expected appearance? Newton did not arrive at his Law of Gravitation in the trail of a logical argument from given premises towards unforeseen conclusions. Nor did Einstein discover his version of the Law in any syllogistic way either. The fact seems to be more often true that the unknown reveals itself all on a sudden and is not reached through a continuous series of known steps. Examples could be easily multiplied from the History of scientific discoveries.
For the fact is that man, the being that knows, is composed not merely of known elements, known to himself and to others, but possesses a hidden, an unknown side which is nonetheless part of himself. And even though unknown, it is not inactive,it always exerts its influence, imposes its presence. Man has a submerged consciousness which is in contact and communion with similarly submerged worlds of consciousness. Man's consciousness possesses aerials that catch vibrations from unknown regions. He has a secret sensitiveness that receives intimations from other where than his physical senses and his logical reason. His external mind does not always recognise such unorthodox or abnormal movements; he only expresses his surprise or amazement at the luminosity, the au thenticity of solutions that come so simply, suddenly, inevitably, the unknown revealing itself miraculously.
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We are familiar with the phrase "Augustan Age": it is in reference to a particular period in a nation's History when its creative power is at its highest both in respect of quantity and quality, especially in the domain of art and literature, for it is here that the soul of a people finds expression most easily and spontaneously. Indeed, if we look at the panorama that the course of human evolution unfolds, we see epochs of high light in various countries spread out as towering beacons or soaring peaks bathed in sunlight dominating the flat plains or darksome valleys of the usual normal periods. Take the Augustan Age itself which has given the name: it is a very crucial and one of the earlier outflowerings of the human genius on a considerable scale. We know of the appearance of individuals on the stage of life each with a special mission and role in various ages and various countries. They are great men of action, great men of thought, creative artists or spiritual and religious teachers. In India we call them Vibhutis (we can include the AvatarasDivine Incarnationsalso in the category). Even so, there is a collective manifestation too, an upsurge in which a whole race or nation takes part and is carried and raised to a higher level of living and achievement. There is a tide in the affairs not only of men, but of peoples also: and masses, large collectivities live on the crest of their consciousness, feeling and thinking deeply and nobly, acting and creating powerfully, with breadth of vision and intensity of aspiration, spreading all around something that is new and not too common, a happy guest come from elsewhere.
Ancient Greece, the fountainhead of European civilisationof the world culture reigning today, one can almost sayfound itself epitomised in the Periclean Age. The lightgrace, harmony, sweet reasonableness that was Greece, reached its highest and largest, its most characteristic growth in that period. Earlier, at the very beginning of her life cycle, there came indeed Homer and no later creation reached a higher or even as high a status of creative power: but it was a solitary peak, it was perhaps an announcement, not the realisation of the national glory. Pericles stood as the guardian, the representative, the emblem and nucleus of a nation-wide efflorescence. Not to speak of the great names associated with the age, even the common peoplemore than what was normally so characteristic of Greecefelt the tide that was moving high and shared in that elevated sweep of life, of thought and creative activity. Greece withdrew. The stage was made clear for Rome. Julius Caesar carried the Roman genius to its sublimest summit: but it remained for his great nephew to consolidate and give expression to that genius in its most characteristic manner and lent his name to a characteristic high-water mark of human civilisation.
--
In the early stages of humanity its History consists of the isolated histories of various peoples and lands: intercommunication was difficult, therefore all communion was of the nature of infiltration and indirect influence. The difference between countries far distant from each other were well marked and very considerable in respect of their cultures and civilisations. To put it in a somewhat scholarly yet graphic manner, we can say, the i sometric chart of the tides of civilisation in various countries over the globe in those days presents a very unequal and tortuous figure. On the other hand, a graph depicting the situation in modern times would be formed by lines that are more even, uniform and straight. In other words, the world has become one, homogeneous: a consciousness has grown same or similar on the whole in outlook and life-impulse embracing all peoples and races in a tight embrace. The benefit of the descending or manifesting Light is now open equally and freely to each and every member of the human kind.
Not only in extension but the growth or evolution has progressed in another direction. There has not only been a quantitative but also a qualitative development. Culture movements have grown in intent, in depth or elevation, in the meaning and significance of the consciousness involved. And they have converged towards a single aim and purpose. That purpose is not only the establishment of the global consciousness, but the expression and embodiment of the highest, the supreme consciousness. The process here too, as in the domain of extension, is one of graduation, advance by stages. The light, the light of awakening consciousness first touches the more easily accessible parts of human nature, the higher domains that are not too much involved in the gross material or animal nature. It is the realm of thoughts and ideas, of idealism, imagination and aspiration: it is man's mind, which is the least heavily weighted or ballasted by a downward gravitational pull and the most buoyant and supple the Ariel in him. It is his head that first receives the glow of the morning sun.
--
This episode links up with the inner story of mankind, its spiritual History. The growing or evolving consciousness of man was not only an outgoing and widening movement: it was also a heightening, an ascent into ranges that are not normally perceived, towards summits of our true reality. We have spoken of the Grco-Roman culture as the source and foundation of European civilisation; but apart from that there was a secret vein of life that truly vivified it, led it by an occult but constant influence along channels and achievements that are meant to serve the final goal and purpose. The Mysteries prevalent and practised in Greece itself and Crete and the occult rites of Egyptian priests, the tradition of a secret knowledge and discipline found in the Kabbalah, the legendary worship of gods and goddesses sometimes confused, sometimes identified with Nature forcesall point to the existence of a line of culture which is known in India as Yoga. If all other culture means knowledge, Yoga is the knowledge of knowledge. As the Upanishad says, there are two categories of knowledge, the superior and-the inferior. The development of the mind and life and body belongs to the domain of Inferior Knowledge: the development of the soul, the discovery of the Spirit means the Superior Knowledge.
This knowledge remained at the outset scattered, hidden, confined to a few, a company of adepts: it had almost no direct contact with the main current of life. Its religious aspect too was so altered and popularised as to represent and serve the secular life. The systematisation and propagation of that knowledgeat least the aspiration for that knowledgewas attempted on an effective scale in the Hebrew Old Testament. But then a good amount of externalities, of the Inferior Knowledge was mixed up with the inner urge and the soul perception. The Christ with his New Testament came precisely with the mission of cleaning the Augean stables, in place of the dross and coverings, the false and deformed godheads, to instal something of the purest ray of the inner consciousness, the unalloyed urge of the soul, the demand of our spiritual personality. The Church sought to build up society on that basis, attempting a fusion of the spiritual and the temporal power, so that instead of a profane secular world, a mundane or worldly world, there maybe established God's own world, the City of God.
--
Turning to India we find a fuller and completerif not a globalpicture of the whole movement. India, we may say, is the spiritual world itself: and she epitomised the curve of human progress in a clearer and more significant manner. Indian History, not its political but its cultural and spiritual History, divides itself naturally into great movements with corresponding epochs each dwelling upon and dealing with one domain in the hierarchy of man's consciousness. The stages and epochs are well known: they are(l) Vedic, (2) Upanishadic, (3) Darshanasroughly from Buddha to Shankara, (4) Puranic, (5) Bhagavataor the Age of Bhakti, and finally (6) the Tantric. The last does not mean that it is the latest revelation, the nearest to us in time, but that it represents a kind of complementary movement, it was there all along, for long at least, and in which the others find their fruition and consummation. We shall explain presently. The force of consciousness that came and moved and moulded the first and the earliest epoch was Revelation. It was a power of direct vision and occult will and cosmic perception. Its physical seat is somewhere behind and or just beyond the crown of the head: the peak of man's manifest being that received the first touch of Surya Savitri (the supreme Creative Consciousness) to whom it bowed down uttering the invocation mantra of Gayatri. The Ray then entered the head at the crown and illumined it: the force of consciousness that ruled there is Intuition, the immediate perception of truth and reality, the cosmic consciousness gathered and concentrated at that peak. That is Upanishadic knowledge. If the source and foundation of the Vedic initiation was occult vision, the Upanishad meant a pure and direct Ideation. The next stage in the coming down or propagation of the Light was when it reached further down into the brain and the philosophical outlook grew with rational understanding and discursive argumentation as the channel for expression, the power to be cultivated and the limb to be developed. The Age of the Darshanas or Systems of Philosophy started with the Buddha and continued till it reached its peak in Shankaracharya. The age sought to give a bright and strong mental, even an intellectual body to the spiritual light, the consciousness of the highest truth and reality. In the Puranic Age the vital being was touched by the light of the spirit and principally on the highest, the mental level of that domain. It meant the advent of the element of feeling and emotiveness and imagination into the play of the Light, the beginning of their reclamation. This was rendered more concrete and more vibrant and intense in the next stage of the movement. The whole emotional being was taken up into the travailing crucible of consciousness. We may name it also as the age of the Bhagavatas, god-lovers, Bhaktas. It reached its climax in Chaitanya whose physical passion for God denoted that the lower ranges of the vital being (its physical foundations) were now stirred in man to awake and to receive the Light. Finally remains the physical, the most material to be worked upon and made conscious and illumined. That was the task of the Tantras. Viewed in that light one can easily understand why especial stress was laid in that system upon the esoteric discipline of the five m's (pancha makra),all preoccupied with the handling and harnessing of the grossest physical instincts and the most material instruments. The Tantric discipline bases itself upon Nature Power coiled up in Matter: the release of that all-conquering force through a purification and opening into the consciousness of the Divine Mother, the transcendent creatrix of the universe. The dynamic materialising aspect of consciousness was what inspired the Tantras: the others forming the Vedantic line, on the whole, were based on the primacy of the static being, the Purusha, aloof and withdrawing.
The Indian consciousness, we say, presented the movement as an intensive and inner, a spiritual process: it dealt with the substance itself, man's very nature and sought to know it from within and shape it consciously. In Europe where the frontal consciousness is more stressed and valued, the more characteristic feature of its History is the unfoldment and metamorphosis of the forms and expressions, the residuary powers, as it were, of man's evolving personality, individual and social.
To sum up then. Man progresses through cycles of crest movements. They mark an ever-widening circle of the descent of Light, the growth of consciousness. Thus there is at first a small circle of elite, a few chosen people at the top, then gradually the limited aristocracy is widened out into a larger and larger democracy. One may describe the phenomenon in the Indian terms of the Four Orders. In the beginning there is the Brahminic culture, culture confined only to the highest and the fewest possible select representatives. Then came the wave of Kshatriya culture which found a broader scope among a larger community. In India, after the age of the Veda and the Upanishad, came the age of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata which was pre-eminently an age of Kshatriya-hood. In Europe too it was the bards and minstrels, sages and soothsayers who originally created, preserved and propagated the cultural movement: next came the epoch of the Arthurian legends, the age of chivalry, of knights and templars with their heroic code of conduct and high living. In the epoch that followed, culture was still further broad-based and spread to the Vaishya order. It is the culture of the bourgeoisie: it was brought about, developed and maintained by that class in society preoccupied with the production or earning of wealth. The economic bias of the literature of the period has often been pointed out. Lastly the fourth dimension of culture has made its appearance today when it seeks to be coterminous with the proletariate. With the arrival of the Sudra, culture has extended to the very base of the social pyramid in its widest commonalty.
04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
An animal does not separate itself from Nature, exteriorise it and then seek to fashion it as he wants, try to make it yield things he requires. Man is precisely man because he has just this sense of self and of not-self and his whole life is the conquest of the not-self by the self: this is the whole story of his evolution. In the early stages his sense of agency and selfhood is at its minimum. The rough-hewn flint instruments are symbolic of the first attempts of the brain to set its impress upon crude and brute nature. The History of man's artisanship, which is the History of his civilisation, is also the History of his growing self-consciousness. The consciousness in its attempt to react upon nature separated itself from Nature, and at first stood over against it and then sought to stand over and above it. In this process of extricating itself from the sheath in which it was involved and fused, it came back upon itself, became more and more aware of its freedom and individual identity and agency.
The question is now asked how far this self-consciousness given to man by his progress from stone to steelhas advanced and what is its future. The crucial problem is whether man has progressed in historical times. Granted that man with an iron tool is a more advanced type of humanity than man with a chipped stone tool, it may still be enquired whether he has made any real advance since the day he learnt to manipulate metal. If by advance or progress we mean efficiency and multiplication of tools, then surely there can be no doubt that Germany of today (perhaps now we have to say Germany of yesterday and America of today) is the most advanced type of humanityindeed they do make the claim in that country.
--
Jung speaks of two kinds or grades of thinking: (1) the directed thinking and (2) the wishful thinking; one conscious and objective, the other automatic and subjective. The first is the modern or scientific thinking, the second the old-world mythopoeic thinking. These two lines of mental movement mark off two definite stages in the cultural History of man. Down to the Middle Ages man's mental life was moved and coloured by his libidodesire soul; it is with the Renascence that he began to free his mind from, the libido and transfer and transform the libido into non-egoistic and realistic thinking. In simpler psychological terms we can say that man's mentality was coloured and modulated by his biological make-up out of which it had emerged; the age of modernism and scientism began with the development of a rigorous rationalism which means a severance and transcendence of the biological antecedent.
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.
04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness has a fourfold potential. The first is the normal consciousness, which is predominantly mental; it is the sphere comprising movements of which man is usually and habitually aware. It is what the Upanishad names Jgrat or jgaritasthna and characterises as bahipraja: it is the waking state and has cognition only of external things. In other words, the consciousness here is wholly objectivised, externalisedextrovert: it is also a strongly individualised formation, the consciousness is hedged in, isolated and contoured by a protective ring, as it were, of a characteristically separative personality; it is a surface formation, a web made out of day-to-day sensations and thoughts, perceptions and memories, impressions and associations. It is a system of outward actions and reactions against or in the midst of one's actual environment. The second potential is that of the Inner Consciousness: its characteristic is that the consciousness here is no longer trenchantly separative and individual, narrowly and rigidly egoistic. It feels and sees itself as part of or one with the world consciousness. It looks upon its individuality as only a wave of the universal movement. It is also sometimes called the subliminal consciousness; for it plays below or behind the normal surface range of consciousness. It is made up of the residuary powers of the normal consciousness, the abiding vibrations and stresses that settle down and remain in the background and are not immediately required or utilised for life purposes: also it contacts directly energies and movements that well out of the universal life. The phenomena of clairvoyance and clairaudience, the knowledge of the past and the future and of other worlds and persons and beings, certain more dynamic movements such as distant influence and guidance and controlling without any external means, well known in all yogic disciplines, are various manifestations of the power of this Inner Consciousness. But there is not only an outward and an inner consciousness; there is also a deeper or nether consciousness. This is the great field that has been and is being explored by modern psychologists. It is called the subconscious, sometimes also the unconscious: but really it should be named the inconscient, for it is not altogether devoid of consciousness, but is conscious in its own way the consciousness is involved or lost within itself or lies buried. It comprises those movements and impulsions, inclinations and dispositions that have no rational basis, on the contrary, have an irrational basis; they are not acquired or developed by the individual in his normal course of life experience, they are ingrained, lie imbedded in man's nature and are native to his original biological and physical make-up. As the human embryo recapitulates in the womb the whole History of man's animal evolution, even so the normal man, even the most civilised and apparently the farthest from his ancient moorings and sources, enshrines in his cells, in a miraculously living manner, the memory of vast geological epochs, the great struggles and convulsions through which earth and its inhabitants have passed, the basic urges of the crude life force, its hopes, fears, desires, hungers that constitute the rudimental and aboriginal consciousness, the atavism that links the man of today not only to his primitive ancestry but even to the plant worldeven perhaps to the mineral worldout of which his body cells have issued and evolved. Legends and fairy tales, mythologies and fables are a rationalised pattern and picture of the vibrations and urges that moved the original consciousness. It was a collectivea racial and an aboriginal consciousness. The same lies chromosomic, one can almost say, in the constitution of the individual man of today. This region of the unconscious (or the inconscient) is a veritable field of force: it lies at the root of all surface dynamisms. The surface consciousness, jgrat, is a very small portion of the whole, it is only the tip of the pyramid or an iceberg, the major portion lies submerged beyond our normal view. In reflex movements, in sudden unthinking outbursts, in dreams and day-dreams, this undercurrent is silhouetted and made visible and recognisable. Even otherwise, they exercise a profound influence upon all our conscious movements. This underground consciousness is the repository of the most dark and unenlightened elements that grew and flourished in the slime of man's original habitat. They are small, ugly, violent, anti-social, chaotic forces, their names are cruelty, lust, hunger, blind selfishness. Nowhere else than in this domain can the great Upanishadic truth find its fullest applicationHunger that is Death.
But this is the seamy side of Nature, there is also a sunny side. If there is a nadir, there must be a corresponding zenith. In the Vedic image, if man is born of the Dark Mother, he is also a child of the White Mother (ka and vet). Or again, if Earth is our mother, the Heaven is our fatherdyaur me pit mat pthiv iyam. In other words, consciousness extends not in depth alone, but in height alsoit is vertically extended, infinite both ways. As there is a sub-consciousness or unconsciousness, so also there is at the other end super-consciousness.
04.03 - The Eternal East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The East and the West are two recognised wings of humanity. Only the relation between them is somewhat in dispute. According to one view the two are quite separate and irreconcilable entities, because they embody two outlooks that are contradictory to each other. The other view is that they are not contradictory, however distinct they may be; they are complementary or supplementary to each other. The interaction between the two across the centuries recorded in History has been admitted and studied; it considerably influenced the growth and development of each in its line. Only the influence exerted some view with favour, others with disfavour. For some consider the mixture of influence, like that of blood, as a necessary condition of progress and creativity: others again are keen on maintaining, the purity of stock, the particular type of culture to which each is attached and any intrusion of a foreign vein they consider as a lowering, a degeneration of the type.
We all know the great difference between the East and the West that has been pointed out and accepted generally as true is that of the spiritual East and the worldly or materialist West. Crudely and categorically formulated the truth remains no longer true. There is a very large amount of worldliness in the East, on the one hand, and on the other, mystics and spiritual seekers or leaders are not a rare phenomenon in the West. However, it can be said and admitted as a fact that there is in the East an atmosphere that is predominantly spiritual and one can more easily come in contact with it; whereas in the West it is the mental and material culture that predominates and the approach to it is nearer and closer to man. The science of the Spirit has received greater attention in the East; it has been studied, experimented, organised, almost consummated there in a supreme manner. Even as the science of Matter has reached its apotheosis in the West.
--
As I have said, the History of mankind, as a matter of fact, the whole History of creation gives a graphic picture of the interaction of this double movement. There are ages and countries in which one or the other of the two takes precedence and special or exclusive emphasis. But the inner story is always a converging movement.
Parallel lines meet at infinity, each overpasses its own limit and touches and coalesces with the other.
04.04 - A Global Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We say then that the fraternity and unity of mankind has been a constant dream and aspiration, a settled ideal. And in the circumstances of today it is becoming more and mace evident that the idea is a secret fact of existence and that there is an overwhelming urge in Nature to bring it out and establish it as a manifest and concrete reality. If we review the History of mankind once again, not measuring it by its centuries but by its millenniums, not by its apparent habits and outward forms but by inner forces and attitudes, we shall discover that it is the story of the unfoldment of a collective fulfilment, of an ascension in grades of consciousness towards an ever higher and vaster truth and reality.
Viewed as a progressive growth of consciousness and transformation of nature, man's advance has been marked out in a few very definite stages. The first was the purely animal manPasuwhen man lived merely as a physical being, concerned solely about his body. Then came the Pisacha, the man of vital urges in their crudest form, the man of ignorant passions and dark instincts who has been imaged in the popular mind as the ghoul. At the next stage, with a further release of the consciousness, when the larger vital impulses come into play man becomes the Rakshasa, the demon. Egoistic hunger for possession, enjoyment, enlarged and increased appetite are his characteristics. Next came the Asura, the Titan, the egoistic mental man in his earlier avatar seeking to emerge out of the purely vital nature. Ambition and pride are his guiding spirit. Prometheus is his prototype. There are still two higher types which have been established in the human consciousness and in the world atmosphere as dynamic ideals, if not as common concrete facts of the material world. The first is the ethical man, who seeks to govern his life according to some principles of light and purity, such, for example, as unselfishness, altruism, chivalry, self-abnegation, rectitude, truthfulness etc. He is the Sattwic man, as known in India. There is also a still higher category, where consciousness endeavours to go beyond mind, enters into the consciousness of the Spirit; then we have the spiritual man, the saint and the sage. Beyond lie the supra-mental domains formed of the consciousness of the gods.
--
Humanity is evolving and developing the various groupings to manifest fundamental aspects of its cosmic person. Ancient Egypt, for example, brought us in contact with an occult world and a subliminal consciousness. We know also of the nature of the Hebraic genius, the moral fervour, the serious, almost grim spirit of Righteousness that formed and even now forms a major strain in the European or Christian culture and civilisation. The famous "sweetness and light" of the Hellenic mind supplied the other strain. The Roman genius for law and government is a well-known commonplace of History. Well-known also India's spirituality. All these modes of consciousness are elementsforces, energies and personalities that build up the godhead of humanity. Peoples and races in the past were the scattered limbs of the godhead-scattered and isolated from one another, because of the original unconsciousness and sharp egocentricity out of which Nature started its course of evolution. The disjecta membra are being collected together by a growing consciousness.
Such then is the destiny of man and mankindman to rise to higher heights of consciousness beyond mental reason that are not governed by the principle of division, separation, antithesis but by the principle of unity, identity, mutuality and totality. In other words, he will take his seat in the status of his soul, his inner and inmost being, his divine personality where he is one with all beings and with the world. This is a rare and difficult realisation for man as he is today, but tomorrow it will be his normal nature. The individual will live in his total being and therefore in and through other individuals; as a consequence the nature too in each will undergo a divine transmutation, a marvellous sea-change.
04.05 - The Immortal Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire must have been the original source of the inspiration that moved later on Spengler and Toynbee and others to posit a life-line for nations and races and mark its various stages of growth and evolution. The general theory put in a nutshell would be like this: mankind is composed of groups or aggregates of individuals and each has a life-History of its own even like an individual human being, in other words, an inescapable cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decline and disintegration. All groupspeoples; races, nationshave to pass through these destined stages, although, naturally, at different times and with a varying tempo. The view implies two conclusions or rather postulates:(l) that whatever is born must die, there is no resurrection or rejuvenation, neither in the individual nor in the collective life and (2) that humanity remains on the whole more or less the same, there is no global progress: there is no continued march forward towards a kingdom of heaven upon earth, even as there has not been a decline and deterioration from some Golden Age in the past.
Is this so, in point of fact or is it bound to be so, in point of theory? What are the facts? There are at least two human groups or peoples extant that seem to point to a different conclusion. I speak of China and especially of India. Egypt and Greece and Rome, the Minoans, the early Mesopotamians had their day. They rose, they lived, they died and are no more. But India and China, although almost contemporaneous with any of those earliest civilisations, have not vanished; they continue still today. In respect of India at least it cannot be said that she is not today, is totally different from what she was in her Vedic epoch or even in her Harappa and Mohenjo-daro days, in the sense that modern Egypt is not the Egypt of the Pharaohs, nor the Greece of Venizelos the Greece of Pericles.
--
It is about the life-span of peoples. The life-span of peoples is not uniform: it differs with different peoples and differs considerably. The Spanish or Portuguese hegemony in modern Europe was after all rather briefa matter of one century or twoin comparison with the lease enjoyed by Rome or Greece. Indeed it might seem that the older the nation the longer it lived. Take, for example, the oldest nation recognized as such in History, Egypt; her life-span is to be measured not by centuries but by millenniums. The Hellenic civilisation that succeeded the Egyptian did not last as long and yet it lasted more than its own successor, the Roman, did. How was it then the more ancient people resisted more successfully the forces of decline and disintegration? What was it that made the later and younger nations less successful in the battle of life?
Another fact. The Asiatic peoples or nations endured generally longer than their European brethren. I have spoken of India and China, I may now refer to Persia, the old Persia that has a glorious story to tell for more than a thousand years (from Cyrus to the last of the Sassanides) ending or suffering a sea-change with the advent of the Arabs. The Arabs themselves and also the Hebrews were likewise long-lived peoples, although both of them have this especial characteristic that theirs is not a land-locked civilisation, that is to say, they were not peoples wedded to their own land, a mother-country of their own, theirs was a peripatetic genius which went abroad and sought to make their own or make themselves over to and enter into other countries and other cultures. Perhaps this is their way of securing a long life.
--
One may note three or four crises, practically rebirths, in India's life History. They correspond roughly with the great racial infiltrations or what is described as such by anthropologists, what others may describe as operations of blood transfusion. There was an original autochthonous people, the early humanity out of the stone age, usually called proto-Dravidians, whose remnants are still found among the older and cruder aboriginal tribes. Then the Dravidian infusion which culminated in the humanity, the Indian humanity, of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Next the Aryan avatar. One usually begins Indian History with the Dravido-Aryan civilisation which is taken as the basic foundation, the general layout of the whole structure. The first shock or blow the edifice received was from the Greeks and then the Huns and Scythians the Tartars something that struck at the most essential element of Indian culture and character. Psychologically the new leaven was brought in and injected by Gautama Buddha the un-Vedic Buddha the external invasion and penetration was possible because of this opening already made from within. This injection was necessary as an antidote to the decline and fall that had set in sometime between the passing of Sri Krishna and the advent of Buddha. But traditional India absorbed this new leaven and came out with a renewed and enriched personality. The next major shaking came with the Islamic inundation. This meant or would have meant a great and even catastrophic reversal, but this too in the course of centuries succeeded only in invigorating and enlarging the life and consciousness of eternal India. The last and perhaps the most dangerous assault came from the Europeans, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and finally, most of all, from the British. An absolutely matter-of-fact vitalistic Europe overran and overwhelmed a predominantly otherworldly spirit and almost succeeded in obliterating that spirit and replacing it by a replica of its own life-pattern and Weltanschauung. Even such a blow India could survive, not only so, could utilise it for her own purpose, for the greater fulfilment of her mission in life. She is coming out of that ordeal a towering personality, a godhead for the remoulding of humanity and earth-life.
It may be argued that all nations and peoples are a mixture of various races and foreign strands which are gradually, soldered and unified together in course of time. The British nation, for example, is built upon a base of Celtic blood and culture (the original Briton), to which were added one by one the German (Angles and the Saxon), the Danish, the French. But what is to be noted is that the resultant is at the end some-thing very different from the start something unrecognisable when compared with the original pattern and genius. The resultant seems to be arrived at not by a gradual evolution and continuous transformation but by disparate echelons or , breaks, as it were, in the line. In France also or in Italy the growth and the unification were achieved through violent revolutions, eruptions and irruptions. In the former, a Gaelic and Iberian base and in the latter an Etruscan were all but swept off by the Roman rule which again saw its end at the hand of the Barbarians. The History of Greece offers a typical picture of the destiny of these peoples. Her life-line is sundered completely at three different epochs giving us not one but three different personalities or peoples: at the outset there was the original classical Greece, then the first and milder although sufficiently serious break came with the Roman conquest; the second catastrophic change was wrought by the Goths and Vandals which was stabilised in the Byzantine Empire and the third avatar appeared with the Turkish regime. At the present time, she is acquiring another life and body.
Indeed, viewed from this angle, the whole conscious personality of Europe seems to have been cut across by such hiatuses, two or three of them of a serious kind. Upon a primitive and mythologic stratum was laid the Grco-Roman and then there was a strong Hebraic or Old Testament influence, finally the known Christian or New Testament element; to that must be added the modern New Enlightenment, that is to say, of Science and Rationalism and Materialism. These several strands have not been welded or harmonised together very well. They are very often at variance with each other and combating each other. It is this schizophrenia that lies at the bottom of European malady. Europe has not been able to develop a wholly unified or one-pointed spiritual personality. On the other hand, it has developed very well-defined and sharply separated nations in its bosom, a sign and resultant of the lack of complete integration. India has some-times been spoken of as a continent consisting of many and varied nations, and not as a unified nation, she being more like Europe than a particular nation like England or France. We may answer that India possesses a more unified soul than Europe and that is why her sub-nations do not stand out in any intransigent separativeness like the nations in Europe. Even Asia possesses a more unified and integrated soul-personality than Europe; for, as I have said, her peoples stand upon a deeper strand of life and consciousness, something that is in contact with and is inspired by the Spiritual truth and reality. It is more so in India, where one has the very emblem and exemplar of this spiritual unity and the spiritual personality that derives from there.
05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the old world, before Science was born, sufficient distinction or discrimination was not made between the observer and the observed. The observer mixed himself up or identified himself with what he observed and the result was not a scientific statement but a poetic description. Personal feelings, ideas, judgments entered into the presentation of facts and the whole mass passed as truth, the process often being given the high-sounding name of Intuition, Vision or Revelation but whose real name is fancy. And if there happened to be truth off act somewhere, it was almost by chance. Once we thought of the eclipse being due to the greed of a demon, and pestilence due to the evil eye of a wicked goddess. The universe was born out of an egg, the cosmos consisted of concentric circles of worlds that were meant to reward the virtuous and punish the sinner in graded degrees. These are some of the very well-known instances of pathetic fallacy, that is to say, introducing the element of personal sentiment in our appreciation of events and objects. Even today Nazi race History and Soviet Genetics carry that unscientific prescientific tradition.
Science was born the day when the observer cut himself aloof from the observed. Not only so, not only he is to stand aside, outside the field of observation and be a bare recorder, but that he must let the observed record itself, that is, be its own observer. Modern Science means not so much the observer narrating the story of the observed but the observed telling its own story. The first step is well exemplified in the story of Galileo. When hot discussion was going on and people insisted on sayingas Aristotle decided and common sense declared that heavier bodies most naturally fall quicker from a height, it was this prince of experimenters who straightaway took two different weights, went up the tower of Pisa and let them drop and astounded the people by showing that both travel with equal speed and fall to the ground at the same time.
05.08 - An Age of Revolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Well, it is now found that they do not do so. However same or similar constitutionally, each unit is sui generisand its movement cannot be predicted. That movement does not depend upon its mass or store of energy or its position in a pattern, as a wholly mechanistic conception would demand: it is something incalculable, one should say even, erratic. In a radioactive substance, the particle that is shot out, becomes active, cannot be predetermined by any calculation, even if that is due to a definitely and precisely arranged bombardment. So we have come to posit a principle of uncertainty, as a very fundamental law of Nature. It practically declares that the ultimate particle is an autonomou unit, it is an' individual, almost a personality, and seems to have a will of its own. A material unit acts very much like a biological unit: it does not obey mechanically, answer mechanically as an automaton, but seems to possess a capacity for choice, for assent or refusal, for a free determination. The mechanistic view presented is due to an average functioning. The phenomenon has been explained by a very apt image. It is like an army. A group of soldiers, when they are on parade, look all similar and geometrically patterned: each is just like another and all move and march in the same identical manner. But that' is when you look at the whole, the collectivity, but looked individually, each one regains his separate distinct personality, each having his own nature and character, his own unique History: there no two are alike, each is non pareil and behaves differently, incalculably.
That is how we have been led almost to the threshold of a will, of a life principle, of a consciousness, however rudimentary, imbedded in the heart of Matter. All the facts that are now cropping up, the new discoveries that are being made and which we have to take into cognisance lead inevitably towards such a conclusion. Without such a conclusion a rational co-ordination of all the data of experience is hardly possible. A physical scientist may not feel justified to go beyond the purely physical data, but the implications of even such data, the demand for a fair hypothesis that can harmonise and synthesise them are compelling even a physicist to become a psychologist and a metaphysician.
05.22 - Success and its Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Yoga brings in a different line and scheme of life. For it is built upon soul-consciousness, upon Divine Nature which means another History of individual destiny. Even then tranquillity and self-confidence are at the basis of a Yogic life also and a new degree of modesty and humility.
***
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.
05.33 - Caesar versus the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But then, it may be asked, how is it that in the History of the world we find men of action, great dynamic personalities to be mostly not spiritual but rather mundane in their character and outlook? Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Chandragupta, Akbar, even Shivaji, were not spiritual personalities; their actions were of the world and of worldly nature. And the force they wielded cannot be described as spiritual, and yet how effective it was, what mighty changes it brought about in the affairs of men! And do we not actually see in the lives of saints and true spiritual souls that the force of the spirit, if force it can be called, moves away from the field of dynamism, turns towards a plane or height where all incentives and impulses to action fall silent and vanish in the end? The spiritual force is applied to negate all mundane activity, to get out of the profane field of life. That is the skill of Yoga referred to in the Gita, that is how we are to understand the injunction to see "inaction in action", and "action in inaction".
Now there are several things to be distinguished here. First of all, even if it is accepted as true that in the past it is worldly men alone who were dynamically active in the world and that spiritual men were men of inaction whose role was to withdraw from the world, at least to be passive and indifferent with regard to mundane activities, that does not prove that it is an eternal truth and it is bound to be so ever and always. We must remember, if we admit the evolutionary character of Nature, of man and his growth and fulfilment, that spirituality in one of its forms at an early stage is and should be a movement of withdrawal, of diminishing dynamism in the sense of an "introversion". For when man still lives mostly in the vital domain and is full of the crude life urge, when the animal is still dominant in him (as the Tantrik discipline also points out), then a rigorous asceticism and self-denial is needed for the purification and sublimation of the nature. At that stage powers and dynamic capacities that often develop in the course of such discipline should also be carefully avoided and discarded; for they are more likely to bring down the consciousness to the ordinary level. But if that were the procedure and principle in the past, one need not eternise it into the present and the future. We Believe mankinda good part of mankind in its inner consciousness has advanced sufficiently on the vital level as to be able to give a new turn to his life and follow a different course of development. If he has not totally outgrown the animal, at least some higher element has been superimposed on it or infused into it and he can very well find the fulcrum of his nature in this superior station and order a new pattern of values and way of becoming. In other words, he need no longer altogether shun or avoid the so-called inferior forces the physico-vitalin him, but try to control and utilise them for higher diviner purposes in the world, upon the earth. For the earth embodies after all the crucial complex. Whatever is to be done in the end has to be done here, effected and established here. The withdrawal was needed for a purification and husbanding of the forces so that they may be brought forth and applied at the proper time and place, it is reculer pour mieux sauter, to fall back in order to leap forward all the better.
06.01 - The End of a Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Therefore misery stalks large upon the earth. Nothing com-parable to it, either in quality or quantity, can History offer as an example. Man finds no remedy for his ills, he does not dare to hope for any. He feels he is being irretrievably drawn into the arms of the Arch-enemy.
Perhaps it was necessary that it should be so. A pralaya, a Deluge has to be there to end an epoch and begin a new one. Indeed the civilisation that man has built up over the millenniums, that has reached its culmination in modern scientism, whatever gifts it might have brought to him, however great and powerful and beautiful it might have been at its best in its own sphere, still it had and was a limitation, acted as a deterrent to a further leap and progress of the consciousness. It is the humanistic cycle that has reigned, from ancient Greece down to modern America. Is it not time that another consciousness should intervene, other gods make their appearance?
06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nothing has he learned from Time and its History;
Even as of old in the raw youth of Time,
06.15 - Ever Green, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Integral Realisation A Page of Occult History
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SixEver Green
--
The Integral Realisation A Page of Occult History
06.16 - A Page of Occult History, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:06.16 - A Page of Occult History
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
--
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SixA Page of Occult History
A Page of Occult History
At the beginning of creation, four individual formations the first personalitiesmade their appearance. There were: (1) a Being of Light or Consciousness, (2) a Being of Truth or Reality, (3) a Being of Love or Ananda and (4) a Being of Life. And the first law of creation was freedom of decision. These Beings were manifestations in the free movement of the Divine; they themselves moved free, according to their individualised conscious will. They stood out, as if in bold relief, on the background of the Divine Existence. For originally, although they differentiated themselves from each other and from the Divine, yet they formed a unified harmony and lived and moved and had their being as different members of the same divine Body. At first they stood out, but still essentially and apparently linked on to their fount and origin. Soon, however, they stood out no longer on the Divine, but moved out of him, away and separate; they sought to fulfil their individualised will and destiny. The Divine did not impose its will or force these individualities to turn round: that would frustrate the very purpose of creation. He allowed these independent beings to enjoy their full independence, although they were born out of him and essential part and parcel of his own being. They went abroad on a journey of adventure, each carving out its own line of growth and fulfilment. The first fruit, the inevitable reaction of freedom was precisely, as is just said, a separation from the Divine, each one encircled within its ego, limited and bound to its own fund of potency: individualism means limitation. Now, once separated, the connection with the source snapped, that is to say in the outward activity, in dynamic movement or becoming (not in essential being), the Four Independents lapsed into their opposites: Light changed to Darkness, i.e. conscious-ness to unconsciousness, Truth changed to Falsehood, Delight changed to Pain and Suffering, and Life changed to Death. That is how the four undivine principles, the Powers of the Undivine came to rule and fashion the material creation.
Into the heart of this Darkness and Falsehood and Pain and Death, a seed was sown, a grain that is to be the epitome and symbol of material creation and in and through which the Divine will claim back all the elements gone astray, the prodigal ones who will return to recognise and fulfil the Divine. That was Earth. And the earth, in her turn, in her labour towards the Divine Fulfilment, out of her bosom, threw up a being who would again symbolise and epitomise the earth and material creation. That is Man. For, man came with the soul in him, the Psychic Being, the Divine Flame, the spark of consciousness in the midst of universal unconsciousness, a miniature of the original Divine Light-Truth-Love-Life. In the meantime, to help the evolution, to join hands with the aspiring soul in the human being, there was created, on the defection of the First Lords the Asuric Quaternitya second hierarchy of luminous beingsDevas, gods. (Some-thing of this inner History of the world is reflected in the Greek legend of struggle between the Titans and the Olympians.) These gods, however, being a latter creation, perhaps because they were young and inexperienced, could not cope immediately with their strong Elders. It is why we see in the mythological legends the gods very often worsted at the hands of the Asuras: Indra hiding under the sea, Zeus threatened often with defeat and disaster. It is only an intervention from the Supreme (the Greeks called it Fate) that saved them in the end and restored the balance.
However, the Asuras came to think better of the game and consented to use their freedom on the side of the Divine, for the fulfilment of the Divine; that is to say, they agreed to conversion. Thus they took birth as or in human beings, so that they may be in contact with the human soulPsychewhich is the only door or passage to the Divine in this material world. But the matter was not easy; the process was not straight. For, even agreeing to be converted, even basking in the sunshine of the human psyche, these incorrigible Elders could not forget or wholly give up their old habit and nature. They now wanted to work for the Divine Fulfilment in order to magnify themselves thereby; they consented to serve the Divine in order to make the Divine serve them, utilise the Divine End for their own purposes. They wished to see the new creation after their own heart's desire.
06.17 - Directed Change, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A Page of Occult History Value of Gymnastics Mental or Other
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SixDirected Change
06.24 - When Imperfection is Greater Than Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A perfected consciousness is attained in the highest status of being, when it is full of light and delight, peace and purity, one with the Divine Consciousness. Such a Consciousness, when it comes down upon earth in its original unmixed clarity, lives as a foreign element and has no real contact with the world; it can have only a very indirect influence upon men and things. If the perfect, the Divine Consciousness has to be truly effective, has to change human and world nature, it must put on partially at least that nature; it must share in the imperfection of ignorance so that it can show how that imperfection can be dealt with and transformed. The Divine has to become human, even the ordinary human, in a sense, in the outward instrumental aspect, to a greater or lesser degree as needed, so that He may come in living contact with the obscure lower consciousness and put His light into it and gradually purify and illumine it. If, however, the consciousness retains its fullness of power and light makes its appearance as such, it may dazzle and overwhelm, as a meteor miracle, but leave nothing substantial behind. This is what has happened in the past of man's History. The saints and sages, the greatest and the most genuine among them, mostly dwelt apart from humanity in consciousness and even away from human contact; the earth could not profit wholly by their example.
Therefore the Mother says in her Prayers and Meditations that having gone beyond all desires still she had to live in the midst of desires; she had no choice of her own, no preference, no attachment, no need of anything, yet she was put in the conditions of very ordinary life, the normal human life; she had to deal with the common man, handle the small insignificant objects of material existence. In one part of her being she had to identify herself with ignorance and obscurity, so much so that even the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness the conscient and the inconscientwas for a time obliterated. Naturally, the inmost being in its inner self remained always calm, luminous, inviolable, but it put around itself this body of ordinary nature to meet its ordinary reactions and through them gradually to uplift and train it to manifest and incarnate the inmost divine.
07.01 - Realisation, Past and Future, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But there is a kind of Grace that comes to your help. If a scientist had again to go over all the experiments that have been done, all that others have found in the past in his line in order to make a further progress, to come to a new discovery, then he will have to pass his whole life in repeating the past and will have no time left for anything else. The scientist just opens instead a book or consults another person who is conversant with the past and gets all the knowledge he re-quires of it. Sri Aurobindo wanted to do something like that in the spiritual domain. He asks you to gather the experience of the past,it is all there recorded in earth's History, and pass on; basing yourself upon that, you rise up to still higher ranges.
You may pertinently ask, however, why we have not started with overmental beings; we should have had here, say, Vivekanandas only and not ordinary frail human creatures.
07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the embryo tracked the History of forms,
And the genealogy framed of all that lives.
07.05 - This Mystery of Existence, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The World Serpent Record of World-History
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SevenThis Mystery of Existence
--
The World Serpent Record of World-History
07.06 - Record of World-History, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:07.06 - Record of World-History
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
--
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SevenRecord of World-History
Record of World-History
All that has happened upon earth, everything from the beginning of creation till now, everything without exception has been recorded somewhere in some particular world or region of consciousness. All that man has thought, his researches and discoveries, his findings and conclusions are kept intact, carefully stored. If you want to know anything of the past History of the earth, the happening at a particular time and place, you have simply to transplant yourself into that world and look into the records.
It is a very curious place, something like a vast library. It consists of an infinite number of cells, as it were, each containing all information on a particular subject. They seem to be squares in shape and they remain closed normally. If you have to consult a particular square, you press a button and it opens and out of it comes a roll of written matter. You unroll it and find out what you want. There are millions and millions and millions of these cells and rolls, around, above, every-where. Fortunately in the mental world you can move any-where as you like, you do not require lifts and ladders to go up.
07.07 - Freedom and Destiny, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Record of World-History The Divine Truth Its Name and Form
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SevenFreedom and Destiny
--
Record of World-History The Divine Truth Its Name and Form
07.38 - Past Lives and the Psychic Being, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is a being who is completely identified with his psychic, who has organised his whole person, in all its parts, around this centre, in fact, a being of one piece, entirely and solely turned to the Divine that can alone remember or hold in his consciousness something like a totality of his personal History. For in his case even when the body drops, the other parts being integrated and taken up into the soul substance maintain their individual existence; the personality formed around the psychic continues to exist with its memory intact: even it can pass from one life to another without losing the consciousness.
A psychic memory has a very definite character; it has a wonderful intensity. It stores the unforgettable moments of life, those when the consciousness was most luminous, most powerful, most active. They are the happiest and the most fortunate moments of life. But they cannot be spoken about.
08.15 - Divine Living, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But we can also say that it is something more divine than what has been manifested before. For the Infinity is there; that has no limit. Thus there will always be a growing perfection. What appears to us as imperfect today must have appeared as something perfect to which certain epochs of History yearned and aspired.
And there is no reason why the movement should stop. If it stopped it would mean an end of thingsa new pralaya.
08.16 - Perfection and Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The people who were announcing the good news from the beginning of time must have been the best informed of men. And I tell you that since the beginning of earth History, Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great earthly transformations, under one form or another, one name or another. And if he came this time and said this is the final, then it must be the final. Perhaps he knows.
In that case, if this time it is final, then those who are ready or make themselves ready will naturally be the people who start first on the new path. There will be many such, I hope. But my own standpoint here is this: even if the thing has only half a chance of materialising it is worth the trouble. I think I have told you more than once that a moment comes in the life of many when life as it is, human consciousness as it is, becomes absolutely unbearable, creating only disgust and repulsion; one does not wish to continue it any longer, one can only throw all effort, all force, all life and soul into this single chance, into this singular opportunity given at last, so that one may pass on to the other side. What a relief, to set one's foot on a road that takes you elsewhere! It is worth the trouble of throwing behind all your burdens, freeing yourself of all loads so that you may leap all the better. This is how I look at the thing. It is the sublimest of adventures; if you have in you the true spirit of adventure in the least, you will feel it is worth risking all for all. But they who fear and hesitate, who ask, "Am I not giving away my prey for the shadow?"a most stupid saying, according to methey who are more for profiting by what they possess than for risking to lose all in the hope of something that may or may not happen tomorrow, I assure you, such people will not notice the change even if it happens right under their nose. They will say, "It is all right, we do not care, there is nothing to regret." Quite possibly; but after all, they might have to regret, we do not know.
09.05 - The Story of Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Love comes from the very origin of the universe. Love in its essence, I say, that is, before the manifestation, is the delight of identity. Something there was which became conscious of the identity. And that is precisely Love. Afterwards comes the manifestation of Love. In its highest form, when it comes back to its origin across all its History of manifestation, it becomes the felicity of union. The sense of union comes as a consequence of the sense of separation. The passage through the whole manifested universe gives the sense of separation from the origin and the return to the origin is the felicity of reunionunion of two things which were separated and are united again. That is Love in its great circuit of manifestation.
When it climbs back to its origin, it returns to the starting point with something more than what it had before it started. It is the experience of the universe and universality. Fundamentally, that is the reason for the existence of creation. Consciousness would not be what it is had it not been expressed in a creation. There is an enrichment of consciousness through the experience gathered in an objective universe, a richness of content and a plenitude it would not have if there were not a manifested universe.
100.00 - Synergy, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
score of such man-made battleships recurrent in the split-second History of
humans on infinitesimally minor Earth.171.00 All the fundamental nuclear simplexes of the 92 inherently
1.007 - Initial Steps in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We have a wrong notion about everything, including our own self. And with this wrong notion we go headlong into such a serious practice as is meditation because, just as a small sand particle getting stuck in the eye causes us annoyance, so too a little mistake in the beginning will loom large and become a serious obstacle in the end a factor which can be studied from the History of institutions and the lives of saints, sages and sadhakas. These small mistakes look like normal things, and not serious obstacles, because they do not stand against us. They appear to be unconcerned externals; but there is no such thing as an unconcerned external. Every external is connected with us, and the very fact of our perception of it will be enough reason why it can take action, for or against us, one day or the other.
So, we have to chalk out very carefully, as in a spiritual diary, the little mistakes that a person can commit by injudicious thinking, irrational analysis of conditions due to a false view of life, a false judgement of things, and due to a woeful lack of knowledge of human nature and psychology. These are the difficulties that arise due to ignorance of the true nature of things that drives us into committing small mistakes, which will stand before us like devils one day and prevent us from going further. These mistakes must be avoided, and we have to consider them in some detail.
10.07 - The World is One, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Coming next to Mind, the unity here too, is quite marked, clearly discernible. There is only one Mind that rules the myriad mentalities of this world. Thoughts and ideas are not in reality personal creations, they are various formulations of the one universal Mind; they enter into and possess individual minds as receptacles, and no doubt in the process undergo particular modifications in their general character. It is a very common experience to see the same or very similar ideas and thoughts expressed by individuals (or groups) living far from each other, having practically no mutual contact. We have known of "independent discoveries" of the same truth or fact and innumerable instances of this kind has History provided for us. It is not a freak of nature that we find Socrates and Buddha and Confucius as contemporaries. Contemporaries also were India's Akbar, England's Elizabeth and Italy's Leo X. Also the year 1905 has been known as Annus Mirabilis, a year of seminal importance the sowing of the seed of a new earth-lifesignificant for the whole human race, for the East and for the West, particularly for India, for Japan, for Russia and even for England. And today's world has indeed become a world of compact unity in human achievement and also alas, in human distress!
Now if one goes to the very source, the very root of the matter, the cardinal fact of unity is that of the supreme Consciousness, the original oneness of the one Divine Existence. It is the Ultimate One, inviolate, inviolableekam sat. That unity is transferred or translated or imaged on all the levels and strands of creation. That is the basic reality that holds together all tiered multiplicities. True, there has been side by side a movement of aberration, denial, disjunction in the multiple formulations and translations of the One. A reunion remains to be achieved conveying and embodying the basic unity.
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Indeed, I want you to go even further; make sure of what is meant by even the simplest words. Trace the History of the word with the help of Skeat's Etymological Dictionary. E.g. "pretty" means tricky, deceitful; on the other hand, "hussy" is only "housewife." It's amusing, too, this "tabby" refers to Prince Attab, the grandson of Ommeya the silk quarter of Baghdad where utabi, a rich watered silk was sold. This will soon give you the power of discerning instantly when words are being used to hide meaning or lack of it.
About AA, etc.: your resolution is noble, but there is a letter ready for you which deals with what is really a legitimate enquiry; necessary, too, with so many hordes of "Hidden Masters" and "Mahatmas" and so on scurrying all over the floor in the hope of distracting attention from the inanities of their trusted henchmen.
1.00b - INTRODUCTION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
two or three thousand years of religious History, that the ultimate Reality is not
clearly and immediately apprehended, except by those who have made themselves
1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Here we touch upon a hidden mystery, of which the solution lies revealed for those who seek, in the fact that human beings and certain groups of devas are no longer found upon the Moon. Man has not ceased to exist upon the Moon because it is dead and cannot therefore support his life, but the Moon is dead because man and these deva groups have been removed from off its surface and from its sphere of influence. [xli]41 Man and the devas act on every planet as intermediaries, or as transmitting agencies. Where they are not found, then certain great activities become impossible, and disintegration sets in. The reason for this removal lies in the cosmic Law of Cause and Effect, or cosmic karma, and in the composite, yet individual, History of that one of the Heavenly Men Whose body, the Moon or any other dead planet at any time happened to be.
3. The prana of forms.
--
Hence, when the pranic vehicle is working perfectly in all three groups, human, planetary and solar, the union with latent fire will be accomplished. Here lies [103] the reason for the emphasis laid on the necessity for building pure, refined physical vehicles. The more refined and rarefied the form, the better a receiver of prana will it be, and the less will be the resistance found to the uprising of kundalini at the appointed time. Coarse matter and crude immature physical bodies are a menace to the occultist, and no true seer will be found with a body of a gross quality. The dangers of disruption are too great, and the menace of disintegration by fire too awful. Once in the History of the race (in Lemurian days) this was seen in the destruction of the race and the continents by means of fire. [xlvi]45 The Guides of the race at that time availed Themselves of just this very thing to bring about the finish of an inadequate form. The latent fire of matter (as seen in volcanic display, for instance) and the radiatory fire of the system were combined. Planetary kundalini and solar emanation rushed into conjunction, and the work of destruction was accomplished. The same thing may again be seen, only in matter of the second ether, and the effects therefore will be less severe owing to the rarity of this ether and the comparatively greater refinement of the vehicles.
We might here note a fact of interest, though of a mystery insoluble as yet to most of us, and that is, that these destructions by fire are part of the tests by fire of an initiation of that one of the Heavenly Men Whose karma is bound up with our earth.
1.00d - DIVISION D - KUNDALINI AND THE SPINE, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The merging of the fires of matter is the result of evolutionary growth, when left to the normal, slow development that time alone can bring. The junction of the two fires of matter is effected early in the History of man, and is the cause of the rude health that the clean-living, high-thinking man should normally enjoy. When the fires of matter have passed (united) still further along the etheric spinal channel they contact the fire of manas as it radiates from the throat centre. Clarity of thought is here essential, and it will be necessary to elucidate somewhat this rather abstruse subject.
1. The three major head centres (from the physical standpoint) are the:
1.00 - Introduction to Alchemy of Happiness, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
It has been reserved to our own times to obtain a more intimate acquaintance with Ghazzali, and this chiefly by means of a translation by M. Pallia, into French, of his Confessions, wherein he announces very clearly his philosophical views; and from an essay on his writings by M. Smolders. In consequence, Mr. Lewes, who in his first edition of the Biographical History of Philosophy, found no place for Ghazzali, is induced in his last edition, from the evidenee which that treatise contains that he was one of the controlling minds of his age, to devote an entire section to an exhibition of his opinions in the same series with Abclard and Bruno, and to make him the typical figure to represent Arabian philosophy. For a full account of Ghazzali's [7] school of philosophy, we refer to his History and to the two essays, just mentioned. We would observe, very briefly however, that like most of the learned Mohammedans of his age, he was a student of Aristotle. While they regarded all the Greek philosophers as infidels, they availed themselves of their logic and their principles of philosophy to maintain, as far possible, the dogmas of the Koran. Ghazzali's mind possessed however Platonizing tendencies, and he affiliated himself to the Soofies or Mystics in his later years. He was in antagonism with men who to him appeared, like Avicenna, to exalt reason above the Koran, yet he himself went to the extreme limits of reasoning in his endeavors to find an intelligible basis for the doctrines of the Koran, and a philosophical basis for a holy rule of life. His character, and moral and intellectual rank are vividly depicted in the following extract from the writings of Tholuck, a prominent leader of the modern Evangelical school of Germany.
"Ghazzali," says Tholuck, "if ever any man have deserved the name, was truly a divine, and he may justly he placed on a level with Origen, so remarkable was he for learning and ingenuity, and gifted with such a rare faculty for the skillful and worthy exposition of doctrine. All that is good, noble and sublime, which his great soul had compassed, he bestowed upon Mohammedanism; and he adorned the doctrines of the Koran with so much piety and learning, that, in the form given them by him, they seem in my opinion worthy the assent of Christians. Whatsoever was most excellent in the philosophy of Aristotle or in the Soofi mysticism, he discreetly adapted to the Mohammedan theology. From every school, he sought the [8] means of shedding light and honor upon religion; while his sincere piety and lofty conscientiousness imparted to all his writings a sacred majesty. He was the first of Mohammedan divines." (Bibliotheca Sacra, vi, 233).
--
This treatise on the Alchemy of Happiness, or Kimiai Saadet, seems well adapted to extend our knowledge of the writings of Ghazzali and of the opinions current then and now in the Oriental world. Although it throws no light on any questions of geography, philology or political History, objects most frequently in view in translations from the Oriental languages, yet a book which exhibits with such plainness the opinions of so large a portion of the human race as the Mohammedans, on questions of philosophy, practical morality and religion, will always be as interesting to the general reader and to a numerous class of students, as the facts that may be elicited to complete a series of kings in a dynasty or to establish the site of an ancient city can be to the historian or the geographer. I translate it from an edition published in Turkish in 1845 (A. H., 1260), at the imperial printing press in Constantinople. [9] As no books are allowed to be printed there which have not passed under the eyes of the censor, the doctrines presented in the book indicate, not only the opinions of eight hundred years since, but also what views are regarded as orthodox, or tolerated among the orthodox at the present day. It has been printed also in Persian at Calcutta.
In form, the book contains a treatise on practical piety, but as is the case with a large proportion of Mohammedan works, the author, whatever may be his subject, finds a place for observations reaching far wide of his apparent aim, so our author is led to make many observations which develop his notions in anatomy, physiology, natural philosophy and natural religion. The partisans of all sorts of opinions will be interested in finding that a Mohammedan author writing so long since in the centre of Asia, had occasion to approve or condemn so many truths, speculations or fancies which are now current among us with the reputation of novelty. Many of the same paradoxes and problems that startle or fascinate in the nineteenth century are here discussed. He came in contact, among his contemporaries, with persons who made the same general objections to natural and revealed religion, as understood by Mohammedans, as are in our days made to Christianity, or who perverted and abused the religion which they professed for their own ends, in the same manner as Christianity is abused among us. And he engaged with earnestness now truthfully, and now erroneously, in refuting these men. His usual stand-point in discussion is equally removed from the most extravagant mysticism, and literal and formal orthodoxy. He attempts a dignified blending of reason [10] and faith, requiring of his fellow men unfeigned piety in the temper and tone of an evangelical Christian. He reminds his readers, in these discourses, that they are not Mussulmans if they are satisfied with merely a nominal faith, and treats with scorn those who are spiritualists only in language and dress.
1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
hoped to emulate the socialist leaders. The left wing had a long and honorable History in Canada, and
attracted some truly competent and caring people. However, I could not generate much respect for the
--
junior college, where I was introduced to the History of political philosophy. When I moved to the main
campus at the University of Alberta, however, my interest disappeared.. I was taught that people were
--
History is just a madhouse
its turned over all the stones
--
insane, and something strange and frightening was happening in my head. James Joyce said, History is a
nightmare from which I am trying to awake.6 For me, History literally was a nightmare. I wanted above all
else at that moment to wake up, and make my terrible dreams go away.
--
or blindly ignored, leads logically into the depths of religious phenomenology. The History of religion in
its widest sense (including therefore mythology, folklore, and primitive psychology) is a treasure-house
1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
There is, however, one form of miracle which certainly happens, the influence of the genius. There is no known analogy in Nature. One cannot even think of a super-dog transforming the world of dogs, whereas in the History of mankind this happens with regularity and frequency. Now here are three super-men, all at loggerheads.
What is there in common between Christ, Buddha, and Mohammed? Is there any one point upon which all three are in accord?
No point of doctrine, no point of ethics, no theory of a hereafter do they share, and yet in the History of their lives we find one identity amid many diversities.
Buddha was born a Prince, and died a beggar.
--
History will not help us to solve the problem; for History is silent.
We have only the accounts given by the men themselves.
--
The History of Christianity shows precisely the same remarkable fact. Jesus Christ was brought up on the fables to the Old Testament, and so was compelled to ascribe his experiences to Jehovah, although his gentle spirit could have had nothing in common with the monster who was always commanding the rape of virgins and the murder of little children, and whose rites were then, and still are, celebrated by human sacrifice.1
Similarly the visions of Joan of Arc were entirely Christian; but she, like all the others we have mentioned, found somewhere the force to do great things. Of course, it may be said that there is a fallacy in the argument; it may be true that all these great people saw God, but it does not follow that every one who sees God will do great things.
1.011 - Hud, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
120. Everything We narrate to you of the History of the messengers is to strengthen your heart therewith. The truth has come to you in this, and a lesson, and a reminder for the believers.
121. And say to those who do not believe, “Act according to your ability; and so will we.”
1.012 - Joseph, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
3. We narrate to you the most accurate History, by revealing to you this Quran. Although, prior to it, you were of the unaware.
4. When Joseph said to his father, “O my father, I saw eleven planets, and the sun, and the moon; I saw them bowing down to me.”
1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
periods of the History of humankind (as we shall see). And
we remember that, at the beginning of the evolution as well
--
traced back through most of the previous History. Direct in-
fluences are discernible of Pythagoranism, Platonism, the
--
the first for whom History had an aim, and therefore a direc-
tion and a sense.) In many of those traditions the universe
1.01 - A NOTE ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
past and that nothing is comprehensible except through its History.
"Nature" is the equivalent of "becoming," self-creation: this is the
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
into the grey mists of neolithic preHistory. Mankind has never
lacked powerful images to lend magical aid against all the un-
--
2 3 The History of Protestantism has been one of chronic icono-
clasm. One wall after another fell. And the work of destruction
--
that offends our sense of History, the disintegration of Protes-
tantism into nearly four hundred denominations is yet a sure
--
nourished by a foreign culture, interwoven with foreign History,
and so resemble a beggar who wraps himself in kingly raiment,
--
osophists do, we would be playing our own History false. A man
does not sink down to beggary only to pose afterwards as an
--
of the unconscious, of the primitive mind, of the History of lan-
guage and religion. It is a "factor" in the proper sense of the
--
where we find ourselves confronted with the History of language,
with images and motifs that lead straight back to the primitive
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each others eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry,
Mythology!I know of no reading of anothers experience so startling and informing as this would be.
--
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual History; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished.
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most mens, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint No Admittance on my gate.
--
When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money, and we may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses,but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would know the History of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in
Concord. What has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex
1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
sought for in the Veda was the early History of India, its society,
institutions, customs, a civilisation-picture of the times. They
--
in a period of materialistic rationalism regarded the History
of the race as a development out of primitive barbarism or
--
this historical truth and takes its place in the History of Indian
culture. The tradition of the Veda as the bed-rock of Indian
--
than a tradition, it is an actual fact of History.
But even if an element of high spiritual knowledge, or passages full of high ideas were found in the hymns, it might be
1.01 - Fundamental Considerations, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
The structuration we have discovered seems to us to reveal the bases of consciousness, thereby enabling us to make a contri bution to the understanding of mans emergent consciousness. It is based on the recognition that in the course of mankinds History - and not only Western mans - clearly discernable worlds stand out whose development or unfolding took place in mutations of consciousness. This, then, presents the task of a cultural-historical analysis of the various structures of consciousness as they have proceeded from the various mutations.
For this analysis we shall employ a method of demonstrating the respective consciousness structures of the various epochs on the basis of their representative evidence and their unique forms of visual as well as linguistic expression. This approach, which is not limited to the currently dominant mentality, attempts to present in visible, tangible, and audible form the respective consciousness structures from within their specific modalities and unique constitutions by means appropriate to their natures.
--
Finally, we would emphasize the general validity of the term aperspectival; it is definitely not intended to be understood as an extension of concepts used in art History and should not be so construed. When we introduced the concept in 1936/1939, it was within the context of scientific as well as artistic traditions. The perspectival structure as fully realized by Leonardo da Vinci is of fundamental importance not only to our scientific-technological but also artistic understanding of the world. Without perspective neither technical drafting nor three-dimensional painting would have been possible. Leonardo - scientist, engineer, and artist in one - was the first to fully develop drafting techniques and perspectival painting. In this same sense, that is from a scientific as well as artistic standpoint, the term aperspectival is valid, and the basis for this significance must not be overlooked, for it legitimizes the validity and applicability of the term to the sciences, the humanities, and the arts.
It is our intent to furnish evidence that the aperspectival world, whose nascence we are witnessing, can liberate us from the superannuated legacy of both the unperspectival and the perspectival worlds. In very general terms we might say that the unperspectival world preceded the world of mind- and ego-bound perspective discovered and anticipated in late antiquity and first apparent in Leonardos application of it. Viewed in this manner the unperspectival world is collective, the perspectival individualistic. That is, the unperspectival world is related to the anonymous one or the tribal we, the perspectival to the I or Ego; the one world is grounded in Being, the other, beginning with the Renaissance, in Having; the former is predominantly irrational, the later rational.
--
It is our task in this book to work out this aperspectival basis. Our discussion will rely more an the evidence presented in the History of thought than on the findings of the natural sciences as is the case with the authors Transformation of the Occident. Among the disciplines of historical thought the investigation of language will form the predominant source of our insight since it is the preeminent means of reciprocal communication between man and the world.
It is not sufficient for us to merely furnish a postulate; rather, it will be necessary to show the latent possibilities in us and in our present, possibilities that are about to become acute, that is, effectual and consequently real. In the following discussion we shall therefore proceed from two basic considerations:
--
1) Latency - what is concealed - is the demonstrable presence of the future. It indudes everything that is not yet manifest, as well as everything which has again returned to latency. Since we are dealing here primarily with phenomena of consciousness and integration, we will also have to investigate questions of History, the soul and the psyche, time, space, and the forms of thought.
Since the second part of this work is devoted to manifestations of the new consciousness, the first part must clarify questions relating to the manifestations of previous and present consciousness structures. We shall attempt to demonstrate the incipient concretion of time and the spiritual dimension which are preconditions of the aperspectival world. We shall also attempt to furnish evidence of the increasing efficacy of that spiritual reality (which is neither a mere psychic state nor an intellectual-rational form of representation). This will bring out the validity of our second guiding principle:
1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The History of the Qabalah, so far as the publication of early exoteric texts is concerned, is indeterminate and vague. Literary criticism traces the Sepher Yetsirah (sup- posedly by Rabbi Akiba) and the Sepher haZohar (by
Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai), its main texts, to about the eighth century in the first case and the third or fourth century a.d. in the latter. Some historians claim that the
--
The great Jewish historian, Graetz, too, holds the unhistoric view that Jewish mysticism is a morbid and late growth, foreign to the religious genius of Israel, and that it has its origin in the speculations of one Isaac the Blind in Spain somewhere between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Graetz regards the Qabalah, the Zohar in particular, as a " false doctrine which, although new, styled itself a genuine teaching of Israel " ( History of the Jews,
Vol. Ill, p. 565).
--
Szinessy, one-time Reader in Rabbinic and Talmudic literature at Cambridge, says : " The nucleus of the book is of Mishnic times. Rabbi Shimeon ben Yochai was the author of the Zohar in the same sense that Rabbi Yohanan was the author of the Palestinian Talmud ; i.e., he gave the first impulse to the composition of the book." And I find that Mr. Arthur Edward Waite in his scholarly and classic work The Holy Kaballah, wherein he examines most of the arguments concerning the origin and History of this
Book of Splendour, inclines to the view hereinbefore set forth, steering a middle course, believing that while much of it does pertain to the era of ben Leon, nevertheless a
--
Be that as it may, and ignoring the sterile aspects of con- troversy, the public appearance of the Zohar was the great landmark in the development of the Qabalah, and we to-day are able to divide its History into two main periods, pre- and post-Zoharic. While it is undeniable that there were
Jewish prophetic and mystical Schools of great proficiency and possessing much recondite knowledge in Biblical times, such as that of Samuel, the Essenes, and Philo, yet the first
--
Universe, the Soul and its transmigrations, and its final return to the Source of All. The new era in the History of the Qabalah created by the appearance of this storehouse of legend, philosophy, and anecdote, has continued right down to the present day. Yet nearly every writer who has since espoused the doctrines of the Qabalah has made the
Zohar his principal textbook, and its exponents have applied themselves assiduously to commentaries, epitomes, and translations - missing, however, with only a few exceptions, the real underlying possibilities of the Qabalistic
--
There are several Qabalists of varying degrees of impor- tance in the intervening period of post-Zoharic History.
Russia, Poland, and Lithuania gave refuge to numbers of them. None of these have expounded publicly that par- ticular portion of the philosophy to which this present
1.01 - How is Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds Attained?, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
The methods by which a student is prepared for the reception of higher knowledge are minutely prescribed. The direction he is to take is traced with unfading, everlasting letters in the worlds of the spirit where the initiates guard the higher secrets. In ancient times, anterior to our History, the temples of the spirit were also outwardly visible; today, because our life has become so unspiritual, they are not to be found in the world visible to external sight; yet they are present spiritually everywhere, and all who seek may find them.
Only within his own soul can a man find the means to unseal the lips of an initiate. He must develop within himself certain faculties to a definite degree, and then the highest treasures of the spirit can become his own.
1.01 - Maitreya inquires of his teacher (Parashara), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Maitreya[10], having saluted him reverentially, thus addressed Parāśara, the excellent sage, the grandson of Vaśiṣṭha, who was versed in traditional History, and the Purāṇas; who was acquainted with the Vedas, and the branches of science dependent upon them; and skilled in law and philosophy; and who had performed the morning rites of devotion.
Maitreya said, Master! I have been instructed by you in the whole of the Vedas, and in the institutes of law and of sacred science: through your favour, other men, even though they be my foes, cannot accuse me of having been remiss in the acquirement of knowledge. I am now desirous, oh thou who art profound in piety! to hear from thee, how this world was, and how in future it will be? what is its substance, oh Brahman, and whence proceeded animate and inanimate things? into what has it been resolved, and into what will its dissolution again occur? how were the elements manifested? whence proceeded the gods and other beings? what are the situation and extent of the oceans and the mountains, the earth, the sun, and the planets? what are the families of the gods and others, the Menus, the periods called Manvantaras, those termed Kalpas, and their subdivisions, and the four ages: the events that happen at the close of a Kalpa, and the terminations of the several ages[11]: the histories, oh great Muni, of the gods, the sages, and kings; and how the Vedas were divided into branches (or schools), after they had been arranged by Vyāsa: the duties of the Brahmans, and the other tribes, as well as of those who pass through the different orders of life? All these things I wish to hear from you, grandson of Vaśiṣṭha. Incline thy thoughts benevolently towards me, that I may, through thy favour, be informed of all I desire to know. Parāśara replied, Well inquired, pious Maitreya. You recall to my recollection that which was of old narrated by my father's father, Vaśiṣṭha. I had heard that my father had been devoured by a Rākṣas employed by Visvāmitra: violent anger seized me, and I commenced a sacrifice for the destruction of the Rākṣasas: hundreds of them were reduced to ashes by the rite, when, as they were about to be entirely extirpated, my grandfather Vaśiṣṭha thus spake to me: Enough, my child; let thy wrath be appeased: the Rākṣasas are not culpable: thy father's death was the work of destiny. Anger is the passion of fools; it becometh not a wise man. By whom, it may be asked, is any one killed? Every man reaps the consequences of his own acts. Anger, my son, is the destruction of all that man obtains by arduous exertions, of fame, and of devout austerities; and prevents the attainment of heaven or of emancipation. The chief sages always shun wrath: he not thou, my child, subject to its influence. Let no more of these unoffending spirits of darkness be consumed. Mercy is the might of the righteous[12].
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
however, that renders the alchemical description worth examining not from the perspective of the History
of science, concerned with the examination of outdated objective ideas, but from the perspective of
--
from Sumer the birthplace of History:
So far, no cosmogonic text properly speaking has been discovered, but some allusions permit us to
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
What a shame! How foolish I am! This is not mathematics or History or literature, that one can teach it to others. No, this is the deep mystery of God. What he says appeals to me."
This was M.'s first argument with the Master, and happily his last.
1.01 - Necessity for knowledge of the whole human being for a genuine education., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
Dear friends! Our assignment for this educational conference is to answer the question: What is the role of education and teaching to be for the future in terms of both the individual and society? Anyone who looks with an unbiased eye at modern civilization and its various institutions can hardly question the importance of this theme today (by today I mean the current decade in History). This theme touches on questions deep in the souls and hearts of a great many people.
Knowledge of the Whole Human Being
1.01 - Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
role in the early History of modern philosophy, although we are
rather prone to ignore it.
1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There have been other syntheses in the long History of Indian thought. We start with the Vedic synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with the cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense and the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning experience of the earlier seers and make it their starting-point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking. The
Gita starts from this Vedantic synthesis and upon the basis of its essential ideas builds another harmony of the three great means and powers, Love, Knowledge and Works, through which the soul of man can directly approach and cast itself into the Eternal.
--
Our object, then, in studying the Gita will not be a scholastic or academical scrutiny of its thought, nor to place its philosophy in the History of metaphysical speculation, nor shall we deal with it in the manner of the analytical dialectician. We approach it for help and light and our aim must be to distinguish its essential and living message, that in it on which humanity has to seize for its perfection and its highest spiritual welfare.
1.01 - Principles of Practical Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
straight into our laps. They too have their History. Although I was the
first to demand that the analyst should himself be analysed, we are
--
the individual path looks like a regression to mans preHistory, and that
consequently it seems as if something very untoward were happening
--
therapeutics is by no means a bad thing. The History of medicine is
exceedingly revealing in this respect.
--
History and tradition. It is here that we come across those mythological
dreams whose characteristic sequence of images presents the doctor with an
1.01 - Seeing, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
The Phenomenon of Man, which marks a turning-point in the History
of twentieth-century thought.
--
verb. That, doubtless, is why the History of the living world
can be summarized as the elaboration of ever more perfect
--
we shall show, covers and punctuates the whole History of the
struggles of the mind.
1.01 - Sri Aurobindo, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What Sri Aurobindo represents in the worlds History is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.
14 February 1961
--
What Sri Aurobindo represents in the History of the earths spiritual progress is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a mighty action straight from the Supreme.
15 August 1964
--
Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past nor to History.
Sri Aurobindo is the Future advancing towards its realisation.
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The doctrine of the Inner Light achieved a clearer formulation in the writings of the second generation of Quakers. There is, wrote William Penn, something nearer to us than Scriptures, to wit, the Word in the heart from which all Scriptures come. And a little later Robert Barclay sought to explain the direct experience of tat tvam asi in terms of an Augustinian theology that had, of course, to be considerably stretched and trimmed before it could fit the facts. Man, he declared in his famous theses, is a fallen being, incapable of good, unless united to the Divine Light. This Divine Light is Christ within the human soul, and is as universal as the seed of sin. All men, hea then as well as Christian, are endowed with the Inward Light, even though they may know nothing of the outward History of Christs life. Justification is for those who do not resist the Inner Light and so permit of a new birth of holiness within them.
Goodness needeth not to enter into the soul, for it is there already, only it is unperceived.
--
It is, however, certain that many activities undertaken by some minds at the present time were not, in the remote past, undertaken by any minds at all. For this there are several obvious reasons. Certain thoughts are practically unthinkable except in terms of an appropriate language and within the framework of an appropriate system of classification. Where these necessary instruments do not exist, the thoughts in question are not expressed and not even conceived. Nor is this all: the incentive to develop the instruments of certain kinds of thinking is not always present. For long periods of History and preHistory it would seem that men and women, though perfectly capable of doing so, did not wish to pay attention to problems, which their descendants found absorbingly interesting. For example, there is no reason to suppose that, between the thirteenth century and the twentieth, the human mind underwent any kind of evolutionary change, comparable to the change, let us say, in the physical structure of the horses foot during an incomparably longer span of geological time. What happened was that men turned their attention from certain aspects of reality to certain other aspects. The result, among other things, was the development of the natural sciences. Our perceptions and our understanding are directed, in large measure, by our will. We are aware of, and we think about, the things which, for one reason or another, we want to see and understand. Where theres a will there is always an intellectual way. The capacities of the human mind are almost indefinitely great. Whatever we will to do, whether it be to come to the unitive knowledge of the Godhead, or to manufacture self-propelled flame-throwers that we are able to do, provided always that the willing be sufficiently intense and sustained. It is clear that many of the things to which modern men have chosen to pay attention were ignored by their predecessors. Consequently the very means for thinking clearly and fruitfully about those things remained uninvented, not merely during prehistoric times, but even to the opening of the modern era.
The lack of a suitable vocabulary and an adequate frame of reference, and the absence of any strong and sustained desire to invent these necessary instruments of though there are two sufficient reasons why so many of the almost endless potentialities of the human mind remained for so long unactualized. Another and, on its own level, equally cogent reason is this: much of the worlds most original and fruitful thinking is done by people of poor physique and of a thoroughly unpractical turn of mind. Because this is so, and because the value of pure thought, whether analytical or integral, has everywhere been more or less clearly recognized, provision was and still is made by every civilized society for giving thinkers a measure of protection from the ordinary strains and stresses of social life. The hermitage, the monastery, the college, the academy and the research laboratory; the begging bowl, the endowment, patronage and the grant of taxpayers moneysuch are the principal devices that have been used by actives to conserve that rare bird, the religious, philosophical, artistic or scientific contemplative. In many primitive societies conditions are hard and there is no surplus wealth. The born contemplative has to face the struggle for existence and social predominance without protection. The result, in most cases, is that he either dies young or is too desperately busy merely keeping alive to be able to devote his attention to anything else. When this happens the prevailing philosophy will be that of the hardy, extraverted man of action.
All this sheds some lightdim, it is true, and merely inferentialon the problem of the perennialness of the Perennial Philosophy. In India the scriptures were regarded, not as revelations made at some given moment of History, but as eternal gospels, existent from everlasting to everlasting, inasmuch as coeval with man, or for that matter with any other kind of corporeal or incorporeal being possessed of reason. A similar point of view is expressed by Aristotle, who regards the fundamental truths of religion as everlasting and indestructible. There have been ascents and falls, periods (literally roads around or cycles) of progress and regress; but the great fact of God as the First Mover of a universe which partakes of His divinity has always been recognized. In the light of what we know about prehistoric man (and what we know amounts to nothing more than a few chipped stones, some paintings, drawings and sculptures) and of what we may legitimately infer from other, better documented fields of knowledge, what are we to think of these traditional doctrines? My own view is that they may be true. We know that born contemplatives in the realm both of analytic and of integral thought have turned up in fair numbers and at frequent intervals during recorded History. There is therefore every reason to suppose that they turned up before History was recorded. That many of these people died young or were unable to exercise their talents is certain. But a few of them must have survived. In this context it is highly significant that, among many contemporary primitives, two thought-patterns are foundan exoteric pattern for the unphilosophic many and an esoteric pattern (often monotheistic, with a belief in a God not merely of power, but of goodness and wisdom) for the initiated few. There is no reason to suppose that circumstances were any harder for prehistoric men than they are for many contemporary savages. But if an esoteric monotheism of the kind that seems to come natural to the born thinker is possible in modern savage societies, the majority of whose members accept the sort of polytheistic philosophy that seems to come natural to men of action, a similar esoteric doctrine might have been current in prehistoric societies. True, the modern esoteric doctrines may have been derived from higher cultures. But the significant fact remains that, if so derived, they yet had a meaning for certain members of the primitive society and were considered valuable enough to be carefully preserved. We have seen that many thoughts are unthinkable apart from an appropriate vocabulary and frame of reference. But the fundamental ideas of the Perennial Philosophy can be formulated in a very simple vocabulary, and the experiences to which the ideas refer can and indeed must be had immediately and apart from any vocabulary whatsoever. Strange openings and theophanies are granted to quite small children, who are often profoundly and permanently affected by these experiences. We have no reason to suppose that what happens now to persons with small vocabularies did not happen in remote antiquity. In the modern world (as Vaughan and Traherne and Wordsworth, among others, have told us) the child tends to grow out of his direct awareness of the one Ground of things; for the habit of analytical thought is fatal to the intuitions of integral thinking, whether on the psychic or the spiritual level. Psychic preoccupations may be and often are a major obstacle in the way of genuine spirituality. In primitive societies now (and, presumably, in the remote past) there is much preoccupation with, and a widespread talent for, psychic thinking. But a few people may have worked their way through psychic into genuinely spiritual experiencejust as, even in modern industrialized societies, a few people work their way out of the prevailing preoccupation with matter and through the prevailing habits of analytical thought into the direct experience of the spiritual Ground of things.
Such, then, very briefly are the reasons for supposing that the historical traditions of oriental and our own classical antiquity may be true. It is interesting to find that at least one distinguished contemporary ethnologist is in agreement with Aristotle and the Vedantists. Orthodox ethnology, writes Dr. Paul Radin in his Primitive Man as Philosopher, has been nothing but an enthusiastic and quite uncritical attempt to apply the Darwinian theory of evolution to the facts of social experience. And he adds that no progress in ethnology will be achieved until scholars rid themselves once and for all of the curious notion that everything possesses a History; until they realize that certain ideas and certain concepts are as ultimate for man, as a social being, as specific physiological reactions are ultimate for him, as a biological being. Among these ultimate concepts, in Dr. Radins view, is that of monotheism. Such monotheism is often no more than the recognition of a single dark and numinous Power ruling the world. But it may sometimes be genuinely ethical and spiritual.
The nineteenth centurys mania for History and prophetic Utopianism tended to blind the eyes of even its acutest thinkers to the timeless facts of eternity. Thus we find T. H. Green writing of mystical union as though it were an evolutionary process and not, as all the evidence seems to show, a state which man, as man, has always had it in his power to realize. An animal organism, which has its History in time, gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally complete consciousness, which in itself can have no History, but a History of the process by which the animal organism becomes its vehicle. But in actual fact it is only in regard to peripheral knowledge that there has been a genuine historical development. Without much lapse of time and much accumulation of skills and information, there can be but an imperfect knowledge of the material world. But direct awareness of the eternally complete consciousness, which is the ground of the material world, is a possibility occasionally actualized by some human beings at almost any stage of their own personal development, from childhood to old age, and at any period of the races History.
1.01 - the Call to Adventure, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
the horrible History of the Minotaur; or he may be carried or
sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent, as was
1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Modern Science, obsessed with the greatness of its physical discoveries and the idea of the sole existence of Matter, has long attempted to base upon physical data even its study of Soul and Mind and of those workings of Nature in man and animal in which a knowledge of psychology is as important as any of the physical sciences. Its very psychology founded itself upon physiology and the scrutiny of the brain and nervous system. It is not surprising therefore that in History and sociology attention should have been concentrated on the external data, laws, institutions, rites, customs, economic factors and developments, while the deeper psychological elements so important in the activities of a mental, emotional, ideative being like man have been very much neglected. This kind of science would explain History and social development as much as possible by economic necessity or motive,by economy understood in its widest sense. There are even historians who deny or put aside as of a very subsidiary importance the working of the idea and the influence of the thinker in the development of human institutions. The French Revolution, it is thought, would have happened just as it did and when it did, by economic necessity, even if Rousseau and Voltaire had never written and the eighteenth-century philosophic movement in the world of thought had never worked out its bold and radical speculations.
Recently, however, the all-sufficiency of Matter to explain Mind and Soul has begun to be doubted and a movement of emancipation from the obsession of physical science has set in, although as yet it has not gone beyond a few awkward and rudimentary stumblings. Still there is the beginning of a perception that behind the economic motives and causes of social and historical development there are profound psychological, even perhaps soul factors; and in pre-war Germany, the metropolis of rationalism and materialism but the home also, for a century and a half, of new thought and original tendencies good and bad, beneficent and disastrous, a first psychological theory of History was conceived and presented by an original intelligence. The earliest attempts in a new field are seldom entirely successful, and the German historian, originator of this theory, seized on a luminous idea, but was not able to carry it very far or probe very deep. He was still haunted by a sense of the greater importance of the economic factor, and like most European science his theory related, classified and organised phenomena much more successfully than it explained them. Nevertheless, its basic idea formulated a suggestive and illuminating truth, and it is worth while following up some of the suggestions it opens out in the light especially of Eastern thought and experience.
The theorist, Lamprecht, basing himself on European and particularly on German History, supposed that human society progresses through certain distinct psychological stages which he terms respectively symbolic, typal and conventional, individualist and subjective. This development forms, then, a sort of psychological cycle through which a nation or a civilisation is bound to proceed. Obviously, such classifications are likely to err by rigidity and to substitute a mental straight line for the coils and zigzags of Nature. The psychology of man and his societies is too complex, too synthetical of many-sided and intermixed tendencies to satisfy any such rigorous and formal analysis. Nor does this theory of a psychological cycle tell us what is the inner meaning of its successive phases or the necessity of their succession or the term and end towards which they are driving. But still to understand natural laws whether of Mind or Matter it is necessary to analyse their working into its discoverable elements, main constituents, dominant forces, though these may not actually be found anywhere in isolation. I will leave aside the Western thinkers own dealings with his idea. The suggestive names he has offered us, if we examine their intrinsic sense and value, may yet throw some light on the thickly veiled secret of our historic evolution, and this is the line on which it would be most useful to investigate.
Undoubtedly, wherever we can seize human society in what to us seems its primitive beginnings or early stages,no matter whether the race is comparatively cultured or savage or economically advanced or backward,we do find a strongly symbolic mentality that governs or at least pervades its thought, customs and institutions. Symbolic, but of what? We find that this social stage is always religious and actively imaginative in its religion; for symbolism and a widespread imaginative or intuitive religious feeling have a natural kinship and especially in earlier or primitive formations they have gone always together. When man begins to be predominantly intellectual, sceptical, ratiocinative he is already preparing for an individualist society and the age of symbols and the age of conventions have passed or are losing their virtue. The symbol then is of something which man feels to be present behind himself and his life and his activities,the Divine, the Gods, the vast and deep unnameable, a hidden, living and mysterious nature of things. All his religious and social institutions, all the moments and phases of his life are to him symbols in which he seeks to express what he knows or guesses of the mystic influences that are behind his life and shape and govern or at the least intervene in its movements.
--
For always the form prevails and the spirit recedes and diminishes. It attempts indeed to return, to revive the form, to modify it, anyhow to survive and even to make the form survive; but the time-tendency is too strong. This is visible in the History of religion; the efforts of the saints and religious reformers become progressively more scattered, brief and superficial in their actual effects, however strong and vital the impulse. We see this recession in the growing darkness and weakness of India in her last millennium; the constant effort of the most powerful spiritual personalities kept the soul of the people alive but failed to resuscitate the ancient free force and truth and vigour or permanently revivify a conventionalised and stagnating society; in a generation or two the iron grip of that conventionalism has always fallen on the new movement and annexed the names of its founders. We see it in Europe in the repeated moral tragedy of ecclesiasticism and Catholic monasticism. Then there arrives a period when the gulf between the convention and the truth becomes intolerable and the men of intellectual power arise, the great swallowers of formulas, who, rejecting robustly or fiercely or with the calm light of reason symbol and type and convention, strike at the walls of the prison-house and seek by the individual reason, moral sense or emotional desire the Truth that society has lost or buried in its whited sepulchres. It is then that the individualistic age of religion and thought and society is created; the Age of Protestantism has begun, the Age of Reason, the Age of Revolt, Progress, Freedom. A partial and external freedom, still betrayed by the conventional age that preceded it into the idea that the Truth can be found in outsides, dreaming vainly that perfection can be determined by machinery, but still a necessary passage to the subjective period of humanity through which man has to circle back towards the recovery of his deeper self and a new upward line or a new revolving cycle of civilisation.
It is at least doubtful. The Brahmin class at first seem to have exercised all sorts of economic functions and not to have confined themselves to those of the priesthood.
1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Formerly a congeries of kindred nations with a single life and a single culture, always by the law of this essential oneness tending to unity, always by its excess of fecundity engendering fresh diversities and divisions, it has never yet been able to overcome permanently the almost insuperable obstacles to the organisation of a continent. The time has now come when those obstacles can be overcome. The attempt which our race has been making throughout its long History, it will now make under entirely new circumstances. A keen observer would predict its success because the only important obstacles have been or are in the process of being removed. But we go farther and believe that it is sure to succeed because the freedom, unity and greatness of India have now become necessary to the world.
This is the faith in which the Karmayogin puts its hand to the work and will persist in it, refusing to be discouraged by difficulties however immense and apparently insuperable. We believe that God is with us and in that faith we shall conquer. We believe that humanity needs us and it is the love and service of humanity, of our country, of the race, of our
--
Parliament. Machinery is of great importance, but only as a working means for the spirit within, the force behind. The nineteenth century in India aspired to political emancipation, social renovation, religious vision and rebirth, but it failed because it adopted Western motives and methods, ignored the spirit, History and destiny of our race and thought that by taking over
The Ideal of the Karmayogin
European education, European machinery, European organisation and equipment we should reproduce in ourselves European prosperity, energy and progress. We of the twentieth century reject the aims, ideals and methods of the Anglicised nineteenth precisely because we accept its experience. We refuse to make an idol of the present; we look before and after, backward to the mighty History of our race, forward to the grandiose destiny for which that History has prepared it.
We do not believe that our political salvation can be attained by enlargement of Councils, introduction of the elective principle, colonial self-government or any other formula of European politics. We do not deny the use of some of these things as instruments, as weapons in a political struggle, but we deny their sufficiency whether as instruments or ideals and look beyond to an end which they do not serve except in a trifling degree. They might be sufficient if it were our ultimate destiny to be an outlying province of the British Empire or a dependent adjunct of European civilisation. That is a future which we do not think it worth making any sacrifice to accomplish.
1.01 - The King of the Wood, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
into the early History of man have revealed the essential similarity
with which, under many superficial differences, the human mind has
--
was sacked by the Romans and disappears from History. But we cannot
suppose that so barbarous a rule as that of the Arician priesthood
--
though worthless as History, have a certain value in so far as they
may help us to understand the worship at Nemi better by comparing it
1.01 - THE STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
the other end) the only real indivisible. The History of conscious-
ness and its place in the world remain incomprehensible to anyone
--
ing a History. Today, positive knowledge of things is identified
with the study of their development. Farther on, in the chapter
--
beacon that lights the History of the universe to our eyes. In its
own way, matter has obeyed from the beginning that great law
--
still ignorant of many points in the History of the world.
First of all, must all the elements mount each successive rung
--
object of History. 1
Let us translate into images the natural significance of these
1.01 - What is Magick?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
We might fare even worse if we tried to clear things up by making lists of events in History, tradition, or experience and classifying this as being, and that as not being, true Magick. The borderl and cases would confuse and mislead us.
But since I have mentioned History I think it might help, if I went straight on to the latter part of your question, and gave you a brief sketch of Magick past, present and future as it is seen from the inside.
What are the principles of the "Masters"? What are They trying to do? What have They done in the past? What means do They employ?
10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now these prayerswho prays? And to whom? These meditationswho meditates? And who is the object of the meditation? First of all there is the apparent obvious meaning, that is on the very surface. It is the Mother's own prayers offered to her own beloved Lord. It is her own personal aspiration, the preoccupation of the individual human being that she is. It is the secret story, the inner History of all that she desires, asks for, questions, all that she has 'experienced and realised and the farther more that she is to achieve, the revelations of a terrestrial creature of the particular name and form that she happens to possess. Thus for example, the very opening passage of these prayers:
Quoique tout mon tre Te soit thoriquement consacr, Matre Sublime, qui est la vie, la lumire et I' amour de toute chose j' ai peine encore appliquer cette conscration dans les dtails. Il m' a fallu Plusieurs semaines pour savoir que la raison de cette mditation crite, sa lgitimation, rside dans Ie fait de Te l' adresser quotidiennement. Ainsi je matrialiserai chaque jour un pen de la conversation que j' ai si frquemment avec Toi; je Te ferai de mon mieux ma corifession. .12
1.023 - The Believers, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
44. Then We sent Our messengers in succession. Every time a messenger came to his community, they called him a liar. So We made them follow one another, and made them History. So away with a people who do not believe.
45. Then We sent Moses and his brother Aaron, with Our signs and a clear authority.
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The animalistic way of thinking persists in the human level also, and often many times, in fact the urge to assert one's bodily individuality vehemently gains the upper hand, though rationally it would not be possible for anyone to justify the exclusive reality of a bodily personality. Such was the primitive condition of people in prehistoric times, or Paleolithic times, as they say, when human beings were not yet evolved to the present condition of social understanding. In the biological History of mankind, right from creation as far as the mind can go, it is said that the evolution of the human individual, right from the lowest levels, included certain conditions of human existence which were inseparable from animal life. The caveman, the Neanderthal man and such other primitive types of existence point to an animal mind operating through a human body, where cannibalism was not unfamiliar. One could eat another, because the animal mind was not completely absent even in the human body, and there was insecurity on account of it being possible for one man to eat another man. As History tells us, it took ages for the primitive mind to realise the necessity for individuals to come into agreement among themselves for the purpose of security. If I start jumping upon you and you start jumping upon me, both of us will be unhappy and insecure, and you would not know whether you will be safe and I cannot know if I will be safe. This sort of thing would be most undesirable.
It is said by anthropologists, historian's of mankind's evolution, and political historians, that a state was reached when it was felt necessary to organise people into groups, and this was the beginning of the governmental system. A government is nothing but an agreement among people in order that there may not be warfare among individuals and attacks every day. Otherwise there would be chaos and confusion, and anyone could attack at any moment, for any reason whatsoever. Therefore, an agreement was made, an organisation was set up, a rule was framed and a system was brought forth under which it was obligatory on the part of individuals to obey certain principles laid down by groups, of which some people were made leaders. It does not mean that these leaders were kings or autocrats; they were the governors of law, the dispensers of justice, and the instruments for the maintenance of order in the group of people who found it necessary to bring about this system.
1.028 - History, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
object:1.028 - History
class:chapter
--
3. We narrate to you from the History of Moses and Pharaoh—in truth—for people who believe.
4. Pharaoh exalted himself in the land, and divided its people into factions. He persecuted a group of them, slaughtering their sons, while sparing their daughters. He was truly a corrupter.
1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Vedanta presuppose a preparation in life, for it is only through life that one can reach to immortality. The opposite opinion is due to certain tendencies which have bulked large in the History and temperament of our race. The ultimate goal of our religion is emancipation from the bondage of material Nature and freedom from individual rebirth, and certain souls, among the highest we have known, have been drawn by the attraction of the final hush and purity to dissociate themselves from life and bodily action in order more swiftly and easily to reach the goal. Standing like
10
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
knew an animals reinforcement History, you could determine what stimuli were likely to have positive or
negative valence. The fundamental problem with this argument is one of parsimony. It is impossible to
know an animals reinforcement History particularly if that animal is as complex and long-lived as a
human being. This is tantamount to saying, you must know everything that has ever happened to that
--
it impossible anyway. Likewise, you dont have access to the reinforcement History, and, even if you
39
--
immediate reinforcement History played a context-determining role. This implicit limit enabled him to
sidestep the fundamental issue, and to make inappropriate generalizations. It didnt matter how a rat related
--
reinforcement History. Frameworks of reference, influenced in their structure by learning, specify the
valence of ongoing experience; determine what might be regarded, in a given time and place, as good, bad,
--
History.
Valence can be positive, or negative, as the early behaviorists noted. Positive and negative are not
--
embody the behavioral wisdom of History. In an analogous fashion, in a less abstract, less ritualized
manner, the continuing behavior of parents dramatizes cumulative mimetic History for children.
Emergence of narrative which, paradoxically, contains much more information than it explicitly
--
appear in the History of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as all the members of
the fauna of a continent is betrayed in the end also by the fact that the most diverse philosophers keep
--
precise circumstance of origins have been lost in the mists of History, but which have been integrated into a
consistent behavioral pattern, over time integrated into culturally-determined character. Integration
--
that constitute the present mode of being. This telescoping is the mythologization of History and is very
useful, from the perspective of efficient storage. We learn to imitate (and to remember) not individual
--
applied validly to literary interpretation, the study of History, dream analysis, and anthropology. Cultural
81
--
A god, so considered more specifically, a potent and powerful god; one with a History constitutes the
manner in which a group or family of stimuli of isomorphic motivational significance reveals itself to or
--
developmental History that predates the emergence of humanity, is associated with relatively innate
releasing stimuli (those that characterize erotic beauty), is of terrible power, and has an existence
--
genius, and a decisive move in the History of the Western mind.
What Should Be:
--
John Wilson observes,264 it is at the beginning of Egyptian History that we find a doctrine that can be
compared with the Christian theology of the Logos [or Word].265
--
is now table also has before it an equally complex and lengthy developmental History waiting in front of
it; it will be, perhaps, ash, then earth, then far enough in the future part of the sun again (when the sun
--
representation of the source of all things since well before written History began.300
The uroboros and the figure of the Great Mother commonly overlap because the chaos comprising the
--
does not determine, the general course of History; expresses one fundamental preconception, in a thousand
different ways. This idea (analogous in structure to the modern hypothesis, although not explicitly
--
Eliade continues, drawing upon Philo of Byblos archaic Phoenician History:
the first sovereign [Phoenician] god was Elioun (in Greek, Hypistos, The Most High),
--
human History [such transformations occurred] only under external compulsion, but they [occurred]
through the bringing into the world of hereditary dispositions for such transformations and also through
--
prototype being the family), a developmental History in the sense of ontogenetic and phylogenetic
transformations of outer into inner compulsions, and the inheritance of these transformations.339
--
In one sense it could almost be said that for the man of archaic societies History is closed; that it
exhausted itself in the few stupendous events of the beginning. By revealing the different modes of
--
But, properly considered, this History preserved in the myths is closed only in appearance. If the man
of primitive societies had contented himself with forever imitating the few exemplary gestures revealed
--
changed at least some aspects of its institutions; none that, in short, has had no History. But, in contrast
160
--
In the last analysis we could say that, though they are open to History, traditional societies tend to
project every new acquisition into the primordial Time, to telescope all events in the same atemporal
--
The Great Father is a product of History or, is History itself, insofar as it is acted out and spontaneously
remembered intrapsychically instantiated during the course of socialization, and embedded in the social
--
The story carries revolutionary significance for human History, for it is the story of how someone
without official position took the side of a wronged man and denounced a king to his face on grounds of
injustice. One will search the annals of History in vain for its parallel. Elijah was not a priest. He had no
formal authority for the terrible judgment he delivered. The normal pattern of the day would have called
1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
dustry and agriculture; we must forget our History; we must assume
that even language does not exist. In short, we must get as close as
--
ever confusedly, to re-create what we can of their History. What im-
measurable toil went into the weaving of each garment, what
--
acquiring the knowledge of its birth, its History, its natural envi-
ronment, its external powers, and the secrets of its soul.
--
worshipper of Christ this act expresses the History of the universe.
But how does it operate, this gradual conquest and assimilation
--
whether his subject be literature, History, science or philosophy,
must constantly live with it and consciously strive for its realization.
1.02 - Taras Tantra, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
are (to which belong, in fact, all our History and even
before) when the lifespan of huma n beings is limited
--
History tells us that the Tara Tantra especially was
communicated to human beings only three centuries
--
Question: The History of propagation of the Greater Vehicle
and tantras as presented by the Tibetans, and as we have
1.02 - The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
sonal preHistory. And what about all the other artists who
painted the same theme? Surely not all of them had two
1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
science, politics, History, sociology, psychology, religion
and traditional spirituality were checked against his day-
--
revolution in History ongoing in a single being.
As a politician, Aravinda Ghose had been a revolution-
--
place in History to incarnate. Moreover, it may be said that,
because of their love for humanity and because of their ava-
--
surely the mightiest act of renunciation in spiritual History.
No new edition of the old fiasco
--
the end of that dreadful chapter in human History. Other
blacknesses threaten to overshadow or even engulf man-
--
on the verge of another failure of which History shows us
so many examples?
1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HE PECULIARITY of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an epic History of nations and their wars and men and their deeds and arises out of a critical moment in the soul of one of its leading personages face to face with the crowning action of his life, a work terrible, violent and sanguinary, at the point when he must either recoil from it altogether or carry it through to its inexorable completion. It matters little whether or no, as modern criticism supposes, the Gita is a later composition inserted into the mass of the Mahabharata by its author in order to invest its teaching with the authority and popularity of the great national epic. There seem to me to be strong grounds against this supposition for which, besides, the evidence, extrinsic or internal, is in the last degree scanty and insufficient. But even if it be sound, there remains the fact that the author has not only taken pains to interweave his work inextricably into the vast web of the larger poem, but is careful again and again to remind us of the situation from which the teaching has arisen; he returns to it prominently, not only at the end, but in the middle of his profoundest philosophical disquisitions. We must accept the insistence of the author and give its full importance to this recurrent preoccupation of the Teacher and the disciple.
The teaching of the Gita must therefore be regarded not merely in the light of a general spiritual philosophy or ethical doctrine, but as bearing upon a practical crisis in the application of ethics and spirituality to human life. For what that crisis stands, what is the significance of the battle of Kurukshetra and its effect on
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
alone, all this magnificent universe." (Mundaka Upanishad II, 12) At long last, the dichotomy that is tearing this poor world apart between God and the Devil as if one always had to choose between heaven and earth, and could never be saved except when mutilated was healed for good. Yet, in practice, for the last three thousand years, the entire religious History of India has taken the view that there is a true Brahman, as it were, transcendent, immobile, forever beyond this bedlam, and a false Brahman, or rather a minor one (there are several schools), for an intermediate and more or less questionable reality (i.e., life, the earth, our poor mess of an earth). "Abandon this world of illusion," exclaimed the great Shankara. 17 "Brahman is real, the world is a lie," says the Nirlamba Upanishad: brahman satyam jaganmithya.
Try as we might, we just don't understand through what distortion or oversight "All is Brahman" ever became "All, except the world, is Brahman."
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Among the Sufis, Al Haqq, the Real, seems to be thought of as the abyss of Godhead underlying the personal Allah, while the Prophet is taken out of History and regarded as the incarnation of the Logos.
Some idea of the inexhaustible richness of the divine nature can be obtained by analysing, word by word, the invocation with which the Lords Prayer beginsOur Father who art in heaven. God is oursours in the same intimate sense that our consciousness and life are ours. But as well as immanently ours, God is also transcendently the personal Father, who loves his creatures and to whom love and allegiance are owed by them in return. Our Father who art: when we come to consider the verb in isolation, we perceive that the immanent-transcendent personal God is also the immanent-transcendent One, the essence and principle of all existence. And finally Gods being is in heaven; the divine nature is other than, and incommensurable with, the nature of the creatures in whom God is immanent. That is why we can attain to the unitive knowledge of God only when we become in some measure Godlike, only when we permit Gods kingdom to come by making our own creaturely kingdom go.
1.02 - THE POOL OF TEARS, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction
Mouse heard this, it turned 'round and swam slowly back to her; its face was quite pale, and it said, in a low, trembling voice, "Let us get to the shore and then I'll tell you my History and you'll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs."
It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it; there were a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way and the whole party swam to the shore.
1.02 - The Recovery, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
We reached the month of April. Sri Aurobindo's rapid progress became widely known and people began to clamour for a Darshan; they had already missed two of them, and for the next one in August it would be too painfully long to wait. The Mother also began to plead on behalf of the bhaktas, though not much pleading was needed. For we know that when the Mother's heart had melted, the Father's would not take long to do so. Besides, the Mother probably wanted Sri Aurobindo to take up his regular activities as soon as possible. Even for him she would not make any exception. Her dynamic nature cannot brook too long an ease. April 24th was then fixed for the Darshan, as it was the day of the Mother's final arrival in Pondicherry. Thenceforth the April Darshan became a permanent feature. The date well suited the professors and students, since it fell within the span of the summer holidays. But the darshan time had to be changed from the morning to the afternoon and it would be a darshan in the true sense of the word. For the devotees would simply come and stand for a brief while before the Mother and the Master, have their darshan and quietly leave. Sri Aurobindo tersely remarked, "No more of that long seven-hour darshan!" Formerly the Darshan was observed with a great ceremonial pomp. Starting at about 7.30 a.m., it ran with one breathing interval, up to 3 p.m. The devotees offered their garlands and flowers, did two, even three or four pranams to the Mother and the Master who remained glued to one place throughout the ordeal, and endured another martyrdom under this excessive display of bhakti even as Raman Maharshi suffered from the "plague of prasads". Now, all that was cut down at one stroke by the force of external circumstances, and all expression transformed into a quiet inner adoration which is a characteristic of this Yoga. Sri Aurobindo's accident made the ceremonial Darshan a thing of past History.
On the eve of the Darshan, the Mother washed Sri Aurobindo's hair with our help. It was such an elaborate and complicated affair that had it been left in our hands, it would have ended in confusion, particularly because it had to be done in the bedroom. Hot and cold water, basins, soap, powder, etc., etc., had to be kept ready. What a ceremony really, this washing was! No wonder ladies go in for bob or shingle. Formerly, Sri Aurobindo, it seems, used to wash his long hair every night, but I am sure he did without all this paraphernalia. His secluded life had, of course, simplified the whole complex process. Later on when a bathroom adjoining his living room was built, washing lost its formidable character. Sri Aurobindo bore all this torture as a part of the game, I suppose.
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
forms of animals and plants are described in ordinary natural History, so too, the spiritual scientist describes or draws the spiritual forms of the process of growth and decay, according to species and kind.
If the student has progressed so far that he can perceive the spiritual forms of those phenomena which are physically visible to his external sight, he is then not far from the stage where he will behold things which have no physical existence, and which therefore remain entirely hidden (occult) from those who have not received suitable instruction and training.
1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
As we shall see, these designations are valid not only with respect to art History, but also to aesthetics, cultural History, and the History of the psyche and the mind. The achievement of perspective indicates man's discovery and consequent coming to awareness of space, whereas the unrealized perspective indicates that space is dormant in man and that he is not yet awakened to it. Moreover, the unperspectival world suggests a state in which man lacks self-identity: he belongs to a unit, such as a tribe or communal group, where the emphasis is not yet on the person but on the impersonal, not an the "I" but on the communal group, the qualitative mode of the collective. The illuminated manuscripts and gilt ground of early Romanesque painting depict theunperspectival world that retained the prevailing constitutive elements of Mediterranean antiquity. Not until the Gothic, the forerunner of the Renaissance was there a shift in emphasis. Before that space is not yet our depth-space, rather a cavern (and vault), or simply an in-between space; in both instances it is undifferentiated space. This situation bespeaks for us a hardly conceivable enclosure in the world, an intimate bond between outer and inner suggestive of a correspondence only faintly discernible between soul and nature. This condition was gradually destroyed by the expansion and growing strength of Christianity whose teaching of detachment from nature transforms this destruction into an act of liberation.
Man's lack of spatial awareness is attended by a lack of ego-consciousness, since in order to objectify and qualify space, a self-conscious "I" is required that is able to stand opposite or confront space, as well as to depict or represent it by projecting it out of his soul or psyche. In this light, Worringer's statements regarding the lack of all space consciousness in Egyptian art are perfectly valid: "Only in the rudimentary form of prehistorical space and cave magic does space have a role in Egyptian architecture . . . . The Egyptians were neutral and indifferent toward space . . . . They were not even potentially aware of spatiality. Their experience was not trans-spatial but pre-spatial; . . . their culture of oasis cultivation was spaceless . . . . Their culture knew only spatial limitations and enclosures in architecture but no inwardness or interiority as such. Just as their engraved reliefs lacked shadow depth, so too was their architecture devoid of special depth. The third dimension, that is the actual dimension of life's tension and polarity, was experience not as a quality but as a mere quantity. How then was space, the moment of depth-seeking extent, to enter their awareness as an independent quality apart from all corporality? . . . The Egyptians lacked utterly any spatial consciousness."
--
"Yesterday I climbed the highest mountain of our region," he begins the letter, "motivated solely by the wish to experience its renowned height. For many years this has been in my soul and, as you well know, I have roamed this region since my childhood. The mountain, visible from far and wide, was nearly always present before me; my desire gradually increased until it became so intense that I resolved to yield to it, especially after having read Livy's Roman History the day before. There I came upon his description of the ascent of Philip, King of Macedonia, on Mount Haemus in Thessalia, from whose summit two seas, the Adriatic as well as the Pontus Euxinus, are said to be visible."
The significance of Philip's ascent cannot be compared to Petrarch's because Livy's emphasis is on the sea, while the land - not yet a landscape - is not mentioned at all. The reference to the sea can be understood as an indication that in antiquity man's experience of the soul was symbolized by the sea, and not by space (as we shall see further on in our discussion). The famous ascents undertaken by such Romans as Hadrian, Strabo, and Lucilius were primarily for administrative and practical, not for aesthetic purposes. As an administrative reformer, Hadrian had climbed MountAetna in order to survey the territory under his jurisdiction, while the fugitive Lucilius, the friend of Seneca, had been motivated by purely practical reasons.
--
The intent of our somewhat detailed outline of the History of perspective is to indicate the length of time and the intensity of effort that man required to fully express internal predispositions in externalized forms. An equally detailed description of such specific factors will be required further on in our discussion if we are to apply criteria to the inquiry of our own times that will permit a valid or, at the very least, a considered judgement.
In the third decade of the fifteenth century, CenninoCennini wrote his celebrated Trattatadellapittura, the first theoretical treatise an art. The various investigations that had preceded his work, notably those by the friars of MountAthos, Heraclius and Theophilus, had been mere formularies. But Cennini, proceeding from a defense of Giotto's style, offers advice on techniques, suggestions for differentiating man from space, and instructions an rendering mountains and space by the use of gradations and shadings of color, thereby anticipating in principle the "aerial and colorperspectivity" of Leonardo da Vinci.
--
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.
1.02 - The Vision of the Past, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
changed if we compare two moments in the earth's History
sufficiently separated in time. In any period of ten million
1.02 - Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in History which had most attracted me.
Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeias Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to
--
Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right proportions,they may have changed the names a little since I saw the papers, and serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the History of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted.
What news! how much more important to know what that is which was never old! Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to
10.30 - India, the World and the Ashram, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We know also that the earth is the symbol of the cosmic evolution. What creation means has been epitomised in earth's History: the earth has been chosen as the field and means of working out a cosmic plan. As the earth is the representative of the world, so India is the representative of the earth. For the evolution of the earth, India has been chosen as the channel and the laboratory; all problems confronting humanity are found as if gathered here. All that is solved here will be solved almost automatically in the world and the how of it will be shown. All difficulties are concentrated here because here there is a living consciousness which alone can solve them.
In the same way it may be said that our Ashram here is the symbol of all the difficulties that humanity faces, difficulties psychological and material, national and social. All varieties of contradictions and contraries, obstacles and impediments, ignorances and prejudices are here that confuse the issue and seek to delay the journey as much as possible, towards progress and new creation. This is because it is a place where there is behind the surface movements of negation, an aspiration and a supporting consciousness supreme in power and effectivity. The individuals here have to meet all kinds of difficulties so that a way out of them may be discovered both in the individual nature and in collective achievement. .
1.034 - Sheba, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
19. But they said, “Our Lord, lengthen the distances of our journeys.” They wronged themselves; so We made them History, and We scattered them in every direction. In this are lessons for every steadfast and appreciative person.
20. Satan was correct in his assessment of them. They followed him, except for a group of believers.
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.
10.36 - Cling to Truth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
For two things have happenedtwo mighty happenings in earth's History, in the course of nature's evolution here: two unseen events that have new-oriented the destiny of earth and mankind. First of all human consciousness in its essential achievement has risen to a new level of consciousness, although not in the mass, nor generally even in individuals, but there has come a common acquiescence in the being to a higher status of livingproletarianism at its best means nothing else. Human nature has shed something of its mediaeval crudeness and obscurantism, separatism and selfishness; human mind has been more sharpened and polished and widened so as to receive easily the message of the cosmic rays. There has dawned in the atmosphere the perception or sense, of a higher, purer, more luminous and enlightened status of existence. That is, one may say, Nature's gift, the outcome of the millennial, the aeonic working of an aspiration inherent in matter towards light and order. That is the first event. The second one is more occult but more mighty and even devastating. It is the descent, the manifestation, the intervention of a new force here below. They who have seen it know and there is no question. The Veda has declared long ago: The Unseeing have not the Knowledge, those who have eyes possess the Knowledge.
Today, more than ever, only a little of this pure consciousness will bring you victory, not merely safety from a great perdition. Against the vast, what appears as the all-swallowing gloom of the external space, the inner space is now luminous, doubly luminous and powerful.
1.037 - Preventing the Fall in Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
After that, something else can come, says Patanjali. This working for the world and merging oneself in social liberating activity cannot go on for a long time, because the world will give us a kick. All great saviours of mankind were thrown to the pits because they could not save mankind. A day comes when society will dislike and even hate us, though we are utmost sincere in trying to help it. We have only to read History that is sufficient. All masters in the political field and most sincere workers in the social field were finally doomed by society. They were either killed by the very same people for whom they were working, or they were condemned to a condition worse than death. This is what happened to great leaders of mankind right from Pedicles, Plato and Aristotle, and nobody has been exempted from this, right up to modern times which is the tragedy of human effort. Then we will realise what is in front of us. People generally leave this world with a sob and a cry, not with joy on their faces, because they realised this fact too late. There was very little time for them to live in this world, and all the time had been spent in wrong activity under the impression that it is right activity.
When it is too late to realise this, there is a deep sorrow supervening in oneself, and then people wind up all their activities, spiritual as well as temporal, and nothing happens. There is the condition of torpidity alasya, as Patanjali mentions. If there had not been lethargy in people, who would not be successful in life? We are not successful because of lethargy. We are not active, really speaking. A little finger is active, but the whole body is not active. A little part of the mind is functioning, while the other part is sleeping. Alasya, or the lethargic condition of the whole personality, will swallow up all effort. The mind and the understanding cease to function. There is a complete hibernation that takes place, and oblivion, both inward as well as outward, occurs. This oblivion is most dangerous. This total inactivity which a person may resort to, and an extreme type of negativity that may become the consequence of the difficulties on hand, may stir up another storm altogether, because these forces of nature will not allow us to keep quiet for long. They will neither allow us to do the right thing, nor will they allow us to keep quiet. They always want us to be punished, harassed and put to the greatest of hardship. This lethargic condition may continue for a long time.
1.03 - A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction
"You promised to tell me your History, you know," said Alice, "and why it is you hate--C and D," she added in a whisper, half afraid that it would be offended again.
"Mine is a long and a sad tale!" said the Mouse, turning to Alice and sighing.
1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
acting as a unit (as the embodiment of social History 366), separate the initiates from their mothers who
offer a certain amount of more-or-less dramatized resistance, and some genuine sorrow (at the death of
--
appear in the History of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as all the members of
the fauna of a continent is betrayed in the end also by the fact that the most diverse philosophers keep
1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
History of literature, can hardly claim to say anything about
the concept of the anima. His knowledge of the psychology of
--
i2 5 Now religious ideas, as History shows, are charged with an
extremely suggestive, emotional power. Among them I naturally
--
from the History of religion, and anything that has an "-ism"
61
--
with the parental imagos. History has preserved overwhelming
evidence of this, quite apart from modern medical findings,
--
hermaphrodite type, which seems to go far back into preHistory. Whenever a
psychological theory is forcibly applied, we have reason to suspect that an arche-
--
fications in the History of symbols that one comes to the con-
clusion that the basic psychic elements are infinitely varied and
1.03 - Eternal Presence, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You spoke of Sri Aurobindos birth as eternal in the History of the universe. What exactly was meant by eternal?
The sentence can be understood in four different ways on four ascending planes of consciousness:
--
2) Mentally, it is a birth that will be eternally remembered in the universal History.
3) Psychically, a birth that recurs for ever from age to age upon earth.
--
Since the beginning of earth History, Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great earthly transformations, under one form or another, one name or another.
***
--
You can say that all through History Sri Aurobindo played an active part. Especially in the most important movements of History he was there and playing the most important, the leading part. But he was not always visible.
23 January 1960
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
What we do depends in large measure upon what we think, and if what we do is evil, there is good empirical reason for supposing that our thought patterns are inadequate to material. mental or spiritual reality. Because Christians believed that there had been only one Avatar, Christian History has been disgraced by more and bloother crusades, interdenominational wars, persecutions and proselytizing imperialism than has the History of Hinduism and Buddhism. Absurd and idolatrous doctrines, affirming the quasi-divine nature of sovereign states and their rulers, have led oriental, no less than Western, peoples into innumerable political wars; but because they have not believed in an exclusive revelation at one sole instant of time, or in the quasi-divinity of an ecclesiastical organization, oriental peoples have kept remarkably clear of the mass murder for religions sake, which has been so dreadfully frequent in Christendom. And while, in this important respect, the level of public morality has been lower in the West than in the East, the levels of exceptional sanctity and of ordinary individual morality have not, so far as one can judge from the available evidence, been any higher. If the tree is indeed known by its fruits, Christianitys departure from the norm of the Perennial Philosophy would seem to be philosophically unjustifiable.
The Logos passes out of eternity into time for no other purpose than to assist the beings, whose bodily form he takes, to pass out of time into eternity. If the Avatars appearance upon the stage of History is enormously important, this is due to the fact that by his teaching he points out, and by his being a channel of grace and divine power he actually is, the means by which human beings may transcend the limitations of History. The author of the Fourth Gospel affirms that the Word became flesh; but in another passage he adds that the flesh profiteth nothingnothing, that is to say, in itself, but a great deal, of course, as a means to the union with immanent and transcendent Spirit. In this context it is very interesting to consider the development of Buddhism. Under the forms of religious or mystical imagery, writes R. E. Johnston in his Buddhist China, the Mahayana expresses the universal, whereas Hinayana cannot set itself free from the domination of historical fact. In the words of an eminent orientalist, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Mahayanist believer is warnedprecisely as the worshipper of Krishna is warned in the Vaishnavite scriptures that the Krishna Lila is not a History, but a process for ever unfolded in the heart of man that matters of historical fact are without religious significance (except, we should add, insofar as they point to or themselves constitute the meanswhe ther remote or proximate, whether political, ethical or spiritualby which men may come to deliverance from selfness and the temporal order.)
In the West, the mystics went some way towards liberating Christianity from its unfortunate servitude to historic fact. (or, to be more accurate, to those various mixtures of contemporary record with subsequent inference and phantasy, which have, at different epochs, been accepted as historic fact). From the writings of Eckhart, Tauler and Ruysbroeck, of Boehme, William Law and the Quakers, it would be possible to extract a spiritualized and universalized Christianity, whose narratives should refer, not to History as it was, or as someone afterwards thought it ought to be, but to processes forever unfolded in the heart of man. But unfortunately the influence of the mystics was never powerful enough to bring about a radical Mahayanist revolution in the West. In spite of them, Christianity has remained a religion in which the pure Perennial Philosophy has been overlaid, now more, now less, by an idolatrous preoccupation with events and things in timeevents and things regarded not merely as useful means, but as ends, intrinsically sacred and indeed divine. Moreover such improvements on History as were made in the course of centuries were, most imprudently, treated as though they themselves were a part of Historya procedure which put a powerful weapon into the hands of Protestant and, later, of Rationalist controversialists. How much wiser it would have been to admit the perfectly avowable fact that, when the sternness of Christ the Judge had been unduly emphasized, men and women felt the need of personifying the divine compassion in a new form, with the result that the figure of the Virgin, mediatrix to the mediator, came into increased prominence. And when, in course of time, the Queen of Heaven was felt to be too awe-inspiring, compassion was re-personified in the homely figure of St. Joseph, who thus became me thator to the me thatrix to the me thator. In exactly the same way Buddhist worshippers felt that the historic Sakyamuni, with his insistence on recollectedness, discrimination and a total dying to self as the principal means of liberation, was too stern and too intellectual. The result was that the love and compassion which Sakyamuni had also inculcated came to be personified in Buddhas such as Amida and Maitreyadivine characters completely removed from History, inasmuch as their temporal career was situated somewhere in the distant past or distant future. Here it may be remarked that the vast numbers of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, of whom the Mahayanist theologians speak, are commensurate with the vastness of their cosmology. Time, for them, is beginningless, and the innumerable universes, every one of them supporting sentient beings of every possible variety, are born, evolve, decay and the, only to repeat the same cycleagain and again, until the final inconceivably remote consummation, when every sentient being in all the worlds shall have won to deliverance out of time into eternal Suchness or Buddhahood This cosmological background to Buddhism has affinities with the world picture of modern astronomyespecially with that version of it offered in the recently published theory of Dr. Weiszcker regarding the formation of planets. If the Weiszcker hypothesis is correct, the production of a planetary system would be a normal episode in the life of every star. There are forty thousand million stars in our own galactic system alone, and beyond our galaxy other galaxies, indefinitely. If, as we have no choice but to believe, spiritual laws governing consciousness are uniform throughout the whole planet-bearing and presumably life-supporting universe, then certainly there is plenty of room, and at the same time, no doubt, the most agonizing and desperate need, for those innumerable redemptive incarnations of Suchness, upon whose shining multitudes the Mahayanists love to dwell.
For my part, I think the chief reason which prompted the invisible God to become visible in the flesh and to hold converse with men was to lead carnal men, who are only able to love carnally, to the healthful love of his flesh, and afterwards, little by little, to spiritual love.
--
This sensitive affection for Christ was always presented by St. Bernard as love of a relatively inferior order. It is so precisely on account of its sensitive character, for charity is of a purely spiritual essence. In right the soul should be able to enter directly into union, in virtue of its spiritual powers, with a God Who is pure spirit. The Incarnation, moreover, should be regarded as one of the consequences of mans transgression, so that love for the Person of Christ is, as a matter of fact, bound up with the History of a fall which need not, and should not, have happened. St. Bernard furthermore, and in several places, notes-that this affection cannot stand safely alone, but needs to be supported by what he calls science. He had examples before him of the deviations into which even the most ardent devotion can fall, when it is not allied with, and ruled by, a sane theology.
Can the many fantastic and mutually incompatible theories of expiation and atonement, which have been grafted onto the Christian doctrine of divine incarnation, be regarded as indispensable elements in a sane theology? I find it difficult to imagine how anyone who has looked into a History of these notions, as expounded, for example, by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Athanasius and Augustine, by Anselm and Luther, by Calvin and Grotius, can plausibly answer this question in the affirmative. In the present context, it will be enough to call attention to one of the bitterest of all the bitter ironies of History. For the Christ of the Gospels, lawyers seemed further from the Kingdom of Heaven, more hopelessly impervious to Reality, than almost any other class of human beings except the rich. But Christian theology, especially that of the Western churches, was the product of minds imbued with Jewish and Roman legalism. In all too many instances the immediate insights of the Avatar and the theocentric saint were rationalized into a system, not by philosophers, but by speculative barristers and metaphysical jurists. Why should what Abbot John Chapman calls the problem of reconciling (not merely uniting) Mysticism and Christianity be so extremely difficult? Simply because so much Roman and Protestant thinking was done by those very lawyers whom Christ regarded as being peculiarly incapable of understanding the true Nature of Things. The Abbot (Chapman is apparently referring to Abbot Marmion) says St John of the Cross is like a sponge full of Christianity. You can squeeze it all out, and the full mystical theory (in other words, the pure Perennial Philosophy) remains. Consequently for fifteen years or so I hated St John of the Cross and called him a Buddhist. I loved St Teresa and read her over and over again. She is first a Christian, only secondarily a mystic. Then I found I had wasted fifteen years, so far as prayer was concerned.
Now see the meaning of these two sayings of Christs. The one, No man cometh unto the Father but by me, that is through my life. The other saying, No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him; that is, he does not take my life upon him and follow after me, except he is moved and drawn of my Father, that is, of the Simple and Perfect Good, of which St. Paul saith, When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.
1.03 - Preparing for the Miraculous, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
stand the patterns of History. It is a delusion engendered
by our refusal to accept our insignificance when faced with
--
knowledge day by day. The events of History have never
been predictable to the human mind. Still less is it capable
of discerning the trends of our contemporary History and
their possible consequences, now that we are constantly
--
this standpoint all History, like all existence and manifesta-
tion, is one continuous miracle. This knowledge can help
--
the richest in the History of modern spirituality. (Sri Au-
robindo was nominated for the Nobel Prize of Literature
--
the long History of ones soul.
Until recently, that is until about 1970, little was known
--
of all the cycles of the evolution and of human History in its
various known or lost civilizations had to be worked out.
1.03 - Reading, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the History of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor schylus, nor Virgil evenworks as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and
Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.
1.03 - .REASON. IN PHILOSOPHY, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
thing by divorcing it from History _sub specie terni,--_when they
make a mummy of it. All the ideas that philosophers have treated for
--
Becoming, of History, of falsehood.--History is nothing more than the
belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood. Moral: we must say "no"
1.03 - Some Aspects of Modern Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
History man has been the maker of his own laws; and even if, as Freud
seems to think, they were the invention of our malevolent forefa thers, it is
--
on the personal attitude of the patient than on his infantile History. No
matter what the influences are that disturbed his youth, he still has to put up
1.03 - Supernatural Aid, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
to Thomas Carlyle's idea of the Hero King, as "Ableman" (On Heroes, HeroWorship and The Heroic in History, Lecture VI).
66
--
sures, and the Seven Palaces, as well as the History of the daugh
ter's refusal to wed. "And I," said he, "O my lady, go to her
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
makes of it. The heaviest calamity in English History, the breach
with America, might never have occurred if George the Third had not
--
aggrandisement, which at an early stage of History is often highly
favourable to social, industrial, and intellectual progress. For
--
Japan. Nor, to remount the stream of History to its sources, is it
an accident that all the first great strides towards civilisation
1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In Europe and in modern times this has taken the form of a clear and potent physical Science: it has proceeded by the discovery of the laws of the physical universe and the economic and sociological conditions of human life as determined by the physical being of man, his environment, his evolutionary History, his physical and vital, his individual and collective need. But after a time it must become apparent that the knowledge of the physical world is not the whole of knowledge; it must appear that man is a mental as well as a physical and vital being and even much more essentially mental than physical or vital. Even though his psychology is strongly affected and limited by his physical being and environment, it is not at its roots determined by them, but constantly reacts, subtly determines their action, effects even their new-shaping by the force of his psychological demand on life. His economic state and social institutions are themselves governed by his psychological demand on the possibilities, circumstances, tendencies created by the relation between the mind and soul of humanity and its life and body. Therefore to find the truth of things and the law of his being in relation to that truth he must go deeper and fathom the subjective secret of himself and things as well as their objective forms and surroundings.
This he may attempt to do for a time by the power of the critical and analytic reason which has already carried him so far; but not for very long. For in his study of himself and the world he cannot but come face to face with the soul in himself and the soul in the world and find it to be an entity so profound, so complex, so full of hidden secrets and powers that his intellectual reason betrays itself as an insufficient light and a fumbling seeker: it is successfully analytical only of superficialities and of what lies just behind the superficies. The need of a deeper knowledge must then turn him to the discovery of new powers and means within himself. He finds that he can only know himself entirely by becoming actively self-conscious and not merely self-critical, by more and more living in his soul and acting out of it rather than floundering on surfaces, by putting himself into conscious harmony with that which lies behind his superficial mentality and psychology and by enlightening his reason and making dynamic his action through this deeper light and power to which he thus opens. In this process the rationalistic ideal begins to subject itself to the ideal of intuitional knowledge and a deeper self awareness; the utilitarian standard gives way to the aspiration towards self-consciousness and self-realisation; the rule of living according to the manifest laws of physical Nature is replaced by the effort towards living according to the veiled Law and Will and Power active in the life of the world and in the inner and outer life of humanity.
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
istence and determine the phases of a life-History
of the stars, so the science of biology, by the com-
--
PreHistory teaches us that in the beginning Man must have
lived in small, autonomous groups; after which links were estab-
--
more from the sap of the earth? Again we may turn to History for
an answer. Let us suppose, for example, that the strivings and the
--
But if, as History suggests, there is really a quality of the in-
evitable in the forward march of the Universe if, in truth, the
--
when the paper is curved. Indeed the past History of human intel-
ligence is full of "mutations" of this kind, more or less abrupt, in-
--
the distribution and History of the whole around it. To accommo-
date this expansion of our thought the restricted field of static jux-
1.03 - THE ORPHAN, THE WIDOW, AND THE MOON, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[27] The motif of wounding in alchemy goes back to Zosimos (3rd cent.) and his visions of a sacrificial drama.180 The motif does not occur in such complete form again. One next meets it in the Turba: The dew is joined to him who is wounded and given over to death.181 The dew comes from the moon, and he who is wounded is the sun.182 In the treatise of Philaletha, Introitus apertus ad occlusum Regis palatium,183 the wounding is caused by the bite of the rabid Corascene dog,184 in consequence of which the hermaphrodite child suffered from hydrophobia.185 Dorn, in his De tenebris contra naturam, associates the motif of wounding and the poisonous snake-bite with Genesis 3: For the sickness introduced into nature by the serpent, and the deadly wound she inflicted, a remedy is to be sought.186 Accordingly it is the task of alchemy to root out the original sin, and this is accomplished with the aid of the balsamum vitae (balsam of life), which is a true mixture of the natural heat with its radical moisture. The life of the world is the light of nature and the celestial sulphur,187 whose substance is the aetheric moisture and heat of the firmament, like to the sun and moon.188 The conjunction of the moist (= moon) and the hot (= sun) thus produces the balsam, which is the original and incorrupt life of the world. Genesis 3 : 15, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel (RSV), was generally taken as a prefiguration of the Redeemer. But since Christ was free from the stain of sin the wiles of the serpent could not touch him, though of course mankind was poisoned. Whereas the Christian belief is that man is freed from sin by the redemptory act of Christ, the alchemist was evidently of the opinion that the restitution to the likeness of original and incorrupt nature had still to be accomplished by the art, and this can only mean that Christs work of redemption was regarded as incomplete. In view of the wickednesses which the Prince of this world,189 undeterred, goes on perpetrating as liberally as before, one cannot withhold all sympathy from such an opinion. For an alchemist who professed allegiance to the Ecclesia spiritualis it was naturally of supreme importance to make himself an unspotted vessel of the Paraclete and thus to realize the idea Christ on a plane far transcending a mere imitation of him. It is tragic to see how this tremendous thought got bogged down again and again in the welter of human folly. A shattering example of this is afforded not only by the History of the Church, but above all by alchemy itself, which richly merited its own condemnationin ironical fulfilment of the dictum In sterquiliniis invenitur (it is found in cesspools). Agrippa von Nettesheim was not far wrong when he opined that Chymists are of all men the most perverse.190
[28] In his Mysterium Lunae, an extremely valuable study for the History of alchemical symbolism, Rahner191 mentions that the waxing and waning of the bride (Luna, Ecclesia) is based on the kenosis192 of the bridegroom, in accordance with the words of St. Ambrose:193
Luna is diminished that she may fill the elements. Therefore is this a great mystery. To her it was given by him who confers grace upon all things. He emptied her that he might fill her, as he also emptied himself that he might fill all things. He emptied himself that he might come down to us. He came down to us that he might rise again for all. . . . Thus has Luna proclaimed the mystery of Christ.194
1.03 - The Sunlit Path, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
We are Bill Smith, a name without a meaning, a legal artifice to tie us to the great Machine and to an obscure genealogy we do not know much about, except that we are the son of our father, who was the son of his father, who was the son of his father, and that evidently we shall be the father of our son, who will be the father of his son, who will be the father of his son, and so on endlessly. And we walk up and down the great boulevard of the world, here or there, in a Los Angeles which looks more and more like Tokyo, which looks more and more like Mexico City, which looks more and more like every city in the world, just as one anthill looks like another. We can very well take a plane, but we will find ourselves again everywhere. We are French or American, but, to tell the truth, that is only History and passports, another artifice to bind us hand and foot to one machine or another, while our brother in Calcutta or Rangoon walks the same boulevard with the same question, under a yellow, red or orange flag. All this is the vestige of the hunting grounds, but there is not much left to hunt, save ourselves, and we are well on our way to being crushed out of that possibility, too, under the steamroller of the great Machine. So we go up and down the stairs, make phone calls, rush around, rush to vacation or enjoy life, like our brother under a yellow or a brown skin: in English, French and Chinese, we are harassed on all sides, exhausted, and we are not quite sure whether we are enjoying life or life is enjoying us. But it goes on and on all the same. And through it all, there is something that goes up and down, rushes and rushes, and sometimes, for a second, there is a sort of little cry inside: Who am I? Who am I? Where is me? Where am I?
That brief second, so vain and futile amid this gigantic haste, is the real key to the discovery, an all-powerful lever that seems like nothing but truth seems like nothing, naturally, for if it seemed like something, we would already have wrung its neck, to pigeonhole it and harness it to another piece of machinery. It is light; it slips through the fingers. It is a passing breeze that refreshes all.
1.03 - The Uncreated, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Nothing is more vain than this seeking after what has been; for what has been is what is. All things carry in themselves their own History. The problem of the beginning is, in fact, only the problem of the perpetual development of things,the how of each existence.
The Unique, Impersonal, Immutable being in existence, how can the multiple, individual and transient exist? And what are they?
1.03 - Time Series, Information, and Communication, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
a number depending upon the whole History of f(t)-and if the
average of f(t) over the whole ensemble is finite, we are in a posi-
--
class. In other words, given the entire History up to the present
of a time series known to belong to an ensemble in statistical
--
from the past History of a single example. Actually, for such a
time series,
1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
89. The theme of divine madness has a long History. Its 10c1. .\s Classicus was Socrates's discussion of it in the Phaedrus: madness, provided it comes as a gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings (Plato, Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII, tr. W Hamilton
[London: Penguin, 1986], p. 46, line 244). Socrates distinguished four types of divine madness: (I) inspired divination, such as by the prophetess at Delphi; (2) instances in which individuals, when ancient sins have given rise to troubles, have prophesied and incited to prayer and worship; (3) possession by the Muses, since the technically skilled untouched by the madness of the Muses will never be a good poet; and (4) the lover. In the Renaissance, the theme of divine madness was talcen up by the Neoplatonists such as Ecino and by humanists such as Erasmus. Erasmus's discussion is particularly important, as it fuses the classical Platonic conception with Christianity.
--
War, as "a turning point in the History of the twentieth century" ( A History of the Twentieth
Century: Volume One: 1900-1933 [London: William Morrow, 1977], p. 308).
1.04 - HOW THE .TRUE WORLD. ULTIMATELY BECAME A FABLE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
THE History OF AN ERROR
1. The true world, attainable to the sage, the pious man and the man of
1.04 - KAI VALYA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
History has recorded had this. They had found the whole
139
1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
sufficiently explains the relentless hostility with which in History
the priest has often pursued the magician. The haughty
--
appearance comparatively late in the History of religion. At an
earlier stage the functions of priest and sorcerer were often
--
History of humanity. We have seen that on the one hand magic is
nothing but a mistaken application of the very simplest and most
--
the world have also at some period of their History passed through a
similar intellectual phase, that they attempted to force the great
1.04 - Pratyahara, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
3:A very similar experience to that of Asana is in store for us. At first we shall very likely flatter ourselves that our minds are pretty calm; this is a defect of observation. Just as the European standing for the first time on the edge of the desert will see nothing there, while his Arab can tell him the family History of each of the fifty persons in view, because he has learnt how to look, so with practice the thoughts will become more numerous and more insistent.
4:As soon as the body was accurately observed it was found to be terribly restless and painful; now that we observe the mind it is seen to be more restless and painful still. (See diagram opposite.)
1.04 - Reality Omnipresent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:And when we say that out of Non-Being Being appeared, we perceive that we are speaking in terms of Time about that which is beyond Time. For what was that portentous date in the History of eternal Nothing on which Being was born out of it or when will come that other date equally formidable on which an unreal all will relapse into the perpetual void? Sat and Asat, if they have both to be affirmed, must be conceived as if they obtained simultaneously. They permit each other even though they refuse to mingle. Both, since we must speak in terms of Time, are eternal. And who shall persuade eternal Being that it does not really exist and only eternal Non-Being is? In such a negation of all experience how shall we find the solution that explains all experience?
9:Pure Being is the affirmation by the Unknowable of Itself as the free base of all cosmic existence. We give the name of Non-Being to a contrary affirmation of Its freedom from all cosmic existence, - freedom, that is to say, from all positive terms of actual existence which consciousness in the universe can formulate to itself, even from the most abstract, even from the most transcendent. It does not deny them as a real expression of Itself, but It denies Its limitation by all expression or any expression whatsoever. The Non-Being permits the Being, even as the Silence permits the Activity. By this simultaneous negation and affirmation, not mutually destructive, but complementary to each other like all contraries, the simultaneous awareness of conscious Self-being as a reality and the Unknowable beyond as the same Reality becomes realisable to the awakened human soul. Thus was it possible for the Buddha to attain the state of Nirvana and yet act puissantly in the world, impersonal in his inner consciousness, in his action the most powerful personality that we know of as having lived and produced results upon earth.
1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
compare two moments in the earth's History sufficiently separated
in time. In any period of ten million years Life practically grows a
--
ancient though preHistory may make it seem to our
eyes, Mankind is still very young. We can trace its existence for not
--
irresistible flow of our History in the direction of more and more
unified groupings has no particular meaning; they relegate it to the
--
ment upon our general knowledge of the world's History over a
period of 300 million years, we can advance the following two
--
is still young, still fresh. If we are to judge by what History teaches
us about other living groups, it still has, organically speaking, some
--
b A hope held in common. Here again the History of Life is
decisive. Not all directions are good for our advance: one alone
--
human History this conflict between the "servants of Heaven" and
the "servants of earth" has gone on; but only since the birth of the
--
History of Earth.
I am convinced that finally it is upon the idea of progress, and
1.04 - Sounds, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of History, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some travellers wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.
--
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments, and hence its singular success. I am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoa-nut husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This car-load of torn sails is more legible and interesting now than if they should be wrought into paper and printed books. Who can write so graphically the History of the storms they have weathered as these rents have done?
They are proof-sheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber from the Maine woods, which did not go out to sea in the last freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand because of what did go out or was split up; pine, spruce, cedar,first, second, third, and fourth qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which will get far among the hills before it gets slacked. These rags in bales, of all hues and qualities, the lowest condition to which cotton and linen descend, the final result of dress,of patterns which are now no longer cried up, unless it be in Milwaukie, as those splendid articles,
1.04 - The Aims of Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
which has a special History of its own; but for obvious reasons we cannot
go into that here.
--
the course of human History that it has become the theme of many myths
and fairytales. We are told of the Open sesame! to the locked door, or of
--
nature of the underlying creative forces. They are irrational, symbolisticcurrents that run through the whole History of mankind, and are so archaic
in character that it is not difficult to find their parallels in archaeology and
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
alchemist or the classical Neoplatonist. Hence one could say cum grano salis that History could be
constructed just as easily from ones own unconscious as from the actual texts.396
--
(previously extant) paradise initiates the redemptive activity, History; regain of paradise in the course or
as a consequence of proper behavior is its goal. This general pattern appears characteristic of all
--
The group, History incarnate, is the embodiment of a specific mode of being designed to attain perfection,
and contains the concrete expression of the goal of a people it is the objective and subjective realization
--
of the mode by which they improve their tragic condition. History not only protects people from the
unknown; it provides them with rules for achieving what they desire most, and, therefore, for expressing
--
elaborately complex evolutionary History, the depth of heroic endeavor necessary to their formulation, and
their extreme current potency. Sufficiently novel verbally-transmitted information may disturb semantic,
--
cynically and with innocence. What I relate is the History of the next two centuries. I describe what is
coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism.... Our whole European culture is
--
the falseness and mendaciousness of all Christian interpretations of the world and of History; rebound
from God is the truth to the fanatical faith All is false; an active Buddhism.
--
of the creative illness described in detail by Henri Ellenberger, in his massive study of the History of the
unconscious is alive and well in our own culture. Ellenberger described its characteristic elements:
--
proclivity).426 His unique personality or experiential History, in combination with presently extant social
conditions, doomed him to experience so anomalous that it could not simultaneously be accepted as
--
History.
220
--
cultural. History is an invaluable storehouse of the creative experience and wisdom of the past. Past
wisdom is not always sufficient to render present potentiality habitable. If the structure of experience itself
--
out of the future, into the present, where none existed before. History, as description of the past, is
incomplete, as well as static. It must therefore exist in constant conflict with new experiences. The spirit
--
bear the initial burden for the forward movement of History are capable of transforming personal
idiosyncrasy and revelation into collective reality, without breaking down under the weight of isolation and
--
from the unknown. The hero, by contrast, author and editor of History, masters the known, exceeds its
bounds, and then subjects it to restructuring exposing chaos once more to view in the process or pushes
--
resolve the tension between what they know to be true and what History claims. Re-adaptation, during times
of crisis, does not necessarily constitute simple addition to the body of historical knowledge although that
--
the meaning of experience, and therefore, the mythology of History and being. If resolution is not reached
in time of crisis, mental illness (for the individual) or cultural degeneration (for the society) threatens. This
--
cultures central myth by placing himself beyond the protective enclave of History and by exposing his
vulnerability to the terrible nature of reality. In psychological terms: the hero discovers the limitations of
History; discovers the nakedness of the father (Genesis 9:20-25). He must, therefore, challenge History, and
face what it had previously protected him from. Contact with the Terrible Mother means exposure to
--
experience and History that is, the origin of being itself appears inextricably bound up with such
opposition, with differentiation from the origin. The initial paradisal state, although characterized by
--
serpent, coupled and singly, have an extensive, pervasive, and detailed History as representational agents.
They serve similar functions in a multitude of myths describing the loss of paradise, and must therefore
--
evolutionary History. The human nervous system is composed in part of structures as phylogenetically
ancient as the reptile, in whose recesses lurk tremendous excitatory power. The deep structures of the
--
experience of others. The self-aware individual human being, by contrast, lives in History, in an experiential
field whose every aspect has been shaped and modified by experience communicated from extant
1.04 - The Crossing of the First Threshold, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
History of the Tar-Baby Story," Journal of American Folklore, 43, 1930,
pp. 129-209; "A New Classification of the Fundamental Elements of the TarBaby Story on the Basis of Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven Versions," ibid., 56,
1.04 - The Discovery of the Nation-Soul, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The objective view of society has reigned throughout the historical period of humanity in the West; it has been sufficiently strong though not absolutely engrossing in the East. Rulers, people and thinkers alike have understood by their national existence a political status, the extent of their borders, their economic well-being and expansion, their laws, institutions and the working of these things. For this reason political and economic motives have everywhere predominated on the surface and History has been a record of their operations and influence. The one subjective and psychological force consciously admitted and with difficulty deniable has been that of the individual. This predominance is so great that most modern historians and some political thinkers have concluded that objective necessities are by law of Nature the only really determining forces, all else is result or superficial accidents of these forces. Scientific History has been conceived as if it must be a record and appreciation of the environmental motives of political action, of the play of economic forces and developments and the course of institutional evolution. The few who still valued the psychological element have kept their eye fixed on individuals and are not far from conceiving of History as a mass of biographies. The truer and more comprehensive science of the future will see that these conditions only apply to the imperfectly self-conscious period of national development. Even then there was always a greater subjective force working behind individuals, policies, economic movements and the change of institutions; but it worked for the most part subconsciously, more as a subliminal self than as a conscious mind. It is when this subconscious power of the group-soul comes to the surface that nations begin to enter into possession of their subjective selves; they set about getting, however vaguely or imperfectly, at their souls.
Certainly, there is always a vague sense of this subjective existence at work even on the surface of the communal mentality. But so far as this vague sense becomes at all definite, it concerns itself mostly with details and unessentials, national idiosyncrasies, habits, prejudices, marked mental tendencies. It is, so to speak, an objective sense of subjectivity. As man has been accustomed to look on himself as a body and a life, the physical animal with a certain moral or immoral temperament, and the things of the mind have been regarded as a fine flower and attainment of the physical life rather than themselves anything essential or the sign of something essential, so and much more has the community regarded that small part of its subjective self of which it becomes aware. It clings indeed always to its idiosyncrasies, habits, prejudices, but in a blind objective fashion, insisting on their most external aspect and not at all going behind them to that for which they stand, that which they try blindly to express.
This has been the rule not only with the nation, but with all communities. A Church is an organised religious community and religion, if anything in the world, ought to be subjective; for its very reason for existencewhere it is not merely an ethical creed with a supernatural authorityis to find and realise the soul. Yet religious History has been almost entirely, except in the time of the founders and their immediate successors, an insistence on things objective, rites, ceremonies, authority, church governments, dogmas, forms of belief. Witness the whole external religious History of Europe, that strange sacrilegious tragi-comedy of discords, sanguinary disputations, religious wars, persecutions, State churches and all else that is the very negation of the spiritual life. It is only recently that men have begun seriously to consider what Christianity, Catholicism, Islam really mean and are in their soul, that is to say, in their very reality and essence.
But now we have, very remarkably, very swiftly coming to the surface this new psychological tendency of the communal consciousness. Now first we hear of the soul of a nation and, what is more to the purpose, actually see nations feeling for their souls, trying to find them, seriously endeavouring to act from the new sense and make it consciously operative in the common life and action. It is only natural that this tendency should have been, for the most part, most powerful in new nations or in those struggling to realise themselves in spite of political subjection or defeat. For these need more to feel the difference between themselves and others so that they may assert and justify their individuality as against the powerful superlife which tends to absorb or efface it. And precisely because their objective life is feeble and it is difficult to affirm it by its own strength in the adverse circumstances, there is more chance of their seeking for their individuality and its force of self-assertion in that which is subjective and psychological or at least in that which has a subjective or a psychological significance.
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
I have dwelt at length in the previous chapters on the Mother's relation with Sri Aurobindo and her role in his outer life. There used to be considerable speculation in the early days about their mutual relationship. Was it one of Purusha and Prakriti, Master and disciple or Shiva and Shakti? I was therefore very curious from the start to observe and discern the relationship. I came to the conclusion that it was that of Shiva and Shakti. The Mother has said, "Without him, I exist not; without me he is unmanifest." And we were given the unique opportunity of witnessing the dual personality of the One enacting on our earth-plane an immortal drama, rare in the spiritual History of man. I could perfectly realise that without the Mother, Sri Aurobindo's stupendous realisations could not have taken such a concrete shape on this terrestrial base. In fact, he was waiting for the Mother's coming. He said that with the Mother's help he covered ten years of sadhana in one year. The very building up of the Ashram testifies to this irrefutable truth: "He wills, I execute." After Sri Aurobindo's passing, it was feared in some quarters that the Ashram would collapse, at least decline. On the contrary, the manifestation of the Supramental Truth took place after his withdrawal, and since then the Ashram has expanded beyond all belief.
Sri Aurobindo wrote to me, "...The Mother's pressure for change is always strong even when she does not put it as force, it is there by the very nature of the Divine Energy in her." That is the indubitable, puissant impression of all those who have had anything to do with her from near or far. While one felt in Sri Aurobindo's atmosphere a wide and large freedom of nature, the Mother's contact always brought us to the hard reality of things. Whenever she came to Sri Aurobindo's room, a powerful vibration was set within the calm, passive silence of the Self and we had to be qui vive. We were no longer left to our easy movements. If chattering was going on, it would stop; a newspaper would remain unread; if anyone was leaning against the wall, he would sit upright. In a word, everyone was like a taut bow-string, certainly not out of fear but to rise to her expectations. Even Sri Aurobindo, if in the course of the evening talk, happened to see her coming, would say in a hushed voice, "The Mother is coming!" and would stop talking, while the Mother would encourage us with a smile, "Go on, go on!" Such was her dynamism, cit tapas! This does not imply that she was a stern school-mistress.
--
Now, I shall give some instances of my medical contact with her. We have noticed that she possessed medical knowledge far above an average doctor's. In fact, during my medical practice in the Ashram, it was she who guided me at every step. I was doing the double duty of attending to the patients as well as the Divine. I could not spare much time for the patients, A heavy work was imposed upon me, of course at my own suggestion, that a medical History of all the Ashram people should be recorded and preserved for reference, and it should be incumbent on the new candidates for taking up Yoga to appear for and pass a medical examination. I was to read these reports every day when the Mother attended on Sri Aurobindo. Both of them would ask questions and give suggestions. It became more a test for the doctor than for the patients. Any negligence, mistake or slip in my case-taking was at once detected, but never was I reprimanded for any short-coming. If to some of her questions I remained silent, the Mother would comment, "Oh, he doesn't know. If he knew, he would at once speak out." A humorous instance comes to mind. Once I prescribed a mixture to our bumptious Mridu, Sri Aurobindo's luchi-maker, but forgot to write precise directions on the label. She caught hold of this slip, came in a flurry to the Mother and burst out, "Mother, Nirodbabu is a poem, he is no doctor. He has given me medicine without any directions." The Mother appearing grave, the bottle in her hand, came and reported the joke to Sri Aurobindo. He listened in silence. If it had happened during the correspondence period, I am sure he would have had fun at my cost.
I shall now give an example of the Mother's considerable courage in taking up the charge of a patient suffering from throat cancer. This man, a devotee, arrived from outside. He had refused all medical aid and turned down all entreaties of his relatives for the accepted treatment. He wanted only to be cured by the Mother or to die here. He was very thin, of a nervous type and his general health was poor. I was asked to supervise the case and give daily reports to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. We shall see in the chapter 'God Departs' another devotee seeking entire refuge in them and being cured of a mysterious illness that endangered her life. I must admit frankly that I was stunned by the Mother's boldness and could not have an unreserved faith. Either in this context or another, I had asked the Mother and Sri Aurobindo if they had cured cancer by their Force. The Mother replied firmly, "Not only cancer, other diseases too, pronounced incurable by the doctors. Isn't it so?" She asked Sri Aurobindo, as if looking for confirmation; he nodded. The Mother once said that there is hardly a disease that Yoga cannot cure. Sri Aurobindo also wrote, "Of course it [Yoga] can, but on condition of faith or openness or both. Even a mental suggestion can cure cancer with luck of course, as is shown by the case of the woman operated on unsuccessfully for cancer, but the doctors lied and told her it had succeeded. Result, cancer symptoms all ceased and she died many years afterwards of another illness altogether," Here was a patient, then, who came with faith in the Mother. I began to do my duty regularly. At first the patient came for Pranam to the Mother. I witnessed her intense concentration and preoccupation with the case. While listening to the report, she would suddenly go into a trance and Sri Aurobindo would intently watch over her. Once she was on the point of falling down. Sri Aurobindo stretched both his arms, exclaiming "Ah!" The Mother regained her control. Things seemed to be moving at a slow pace. If some symptoms improved, new ones appeared; the condition fluctuated from day to day. Some days passed in a comparative restfulness. Our help was mostly psychological: to give courage and instil faith. If some progress was noticed, I would with a cheerful face report it to the Mother. She would just listen quietly. Meanwhile letters from the relatives urged the patient to return. When the Mother heard about it, she replied, "If I can't cure it, there is none who can." The fight continued, it was a grim encounter, indeed. As a result of the Mother's steady Force, things looked bright and I felt we had turned the corner. The Mother kept her vigil and wasted no words. After the February Darshan, however, the picture changed for no apparent reason. The patient went gradually down-hill and in a month or two, life petered out. The patient was brought before the Mother to have her last blessings. She came down and with her soothing touch and the balm of her divine smile wiped away all his distress and made his passage peaceful. Later when I asked Sri Aurobindo the reason for this unaccountable reversal, he replied, "After the Darshan his faith got shaken and he could not get it back." Cancer of the throat is a scourge; one cannot eat, drink or speak; breathing becomes difficult. Let us remember Sri Ramakrishna's classical example. To keep a steady faith needs a heroic will which how many can have? Besides, the family surroundings also were not very congenial.
--
To end the sad story: the case was not showing any improvement; one after another complications began to develop. Above all, his outer consciousness failed to respond actively to the Force. The Mother saw that the only way that could save the patient was to send him to Bangalore where he could be treated by an efficient German doctor well-known to us, Sri Aurobindo asked me to prepare a clear and complete History of the patient's malady, let the Mother hear it and then send it to the doctor. When it was ready, I read it out to both of them. Sri Aurobindo commented, "Excellent!" I felt gratified. On receiving the report the doctor came down to take the patient. He concurred with our view that it must be a case of septicaemia. When the patient was being sent off, the Mother came and stood on her terrace waiting a long time for him. At last the car came before her and she and the patient looked at each other for quite a while. He had a premonition that he would not come back.
We felt very sad, indeed, but there was no other choice. Next day, a telegram arrived carrying the news that the patient had suddenly collapsed and died in the train. As soon as I heard it, my head began to reel and I had to sit down before Sri Aurobindo. It was a most treacherous blow! The post-mortem revealed that there was an inflammation of the heart's envelope with a little collection of fluid behind the heart, and yet clinically there was no sign of it.
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The immediate or at any rate the earliest known successors of the Rishis, the compilers of the Brahmanas, the writers of theUpanishads give a clear & definite answer to this question.The Upanishads everywhere rest their highly spiritual & deeply mystic doctrines on the Veda.We read in the Isha Upanishad of Surya as the Sun God, but it is the Sun of spiritual illumination, of Agni as the Fire, but it is the inner fire that burns up all sin & crookedness. In the Kena Indra, Agni & Vayu seek to know the supreme Brahman and their greatness is estimated by the nearness with which they touched him,nedistham pasparsha. Uma the daughter of Himavan, the Woman, who reveals the truth to them is clearly enough no natural phenomenon. In the Brihadaranyaka, the most profound, subtle & mystical of human scriptures, the gods & Titans are the masters, respectively, of good and of evil. In the Upanishads generally the word devah is used as almost synonymous with the forces & functions of sense, mind & intellect. The element of symbolism is equally clear. To the terms of the Vedic ritual, to their very syllables a profound significance is everywhere attached; several incidents related in the Upanishads show the deep sense then & before entertained that the sacrifices had a spiritual meaning which must be known if they were to be conducted with full profit or even with perfect safety. The Brahmanas everywhere are at pains to bring out a minute symbolism in the least circumstances of the ritual, in the clarified butter, the sacred grass, the dish, the ladle. Moreover, we see even in the earliest Upanishads already developed the firm outlines and minute details of an extraordinary psychology, physics, cosmology which demand an ancient development and centuries of Yogic practice and mystic speculation to account for their perfect form & clearness. This psychology, this physics, this cosmology persist almost unchanged through the whole History of Hinduism. We meet them in the Puranas; they are the foundation of the Tantra; they are still obscurely practised in various systems of Yoga. And throughout, they have rested on a declared Vedic foundation. The Pranava, the Gayatri, the three Vyahritis, the five sheaths, the five (or seven) psychological strata, (bhumi, kshiti of the Vedas), the worlds that await us, the gods who help & the demons who hinder go back to Vedic origins.All this may be a later mystic misconception of the hymns & their ritual, but the other hypothesis of direct & genuine derivation is also possible. If there was no common origin, if Greek & Indian separated during the naturalistic period of the common religion supposed to be recorded in the Vedas it is surprising that even the little we know of Greek rites & mysteries should show us ideas coincident with those of Indian Tantra & Yoga.
When we go back to the Veda itself, we find in the hymns which are to us most easily intelligible by the modernity of their language, similar & decisive indications. The moralistic conception of Varuna, for example, is admitted even by the Europeans. We even find the sense of sin, usually supposed to be an advanced religious conception, much more profoundly developed in prehistoric India than it was in any other old Aryan nation even in historic times. Surely, this is in itself a significant indication. Surely, this conception cannot have become so clear & strong without a previous History in the earlier hymns. Nor is it psychologically possible that a cult capable of so advanced an idea, should have been ignorant of all other moral & intellectual conceptions reverencing only natural forces & seeking only material ends. Neither can there have been a sudden leap filled up only by a very doubtful henotheism, a huge hiatus between the naturalism of early Veda and the transcendentalism of the Vedic Brahmavada admittedly present in the later hymns. The European interpretation in the face of such conflicting facts threatens to become a brilliant but shapeless monstrosity. And is there no symbolism in the details of the Vedic sacrifice? It seems to me that the peculiar language of the Veda has never been properly studied or appreciated in this connection. What are we to say of the Vedic anxiety to increase Indra by the Soma wine? Of the description of Soma as the amritam, the wine of immortality, & of its forces as the indavah or moon powers? Of the constant sense of the attacks delivered by the powers of evil on the sacrifice? Of the extraordinary powers already attri buted to the mantra & the sacrifice? Have the neshtram potram, hotram of the Veda no symbolic significance? Is there no reason for the multiplication of functions at the sacrifice or for the subtle distinctions between Gayatrins, Arkins, Brahmas? These are questions that demand a careful consideration which has never yet been given for the problems they raise.
The present essays are merely intended to raise the subject, not to exhaust it, to offer suggestions, not to establish them. The theory of Vedic religion which I shall suggest in these pages, can only be substantiated if it is supported by a clear, full, simple, natural and harmonious rendering of the Veda standing on a sound philological basis, perfectly consistent in itself and proved in hymn after hymn without any hiatus or fatal objection. Such a substantiation I shall one day place before the public. The problem of Vedic interpretation depends, in my view, on three different tests, philological, historic and psychological. If the results of these three coincide, then only can we be sure that we have understood the Veda. But to erect this Delphic tripod of interpretation is no facile undertaking. It is easy to misuse philology. I hold no philology to be sound & valid which has only discovered one or two byelaws of sound modification and for the rest depends upon imagination & licentious conjecture,identifies for instance ethos with swadha, derives uloka from urvaloka or prachetasa from prachi and on the other [hand] ignores the numerous but definitely ascertainable caprices of Pracritic detrition between the European & Sanscrit tongues or considers a number of word-identities sufficient to justify inclusion in a single group of languages. By a scientific philology I mean a science which can trace the origins, growth & structure of the Sanscrit language, discover its primary, secondary & tertiary forms & the laws by which they develop from each other, trace intelligently the descent of every meaning of a word in Sanscrit from its original root sense, account for all similarities & identities of sense, discover the reason of unexpected divergences, trace the deviations which separated Greek & Latin from the Indian dialect, discover & define the connection of all three with the Dravidian forms of speech. Such a system of comparative philology could alone deserve to stand as a science side by side with the physical sciences and claim to speak with authority on the significance of doubtful words in the Vedic vocabulary. The development of such a science must always be a work of time & gigantic labour.
1.04 - The Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
amply confirmed by History as well as by empirical psychology.
What at first looks like an abstract idea stands in reality for
1.04 - To the Priest of Rytan-ji, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
It was a convention to address letters of this type to the attendant rather than to the head priest himself. Hakuin also mentions that this is the third time he has received a letter from the attendant, alluding to a famous episode from the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese History when the warlord
Liu Pei paid three visits in person to the wise scholar Chu-ko Liang to solicit his aid in establishing his reign. The "three visits" became proverbial for the sincerity one should evince when seeking someone's help.
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
in human History, receives the full initiation. This is the
figure of the supreme and universal Being, writes Sri Au-
--
History of the earth and its races. ... The Avatar is necessary
when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evo-
--
the first time in human History the complete, bi-poled male-
female Avatar. May it at last be realized that their crucial
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
interpret History not as cyclic but as linear, with a begin-
ning at Creation and an end when evil will be conquered
--
Millennium: Jesus thought that the History of the world
would come to a screeching halt, and that God would in-
--
at any other phase in its History, writes Rees. The wider
cosmos has a potential future that could even be infinite.
--
the world than in all previous human History. ... We and the
rest of life cannot afford another hundred years like that. ...
--
through the countless millenniums of its History. 21
The recent decades in the History of humanity must of
course be seen in the perspective of a cycle of progression
--
ly froze over at least twice in its History (once 2.45 billion
years ago and a second time between 800 and 600 million
--
ence, if its long History and continuous survival is not the
accident of a fortuitously self-organizing Chance, which it
1.056 - Lack of Knowledge is the Cause of Suffering, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This ignorance or avidya is, really speaking, an oblivion in respect of the nature of things in their own status, and an insistence and an emphasis of their apparent characteristics, their forms, their names and their relationships, upon the basis of which the History of the world moves and the activity of people goes on. This ignorance is the root cause of all mental suffering, which of course is the cause of every other suffering. It may be any kind of suffering; it is based ultimately on this peculiar inward root of dislocation of personality where begins our study of abnormal psychology, if we would like to call it so.
If abnormal psychology is the study of disordered mental conditions, then we may say that every psychology is abnormal psychology, because there is no ordered mind anywhere in the world, in the sense that everything is set out of tune from reality. Psychoanalysts are fond of saying that when the mind is out of tune with reality, there is abnormality. This is a great dictum of Freud, Adler, Hume, and many others. But though the saying is well-defined and accepted by all psychologists, the crux of the matter is: what is reality with which the mind is supposed to be in tune? According to psychoanalysts, reality is the world that we see with our eyes and the society in which we are living.
--
The attunement of the inward conduct and character of the individual with the conditions prevailing outside in human society is supposed to be the normal behaviour of the mind, according to psychoanalysis. The word used for this prevailing condition outside is reality, because that is what persists always, whereas individual instincts may go on changing. But the definition of reality as applied to the social laws would not hold water for long, because anything that is subject to change cannot be called real. The constitution of human society is subject to transformation on account of the mutations of History the changes that we see in the world through the process of evolution. Therefore, laws will change, and our concept of normalcy also will change.
The root cause of unhappiness, therefore, is an irreconcilability between the individual and its environment. This environment is a very peculiar word which has deep connotations. It means anything and everything. The circumstances in which we find ourselves are of the environment the geographical conditions, the social conditions, the psychological conditions, the astronomical conditions. All these have to be taken into consideration when we speak of the environment of an individual. These are vast things, insurmountable by ordinary human thinking. It is not usually practicable for the mind to tune itself to all these things that are outside. If it succeeds in one line, it will fail in another, so that there is always some kind of difficulty, one coming after the other. And so, there is a perpetual restlessness within.
1.05 - Adam Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Thinker would be borne out by the History of philosophy.
To analysis, the essence of the intellect appears just as
1.05 - Buddhism and Women, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
All through its History, buddhism in India, and in
Tibet as well, has seen a great number of remarkable
--
indelible imprint on the long History of Indian
buddhism, like Gelongma Palmo, Mandarava,
--
preserved in History.
THE TWo SPOUSES OF SONGTSEN GAMPO - From the
--
accomplishments even if History has not recorded their
names. Their rank was then equal to that of men. They
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Our present economic, social and international arrangements are based, in large measure, upon organized lovelessness. We begin by lacking charity towards Nature, so that instead of trying to co-operate with Tao or the Logos on the inanimate and subhuman levels, we try to dominate and exploit, we waste the earths mineral resources, ruin its soil, ravage its forests, pour filth into its rivers and poisonous fumes into its air. From lovelessness in relation to Nature we advance to lovelessness in relation to arta lovelessness so extreme that we have effectively killed all the fundamental or useful arts and set up various kinds of mass production by machines in their place. And of course this lovelessness in regard to art is at the same time a lovelessness in regard to the human beings who have to perform the fool-proof and grace-proof tasks imposed by our mechanical art-surrogates and by the interminable paper work connected with mass production and mass distribution. With mass-production and mass-distribution go mass-financing, and the three have conspired to expropriate ever-increasing numbers of small owners of land and productive equipment, thus reducing the sum of freedom among the majority and increasing the power of a minority to exercise a coercive control over the lives of their fellows. This coercively controlling minority is composed of private capitalists or governmental bureaucrats or of both classes of bosses acting in collaborationand, of course, the coercive and therefore essentially loveless nature of the control remains the same, whether the bosses call themselves company directors or civil servants. The only difference between these two kinds of oligarchical rulers is that the first derive more of their power from wealth than from position within a conventionally respected hierarchy, while the second derive more power from position than from wealth. Upon this fairly uniform groundwork of loveless relationships are imposed others, which vary widely from one society to another, according to local conditions and local habits of thought and feeling. Here are a few examples: contempt and exploitation of coloured minorities living among white majorities, or of coloured majorities governed by minorities of white imperialists; hatred of Jews, Catholics, Free Masons or of any other minority whose language, habits, appearance or religion happens to differ from those of the local majority. And the crowning superstructure of uncharity is the organized lovelessness of the relations between state and sovereign statea lovelessness that expresses itself in the axiomatic assumption that it is right and natural for national organizations to behave like thieves and murderers, armed to the teeth and ready, at the first favourable opportunity, to steal and kill. (Just how axiomatic is this assumption about the nature of nationhood is shown by the History of Central America. So long as the arbitrarily delimited territories of Central America were called provinces of the Spanish colonial empire, there was peace between their inhabitants. But early in the nineteenth century the various administrative districts of the Spanish empire broke from their allegiance to the mother country and decided to become nations on the European model. Result: they immediately went to war with one another. Why? Because, by definition, a sovereign national state is an organization that has the right and duty to coerce its members to steal and kill on the largest possible scale.)
Lead us not into temptation must be the guiding principle of all social organization, and the temptations to be guarded against and, so far as possible, eliminated by means of appropriate economic and political arrangements are temptations against charity, that is to say, against the disinterested love of God, Nature and man. First, the dissemination and general acceptance of any form of the Perennial Philosophy will do something to preserve men and women from the temptation to idolatrous worship of things in timechurch-worship, state-worship, revolutionary future-worship, humanistic self-worship, all of them essentially and necessarily opposed to charity. Next come decentralization, widespread private ownership of land and the means of production on a small scale, discouragement of monopoly by state or corporation, division of economic and political power (the only guarantee, as Lord Acton was never tired of insisting, of civil liberty under law). These social rearrangements would do much to prevent ambitious individuals, organizations and governments from being led into the temptation of behaving tyrannously; while co-operatives, democratically controlled professional organizations and town meetings would deliver the masses of the people from the temptation of making their decentralized individualism too rugged. But of course none of these intrinsically desirable reforms can possibly be carried out, so long as it is thought right and natural that sovereign states should prepare to make war on one another. For modern war cannot be waged except by countries with an over-developed capital goods industry; countries in which economic power is wielded either by the state or by a few monopolistic corporations which it is easy to tax and, if necessary, temporarily to nationalize; countries where the labouring masses, being without property, are rootless, easily transferable from one place to another, highly regimented by factory discipline. Any decentralized society of free, uncoerced small owners, with a properly balanced economy must, in a war-making world such as ours, be at the mercy of one whose production is highly mechanized and centralized, whose people are without property and therefore easily coercible, and whose economy is lop-sided. This is why the one desire of industrially undeveloped countries like Mexico and China is to become like Germany, or England, or the United States. So long as the organized lovelessness of war and preparation for war remains, there can be no mitigation, on any large, nation-wide or world-wide scale, of the organized lovelessness of our economic and political relationships. War and preparation for war are standing temptations to make the present bad, God-eclipsing arrangements of society progressively worse as technology becomes progressively more efficient.
1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
find the concept of the archetype in the History of art as well as
in philology and textual criticism. The psychological archetype
1.05 - Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
All here is Consciousness, because all is Being or Spirit. All is Chit, because all is Sat Sat-Chit at every level of Its own manifestation. The History of our earthly evolution is nothing but a slow conversion of Force into Consciousness or, more exactly, a slow 52
53
1.05 - Definition of the Ludicrous, and a brief sketch of the rise of Comedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
The successive changes through which Tragedy passed, and the authors of these changes, are well known, whereas Comedy has had no History, because it was not at first treated seriously. It was late before the Archon granted a comic chorus to a poet; the performers were till then voluntary. Comedy had already taken definite shape when comic poets, distinctively so called, are heard of. Who furnished it with masks, or prologues, or increased the number of actors,--these and other similar details remain unknown. As for the plot, it came originally from Sicily; but of Athenian writers Crates was the first who, abandoning the 'iambic' or lampooning form, generalised his themes and plots.
Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imitation in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ, in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of metre, and is narrative in form. They differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavours, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit; whereas the Epic action has no limits of time. This, then, is a second point of difference; though at first the same freedom was admitted in Tragedy as in Epic poetry.
1.05 - Knowledge by Aquaintance and Knowledge by Description, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
Bismarck to those who only know of him through History; the man with the iron mask; the longest-lived of men. These are progressively further removed from acquaintance with particulars; the first comes as near to acquaintance as is possible in regard to another person; in the second, we shall still be said to know 'who Bismarck was'; in the third, we do not know who was the man with the iron mask, though we can know many propositions about him which are not logically deducible from the fact that he wore an iron mask; in the fourth, finally, we know nothing beyond what is logically deducible from the definition of the man. There is a similar hierarchy in the region of universals. Many universals, like many particulars, are only known to us by description. But here, as in the case of particulars, knowledge concerning what is known by description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is known by acquaintance.
The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: _Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted_.
1.05 - MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
their inner "Satan." Look at the whole History of the priests, the
philosophers, and the artists as well: the most poisonous diatribes
1.05 - Problems of Modern Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
All life is living History. Even the reptile still lives in us par sous-
entendu. In the same way, the three stages of analytical psychology so far
--
the objective level in the History of our psychologyconfession,
elucidation, educationpasses to the subjective level; in other words, what
1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
point of view of the History of life, is the accession of biolo-
gical realities (or values) to the domain of moral realities (or
--
tible in History*.
This will constitute one of his approaches to the Christian problem.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
incarnation of God (which was the most stupendous event in History, from the Christian perspective).
Adoption of this broader viewpoint allowed even the Edenic serpent, who propelled mankind into chaos, to
--
protection; to ensure its grant of knowledge, derived from History. It is necessary to identify with the group,
in the course of normal development that identification fosters maturity, and separation from blind
--
and the absolute conservative wants to limit what could be to what has already been. If History was
complete, and perfect, if the individual had fully exploited his highest potential, then the human race would
--
something inexplicable; that is evidence, is it not, that everything that I have been told is wrong. History is
unreliable; rules are arbitrary; accomplishment is illusory. Why do anything, under such circumstances?
--
all through History.525
The act of metanoia is adaptation itself: admission of error, founded on faith in ability to tolerate such
--
And since that time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions in History: They
destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them (and also fail, out of haste, to discriminate
--
Yes, and if it does not triumph then all humanitys History will have turned out to be an empty
exercise in marking time, without the tiniest mite of meaning! Whither and to what end will we
--
protective enclave of History. In consequence, he suffers re-exposure to the terrible unknown. Such reexposure engenders mortal terror, but allows for union with possibility allows for inspiration,
reconstruction, and advancement. It is the disintegration and disinhibition of meaning (preceding its
--
History, and that it is in the more poetic language of the prophets that the true or symbolic meaning of
Egypt, wilderness and Promised Land emerges more clearly.
--
convention, hero and antihero, Christ and Satan eternal generator and destroyer of History and tradition.
Semantic cognition, feeding on narrative the bridge between the episode and the pure verbal abstraction
--
The Great Father, positive aspect of History, protects man from the Terrible Mother. He is civilized
order, education and wisdom embodied, and represented; is the abstracted and integrated personification of
--
Tyrant, the Bureaucrat. This is History as the Terrible Father, dead weight of the past, crushing mass of
296
--
means that as History becomes established, in counterposition to the force that nature represents, the
creative hero has to battle public opinion [composed, when ideological, of contemporary slogans (sluaghghairms: battle cries of the dead)] as well as the forces of the natural unknown. The hero is an enemy of
--
Historys cumulative effect on action. The mythical narratives that accompany retention of historicallydetermined behavior constitute non-empirical episodic representation of that behavior and its method of
establishment. Myth is purpose, coded in episodic memory. Mythic truth is information, derived from past
--
historical observation of that potential in action. The expression of this potential throughout History
provides for the creation of specific environmentally-appropriate social contexts, procedural and episodic,
--
History protects man against overwhelming material and spiritual onslaught. It performs this function by
providing a framework of meaning for those enmeshed within it. History, conceived of in this manner,
comprises those a priori assumptions all cultures base themselves on, which guide the action of individuals,
--
prophetic rather than legal, his real significance is that of being the one figure in History whom no
organized human society could possibly put up with. The society that rejected him represented all
--
and shape to History by presenting it with a dialectical meaning. From this point of view, the root of evil
in human life cannot be adequately described as ignorance, or the cure for it correctly described as
--
enlightenment: man has to fight his way out of History and not simply awaken from it. Two, the ability
to absorb a complete individual is, so far, beyond the capacity of any society, including those that call
--
As History progresses, becomes more conscious and differentiated or, more accurately, as the
presuppositions underlying adaptive social behavior become more and more accurately abstractly
--
therefore appears possessed of power. All behaviors that change History, and compel imitation, follow the
same pattern that of the divine hero, the embodiment of creative human potential. For the primitive
--
If you read the History of the development of chemistry and particularly of physics, you will see that
even... exact natural sciences [such as chemistry and physics] could not, and still cannot, avoid basing
--
elaborate History in the Orient.
317
--
something transformed by man with a still uncompleted and equally extensive developmental History
before it. This transformation of the object is temporality itself the manifestation of Tao, the flux of
--
developed. Formal Christianity adopted the position that the sacrifice of Christ brought History to a close,
and that belief in that sacrifice guaranteed redemption. Alchemy rejected that position, in its pursuit of
--
furthest reaches of History. It is the symbolic expression of the action of instinct, which manifests itself in
some variant of the hero myth, whenever the unknown is pursued, without avoidance, in the attempt to
--
transcends the limits of History. The child represents the creative spirit, the possibility in man, the Holy
Ghost. He is not the child of ignorance, but the innocence of maturity. He precedes and antedates History in
the subjective and collective sense:
--
meant: to say that Christ was the greatest man in History a combination of the divine and mortal was
not sufficient expression of faith. Sufficient expression meant, alternatively, the attempt to live out the
--
the outcome of History as a whole.
But I am no longer so sure. I have read much about evil, and its manner of perpetration and growth, and
--
You see, History itself conditioned everything I believed, even when I did not know it, and it was sheer
unconscious arrogance that made me posit to begin with that I had half a notion of who or what I was, or
what the processes of History had created, and how I was affected by that creation.
It is one thing to be unconscious of the answers, and quite another to be unable to even consider the
--
I mentioned earlier that History conditioned what I think and acted. Pursuit of this realization which is
rather self-evident, once realized has lead me to the study of History, as a psychological phenomenon.
You see, if what I think and am is a product of History, that means that History must take form inside me, so
to speak, and from inside me determine who I am. This is easier to understand if you consider that I carry
--
during the course of History, and is the embodiment of History.
The implications of this idea overwhelmed me. I have been attempting to consider History itself as a
unitary phenomenon as a single thing, in a sense in order to understand what it is, and how it affects
what I think and do. If you realize that History is in some sense in your head, and you also realize that you
know nothing of the significance of History, of its meaning which is almost certainly true then you must
realize that you know nothing of the significance of yourself, and of your own meaning.
I am writing my book in an attempt to explain the psychological significance of History to explain the
meaning of History. In doing so, I have discovered a number of interesting things:
1. All cultures, excepting the Western, do not possess a History based on objective events. The History
of alternative cultures even those as highly developed as the Indian, Chinese, and ancient Greco-Roman
--
within their mythological History, certain constant features (just as all languages share grammatical
structure, given a sufficiently abstract analysis). The lines among which culture develops are determined
--
3. Mythological renditions of History, like those in the Bible, are just as true as the standard Western
empirical renditions, just as literally true, but how they are true is different. Western historians describe
--
initial condition, disrupted by the events of the fall, also serves as the goal towards which History proceeds.
Stories of the fall describe the introduction of uncontrollable anxiety into human experience, as the
--
curtain on the drama of human History. Whether or not it would have been better for humanity to have
remained unconscious is no longer a point that can be usefully considered although that path does not
--
For much of human History after the fall, so to speak the individual remained firmly ensconced
within the confines of a religious dream, which gave meaning to the tragedy of existence. Many modern
--
majority of westerners, who regard themselves as educated. The mythic view of History cannot be credited
with reality, from the material, empirical point of view. It is nonetheless the case that all of western ethics,
--
the domain of History.
Self-consciousness means knowledge of individual vulnerability. The process by which this knowledge
--
the face of History itself, and moves each generation of man farther into the unknown.
363
--
Eliade, M. A History of religious ideas. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
(1978b). Vol. 1. From the stone age to the Eleusinian mysteries.
--
Eliade, M. (1991b). The myth of the eternal return, or, cosmos and History. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Ellenberger, H. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious: The History and evolution of dynamic psychiatry.
New York: Basic Books.
--
Fukuyama, F. (1993). The end of History and the last man. New York: Avon Books.
Gabrieli, J.D.E., Fleischman, D.A., Keane, M., Reminger, M., Sheryl, L., et al. (1995). Double dissociation
--
Hawking, S. (1988). A brief History of time. New York: Bantam.
Hebb, D.O. & Thompson, W.R. (1985). The social significance of animal studies. In G. Lindzey & E.
--
Joravsky, D. (1989). Russian psychology: A critical History. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
Joyce, J. (1986). Ulysses. New York: Random House.
--
Neumann, E. (1954). The origins and History of consciousness (R.F.C. Hull, Trans.). New York: Pantheon
Books.
--
Nietzsche, F. (1957). The use and abuse of History (A. Collins, Trans.). New York: Bobbs-Merrill
Company.
--
between the idea and the action has widened within the course of recent evolutionary History. Medieval people, unused
to rhetorical speech, were easily seized emotionally or inspired to action by passionate words [see Huizinga, J. (1967)].
--
clouds by his power of turning the past to the uses of the present. But an excess of History makes him flag again....
Nietzsche, F. (1957).
--
It would be confusing to summarize all the falls and rises of the Biblical History at once. In honor of the days of
creation, let us select six, with a seventh forming the end of time. The first fall, naturally, is that of Adam from
--
collectivity, and not the individual. In the collective projection, History appears as the collective representation of
destiny; the crisis is manifested in the projection of the ways which characterize the Last Days; and the
1.05 - THE NEW SPIRIT, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
Whereas for the last two centuries our study of science, History and
philosophy has appeared to be a matter of speculation, imagina-
1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Note how admirably they have preserved the idea of balance. M.1. and F.1. are perfection. M.2. and F.2. still keep balance in their lines. The four "elements" show imperfection; yet they are all balanced as against each other. Note, too, how apt are the ideograms. M.3. shows the flames flickering on the hearth, F.3., the wave on the solid bottom of the sea; M.4., the mutable air, with impenetrable space above, and finally F.4., the thin crust of the earth masking the interior energies of the planet. They go in to double these Kw, thus reaching the sixty-four Hexagrams of the Y King, which is not only a Map, but a History of the Order of Nature.
It is pure enthusiastic delight in the Harmony and Beauty of the System that has led me thus far afield; my one essential purpose is to show how the Universe was derived by these Wise Men from Nothing.
1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
How was it possible that an ordinary man could rise to such a height of power, exercise a command and influence over the whole German race, and receive admiration from Europe, even from the whole world? Sri Aurobindo calls it his asuric my that cast a spell upon the nations to such an extent that he was considered superior even to Alexander and Napoleon! Sri Aurobindo tore the veil from the face of that deception and showed us the dire truth. History has no parallel of a maniac using all kinds of falsehood, hypocrisy, perversity to capture the imagination of a cultured race like the Germans. Sri Aurobindo found his Mein Kampf the Bible of the Nazis a tissue of lies and would not touch it. Looking at a photograph in L'Illustration, he described Hitler, Goebbels and Goering, the trio, in unmistakable terms: "Hitler gives the impression of the face of a street-criminal. In his case it is successful ruffianism with a diabolical cunning and behind it the psychic of a London cabman, crude and undeveloped. That is to say, the psychic character in the man consists of some futile and silly sentimentalism which finds expression in his paintings and weeps at his mother's grave. He is possessed by some supernatural Power and it is from this Power that the voice, as he calls it, comes. Have you noted that people who at one time were inimical to him come into contact with him and leave as his admirers? It is a sign of that Power. It is from this Power that he has constantly received suggestions and the constant repetition of the suggestions has taken hold of the German people. You will also mark that in his speeches he goes on stressing the same ideas this is evidently a sign of that vital possession."
We heard something from the Mother to this effect in one of her talks. She said, "Hitler was an idiot. In his normal moments he was no better than a concierge or a cordonnier and behaved and spoke of things in a most idiotic and stupid manner. He was possessed and made an instrument of by some other power and only when that happened he did extraordinary things. People who have seen him at that time said how he thumped, cried and screamed. The Japanese ambassador said, 'This man is mad. It is dangerous to have any alliance with him.' It is strange how the whole German race was stupid enough to follow this man. Such a thing would not have been possible in France or other countries."
--
"She said something to this effect: 'One should leave the matter of the Cripps' offer entirely in the hands of the Divine, with full confidence that the Divine will work everything out. Certainly there were flaws in the offer. Nothing on earth created by man is flawless, because the human mind has a limited capacity. Yet behind this offer there is the Divine Grace directly present. The Grace is now at the door of India, ready to give its help. In the History of a nation such opportunities do not come often. The Grace presents itself at rare moments, after centuries of preparation of that nation. If it is accepted, the nation will survive and get a new birth in the Divine's consciousness. But if it is rejected the Grace will withdraw and then the nation will suffer terribly, calamity will overtake it.
"'Only some months ago, the same Grace presented itself at the door of France, immediately after the fall of Dunkirk, in the form of Churchill's offer to her to have joint nationality with England and fight the enemy. Sri Aurobindo said that it was the right idea, and it would also have helped His work immensely. But France could not raise herself above the ordinary mind, and rejected it. So the Grace withdrew and the Soul of France has gone down. One doesn't know when the real France will be up again.
1.05 - Work and Teaching, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You must understand that what Sri Aurobindo represents in the worlds History, is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.
And I am just trying to fulfil that action.
1.06 - A Summary of my Phenomenological View of the World, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
consciousness') is applied to the History of the World, we see
the emergence of an ascending series of critical points and
1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
History has taken, for he is of the opinion that science could
now already have been much more advanced if its progress
--
History (in which the pursuits of science did not decline),
just a few more centuries could have allowed the likes of
--
The History of the formulation of the laws of motion is
fascinating, if only because of the difficulties Galileo and
--
one of the great episodes in the History of a part of human
ity, Western Europe, which would become of importance
--
ble throughout the History of Christianity remained inter
twined with the hea then literature and philosophy of
1.06 - Dhyana and Samadhi, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
We find, in studying History, one fact held in common by all the great teachers of religion the world ever had. They all claim to have got their truths from beyond, only many of them did not know where they got them from. For instance, one would say that an angel came down in the form of a human being, with wings, and said to him, "Hear, O man, this is the message." Another says that a Deva, a bright being, appeared to him. A third says he dreamed that his ancestor came and told him certain things. He did not know anything beyond that. But this is common that all claim that this knowledge has come to them from beyond, not through their reasoning power. What does the science of Yoga teach? It teaches that they were right in claiming that all this knowledge came to them from beyond reasoning, but that it came from within themselves.
The Yogi teaches that the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, and when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge, beyond reasoning, comes to man. Metaphysical and transcendental knowledge comes to that man. This state of going beyond reason, transcending ordinary human nature, may sometimes come by chance to a man who does not understand its science; he, as it were, stumbles upon it. When he stumbles upon it, he generally interprets it as coming from outside. So this explains why an inspiration, or transcendental knowledge, may be the same in different countries, but in one country it will seem to come through an angel, and in another through a Deva, and in a third through God. What does it mean? It means that the mind brought the knowledge by its own nature, and that the finding of the knowledge was interpreted according to the belief and education of the person through whom it came. The real fact is that these various men, as it were, stumbled upon this superconscious state.
1.06 - Dhyana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
13:Good literature is principally a matter of clear observation and good judgment expressed in the simplest way. For this reason none of the great events of History (such as earthquakes and battles) have been well described by eye-witnesses, unless those eye-witnesses were out of danger. But even when one has become accustomed to Dhyana by constant repetition, no words seem adequate.
14:One of the simplest forms of Dhyana may be called "the Sun." The sun is seen (as it were) by itself, not by an observer; and although the physical eye cannot behold the sun, one is compelled to make the statement that this "Sun" is far more brilliant than the sun of nature. The whole thing takes place on a higher level.
--
19:In any case, the mass of mankind is always ready to be swayed by anything thus authoritative and distinct. History is full of stories of officers who have walked unarmed up to a mutinous regiment, and disarmed them by the mere force of confidence. The power of the orator over the mob is well known. It is, probably, for this reason that the prophet has been able to constrain mankind to obey his law. I never occurs to him that any one can do otherwise. In practical life one can walk past any guardian, such as a sentry or ticket-collector, if one can really act so that the man is somehow persuaded that you have a right to pass unchallenged.
20:This power, by the way, is what has been described by magicians as the power of invisibility. Somebody or other has an excellent story of four quite reliable men who were on the look-out for a murderer, and had instructions to let no one pass, and who all swore subsequently in presence of the dead body that no one had passed. None of them had seen the postman.
1.06 - LIFE AND THE PLANETS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
erable they may be in the History of sidereal bodies, however acci-
dental their coming into existence, the planets are finally nothing
1.06 - Magicians as Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
and Peru; but we know too little of the early History of these
countries to say whether the predecessors of their deified kings
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
That the mortified are, in some respects, often much worse than the unmortified is a commonplace of History, fiction and descriptive psychology. Thus, the Puritan may practice all the cardinal virtuesprudence, fortitude, temperance and chastity and yet remain a thoroughly bad man; for, in all too many cases, these virtues of his are accompanied by, and indeed causally connected with, the sins of pride, envy, chronic anger and an uncharitableness pushed sometimes to the level of active cruelty. Mistaking the means for the end, the Puritan has fancied himself holy because he is stoically austere. But stoical austerity is merely the exaltation of the more creditable side of the ego at the expense of the less creditable. Holiness, on the contrary, is the total denial of the separative self, in its creditable no less than its discreditable aspects, and the abandonment of the will to God. To the extent that there is attachment to I, me, mine, there is no attachment to, and therefore no unitive knowledge of, the divine Ground. Mortification has to be carried to the pitch of non-attachment or (in the phrase of St. Franois de Sales) holy indifference; otherwise it merely transfers self-will from one channel to another, not merely without decrease in the total volume of that self-will, but sometimes with an actual increase. As usual, the corruption of the best is the worst. The difference between the mortified, but still proud and self-centred stoic and the unmortified hedonist consists in this: the latter, being flabby, shiftless and at heart rather ashamed of himself, lacks the energy and the motive to do much harm except to his own body, mind and spirit; the former, because he has all the secondary virtues and looks down on those who are not like himself, is morally equipped to wish and to be able to do harm on the very largest scale and with a perfectly untroubled conscience. These are obvious facts; and yet, in the current religious jargon of our day the word immoral is reserved almost exclusively for the carnally self-indulgent. The covetous and the ambitious, the respectable toughs and those who cloak their lust for power and place under the right sort of idealistic cant, are not merely unblamed; they are even held up as models of virtue and godliness. The representatives of the organized churches begin by putting haloes on the heads of the people who do most to make wars and revolutions, then go on, rather plaintively, to wonder why the world should be in such a mess.
Mortification is not, as many people seem to imagine, a matter, primarily, of severe physical austerities. It is possible that, for certain persons in certain circumstances, the practice of severe physical austerities may prove helpful in advance towards mans final end. In most cases, however, it would seem that what is gained by such austerities is not liberation, but something quite different the achievement of psychic powers. The ability to get petitionary prayer answered, the power to heal and work other miracles, the knack of looking into the future or into other peoples mindsthese, it would seem, are often related in some kind of causal connection with fasting, watching and the self-infliction of pain. Most of the great theocentric saints and spiritual teachers have admitted the existence of supernormal powers, only, however, to deplore them. To think that such Siddhis, as the Indians call them, have anything to do with liberation is, they say, a dangerous illusion. These things are either irrelevant to the main issue of life, or, if too much prized and attended to, an obstacle in the way of spiritual advance. Nor are these the only objections to physical austerities. Carried to extremes, they may be dangerous to health and without health the steady persistence of effort required by the spiritual life is very difficult of achievement. And being difficult, painful and generally conspicuous, physical austerities are a standing temptation to vanity and the competitive spirit of record breaking. When thou didst give thyself up to physical mortification, thou wast great, thou wast admired. So writes Suso of his own experiencesexperiences which led him, just as Gautama Buddha had been led many centuries before, to give up his course of bodily penance. And St. Teresa remarks how much easier it is to impose great penances upon oneself than to suffer in patience, charity and humbleness the ordinary everyday crosses of family life (which did not prevent her, incidentally, from practising, to the very day of her death, the most excruciating forms of self-torture. Whether these austerities really helped her to come to the unitive knowledge of God, or whether they were prized and persisted in because of the psychic powers they helped to develop, there is no means of determining).
--
There can be no complete communism except in the goods of the spirit and, to some extent also, of the mind, and only when such goods are possessed by men and women in a state of non-attachment and self-denial. Some degree of mortification, it should be noted, is an indispensable prerequisite for the creation and enjoyment even of merely intellectual and aesthetic goods. Those who choose the profession of artist, philosopher, or man of science, choose, in many cases, a life of poverty and unrewarded hard work. But these are by no means the only mortifications they have to undertake. When he looks at the world, the artist must deny his ordinary human tendency to think of things in utilitarian, self-regarding terms. Similarly, the critical philosopher must mortify his commonsense, while the research worker must steadfastly resist the temptations to over-simplify and think conventionally, and must make himself docile to the leadings of mysterious Fact. And what is true of the creators of aesthetic and intellectual goods is also true of the enjoyers of such goods, when created. That these mortifications are by no means trifling has been shown again and again in the course of History. One thinks, for example, of the intellectually mortified Socrates and the hemlock with which his unmortified compatriots rewarded him. One thinks of the heroic efforts that had to be made by Galileo and his contemporaries to break with the Aristotelian convention of thought, and the no less heroic efforts that have to be made today by any scientist who believes that there is more in the universe than can be discovered by employing the time-hallowed recipes of Descartes. Such mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artistand the philosopher and the man of science are also artistsknows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession.
The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking, feeling and fancying.
--
No infallible method for controlling the political manifestations of the lust for power has ever been devised. Since power is of its very essence indefinitely expansive, it cannot be checked except by colliding with another power. Hence, any society that values liberty, in the sense of government by law rather than by class interest or personal decree, must see to it that the power of its rulers is divided. National unity means national servitude to a single man and his supporting oligarchy. Organized and balanced disunity is the necessary condition of liberty. His Majestys Loyal Opposition is the loyalest, because the most genuinely useful section of any liberty-loving community. Furthermore, since the appetite for power is purely mental and therefore insatiable and impervious to disease or old age, no community that values liberty can afford to give its rulers long tenures of office. The Carthusian Order, which was never reformed because never deformed, owed its long immunity from corruption to the fact that its abbots were elected for periods of only a single year. In ancient Rome the amount of liberty under law was in inverse ratio to the length of the magistrates terms of office. These rules for controlling the lust for power are very easy to formulate, but very difficult, as History shows, to enforce in practice. They are particularly difficult to enforce at a period like the present, when time-hallowed political machinery is being rendered obsolete by rapid technological change and when the salutary principle of organized and balanced disunity requires to be embodied in new and more appropriate institutions.
Acton, the learned Catholic historian, was of opinion that all great men are bad; Rumi, the Persian poet and mystic, thought that to seek for union with God while occupying a throne was an undertaking hardly less senseless than looking for camels among the chimney pots. A slightly more optimistic note is sounded by St. Franois de Sales, whose views on the matter were recorded by his Boswellizing disciple, the young Bishop of Belley.
1.06 - On Thought, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We are products determined by all our past History, impelled by the blind and arbitrary will of our contemporaries.
It is a pitiful sight. But let us not be disheartened; the greater the ailment and the more pressing the remedy, the more energetically we must fight back.
1.06 - Psychic Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These books should contain, for younger students, the loftiest examples of the past, given not as moral lessons but as things of supreme human interest, and for elder students, the great thoughts of great souls, the passages of literature which can set fire to the highest emotions and prompt the highest ideals and aspirations, the records of History and biography which exemplify the living of those great thoughts, noble emotions and inspiring ideals.
Opportunity should be given to students to emulate in action the deeper and nobler impulses which rise within them.
1.06 - Psycho therapy and a Philosophy of Life, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
unembarrassed by our shortcomings as amateurs of History, to go to school
once more with the medical philosophers of a distant past, when body and
1.06 - Quieting the Vital, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
These adverse forces have been given all sorts of devilish and "negative" names through the world's spiritual History, as if their sole aim were to damn the seeker and give decent people a hard time. The reality is somewhat different, for where is the devil if not in God? If he is not in God, then there is not much left in God, because this world is evil enough, as are quite a few other worlds, so that not much would remain that is pure, except perhaps for a dimensionless and shadowless mathematical point. In reality, as experience shows, these disturbing forces have their place in the universe; they are disturbing only at the scale of our constricted momentary consciousness, and for a specific purpose. Firstly, they always catch us with our defenses down yet were we firm and one-pointed, they could not shake us for a second. In addition, if we look into ourselves instead of whining and blaming the devil or the world's wickedness, we find that each of these attacks has exposed one of our many virtuous pretenses, or, as Mother says, has pulled off the little coats we put on to avoid seeing. Not only do the little, or big, coats conceal our own weaknesses, they are everywhere in the world, hiding its small deficiencies as well as its enormous conceit; and if the perturbing forces yank the coats a bit violently, it is not at random or with wanton malice, but to open our eyes and compel us to a perfection we might otherwise resist, because as soon as we have grasped hold of a grain of truth or a wisp of ideal,
we have the unfortunate tendency to lock it up in an hermetic and 66
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
and almost fantastically subrational, but of an immense potency for the earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a larger subliminal consciousness, - there are inner mental, inner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the animating soul of all the rest; and in these hidden reaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the material, the motive-forces, the impulsions of our developing surface existence. For in each one of us here there may be one central person, but also a multitude of subordinate personalities created by the past History of its manifestation or by expressions of it on these inner planes which support its present play in this external material cosmos. And while on our surface we are cut off from all around us except through an exterior mind and sense contact which delivers but little of us to our world or of our world to us, in these inner reaches the barrier between us and the rest of existence is thin and easily broken; there we can feel at once
- not merely infer from their results, but feel directly - the action of the secret world-forces, mind-forces, life-forces, subtle physical forces that constitute universal and individual existence; we shall even be able, if we will but train ourselves to it, to lay our hands on these world-forces that throw themselves on us or surround us and more and more to control or at least strongly modify their action on us and others, their formations, their very movements. Yet again, above our human mind are still greater reaches superconscient to it and from there secretly descend influences, powers, touches which are the original determinants of things here and, if they were called down in their fullness, could altogether alter the whole make and economy of life in the material universe. It is all this latent experience and knowledge that the Divine Force working upon us by our opening to it in the integral Yoga, progressively reveals to us, uses and works out the consequences as means and steps towards a transformation of our whole being and nature. Our life is thenceforth no longer a little rolling wave on the surface, but interpenetrant if not coincident with the cosmic life. Our spirit, our self rises not only into an inner identity with some wide cosmic Self but into
1.06 - THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
psychology, History, nature and all social institutions and customs
of all signs of those two concepts, we recognise no more radical
1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Middle East especially, has a long and colourful preHistory, from
the Babylonian fish-god Oannes and his priests who clothed
--
the History of the world is no cause for wonder. But the sudden
activation of the symbol, and its identification with Christ even
--
und Magog, p. 19) relates from an English "History of the World," which came
out in German in 1760, that the Arab writers say the "Yajui" were "of more
--
know is so extraordinarily important for the History of Western
symbols. Since then the spring-point has moved along the south-
1.06 - The Three Schools of Magick 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The History of Magick has never been seriously attempted. For one reason, only initiates pledged to secrecy know much about it; for another, every historian has been talking about some more or less conventional idea of Magick, not of the thing itself. But Magick has led the world from before the beginning of History, if only for the reason that Magick has always been the mother of Science. It is, therefore, of extreme importance that some effort should be made to understand something of the subject; and there is, therefore, no apology necessary for essaying this brief outline of its historical aspects.
There have always been, at least in nucleus, three main Schools of Philosophical practice. (We use the word "philosophical" in the old good broad sense, as in the phrase "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for the Advancement of Knowledge.")
1.06 - WITCHES KITCHEN, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Such time I've squandered o'er the History:
A contradiction thus complete
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
the Tibetan community into factions at a time in History when they need to
remain united, he recommends that this practice be abandoned.
1.07 - BOOK THE SEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
The History would a romance be thought:
And yet, unless you add one favour more,
--
The whole to a vast History wou'd swell,
I shall but half, and that confus'dly, tell.
1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
The second illustration is a case History from the Feb-
ruary 2002 issue of the French science magazine Science et
--
rible History of our time. What do you think readers would
have said if in the middle of that book I had suddenly writ-
--
within a not too distant future become History.
Vroeger toen ik groot was! (Before, when I was big) is a re-
--
vided only recently, so late in the History of our species?
An answer on this level of things is not to be given by
--
History this evolution is reaching a critical point, the Avatar
has to represent in himself the complete human being in
--
ceeded to incorporate, for the first time in the History of the
Earth, the Supermind into Matter. She and Sri Aurobindo
1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
course of History. By primitive peoples the supernatural agents are
not regarded as greatly, if at all, superior to man; for they may be
--
religious History in which gods and men are still viewed as beings
of much the same order, and before they are divided by the
--
closely to the facts of History if we allow most of the higher
savages at least to possess a rudimentary notion of certain
--
of spiritual economy, whose operation in the History of religion we
may deplore though we cannot alter, has decreed that the miracles
--
democracy to despotism. With the later History of monarchy,
especially with the decay of despotism and its displacement by forms
1.07 - Samadhi, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
7:Such is the splendid History of all spiritual advance! One never stops to take the reward.
8:We shall therefore not trouble at all about what any Samadhi may or may not bring as far as its results in our lives are concerned. We began this book, it will be remembered, with considerations of death. Death has now lost all meaning. The idea of death depends on those of the ego, and of time; these ideas have been destroyed; and so "Death is swallowed up in victory." We shall now only be interested in what Samadhi is in itself, and in the conditions which cause it.
1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
It is my task in this chapter to give a factual account of the long process that led to Savitri in its final form. As the grand epic has captured many hearts all over the world by its supernal beauty I thought that they would be much interested in the History of its growth, development and final emergence the birth of the Golden Child. But I own that it is a formidable task. Though I had the unique good fortune to see Sri Aurobindo working on the epic in its entire revised version, and had some small share in being its scribe, to try in retrospect to reconstruct the imposing edifice from such a distance in memory is indeed difficult, for there are many versions, plenty of revisions, additions, subtractions, emendations from which the final version was made. To give an accurate report of all this process is beyond my capacity. For I am not a scholar, and have no aptitude for research into old (or new) archives, neither did I ever dream that I should one day be called upon to render an account of what the Master had done, or left undone, through this poor mortal as his instrument. Had I not been helped by my esteemed and multi-capable friend Amal Kiran indefatigable researcher no less than a poet and by a young friend as assistant, my readers would have had to remain content with just a bare outline.
The apology submitted, let the rash venture begin. Savitri, according to Dinen Roy,[1] was started by Sri Aurobindo in Baroda. From all the extant versions, for there are quite a number, it appears that originally the scheme of the poem consisted of two parts: I Earth, II Beyond. The first part had four Books and the second had three Books and an epilogue.
--
Each volume of her effort's History.
A limping Yes through the aeons journeys still
--
"...yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the History of evolution, the History of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature....
"These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighbourhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him; He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme....
1.07 - THE GREAT EVENT FORESHADOWED - THE PLANETIZATION OF MANKIND, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
present-day History, the reality and paramount im-
portance of a single basic event is becoming daily
--
I know that to see determinisms everywhere in History may be
to oversimplify and is certainly dangerous. Every so often authori-
--
Whether we like it or not, from the beginning of our History
and through all the interconnected forces of Matter and Spirit, the
1.07 - The Ideal Law of Social Development, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The object of all society should be, therefore, and must become, as man grows conscious of his real being, nature and destiny and not as now only of a part of it, first to provide the conditions of life and growth by which individual Man,not isolated men or a class or a privileged race, but all individual men according to their capacity, and the race through the growth of its individuals may travel towards this divine perfection. It must be, secondly, as mankind generally more and more grows near to some figure of the Divine in life and more and more men arrive at it,for the cycles are many and each cycle has its own figure of the Divine in man,to express in the general life of mankind, the light, the power, the beauty, the harmony, the joy of the Self that has been attained and that pours itself out in a freer and nobler humanity. Freedom and harmony express the two necessary principles of variation and oneness,freedom of the individual, the group, the race, coordinated harmony of the individuals forces and of the efforts of all individuals in the group, of all groups in the race, of all races in the kind, and these are the two conditions of healthy progression and successful arrival. To realise them and to combine them has been the obscure or half-enlightened effort of mankind throughout its History,a task difficult indeed and too imperfectly seen and too clumsily and mechanically pursued by the reason and desires to be satisfactorily achieved until man grows by self-knowledge and self-mastery to the possession of a spiritual and psychical unity with his fellow-men. As we realise more and more the right conditions, we shall travel more luminously and spontaneously towards our goal and, as we draw nearer to a clear sight of our goal, we shall realise better and better the right conditions. The Self in man enlarging light and knowledge and harmonising will with light and knowledge so as to fulfil in life what he has seen in his increasing vision and idea of the Self, this is mans source and law of progress and the secret of his impulse towards perfection.
Mankind upon earth is one foremost self-expression of the universal Being in His cosmic self-unfolding; he expresses, under the conditions of the terrestrial world he inhabits, the mental power of the universal existence. All mankind is one in its nature, physical, vital, emotional, mental and ever has been in spite of all differences of intellectual development ranging from the poverty of the Bushman and negroid to the rich cultures of Asia and Europe, and the whole race has, as the human totality, one destiny which it seeks and increasingly approaches in the cycles of progression and retrogression it describes through the countless millenniums of its History. Nothing which any individual race or nation can triumphantly realise, no victory of their self-aggrandisement, illumination, intellectual achievement or mastery over the environment, has any permanent meaning or value except in so far as it adds something or recovers something or preserves something for this human march. The purpose which the ancient Indian scripture offers to us as the true object of all human action, lokasa
graha, the holding together of the race in its cyclic evolution, is the constant sense, whether we know it or know it not, of the sum of our activities.
1.07 - The Literal Qabalah (continued), #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Qabalah as a system for the comparison of ideas. The examples given are not intended to be anything more than suggestive, and it is to be hoped that, in the not far distant future, some student will provide for us a comprehensive survey of the entire History of philosophy with a comparison of its major developments to the ideology of the Qabalah, and a carefully tabulated classification showing the elec- tronic constitution of the ninety-two elements side by side with an elaborate series of Qabalistic correspondences.
1.07 - The Prophecies of Nostradamus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
l 5 The course of our religious History as well as an essential
part of our psychic development could have been predicted
--
iunct., tract. I, cliff. 4, p. a8 r ). On the analogy of History the evil events to come
are ascribed to the crescent moon, but one never reflects that the opponent of
Christianity dwells in the European unconscious. History repeats itself.
95
--
5 D 7V to 8r, div. 2, cap. 60 and 61. Cf. also Thorndike, A History of Magic and
Experimental Science, IV, p. 102.
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Zens use of almost comic extravagance to emphasize the philosophic truths it regarded as most important is well illustrated in the first of the extracts cited above. We are not intended seriously to imagine that an Avatar preaches in order to play a practical joke on the human race. But meanwhile what the author has succeeded in doing is to startle us out of our habitual complacency about the home-made verbal universe in which we normally do most of our living. Words are not facts, and still less are they the primordial Fact. If we take them too seriously, we shall lose our way in a forest of entangling briars. But if, on the contrary, we dont take them seriously enough, we shall remain unaware that there is a way to lose or a goal to be reached. If the Enlightened did not preach, there would be no deliverance for anyone. But because human minds and human languages are what they are, this necessary and indispensable preaching is beset with dangers. The History of all the religions is similar in one important respect; some of their adherents are enlightened and delivered, because they have chosen to react appropriately to the words which the founders have let fall; others achieve a partial salvation by reacting with partial appropriateness; yet others harm themselves and their fellows by reacting with a total inappropriatenessei ther ignoring the words altogether or, more often, taking them too seriously and treating them as though they were identical with the Fact to which they refer.
That words are at once indispensable and, in many cases, fatal has been recognized by all the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy. Thus, Jesus spoke of himself as bringing into the world something even worse than briarsa sword. St. Paul distinguished between the letter that kills and the spirit that gives life. And throughout the centuries that followed, the masters of Christian spirituality have found it necessary to harp again and again upon a theme which has never been outdated because homo loquax, the talking animal, is still as navely delighted by his chief accomplishment, still as helplessly the victim of his own words, as he was when the Tower of Babel was being built. Recent years have seen the publication of numerous works on semantics and of an ocean of nationalistic, racialistic and militaristic propaganda. Never have so many capable writers warned mankind against the dangers of wrong speech and never have words been used more recklessly by politicians or taken more seriously by the public. The fact is surely proof enough that, under changing forms, the old problems remain what they always wereurgent, unsolved and, to all appearances, insoluble.
--
Non-rational creatures do not look before or after, but live in the animal eternity of a perpetual present; instinct is their animal grace and constant inspiration; and they are never tempted to live otherwise than in accord with their own animal dharma, or immanent law. Thanks to his reasoning powers and to the instrument of reason, language, man (in his merely human condition) lives nostalgically, apprehensively and hopefully in the past and future as well as in the present; has no instincts to tell him what to do; must rely on personal cleverness, rather than on inspiration from the divine Nature of Things; finds himself in a condition of chronic civil war between passion and prudence and, on a higher level of awareness and ethical sensibility, between egotism and dawning spirituality. But this wearisome condition of humanity is the indispensable prerequisite of enlightenment and deliverance. Man must live in time in order to be able to advance into eternity, no longer on the animal, but on the spiritual level; he must be conscious of himself as a separate ego in order to be able consciously to transcend separate selfhood; he must do battle with the lower self in order that he may become identified with that higher Self within him, which is akin to the divine Not-Self; and finally he must make use of his cleverness in order to pass beyond cleverness to the intellectual vision of Truth, the immediate, unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Reason and its works are not and cannot be a proximate means of union with God. The proximate means is intellect, in the scholastic sense of the word, or spirit. In the last analysis the use and purpose of reason is to create the internal and external conditions favour able to its own transfiguration by and into spirit. It is the lamp by which it finds the way to go beyond itself. We see, then, that as a means to a proximate means to an End, discursive reasoning is of enormous value. But if, in our pride and madness, we treat it as a proximate means to the divine End (as so many religious people have done and still do), or if, denying the existence of an eternal End, we regard it as at once the means to Progress and its ever-receding goal in time, cleverness becomes the enemy, a source of spiritual blindness, moral evil and social disaster. At no period in History has cleverness been so highly valued or, in certain directions, so widely and efficiently trained as at the present time. And at no time have intellectual vision and spirituality been less esteemed, or the End to which they are proximate means less widely and less earnestly sought for. Because technology advances, we fancy that we are making corresponding progress all along the line; because we have considerable power over inanimate nature, we are convinced that we are the self-sufficient masters of our fate and captains of our souls; and because cleverness has given us technology and power, we believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer in a yet more systematic way to achieve social order, international peace and personal happiness.
In Wu Chng-ns extraordinary masterpiece (so admirably translated by Mr. Arthur Waley) there is an episode, at once comical and profound, in which Monkey (who, in the allegory, is the incarnation of human cleverness) gets to heaven and there causes so much trouble that at last Buddha has to be called in to deal with him. It ends in the following passage.
1.083 - Choosing an Object for Concentration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Thus, we have to superimpose, in the beginning, all those blessed qualities which we require to be satisfied in our mind, ordinarily speaking. This is a type of psychological analysis that we are making of the point on which the mind is to be fixed the desa, as the sutra puts it, to which the mind has to be tied. The mind cannot be tied to a point like that easily, unless all this background, or its History, is properly known. From this analysis we also come to the understanding that this point is not merely a dot on the wall, as many people imagine. Rather, it is a symbolic focusing point, a metaphorical point not a geometrical point which allows all the infinite characteristics of our longings to converge upon one point. It is the point, really speaking, where we find the satisfaction of our desires. Though the desires of the mind are endless, how is it that the mind sometimes rushes forward towards a single object? How does it become possible for the mind to see all perfection in a single object at the time when it runs towards the object? That is because at that particular moment of time, the given object manages to attract towards itself all the values which the mind seeks. That becomes the converging point of all our longings for that particular time only. Afterwards, that object will withdraw itself and some other object will come to the forefront. So unless all our aspirations get focused at that particular point, it cannot become the point of concentration.
We now conclude that this point is not merely a physical point. It is more a type of conceptual point, or rather the centre of our affection, which cannot find a physical location anywhere. It cannot be seen in this world. Such is the intricacy that is involved in the choosing of the object of meditation itself. This difficulty is a little bit obviated by the assistance that we receive from a Guru at the time of initiation.
1.08 - Attendants, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Often forgetting his gravity, Purani becomes a child and joins us in a plot, when there is nothing to talk about, to draw out Sri Aurobindo who might himself be waiting for the occasion. The ball is set rolling by Purani reporting for instance, "Nirod says that his mind is getting dull and stupid!" On other occasions he starts serious discussions on modern painting, modern poetry, philosophy, politics, History, science and what not. There is hardly any subject on which he cannot say something a versatile man indeed, and a very interesting personality. Once in the evening the Guru and the shishya had a long talk, for more than an hour, on an old legal case (Bapat case?) that must have taken place during Sri Aurobindo's stay in Baroda, and must have been famous for Purani to remember it and discuss it with Sri Aurobindo. He was lying on one side and Purani was sitting on the floor leaning against a couch opposite. It had the air of a very homely talk, as between father and son. Anybody who had seen the Master only during the Darshan could never conceive of this Sri Aurobindo who had put off his mantle of majesty and high impersonality. I stood for a while to listen to the discussion, but found it so dull that I began wondering how they could drag on ad infinitum! It was Purani's versatility that enriched much in our talks with the Master. If, however, by any chance you stepped on his toes, the old lion growled and roared! But wherever Sri Aurobindo's interest was involved, he would not spare himself. The Guru's name acted on him like a Mantra. The Aurobindonians are ever grateful to him for his yeoman service in bringing out so many valuable documents on Sri Aurobindo's early life in England and for trying to get his genius recognised by the English intellectual circle.
One other casual attendant whose name I should include was Dr. Sanyal. He was an eminent surgeon in Calcutta and his active service was called for when Sri Aurobindo's condition became critical in the first week of December, 1950. He was sent an urgent wire to come immediately. Before this he had Sri Aurobindo's private darshan twice. The first occasion was when I consulted him in the beginning about Sri Aurobindo's illness. Next year, when again he visited the Ashram, his contact with Sri Aurobindo was renewed for the same reason. Each time he stayed for about a week and every day he had the Guru's darshan. He would come dressed in simple white dhoti and punjabi with a big bouquet of lotuses or roses and offer his pranam to the Guru in quiet devotion. Then, as Sri Aurobindo sat on the bed, he, kneeling on the floor, massaged his leg and held long talks with him at the same time. Sri Aurobindo's manner was affable and engaging, bearing a smile that egged on the speaker. Once I heard from a distance the Mother talking to Sri Aurobindo about him. From a few words that caught my ear it seemed she was very much impressed by his deportment and physiognomy. I felt that she had already marked him as one of her future instruments. All these paved the way to his last service to his Lord and permanent service to the Mother.
1.08 - Psycho therapy Today, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
different History and often a different social background. When children
come, they complete the process by forcing the parents into the role of
--
our sense of the word, we cannot possibly expect to find in History any
formulations similar to our own. But since the transformation of child into
1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the course of History it has often happened that one or other of the imperfect religions has been taken too seriously and regarded as good and true in itself, instead of as a means to the ultimate end of all religion. The effects of such mistakes are often disastrous. For example, many Protestant sects have insisted on the necessity, or at least the extreme desirability, of a violent conversion. But violent conversion, as Sheldon has pointed out, is a phenomenon confined almost exclusively to persons with a high degree of somatotonia. These persons are so intensely extraverted as to be quite unaware of what is happening in the lower levels of their minds. If for any reason their attention comes to be turned inwards, the resulting self-knowledge, because of its novelty and strangeness, presents itself with the force and quality of a revelation and their metanoia, or change of mind, is sudden and thrilling. This change may be to religion, or it may be to something else for example, to psycho-analysis. To insist upon the necessity of violent conversion as the only means to salvation is about as sensible as it would be to insist upon the necessity of having a large face, heavy bones and powerful muscles. To those naturally subject to this kind of emotional upheaval, the doctrine that makes salvation dependent on conversion gives a complacency that is quite fatal to spiritual growth, while those who are incapable of it are filled with a no less fatal despair. Other examples of inadequate theologies based upon psychological ignorance could easily be cited. One remembers, for instance, the sad case of Calvin, the cerebrotonic who took his own intellectual constructions so seriously that he lost all sense of reality, both human and spiritual. And then there is our liberal Protestantism, that predominantly viscerotonic heresy, which seems to have forgotten the very existence of the Father, Spirit and Logos and equates Christianity with an emotional attachment to Christs humanity or, (to use the currently popular phrase) the personality of Jesus, worshipped idolatrously as though there were no other God. Even within all-comprehensive Catholicism we constantly hear complaints of the ignorant and self-centred directors, who impose upon the souls under their charge a religious dharma wholly unsuited to their naturewith results which writers such as St. John of the Cross describe as wholly pernicious. We see, then, that it is natural for us to think of God as possessed of the qualities which our temperament tends to make us perceive in Him; but unless nature finds a way of transcending itself by means of itself, we are lost. In the last analysis Philo is quite right in saying that those who do not conceive God purely and simply as the One injure, not God of course, but themselves and, along with themselves, their fellows.
The way of knowledge comes most naturally to persons whose temperament is predominantly cerebrotonic. By this I do not mean that the following of this way is easy for the cerebrotonic. His specially besetting sins are just as difficult to overcome as are the sins which beset the power-loving somatotonic and the extreme viscerotonic with his gluttony for food and comfort and social approval. Rather I mean that the idea that such a way exists and can be followed (either by discrimination, or through non-attached work and one-pointed devotion) is one which spontaneously occurs to the cerebrotonic. At all levels of culture he is the natural monotheist; and this natural monotheist, as Dr. Radins examples of primitive theology clearly show, is often a monotheist of the tat tvam asi, inner-light school. Persons committed by their temperament to one or other of the two kinds of extraversion are natural polytheists. But natural polytheists can, without much difficulty, be convinced of the theoretical superiority of monotheism. The nature of human reason is such that there is an intrinsic plausibility about any hypothesis which seeks to explain the manifold in terms of unity, to reduce apparent multiplicity to essential identity. And from this theoretical monotheism the half-converted polytheist can, if he chooses, go on (through practices suitable to his own particular temperament) to the actual realization of the divine Ground of his own and all other beings. He can, I repeat, and sometimes he actually does. But very often he does not. There are many theoretical monotheists whose whole life and every action prove that in reality they are still what their temperament inclines them to bepoly theists, worshippers not of the one God they sometimes talk about, but of the many gods, nationalistic and technological, financial and familial, to whom in practice they pay all their allegiance.
1.08 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE SPIRITUAL REPERCUSSIONS OF THE ATOM BOMB, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
pulsations, during the course of his History. He had felt it, for ex-
ample, in the darkness of the palaeolithic age when for the first
--
tence. For the first time in History, through the nonfortuitous con-
junction of a world crisis and an unprecedented advance in means
1.08 - Sri Aurobindos Descent into Death, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
ful chapter in human History. Other blacknesses threaten to
overshadow or even engulf mankind, but they too will end
--
all wars, and of its significance in human History, one has
to be moved by these words. (The phrase where is Hit-
--
the History of humankind. As the Mother would say later:
For the Will of the Supreme to be expressed as it were in
1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
I believe, for example, that it was precisely this fire and force that allowed Emerson, more than any other person in American History, to actually define the intellectual character of America itself. One of his essays, "The American Scholar," had, as one historian put it, "an influence greater than that of any single work in the nineteenth century."
Oliver Wendell Holmes called it "our intellectual Declaration of Independence." James Russell Lowell explained: "The Puritan revolt had made us ecclesiastically, and the Revolution politically independent, but we were still socially and intellectually moored to English thought, till Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and the glories of blue water. . . ."
And the message, this ringing Declaration of Independence? The Soul is tied to no individual, no culture, no tradition, but rises fresh in every person, beyond every person, and grounds itself in a truth and glory that bows to nothing in the world of time and place and History. We all must be, and can only be, "a light unto ourselves."4
And then in a phrase that, as Holmes indicated, rattled all of America, Emerson announced: "All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do"-because it is the same Self in each of us. Why bow to past heroes, he asks, when all we are bowing to is our own Soul? "Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue?" The magnetism of the great heroes is only the call from our own Self, he says. Why this groveling to the past when the same Soul shines now and only now and always now? And then Emerson swiftly and irrevocably cut the cable and set us all-not just Americans-afloat on the dangers and the glories of blue water:
--
:::If therefore a man claims to know and speak of God and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion? Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the Soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the Soul is light: where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and History is an impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.5
To emphasize that the Soul, the "aboriginal Self," is common in and to all beings, Emerson often refers to it as the "Over-Soul," one and the same in all of us, in all beings as such. The overall number of Souls is but one:
--
THE END OF History
Does History, then, have a final omega point, the Omega of all previous and lesser omegas? Is there an actual End to History as we know it? Where all beings unite in their conscious realization of Godhead? Are we all being drawn to that "one, far-off Divine Event" that dissolves its own trail?
Many mystically inclined writers have made this assumption; it does make a certain amount of first-blush sense.
From the "Aquarian Conspiracy" to Teilhard's "final Omega-point," from the dawn of a "New Age" to "Timewave Zero"-the millenarian End of History has been exuberantly announced. Such theorists as Terence McKenna and Jos Arguelles have even been good enough to calculate the actual date of this final omega point, and it is December 2012-"Timewave Zero."60
Nor, of course, is this the first time we have seen such "End of History" notions, and in chapter 2 we saw why such notions actually make a certain amount of sense and have some degree of truth to them. To summarize that discussion:
Every senior dimension acts as a transformative omega point for its junior dimension, exerting a palpable pull of the deeper and wider on the shallower and narrower. A holon's regime is the transformative omega-point for its own growth and development, facilitated perhaps by morphic resonance from the sum total of similar forms acting as omega. In self-transcendence, however, the emergent and senior level exerts omega pull on junior dimensions, something that neither they themselves, nor their morphically resonating partners, could do alone.61 And short of reaching its immediately senior omega, that lesser dimension suffers the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune of partialness, division, alienation. Each deeper and wider context condemns the lesser to suffering (or rather, the narrower suffers from the boundaries of its own lacerating limitations). And evolution, in the broadest sense, is a sensitive flight from the pain of partiality.
--
In short, no holon rests happy short of finding its own immediately deeper context, its own omega point, which means that each holon rushes to the End of its own History.
In the West, since the time of the Enlightenment, the great omega point or End of History has generally been pictured as some form of rationality (either formop, as in the classical Enlightenment, or vision-logic, as with
Hegel)-and modernity believed this to be the case because that was, indeed, its present state of development, to which all lesser occasions had pointed, and from which rationality had finally and triumphantly emerged.
"Remember the cruelties!"-Voltaire's battle cry of the tortures that magic and mythic had inflicted on History, the tortures of lesser omega points brutally cutting into each other in search of . . . reason.
This omega point of rationality can therefore be seen permeating the theories of virtually all developmentalists in the wake of modernity. We see it in Freud: magical and mythic primary-process cognition gives way, after much reluctance and turmoil, to the secondary (mature) process of rationality. We see it in Marx: rationality, as a worldcentric mode of cognition, will, with its economic developments, overcome egocentric and ethnocentric class divisions and usher in a true communion of equally free subjects. We see it in Piaget: preop to conop to formop, with each previous stage suffering the limitations of its own incapacities. Kohlberg and Gilligan: egocentric to sociocentric to worldcentric reason. Hegel: Self-positing Spirit returns to itself in the form of global Reason, the culmination of
History itself. And Habermas: mutual understanding in unrestrained communicative action unfolded by rationality is the omega point of individual and social evolution itself.
The list is virtually endless. And, as we discussed earlier, they are all, as far as they go, essentially correct in many important ways, and they each can teach us much about expanding the circle and the context of care. (Previously, the mythic structure had said the same thing about itself in relation to archaic and magic: it had claimed that the coming of the mythic God was an end to all tribal History-and that was also true enough.)
Francis Fukuyama recently caused an international sensation with the publication of The End of History, in which he asks "whether, at the end of the twentieth century, it makes sense for us to speak of a coherent and directional
History of humankind? The answer I arrive at is yes, for two separate reasons. One has to do with economics, and the other has to do with what is termed the 'struggle for recognition.'"62
The "struggle for recognition" is simply the theme, developed from Hegel to Habermas to Taylor, that mutual recognition-what we have also been calling the free exchange of mutual self-esteem among all peoples (the emergence of the rational-egoic self-esteem needs)-is an omega point that pulls History and communication forward toward the free emergence of that mutual recognition. Short of that emergence, History is a brutalization of one self or group of selves trying to triumph over, dominate, or subjugate others.
When, on the other hand, human beings universally recognize each other "as beings with a certain worth or dignity," then History in that sense "comes to an end because the longing that had driven the historical process-the struggle for recognition-has been satisfied in a society characterized by universal and reciprocal recognition. No other arrangement of human social institutions is better able to satisfy this longing, and hence no further progressive historical change is possible."63 The End of History.
Echoing Hegel, Fukuyama notes that "this does not mean that the natural cycle of birth, life, and death would end, or that important events would no longer happen, or that newspapers reporting them would cease to be published.
--
We would, of course, continue to fine-tune the ways to implement these freedoms, and help ensure their global equity. And we might, indeed, find new freedoms, and new ways to extend the old freedoms. But these three factors would surely form an important platform for any new developments. And to the extent that History up to that point has been the clash of factions that refused those three factors, then this would indeed mark the End of that History.
All of which, as I said, can be true (and is true, I think) and still leave open-and still demand-that further historical changes are indeed possible, however much they will build upon the platform of mutual egoic self-esteem and self-recognition-and for the simple reason that there are indeed structures of consciousness beyond the egoic, structures that, in their own turn, exert new and subtler omega pulls on the already actualized self-esteem needs.
--
In other words, there are indeed some more "really big questions" that would still need to be settled: History would not have ended, only Egoic History.
Which brings us to the topic of the yet deeper or higher structures (beyond the ego), and whether the whole developmental process will ever actually culminate in a genuine and utter End of all possible History. For that is what is implied in the millenarian themes of Timewave Zero: the absolute Omega of all omegas, the End of all ends, the evaporation of disunity, the disappearance of appearance into the utter Abyss, the restaurant at the end of the universe, where the truly Last Supper will finally be served. . . .
Recall that, in figure 5-1, I included the developments in the four quadrants up to visionlogic/centauric/planetary, which is, as it were, the leading edge of the World Soul's evolution at this point in time (or so I would maintain). And thus, at this point, any higher developments, in all four quadrants, have to occur through an individual's own efforts (UL), evidenced in individual bodily transformations (UR), practiced in a micro-community or sangha of the similarly depthed (LL), with its own microsocial structure (LR).
--
The structural potentials are therefore available; but how they unfold will depend upon the mutual interaction and interplay between all four quadrants-intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social-as all four continue to evolve in History, and none of that is predetermined in any strong sense. Just as, for example, when the human bodymind with its complex triune brain emerged in its present form (again, around fifty thousand years ago), that brain already possessed the potential (or the hard-wiring) for symbolic logic, but that potential would have to await cultural, social, and intentional developments before it could display its form and function, just so with the higher potentials: how they will unfold remains to be seen. But the fact that they are there is demonstrated by the fact that they have already unfolded in some individuals (Buddha to Krishna), and they are thus already available to any individual, at any time, who chooses to continue his or her own evolution within and beyond.
And so the question remains: given all of that, is there still any sense in which a collective humanity would eventually evolve into an Absolute Omega Point, a pure Christ Consciousness (or some such) for all beings? Are we heading for the Ultimate End of History, the Omega of all omegas? Does It even exist?
And the answer is that It does exist, and we are not heading toward it. Or away from It. Or around It. Uncreate
Spirit, the causal unmanifest, is the nature and condition, the source and support, of this and every moment of evolution. It does not enter the stream of time at a beginning or exit at the end. It upholds all times and supports all places, with no partiality at all, and thus exerts neither push nor pull on History.
As the utterly Formless, it does not enter the stream of form at any point. And yet, as Ramana said, there is a sense in which it is indeed the summum bonum, the ultimate Omega Point, in the sense that no finite thing will rest short of release into this Infinity. The Formless, in other words, is indeed an ultimate Omega, an ultimate End, but an
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Vedas are the roots of Indian civilisation and the supreme authority in Indian religion. For three thousand years, by the calculation of European scholars, for a great deal more, in all probability, the faith of this nation, certainly one of the most profound, acute and intellectual in the world, has not left its hold on this cardinal point of belief. Its greatest and most rationalistic minds have never swerved from the national faith. Kapila held to it no less than Shankara. The two great revolted intellects, Buddha and Brihaspati, could not dethrone the Veda or destroy Indias spiritual allegiance. India by an inevitable law of her being casts out, sooner or later, everything that is not Vedic. The Dhammapada has become a Scripture for foreign peoples. Brihaspatis strictures are only remembered as a curiosity of our intellectual History. Religious movements & revolutions have come & gone or left their mark but after all and through all the Veda remains to us our Rock of the Ages, our eternal foundation.
Yet the most fundamental and important part of this imperishable Scripture, the actual hymns and mantras of the Sanhitas, has long been a sealed book to the Indian mind, learned or unlearned. The other Vedic books are of minor authority or a secondary formation. The Brahmanas are ritual, grammatical & historical treatises on the traditions & ceremonies of Vedic times whose only valueapart from interesting glimpses of ancient life & Vedantic philosophylies in their attempt to fix and to interpret symbolically the ritual of Vedic sacrifice. The Upanishads, mighty as they are, only aspire to bring out, arrange philosophically in the language of later thinking and crown with the supreme name of Brahman the eternal knowledge enshrined in the Vedas. Yet for some two thousand years at least no Indian has really understood the Vedas. Or if they have been understood, if Sayana holds for us their secret, the reverence of the Indian mind for them becomes a baseless superstition and the idea that the modern Indian religions are Vedic in their substance is convicted of egregious error. For the Vedas Sayana gives us are the mythology of the Adityas, Rudras,Maruts, Vasus,but these gods of the Veda have long ceased to be worshipped,or they are a collection of ritual & sacrificial hymns, but the ritual is dead & the sacrifices are no longer offered.
--
I put aside at the beginning the common assumption that since religion started from the fears & desires of savages a record of religion as ancient as the Vedas must necessarily contain a barbarous or semi-barbarous mythology empty of any profound or subtle spiritual & moral ideas or, if it contains them at all, that it must be only in the latest documents. We have no more right to assume that the Vedic Rishis were a race of simple & frank barbarians than to assume that they were a class of deep and acute philosophers. What they were is the thing we have to discover and we may arrive at either conclusion or neither, but we must not start from our goal or begin our argument on the basis of our conclusion. We know nothing of the History & thought of the times, we know nothing of the state of their intellectual & social culture except what we can gather from the Vedic hymns themselves. Indications from other sources may be useful as clues but the hymns are our sole authority.
The indications from external sources are few and inconclusive, but they are by no means favourable to the theory of a materialistic worship of Nature-Powers. The Europeans start with their knowledge of the old Pagan worship, their idea of the crudity of early Greek & German myth & practice and their minds naturally expect to find & even insist on finding an even greater crudity in the Vedas. But it must not be forgotten that in no written record of Greek or Scandinavian do the old religions appear as mere materialistic ideas or the old gods as mere Nature forces; they have also a moral significance, and show a substratum of moral and an admixture even of psychological & philosophical ideas. If in their origin, they were material and barbarous, they had already been moralised & intellectualised. Already even in Homer Pallas Athene is not the Dawn or any natural phenomenon, but a great preterhuman power of wisdom, force & intelligence; Apollo is not the Sunwho is represented by another deity, Helios but a moral or moralised deity. In the Veda, even in the European rendering, Varuna has a similar moral character and represents ethical & religious ideas far in advance of any that we find in the Homeric cult & ethics. We cannot rule out of court the possibility that others of the gods shared this Vedic distinction or that, even perhaps in their oldest hymns, the Indians had gone at least as far as the Greeks in the moralising of their religion.
--
The word vja, usually rendered by Sayana, food or ghee,a sense which he is swift to foist upon any word which will at all admit that construction, as well as on some which will not admit it,has in other passages another sense assigned to it, strength, bala. It is the latter significance or its basis of substance & solidity which I propose to attach to vja in every line of the Rigveda where it occursand it occurs with an abundant frequency. There are a number of words in the Veda which have to be rendered by the English strength,bala, taras, vja, sahas, avas, to mention only the most common expressions. Can it be supposed that all these vocables rejoice in one identical connotation as commentators and lexicographers would lead us to conclude, and are used in the Veda promiscuously & indifferently to express the same idea of strength? The psychology of human language is more rich and delicate. In English the words strength, force, vigour, robustness differ in their mental values; force can be used in offices of expression to which strength and vigour are ineligible. In Vedic Sanscrit, as in every living tongue, the same law holds and a literary and thoughtful appreciation of its documents, whatever may be the way of the schools, must take account of these distinctions. In the brief list I have given, bala answers to the English strength, taras gives a shade of speed and impetuosity, sahas of violence or force, avas of flame and brilliance, vja of substance and solidity. In the philological appendix to this work there will be found detailed reasons for concluding that strength is in the History of the word vja only a secondary sense, like its other meanings, wealth and food; the basic idea is a strong sufficiency of substance or substantial energy. Vja is one of the great standing terms of the Vedic psychology. All states of being, whether matter, mind or life and all material, mental & vital activities depend upon an original flowing mass of Energy which is in the vivid phraseology of the Vedas called a flood or sea, samudra, sindhu or arnas. Our power or activity in any direction depends first on the amount & substantiality of this stream as it flows into, through or within our own limits of consciousness, secondly, on our largeness of being constituted by the wideness of those limits, thirdly, on our power of holding the divine flow and fourthly on the force and delight which enter into the use of our available Energy. The result is the self-expression, ansa or vyakti, which is the objective of Vedic Yoga. In the language of the Rishis whatever we can make permanently ours is called our holding or wealth, dhanam or in the plural dhanni; the powers which assist us in the getting, keeping or increasing of our dhanni, the yoga, s ti & vriddhi, are the gods; the powers which oppose & labour to rob us of this wealth are our enemies & plunderers, dasyus, and appear under various names, Vritras, Panis, Daityas, Rakshasas, Yatudhanas. The wealth itself may be the substance of mental light and knowledge or of vital health, delight & longevity or of material strength & beauty or it may be external possessions, cattle, progeny, empire, women. A close, symbolic and to modern ideas mystic parallelism stood established in the Vedic mind between the external & the internal wealth, as between the outer sacrifice which earned from the gods the external wealth & the inner sacrifice which brought by the aid of the gods the internal riches. In this system the word vja represents that amount & substantial energy of the stuff of force in the dhanam brought to the service of the sacrificer for the great Jivayaja, our daily & continual life-sacrifice. It is a substantial wealth, vjavad dhanam that the gods are asked to bring with them. We see then in what sense Saraswati, a goddess purely mental in her functions of speech and knowledge, can be vjebhir vjinvat. Vjin is that which is composed of vja, substantial energy; the plural vj h or vj ni the particular substantialities of various composed. For the rest, to no other purpose can a deity of speech & knowledge be vjebhir vjinvat. In what appropriateness or coherent conceivable sense can the goddess of knowledge be possessed of material wealth or full-stored with material food, ghee & butter, beef & mutton? If it be suggested that Speech of the mantras was believed by these old superstitious barbarians to bring them their ghee & butter, beef & mutton, the answer is that this is not what the language of the hymns expresses. Saraswati herself is said to be vjinvat, possessed of substance of food; she is not spoken of as being the cause of fullness of food or wealth to others.
This explanation of vjebhir vjinvat leads at once to the figurative sense of maho arnas. Arnas or samudra is the image of the sea, flood or stream in which the Vedic seers saw the substance of being and its different states. Sometimes one great sea, sometimes seven streams of being are spoken of by the Rishis; they are the origin of the seven seas of the Purana. It cannot be doubted that the minds of the old thinkers were possessed with this image of ocean or water as the very type & nature of the flux of existence, for it occurs with a constant insistence in the Upanishads. The sole doubt is whether the image was already present to the minds of the primitive Vedic Rishis. The Europeans hold that these were the workings of a later imagination transfiguring the straightforward material expressions & physical ideas of the Veda; they admit no real parentage of Vedantic ideas in the preexistent Vedic notions, but only a fictitious derivation. I hold, on the contrary, that Vedantic ideas have a direct & true origin & even a previous existence in the religion & psychology of the Vedas. If, indeed, there were no stuff of high thinking or moral sensibility in the hymns of the Vedic sages, then I should have no foundation to stand upon and no right to see this figure in the Vedic arnas or samudra. But when these early minds,early to us, but not perhaps really so primitive in human History as we imagine,were capable of such high thoughts & perceptions as these three Riks bear on their surface, it would be ridiculous to deny them the capacity of conceiving these great philosophical images & symbols. A rich poetic imagery expressing a clear, direct & virgin perception of the facts of mind and being, is not by any means impossible, but rather natural in these bright-eyed sons of the morning not yet dominated in their vision by the dry light of the intellect or in their speech & thought by the abstractions & formalities of metaphysical thinking. Water was to them, let us hold in our hypothesis, the symbol of unformed substance of being, earth of the formed substance. They even saw a mystic identity between the thing symbolised & the symbol.
What then is maho arnas? Is it the great sea of general being, substance of general existence out of which the substance of thought & speech are formed? It is possible; but such an interpretation is not entirely in consonance with the context of this passage. The suggestion I shall advance will therefore be different. Mahas, as a neuter adjective, means great,maho arnas, the great water; but mahas may be equally a noun and then maho arnas will mean Mahas the sea. In some passages again, mahas is genitive singular or accusative plural of a noun mah; maho arnas may well be the flowing stream or flood of Mah, as in the expression vasvo arnavam, the sea of substance, in a later Sukta.We are therefore likely to remain in doubt unless we can find an actual symbolic use of either word Mah or Mahas in a psychological sense which would justify us in supposing this Maho Arnas to be a sea of substance of knowledge rather than vaguely the sea of general substance of being. For this is the significance which alone entirely suits the actual phraseology of the last Rik of the Sukta. We find our clue in the Taittiriya Upanishad. It is said there that there are three recognised vyahritis of the Veda, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swah, but the Rishi Mahachamasya affirmed a fourth. The name of this doubtful fourth vyahriti is Mahas. Now the mystic vyahritis of the Veda are the shabdas or sacred words expressing objectively the three worlds, subjectively mentalised material being, mentalised vital being & pure mental being, the three manifest states of our phenomenal consciousness. Mahas, therefore, must express a fourth state of being, which is so much superior to the other three or so much beyond the ordinary attainment of our actual human consciousness that it is hardly considered in Vedic thought a vyahriti, whatever one or two thinkers may have held to the contrary. What do we know of this Mahas from Vedantic or later sources? Bhuh, Bhuvah, Swar of the Veda rest substantially upon the Annam, Prana, Manas, matter, life & mind of the Upanishads. But the Upanishads speak of a fourth state of being immediately aboveManas, preceding it therefore & containing it, Vijnanam, ideal knowledge, and a fifth immediately above Vijnanam, Ananda or Bliss. Physically, these five are the pancha kshitayah, five earths or dwelling-places, of the Rig Veda and they are the pancha koshas, five sheaths or bodies of the Upanishads. But in our later Yogic systems we recognise seven earths, seven standing grounds of the soul on which it experiences phenomenal existence. The Purana gives us their names [the names of the two beyond the five already mentioned], Tapas and Satya, Energy&Truth. They are the outward expressions of the two psychological principles, Self-Awareness &Self-Being (Chit&Sat) which with Ananda, Self-Bliss, are the triune appearance in the soul of the supreme Existence which the Vedanta calls Brahman. Sat, Chit & Ananda constitute to Vedantic thought the parardha or spiritual higher half [of] our existence; in less imaginative language, we are in our supreme existence self-existence, self-awareness & self-delight. Annam, Prana & Manas constitute to Vedantic thought the aparardha or lower half; again, in more abstract speech, we are in our lower phenomenal existence mind, life & matter. Vijnana is the link; standing in ideal knowledge we are aware, looking upward, of our spiritual existence, looking downward, we pour it out into the three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvah & Swar, mental, vital & material existence, the phenomenal symbols of our self-expression. Objectively vijnana becomes mahat, the great, wide or extended state of phenomenal being,called also brihat, likewise signifying vast or great,into which says the Gita, the Self or Lord casts his seed as into a womb in order to engender all these objects & creatures. The Self, standing in vijnanam or mahat, is called the Mahan Atma, the great Self; so that, if we apply the significance [of] these terms to the Vedic words mah, mahas, mahi, mahn, then, even accepting mahas as an adjective and maho arnas in the sense of the great Ocean, it may very well be the ocean of the ideal or pure ideative state of existence in true knowledge which is intended, the great ocean slumbering in our humanity and awakened by the divine inspiration of Saraswati. But have we at all the right to read these high, strange & subtle ideas of a later mysticism into the primitive accents of the Veda? Let us at least support for a while that hypothesis. We may very well ask, if not from the Vedic forefa thers, whence did the Aryan thinkers get these striking images, this rich & concrete expression of the most abstract ideas and persist in them even after the Indian mind had rarefied & lifted its capacity to the height of the most difficult severities & abstractions known to any metaphysical thinking? Our hypothesis of a Vedic origin remains not only a possible suggestion but the one hypothesis in lawful possession of the field, unless a foreign source or a later mixed ideation can be proved. At present this later ideation may be assumed, it has not been & cannot be proved. The agelong tradition of India assigns the Veda as the source & substance of our theosophies; Brahmana, Aranyaka, Upanishad & Purana as only the interpretation & later expression; the burden of disproof rests on those who negative the tradition.
--
The precise meaning of the words has first to be settled. Charshani is taken in the Veda to be, like krishti, a word equivalent to manushya, men. The entire correctness of the rendering may well be doubted. The gods, no doubt, can be described as upholders of men, but there are passages & uses in which the application of this significance becomes difficult. For Indra, like Agni, is called vivacharshani. Can this expression mean the Universal Man? Is Indra, like Agni, Vaivnara, in the sense of being present in all human beings? If so, the subjective capacity of Indra is indeed proved by a single epithet. But Vaivnara really means the Universal Existence or Force, from a sense of the root an which we have in anila, anala, Latin anima or else, if the combination be viv-nara, then from the Vedic sense of nara, strong, swift or bright. And what canwemake of such an expression as charshanipr?We must therefore follow our usual course & ask how charshani came to mean a human being. The root charsh or chrish is formed from the primary root char or chri (a lost form whose original presence is, however, necessary in the History of Sanscrit speech), as krish from kri. Now kri means to do, char means to do, work, practise or perform. The form krish was evidently used in the sense of action which required a prolonged or laborious effort; in the same way as the root Ar it came to mean to plough; it came to mean also to overcome or to drag or pull. From this sense of action or labour alone can krishti have been extended in significance to the idea, man; originally it must have been used like kru or keru to mean a doer, worker, and, from its form, have been capable also of meaning action. I suggest that charshani had really the same meaning & something of the same development. The other sense given to the word, swift, moving, cannot easily have led to the idea of man; strength, doing, thinking are the characteristics behind the human idea in the older languages. Charshani-dhrit applied to the Visvadevas or dhartr charshannm to Mitra & Varuna will mean the upholders of actions or activities; vivacharshani, applied to Indra or Agni, will mean the lord of all actions; charshanipr will mean filling the actions. That Indra in this sense is vivacharshani can be at once determined from two passages occurring early in the Veda,I.9.2 in Madhuchchhandas hymn to Indra, mandim Indrya mandine chakrim vivni chakraye, delight-giving for Indra the enjoyer, effective of action for the doer of all actions, where vivni chakri is a perfect equivalent to vivacharshani, and I.11.4 in another hymn to Indra, Indro vivasya karmano dhart, Indra the upholder of every action, where we have the exact idea of charshandhrit, vivacharshani & dhartr charshannm. The Visvadevas are the upholders of all our activities.
In the eighth rik, usr iva swasarni offers us an almost insoluble difficulty. Usr means, ordinarily, either rays or cows or mornings; swasaram is a Vedic word of unfixed significance. Sayana renders, hastening like sunbeams to the days, a rendering which has neither sense nor appropriateness; emending it slightly we get hastening like dawns or mornings to the days, a beautiful & picturesque, though difficult image but one, unhappily, which has no appropriateness to the context. If we can suppose the lost root swas to have meant, to lie, sleep, rest, like the simpler form sas (cf sanj to cling & swanj to embrace), we may translate, hastening like kine to their stalls; but this also is not appropriate to the Visvadevas hastening to the Soma offering not for rest, but for enjoyment & action. I believe the real meaning to be, hastening like lovers to their paramours; but the philological reasoning by which I arrive at these meanings for usra & swasaram is so remote & conjectural, that I cannot lay any stress on the suggestion. Aptur is a less difficult word. If it is a compound, ap+tur, it must mean swift or forceful in effecting or producing; but it may also be formed by the addition of a suffix tur in an adjectival sense to the root ap, to do, bring about, effect, produce or obtain.
1.08 - The Historical Significance of the Fish, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
fishes. Thus, in astrological tradition as well as in the History of
symbols, the fishes have always had these opprobrious qualities
1.08 - The Magic Sword, Dagger and Trident, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The History of occult science has given many examples of the tragic fate and even more tragic end of such sorcerers. It would exeed the extension of this book to talk about certain events in detail.
1.08 - The Three Schools of Magick 3, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
There is in History only one movement whose object has been to organize the isolated adepts of the White School of Magick, and this movement was totally unconnected with religion, except in so far as it lent its influence to the reformers of the Christian church. Its appeal was not at all to the people. It merely offered to open up relations with, and communicate certain practical secrets of wisdom to, isolated men of science through Europe. This movement is generally known by the name of Rosicrucianism.
The word arouses all sorts of regrettable correspondences; but the adepts of the Society have never worried themselves in the least about the abuse of their name for the purposes of charlatanism, or about the attacks directed against them by envious critics. Indeed, so wisely have they concealed their activities that some modern scholars of the shallower type have declared that no such movement ever existed, that it was a kind of practical joke played upon the curiosity of the credulous Middle Ages. It is at least certain that, since the original proclamations, no official publications have been put forward. The essential secrets have been maintained inviolate. If, during the last few years, a considerable number of documents have been published by them, though not in their name, it is on account of the impending crisis to civilization, of which mention will later be made.
--
From the deepest point of view, the greatest value of this formula is that it affords, for the first time in History, a basis of reconciliation between the three great Schools of Magick. It will tend to appease the eternal conflict by understanding that each type of thought shall go on its own way, develop its own proper qualities without seeking to inter- fere with other formulae, however (superficially) opposed to its own.
What is true for every School is equally true for every individual. Success in life, on the basis of the Law of Thelema, implies severe self-discipline. Each being must progress, as biology teaches, by strict adaptation to the conditions of the organism. If, as the Black School continually asserts, the cause of sorrow is desire, we can still escape the conclusion by the Law of Thelema. What is necessary is not to seek after some fantastic ideal, utterly unsuited to our real needs, but to discover the true nature of those needs, to fulfill them, and rejoice therein.
1.08 - THINGS THE GERMANS LACK, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
of this kind of earnestness. In the History of European culture the
rise of the Empire signifies, above all, a displacement of the centre
1.09 - Civilisation and Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It would seem at first sight that since man is pre-eminently the mental being, the development of the mental faculties and the richness of the mental life should be his highest aim,his preoccupying aim, even, as soon as he has got rid of the obsession of the life and body and provided for the indispensable satisfaction of the gross needs which our physical and animal nature imposes on us. Knowledge, science, art, thought, ethics, philosophy, religion, this is mans real business, these are his true affairs. To be is for him not merely to be born, grow up, marry, get his livelihood, support a family and then die,the vital and physical life, a human edition of the animal round, a human enlargement of the little animal sector and arc of the divine circle; rather to become and grow mentally and live with knowledge and power within himself as well as from within outward is his manhood. But there is here a double motive of Nature, an insistent duality in her human purpose. Man is here to learn from her how to control and create; but she evidently means him not only to control, create and constantly re-create in new and better forms himself, his own inner existence, his mentality, but also to control and re-create correspondingly his environment. He has to turn Mind not only on itself, but on Life and Matter and the material existence; that is very clear not only from the law and nature of the terrestrial evolution, but from his own past and present History. And there comes from the observation of these conditions and of his highest aspirations and impulses the question whether he is not intended, not only to expand inwardly and outwardly, but to grow upward, wonderfully exceeding himself as he has wonderfully exceeded his animal beginnings, into something more than mental, more than human, into a being spiritual and divine. Even if he cannot do that, yet he may have to open his mind to what is beyond it and to govern his life more and more by the light and power that he receives from something greater than himself. Mans consciousness of the divine within himself and the world is the supreme fact of his existence and to grow into that may very well be the intention of his nature. In any case the fullness of Life is his evident object, the widest life and the highest life possible to him, whether that be a complete humanity or a new and divine race. We must recognise both his need of integrality and his impulse of self-exceeding if we would fix rightly the meaning of his individual existence and the perfect aim and norm of his society.
The pursuit of the mental life for its own sake is what we ordinarily mean by culture; but the word is still a little equivocal and capable of a wider or a narrower sense according to our ideas and predilections. For our mental existence is a very complex matter and is made up of many elements. First, we have its lower and fundamental stratum, which is in the scale of evolution nearest to the vital. And we have in that stratum two sides, the mental life of the senses, sensations and emotions in which the subjective purpose of Nature predominates although with the objective as its occasion, and the active or dynamic life of the mental being concerned with the organs of action and the field of conduct in which her objective purpose predominates although with the subjective as its occasion. We have next in the scale, more sublimated, on one side the moral being and its ethical life, on the other the aesthetic; each of them attempts to possess and dominate the fundamental mind stratum and turn its experiences and activities to its own benefit, one for the culture and worship of Right, the other for the culture and worship of Beauty. And we have, above all these, taking advantage of them, helping, forming, trying often to govern them entirely, the intellectual being. Mans highest accomplished range is the life of the reason or ordered and harmonised intelligence with its dynamic power of intelligent will, the buddhi, which is or should be the driver of mans chariot.
1.09 - FAITH IN PEACE, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
History of the animal world into the future, or even that of the first
hundred or two hundred millennia of our own species? Biologically
1.09 - Fundamental Questions of Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Such developments are by no means the exception in the History of
science, they are the rule. Anyone who accuses modern medical
--
happened more than once in human History. In the face of such
transformations the individual is powerless.
--
certain typical figures which we can follow far back into History, and even
into preHistory, and which may therefore legitimately be described as
archetypes. They seem to me to be built into the very structure of mans
1.09 - Legend of Lakshmi, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
But with respect to the question thou hast asked me, Maitreya, relating to the History of Śrī, hear from me the tale as it was told to me by Marīci.
Durvāsas, a portion of Śa
1.09 - (Plot continued.) Dramatic Unity., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen,--what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of History, with metre no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than History: for poetry tends to express the universal, History the particular. By the universal, I mean how a person of a certain type will on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages. The particular is--for example--what
Alcibiades did or suffered. In Comedy this is already apparent: for here the poet first constructs the plot on the lines of probability, and then inserts characteristic names;--unlike the lampooners who write about particular individuals. But tragedians still keep to real names, the reason being that what is possible is credible: what has not happened we do not at once feel sure to be possible: but what has happened is manifestly possible: otherwise it would not have happened. Still there are even some tragedies in which there are only one or two well known names, the rest being fictitious. In others, none are well known, as in
1.09 - Saraswati and Her Consorts, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If that were all, this would not carry us much farther than the obvious fact that the Vedic Rishis were not mere naturalistic barbarians, but had their psychological ideas and were capable of creating mythological symbols which represent not only those obvious operations of physical Nature that interested their agricultural, pastoral and open-air life, but also the inner operations of the mind and soul. If we have to conceive the History of ancient religious thought as a progression from the physical to the
92
--
I do not think we have any real materials for determining the first origin and primitive History of religious ideas. What the facts really point to is an early teaching at once psychological and naturalistic, that is to say with two faces, of which the first came to be more or less obscured, but never entirely effaced even in the barbarous races, even in races like the tribes of North America. But this teaching, though prehistoric, was anything but primitive.
Saraswati and Her Consorts
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
History is full of such anti-artists, of such creatures of low
vitality who have no choice but to appropriate everything they see
--
History has to show. Examined more carefully, he is in this respect
simply the heir of the Christian interpretation; except that he knew
--
Hitherto the History of his desires has been the _partie honteuse_ of
mankind: one should take care not to read too deeply in this History.
That which justifies man is his reality,--it will justify him to all
--
of History. The nations which were worth anything, which _got to
be_ worth anything, never attained to that condition under liberal
--
enlisted History, natural science, antiquity, as well as Spinoza, and
above all practical activity, in his service. He drew a host of very
1.09 - Sri Aurobindo and the Big Bang, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
All peoples known in History and most probably all
others also have wondered about how the world in which
--
tacked and even ridiculed. (In the History of science, there
has never been a new proposition which was not attacked
--
was that portentous date in the History of eternal Nothing
on which Being was born out of it or when will come that
1.09 - The Ambivalence of the Fish Symbol, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
'92 Ancient History gives us a divided picture of the region to
the north: it is the seat of the highest gods and also of the ad-
1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
IN THE RELIGIOUS History of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of
trees has played an important part. Nothing could be more natural.
For at the dawn of History Europe was covered with immense primaeval
forests, in which the scattered clearings must have appeared like
--
confirmed by History; for classical writers contain many references
to Italian forests which have now disappeared. As late as the fourth
1.09 - To the Students, Young and Old, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are, in the History of the earth, moments of transition when things that have existed for thousands of years must give way to those that are about to manifest. A special concentration of the world consciousness, one might almost say, an intensification of its effort, occurs at such times, varying according to the kind of progress to be made, the quality of the transformation to be realised. We are at precisely such a turning-point in the worlds History. Just as Nature has already created upon earth a mental being, man, so too there is now a concentrated activity in this mentality to bring forth a supramental consciousness and individuality.
Certain beings who, I might say, are in the secret of the gods, are aware of the importance of this moment in the life of the world, and they have taken birth on earth to play their part in whatever way they can. A great luminous consciousness broods over the earth, creating a kind of stir in its atmosphere. All who are open receive a ripple from this eddy, a ray of this light and seek to give form to it, each according to his capacity.
11.01 - The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Events are the crowded History of his life,
And sea and land are the pages for his tale.
convenience portal:
recent: Section Maps - index table - favoritesSavitri --Savitri extended toc Savitri Section Map --1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
authors -- Crowley - Peterson - Borges - Wilber - Teresa -Aurobindo -Ramakrishna - Maharshi -Mother
places -- Garden - Inf. Art Gallery - Inf. Building - Inf. Library - Labyrinth - Library - School -Temple - Tower - Tower of MEM
powers -- Aspiration - Beauty - Concentration - Effort - Faith - Force - Grace - inspiration -Presence - Purity - Sincerity - surrender
difficulties -- cowardice - depres. - distract. - distress - dryness - evil - fear - forget - habits - impulse - incapacity - irritation - lost - mistakes - obscur. - problem - resist - sadness - self-deception - shame - sin - suffering
practices -- Lucid Dreaming - meditation - project - programming - Prayer - read Savitri - studysubjects -- CS - Cybernetics - Game Dev - Integral Theory - Integral Yoga - Kabbalah - Language - Philosophy - Poetry - Zen
6.01 books -- KC - ABA - Null -Savitri - SA O TAOC -SICP - The Gospel of SRK - TIC - The Library of Babel -TLD -TSOY - TTYODAS - TSZ - WOTM II
8 unsorted / add here -- Always - Everyday - Verbs