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1:Time is only an idea. There is only the Reality. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

2:Let us cherish that Self, which is the Reality, in the Heart. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

3:When we give up regarding the unreal as real, then the reality alone will remain. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

4:God is the only existence that is real, all other existences are unreality behind which God exists as the reality. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda,

5:There is no greater mystery than this, ourselves being the Reality we seek to gain Reality. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

6:We shouldn't stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination.    ~ Hayao Miyazaki,

7:The nature of bondage is merely the rising, ruinous thought `I am different from the reality'. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

8:That still mind which is adorned with the attainment of the limitless supreme Self, alone is the reality of God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

9:It is within us that the Reality must be found and the source and foundation of a perfected life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life,

10:Carry on the sadhana until pleasure and fear are both transcended and all duality ceases, and the Reality alone remains. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

11:Our humanity is not the whole of the Reality or its best possible self-formation or self-expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life,

12:All sadhanas, all practices, are meant to purify and strengthen the mind that disturbs your being and prevents you from being aware of the Reality that is within you. ~ SWAMI RAMA,

13:Physical science may give clues of process, but cannot lay hold on the reality of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Rebirth and Soul Evolution,

14:The goldness of gold, the silverness of silver, the manhood of man, the womanhood of woman, the reality of everything is the Lord. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VI. 378),

15:Where life and being are a sacrament Offered to the Reality beyond, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,

16:Awakening cannot take place, so long as the idea persists, that one is a seeker. Doing sadhana means assuming the existence of a phantom. The entity that you think you are, is false. You are the Reality. ~ Ramesh Balsekar,

17:We may gain some inkling of what God is if we attempt by means of every sensation to reach the reality of each creature, not giving up until we are alive to what transcends it… ~ Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies v.11,

18:My brother, a delicate heart is like a mirror; polish it by love and detachment, that the Sun of the Reality may reflect itself in it and the divine Dawn arise. ~ Baha-ullah, the Eternal Wisdom

19:A truly religious man ought to think that the other religions are also paths leading towards the Reality. We should always maintain an attitude of respect towards other religions. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

20:And yet in the end we are obliged to negate our largest conceptions, our most comprehensive experiences in order to affirm that the Reality exceeds all definitions. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.5,

21:If every man dared speak frankly and highly what he thinks, he would abide always in the reality. How unhappy we make ourselves by striving to hide our nature. ~ Antoine the Healer, the Eternal Wisdom

22:A truly religious man ought to think that the other religions are also paths leading towards the Reality. We should always maintain an attitude of respect towards other religions. ~ Ramakrishss, the Eternal Wisdom

23:People who believe in the reality of the world are really no better than people who build dams to catch the water that they see in a mirage." ~ Annamalai Swami, (1906-1995), a direct disciple of Sri Ramana Maharshi, author of "Final Talks", (2000),

24:The nearer you come to God, the less you are disposed to questioning and reasoning. When you actually attain Him, when you behold Him as the Reality, then all noise, all disputations, come to an end. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

25:The Wise men fulfil their desire, and come to the child, the Lord Jesus Christ, the same star going before them. They adore the Word in flesh, the Wisdom in infancy, the Power in weakness, the Lord of majesty in the reality of man. ~ Pope Leo the Great, Sermon 31,

26:Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

27:The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. ~ Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism,

28:It is the clinging to the false that makes the true so difficult to see. Once you understand that the false needs time & what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality which is timeless, ever in the now. If you need time to achieve something, it must be false. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,

29:This cannot be done without an uncompromising abolition of the ego-sense at its very basis and source. In the path of Knowledge one attempts this abolition, negatively by a denial of the reality of the ego, positively by a constant fixing of the thought upon the idea of the One and the Infinite in itself or the One and Infinite everywhere.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,

30:Brahman: the Reality; the Eternal; the Absolute; the Spirit; the Supreme Being; the One besides whom there is nothing else existent; in relation to the universe [cf. atman] the Supreme is brahman, the one Reality which is not only the spiritual, material and conscious substance of all the ideas and forces and forms of the universe, but their origin, support and possessor, the cosmic and supracosmic Spirit. God.    ~ Sri Aurobindo?,

31:When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.    ~ Henri J M Nouwen, Out Of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life,

32:It is the foundation of the pure spiritual consciousness that is the first object in the evolution of the spiritual man, and it is this and the urge of that consciousness towards contact with the Reality, the Self or the Divine Being that must be the first and foremost or even, till it is perfectly accomplished, the sole preoccupation of the spiritual seeker. It is the one thing needful that has to be done by each on whatever line is possible to him, by each according to the spiritual capacity developed in his nature.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 892 [T1],

33:We live in an age where we feel guilt whenever we have to cut someone off but the reality is that some relationships do need to die, some people do need to be unfollowed and defriended. We aren't meant to be this tethered to the people in our past. The Internet mandates that we don't burn bridges and keep everyone around like relics but those expectations are unrealistic and unhealthy. Simply put, we don't need to know what everyone else is up to. We're allowed to be choosy about who we surround ourselves with online and in real life, even if it might hurt people's feelings. ~ Ryan O'Connell,

34:Lojong Slogan 1. First, train in the preliminaries; The four reminders. or alternatively called the Four Thoughts    1. Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.    2. Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone; Impermanence.    3. Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; Karma.    4. Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will experience suffering. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you dont want does not result in happiness; Ego.    ~ Wikipedia,

35:This then is the first necessity, that the individual, each individual, shall discover the spirit, the divine reality within him and express that in all his being and living. A divine life must be first and foremost an inner life; for since the outward must be the expression of what is within, there can be no divinity in the outer existence if there is not the divinisation of the inner being. The Divinity in man dwells veiled in his spiritual centre; there can be no such thing as self-exceeding for man or a higher issue for his existence if there is not in him the reality of an eternal self and spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.28 - The Divine Life,

36:abolishing the ego :::    In the path of Knowledge one attempts this abolition, negatively by a denial of the reality of the ego, positively by a constant fixing of the thought upon the idea of the One and the Infinite in itself or the One and Infinite everywhere. This, if persistently done, changes in the end the mental outlook on oneself and the whole world and there is a kind of mental realisation; but afterwards by degrees or perhaps rapidly and imperatively and almost at the beginning the mental realisation deepens into spiritual experience - a realisation in the very substance of our being.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Ego, 363,

37:The Names of Allah are endless because they are known by what comes from them, and what comes from them is endless, even though they can be traced back to the limited roots which are the matrices of the Names or the presences of the Names. In reality, there is but one of the Names or the presences of the Names. In reality, there is but One Reality which assumes all these relations and aspects which are designated by the Divine Names. The Reality grants that each of the Names, which manifest themselves without end, has a reality by which it is distinguished from another Name. It is that reality by which it is distinguished which is the Name itself - not that which it shares. ~ Ibn Arabi,

38:The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe. But if the propensity is natural and even inevitable, it is nevertheless fraught with peril, since it is apt to narrow and falsify our conception of any subject under investigation. To correct it partially - for to correct it wholly would require an infinite intelligence - we must endeavour to broaden our views by taking account of a wide range of facts and possibilities; and when we have done so to the utmost of our power, we must still remember that from the very nature of things our ideas fall immeasurably short of the reality. ~ James George Frazer, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, Part 1,

39:If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others. There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind Mind and the Overmind Maya,

40:Yes, from thenceforward, is there any suffering for one who sees this unity of the universe, this unity of life, this unity of the All? The separation between man and man, man and woman, man and child; nation and nation, that is the real cause of all the misery of the world. Now this separation is not at all real ; it is only apparent, it is only on the surface. In the very heart of things is the unity which is for ever. Go into yourself and you will find this unity between man and man, women and children, race and race, the great and the little, the rich and the poor, gods and men : all of us are one, even the animals, if you go down to a sufficient depth. And to the man who goes so far nothing can cause any illusion. ..where can there exist for him any illusion ? What can deceive him ? He knows the reality of everything, the secret of everything. Where can there exist any misery for him ? What can he desire ? He has discovered the reality of everything in the Lord who is the centre, the unity of all and who is the eternal felicity, the eternal knowledge, the eternal existence. ~ Virekananda, the Eternal Wisdom

41:It has been argued that this is no relation peculiar to the constitution of humanity and its outlook upon an objective world, but the very nature of existence itself; all phenomenal existence consists of an observing consciousness and an active objectivity, and the Action cannot proceed without the Witness because the universe exists only in or for the consciousness that observes and has no independent reality. It has been argued in reply that the material universe enjoys an eternal self-existence: it was here before life and mind made their appearance; it will survive after they have disappeared and no longer trouble with their transient strivings and limited thoughts the eternal and inconscient rhythm of the suns. The difference, so metaphysical in appearance, is yet of the utmost practical import, for it determines the whole outlook of man upon life, the goal that he shall assign for his efforts and the field in which he shall circumscribe his energies. For it raises the question of the reality of cosmic existence and, more important still, the question of the value of human life.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 23,

42:What is "the heavenly archetype of the lotus"?    It means the primal idea of the lotus.    Each thing that is expressed physically was conceived somewhere before being realised materially.    There is an entire world which is the world of the fashioners, where all conceptions are made. And this world is very high, much higher than all the worlds of the mind; and from there these formations, these creations, these types which have been conceived by the fashioners come down and are expressed in physical realisations. And there is always a great distance between the perfection of the idea and what is materialised. Very often the materialised things are like caricatures in comparison with the primal idea. This is what he calls the archetype. This takes place in worlds... not always the same ones, it depends on the things; but for many things in the physical, the primal ideas, these archetypes, were in what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind.    But there is a still higher domain than this where the origins are still purer, and if one reaches this, attains this, one finds the absolutely pure types of what is manifested upon earth. And then it is very interesting to compare, to see to what an extent earthly creation is a frightful distortion. And moreover, it is only when one can reach these regions and see the reality of things in their essence that one can work with knowledge to transform them here; otherwise on what can we take our stand to conceive a better world, more perfect, more beautiful than the existing one? It can't be on our imagination which is itself something very poor and very material. But if one can enter that consciousness, rise right up to these higher worlds of creation, then with this in one's consciousness one can work at making material things take their real form. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 121,

43:the spiritual force behind adoration :::    All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendor appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter this image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life, 159,

44:The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet it is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a qualityless void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe. It is the cosmic and the supracosmic spirit, the supreme Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha and supreme shakti, the Ever Unborn who is endlessly born, the Infinite who is innumerably finite, the multitudinous One, the complex Simple, the many-sided Single, the Word of the Silence Ineffable, the impersonal omnipresent Person, the Mystery, translucent in highest consciousness to its own spirit, but to a lesser consciousness veiled in its own exceeding light and impenetrable for ever. These things are to the dimensional mind irreconcilable opposites, but to the constant vision and experience of the supramental Truth-Consciousness they are so simply and inevitably the intrinsic nature of each other that even to think of them as contraries is an unimaginable violence. The walls constructed by the measuring and separating Intellect have disappeared and the Truth in its simplicity and beauty appears and reduces all to terms of its harmony and unity and light. Dimensions and distinctions remain but as figures for use, not a separative prison for the self-forgetting Spirit. 2:In the ordinary Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and merges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, 2.01 - The Object of Knowledge,

45:The object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme, the Divine, the Infinite and the Absolute. This Supreme has its relations to our individual being and its relations to the universe and it transcends both the soul and the universe. Neither the universe nor the individual are what they seem to be, for the report of them which our mind and our senses give us, is, so long as they are unenlightened by a faculty of higher supramental and suprasensuous knowledge, a false report, an imperfect construction, an attenuated and erroneous figure. And yet that which the universe and the individual seem to be is still a figure of what they really are, a figure that points beyond itself to the reality behind it. Truth proceeds by a correction of the values our mind and senses give us, and first by the action of a higher intelligence that enlightens and sets right as far as may be the conclusions of the ignorant sense-mind and limited physical intelligence; that is the method of all human knowledge and science. But beyond it there is a knowledge, a Truth-Consciousness, that exceeds our intellect and brings us into the true light of which it is a refracted ray.    There the abstract terms of pure reason and the constructions .of the mind disappear or are converted into concrete soul-vision and the tremendous actuality of spiritual experience. This knowledge can turn away to the absolute Eternal and lose vision of the soul and the universe; but it can too see that existence from that Eternal. When that is done, we find that the ignorance of the mind and the senses and all the apparent futilities of human life were not an useless excursion of the conscious being, an otiose blunder. Here they were planned as a rough ground for the self-expression of the Soul that comes from the Infinite, a material foundation for its self-unfolding and self-possessing in the terms of the universe. It is true that in themselves they and all that is here have no significance, and to build separate significances for them is to live in an illusion, Maya; but they have a supreme significance in the Supreme, an absolute Power in the Absolute and it is that that assigns to them and refers to that Truth their present relative values. This is the all-uniting experience that is the foundation of the deepest integral and most intimate self-knowledge and world-knowledge    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, 293, 11457,

46:Our culture, the laws of our culture, are predicated on the idea that people are conscious. People have experience; people make decisions, and can be held responsible for them. There's a free will element to it. You can debate all that philosophically, and fine, but the point is that that is how we act, and that is the idea that our legal system is predicated on. There's something deep about it, because you're subject to the law, but the law is also limited by you, which is to say that in a well-functioning, properly-grounded democratic system, you have intrinsic value. That's the source of your rights. Even if you're a murderer, we have to say the law can only go so far because there's something about you that's divine. Well, what does that mean? Partly it means that there's something about you that's conscious and capable of communicating, like you're a whole world unto yourself. You have that to contribute to everyone else, and that's valuable. You can learn new things, transform the structure of society, and invent a new way of dealing with the world. You're capable of all that. It's an intrinsic part of you, and that's associated with the idea that there's something about the logos that is necessary for the absolute chaos of the reality beyond experience to manifest itself as reality. That's an amazing idea because it gives consciousness a constitutive role in the cosmos. You can debate that, but you can't just bloody well brush it off. First of all, we are the most complicated things there are, that we know of, by a massive amount. We're so complicated that it's unbelievable. So there's a lot of cosmos out there, but there's a lot of cosmos in here, too, and which one is greater is by no means obvious, unless you use something trivial, like relative size, which really isn't a very sophisticated approach. Whatever it is that is you has this capacity to experience reality and to transform it, which is a very strange thing. You can conceptualize the future in your imagination, and then you can work and make that manifest-participate in the process of creation. That's one way of thinking about it. That's why I think Genesis 1 relates the idea that human beings are made in the image of the divine-men and women, which is interesting, because feminists are always criticizing Christianity as being inexorably patriarchal. Of course, they criticize everything like that, so it's hardly a stroke of bloody brilliance. But I think it's an absolute miracle that right at the beginning of the document it says straightforwardly, with no hesitation whatsoever, that the divine spark which we're associating with the word, that brings forth Being, is manifest in men and women equally. That's a very cool thing. You got to think, like I said, do you actually take that seriously? Well, what you got to ask is what happens if you don't take it seriously, right? Read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. That's the best investigation into that tactic that's ever been produced. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,

47:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],

48:Sometimes one cannot distinguish adverse forces from other forces. That happens when one is quite unconscious. There are only two cases when this is possible: you are either very unconscious of the movements of your being - you have not studied, you have not observed, you do not know what is happening within you - or you are absolutely insincere, that is, you play the ostrich in order not to see the reality of things: you hide your head, you hide your observation, your knowledge and you say, "It is not there." But indeed the latter I hope is not in question here. Hence it is simply because one has not the habit of observing oneself that one is so unconscious of what is happening within. Have you ever practised distinguishing what comes from your mind, what comes from your vital, what comes from your physical?... For it is mixed up; it is mixed up in the outward appearance. If you do not take care to distinguish, it makes a kind of soup, all that together. So it is indistinct and difficult to discoveR But if you observe yourself, after some time you see certain things, you feel them to be there, like that, as though they were in your skin; for some other things you feel you would have to go within yourself to find out from where they come; for other things, you have to go still further inside, or otherwise you have to rise up a little: it comes from unconsciousness. And there are others; then you must go very deep, very deep to find out from where they come. This is just a beginning. Simply observe. You are in a certain condition, a certain undefinable condition. Then look: "What! how is it I am like that?" You try to see first if you have fever or some other illness; but it is all right, everything is all right, there's neither headache nor fever, the stomach is not protesting, the heart is functioning as it should, indeed, all's well, you are normal. "Why then am I feeling so uneasy?"... So you go a little further within. It depends on cases. Sometimes you find out immediately: yes, there was a little incident which wasn't pleasant, someone said a word that was not happy or one had failed in his task or perhaps did not know one's lesson very well, the teacher had made a remark. At the time, one did not pay attention properly, but later on, it begins to work, leaves a painful impression. That is the second stage. Afterwards, if nothing happened: "All's well, everything is normal, everything usual, I have nothing to note down, nothing has happened: why then do I feel like that?" Now it begins to be interesting, because one must enter much more deeply within oneself. And then it can be all sorts of things: it may be precisely the expression of an attack that is preparing; it may be a little inner anxiety seeking the progress that has to be made; it may be a premonition that there is somewhere in contact with oneself something not altogether harmonious which one has to change: something one must see, discover, change, on which light is to be put, something that is still there, deep down, and which should no longer be there. Then if you look at yourself very carefully, you find out: "There! I am still like that; in that little corner, there is still something of that kind, not clear: a little selfishness, a little ill-will, something refusing to change." So you see it, you take it by the tip of its nose or by the ear and hold it up in full light: "So, you were hiding! you are hiding? But I don't want you any longer." And then it has to go away. This is a great progress.    ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 102-104, [T4],

49:    In the lower planes can't one say what will happen at a particular moment? That depends. On certain planes there are consciousnesses that form, that make formations and try to send them down to earth and manifest them. These are planes where the great forces are at play, forces struggling with each other to organise things in one way or another. On these planes all the possibilities are there, all the possibilities that present themselves but have not yet come to a decision as to which will come down.... Suppose a plane full of the imaginations of people who want certain things to be realised upon earth - they invent a novel, narrate stories, produce all kinds of phenomena; it amuses them very much. It is a plane of form-makers and they are there imagining all kinds of circumstances and events; they play with the forces; they are like the authors of a drama and they prepare everything there and see what is going to happen. All these formations are facing each other; and it is those which are the strongest, the most successful or the most persistent or those that have the advantage of a favourable set of circumstances which dominate. They meet and out of the conflict yet another thing results: you lose one thing and take up another, you make a new combination; and then all of a sudden, you find, pluff! it is coming down. Now, if it comes down with a sufficient force, it sets moving the earth atmosphere and things combine; as for instance, when with your fist you thump the saw-dust, you know surely what happens, don't you? You lift your hand, give a formidable blow: all the dust gets organised around your fist. Well, it is like that. These formations come down into matter with that force, and everything organises itself automatically, mechanically as around the striking fist. And there's your wished object about to be realised, sometimes with small deformations because of the resistance, but it will be realised finally, even as the person narrating the story up above wanted it more or less to be realised. If then you are for some reason or other in the secret of the person who has constructed the story and if you follow the way in which he creates his path to reach down to the earth and if you see how a blow with the fist acts on earthly matter, then you are able to tell what is going to happen, because you have seen it in the world above, and as it takes some time to make the whole journey, you see in advance. And the higher you rise, the more you foresee in advance what is going to happen. And if you pass far beyond, go still farther, then everything is possible.    It is an unfolding that follows a wide road which is for you unknowable; for all will be unfolded in the universe, but in what order and in what way? There are decisions that are taken up there which escape our ordinary consciousness, and so it is very difficult to foresee. But there also, if you enter consciously and if you can be present up there... How shall I explain that to you? All is there, absolute, static, eternal: but all that will be unfolded in the material world, naturally more or less one thing after another; for in the static existence all can be there, but in the becoming all becomes in time, that is, one thing after another. Well, what path will the unfolding follow? Up there is the domain of absolute freedom.... Who says that a sufficiently sincere aspiration, a sufficiently intense prayer is not capable of changing the path of the unfolding?    This means that all is possible.    Now, one must have a sufficient aspiration and a prayer that's sufficiently intense. But that has been given to human nature. It is one of the marvellous gifts of grace given to human nature; only, one does not know how to make use of it. This comes to saying that in spite of the most absolute determinisms in the horizontal line, if one knows how to cross all these horizontal lines and reach the highest Point of consciousness, one is able to make things change, things apparently absolutely determined. So you may call it by any name you like, but it is a kind of combination of an absolute determinism with an absolute freedom. You may pull yourself out of it in any way you like, but it is like that.    I forgot to say in that book (perhaps I did not forget but just felt that it was useless to say it) that all these theories are only theories, that is, mental conceptions which are merely more or less imaged representations of the reality; but it is not the reality at all. When you say "determinism" and when you say "freedom", you say only words and all that is only a very incomplete, very approximate and very weak description of what is in reality within you, around you and everywhere; and to be able to begin to understand what the universe is, you must come out of your mental formulas, otherwise you will never understand anything.    To tell the truth, if you live only a moment, just a tiny moment, of this absolutely sincere aspiration or this sufficiently intense prayer, you will know more things than by meditating for hours. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,

50:For instance, a popular game with California occultists-I do not know its inventor-involves a Magic Room, much like the Pleasure Dome discussed earlier except that this Magic Room contains an Omniscient Computer.    To play this game, you simply "astrally project" into the Magic Room. Do not ask what "astral projection" means, and do not assume it is metaphysical (and therefore either impossible, if you are a materialist, or very difficult, if you are a mystic). Just assume this is a gedankenexperiment, a "mind game." Project yourself, in imagination, into this Magic Room and visualize vividly the Omniscient Computer, using the details you need to make such a super-information-processor real to your fantasy. You do not need any knowledge of programming to handle this astral computer. It exists early in the next century; you are getting to use it by a species of time-travel, if that metaphor is amusing and helpful to you. It is so built that it responds immediately to human brain-waves, "reading" them and decoding their meaning. (Crude prototypes of such computers already exist.) So, when you are in this magic room, you can ask this Computer anything, just by thinking of what you want to know. It will read your thought, and project into your brain, by a laser ray, the correct answer.    There is one slight problem. The computer is very sensitive to all brain-waves. If you have any doubts, it registers them as negative commands, meaning "Do not answer my question." So, the way to use it is to start simply, with "easy" questions. Ask it to dig out of the archives the name of your second-grade teacher. (Almost everybody remembers the name of their first grade teacher-imprint vulnerability again-but that of the second grade teacher tends to get lost.)    When the computer has dug out the name of your second grade teacher, try it on a harder question, but not one that is too hard. It is very easy to sabotage this machine, but you don't want to sabotage it during these experiments. You want to see how well it can be made to perform.    It is wise to ask only one question at a time, since it requires concentration to keep this magic computer real on the field of your perception. Do not exhaust your capacities for imagination and visualization on your first trial runs.    After a few trivial experiments of the second-grade-teacher variety, you can try more interesting programs. Take a person toward whom you have negative feelings, such as anger, disappointment, feeling-of-betrayal, jealousy or whatever interferes with the smooth, tranquil operation of your own bio-computer. Ask the Magic Computer to explain that other person to you; to translate you into their reality-tunnel long enough for you to understand how events seem to them. Especially, ask how you seem to them.    This computer will do that job for you; but be prepared for some shocks which might be disagreeable at first. This super-brain can also perform exegesis on ideas that seem obscure, paradoxical or enigmatic to us. For instance, early experiments with this computer can very profitably turn on asking it to explain some of the propositions in this book which may seem inexplicable or perversely wrong-headed to you, such as "We are all greater artists than we realize" or "What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" or "mind and its contents are functionally identical."    This computer is much more powerful and scientifically advanced than the rapture-machine in the neurosomatic circuit. It has total access to all the earlier, primitive circuits, and overrules any of them. That is, if you put a meta-programming instruction into this computer; it will relay it downward to the old circuits and cancel contradictory programs left over from the past. For instance, try feeding it on such meta-programming instructions as: 1. I am at cause over my body. 2. I am at cause over my imagination. 3.1 am at cause over my future. 4. My mind abounds with beauty and power. 5.1 like people, and people like me.    Remember that this computer is only a few decades ahead of present technology, so it cannot "understand" your commands if you harbor any doubts about them. Doubts tell it not to perform. Work always from what you can believe in, extending the area of belief only as results encourage you to try for more dramatic transformations of your past reality-tunnels.    This represents cybernetic consciousness; the programmer becoming self-programmer, self-metaprogrammer, meta-metaprogrammer, etc. Just as the emotional compulsions of the second circuit seem primitive, mechanical and, ultimately, silly to the neurosomatic consciousness, so, too, the reality maps of the third circuit become comic, relativistic, game-like to the metaprogrammer. "Whatever you say it is, it isn't, " Korzybski, the semanticist, repeated endlessly in his seminars, trying to make clear that third-circuit semantic maps are not the territories they represent; that we can always make maps of our maps, revisions of our revisions, meta-selves of our selves. "Neti, neti" (not that, not that), Hindu teachers traditionally say when asked what "God" is or what "Reality" is. Yogis, mathematicians and musicians seem more inclined to develop meta-programming consciousness than most of humanity. Korzybski even claimed that the use of mathematical scripts is an aid to developing this circuit, for as soon as you think of your mind as mind 1 , and the mind which contemplates that mind as mind2 and the mind which contemplates mind2 contemplating mind 1 as mind3, you are well on your way to meta-programming awareness. Alice in Wonderland is a masterful guide to the metaprogramming circuit (written by one of the founders of mathematical logic) and Aleister Crowley soberly urged its study upon all students of yoga. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising,

51: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],

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Only real risk passes the reality of faith. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove

2:The reality is that I am the Teacher. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove

3:Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove

4:Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove

5:I was only photographing in words the reality of it all. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove

6:Scientists have a grave difficulty dealing with the reality of God. ~ m-scott-peck, @wisdomtrove

7:In war, character and opinion make more than half of the reality. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove

8:That's the reality of what they're going to sell them to the Treasury for. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove

9:Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove

10:In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove

11:In the seeing of who you are not, the reality of who you are emerges by itself. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove

12:The reality of my life cannot die for I am indestructible consciousness. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove

13:In the seeing of who you are not, the reality of who you are emerges by itself.   ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove

14:And the reality is that we are actually more afraid of change than we are of death. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove

15:Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove

16:And the reality is that we are actually more afraid of change than we are of death. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove

17:Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove

18:The new always looks so puny-so unpromising-next to the reality of the massive, ongoing business. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove

19:The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life-the terror of art. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove

20:I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove

21:Loving the ideal more than the reality is the cause of all the misery the human species creates for itself. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove

22:Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and greatest of Calamities. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove

23:To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past. Therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove

24:How far do our feelings take their colour from the dive underground? I mean, what is the reality of any feeling? ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove

25:Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the Reality and interested in telling about it. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove

26:I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove

27:Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

28:The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove

29:[God is] an all-encompassing love that is the source of all, the reality of all, and the being through which I am. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove

30:Enjoy the limitless bliss consciousness here and now. The reality of you lies much beyond your sensory perceptions and boundaries. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove

31:As soon as you raise a thought and begin to form an idea of it, you ruin the reality itself, because you then attach yourself to form. ~ d-t-suzuki, @wisdomtrove

32:God' is a word for the mysterious life force in everything. And I'm experiencing the reality of that all-embracing life force right now. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove

33:Affirmation statements are going beyond the reality of the present into the creation of the future through the words you use in the now. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove

34:The physical is external reality. The mental is our thought process - an intermediate reality. And the vital is the reality behind both. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove

35:Although we may trust God's promises for life after death and the certainty of a heavenly home, we must still face the reality of death. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove

36:Utterly destroy the ego. Control the many waves of distraction which it raises in the mind. Discern the Reality and realize "I am That." ~ adi-shankara, @wisdomtrove

37:Know that ever about you stands the reality of love, and each moment you have the power to transform your world by what you have learned. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove

38:Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove

39:If you keep examining your mind, you'll come to see that thoughts of who you are and how it all is are creating the reality you're experiencing. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove

40:You and I are the force for transformation in the world. We are the consciousness that will define the nature of the reality we are moving into. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove

41:In the end, you really want to make the best film that you can, and in the reality of the filmmaking world, you have things like budgets. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove

42:I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. You wander restlessly from forest to forest while the Reality is within your own dwelling. ~ kabir, @wisdomtrove

43:Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove

44:Hope is not an idle term. Hope is the reality that can and does reveal itself to us at God's choice hour. To hope is to know the secret of achievement. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove

45:The reality of loving God is loving him like he's a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove

46:An artist must know the reality he is depicting in its minutest detail. In my opinion we have only one shining example of that - Count Leo Tolstoy. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove

47:The reality we live in is selected by our conceptual definitions. You and I may be in the same physical space, but each of us will see it as entirely different. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove

48:Many philosophies have held that the universe is mental, in its last analysis, and that the Universal Mind is the reality behind the appearances. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove

49:The cognitive scientists have now proven the reality of decision fatigue”—that every decision you make, little or big, diminishes a limited amount of your brain power. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove

50:Death changes everything in a flash. That’s the reality of the situation. If all these things can be changed in an instant, then maybe they aren’t so real after all. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove

51:The aim of my teaching is enlightenment, awakening from the dream state of separateness into the reality of the One. In short, my teaching is focused on realizing what you are. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove

52:He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove

53:Give us that calm certainty of truth, that nearness to Thee, that conviction of the reality of the life to come, which we shall need to bear us through the troubles of this. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove

54:In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove

55:Our difficulties launch us into new states of consciousness where we are inspired to step out of the reality of our smallest thoughts and step into the limitless freedom of our biggest dreams. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove

56:Theresa, I know there's a part of you that believes you can change someone, but the reality is that you can't. You can change yourself, and Garrett can change himself, but you can't do it for him. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove

57:We (Christians) are always in the presence of God. There is never a non-sacred moment! His presence never diminishes. Our awareness of His presence may falter, but the reality of His presence never changes. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove

58:A man's character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove

59:The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove

60:The most important thing in arithmetic is not the shapes of the numbers but the reality living in them. This living reality has much more meaning for the spiritual world than what lives in reading and writing. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove

61:In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death... these are things that unite us all. ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove

62:Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial. To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. ~ jianzhi-sengcan, @wisdomtrove

63:What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the atomic threat, the alienation of man, I am astonished that they do not color all our literature. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove

64:How does your heart respond to the thought that the Universe is alive and compassionate and that with it and with other souls of great power and Light you learn through the process of co-creating the reality that you experience? ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove

65:Islam was something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing their Jesus from the reality of his body even at the expense of the sincerity of his soul. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

66:No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove

67:There is only one reality - the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove

68:Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self-actualization and the love for the highest values. ~ abraham-maslow, @wisdomtrove

69:The reality of truth is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thought, in the fullness of love. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove

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71:The destiny of photography has taken it far beyond the role to which it was originally thought to be limited: to give more accurate reports on reality (including works of art). Photography is the reality; the real object is often experienced as a letdown. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove

72:The reality today is that we are all interdependent and have to co-exist on this small planet. Therefore, the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving differences and clashes of interests, whether between individuals or nations, is through dialogue.    ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove

73:Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove

74:Men who no longer can make sure of the reality which they feel and experience through talking about it and sharing it with their fellow-men, live in the same nightmare of loneliness and uncertainty which, in a normal world, is the terrible fate of insanity. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove

75:Instead of projecting your own autobiography and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives, and interpretation, you’re dealing with the reality inside another person’s head and heart. You’re focused on receiving the deep communication from another human soul.   ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove

76:Cartesian, adj. Relating to Descartes, author of &

77:This consciousness of the reality of &

78:To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know. ~ jianzhi-sengcan, @wisdomtrove

79:The mystic and the physicist arrive at the same conclusion; one starting from the inner realm, the other from the outer world. The harmony between their views confirms the ancient Indian wisdom that Brahman, the ultimate reality without, is identical to Atman, the reality within. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove

80:During times of challenge, what you have faith in is what determines what the challenge will turn into. Have faith in the reality of the challenge, and it will birth more challenges. Have faith in the reality of miracles, and the challenge will transform into something else. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove

81:These four questions will join any program you’ve got and enhance it. Any religion you have — they’ll enhance it. If you have no religion, they will bring you joy. And they’ll burn up anything that isn’t true for you. They’ll burn through to the reality that has always been waiting. ~ byron-katie, @wisdomtrove

82:Nirvana manifests as ease, as love, as connectedness, as generosity, as clarity, as unshakable freedom. This isn’t watering down nirvana. This is the reality of liberation that we can experience, sometimes in a moment and sometimes in transformative ways that change our entire life ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove

83:Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove

84:Ideological thinking becomes emancipated from the reality that we perceive with our five senses, and insists on a &

85:Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity? ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove

86:In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove

87:The pleasure principle long persists, however, as the method of working employed by the sexual instincts, which are so hard to &

88:The Oriental thinks everything in the sense-perceptible world is &

89:We never get upset over what happens. Never. We get upset because of preconceived ideas as to what we think should happen, what we want to happen. When our preference clashes with the reality, we get hurt. Rid yourself of all preconceived ideas as to what should happen. You are then at peace whatever happens. ~ vernon-howard, @wisdomtrove

90:Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty... No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove

91:When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you. It tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove

92:Forgiving someone does not mean you condone their behavior. The act of forgiveness takes place in your own mind. It really has nothing to do with the other person. The reality of true forgiveness lies in setting ourselves free from holding on to the pain. It is simply an act of releasing yourself from the negative energy. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove

93:To see reality is as simple as to see one's face in a mirror. Only the mirror must be clear and true. A quiet mind, undistorted by desires and fears, free from ideas and opinions, clear on all the levels, is needed to reflect the reality. Be clear and quiet -alert and detached, all else will happen by itself. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove

94:We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in someways shameful- because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed- is made much more bearable when it is shared, face to face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove

95:It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self&

96:Until now, physical theories have been regarded as merely models with approximately describe the reality of nature. As the models improve, so the fit between theory and reality gets closer. Some physicists are now claiming that supergravity is the reality, that the model and the real world are in mathematically perfect accord. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove

97:I am therefore a ready believer in relics, legends, and local anecdotes of goblins and great men, and would advise all travellers who travel for their gratification to be the same. What is it to us whether these stories be true or false, so long as we can persuade ourselves into the belief of them and enjoy all the charm of the reality? ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove

98:It is true that the more we see some connection in what happens to us, the more we are confirmed in the opinion we have about the reality of our appearances; and it is also true that the more we examine our appearances closely, the more we find them well-sequenced, as microscopes and other aids in making experiments have shown us. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

99:The practice of assertiveness: being authentic in our dealings with others; treating our values and persons with decent respect in social contexts; refusing to fake the reality of who we are or what we esteem in order to avoid disapproval; the willingness to stand up for ourselves and our ideas in appropriate ways in appropriate contexts. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove

100:Reason and Knowledge have always played a secondary, subordinate, auxiliary role in the life of peoples, and this will always be the case. A people is shaped and driven forward by an entirely different kind of force, one which commands and coerces them and the origin of which is obscure and inexplicable despite the reality of its presence. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove

101:We often think more highly of ourselves than we ought to, and it's easy to judge others and be critical of their weaknesses and shortcomings. But this self-righteous attitude is a sin that we can be blinded to because we're so focused on what the other person did wrong. The reality is this attitude is worse than the wrong behavior we're judging. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove

102:Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, including personal contact and visits, images, sounds. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove

103:Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove

104:I, the dreamer clinging yet to the dream as the patient clings to the last thin unbearable ecstatic instant of agony in order to sharpen the savor of the pain's surcease, waking into the reality, the more than reality, not to the unchanged and unaltered old time but into a time altered to fit the dream which, conjunctive with the dreamer, becomes immolated and apotheosized ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove

105:Dogs invite us not only to share their joy but also to live in the moment, where we are neither proceeding from nor moving toward, where the enchantment of the past and future cannot distract us, where a freedom from practical desire and a cessation of our usual ceaseless action allows us to recognize the truth of our existence, the reality of our world and purpose&

106:Instead of being encouraged to feel completely protected, loved, honored, and respected by the Divine Force, you've been taught that you're being judged. Because you've been taught that, you feel guilt and fear. But guilt and fear do not open you connection to the Divine; they only serve to close your heart. The reality is that God's way is love, and you can see this for yourself. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove

107:What if somebody came along who could teach me how my world works and how to control it What if I could meet a super-advanced ... what if a Siddhartha or a Jesus came into our time, with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them And what if I could meet him in person, if he were flying a biplane, for instance, and landed in the same meadow with me. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove

108:LSD was an incredible experience. Not that I'm recommending it for anybody else; but for me it kind of – it hammered home to me that reality was not a fixed thing. That the reality that we saw about us every day was one reality, and a valid one – but that there were others, different perspectives where different things have meaning that were just as valid. That had a profound effect on me. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove

109:By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbour actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbour, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove

110:Retreat is a response to the call of the heart-that call which beckons us toward reality, to the truth of our being, to that which is truly sane, really real and liberating ... When a group of people come together as a response to that kind of inward call, it creates a very powerful environment, where truth is held in the highest esteem and the reality of our being responds to that deepest intention. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove

111:Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove

112:And, as in the case of sensible images, if the artist look without distraction upon the archetypal form, not distracted by sight of anything else, or in any way divided in attention, he will duplicate, if I may so speak, the very person that is being sketched, whoever he may be, and will shew the reality in the likeness, and the archetype in the image, and each in each, save the difference of substance; ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove

113:This is what Wisdom means: To be changed without the slightest effort on your part, to be transformed, believe it or not, merely by waking to the reality that is not words , that lies beyond the reach of words. If you are fortunate enough to be Awakened thus, you will know why the finest language is the one that is not spoken, the finest action is the one that is not done and the finest change is the one that is not willed. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove

114:A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove

115:Modern non-dual spirituality is often characterized by a complete denial of the reality of the individual self. A central claim is that awakening requires the understanding that there is ‘no doer’ with free will to choose and act. The idea of an individual agent with volition arises from the illusion of separateness. In reality everything is just happening and seeing this leads to the realization of ‘no self’, which is the ‘final truth’. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove

116:All the things and events we usually consider as irreconcilable, such as cause and effect, past and future, subject and object, are actually just like the crest and trough of a single wave, a single vibration. For a wave, although itself a single event, only expresses itself through the opposites of crest and trough, high point and low point. For that very reason, the reality is not found in the crest nor the trough alone, but in their unity. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove

117:You see, the Law of Attraction is responding to your vibration, not to the reality you are currently living - but if your vibration continues to be only about the reality you are living, nothing can change. You can easily change your vibrational point of attraction by visualizing the lifestyle you desire and holding your attention upon those images until you begin to feel relief, which will indicate that a true vibrational shift has occurred. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove

118:... .all the things and events we usually consider as irreconcilable, such as cause and effect, past and future, subject and object, are actually just like the crest and trough of a single wave, a single vibration. For a wave, although itself a single event, only expresses itself through the opposites of crest and trough, high point and low point. For that very reason, the reality is not found in the crest nor the trough alone, but in their unity... ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove

119:Instead of being encouraged to feel completely protected, loved, honored, and respected by the Divine Force, you’ve been taught that you’re being judged. Because you’ve been taught that, you feel guilt and fear. But guilt and fear do not open your connection to the Divine; they only serve to close your heart. The reality is that God’s way is love, and you can see this for yourself. – Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove

120:We are all healers of each other. Look at David Spiegel's fascinating study of putting people together in a support group and seeking that some people in it live twice as long as other people who are not in a support group. I asked David what went on in those groups and he said that people just cared about each other.  Nothing big, no deep psychological stuff-people just cared about each other.  The reality is that healing happens between people. ~ rachel-naomi-remen, @wisdomtrove

121:Difficulties with material things often come to remind us that our concentration should be on spiritual things instead of material things. Sometimes difficulties of the body come to show that the body is just a transient garment, and that the reality is the indestructible essence which activates the body. But when we can say, &

122:We have two main instruments: the mind and the heart. The mind finds it difficult to be happy, precisely because the mind consciously enjoys the sense of separativity. It is always judging and doubting the reality in others. This is the human mind, the ordinary physical mind, the earth-bound mind. But we also have the aspiring heart, the loving heart. This loving heart is free from insecurity, for it has already established its oneness with the rest of the world. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove

123:I have been asked many times, Why do you laugh so much and make so many jokes? I become serious sometimes-when I have a stomachache! The Lord is all blissfulness. He is the reality behind all that exists. He is the goodness, the truth in everything. You are His incarnations. That is what is glorious. The nearer you are to Him, the less you will have occasions to cry or weep. The further we are from Him, the more will long faces come. The more we know of Him, the more misery vanishes. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove

124:When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice. Only in this moment can we discover that which is timeless. Only here can we find the love that we seek. Love in the past is simply memory, and love in the future is fantasy. Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove

125:The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being... Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen) we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations... . May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove

126:When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove

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128:Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove

129:I'm not [a Buddhist]. The whole point of anything that is really, truly valuable to your soul, and your own growth, is not to attach to a teacher, but rather to find out what the real deal is in the world itself. You become your own guide. The teachings can help you, but really, we're all here with the opportunity the reality of hereness. We all have that. I trust that... I'm just not interested in labels. I find all of them    They're hard to wear.  And they're hard to wear because we're always - hopefully - growing. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove

130:The illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement ... alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinced that our life, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we condemn and destroy our own reality and the reality of our natural resources. Technology was made for man, not man for technology. In losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove

131:Even if it be true that all these shapes, and forms, and appearances, and phenomena, and personalities, be but illusion as compared to the inner Reality— what of it? Are you not then assured that the Spirit within Yourself is the Spirit of the Absolute— that the Reality within You is the Reality of the Absolute— that you ARE, because the Absolute IS, and cannot be otherwise? Does not the Peace, and Calm, and Security, and Bliss that comes to you with this Realization, far more than counterbalance the petty nothings that you have discarded? ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove

132:If you set your bar at &

133:The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality - to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our sense-intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove

134:The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt... . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove

135:What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think. "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these things are things that cannot inspire envy." ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove

136:On the altar you are looking at the same thing as you saw there last night. You have not heard, however, what this is, what it signifies, or about the greatness of the reality of which it is a sacrament. Your eyes are looking at bread and cup. This is the evidence before your physical sight. But your faith must be instructed concerning it- this bread being Christ &

137:I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove

138:How many times have you said, &

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Face to the reality. ~ Johann Sebastian Bach,

2:The process is the reality. ~ Samuel Johnson,

3:Love is the reality of the soul. ~ Lilian Whiting,

4:The memories: they are the reality. ~ Stephen King,

5:Love is the reality, and poetry is the drum. ~ Rumi,

6:Subject is alone the Reality. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

7:But the reality is that we are a folk band. ~ Amy Ray,

8:Only real risk passes the reality of faith. ~ C S Lewis,

9:The reality is Donald Trump's a genius. ~ Rudy Giuliani,

10:We create the reality in which we live. ~ James Turrell,

11:I am a single mother - that is the reality. ~ Emilia Fox,

12:I think the reality is important anyway. ~ Andrea Arnold,

13:Dreams are manifestation of the reality. ~ Santosh Kalwar,

14:The writer's task is to invent the reality. ~ J G Ballard,

15:The reality is that I am the Teacher. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,

16:Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. ~ C S Lewis,

17:The mask is torn off, while the reality remains ~ Lucretius,

18:Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow ~ T S Eliot,

19:The reality of love is better than its reputation ~ Nina George,

20:The mind is the reality. You are what you think. ~ Alfred Bester,

21:The reality of love is better than its reputation. ~ Nina George,

22:Don’t sit! Stand up and jump on the reality! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

23:Dare to believe in the reality of your assumption ~ Neville Goddard,

24:Multiplicity is a delusion. Unity is the Reality. ~ Sathya Sai Baba,

25:Douglass gave voice to the reality of social death. ~ David W Blight,

26:The reality is more excellent than the report. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,

27:After a time, she believed in the reality of this comedy ~ mile Zola,

28:Scary Movie' is very broad, and the reality is extreme. ~ Regina Hall,

29:The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. ~ Timothy Snyder,

30:Accepting the reality of change gives rise to equanimity. ~ Allan Lokos,

31:Here is the reality: to be changed, we need His presence! ~ John Bevere,

32:The idea of being famous is a lot better than the reality. ~ Tom Felton,

33:I WISH YOU ALL THE REALITY YOU COULD EVER WANT. HANDLE. WANT. ~ Amy King,

34:she loves the potentiality and the reality of each friend. ~ Dean Koontz,

35:The reality of your life always comes out in pathology, ~ Michael Mosley,

36:I think the idea of me is better than the reality of me. ~ Colleen Hoover,

37:May the dreams of your past be the reality of your future. ~ Jimi Hendrix,

38:One more cockeyed optimist thrown under the reality bus. ~ Deborah Coonts,

39:Those [old] days are gone... accept the reality and do it. ~ Ava DuVernay,

40:[T]o know means to reach the reality of existing things[.] ~ Josef Pieper,

41:Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past. ~ Shannon L Alder,

42:Pessimism is the affectation of youth, the reality of age. ~ Ellen Glasgow,

43:Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,

44:The space within becomes the reality of the building. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright,

45:Virginity is the poetry, not the reality, of life. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine,

46:I was only photographing in words the reality of it all. ~ Charles Bukowski,

47:We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented. ~ Ed Harris,

48:You may find a myth that will evoke the reality in you ~ Jean Shinoda Bolen,

49:You’re just a casualty in the reality of the madness of Bri. ~ Angie Thomas,

50:No dream can be more beautiful than the reality itself! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

51:Surrealism comes from the reality of Latin America. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez,

52:The best way to ruin a fantasy is to meet the reality, right? ~ Meghan March,

53:the object of our attention becomes the reality of our world. ~ Gregg Braden,

54:The reality of any place is what its people remember of it. ~ Charles Kuralt,

55:They give you the semblance of success, I give you the reality... ~ Socrates,

56:True faith is belief in the reality of absolute values. ~ William Ralph Inge,

57:Adventure is the best way to feel the reality thoroughly! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

58:The reality we can put into words is never reality itself. ~ Werner Heisenberg,

59:There is the illusion of the world and the reality of the Torah. ~ Meir Kahane,

60:Where consciousness is concerned, the appearance is the reality. ~ John Searle,

61:All that schooling never prepares you for the reality of life. ~ Juliette Lewis,

62:I guess the reality is, everybody today has so many gadgets. ~ Barbara Broccoli,

63:I think the reality is that, that money was probably badly spent. ~ Alan Hansen,

64:My dreams have become puny with the reality my life has become. ~ Imelda Marcos,

65:Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? ~ Ron Suskind,

66:Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God. ~ Tom Stoppard,

67:It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept. ~ Bill Watterson,

68:Nothing shatters the reality of our good intentions like reality. ~ Tawni O Dell,

69:Scientists have grave difficulty dealing with the reality of God. ~ M Scott Peck,

70:The first is the courage to confront the reality of mortality—the ~ Atul Gawande,

71:Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction. ~ Slavoj i ek,

72:Manipulate the situation to create the reality of your desire ~ Eleanor Roosevelt,

73:The imagining of chaos was quite different from the reality of it. ~ Melissa Grey,

74:The mark of wisdom is to see the reality behind each appearance. ~ Corban Addison,

75:The reality is that most families are overmanaged and underled. ~ Stephen R Covey,

76:Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction. ~ Slavoj Zizek,

77:His imagination was always more real than the reality of daily life. ~ Dan Simmons,

78:I cannot provide the reality of events, I can only convey their shadow. ~ Stendhal,

79:If you are miserable you are miserable; that is the reality, ~ Henepola Gunaratana,

80:Key 7: The focus of our awareness becomes the reality of our world. ~ Gregg Braden,

81:People's sense of how they talk tends to differ from the reality. ~ John McWhorter,

82:The Cruor are the reality from which legends of vampires arose. ~ Rebecca Hamilton,

83:The reality is that de-carbonisation is not happening fast enough. ~ Jamais Cascio,

84:what you can still dream about is often sweeter than the reality. ~ Susan Meissner,

85:Let us cherish that Self, which is the Reality, in the Heart. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

86:People create the reality they need in order to discover themselves ~ Ernest Becker,

87:The poetry was all in the anticipation - there is none in the reality. ~ Mark Twain,

88:The reality is the park has been badly maintained for years. ~ Scott Michael Foster,

89:How can we not create a fantasy in our minds when the reality is so hard? ~ Lisa See,

90:Sometimes the memory of someone is better than the reality of them. ~ Steve Maraboli,

91:The reality we can accept is limited to our consciousness, after all. ~ Project Itoh,

92:You have to know the reality and the reality is that we are eternal. ~ Deepak Chopra,

93:the reality has come to seem more and more what we are shown by camera ~ Susan Sontag,

94:The reality is the picture, it is most certainly not in the picture. ~ Georg Baselitz,

95:When the sleep appears like a ghost, all the reality disappears! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

96:In war, character and opinion make more than half of the reality. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte,

97:Ironing is a great diversion from the reality you dont want to face. ~ Melissa McBride,

98:The reality is that I feel that fear is a very spiritual emotion. ~ Guillermo del Toro,

99:What you find in the mirror you will find in the reality it mirrors. ~ William Barrett,

100:All are called to be what in the reality of God they are already. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

101:Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel,

102:Humility is simply accepting the reality of who God is and who you are. ~ John Townsend,

103:It's fine to dream, provided we can deal with the reality when we wake up ~ Ruskin Bond,

104:This is the essence of idolatry: replacing the reality with a counterfeit. ~ R C Sproul,

105:You can play with the reality and the 3D is a tool to play with it. ~ Timur Bekmambetov,

106:Art is not a reflection of reality, it is the reality of a reflection. ~ Jean Luc Godard,

107:Many scientists simply do not look at the evidence of the reality of God. ~ M Scott Peck,

108:The reality of it is you have to be over the top if you want to be noticed. ~ Bob Wright,

109:Watch your mouth: The language we use creates the reality we experience. ~ Michael Hyatt,

110:…I am a good Hegelian. If you have a good theory, forget about the reality. ~ Slavoj i ek,

111:The job of reflection is to add a dimension of fable to the reality! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

112:The reality is no one knows how much it will cost us to wage war with Iraq. ~ Kent Conrad,

113:The reality is, some people don't want you to change or go anywhere different. ~ Babyface,

114:What was it about the world that it could not face the reality it lived? ~ Robin Oliveira,

115:Are you in a desert? Then be a camel! Be compatible with the reality! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

116:The reality is that we do not wash our own laundry - it just gets dirtier. ~ Frank Serpico,

117:Anticipation almost always exceeds the reality of that which we anticipated. ~ Dov Davidoff,

118:In the reality - TV era, unstable behavior become a valid career choice. ~ James Poniewozik,

119:It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English. ~ Chinua Achebe,

120:Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same. ~ Oswald Chambers,

121:Sometimes having the dream makes you more content than having the reality. ~ Lorraine Heath,

122:That's the reality of what they're going to sell them to the Treasury for. ~ Warren Buffett,

123:The reality is I'm not this person with this driving 'get it done' attitude. ~ Greg Giraldo,

124:Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow ~ T S Eliot,

125:If the reality makes you unhappy, make yourself happy with the surreal! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

126:In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything. ~ Thomas Merton,

127:Man is imperfect. The reality he creates is always endangered by man. ~ Friedrich Durrenmatt,

128:The reality is I'm not a 'get knocked down and come back harder' kind of guy. ~ Greg Giraldo,

129:I had retreated to reporting because I doubted the reality of my inner voice ~ Gloria Steinem,

130:Now faith is the reality A of what is hoped for, the proof B of what is not seen. ~ Anonymous,

131:The great philosophers are poets who believe in the reality of their poems. ~ Antonio Machado,

132:We derive a lot of the reality of ourselves through interactions with others. ~ Joyce Johnson,

133:Any prudent business looks at the reality and how to maximize our investment. ~ John Elkington,

134:The dreams of yesterday are the hopes of today and the reality of tomorrow. ~ Robert H Goddard,

135:The reality you experience is a reflection of what you believe is most possible. ~ Darryl Anka,

136:To discuss the reality of our global position is considered impolite. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett,

137:Art symbolizes our perfect ability in the matter of enriching the reality! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

138:But, as was so often the case, the reality was different from what I’d imagined. ~ Heidi Heilig,

139:We must accept the reality that the causes of impatience travel a two-way street. ~ Allan Lokos,

140:Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live. ~ Mary Catherine Bateson,

141:Our role is to dream and inspire rather than collude in impacting the reality. ~ Dries van Noten,

142:The reality of my life cannot die for I am indestructible consciousness. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,

143:The truth about parenting is that the reality of our lives needs to be enough. ~ Jessica Valenti,

144:they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. ~ Marshall McLuhan,

145:When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality? ~ Henry David Thoreau,

146:Any honest inquiry into the reality of nature also yields insights about ourselves. ~ Carl Safina,

147:Escapism- that's what I like. I'm not so crazy about the reality of everything. ~ Michael Jackson,

148:I act for the reality, for the moment, and most of all I do it for the process. ~ Ted Shackelford,

149:In the name of respecting the reality, keep the flatterers out of your life! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

150:Pornography takes all the reality out of sex and Disney does that to family life. ~ Jarvis Cocker,

151:The reality is that doing good unto others actually does more good for you. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,

152:The reality is that the Lord never calls the qualified; He qualifies the called. ~ Henry Blackaby,

153:I do think the reality is, there is a general recognition of what I've accomplished. ~ Hugh Hefner,

154:In sum: the church exists to be a living exhibit of the reality of the gospel. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer,

155:The reality is [in] any emotional situation, a compulsive eater eats or an alcoholic ~ Jeff Garlin,

156:The reality is that a brand can no longer afford to be "friends with everyone." ~ Martin Lindstrom,

157:The reality of God’s presence both comforts our hearts and restrains our behavior. ~ Robert Morgan,

158:We hate to be cheering for high gas prices. The reality is that's what's happening. ~ Steve Miller,

159:As a person of color, there's no getting around the reality of its responsibility. ~ Benjamin Bratt,

160:It's been a long time coming but the reality is that this process is at a crossroads. ~ Gerry Adams,

161:So often, our acts of love are what help people believe the reality of Jesus' love. ~ Andi Ashworth,

162:The idea of how others see you becomes more important than the reality of you. ~ Michael J Sullivan,

163:The number one ranked team is playing the number 10 ranked team. That's the reality. ~ Dav Whatmore,

164:The reality is that the Lord never calls the qualified; He qualifies the called. ~ Henry T Blackaby,

165:The subject and the reality of having children came at the height of my career. ~ Melissa Etheridge,

166:Truthfully though, it’s the reality. Once you change your nature, people question. ~ Krista Ritchie,

167:Country music has become the music that best represents the reality of American life. ~ Brad Paisley,

168:Somewhere between the fact we know and the anxiety we feel is the reality we live. ~ Timothy B Tyson,

169:We can distance ourselves from the reality of what we did through storytelling. ~ Joshua Oppenheimer,

170:Your words create images and eventually you will live out the reality of that image. ~ Charles Capps,

171:Looks like it's time to liven up this dead little town!" - Saint Dane (The Reality Bug) ~ D J MacHale,

172:The poet's expression of joy conceals his despair at not having found the reality of joy. ~ Max Jacob,

173:You don’t question Providence. If you can’t have the reality, a dream is just as good. ~ Ray Bradbury,

174:As it turned out, my perception was so much more intimidating than the reality. ~ Jennifer Baumgardner,

175:Somewhere between the fact we know and the anxiety we feel is the reality we live.”5 ~ Timothy B Tyson,

176:When a band means a lot to you, you build the fantasy more than the reality. Always. ~ Stephen Malkmus,

177:Don’t go chasing after daydreams when the reality is much more suitable and willing. ~ Yasmine Galenorn,

178:In my heart I know the truth, but my mind cannot accept the reality of what this all means. ~ Loung Ung,

179:In the end I didn't get a top car any more. I had no toughness left. That was the reality. ~ Jacky Ickx,

180:Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret. ~ Ralph Nader,

181:Loneliness, insomnia, and change: the fear of these is even worse than the reality. ~ Mignon McLaughlin,

182:Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. Hebrews 11:1 ~ Beth Moore,

183:Prescription of the correct cure is dependent on a rigorous analysis of the reality. ~ Ng g wa Thiong o,

184:...the true direction of her heart: that is to say, inwards, to the reality of dreams. ~ Salman Rushdie,

185:To talk about the reality of life here and the work that you do here at the university. ~ Robert Pinsky,

186:We would like to build the idea of April May to help people deal with the reality of Carl. ~ Hank Green,

187:When we give up regarding the unreal as real, then the reality alone will remain. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

188:Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow ~ T S Eliot,

189:Life is about deciding what matters. It's about the fantasy that determines the reality. ~ Claire Messud,

190:Life is about deciding what matters. It’s about the fantasy that determines the reality. ~ Claire Messud,

191:Life itself is not the reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles. ~ Frederick Sommer,

192:The reality is that changes are coming... They must come. You must share in bringing them. ~ John Hersey,

193:Trust means you anchor your heart in the reality of God's awareness of your situation. ~ James MacDonald,

194:I have no idea how I'm perceived in America because I don't live the reality of America ~ Monica Bellucci,

195:Mother Nature comes up against reality, and the reality is that the system doesn't work. ~ John Garamendi,

196:Love is an ideal. A false hope. Marriage is the reality. And like all realities it is painful. ~ Anonymous,

197:No matter how stark the reality, a human being fits it into a narrative that is palatable. ~ Joshua Prager,

198:Others see their possibility in the reality of you. Your message is your life lived. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,

199:The reality is not exactly what the song started out to be, but it's not a bad song. ~ Robert James Waller,

200:The reality of art is disclosed only in experience, not in reflection upon experience. ~ Clement Greenberg,

201:The reality of boy-girl life gets harsh, but in my fantasy, the music keeps them together. ~ Rob Sheffield,

202:The reality of the individualis an incoherent reality and must be expressed incoherently. ~ Samuel Beckett,

203:Can you give yourself totally to the reality of your life and its unknowable outcome? ~ Karen Maezen Miller,

204:Get your news from six or nine sources and you can usually tell the bullshit from the reality. ~ Mira Grant,

205:I think I'm a bit of a dreamer. I don't like the reality of life to impinge much on my life. ~ Hugo Weaving,

206:I was like a child leaving a gift unwrapped, the anticipation more exciting than the reality. ~ Karen White,

207:Sometimes I am willing to believe in anything if it means ignoring the reality of a situation. ~ Pete Wentz,

208:The reality is that al Qaeda has been trying to attack the United States since long before Iraq. ~ Ed Royce,

209:The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose. ~ Barbara W Tuchman,

210:The reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime, can never be the whole truth. ~ Nicole Kidman,

211:To the young, tragedies that don't happen are only dreams. The memories: they're the reality ~ Stephen King,

212:To the young, tragedies that don't happen are only dreams. The memories: they're the reality. ~ Steven King,

213:You will never see the preciousness of a Savior, if you do not see the reality of your sin. ~ Kevin DeYoung,

214:All of us experience a gap between our minds and the reality of time—that's why we suffer. ~ Dainin Katagiri,

215:I like to deal in the reality of life. I'm too old to sing about women and things like that. ~ Geezer Butler,

216:sometimes, how a situation is perceived carries more weight than the reality of the matter. ~ Tammara Webber,

217:The reality is that we have missed a lot of opportunities in Iraq because of a failed policy. ~ Marty Meehan,

218:This is the reality of intensive care: at any point, we are as apt to harm as we are to heal. ~ Atul Gawande,

219:When the reality is no different than a beautiful dream, stick tightly to that reality! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

220:But whatever the reasons, the rhetoric of hard work conflicts with the reality on the ground. The ~ J D Vance,

221:Money is certainly one of the ways we can turn the dreams we have into the reality we live. ~ Anthony Robbins,

222:The darkest of man’s imaginings can never match the reality of the depths of his depravity.  ~ Brett J Talley,

223:The reality is that sometimes, it takes more strength to let go than it does to keep holding on. ~ Amari Soul,

224:...the reality of the days washed away the possibilities of the past, and time moved on. ~ Guillermo del Toro,

225:The reality you live in is partially up to you. The fantasy you live in is entirely up to you. ~ Najwa Zebian,

226:The theory of policing is quite far from the reality of policing. For us, at least, that is. ~ DeRay Mckesson,

227:Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don’t adjust! Revolt against the reality! ~ Mordechai Anielewicz,

228:When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness. ~ William James,

229:But of course everything presses forward, even as we dig our feet against the reality of it all. ~ Carrie Ryan,

230:Innovators are the ones whose dreams are clearer than the reality that tells them they're crazy. ~ Simon Sinek,

231:I think you just have to be realistic to what the reality is, the way people experience movies. ~ Adam Wingard,

232:It's easier to deny the reality of the problem altogether than acknowledge that it is real. ~ Katharine Hayhoe,

233:Perception is everything and that becomes the reality. It's a big problem for Hillary Clinton. ~ Carly Fiorina,

234:Tantric Buddhism means that we become mature adults and we learn the reality of chaos theory. ~ Frederick Lenz,

235:The dreams we are chasing and the reality that is chasing us are always parallel; they never meet. ~ Ai Yazawa,

236:There are few things stressed more strongly in the Bible than the reality of God's work as Judge. ~ J I Packer,

237:Art reveals the power of the intuitive, capturing the reality hiding beneath the culture. The ~ Makoto Fujimura,

238:God is a fiction invented by people so they do not have to face the reality of their condition. ~ Michel Onfray,

239:Seeing someone happy on set is just a very small slice of the reality of an actor's life. ~ Katherine Waterston,

240:The most lively fancy aided by the strongest description cannot equal the reality of the opera. ~ John Marshall,

241:The reality of the building does not consist of the roof and walls, but the space within to be lived. ~ Lao Tzu,

242:Preachers who talk about everything but the reality of Hell, are likeable betrayers of the Gospel. ~ Ray Comfort,

243:The reality is, saying yes to any opportunity by definition requires saying no to several others. ~ Greg McKeown,

244:Education becomes most rich and alive when it confronts the reality of moral conflict in the world. ~ Howard Zinn,

245:I'd love to tell you that something is going to change tomorrow. But the reality is that it won't. ~ Richard Burr,

246:Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. ~ Susan Sontag,

247:The friendly preacher who fails to warn of the reality of Hell, betrays the Son of God with a kiss. ~ Ray Comfort,

248:The new always looks so puny-so unpromising-next to the reality of the massive, ongoing business. ~ Peter Drucker,

249:The reality of living was never greater than when you held death clutched tightly in your hands. ~ Harold Robbins,

250:There is no greater mystery than this, ourselves being the Reality we seek to gain Reality. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

251:The thing about tourism is that the reality of a place is quite different from the mythology of it. ~ Martin Parr,

252:America is concerned more with the possibility of moon folks than the reality of hungry poor folks. ~ Dick Gregory,

253:And that’s why I stay at home and write. I think the idea of me is better than the reality of me. ~ Colleen Hoover,

254:since He had lost the reality of virtue, it appeared as if its semblance was become more valuable. ~ Matthew Lewis,

255:The reality of the mind can be one hundred percent different than the reality of the reality! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

256:What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life. ~ Ted Hughes,

257:Every work of art is an abstraction from time; it denies the reality of change and decay and death. ~ Lewis Mumford,

258:In order to keep anything cultural, logical, or ideological, you have to reinvent the reality of it. ~ Ani DiFranco,

259:Kill the fantasy. Show him the reality. That’s my game. No man wants to truly see behind the curtain ~ Meghan March,

260:the reality is, if we truly desire to follow Jesus, we will definitely not fit in with this culture. ~ Francis Chan,

261:The reality of having a kid involves day-to-day practicality - not broader philosophical outlooks. ~ John Darnielle,

262:The reality of the building does not consist in the roof and walls, but in the space within to be lived in. ~ Laozi,

263:The visible is always a mirror of the invisible. The reality is imagined before it manifests itself. ~ Paulo Coelho,

264:Why are you messing with the fantasy? We know about the reality. Don't ruin the fantasy, OK? ~ Anthony Michael Hall,

265:Yet the reality is that I'm a stage actor from the Midwest - probably the opposite of a shark agent. ~ Jeremy Piven,

266:Considering a work program at this time is quite simply out of touch with the reality we confront. ~ John Negroponte,

267:Darkness could find you knee deep in happiness and come slap you back into the reality of the hate. ~ Jennae Cecelia,

268:I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,

269:Pessimism is a denial of the reality of God and the power man draws from being connected to it. ~ Arianna Huffington,

270:The doctrine of adoption establishes the reality that believers, once saved, are always saved. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,

271:The memory of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy. ~ Orson Scott Card,

272:The nature of bondage is merely the rising, ruinous thought `I am different from the reality'. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

273:The reality is that I surround myself with very smart, very strong people - including my ex-wives. ~ Ronald Perelman,

274:Time is only an idea. There is only the Reality. Time is immaterial for the Path of Knowledge. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

275:Time is only an idea. There is only the Reality. Whatever you think it is, it looks like that. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

276:Americans believe in the reality of “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates,

277:Don’t let your imagination run away with you...” But why would you not when the reality was so awful? ~ Kate Atkinson,

278:Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you. ~ Alex Haley,

279:If you let the reality of the business side get to you, it can turn you, and that's not good at all. ~ Landon Donovan,

280:Interfere with the reality of my world, and you therefore take the very life and heart out of my will. ~ Josiah Royce,

281:Oh, life is too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best not to be born. ~ Osamu Dazai,

282:Past and Future are a duality of which Present is the reality. The now-moment alone is eternal and real. ~ Wei Wu Wei,

283:The reality is more complicated, but as with most humans, the people on Earth prefer the simple answer. ~ John Scalzi,

284:The reality is not that I lack respect for the law; it's that I have greater respect for justice. ~ Tim DeChristopher,

285:The reality is that you will never get much done unless you go ahead and do it before you are ready. ~ John C Maxwell,

286:The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. ~ Cormac McCarthy,

287:We have to face the reality of climate change. It is arguably the biggest threat we are facing today. ~ William Hague,

288:Your faith could have no substance if you did not also accept the reality of its effects in this world. ~ Dean Koontz,

289:Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,

290:Real heroes are like poor old Gaspode. No one ever notices them until afterward. That’s the reality. ~ Terry Pratchett,

291:Right or wrong, he’d have to face up to the reality that her heart came used, as-is, and without warranties ~ J D Horn,

292:The memory doesn’t fit with the reality, because I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear. ~ Paula Hawkins,

293:THE MYTH: Money is the indicator of wealth. THE REALITY: Quality of life is the real indicator of wealth. ~ Alan Cohen,

294:The reality is that for many of us family was as much the incubator of despair as the safe nurturing ~ Dorothy Allison,

295:That literary is still based on beauty, does not know the reality and does not have fixed rules like scientific rules ~,

296:The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life-the terror of art. ~ Franz Kafka,

297:The most important thing about my profession is finding the truth, finding the reality of these shows. ~ Shuler Hensley,

298:The reality is that the AIDS epidemic continues to outstrip the global and national efforts to contain it. ~ Peter Piot,

299:The reality of things going on around me is more interesting than the fantasies of the world I work in. ~ Dennis Hopper,

300:I also believe that when one dies, one may wake up to the reality that proves that time does not exist. ~ Thor Heyerdahl,

301:I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make. ~ Haruki Murakami,

302:People may think you're giving up, when in fact you are simply giving in to the reality of your new life ~ Toni Bernhard,

303:Spontaneousness is thought to be madness. Formalities are thought to be sanity. Just the opposite is the reality. ~ Osho,

304:The very fact that we protest evil means that we recognize the reality and ultimate priority of goodness. ~ Holly Ordway,

305:Hood films now are made by studios and have nothing to do with the reality they supposedly represent. ~ Mathieu Kassovitz,

306:If the reality is not ideal, resist and refuse the reality and change it no matter how strong it is! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

307:Indeed, the truth, the reality of the Kosovo War, was actually hidden behind all the 'humanitarian' faces. ~ Paul Virilio,

308:I think that the reality is, is that there's a shift in the mood in the USA that's very anti-Washington. ~ Reince Priebus,

309:Just a recognition of the reality of decision-making and the state of play in the government of Israel. ~ Richard Boucher,

310:Loving the ideal more than the reality is the cause of all the misery the human species creates for itself. ~ Dean Koontz,

311:Then something happens, and we realize that all we’ve fallen for is the idea of something, not the reality. ~ Eileen Cook,

312:They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting at the end of the trip— ~ Markus Zusak,

313:Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and greatest of Calamities. ~ J R R Tolkien,

314:And then, little by little, the reality of what I had just done sank in: I had just killed my boyfriend’s dad! ~ Meg Cabot,

315:Despite her best intentions, she was beginning to accept the reality of the attraction she felt for him. ~ Nicholas Sparks,

316:I need the reality of other people, work, to fulfill myself. Must never become a mere mother and housewife. ~ Sylvia Plath,

317:In truth, there can be no between the observer and the observed. If the two are split, the reality is gone. ~ Robert Lanza,

318:It can be heartbreaking when you find out that your fairytale image of the world doesn't match the reality. ~ Taylor Swift,

319:Practice of [meditation] leads to self-enquiry which consists in sifting the reality from unreality. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

320:The Christian is not a Stoic. Neither does he flee into a fantasy world that denies the reality of suffering. ~ R C Sproul,

321:The reality is that I'm an actor from the Midwest and I was 40 movies into it before I started 'Entourage'. ~ Jeremy Piven,

322:But the most important thing I know is that I want the possibility of you more than the reality of [her]. ~ Caroline Kepnes,

323:I see you brought along your violent little girlfriend. What a nice surprise!" - Saint Dane (The Reality Bug) ~ D J MacHale,

324:The reality of this election is that we can choose between a disappointing Democrat and the end of the world. ~ Wil Wheaton,

325:When I lose touch with the audience and the reality of what life really is, I'll be Vanilla Ice or something. ~ Wyclef Jean,

326:You can show more of the reality of yourself instead of hiding behind a mask for fear of revealing too much ~ Betty Friedan,

327:As Hoffman later lamented, “The reality distortion field can serve as a spur, but then reality itself hits. ~ Joanna Hoffman,

328:I’m infinitely more involved in the reality of the characters and their situation than I am in everyday life. ~ Edward Albee,

329:The reality is that if you always do what you've always done, you'll always be where you've always been. ~ James Emery White,

330:The reality of what we really are is often times found in the small snips, way down at the bottom of things. ~ Jean Shepherd,

331:To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past. Therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,

332:To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past; therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,

333:I'm dreaming about making movies for eight weeks, because it's a luxury. But time is money. That's the reality. ~ Julie Delpy,

334:Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes. ~ Desmond Tutu,

335:Strategies are great, business models are great, but the reality is your music has to mean something to people. ~ Brother Ali,

336:The reality of life gets in the way and you’re hit by the realisation that you can’t be all you wanted to be, ~ Cecelia Ahern,

337:We all tend to look for life horizontally when the reality is that we will only ever find life vertically. ~ Paul David Tripp,

338:In politics,” said John Lindsay, “the perception is the reality.” So, too, in advertising, in business, and in life. ~ Al Ries,

339:Man is the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are, and of the unreality of those which are not. ~ Protagoras,

340:One can be a full-fledged Christian and at the same time, enjoy the reality of a universal spiritual truth. ~ Elizabeth Lesser,

341:Words and ideas are a description of reality, silence is a negation of reality. What is the reality itself? ~ John Daido Loori,

342:Creative vision, sometimes childlike, enhances our ability to explore and question the reality around us. ~ Taigen Dan Leighton,

343:Find a right and a beautiful idea; stick to it tightly and drag it strongly from your mind to the reality! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

344:Most mistakes in philosophy and logic occur because the human mind is apt to take the symbol for the reality. ~ Albert Einstein,

345:Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience. ~ Rachel Carson,

346:We, who should know better, reinforce every patient's desire to hide from the reality of his own mortality. ~ Michael J Collins,

347:But the reality is that many people are facing nonphysical persecution because of their stand for righteousness. ~ Jerry Bridges,

348:How old did you have to be before you learned the difference between the simulacrum of love and the reality? ~ Emily Croy Barker,

349:In truth, there can be no break between the observer and the observed. If the two are split, the reality is gone. ~ Robert Lanza,

350:people have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy. ~ Peter Watts,

351:The reality comes first, and the symbol comes after. I see these things, and suddenly they become symbolic of life. ~ Mary Pratt,

352:What your mind wants to believe will become the reality, regardless of the truth or falsity in the statement. ~ Stephen Richards,

353:You are...every dream I've ever had rolled into one. Every fantasy I ever had...the reality of you blows them away. ~ Ann Vaughn,

354:Foolishly romantic, yeah, sure, maybe: but she'd rather have dreams of Prince Charming than the reality of Mr. Wrong. ~ Lisa Cach,

355:How far do our feelings take their colour from the dive underground? I mean, what is the reality of any feeling? ~ Virginia Woolf,

356:I've realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch,

357:Most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. ~ John Dickinson,

358:Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile. ~ Mahmoud Darwish,

359:Sometimes, it’s easier to withdraw from the reality around you and enjoy the fantasy reality in a fictional novel. ~ Rebecca Shea,

360:For a realized being the Self alone is the Reality, and actions are only phenomenal, not affecting the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

361:Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the Reality and interested in telling about it. ~ Gertrude Stein,

362:I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything. ~ Virginia Woolf,

363:The reality of an actor's life is that we do not always have the luxury of choice. We take what comes to us. ~ Stephanie D Abruzzo,

364:The reality was that Warner wasn't there. If there were two people or 20 people identifying him, they were wrong. ~ Richard Harris,

365:THE MYTH: Being a misfit is a defect you must correct. THE REALITY: Your nonconformity is your pathway to fulfillment. ~ Alan Cohen,

366:...the reality of intelligent British speech... uses blasphemus, coital and cloacal expletives as a matter of course. ~ Stephen Fry,

367:The reality of spirit-matter is inevitably translated into and confirmed by a structure of the spirit. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,

368:We are shaped by each other. We adjust not to the reality of a world, but to the reality of other thinkers. ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce,

369:We have to confront the reality of our world, and make the hard decisions about which way we want to move forward. ~ Edward Snowden,

370:Why is it that you can sometimes feel the reality of people more keenly through a letter than face to face? ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh,

371:Because the reality of death has not yet penetrated awareness, survivors can appear to be quite accepting of the loss. ~ Joan Didion,

372:Coming to grips with the reality that our planet is not the only one harboring intelligent life the universe. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt,

373:Everything is just electricity and magnetism; everything is only an illusion. The reality is in the spiritual plane. ~ Lobsang Rampa,

374:I don't believe in the reality of painting, so I use different styles like clothes: it's a way to disguise myself. ~ Gerhard Richter,

375:I have an imagination because my life is so boring that my imagination lets me get off the reality of what's going on. ~ Dave Attell,

376:people have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy. You ~ Peter Watts,

377:Religion is boring and alien to me and relates no more than a chimera to what is to me the reality of the spirit. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,

378:The question is, when does the therapeutic community end and the reality kick back in Then, what do you do with them ~ James Johnson,

379:As a child, I wanted to marry a farmer, but no doubt the reality would have been very different to the idyll in my head. ~ Jane Asher,

380:Faculty X is the ability to grasp the reality not simply of other times and places, but of the present moment as well. ~ Colin Wilson,

381:Faith is like radar that sees through the fog -- the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see. ~ Corrie ten Boom,

382:I read and I read; and I was like a medieval king, I had fallen in love with the picture long before I saw the reality. ~ John Fowles,

383:Practices help us to bring the reality of what we seek into the physicality and earthiness of our lives. ~ Christine Valters Paintner,

384:The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality. ~ Marya Mannes,

385:The question is, "Are you spiritual or are you not?" The truth is you are. The reality is you don't believe it ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi,

386:There was political correctness, and then there was reality, and the reality was that people were people. -Mr. Perfect ~ Linda Howard,

387:When the reality looks extraordinarily unreal, you must know that you are in an extraordinarily beautiful place! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

388:Imagination alone is not enough, because the reality of nature is far more wondrous than anything we can imagine ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson,

389:It is amazing how your life changes when you embrace the reality that you're better than the life you've settled for. ~ Steve Maraboli,

390:That still mind which is adorned with the attainment of the limitless supreme Self, alone is the reality of God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

391:The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves. ~ Hannah Arendt,

392:The reality of this wide-eyed caramel-coloured wonder was arresting. This was the future, alive and kicking in my arms. ~ Camilla Gibb,

393:the reality we belong to, the reality we long to know, extends far beyond human beings interacting with one another. ~ Parker J Palmer,

394:Underneath the reality in which we live and have our being, another altogether different reality lies concealed. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,

395:We think that if we surround ourselves with people, we can’t be alone, when the reality is that we’re always alone. ~ Lisa Renee Jones,

396:He was in that hazy, semiconscious state where the dreams of the night before dovetail with the reality of the day ahead. ~ Scott Meyer,

397:I'm not going to experience the reality of hardship that sometimes my characters live in. I'm very cautious about that. ~ Colin Farrell,

398:In dunya, the image is always better than the reality. In Jennah, the Reality is better than any image ever could be. ~ Yasmin Mogahed,

399:My heart is so heavy when I see the reality of the Indian reservation and as an American, I know I am, too, responsible. ~ Maya Angelou,

400:The Infinite Expanse is the Reality known as the Supreme or the Self, which shines as the One in all individuals. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

401:The reality is that these cases are happening all the time. It's when they get out of control that you have a problem. ~ Steve Williams,

402:They were dumbfounded. The man was thoroughly incapable of admitting a mistake or grasping the reality of the situation. ~ John Grisham,

403:True sympathy is putting ourselves in another's place; and we are moved in proportion to the reality of our imagination. ~ Hosea Ballou,

404:We want people to go to the movies. But the reality is that this is a digital world and we have to adapt to that reality. ~ Todd Wagner,

405:We want to believe health and youth can belong to us forever; we want to deny the reality of transience in our lives. ~ Daniel J Siegel,

406:Whatever you’ve heard about Caraval, it doesn’t compare to the reality. It’s more than just a game or a performance. ~ Stephanie Garber,

407:You don’t walk in the truth, you walk in the reality you want to inhabit, you walk in the reality you can stand. ~ Carolina De Robertis,

408:[God is] an all-encompassing love that is the source of all, the reality of all, and the being through which I am. ~ Marianne Williamson,

409:He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,

410:People can change. People can grow. People can realize that the idea of something is more frightening than the reality. ~ Krista Ritchie,

411:The power of movies lies in the fact that it enables the viewer to enter the reality, to some extent, of the characters. ~ Eckhart Tolle,

412:The reality is: a founder is someone who deals with a ton of different headaches and no one is universally super powered. ~ Reid Hoffman,

413:The reality of the situation is life on Earth has not changed. We need facts, we need events, we need specifics on things. ~ Matt Drudge,

414:There is, however, a third theory which expresses the reality of time travel. Are you familiar with Schrodinger's Cat? ~ Marion G Harmon,

415:The UN, of course, must also adapt to modern demands and take into account the reality of the modern world in its work. ~ Vladimir Putin,

416:When I look back and consider why I didn’t rebel, the reality was that doing so would have just made life harder. ~ Jenna Miscavige Hill,

417:You shouldn't be afraid of science. Accepting the reality of nature makes life more exciting and even more precious. ~ Lawrence M Krauss,

418:A lot of our culture and its entertainments encourage us to run away from the reality of the aliveness of our life. ~ Taigen Dan Leighton,

419:But symbols can be deceptive: they have a tendency to distract from the reality they are supposed to represent. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,

420:Our tendency to create heroes rarely jibes with the reality that most nontrivial problems require collective solutions. ~ Warren G Bennis,

421:That which is, is. If you accept it you have joy arising in you, if you reject it you have pain, but the reality remains the same. ~ Osho,

422:The reality is that international institutions like the UN can only be as effective as its members allow it to be. ~ Atal Bihari Vajpayee,

423:A theory is nothing but a tool to know the reality. If a theory contradicts reality, it must be discarded at the earliest. ~ Awdhesh Singh,

424:But the reality is that we don't live in Mr. Rogers neighborhood anymore. The reality is that our officers should be armed. ~ Ronnie Moran,

425:I hoped to burn out, through Hella, my image of Giovanni and the reality of his touch—I hoped to drive out fire with fire. ~ James Baldwin,

426:Intentions always look better on paper than in reality. The reality is, I may not make it to the courthouse in the morning. ~ Angie Thomas,

427:It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow. ~ Robert H Goddard,

428:Me wanting to talk about my feelings is a sign of the apocalypse. Or the reality I’m falling in love with my best friend. ~ Daisy Prescott,

429:The reality is that the people that we represent are no longer going to be second-class citizens in their own country. ~ Martin McGuinness,

430:When the child does not conform to this image, the parents often need help in adapting their behavior to the reality—they ~ Andrew Solomon,

431:Dare to believe in the reality of your assumption and watch the world play its part relative to to its fulfillment. ~ Neville Goddard,

432:Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,

433:The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains. ~ James Baldwin,

434:The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium. ~ George Soros,

435:When you're overwhelmed by your emotion, you listen less and you judge more. This is also the reality of the dogmatic mind. ~ Tariq Ramadan,

436:I didn't want to be known as the reality-show star trying to be an actress, so I kept a lot of the failed auditions to myself. ~ Jamie Chung,

437:In crude Marxist terms, liberals have a theory of infallible government that is constantly at war with the reality of life. ~ Jonah Goldberg,

438:Jacob’s Ladder represents a bridge between Jacob’s secular mindset to make it in this world and the reality of Heavenly things. ~ R C Sproul,

439:Social change occurs when the gap between the ideals that people hold and the reality that they see every day gets too large. ~ Robert Reich,

440:The inner attitude of the heart is far more crucial than the mechanics for coming into the reality of the spiritual life. ~ Richard J Foster,

441:Then she had doubts about the reality of her situation and wondered if her imminent departure was not the illusion of a dream. ~ George Sand,

442:Enjoy the limitless bliss consciousness here and now. The reality of you lies much beyond your sensory perceptions and boundaries. ~ Amit Ray,

443:The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains. ~ James A Baldwin,

444:the reality of her trauma to consciousness so that she could free herself from its intrusions into her everyday life. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,

445:The reality of human behavior is that most people avoid those activities in which they perceive themselves to be failures. ~ Donald S Whitney,

446:The reality set in that I had even lost my dog, and now my life was just one tragedy away from becoming a sad country song. ~ Amelia Hutchins,

447:There is nothing more dangerous than someone who comes to realize that the reality they’ve been force-fed isn’t the only option. ~ Julia Kent,

448:When the reality looks magnificent, a real art of photography has only one choice: To capture this beauty magnificently! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

449:Carry on the sadhana until pleasure and fear are both transcended and all duality ceases, and the Reality alone remains. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

450:Enjoy the limitless bliss consciousness here and now. The reality of you lies much beyond your sensory perceptions and boundaries. ~ Amit Ray,

451:I think, unfortunately or fortunately, the reality of Hollywood is that if your movie makes money, they'll make another one. ~ Jonathan Frakes,

452:It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance. ~ Lewis Thomas,

453:On the one hand, the reality is dire, on the other, reality is always false, it is a mask covering what is coming up underneath. ~ Lee Maracle,

454:The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet. ~ Jeffrey Sachs,

455:The reality is this, though: a healthy person coupled with an unhealthy person will still result in an unhealthy relationship. ~ Donald Miller,

456:There is a world of difference between knowing something to be true in your head and experiencing the reality in your life. ~ Henry T Blackaby,

457:threw light upon the principles of war. It is obvious enough that Ssu-ma Ch`ien at least had no doubt about the reality of Sun Wu as ~ Sun Tzu,

458:Any business plan won't survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan. ~ Jeff Bezos,

459:As a science fiction writer who began as a fan, I do not use my fiction as a disguised way to criticize the reality of the present. ~ Liu Cixin,

460:I like when you feel like you arrive in a very different place, with a different ordering of the reality you normally think of. ~ James Turrell,

461:It was one of the few things he had to believe in, the possibility of beauty when faced with the reality of so much ugliness. ~ Cassandra Clare,

462:Where life and being are a sacrament Offered to the Reality beyond, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life,

463:Who's to say what's tied to all this?" Gab asked. "What's natural and what's not? If it's real then it's part of the reality. ~ Chet Williamson,

464:You created the reality you now exist in with your thoughts, which means you can use the very same power of thought to change it. ~ Jen Sincero,

465:God only knows what the doctor gave her. However,the medication has run out and she now must face the reality on her on accord. ~ Nancy B Brewer,

466:Historically, the people who weather crises the best are those who adjust their expectations to fit the reality of the situation. ~ Matthew Iden,

467:History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth. ~ Jean Cocteau,

468:If you can touch your dreams very powerfully in your mind, sooner or later you will really touch them in the reality world! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

469:Nothing, not even dictionaries, can tell you what anything means," he said. "The reality of things is just sad, for the most part. ~ Tom Rachman,

470:ONE OF THE most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. ~ Sam Harris,

471:The parents’ perceptions all too often become the reality. In other words, who they believe they are raising is who they will raise. ~ L R Knost,

472:The reality is, is that we love competition, at Apple. We think it makes us all better. But we want people to invent their own stuff. ~ Tim Cook,

473:The wise will admire you. The wishful will envy you. The weak will hate you. This is the reality for those who dare to be epic. ~ Steve Maraboli,

474:the movie is not a thing which is taken by the camera; the movie is the reality of the movie moving from reality to the camera. ~ Jean Luc Godard,

475:We want everyone to prepare themselves for the reality that we are not going to be able to recover significant numbers of people. ~ Rudy Giuliani,

476:I am a victim. To be an artist is to be a victim, because if you don't do what you want to do you die. That is the reality. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky,

477:If you are not being criticized, you are not leading. Such is the reality of leadership. Such is the reality of change leadership. ~ Thom S Rainer,

478:I realized that for me it is only and always the “literary” appeal that people and places make. The reality is void of interest. Flat. ~ Ana s Nin,

479:One common mistake is to think that one reality is the reality. You must always be prepared to leave one reality for a greater one. ~ Mother Meera,

480:The rhetoric of innovation is often about fun and creativity, but the reality is that innovation can be very taxing and uncomfortable. ~ Anonymous,

481:As pathetic as it was, she'd rather hold on to the possibility of something perfect than be hit with the reality of nothing much. ~ Francine Pascal,

482:As soon as you raise a thought and begin to form an idea of it, you ruin the reality itself, because you then attach yourself to form. ~ D T Suzuki,

483:Christians are people who let the reality of Jesus change everything about who they are, how they see, and how they live. Taking ~ Timothy J Keller,

484:Great man is the one who is aware of his smallness in this universe! Greatness starts first of all with accepting the reality. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

485:I had not considered the idea; rather than seeking to rule out variations in quality, accept and adopt the reality of imperfection. ~ Nick Harkaway,

486:Life is an opportunity afforded to each not to eat and drink, but to achieve something nobler and higher to merge in the Reality. ~ Sathya Sai Baba,

487:The nature of civilisation everywhere was such that, even with the Greeks, it diverted people’s minds away from the reality of death. ~ Antal Szerb,

488:The reality, sitting ten thousand miles away, is that we remain the country that inspires. We remain that shining city on a hill. ~ Jon Huntsman Jr,

489:There is no justice, Malcolm had told her once, but we stand for it anyway. Justice is the ideal, but justice is not the reality. ~ Simone St James,

490:What he imagines evokes nothing imaginary, it evokes the reality of the world that experience and reason treat in a confused manner. ~ Ren Magritte,

491:You always think another time would have been ideal for you . . . the reality is there was no novocaine when you went to the dentist. ~ Woody Allen,

492:Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth. ~ Rene Daumal,

493:Being a Jew, one learns to believe in the reality of cruelty and one learns to recognize indifference to human suffering as a fact. ~ Andrea Dworkin,

494:But the reality of consciousness appears irreducible. Only consciousness can know itself—and directly, through first-person experience. ~ Sam Harris,

495:It is within us that the Reality must be found and the source and foundation of a perfected life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life,

496:Minimization is acknowledging the reality of the situation and even owning responsibility for it but denying its seriousness. Instead ~ Kyle Idleman,

497:Oh, Marilla, I thought I was happy before. Now I know that I just dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness. This is the reality. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery,

498:the reality is most of us are hardwired for a handful of activities that when combined lead to our greatest satisfaction and best work. ~ Jeff Goins,

499:The reality is people have always died in large numbers in natural disasters such as avalanches, earthquakes, and tornadoes. ~ Elisabeth K bler Ross,

500:The reality is that Social Security is not a government handout. It is a benefit that is earned and paid for through hard work. ~ David Cay Johnston,

501:The reality is: when you're slouched over, not only are you not using the full potential of your brain, but you look untrustworthy. ~ James Altucher,

502:The reality was my life wasn't miserable because I was curvy; I was miserable because I thought I'd be happier if I were thinner. ~ Brittany Gibbons,

503:There are Eastern religions that deny the reality of pain and suffering. They just try to wipe it away by saying it's all an illusion. ~ Lee Strobel,

504:There’s no other choice but for followers of the world’s religions to accept the reality of other faiths. We have to live together. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,

505:We shouldn't stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination.    ~ Hayao Miyazaki,

506:While my heart wants to say yes, the reality of my time makes this a no.” I’ve learned the best “no” answers are graciously honest. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,

507:Affirmation statements are going beyond the reality of the present into the creation of the future through the words you use in the now. ~ Louise Hay,

508:[after the death of a loved one] It is when there is nothing more to be done that the reality of the loss often hits with full force. ~ Judith Martin,

509:As filmmakers, we're constantly always looking for something to bring the audience deeper into the reality of the story we're telling. ~ Jeff Bridges,

510:A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around. ~ Paul Feyerabend,

511:Because the body is the end product of intelligence and how that intelligence shapes your reality will shape the reality of the body. ~ Deepak Chopra,

512:But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first. ~ Cheryl Strayed,

513:Our very dissatisfaction with our weaknesses and struggles points to the reality that continuing to live in them is not our destiny. ~ Stasi Eldredge,

514:Stay away from people with tiny minds and tiny thoughts and start hanging out with people who see limitless possibility as the reality. ~ Jen Sincero,

515:but the reality of millions of years of adaptation to a ruggedly physical existence will not just go away because desks were invented. ~ Mark Rippetoe,

516:Few years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media. ~ Julie Delpy,

517:His love was an architect that entirely remade the reality of the chapel, transforming it into a cathedral as grand as any in the world. ~ Dean Koontz,

518:The goldness of gold, the silverness of silver, the manhood of man, the womanhood of woman, the reality of everything is the Lord. ~ Swami Vivekananda,

519:The spiritual side of the human being, Christian and non-Christian alike, develops into the reality that it becomes, for good or ill. ~ Dallas Willard,

520:This is the reality of operating complex systems; no single person can see the whole system and understand how all the pieces fit together. ~ Gene Kim,

521:Till He comes, we will have to accept the reality of evil in this world and keep praying, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20). ~ Warren W Wiersbe,

522:What this anger hides is grief ... the reality that his wife didn't value their marriage as much as he did. He realizes it was a mistake. ~ David Gill,

523:Although we may trust God's promises for life after death and the certainty of a heavenly home, we must still face the reality of death. ~ Billy Graham,

524:It was funny how bomb and wars looked so thrilling in movies and computer games, when the reality was so heart-stoppingly terrifying. ~ Sophie McKenzie,

525:Our humanity is not the whole of the Reality or its best possible self-formation or self-expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life,

526:The reality is that when three or four networks are at the table with three or four political parties, someone is going to be the victim. ~ Rick Mercer,

527:What a beautiful thing, to walk amidst the endless diversity of life with the ability to perceive the source and the reality of its unity. ~ Rolf Gates,

528:But the reality of modern Democrat foreign policy is—Speak softly and claim to carry a big stick, which you have no intention of ever using. ~ Anonymous,

529:Each act of obedience by the Christian is a modest proof, unequivocal for all its imperfection, of the reality of what he attests."1 ~ Eugene H Peterson,

530:It had seemed simple in theory to persuade one of them to allow a male into her bed and heart. The reality of it was anything but easy. ~ Laurann Dohner,

531:I think we cannot have a double standard. We cannot see our art as different from the reality. We cannot use two different sets of judgment. ~ Ai Weiwei,

532:Know that ever about you stands the reality of love, and each moment you have the power to transform your world by what you have learned. ~ Richard Bach,

533:The attempt to live by the reality of our own nature, which means our limits as well as our potentials, is a profoundly moral regimen. ~ Parker J Palmer,

534:We have invented the literature because the reality wasn’t imaginative enough and we also wanted to be alone, at least for a while! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

535:When the preacher says it’s for better or worse, you’re so blinded by the possibility of better you fail to see the reality of worse. ~ Bette Lee Crosby,

536:When we touch the foundation of the reality of the good news of God, we will never bother Him anymore with little personal complaints. ~ Oswald Chambers,

537:Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. ~ Anais Nin,

538:Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. ~ Ana s Nin,

539:Education is critical for people to become compassionate. If you don't know the problem and you don't know the reality, how can you help? ~ Marla Ruzicka,

540:I joke that I stick with the job because it covers my insurance, but the reality is that my career has always been very important to me. ~ Michelle Obama,

541:The acceptance of the reality that we are in the Lord's loving hands is only a recognition that we have never really been anywhere else. ~ Neal A Maxwell,

542:The reality is that most innovative work is incremental improvement. It’s about staying ahead of trends as opposed to reacting to trends. ~ Bill Sheridan,

543:The reality is that our early interests are fragile, vaguely defined, and in need of energetic, years-long cultivation and refinement. ~ Angela Duckworth,

544:The reality of the moment is so palpable and powerful that it holds imagination in a tight orbit from which it never fully escapes. ~ Daniel Todd Gilbert,

545:They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting at the end of the trip—the relative you cringe to kiss. ~ Markus Zusak,

546:Thus language rarities bring us face to face with the mirror and the reality of the shortcomings of our deepest efforts to generalize. ~ Daniel L Everett,

547:When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship. ~ Rollo May,

548:a knowledge of the invisible God is revealed to us through that which is visible. The creation itself screams out the reality of the Creator. ~ R C Sproul,

549:"At a certain point, you can become so enchanted with the symbols that you entirely confuse them with the reality. The menu is not the meal." ~ Alan Watts,

550:Clarity and focus doesn’t always come from God or inspirational quotes. Usually, it takes your mother to slap the reality back into you. ~ Shannon L Alder,

551:Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. ~ Henry David Thoreau,

552:It would be wisest not to worry too much about the sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life. ~ Andre Gide,

553:Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilised world ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset,

554:Most people that work in [show] business, if they're not gypsies by nature, become gypsies, just because of the reality of this business. ~ Charlie Hunnam,

555:Not everyone needs to feel happy all the time. Besides, no one can be happy all the time. I need to learn to deal with the reality of life. ~ Paulo Coelho,

556:Our subconscious thought patterns collapses the quantum wave function and generates the reality. Meditation is streamline the thought patterns. ~ Amit Ray,

557:Since the appearance of Christ, ethics can be concerned with only one thing: to partake in the reality of the fulfilled will of God. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

558:The reality is I'm kind of like an ocean. Everything is calm, calm, calm. I'm good. When the ball goes up in the air, the waves start rocking. ~ J R Smith,

559:The reality is that it’s harder for religious people to come to Christ than anyone else because they think they are already good to go. ~ Jefferson Bethke,

560:The reality is that the shows kind of disconnect from the songs a little bit. You're playing the songs, but they take on a life of their own. ~ Craig Finn,

561:The reality is you do not know exactly what is likely to occur tomorrow. Lifetime can be a ridiculous trip, and practically nothing is confirmed. ~ Eminem,

562:They want to criticize you, let them criticize and do not worry. Just be transparent with your people and tell them this is the reality. ~ Bashar al Assad,

563:As for biblical or religious theory, I don’t ever want to fight about the details of the story, I want to live the reality of the message. ~ Steve Maraboli,

564:If you keep examining your mind, you'll come to see that thoughts of who you are and how it all is are creating the reality you're experiencing. ~ Ram Dass,

565:I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. ~ James Joyce,

566:I'm an unashamed realist, and actually, I try to make whatever the script is the reality of that situation, even though it's fictional. ~ Wolfgang Petersen,

567:In the end, you really want to make the best film that you can, and in the reality of the filmmaking world, you have things like budgets. ~ Nicholas Sparks,

568:Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves of a paradoxical whole. ~ Carl Jung,

569:The intellectuals of this era are simply blind to the reality of consciousness. Consciousness is who we are, how we think, and how we know. ~ George Gilder,

570:The Lord’s presence may not always be–and usually is not–evident to the natural sight, but it is always the reality of faith. Whereas ~ Michael P V Barrett,

571:You and I are the force for transformation in the world. We are the consciousness that will define the nature of the reality we are moving into. ~ Ram Dass,

572:He did not understand—until it was too late—what one university president called the reality of tenured faculty: “A thousand points of no. ~ James C Collins,

573:Here’s the reality: you’re not supposed to be perfect. You’re supposed to be human. And humans are messy, flawed, glorious, and deeply loved. ~ Holley Gerth,

574:The reality is sobering: in the United States one in three girls will become pregnant before age 20, totaling more than 750,000 girls per year. ~ Jane Fonda,

575:The reality that on every morning brand-new mercy greets us is not the thing that grips our minds as we frenetically prepare for our day. ~ Paul David Tripp,

576:The tonal is so strong, that it even arranges a syntactical place for God and thus kills the mystery, the reality, and paralyzes the being. ~ Frederick Lenz,

577:When we really understand the fact of separate realities, we will stop spending so much time and energy trying to change the reality of others ~ Jane Nelsen,

578:But the reality is: reinvention is life. This is the call to adventure that constantly whispers to us. Do we answer it? Do we take the call? ~ James Altucher,

579:Miracles can only inhabit the reality of our awareness when we surrender our need for the familiar to our desire for the limitless. ~ Eric Micha el Leventhal,

580:Miss America gets a lot of flak, but the reality is that it is uplifting and aspirational - 50% percent of my points were based on talent. ~ Gretchen Carlson,

581:The reality is, we can change. We can change ourselves. We can change our minds. We can change our hearts. And therefore the universe changes. ~ Richard Gere,

582:The reality, then, was that Indian nationalism was fuelled not by the impoverishment of the many but by the rejection of the privileged few. ~ Niall Ferguson,

583:To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth. ~ Ed Catmull,

584:You can't fake joy. Authentic joy is the kind that grows out of the soil of pain and doubt and fear, because that is the reality of the world. ~ Holly Ordway,

585:I’ve been wondering if I was in some altered state when I planned this trip, because the reality of it feels distinctly like a bad hangover. ~ Rachel Friedman,

586:Perhaps the reality is in the suffering. But it can't be. Love promises happiness. Art promises happiness. Yet it isn't exactly a promise . . . ~ Iris Murdoch,

587:that might help her hold onto the reality that with Christ there was peace and hope, that the battle of life didn’t have to be fought alone. ~ Karen Kingsbury,

588:The reality is that whatever you are looking for is, at the same time, looking for you. It all starts with believing before seeing. ~ John Frederick Demartini,

589:If you're a beautiful Caucasian woman, and you commit a heinous crime, it's like people don't want to acknowledge the reality of your actions. ~ Alissa Nutting,

590:I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. You wander restlessly from forest to forest while the Reality is within your own dwelling. ~ Kabir,

591:one day that child will fill your heart with joy, and the next day they’ll rip it out and stamp all over it. That’s the reality of parenthood ~ Keith A Pearson,

592:The materialist assumption that spiritual substances do not exist is as much an act of faith as the religious belief in the reality of angels. ~ Mortimer Adler,

593:The reality is, there's still so much we haven't yet figured out. There's still so much stuff that has not been made more, frankly, efficient. ~ Alexis Ohanian,

594:The reality of today from a cyber security point of view - I think some of the top people predict that the next big war is fought on cyber security. ~ Tim Cook,

595:We fail to reckon with the reality of human nature. By nature,we are egocentric. Our world revolves around us. None of us is totally altruistic. ~ Gary Chapman,

596:We must confront the reality that his [Donald Trump] comments have provoked, and consider whether we want to import such hatred to this country. ~ Tulip Siddiq,

597:And for the people who promote drones as the answer to everything, there is a danger from being distanced from the reality of the ugly mess of war. ~ Gavin Hood,

598:Becca Jones might be my property in the eyes of the club, but the reality was that she owned me and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. ~ Anonymous,

599:Christians have never since abandoned their rhetoric of unity, despite their general inability to sustain it at any stage in the reality of history. ~ Anonymous,

600:I have toured around for 45 years and have experience of night halt at more than 400 districts. And that's why I know the reality of this earth. ~ Narendra Modi,

601:I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make. It is this that gives birth to meaning. ~ Haruki Murakami,

602:Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world. ~ Jack Kornfield,

603:The reality is that the rich are not taxed. It’s the middle class, especially the educated upper-income middle class, who pays for the poor. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki,

604:The secret is not to think, we think in words. And what lies beyond the reality we see is a truth that words can't contain, the secret is to feel. ~ Dean Koontz,

605:We live in a bubble of the fantasy of death, but the reality of it is something that we obviously all face and have to deal with, at some point. ~ Michael Sheen,

606:All these things Alanna knew from her father's books and maps, but the reality took her breath away as a paragraph written in a book never could. ~ Tamora Pierce,

607:Cubism is the art of depicting new wholes with formal elements borrowed not only from the reality of vision, but from that of conception. ~ Guillaume Apollinaire,

608:In Christ we are invited to participate in the reality of God and the reality of the world at the same time, the one not without the other. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

609:Living for a man is the quickest way to get lost. And the reality of coming up empty-handed when it doesn’t work out. Fuck that. It’s a nightmare. ~ Kate Stewart,

610:So it's hard to be an artist and be true to the reality of the world you want to create and also make it entertaining and successful financially. ~ Antoine Fuqua,

611:successful leaders embrace the reality that their models may be wrong or incomplete. Only when we admit what we don’t know can we ever hope to learn ~ Ed Catmull,

612:The reality of your own nature should determine your speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become tense and high-strung, slow down. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam,

613:Watching was one of the purest expressions of human existence. It affirmed the presence of these people and the reality of the world they inhabited. ~ Kim Brooks,

614:Essographs—literally, thing-writers, named after the esson, the reality particle—measured fluctuations in the standing magical, or mirabilic, field. ~ Vivian Shaw,

615:I am not superwoman. The reality of my daily life is that I am juggling a lot of balls in the air? And sometimes some of the balls get dropped. ~ Geoffrey Blainey,

616:I don't know if I'm all that famous. When I first started my idea of what a career in fashion would look like is very different to the reality now. ~ Karen Walker,

617:The reality is, if you're friends with somebody you should be able to be honest with them, and that honesty should be the biggest magnet to truth. ~ Justin Vernon,

618:The reality is, sometimes you lose. And you're never too good to lose, you're never too big to lose, you're never too smart to lose, it happens. ~ Beyonce Knowles,

619:The symbol not only points beyond itself, but is itself part of the reality, so that the symbol escalates the intensity of the sign to another level. ~ R C Sproul,

620:The world that you can go walk outside and walk around the block. That's reality. The reality that's being talked about is something else entirely. ~ Jerry Garcia,

621:To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth. Left ~ Ed Catmull,

622:All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society. ~ Eric Hoffer,

623:Becca Jones might be my property in the eyes of the club, but the reality was that she owned me and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. ~ Joanna Wylde,

624:Don't let your imagination run away with you, Miss Armstrong. But why would you not when the reality was so awful? And that was that. Juliet's war. ~ Kate Atkinson,

625:Follow the ball, man. There's only one ball. They can only give it to one of them at a time, so let's not get too far away from the reality of it all. ~ Jon Gruden,

626:It is difficult to say what is impossible, . . . . . . For the dream of yesterday is the hope of today . . . . . . . And the reality of tomorrow. ~ Unknown,

627:It is not easy to see the reality as it is because our vision is always coloured with our beliefs, we create our own world by choosing our beliefs. ~ Awdhesh Singh,

628:Lucretius wants to write the poem of matter, but he warns us from the start that the reality of matter is that it’s made of invisible particles. He ~ Italo Calvino,

629:The reality is that nearly 80 percent of the world's purchasing power lies outside the United States, and if we don't tap those markets, others will. ~ John Hoeven,

630:The rhythm of being an activist today involves a pretty simple rhythm. You have to open your eyes to the reality before you. You have to look and see. ~ Bill Ayers,

631:Today's dialogue has succeeded in reinforcing the need for international partnerships and cooperation in tackling the reality of climate change. ~ Margaret Beckett,

632:I am in any way glorifying or simplifying prostitution. The reality of prostitutes around the world is so complex. I've tried to focus on the humanity. ~ Maya Goded,

633:I think you need to be a little in love—not necessarily in a romantic sense, although that helps—but to be in love with the reality of your own life. ~ Maria Popova,

634:Knowing how to distinguish between an ideal keyword and the reality of queries will help you to refine your strategy and success as an online marketer. ~ Neil Patel,

635:The greatest obstacle to experiencing the reality of your connectedness is identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. ~ Eckhart Tolle,

636:Alone, alone. I am alone – I ache … Yet for the first time, despite all the anguish and the reality problems, I’m here. I feel tranquil, whole, ADULT. ~ Susan Sontag,

637:But when one believes in the reality of things, making them visible by artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that they are close at hand. ~ Marcel Proust,

638:Chips on shoulder, all that, everybody plays the game for different reasons. You've got to prove yourself every time you go out there. That's the reality. ~ John Fox,

639:Get away from the place that makes you feel comfortable with your depression. The reality is it's never as bad as the insanity you've created in your head. ~ Ben Huh,

640:Hope is not an idle term. Hope is the reality that can and does reveal itself to us at God's choice hour. To hope is to know the secret of achievement. ~ Sri Chinmoy,

641:I learned a long time ago: You're in the entertainment business. You're not in the reality business. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. ~ Dennis Farina,

642:I respect newspapers but the reality is that magazine "photojournalism" is finished. They want illustrations, Photoshopped pictures of movie stars. ~ Mary Ellen Mark,

643:Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing; I find the reality thrilling. ~ Richard Dawkins,

644:Physical science may give clues of process, but cannot lay hold on the reality of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Rebirth and Soul Evolution,

645:The reality is we are still ranked 10th and we are playing a team ranked second in the world who are playing at the top of their game and are at home. ~ Dav Whatmore,

646:Two or three girls go to a club and they've worked out that one player is worth 50,000 (128,000), another's worth 30,000 (77,000). That's the reality. ~ Max Clifford,

647:When you imagine the reality of the fulfilled desire and feel the thrill of accomplishment, your subconscious brings about the realisation of desire. ~ Joseph Murphy,

648:But embedded in the structure of both literature and life was the reality that for women, adulthood—and with it, the end of the story—was marriage. ~ Rebecca Traister,

649:He had prepared his death much earlier, in his imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than he, was planning the reality of that death. ~ Umberto Eco,

650:I talk about acting to students making the transition from high school to UCLA. Kids going into this profession really need to know the reality of it. ~ Loni Anderson,

651:Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the NOW. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,

652:Quitters always believe the lies they tell themselves because delusion is easier to live with than the reality that they settled for an easier path. ~ Shannon L Alder,

653:safety from feeling shamed, admonished, or judged, and to bolster the courage to tolerate, face, and process the reality of what has happened. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,

654:The job of the writer and the filmmaker is not to impose his vision on the reality, but to be inspired by the reality and create a vision out of that. ~ Ramin Bahrani,

655:The reality of loving God is loving him like he's a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff. ~ Criss Jami,

656:To fly in space is to see the reality of Earth, alone. The experience changed my life and my attitude toward life itself. I am one of the lucky ones. ~ Roberta Bondar,

657:You can't ignore the reality that faith and family, those two things are integral parts of having limited government, lower taxes, and free societies. ~ Rick Santorum,

658:An artist must know the reality he is depicting in its minutest detail. In my opinion we have only one shining example of that - Count Leo Tolstoy. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky,

659:If you're going to be a man that reads the papers and takes everything as gospel truth, that's a sign of who you are, that isn't a sign of the reality. ~ Frank Lampard,

660:‎"Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing; I find the reality thrilling. ~ Richard Dawkins,

661:My suspicion is that we're near a near-term low. The reality is the majority of the selling short-term is over with - the market doesn't want to go down. ~ Peter Green,

662:The reality is that, statically, 95% of the people that read any book don't implement what they learn, because no one is holding them accountable to do so. ~ Hal Elrod,

663:The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large. ~ Aberjhani,

664:We are in the hands of men whose power and wealth have separated them from the reality of daily life and from the imagination. We are right to be afraid. ~ Grace Paley,

665:An artist must know the reality he is depicting in its minutest detail. In my opinion we have only one shining example of that - Count Leo Tolstoy. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

666:An important step to overcome consumerism is to embrace the reality that there is more life to be found in owning less than can be found in owning more. ~ Joshua Becker,

667:Ether is the only substance we are confident of in dynamics. One thing we are sure of and that is the reality and substantiality of the luminferous ether. ~ Lord Kelvin,

668:Here is the reality - as I've been saying for longer than I can remember, Scott Walker is a mediocre county executive who has risen far beyond his talents. ~ Rick Ungar,

669:The reality is the cap-and-trade legislation offered by the Democrats amounts to an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals on Capitol Hill. ~ Mike Pence,

670:The reality is we all have to work together to make it work. We're going to be congenial with everyone. We're not telling people to park on the street. ~ Brian Reynolds,

671:We learn to face the reality and the pain of our loss, to say good-bye to the dead loved one, to restore ourselves, and to reinvest in life once again. ~ Judy Tatelbaum,

672:Well, Colonel, there is diplomacy and there is reality. Our ambassador represents diplomacy. I represent reality. And the reality is we don't want you. ~ Stephen Kinzer,

673:My thing in this day and age, with reality television and so much other stuff that is going on, is people want to feel the reality. They want to relate. ~ Darius McCrary,

674:Salaries and wages must reflect the reality of the enterprise's economic performance; deviations from the planned performance should be reflected in pay. ~ Samora Machel,

675:So we have to recognize that species concepts are humanly produced categories which may or may not always work when compared with the reality of nature. ~ Chris Stringer,

676:This was never what I wanted for us, but things change. Plans change. People change. I've faced the reality of my destiny and now I need to embrace that. ~ Siobhan Davis,

677:You have to deal with the reality that in the political process, people are going to vote based on what they're hearing from their constituents and others. ~ Marco Rubio,

678:In order to express the reality of my past, I would have to reach a public whose point of reference was deliberately distorted through social engineering. ~ Cathy O Brien,

679:Not that leaders need to be overly “nice”; the emotional art of leadership includes pressing the reality of work demands without unduly upsetting people. ~ Daniel Goleman,

680:Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends. ~ Jacques Ellul,

681:The Gospel frees us to speak honestly about the reality of pain, confident that nothing is riding on our ability to cope with or fend off suffering. ~ Tullian Tchividjian,

682:The reality is that we are going to have problems with water in this century. And the fact that we are going to have problems with fossil fuel is a given. ~ Henry Rollins,

683:the reality of building a company is writing your own playbook and adapting that playbook to the obstacles—many of them self-inflicted—that inevitably emerge. ~ Anonymous,

684:There are so many cameras. There is so much instant media attention, not just for celebrities, but for normal people that get thrust in the reality world. ~ Lorenzo Lamas,

685:There is something irreversible about acquiring knowledge; and the simulation of the search for it differs in a most profound way from the reality. ~ J Robert Oppenheimer,

686:The world has been taught to be scared of him, but the reality is that he is scared of the world because he has none of the tools necessary to cope with it. ~ Trevor Noah,

687:to their terror when they saw the reality of twenty-four tributes circled together, knowing only one could live? Haymitch and Peeta come in, bid me good ~ Suzanne Collins,

688:We need to educate people about the reality of Islam, the logics of Islam. I am sure every free man in this world would fight the ideology of Islam. ~ Mosab Hassan Yousef,

689:We recognize ourselves in Westerns, ... I believe the Western can orchestrate moments around reality. The reality can be as entertaining to us as the lie. ~ Kevin Costner,

690:Why would love bow to the reality of things, when it creates a reality of its own, so much more vivid, wherein everything resonates to the key of the heart? ~ Paul Murray,

691:You talk about the values that you have whether they're in favor or not in favor. That's how you lead. The reality is, we're losing more and more elections. ~ Artur Davis,

692:If our life is a dream, let it continue; who wants the reality? If our life is a reality, let it continue; who wants the dream? Unknown is unreliable! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

693:In a way my work is documentary. But I am also a photographer who has a distinct style. My photographs are a companion to the reality of the situation. ~ Graciela Iturbide,

694:Studies have repeatedly shown that when you multi-task, you have only the illusion of productivity. The reality is, you accomplish less and are less effective. ~ Anonymous,

695:the reality of modern capitalism is menacing that ideal with terrors and even splendours that might well stagger the wavering and impressionable modern spirit. ~ Anonymous,

696:The reality we live in is selected by our conceptual definitions. You and I may be in the same physical space, but each of us will see it as entirely different. ~ Ram Dass,

697:Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class differences than in educational settings. ~ Bell Hooks,

698:If you are miserable you are miserable; that is the reality, that is what is happening, so confront that. Look it square in the eye without flinching. ~ Henepola Gunaratana,

699:In Washington...the appearance of power is therefore almost as important as the reality of it. In fact, the appearance is frequently its essential reality ~ Henry Kissinger,

700:Our fear of technology is really a fear of empowerment. We now have the ability to design the reality we live in, and we have to step up to the occasion. ~ Douglas Rushkoff,

701:The reality is that no one can be forced to join a union against their will, and a union cannot take action against those who decide not to join their union. ~ Dan Lipinski,

702:Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. ~ James Joyce,

703:You are the reality. The sense of of worship, love, devotion and loyalty. You are the purpose of life and existence. That is why I am still alive. ~ M F Moonzajer,

704:For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present. Our search to understand ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,

705:I accept the reality of my problems, but I am not defined by them. My problems are not my essence. My fear, pain, confusion, or mistakes are not my core. ~ Nathaniel Branden,

706:It was that palpable sense of presence shoved up against the reality of absence, like hot against cold, that really threatened to buckle the whole mass. ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard,

707:Let's deal with reality. The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom. ~ Eric Holder,

708:My brother, a delicate heart is like a mirror; polish it by love and detachment, that the Sun of the Reality may reflect itself in it and the divine Dawn arise. ~ Baha-ullah,

709:Mystery is the wine of this universe. It makes us dizzy and makes us feel happy! Man needs enigma so that he can get rid of the dullness of the reality! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

710:Naturally, people's image is of a performer, but the reality of it is the writing for me has always been the most important thing and the most rewarding thing. ~ John Cleese,

711:Playboy, very clearly, from the outset, has fought against the historical repression of women. The notion that we were anywhere else simply defies the reality. ~ Hugh Hefner,

712:Reading Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar bridges the gap between what most Indians are schooled to believe in and the reality we experience every day of our lives. ~ Arundhati Roy,

713:Science teaches you to open your eyes and appreciate the reality around you. Religion teaches you to close your eyes and cling to the fantasy within you. ~ David Alan Harvey,

714:The fantasist in whom the reality barrier has broken down is unreliable, believing things when he should not, and telling things as true when they are not. ~ Simon Blackburn,

715:The most important quality of leadership is intellectual honesty. The reality principle - the ability to see the world as it really is, not as you wish it were. ~ Jack Welch,

716:This is the reality of the human heart, the inevitability of two sinful people pledging to live together, with all their faults, for the rest of their lives. ~ Gary L Thomas,

717:Today's new climate policy is like delivering the final divorce papers to the public and the world, ... And it is divorced from the reality of global warming. ~ Jim Jeffords,

718:True, the initial ideas are in general those of an individual, but the establishment of the reality and truth is in general the work of more than one person. ~ Willard Libby,

719:Altruism itself depends on a recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many. ~ Thomas Nagel,

720:As God nurtures, protects, prepares, and initiates us, he restores us to the truth of who we are and the reality of the life we are living and meant to live. ~ Stasi Eldredge,

721:Delight in itself is the approach of sanity. Delight is to open our eyes to the reality of the situation rather than siding with this or that point of view. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa,

722:Delight in itself is the approach of sanity. Delight is to open our eyes to the reality of the situation rather than siding with this or that point of view. ~ Chogyam Trungpa,

723:Everyone should be sacked at least once in their career because perfection doesn't exist. It's important to have setbacks, because that is the reality of life. ~ Anna Wintour,

724:I believe in the reality of God the way scientists believe in the reality of electrons. I see things happening that would not happen unless there is a God. ~ Harold S Kushner,

725:In fact, the reality of life is such that you never do get to the top. The climb is the goal. The top of the mountain is only the direction, not the destination ~ David Aaron,

726:It may not necessarily be the way I would like to see it happen, but the reality is we could still bring millions of people out of the darkness into the light. ~ Bob Menendez,

727:I wrote a book called The Taste of New Wine because I couldn't find a book that talked about the reality of the situation and how we were dishonest and afraid. ~ Keith Miller,

728:The reality is that we do not have an air traffic control system that is smart enough and technologically capable enough to be able to handle that kind of demand. ~ James May,

729:The reality is, what writers write and the way they live can be as different as a lump of coal and a diamond. The written life is shined to a deceptive gloss. ~ Donald Miller,

730:What a man eats, he should be willing to kill. It’s not absolutely necessary that he do so, but he should at least be willing to face the reality of it. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde,

731:All the masters tell us that the reality of life - which our noisy walking consciousness prevents us from hearing - speaks to us chiefly in silence. ~ Karlfried Graf Durckheim,

732:A spiritual person is also in touch with his or her own reality, feelings and thoughts, and the reality of the people around him or her, not projecting on them. ~ Keith Miller,

733:I hope you aren’t too ugly. What a collection of scars you have. Be grateful. Our scars have the ability to give us the reality that our past is real. - Red Dragon ~ Anonymous,

734:It struck me then, for the first time, how unethical anxiety is, how it voids the reality of other people by conscripting them as palliatives for your own fear. ~ Adam Haslett,

735:Life is about deciding what matters. It’s about the fantasy that determines the reality. Have you ever asked yourself whether you’d rather fly or be invisible? ~ Claire Messud,

736:Like standing on a beach as the tide sucks the sand beneath my feet back out to sea, I can feel my native world, and the reality that supports it, pulling away. ~ Blake Crouch,

737:Moreover, successful leaders embrace the reality that their models may be wrong or incomplete. Only when we admit what we don’t know can we ever hope to learn it. ~ Ed Catmull,

738:The complementary movement towards divine love is growth in humility which is the acceptence of the reality about ourselves, our own weakness and limitations. ~ Thomas Keating,

739:A person who does not know the history of the last 3,000 years wanders in the darkness of ignorance, unable to make sense of the reality around him ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,

740:He had lived with death, so he knew there was nothing brave in not fearing it. The only people who didn’t were those stupid enough to not know the reality of it. ~ Brit Bennett,

741:If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them. ~ Camille Paglia,

742:Obsoletes and absolutes are the stock in trade of religions that place their faith in an 'unchanging' god while faced with the reality of an ever-changing world. ~ Stifyn Emrys,

743:The reality is that if we do nothing it will take 75 years, or for me to be nearly a hundred before women can expect to be paid the same as men for the same work. ~ Emma Watson,

744:Within a Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the patterns are not the reality they describe. ~ Robert M Pirsig,

745:For me, to catch, to celebrate the reality and life and friends and everything around me the very moment it happens - that's what is, that's what I'm possessed by. ~ Jonas Mekas,

746:I am so glad I was writing while on my last book tour, which was really meta, but I think a fascinating look inside the reality of what that whole madness is about. ~ Andy Cohen,

747:If I obey Jesus Christ, the redemption of God will flow through me to the lives of others, because behind the deed of obedience is the reality of Almighty God. ~ Oswald Chambers,

748:People think we don't give a toss about the game, but when I walked out of Windsor Park that night I felt lower than a snake's belly. The reality is still there. ~ Rio Ferdinand,

749:So-called "realist" photography does not capture the "what is." Instead, it is preoccupied with what should not be, like the reality of suffering for example. ~ Jean Baudrillard,

750:The reality is that during the Reagan years, for instance, we doubled the amount of revenue that we were sending to Washington, D.C. after the tax cuts took effect. ~ Mike Pence,

751:The reality is that my stepfather was like a father to me and watching him die from a sudden heart attack was one of the hardest things I have ever gone through. ~ Roger Clemens,

752:There was no way to grasp the reality of the present which slid away each second, invisible as air; reality only existed after the fact, in one's vision of the past. ~ Paula Fox,

753:We’re committed to the idea that a book has to live in the present . . . but the reality, that’s hard for us to recognise, is that a book has to live in the future. ~ Junot D az,

754:[Chemical weapons] isn't about what the United States believe in, it's about the reality that we have, and this reality, we own it, we don't have to discuss it. ~ Bashar al Assad,

755:Doth the Reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind? ~ George Berkeley,

756:Evil at bottom is the refusal to recognize the reality of others, to refuse to restrain ourselves, so that another does not have room to live and develop freely. ~ Diogenes Allen,

757:If we must escape from reality, it should be to a deeper, or greater, reality. This is the reality of our inner life, of our own unique vision of the world. To ~ Mortimer J Adler,

758:Nevertheless, all of us who work in quantum physics believe in the reality of a quantum world, and the reality of quantum entities like protons and electrons. ~ John Polkinghorne,

759:The reality is customers lie - not because they want to want to deceive you, but because they don't do a good job of predicting what they will do in the future. ~ Scott D Anthony,

760:The reality of a person is a deep and hidden thing, buried not only in the invisible recesses of man’s own metaphysical secrecy but in the secrecy of God Himself. ~ Thomas Merton,

761:The rules have changed so dramatically.They are not the Jeb Bush rules of the 90s, they are the reality television rules of this decade and he was not suited for it. ~ Chuck Todd,

762:Trudging off into a swamp in the middle of the night had seemed like a god idea at the time but, like most of Frey's ideas, the reality fell short of the concept. ~ Chris Wooding,

763:Whoever deemed the ocean an invigorating place needed to reconsider the reality of crashing waves, sunburn, and sand wedged up into places no one should have it. ~ Natalia Jaster,

764:By and large, women have a faith and a morality peculiar to themselves; they believe in the reality of everything that serves their interest and their passions. ~ Honore de Balzac,

765:His mind was a turmoil of words and fancies, incomplete fancies and insufficient words, but already he knew that this and only this was the reality of his life. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,

766:I think it's very troubling to see the reality of where the American political establishment is going - into this big tent, which is one happy Demo-Republican family. ~ Jill Stein,

767:Most women can't handle the reality of what comes with being with me. It takes a very secure woman to be backstage at a concert hearing 15,000 females going crazy. ~ Tyrese Gibson,

768:The dream of life is really an illusion, and everybody lives in the reality he or she creates - a virtual reality that is only true for the one who creates it. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz,

769:The dreams we had of finding meaning and fulfillment through our jobs have faded into the reality of professional politics, burnout, boredom and intense competition. ~ Vicki Robin,

770:... there are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is the reality of God, which has become manifest in the Christ event/redemption and creation. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

771:We must go back again and again to the Gospel of Christ crucified, so that our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what He did and who we are in Him. ~ Timothy Keller,

772:Any Republican, especially any conservative, expects the media to be hostile. That's just the reality of being a Republican. You've got to be prepared to deal with that. ~ Ted Cruz,

773:If every man dared speak frankly and highly what he thinks, he would abide always in the reality. How unhappy we make ourselves by striving to hide our nature. ~ Antoine the Healer,

774:Kami linked her arms behind his back, felt the breadth of his shoulders and the reality of skin and muscle and bone, and thought again, Don't let me go. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan,

775:No amount of success - whatever that means, quote-unquote success - no amount of success replaces the reality of being separated from my family for this long. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas,

776:That the AIDS pandemic is threatening sustainable development in Africa only reinforces the reality that health is at the center of sustainable development. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland,

777:With concentration on nonself—the reality that we do not have a separate self—we become aware that suffering is there not only in us but also in the other person. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,

778:I don't want you to have to handle it. That's the horror of my past. But you...you're the reality of my present. You're the proof I survived. The prize in the cereal box. ~ J Kenner,

779:I fused the beauty of dreaming and the reality of life into a single blissful colour.. ...On a clear bright day even the softness of the sounds is golden... ~ Fernando Pessoa,

780:It's very easy for some men and in some cases women to sit back and say with 20-20 hindsight, "Tsk-tsk, should have done more." But it doesn't account for the reality. ~ Megyn Kelly,

781:Reading isn’t important because it helps to get you a job. It’s important because it gives you room to exist beyond the reality you’re given. It is how humans merge. How ~ Matt Haig,

782:Strangers were a fairytale full of possibilities not yet corrupted by reality while caregivers were the reality – and everything that couldn't be counted upon. ~ Donna Lynn Hope,

783:The government needs the help of industry. But the reality is companies will balance that against their own commercial interest in a very competitive market. ~ Michael Clarke Duncan,

784:The Players Association has on the table a demand which doesn't recognize the reality of our league's economics today. It's a very excessive and unrealistic demand. ~ Paul Tagliabue,

785:The reality of the human condition is such that, according to Porter (and I agree), we must “salvage our fragments of happiness” out of life’s inevitable sufferings. ~ Gary L Thomas,

786:The thought of another man terrifies me. The reality, though, excites me. That he wants me this badly. That he can’t keep his hands off what doesn’t belong to him. ~ Jessica Hawkins,

787:This is criterion by which the Church is to be judged, not by the forms of its doctrine or ritual, but by the reality of the reality of the love which it manifests. ~ Bede Griffiths,

788:We must go back again and again to the gospel of Christ crucified, so that our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what He did and who we are in Him. ~ Timothy J Keller,

789:Mina and I fear to be idle, so we have been over all the diaries again and again. Somehow, although the reality seem greater each time, the pain and the fear seem less. ~ Bram Stoker,

790:That's the great thing about rock n' roll: the myth is ultimately more important than the reality. And that's what you learn - you just learn to go with the mythology. ~ Billy Corgan,

791:That's the reality in the Catholic Church today You don't want to build something that will be OK for now, when you know this large population is going to get bigger. ~ Mary Gauthier,

792:The cognitive scientists have now proven the reality of “decision fatigue”—that every decision you make, little or big, diminishes a limited amount of your brain power. ~ David Allen,

793:The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography and local politics. ~ Bryan Stevenson,

794:We're now in one of those periods when the reality of intense pressure on the middle class diverges from long-held assumptions of how the American bargain should work ~ James Fallows,

795:Your misconceptions veil the holy. The Princess is naked beneath the surface of every form. Your boredom would vanish if you had more of a clue about the Reality I know. ~ Rumi,

796:All the thoughts, beliefs, and words you’ve had on repeat throughout your life, either consciously or unconsciously, created the reality you’re presently hanging out in. ~ Jen Sincero,

797:I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best. ~ George W Bush,

798:It so happens that at times your desires tend to disagree with the reality and this is due to the fact that you have not let the two elements complement each other. ~ Stephen Richards,

799:Tayyip Erdoğan is megalomaniac President, he is not stable. He lives during the Ottoman era, he doesn't live in the current time. He's out of touch with the reality. ~ Bashar al Assad,

800:That's the thing about being a victim; you start to think it'll happen to you on a regular basis. It's living with the reality of your own vulnerability, and it sucks. ~ Dennis Lehane,

801:The degree to which we have not allowed ourselves to experience the reality of our true Self is represented by our resentment toward those who have actually done so. ~ David R Hawkins,

802:The reality is that the "gayborhoods" are going away. It's because of many factors, including the internet and increased acceptance, but mostly it's the cost of housing. ~ Cleve Jones,

803:The reality is that there is an enormous value to gut-check instinctive decision-making in the world that is not hampered by reams and reams of research and complexity. ~ John Hodgman,

804:We can't simply take the way things seem and just work on that, because that would be another kind of mistake thought makes-taking the surface and calling it the reality. ~ David Bohm,

805:When I was a boy I read an enormous quantity of books, my sole object being to get away from the reality I was living in—in other words, pure and simple escapism. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,

806:Death changes everything in a flash. That’s the reality of the situation. If all these things can be changed in an instant, then maybe they aren’t so real after all. ~ Michael A Singer,

807:If you deny the reality of your body or your life, you'll never be able to dress any of it well - even the parts you love. You have to see it all to work with any of it. ~ Stacy London,

808:I see everything as creative material. If I pick up a shell of a song that I wrote 10 years ago, all that matters is the reality of that material as it's living today. ~ Antony Hegarty,

809:It is absolutely stunning. You cannot read numbers that communicate what the reality is. That's part of what I'm trying to get across and that's partly why I use video. ~ Hedrick Smith,

810:Life's little ironies are not always manifest. We hear distant rumbling sounds of its tragedies, but rarely are we permitted to witness the reality. (from W.L.S.) ~ Theodore Dreiser,

811:No matter how much money you have or what kind of cocoon you live in, the reality is that you have lost a game of football and let England's fans down. We are bothered. ~ Rio Ferdinand,

812:The line between the reality that is photographed because it seems beautiful to us and the reality that seems beautiful because it has been photographed is very narrow. ~ Italo Calvino,

813:The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand, ~ Walter Isaacson,

814:The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand. ~ Walter Isaacson,

815:The reality is that most of what happens in American politics is transactional. People look for ways to influence those in power by throwing money in their direction. ~ Peter Schweizer,

816:The reality is that we've seen the last of any serious price wars for a long time. I don't think any of the others could afford it, certainly not on a long-term basis. ~ Rupert Murdoch,

817:The structure of apartheid is still rooted in the Haitian society. When you have apartheid, you don't see those behind the walls. That is the reality of Haiti. ~ Jean Bertrand Aristide,

818:But a small part of him also knew that the reason he'd never ventured anywhere was because of the worry that the reality of the world wouldn't match up to his dreams. ~ Jennifer E Smith,

819:By going along with feelings, you unify your emotional, mental and bodily states. When you try to fight or deny them, you divorce yourself from the reality of your being. ~ Jane Roberts,

820:For when we genuinely look at how the other sees us, we are confronted with a distance that exists between the image we have of ourselves and the reality of our actions. ~ Peter Rollins,

821:If there were no illusions, there would bo no disillusionment. But then one would have no fond memories either, with which fortify oneself against the pain of the reality. ~ Mary Balogh,

822:Nothing is as beautiful as the reality itself, even a beautiful dream; but at the same time nothing is as terrible as the reality itself, even a terrible nightmare! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

823:Science is not there for you to cherry pick ... You can decide whether or not to believe in it but that doesn’t change the reality of an emergent scientific truth. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson,

824:The best time to practice, the best time to prepare for the reality of death, and the best time to clarify our own Dharma Visions, is the present. Don’t waste a moment. ~ Anyen Rinpoche,

825:the protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world. ~ Christopher Clark,

826:Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be, like the reality of yesterday, an illusion tomorrow. ~ Luigi Pirandello,

827:Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,

828:If we are to grasp the reality of our life while we have it, we will need to wake up to our moments. Otherwise, whole days, even a whole life, could slip past unnoticed. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn,

829:I know I said I wanted to live forever and I would never be bored, but the reality is, it's probably kind of sad to live forever if you're the only one sticking around. ~ Viggo Mortensen,

830:I realized at that instant just how surely the affirmation of demons or the summoning of Satan somehow can affirm the reality of their mystic antithesis—the God of Abraham. ~ Dan Simmons,

831:Then they show up at the door and the reality is that they are 5-foot-8, 240 pounds and have not run a mile in years. A background check is not going to help you with that. ~ Charlene Li,

832:Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of God, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human mind and the nature of our aspiration. ~ Karen Armstrong,

833:What separated me from all my homeboys is the fact that I didn't get caught inside the reality. I was always dreaming about doing something else or going somewhere else. ~ Kendrick Lamar,

834:You may be able to look beyond the reality of our situation and imagine some other outcome, but all I ever saw, all I ever see, is a reminder that our lives aren't our own. ~ Sara Raasch,

835:Actually, how I am a defensive pessimist. I always assume the worst, so if the reality is even a wee bit better than my disaster scenario, it's a cause for celebration. ~ Megan McCafferty,

836:Amen.So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. ~ James Joyce,

837:Binary approach is an obsolete school of thought in the process of structuring human perception towards reality. True nature of the reality fits better with spectrum approach. ~ Toba Beta,

838:Infinite trust is what you are. It describes everything in the reality where you can feel your whole being. In that line between here and infinity, everything is contained. ~ Robert Young,

839:It is like being two foreigners, trapped in a land we have come to, unable to return to our own, and having only each other to confirm the reality of the place we once lived. ~ Robin Hobb,

840:The lake i had grown up on was protected by thousands of acres of private forests. It kept out the reality of a harsher world and surrounded me with fun and privilege ~ Michael Gates Gill,

841:The Olympic Movement gives the world an ideal which reckons with the reality of life, and includes a possibility to guide this reality toward the great Olympic Idea. ~ Pierre de Coubertin,

842:The only way art lives is through the experience of the observer. The reality of art begins with the eyes of the beholder, through imagination, invention and confrontation. ~ Keith Haring,

843:Wanting to steer toward great outcomes is noble. But trying to control the world is disastrous. In time, controllers crack under the reality that none of us are in control. ~ Louie Giglio,

844:Weddings are about fantasies—you understand? Your job is to photograph the fantasy, not the reality. Never the reality. If I ever see another picture like that, you’re fired. ~ Mira Jacob,

845:What else do I have to offer? Nothing happens to me anymore. That’s the reality of getting old, and I guess that’s really the crux of the matter. I’m not ready to be old yet. ~ Sara Gruen,

846:You can lie to yourself about all kinds of things. Until you can't, anymore. Until reality pounds a hole through your fantasy castle and the reality check must be cashed in. ~ Ann Aguirre,

847:As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. But only when the reality has not been subsumed by foamy legends and fantasies that radiate outward from the actual event. ~ Brock Yates,

848:Democrats finally seem to be standing up to antigovernment propaganda and recognizing the reality that there are some things the government does better than the private sector. ~ Anonymous,

849:If something you desire is not happening, you are not emotionally or mentally ready for it yet. Make your mental adjustment in the now, and the reality will follow. ~ Russell Anthony Gibbs,

850:I'm one of the school of people who don't do research of the reality of the thing or the unreality of the thing. In all the movies I've done, I've never done any research. ~ Billy Connolly,

851:From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises. In ~ Timothy Ferriss,

852:John Kerry's campaign attacks on gas prices ignore the reality of Kerry's long record of supporting higher gas prices and blocking the president's comprehensive energy plan. ~ Steve Schmidt,

853:The aim of my teaching is enlightenment, awakening from the dream state of separateness into the reality of the One. In short, my teaching is focused on realizing what you are. ~ Adyashanti,

854:The place where the questions about the reality of God and about the reality of the world are answered at the same time is characterized solely by the name: Jesus Christ. God ~ Eric Metaxas,

855:The reality is (Clinton's) so-called tax cut is basically giving money to people who largely don't pay taxes, so that it's really spending rather than a tax cut, ... This Week. ~ Phil Gramm,

856:A common misconception is that the costs of health care are cheaper in rural America, when in fact the reality is that they are more expensive and more difficult to access. ~ Blanche Lincoln,

857:All things look good from far away and it is man's eternally persistent childlike faith in the reality of that illusion that has made him the triumphant restless being he is. ~ Rockwell Kent,

858:Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances.  He would have to learn the reality of a thing before he could put his faith into it. ~ Jack London,

859:The reality is that tomorrow is most certainly uncertain and no matter how many expectations we form, tomorrow will come, tomorrow will go and it will all be what it will be. ~ Lori Deschene,

860:The sun is still there... even if clouds drift over it. Once you have experienced the reality of sunshine you may weep, but you will never feel ice about your heart again. ~ Elizabeth Goudge,

861:When you take a photo, you often take your own reality into your camera - the reality that you shaped in your mind - and not the real reality over there, whatever it is! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

862:Christian doctrine grows disciples by teaching them to perceive, name, and act in ways that demonstrate the reality of the gospel, speaking and showing what is “in Christ. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer,

863:He has no education. He has no skills. He doesn't know what to do, where to be. The world has been taught to be scared of him, but the reality is that he is scared of the world. ~ Trevor Noah,

864:Once the initial excitement wears off and it's time to sit down to write, the authors are usually still very eager, but the reality of doing the work can be a little daunting. ~ Deborah Reber,

865:The gesture must be correct. If the gesture is correct, your mind really creates the reality of the figure, and it is not necessary to hang on all the rest [of the details]. ~ Nathan Oliveira,

866:The Platonic idealist is the man by nature so wedded to perfection that he sees in everything not the reality but the faultless ideal which the reality misses and suggests. ~ George Santayana,

867:We expect a horse race, ... The reality is that competition drives all innovation. Intel did nothing with its 386 chip for five years until AMD introduced its own version in 1991. ~ Lou Dobbs,

868:Women need to become literary "criminals," break the literary laws and reinvent their own, because the established laws prevent women from presenting the reality of their lives. ~ Kathy Acker,

869:You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality? ~ Henry David Thoreau,

870:He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird. ~ Thomas Paine,

871:Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognised visitor will flee! ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,

872:I think one of the major things a director has to do is to know his subject matter, the subject matter of his script, know the truth and the reality of it. That's very important. ~ Robert Wise,

873:Natural Theology says not only look up and look out-it also says look down and look in, and you will find the proofs of the reality of God in the depth of your own nature. ~ Christopher Dawson,

874:We continue to put in place the anti-sexist thinking and practice which affirms the reality that females can achieve self-actualization and success without dominating one another. ~ bell hooks,

875:A truly religious man ought to think that the other religions are also paths leading towards the Reality. We should always maintain an attitude of respect towards other religions. ~ Ramakrishss,

876:For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film...if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better. ~ Garry Winogrand,

877:Poetry exists partly to undermine the certainties of an accepted intellectual system, by opening a fissure of awareness at which the reality of the unconquered world may enter. ~ Germaine Greer,

878:The reality is that, in the context of relationship, without the connection of recreation and play, the serious message of the gospel becomes heavy, dry, and undesirable. Being ~ Barnabas Piper,

879:The reality is you have to do your work and maybe you don't know everything. Maybe I don't know what the hell I'm doing! But most of the time you can't even admit that, though. ~ Julian McMahon,

880:Unless we take the time to regain our perspective and face the reality that life is short, we risk arriving at a destination we didn’t choose—or at least one we wouldn’t prefer. ~ Michael Hyatt,

881:We can debate this or that aspect of climate change, but the reality is that most people now accept our climate is indeed subject to change as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. ~ Tony Blair,

882:As useful as looking for objective reality can be, it is ultimately the reality as each side sees it that constitutes the problem in a negotiation and opens the way to a solution. ~ Roger Fisher,

883:Give us that calm certainty of truth, that nearness to Thee, that conviction of the reality of the life to come, which we shall need to bear us through the troubles of this. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,

884:I laughed out loud, no one to hear me but the audience of snowflakes. I leaped off the sidewalk, into the bank of greying snow. I was drunk with the reality of my human body. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,

885:The reality is that we are all economists. We all deal with scarcity as we make choices and calculate how to ration various items and resources that we consume, produce and utilize. ~ Kurt Bills,

886:Whether or not, you know, people think that Martin Shkreli is the worst person in the world, the reality is that he is the symptom or a larger problem in an pharmacology industry. ~ Joy Ann Reid,

887:You can't pick when you're touched. You can't pick the time. It just is. It's the reality. What it is, is. I can't change the past. I can only deal with the present and the future. ~ Paul Mooney,

888:You have to fight for respect. In life, even cashiers at the supermarket, if they're women, they're differently treated. It's a reality. The reality is not nice; it's not pretty. ~ Isabel Coixet,

889:You may think that grown-ups create children. The reality is that children create grown-ups. They become their own person, and so do you. Children give so much more than they take. ~ John Medina,

890:EMPTINESS: THE REALITY BEYOND REALITY Emptiness is described as the basis that makes everything possible. —THE TWELFTH TAI SITUPA RINPOCHE, Awakening the Sleeping Buddha ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche,

891:Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it. ~ Karl Jaspers,

892:Give weather reports. It helps the reality of a scene if foghorns are blowing or kites are in the sky on a windy afternoon or the day's so hot wallpaper is peeling off the walls. ~ Sid Fleischman,

893:. It is often said that in elite sport the margins of victory and defeat are measured in milliseconds: the reality is that they are measured in variables that are far more elusive. ~ Matthew Syed,

894:Teenaged girls have a way of holding fast to their illusions, even as those illusions are dissipating into the air. Denial of unpleasant reality is as powerful as the reality itself. ~ Wendy Webb,

895:The precise instant of creation is when you choose the subject. (meaning that the essential thing occurs at the moment when he, the photographer, meets the reality he wishes to capture. ~ Brassai,

896:Tourism is the chance to go and see what has been made trite… the same modernization that has deprived travel of its temporal aspect has likewise deprived it of the reality of space. ~ Guy Debord,

897:Traveling the world on my own terms taught me that human beings make decisions based not on the reality of things, but on the stories that fill their heads about how things are. ~ Gregory V Diehl,

898:We're told we need this trade deal to open up vast markets to American goods, ... But the reality is that most Chinese workers cannot afford to buy the goods that even they make. ~ David E Bonior,

899:Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right. ~ Haruki Murakami,

900:Anybody who believes and experiences their life and doesn't have shades of gray in it doesn't live where I live and is simply not in touch with the reality of the human condition. ~ Alexis Denisof,

901:Communication is a two-way street. And while we revel in the reality that we can always get through to heaven, our concern should be whether our Lord can always get through to us. ~ Joseph Stowell,

902:If you think hitting 40 is liberating, wait until you hit 50; and I was surprised at how liberating it was. The anticipation of something is always much worse than the reality. ~ Michelle Pfeiffer,

903:Our rational minds often attempt to minimise or negate the mystical encounters. We forget the power of our experiences. We must embrace the reality of that event, which is a miracle. ~ Brian Weiss,

904:Philosophy was born in the ancient quest for ultimate reality, the reality that transcends the proximate and commonplace and that defines and explains the data of everyday experience. ~ R C Sproul,

905:She wondered, faintly, if it was immoral to raise children in the habit of hope. Was it not, in the end, all the harder for them to adjust to the reality of how the world worked? ~ Gregory Maguire,

906:The car crash that took the lives of these two lovely people has been portrayed as a traffic accident caused by a drunk driving at high speed. The reality is that it was murder. ~ Mohamed Al Fayed,

907:The reality of the writer's world is that you set yourself up for future disappointment with every success that you deliver because you end up raising your audience's expectations. ~ Ashwin Sanghi,

908:There is no one to tell this to and yet it seems very important to get this right. The reality and what it is like to escape it. That even now it is sometimes too beautiful to bear. ~ Peter Heller,

909:There really is something raw about sexuality that's real and good and we must continue to learn to not be ashamed of it. But - we have to honor the reality of practicing safer sex. ~ Kyan Douglas,

910:The will not to believe. It is simple human nature. When the mind cannot grasp or face up to a horrible fact it turns away, as though refusing credence will conjure away the reality. ~ Herman Wouk,

911:I can’t picture you as a little girl, Kate.” “We were all little once, Will. Then we grow up, and we accept the reality of being an adult. Making decisions. Life-and-death struggles. ~ Sam Sisavath,

912:Officials of governments that use or produce landmines should be forced to see the reality of how landmines hurt people and make them suffer, because this would surely make them stop. ~ Jackie Chan,

913:The reality, certainly in my life, is that we all have love stories that go terribly wrong; we all have horribly broken hearts. And somehow we endure. We're not destroyed by it. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

914:we tend to think of our behavior as largely conscious and willed. To imagine that we are not always in control of what we do is a frightening thought, but in fact it is the reality. ~ Robert Greene,

915:Whatever you've heard about Caraval, it doesn't compare to the reality. It's more than just a game or performance. It's the closest you'll ever find yourself magic in this world. ~ Stephanie Garber,

916:Where you choose to place your attention dictates the reality you get to participate in. Choose to focus on the good instead of spending your one and only life stewing on the suckery. ~ Jen Sincero,

917:And in answering that question he saw the inside of that bleak Viking world, the reality of love and compassion that all these hammer-throwing and skull-smashing gods concealed. That ~ Roger Scruton,

918:And now, with one semester to go, Mark was staring miserably at the reality of graduating with a combined total, undergrad and law school, principal and interest, of $266,000 in debt. ~ John Grisham,

919:A truly religious man ought to think that the other religions are also paths leading towards the Reality. We should always maintain an attitude of respect towards other religions. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

920:Cease to exist, he urged us, disappear the self. And all of us nodding like golden retrievers, the reality of our existence making us cavalier, eager to dismantle what seemed permanent. ~ Emma Cline,

921:Human beings have a need, generally, to destroy things. The Freudian principle of civilisation is correct. There's always, always a difference between the family image and the reality. ~ Rachel Cusk,

922:I know it feels like you have all these options and when you make a decision, you lose a world of possibilities. But the reality is, until you make a decision, you have nothing at all. ~ Janet Finch,

923:In the instant of our first breath, we are infused with the single greatest force in the universe--the power to translate the possibilities of our minds into the reality of our world. ~ Gregg Braden,

924:The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it. ~ Alan W Watts,

925:The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have. ~ Rollo May,

926:I’ll never forget that day.” It confirmed what I learned from my Spelman years, that education becomes most rich and alive when it confronts the reality of moral conflict in the world.) ~ Howard Zinn,

927:The reality is you've got to be yourself. You've got to be who you are. You've got to be honest with people. If your views change on something, you've got to be willing to express it. ~ Rudy Giuliani,

928:We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. We can never have enough of nature. ~ Henry David Thoreau,

929:Even one kid going hungry in America is one too many. How can we stand by when the reality is that there are more than 12 million underfed children in the U.S.? We can make a difference. ~ LeAnn Rimes,

930:In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united. ~ Henri Nouwen,

931:In this sense, the protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world. ~ Christopher Clark,

932:One of the surprises of being a grown-up is embracing the fact that you see your friends when you are both available. It's not like you hang out all the time.... It's just the reality. ~ Anna Kendrick,

933:Rejecting the notion that God creates one person just for us doesn’t discount the reality that God can lead us toward someone and help us make a wise choice when we seek Him in prayer. ~ Gary L Thomas,

934:We are here to awaken to the reality of our true identity - that we are sparks of the Eternal Imperishable Spirit, who is the source of all Creation and the very essence of our being. ~ Shriram Sharma,

935:When you can see your life in retrospect, the romanticism of how good things once were gives way to the reality that positives and negatives comprise every day and every decade. (235) ~ Victoria Moran,

936:When you learn to consciously master the energetic realm, believe in the not yet seen, and stay in your highest frequency, you harness your innate power to create the reality you desire. ~ Jen Sincero,

937:But I guess when it comes right down to it, the reality is that the pretty girl is the desirable one, the one guys want their friends to see them with. And that’s just the way it is. ~ Karen McQuestion,

938:Contemplate the wonders of creation, the Divine dimension of their being, not as a dim configuration that is presented to you from a distance, but as the reality in which you live. ~ Abraham Isaac Kook,

939:Darkness could find you knee deep in happiness and come slap you back into the reality of the hate. Run fast my friend. Don’t let darkness catch you today. Don’t let darkness overtake. ~ Jennae Cecelia,

940:Imagination has to do with one's awareness of the reality of other people as well as of one's own reality. Imagination is a bridge between the provincialism of the self and the great world. ~ Paula Fox,

941:Notice, for example, that people who talk about "the joys of childhood" are always adults. Only an adult, utterly remote from the reality of childhood, could suppose it is time of joys. ~ Russell Baker,

942:Since meeting Con, she desperately wanted to know what it would feel like to be have him --- He crushed his mouth to hers, jerking her out of her fantasies right into the reality. ~ Savannah Stuart,

943:The president should stop apologizing, stop being defensive. The reality is the NSA has saved thousands of lives not just in the United States but in France, Germany and throughout Europe. ~ Peter King,

944:The reality is that I spent years in the factories in Italy when I first set up Jimmy Choo. Today, everyone who has a job at Jimmy Choo, I've done their job - right down to the cleaner. ~ Tamara Mellon,

945:We've seen the reality of Saddam's regime: his thugs prepared to kill their own people, the parading of prisoners of war and now the release of those pictures of executed British soldiers. ~ Tony Blair,

946:Good or bad, the reality is most people become ‘famous’ or get ‘great jobs’ after a very, very long tenure shoveling shit and not because they handed their script to someone on the street. ~ Amy Poehler,

947:It was unexpected. That's just how it was. I don't believe they were faster than us. I don't believe they had more heart or dedication. It just fell on their side. That's the reality of it. ~ Nat Turner,

948:I was appearing on the reality show R&B Divas and when I started to fall apart it was very public. But I am glad that it happened that way. It made me see myself. And it made me transparent. ~ Michel le,

949:Theories have been outgrown. The means is disappearing, the reality of the sensation alone remains. It is that in its essence which I wish to put down. It should be a delightful adventure. ~ Arthur Dove,

950:The reality is, the United States has global interests. Our defense budget is about the same as the defense budgets or military budgets of every other country in the world put together. ~ Robert M Gates,

951:There are such moments in a life. Solitary seconds on which the reality of what life means pivots and turns from a dead end toward a road of untrodden grass that stretches on forever. ~ Jonathan Maberry,

952:There was no denying the reality of this situation. The exquisite ecstasy of having an honest-to-God, flesh-and-blood c#ck inside. Dream symbolisms and explanations be damned. This was bliss. ~ Jess Dee,

953:We can never know the answers to great spiritual questions, but it's all right not to understand. We have been born and are living on the earth to face directly the reality of living. ~ Masanobu Fukuoka,

954:And yet in the end we are obliged to negate our largest conceptions, our most comprehensive experiences in order to affirm that the Reality exceeds all definitions. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.5,

955:I think I've reached the point that I'm convinced enough of the reality of the ET presence and I'm not going to deny it and shy away from it.... It is time to open this up to the public. ~ Edgar Mitchell,

956:It’s not a dream, But the reality that makes our passion As a lamp shadow—no—no lamp, the sun. What the world’s million lips are thirsting for Must be substantial somewhere... ~ W B Yeats,

957:no matter how difficult the reality, you mustn’t let yourself be beaten. You must have a strong will. You have to summon what you know is right from your innermost depths and follow it. ~ Masaji Ishikawa,

958:Nothing is permanent in the world of forms, and yet the great Reality is unchangeable. Forms are but appearances—they come, they go, but the Reality is eternal and unchangeable. ~ William Walker Atkinson,

959:The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world. ~ Sam Harris,

960:And my commander always says, when we go about our business in the city, that when you look at the state of mankind you are forced to accept the reality of the gods.' (Captain Carrot) ~ Terry Pratchett,

961:I live always in the present. I know nothing of the future and no longer have a past. The former weighs me down with a thousand possibilities, the latter with the reality of nothingness. ~ Fernando Pessoa,

962:Solitude provides the illusion—or is it the reality?—of a self. If I’m alone I can think dark thoughts, be real, be phony, try this, try that. Erase, contradict, forge ahead, double back. ~ Patricia Hampl,

963:The world, and therefore the workplace, is full of idiots. And the reality of life is that when you get rid of one idiot, another will show up to take his place. It's the curse of humanity. ~ Larry Winget,

964:At some point, all creative tasks become work. The interesting and fun challenges fade, and the ordinary, boring, inglorious work necessary to bring an idea to the world becomes the reality. ~ Scott Berkun,

965:Healing, he told us, depends on experiential knowledge: You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,

966:I have so much confidence in the reality of Jesus that I feel no pressure to try to make people act or be a certain way. I'm banking everything on the fact that God actually changes people. ~ Erwin McManus,

967:I think God gives medication that heals some illnesses. But I think when you deny the reality of evil, you want to use medicine to solve every problem, and it doesn't solve every problem. ~ Robert Jeffress,

968:It is not by telling people about ourselves that we demonstrate our Christianity. Words are cheap. It is by costly, self-denying Christian practice that we show the reality of our faith. ~ Jonathan Edwards,

969:It's easy to say, 'But women can just say no to all this.' But the reality is more difficult, more complex. We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,

970:No political movement can avoid the reality of desire in its midst. Every office building is full of the illicit affairs, the unwanted pregnancies, the crises that happen in human lives. ~ Amber Hollibaugh,

971:People have sought to adjust the truth to the hour instead of adjusting the hour to the truth, and in diplomacy they have endeavoured to bring about as much of the reality as they deem wise. ~ Alice Bailey,

972:This is the reality of our community. It’s about a naked druggie destroying what little of value exists in her life. It’s about children who lose their toys and clothes to a mother’s addiction. ~ J D Vance,

973:Whatever your reality is about money inside of you is the reality of money outside of you. You cannot change your outside reality until you first change your inside reality about money. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki,

974:Even when your dream that you set out comes true, it's not always perfect, and there isn't always the kiss at the end, and we all get to live happily ever after. That's not the reality of life. ~ Emma Stone,

975:Having the reality of God's presence is not dependent on our being in a particular circumstance or place, but is only dependent on our determination to keep the Lord before us continually. ~ Oswald Chambers,

976:Our difficulties launch us into new states of consciousness where we are inspired to step out of the reality of our smallest thoughts and step into the limitless freedom of our biggest dreams. ~ Debbie Ford,

977:The purity of death holds no attraction for the Homeric Greeks. Their world is one in which the felt, sensed and shared reality, the reality of the human heart, is the only one worth having. ~ Adam Nicolson,

978:We are transmuting the reality of our perceptual field. There are endless, beautiful and perfect universes - or you can go beyond universes to the dissolution, where there's no beginning. ~ Frederick Lenz,

979:We [me and Eugene Levy] both try to play the reality of a moment and don't try to impose humor on something where it doesn't belong. Contrary to what other people seem to think sometimes. ~ Samuel L Jackson,

980:Everyone thinks that religion is the ball and chain. But the reality is that sin is the ball and chain. A relationship with Christ is the freedom that people are looking for in alcohol and drugs. ~ Dan Brown,

981:I get cranky real easily. So the honor of it and the wonder of it all and everything has a hard time overcoming the petty annoyances; I mean, that's simply the reality of being alive, I guess. ~ Frank Stella,

982:Life is, by nature, highly interdependent. To try to achieve maximum effectiveness through independence is like trying to play tennis with a golf club—the tool is not suited to the reality. ~ Stephen R Covey,

983:Sandy tried to never lose sight of the fact that we tend to order things according to the reality we know, as we discover it. All life is hindsight, really, stories informed by their endings. ~ Laura Lippman,

984:There seems to be no agent more effective than another person in bringing a world for oneself alive or, by a glance, a gesture, or a remark, shriveling up the reality in which one is lodged. ~ Erving Goffman,

985:You can always figure out how to deliver things in somewhat controlled situations, but when you start to get into the reality of the market you start to figure out what isn't going to work. ~ Scott D Anthony,

986:Democracy in crime was turning out no different from democracies everywhere: a sublime idea in theory, soiled by the reality that deep down nobody really believes that all men are created equal. ~ Steve Toltz,

987:Everything is energy and that's all there is. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics. ~ Anonymous,

988:I get it,” Merlin leaned forward. “The magician simply redirects attention to one of these other fifty-five thousand realities, thereby distracting others from the reality they’re manipulating ~ Tony Vigorito,

989:In college, I became interested in folk tales and fairy tales. Gradually I became more and more interested in the underlying meaning of it all and the possibility of the reality of real fairies. ~ Brian Froud,

990:It is thus that imagination can in the end determine destiny, and it but needs our future actions to be given shape in speech so that we are obliged to give them the reality of accomplishment. ~ Maurice Druon,

991:Maybe every two films you need to do documentary to tell what you really want to tell and not be limited by the medium. With documentary you don't create the reality you have to hunt the reality. ~ Fatih Ak n,

992:Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance. ~ Dalai Lama,

993:Part of the challenge with leadership is that it's very driven by gut instinct in most cases - and even worse, everyone thinks they're really good at it. The reality is that very few people are. ~ Laszlo Bock,

994:Then, when they had thus passed the day in building castles in the air, they separated their flocks, and descended from the elevation of their dreams to the reality of their humble position. ~ Alexandre Dumas,

995:The pressure, the heat, the almost impossibly fast pace at which you need work - this is the reality of working in the culinary industry. This is what professional chefs do night after night. ~ Joe Bastianich,

996:There seems to be no agent more effective than another person in bringing a world for oneself alive, or, by a glance, a gesture, or a remark, shriveling up the reality in which one is lodged. ~ Erving Goffman,

997:Those who thought of collaboration in simplistic terms could not comprehend the reality of trying to survive in an uncivilized, unstable environment in which the norms of society had broke down. ~ Lynne Olson,

998:tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. ~ Alan W Watts,

999:Unfortunately, too many executives believe the myths about trust. Myths like how trust is soft and is merely a social virtue. The reality is that trust is hard-edged and is an economic driver. ~ Stephen Covey,

1000:acknowledging all that has been lost and learning to live with that loss. It would be too soon for Keith to be able to accept this situation. He can acknowledge the reality of the loss, ~ Elisabeth K bler Ross,

1001:But wishes don’t make policy. Policy is made by reality, and the reality of what has been created, whether intentionally or not, can’t be abandoned without breathtakingly severe consequences. ~ George Friedman,

1002:I want to forget what I've learned about the character, but the reality is that you can't, because you've absorbed it. It's there in that moment when you need it. The hard part is to trust it. ~ Liev Schreiber,

1003:Now, back in the reality that always lies in wait among the shadows of the Ensanche quarter, the enchantment was lifting, and all I had was painful desire and an indescribable restlessness. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,

1004:The reality is that we will continue to hear negative information from many sources. It lies in our will to decide whether to discard them into the waste bin or record them into our brains! ~ Israelmore Ayivor,

1005:The reality of the world we live in is that people sometimes aren't interested in many circumstances; no matter how much young radicals yell at them, that isn't what they want to do right now. ~ Gar Alperovitz,

1006:THE REALITY: You are not getting what you want because your intentions are mixed, unclear, or contrary to what you say you want. When you clarify your intentions, your desired results will follow. ~ Alan Cohen,

1007:Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith. ~ W H Auden,

1008:I don't just look at the thing itself or at the reality itself; I look around the edges for those little askew moments-kind of like what makes up our lives-those slightly awkward, lovely moments. ~ Keith Carter,

1009:I know you're frustrated, Sam, but the reality is you're in a world now where the majority of the people you run into will be able to snap you like a twig." "My world was like that before. ~ Lish McBride,

1010:The 'Hemingway curse' was such a huge, awful thing for me to have to deal with. . . . The reality is, because there are genetic tendencies toward mental illness, you need to be aware of them. ~ Mariel Hemingway,

1011:These leave-takings in novels are as disagreeable as they are in real life; not so sad, indeed, for they want the reality of sadness; but quite as perplexing, and generally less satisfactory. ~ Anthony Trollope,

1012:… tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. ~ Alan W Watts,

1013:What thrives online is not the writing that reflects anything close to the reality in which you and I live. Nor does it allow for the kind of change that will create the world we wish to live in. ~ Ryan Holiday,

1014:Facing your fears can be a dangerous thing, because when you put yourself out there, there's always the chance, no matter how vanishingly slim, that your very worst fears could match the reality. ~ Ambrose Ibsen,

1015:It is easy to say, ‘But women can just say no to all this.’ But the reality is more difficult, more complex. We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization. Even ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,

1016:One always starts work with the subject, no matter how tenuous it is, and one constructs an artificial structure by which one can trap the reality of the subject-matter that one has started from. ~ Francis Bacon,

1017:There are lots of imposters in this earth, and to very first there always comes a second, to every reality there always come a fantasy, and the fantasy wants to come and live the life of the reality ~ Peter Tosh,

1018:Accepting the reality of our sinfulness means accepting our authentic self. Judas could not face his shadow; Peter could. The latter befriended the impostor within; the former raged against him. ~ Brennan Manning,

1019:Choosing with integrity means finding ways to speak up that honor your reality, the reality of others, and your willingness to meet in the center of that large field. It’s hard sometimes. ~ Terry Tempest Williams,

1020:I didn't want to find out the reality that if I wanted my dream, I had to lose weight. That's a crushing dream for anybody . . . to change yourself to get your dream. Nobody should have to do that. ~ Serinda Swan,

1021:I knew, as soon as I woke up, that the dream had come from God and it was about the reality of Jesus. The truth of Him. The He was a person whose pronouns you had to capitalize. That He was God. ~ Lauren F Winner,

1022:I think the promise of fame and what it holds to you as a child and dreaming of it is not what it is. What it is, I'm not complaining about, but it's just different than the reality you dreamed. ~ Rosie O Donnell,

1023:It was never easy being a witch. Oh, the broomstick was great, but to be a witch you needed to be sensible, so sensible that sometimes it hurt. You dealt with the reality—not what people wanted. ~ Terry Pratchett,

1024:Knowing yourself now requires the understanding that the conscious you occupies only a small room in the mansion of the brain, and that it has little control over the reality constructed for you. ~ David Eagleman,

1025:Most good roles are written for young men. We are fixated on youth. So however much people say there is nothing wrong with being bald, the reality is once the hair is gone, you might not get the parts. ~ Ian Hart,

1026:The reality is that in the business world almost everyone is just a very small cog in a huge collection of cogs.2 2 Sorry. Try not to take it personally. Do good work. Enjoy your home life. Be happy. ~ Steve Krug,

1027:When we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. Not to have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven't yet really understood who he is or what he's done. ~ N T Wright,

1028:He believed in redemption, the inchoate grace in every person he met. It was one of the few things he had to believe in, the possibility of beauty when faced with the reality of so much ugliness. ~ Cassandra Clare,

1029:I think that's the reality of the business. It's not about what you did. It's what have you done for me lately. We're in the production business. What you did before is irrelevant. Everyone knows that. ~ Don Davis,

1030:On the one hand, I'm a kind of crazy anarchist-sympathizer with a hippie background, so this sounds pretty good to me. Make something for the love of it! But the reality is so much more complicated. ~ Astra Taylor,

1031:Reality includes both the past and the future, but existence includes only the present and is totally dependent on the reality of past and future universes. Without them there is no existence now. ~ Fred Alan Wolf,

1032:The notion that the one who thinks (the Ego) is at least in principle completely separate from and independent of the reality that he thinks about is of course firmly embedded in our entire tradition. ~ David Bohm,

1033:...time can be slowed if you live deliberately. If you stop and watch sunsets. If you spend time sitting on porches listening to the woods. If you give in to the reality of the seasons. ~ Thomas Christopher Greene,

1034:When you begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. Not to have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that you haven’t yet really understood who he is or what he’s done. ~ Anonymous,

1035:I had deep satisfaction in the thought, that the reality of shareholders was not concealed from the eyes of the world, and that I was not alone in aborting the cruelty and brutality of slavery. ~ Frederick Douglass,

1036:I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger. ~ Neil Gaiman,

1037:It's just the reality. Everyone's going to die and everyone's going to get sick at some point. But I do believe that there are choices you can make in life that will make you as healthy as possible. ~ Anne Wojcicki,

1038:Just as the Atman (Soul) is the reality underlying the conscious powers of an individual, so the Supreme Soul (God) is the eternal quiet underneath the drive and activity of the universe. ~ Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan,

1039:Our view of history diminishes the reality of the past. We concentrate on the historic event as something that has happened, and in so doing we ignore it as a moment which, at the time, is happening. ~ Ian Mortimer,

1040:Theresa, I know there's a part of you that believes you can change someone, but the reality is that you can't. You can change yourself, and Garrett can change himself, but you can't do it for him. ~ Nicholas Sparks,

1041:When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. ~ Henry David Thoreau,

1042:Yeah, yeah, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye type of thing. There's that kind of irreverence to it the humor and in the reality of what's really going on that plays into this movie. ~ Jeremy Renner,

1043:Even if you plan a marriage and a family, you are never quite prepared for the reality versus how you imagined it. In a lot of ways it's better, and in a lot of ways it's worse. That's life, right? ~ Katherine Heigl,

1044:The diminution of the reality of class, however socially desirable in many respects, seems to have the practical effect of diminishing our ability to see people in their difference and specialness. ~ Lionel Trilling,

1045:The whole dream of having your own place is great, but the reality is having to cook and clean yourself and do the washing and make sure there's milk in the fridge. But you have to grow up some time. ~ Michelle Ryan,

1046:At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him. ~ Viktor E Frankl,

1047:Besides death and taxes, the one other universal truth is that bureaucracies never respond kindly to challenges to their authority. So there’s enormous societal pressure to suppress the reality of magic. ~ Dean Radin,

1048:Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics. ~ Darryl Anka,

1049:In the end of the film there is hope, ... There's beauty in ugliness. It's really important for us Latinos to acknowledge each other and not deny the reality, because our reality is fascinating. ~ Jonathan Jakubowicz,

1050:Memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally. ~ Azar Nafisi,

1051:Politicians have made up their own version of Islam to avoid having to deal with the reality of Islam because it's just too daunting, frightening, scary, whatever, and they don't want to deal with it. ~ Rush Limbaugh,

1052:Reverent corporate worship, then, is not optional for the church of God. . . . Rather, it brings to expression the very being of the church. It manifests on earth the reality of the heavenly assembly.3 ~ Wayne Grudem,

1053:The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable. ~ Andrea Dworkin,

1054:Truth is transparent. It is powerless and colourless. It speaks about reality but can’t alter the reality. On the other hand, a lie which is spoken beautifully is powerful enough to alter the reality. ~ Awdhesh Singh,

1055:we see the reality of Jesus risen, his actual existence now as a person who is present among his people. We find him in his ecclesia, his sometimes motley but always glorious crew of called-out ones. ~ Dallas Willard,

1056:As a child I became a confirmed believer in the ancient gods simply because as between the reality of fact and the reality f myth, I chose myth...Myth is the truth of fact, not fact the truth of myth. ~ Kathleen Raine,

1057:Even though many boast in free will, the reality is that sin makes us a slave. And as slaves, we need someone to redeem us, to set us free. Consider what Paul says about man’s condition because of sin. ~ Gregory Brown,

1058:Fairy tales opened up a door into my imagination - they don't conform to the reality that's around you as a child. I started reading when I was three and read everything, but I wanted to be an actress. ~ Kate Atkinson,

1059:I believe that fantasy in the meaning of imagination is very important. We shouldn't stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination. ~ Hayao Miyazaki,

1060:I believe that the fact and the reality of homosexuality and heterosexuality and of opposite and same-gender unions should be taught in our public schools without a value judgement system also being offered. ~ Ed Case,

1061:Of ultimate importance, then, is not that I become good, or that the condition of the world be improved by my efforts, but that the reality of God show itself everywhere to be the ultimate reality. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer,

1062:Once Conner was dragged out of the room, I directed the musicians to play. Then, exhausted, I fell into my father's throne. No, my throne. I was king now. The reality of that was incomprehensible. ~ Jennifer A Nielsen,

1063:The Biblical world-view is the only one that accepts the reality of evil and suffering while giving both the cause and the purpose, while offering God-given strength and sustenance in the midst of it. ~ Ravi Zacharias,

1064:the fact that her children were so obviously living their own lives was bittersweet. Their independence was what you hoped for and worked toward, but the reality was you just weren’t that critical anymore. ~ Wendy Wax,

1065:The nearer you come to God, the less you are disposed to questioning and reasoning. When you actually attain Him, when you behold Him as the Reality, then all noise, all disputations, come to an end. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

1066:The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic.” And it is rapidly taking on many functions of a modern state, issuing its citizenry everything from driver’s permits to fishing licenses. ~ Daniel Silva,

1067:We also know that religion, as the Marxists have always insisted, has, too often, like an opiate, tended to put people to sleep to the reality and the need for the present struggle for peace and justice. ~ Dorothy Day,

1068:We tend to think of the Norman Conquest as the turning point in the history of England. But the Saxon Conquest was even more important, since it created both the reality and the idea of England itself. ~ David Starkey,

1069:All of which is mostly bullshit. The reality is that it's just like any other Ponzi scheme: the guys at the top are doing pretty well, but the guys on the bottom are doing Amway pitches in trailer parks. ~ Tod Goldberg,

1070:But this is how I remember these things, and all we can ever be is faithful to our memories of reality, rather than the reality itself, which is something closely related but never precisely the same thing. ~ Matt Haig,

1071:Ignoring platforms that have gained critical mass is a great way to look slow and out-of-touch. Do not cling to nostalgia. Do not put your principles above the reality of the market. Do not be a snob. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk,

1072:Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream. ~ Joseph Conrad,

1073:I've been a Colt for almost all of my adult life, but I guess in life, and in sports, we all know nothing lasts forever. Times change, circumstances change, and that's the reality of playing in the NFL. ~ Peyton Manning,

1074:Jesus did not begin to be loved at the moment of his baptism, nor did he cease to be loved when his baptism became a memory. Baptism simply named the reality of his existing and unending belovedness. ~ Rachel Held Evans,

1075:The reality is, it takes daily cultivation of a spiritual path, preferably with spiritual kin in proximity, to sustain not the feeling of elation, but the focused, mindful path of steady growth. ~ S Kelley Harrell M Div,

1076:Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq. ~ Chuck Hagel,

1077:This wasn’t a place for illusions; the reality here was the genuine happiness that came about from the natural magic of standing next to someone and being consumed by the fortitude in his or her humanity. ~ Ishmael Beah,

1078:To call someone a Christian simply because he does some Christian-y things is giving false comfort to the unsaved. But to declare anyone who sins “unsaved” is to deny the reality and truth of God’s grace. ~ Francis Chan,

1079:We (Christians) are always in the presence of God. There is never a non-sacred moment! His presence never diminishes. Our awareness of His presence may falter, but the reality of His presence never changes. ~ Max Lucado,

1080:Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if that's what it is, that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. ~ Edsger Dijkstra,

1081:A man's character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,

1082:The reality is technology is here, technology will only improve and certain technology companies will dominate in the next five to ten years, ... The problem is determining which ones and at what value. ~ George Rodrigue,

1083:The reality is that what you find out is that your head is the medicine. If your head is not in the right place and you don't think positively, all the medicine technology in the world is not going to work. ~ Herbie Mann,

1084:Yudhishthira taught me that moral integrity begins with the awareness of other human beings. The reality of others looms large in Yudhishthira’s consciousness—it is the shining feature of his personality, ~ Gurcharan Das,

1085:I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger. ~ Neil Gaiman,

1086:Mindfulness, which involves turning our attention back to the present moment, is essential to refocusing our mind, body and spirit from the past and placing it solidly into the reality of the here and now. ~ Shahida Arabi,

1087:Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony. ~ Noam Chomsky,

1088:The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say. ~ Khalil Gibran,

1089:The worst thing that you could ever do for that war was having all these media people embedded in the units. Most Americans can’t take the reality of war, and the reports they sent back didn’t help us at all. ~ Chris Kyle,

1090:When he was reading he could fly away into the wildest skies of imagination, untethered to the reality that his soul was trapped in a wretched creature cobbled together from meat and bone, like us all. ~ Christopher Moore,

1091:Differentiation is classroom practice that looks eyeball to eyeball with the reality that kids differ, and the most effective teachers do whatever it takes to hook the whole range of kids on learning. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson,

1092:I think it's inevitable that New Zealand will become a republic and that would reflect the reality that New Zealand is a totally sovereign-independent 21st century nation 12,000 miles from the United Kingdom. ~ Helen Clark,

1093:It is so much easier for them to talk about what has been done to them—to tell a story of victimization and revenge—than to notice, feel, and put into words the reality of their internal experience. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,

1094:It was awkward at times, especially at first. But I think the reality is they actually saw me with a Razorback on my shirt, and it kind of hit home that, hey, he is over there, he's not at Springdale anymore. ~ Gus Malzahn,

1095:We must come to grief and regret anyway - and I for one would rather regret the reality than its phantasm, knowledge than hope, the deed than the hesitation, true life and not mere sickly potentialities. ~ A S Byatt,

1096:MIND TELLING US WHAT THE REALITY IS LIKE ROUND HERE?” The pen wrote: +++ On A Scale Of One To Ten—Query +++ “FINE,” Ridcully shouted. +++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++ ~ Terry Pratchett,

1097:People like to focus on a narrow stereotype, like if we didn't have football then we wouldn't have made it, ... The reality is, there are a lot of football players like me who came out of the middle class. ~ Jonathan Vilma,

1098:We may find it convenient to live with the illusion that circumstances or other people are responsible for the quality of our lives, but the reality is that we are responsible-response-able-for our choices. ~ Stephen Covey,

1099:You are trying to stay dry when it rains; but only when you get wet, you will know that no one can ever obtain wisdom without melting inside the reality, without being on intimate terms with the truth! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

1100:Accepting that by-products of industrial civilization were irreparably damaging the global environment was to accept the reality of market failure. It was to acknowledge the limits of free market capitalism. ~ Naomi Oreskes,

1101:Arthur Schlesinger admits that JFK "succumbed to the fake omniscience of insiders". Prolonged immersion in the self-contained, self-justifying world of clandestinity and deception erodes the reality principle. ~ Garry Wills,

1102:I hate it when, in films, the girl looks perfect in every shot. It's quite nice if there's a bit of dark circles underneath the eyes, if we see the reality of the situation that the person is going through. ~ Felicity Jones,

1103:I mean, you can pretend up to a certain point that the world has infinite resources and that it's an infinite wastebasket-but at some point you're going to run into the reality, which is that that isn't true. ~ Noam Chomsky,

1104:My elaboration of the story always conforms to the reality at its source. It is always close to the world, the life, the reality it describes. No matter where I go, I’m still holding up a mirror. ~ Gustaw Herling Grudzinski,

1105:The reality of politics is, if Trump is the president tonight, every progressive group in America will be able to mobilize in a way tomorrow that they may not necessarily have been able to mobilize yesterday. ~ David Sirota,

1106:The source of a Christian ethic is not the reality of one’s own self, not the reality of the world, nor is it the reality of norms and values. It is the reality of God that is revealed in Jesus Christ. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

1107:Don't make your living with cinema because Hollywood will take you, will eat you, will destroy you. This is the reality. You have a good picture, have success, you take the person and they destroy you. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky,

1108:Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud. ~ Viktor E Frankl,

1109:I think every person deserves two marriages, because you may not get the first one right. You really never knew. That's why divorce is so big. We all want it to last, but that's not always the reality of it. ~ Tichina Arnold,

1110:The reality is in this head. Mine. I'm the projector at the planetarium, all the closed little universe visible in the circle of that stage is coming out of my mouth, eyes, and sometimes other orifices also. ~ Thomas Pynchon,

1111:The reality is sometimes markets don't exist for very good reasons. It might be that there isn't a deep customer need. Or the economic model is just hard to pull off. Or maybe there is a regulatory barrier. ~ Scott D Anthony,

1112:The reality is that Qatar is an ally of the United States. There are a significant number of American troops that are stationed in Qatar. What we did for them and do for them is security for their facilities. ~ Rudy Giuliani,

1113:When investors, particularly investment bankers, talk about splitting up companies, there's a lot of discussion about multiple expansion, and the reality is multiple expansion is an outcome, not a strategy. ~ Irene Rosenfeld,

1114:You know, he [Alan Rickman] played these very reserved, sometimes-cold, sometimes-threatening characters on the screen, but the reality of the man was incredible warmth and humor and generosity and wicked fun. ~ Helen Mirren,

1115:At least two kinds of courage are required in aging and sickness. The first is the courage to confront the reality of mortality—the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped. ~ Atul Gawande,

1116:Dear young people, please, don’t be observers of life, but get involved. Jesus did not remain an observer, but he immersed himself. Don’t be observers, but immerse yourself in the reality of life, as Jesus did. ~ Pope Francis,

1117:I don't want to be thought of as somebody who's spiritually ambiguous, but the reality is there's unknown things happening. I'm not ready to point at what they are or what the reason is, but I know they exist. ~ Shane Carruth,

1118:If (environmentalists) want to continue to beat those drums to solicit money from concerned soccer moms, they can do that. The reality on the ground is things are better as a result of Gale Norton's tenure. ~ Christopher West,

1119:It's great news. The reality of negotiations today is that they take time. But these have always been conducted in a good spirit and we are very pleased with the outcome. We can now look forward to the future. ~ Alex Ferguson,

1120:Reality is not so much what happens to us; rather, it is how we think about those events that create the reality we experience. In a very real sense, this means that we each create the reality in which we live. ~ Albert Ellis,

1121:The ones who are fearful all the time, who need to medicate to function? It is because they understand the reality, how thin the line is. It isn’t that they can’t accept the truth—it’s that they can’t block it. ~ Harlan Coben,

1122:Although we hardly see each other off the set, Joy and I get along well when we do. As far as the marriage between Nathan and Haley, I think they are young and will see the reality of the situation eventually. ~ James Lafferty,

1123:But the reality, observes Hrdy, is that it’s more common for mothers not to form an immediate attachment to their offspring than we like to believe. Her argument is that this is a legacy of cooperative breeding. ~ Angela Saini,

1124:Clean water is only as far away as the nearest tap, and there are taps everywhere. There's a faucet everywhere. But the reality is, the water in our toilets is cleaner than the water that most people are drinking. ~ Matt Damon,

1125:Government grew under [Ronald] Reagan. He was the strongest opponent of free markets in the post-war history among presidents. But it doesn't matter what the reality is; they concocted an image that you worship. ~ Noam Chomsky,

1126:I just think that the reality of life is impermanence. That's the foundation of understanding what Yoga is, and we're here for however long we're here, and then it's over. And I've known this since I was a kid. ~ Gary Kraftsow,

1127:In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death... these are things that unite us all. ~ Albert Camus,

1128:N. T. Wright aptly notes, “But Rome is not the enemy; it is the Satan and his hordes, who are deceiving Israel into thinking that Rome is the real enemy, so that she (Israel) will not notice the reality. ~ Christopher W Morgan,

1129:ONLY THE DAY DAWNS TO WHICH WE ARE AWAKE,IF WE ARE TO GRASP THE REALITY OF OUR LIFE WHILE WE HAVE IT,WE WILL NEED TO WAKE UP TO OUR MOMENTS,OTHERWISE,WHOLE DAYS,EVEN A WHOLE LIFE COULD SLIP BY UNNOTICED.. ~ Henry David Thoreau,

1130:Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends. Any other assessment of the situation is mere idealism. ~ Jacques Ellul,

1131:Reality itself is not static. This is one of the things that the psychedelic is trying to put across, that the reality we're embedded in is itself some kind of an organism and is evolving toward a conclusion. ~ Terence McKenna,

1132:We must beware of thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites . . .Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativises the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves of a paradoxical whole. ~ Carl Jung,

1133:I care nothing for your intentions, E’lir Kvothe, deceived or otherwise. All that matters is the reality of your actions. Your hand held the fire. Yours is the blame. That is the lesson all adults must learn. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,

1134:I support such a review, ... But the reality is that we don't need the results of a strategic study to know that there are some pressing problems in our military that demand our attention and our assistance now. ~ Joe Lieberman,

1135:I've always talked to players about perception and reality. I don't worry about perception. There may be some of that, that people want to attach to a good name, but the reality is that some good things can happen. ~ Tony Dungy,

1136:The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help. They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting at the end of the trip- the relative you cringe to kiss. ~ Markus Zusak,

1137:The reality is that accent distinctiveness is nothing to do with physical environment, but a result of the combination of regional and social factors that have influenced the emergence of a particular community. ~ David Crystal,

1138:The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so. ~ Timothy Snyder,

1139:This is the reality of living in my body: I am trapped in a cage. The frustrating thing about cages is that you’re trapped but you can see exactly what you want. You can reach out from the cage, but only so far. It ~ Roxane Gay,

1140:CAN YOU FREE YOURSELF ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO EXPERIENCE THE REALITY OF LIFE AS IT GOES ON BEFORE YOU AND WITH YOU, AND AS YOU GO ON AS PART OF IT? OR NOT? BECAUSE IF YOU CAN’T YOU STAND ON SQUARE ONE, UNTIL YOU DIE. ~ Roger Waters,

1141:It's not fear that keeps me up. I mean, every generation has thought, this is the worst generation; the world's going to hell in a hand basket. The reality is, people are living longer, and they're living better. ~ Juan Enriquez,

1142:Shalom, therefore, does not eschew or diminish the role of the other or the reality of a suffering world. Instead, it embraces the suffering other as an instrumental aspect of well-being. Shalom requires lament. ~ Soong Chan Rah,

1143:Since when has love ever looked for reasons, or evidence? Why would love bow to the reality of things, when it creates a reality of its own, so much more vivid, wherein everything resonates to the key of the heart? ~ Paul Murray,

1144:So the film was a kind of lie, because by existing it said: 'Observe the lengths we'll go to for your security. We'll even make you a movie about it.' Style instead of substance, the image instead of the reality ~ Salman Rushdie,

1145:The erruption of feelings & emotions that follows a near-death exerience, or any event that causes us to stop & look deeply at the reality of our lives, is ripe with the potential for insight & clarity. ~ Allan Lokos,

1146:The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode . . . . ~ Kofi Annan,

1147:The Senate is extremely slow: They have enormous difficulty passing the bills that even get through the House. That's the reality that I've recognized in my two years: that it takes time to change the world. ~ Kirsten Gillibrand,

1148:Traditions decay when the reality facing the new generation changes. The habit of thrift decays if there is no penalty for not saving. The work ethic decays if there is no penalty for not working. Neighborliness ~ Charles Murray,

1149:I am intrigued and even moved by the idea of being right with the reader in the actuality that she or he is reading a poem. So the titles are an acknowledgment of the reality and value of that act in the world. ~ Matthew Zapruder,

1150:I think it reflects the reality on the ground, that this was an important milestone that's been achieved by the Iraqi people, and it's a significant development. It's a real hopeful moment for democracy in Iraq. ~ Scott McClellan,

1151:There’s a truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. ~ Gregory David Roberts,

1152:We live within this reality we create, and we're quite unaware of how we create the reality. So the work is often a general koan into how we go about forming this world in which we live, in particular with seeing. ~ James Turrell,

1153:Whatever the reality is the perception is that Marco Rubio went to Washington and threw in with the, quote/unquote, "establishment". He cannot - he cannot recover from that. Has not been able to recover from that. ~ Rush Limbaugh,

1154:When he was reading he could fly away into the wildest skies of imagination, untethered to the reality that his soul was trapped in a wretched creature cobbled together from meat and bone, like us all. Charlie ~ Christopher Moore,

1155:When you deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him, you die while you simultaneously truly live. That is when you experience the reality that “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). ~ Tony Evans,

1156:A lot of people are living in a dream world - they want to deny that aging occurs or believe it doesnt have to occur. Theyll hold on to this belief until the moment they die. The reality will eventually hit them. ~ S Jay Olshansky,

1157:It’s funny. You begged for people to talk to you, to let you in because you are an adult. Then when you are let in to the reality of adulthood, you instantly turn into that five-year-old girl you denied being. ~ Brittainy C Cherry,

1158:The intention was to film with James for a one-week period, but the reality was that after two days he decided that he preferred being homeless to living with me. Also, as a junkie, he needed to get out to score drugs. ~ Anonymous,

1159:The only real difficulty with becoming disciplined is when you buy into the notion that happiness comes at the price of sacrifice. The reality is this: Discipline becomes freedom when you are doing what you love. ~ Shannon L Alder,

1160:For a political movement to not understand that sexuality is a profound component of both how people are oppressed and how people dream, is not to recognize the reality of political power and where it's centered. ~ Amber Hollibaugh,

1161:Sooner or later we've all got to confront the reality that we have got to come to understand who we are and what we're doing, and the extent to which we are guided or manipulated by forces that are beyond our control. ~ Ayad Akhtar,

1162:The reality is that everybody makes mistakes. The issue isn't whether you will make them, it's what you will do about them. It's whether you will choose the path of humility and courage or the path of ego and pride. ~ Stephen Covey,

1163:The reality is that until we can agree on a formula that reduces tariffs globally we cannot meet this Doha promise for development. In order to keep momentum post-Hong Kong, the European Union must be willing to move. ~ Rob Portman,

1164:We're looking for something that sounds like a member of the Republican Party. The reality is, he's playing for the Democratic vote at this point ... but he has to give something to create energy among conservatives. ~ Steven Frank,

1165:Illusion doesn't mean that something is not real. Illusion simply means that something is less real than something else. This life and this world certainly exist - who is to say the reality of the dream is not real? ~ Frederick Lenz,

1166:The line between the reality that is photographed because it seems beautiful to us and the reality that seems beautiful because it has been photographed is very narrow." - from "The Adventure of a Photographer ~ Italo Calvino,

1167:The way I look at life, and the way I look at the reality of Parkinson's, is that sometimes it's frustrating and sometimes it's funny. I need to look at it that way, and I think other people will look at it that way. ~ Michael J Fox,

1168:And I came to recognize that, no matter how difficult the reality, you mustn't let yourself be beaten. You must have a strong will. You have to summon what you know is right from your innermost depths and follow it. ~ Masaji Ishikawa,

1169:And I came to recognize that, no matter how difficult the reality, you mustn’t let yourself be beaten. You must have a strong will. You have to summon what you know is right from your innermost depths and follow it. ~ Masaji Ishikawa,

1170:It had been a slow and painful business, discovering that the theory of love did not match the reality of life. It was like expecting to be able to write a symphony because you had once read a handbook of composition. ~ Julian Barnes,

1171:The most valuable lesson anyone learns in life should be learned as early as possible. That you don’t have to live in the reality someone else had invented. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Ever. ~ Penelope Douglas,

1172:The older I grow the more sharply I mistrust words. So few of them have any meaning left. It is impossible to write one sentence in which every word has the bareness and hardness of bones, the reality of the skeleton. ~ Storm Jameson,

1173:You must accept the reality of other people. You think that reality is up for negotiation, that we think it's whatever you say it is. You must accept that we are as real as you are; you must accept that you are not God. ~ J K Rowling,

1174:Furthermore, even a deep, penetrating sense of our sinfulness does not do justice to the reality of our predicament. Our need is not to be measured by our own sense of need, but by what God had to do to meet that need. ~ Jerry Bridges,

1175:If you're a global company you are going to have jobs overseas. The reality is if we start taxing those jobs at a rate that makes them noncompetitive in those markets, the reality is that we're going to lose business. ~ Anne M Mulcahy,

1176:I know I'm breaking a taboo by using the term antiwhite racism, but I do so intentionally, because it's the reality some of our fellow citizens live with, and remaining quiet about it only aggravates their trauma. ~ Jean Francois Cope,

1177:My husband and I always have fun together in everything we do. Some people call me crazy, but the reality is that I enjoy spending each second with him. He is not just my husband - he is my rock and my very best friend! ~ Joyce Giraud,

1178:The kids from the streets don't want preaching or messages. They want what they can identify with. They want to hear about the reality of their situation, not fairy tales. They don't care if it's ugly; they just want reality. ~ Eazy E,

1179:The reality of space travel I think is somewhere in the middle. We will get there, it will be hard, it will take a long time, and in the end, the most extraordinary thing we will find when we get there will be ourselves. ~ Jon Spaihts,

1180:A brief silence followed, during which the reality of my present situation crashed over me. I was alone. I was alone with Cletus Winston. I was alone with Cletus Winston and no one knew where I was. Oh. Shit. ~ Penny Reid,

1181:Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

1182:Luna Hills Trans Asylum. There was something extra creepy about giving a fucked up place a sane, serene name to play down the reality. Why not just call it Sanitarium For The Bat Shit Crazy, or Forgotten Hope Mental Ward? ~ Lucian Bane,

1183:Think about this: terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction-all challenges that know no borders-the reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them. ~ John F Kerry,

1184:We often take for granted that our lights will come on when we flip the light switch, but the reality is that our reliability standards and the current state of the transmission grid leave us all vulnerable to blackouts. ~ Richard Burr,

1185:Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

1186:It's amazing how we wake up every day and just take for granted that life will go on. We know the reality that it will end at some point, yet we still wake up every morning believing deeply, that we will live forever. ~ Benjamin J Carey,

1187:Pragmatism and subjectivism obscure the reality of the truth. They engage the mind, but they make it the servant of our desires and our work. But they can't answer which desires I should pursue and which work is worthwhile. ~ John Piper,

1188:Reading isn’t important because it helps to get you a job. It’s important because it gives you room to exist beyond the reality you’re given. It is how humans merge. How minds connect. Dreams. Empathy. Understanding. Escape. ~ Matt Haig,

1189:The chief difference between the reality and the vision was that in his dream Hetty was continually coming before him in bodily presence — strangely mingling herself as an actor in scenes with which she had nothing to do. ~ George Eliot,

1190:These days the American dream of home ownership has turned into a nightmare for millions of families. They wake every day to the reality of a horrible decline in the value of the home that has meant so much to them. ~ Mortimer Zuckerman,

1191:What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the atomic threat, the alienation of man, I am astonished that they do not color all our literature. ~ Jean Paul Sartre,

1192:And I too change perpetually—now this, now that—now disappointed and peevish because all is not exactly as I had pictured it, and now suddenly discovering that the reality is far more beautiful than I had imagined it. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell,

1193:In its relation to the reality of daily life, the high culture of the past was many things opposition and adornment, outcry and resignation. But it was also the appearance of the realm of freedom: the refusal to behave. ~ Herbert Marcuse,

1194:In science as in romance, the unknown is disrobed sheath by sheath as fervid fantasies imagine the possibilities conquerable by knowledge—fantasies that far outstrip the reality eventually revealed as knowledge progresses. ~ Maria Popova,

1195:There is only one reality—the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all. ~ Anonymous,

1196:The very fact that we long for the change we do is a sign that we are meant to have it. Our very dissatisfaction with our weaknesses and struggles points to the reality that continuing to live in them is not our destiny. ~ Stasi Eldredge,

1197:Whenever we have fifteen free minutes, an hour or two, we have the habit of using our computers or cell phones, music, or conversations to forget and to run away from the reality of the elements that make up our beings. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,

1198:Generally speaking, that's good drama - the marriage plot or the tragedy - but the reality of women's lives is that most of us don't get what we wanted, and most of us find ways to have really interesting lives anyway. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

1199:In acting, there can be a great discrepancy between the part which is played and the reality of the life which lies behind it. Paul suggests that the same can be true of faith. We can profess much and possess little. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson,

1200:I've been blessed, because the type I started in was competition based. It was about being witty and smart and innovative and different. I don't get backlash like some of the reality shows today because that's not who I am. ~ Eva Marcille,

1201:Our world in that living room with its window framing my beloved Elburz Mountains became our sanctuary, our self-contained universe, mocking the reality of black-scarved, timid faces in the city that sprawled below. ~ Azar Nafisi,

1202:The reality is that if you want to be in a reality-based community, you've got to respect reality and that means calling it bad when you see the past ahead and it doesn't look good and acknowledging when it's going to work. ~ John Hodgman,

1203:We should remember that science exists only because there are people, and its concepts exist only in the minds of men. Behind these concepts lies the reality which is being revealed to us, but only by the grace of God. ~ Wernher von Braun,

1204:While we very much regret the impact this will have on certain employees, we must adjust our production capacity to the reality of current business conditions and reduce costs to improve overall financial performance. ~ Christopher Galvin,

1205:Plato, the first true pope of philosophy (sorry, Socrates), argued for a World of Forms above the reality-a transcendent plane of perfect essences, pure and lovely, where nothing ever gets muddy (including the essence of mud.) ~ N D Wilson,

1206:When it comes to addictions, we tend to divide humanity into two groups: those who are prone toward addictions and those who aren’t. The reality, of course, is very different. All human beings have already fallen into sin. ~ Edward T Welch,

1207:A testimony is a conviction, a quiet inward certainty of the reality of the living God, of the divinity of His Beloved Son, of the restoration of Their work in this time. It demands that we do what He has asked us to do. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

1208:At the same, we need to remain sensitive to the reality that we are still an African society in which the majority of the people and communities live under severe deprivations and afflictions that are no fault of theirs. ~ Ibrahim Babangida,

1209:Christianity doesn’t deny the reality of suffering and evil… Our hope… is not based on the idea that we are going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering. ~ Brennan Manning,

1210:That's really what SF is all about, you know: the big reality that pervades the real world we live in: the reality of change. Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have. ~ Frederik Pohl,

1211:The reality is if you take any three people and look at their cellphones or blackberries and facebook pages, you can get to almost everywhere in the country, because we're networked together in a way that is incredibly powerful. ~ Van Jones,

1212:The reality is people are impressed with all kinds of things: intelligence, power, money, charm, talent, and so on. But the ones we tend to stay in love with are, in the long run, the ones who do a decent job loving us back. ~ Donald Miller,

1213:How does your heart respond to the thought that the Universe is alive and compassionate and that with it and with other souls of great power and Light you learn through the process of co-creating the reality that you experience? ~ Gary Zukav,

1214:Secrets always tend towards a domino effect, dividing and mutating and acquiring as they multiply the force of irresistible momentum. One soon learns to live in the reality of the alternative unreality of one’s making. ~ Panayotis Cacoyannis,

1215:The reason Jesus is so adamant about followers surrendering everything is because the reality is this: the one thing we are most reluctant to give up is the one thing that has the most potential to become a substitute for him. ~ Kyle Idleman,

1216:For too long, we've assumed that there is a single template for human nature, which is why we diagnose most deviations as disorders. But the reality is that there are many different kinds of minds. And that's a very good thing. ~ Jonah Lehrer,

1217:If we can learn to understand [our] suffering and open to the reality of it, then instead of simply being overwhelmed by it, we can investigate its causes and begin to let them go. ~ Joseph Goldstein, "Facing the Heat [via Tricycle Magazine]",

1218:Shame can be removed, and you can still be you. Despite your feeling that your destiny and shame’s destiny are identical—that if shame no longer exists, you won’t either—the reality is that you will be more you without shame. ~ Edward T Welch,

1219:Stop paying or buying into the ideas that don't resonate with the reality you prefer. Stop giving them credence. Appreciate, Appreciate your chosen vibration and allow the vibrations that are not aligned with you to de-preciate. ~ Darryl Anka,

1220:There was a conflict - the actual putting together of the reality of the situation didn't seem to gel. I'd been doing kind of a slow ballad type of thing on records, but when it came to performing, I felt I was limiting myself. ~ Van Morrison,

1221:The softer your heart is the less that your past is forming your present and your future. When there is openness and softness of heart, what forms the present and the future is not your past but the reality of your own being. ~ John de Ruiter,

1222:[..] two Popsicles are talking to each other. One accuses, "You're more interested in fantasy than reality". The other responds, "I'm interested in the reality of my fantasy." Both of the Popsicles are melting of their sticks. ~ Maggie Nelson,

1223:Concepts of well-being for countries, for peoples and for individuals are changing. In such a world, to argue for rules that never change would be to deny the reality found in scientific knowledge and reasoned judgment. ~ Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,

1224:If you'd called me an ox, I'd have said I was an ox; if you'd called me a horse, I'd have said I was a horse. If the reality is there and you refuse to accept the name men give it, you'll only lay yourself open to double harassment. ~ Zhuangzi,

1225:Masses of the people think that feminism is always the only about women seeking to be equal to men. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media. ~ bell hooks,

1226:NAFTA recognizes the reality of today's economy - globalization and technology. Our future is not in competing at the low-level wage job; it is in creating high-wage, new technology jobs based on our skills and our productivity. ~ John F Kerry,

1227:Once again, America finds itself with some leaders who believe we can ignore the world without consequences here at home. Apparently they're oblivious to the reality that we are less insulated from global events than ever before. ~ Marco Rubio,

1228:One thing I think celebrities shy away from is exposing the reality that we're all the same. Somebody's not more important because they have a Bentley or a big house or a famous boyfriend or plastic surgery - we're all the same. ~ Aubrey O Day,

1229:The movies often show an honest and good man winning over evil all the time. The reality is not that simple or one-sided. The fictions of movies and arts perpetuate and exploit our beliefs rather than letting us know the truth. ~ Awdhesh Singh,

1230:The reality is, if you go to the library and read biographies, thousands of people have changed, radically changed. St. Augustine was one of them. He lived a terrible a life for the first 33 years, and then he radically changed. ~ Gary Chapman,

1231:We spend our lives telling ourselves the story of past and future, while the reality of the present goes largely unexplored. Now we live in ignorance of the freedom and simplicity of consciousness, prior to the arising of thought. ~ Sam Harris,

1232:When we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things to it - meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc. ~ Dan Ariely,

1233:When you wake up from a nightmare, the reality comforts you. When you wake up from the best dream ever, reality is a burden, a slap-in-the-face reminder that you could feel this, you could have this, but you don’t and you won’t. ~ Karina Halle,

1234:Humans are pretty amazing at living pretty much anywhere and so that makes me optimistic that perhaps humanity will be able to survive itself, because the reality is that we are going to have problems with water in this century. ~ Henry Rollins,

1235:Sometimes, despite the fact that you're reading through masses of material, you just can't not think about a certain event, for it seems to capture the reality of the entire situation so much better than any set of statistics. ~ Nicholson Baker,

1236:The reality is that the overwhelming majority of women are working and they're going to be part of the labor force for a long time. While they may choose to take time off, they're doing things that women in '60s weren't doing. ~ Heather Boushey,

1237:This is the reality about humanity. We are each born with an evil, God-hating heart. Genesis 8: 21 says that every inclination of man's heart is evil from childhood, and Jesus' words in Luke 11: 13 assume that we know we are evil. ~ David Platt,

1238:This society is driven by neurotic speed and force accelerated by greed and frustration of not being able to live up to the image of men and woman we have created for ourselves; the image has nothing to do with the reality of people. ~ Yoko Ono,

1239:True baptism allows us to reframe, and contain, the reality of evil, without needing to blame anyone else, without any need for shame or vengeance. We are all in this together, and our common wound shows itself in different ways. ~ Richard Rohr,

1240:Adding hardware to any computer is hard. The reality is, you're sticking in disks, trying to run installers. We do a very sophisticated installation and de-install but it's invisible to the user and happens almost instantaneously. ~ Jeff Hawkins,

1241:As nice as it sounds to build a company like Barry-Wehmiller, the reality is it’s just not happening. And without those companies it is going to be harder for us to find a job in a company that truly does care about our well-being. ~ Simon Sinek,

1242:From a misanthrope Bacchus makes me sociable … Yet on the other hand I had already bowed and smiled; I had performed at least the motions of complaisancy; and how often have I not observed that the imitation begets the reality. ~ Patrick O Brian,

1243:[Man] literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness, but madness all the same. ~ Ernest Becker,

1244:Ruling Akaran is a strange task. In many ways, it is like balancing an illusion. You must separate the illusion of what you see and the reality of its consequences," he said. "Tell me, my queen, are you ready to play with fate? ~ Roshani Chokshi,

1245:The desire to have meaning and messages in a neutral way, independent of religious commitments, corrupts scholarly work on the Bible, because it suppresses the reality of the presence of God as the key to biblical understanding. ~ Vern Poythress,

1246:There is no way to avoid the reality that the American government in the past years has been the most spectacularly hypocrisy-driven government in the world. We rival the Soviet Union in some stages, in some ways, in hypocrisy. ~ Michael Scheuer,

1247:But as for me, I often remain focused on myself. I become caught up either in all that I accomplish or in all that I have left undone. When life is all about me, I am blinded from the reality of my complete dependence upon my Creator. ~ Anonymous,

1248:Creation is grace: a statement at which we should like best to pause in reverence, fear and gratitude. God does not grudge the existence of the reality distinct from Himself; He does not grudge it its own reality, nature and freedom. ~ Karl Barth,

1249:I believe the president wants this bill, and I know he's taken some steps to bring it about, ... The reality is that with a majority of the members of the House ready to vote for this bill, the speaker refused to call a roll call. ~ Joe Lieberman,

1250:In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit , but as a limiting situation which they can transform. ~ Paulo Freire,

1251:No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,

1252:The last of us could be the very best of us who ever roamed the earth, the great exemplars of a humanity we used to dream of becoming before we got wise to the reality that we are just a mob always in the market for new recruits. ~ Thomas Ligotti,

1253:There is only one reality - the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all ~ Nathaniel Branden,

1254:I mean, the reality is unemployment today - over 14 million Americans are unemployed. That's exactly what it was a year ago. I mean, this - the American people know we can't borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing economy. ~ Mike Pence,

1255:Love stories aren’t always perfect. They can wreak havoc on the heart and distort the soul. I’d gotten lost in love and found the reality at the end of it where I lived in the truth. Not all love stories come with happy endings. ~ Kate Stewart,

1256:Slowly the reality of the situation sank in. He got his ass kicked, learned nothing, and got saved by a dumb dog and an old lady. If he lived long enough to report to Nancy back in Adrianglia, he would have to gloss over this part. ~ Ilona Andrews,

1257:The main thing is that we are part of the reality in ourselves to perfect one's power of discovery and that leads to the discovery of our organic ourselves without fear of immersing ourselves in the earth, the sea, fire or air. ~ Pierre Alechinsky,

1258:When you are in a state of nonacceptance, it's difficult to learn. A clenched fist cannot receive a gift, and a clenched psyche grasped tightly against the reality of what must not be accepted cannot easily receive a lesson. ~ Roger Delano Hinkins,

1259:You don't need to go back in time to be awesome; you just have to start right now. Regretting that you didn't start earlier is a great distraction from moving on your dream today, and the reality is that today is earlier than tomorrow. ~ Jon Acuff,

1260:An electric chain seems to vibrate, as it were, between our brain and him or her preserved there [in a Daguerreotype] so well by the limner's cunning. Time, space, both are annihilated, and we identify the semblance with the reality. ~ Walt Whitman,

1261:attention on your ideal, and refuse to be swerved from your purpose or aim in life. As you get mentally absorbed in the reality of your ideal, by loving and remaining faithful to it, you will see your desire take form in your world. ~ Joseph Murphy,

1262:I am really proud to be a part in whatever way of women becoming active in the political scene. I think it was the first time that people came to terms with the reality of what it meant to have a Senate made up of 98 men and two women. ~ Anita Hill,

1263:Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion. ~ Ray Kurzweil,

1264:A person experiences life as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this self-imposed prison, and through compassion, to find the reality of Oneness. ~ Albert Einstein,

1265:I'm a Christian because Christianity names and addresses sin. It acknowledges the reality that the evil we observe in the world is also present within ourselves. It tells the truth about the human condition - that we're not okay. ~ Rachel Held Evans,

1266:The thing that made Communism seem so plausible to me was my own lack of logic which failed to distinguish between the reality of the evils which Communism was trying to overcome and the validity of its diagnosis and the chosen cure. ~ Thomas Merton,

1267:What better metaphor for the subliminal state than capitalism? This whole notion that you're trying to do good and make things good for the world, but at the same time the reality is that you have to eat other people to end up on top. ~ Owen Pallett,

1268:And if we ground ourselves in the reality that we trust God, we can face circumstances that are out of our control without acting out of control. We can’t always fix our circumstances, but we can fix our minds on God. We can do that. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,

1269:Her clothes, her figure, the expression of her face, the sound of her voice--all these said to him: 'Not the real thing. Everything you lived by and still live by is a lie, a deception that blinds you from the reality of life and death. ~ Leo Tolstoy,

1270:Her perfume and liquor scent made my stomach queasy. Whatever pills she mixed with alcohol couldn’t be healthy. She smelled like half the girlfriends of mafiosos did after they’d succumbed to the reality of their purgatorial existence. ~ Laird Barron,

1271:Islam was something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing their Jesus from the reality of his body even at the expense of the sincerity of his soul. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,

1272:The important aim in Christian meditation is to allow God's mysterious and silent presence within us to become more and more not only a reality but the reality which gives meaning, shape and purpose to everything we do, everything we are. ~ John Main,

1273:Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women . . . . they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation. ~ Bell Hooks,

1274:Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women . . . . they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation. ~ bell hooks,

1275:We can't ignore right-wing demagogues who insist that the word of the doctor who proclaims a child's sex at birth somehow holds more sway over the reality of the body than the word of the person who inhabits it. - Gwendolyn Ann Smith ~ Kate Bornstein,

1276:We should figure out how to do this so that some parents don't feel disenfranchised, angry and upset. It says a lot about the state of where we are in the city, the role of parents and the reality of small school and combining schools. ~ Lisa Randall,

1277:When I was playing Dracula I had to switch off from the reality and fall into this fantasy world. Otherwise I just couldn't cope with what I was doing. It's about switching off. It is about trying to flick a switch, which you have to do. ~ Luke Evans,

1278:Every day you face battles—that is the reality for all creatures in their struggle to survive. But the greatest battle of all is with yourself—your weaknesses, your emotions, your lack of resolution in seeing things through to the end. ~ Robert Greene,

1279:The only weapon of power, its only strategy against this defection, is to reinject the real and the referential everywhere, to persuade us of the reality of the social, of the gravity of the economy and the finalities of production. ~ Jean Baudrillard,

1280:We shall lie down,” Lincoln warned, “pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.” Lincoln ~ Eric Foner,

1281:Don’t blame your parents, don’t blame your boyfriend, don’t blame the weather. Accept the reality, embrace the challenge, and deal with it. Be in charge of your own life. Turn negatives into positives and be proud to be a woman. ~ Diane Von Furstenberg,

1282:Here’s the reality of our current technique: Other people’s requests dictate the decisions we make. We become slaves to others’ demands when we let our time become dictated by requests. We will live reactive lives instead of proactive. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,

1283:One primary reason many believers today have a hard time accepting the role of suffering in their lives or in the lives of friends and loved ones is that they have failed to understand and accept the reality of divine sovereignty. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,

1284:Tension means hurry, fear, doubt. Tension means a constant effort to protect, to be secure, to be safe. Tension means preparing for tomorrow now, or for the afterlife—afraid that you will not be able to face the reality tomorrow, so be prepared. ~ Osho,

1285:The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not. ~ Henry David Thoreau,

1286:You grab the core essence of a true problem and swaddle it in the mad glittery ribbons of fantasy — and therein you find glorious new permutations of conflict. Reality expressed in mind-boggling ways. Reach for fantasy. Find the reality. ~ Chuck Wendig,

1287:Amazingly, the reality distortion field seemed to be effective even if you were acutely aware of it. We would often discuss potential techniques for grounding it, but after a while most of us gave up, accepting it as a force of nature. ~ Walter Isaacson,

1288:I think we have to face the reality that in a society where there is a legitimate threat of terrorism, not being able to see one's face, not being able to have some sense of communication in that way, is for many societies a challenge. ~ Hillary Clinton,

1289:It's understandable why someone would like their entertainment to provide an escape from modern day worries and the reality of war. We feel this record creates a healthy opportunity to process some of these emotions rather than deny them. ~ Eddie Vedder,

1290:The reality of our century is technology: the invention, construction and maintenance of machines. To be a user of machines is to be of the spirit of this century. Machines have replaced the transcendental spiritualism of past eras. ~ Laszlo Moholy Nagy,

1291:The writer trapped among a speechless people is in danger of becoming speechless himself. For then he has no mirror, no corroborations of his essential reality; and this means that he has no grasp of the reality of the people around him. ~ James Baldwin,

1292:Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values. ~ Abraham Maslow,

1293:Do not close your eyes before suffering. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, Including personal contact and visits, images, sound. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world. ~ Gautama Buddha,

1294:I didn’t know believing you had lost your soul mate and then having them re-enter your life made the word ‘relief’ too simple of an emotion, because the reality of having your heart fixed back together was too indescribable for words. Looking ~ Anonymous,

1295:I'm not sure that my films show the reality of life in Iran; we show different aspects of life. Iran is a very extensive and expansive place, and sometimes, even for us who live there, some of the realities are very hard to comprehend. ~ Abbas Kiarostami,

1296:Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts. ~ Thomas Merton,

1297:The moment is brief, barely enough for a flutter of the pulse but long enough for her illusory self to catch up with the reality of the woman gazing back from the shopwindow. It is a little devastating. This is what aging is, she thinks ~ Khaled Hosseini,

1298:this temporal-reality model with its sequence of memories gives you the subjective feeling of time flowing through a sequence of events even while your mind is actually looking at the reality model in your brain in a single observer moment. ~ Max Tegmark,

1299:But love is a fluid thing. It's not the same for every person. The concept is. The reality isn't. When you hear people talking, they're usually trying to validate their own perception of what love is, or what it means to be in love. ~ Brandon Shire,

1300:intellectual respectability in the modern world, the reality of the transcendent God must indeed be proclaimed by the theologians—and proclaimed on the basis of man’s rational competence to know the transempirical [supernatural] realm.”[309] ~ Daryl Aaron,

1301:Neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran’s work with phantom limbs seems to confirm the brain’s remarkable ability to create a sense of cognitive unity even if the reality (of many selves, and of many layers of consciousness) is more complex. ~ Tom Butler Bowdon,

1302:She wanted to scream, You must accept the reality of other people. You think that reality is up for negotiation, that we think it’s whatever you say it is. You must accept that we are as real as you are; you must accept that you are not God. ~ J K Rowling,

1303:The responsibility of the scientist or journalist is to convey the context. If you're talking about the Arctic Sea ice, you have to embrace the reality that there's a huge number of other things that influence that on a year-to-year basis. ~ Andrew Revkin,

1304:The sense of space within the reality of any building is a new concept wherever architecture is concerned. But it is essential ancient principle just the same and is not only necessary now but implied by the ideal of democracy itself. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright,

1305:We set ourselves up for it with the reality show. You've seen me and Nick go at each other's throats on TV. They've got all these people giving their opinions on our marriage and how we handle it when they are watching an edited TV show. ~ Jessica Simpson,

1306:Whether the reality of change is a source of freedom for us or a source of horrific anxiety makes a significant difference. Do the days of our lives add up to further suffering or to increased capacity for joy? That’s an important question. ~ Pema Ch dr n,

1307:A man today has to live with the reality of today. He can no longer live with the reality of 100 years ago. The world's changing so fast. Unless you are prepared to adapt every day, then you have a problem, because the world's not stopping. ~ Mario Testino,

1308:I directed 24's pilot. I felt we should follow the characters around as if we were a documentary crew, using available light, hand-held cameras, split screens, sound that isn't always what it should be, to suit the reality of the premise. ~ Stephen Hopkins,

1309:If this was one of those books, there would now be three pages of head-banging sex. The reality was that he pulled me close, whispered, ‘Mfhbnnntx,’ and I pulled his arm over me like a cover and muttered, ‘Trout,’ and that was pretty much it. ~ Jodi Taylor,

1310:If we are to accept the teaching of Jesus at all, then the only test of the reality of a man's religion is his attitude to his fellow men. The only possible proof that a man loves God is the demonstrated fact that he loves his fellow men. ~ William Barclay,

1311:I’m talking about changing the rules of the game, taking control of the field. All these pedestrian notions about morality and dignity are just fairy tales. Here’s the reality. You do what you have to do until you don’t have to do it anymore. ~ S G Redling,

1312:It’s not dissimilar to the reality-TV-show contestant’s ungrammatical attempt to appear grammatical, a quirk of using the subject pronoun after a preposition, instead of the correct object version. So: You have to choose between Brad or I. ~ Sloane Crosley,

1313:Serious doubting as a theological method re-contextualises Liberation Theology by questioning those very hermeneutical principles which led liberationists to be indifferent to the reality of lemon vendors in the first place. Amongst ~ Marcella Althaus Reid,

1314:That's what happens in Hollywood. People are like, 'I want to hate you, because everyone else seems to love you.' But the reality is this: I'm a simple person who's not interested in attention and who just wants to go about her business. ~ Evangeline Lilly,

1315:The real reason for grounding ourselves in the truth that we are made for more is “so that you may know him better.” The more we operate in the truth of who we are and the reality that we were made for more, the closer to God we’ll become. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,

1316:'Going home' is a journey to the heart of who we are, a place where we can be ourselves and welcome the reality of our beauty and our pain. From this acceptance of ourselves, we can accept others as they are and we can see our common humanity. ~ Jean Vanier,

1317:I've always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality - which is not really... I don't even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation. ~ Gus Van Sant,

1318:Lament in the Bible is a liturgical response to the reality of suffering and engages God in the context of pain and trouble. The hope of lament is that God would respond to human suffering that is wholeheartedly communicated through lament. ~ Soong Chan Rah,

1319:Reality is a projection of consciousness, so if you believe - more than just think - but believe, subliminally, that something is true, it will become true because you will make micro-decisions based on the reality that you have faith in. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh,

1320:Sometimes you get caught up in what's going on around you. The reality is that you are just a regular person. At some point, the career will be over, the bright lights turn off. That can come back to haunt you if you're not just a regular guy. ~ Brett Favre,

1321:The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought. ~ Karl Jaspers,

1322:The purely formal language of geometry describes adequately the reality of space. We might say, in this sense, that geometry is successful magic. I should like to state a converse: is not all magic, to the extent that it is successful, geometry? ~ Rene Thom,

1323:The reality is that we communicate with every part of our being, and there are times when we must use it all. When someone needs us, he or she needs all of us. There's no text that can replace a loving touch when someone we love is hurting. ~ Ashton Kutcher,

1324:When you get bullied, you automatically think that you're the reason why you're getting bullied. The reality is, it's about them, not you...I'm all about blocking people. I'm all about saying, 'You know what, I don't need this in my life.' ~ Katerina Graham,

1325:Goethe epitomizes what was known in the Renaissance as the Ideal of the Universal Man—a person so steeped in all forms of knowledge that his mind grows closer to the reality of nature itself and sees secrets that are invisible to most people. ~ Robert Greene,

1326:They each had scars to deal with. Scars of a different kind, but scars nonetheless. If he could say something--anything--to make a difference, he'd do it, but there simply wasn't anything left to say. The reality of that made him downright sad. ~ Emily March,

1327:Thus, flowers cannot be preserved, but their ethereal oil, their essence, with the same smell and the same virtues, can. The conduct that has had correct concepts for its guidance will, in the result, coincide with the reality intended. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,

1328:Twentieth-century culture's disease is the inability to feel their reality. People cluster to TV, soap operas, movies, theater, pop idols and they have wild emotion over symbols. But in the reality of their own lives, they're emotionally dead. ~ Jim Morrison,

1329:For years I'd been trying to forget..., locking it up and burying it deep in my memory. The journey... had shattered that, bringing it all back - but now that I'd faced it, I found to my surprise that the fear had been worse than the reality. ~ Benedict Jacka,

1330:Intellectual understanding and aestheticism both produce the deceptive, treacherous sense of liberation and superiority which is liable to collapse if feeling intervenes. Feeling always binds one to the reality and the meaning of symbolic contents ~ Carl Jung,

1331:The reality of truth is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thought, in the fullness of love. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,

1332:This is pretty simple stuff. But the truth is, the reality of making money and wise decisions isn't very complicated. However, not many people understand the importance of a don't-worry attitude. If you do, you're one step ahead of the game. ~ Richard Carlson,

1333:While hope was a much-needed commodity around the castle, what he was doing went beyond good leadership – it was a blatant disregard of the reality. There are limits to faith, and he shamelessly crossed them and never looked over his shoulder. ~ Terry Mancour,

1334:While the liberal media elite depict the bowler as a chubby guy with a comb-over and polyester pants, the reality is that bowling is one of the most tech-heavy sports today. Robotic pinsetters and computerized scoring were just the beginning. ~ Chris Hardwick,

1335:Either God is not all-powerful, or God is not absolutely good, or God does not command wherever He has the power to do so. So the existence of evil here below, far from being a proof against the reality of God, is what reveals Him to us in truth. ~ Simone Weil,

1336:Now a days, I don't think these things scare kids. I think that kids are so desensitized to violence and I don't mean this in a negative way what so ever, but, I just think it's the reality that I think that it's just all changing so I don't know. ~ Mila Kunis,

1337:The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction. ~ Chinua Achebe,

1338:this is what’s so dangerous about a society that coddles itself more and more from the inevitable discomforts of life: we lose the benefits of experiencing healthy doses of pain, a loss that disconnects us from the reality of the world around us. ~ Mark Manson,

1339:We have only to see how that which makes up the reality of our lives relates to our vocation; we have only to hear the call God makes to us to work with him. Quite often it is not a matter of doing something different, but doing it differently. ~ Jean Danielou,

1340:Here's the reality, for the next couple of years the Mac OS will experience increasing security threats and mark my words, the company will have to seek outside expertise in the form of a head of security communications in the next 12 months. ~ Stephen Toulouse,

1341:I was always really interested in the reality of things - the two sides to every story - and I always had a darker perspective on things. Even as a kid I would watch the world news for hours just to get a sense of what was going on in the world. ~ Chelsea Wolfe,

1342:Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians have insisted for centuries that God does not exist and that there is 'nothing' out there; in making these assertions, their aim was not to deny the reality of God but to safeguard God's transcendence. ~ Karen Armstrong,

1343:The first eight months were a struggle, but by the final month of my pregnancy, I felt ready. Maybe that’s why you stay pregnant for so long. It’s exactly enough time to mentally prepare for the reality of what is happening in your life. ~ Jodie Sweetin,

1344:The good life may mean doing some things that do not feel comfortable. It may mean sitting long hours just with yourself as you begin to listen to your own questions. That was the reality for me when I was 27, and it was really terrifying. ~ Frances Moore Lappe,

1345:the wisdom literature of thousands of years of history repeatedly validates the reality that the greatest fulfillment in improving ourselves comes in our empowerment to more effectively reach out and help others. Quality of life is inside-out. ~ Stephen R Covey,

1346:To ignore death and to be afraid of it is dumb because everyone is going to face it at some point. If you look at death and the reality of it, you realise that we're all going to die, so let's use this time on Earth to be positive and do good things. ~ Ray Toro,

1347:We made the song a big part of the story [Sausage Party ] itself, in that it's kind of their prayer that they say every morning, because we found that just to have an arbitrary song felt too unrealistic within the reality of our talking food movie. ~ Seth Rogen,

1348:You have no shot at experiencing real change in life if you’re habitually protecting your image, hyping your spiritual brand, and putting out the vibe that you’re a lot more unfazed by temptation than the reality you know and live would suggest. ~ Matt Chandler,

1349:Her voice jolts me back to reality. Back to the reality of the past three years. There are so many things that demand to be said. Where did you go? Do you ever think about me? You've ruined me. Are you okay? But of course, I can't say any of that. ~ Gayle Forman,

1350:One has only to set a loved human being against the fact that we are all in peril all the time to get back a sense of proportion. What does anything matter compared to the reality of love and its span, so brief at best, maintained against such odds? ~ May Sarton,

1351:Since human beings do in fact have equal rights of property, any social system which rejects this right is doomed to utter failure – just as any bridge planner who rejects the reality of gravity will never be able to build a bridge that stands. ~ Stefan Molyneux,

1352:The Board of Inquiry report fails to recognize that the central problem in the Los Angeles Police Department is the culture. The reality is there will not be meaningful reform in the Los Angeles Police Department until the culture is changed. ~ Erwin Chemerinsky,

1353:There’s something about hospital walls; though only made of bricks and plaster, when you’re inside them the noise, the reality of the teeming city beyond, disappears; it’s just outside the door, but it might as well be a magical land far, far away. ~ Kate Morton,

1354:I know this now. I’ve known it for a very long time. You’ve been tormented with memories, but I live with the reality every day. I may have been some rare and exotic flower to him once, but you? Eden, you were and always will be his entire garden. ~ Faith Andrews,

1355:I put away that stuffed God I had all stitched up with my human understandings and fears. God is less formulaic and quantifiable as he once used to be, but experiencing the reality of his love is infinitely better than dragging that other one around. ~ Jim Palmer,

1356:Jobs are a centuries-old concept created during the Industrial Revolution. Despite the reality that we're now deep in the Information Age, many people are studying for, or working at, or clinging to the Industrial Age idea of a safe, secure job. ~ Robert Kiyosaki,

1357:Our public life is largely premised on an exploitation of our common anxiety. The advertising of consumerism and the drives of the acquisitive society, like he serpent, seduce into believing there are securities apart from the reality of God. ~ Walter Brueggemann,

1358:Reading isn’t important because it helps to get you a job. It’s important because it gives you room to exist beyond the reality you’re given. It is how humans merge. How minds connect. Dreams. Empathy. Understanding. Escape. Reading is love in action. ~ Matt Haig,

1359:The average life expectancy for a black man in an American city is something like twenty-three very short years. The reality of that had never fully kicked in before, but it did that night. And I thought, hell, I’m at risk just walking around. ~ Suzanne Brockmann,

1360:The inward eye sees only through symbols. Because science, the dominant myth of our age, has thrust us all into a region of material, concrete reality, we need these symbols to connect our conscious self to the reality of our nature, the unconscious. ~ Bud Harris,

1361:When telescopes work, everyone is an astronomer, and the world is full of stars. When they don’t, everyone whips out their microscopes, and the world is full of flaws. The reality is that you need both microscopes and telescopes to achieve success. ~ Guy Kawasaki,

1362:When we see the reality which can’t be explained by our existing faith and beliefs, we drop or modify our beliefs and try to understand the world by using our renewed beliefs. Our faith is not hard-coded but changes with time like a living entity. ~ Awdhesh Singh,

1363:I feel that your ambitions should always exceed the budget. That no matter what budget you're doing, you should be dreaming bigger than the budget you have, and then it's a matter of reigning it in to the reality. You try to make things count. ~ Guillermo del Toro,

1364:It felt, like, so far from - or far enough from the reality of things that we can enjoy it purely as entertainment. And now it feels a little bit too in alignment, honestly, but yeah - so we'll see how season five [House of Cards] goes over there. ~ Mahershala Ali,

1365:It's not so easy for people to end their own lives. It's not like in the movies. There, they do it like nothing, no pain, and it's all over, they're dead. The reality is not like that. You lie in bed for ten years with the piss oozing out of you. ~ Haruki Murakami,

1366:I was too young and naive then to link up the meaning of those ridiculingly defunct tennis shoes that I was forced to wear with the reality that we were on Welfare and Welfare was not designed to provide a child with any pride in its existence. ~ Richard Brautigan,

1367:Observe the reality as it is. As it is, not as you wish it to be. Perhaps your breath is deep. Perhaps your breath is shallow. Perhaps you breathed in through the left nostril. Perhaps you breathed in through the right nostril. It makes no difference. ~ S N Goenka,

1368:The disorientation of meeting one’s sagging contemporaries, memories of a younger face crashing into the reality of jowls, under-eye pouches, unexpected lines, and then the terrible realization that one probably looks just as old as they do. ~ Emily St John Mandel,

1369:And my father is dead. She did not speak the words aloud, but the reality of them cut her again, deeper and sharper. It seemed to her that each time she thought she had grasped the fact of his death, a few moments later it struck her again even harder. ~ Robin Hobb,

1370:But the reality is that the police serve a certain function, to maintain a certain status quo, and that's one of the things that the movie is about, because it basically gives you three options for looking at the police, as symbolized by Dave Brown. ~ Oren Moverman,

1371:Instead, it is the reality that the God-forsaken one experienced in an eminent way because no one can even approximately experience the abandonment by God as horribly as the Son, who shares the same essence with the Father for all eternity. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar,

1372:It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne,

1373:More often than not, whenever gossip has been written about me, the gossip is more interesting than the reality. I know some public figures hate gossip, but personally I like it because it makes my life sound more glamorous and interesting than it really is. ~ Moby,

1374:When the reality of power has been surrendered, it's playing a dangerous game to seek to retain the appearance of it; the external aspect of vigor can sometimes support a debilitated body, but most often it manages to deal it the final blow. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,

1375:All of us have to deal with death at one time or another, but to have in one's heart a solid conviction concerning the reality of eternal life is to bring a sense of peace in an hour of tragedy that can come from no other source under the heavens ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

1376:If you understand our salary cap, you have to be logical. If Barry Sanders , for instance, came out of retirement, if we were interested we probably couldn't get real interested. So you've got to temper your enthusiasm with the reality of our situation. ~ Jon Gruden,

1377:Let's face the reality that if OJ Simpson had been poor or even lower-middle-class there would have been no media attention. Justice was never a central issue. Our nation's tabloid passion to know about the lives of the rich made class a starting point. ~ bell hooks,

1378:Self-help books for those who believe 'You can have it all' often advise, 'Follow your bliss and money will follow.' With the collapse of the stock markets the reality of trade-offs is more like, 'When you follow your bliss, it's money you'll miss.' ~ Warren Farrell,

1379:It's television. The reality of it is, if you go on the boards and people are saying, "I saw that coming," or "This is lame," or "I can't believe they're doing this again..." Having been one of those people myself, I know better, and try to avoid it. ~ Damon Lindelof,

1380:Our perception of celebrities in Hollywood is not the reality. The reality of our lives is so much like everyone else's life. We have family members we love, everyone gets up in the morning, they have three meals a day and they go about their business. ~ Sissy Spacek,

1381:The pictures we saw before we got down here didn't even touch the reality of what it is like being here. We can be right on the beach with all the devastation and still not be able to imagine what it was like when the wall of water actually came up. ~ Connie Sellecca,

1382:And this is what’s so dangerous about a society that coddles itself more and more from the inevitable discomforts of life: we lose the benefits of experiencing healthy doses of pain, a loss that disconnects us from the reality of the world around us. You ~ Mark Manson,

1383:Each act of imagination, each moment of creative life stands up to the entire material universe and affirms the reality of meaning against the corroding solvents of entropy, dark matter, or whatever else may be dragging the physical world into oblivion. ~ Gary Lachman,

1384:Giving a fuck about something is the only thing that distracts us from the reality and inevitability of our own death. And to truly not give a single fuck is to achieve a quasi-spiritual state of embracing the impermanence of one's own existence. (p.199) ~ Mark Manson,

1385:People are very nice to me, and they've been nice as my career has gotten better and I've gotten more jobs. But the reality is that if I decided tomorrow that I didn't want to act anymore, it's not like people are going to be like, "Please, come back!" ~ Rashida Jones,

1386:The dignity of a woman's life is infinite, her status immeasurable, her capacity unbounded, her role divine...In the fast changing world of today her vision penetrates into the reality of the far beyond, the reality which endures beyond change. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,

1387:The ego is a jealous god, and it wants its interests served. It does not want to admit the reality of any dimensions except those within which it feels comfortable and can understand. It was meant to be an aid but it has been allowed to become a tyrant. ~ Jane Roberts,

1388:The most powerful state for a human to be in is the state of embracing completely the reality of what is - Now. It is to say "Yes" to life, which is now and always now. There is a vast power in that "Yes," that state of inner non-resistance to what is. ~ Eckhart Tolle,

1389:The reality today is that we are all interdependent and have to co-exist on this small planet. Therefore, the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving differences and clashes of interests, whether between individuals or nations, is through dialogue. ~ Dalai Lama,

1390:As business leaders we need to understand that lack of data is not the issue. Most businesses have more than enough data to use constructively; we just don't know how to use it. The reality is that most businesses are already data rich, but insight poor. ~ Bernard Marr,

1391:Because Microsoft seems to sometimes not trust customer choice, they salt XP with all these little gizmos and trap doors to get people to try Microsoft stuff. But the reality is that we're downloading more players than we ever have on a worldwide basis. ~ Robert Glaser,

1392:Controversy What controversy This is reality. What I see is that no matter if you're a conservative or a liberal or whatever side you stand on, this is the reality of the situation - that people's families and their young kids are being affected. ~ Billie Joe Armstrong,

1393:Garth on making his stories feel real "Things like armour, clothes and other small details are very important in building up the reality of the story... I do spend quite a lot of time on things like clothing, armour, weapons and try and make them feel real. ~ Garth Nix,

1394:It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture. Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names. ~ Michael Medved,

1395:No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals. ~ G K Chesterton,

1396:The law is this: the higher you go in leadership, the fewer external forces act upon you and dictate your focus, energy, and direction. Instead you set the terms of engagement and direct your own path, with only the reality of results to push against you. ~ Henry Cloud,

1397:The reality is that we’re in very politicized times. The complete antithesis of Obama is Trump. We are in very polarized times. People are taking a very strong view after a period of time, I think, where people fell asleep on politics to a certain extent. ~ Amma Asante,

1398:Thomas Slater says that modern authority is based on a system of lies that are accepted by the general population. If you pull away the curtain and show the reality of power, people are motivated to question the fictions that govern their own lives. ~ John Twelve Hawks,

1399:Americans believe in the reality of “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism—the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them—inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates,

1400:Black Magick is the process of self-transformation through an antinomian initiatory structure, Black meaning the hidden wisdom, power of darkness, dreams and staging the reality you wish and Magick being the process to ascend, become immortal in spirit. ~ Michael W Ford,

1401:If you take your inspiration from nature, you don't invent anything, because what you want to do is to interpret something. But still, everything passes throught your imagination. What you produce at the end is very different from the reality you started with. ~ Brassai,

1402:I kind of thought actually that Trevor was gone completely mental when he called up here a few weeks ago. Like, why would he not text or email or Facebook? What's with all the reality, I thought. Does he not know he's a million times cooler in virtual form? ~ Donal Ryan,

1403:Immerse them together in the presence of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Yes, baptize them in the name, but, dear friends, that doesn’t just mean getting them wet while you say those names. It means to immerse them in the Reality. ~ Dallas Willard,

1404:Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives. ~ Bell Hooks,

1405:Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives. ~ bell hooks,

1406:The cause of our suffering is our reaction to the reality of no escape: ego clinging and all the trouble that stems from it, all the things that make it difficult for us to be comfortable in our own skin and get along with one another. ~ Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully,

1407:The destiny of photography has taken it far beyond the role to which it was originally thought to be limited: to give more accurate reports on reality (including works of art). Photography is the reality; the real object is often experienced as a letdown. ~ Susan Sontag,

1408:The reality that exists is only one. Then how can there be another self which is to be seen? All are seeing the Self everywhere but they don't understand. What a pity! What to do? If the thought "I am this body" is given up, what is seen is only the Self. ~ David Godman,

1409:The sunlight ranges over the universe, and at incarnation we step out of it into the twilight of the body, and see but dimly during the period of our incarceration; at death we step out of the prison again into the sunlight, and are nearer to the reality. ~ Annie Besant,

1410:While we believe we hold the power to raise our children, the reality is that our children hold the power to raise us into the parents they need us to become. For this reason, the parenting experience isn’t one of parent versus child but of parent with child. ~ Anonymous,

1411:many women don’t live like God’s beloved. We don’t internalize that His love has made us lovely. We don’t rest in the reality that His sufficiency has made us good enough. We don’t identify with our identity. We don’t accept that God has accepted us. ~ Jennifer Rothschild,

1412:There is power in bringing untold stories to light. The freedom to speak about the reality of suffering and death results in a freedom from denial. Lamentations 1 presents as a funeral dirge to remind us that we cannot ignore what is right in front of us. ~ Soong Chan Rah,

1413:We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we'll do it not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that bring people to their senses. ~ Mario Cuomo,

1414:What a strange place, I thought. If I look up everything is so clear and beautiful, and if I look down, everything is so dangerous and ugly. I wished I could keep my head in the sky, but the scorpions brought me back to reality. Or was the sky the reality? ~ Margot Berwin,

1415:Gnostic teachings speak of the reality and power of evil and its fundamental presence throughout manifest existence. They declare that while we may not be able to rid the world or ourselves of evil, we may, and indeed will, rise above it through gnosis. ~ Stephan A Hoeller,

1416:I mean, when you get down to very low numbers of nuclear weapons, and you contemplate going to zero, how do you deal with the reality of that technology being available to almost any country that seeks to pursue it? And what conditions do you put in place? ~ Robert M Gates,

1417:I've always said it's flattering to be desired, just as it's flattering that people accept the reality of the character you play. But it was always ridiculous to assume that because I could play a gigolo on screen I'd play anything like that role off screen. ~ Richard Gere,

1418:Men who no longer can make sure of the reality which they feel and experience through talking about it and sharing it with their fellow-men, live in the same nightmare of loneliness and uncertainty which, in a normal world, is the terrible fate of insanity. ~ Hannah Arendt,

1419:The reality, I believe, is that all change starts small. The big picture is just too unwieldy, too incomprehensible and seemingly immovable. But give us something individual, quantifiable and personalize-able and, suddenly, our perspective shifts to the one. ~ Mick Ebeling,

1420:The reality is that a heart desire for prayer is lacking. Many do not know how to spend half an hour with God! It is not that they absolutely do not pray; they may pray every day—but they have no joy in prayer. Joy is the sign that God is everything to you. ~ Andrew Murray,

1421:The reality is that there's heartbreak and tragedy that has struck American families because people that came into this country illegally are now involved in criminal enterprise and activity. We don't have the resources or the will to deport them systemically. ~ Mike Pence,

1422:The reality of any location in Britain being used in a TV program of a film is that something bad is going to happen! That's the nature of drama. Most of the things that get made or basically grisly detective shows about murders, accidents or medical dramas. ~ Ben Wheatley,

1423:...the reality of God...as cosmic Lover, whose care for his people would go to any lengths and would accept suffering, anguish, even death, if this would bring to his children a full and abundant life...in and under his loving yet demanding care. ~ William Norman Pittenger,

1424:There is in St. Paul's definite, soul-stirring assertion of the wrath of God and the reality of the judgment at hand, a truth more profound than any that underlies our somewhat enfeebled ideas of universal benevolence and the determined progress of the race. ~ Roland Allen,

1425:Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am not proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy. ~ Viktor E Frankl,

1426:Like memory, history was synthetic. Humans thought of both as factual records, but study after study confirmed that they were more like dreams, narratives constructed and reconstructed by the mind to fit the demands of the present, not the reality of the past. ~ Eliot Peper,

1427:Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so. ~ Timothy Snyder,

1428:We have faith in the potentialities of other, of ourselves, and of mankind because, and only to the degree which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and of love. ~ Erich Fromm,

1429:You can’t leave it alone. The flow of the words should be perfect, taking you with it so your heart sinks when you have to put it down. All you want to do is read. It’s all you can think about when in the reality of your daily life. It should consume you. ~ Lynsey M Stewart,

1430:Artist should look at the reality and brutality of modern life in all its color, nature with all its imperfections - that should be the challenge to the modern painter not the didactic idealization of the past. The new generation should forge a new path. ~ Charles Baudelaire,

1431:Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy. ~ Viktor E Frankl,

1432:We have faith in the potentialities of others, of ourselves, and of mankind because, and only to the degree to which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and love. ~ Erich Fromm,

1433:Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. ~ Mike Yaconelli,

1434:And to me, fame is not a positive thing. The idea of being famous is a lot better than the reality. It's fantastic when you go to premieres and people cheer you, but it's not real. And it's totally not my approach to get my name on a club door just because I can. ~ Tom Felton,

1435:If I still remember that all realities are neurological constructs and relative to the observer, I am nonetheless committed now to one reality above all alternatives: the reality of Jesus and Buddha, in which reverence for life is the supreme imperative. ~ Robert Anton Wilson,

1436:It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires, and who can doubt that the interest we have in admitting or denying the reality of the Judgement to come determines the faith of most men in accordance with their hopes and fears. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau,

1437:Joy is deep satisfaction in the will of God, and this must be coupled with recognizing the reality that God’s will is everywhere and in everything. There is no place where we may go and be allowed to murmur or despair because God’s will is somehow “not there. ~ Douglas Wilson,

1438:OK, I say again, not really understanding what it is I am agreeing to, what it is precisely I am accepting. But I am accepting something. The truth of my circumstances? The reality I have until now avoided? It’s much worse than I imagined and also somehow better. ~ Bill Clegg,

1439:The bottom line is that devout Muslims can have no doubt about the reality of paradise or about the efficacy of martyrdom as a means of getting there. Nor can they question the wisdom and reasonableness of killing people for what amount to theological grievances. ~ Sam Harris,

1440:The reality is, there is heartbreaking tragedy that has struck American families because people who came into this country illegally are now involved in criminal and reprise and activity, and we do not have the resources or the will to deport them systematically. ~ Mike Pence,

1441:Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. ~ Mike Yaconelli,

1442:Among the illusions which have invested our civilization is an absolute belief that the solutions to our problems must be a more determined application of rationally organized expertise... The reality is that our problems are largely the product of that application. ~ Voltaire,

1443:As Albert Camus wrote, the doctor’s role is as a witness – to witness authentically the reality of humanity, and to speak out against the horrors of political inaction... The only crime equaling inhumanity is the crime of indifference, silence, and forgetting. ~ James Orbinski,

1444:It is only a matter of time till the reality of the rest of the world comes home. And all the while we are called by Christ to go to them, love them, sacrifice for them, bring the gospel to them. The Great Commission is not child’s play. It is costly. Very costly. ~ John Piper,

1445:The masks are just as important as the reality. The masks are our reality. Everyone’s reality. Life is a performance. When an actor gives a good performance, often people say, “What good choices.” So if life is your grand performance, have you made good choices? ~ James Franco,

1446:You might categorize your own fear as anxiety. But while the reality of fear is different for each of us, one thing remains constant: fear robs us of joy. When fear takes center stage, we find it impossible to live in the “what is” because of the “what might be. ~ Sheila Walsh,

1447:I have no interest in ever coming out. I’m just trying to make the pictures look good; I’m not into trying to make myself look good. And besides, it’s a pretty safe bet that the reality of me would be a crushing disappointment to a couple of 15-year-old kids out there. ~ Banksy,

1448:Like standing on a beach as the tide sucks the sand beneath my feet back out to sea, I can feel my native world, and the reality that supports it, pulling away. I wonder: If I don’t fight hard enough against it, will this reality slowly click in and carry me off? ~ Blake Crouch,

1449:More than anything, people want the reality of the discussion at hand. If what is going on in that building is the real thing, if the transforming love and power of Jesus Christ is being experienced, you can sit on a metal folding chair or in a plush theater seat. ~ Bill Hybels,

1450:The animating principle of mana, the effect of magic, the magical efficacy of spirits, and the reality of collective ideas, dreams, and ordeals are all governed by the laws of this interior reality which modern depth psychology is trying to bring to the surface. ~ Erich Neumann,

1451:The reality is that while the Internet allows content to be written iteratively, the audience does not read or consume it iteratively. Each member usually sees what he or she sees a single time—a snapshot of the process—and makes his or her conclusions from that. ~ Ryan Holiday,

1452:In other words, they had seen a lot. They had heard a lot. But they had not personally applied what they’d seen and heard. Their hearts were not tender to the reality of Jesus. Their hearts were hardened. Access without application will not equal transformation. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,

1453:It's a joke. Greed and the desire to take drugs are two separate things. If you want to separate the two, the thing you do is make drugs legal. Accept the reality that people do want to change their consciousness, and make an effort to make safer, healthier drugs. ~ Jerry Garcia,

1454:It would have been a great story if Brooks had went out there and scored 21 points, ... That would have been great theater. But the reality of that is very difficult, as we know, in this league for any QB when defense is playing good. And the Ravens played well. ~ Herman Edwards,

1455:that rather than attempting to implement, often through lethal force, their conceptual self across the world, people should question their conceptual self and become more comfortable with the reality of their own death. Becker called this “the bitter antidote,” and ~ Mark Manson,

1456:The civil rights vision tends to view group characteristics as mere “stereotypes” and concentrates on changing the public’s “perceptions” or raising the public’s “consciousness.” Yet the reality of group patterns that transcend any given society cannot be denied. ~ Thomas Sowell,

1457:There are many kinds of adult adversities that can provoke severe psychological distress, including debt and unemployment, dysfunctional marital relationships and occupational stress. The reality is that the social causes of mental ill-health are all around us. ~ Richard Bentall,

1458:Traditionally the United States has been the natural leader of the world. That's not just pride as an American speaking; it's just the reality. Without the U.S. being involved in Paris Climate Agreement, it's hard for the world community to move forward as effectively. ~ Al Gore,

1459:He provides the example of a philosopher who puzzles about the reality of time, but who nonetheless applies for a research grant to work on the philosophical problem of time during next year’s sabbatical—without doubting the reality of next year’s arrival. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,

1460:In rehearsals I get so completely wrapped up with the reality that's occurring on stage that by the time the play has opened I'm not usually quite as aware of the distinctions between what I'd intended and the result. There are many ways of getting the same result. ~ Edward Albee,

1461:The reality of our business is that for every actor who's rolled up his tent and given up and gone home, the next day you hear about some shoe salesman at Macy's who had this audition and now he's Harrison Ford. There's always that carrot out there in our business. ~ Scott Bakula,

1462:To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something [the Reality] beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither living nor not-living. It is a state of Pure Awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,

1463:We must all make the mental leap from the pious histories we have read in the martyrologies to the reality of living flesh and blood. Our early martyrs were real men and women, with their own personalities, their flaws and their greatness. We are no different. ~ Michael D O Brien,

1464:Whether we like it or not, each of us is constrained by limits on what we can do and feel. To ignore these limits leads to denial and eventually to failure. To achieve excellence, we must first understand the reality of the everyday, with all its demands ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,

1465:Yoga does not remove us from the reality or responsibilities of everyday life but rather places our feet firmly and resolutely in the practical ground of experience. We don't transcend our lives; we return to the life we left behind in the hopes of something better. ~ Donna Farhi,

1466:I believe strongly that most people in this country U.S. don't want a totalitarian state...And when conservatives say, "Get the government out of my backyard," the reality is, you can't say that and put somebody in the White House who's gonna be in your business. ~ Whoopi Goldberg,

1467:It saddens me to see the reality-television shows that are getting so much fanfare that are a celebration of stupidity and the degradation of women. And those women are consistently wearing too short, too tight dresses. I hope the trend of aging gracefully returns. ~ Prabal Gurung,

1468:The reality is that we are safe and we have the capacity to enjoy the wonders of life in the present moment. When we recognize that our suffering is based on images instead of current reality, then living happily in the present moment becomes possible right away. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,

1469:The reality is what you wear matters. If you're a singer and on TV and in the living room of some 12-year-old girl, she's watching what you're wearing and saying and doing... That's what little girls do, so there is a big responsibility and I take it very seriously. ~ Taylor Swift,

1470:We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off. ~ John Trudell,

1471:Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution - perhaps the first modern political institution. ~ Adam Gopnik,

1472:He said that in order to save the world you must serve the people in your life. “You gradually struggle less and less for an idea,” Merton wrote, “and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything. ~ Elizabeth Lesser,

1473:Our body remains alive, yet sooner or later our soul will receive the mortal blow. The perfect crime - for we don't know who murdered our joy, what their motives were, or where the guilty parties are to be found...they too are the victims of the reality they created. ~ Paulo Coelho,

1474:The reality is though, no matter what good deeds 99% of the worlds bikers do, the public has already formed its opinion and if something like this can't change it nothing ever will. People love to hate a bad boy, and bikers are like everybody's personal last ditch hope. ~ Anonymous,

1475:All speech, action and behavior are fluctuations of consciousness. All life emerges from, and is sustained in, consciousness. The whole universe is the expression of consciousness. The reality of the universe is one unbounded ocean of consciousness in motion. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,

1476:If you want to know the reality of life, then you should travel. At first travel your country, after that start travelling the world. Travel to know your surroundings so that we can say that you are an aware person. Nature, people and culture are calling you, so travel. ~ Imran Khan,

1477:Often I'm told I'm an inspiration to people which I will forever be grateful for. But the reality is that I'm only able to help others because others are helping me. Everyday people who are doing whatever they can to help make a difference are what keeps me going. ~ Lizzie Velasquez,

1478:the human mind is alike in every race and sect of people: when the danger isn’t close enough, or when enough generations have passed so that the reality of hardship and persecution ceases to be real, the threats fade. They take on the quality of interesting fiction. ~ Michael Bunker,

1479:To listen for the future starts with listening to present & past; that is, to come face to face with the reality of our failures and our limits. It is to let them in, to allow them to dissolve our story and our certainty. It is a process of humiliation and of grief. ~ Eisenstein,

1480:Underlying the preaching of the Puritans are three basic axioms: 1. The unique place of preaching is to convert, feed and sustain, 2. The life of the preacher must radiate the reality of what he preaches, 3. Prayer and solid Bible study are basic to effective preaching. ~ J I Packer,

1481:All Christians enjoy a unity of mission in which we have one Lord, one faith, and one baptism (Eph. 4:4–5). There is surely disunity in the visible church, but that is not as important as the reality of the unity that we enjoy by virtue of our shared communion in Christ. ~ R C Sproul,

1482:Faith and science thus find themselves reconciled, not in the way of the scholastic, who claims to prove the reality of his dogmatic propositions by means of universal reason, but by the assertion of the overall oneness of the real that has no double or reflection. ~ Alain de Benoist,

1483:Materialists thereby deny the reality of mind (while they use their minds to advance materialism), determinists deny the reality of human choice (while they choose determinism), and relativists deny the fact of right and wrong (while they judge you if you disagree). ~ Nancy R Pearcey,

1484:My mother gave me an understanding that as good as you think you are, you're not so great. There's always room for improvement. The reality is when people don't have someone to give them a sense of guidance, and say, "Hey, man, that's not happening," it's really hard. ~ Stevie Wonder,

1485:The reality for me is simple. When music is written, it is usually categorized as classical. When it is improvised, it can still be called classical if it is an inspired improvisation. In either category, it is still music, and it can be good or bad or simply mediocre. ~ Dave Brubeck,

1486:The reality is that Qaddafi has been trying to talk to us about his weapons system for years, and we ignored him. The Libyans even came to me about two years ago and offered me a chance to go through their facilities because they couldn't get anybody's attention here. ~ Seymour Hersh,

1487:We act upon assumptions that control our view of reality, even though reality might be quite different... By definition, what is unthinkable isn't part of our reality... your assumptions about what is possible prevent you from accurately seeing the reality before you. ~ David Morrell,

1488:I refer, of course, to the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence. It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink. We can debate its origins endlessly and search for villains on ideological grounds, but the reality is pure arithmetic. ~ Mitch Daniels,

1489:Regardless of what we think we know and should happen the reality is that a lot of stock action is random. Therefore, money management is crucial if you want to be successful as a trader. To me, it`s the cornerstone of both making a living at trading and building wealth. ~ Jeff Cooper,

1490:The reality is fuck the animals, fuck biodiversity, fuck the laws, and long live construction," [Ricardo Freitas] said. "All of this is being done because some people will make a lot of money, and it's being done with no monitoring, no support, no rescue of species. ~ Juliana Barbassa,

1491:The reality is that no one can be authentic by trying to be like someone else. There is no doubt you can learn from their experiences, but there is no way you can be successful trying to be like them. People trust you when you are genuine and authentic, not an imitation. ~ Bill George,

1492:Thus the motivation, energy and drive for holiness are all found in the reality and power of God's grace in Christ. And so if I am to make any progress in sanctification, the place where I must always begin is the gospel of the mercy of God to me in Christ Jesus. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson,

1493:Doubts are suppressed by groups... But remember that the internal incentives that shape how the group perceives risks and rewards may be very different from the reality of the risks and rewards in the external marketplace. Those incentives can distort risk perception. ~ Daniel Kahneman,

1494:Half the time we walk around in love with the idea of a thing instead of the reality of it. But sometimes things don't turn out that way. You have to pay attention to what's real, what's in the world. Not some imaginary alternative, as if it's a choice we could make. ~ David Wroblewski,

1495:It's not like we have not had close games. We've just been able to win them, and as a result, the reality sometimes doesn't set in that you're weak in certain areas or you're not doing certain things well. ... When you win, sometimes it overshadows a poor performance. ~ Mike Krzyzewski,

1496:There is something about human nature that just doesn't want to face the reality that we live in two worlds. We live in the physical, material world where we have jobs, read books, and go about our business. And we live in a spiritual world - and that is a world at war. ~ John Eldredge,

1497:To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know. ~ Sengcan,

1498:What’s a healthy person?” he asked. I told him I was still figuring that out myself, but I’d not met a lot of healthy people who were dramatic. The reality is this, though: a healthy person coupled with an unhealthy person will still result in an unhealthy relationship. ~ Donald Miller,

1499:Coffee, the sober drink, the mighty nourishment of the brain, which unlike other spirits, heightens purity and lucidity; coffee, which clears the clouds of the imagination and their gloomy weight; which illuminates the reality of things suddenly with the flush of truth. ~ Jules Michelet,

1500:The disparity between being a 10-year-old boy playing air guitar, wishing I was a rock star, and the reality of the whole thing is insane. A girl will throw her bra onstage, and I say to myself, if I was the guy that pumped your gas today, would you throw your bra at me? ~ John Rzeznik,

  181 Integral Yoga
   32 Christianity
   27 Yoga
   18 Philosophy
   18 Occultism
   15 Psychology
   11 Science
   10 Poetry
   9 Integral Theory
   8 Fiction
   4 Theosophy
   4 Education
   3 Mysticism
   3 Islam
   3 Buddhism
   2 Baha i Faith
   1 Sufism
   1 Hinduism
   1 Alchemy


  134 Sri Aurobindo
   68 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   66 The Mother
   28 Satprem
   20 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   15 Carl Jung
   13 Sri Ramakrishna
   11 Swami Krishnananda
   11 A B Purani
   9 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   7 Rudolf Steiner
   7 Plato
   7 H P Lovecraft
   6 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   5 George Van Vrekhem
   4 Swami Vivekananda
   4 Aleister Crowley
   4 Aldous Huxley
   3 William Butler Yeats
   3 Plotinus
   3 Paul Richard
   3 Muhammad
   3 Jorge Luis Borges
   3 Bokar Rinpoche
   2 Ken Wilber
   2 Jordan Peterson
   2 Henry David Thoreau
   2 Baha u llah


   36 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   28 The Life Divine
   16 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   13 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   12 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   11 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   11 Talks
   11 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   10 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   9 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   9 City of God
   8 The Phenomenon of Man
   8 Letters On Yoga I
   8 Essays Divine And Human
   8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   7 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   7 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   7 Lovecraft - Poems
   7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   6 The Secret Doctrine
   6 The Human Cycle
   6 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   6 Prayers And Meditations
   6 Letters On Yoga II
   6 Let Me Explain
   6 Essays On The Gita
   5 The Future of Man
   5 Record of Yoga
   5 Preparing for the Miraculous
   5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
   4 The Perennial Philosophy
   4 Questions And Answers 1956
   4 Questions And Answers 1955
   4 Questions And Answers 1953
   4 Letters On Yoga IV
   4 Isha Upanishad
   4 Agenda Vol 06
   4 Agenda Vol 02
   3 Yeats - Poems
   3 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   3 Theosophy
   3 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
   3 Tara - The Feminine Divine
   3 Quran
   3 Magick Without Tears
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
   2 Walden
   2 The Problems of Philosophy
   2 The Essentials of Education
   2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
   2 Savitri
   2 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   2 On Education
   2 Maps of Meaning
   2 Labyrinths
   2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
   2 Bhakti-Yoga
   2 Aion
   2 Agenda Vol 13
   2 Agenda Vol 12
   2 Agenda Vol 08
   2 Agenda Vol 04
   2 Agenda Vol 03

0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   A little white silhouette, twelve thousand miles away, solitary and frail amidst a spiritual horde which had once and for all decided that the meditating and miraculous yogi was the apogee of the species, was searching for the means, for The Reality of this man who for a moment believes himself sovereign of the heavens or sovereign of a machine, but who is quite probably something completely different than his spiritual or material glories. Another, a lighter air was throbbing in that breast, unburdened of its heavens and of its prehistoric machines. Another Epic was beginning.   Would Matter and Spirit meet, then, in a third PHYSIOLOGICAL position that would perhaps be at last the position of Man rediscovered, the something that had for so long fought and suffered in quest of becoming its own species? She was the great Possible at the beginning of man. Mother is our fable come true. 'All is possible' was her first open sesame.

00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen   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.

00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Still the Upanishad says this is not the final end. There is yet a higher status of reality and consciousness to which one has to rise. For beyond the Cosmos lies the Transcendent. The Upanishad expresses this truth and experience in various symbols. The cosmic reality, we have seen, is often conceived as a septenary, a unity of seven elements, principles and worlds. Further to give it its full complex value, it is considered not as a simple septet, but a threefold heptad the whole gamut, as it were, consisting of 21 notes or syllables. The Upanishad says, this number does not exhaust the entire range; I for there is yet a 22nd place. This is the world beyond the Sun, griefless and deathless, the supreme Selfhood. The Veda I also sometimes speaks of the integral reality as being represented by the number 100 which is 99 + I; in other words, 99 represents the cosmic or universal, the unity being The Reality beyond, the Transcendent.    Elsewhere the Upanishad describes more graphically this truth and the experience of it. It is said there that the sun has fivewe note the familiar fivemovements of rising and setting: (i) from East to West, (ii) from South to North, (iii) from West to East, (iv) from North to South and (v) from abovefrom the Zenithdownward. These are the five normal and apparent movements. But there is a sixth one; rather it is not a movement, but a status, where the sun neither rises nor sets, but is always visible fixed in the same position.   --    The third in the line of ascension is the region of Varuna and the Adityas, that is to say, of the large Mind and its lightsperhaps it can be connected with Tantric Ajnachakra. The fourth is the domain of Soma and the Marutsthis seems to be the inner heart, the fount of delight and keen and sweeping aspirations the Anahata of the Tantras. The fifth is the region of the crown of the head, the domain of Brahma and the Sadhyas: it is the Overmind status from where comes the descending inflatus, the creative Maya of Brahma. And when you go beyond, you pass into the ultimate status of the Sun, The Reality absolute, the Transcendent which is indescribable, unseizable, indeterminate, indeterminable, incommensurable; and once there, one never returns, neverna ca punarvartate na ca punarvartate.    VIII. How Many Gods?   --    In Yajnavalkya's enumeration, however, it is to be noted, first of all, that he stresses on the number three. The principle of triplicity is of very wide application: it permeates all fields of consciousness and is evidently based upon a fundamental fact of reality. It seems to embody a truth of synthesis and comprehension, points to the order and harmony that reigns in the cosmos, the spheric music. The metaphysical, that is to say, the original principles that constitute existence are the well-known triplets: (i) the superior: Sat, Chit, Ananda; and (ii) the inferior: Body, Life and Mindthis being a reflection or translation or concretisation of the former. We can see also here how the dual principle comes in, the twin godhead or the two gods to which Yajnavalkya refers. The same principle is found in the conception of Ardhanarishwara, Male and Female, Purusha-Prakriti. The Upanishad says 14 yet again that the One original Purusha was not pleased at being alone, so for a companion he created out of himself the original Female. The dual principle signifies creation, the manifesting activity of The Reality. But what is this one and a half to which Yajnavalkya refers? It simply means that the other created out of the one is not a wholly separate, independent entity: it is not an integer by itself, as in the Manichean system, but that it is a portion, a fraction of the One. And in the end, in the ultimate analysis, or rather synthesis, there is but one single undivided and indivisible unity. The thousands and hundreds, very often mentioned also in the Rig Veda, are not simply multiplications of the One, a graphic description of its many-sidedness; it indicates also the absolute fullness, the complete completeness (prasya pram) of The Reality. It includes and comprehends all and is a rounded totality, a full circle. The hundred-gated and the thousand-pillared cities of which the ancient Rishis chanted are formations and embodiments of consciousness human and divine, are realities whole and entire englobing all the layers and grades of consciousness.    Besides this metaphysics there is also an occult aspect in numerology of which Pythagoras was a well-known adept and in which the Vedic Rishis too seem to take special delight. The multiplication of numbers represents in a general way the principle of emanation. The One has divided and subdivided itself, but not in a haphazard way: it is not like the chaotic pulverisation of a piece of stone by hammer-blows. The process of division and subdivision follows a pattern almost as neat and methodical as a genealogical tree. That is to say, the emanations form a hierarchy. At the top, the apex of the pyramid, stands the one supreme Godhead. That Godhead is biune in respect of manifestation the Divine and his creative Power. This two-in-one reality may be considered, according to one view of creation, as dividing into three forms or aspects the well-known Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra of Hindu mythology. These may be termed the first or primary emanations.

0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism    According to the Tantra, the Ultimate Reality is Chit, or Consciousness, which is identical with Sat, or Being, and with Ananda, or Bliss. This Ultimate Reality, Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, is identical with The Reality preached in the Vedas. And man is identical with this Reality; but under the influence of maya, or illusion, he has forgotten his true nature. He takes to be real a merely apparent world of subject and object, and this error is the cause of his bondage and suffering. The goal of spiritual discipline is the rediscovery of his true identity with the divine Reality.    For the achievement of this goal the Vedanta prescribes an austere negative method of discrimination and renunciation, which can be followed by only a few individuals endowed with sharp intelligence and unshakable will-power. But Tantra takes into consideration the natural weakness of human beings, their lower appetites, and their love for the concrete. It combines philosophy with rituals, meditation with ceremonies, renunciation with enjoyment. The underlying purpose is gradually to train the aspirant to meditate on his identity with the Ultimate.   --    One day, when guru and disciple were engaged in an animated discussion about Vedanta, a servant of the temple garden came there and took a coal from the sacred fire that had been lighted by the great ascetic. He wanted it to light his tobacco. Totapuri flew into a rage and was about to beat the man. Sri Ramakrishna rocked with laughter. "What a shame!" he cried. "You are explaining to me The Reality of Brahman and the illusoriness of the world; yet now you have so far forgotten yourself as to be about to beat a man in a fit of passion. The power of maya is indeed inscrutable!" Totapuri was embarrassed.    About this time Totapuri was suddenly laid up with a severe attack of dysentery. On account of this miserable illness he found it impossible to meditate. One night the pain became excruciating. He could no longer concentrate on Brahman. The body stood in the way. He became incensed with its demands. A free soul, he did not at all care for the body. So he determined to drown it in the Ganges. Thereupon he walked into the river. But, lo! He walks to the other bank." (This version of the incident is taken from the biography of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Saradananda, one of the Master's direct disciples.) Is there not enough water in the Ganges? Standing dumbfounded on the other bank he looks back across the water. The trees, the temples, the houses, are silhouetted against the sky. Suddenly, in one dazzling moment, he sees on all sides the presence of the Divine Mother. She is in everything; She is everything. She is in the water; She is on land. She is the body; She is the mind. She is pain; She is comfort. She is knowledge; She is ignorance. She is life; She is death. She is everything that one sees, hears, or imagines. She turns "yea" into "nay", and "nay" into "yea". Without Her grace no embodied being can go beyond Her realm. Man has no free will. He is not even free to die. Yet, again, beyond the body and mind She resides in Her Transcendental, Absolute aspect. She is the Brahman that Totapuri had been worshipping all his life.

0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   The Reality of your being we are always united.   To think that if you leave your body you will come closer to

01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    This mastery will be effected not merely in will, but in mind and heart also. For the New Man will know not by the intellect which is egocentric and therefore limited, not by ratiocination which is an indirect and doubtful process, but by direct vision, an inner communion, a soul revelation. The new knowledge will be vast and profound and creative, based as it will be upon The Reality of things and not upon their shadows. Truth will shine through every experience and every utterance"a truth shall have its seat on our speech and mind and hearing", so have the Vedas said. The mind and intellect will not be active and constructive agents but the luminous channel of a self-luminous knowledge. And the heart too which is now the field of passion and egoism will be cleared of its noise and obscurity; a serener sky will shed its pure warmth and translucent glow. The knot will be rent asunderbhidyate hridaya granthih and the vast and mighty streams of another ocean will flow through. We will love not merely those to whom we are akin but God's creatures, one and all; we will love not with the yearning and hunger of a mortal but with the wide and intense Rasa that lies in the divine identity of souls.    And the new society will be based not upon competition, nor even upon co-operation. It will not be an open conflict, neither will it be a convenient compromise of rival individual interests. It will be the organic expression of the collective soul of humanity, working and achieving through each and every individual soul its most wide-winging freedom, manifesting the godhead that is, proper to each and every one. It will be an organisation, most delicate and subtle and supple, the members of which will have no need to live upon one another but in and through one another. It will be, if you like, a henotheistic hierarchy in which everyone will be the greatest, since everyone is all and all everyone simultaneously.

01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    This is what I was trying to make out as the distinguishing trait of the real spiritual consciousness that seems to be developing in the poetic creation of tomorrow, e.g., it has the same rationality, clarity, concreteness of perception as the scientific spirit has in its own domain and still it is rounded off with a halo of magic and miracle. That is the nature of the logic of the infinite proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought element or what corresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form to the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such a thing, the presentation of a divine name and form. And this distinguishes it from the mystic consciousness which is not the supreme solar consciousness but the nearest approach to it. Or, perhaps, the mystic dwells in the domain of the Divine, he may even be suffused with a sense of unity but would not like to acquire the Divine's nature and function. Normally and generally he embodies all the aspiration and yearning moved by intimations and suggestions belonging to the human mentality, the divine urge retaining still the human flavour. We can say also, using a Vedantic terminology, that the mystic consciousness gives us the tatastha lakshana, the nearest approximative attribute of the attri buteless; or otherwise, it is the hiranyagarbha consciousness which englobes the multiple play, the coruscated possibilities of The Reality: while the spiritual proper may be considered as prajghana, the solid mass, the essential lineaments of revelatory knowledge, the typal "wave-particles" of The Reality. In the former there is a play of imagination, even of fancy, a decorative aesthesis, while in the latter it is vision pure and simple. If the spiritual poetry is solar in its nature, we can say, by extending the analogy, that mystic poetry is characteristically lunarMoon representing the delight and the magic that Mind and mental imagination, suffused, no doubt, with a light or a reflection of some light from beyond, is capable of (the Upanishad speaks of the Moon being born of the Mind).    To sum up and recapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in man has ever been an attempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic inspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from the very beginning. The movement has followed devious waysstrongly negative at timeseven like man's life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but the ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet's ideal in the dawn of the world was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by his poetic power,kavi kavitv divi rpam sajat. Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurator, in a way, of modernism and modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit:

01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    What is Reason, the faculty that is said to be the proud privilege of man, the sovereign instrument he alone possesses for the purpose of knowing? What is the value of knowledge that Reason gives? For it is the manner of knowing, the particular faculty or instrument by which we know, that determines the nature and content of knowledge. Reason is the collecting of available sense-perceptions and a certain mode of working upon them. It has three component elements that have been defined as observation, classification and deduction. Now, the very composition of Reason shows that it cannot be a perfect instrument of knowledge; the limitations are the inherent limitations of the component elements. As regards observation there is a two-fold limitation. First, observation is a relative term and variable quantity. One observes through the prism of one's own observing faculty, through the bias of one's own personality and no two persons can have absolutely the same manner of observation. So Science has recognised the necessity of personal equation and has created an imaginary observer, a "mean man" as the standard of reference. And this already takes us far away from the truth, from The Reality. Secondly, observation is limited by its scope. All the facts of the world, all sense-perceptions possible and actual cannot be included within any observation however large, however collective it may be. We have to go always upon a limited amount of data, we are able to construct only a partial and sketchy view of the surface of existence. And then it is these few and doubtful facts that Reason seeks to arrange and classify. That classification may hold good for certain immediate ends, for a temporary understanding of the world and its forces, either in order to satisfy our curiosity or to gain some practical utility. For when we want to consider the world only in its immediate relation to us, a few and even doubtful facts are sufficient the more immediate the relation, the more immaterial the doubtfulness and insufficiency of facts. We may quite confidently go a step in darkness, but to walk a mile we do require light and certainty. Our scientific classification has a background of uncertainty, if not, of falsity; and our deduction also, even while correct within a very narrow range of space and time, cannot escape the fundamental vices of observation and classification upon which it is based.    It might be said, however, that the guarantee or sanction of Reason does not lie in the extent of its application, nor can its subjective nature (or ego-centric predication, as philosophers would term it) vitiate the validity of its conclusions. There is, in fact, an inherent unity and harmony between Reason and Reality. If we know a little of Reality, we know the whole; if we know the subjective, we know also the objective. As in the part, so in the whole; as it is within, so it is without. If you say that I will die, you need not wait for my actual death to have the proof of your statement. The generalising power inherent in Reason is the guarantee of the certitude to which it leads. Reason is valid, as it does not betray us. If it were such as anti-intellectuals make it out to be, we would be making nothing but false steps, would always remain entangled in contradictions. The very success of Reason is proof of its being a reliable and perfect instrument for the knowledge of Truth and Reality. It is beside the mark to prove otherwise, simply by analysing the nature of Reason and showing the fundamental deficiencies of that nature. It is rather to the credit of Reason that being as it is, it is none the less a successful and trustworthy agent.   --    It may be answered that Reason is a faculty which gives us progressive knowledge of The Reality, but as a knowing instrument it is perfect, at least it is the only instrument at our disposal; even if it gives a false, incomplete or blurred image of The Reality, it has the means and capacity of correcting and completing itself. It offers theories, no doubt; but what are theories? They are simply the gradually increasing adaptation of the knowing subject to the object to be known, the evolving revelation of reality to our perception of it. Reason is the power which carries on that process of adaptation and revelation; we can safely rely upon Reason and trust It to carry on its work with increasing success.    But in knowledge it is precisely finality that we seek for and no mere progressive, asymptotic, rapprochement ad infinitum. No less than the Practical Reason, the Theoretical Reason also demands a categorical imperative, a clean affirmation or denial. If Reason cannot do that, it must be regarded as inefficient. It is poor consolation to man that Reason is gradually finding out the truth or that it is trying to grapple with the problems of God, Soul and Immortality and will one day pronounce its verdict. Whether we have or have not any other instrument of knowledge is a different question altogether. But in the meanwhile Reason stands condemned by the evidence of its own limitation.

01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    This is the truth that is trying to dawn upon the new age. Not matter but that which forms the substance of matter, not intellect but a vaster consciousness that informs the intellect, not man as he is, an aberration in the cosmic order, but as he may and shall be the embodiment and fulfilment of that orderthis is the secret Intuition which, as yet dimly envisaged, nevertheless secretly inspires all the human activities of today. Only, the truth is being interpreted, as we have said, in terms of vital life. The intellectual and physical man gave us one aspect of The Reality, but neither is the vital and psychical man the complete reality. The one acquisition of this shifting of the viewpoint has been that we are now in touch with the natural and deeper movement of humanity and not as before merely with its artificial scaffolding. The Alexandrine civilisation of humanity, in Nietzsche's phrase, was a sort of divagation from nature, it was following a loop away from the direct path of natural evolution. And the new Renaissance of today has precisely corrected this aberration of humanity and brought it again in a line with the natural cosmic order.    Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the change. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism which is also in its turn a section of the integral reality. It means the order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the physical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence of humanity is not the transcendence of one or other of its levels but the total transcendence to an altogether different status and the transmutation of humanity in the mould of that statusnot a Nietzschean Titan nor a Bergsonian Dionysus but the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the Spirit the incarnation of a god-head.

01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    In his inquiry into truth and certitude Pascal takes his stand upon what he calls the geometrical method, the only valid method, according to him, in the sphere of reason. The characteristic of this method is that it takes for granted certain fundamental principles and realitiescalled axioms and postulates or definitionsand proceeds to other truths that are infallibly and inevitably deduced from them, that are inherent and implied in them. There is no use or necessity in trying to demonstrate these fundamentals also; that will only land us into confusion and muddle. They have to be simply accepted, they do not require demonstration, it is they that demonstrate others. Such, for instance, are space, time, number, The Reality of which it is foolishness and pedantry to I seek to prove. There is then an order of truths that do not i require to be proved. We are referring only to the order of I physical truths. But there is another order, Pascal says, equally I valid and veritable, the order of the Spirit. Here we have another set of fundamentals that have to be accepted and taken for granted, matrix of other truths and realities. It can also be called the order of the Heart. Reason posits physical fundamentals; it does not know of the fundamentals of the Heart which are beyond its reach; such are God, Soul, Immortality which are evident only to Faith.    But Faith and Reason, according to Pascal, are not contraries nor irreconcilables. Because the things of faith are beyond reason, it is not that they are irrational. Here is what Pascal says about the function and limitation of reason:

0 1960-10-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    Those people deny The Reality of all physical needs.    Its quite all right when youve come TO THE END, when you have totally mastered the body by means of the spiritual consciousness. But until then, I dont agree I do not at all agree.

0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Its easy to understand how someone who has this experience can spread it and act upon others, since to have it you must touch the unique, supreme Essence of the whole manifestation the Origin and the Essence, the Source and The Reality of all that is; then you immediately enter the realm of Unity where there is no more separation among individuals: its a single vibration that can repeat itself endlessly in outer forms.2    If you go high enough, you come to the Heart of everything. Whatever manifests in this Heart can manifest in all things. This is the great secret, the secret of divine incarnation in an individual form. For in the normal course of things, what manifests at the center is only realized in the outer form with the awakening and RESPONSE Of the will within the individual form. But if the central Will is constantly, permanently represented in one individual, he can then serve as an intermediary between that Will and all beings, and will FOR THEM. Whatever this being perceives and consciously offers to the supreme Will is replied to as if it came from each individual being. And if individuals happen to be in a more or less conscious and voluntary relationship with this representative being, their relationship increases his efficacy and the supreme Action can work in Matter in a much more concrete and permanent way. This is the reason for these descents of what could be called polarized consciousnesses that always come to earth for a particular realization, with a definite purpose and missiona mission decided upon before the actual embodiment. These mark the great stages of the supreme incarnations upon earth.

0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    In the end, the Agenda is simply Mother's long quest in search of The Reality of Matter: what is Matter... truly? The 'transformation', perhaps, means simply to 'un-cover' what is actually there.    ***

0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    So this episode with X is probably part of the same process. What has been affected is a certain confidence in The Reality of the Power, The Reality of spiritual action; there seems to be no communication between here (above) and there (below).    Does that mean youre breaking all contacts with the earth?    No, thats not it. Things go on. I dont know, I have no idea. I cant say exactly what it is, but. Its a. Dont know. In any case, it seems obvious that the NATURE of the contact must become very different. Because in proportion to this detachment, The Reality of the Vibration and especially the vibration of divine Lovekeeps growing and growing (out of all proportion to the body, even) in a FORMIDABLE manner, formidable! The body is beginning to feel nothing but that.    Is this detachment necessary, then, for divine Love to be established? I dont know.

0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Satprem remembers that a few years earlier Mother had told him about the circumstances of this incident: during her work in trance, Mother discovered the location of the 'mantra of life'the mantra that has the power to create life (and to withdraw it, as well). Theon, an incarnation of the Asura of Death, was of course quite interested and told Mother to repeat this mantra to him. Mother refused. Theon became violently angry and the link was cut (the link that connected Mother to her body). When he realized the catastrophe his anger had caused, Theon grew afraid (for he knew who Mother was) and he then, as Mother recounts, made use of all his power to help her re-enter her body. Later, Mother gave this mantra to Sri Aurobindo... who let it quietly sink into oblivion. For it is not through a mantra that the secret of life (or death) is to be mastered, but through knowledge of the true Powerin other words, ultimately, knowledge of The Reality of Matter and the mechanism of death: it is the whole cellular yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Mother.    Tamas: inertia, obscurity.

0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Striking though the parallel may be, there is still a fundamental difference between these mathematical concepts and Mothers experience. In the first case, we are dealing with conceptual instruments used by the human mind to better explain and master the world: no one has actually seen electromagnetic wavesnot to speak of gravitational ones! They are images, convenient models, invisible and nonexistent in themselves. They exist only through their effects: a beam of sunlight, which is an electromagnetic wave, strikes our retina and enables us to distinguish a flower; by means of gravitational waves, Newtons apple falls from the tree but no one has lived The Reality of those waves. The way Mother grasps reality, on the contrary, is first and foremost through lived experience. She is the movement, she is the wave: I walk around the room, and that is what is walking. Here we touch upon a stupendous mystery and a formidable question: How is it possible for a material and cellular body to be the wave that at once constitutes and carries the worlds along in its infinite undulating movement and governs the existence of atoms and galaxies? How is it possible to be an infinite and ubiquitous electromagnetic wave while remaining within the narrow confines of a human body?    In being THAT, it might be said, Mother thus resolves the famous question of the unified-field theory, the theory to which Einstein devoted the last years of his life in vain, that would describe the movements of both planets and atoms in a single mathematical equation. Mothers body-consciousness is one with the movement of the universe, Mother lives the unified-field theory in her body. In so doing she opens up to us not merely one more physical theory, but the very path to a new species on earth, a species that will physically and materially live on the scale of the universe. The posthuman species might not simply be one with a few organs more or less, but rather one capable of being at every point in the universe. A sort of material ubiquity. It may not be so much a new as an ubiquitous species, a species that embraces everything, from the blade of grass under our feet to the far galaxies. A multifarious, undulating existence. A resume or epitome of evolution, really, which at the end of its course again becomes each point and each species and each movement of its own evolution.

0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Why have I left politics? Because the politics of the country is not a genuine thing belonging to India. It is an importation from Europe and an imitation. At one time there was a need of it. We also have done politics of the European kind. If we had not done it, the country would not have risen and we too would not have gained experience and attained full development. There is still some need of it, not so much in Bengal as in the other provinces of India. But the time has come to stop the shadow from extending and to seize on The Reality. We must get to the true soul of India and in its image fashion all works.    People now talk of spiritualizing politics. Its result will be, if there be any permanent result, some kind of Indianized Bolshevism. Even to that kind of work I have no objection. Let each man do according to his inspiration. But that is not the real thing. If one pours the spiritual power into all these impure forms the water of the Causal ocean into raw vesselsei ther the raw vessels will break and the water will be spilt and lost or the spiritual power will evaporate and only the impure form remain. In all fields it is the same. I can give the spiritual power but that power will be expended in making the image of an ape and setting it up in the temple of Shiva. If the ape is endowed with life and made powerful, he may play the part of the devotee Hanuman and do much work for Rama,2 so long as that life and that power remain. But what we want in the Temple of India is not Hanuman, but the god, the avatar, Rama himself.

0 1963-02-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Only, you cannot see it unless you see the whole. At the time, everything was preexistent, although unfolding in time for the Manifestation. But it was preexistent. Not preexistent as we understand it, not everything at a given moment. Oh, how impossible! Its impossible to express it. I still feel what I could call the warmth of the experience The Reality, the life, the warmth of the experience are there. You know, I have lived in a Light! A Light which isnt our light, which has nothing to do with what we call light, a Light so warm and powerful! A creative Light. So powerful! Everything was so perfectly harmonious: everything, everything without exception, even the things that appear to be the very negation of divinity. And a rhythm! (gesture as of great waves) A harmony, so wonderful a TOTALITY, where the sense of sequence Sequence doesnt mean things being like this (chopping gesture), one being abolished by the next, it is At the time I might have been able to find or invent the words, I dont know, now now, its only the memory of it. The memory, not the presence itself.    The experience lasted long. It started in the night, lasted through the whole day, and last night there was still something of it lingering, but then (laughing) I seemed to be told, So then, arent you going to move on? Are you going to stay with this experience, are you stuck there?! It is so true: things move fast, fast, fast, and run as you may, youre still not going fast enough.

0 1963-03-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    But what people call miracles nowadays are almost always performed by beings of the vital world, or by men in relation with such beings, so theres a mixtureit accepts The Reality of certain things, the truth of certain things that arent true. And it works on that basis. So its unacceptable.    Some other day Ill tell you more, though what Ill have to say will be personally to you, for the Agenda, it just wont do for the Bulletin. There you are.

0 1964-03-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    You see, this aphorism would eventually lead to an absolute subjectivity, and only that absolute subjectivity would be truewell, its NOT like that. Because that means pralaya, it means Nirvana. Well, there isnt only Nirvana, there is an objectivity thats real, not false but how can you say what it is! Its something I have felt several timesseveral times, not just in a flash: The Reality of (How can we express ourselves? We are always deceived by our words) In the perfect sense of Oneness and in the consciousness of Oneness there is room for the objective, for objectivityone doesnt destroy the other, not at all. You may have the sense of a differentiation; not that it isnt yourself, but its a different vision. I told you, all that we can say is nothing, its nonsense, because the purpose of words is to express the unreal world, but Yes, that may be what Sri Aurobindo calls the sense of Multiplicity in Unity (maybe that corresponds a little), just as you feel the internal multiplicity of your being, something of that sort. I dont at all have the sensation of a separate self anymore, not at all, not at all, not even in the body, yet that doesnt prevent me from having a certain sense of an objective relationshipwell, yes, it leads us back to his change in the relation of sun-consciousness and earth-consciousness. (Laughing) Maybe thats really is the best way of putting it! Its a relation of consciousness. It isnt at all the relationship between oneself and othersnot at all, thats entirely canceled but it might be like the relation of consciousness between the various parts of ones being. And it gives objectivity to those various parts, obviously.    (long silence)

0 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    That has been the object of my work all these last few days: how to get at that refusal to know? It has been there for a long time. And its the sequel to what Sri Aurobindo said in one of his letters: he says that India, with its methods, has done much more for spiritual life than Europe with all her doubts and questions.4 Thats exactly the point. Its a kind of refusala refusal to accept a certain method of knowing that isnt the purely material method, and a negation of the experience, of The Reality of the experiencehow can they be convinced of it? And then, there is Kalis method, which is to give a sound thrashing. But its a lot of damage for little result, if you ask me.    No, it is still a big problem.

0 1965-08-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    2) Similarly, if you were asked to comment on The Reality as you see it, how would you do it in one sentence?    The present reality is a big falsehoodhiding an eternal truth.    3) What, according to you, are the three main barriers that stand between the vision and The Reality?    i) Ignorance ii) Fear iii) Falsehood.

0 1965-10-13, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Sometimes, in the individual or collective evolution, there are phases when you have emerged from the grating, that is to say, you no longer believe in it, no longer believe in the truth and importance, The Reality of those things, but you dont have the other thing yet, so in between the two its austere, dull and cold. You no longer have the excitement of one thing, and not yet the joy of the other; you are in between the two and its a little arid. But only a small, limited number of individuals have reached that stage. They are the people who say, I dont want this world. And then they go away.    But as for the other thing

0 1965-12-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    You just have to give him all the affection you had for him, exactly as if he were physically by your side. You give him your affection and do for him, like that, in the inner silence, what you would like to do if he were here physically and it makes no difference, thats all. Thats the point on which I insist, that illusion that sticky illusionwhich clings to our consciousness and says that this is The Reality (Mother pinches the skin of her hands)but this is the falsehood, this is the illusion, because its not the correct expression of reality.    And rebels (they dont know, theyre ignorant) revolt because things arent as they should be, and instead of saying to themselves (because they dont have the knowledge), instead of saying to themselves, Now Ill work for things to become as they want to be, as they should be, they go off. They say, No, I dont accept the world as it is. Thats very good. Its very good, you neednt accept it, nobody is asking you to accept it as it is, but if you have goodwill, help it to change.

0 1966-07-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    But it has caused a sort of detachment from the gestures, the outside, as if life werent quite realyet real at the same time, but The Reality isnt there. There is the sense of the Presence; thats constant. And thats a good thing to begin with, it strongly counterbalances the sense and perception of all the Distortion. There is even an insistence from this Presence for That alone to exist and to increasingly reduce The Reality of the perception of what must not be. There will be a great strength in the being when the perception of what must not be is dimmed, erased as something far away and nonexistent.    Thats what is being prepared.

0 1967-03-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    For instance, these last few days I have clearly seen that men do not know The Reality the concrete realityof the invisible, because if they knew it they would go insane. They have such a fear of these things.    Even now, when they see in a vision someone they loved when he was alive, when they see him at night, they say, Ohh, a ghost! And they are horribly afraid!

0 1967-07-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Theres a whole world of things people know out of force of habit, automatically, which have been completely erased (because all habits are increasingly being erased), so at times its embarrassing! And it comes back, all those things come back like that, as if on a screen (but the screen of consciousness), and those that correspond to a reality come forward like an image, with The Reality behind, so then its very easy: you catch hold of The Reality and its over. But with many theres only the image and nothing behind! So how do you replace them?    When it comes to languages, its very interesting. Those are things that come, stay for an hour or two, then go away; they are like lessons, things to be learned. And so, one day, there came the question of languages, of the different languages. Those languages were formed progressively (probably through usage, until, as you said, one day someone took it into his head to fix it in a logical and grammatical way), but behind those languages, there are identical experiencesidentical in their essence and there are certainly sounds that correspond to those experiences; you find those sounds in all languages, the different sounds with minor differences. One day (for a long time, more than an hour), it unfolded with all the evidence to support it, for all languages. Unfortunately, I couldnt see clearly, it was at night, so I couldnt note it down and it went away. But it should be able to come back. It was really interesting (Mother tries to recall the experience.) There were even languages I had never heard: Ive heard many European languages; in India, several Indian languages, chiefly Sanskrit; and then, Japanese. And there were languages I had never heard. It was all there. And there were sounds, certain sounds that come from all the way up, sounds (how can I explain?), sounds we might call essential. And I saw how they took shape and were distorted in languages (Mother draws a sinuous descending line that branches out). Sounds like the affirmative and the negativewhat, for us, is yes and noand also the expression of certain relationships (Mother tries to remember). But the interesting point was that it came with all the words, lots of words I didnt know! And at that time I knew them (it comes from a subconscient somewhere), I knew all those words.

0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    One could say that it is far more difficult to go from the mental to the supramental life than to go from a certain psychic emotion in life something that is like a reflection, a luminous emanation of the divine Presence in matterto the supramental consciousness; it is much easier to go from that into the supramental consciousness than to go from the highest intellectual speculation to any supramental vibration. Perhaps it is the word that misleads us! Perhaps it is because we call it supramental that we expect to reach it through a higher intellectual mental activity. But The Reality is quite different. With this very high and pure and lofty intellectual activity, one seems to go towards a kind of cold, powerless abstraction, an icy light that is surely very remote from life and still further away from the experience of the supramental reality.    The new substances that is spreading and acting in the world contains a warmth, a power, a joy so intense that all intellectual activity seems cold and dry beside it. And that is why the less one talks about these things, the better it is. A single instant, a single impulse of deep and true love, a single minute of deep communion with the divine Grace brings you much closer to the goal than all possible explanations.

0 1971-07-03, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    But, of course, thats what Ive just told you: everything is falling aparteverything and everybody. Its a factwell, that fact is there to tell us, This is what must cease to be. For the ordinary human consciousness, thats The Realitywell, its not true, thats all. We just have to tell ourselves its not true.    I mean, for example, what I have written is no longer a living reality for me.

0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    In your reply to the Swedish magazine, you emphasize, The major obstacle to tolerance is not agnosticism but Manichaeism. That is also why religions will never be able to unite humanity, because they have remained Manichaean in their principle, because they are founded on morality, on a sense of good and evil, necessarily varying from one country to the next. Religions will not reconcile men with one another any more than they have reconciled men with themselves, or reconciled their aspiration to be with their need for action and for the same reasons, for in both cases they have dug an abyss between an ideal good, a being they have relegated to heaven, and an evil, a becoming, which reigns supreme in a world where all is vanity. I would like to quote here a passage from Sri Aurobindos Essays on the Gita which throws a clear light on the problem: To put away the responsibility for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices in which the religious thought of India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of The Reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the worlds are Gods discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony.2 I believe that the characters of your books would not be seeking sacrifice and death so intensely if they did not feel the side of light and joy behind the mask of darkness in which they so passionately lose themselves.    Sri Aurobindo has constantly stressed that, through progressive evolutionary cycles, humanity must go beyond the purely ethical and religious stage, just as it must go beyond the infrarational and rational stage, in order to reach a new spiritual and suprarational ageotherwise we will simply remain doomed to the upheavals, conflicts and bloody sacrifices that shake our times, for living according to a code of morality is always a tragedy, as one of the characters in Hope notes.

0 1972-06-24, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Take for example someone who is ill and BELIEVES in The Reality of his illness; the effect of the Action is lessened in proportion to his wrong belief.    Its hard to explain.

02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    That is what some of the old spiritual disciplines taught. Even if there is no unbridgeable gulf between Spirit and Matter, they said, even if they are not incommensurables but form one reality, Spirit is The Reality in essence, Matter is an inferior formulation. Matter has unrolled itself out of the infinite, it can only be and it has got to be rolled back again into the Spirit.    Here comes the second cardinal principle in Sri Aurobindo's vision of The Reality, viz, that an inferior formulation of the Spirit, an involute on a lower plane is not essentially or truly, even in its outer and dynamic nature and character, a mere temporary or by-the-way reality, an epiphenomenon; its sole function is not simply to impede, diminish and obscure the real reality so that it has to be gradually rejected and eliminated on the way back to the source. As a matter of fact, an inferior formulation has a double function; in the line of descent it limits, obscures, deviates and in the end falsifies the higher reality; at the same time, however, it concretises, energises, incarnates what it obscures. But in the ascending line, that is to say, in the movement of reversal from the inferior to the superior, the movement need not be always that of disincarnation and dissolution, it may be that of purification and illumination and fulfilment. The analogy will not be, then, that of Matter being dematerialised into pure energy but that of Matter being transformed into a radiant substance, not losing itself in the process of radiation, being wholly made of the undying luminous stuff.    Such a movement of transforming evolution is not merely a possibility or a probability: it is a fact of Nature. Indeed, natural evolution means nothing less than that. First of all, evolution means the reversibility of Nature; for, it is the backward movement of an involutionary process. We have said that the supreme truth and realitysat-cit-ananda, as it is calledmultiplied and concretised itself gradually through various steps and stages of a diminishing power of expression or an increasing entropy of self-concealment: the main grades being the Supermind, the Overmind, the Higher Mind, the Mind, Life and lastly the body or Matter. Having arrived at the extreme end that Matter represents,the farthest apparently from the original source, the movement turns round and seeks to go up the ladder through the same gradations it has traversed. But this process of reversal is not merely a resolution and dissolution, it is a process of greater fulfilment and synthetisation, of sublimation as well as of integration.

02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Now, as The Reality along with its consciousness, in the downward involutionary course towards materialisation, has been gradually disintegrating itself, multiplying itself, becoming more and more obscure and dense in separated and isolated units, even so the Person too has been following a parallel course of disintegration and multiplication and obscuration and isolation. At the origin lies, as we have said, the Perfect Person, the Supreme Person, in his dual aspect of being and nature, appearing as the supreme purua and the supreme prakti, our Father and our Mother in the highest heaven.    Next is the domain of the Supermind with which the manifestation of the Divine starts. We have said it is the world of typal realities, of the first seed-realities, where the One and the Many are united and fused in each other, where the absolute unity of the Supreme maintains itself in undiminished magnitude and expresses and formulates itself perfectly in and through the original multiplicity. Here take birth the first personalities, absolute truth-forms of the Divine. Here are the highest gods, the direct formations of the Divine himself. Here are the Four Powers and Personalities of swara whom Sri Aurobindo has named after the Vaishnava terminology: (i) Mahavira, embodying the Brahmin quality of Knowledge and Light and wide Consciousness, (ii) Balarama, embodying the Kshatriya quality of Force and intense dynamism, (iii) Pradyumna, embodying the quality of love and beauty the Vaishya virtue of mutuality and harmony and solidarity, and (iv) Aniruddha, embodying the Sudra quality of competent service, of organisation and execution in detail. Corresponding with these Four there are the other Four Powers and Personalities of the Divine Mother war (i) Maheshwari, (ii) Mahakali, (iii) Mahalakshmi and (iv) Mahasaraswati. Next in the downward gradient comes the Overmind where the individualised powers and personalities of the Divine tend to become self-sufficient and self-regarding; their absolute unity is loosened and the lines of multiplicity begin to be more independent of each other, each aiming at a special fulfilment of its own. Still the veil that is being drawn over the unity is yet transparent which continues to be sufficiently dynamic. This is the abode of the gods, the true and high gods: it is these that the Vedic Rishis appear to have envisaged and sought after. The all gods (vive dev) were indeed acknowledged to be but different names and forms of one supreme godhead (dev) it is the one god, says Rishi Dirghatamas, who is called multifariously whether as Agni or Yam a or Matariswan; it is the one god, again, who is described as having a thousand heads and a thousand feet. And yet they are separate entities, each has his own distinct and distinctive character and attribute, each demands a characteristic way of approach and worship. The tendency towards an exclusive stress is already at work on this level and it is the perception of this truth that lies behind the term henotheism used by European scholars to describe the Vedic Religion.   --    We have thus far followed the course of the break-up of Personality, from the original one supreme Person, through a continuous process of multiplication and disintegration, of parcellation and crystallisation into more and more small self-centred units, until we reach the final pulverisation as purely material physico-chemical atoms. Now with the reversal of consciousness, in its return movement, we have again a process of growth and building up of individuality and personality, with the awakening and ascension of consciousness from level to level on the physical plane and in the material embodiment, there occurs too an evolution of the personal aspect of The Reality.    We say that at the lowest level of involution, in Matter, where consciousness has zero magnitude, there is no personality or individuality. It is all a mechanical play of clashing particles that constantly fly apart or come together according to the force or the resultant of forces that act upon them. An individuality means a bounded form as its basis of reaction and a form that tends to persist and grow by assimilation; it means a centre of a definite manner and pattern of reaction. Individuality, in its literal sense, designates that which cannot be divided (in + dividus). Division is only another name for death for the particular entity. Even in the case of cell-division or self-division of some lower organisms, in the first instance the original living entity disappears and, secondly, the succeeding: entities, created by division, always re-form themselves again into integral wholes. A material particle, on the other hand, is divisible ad infinitum. We have been able to divide even an atom (which means also that which cannot be divided) to such an extent as to reduce it to a mere charge of energy, nay, we have sublimated it to a geometrical point. Individualisation starts with the coming of life. It is a ganglion of life-force round which a particular system of action and reaction weaves itself. The characteristic of individuality is that each one is unique, each relates itself to others and to the environment in its own way, each expresses itself, puts forth its energy, receives impacts from outside in a manner that distinguishes it from others. It is true this character of individuality is not very pronounced in the earlier or rudimentary forms of life. Still it is there: it grows and develops slowly along the ladder of evolution. Only in the higher animals it attains a clear and definite norm and form.

02.03 - An Aspect of Emergent Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Bertr and Russell made a move in the right direction with a happy suggestion which unhappily he had not the courage to follow up. Mind (and Life), he says, are certainly emergents out of Matter; that is because The Reality is neither, it is a neutral stuff out of which all emergents issue. The conclusion is logical and sensible. But as he was initially bound to his position of scientific scepticism, he could not further question or probe the neutral and stopped on the fence.    The problem in reality, however, is simple enough, if we allow the facts to speak for themselves and do not hesitate to accept the conclusions to which they inevitably lead. After Matter came Life; that is to say, out of Matter came Life, and that can only be because Life was involved in Matter. And if such a conclusion makes of Matter a potentially living thing, we shall have to accept the position. In the same way, Mind that followed Life came out of Life, because Mind was involved in Life; and if that means endowing Life with a secret mentality, well, there is no help for it. And if, as a natural consequence of the two premises we have to admit the existence of some kind of mind or consciousness secreted in Mattera minimal psychic life, according to McDougall that would be but what the Upanishads always declared: Creation -is a vibration of consciousness, and all things and all kinds of existence are only forms and modalities of consciousness.

02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Or The Reality living there enshrined:   Only they knew what Mind could take and build   --   Offered to The Reality beyond,   And saw her loose into infinity

02.07 - George Seftris, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    This reaction led him not to escape The Reality but to detach himself and rise to heights from where he could see a clearer beauty in earthly things. He says:    Just a little more

02.08 - Jules Supervielle, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Reality is so real that it is always there, and it is not always altogether intangible, invisible. You touch it often enough but you do not know that it was The Reality. You give it another name: perhaps imagination, illusion, hallucination. Yes, at the dead of night when you have forgotten yourself, forgotten the world, nothing exists, you call out his true name and set him in frontO my soul, O my God!    In the next poem that I quote, the mystery is explained, that is to say, described a little more at length.

03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The inner soul the psychicvery often undergoes a secret preparation, develops and comes forward but just waits, as it were, behind the thin though opaque screen; and because of that it gives no objective indication of its growth and readiness. We see no patent sign of what is usually known as fitness or aptitude or capacity. Otherwise how to explain the conversion of a profligate and dilettante like Augustine, or of a rebel like Paul, or of scamps like Jagai-Madhai. Often the purest gold hides in the basest ore, the diamond is coal turned, as it were, inside out. This, one would say, is the Divine Grace that blows where it listsmakes of the dumb a prattler, of the lame a mountain-climber. Yet, but what is this Divine Grace and how does it move and act? It does not act on all and sundry, it does not act on all equally. What is the reason? Appearances often belie The Reality: a contrary mask is put on, it would appear, deliberately, with a set purpose. The: sense and significance of this mystery? The hard, obscure, obstinate, rebel outer crust may continue long but it is corroded from within and one day, all on a sudden, it crumbles and dissolves and becomes in a new avatar the vehicle and receptacle of the very thing it opposed and denied.    Virtues are not indications of the fire of the inner soul, nor are vices irremediable obstacles to its growth. The inner soul, we have said, feeds upon allit is indeed fire, the omnivorous, sarvabhuk,virtues and vices and everything else and gather strength from everywhere. The mystery of miracles, of a sudden change or reversal or revolution in consciousness and way of life lies in the omnipotency of the psychic being. The psychic being has the power of making the apparently impossible, for this reason that it is a portion of the almighty Divine, it is the supreme Conscious-Power crystallised and canalised in a centre for the sake of manifestation. It is a particle from the Being, a spark of the Consciousness, a ripple from the Delight cast into the fastnesses of Matter and the, material body. Now, it is the irresistible urge of this particle, this spark, this ripple to grow and expand, to become in the end the Vast the Ocean and the Sun and the sphere of Infinityto become that not merely in an essential status but in a dynamic and apparent becoming also. The little soul, originally no bigger than a thumb, goes forward through one life after another enlarging and intensifying itself till it recovers and establishes its parent reality in this material body here below, till it unveils what is latent within itself, what is its own, what is itself,its integral self-fulfilment, the Divine integrality.

03.03 - The Inner Being and the Outer Being, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   There are always two different consciousnesses in the human being, one outward in which he ordinarily lives, the other inward and concealed of which he knows nothing. When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes The Reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the   Mother. One is then aware of two consciousnesses, this inner one and the outer which has to be changed into its counterpart and instrument - that also must become full of peace, light, union with the Divine.

03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    A question is asked, where, at what stage or level of Involution does the principle of exclusive concentration (the principle of Ignorance) come in? If, as Sri Aurobindo says, it comes subsequently at a later stage, where was it then before? Was it not in the Absolute Reality itself? There can be nothing that is not inherent in the Absolute Reality. We all know, nothing comes out of nothing. Then, if it is in the original Reality already, why should it come out at a later stage and not be active from the very beginning? This standpoint seems to have been anticipated by some schools (Visishtadwaita Vedanta, for example) who describe in consequence The Reality (Brahman) as consisting, when viewed as a totality, of both Knowledge and Ignorancecit-acit; the Ignorance is a sort of peripheral reality not touching or affecting the Knowledge, but connected with or depending upon the nuclear reality, something like the physical body coexisting with and depending on the soul or self. One can also remember in this connection the Purusha-Prakriti relation in Sankhya. Such a standpoint, I suppose, is the precursor or philosophical background of what is well known as the Manichean principle.    Sri Aurobindo's view is different. It is something like this I am putting the thing as simply as possible, without entering into details or mysteries that merely confuse the brain. The Absolute Reality contains all, nothing can be outside it, pain and sin and all; true. But these do not exist as such in the supreme status, they are resolved each into its ultimate and fundamental force of consciousness. When we say I all things, whatever they are, exist in the Divine Consciousness, the Absolute, we have an idea that they exist there as they do here as objects or entities; it goes without saying, they do not. Naturally we have to make a distinction between things of Knowledge and things of Ignorance. Although there is a gradation between the twoKnowledge rolls or wraps itself gradually into Ignorance and Ignorance unrolls or unfolds itself slowly into Knowledgestill in the Divine Consciousness things of Knowledge alone exist, things of Ignorance cannot be said to exist there on the same title, because, as I have said, the original truths of things alone are therenot their derivations and deformations. One can say, indeed, that in the supreme Light darkness exists as a possibility; but this is only a figure of speech. Possibility does not mean that it is there like a seedor even a chromosome rodto sprout and grow. Possibility really means just a chance of the consciousness acting in a certain way, developing in a particular direction under certain conditions.

03.05 - The World is One, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    In the higher scheme of Nature, the next evolutionary status that is being forged,itis unity, harmony that is insisted upon, for that is the very basis of the new creation: whatever militates against that, whatever creates division and disruption must be banned and ruthlessly eschewed. In The Reality of things, in the actual life that man lives, it will be found that on the whole, things that separate are less numerous and insistent than those which unite, man and man and nation and nation, if each one simply lives and lets live: on the contrary, it is the points of concordance and mutuality that abound. A certain knot or twist in the mind makes all the difference: it brings in the ignorance, selfishness, blind passiona possession by the dark forces of atavism that makes the mischief.    We ask for freedom, liberty of the individual, self-determinationwell and good. But that does not mean the licence to do as one pleases, impelled by one's irrational idiosyncrasies. The individual must be truly individual, not a fractional being, the self must be the real self, not a shadow or surface formulation in order to have the full right to unfettered movement. Liberty, yes; but that means liberty for all which means again the other two terms of the great trinity, equality and fraternity. Individuality, yes; that means every individuality, in other words, solidarity. The two sides of the equation must be given equal value and equal emphasis. If the stress upon one leads to Nazism, Fascism or Stalinism, steam-rollered uniformity or streamlined regimentation, the death of the individual, the other emphasis leads to disintegration and disruption, to the same end in a different way. But in the world of today, after the victory in the last war over the Nazi conception of humanity, it seems as though the spirit of disruption has gone abroad, human consciousness has been atom-bombed into flying fragments; so we have the spectacle of all manner of parochialism pullulating on the earth, regional and ideologicalimperial blocs, nations, groups, parties have chequered ad infinitum, have balkanised human commonalty.

03.07 - Some Thoughts on the Unthinkable, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Divine has two aspects in its manifestation, the one in which it is the All, the infinite and equal Brahman, spread wide as to include the two extremes, Knowledge and Ignorance, Birth and Death, impartially containing or consisting of the dualitiesit is The Reality that is; the other is The Reality that becomesit is not the All, but the Over-All, the Transcendent that manifests and is being embodied; it is not the duality of Knowledge and Ignorance, but Supra-knowledge; it is not the duality of Birth and Death, but Immortality; it is the Divine in its own Truth-Nature that lies on one side beyond and behind, at the origin, and on the other, involved and submerged in the play of the All and gradually emerging out of the All, transforming it and giving it a concrete form even in the likeness of the original transcendent supra-Nature.    Both the Divines are to be envisaged and established in one single undivided realisation the static and equal and impartial Brahman forming the basis, the unshakable calm and absolute freedom, and the dynamic emergent Brahman revealing more and more in the manifested creation a definite divine Purpose and Aim and Fulfilment, The one accepts and contains everything, for it is everything; the other, on the basis of that wide acceptation, chooses and selects, keeps back or dissolves and annihilates, in the progression of its increasing light, the darkness, the ignorance that form one part of the dual Nature.

03.09 - Buddhism and Hinduism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Buddhists deny likewise the real existence of general ideas: according to them only individuals are real existences, general ideas are mere abstractions. The Hindus, on the other hand, like Plato who must have been influenced by them, affirm The Reality of general ideas-although real need not always mean material.    (IV) The Vedic Rishis declared with one voice that all existence is built upon delight, all things are born out of delight and move from delight to delight, and delight is their final culmination. Buddha said misery is the hallmark of things created; sorrow is the marrow and pith and the great secret of existence. Sabbe samkhara anichcha. Sabbe samkhara dukkha. Sabbe dhamma anatta.1

04.01 - The Divine Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    But there is a still closer mystery, the mystery of mysteries. There has not been merely a general descent, the descent of a world-force on a higher plane into another world-force on a lower plane; but that there is the descent of the individual, the personal Godhead into and as an earthly human being. The Divine born as a man and leading the life of a man among us and as one of us, the secret of Divine Incarnation is the supreme secret. That is the mechanism adopted by the Divine to cure and transmute human illshimself becoming a man, taking upon himself the burden of the evil that vitiates and withers life and working it out in and through himself. Something of this truth has been caught in the Christian view of Incarnation. God sent upon earth his only begotten son to take upon himself the sins of man, suffer vicariously for him, pay the ransom and thus liberate him, so that he may reach salvation, procure his seat by the side of the Father in Heaven. Man corrupted as he is by an original sin cannot hope by his own merit to achieve salvation. He can only admit his sin and repent and wait for the Grace to save him. The Indian view of Incarnation laid more stress upon the positive aspect of the matter, viz, the role of the Incarnation as the inaugurator and establisher of a new order in lifedharmasasthpanrthya. The Avatar brings down and embodies a higher principle of human organisation, a greater consciousness which he infuses into the existing pattern, individual or collective, which has -served its purpose, has become otiose and time-barred and needs to be remodelled, has been at the most preparatory to something else. The Avatar means a new revelation and the uplift of the human consciousness into a higher mode of being. The physical form he takes signifies the physical pressure that is exerted for the corroboration and fixation of the inner illumination that he brings upon earth and in the human frame. The Indian tradition has focussed its attention upon the Goodreyasand did not consider it essential to dwell upon the Evil. For one who finds and sees the Good always and everywhere, the Evil does not exist. Sri Aurobindo lays equal emphasis on both the aspects. Naturally, however, he does not believe in an original evil, incurable upon earth and in earthly life. In conformity with the ancient Indian teaching he declares the original divinity of man: it is because man is potentially and essentially divine that he can become actually and wholly divine. The Bible speaks indeed of man becoming perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect: but that is due exclusively to the Grace showered upon man, not because of any inherent perfection in him. But in according full divinity to man, Sri Aurobindo does not minimise the part of the undivine in him. This does not mean any kind of Manicheism: for Evil, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not coeval or coterminous with the Divine, it is a later or derivative formation under given conditions, although within the range and sphere of the infinite Divine. Evil exists as a stern reality; even though it may be temporary and does not touch the essential reality, it is not an illusion nor can it be ignored, brushed aside or bypassed as something superficial or momentary and of no importance. It has its value, its function and implication. It is real, but it is not irremediable. It is contrary to the Divine but not contradictory. For even the Evil in its inmost substance carries or is The Reality which it opposes or denies outwardly. Did not the very first of the apostles of Christ deny his master at the crucial moment? As we have said, evil is a formation necessitated by certain circumstances, the circumstances changed, the whole disposition as at present constituted changes automatically and fundamentally.    The Divine then descends into the earth-frame, not merely as an immanent and hidden essencesarvabhtntratm but as an individual person embodying that essencemnu tanumritam. Man too, however earthly and impure he maybe, is essentially the Divine himself, carries in him the spark of the supreme consciousness that he is in his true and highest reality. That is how in him is bridged the gulf that apparently exists between the mortal and the immortal, the Infinite and the Finite, the Eternal and the Momentary, and the Divine too can come into him and become, so to say, his lower self.

04.04 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    But once there is the possibility gained of a more normalised, familiar and wider reconnaissance of the Beyond, when the human being has been mentalised to a degree and in a manner that makes it inevitable for him to overpass to a higher status and live there habitually, then it becomes an urgent matter of concern to know and find out where one goes exactly, on which level and in what domain, once one is beyond. The question, it is true, engaged the attention of the ancients too; but it was more or less an interesting inquiry, a good part speculative and theoretical; it had not The Reality and insistence of the need of the hour. We have today chalked out an almost exhaustive science of the inferior consciousness, of the lower hemisphereof course, so far as it is possible for such a science to be exhaustive moving in the light of the partial and inferior consciousness. In the same way we need at the present hour a complete and precise science of the Divine Consciousness. As there is a logic of the finite, there is also a logic of the infinite, not merely its magic, and that too has to be discovered and laid out.    Thus, the highest and most comprehensive description of the Divine is perhaps the formula Sat-chit-ananda. But even so, it is a very general and, after all, an inadequate description. It has to be filled in and supplemented by other categories as well, if one may say so. For Sat-chit-ananda presents to us the Sat Brahman. There is also the Asat Brahman. And again we must accept a reality which is neither Sat nor Asatnsadsnno sadst, says the Veda. And as for the filling up of the details in an otherwise almost blank and featureless infinity, Sri Aurobindo's charting of that vast unknownwith the categories of the Supermind and its various levels, of the Overmind and its levels too, all forming the Divine Status and Consciousness is a new, almost a revolutionary revelation, just the required science which the present world needs and demands and for which it has been prepared through all the cycles of evolution.

04.05 - The Freedom and the Force of the Spirit, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The soldier of an ideal, the martyr, bears testimony to The Reality of this mental condition: the Yogi is he who is supremely indifferent to outside contacts (mtrsparah), fixed as he is in inner union with the Divine. Secondly, the freedom of the will not only liberates the inner person, but exerts a pressure on the outside also, upon the field and circumstances, obliging them to change or move in the direction and according to the demand of the will. Consciousness has this power: only all depends on the nature of the consciousness and the will it embodies. For consciousness-will has varying degrees and levels of its potential. A will belonging to the purely mental consciousness can have only a very limited result and may not even show itself at all in any external modification. For it is only one among a million contending forces and its effect will depend upon the allies it can count on its side. Similar is the case with a vital will or a physico-vital will: these are more effective apparently but always in a narrow field; the narrower the field, the greater the possibility of the effectiveness. Moreover, a mental will affects chiefly the mental field, a vital will is directly operative in the vital world, even as a physical force is effective on physical things: each is largely confined to its own domains, the effect on other domains is for the most part indirect and remote.    But the truly effective will, that can produce an all-round change, comes from a still higher or deeper source. Indeed, the will that never fails, that turns even the external circumstances, adverse and obstructive though they appear to be, to serve it, is the will of the soul, the spiritual being in us. And man is man, not a mere animal, because he has been called upon to seek and find his soul, to get at his inner and inmost being and from there comm and his external nature and outside circumstances too. The orthodox name for this endeavour is spiritual discipline or Yoga.

04.06 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    But once there is the possibility gained of a more normalised, familiar and wider reconnaissance of the Beyond, when the human being has been mentalised to a degree and in a manner that makes it inevitable for him to overpass to a higher status and live there habitually, then it becomes an urgent matter of concern to know and find out where one goes exactly, on which level and in what domain, once one is beyond. The question, it is true, engaged the attention of the ancients too; but it was more or less an interesting enquiry, a good part speculative and theoretical; it had not The Reality and insistence of the need of the hour. We have today chalked out an almost exhaustive science of the inferior consciousness, of the lower hemisphereof course, so far as it is possible for such a science to be exhaustive moving in the light of the partial and inferior consciousness. In the same way we need at the present hour a complete and precise science of the Divine Consciousness. As there is a logic of the finite, there is also a logic of the infinite, not merely its magic, and that too has to be discovered and laid out.    Thus, the highest and most comprehensive description of the Divine is perhaps the formula Sat-chit-ananda. But even so, it is a very general and, after all, an inadequate description. It has to be filled in and supplemented by other categories as well, if one may say so. For Sat-chit-ananda presents to us the Sat Brahman. There is also the Asat Brahman. And again we must accept a reality which is neither Sat nor Asatnsadsnno sadst, says the Veda. And as for the filling up of the details in an otherwise almost blank and featureless infinity, Sri Aurobindo's charting of that vast unknownwith the categories of the Supermind and its various levels, of the Overmind and its levels too, all forming the Divine Status and Consciousness is a new, almost a revolutionary revelation, just the required science which the present world needs and demands and for which it has been prepared through all the cycles of evolution.

04.09 - Values Higher and Lower, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    In fact, however, The Reality is a polarised entity: and both ends are equally necessary, for each is involved in the other. It is an unreal distinction, due to mind's prejudice and preference, that says one is first and the other next or last, one is more important and the other less. The true truth is that Spirit and Matter are one: for Matter is Spirit involved and Spirit is Matter evolved. The position can be stated in this form also: without Spirit, Matter does not exist; without Matter, Spirit does not manifest.    The balance is upset exactly when we say that the higher depends on the lower or that it comes after. Not only so, the statement is likely to involve an error, a mistaken view. If one has to make a distinction between higher and lower, inner and outer, it will be nearer the truth and fact to say that the lower depends on the higher, it is the inner reality that upholds and inspires the outer form: without this inner cohesive deity all the external frame would fall to pieces. It is not the contingencies of time and circumstances, of day-to-day existence that determine the nature and form of power of the soul and spirit. It is the pressure of the Inner Being, antarym, that brings about the pattern and organisation of the outer life. At the summit of being, at the absolute point of consciousness the two are identical, absolutely one and the same. In the lower ranges as manifestation and variation begin the two maintain their union and harmony and mutuality so long as the consciousness retains its purity and the being is not invaded by Ignorance. Ignorance means the gradual predominance of the outer and the lower, till it reaches its last point in Inconscience where Matter is the only reality and everything is made to stand and depend on the grossest reality.

05.01 - Man and the Gods, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Earth symbolises and epitomises material Nature. It is the body and substance, the very personification, of unconsciousness Ignorance carried to the last limit and concretised. It represents, figures the very opposite of The Reality at the summit. The supreme and original Reality is the quaternary:(1) Light, (2) Truth, (3) Love and (4) Life. They are the first and primal godheads with whom creation starts and who preside over the whole play of the manifestation. These gods that emanated out of the supreme consciousness of the Divine Mother as her fundamental aspects and personalities had automatically an absolute freedom of action and movement, otherwise they would not be divine personalities. And this freedom could be exercised and was in fact exercised in cutting the tie with the mother consciousness, in order to follow a line of independent and separate development instead of a merger life of solidarity with the Supreme. The result was immediate and drastic the precipitation of a physical life and an earthly existence which negated the very principles of the original nature of the godheads and brought forth exactly their contraries: instead of Light there brooded Darkness and Inconscience, Truth turned to Falsehood, Love and Delight gave place to Hatred and Suffering and finally, instead of Life and Immortality there appeared Death. That was how separation, "the disobedience" of the Bible, caused the distortion that turned the gods into Asuras, that was how Lucifer became Satan.    And that was how Paradise was lost. But the story of Paradise Regained is yet more marvellous. When the Divine Mother, the creative infinite Consciousness found herself parcelled out and scattered (even like the body of Sati borne about by Shiva, in the well-known Indian legend) and lost in unconsciousness, something shot down from the Highest into the lowest, something in response to an appeal, a cry, as it were, from the depth of the utter hopelessness in the heart of Matter and the Inconscient. A dumb last-minute S O S from belowa De profundis clamaviwent forth and the Grace descended: the Supreme himself came down and entered into the scuttled dead particles of earth's dust as a secret core of light and flame, just a spark out of his own conscious substance. The Earth received the Grace and held it in her bosom. Thus she had her soul born in her the psychic being that is to grow and evolve and bring about her redemption, her transmutation into the divine substance.

05.02 - Gods Labour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Divine incarnates, as an individual in the concrete material actuality, this double aspect of the utter truth and reality. There are, what may be called, intermediary incarnations, some representing powersaspects of the Divinein the higher mental or overmental levels of consciousness, others those of the inner heart, yet others again those of the dynamic vital consciousness. But the integral Divine, he who unites and reconciles in his body the highest height and the lowest depth, who has effectuated in him something like the "marriage of Heaven and Hell" is an event of the futureeven perhaps of the immediate future. The descent into hell is an image that has been made very familiar to man, but all its implications have not been sounded. For what we were made familiar with was more or less an image of hell, not hell itself, a region or experience in the vital (may be even in the mental): real hell is not the mass of desires or weaknesses of the flesh, not "living flesh", but dead Matter whose other name is Inconscience. In the older disciplines the central or key truth, the heart of reality where the higher and the lowerBrahman and Maya, the Absolute and the Contingency, the One and the Many, God and the Worldmet and united in harmony was bypassed: one shot from below right into the supreme Absolute; the matrix of truth-creation was ignored. Even so, at the other end, The Reality of brute matter was not given sufficient weight, the spiritual light disdained to reach it (vijigupsate).    The integral Divine not merely suffers (as in the Christian tradition) a body material, He accepts it in his supernal delight, for it is his own being and substance: it is He in essence and it will become He in actuality. When he comes into the world, it is not as though it were a foreign country; he comes to his own,only he seeks to rebuild it on another scale, the scale of unity and infinity, instead of the present scale of separativism and finiteness. He comes among men not simply because he is' moved by human miseries; he is no extra-terrestrial person, a bigger human being, but is himself this earth, this world, all these miseries; he is woven into the fabric of the universe, he is the warp and woof that constitute creation. It is not a mere movement of sympathy or benevolence that actuates him, it is a total and absolute identification that is the ground and motive of his activity. When he assumes the frame of mortality, it is not that something outside and totally incongruous is entering into him, it is part and parcel of himself, it is himself in one of his functions and phases. Consequently, his work in and upon the material world and life may be viewed as that of self-purification and self-illumination, self-discipline and selfrealisation. Also, the horrors of material existence, being part of the cosmic play and portion of his infinity, naturally find shelter in the individual divine incarnation, are encompassed in his human embodiment. It is the energy of his own consciousness that brought out or developed even this erring earth from within it: that same energy is now available, stored up in the individual formation, for the recreation of that earth. The advent and acceptance of material existence meant, as a kind of necessity in a given scheme of divine manifestation, the appearance and play of Evil, the negation of the very divinity. Absolute Consciousness brought forth absolute unconsciousness the inconscientbecause of its own self-pressure, a play of an increasingly exclusive concentration and rigid objectivisation. That same consciousness repeats its story in the individual incarnation: it plunges into the material life and matter and identifies itself with Evil. But it is then like a pressed or tightened spring; it works at its highest potential. In other words, the Divine in the body now works to divinise the body itself, to make of the negation a concrete affirmation. The inconscient will be embodied consciousness.

05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    In fact, we are forced to the conclusion that the picture of a solid massive material nature is only a mask of The Reality; The Reality is,that matter is a charge of electricity and the charge of electricity is potentially a mode of light. The ancient distinction between matter and energy is no longer valid. In fact energy is the sole reality, matter is only an appearance that energy puts on under a certain condition. And this energy too' is not mechanical (and Newtonian) but radiant and ethereal. We can no longer regret with, the poet:    They have gone into the world of light   --    So far so good. But it is evidently not far enough, for one can answer that all this falls within the dominion of Matter and the material. The conception of Matter has changed, to be sure: Matter and energy are identified, as we have said, and the energy in its essential and significant form is light (which, we may say, is electricity at its highest potential). But this does not make any fundamental change in the metaphysical view of The Reality. We have to declare in the famous French phrase plus a change, plus a reste Ie mme(the more it changes the more it remains the same). The Reality remains material: for light, physical light is not something spiritual or even immaterial.    Well, let us proceed a little further. Admitted the universeis a physical substance (although essentially of the nature of lightadmitted light is a physical substance, obeying the law of gravitation, as Einstein has demonstrated). Does it then mean that the physical universe is after all a dead inert insentient thing, that whatever the vagaries of the ultimate particles composing the universe, their structure, their disposition is more or less strictly geometrical (that is to say, mechanical) and their erratic movement is only the errantry of a throw of dicea play of possibilities? There is nothing even remotely conscious or purposive in this field.

05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The idealisations more or less schematic that our mind builds up are capable of representing certain facets of things, but they have inherent limitations and cannot contain within their frames all the richness of The Reality. 4    The difficulty that modern Science encounters is not, how-ever, at all a difficulty: it may be so to the philosopher, but not to the mystic, the difficulty, that is to say, of positing a real objective world when all that we know or seize of it seems to be our own mental constructions that we impose upon it. Science has come to such a pass that it can do no more than take an objective world on trust.    Things need not, however, be so dismal looking. The difficulty arises because of a fundamental attitude the attitude of a purely reasoning being. But Reason or Mind is only one layer or vein of The Reality, and to see and understand and explain that reality through one single track of approach will naturally bias the view, it will present only what is real or immediate to it, and all the rest will appear as secondary or a formation of it. That is, of course, a truth that has been clearly brought out by the anti-intellectualist. But the vitalist's view is also likewise vitiated by a similar bias, as he contacts reality only through this prism of vital force. It is the old story of the Upanishad in which the seeker takes the Body, the Life and the Mind one after another and declares each in its turn to be the only and ultimate reality, the Brahman.    The truth of the matter is that the integral reality is to be seized by an integral organon. To an integralised consciousness the integral reality is directly and immediately presented, each aspect is apprehended in and through its own truth and substance. The synthesis or integration is reached by a consciousness which is the basis and continent of all, collectively and severally, and of which all are various formations and expressions on various levels and degrees. This is the knowledge and experience given by the supreme spiritual consciousness.

05.06 - The Role of Evil, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    This is the divine miracle that has been vouchsafed to man, the spectacle of the Divine himself becoming an earthly creature, wearing as his own body of flesh and blood this mortal frame of pain and suffering and ignorance, of obscurity and incapacity and falsehood. This is the calvary he has accepted, the sacrifice of his divinity he agreed to in order that the undivine too may gracefully serve the Divine, be taken up and transmuted into The Reality from which it fell, of which it is an aberration.    The glory and beauty of this gesture one would not like not to have witnessed and experienced and shared.

05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Once again, to repeat in other terms the distinction which may sometimes appear to carry no difference. First, the subjective objective in which the subject assumes the preponderant position, not denying or minimising The Reality of the object. The external world, in this view, is a movement in and of the consciousness of a universal subject. It is subjective in the sense that it is essentially a function of the subject and does not exist apart from it or outside it; it is objective in the sense that it exists really and is not a figment or imaginative construction of any individual consciousness, although it exists in and through the individual consciousness in so far as that consciousness is universalised, is one with the universal consciousness (or the transcendental, the two can be taken together in the present connection). Instead of the Kantian transcendental idealism we can name it transcendental realism.    In the other case the world exists here below in its own reality, outside all apprehending subject; even the universal subject is in a sense part of it, immanent in itit embraces the subject in its comprehending consciousness and posits it as part of itself or a function of its apprehension. The many Purushas (conscious beings or subjects) are imbedded in the universal Nature, say the Sankhyas. Kali, Divine Nature, is the manifest Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent reality holding within her the transcendent divine Purusha who supports, sanctions and inspires secretly, yet is dependent on the Mahashakti and without her is nothing, unyam. That is how the Tantriks put it. We may mention here, among European philosophers, the rather interesting conclusion of Leibnitz (to which Russell draws our attention): space is subjective to the view of each monad (subject unit) separately, it is objective when it consists of the assemblage of the view-points of all the monads.

05.13 - Darshana and Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    There is a mental approach to spiritual truths and there is a direct and immediate approach or rather contact. The mind sees as though through a mist, a darkling glass, a more or less opaque veil, and the thing envisaged presents a blurred and not unoften a deformed appearance. The mind has its own pre-dispositionsits own categories and terms, its own forms and figureswhich it has to use when it seeks to express that which is beyond it. Naturally the object, the truth as it is, it cannot apprehend or represent; it gives as it were the reverse side of an embroidery work. It goes round about the thing, has to take recourse to all kinds of contortions and gymnastics and grimaces to ape the natural gesture of the truth. But mind acts in this way, as a veil rather than' a medium, when one is stationed in it or below it and strains to look at what is above and beyond. On the other hand, if the consciousness is stationed above the mind, that is to say, if it has direct access or contact with the truth, the spiritual reality, in that case, mind need not act as a veil, it too can be made transparent, and sufflused with the higher light, it too can translate faithfully, present and embody The Reality beyond somewhat as it actually is, in its native rhythm and figure and not diffracted and diffused through a hazy atmosphere.    European thought, European philosophy particularly, moves under the aegis of the Mind. It takes its stand within the Mind and from there tries to reach out to truths and realities; and therefore, however far it goes, its highest flights of perception, its most intimate contacts with spirit-truths are 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought'. The Indian standpoint, on the contrary, is first to contact the truth by a direct realisationthrough meditation, concentration, an uplifting and a deepening of the consciousness, through Yoga, spiritual discipline, and then endeavour to express the truth thus realised, directly intuited or revealed, through mental terms, to make it familiar and communicable to the normal intelligence. Mind, so subordinated and keyed to a new rhythm, becomes, as far as it is possible for it, a channel, a vehicle and not a veil. All the main systems of Indian philosophy have this characteristic as their background. Each stands on a definite experience, a spiritual realisation, a direct contact with an aspect of truth and in and -through that seeks to give a world-view, building "up an intellectual system, marshalling rational conclusions that are natural to it or derive inevitably from it. In the Upanishads, which preceded the Darshanas, the spiritual realisations were not yet mentally systematised or logically buttressed: truths were delivered there as self-evident statements, as certitudes luminous in their own au thenticity. We accept them without question and take them into our consciousness as forming its fundamental norms, structuring its most intimate inscape. This is darana, seeing, as philosophy is named in India. One sees the truth or reality and describes it as it is seen, its limbs and gestures, its constituents and functions. Philosophy here is fundamentally a recording of one's vision and a translation or presentation of it in mental terms.

05.14 - The Sanctity of the Individual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    If we do not keep in view this vertical transcendence and confuse it with immanence, we are likely to arrive at queer conclusions, as for example, one Existentialist says: polarity being an essential truth of The Reality, the law of day and night is an eternal and immutable law and therefore, God cannot subsist as pure love; there must be also anger in him. In fact, God too is a becoming God as the human being. The limitation of such a view, characteristically Germanic and intellectual, is evident.    ***

05.15 - Sartrian Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    "Freedom is not abeing: it is thebeing of man, that is to say, his not-being". A very cryptic mantra. Let us try to unveil the Shekinah. "Being" means "being" i.e. existing, something persisting, continuing in the same condition, something fixed, a status. Freedom is not a thingof that kind, it is movement: even so, it is not a continuous movement. According to Bergson, the true, the ultimate reality is a continuity of urge (lan vital); according to Sartre, however, in line with the trend of modern scientific knowledge, The Reality is an assemblage of discrete units of energy, packets or quanta. So freedom is an urge, a spurt (jaillissement):it acts in a disconnected fashion and it is absolute and unconditional. It is veritably the wind that bloweth where it listeth. It has no purpose, no direction, no relation: for all those attributes or definitions would annul its absoluteness. It does not stop or halt or dwell upon, it bursts forth and passes. It does not exist, that is stay: therefore it is non-being. Man's being then consist of a conglomeration (ensemble)of such freedoms. And that is the whole reality ofman, his very essence. We have said that a heavy sense of responsibility hangs upon the .free Purusha: but it appears the Sartrian Purusha is a divided personality. In spite of the sense of responsibility (or because of it?) he acts irresponsibly; for, acting otherwise would not be freedom. So then this essence, the self-consciousness, self-existence, presence in oneself is not a status, a fixed standing entity: it is not a point, even if geometrical; it is, Sartre describes, the jet from one point to another, for, real point there is none: so it is the emptiness behind all concrete realities that is the true reality, asat brahman, unyamto Sartre that is freedom, freedom absolute and ultimate.    Practically this conception of freedom brings into high relief, makes almost all in all, only one aspect, one character or attri bute of freedom: the abolition of all ties and obligations and relations beyond oneself involving a hollow self-sufficiency. Naturally such an outlook requires against it a complementary one, even if it is not to correct and complete, at least to support and implement it. Sartre too cannot ignore the fact that the free being is not an isolated phenomenon in the world; it exists along with and in the company of others of the same nature and quality. Indeed human society is that in essence, an association of freedoms, although these movements of freedom are camouflaged in appearance and are not recognised by the free persons themselves. The interaction between the free persons, the reflection of oneself in others and the mutual dependence of egos is a constant theme in the novels and plays of Sartre.

05.26 - The Soul in Anguish, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    In his quest for Brahman, Bhrigu came in contact first of all with the material existence and so took Matter to be the ultimate Reality. He was asked to move on and at the next step he met Life and considered that as Brahman. He was asked to move farther on and at the third stage he found Mind which then appeared to him as The Reality. He had to proceed farther and enter and pass through other higher formulations till finally he entered the highest expanse (parame vyoman). Now applying the parable to the situation today and the modern quest we can say that Science like Bhrigu is at the first stepand, for some, stuck there contented like the Asura Virochana of another Upanishadic parable, although it has become fidgety and somewhat uncertain in recent times: some others the "vitalist" scientists and philosophersare in the second stage. And yet there is a third category, the idealist philosophers generally, who are emerging from the second into the third.    It seems that the School of Anguish is on the borderl and between the second and the third stage, that is to say, the vital rising into the mental or the mental still carrying an impress of the vital consciousness. It is the emergence of the Purusha consciousness, the individual being in its heart of hearts, in its pure status: for it is that that truly evolves, progresses from level to level, deploying and marshalling according to its stress and scheme the play of its outward nature. Now the Purusha consciousness, as separate from the outward nature, has certain marked characteristics which have been fairly observed and comprehended by the exponents of the school we are dealing with. Sartre, for example, characterises this beingtre en soi, as distinguished from tre pour soi which is something like dynamic purusha or purusha identified or associated with prakrtias composed of the sense of absolute freedom, of full responsibility, of unhindered choice and initiation. Indeed, Purusha is freedom, for in its own status it means liberation from all obligations to Prakriti. But such freedom brings in its train, not necessarily always but under certain conditions, a terrible sense of being all alone, of infinite loneliness. One is oneself, naked and face to face with one's singleness and unbreakable, unsharable individual unity. The others come as a product or corollary to this original sui generisentity. Along with the sense of freedom and choice or responsibility and loneness, there is added and gets ingrained into it the sense of fear and anxiety the anguish (Angst). The burden that freedom and loneliness brings seems to be too great. The Purusha that has risen completely into the mental zone becomes wholly a witness, as the Sankhyans discovered, and all the movements of his nature appear outside, as if foreign: an absolute calm and unperturbed tranquillity or indifference is his character. But it is not so with regard to the being that has still one foot imbedded in the lower region of the vital consciousness; for that indeed is the proper region of anguish, of fear and apprehension, and it is there that the soul becoming conscious of itself and separate from others feels lone, lonely, companionless, without support, as it were. The mentalised vital Purusha suffers from this peculiar night of the soul. Sartre's outlook is shot through with very many experiences of this intermediary zone of consciousness.

05.34 - Light, more Light, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Anyway, we are concerned particularly with one who asks for the truth and reality, the aspirant who is ready for the discipline. To the aspiring soul, to one who sincerely wishes to see the truth, it has been said, the truth unveils its body. The unveiling is gradual: the perception of The Reality grows, the sensibility becomes refined, the vision clearer and clearer. The first step, as in all things, is the most decisive. For once all on a sudden, probably when you are off your guard, you know, in a flash, as it were, here is the right thing to do or the right thing you have done or even the wrong you have not done. You have thus secured the clue: and it is up to you now to pursue the clue.    The question of false light or of wrong perception need not trouble you too much. If you are sincere, if you have the correct attitude, things will come always right to you. The trouble is for him who is not himself true or does not propose to be true.

07.07 - The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   It was The Reality of existing things,   It was the consciousness of all that lived

07.08 - The Divine Truth Its Name and Form, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    You expect to see a divine form in each and all things? It may happen so. But I am not sure; I have the impression that there is a large part of imagination in such experiences. You may, for example, see the form of Krishna or Christ or Buddha in every being or thing. But I say that much of human conception enters into this perception. Otherwise what I was telling you just now would not be true. I said all who have the consciousness of the Divine, all who get the contact with the Divine, wherever one may be, to whatever age or country he may belong, all have the same essential experience. If it were not so, the Hindus would always see one of their gods, the Europeans one of theirs, the Japanese a third variety and so on. This may be an addition of each one's own mental formation, but it would not be The Reality in its essence or purity which is beyond all form. One can have a perception of the Divine Presence, a very concrete perception, one can have even a personal contact with the Divine, but it need not happen in and through the kind of form you imagine; it is something inexpressible, beyond all explanation or definition, it is evident only to one who has the experience. It may be as you are suddenly lifted up into a peculiar condition, you find yourself in the presence of the Divine which takes a form familiar to you, a form you have been accustomed to associate with the Divine, because of your education, your up-bringing and tradition. But, as I say, it is not the supreme essence of the experience: the form gives after all a limitation to the experience, takes away from it its universality and a large measure of its power.    ***

07.11 - The Problem of Evil, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    But in reality these questions cannot be adequately answered in that way. It is a problem to which mental answersof which the mental formulations evenonly serve to diminish the dimensions of the problem; the question itself reduces the problem to a more or less elementary formula corresponding only vaguely and superficially and incompletely to The Reality of things.    To be able to understand you must become. If you want to understand the why and the how of the universe you must identify yourself with the universe. And that is not easy.

07.40 - Service Human and Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    You will make a remarkable discovery as you proceed to know what you are and who you are. That is how you should begin. I want to serve humanity. How can I serve? Who is this 'I' that wants to serve? You say, I am such a person, this form and this name. But the form you have now was not there when you were a baby: it has been changing constantly All the elements of your body are being renewed totally. Neither are your sensations and feelings those you had a few years ago. Your thoughts and ideas have undergone revolutions. The I covers a sum of ever-changing factors. There is nothing particularly to be called I : it is only a ring of changes. An empty name seems to be the only constant thing. One element at a time comes forwardan idea, a feeling, an Impulse and that is your I for the moment. At another moment another element comes up and becomes your I. You are not one I but a crowd of many Is. So what is the value of the declaration of one of the 1's that it has found the goal, the truth, the duty you have to follow? Thus if you proceed further, questioning and analysing yourself thoroughly and sincerely, you will stumble upon The Reality. You will find that I does not exist at all. What exists is something else: it is the one indivisible reality, the Divine alone.    It is this self-discovery that will give you the basic knowledge, the foundation of your life, the discovery that your self as yourself does not exist, you are indeed nothing. This sense of nothingness must pervade your being, fill all the elements of your being before the truth can dawn upon you and the Divine Presence can be felt. And what you have been doing all along is the very contrary thing, asserting your egoism, your vanitypretending that you were somebody, you could do something, that the world needed your help and you could give that help. Nothing of the kind. When you discover this truth and accept it, when you are humbled and in true humility you approach life and reality, you will find your real career and vocation.

07.42 - The Nature and Destiny of Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The decline comes in the normal course of evolution which follows a spiral movement. From the beginning of the last century to the middle of it, art became totally a debased thing, commercial, obscure, ignorant, something very far from its true nature and function. But the spirit of art cannot die; only as it rose as a movement of protest or revolt, the forms it chose were equally bizarre. In attempting to counteract the general debasing of taste it went to the other extreme, as is the character of all movements of nature. One was a servile copy of nature, it was pointed out or not even that. In those days it used to be called photographic art, if one were to condemn it: But now it is no longer a term of condemnation, for photography has developed into a consummate art. Neither could it be truly called realism, for there are realistic paintings which belong to a very high order. That art was conventional, artificial, I lifeless. Now the reaction to this movement said: we do not concern ourselves with physical life any more, The Reality as we see with outward eyes is no longer our business; we want instead to express the vital life, the mental life. Hence came a whole host of reformers and rebelscubists, surrealists, futurists and so onwho sought to create art with their head. They forgot the simple truth that in art it is not the head that commands, but the feeling of beauty in the heart. So art landed into the most absurd, ridiculous and frightful of worlds. Indeed with the two wars behind us we have gone further in that direction. Each war has brought down a world in decomposition. And now we seem to be in the very heart of chaos.    Perhaps we are at the bottom of the curve and it is time to mount up. This disintegration is a necessary prelude; it is even from a certain point of view a better condition than that of the epoch of Queen Victoria or the Second Empire in France, the age of the practical, successful bourgeoisie, of snug contentment and dull mediocrity, of death in life. As I say, the movement of progress follows a curve. In a certain epoch some fine things are expressed in a fine way. Then follows an epoch which is tired of the old things, wants to find new things and express them in a new way. The age of Louis XIV, for example, was an age dominated by the sense of artistic creation and it represented the peak of a certain type of the truly beautiful in art and life. In the course of social evolution other ideas, other needs appearedthose of a commercial age. So the curve took a downward course. For there is nothing so antagonistic to art as commerce. For the association of commerce with art means the popularisation of something which is exceptional: it is putting within the reach of all and sundry a thing which is understood and appreciated only by the chosen few, the elite. Perhaps it is because of this, because art has no outlet in the world, it has in these days turned to other directions, into the domains of the mental and the vital, into sideways and bypaths of consciousness. When, however, better conditions prevail, when instead of the spirit of mercantilism, there appears upon earth the sense of a more beautiful reality, then art will be reborn and come to its own. That seems to be still a long way off.

08.16 - Perfection and Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Human life, however, is brief and naturally there is a tendency in man to shorten the distances in proportion to his dimensions. Still there will come a time when the thing will happen; there will be a moment or a movement that will at last land into The Reality. Once upon a time there came a moment when the mental being could appear upon earth. The start may be poor, very incomplete, very partial, but after all there was the start. Why should not the same thing occur now?    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.

08.28 - Prayer and Aspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    All theories are mere theories, that is to say, mental conceptions which are only representations or images of The Reality, they are not The Reality at all. When you say "determinism" or liberty, you utter only words. All that is a very incomplete, a very feeble description of That which Is, in truth, within you, around you, everywhere. And if you are even to begin to understand what the universe is like, you must come out of these mental formulas; otherwise you will never understand.    Indeed, if you live just for a minute only by this absolutely sincere aspiration, this adequately intense prayer, you will know more things than by meditating for long hours.

08.31 - Personal Effort and Surrender, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The relation of the whole and its part does not hold good here; for there is no longer any division. The very quality of the approach is different. Can you say that a perfect identification with one drop of water would give you the knowledge of what the sea is? And here the perfect identification in question is not merely with the ocean but with all possible oceans. And yet the perfect identification with one drop of water does give you the knowledge of the ocean in its essence; but in the other way you know the ocean not merely in its essence but in its totality. It is however very difficult to express The Reality of the truth. What can be said to put it as clearly as possible is this: in the line of personal effort, when one depends solely upon one's personal strength, all that has been individualised maintains the virtues of individuality and hence also, in a certain sense, all the limitations necessary for this individuality. In the other case, when you have surrendered your individuality, you not only enjoy the virtues of individuality but also you are not subject to its limitations. It is almost high philosophy, I am afraid. It is not clear therefore. But that is all I can say.    ***

10.02 - Beyond Vedanta, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The relation between the Supreme (over and above the creation) and the individual in the creation representing the creation is sometimes described in human terms to give it a concrete and graphic form. This relationship characteristically indicates the fundamental nature of The Reality it deals with. Thus in the Vedantic tradition the Supreme is worshipped as the Father (pit no asi). It is also a relation of Master and disciple, the leader and the led. Ii brings out into prominence the Purusha aspect of The Reality. In the Tantra the relation is as between Mother and child. The supreme Reality is the Divine Mother holding the universe in her arms. The individual worships and adores the Supreme Prakriti as a human child does. The Vaishnava makes the relation as between the lover and the beloved, and the love depicted is intensely vital and even physical, as intense and poignant as the ordinary ignorant human passion. It is to show that the Love Divine can beat the human love on its own ground, that is to say, it can be or it is as passionately sweet and as intensely intimate as any human love. It is why Bhakta Prahlad said to his beloved Vishnu "O Lord, what ordinary men feel and enjoy in and through their physical senses, may I have the same enjoyment in and through Thee."    Still the Vaishnava love in its concrete reality is a manifestation in a subtle world, the world of an inner physical consciousness.

10.03 - Life in and Through Death, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    To live away from life and consequently away from death is one thing, comparatively easy; but to live in life and consequently in death is another thing, somewhat more difficult. To withdraw oneself from the field of death and retire in the immutability beyond or some form of it is what was attempted in the ancient days. But there has been side by side always a growing tendency in man to stay here in this vale of tears under the shadow of death, to live dangerously and face the Evil and conquer it here itself; for death is not a mere negation an annihilation of The Reality, it is only a mask put over The Reality or is its obverse. Tear off or remove the disguise, you will see the smiling radiant Godhead behind.    The gold is there, the purest gold, but it is crusted over with dross. The dross is to be eliminated and the noble metal freed. Indeed each element of the being wherever and whatever it is, each corpuscle, mental, vital or physical is ambivalentit is a polarised entity consisting of two parts or two ends, one pure, the other impure. The ancients thought that the whole creation is impure; the only pure substance is the Divine. The Sankhya posited clearly the demarcation between Purusha, the Conscious Being secreted above and behind and the entire Prakriti which is absolute unconsciousness. But as we have said, a new revelation has been slowly coming up which speaks of a different conclusion 'and a different destiny for man and the universe. Each element of the created universe has a double nature, it is both conscious and unconscious, it is both immortal and mortal. And furthermore, the two are not united or soldered together inextricably so that if one is eliminated the other gets eliminated automatically. Life and death appear to be bound together absolutely and eternally; in fact, however, it is not so. Even in life, Life can be established in its single pure reality free from the normal counterpoint of Death. Purusha is not the only conscious element in or above creation. Prakriti is not merely the unconscious being. The unconscious Prakriti is only the apparent aspect of the Higher Prakriti, the Para Prakriti, which is supremely conscious, for it is one with the Supreme Purusha.

10.06 - Beyond the Dualities, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    It is true that mind in its natural state seeks the truth, seeks to know the fact, know what is what. But the difficulty is, it has its own criterion of truth, it has a mould and whatever does not fit into that mould is brushed aside or doubted as untruth. The most simple and the most categorical of its canons is that a thing is always itself and cannot be anything else (it is the famous logical law of identity and law of contradiction). One is always one and cannot be two. So by extension the mind affirms if The Reality is one it cannot be also many. If the Brahman is there, the world cannot be, and if the world is there, Brahman cannot be. There begins also the unending theological dispute that either God has a form or He is formless. He cannot be both at the same time.    What the mind forgets or ignores is that the law of self-contradiction belongs exclusively to the finite. It does not hold good in infinity. The Infinite is infinite because it has transcended the laws and categories of the finite, even as Eternity has transcended the temporal. In the transcendental consciousness The Reality is single and multiple at the same time, simultaneously (although the conception of time is not there at all); also God is both with form and without form at the same time. The mind may not be able to conceive it but the fact is that, for one can rise above the mind and see and experience The Reality.    There are other dualities that are confusing to the mind. It is said two objects cannot occupy together the same spot or position. One object must drive out another to occupy its position. Obviously this is a truth belonging to the material world for it is said matter is impenetrable. But this law, however valid in the material plane, becomes less and less applicable in regions subtler and less and less material. Two movements or two vibrations of consciousness, may exist together without annihilating each other's identity, being a total identity.

1.009 - Perception and Reality, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   Why has this situation arisen? Why this vehement affirmation of the ego, this assertion of the mind in respect of a particular condition which is passing, transitory, phenomenal? The attachment of the mind to a particular condition is the principle of egoism. Why does it happen? Why does it breed the further problems of like, dislike, love of physical life, individual life, fear of death, etc.? This happens because of a background which is still deeper than this particular psychological involvement. The very belief in The Reality of externals is the cause for this calamity, because the moment we have a conviction that an object of perception is real, we have to develop a real attitude towards it. The perception of the object as something real is the beginning of the trouble. The trouble then intensifies itself as a compulsive activity towards the development of an attitude towards that object. The precondition of this attitude is egoism.   To describe the series or the successive stages of this development there is, first, a perception of the object, such as a tree, for example, in front. I perceive an object in front of me such as a tree, and I am convinced that it is a real tree. The tree is really there; it is not an unreal perception. The existence of the tree is real. It is really there outside me. The 'outsideness' of the tree is also real. The tree is real, its externality to me is real and, therefore, I am now compelled to develop a real attitude towards it.   --   So, the world need not be real merely because of the fact that we are seeing it. It only shows that we are as much fools as the things are. We are in the same level or degree of reality as the atmosphere around us. This is not a great proof for The Reality of the world. If I agree with you, it does not mean that our agreement is based on any judicious judgement. Suppose you have an opinion and I agree with that opinion; it does not mean that this opinion is correct. Merely because I agree with you, it need not be correct. It shows that my way of thinking is similar to your way of thinking, that is all. But it does not mean that it is a correct opinion; a third person may not agree with it.   So, merely because our mental make-up and sensory constitution agree with the structure of things outside, it does not mean that the world exists or that it is real. It only indicates that we are on the same level, that is all. Here is a word of caution: we have to be on guard in our attachment to things and our taking them for ultimate realities. We have to withdraw ourselves into higher, more judicious judgements for the purpose of higher unity.

1.00b - INTRODUCTION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy   resembling, or identical with, The Reality substantial to the manifold world; and yet,   when that mind is subjected to certain rather drastic treatments, the divine element,   --   few have left accounts of The Reality they were thus enabled to apprehend and have   tried to relate, in one comprehensive system of thought, the given facts of this

1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism   Science, as we know, is fast reaching the point where it will be forced to admit the fact of the etheric body, because the difficulties of refusing to acknowledge it, will be far more insuperable than an admission of its existence. Scientists admit already the fact of etheric matter; the success of photographic endeavor has demonstrated The Reality of that which has hitherto been considered unreal, because (from the standpoint of the physical) intangible. Phenomena are occurring all the time which remain in the domain of the supernatural unless accounted for through the medium of etheric matter, and in their anxiety to prove the spiritualists wrong, scientists have aided the cause of the true and higher spiritism by falling back on reality, and on the fact of the etheric body, even though they consider it a body of [89] emanative radiationbeing concerned with the effect and not having yet ascertained the cause. Medical men are beginning to study (blindly as yet) the question of vitality, the effect of solar rays upon the physical organism, and the underlying laws of inherent and radiatory heat. They are beginning to ascribe to the spleen functions hitherto not recognised, to study the effect of the action of the glands, and their relation to the assimilation of the vital essences by the bodily frame. They are on the right road, and before long (perhaps within this century) the FACT of the etheric body and its basic function will be established past all controversy, and the whole aim of preventive and curative medicine will shift to a higher level. All we can do here is to give simply, and in a condensed form, a few facts which may hasten the day of recognition, and further the interest of the true investigator. Let me, therefore, briefly state what will be dealt with in our remaining three points:   The functions of the etheric body.   --   If a man persists from life to life in this line of action, if he neglects his spiritual development and concentrates on intellectual effort turned to the manipulation of matter for selfish ends, if he continues this in spite of the promptings of his inner self, and in spite of the warnings that may reach him from Those who watch, and if this is carried on for a long period he may bring upon himself a destruction that is final for this manvantara or cycle. He may, by the uniting of the two fires of matter and the dual expression of mental fire, succeed in the complete destruction of the physical permanent atom, and thereby sever his connection with the higher self for aeons of time. H. P. B. has somewhat touched on this when speaking of "lost souls"; [lx]58 [lxi]59 we must here emphasise The Reality of this dire disaster and sound a warning note to those who approach this subject of the fires of matter with all its latent dangers. The blending of these fires must be the result of spiritualised knowledge, and must be directed solely by the Light of the Spirit, who works through love and is love, and who seeks this unification and this utter merging not from the point of view of sense or of material gratification, but because liberation and purification is desired in order that the higher union with the Logos may be effected; this union must be desired, not for selfish ends, but because group perfection is the goal and scope for greater service to the race must be achieved.   [128]

10.13 - Go Through, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The best way to tackle the thing is, as the Mother says, to go through it. To go through means to stand and face it and not run away from it. To go through does not mean, however, to satisfy or to indulge the urge that makes you a slave of it more and more; you get all the more entangled and can never hope to be free. You stand and face in order to seize the truth, The Reality of the thing you have to deal with. You have to purify it and clean it in order to remove the dust that covers the gold. If it is human love, to purify means to free it from selfishness, from egoistic desire, the sense of possession. Instead, you love simply for the joy of loving without any expectation or demand of return. You find in the end that this way of loving brings to you a greater delight, a new thrill and poignancy, proper to a pure feeling.    Indeed not only love but all human impulses and urges are to be dealt with in the same way. The Gita furnishes a beautiful and crucial example. The Gita teaches man to go through the field of activity and not to reject or avoid it. The whole of the Gita is an ideal lesson in the technique of going through. The Gita says, do not renounce work but dedicate itnot karmatyga but karmanysa. What does this dedication mean? The first step in the process of dedication is desirelessnessto do work without desire. It is usually thought that desire is the source and origin of work. If you have no desire, you have no need or impulse to work. But this is a very superficial view of things. The impulse for work springs from elsewhere, from a deeper and impersonal source. The true spirit in which you should work is, as the Gita enjoins, to do a work because it is a thing to be done, not because you desire it. So naturally you do not hanker for the fruit of your action. First then, no attachment to the action itself, then no attachment to the fruit that it brings. This can be done only when you are unselfish. Not only unselfishness but you have to go a step farther, to selflessness. So then there are these three stages in the process of dedication or purification. First to work without desire, without attachment to the result of the work. Then you will be able to see that you are an instrument only, the work is being done through you. At the beginning you are a desireless, unselfish doer of works, next you see yourself as a detached witness of your action and finally you see that the action happening in you is Nature working in you, Nature the instrument of the Divine. Finally yourself is no longer there, it is the Divine alone that is and acts.    What has been said of works is true of all activities in man, his thoughts, feelings, impulses, physical acts. It is the process of going through and meeting The Reality beyond, which hides, encloses itself with all its envelopes or coverings which you pass through.    In fact it is to the Divine that the dedication has to be made. Dedication means offering. All works, says the Gita, have to be offered to the Supreme, that is the meaning of sacrifice, the sacrifice of works (Karmayajna), all works come from the Divine and they are to go back to Him, that is how they are purified and through them thus purified and elevated, man attains his goal, union with the Supreme. However, not works alone but each and every element of the human beingeven love and passion and all the grosser urgesdo come from the only one Source, the Divine. They become impure and distorted, muddy and poisonous when man seeks to appropriate, that is to say, misappropriate them as his own personal belongings. To give up the sense of ownership is the core of dedication. You are not the possessor, the Divine is the only possessor. In fact, you also do not belong to yourself, you belong to the Divine. That is the ceremony of sacrifice you have to undertakeinstall the Divinity in all your parts and functions. That is how you purify and divinise your human elements. That is how you go through ignorance and mortality and arrive at knowledge and immortality.

1.01 - A NOTE ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   For my own part I accept The Reality of the movement which   tends to segregate, within the bosom of Mankind, a congregation

1.01 - Appearance and Reality, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy   Before we go farther it will be well to consider for a moment what it is that we have discovered so far. It has appeared that, if we take any common object of the sort that is supposed to be known by the senses, what the senses _immediately_ tell us is not the truth about the object as it is apart from us, but only the truth about certain sense-data which, so far as we can see, depend upon the relations between us and the object. Thus what we directly see and feel is merely 'appearance', which we believe to be a sign of some 'reality' behind. But if The Reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all? And if so, have we any means of finding out what it is like?   Such questions are bewildering, and it is difficult to know that even the strangest hypotheses may not be true. Thus our familiar table, which has roused but the slightest thoughts in us hitherto, has become a problem full of surprising possibilities. The one thing we know about it is that it is not what it seems. Beyond this modest result, so far, we have the most complete liberty of conjecture. Leibniz tells us it is a community of souls: Berkeley tells us it is an idea in the mind of God; sober science, scarcely less wonderful, tells us it is a vast collection of electric charges in violent motion.

1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy   The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have The Reality or not. Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a busk, or feast of first fruits, as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians? When a town celebrates the busk, says he, having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town.   On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame.

1.01 - Introduction, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction   It is the manner-such as our senses understand it-in which a totality of particular activities reacts in relation to the all, that is manifest to our eyes in each element of The Reality, whether that element be an object or a being. So too it is the relation between their modes of action and ours that permits us to differentiate ourselves from all that is other than ourselves and determines for us the character, the forms, the values, the accidents of all that environs us.   The attempt to explain the world by the things that we see, is therefore vain; it is these, on the contrary, that find their explanation in those that we do not see. To find the causes of thing we must turn our regard not on the visible, but on the invisible.

1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen   8 There is a clear distinction in Vedic thought between kavi, the seer, and mans, the thinker. The former indicates the divine supra-intellectual Knowledge which by direct vision and illumination sees The Reality, the principles and the forms of things in their true relations, the latter the labouring mentality which works from the divided consciousness through the possibilities of things downward to the actual manifestation in form and upward to their reality in the self-existent Brahman.   9 Anyadeva - eva here gives to anyad the force, "Quite other than the result described in the preceding verse is that to which lead the Knowledge and the Ignorance." We have the explanation of anyad in the verse that follows. The ordinary rendering, "Knowledge has one result, Ignorance another", would be an obvious commonplace announced with an exaggerated pompousness, adding nothing to the thought and without any place in the sequence of the ideas.

1.01 - Necessity for knowledge of the whole human being for a genuine education., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen   If we achieve pedagogical understanding by looking at the whole human being and not just at the childwhich is much more comfortableit becomes clear that education and teaching play a central role in the course of human life. We see how often happiness or unhappiness in the spirit, soul, or physical life is related to a persons education and schooling. Just consider this: doctors are asked by older people to correct the mistakes of their educators, when in fact the problems have sunk so deeply into the person that no more can be done. The impressions on the childs soul have been transformed into physical effects, and the psycho- logical interacts with the physical; knowing all this, we begin to pay attention in the right way, and we acquire a proper apprecia- tion for teaching methods and what is required for a viable educa- tion according to The Reality of human nature.   The Phlegmatic Temperament

1.01 - Tara the Divine, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen   deity. Also, we would be sure of The Reality of the "I"   who, upon seeing the deity, would feel joy and   --   imagine it, and as she exists in The Reality of the   Awakened Mind.   --   to fight our strong tendency to believe in The Reality of   phenomena as we are able to perceive them. The   --   point of view of The Reality of the Enjoyment Body,   means and knowledge are always indiscriminately   --   fear. Fear and a belief in The Reality of "I," fear and   attachment to oneself are very closely related.   --   What the world cannot give us, The Reality that   transcends this world, incarnated by the buddhas and

1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The tendency of the conventional age of society is to fix, to arrange firmly, to formalise, to erect a system of rigid grades and hierarchies, to stereotype religion, to bind education and training to a traditional and unchangeable form, to subject thought to infallible authorities, to cast a stamp of finality on what seems to it the finished life of man. The conventional period of society has its golden age when the spirit and thought that inspired its forms are confined but yet living, not yet altogether walled in, not yet stifled to death and petrified by the growing hardness of the structure in which they are cased. That golden age is often very beautiful and attractive to the distant view of posterity by its precise order, symmetry, fine social architecture, the admirable subordination of its parts to a general and noble plan. Thus at one time the modern litterateur, artist or thinker looked back often with admiration and with something like longing to the mediaeval age of Europe; he forgot in its distant appearance of poetry, nobility, spirituality the much folly, ignorance, iniquity, cruelty and oppression of those harsh ages, the suffering and revolt that simmered below these fine surfaces, the misery and squalor that was hidden behind that splendid faade. So too the Hindu orthodox idealist looks back to a perfectly regulated society devoutly obedient to the wise yoke of the Shastra, and that is his golden age,a nobler one than the European in which the apparent gold was mostly hard burnished copper with a thin gold-leaf covering it, but still of an alloyed metal, not the true Satya Yuga. In these conventional periods of society there is much indeed that is really fine and sound and helpful to human progress, but still they are its copper age and not the true golden; they are the age when the Truth we strive to arrive at is not realised, not accomplished,4 but the exiguity of it eked out or its full appearance imitated by an artistic form, and what we have of The Reality has begun to fossilise and is doomed to be lost in a hard mass of rule and order and convention.   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.

1.02.1 - The Inhabiting Godhead - Life and Action, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen   The cause of ego is that while by Its double power of Vidya and Avidya the Spirit dwells at once in the consciousness of multiplicity and relativity and in the consciousness of unity and identity and is therefore not bound by the Ignorance, yet It can, in mind, identify Itself with the object in the movement, absorbingly, to the apparent exclusion of the Knowledge which remains behind, veiled at the back of the mentality. The movement of Mind in Nature is thus able to conceive of the object as The Reality and the Inhabitant as limited and determined by the appearances of the object. It conceives of the object, not as the universe in one of its frontal appearances, but as itself a separate existence standing out from the Cosmos and different in being from all the rest of it. It conceives similarly of the Inhabitant. This is the illusion of ignorance which falsifies all realities. The illusion is called ahamkara, the separative ego-sense which makes each being conceive of itself as an independent personality.   The result of the separation is the inability to enter into harmony and oneness with the universe and a consequent inability to possess and enjoy it. But the desire to possess and enjoy is the master impulse of the Ego which knows itself obscurely to be the Lord, although owing to the limitations of its relativity, it is unable to realise its true existence. The result is discord with others and oneself, mental and physical suffering, the sense of weakness and inability, the sense of obscuration, the straining of energy in passion and in desire towards self-fulfilment, the recoil of energy exhausted or disappointed towards death and disintegration.

1.022 - The Pilgrimage, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   62. That is because God is The Reality, and what they invoke besides Him is vanity, and because God is the Sublime, the Grand.   63. Do you not see that God sends down water from the sky, and the land becomes green? God is Kind and Aware.

10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    And The Reality that Their manifestation upon earth has to establish, the supreme achievement of Their terrestrial existence is chanted, as it were, in these wonderfully mystic Sibylline-lines:    La mort a pass vaste et solennelle et tout s' est tu religieusement durant son passage. Une beaut surhumaine a pam sur la terre. Quelque chose de plus merveilleux que la plus merveilleuse flicit fait pressentir sa Prsence.24

1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   Here we have a higher reality than the individual, quantitatively speaking, though qualitatively we cannot say that there was an improvement. While there is a quantitative improvement in an organisation or a set-up such as a government, in the sense that an individual is made a part of a larger body so that the egoism of the individual cannot operate as forcefully as it could have operated when it was left alone and given a long rope, a consideration for the welfare of other individuals in the system becomes obligatory on the part of every individual on account of the presence of this order and system. So far, so good. From the point of view of the quantity of The Reality that has been introduced into life the mathematical measure of the order that has been set up we can say that a society is a larger reality than the individual. A nation is a larger reality than a community, and the entire set-up of mankind, the international system, may be regarded as a still larger reality than a single nation. This is a quantitative evaluation of The Reality toward which the human mind seems to be aiming, for the purpose of bringing peace on earth, happiness, etc.   But, this is not the type of reality which Patanjali had in mind, though this type of reality cannot be completely ignored. While it is true that a social system is a quantitatively higher reality than an individual body, because for obvious reasons life without it would be impracticable, it is not wholly true that an ordered society is qualitatively superior to the individual, which is the reason that insecurity within society still persists. Even with the best government there can be insecurity and unhappiness because, after all, individuals are behind this quantitative system called this ordered whole. A hundred million thinking people cannot always be qualitatively superior to one thinking man. After all, it is man who is thinking, and not God. We must know that. A hundred million people thinking, means only people are thinking only man is thinking. So qualitatively, it is only human thinking, though quantitatively it has a larger force on account of the inclusion of many individuals.

1.02 - Meeting the Master - Authors second meeting, March 1921, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    The Prabartak Sangh was started at Chandernagore by Motilal Roy and others under the inspiration of Sri Aurobindo. In the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo life is accepted as the field for the manifestation of the Divine. Its main aim is not liberation merely but the manifestation of divine perfection. In his vision not only the individual but the collectivity also is a term of the Divine. Acceptance of life includes the collective life. There is a deeper reason for accepting life. In his vision of The Reality Sri Aurobindo shows the rationality and the inevitability of an ascent by man to a higher consciousness than Mind. This ascent to the Higher Consciousness must lead to its descent in man. If the new element, the Supermind, is to become a permanent part of the earth-consciousness, then not only should it descend into the lowest plane of physical consciousness the subconscient but it must become a part of the collective consciousness on earth.    I asked him many questions about the organisation of a collective life based on spiritual aspiration.

1.02 - Taras Tantra, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen   created by thoug hts and belief in The Reality of   phenomena. To do so, many approaches are propo sed

1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset   Life is, by nature, highly interdependent. To try to achieve maximum effectiveness through independence is like trying to play tennis with a golf club -- the tool is not suited to The Reality.   Interdependence is a far more mature, more advanced concept. If I am physically interdependent, I am self-reliant and capable, but I also realize that you and I working together can accomplish far more than, even at my best, I could accomplish alone. If I am emotionally interdependent, I derive a great sense of worth within myself, but I also recognize the need for love, for giving, and for receiving love from others. If I am intellectually interdependent, I realize that I need the best thinking of other people to join with my own.

1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen   This is what people want because they have lost faith in The Reality of our inner activity as human beings; theyve lost faith in the possibility that intuitions can emerge from human beings themselves when looking at ordinary life, at sensory appearances and the intellect. Humanity has really weakened inwardly, and its no longer conscious of the firm foundation of an inner, creative life. The things I just described have had a deep influence on all areas of practical life, and most of all on education.   Proofs, such as external sensory appearances, through observa- tion and experiment, might be compared to a man who notices that an unsupported object falls, and that its attracted by the Earths gravity and therefore must be supported until it rests on solid ground. And then this man says, Go ahead, tell me that the Earth and the other heavenly bodies hover freely in space, but I cant understand it. Everything has to be supported or it will fall. Nevertheless, the Earth, Sun, and other heavenly bodies dont fall. We need to change our way of thinking completely when we move from earthly conditions into the cosmos. In cosmic space, heavenly bodies support one another; the laws of Earth dont ap- ply there.

1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   India has from ancient times held strongly a belief in The Reality of the Avatara, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of life and taken firm root in the consciousness of the race. All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of   14

1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy   (In The Reality unitively known by the mystic), we can speak no more of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, nor of any creature, but only one Being, which is the very substance of the Divine Persons. There were we all one before our creation, for this is our super-essence. There the Godhead is in simple essence without activity.   Ruysbroeck   --   The significance of Brahman is expressed by neti neti (not so, not so); for beyond this, that you say it is not so, there is nothing further. Its name, however, is The Reality of reality. That is to say, the senses are real, and the Brahman is their Reality.   Brhadaranyaka Upanishad   --   So far, then, as a fully adequate expression of the Perennial Philosophy is concerned, there exists a problem in semantics that is finally insoluble. The fact is one which must be steadily borne in mind by all who read its formulations. Only in this way shall we be able to understand even remotely what is being talked about. Consider, for example, those negative definitions of the transcendent and immanent Ground of being. In statements such as Eckharts, God is equated with nothing. And in a certain sense the equation is exact; for God is certainly no thing. In the phrase used by Scotus Erigena God is not a what; He is a That. In other words, the Ground can be denoted as being there, but not defined as having qualities. This means that discursive knowledge about the Ground is not merely, like all inferential knowledge, a thing at one remove, or even at several removes, from The Reality of immediate acquaintance; it is and, because of the very nature of our language and our standard patterns of thought, it must be, paradoxical knowledge. Direct knowledge of the Ground cannot be had except by union, and union can be achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego, which is the barrier separating the thou from the That.

1.02 - The Philosophy of Ishvara, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism    "The way is more difficult for those whose mind is attached to the Absolute!" Bhakti has to float on smoothly with the current of our nature. True it is that we cannot have; any idea of the Brahman which is not anthropomorphic, but is it not equally true of everything we know? The greatest psychologist the world has ever known, Bhagavan Kapila, demonstrated ages ago that human consciousness is one of the elements in the make-up of all the objects of our perception and conception, internal as well as external. Beginning with our bodies and going up to Ishvara, we may see that every object of our perception is this consciousness plus something else, whatever that may be; and this unavoidable mixture is what we ordinarily think of as reality. Indeed it is, and ever will be, all of The Reality that is possible for the human mind to know. Therefore to say that Ishvara is unreal, because He is anthropomorphic, is sheer nonsense. It sounds very much like the occidentals squabble on idealism and realism, which fearful-looking quarrel has for its foundation a mere play on the word "real". The idea of Ishvara covers all the ground ever denoted and connoted by the word real, and Ishvara is as real as anything else in the universe; and after all, the word real means nothing more than what has now been pointed out. Such is our philosophical conception of Ishvara.   (Bhagavata) "Unto them appeared Krishna with a smile on His lotus face, clad in yellow robes and having garlands on, the embodied conqueror (in beauty) of the god of love."

1.02 - The Vision of the Past, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   emergence and existence, who finally proves The Reality of the   trajectory and defines it - 'the dot on the i\ . . .

1.02 - Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy   Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of The Reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that there was a kings son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his fathers ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul, continues the Hindoo philosopher, from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be _Brahme_. I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that _is_ which _appears_ to be.   If a man should walk through this town and see only The Reality, where, think you, would the Mill-dam go to? If he should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of The Reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.   Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

1.031 - Luqman, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   30. That is because God is The Reality, and what they worship besides Him is falsehood, and because God is the Exalted, the Supreme.   31. Have you not seen how the ships sail through the sea, by the grace of God, to show you of His wonders? In that are signs for every persevering, thankful person.

10.31 - The Mystery of The Five Senses, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Indeed we say habitually, when speaking of spiritual realisation, that one sees the truth, one has to see the truth: to know the truth, to know The Reality is taken to mean to see the truth, to see The Reality, and what does this signify? It signifies what one sees is the light, the light that emanates from truth, the form that the Truth takes, the radiant substance that is the Truth. This then is the special character or gift of this organ, the organ of sight, the eye. One sees the physical light, of course, but one sees also the supraphysical light. It is, as the Upanishad says, the eye of the eye, the third eye in the language of the occultists. What we say about the eye may be equally said in respect of the other sense-organs. Take hearing, for example. By the ear we hear the noises of the world, its deafening cries and no doubt at times also some earthly music. But when the ear is turned inward, we listen to unearthly things Indeed we know how stone-deaf Beethoven heard some of those harmonies of supreme beauty that are now the cherished possessions of humanity. This inner ear is able to take you by a process of regression to the very source of all sound and utterance, from where springs the anhata vk, the undictated voice, the nda-brahman, the original sound-seed, the primary vibration. So the ear gives that hearing which reveals to you a special aspect of the Divine: the vibratory rhythm of the being, that matrix of all utterance, of all speech that mark the material expression of consciousness. Next we come to the third sense, that of smell, Well, the nose is not a despicable organ, in any way; it is as important as any other more aristocratic sense-organ, as the eye or the ear. It is the gate to the perfumed atmosphere of The Reality. Even like a flower, as a lotus for example, the truth is colourful, beautiful, shapely, radiant to the eye; to the nostrils it is exhilarating perfume, it distils all around a divine scent that sanctifies, elevates the whole being. After the third sense we come to the fourth, the tongue. The mouth gives you the taste of the truth and you find that the Truth is sweetness, the delicious nectar of the gods: for the truth is also soma, the surpreme rasa, amta, immortality itself. Here is Aswapathy's experience of the thing in Savitri:    In the nostrils quivered celestial fragrances,

10.32 - The Mystery of the Five Elements, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    It must be noted, however, that parallelism means similarity but also difference. The manner of approach to The Reality, the way of expressing it is different in the east and in the west. The ancients express a truth or a fact symbolically, the moderns express it in a straightforward matter-of-fact way. The ancients used symbols; for they wanted a multiple way of expression, that is to say, a symbol embodying a movement refers at the same time to many forms of the same movement on different levels, along different lines, in diverse applications. It is like the multiple meanings of a verbal root in Sanskrit. The scientific terms, on the other hand, are very specific; they connote only one thing at a time. Each term with its specific sense is unilateral in its movement.    Now furthermore, the Great Five need not be restricted to the domain of matter alone as being its divisions and levels and functions, but they may be extended to represent the whole existence, the cosmos as a whole. Indeed they are often taken to symbolise the stair of existence as a whole, the different levels of cosmic being and consciousness. Thus at the lowest rung of the ladder as always is the earth representing precisely matter and material existence; next, water represents life and the vital movement; then, fire represents the heart centre from where wells up all impulse and drive for progression. It holds the evolutionary urge: we call it the Divine Agni, the Flame of the Inner Heart, the radiant Energy of Aspiration. The fourth status or level of creation is mind or the mental world, represented by air, the Vedic Marut; finally, Vyom or space represents all that is beyond the mind, the Infinite Existence and Consciousness. The five then give the chart, as it were, of nature's constitution, they mark also the steps of her evolutionary journey through unfolding time.

1.03 - Bloodstream Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism   impossible. The Reality of your own self-nature,t5 the absence of   cause and effect, is what's meant by mind. Your mind is nirvana.

1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    At present what I am doing is the Supramental Yoga. Man, as constituted at present, is a very imperfect manifestation of the Divine he is very crude. It is so because man is living in an envelope of ignorance in Mind, Life and Body so that he is not conscious of The Reality that is beyond Mind. The Supramental Power is above the Mind. What I am trying to do at present is to call down the Higher Power to govern Mind, Life and Body. The object of this Yoga is not the service of humanity, or the ordinary perfection of man but the evolution of the Supramental Power in the cyclic evolution of the Spirit in the material universe. What one has to do is to rend the veil the thick veil that divides the Mind from the Supermind. That work a man cannot do by himself.    Athavale: Then where is the place for the use of will?

1.03 - Of some imperfections which some of these souls are apt to have, with respect to the second capital sin, which is avarice, in the spiritual sense, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity   say, they set their eyes only upon The Reality of interior perfection, which is to give   pleasure to God and in naught to give pleasure to themselves.

1.03 - Preparing for the Miraculous, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga   confirmations of science, he explains here that The Reality   of what science tries to grasp, describe and understand is

1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga   Many fantastic tales were abroad about his outer life, gaining ground and credit because of his living in seclusion. Some people believed that he neither ate nor slept, but remained absorbed in Samadhi. Others had heard that he could keep his body suspended in the air. Some there were who, like Arjuna, wanted genuinely to know how he spoke, how he sat and walked. The Mother had, at one time, discouraged us from dwelling upon these external aspects for fear that people's minds would be deflected from The Reality. After all it is not what a man appears to be which is most important. And we can affirm that all Sri Aurobindo's actions welled from the Divine Consciousness that he embodied: they were yukta karma. But how to demonstrate this? By having a practical knowledge of his day-to-day activity? Well, he who sees, sees!   Let us then begin from the very break of day. The sun's rays came in by the eastern window; he was awake and the exercises started in bed, prescribed by Manilal. By 6.30 a.m. he sat up to receive the Mother who on her way to the Balcony Darshan visited him to have his darshan. Sri Aurobindo gave us definite instructions to wake him up before the Mother's arrival. On the other hand, the Mother wanted us not to disturb his sleep. So at times we found ourselves in a quandary. Champaklal's devotional nature would not interrupt his sweet nap after the exercises, while I, when alone, would try by all sorts of devices to wake him up. Sometimes he himself would wake up only to learn that the Mother had come and gone! Then she would come back after the darshan and begin her day with his blessings, just as we did after her darshan. This was followed by his reading The Hindu. Between 9.00 a.m. and 10.00 a.m. the Mother came to comb his hair, apply a lotion and plait it. Most often she finished some business during this period. When a sadhak translated the Mother's Prayers and Meditations into English and wanted her approval, she had it read out before Sri Aurobindo and both of them made the necessary changes. She sometimes talked of private matters, and when her voice sank low, we took the hint and withdrew discreetly. She believed more in subtle methods than in open expressions. The gesture, the look, the smile, the fugitive glance, the silence, a thousand are her ways of communication to the soul! After the Mother had left, there started the routine of washing the face and mouth. Here a small detail calls for mention by its unusualness. When he had finished using Neem paste for his teeth and the mouth-wash (Vademecum), he massaged his gums with a little bit of Oriental Balm.

1.03 - The Phenomenon of Man, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   intense psychism he confirms The Reality and fixes the direc-   tion of a rise of consciousness through things. But may he

1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   3:If the materialist is justified from his point of view in insisting on Matter as reality, the relative world as the sole thing of which we can in some sort be sure and the Beyond as wholly unknowable, if not indeed non-existent, a dream of the mind, an abstraction of Thought divorcing itself from reality, so also is the Sannyasin, enamoured of that Beyond, justified from his point of view in insisting on pure Spirit as The Reality, the one thing free from change, birth, death, and the relative as a creation of the mind and the senses, a dream, an abstraction in the contrary sense of Mentality withdrawing from the pure and eternal Knowledge.   4:What justification, of logic or of experience, can be asserted in support of the one extreme which cannot be met by an equally cogent logic and an equally valid experience at the other end? The world of Matter is affirmed by the experience of the physical senses which, because they are themselves unable to perceive anything immaterial or not organised as gross Matter, would persuade us that the suprasensible is the unreal. This vulgar or rustic error of our corporeal organs does not gain in validity by being promoted into the domain of philosophical reasoning. Obviously, their pretension is unfounded. Even in the world of Matter there are existences of which the physical senses are incapable of taking cognisance. Yet the denial of the suprasensible as necessarily an illusion or a hallucination depends on this constant sensuous association of the real with the materially perceptible, which is itself a hallucination. Assuming throughout what it seeks to establish, it has the vice of the argument in a circle and can have no validity for an impartial reasoning.   --   8:But the worlds are only frames for our experience, the senses only instruments of experience and conveniences. Consciousness is the great underlying fact, the universal witness for whom the world is a field, the senses instruments. To that witness the worlds and their objects appeal for their reality and for the one world or the many, for the physical equally with the supraphysical we have no other evidence that they exist. It has been argued that this is no relation peculiar to the constitution of humanity and its outlook upon an objective world, but the very nature of existence itself; all phenomenal existence consists of an observing consciousness and an active objectivity, and the Action cannot proceed without the Witness because the universe exists only in or for the consciousness that observes and has no independent reality. It has been argued in reply that the material universe enjoys an eternal self-existence: it was here before life and mind made their appearance; it will survive after they have disappeared and no longer trouble with their transient strivings and limited thoughts the eternal and inconscient rhythm of the suns. The difference, so metaphysical in appearance, is yet of the utmost practical import, for it determines the whole outlook of man upon life, the goal that he shall assign for his efforts and the field in which he shall circumscribe his energies. For it raises the question of The Reality of cosmic existence and, more important still, the question of the value of human life.   9:If we push the materialist conclusion far enough, we arrive at an insignificance and unreality in the life of the individual and the race which leaves us, logically, the option between either a feverish effort of the individual to snatch what he may from a transient existence, to "live his life", as it is said, or a dispassionate and objectless service of the race and the individual, knowing well that the latter is a transient fiction of the nervous mentality and the former only a little more long-lived collective form of the same regular nervous spasm of Matter. We work or enjoy under the impulsion of a material energy which deceives us with the brief delusion of life or with the nobler delusion of an ethical aim and a mental consummation. Materialism like spiritual Monism arrives at a Maya that is and yet is not, - is, for it is present and compelling, is not, for it is phenomenal and transitory in its works. At the other end, if we stress too much the unreality of the objective world, we arrive by a different road at similar but still more trenchant conclusions, - the fictitious character of the individual ego, the unreality and purposelessness of human existence, the return into the Non-Being or the relationless Absolute as the sole rational escape from the meaningless tangle of phenomenal life.   --   19:We seek indeed a larger and completer affirmation. We perceive that in the Indian ascetic ideal the great Vedantic formula, "One without a second", has not been read sufficiently in the light of that other formula equally imperative, "All this is the Brahman". The passionate aspiration of man upward to the Divine has not been sufficiently related to the descending movement of the Divine leaning downward to embrace eternally Its manifestation. Its meaning in Matter has not been so well understood as Its truth in the Spirit. The Reality which the Sannyasin seeks has been grasped in its full height, but not, as by the ancient Vedantins, in its full extent and comprehensiveness. But in our completer affirmation we must not minimise the part of the pure spiritual impulse. As we have seen how greatly Materialism has served the ends of the Divine, so we must acknowledge the still greater service rendered by Asceticism to Life. We shall preserve the truths of material Science and its real utilities in the final harmony, even if many or even if all of its existing forms have to be broken or left aside. An even greater scruple of right preservation must guide us in our dealing with the legacy, however actually diminished or depreciated, of the Aryan past.

1.03 - The Uncreated, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction   But such metaphysical distinctions cannot lead us very far on the road to the unknown. They are a vain dream of discovery, the illusion of the dreamer recumbent on his bed while he thinks himself erect and on the march. They delude our ignorance and persuade it that it is about to lay its hand on The Reality, when in truth they have only placed one veil the more between it and us, a veil woven by words that are powerful to deceive.   For what is it that is concealed behind these terms, Absolute, Infinite, Eternal, to which our thought has recourse in order to solve the riddle of the beginning of things?

1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "The jnani gives up his identification with worldly things, discriminating, 'Not this, not this'. Only then can he realize Brahman. It is like reaching the roof of a house by leaving the steps behind, one by one. But the vijnni, who is more intimately acquainted with Brahman, realizes something more. He realizes that the steps are made of the same materials as the roof: bricks, lime, and brick-dust. That which is realized intuitively as Brahman, through the eliminating process of 'Not this, not this', is then found to have become the universe and all its living beings. The vijnni sees that The Reality which is nirguna, without attributes, is also saguna, with attri butes.   "A man cannot live on the roof a long time. He comes down again. Those who realize Brahman in samdhi come down also and find that it is Brahman that has become the universe and its living beings. In the musical scale there are the notes sa, re ga, ma, pa, dha, and ni; but one cannot keep one's voice on 'ni' a long time. The ego does not vanish altogether. The man coming down from samdhi perceives that it is Brahman that has become the ego, the universe, and all living beings. This is known as vijnna.

1.03 - YIBHOOTI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism   bad for the good, the dream for The Reality. Soul is the only   reality, and we have forgotten it. Body is an unreal dream, and

1.045 - Piercing the Structure of the Object, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   But Patanjali says that mere thinking and analysis will not do it requires direct meditation. While analytical techniques are good enough for the purpose of bringing about logical convictions in the mind, direct experience of The Reality behind the objects would be possible only by meditation, which is not merely an analytical technique undertaken, but a profound attempt at piercing through the structure of the object by repeatedly hitting upon it by the use of a single technique which is practised regularly every day, so that when the object is bombarded in this manner by a repeated process of meditation, adopting a single technique, without remission of effort the object gives way. The complex structure of the object, which appeared to be a compact substance, is revealed before the mind as made up of bits of matter and little tiny processes of force which can be disintegrated by the power of meditation. The object can be dismembered, and we will find that afterwards there is no object at all.   When we dissect an object into its components, the object ceases to be there; we have only the components. The appearance of a single, compact object before the mind is due to a misconception that has arisen in the mind. We dealt with this subject earlier, when we discussed some aspects of Buddhist psychology and certain other relevant subjects in this connection. The belief in the solidity of an object, and the conviction that the object is completely outside one's consciousness, almost go together. They move hand in hand, and it is this difficulty that comes as a tremendous and serious obstacle in meditation.

1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen   [2] When the desert begins to bloom, it brings forth strange plants. You will consider yourself mad, and in a certain sense you will in fact be mad. 88 To the extent that the Christianity of this time lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Take note of what the ancients taught us in images: madness is divine. 89 But because the ancients lived this image concretely in events, it became a deception for us, since we became masters of The Reality of the world. It is unquestionable: if you enter into the world of the soul, you are like a madman, and a doctor would consider you to be sick. What I say here can be seen as sickness, but no one can see it as sickness more than I do.   This is how I overcame madness. If you do not know what divine madness is, suspend judgment and wait for the fruits. 90 But know that there is a divine madness which is nothing other than the overpowering of the spirit of this time through the spirit of the depths. Speak then of sick delusion when the spirit of the depths can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself is the spirit

1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy   What is the Dhyana with Ta thata (or Suchness) as its object? When the Yogin recognizes that the discrimination of the two forms of egolessness is mere imagination and that where he establishes himself in The Reality of Suchness there is no rising of discriminationthis I call the Dhyana with Suchness for its object.   What is the Dhyana of the Tathagata? When the Yogin, entering upon the stage of Tathagatahood and abiding in the triple bliss characterizing self-realization attained by noble wisdom, devotes himself for the sake of all beings to the accomplishment of incomprehensible worksthis I call the Dhyana of the Tathagata.   --   Looking backwards across the carnage and the devastation, we can see that Vigny was perfectly right. None of those gay travellers, of whom Victor Hugo was the most vociferously eloquent, had the faintest notion where that first, funny little Puffing Billy was taking them. Or rather they had a very clear notion, but it happened to be entirely false. For they were convinced that Puffing Billy was hauling them at full speed towards universal peace and the brotherhood of man; while the newspapers which they were so proud of being able to read, as the train rumbled along towards its Utopian destination not more than fifty years or so away, were the guarantee that liberty and reason would soon be everywhere triumphant. Puffing Billy has now turned into a four-motored bomber loaded with white phosphorus and high explosives, and the free press is everywhere the servant of its advertisers, of a pressure group, or of the government. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, the travellers (now far from gay) still hold fast to the religion of Inevitable Progresswhich is, in the last analysis, the hope and faith (in the teeth of all human experience) that one can get something for nothing. How much saner and more realistic is the Greek view that every victory has to be paid for, and that, for some victories, the price exacted is so high Uiat it outweighs any advantage that may be obtained! Modern man no longer regards Nature as being in any sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave towards her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant. The spoils of recent technological imperialism have been enormous; but meanwhile nemesis has seen to it that we get our kicks as well as halfpence. For example, has the ability to travel in twelve hours from New York to Los Angeles given more pleasure to the human race than the dropping of bombs and fire has given pain? There is no known method of computing the amount of felicity or goodness in the world at large. What is obvious, however, is that the advantages accruing from recent technological advancesor, in Greek phraseology, from recent acts of hubris directed against Natureare generally accompanied by corresponding disadvantages, that gains in one direction entail losses in other directions, and that we never get something except for something. Whether the net result of these elaborate credit and debit operations is a genuine Progress in virtue, happiness, charity and intelligence is something we can never definitely determine. It is because The Reality of Progress can never be determined that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have had to treat it as an article of religious faith. To the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, the question whether Progress is inevitable or even real is not a matter of primary importance. For them, the important thing is that individual men and women should come to the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, and what interests them in regard to the social environment is not its progressiveness or non-progressiveness (whatever those terms may mean), but the degree to which it helps or hinders individuals in their advance towards mans final end.   next chapter: 1.05 - CHARITY

1.04 - Reality Omnipresent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   16:We start, then, with the conception of an omnipresent Reality of which neither the Non-Being at the one end nor the universe at the other are negations that annul; they are rather different states of The Reality, obverse and reverse affirmations. The highest experience of this Reality in the universe shows it to be not only a conscious Existence, but a supreme Intelligence and Force and a self-existent Bliss; and beyond the universe it is still some other unknowable existence, some utter and ineffable Bliss. Therefore we are justified in supposing that even the dualities of the universe, when interpreted not as now by our sensational and partial conceptions, but by our liberated intelligence and experience, will be also resolved into those highest terms. While we still labour under the stress of the dualities, this perception must no doubt constantly support itself on an act of faith, but a faith which the highest Reason, the widest and most patient reflection do not deny, but rather affirm. This creed is given, indeed, to humanity to support it on its journey, until it arrives at a stage of development when faith will be turned into knowledge and perfect experience and Wisdom will be justified of her works.

1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   finally proves The Reality and defines the direction of the tra-   jectory "the dot on the i". . . .   --   Once he has been brought to accept The Reality of a Noogen-   esis, the believer in this World will find himself compelled to allow

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology   The Reality of suffering and death, of complete annihilation.   I grew sick of life; some irresistible force was leading me to somehow get rid of it. It was not that I   --   sensory information, made possible by linguistic communication challenged belief in The Reality of the   mythic world, which was in fact never objective, from the perspective of perception and sensation. The   --   and death. The revolutionary hero faces The Reality of his vulnerability, and fights a battle with the terror   thereby generated.

1.04 - The Praise, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen   - the path: absence of belief in The Reality of   phenomena

1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   It is an integral knowledge that is being sought, an integral force, a total amplitude of union with the All and Infinite behind existence. For the seeker of the integral Yoga no single experience, no one Divine Aspect,however overwhelming to the human mind, sufficient for its capacity, easily accepted as the sole or the ultimate reality,can figure as the exclusive truth of the Eternal. For him the experience of the Divine Oneness carried to its extreme is more deeply embraced and amply fathomed by following out to the full the experience of the Divine Multiplicity. All that is true behind polytheism as well as behind monotheism falls within the scope of his seeking; but he passes beyond their superficial sense to human mind to grasp their mystic truth in the Divine. He sees what is aimed at by the jarring sects and philosophies and accepts each facet of The Reality in its own place, but rejects their narrownesses and errors and proceeds farther till he discovers the One Truth that binds them together. The reproach of anthropomorphism and anthropolatry cannot deter him,for he sees them to be prejudices of the ignorant and arrogant reasoning intelligence, the abstracting mind turning on itself in its own cramped circle. If human relations as practised now by man are full of smallness and perversity and ignorance, yet are they disfigured shadows of something in the Divine and by turning them to the Divine he finds that of which they are a shadow and brings it down for manifestation in life. It is through the human exceeding itself and opening itself to a supreme plenitude that the Divine must manifest itself here, since that comes inevitably in the course and process of the spiritual evolution, and therefore he will not despise or blind himself to the Godhead because it is lodged in a human body, mnu tanum ritam. Beyond the limited human conception of God, he will pass to the one divine Eternal, but also he will meet him in the faces of the Gods, his cosmic personalities supporting the World-Play, detect him behind the mask of the Vibhutis, embodied World-Forces or human Leaders, reverence and obey him in the Guru, worship him in the Avatar. This will be to him his exceeding good fortune if he can meet one who has realised or is becoming That which he seeks for and can by opening to it in this vessel of its manifestation himself realise it. For that is the most palpable sign of the growing fulfilment, the promise of the great mystery of the progressive Descent into Matter which is the secret sense of the material creation and the justification of terrestrial existence.   Thus reveals himself to the seeker in the progress of the sacrifice the Lord of the sacrifice. At any point this revelation can begin; in any aspect the Master of the Work can take up the work in him and more and more press upon him and it for the unfolding of his presence. In time all the Aspects disclose themselves, separate, combine, fuse, are unified together. At the end there shines through it all the supreme integral Reality, unknowable to Mind which is part of the Ignorance, but knowable because self-aware in the light of a spiritual consciousness and a supramental knowledge.

1.04 - The Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   must now be levelled down in favour of The Reality of the un-   conscious. In the first case, reality had to be protected against an

1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga   ity. The Reality of their Work, even of the little we know of   it, is much more epochal than any of the religious myths.

1.04 - Wherefore of World?, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction   No doubt, The Reality assumes a new character when it translates, itself into concrete forms. In those forms the universal becomes the particular. When it appears, it clothes itself in appearances and they veil even while they reveal it. It is for this reason that the mind finds it as difficult to admit as to deny the principle which underlies the phenomenon.   If we examine, for instance, the phenomenon of thought, we have to observe that it is inseparable from the functioning of the material organs, while on the other hand it seems in its principle to have nothing in common with the matter of the organ which manifests it. And we cannot help opposing Mind and Matter to each other, although we do not see the in anywhere apart from each other.   --   It is, therefore, only an integral experience that can enable us to attain, beyond the multiple forms and successive depths of The Reality, its ultimate sources. The discovery cannot be effected by the sole aid of the logical reason. The data of sensation must enter into it no less than those of the understanding, no less than those of the still more transcendent faculties of intuitive consciousness and of knowledge that is lived.   When the mind, then, assembles these data and makes its language sufficiently supple to translate them synthetically, it perceives that each of them justifies from its own point of view one or other of the reasons which philosophies and religions have assigned for the existence of beings and of the world. And as the being within proceeds to resume them and make an integral whole of them all, it learns to discover by them the being itself and by the being the wherefore of the worlds.

1.053 - A Very Important Sadhana, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   The purpose of sense control, study of scripture and adoration of God is all single namely, the affirmation of the supremacy and the ultimate value of Godhead. This requires persistent effort, no doubt, and as has been pointed out earlier, it is a strenuous effort on the part of the mind to prevent the incoming of impressions of desire from objects outside on the one hand, and to create impressions of a positive character in the form of love of God on the other hand. Vijatiya vritti nirodha and sajatiya vritti pravah these two processes constitute sadhana. Vijatiya vritti nirodha means putting an end to all incoming impressions from external objects and allowing only those impressions which are conducive to contemplation on The Reality of God. Vijati means that which does not belong to our category, genus, or species.   What is our species? It is not mankind, human nature, etc. Our species is a spiritual spark, a divine location in our centre. The soul that we are is the species that we are. So all impressions, thoughts, feelings and ideas which are in agreement with the character of the soul, which is our jati, or species, should be allowed, and anything that is contrary or different from this should not be allowed. The vijatiya vritti nirodha is the inhibition or putting an end to all those vrittis or modifications of the mind in respect of things outside, because the soul is not anything that is outside. Sajatiya vritti pravah is the movement like the flow of a river, or the pouring of oil continuously, without break, in a thread of such ideas which are of the character of the soul which is universality.

1.056 - Lack of Knowledge is the Cause of Suffering, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   The point they make out is that if we are in tune with the way in which society expects us to live, we are normal. If we are not able to live in that manner, we are abnormal. The laws of society are supposed to be what they call the super-ego in psychoanalytical language. It has nothing to do with the ego that we are speaking of in philosophy; it is something different altogether. The superego is a Freudian word which implies the check that is put upon individual instincts and desires by the laws of human society outside. On account of this pressure that is exerted perpetually upon inward desires by The Reality of social rules and regulations outside, every human being is kept in tension. Therefore, there is a tendency to revolt against society. No one is really happy with society, ultimately. There is a disrespect and a dislike and a discontent, but because we cannot wag our tail before this monster called society, we keep quiet. But sometimes we become vehement, and then so many consequences follow inwardly as well as outwardly.   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.

1.057 - The Four Manifestations of Ignorance, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   The perception of The Reality of a not-Self; the perception of permanency in everything that is transitory or transitional; the perception of beauty, grandeur, and value in objects of sense; the perception of joy in the contact of the senses with objects these are the ways in which ignorance works. And, because of the vehemence with which these forms of ignorance work, because of the force with which they impinge upon us, because of the velocity with which they come and sit on our heads, we cannot escape them. Like vultures they come and sit on us, threatening us and subjugating us with their powers. Because of the force with which they sit upon us, we have to yield to them. Then, coming under their thumb, we act according to their commands, because this ignorance does not merely end with these perceptions. They have other demands, and once we fulfil a single demand, another will come.   The demands that follow from this ignorance have already been mentioned raga, dvesha, abhinivesha, etc. Because of the fact that the mind is completely involved, root and branch, in this mix-up of values, it is unable to concentrate itself on any given point. How is it possible for the mind to meditate? It is simply out of the question. It is a slave of slaves dasa se dasaha and such a slave cannot have any independence of its own. Where there is no independence, how can there be deliberate action? The question of the practice of yoga does not arise. It is gone, if this is to be the case.   --   Who in this world does not believe The Reality of a not-Self, or an object of sense? Is there anyone in this world who does not have the conviction that what he sees, or she sees, is real in itself? And, is there any activity which is not based on this notion? So, we can imagine what will be the outcome of all these activities. They will be only adding fuel to the fire that is already blazing due to the action of this ignorance. But, when this endeavour on the part of the perceiving consciousness in respect of the objects of sense gets re-evaluated and takes a new turn altogether, then this binding activity can become a liberating activity. That is the subtle difference between discriminative perception of an object and emotional perception of an object. The scientific observation of a thing is different from an observation that is coupled with attachment like, dislike, etc. Gradually the mind has to be disentangled from its obsessions in respect of things, and the perceptions should become detached observations for the purpose of the complete extrication of the mind from its emotional relationships.   Anitya auci dukha antmasu nitya uci sukha tma khyti avidy (II.5). To sum up what this sutra tells us, while it is true that ignorance is the breeding ground for all the effects thereof like, dislike, and so on this ignorance has a fourfold prong with which it moves into action. These four manifestations, which have been mentioned, are: the appearing of the not-Self as the Self, the regarding of impermanent things as permanent, painful experiences as pleasures, and impure things as pure. This is a frightening disclosure, indeed, of the facts of our experiences in this world, because there is no experience which is free from these defects. We cannot humanly imagine a kind of experience which is not involved in these defects. It means to say that ignorance rules the world and, therefore, pain cannot be avoided. Where erroneous perception is present, a sort of sorrow naturally should follow.   --   Social life is nothing but a set-up of living which has been agreed upon by different individuals in a group for the purpose of mutual sustenance, coordination and security, as no individual can be secure by itself in the light of the presence of other individuals because each individual is a centre of egoism, a principle of intense self-affirmation which denies The Reality of every other individual. The meaning of individuality or egoism is the denial of value to others, and sometimes the force of denial becomes so intense that it comes to the surface as conflict, as warfare. Whether it is through words or actually in fight, internally there is a feeling of irreconcilability among individuals. They are not really friends, because their very existence is an irreconcilability; it is an untenability; it is a denial of the truths which prevail in the midst of this apparent diversity.   Simultaneously with this urge to affirm oneself as an individual isolated from others, there is a contrary feeling of the necessity to relate oneself to others. We create a tense form of living, which is our present-day social living, where internally we dislike one another but outwardly we feel a necessity to be brothers. There is a necessity felt both ways. I feel a necessity to maintain my individuality. I cannot merge myself in you then, I will lose my individuality. It is a loss of my very status, which I would not like. So I maintain and preserve vehemently my individuality but at the same time, I cannot exist in that condition because of my dependence upon other individuals.

1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   than, say, The Reality of the devil in dogma, who according to the   au thentic sources was not invented by man at all but existed   --   8 9 These quotations show with what emphasis The Reality of   evil was denied by the Church Fathers. As already mentioned,   --   insist on The Reality of evil and must reject any definition that   regards it as insignificant or actually non-existent. Psychology is   --   that The Reality of evil does not necessarily lead to Manichaean   dualism and so does not endanger the unity of the God-image.   --   critical remark that projection does not do away with The Reality of a psychic   content. Nor can a fact be called "unreal" merely because it cannot be described

1.05 - Problems of Modern Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   into which The Reality of the human psyche has fallen is still so great that   self-examination or preoccupation with ourselves is deemed almost

1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy   Pictures, then, of a spiritual kind are first encountered by the student on his progress into higher worlds; and The Reality to which these pictures correspond is actually within himself. He should be far enough advanced to refrain from desiring reality of a more robust kind at this initial stage, and to regard these pictures as timely. He will soon meet something quite new within this world of pictures. His lower self is before him as a mirrored image; but from within this image there appears the true reality of his higher self. Out of the picture of his lower personality the form of the spiritual ego becomes visible. Then threads are spun from the latter to other and higher spiritual realities.   This is the moment when the two-petalled lotus in the region of the eyes is required. If it now begins to stir, the student finds it possible to bring his higher ego in contact with higher spiritual beings. The currents form this lotus flower flow toward the higher realities in such a way that the movements in question are fully apparent to the individual. Just as the light renders the physical

1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   If only man would turn and see The Reality of the Universe   shining in the spirit and through the flesh. He would then

1.05 - The Destiny of the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   1:AN OMNIPRESENT Reality is the truth of all life and existence whether absolute or relative, whether corporeal or incorporeal, whether animate or inanimate, whether intelligent or unintelligent; and in all its infinitely varying and even constantly opposed self-expressions, from the contradictions nearest to our ordinary experience to those remotest antinomies which lose themselves on the verges of the Ineffable, The Reality is one and not a sum or concourse. From that all variations begin, in that all variations consist, to that all variations return. All affirmations are denied only to lead to a wider affirmation of the same Reality. All antinomies confront each other in order to recognise one Truth in their opposed aspects and embrace by the way of conflict their mutual Unity. Brahman is the Alpha and the Omega. Brahman is the One besides whom there is nothing else existent.   2:But this unity is in its nature indefinable. When we seek to envisage it by the mind we are compelled to proceed through an infinite series of conceptions and experiences. And yet in the end we are obliged to negate our largest conceptions, our most comprehensive experiences in order to affirm that The Reality exceeds all definitions. We arrive at the formula of the Indian sages, neti neti, "It is not this, It is not that", there is no experience by which we can limit It, there is no conception by which It can be defined.   3:An Unknowable which appears to us in many states and attributes of being, in many forms of consciousness, in many activities of energy, this is what Mind can ultimately say about the existence which we ourselves are and which we see in all that is presented to our thought and senses. It is in and through those states, those forms, those activities that we have to approach and know the Unknowable. But if in our haste to arrive at a Unity that our mind can seize and hold, if in our insistence to confine the Infinite in our embrace we identify The Reality with any one definable state of being however pure and eternal, with any particular attri bute however general and comprehensive, with any fixed formulation of consciousness however vast in its scope, with any energy or activity however boundless its application, and if we exclude all the rest, then our thoughts sin against Its unknowableness and arrive not at a true unity but at a division of the Indivisible.   4:So strongly was this truth perceived in the ancient times that the Vedantic Seers, even after they had arrived at the crowning idea, the convincing experience of Sachchidananda as the highest positive expression of The Reality to our consciousness, erected in their speculations or went on in their perceptions to an Asat, a Non-Being beyond, which is not the ultimate existence, the pure consciousness, the infinite bliss of which all our experiences are the expression or the deformation. If at all an existence, a consciousness, a bliss, it is beyond the highest and purest positive form of these things that here we can possess and other therefore than what here we know by these names. Buddhism, somewhat arbitrarily declared by the theologians to be an un-Vedic doctrine because it rejected the authority of the Scriptures, yet goes back to this essentially Vedantic conception. Only, the positive and synthetic teaching of the Upanishads beheld Sat and Asat not as opposites destructive of each other, but as the last antinomy through which we look up to the Unknowable. And in the transactions of our positive consciousness, even Unity has to make its account with Multiplicity; for the Many also are Brahman. It is by Vidya, the Knowledge of the Oneness, that we know God; without it Avidya, the relative and multiple consciousness, is a night of darkness and a disorder of Ignorance. Yet if we exclude the field of that Ignorance, if we get rid of Avidya as if it were a thing non-existent and unreal, then Knowledge itself becomes a sort of obscurity and a source of imperfection. We become as men blinded by a light so that we can no longer see the field which that light illumines.   5:Such is the teaching, calm, wise and clear, of our most ancient sages. They had the patience and the strength to find and to know; they had also the clarity and humility to admit the limitation of our knowledge. They perceived the borders where it has to pass into something beyond itself. It was a later impatience of heart and mind, vehement attraction to an ultimate bliss or high masterfulness of pure experience and trenchant intelligence which sought the One to deny the Many and because it had received the breath of the heights scorned or recoiled from the secret of the depths. But the steady eye of the ancient wisdom perceived that to know God really, it must know Him everywhere equally and without distinction, considering and valuing but not mastered by the oppositions through which He shines.   6:We will put aside then the trenchant distinctions of a partial logic which declares that because the One is The Reality, the Many are an illusion, and because the Absolute is Sat, the one existence, the relative is Asat and non-existent. If in the Many we pursue insistently the One, it is to return with the benediction and the revelation of the One confirming itself in the Many.   7:We will guard ourselves also against the excessive importance that the mind attaches to particular points of view at which it arrives in its more powerful expansions and transitions. The perception of the spiritualised mind that the universe is an unreal dream can have no more absolute a value to us than the perception of the materialised mind that God and the Beyond are an illusory idea. In the one case the mind, habituated only to the evidence of the senses and associating reality with corporeal fact, is either unaccustomed to use other means of knowledge or unable to extend the notion of reality to a supraphysical experience. In the other case the same mind, passing beyond to the overwhelming experience of an incorporeal reality, simply transfers the same inability and the same consequent sense of dream or hallucination to the experience of the senses. But we perceive also the truth that these two conceptions disfigure. It is true that for this world of form in which we are set for our selfrealisation, nothing is entirely valid until it has possessed itself of our physical consciousness and manifested on the lowest levels in harmony with its manifestation on the highest summits. It is equally true that form and matter asserting themselves as a selfexistent reality are an illusion of Ignorance. Form and matter can be valid only as shape and substance of manifestation for the incorporeal and immaterial. They are in their nature an act of divine consciousness, in their aim the representation of a status of the Spirit.

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology   clear understanding as equivalent to the construction of a proper set, and assume that The Reality of a   thing can be clearly defined. Ideas about evil, however, do not form a proper set. They form a natural   --   The fascist who will not face The Reality and necessity of the unknown hides his vulnerable face in a   pathological excess of order. The decadent who refuses to see that existence is not possible without   --   will he will not allow The Reality of his suffering to prove to him that some things are real, because   acceptance of that proof would force him to believe and to act (would force him as well towards painful   --   The Reality of personal experience ensures contact with the dragon and it is during such contact that the   great force of the individual spirit makes itself manifest, if it is allowed to. The hero voluntarily places   --   up, to any other reality besides The Reality of our drives for thinking is merely a relation of these drives to each   other: is it not permitted to make the experiment and to ask the question whether this given would not be sufficient

1.05 - THE MASTER AND KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "He who is called Brahman by the jnanis is known as tman by the yogis and as Bhagavan by the bhaktas. The same brahmin is called priest, when worshipping in the temple, and cook, when preparing a meal in the kitchen. The jnani sticking to the path of knowledge, always reasons about The Reality, saying, 'Not this, not this'. Brahman is neither 'this' nor 'that'; It is neither the universe nor its living beings. Reasoning in this way, the mind becomes steady. Then it disappears and the aspirant goes into samdhi.   This is the knowledge of Brahman. It is the unwavering conviction of the jnani that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory. All these names and forms are illusory, like a dream. What Brahman is cannot be described. One cannot even say that Brahman is a Person. This is the opinion of the jnanis, the followers of Vedanta philosophy.   --   "But The Reality is one and the same. The difference is only in name. He who is Brahman is verily tman, and again, He is the Bhagavan. He is Brahman to the followers of the path of knowledge, Paramatman to the yogis, and Bhagavan to the lovers of God."   The steamer had been going toward Calcutta; but the passengers, with their eyes fixed on the Master and their ears given to his nectar-like words, were oblivious of its motion.   --   MASTIER: "The jnanis, who adhere to the non-dualistic philosophy of Vedanta, say that the acts of creation, preservation, and destruction, the universe itself and all its living beings, are the manifestations of akti, the Divine Power. If you reason it out, you will realize that all these are as illusory as a dream. Brahman alone is The Reality, and all else is unreal. Even this very akti is unsubstantial, like a dream.   "But though you reason all your life, unless you are established in samdhi, you cannot go beyond the jurisdiction of akti. Even when you say, 'I am meditating', or 'I am contemplating', still you are moving in the realm of akti, within Its power.   --   But when It engages in these activities, then we call It Kli or akti. The Reality is one and the same; the difference is in name and form.   "It is like water, called in different languages by different names, such as 'jal', 'pani', and so forth. There are three or four ghats on a lake. The Hindus, who drink water at one place, call it 'jal'. The Mussalmans at another place call it 'pani'. And the English at a third place call it 'water'. All three denote one and the same thing, the difference being in the name only. In the same way, some address The Reality as 'Allah', some as 'God', some as 'Brahman', some as 'Kli', and others by such names as 'Rama', 'Jesus', 'Durga', 'Hari.' "   Different manifestations of Kli

1.060 - Tracing the Ultimate Cause of Any Experience, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   The satisfaction of the senses is possible only if the not-Self is outside the Self. If the not-Self is not there, the pleasure also cannot be there because every contactual pleasure, sensory or egoistic, is conditioned by the presence of an external object. The perception of The Reality of an external object is what is known as the recognition of the Self in the not-Self. So, the extent to which we read reality into the location of an object outside is also the magnitude of the satisfaction that we gain by coming in contact with it. The more is The Reality of an object, the greater is the satisfaction that we get by coming in contact with it. The more we read the Selfhood in a not-Self, the more is the intensity of the recognition of the Self in the not-Self, the greater is the pleasure that we derive by contact with it. Hence, all the pleasures of the world are ultimately rooted in this peculiar phenomenon namely, the vision of the Self in the not-Self.   Now we have been awakened to a very terrifying situation in which we have been placed: we see the Self in the not-Self. Is it proper? If it is not proper, why is it not proper? It is not proper because it is quite the opposite of what is. It is the contrary of facts, and inasmuch as it is ultimately the Truth alone that can succeed, this effort of the mind in the direction of coming in contact with the not-Self will not succeed. It cannot succeed because it is contrary to Truth. Satyameva jayate nanritam: Truth alone will succeed. This amrita of the perception of the Self in the not-Self is the basis of the great joys that we have in this world any kind of joy, whatever it be, whether it is sensory or egoistic, social, personal, or whatever it is.

1.069 - The Reality, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   object:1.069 - The Reality   class:chapter   --   1. The Reality.   2. What is The Reality?   3. What will make you understand what The Reality is?   4. Thamood and Aad denied the Catastrophe.

1.06 - Quieting the Vital, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   When a sailor needs to take his ship's bearing, he does not use his love of the sea to do so, but a sextant, and he makes quite sure that the mirror is clean. If our mirror is not clean, we can never see The Reality of things or people, because everywhere we will meet only the reflection of our own desires or fears, the echo of our own turmoil, not only in this world but in all the other worlds, in waking, in sleep, and in death. In order to see, we need to stop being in the center of the picture. The seeker will therefore need to discriminate between those elements that blur his vision and those that clarify it; such will be the essence of his "morality."   Habit of Response The first thing the seeker will detect in his vital exploration is a part of the mind whose only role seems to be to give form, and justification,   --   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   All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendour appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter the image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by The Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. Our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.   An ultimate inexpressible adoration offered by us to the Transcendent, to the Highest,1 to the Ineffable, is yet no complete worship if it is not offered to him wherever he manifests or wherever even he hides his godhead - in man2 and object and every creature. An Ignorance is there no doubt which imprisons the heart, distorts its feelings, obscures the significance of its offering; all partial worship, all religion which erects a mental or a physical idol is tempted to veil and protect the truth in it by a certain cloak of ignorance and easily loses the truth in its image. But the pride of exclusive knowledge is also a limitation and a barrier. For there is, concealed behind individual love, obscured by its ignorant human figure, a mystery which the mind cannot seize, the mystery of the body of the Divine, the secret of a mystic form of the Infinite which we can approach only through the ecstasy of the heart and the passion of the pure and sublimated sense, and its attraction which is the call of the divine Flute-player, the mastering compulsion of the AllBeautiful, can only be seized and seize us through an occult love and yearning which in the end makes one the Form and the Formless, and identifies Spirit and Matter. It is that which the spirit in Love is seeking here in the darkness of the Ignorance and it is that which it finds when individual human love is changed into the love of the Immanent Divine incarnate in the material universe.

1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga   which is beyond doubt, not only confirms The Reality of the   near-death experiences, it also raises several interesting

1.07 - The Continuity of Consciousness, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy   By thus conducting himself the student approaches ever nearer to the attainment of that condition, on his path to higher knowledge, in which the unconsciousness of sleep-life is transformed into complete consciousness. When his body rests, man lives in surroundings which are just as real as those of his waking daily life. It is needless to say that The Reality during sleep is different from physical reality surrounding the physical body. The student learns-indeed he must learn if he is to retain a firm footing in the physical world and not become a visionary-to    p. 214

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   --   disparage The Reality of this grand phenomenon, we do better to   accept it frankly. Let us look it in the face and see whether, using it

1.07 - The Ideal Law of Social Development, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Man, the mental being in Nature, is especially distinguished from her less developed creatures by a greater power of individuality, by the liberation of the mental consciousness which enables him finally to understand more and more himself and his law of being and his development, by the liberation of the mental will which enables him under the secret control of the universal Will to manage more and more the materials and lines of his development and by the capacity in the end to go beyond himself, beyond his mentality and open his consciousness into that from which mind, life and body proceed. He can even, however imperfectly at present, get at his highest to some consciousness of The Reality which is his true being and possess consciously also, as nothing else in terrestrial Nature can possess, the Self, the Idea, the Will which have constituted him and can become by that the master of his own nature and increasingly, not as now he is, a wrestler with dominant circumstance but the master of Nature. To do this, to arrive through mind and beyond mind at the Self, the Spirit which expresses itself in all Nature and, becoming one with it in his being, his force, his consciousness, his will, his knowledge, to possess at once humanly and divinelyaccording to the law and nature of human existence, but of human existence fulfilled in God and fulfilling God in the worldboth himself and the world is the destiny of man and the object of his individual and social existence.1   This is done primarily through the individual man; for this end man has become an individual soul, that the One may find and manifest Himself in each human being. That end is not indeed achieved by the individual human being in his unaided mental force. He needs the help of the secret Divine above his mentality in his superconscient self; he needs the help also of the secret Divine around him in Nature and in his fellow-men. Everything in Nature is an occasion for him to develop his divine potentiality, an occasion which he has a certain relative freedom to use or to misuse, although in the end both his use and misuse of his materials are overruled in their results by the universal Will so as to assist eventually the development of his law of being and his destiny. All life around him is a help towards the divine purpose in him; every human being is his fellow worker and assists him whether by association and union or by strife and opposition. Nor does he achieve his destiny as the individual Man for the sake of the individual soul alone,a lonely salvation is not his complete ideal,but for the world also or rather for God in the world, for God in all as well as above all and not for God solely and separately in one. And he achieves it by the stress, not really of his separate individual Will, but of the universal Will in its movement towards the goal of its cycles.

1.07 - The Process of Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The end of a stage of evolution is usually marked by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out of the evolution. It is a principle of Nature that in order to get rid of any powerful tendency or deep-seated association in humanity, whether in the mass or in the individual, it has first to be exhausted by bhoga or enjoyment, afterwards to be dominated and weakened by nigraha or control and, finally, when it is weak, to be got rid of by sayama, rejection or self dissociation. The difference between nigraha and sayama is that in the first process there is a violent struggle to put down, coerce and, if possible, crush the tendency, The Reality of which is not questioned, but in the second process it is envisaged as a dead or dying force, its occasional return marked with disgust, then with impatience, finally with indifference as a mere ghost, vestige or faint echo of that which was once real but is now void of significance. Such a return is part of the process of Nature for getting rid of this undesirable and disappearing quantity.   Sayama is unseasonable and would be fruitless when a force, quality or tendency is in its infancy or vigour, before it has had the enjoyment and full activity which is its due. When once a thing is born it must have its youth, growth, enjoyment, life and final decay and death; when once an impetus has been given by Prakriti to her creation, she insists that the velocity shall spend itself by natural exhaustion before it shall cease. To arrest the growth or speed unseasonably by force is nigraha, which can be effective for a time but not in perpetuity. It is said in the Gita that all things are ruled by their nature, to their nature they return and nigraha or repression is fruitless. What happens then is that the thing untimely slain by violence is not really dead, but withdraws for a time into the Prakriti which sent it forth, gathers an immense force and returns with extraordinary violence ravening for the rightful enjoyment which it was denied. We see this in the attempts we make to get rid of our evil saskras or associations when we first tread the path of Yoga. If anger is a powerful element in our nature, we may put it down for a time by sheer force and call it self-control, but eventually unsatisfied Nature will get the better of us and the passion return upon us with astonishing force at an unexpected moment. There are only two ways by which we can effectively get the better of the passion which seeks to enslave us. One is by substitution, replacing it whenever it rises by the opposite quality, anger by thoughts of forgiveness, love or forbearance, lust by meditation on purity, pride by thoughts of humility and our own defects or nothingness; this is the method of Rajayoga, but it is a difficult, slow and uncertain method; for both the ancient traditions and the modern experience of Yoga show that men who had attained for long years the highest self-mastery have been suddenly surprised by a violent return of the thing they thought dead or for ever subject. Still this substitution, slow though it be, is one of the commonest methods of Nature and it is largely by this means, often unconsciously or half-consciously used, that the character of a man changes and develops from life to life or even in the bounds of a single lifetime. It does not destroy things in their seed and the seed which is not reduced to ashes by Yoga is always capable of sprouting again and growing into the complete and mighty tree. The second method is to give bhoga or enjoyment to the passion so as to get rid of it quickly. When it is satiated and surfeited by excessive enjoyment, it becomes weak and spent and a reaction ensues which establishes for a time the opposite force, tendency or quality. If that moment is seized by the Yogin for nigraha, the nigraha so repeated at every suitable opportunity becomes so far effective as to reduce the strength and vitality of the vtti sufficiently for the application of the final sayama. This method of enjoyment and reaction is also a favourite and universal method of Nature, but it is never complete in itself and, if applied to permanent forces or qualities, tends to establish a see-saw of opposite tendencies, extremely useful to the operations of Prakriti but from the point of view of self-mastery useless and inconclusive. It is only when this method is followed up by the use of sayama that it becomes effective. The Yogin regards the vtti merely as a play of Nature with which he is not concerned and of which he is merely the spectator; the anger, lust or pride is not his, it is the universal Mothers and she works it and stills it for her own purposes. When, however, the vtti is strong, mastering and unspent, this attitude cannot be maintained in sincerity and to try to hold it intellectually without sincerely feeling it is mithycra, false discipline or hypocrisy. It is only when it is somewhat exhausted by repeated enjoyment and coercion that Prakriti or Nature at the comm and of the soul or Purusha can really deal with her own creation. She deals with it first by vairgya in its crudest form of disgust, but this is too violent a feeling to be permanent; yet it leaves its mark behind in a deep-seated wish to be rid of its cause, which survives the return and temporary reign of the passion. Afterwards its return is viewed with impatience but without any acute feeling of intolerance. Finally supreme indifference or udsnat is gained and the final going out of the tendency by the ordinary process of Nature is watched in the true spirit of the sayam who has the knowledge that he is the witnessing soul and has only to dissociate himself from a phenomenon for it to cease. The highest stage leads either to mukti in the form of laya or disappearance, the vtti vanishing altogether and for good, or else to another kind of freedom when the soul knows that it is Gods ll and leaves it to Him whether He shall throw out the tendency or use it for His own purposes. This is the attitude of the Karmayogin who puts himself in Gods hands and does work for His sake only, knowing that it is Gods force that works in him. The result of that attitude of self-surrender is that the Lord of all takes charge and according to the promise of the Gita delivers His servant and lover from all sin and evil, the vttis working in the bodily machine without affecting the soul and working only when He raises them up for His purposes. This is nirliptat, the state of absolute freedom within the ll.

1.07 - The Three Schools of Magick 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   Mysticism, both Catholic and Protestant, made a further attempt to free Christianity from the dark cloud of iniquity. They joined hands with the Sufis and the Vedantists. But this again led to the mere denial of The Reality of evil. Thus drawing away, little by little, from clear appreciation of the facts of Nature, their doctrine became purely theoretical, and faded away, while the thundercloud of sin settled down more heavily than ever.   The most important of all the efforts of the White School, from an exoteric point of view, is Islam. In its doctrine there is some slight taint, but much less than in Christianity. It is a virile religion. It looks facts in the face, and admits their horror; but it proposes to overcome them by sheer dint of manhood. Unfortunately, the metaphysical conceptions of its quasi-profane Schools are grossly materialistic. It is only the Pantheism of the Sufis which eliminates the conception of propitiation; and, in practice, the Sufis are too closely allied to the Vedantists to retain hold of reality.

1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy   In connection with the Mahayanist view that words play an important and even creative part in the evolution of unregenerate human nature, we may mention Humes arguments against The Reality of causation. These arguments start from the postulate that all events are loose and separate from one another and proceed with faultless logic to a conclusion that makes complete nonsense of all organized thought or purposive action. The fallacy, as Professor Stout has pointed out, lies in the preliminary postulate. And when we ask ourselves what it was that induced Hume to make this odd and quite unrealistic assumption that events are loose and separate, we see that his only reason for flying in the face of immediate experience was the fact that things and happenings are symbolically represented in our thought by nouns, verbs and adjectives, and that these words are, in effect, loose and separate from one another in a way which the events and things they stand for quite obviously are not. Taking words as the measure of things, instead of using things as the measure of words, Hume imposed the discrete and, so to say, pointilliste pattern of language upon the continuum of actual experiencewith the impossibly paradoxical results with which we are all familiar. Most human beings are not philosophers and care not at all for consistency in thought or action. Thus, in some circumstances they take it for granted that events are not loose and separate, but co-exist or follow one another within the organized and organizing field of a cosmic whole. But on other occasions, where the opposite view is more nearly in accord with their passions or interests, they adopt, all unconsciously, the Humian position and treat events as though they were as independent of one another and the rest of the world as the words by which they are symbolized. This is generally true of all occurrences involving I, me, mine. Reifying the loose and separate names, we regard the things as also loose and separatenot subject to law, not involved in the network of relationships, by which in fact they are so obviously bound up with their physical, social and spiritual environment. We regard as absurd the idea that there is no causal process in nature and no organic connection between events and things in the lives of other people; but at the same time we accept as axiomatic the notion that our own sacred ego is loose and separate from the universe, a law unto itself above the moral dharma and even, in many respects, above the natural law of causality. Both in Buddhism and Catholicism, monks and nuns were encouraged to avoid the personal pronoun and to speak of themselves in terms of circumlocutions that clearly indicated their real relationship with the cosmic reality and their fellow creatures. The precaution was a wise one. Our responses to familiar words are conditioned reflexes. By changing the stimulus, we can do something to change the response. No Pavlov bell, no salivation; no harping on words like me and mine, no purely automatic and unreflecting egotism. When a monk speaks of himself, not as I, but as this sinner or this unprofitable servant, he tends to stop taking his loose and separate selfhood for granted, and makes himself aware of his real, organic relationship with God and his neighbours.   In practice words are used for other purposes than for making statements about facts. Very often they are used rhetorically, in order to arouse the passions and direct the will towards some course of action regarded as desirable. And sometimes, too, they are used poetically that is to say, they are used in such a way that, besides making a statement about real or imaginary things and events, and besides appealing rhetorically to the will and the passions, they cause the reader to be aware that they are beautiful. Beauty in art or nature is a matter of relationships between things not in themselves intrinsically beautiful. There is nothing beautiful, for example, about the vocables, time, or syllable. But when they are used in such a phrase as to the last syllable of recorded time, the relationship between the sound of the component words, between our ideas of the things for which they stand, and between the overtones of association with which each word and the phrase as a whole are charged, is apprehended, by a direct and immediate intuition, as being beautiful.

1.081 - The Application of Pratyahara, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   There is a great amount of doubt in the minds of seekers, even well-informed ones, as to what exactly is intended to be done in this stage known as pratyahara. Is it withdrawal? Many questions arise due to a mix-up of philosophical doctrines, as well as practical difficulties. Some of them are: What is it from which the mind is being abstracted? Is it from the form of the object or from The Reality of the object, the very existence of it?   The omnipresence of the spirit should preclude any kind of withdrawal. Also, there is the doctrine of devotion which recognises the presence of God in everything, and the all-pervading characteristic of God would not demand a withdrawal of the mind from anything, inasmuch as God is present everywhere. Next, there is a doubt that the abstraction of the mind may mean a kind of psychological introversion, which is what is objected to by psychoanalysts, because the introverted attitude is the opposite of the extroverted one, and it is equally bad as bad as the extroverted attitude. Whether we are tied up inwardly or bound outwardly, it makes no difference anyhow we are bound. And, topping the list there is the painful aspect of it, because it is impossible for the mind not to think of that which it desires. If it is not to think of what it desires, then of what is it to think? What else are we to think what we dont like? We are expecting the mind to wipe out the thought of things from its memory, including even those thoughts which it wants and regards as valuable and worthwhile. What else is it to think, if everything is removed from its memory? All these are the difficulties.

1.089 - The Levels of Concentration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   Now we see that the concept that we have about the object called the currency note is not to be identified with the substance of the note. This much is clear now. What is the currency note made of? It is not made up of the purchasing power, as we are thinking. It is made up of paper that is all. The purchasing power is an investiture upon it, a kind of superimposition, which is a meaning that we have foisted upon it for various reasons. Now we have gone one step above in our analysis of the object. From the stage of calling it a currency note, we have come to the higher stage of calling it a piece of paper, which is The Reality behind the currency note. It was paper even previously, but we did not want to call it paper, for reasons of our own. When I show you a thousand-rupee currency note, you will not say, Here is a piece of paper. You will say, Here is a note. We have a new name for it, coined for our practical convenience, notwithstanding the fact that it remains paper even today, as it will be one day after its value is negated by the governments orders.   Thus, the capacity of the mind to lay itself upon the substance of the note, divested of the value that has been superimposed upon it, will be the next step the next higher stage of contemplation. Now we begin to see the paper rather than the note. The idea of note has gone. We call it paper. But is paper the real substance of what we see there? What is paper? It is a name that we give to a peculiar form that wooden pulp has taken. Paper is nothing but wooden pulp which has been made malleable and flattened by a mechanical process in the factory; and we have a coloured piece of wooden pulp before us, which we call paper. We remove the idea of paper from our minds because that is only a name that we have coined to designate a particular form taken by a wooden pulp. What is there? What is the substance of paper? It is pulp, made of wood. From the currency note we have gone to paper, from paper we have gone to wooden pulp. What is the wooden pulp made of?

1.08 - Independence from the Physical, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   materialists, for their lack of faith in the power of the inner spirit, and with the spiritualists, for their lack of faith in The Reality of matter.   This impotence, however, is not irreversible, since it is based mainly on our belief that we are impotent; we are somewhat like a person who has inherited a pair of crutches from his ancestors, and hence has lost faith in his own legs. The point is to have faith in our own consciousness; not only does it have legs, but thousands of eyes and arms, and even wings.

1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy   For if plurality and distinction ["separate selves"] belong only to this world of appearances, and if one and the same Being is what is beheld in all these living things, well then, the experience that dissolves the distinction between the I and the Not-I cannot be false. On the contrary: its opposite must be false. The former experience underlies the mystery of compassion, and stands, in fact, for The Reality of which compassion is the prime expression. That experience, therefore, must be the metaphysical ground of ethics and consist simply in this: that one individual should recognize in another, himself in his own true being.23   THE SUBTLE LEVEL

1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   To avoid any misunderstanding, I must point out here that because of the exigencies of the language in which I am expressing myself, I am obliged to use the masculine gender whenever I mention the Divine. But in fact The Reality of love I speak of is above and beyond all gender, masculine or feminine; and when it incarnates in a human body, it does so indifferently in the body of a man or a woman according to the needs of the work to be done.   In summary, austerity in feelings consists then of giving up all emotional attachment, of whatever nature, whether for a person, for the family, for the country or anything else, in order to concentrate on an exclusive attachment for the Divine Reality. This concentration will culminate in an integral identification and will be instrumental to the supramental realisation upon earth.

1.097 - Sublimation of Object-Consciousness, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   No one can reconstitute the structure of the mind in such a way as to prevent it from the affirmation of its own old conviction that world experience is real. Not only that it feels that it is the only reality. Who among us here is not convinced about The Reality of world experience? Who has the guts to believe that there is another sort of experience other than world experience? All that we see here with our eyes and sense with our senses is the only reality for us. That is why we cling to the things of the world so much. Neither can we believe that there are other grades of experience than the present one, nor can we believe that there is something wrong in the ways of sense perception as provided now, in this condition of the mind. Therefore, it is a herculean task, indeed, to bring the mind round to a new type of conviction, which is what is called viveka right appreciation and a perception of the character of Reality.   The sutra which I stated just now is a precise statement of the conditions of spiritual meditation. What the sutra literally means is: sattva and the purusha namely, the mind and the ultimate consciousness, purusha are opposed to each other in their characters. In what way are they opposed? That is not mentioned here. We have to understand what this difference is by studying the meaning of the implications provided in other sutras. The purusha is infinite, whereas the mind is externalised. This is the primary distinction. The mind cannot have infinite awareness. It is always projected outwardly through the senses, whereas the purusha is eternally aware of an infinitude of being. This is a great difference indeed.

1.098 - The Transformation from Human to Divine, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   What is it that we are going to encounter? It is not easy for anyone to detail these before they come. But, generally speaking, they are supposed to be the forms taken by ones own weaknesses. Every person has some weakness, which is smothered and stifled by the apparent personality that one puts forth in human society. But that weakness still persists. It is kept there in ambush, waiting for favourable conditions to manifest. These weaknesses are those which pertain to the senses and the ego. The senses vehemently assert The Reality of an external object. This is the peculiar weakness of the senses, and whatever arguments we put forth before them, they are of no avail. And the ego has a peculiar feature of affirming itself as an isolated individual. It will oppose any attempt at communion, which is the thing that we want to achieve in yoga, because communion is losing of personality, which is what is very painful to the ego.   Thus, there are two oppositions to the progress in yoga the one that comes from the ego, and the other that comes from the senses. All the obstacles or impediments that we may have to face in future are only these the desires of the senses, and the affirmations of the ego. For this purpose Patanjali has been warning us, again and again, that a thorough grasp of the conditions for the practice are essential before the practice is commenced.

1.09 - Sleep and Death, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   These sundry I's express a fraction of reality, The Reality seen by the naked eye, but immense realms stretch beyond them. We have already mentioned a universal Mind, a universal Vital, and a subtle Physical behind this physical shell; now we must try to recover our entire universal reality. There are three methods or stages for achieving this.   The first, available to everyone, is sleep. The second, less common,

1.1.01 - The Divine and Its Aspects, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga         3. The Divine is transcendent Being and Spirit, all bliss and light and divine knowledge and power, and towards that highest divine existence and its Light we have to rise and bring down The Reality of it more and more into our consciousness and life.       In the ordinary nature we live in the Ignorance and do not know the Divine. The forces of the ordinary nature are undivine forces because they weave a veil of ego and desire and unconsciousness which conceals the Divine from us. To get into the higher and deeper consciousness which knows and lives consciously in the Divine, we have to get rid of the forces of the lower nature and open to the action of the Divine Shakti which will transform our consciousness into that of the Divine Nature.

11.01 - The Opening Scene of Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The original inconscience is a non-existence, a nihil in which all existence is rolled up and dissolved, an infinite non-entity or zero. This is the zero here below, on the reverse side of The Reality. But there is another zero up above and beyond, beyond the superconsciousness, the Sunya, beyond Sachchidananda. In between is the world of night, the world of gestation where the Gods are asleep. When the Divine, the One indivisible existence felt the first stirring and was moved to create, he divided himself and cast himself as it were out of himself. And the Light and Consciousness of his Being forthwith leaped into darkness and inconscience. That is the involution of the Supreme into material existence.    This original darkness is the womb of creation, it is something akin to Hiranyagarbha of Indian tradition. The fiat has gone from the Supreme to resurrect this darknesshis alter-egoand he sends down the messenger-light. So the Gods are about to wake, there is a stir in their slumber. The creation as manifestation begins when the first ray of light strikes the darkness. That is when the Gods open their eyes. But the spell of darkness returns and swallows up the light.

1.1.02 - Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   This is the crucial point in the question, what is consciousness, whether it is a temporary phenomenon of Nature or a reality in itself fundamental to existence. The first is the conclusion that is drawn, and must be drawn, from normal experience on the surface. The other is at best a metaphysical speculation or an instinctive feeling in humanity unless we go beyond the normal experience, deepen and widen the range of our present consciousness and test its inner depths and inferior abysses and supernormal heights, until we can touch its fundamental or its ultimate or its total reality as is done in Yoga. To judge from only normal and superficial experience as the ordinary mind does with phenomena is to miss the truth of things - we have to go behind the surface phenomenon to find The Reality of what a   Sachchidananda

1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga   If one does not accept The Reality of the spirit, consider-   ations like the above are impossible to accept from a materi-   --   cepts The Reality of the spirit but has not realized the cos-   mic consciousness, these considerations are not concretely

1.10 - The Revolutionary Yogi, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   another, the way the two parts of the stick appear in water, but The Reality is quite different when we ascend to a higher plane, to the Superconscient, just as it is again different when we descend to the lower, atomic level. The one difference between the broken stick and our customary vision of the world is that one is merely an optical illusion, while the other is an earnest one. We insist on seeing as broken a stick which in reality is not. That this earnest illusion agrees with our present practical life and with the superficial level at which our existence unfolds may justify the illusion, but it is also the reason we are powerless to control life, for to see falsely is to live falsely.   The scientist, who is not hampered by appearances, sees better and controls better, but his vision, too, is incomplete and his control uncertain; he has not truly mastered life, not even physical forces, but is merely using some of their most obvious effects. Therefore this problem of vision is not just one of personal satisfaction; it is not a matter of seeing better in order to have lovely visions in rose or blue,

11.15 - Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    "The poet of patriotism, the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity" he was, in the famous words of his advocate and friend and follower who stood for him before the bar of History for his cause, and not merely before a British Court of Justice. Indeed he was all that, but today we have to add another epithet and complete the description. For he is now the builder of the Life Divine. This was indeed the secret Truth that worked in him from behind and gave to these earlier preoccupations The Reality and the beauty they attained and the fullness of their significance. He worked for human evolution, that was his life' mission. He thus formulates the stages of human evolution:    "Family, nationality, humanity are Vishnu's three strides from an isolated to a collective unity. The first has been fulfilled, we yet strive for the perfection of the second, towards the third we are reaching out our hands and the pioneer work is already attempted".

1.11 - Oneness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and Godnature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices. . . . We erect a God of Love and Mercy, a God of good, a God just, righteous and virtuous according to our own moral conceptions of justice, virtue and righteousness, and all the rest, we say, is not He or is not His, but was made by some diabolical Power which He suffered for some reason to work out its wicked will or by some dark Ahriman counterbalancing our gracious Ormuzd, or was even the fault of selfish and sinful man who has spoiled what was made originally perfect by God . . . . We have to look courageously in the face of The Reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in His being and that so He has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children,   Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra136 forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only 136   --   leaving us merely with a few sure crumbs. It is true that roast beef is more universally verifiable and, therefore more objective, than the joy in Beethoven's last quartets; but that is a lessening of the world, not an enrichment. Actually, this is a false opposition. Subjectivity is really an advanced or preparatory stage for objectivity; once everyone verifies The Reality of cosmic consciousness, or simply the joy in Beethoven's quartets, we may attain an objectively less barbarous universe.   Sri Aurobindo was not a man to be satisfied with cosmic dreaming. The au thenticity of the experience and its practical relevance can be immediately verified by a very simple test, which reveals a new mode of knowledge through identity: we know a thing because we are that thing. Consciousness can move to any point of its universal reality, focus on any being, any event, and know it immediately and intimately, as one knows the beating of one's own heart, because everything now takes place within; nothing is outside or separate anymore. As the Upanishad long ago stated: "When That is known, all is known."155 The first signs of this new consciousness are quite tangible: One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one's own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one's whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one's instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing,

1.11 - Powers, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset   The misery that we suffer comes from ignorance, from non-discrimination between the real and the unreal. We all take the bad for the good, the dream for The Reality. Soul is the only reality, and we have forgotten it. Body is an unreal dream, and we think we are all bodies. This non-discrimination is the cause of misery. It is caused by ignorance. When discrimination comes, it brings strength, and then alone can we avoid all these various ideas of body, heavens, and gods. This ignorance arises through differentiating by species, sign, and place. For instance, take a cow. The cow is differentiated from the dog by species. Even with the cows alone how do we make the distinction between one cow and another? By signs. If two objects are exactly similar, they can be distinguished if they are in different places. When objects are so mixed up that even these differential will not help us, the power of discrimination acquired by the above-mentioned practice will give us the ability to distinguish them. The highest philosophy of the Yogi is based upon this fact, that the Purusha is pure and perfect, and is the only "simple" that exists in this universe. The body and mind are compounds, and yet we are ever identifying ourselves with them This is the great mistake that the distinction has been lost. When this power of discrimination has been attained, man sees that everything in this world, mental and physical, is a compound, and, as such, cannot be the Purusha.

1.11 - The Change of Power, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   We have therefore come to a new change of power. A new power such as there has never been since the first anthropoids, a tidal wave of power that has nothing to do with our little philosophical and spiritual meditations of past ages, a worldwide, collective and perhaps universal phenomenon as radically new as the first surge of thought upon the world, when mind took over from the simian order and overthrew all its laws and instinctual mechanisms. But here and this is really the characteristic of the new world being born the power is not a power of abstraction, not a talent for getting a bird's-eye view of things and reducing the scattered data of the world into an equation in order to make a synthesis, which is always wobbly the mind has turned everything into abstraction; it lives in an image of the world, a yellow or blue reflection of the great bubble, like a man inside a glass statue not a discursive and contingent power that only adds and subtracts, not a gathering of knowledge that never makes a whole. It is a direct power of the truth of each instant and each thing harmonized with the total truth of the millions of instants and things, a power to enter the truth of each gesture and each circumstance, which accords with all other gestures and circumstances because Truth is one and the Self is unique, and if this point is touched, everything else is instantly touched, like cell and cell of the same body. It is a tremendous power of concretization of Truth, acting directly upon the same Truth contained in each point of space and each second of time, or rather, compelling each moment, each circumstance, each gesture, each cell of matter to yield its truth, its right note, its own innate power buried under all the layers of our vital and mental accretions a tremendous truing of the world and each being. We could say a tremendous Movement of realization the world is not real! It is a distorted appearance, a mental approximation, which looks more like a nightmare, a black and white translation of something we still have not seized. We do not have our real eyes yet! For, in the end, there is only one reality, and that is The Reality of Truth a truth that has grown, that had to protect itself behind walls, to limit and dim itself under one shell or another, one bubble or another, to make itself felt by a caterpillar or a man, then bursts open in its own Sunlight when the wings of the great Self we always were begin to open.   But this change of power, this transition from the indirect and abstract truths of the mind to the direct and concrete Truth of the great Self is obviously not effected on the summits of the Spirit it has nothing to do with mental gymnastics, just as the other power had nothing to do with the ape's skills. It is effected in a most down-to-earth way, in everyday life, in the minuscule, the futility of the moment, which is futile only to us, if we understand that a speck of dust contains as much truth as the totality of all space, and just as much power. It therefore applies itself to utterly material mechanisms. The play takes place in the substance. Therefore it comes up against age-old resistances, against a bubble that is perhaps the first self-defensive bubble of the protoplasm in its water hole. But in the end resistances turn out to have assisted by the resistance much more than they have impeded the intention of the great Creatrix and her Mover,26 and we do not know, finally, if there is a single shadow and pain that does not secretly build up the very power we are trying to manifest. If it emerged too soon, truth would be incomplete, or unbearable for the other animalcules that share our water hole and which would soon disgorge it we are a single human body, we always forget, and our mistakes or slowness are the mistakes and slowness of the world. But if we can win a victory here, in this little point of matter, each of us human beings has a formidable task to carry out, if he understands. Being born in this world is a far more powerful mystery than we had thought.

1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga   warrior on a white horse with a sword. 70 The Reality seems   to be quite different, although it agrees in every detail with

1.11 - The Reason as Governor of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The root of the difficulty is this that at the very basis of all our life and existence, internal and external, there is something on which the intellect can never lay a controlling hold, the Absolute, the Infinite. Behind everything in life there is an Absolute, which that thing is seeking after in its own way; everything finite is striving to express an infinite which it feels to be its real truth. Moreover, it is not only each class, each type, each tendency in Nature that is thus impelled to strive after its own secret truth in its own way, but each individual brings in his own variations. Thus there is not only an Absolute, an Infinite in itself which governs its own expression in many forms and tendencies, but there is also a principle of infinite potentiality and variation quite baffling to the reasoning intelligence; for the reason deals successfully only with the settled and the finite. In man this difficulty reaches its acme. For not only is mankind unlimited in potentiality; not only is each of its powers and tendencies seeking after its own absolute in its own way and therefore naturally restless under any rigid control by the reason; but in each man their degrees, methods, combinations vary, each man belongs not only to the common humanity, but to the Infinite in himself and is therefore unique. It is because this is The Reality of our existence that the intellectual reason and the intelligent will cannot deal with life as its sovereign, even though they may be at present our supreme instruments and may have been in our evolution supremely important and helpful. The reason can govern, but only as a minister, imperfectly, or as a general arbiter and giver of suggestions which are not really supreme commands, or as one channel of the sovereign authority, because that hidden Power acts at present not directly but through many agents and messengers. The real sovereign is another than the reasoning intelligence. Mans impulse to be free, master of Nature in himself and his environment cannot be really fulfilled until his self-consciousness has grown beyond the rational mentality, become aware of the true sovereign and either identified itself with him or entered into constant communion with his supreme will and knowledge.     The ordinary mind in man is not truly the thinking mind proper, it is a life-mind, a vital mind as we may call it, which has learned to think and even to reason but for its own ends and on its own lines, not on those of a true mind of knowledge.

1.11 - The Three Purushas, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The Upanishads do not deny The Reality of the world, but they identify it with Brahman who transcends it. He is the One without a second; He is the All. If all is Brahman, then there can be nothing but Brahman, and therefore the existence of the All, sarvam idam, does not contradict the unity of Brahman, does not establish The Reality of bheda, difference. It is one Intelligence looking at itself from a hundred view-points, each point conscious of and enjoying the existence of the others. The shoreless stream of idea and thought, imagination and experience, name and form, sensation and vibration sweeps onward for ever, without beginning, without end, rising into view, sinking out of sight; through it the one Intelligence with its million self-expressions pours itself abroad, an ocean with innumerable waves. One particular self-expression may disappear into its source and continent, but that does not and cannot abolish the phenomenal universe. The One is for ever, and the Many are for ever because the One is for ever. So long as there is a sea, there will be waves.   In the oceanic stir and change of universal Nature the soul or Purusha is the standing-point, stable, unmoving, unchanging, eternal,nitya sarvagata sthur acaloya santana. In the whole, the Purusha or soul is one,there is One Spirit which supports the stir of the Universe, not many. In the individual the One Purusha has three stages of personality; He is One, but triple, trivt. The Upanishads speak of two birds on one tree, of which one eats the fruit of the tree, the other, seated on a higher branch, does not eat but watches its fellow; one is a or lord of itself, the other is ana, not lord of itself, and it is when the eater looks up and perceives the greatness of the watcher and fills himself with it that grief, death, subjection,in one word my, ignorance and illusion, ceases to touch him. There are two unborn who are male and one unborn who is female; she is the tree with its sweet and bitter fruit, the two are the birds. One of the unborn enjoys her sweetness, the other has put it away from him. These are the two Purushas, the akara, or immutable spirit, and the kara, or apparently mutable, and the tree or woman is Prakriti, universal Energy which the Europeans call Nature. The kara purua is the soul in Nature and enjoying Nature, the akara purua is the soul above Nature and watching her. But there is One who is not seated on the tree but occupies and possesses it, who is not only lord of Himself, but lord of all that is: He is higher than the kara, higher than the akara, He is Purushottama, the Soul one with God, with the All.   --   The personality of the Supreme Soul is universal, not individual. Whatever is in all creatures, character, idea, imagination, experience, sensation, motion, is contained by Him as an object of spiritual enjoyment without limiting or determining Him. He is all things at once. Such a universality is necessary to support and supply individual existence, but it cannot be the determining limit of individual existence. Something has to be reserved, something put forward, and this partial manifestation is the individual. It is verily an eternal part of Me that in the world of individual existence becomes the Jiva or individual. The Jiva or individual is kara purua, and between him and the Supreme stands the akara purua, the bird on the summit of the tree, joyous in his own bliss, undisturbed by the play of Nature, impartially watching it, receiving its images on his calm immovable existence without being for a moment bound or affected, eternally self-gathered, eternally free. This akara purua is our real self, our divine unity with God, our inalienable freedom from that which is transient and changing. If it did not exist, there would be no escape from the bondage of life and death, joy and grief, sin and virtue; we should be prisoners in a cage without a door, beating our wings against the bars in vain for an exit; life and death, joy and grief, sin and virtue would be eternal, ineffugable realities, not temporary rules determining the great game of life, and we should be unwilling actors, not free playmates of God able to suspend and renew the game when we will. It is by realising our oneness with the akara purua that we get freedom from ignorance, freedom from the cords of desire, freedom from the imperative law of works. On the other hand if the akara purua were all, as the Sankhya philosophy contends, there would be no basis for different experience, no varying personality, every individual existence would be precisely like every other individual existence, the development and experience of one soul in Nature an exact replica of the development and experience of another soul. It is the kara purua who is all creatures, and the variety of experience, character and development is effected by a particular part of the universal swabhava or nature of conscious existence in phenomena being attached to a particular individual or Jiva. This is what is meant by saying that it is a part of God which becomes the Jiva. This swabhava, once determined, does not change; but it manifests various parts of itself, at various times, under various circumstances, in various forms of action and various bodies suited to the action or development it has to enjoy. It is for this reason that the Purusha in Nature is called kara, fluid, shifting, although it is not in reality fluid or shifting, but constant, eternal and immutable, santana. It is the variety of its enjoyment in Time, Space and Causality that makes it kara. The enjoyment of the akara purua is self-existent, beyond Time, Space and Causality, aware of but undisturbed by the continual multitudinous flux and reflux of Prakriti. The enjoyment of Purushottama is both in Prakriti and beyond it, it embraces and is The Reality of all experience and enjoyment.   Development is determined by the kara purua, but not conducted by him. It is Prakriti, the Universal Energy, that conducts development under the law of cause and effect, and is the true agent. The soul is not the agent, but the lord who enjoys the results of the action of his agent, Prakriti or Nature; only by his attachment to Prakriti he forgets himself and identifies himself with her so as to have the illusion of agency and, by thus forgetting himself, ceases to be lord of himself, becomes subject to Causality, imprisoned in Time and Space, bound by the work which he sanctions. He himself, being a part of God, is made in His image, of one nature with Him. Therefore what God is, he also is, only with limitation, subject to Time, Space and Causality, because he has, of his own will, accepted that bondage. He is the witness, and if he ceased to watch, the drama would stop. He is the source of sanction, and what he declares null and void, drops away from the development. He is the enjoyer, and if he became indifferent, that individual development would be arrested. He is the upholder, and if he ceased to sustain the dhra, the vehicle, it would fall and cease. He is the lord, and it is for his pleasure that Nature acts. He is the spirit, and matter is only his vehicle, his robe, his means of self-expression. But all his sanctions, refusals, behests act not at once, not there and then, not by imperative absolute compulsion, but subject to lapse of time, change of place, working of cause to effect. The lapse may be brief or long, a moment or centuries; the change small or great, here or in another world; the working direct or indirect, with the rapid concentration of processes which men call a miracle or with the careful and laboured evolution in which every step is visibly ordered and deliberate; but so long as the Jiva is bound, his lordship is limited and constitutional, not despotic and absolute. His sanction and signature are necessary, but it is the Lords spiritual and temporal of his mind and body, the Commons in his external environment who do the work of the State, execute, administer, legislate.

1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   can draw back from mind the image into Brahman The Reality.   But what differentiates that real from this apparent self? Or   --   is a relation and that The Reality originates and governs the   phenomenon.   --   Speech nor their objects and expressions are The Reality which   we have to know and pursue. True knowledge is of That which   --   take certain idea-symbols for The Reality. On the other hand if   we recognise that our mental perceptions are simply so many

1.12 - Delight of Existence - The Solution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   8:If this view be right, then certain consequences inevitably impose themselves. In the first place, since in our depths we ourselves are that One, since in The Reality of our being we are the indivisible All-Consciousness and therefore the inalienable All-Bliss, the disposition of our sensational experience in the three vibrations of pain, pleasure and indifference can only be a superficial arrangement created by that limited part of ourselves which is uppermost in our waking consciousness. Behind there must be something in us, - much vaster, profounder, truer than the superficial consciousness, - which takes delight impartially in all experiences; it is that delight which secretly supports the superficial mental being and enables it to persevere through all labours, sufferings and ordeals in the agitated movement of the Becoming. That which we call ourselves is only a trembling ray on the surface; behind is all the vast subconscient, the vast superconscient profiting by all these surface experiences and imposing them on its external self which it exposes as a sort of sensitive covering to the contacts of the world; itself veiled, it receives these contacts and assimilates them into the values of a truer, a profounder, a mastering and creative experience. Out of its depths it returns them to the surface in forms of strength, character, knowledge, impulsion whose roots are mysterious to us because our mind moves and quivers on the surface and has not learned to concentrate itself and live in the depths.   9:In our ordinary life this truth is hidden from us or only dimly glimpsed at times or imperfectly held and conceived. But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master - a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within. We are aware of it within supporting and helping the apparent and superficial self and smiling at its pleasures and pains as at the error and passion of a little child. And if we can go back into ourselves and identify ourselves, not with our superficial experience, but with that radiant penumbra of the Divine, we can live in that attitude towards the contacts of the world and, standing back in our entire consciousness from the pleasures and pains of the body, vital being and mind, possess them as experiences whose nature being superficial does not touch or impose itself on our core and real being. In the entirely expressive Sanskrit terms, there is an anandamaya behind the manomaya, a vast Bliss-Self behind the limited mental self, and the latter is only a shadowy image and disturbed reflection of the former. The truth of ourselves lies within and not on the surface.

1.12 - Sleep and Dreams, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   The second is certainly not a dream but a reality, a very charming expression of The Reality of the constant presence of   Sri Aurobindo and of his help given through an intimate and true relation, even though veiled to the outer consciousness. This is a precious experience worth being kept in the most sacred corner of the remembrance.

1.12 - The Strength of Stillness, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   To be capable of silence, stillness, illuminated passivity is to be fit for immortalityamtatvya kalpate. It is to be dhra, the ideal of our ancient civilisation, which does not mean to be tamasic, inert and a block. The inaction of the tamasic man is a stumbling-block to the energies around him, the inaction of the Yogin creates, preserves and destroys; his action is dynamic with the direct, stupendous driving-power of great natural forces. It is a stillness within often covered by a ripple of talk and activity without,the ocean with its lively surface of waves. But even as men do not see The Reality of Gods workings from the superficial noise of the world and its passing events, for they are hidden beneath that cover, so also shall they fail to understand the action of the Yogin, for he is different within from what he is outside. The strength of noise and activity is, doubtless, great,did not the walls of Jericho fall by the force of noise? But infinite is the strength of the stillness and the silence, in which great forces prepare for action.   ***

1.13 - Knowledge, Error, and Probably Opinion, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy   Thus in regard to any complex fact, there are, theoretically, two ways in which it may be known: (1) by means of a judgement, in which its several parts are judged to be related as they are in fact related; (2) by means of _acquaintance_ with the complex fact itself, which may (in a large sense) be called perception, though it is by no means confined to objects of the senses. Now it will be observed that the second way of knowing a complex fact, the way of acquaintance, is only possible when there really is such a fact, while the first way, like all judgement, is liable to error. The second way gives us the complex whole, and is therefore only possible when its parts do actually have that relation which makes them combine to form such a complex. The first way, on the contrary, gives us the parts and the relation severally, and demands only The Reality of the parts and the relation: the relation may not relate those parts in that way, and yet the judgement may occur.   It will be remembered that at the end of Chapter XI we suggested that there might be two kinds of self-evidence, one giving an absolute guarantee of truth, the other only a partial guarantee. These two kinds can now be distinguished.

1.13 - The Divine Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   1:EXISTENCE that acts and creates by the power and from the pure delight of its conscious being is The Reality that we are, the self of all our modes and moods, the cause, object and goal of all our doing, becoming and creating. As the poet, artist or musician when he creates does really nothing but develop some potentiality in his unmanifested self into a form of manifestation and as the thinker, statesman, mechanist only bring out into a shape of things that which lay hidden in themselves, was themselves, is still themselves when it is cast into form, so is it with the world and the Eternal. All creation or becoming is nothing but this self-manifestation. Out of the seed there evolves that which is already in the seed, pre-existent in being, predestined in its will to become, prearranged in the delight of becoming. The original plasm held in itself in force of being the resultant organism. For it is always that secret, burdened, self-knowing force which labours under its own irresistible impulse to manifest the form of itself with which it is charged. Only, the individual who creates or develops out of himself, makes a distinction between himself, the force that works in him and the material in which he works. In reality the force is himself, the individualised consciousness which it instrumentalises is himself, the material which it uses is himself, the resultant form is himself. In other words it is one existence, one force, one delight of being which concentrates itself at various points, says of each "This is I" and works in it by a various play of self-force for a various play of self-formation.   2:What it produces is itself and can be nothing other than itself; it is working out a play, a rhythm, a development of its own existence, force of consciousness and delight of being. Therefore whatever comes into the world, seeks nothing but this, to be, to arrive at the intended form, to enlarge its selfexistence in that form, to develop, manifest, increase, realise infinitely the consciousness and the power that is in it, to have the delight of coming into manifestation, the delight of the form of being, the delight of the rhythm of consciousness, the delight of the play of force and to aggrandise and perfect that delight by whatever means is possible, in whatever direction, through whatever idea of itself may be suggested to it by the Existence, the Conscious-Force, the Delight active within its deepest being.   --   6:Still, when we have found that all things are Sachchidananda, all has not yet been explained. We know The Reality of the universe, we do not yet know the process by which that Reality has turned itself into this phenomenon. We have the key of the riddle, we have still to find the lock in which it will turn. For this Existence, Conscious-Force, Delight does not work directly or with a sovereign irresponsibility like a magician building up worlds and universes by the mere fiat of its word. We perceive a process, we are aware of a Law.   7:It is true that this Law when we analyse it, seems to resolve itself into an equilibrium of the play of forces and a determination of that play into fixed lines of working by the accident of development and the habit of past realised energy. But this apparent and secondary truth is final to us only so long as we conceive of Force solely. When we perceive that Force is a selfexpression of Existence, we are bound to perceive also that this line which Force has taken, corresponds to some self-truth of that Existence which governs and determines its constant curve and destination. And since consciousness is the nature of the original Existence and the essence of its Force, this truth must be a self-perception in Conscious-Being and this determination of the line taken by Force must result from a power of selfdirective knowledge inherent in Consciousness which enables it to guide its own Force inevitably along the logical line of the original self-perception. It is then a self-determining power in universal consciousness, a capacity in self-awareness of infinite existence to perceive a certain Truth in itself and direct its force of creation along the line of that Truth, which has presided over the cosmic manifestation.

1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "The Jnni experiences God-Consciousness within himself; it is like the upper Ganges, flowing in only one direction. To him the whole universe is illusory, like a dream; he is always established in The Reality of Self. But with the lover of God the case is different.   His feeling does not flow in only one direction. He feels both the ebb-tide and the flood-tide of divine emotion. He laughs and weeps and dances and sings in the ecstasy of God. The lover of God likes to sport with Him. In the Ocean of God-Consciousness he sometimes swims, sometimes goes down, and sometimes rises to the surface-like pieces of ice in the water. (Laughter.)   --   MASTER: "God alone is The Reality and all else is unreal."   Saturday, September 22, 1883

1.13 - Under the Auspices of the Gods, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   combinations vary, each man belongs not only to the common humanity, but to the Infinite in himself and is therefore unique. It is because this is The Reality of our existence that the intellectual reason and the intelligent will cannot deal with life as its sovereign, even though they may be at present our supreme instruments and may have been in our evolution supremely important and helpful.212   But if evolution is, as Sri Aurobindo insists, an evolution of consciousness, we may assume that humanity will not remain stuck forever at the present mental level; its mind will become illumined,

1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "The feeling of 'I and mine' has covered The Reality. Because of this we do not see Truth. Attainment of Chaitanya, Divine Consciousness, is not possible without the knowledge of Advaita, Non-duality. After realizing Chaitanya one enjoys Nityananda, Eternal Bliss. One enjoys this Bliss after attaining the state of a paramahamsa.   "Vednta does not recognize the Incarnation of God. According to it, Chaitanyadeva is only a bubble of the non-dual Brahman.

1.14 - The Supermind as Creator, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   16:In Supermind being, consciousness of knowledge and consciousness of will are not divided as they seem to be in our mental operations; they are a trinity, one movement with three effective aspects. Each has its own effect. Being gives the effect of substance, consciousness the effect of knowledge, of the selfguiding and shaping idea, of comprehension and apprehension; will gives the effect of self-fulfilling force. But the idea is only the light of The Reality illumining itself; it is not mental thought nor imagination, but effective self-awareness. It is Real-Idea.   17:In Supermind knowledge in the Idea is not divorced from will in the Idea, but one with it - just as it is not different from being or substance, but is one with the being, luminous power of the substance. As the power of burning light is not different from the substance of the fire, so the power of the Idea is not different from the substance of the Being which works itself out in the Idea and its development. In our mentality all are different. We have an idea and a will according to the idea or an impulsion of will and an idea detaching itself from it; but we differentiate effectually the idea from the will and both from ourselves. I am; the idea is a mysterious abstraction that appears in me, the will is another mystery, a force nearer to concreteness, though not concrete, but always something that is not myself, something that I have or get or am seized with, but am not. I make a gulf also between my will, its means and the effect, for these I regard as concrete realities outside and other than myself. Therefore neither myself nor the idea nor the will in me are self-effective. The idea may fall away from me, the will may fail, the means may be lacking, I myself by any or all of these lacunae may remain unfulfilled.

1.15 - The Suprarational Good, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The seeking for God is also, subjectively, the seeking for our highest, truest, fullest, largest self. It is the seeking for a Reality which the appearances of life conceal because they only partially express it or because they express it from behind veils and figures, by oppositions and contraries, often by what seem to be perversions and opposites of the Real. It is the seeking for something whose completeness comes only by a concrete and all-occupying sense of the Infinite and Absolute; it can be established in its integrality only by finding a value of the infinite in all finite things and by the attemptnecessary, inevitable, however impossible or paradoxical it may seem to the normal reasonto raise all relativities to their absolutes and to reconcile their differences, oppositions and contraries by elevation and sublimation to some highest term in which all these are unified. Some perfect highest term there is by which all our imperfect lower terms can be justified and their discords harmonised if once we can induce them to be its conscious expressions, to exist not for themselves but for That, as contri butory values of that highest Truth, fractional measures of that highest and largest common measure. A One there is in which all the entangled discords of this multiplicity of separated, conflicting, intertwining, colliding ideas, forces, tendencies, instincts, impulses, aspects, appearances which we call life, can find the unity of their diversity, the harmony of their divergences, the justification of their claims, the correction of their perversions and aberrations, the solution of their problems and disputes. Knowledge seeks for that in order that Life may know its own true meaning and transform itself into the highest and most harmonious possible expression of a divine Reality. All seeks for that, each power feels out for it in its own way: the infrarational gropes for it blindly along the line of its instincts, needs, impulses; the rational lays for it its trap of logic and order, follows out and gathers together its diversities, analyses them in order to synthetise; the suprarational gets behind and above things and into their inmost parts, there to touch and lay hands on The Reality itself in its core and essence and enlighten all its infinite detail from that secret centre.   This truth comes most easily home to us in Religion and in Art, in the cult of the spiritual and in the cult of the beautiful, because there we get away most thoroughly from the unrestful pressure of the outward appearances of life, the urgent siege of its necessities, the deafening clamour of its utilities. There we are not compelled at every turn to make terms with some gross material claim, some vulgar but inevitable necessity of the hour and the moment. We have leisure and breathing-time to seek the Real behind the apparent: we are allowed to turn our eyes either away from the temporary and transient or through the temporal itself to the eternal; we can draw back from the limitations of the immediately practical and re-create our souls by the touch of the ideal and the universal. We begin to shake off our chains, we get rid of life in its aspect of a prison-house with Necessity for our jailer and utility for our constant taskmaster; we are admitted to the liberties of the soul; we enter Gods infinite kingdom of beauty and delight or we lay hands on the keys of our absolute self-finding and open ourselves to the possession or the adoration of the Eternal. There lies the immense value of Religion, the immense value of Art and Poetry to the human spirit; it lies in their immediate power for inner truth, for self-enlargement, for liberation.

1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "How can you eliminate from The Reality the universe and its living beings? If you do that, It will lack Its full weight. You cannot find out the total weight of the bel-fruit if you eliminate the seeds and shell.   "Brahman is unattached. One finds good and bad smells in the air, but the air itself is untainted. Brahman and akti are identical. It is the Primordial Power that has become the world and all living beings."

1.17 - DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY UPON ITSELF?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   have been vouchsafed us The Reality, capable of definition, of a   Cosmogenesis; the discovery of the genesis of atoms, of the in-   --   is far more likely to fit The Reality. That its validity has not yet been   finally demonstrated or verified may be admitted. Nevertheless it is

1.17 - The Burden of Royalty, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   The Reality of sovereignty without its name. In some countries this   rift in the supreme power deepened into a total and permanent

1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER (to M.): "The Nitya and the Lila are the two aspects of The Reality. God, plays in the world as man for the sake of His devotees. They can love God only if they see Him in a human form; only then can they show their affection for Him as their Brother, Sister, Father, Mother, or Child.   "It is just for this love of the devotees that God contracts Himself into a human form and descends on earth to play His lila."

1.18 - Mind and Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   10:Thus the depiecing is already there; the relation of form with form as if they were separate beings, of will-of-being with willof-being as if they were separate forces, of knowledge-of-being with knowledge-of-being as if they were separate consciousnesses has already been founded. It is as yet only "as if"; for the divine soul is not deluded, it is aware of all as phenomenon of being and keeps hold of its existence in The Reality of being; it does not forfeit its unity: it uses mind as a subordinate action of the infinite knowledge, a definition of things subordinate to its awareness of infinity, a delimitation dependent on its awareness of essential totality - not that apparent and pluralistic totality of sum and collective aggregation which is only another phenomenon of Mind. Thus there is no real limitation; the soul uses its defining power for the play of well-distinguished forms and forces and is not used by that power.   11:A new factor, a new action of conscious force is therefore needed to create the operation of a helplessly limited as opposed to a freely limiting mind, - that is to say, of mind subject to its own play and deceived by it as opposed to mind master of its own play and viewing it in its truth, the creature mind as opposed to the divine. That new factor is Avidya, the self-ignoring faculty which separates the action of mind from the action of the supermind that originated and still governs it from behind the veil. Thus separated, Mind perceives only the particular and not the universal, or conceives only the particular in an unpossessed universal and no longer both particular and universal as phenomena of the Infinite. Thus we have the limited mind which views every phenomenon as a thing-in-itself, separate part of a whole which again exists separately in a greater whole and so on, enlarging always its aggregates without getting back to the sense of a true infinity.

12.03 - The Sorrows of God, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Upanishadic standpoint declares that the being above is a silent witness, inactive, immobile, still. The one below is active and tastes of things both bitter and sweet, in other words, it takes part and is involved in the varied life-experiences. Certain lines of spiritual experience find that the being above is The Reality, that the other is only an image, a reflection or illusion; and the image looks like a troubled image because it is, as it were, a reflection in the troubled waters of cosmic ignorance: dispel the ignorance, nothing remains but the transcendent Witness-Being, all alone. Such is the position of myvda or illusionism. But there are other lines of experience giving a different view and a different realisation. Both the transcendent and the immanent are form of the same Reality, with different functions, standing on different levels. Thus, as we say, the one below is not a vain image, or a mere reflection, but a descent here in the manifestation, of The Reality above. This is also as real as that, the other, only it functions differently. The descent means two things, a double operation, first, the assumption of ignorance: what was light becomes obscurity, what was vast and infinite becomes small and finite, what was straight becomes crooked, what was delight becomes pain, what was one and united becomes many and disparate, what was whole becomes fragmentary. The descending being in one part or facet turns into the exact opposite of what it was originally, it is a denial of itself; secondly, in another aspect or part of itself, in its essence and profundity, it remains unaltered, intact as it were with no change whatsoever in its nature and character. That is the immanent Godhead, the emanation, the extension or projection of the transcendent into the external material appearance. This immanent Godhead has its own function, it is the initiation of the ascent after the descent, in the vast field of an apparent total ignorance it is as it were the catalytic element introducing a reverse movement upward.    Left to itself, Nature, the inferior inconscient Nature would admit of no change, it would only repeat the past; it would be a circular or cyclic movement, at the most it would move in a horizontal line; no upward movement would be possible. It is only when the consciousness descends, sends a shaft of light into the dark inert mass below, uses it as a churning rod, that there occurs the stirring of a new creation; a new formation begins, a new content is added and a new disposition built up. To the human consciousness that appears as calamities and catastrophes. It is truly the great sacrificial horse in the Upanishadic image that shakes its limbs and the elements roar and thunder the forward-marching galloping fiery force of a progressing Consciousness.

12.10 - The Sunlit Path, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The rational mind scoffs at faith and calls it blind. Yes, blind to the unrealities, open to The Reality. In fact faith can be called blind only when the faith is in darkness and ignorance, faith is open-eyed when the faith is in the light.    To understand a little closely we have to distinguish things. The mind has a higher status: the higher mind is naturally receptive to the light and sufficiently aloof from a lower region of the mind itself which is not only limited but subject to up rushes from a still lower region, the vital, the source of passions and prejudices. It is the lower mind, the physical mind as it is called, which is the one obstacle that shuts out the light of true consciousness. The source of all doubt is here. The physical mind has its own role, a truer role; for it is the instrumental consciousness that formulates things, gives a forma name and local habitation to things so that they possess a material existence but it transgresses its bounds when it chooses by itself the things to formulate, instead it should formulate only things presented to it, presented by a higher consciousness, presented, in other words, by faith.    The physical mind doubts, because it has not the criterion by which it can find and judge The Reality, it must perforce seek the support of a higher faculty that can furnish or reveal the object to which it should give a form. By itself it moves bewildered in a tortuous never-ending my, leading nowhereif anywhere to regions still darker and dangerousandha tama pravianti..tato bhuya eva te.    God, truth, reality are not things to be proved or demonstrated. They are to be found, realised. They are accepted things, they have to be accepted. Only you are to find the means to approach them, know them, realise them. Young Nachiketas spontaneously found the way, for the Grace descended and Faith entered into his pure heart and possessed him.

1.21 - The Spiritual Aim and Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The normal society treats man essentially as a physical, vital and mental being. For the life, the mind, the body are the three terms of existence with which it has some competence to deal. It develops a system of mental growth and efficiency, an intellectual, aesthetic and moral culture. It evolves the vital side of human life and creates an ever-growing system of economic efficiency and vital enjoyment, and this system becomes more and more rich, cumbrous and complex as civilisation develops. Depressing by its mental and vital overgrowth the natural vigour of the physical and animal man, it tries to set the balance right by systems of physical culture, a cumbrous science of habits and remedies intended to cure the ills it has created and as much amelioration as it can manage of the artificial forms of living that are necessary to its social system. In the end, however, experience shows that society tends to die by its own development, a sure sign that there is some radical defect in its system, a certain proof that its idea of man and its method of development do not correspond to all The Reality of the human being and to the aim of life which that reality imposes.   There is then a radical defect somewhere in the process of human civilisation; but where is its seat and by what issue shall we come out of the perpetual cycle of failure? Our civilised development of life ends in an exhaustion of vitality and a refusal of Nature to lend her support any further to a continued advance upon these lines; our civilised mentality, after disturbing the balance of the human system to its own greater profit, finally discovers that it has exhausted and destroyed that which fed it and loses its power of healthy action and productiveness. It is found that civilisation has created many more problems than it can solve, has multiplied excessive needs and desires the satisfaction of which it has not sufficient vital force to sustain, has developed a jungle of claims and artificial instincts in the midst of which life loses its way and has no longer any sight of its aim. The more advanced minds begin to declare civilisation a failure and society begins to feel that they are right. But the remedy proposed is either a halt or even a retrogression, which means in the end more confusion, stagnation and decay, or a reversion to Nature which is impossible or can only come about by a cataclysm and disintegration of society; or even a cure is aimed at by carrying artificial remedies to their acme, by more and more Science, more and more mechanical devices, a more scientific organisation of life, which means that the engine shall replace life, the arbitrary logical reason substitute itself for complex Nature and man be saved by machinery. As well say that to carry a disease to its height is the best way to its cure.

1.22 - THE END OF THE SPECIES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   almost as mysterious as that of their formation; but The Reality of   the phenomenon is indisputable. Either the different species, losing

1.23 - Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   A subjective age may stop very far short of spirituality; for the subjective turn is only a first condition, not the thing itself, not the end of the matter. The search for The Reality, the true self of man, may very easily follow out the natural order described by the Upanishad in the profound apologue of the seekings of Bhrigu, son of Varuna. For first the seeker found the ultimate reality to be Matter and the physical, the material being, the external man our only self and spirit. Next he fixed on life as The Reality and the vital being as the self and spirit; in the third essay he penetrated to Mind and the mental being; only afterwards could he get beyond the superficial subjective through the supramental Truth-Consciousness to the eternal, the blissful, the ever creative Reality of which these are the sheaths. But humanity may not be as persistent or as plastic as the son of Varuna, the search may stop short anywhere. Only if it is intended that he shall now at last arrive and discover, will the Spirit break each insufficient formula as soon as it has shaped itself and compel the thought of man to press forward to a larger discovery and in the end to the largest and most luminous of all. Something of the kind has been happening, but only in a very external way and on the surface. After the material formula which governed the greater part of the nineteenth century had burdened man with the heaviest servitude to the machinery of the outer material life that he has ever yet been called upon to bear, the first attempt to break through, to get to the living reality in things and away from the mechanical idea of life and living and society, landed us in that surface vitalism which had already begun to govern thought before the two formulas inextricably locked together lit up and flung themselves on the lurid pyre of the world-war. The vital lan has brought us no deliverance, but only used the machinery already created with a more feverish insistence, a vehement attempt to live more rapidly, more intensely, an inordinate will to act and to succeed, to enlarge the mere force of living or to pile up a gigantic efficiency of the collective life. It could not have been otherwise even if this vitalism had been less superficial and external, more truly subjective. To live, to act, to grow, to increase the vital force, to understand, utilise and fulfil the intuitive impulse of life are not things evil in themselves: rather they are excellent things, if rightly followed and rightly used, that is to say, if they are directed to something beyond the mere vitalistic impulse and are governed by that within which is higher than Life. The Life-power is an instrument, not an aim; it is in the upward scale the first great subjective supraphysical instrument of the Spirit and the base of all action and endeavour. But a Life-power that sees nothing beyond itself, nothing to be served except its own organised demands and impulses, will be very soon like the force of steam driving an engine without the driver or an engine in which the locomotive force has made the driver its servant and not its controller. It can only add the uncontrollable impetus of a high-crested or broad-based Titanism, or it may be even a nether flaming demonism, to the Nature forces of the material world with the intellect as its servant, an impetus of measureless unresting creation, appropriation, expansion which will end in something violent, huge and colossal, foredoomed in its very nature to excess and ruin, because light is not in it nor the souls truth nor the sanction of the gods and their calm eternal will and knowledge.   But beyond the subjectivism of the vital self there is the possibility of a mental subjectivism which would at first perhaps, emerging out of the predominant vitalism and leaning upon the already realised idea of the soul as a soul of Life in action but correcting it, appear as a highly mentalised pragmatism. This first stage is foreshadowed in an increasing tendency to rationalise entirely man and his life, to govern individual and social existence by an ordered scientific plan based upon his discovery of his own and of lifes realities. This attempt is bound to fail because reason and rationality are not the whole of man or of life, because reason is only an intermediate interpreter, not the original knower, creator and master of our being or of cosmic existence. It can besides only mechanise life in a more intelligent way than in the past; to do that seems to be all that the modern intellectual leaders of the race can discover as the solution of the heavy problem with which we are impaled. But it is conceivable that this tendency may hereafter rise to the higher idea of man as a mental being, a soul in mind that must develop itself individually and collectively in the life and body through the play of an ever-expanding mental existence. This greater idea would realise that the elevation of the human existence will come not through material efficiency alone or the complex play of his vital and dynamic powers, not solely by mastering through the aid of the intellect the energies of physical Nature for the satisfaction of the life-instincts, which can only be an intensification of his present mode of existence, but through the greatening of his mental and psychic being and a discovery, bringing forward and organisation of his subliminal nature and its forces, the utilisation of a larger mind and a larger life waiting for discovery within us. It would see in life an opportunity for the joy and power of knowledge, for the joy and power of beauty, for the joy and power of the human will mastering not only physical Nature, but vital and mental Nature. It might discover her secret yet undreamed-of mind-powers and life-powers and use them for a freer liberation of man from the limitations of his shackled bodily life. It might arrive at new psychic relations, a more sovereign power of the idea to realise itself in the act, inner means of overcoming the obstacles of distance and division which would cast into insignificance even the last miraculous achievements of material Science. A development of this kind is far enough away from the dreams of the mass of men, but there are certain pale hints and presages of such a possibility and ideas which lead to it are already held by a great number who are perhaps in this respect the yet unrecognised vanguard of humanity. It is not impossible that behind the confused morning voices of the hour a light of this kind, still below the horizon, may be waiting to ascend with its splendours.

1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   But they are not real. Seek The Reality and get rid of this unreal feeling.   D.: There are great men, public workers, who cannot solve the problem of the misery of the world.   --   M.: Substance and shadow are for the one who sees only the shadow and mistakes it for the substance and sees its shadow also. But there is neither substance nor shadow for the one who is aware only of The Reality.   D.: Buddha, when asked if there is the ego, was silent; when asked if there is no ego, he was silent; asked if there is God, he was silent; asked if there is no God, he was silent. Silence was his answer for all these. Mahayana and Hinayana schools have both misinterpreted his silence because they say that he was an atheist. If he was an atheist, why should he have spoken of nirvana, of births and deaths, of karma, reincarnations and dharma? His interpreters are wrong. Is it not so?   --   Maya has no independent existence. Having brought out the illusion of the world as real, she continues to play upon the ignorance of the victims. When The Reality of her not being is found, she disappears.   'Recognition' says that Sakti (power) is coeval with Siva. The one does not exist without the other. Siva is unmanifest, whereas Sakti is manifest on account of Her independent will swatantra. Her manifestation is the display of the cosmos on pure consciousness, like images in a mirror.   --   There is no change in The Reality. Reality is always Bliss - Ananda.   D.: Bliss is the outcome of practice. What is that practice?

1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   But they are not real. Seek The Reality and get rid of this unreal feeling.   D.: There are great men, public workers, who cannot solve the problem of the misery of the world.   --   M.: Substance and shadow are for the one who sees only the shadow and mistakes it for the substance and sees its shadow also. But there is neither substance nor shadow for the one who is aware only of The Reality.   D.: Buddha, when asked if there is the ego, was silent; when asked if there is no ego, he was silent; asked if there is God, he was silent; asked if there is no God, he was silent. Silence was his answer for all these. Mahayana and Hinayana schools have both misinterpreted his silence because they say that he was an atheist. If he was an atheist, why should he have spoken of nirvana, of births and deaths, of karma, reincarnations and dharma? His interpreters are wrong. Is it not so?   --   Maya has no independent existence. Having brought out the illusion of the world as real, she continues to play upon the ignorance of the victims. When The Reality of her not being is found, she disappears.   Recognition says that Sakti (power) is coeval with Siva. The one does not exist without the other. Siva is unmanifest, whereas Sakti is manifest on account of Her independent will swatantra. Her manifestation is the display of the cosmos on pure consciousness, like images in a mirror.   --   There is no change in The Reality. Reality is always Bliss - Ananda.   D.: Bliss is the outcome of practice. What is that practice?   --   If the world appears, yet to whom does it appear, he asks. What is your reply? You must say the Self. If not, will the world appear in the absence of the cognising Self? Therefore the Self is The Reality.   That is his conclusion. The phenomena are real as the Self and are myths apart from the Self.   Now, what do the tantriks, etc., say? They say that the phenomena are real because they are part of The Reality in which they appear.   Are not these two statements the same? That is what I meant by reality and falsehood being one and the same.   --   Just as a rope-snake cannot be seen in broad daylight, nor rope itself in thick darkness, so also the world appears neither in the samadhi state of Self-shining pure Being or in deep sleep, swoon, etc. Only in Reflected Light (Light mixed with Darkness or knowledge soiled by Ignorance) can the world, not independent of its Source, seem to rise up, flourish and be resolved. Its diversity too cannot be exclusive of The Reality, the original Source. Here a play is going on in which the One Single Being becomes manifold is objectified and then   Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi withdrawn. There must be a Sakti (Power) to do it, and wonderful too! She cannot also be independent of Her origin. In the Self-shining   --   M.: To eschew unreality and seek The Reality is scientific.   D.: I mean there must be a gradual elimination, first of the mind, then of the intellect, then of the ego.   --   D.: I mean I have some flashes of The Reality and, at other times, I do not have them.   M.: Who is aware of those flashes?   --   M.: Because you are in variety, you say you understand unity - that you have flashes, etc., remember things, etc.; you consider this variety to be real. On the other hand Unity is The Reality, and the variety is false. The variety must go before unity reveals itself - its reality.   It is always real. It does not send flashes of its being in this false variety. On the contrary, this variety obstructs the truth.   --   That is The Reality.   One does not know the Self owing to the interference of thoughts.   --   There are all manner of thoughts which rise up from The Reality within and manifest themselves.   Hold on to that Reality.   --   M.: There are different methods of approach to prove the unreality of the universe. The example of the dream is one among them. Jagrat, svapna and sushupti are all treated elaborately in the scripture in order that The Reality underlying them might be revealed. It is not meant to accentuate differences among the three states. The purpose must be kept clearly in view.   Now they say that the world is unreal. Of what degree of unreality is it? Is it like that of a son of a barren mother or a flower in the sky, mere words without any reference to facts? Whereas the world is a fact and not a mere word. The answer is that it is a superimposition on the one Reality, like the appearance of a snake on a coiled rope seen in dim light.   --   Japa may be done even while engaged in other work. That which is, the One Reality. It may be represented by a form, a japa, mantra, vichara or any kind of attempt. All of them finally resolve themselves into that One Single Reality. Bhakti, vichara, japa are only different forms of our efforts to keep out the unreality. The unreality is an obsession at present. Reality is our true nature. We are wrongly persisting in unreality, that is, thoughts and worldly activities. Cessation of these will reveal the Truth. Our attempts are directed towards keeping them out. It is done by thinking of The Reality only. Although it is our true nature it looks as if we are thinking of The Reality. What we do really amounts to the removal of obstacles for the revelation of our true Being. Meditation or vichara is thus a reversion to our true nature.   D.: Are our attempts sure to succeed?   --   External samadhi is holding on to The Reality while witnessing the world, without reacting to it from within. There is the stillness of a waveless ocean. The internal samadhi involves loss of bodyconsciousness.   D.: Is loss of body-consciousness a perquisite to the attainment of sahaja samadhi?   --   M.: The mind is maya. Reality lies beyond the mind. So long as the mind functions there is duality, maya, etc. Once it is transcended The Reality shines forth. Although it is said to shine forth Selfeffulgence is the Self.   D.: It is Sat-chit-ananda.

1.24 - Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   2:It seems indeed that the body is from the beginning the soul's great difficulty, its continual stumbling-block and rock of offence. Therefore the eager seeker of spiritual fulfilment has hurled his ban against the body and his world-disgust selects this world-principle above all other things as an especial object of loathing. The body is the obscure burden that he cannot bear; its obstinate material grossness is the obsession that drives him for deliverance to the life of the ascetic. To get rid of it he has even gone so far as to deny its existence and The Reality of the material universe. Most of the religions have put their curse upon Matter and have made the refusal or the resigned temporary endurance of the physical life the test of religious truth and of spirituality.   The older creeds, more patient, more broodingly profound, not touched with the torture and the feverish impatience of the soul under the burden of the Iron Age, did not make this formidable division; they acknowledged Earth the Mother and Heaven the   --    that struggle and discord cannot be eternal and fundamental principles in His being but by their very existence imply labour towards a perfect solution and a complete victory, we must seek that solution in a real victory of Life over Matter through the free and perfect use of body by Life, in a real victory of Mind over Life and Matter through a free and perfect use of lifeforce and form by Mind and in a real victory of Spirit over the triplicity through a free and perfect occupation of mind, life and body by conscious spirit; in the view we have worked out this last conquest can alone make the others really possible. To the end, then, that we may see how these conquests can be at all or wholly possible, we must find out The Reality of Matter just as, seeking the fundamental knowledge, we have found out The Reality of Mind and Soul and Life.   5:In a certain sense Matter is unreal and non-existent; that is to say, our present knowledge, idea and experience of Matter is not its truth, but merely a phenomenon of particular relation between our senses and the all-existence in which we move.   --    call sense, but here it has to be an obscure externalised sense which must be assured of The Reality of what it contacts. The descent of pure substance into material substance follows, then, inevitably on the descent of Sachchidananda through supermind into mind and life. It is a necessary result of the will to make multiplicity of being and an awareness of things from separate centres of consciousness the first method of this lower experience of existence. If we go back to the spiritual basis of things, substance in its utter purity resolves itself into pure conscious being, self-existent, inherently self-aware by identity, but not yet turning its consciousness upon itself as object. Supermind preserves this self-awareness by identity as its substance of selfknowledge and its light of self-creation, but for that creation presents Being to itself as the subject-object one and multiple of its own active consciousness. Being as object is held there in a supreme knowledge which can, by comprehension, see it both as an object of cognition within itself and subjectively as itself, but can also and simultaneously, by apprehension, project it as an object (or objects) of cognition within the circumference of its consciousness, not other than itself, part of its being, but a part (or parts) put away from itself, - that is to say, from the centre of vision in which Being concentrates itself as the Knower,   Witness or Purusha. We have seen that from this apprehending consciousness arises the movement of Mind, the movement by which the individual knower regards a form of his own universal being as if other than he; but in the divine Mind there is immediately or rather simultaneously another movement or reverse side of the same movement, an act of union in being which heals this phenomenal division and prevents it from becoming even for a moment solely real to the knower. This act of conscious union is that which is represented otherwise in dividing Mind obtusely, ignorantly, quite externally as contact in consciousness between divided beings and separate objects, and with us this contact in divided consciousness is primarily represented by the principle of sense. On this basis of sense, on this contact of union subject to division, the action of the thought-mind founds itself and prepares for the return to a higher principle of union in which   --   9:Thus not any eternal and original law of eternal and original Matter, but the nature of the action of cosmic Mind is the cause of atomic existence. Matter is a creation, and for its creation the infinitesimal, an extreme fragmentation of the Infinite, was needed as the starting-point or basis. Ether may and does exist as an intangible, almost spiritual support of Matter, but as a phenomenon it does not seem, to our present knowledge at least, to be materially detectable. Subdivide the visible aggregate or the formal atom into essential atoms, break it up into the most infinitesimal dust of being, we shall still, because of the nature of the Mind and Life that formed them, arrive at some utmost atomic existence, unstable perhaps but always reconstituting itself in the eternal flux of force, phenomenally, and not at a mere unatomic extension incapable of contents. Unatomic extension of substance, extension which is not an aggregation, coexistence otherwise than by distribution in space are realities of pure existence, pure substance; they are a knowledge of supermind and a principle of its dynamism, not a creative concept of the dividing Mind, though Mind can become aware of them behind its workings. They are The Reality underlying Matter, but not the phenomenon which we call Matter. Mind, Life, Matter itself can be one with that pure existence and conscious extension in their static reality, but not operate by that oneness in their dynamic action, self-perception and self-formation.   10:Therefore we arrive at this truth of Matter that there is a conceptive self-extension of being which works itself out in the universe as substance or object of consciousness and which cosmic Mind and Life in their creative action represent through atomic division and aggregation as the thing we call Matter. But this Matter, like Mind and Life, is still Being or Brahman in its self-creative action. It is a form of the force of conscious Being, a form given by Mind and realised by Life. It holds within it as its own reality consciousness concealed from itself, involved and absorbed in the result of its own self-formation and therefore self-oblivious. And, however brute and void of sense it seems to us, it is yet, to the secret experience of the consciousness hidden within it, delight of being offering itself to this secret consciousness as object of sensation in order to tempt that hidden godhead out of its secrecy. Being manifest as substance, force of Being cast into form, into a figured selfrepresentation of the secret self-consciousness, delight offering itself to its own consciousness as an object, - what is this but Sachchidananda? Matter is Sachchidananda represented to His own mental experience as a formal basis of objective knowledge, action and delight of existence.

1.24 - Necromancy and Spiritism, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   So what use would they be to Lvi? Even if there were among them a few such elements as would serve his purpose, they would have been devitalized and frittered away by the mere lapse of the centuries, since they had lost connection with The Reality of the Sage. Alternatively, they might have been caught up and adopted by some wandering Entity, quite probably some malignant demon.   Qlipoth Shells of the Dead Obsessing Spirits! Here we are back in the pestilent purlieus of Walham Green, and the frowsty atmosphere of the frowsy "medium" and the squalid sance. "Look! but do not speak to them!" as Virgil warned Dante.

1.25 - Critical Objections brought against Poetry, and the principles on which they are to be answered., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy   In general, the impossible must be justified by reference to artistic requirements, or to the higher reality, or to received opinion. With respect to the requirements of art, a probable impossibility is to be preferred to a thing improbable and yet possible. Again, it may be impossible that there should be men such as Zeuxis painted. 'Yes,' we say, 'but the impossible is the higher thing; for the ideal type must surpass The Reality.' To justify the irrational, we appeal to what is commonly said to be. In addition to which, we urge that the irrational sometimes does not violate reason; just as 'it is probable that a thing may happen contrary to probability.'   Things that sound contradictory should be examined by the same rules as in dialectical refutation whether the same thing is meant, in the same relation, and in the same sense. We should therefore solve the question by reference to what the poet says himself, or to what is tacitly assumed by a person of intelligence.

1.27 - On holy solitude of body and soul., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   28. Go and distribute immediately (because to sell would take a long time) all that thou hast, and give to the poor3 monks, so that in their prayers they may accompany you to solitude. And take up thy cross, and carry it with the help of obedience, and vigorously bear the burden of the loss of thy will, and for the future come and follow Me4 to union with most blessed solitude, and I will teach you the visible activity and life of the spiritual powers. They never weary of praising their Maker to all eternity, and he who ascends to the heaven of solitude never ceases to praise his Creator. Immaterial spirits will not think about the material, nor will those who have become immaterial in a material body think about food. The first will not be aware of food, and the second will need no promise of it. The former do not think about money and possessions, nor do the latter think about the malice of the evil spirits. Those in heaven above have no desire for the visible creation, and those here on earth below have no desire for things perceived by the senses. The former will never cease to advance in love, and the latter vie with them daily. Those are well aware of the wealth of their progress, and these are conscious of their love of the ascent. Those will not stop until they reach seraphic perfection, and these will not weary until they become angels. Blessed is he who hopes; thrice-blessed is he who has the promise; but he who has The Reality is an angel.   1 2 Corinthians xii, 4.

1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   2:Still there is one aspect of this problem which must be immediately considered; it is the gulf created between Mind as we know it and the supramental Truth-Consciousness of which we have found Mind in its origin to be a subordinate process. For this gulf is considerable and, if there are no gradations between the two levels of consciousness, a transition from one to the other, either in the descending involution of Spirit into Matter or the corresponding evolution in Matter of the concealed grades leading back to the Spirit, seems in the highest degree improbable, if not impossible. For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, - as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve. Supermind, on the contrary, is in actual and natural possession of the Truth and its formations are forms of The Reality, not constructions, representations or indicative figures. No doubt, the evolving Mind in us is hampered by its encasement in the obscurity of this life and body, and the original Mind principle in the involutionary descent is a thing of greater power to which we have not fully reached, able to act with freedom in its own sphere or province, to build more revelatory constructions, more minutely inspired formations, more subtle and significant embodiments in which the light of Truth is present and palpable. But still that too is not likely to be essentially different in its characteristic action, for it too is a movement into the Ignorance, not a still unseparated portion of the Truth-Consciousness. There must be somewhere in the descending and ascending scale of Being an intermediate power and plane of consciousness, perhaps something more than that, something with an original creative force, through which the involutionary transition from Mind in the Knowledge to Mind in the Ignorance was effected and through which again the evolutionary reverse transition becomes intelligible and possible. For the involutionary transition this intervention is a logical imperative, for the evolutionary it is a practical necessity. For in the evolution there are indeed radical transitions, from indeterminate Energy to organised Matter, from inanimate Matter to Life, from a subconscious or submental to a perceptive and feeling and acting Life, from primitive animal mentality to conceptive reasoning Mind observing and governing Life and observing itself also, able to act as an independent entity and even to seek consciously for self-transcendence; but these leaps, even when considerable, are to some extent prepared by slow gradations which make them conceivable and feasible. There can be no such immense hiatus as seems to exist between supramental Truth-Consciousness and the Mind in the Ignorance.   3:But if such intervening gradations exist, it is clear that they must be superconscient to human mind which does not seem to have in its normal state any entry into these higher grades of being. Man is limited in his consciousness by mind and even by a given range or scale of mind: what is below his mind, submental or mental but nether to his scale, readily seems to him subconscious or not distinguishable from complete inconscience; what is above it is to him superconscious and he is almost inclined to regard it as void of awareness, a sort of luminous Inconscience. Just as he is limited to a certain scale of sounds or of colours and what is above or below that scale is to him inaudible and invisible or at least indistinguishable, so is it with his scale of mental consciousness, confined at either extremity by an incapacity which marks his upper and his nether limit. He has no sufficient means of communication even with the animal who is his mental congener, though not his equal, and he is even capable of denying mind or real consciousness to it because its modes are other and narrower than those with which in himself and his kind he is familiar; he can observe submental being from outside but cannot at all communicate with it or enter intimately into its nature. Equally the superconscious is to him a closed book which may well be filled only with empty pages. At first sight, then, it would appear as if he had no means of contact with these higher gradations of consciousness: if so, they cannot act as links or bridges and his evolution must cease with his accomplished mental range and cannot exceed it; Nature in drawing these limits has written finis to his upward endeavour.   --   6:But once this entry into the inner being is accomplished, the inner Self is found to be capable of an opening, an ascent upwards into things beyond our present mental level; that is the second spiritual possibility in us. The first most ordinary result is a discovery of a vast static and silent Self which we feel to be our real or our basic existence, the foundation of all else that we are. There may be even an extinction, a Nirvana both of our active being and of the sense of self into a Reality that is indefinable and inexpressible. But also we can realise that this self is not only our own spiritual being but the true self of all others; it presents itself then as the underlying truth of cosmic existence. It is possible to remain in a Nirvana of all individuality, to stop at a static realisation or, regarding the cosmic movement as a superficial play or illusion imposed on the silent Self, to pass into some supreme immobile and immutable status beyond the universe. But another less negative line of supernormal experience also offers itself; for there takes place a large dynamic descent of light, knowledge, power, bliss or other supernormal energies into our self of silence, and we can ascend too into higher regions of the Spirit where its immobile status is the foundation of those great and luminous energies. It is evident in either case that we have risen beyond the mind of Ignorance into a spiritual state; but, in the dynamic movement, the resultant greater action of Consciousness-Force may present itself either simply as a pure spiritual dynamis not otherwise determinate in its character or it may reveal a spiritual mind-range where mind is no longer ignorant of The Reality, - not yet a supermind level, but deriving from the supramental Truth-Consciousness and still luminous with something of its knowledge.   7:It is in the latter alternative that we find the secret we are seeking, the means of the transition, the needed step towards a supramental transformation; for we perceive a graduality of ascent, a communication with a more and more deep and immense light and power from above, a scale of intensities which can be regarded as so many stairs in the ascension of Mind or in a descent into Mind from That which is beyond it. We are aware of a sealike downpour of masses of a spontaneous knowledge which assumes the nature of Thought but has a different character from the process of thought to which we are accustomed; for there is nothing here of seeking, no trace of mental construction, no labour of speculation or difficult discovery; it is an automatic and spontaneous knowledge from a Higher Mind that seems to be in possession of Truth and not in search of hidden and withheld realities. One observes that this Thought is much more capable than the mind of including at once a mass of knowledge in a single view; it has a cosmic character, not the stamp of an individual thinking. Beyond this Truth-Thought we can distinguish a greater illumination instinct with an increased power and intensity and driving force, a luminosity of the nature of Truth-Sight with thought formulation as a minor and dependent activity. If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, - an image which in this experience becomes a reality, - we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truthaction, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; for though we have applied that word for want of a better to any supra-intellectual direct way of knowing, yet what we actually know as intuition is only one special movement of self-existent knowledge. This new range is its origin; it imparts to our intuitions something of its own distinct character and is very clearly an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light with which our mind cannot directly communicate. At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, - not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance.   8:In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of The Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.   9:If we regard the Powers of The Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others. There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. As with the One Existence, so with its Consciousness and Force. The One Consciousness is separated into many independent forms of consciousness and knowledge; each follows out its own line of truth which it has to realise. The one total and manysided Real-Idea is split up into its many sides; each becomes an independent Idea-Force with the power to realise itself. The one Consciousness-Force is liberated into its million forces, and each of these forces has the right to fulfil itself or to assume, if needed, a hegemony and take up for its own utility the other forces. So too the Delight of Existence is loosed out into all manner of delights and each can carry in itself its independent fullness or sovereign extreme. Overmind thus gives to the One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss the character of a teeming of infinite possibilities which can be developed into a multitude of worlds or thrown together into one world in which the endlessly variable outcome of their play is the determinant of the creation, of its process, its course and its consequence.   10:Since the Consciousness-Force of the eternal Existence is the universal creatrix, the nature of a given world will depend on whatever self-formulation of that Consciousness expresses itself in that world. Equally, for each individual being, his seeing or representation to himself of the world he lives in will depend on the poise or make which that Consciousness has assumed in him. Our human mental consciousness sees the world in sections cut by the reason and sense and put together in a formation which is also sectional; the house it builds is planned to accommodate one or another generalised formulation of Truth, but excludes the rest or admits some only as guests or dependents in the house. Overmind Consciousness is global in its cognition and can hold any number of seemingly fundamental differences together in a reconciling vision. Thus the mental reason sees Person and the Impersonal as opposites: it conceives an impersonal Existence in which person and personality are fictions of the Ignorance or temporary constructions; or, on the contrary, it can see Person as the primary reality and the impersonal as a mental abstraction or only stuff or means of manifestation. To the Overmind intelligence these are separable Powers of the one Existence which can pursue their independent self-affirmation and can also unite together their different modes of action, creating both in their independence and in their union different states of consciousness and being which can be all of them valid and all capable of coexistence. A purely impersonal existence and consciousness is true and possible, but also an entirely personal consciousness and existence; the Impersonal Divine, Nirguna Brahman, and the Personal Divine, Saguna Brahman, are here equal and coexistent aspects of the Eternal. Impersonality can manifest with person subordinated to it as a mode of expression; but, equally, Person can be The Reality with impersonality as a mode of its nature: both aspects of manifestation face each other in the infinite variety of conscious Existence. What to the mental reason are irreconcilable differences present themselves to the Overmind intelligence as coexistent correlatives; what to the mental reason are contraries are to the Overmind intelligence complementaries. Our mind sees that all things are born from Matter or material Energy, exist by it, go back into it; it concludes that Matter is the eternal factor, the primary and ultimate reality, Brahman. Or it sees all as born of Life-Force or Mind, existing by Life or by Mind, going back into the universal Life or Mind, and it concludes that this world is a creation of the cosmic Life-Force or of a cosmic Mind or Logos. Or again it sees the world and all things as born of, existing by and going back to the Real Idea or Knowledge-Will of the Spirit or to the Spirit itself and it concludes on an idealistic or spiritual view of the universe. It can fix on any of these ways of seeing, but to its normal separative vision each way excludes the others. Overmind consciousness perceives that each view is true of the action of the principle it erects; it can see that there is a material world-formula, a vital world-formula, a mental world-formula, a spiritual worldformula, and each can predominate in a world of its own and at the same time all can combine in one world as its constituent powers. The self-formulation of Conscious Force on which our world is based as an apparent Inconscience that conceals in itself a supreme Conscious-Existence and holds all the powers of Being together in its inconscient secrecy, a world of universal Matter realising in itself Life, Mind, Overmind, Supermind, Spirit, each of them in its turn taking up the others as means of its selfexpression, Matter proving in the spiritual vision to have been always itself a manifestation of the Spirit, is to the Overmind view a normal and easily realisable creation. In its power of origination and in the process of its executive dynamis Overmind is an organiser of many potentialities of Existence, each affirming its separate reality but all capable of linking themselves together in many different but simultaneous ways, a magician craftsman empowered to weave the multicoloured warp and woof of manifestation of a single entity in a complex universe.   11:In this simultaneous development of multitudinous independent or combined Powers or Potentials there is yet - or there is as yet - no chaos, no conflict, no fall from Truth or Knowledge. The Overmind is a creator of truths, not of illusions or falsehoods: what is worked out in any given overmental energism or movement is the truth of the Aspect, Power, Idea, Force, Delight which is liberated into independent action, the truth of the consequences of its reality in that independence. There is no exclusiveness asserting each as the sole truth of being or the others as inferior truths: each God knows all the Gods and their place in existence; each Idea admits all other ideas and their right to be; each Force concedes a place to all other forces and their truth and consequences; no delight of separate fulfilled existence or separate experience denies or condemns the delight of other existence or other experience. The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind, - although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.   --   13:And still we can recognise at once in the Overmind the original cosmic Maya, not a Maya of Ignorance but a Maya of Knowledge, yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable. For if each principle loosed into action must follow its independent line and carry out its complete consequences, the principle of separation must also be allowed its complete course and arrive at its absolute consequence; this is the inevitable descent, facilis descensus, which Consciousness, once it admits the separative principle, follows till it enters by obscuring infinitesimal fragmentation, tucchyena,5 into the material Inconscience, - the Inconscient Ocean of the Rig Veda, - and if the One is born from that by its own greatness, it is still at first concealed by a fragmentary separative existence and consciousness which is ours and in which we have to piece things together to arrive at a whole. In that slow and difficult emergence a certain semblance of truth is given to the dictum of Heraclitus that War is the father of all things; for each idea, force, separate consciousness, living being by the very necessity of its ignorance enters into collision with others and tries to live and grow and fulfil itself by independent self-assertion, not by harmony with the rest of existence. Yet there is still the unknown underlying Oneness which compels us to strive slowly towards some form of harmony, of interdependence, of concording of discords, of a difficult unity. But it is only by the evolution in us of the concealed superconscient powers of cosmic Truth and of The Reality in which they are one that the harmony and unity we strive for can be dynamically realised in the very fibre of our being and all its self-expression and not merely in imperfect attempts, incomplete constructions, ever-changing approximations. The higher ranges of spiritual Mind have to open upon our being and consciousness and also that which is beyond even spiritual Mind must appear in us if we are to fulfil the divine possibility of our birth into cosmic existence.   14:Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance; it is the line at which it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force, emphasising the separateness of each independent movement created by Overmind and hiding or darkening their unity, to divide Mind by an exclusive concentration from the overmental source. There has already been a similar separation of Overmind from its supramental source, but with a transparency in the veil which allows a conscious transmission and maintains a certain luminous kinship; but here the veil is opaque and the transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind is occult and obscure. Mind separated acts as if it were an independent principle, and each mental being, each basic mental idea, power, force stands similarly on its separate self; if it communicates or combines with or contacts others, it is not with the catholic universality of the Overmind movement, on a basis of underlying oneness, but as independent units joining to form a separate constructed whole. It is by this movement that we pass from the cosmic Truth into the cosmic Ignorance. The cosmic Mind on this level, no doubt, comprehends its own unity, but it is not aware of its own source and foundation in the Spirit or can only comprehend it by the intelligence, not in any enduring experience; it acts in itself as if by its own right and works out what it receives as material without direct communication with the source from which it receives it. Its units also act in ignorance of each other and of the cosmic whole except for the knowledge that they can get by contact and communication, - the basic sense of identity and the mutual penetration and understanding that comes from it are no longer there. All the actions of this Mind Energy proceed on the opposite basis of the Ignorance and its divisions and, although they are the results of a certain conscious knowledge, it is a partial knowledge, not a true and integral self-knowledge, nor a true and integral world-knowledge. This character persists in Life and in subtle Matter and reappears in the gross material universe which arises from the final lapse into the Inconscience.

1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   If the world appears, yet to whom does it appear, he asks. What is your reply? You must say the Self. If not, will the world appear in the absence of the cognising Self? Therefore the Self is The Reality.   That is his conclusion. The phenomena are real as the Self and are myths apart from the Self.   Now, what do the tantriks, etc., say? They say that the phenomena are real because they are part of The Reality in which they appear.   Are not these two statements the same? That is what I meant by reality and falsehood being one and the same.   --   Just as a rope-snake cannot be seen in broad daylight, nor rope itself in thick darkness, so also the world appears neither in the samadhi state of Self-shining pure Being or in deep sleep, swoon, etc. Only in Reflected Light (Light mixed with Darkness or knowledge soiled by Ignorance) can the world, not independent of its Source, seem to rise up, flourish and be resolved. Its diversity too cannot be exclusive of The Reality, the original Source. Here a play is going on in which the One Single Being becomes manifold is objectified and then   299   --   M.: To eschew unreality and seek The Reality is scientific.   D.: I mean there must be a gradual elimination, first of the mind, then of the intellect, then of the ego.   --   D.: I mean I have some flashes of The Reality and, at other times, I do not have them.   M.: Who is aware of those flashes?   --   M.: Because you are in variety, you say you understand unity - that you have flashes, etc., remember things, etc.; you consider this variety to be real. On the other hand Unity is The Reality, and the variety is false. The variety must go before unity reveals itself - its reality.   It is always real. It does not send flashes of its being in this false variety. On the contrary, this variety obstructs the truth.   --   That is The Reality.   One does not know the Self owing to the interference of thoughts.   --   There are all manner of thoughts which rise up from The Reality within and manifest themselves.   Hold on to that Reality.   --   M.: There are different methods of approach to prove the unreality of the universe. The example of the dream is one among them. Jagrat, svapna and sushupti are all treated elaborately in the scripture in order that The Reality underlying them might be revealed. It is not meant to accentuate differences among the three states. The purpose must be kept clearly in view.   Now they say that the world is unreal. Of what degree of unreality is it? Is it like that of a son of a barren mother or a flower in the sky, mere words without any reference to facts? Whereas the world is a fact and not a mere word. The answer is that it is a superimposition on the one Reality, like the appearance of a snake on a coiled rope seen in dim light.

13.03 - A Programme for the Second Century of the Divine Manifestation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Divine Presence in the heart the central psychicshould not only be felt constantly there in the heart but in all other parts or levels of the being: it must create or awake its figure or norm everywhere so that it can inspire and control directly all activities and movements in a global and total gesture. It has to be an integral dynamic Presence, that is the way of uplifting the poise of the adhara, its global existence. The process is first to deepen the Presence, that is from the surface to dive into the inner realm and then float up again into a wider and higher expanse, deeper and deeper means truer and truer truthnearer the pure fundamental reality the Eternal and Infinite, the supreme Spirit, the bedrock of existence. Higher and higher means formulations of The Reality in a gradually evolving expansion up the ladders of the physical, the vital, the mental consciousness and towards the higher mental and overmental, indeed towards the Supramental.    II

13.04 - A Note on Supermind, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Supermind is not a function: It is a reality, The Reality itself, the fundamental substance that underlies the world and its formulations of Mind, Life and Matter. It is that secret Energy of Consciousness and Being that lies as the seed and sprouts up and gradually expresses itself in its variant poises of mounting potency. These poises are not mere functions: a function is just the expression or operation of an already acquired or established power. It is a deducible conclusion from known and given data, the data and the conclusion are of the same basic nature, that is commensurable entities. Life and Matter are however not commensurable entities nor, Mind and Life. Even so the Supermind and Mind do not belong to the same category of objective reality. If that was so, one could very justifiably and in high seriousness proclaim in Sri Aurobindo's words those radiant lines, bursting, as it were, with a suppressed laughter:    ***

1.31 - The Giants, Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antaeus. Descent to Cocytus., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity   That The Reality may seem to thee   Less strange, know that these are not towers, but giants,

1.35 - The Tao 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   For his sake I will try to elucidate the matter by an analogy. Consider electricity. It would be absurd to say that electricity is any of the phenomena by which we know it. We take refuge in the petitio principii of saying that electricity is that form of energy which is the principal cause of such and such phenomena. Suppose now that we eliminate this idea as evidently illogical. What remains? We must not hastily answer "Nothing remains." There is some thing inherent in the nature of consciousness, reason, perception, sensation, and of the universe of which they inform us, which is responsible for the fact that we observe these phenomena and not others; that we reflect upon them as we do, and not otherwise. But, even deeper than this, part of The Reality of the inscrutable energy which determines the form of our experience, consists in determining that experience should take place at all. It should be clear that this has nothing to do with any of the Platonic conceptions of the nature of things.   The least abject asset in the intellectual bankruptcy of European thought is the Hebrew Qabalah. Properly understood, it is a system of symbolism indefinitely elastic, assuming no axioms, postulating no principles, asserting no theorems, and therefore adaptable, if managed adroitly, to describe any conceivable doctrine. It has been my continual study since 1898, and I have found it of infinite value in the study of the "Tao Teh King." By its aid I was able to attribute the ideas of Lao Tze to an order with which I was exceedingly familiar, and whose practical worth I had repeatedly proved by using it as the basis of the analysis and classification of all Aryan and Semitic religions and philosophies. Despite the essential difficulty of correlating the ideas of Lao Tze with any others, the persistent application of the Qabalistic keys eventually unlocked his treasure-house. I was able to explain to myself his teachings in terms of familiar systems.

1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   Japa may be done even while engaged in other work. That which is, the One Reality. It may be represented by a form, a japa, mantra, vichara or any kind of attempt. All of them finally resolve themselves into that One Single Reality. Bhakti, vichara, japa are only different forms of our efforts to keep out the unreality. The unreality is an obsession at present. Reality is our true nature. We are wrongly persisting in unreality, that is, thoughts and worldly activities. Cessation of these will reveal the Truth. Our attempts are directed towards keeping them out. It is done by thinking of The Reality only. Although it is our true nature it looks as if we are thinking of The Reality. What we do really amounts to the removal of obstacles for the revelation of our true Being. Meditation or vichara is thus a reversion to our true nature.   D.: Are our attempts sure to succeed?   --   External samadhi is holding on to The Reality while witnessing the world, without reacting to it from within. There is the stillness of a waveless ocean. The internal samadhi involves loss of bodyconsciousness.   396   --   M.: The mind is maya. Reality lies beyond the mind. So long as the mind functions there is duality, maya, etc. Once it is transcended The Reality shines forth. Although it is said to shine forth Selfeffulgence is the Self.   D.: It is Sat-chit-ananda.   --   D.: Bliss manifests occasionally but I am unable to describe it. At times there is illumination, but is it The Reality? If so, how to make   426   --   What is The Reality then? The seer only and certainly not the world.   Such being the truth the man continues to argue on the basis of The Reality of the world. Whoever asked him to accept a brief for the world?   Yoga Vasishta clearly defines Liberation as the abandonment of the false and remaining as Being.   --   M.: A figure on the screen in the cinema show appears to watch the whole world. What is The Reality behind the subject and the object in the same show? An illusory being watches an illusory world.   D.: But I am the witness of the show.

1.4.03 - The Guru, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   What X quotes about the limitation of the power of the Guru to that of a teacher who shows the way but cannot help or guide is the conception of certain paths of Yoga such as the pure Adwaitin and the Buddhist which say that you must rely upon yourself and no one can help you; but even the pure Adwaitin does in fact rely upon the Guru and the chief mantra of Buddhism insists on saran.am to Buddha. For other paths of sadhana, especially those which like the Gita accept The Reality of the individual soul as an "eternal portion" of the Divine or which believe that Bhagavan and the bhakta are both real, the help of the Guru has always been relied upon as an indispensable aid.   I don't understand the objection to the validity of Vivekananda's experience; it was exactly the realisation which is described in the Upanishads as a supreme experience of the Self.

1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   D.: Bliss manifests occasionally but I am unable to describe it. At times there is illumination, but is it The Reality? If so, how to make   Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi it permanent? The method must be simple. Please make it clear without logic, learned discussions or mystifying words.   --   What is The Reality then? The seer only and certainly not the world.   Such being the truth the man continues to argue on the basis of The Reality of the world. Whoever asked him to accept a brief for the world?   Yoga Vasishta clearly defines Liberation as the abandonment of the false and remaining as Being.   --   M.: A figure on the screen in the cinema show appears to watch the whole world. What is The Reality behind the subject and the object in the same show? An illusory being watches an illusory world.   D.: But I am the witness of the show.   --   M.: Such is the firm conviction of The Reality of the world that it is not easily shaken off. The world does not become, for that reason, any more real than the individual himself.   D.: Now there is the Sino-Japanese war. If it is only in imagination, can or will Sri Bhagavan imagine the contrary and put an end to the war?   --   M.: So then, you want not to be led to unreal and changeful things. Your thoughts are unreal and changeful. You want to hold The Reality. That is exactly what I say. The thoughts are unreal. Get rid of them.   D.: I understand now. Yet there is a doubt. Not a trice can you remain inactive. How shall I be able to rid myself of thoughts?   --   Thevaram takes one directly to The Reality.   16th September, 1938   --   The latter is the Supreme Reality whereas the former is the ego. It is to be overcome before the Truth is realised. The Supreme Being is unmanifest and the first sign of manifestation is Aham Sphurana (light of I). The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says Aham nama abhavat (He became I named). That is the original name of The Reality.   The Pandit asked about the operation of Grace. Is it the mind of the   --   Sri Bhagavan observed: Dakshinamurti observed silence when the disciples approached Him. That is the highest form of initiation. It includes the other forms. There must be subject-object relationship established in the other dikshas. First the subject must emanate and then the object. Unless these two are there how is the one to look at the other or touch him? Mowna diksha is the most perfect; it comprises looking, touching and teaching. It will purify the individual in every way and establish him in The Reality.   Talk 520.   --   A practiser may by long practice gain a glimpse of The Reality. This experience may be vivid for the time being. And yet he will be distracted by the old vasanas and so his experience will not avail him. Such a man must continue his manana and nididhyasana so that all the obstacles may be destroyed. He will then be able to remain permanently in the Real State.   D.: What is the difference between a man who makes no attempts and remains an ajnani, and another who gains a glimpse and returns to ajnana?   --   M.: Desire or lust, anger, etc., give you pain. Why? Because of the Iconceit; this I-conceit is from ignorance; ignorance from differentiation; differentiation from the notion of The Reality of the world and this again from I-am-the-body idea. The last can be only after the rise of the ego.   The ego not arising, the whole chain of mishaps disappears. Therefore prevent the rise of the ego. This can be done by remaining in your own real nature; then lust, anger, etc., are conquered.   --   Pure Knowledge seems different from what It really is; the same is seen as I and the world which are full of desire, attachment, hatred, etc. Therefore desire, etc., are said to veil The Reality.   D.: How to be rid of thoughts? Is it as said in the Atma-Vidya - the eye of the mental eye, etc.?   --   Now you say you were unconscious in sleep and self-conscious in the wakeful state. Which is The Reality? The Reality must be continuous and eternal. Neither the unconsciousness nor the self-consciousness of the present is The Reality. But you admit your existence all through. The pure Being is The Reality. The others are mere associations. The pure   Being cannot be otherwise than consciousness. Otherwise you cannot say that you exist. Therefore consciousness is The Reality. When that consciousness is associated with upadhis you speak of self-consciousness, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness, super-consciousness, humanconsciousness, dog-consciousness, tree-consciousness and so on. The unaltering common factor in all of them is consciousness.   Therefore the stone is as much unconscious as you are in sleep. Is that totally devoid of consciousness?   --   make him understand The Reality. The Master is thus God manifest   as human being. He gives out His experience so that the seeker   --   M.: The Reality is alone and eternal. To understand it is good enough.   But the old ignorance should not return. A good watch must be kept   --   and the support of them all. The Reality is thus different from the   three states, the waking, the dream and the deep sleep.   --   glimpse of The Reality. I firmly believe that I can be helped in this only   by a sage like Sri Bhagavan. So I pray for Thy help.   --   It is necessary to experience The Reality now in life in order that it   may be experienced at death. See if this moment be different from   --   (vritti) passes, The Reality behind it does not cease. The background   of the mode is the I in which the mind modes arise and sink.   --   The Reality.   Talk 642.   --   world constantly arises to deflect the mind. If The Reality behind   it is first ascertained it will be found to be Brahman. The tvam is

1.450 - 1.500 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   M.: Such is the firm conviction of The Reality of the world that it is not easily shaken off. The world does not become, for that reason, any more real than the individual himself.   D.: Now there is the Sino-Japanese war. If it is only in imagination, can or will Sri Bhagavan imagine the contrary and put an end to the war?   --   M.: So then, you want not to be led to unreal and changeful things. Your thoughts are unreal and changeful. You want to hold The Reality. That is exactly what I say. The thoughts are unreal. Get rid of them.   D.: I understand now. Yet there is a doubt. "Not a trice can you remain inactive." How shall I be able to rid myself of thoughts?

15.09 - One Day More, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Once again she reaffirms The Reality of her vision in the message she gave to her children on the New Year Day of 1961:    This wonderful world of delight waiting at our gates for our call, to come down upon earth. . . .4

1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   A practiser may by long practice gain a glimpse of The Reality. This experience may be vivid for the time being. And yet he will be distracted by the old vasanas and so his experience will not avail him. Such a man must continue his manana and nididhyasana so that all the obstacles may be destroyed. He will then be able to remain permanently in the Real State.   D.: What is the difference between a man who makes no attempts and remains an ajnani, and another who gains a glimpse and returns to ajnana?   --   M.: Desire or lust, anger, etc., give you pain. Why? Because of the 'I'conceit; this 'I'-conceit is from ignorance; ignorance from differentiation; differentiation from the notion of The Reality of the world and this again from 'I-am-the-body' idea. The last can be only after the rise of the ego.   The ego not arising, the whole chain of mishaps disappears. Therefore prevent the rise of the ego. This can be done by remaining in your own real nature; then lust, anger, etc., are conquered.   --   Pure Knowledge seems different from what It really is; the same is seen as 'I' and the 'world' which are full of desire, attachment, hatred, etc. Therefore desire, etc., are said to veil The Reality.   D.: How to be rid of thoughts? Is it as said in the Atma-Vidya - the eye of the mental eye, etc.?   --   Now you say you were unconscious in sleep and self-conscious in the wakeful state. Which is The Reality? The Reality must be continuous and eternal. Neither the unconsciousness nor the self-consciousness of the present is The Reality. But you admit your existence all through. The pure Being is The Reality. The others are mere associations. The pure   Being cannot be otherwise than consciousness. Otherwise you cannot say that you exist. Therefore consciousness is The Reality. When that consciousness is associated with upadhis you speak of self-consciousness, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness, super-consciousness, humanconsciousness, dog-consciousness, tree-consciousness and so on. The unaltering common factor in all of them is consciousness.   Therefore the stone is as much unconscious as you are in sleep. Is that totally devoid of consciousness?

1914 01 06p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Thou art the one and only goal of my life and the centre of my aspiration, the pivot of my thought, the key of the synthesis of my being. And as Thou art beyond all sensation, all feeling and all thought, Thou art the living but ineffable experience, The Reality lived in the depths of the being but untranslatable in our poor words; and it is because human intelligence is powerless to reduce Thee to a formula that some, a little disdainfully, label sentiment the knowledge that it is possible to have of Thee, but it is surely as far from sentiment as it is from thought. So long as one has not attained this supreme Knowledge, one has no solid basis or lasting centre for ones mental and emotional synthesis, and all other intellectual constructions can only be arbitrary, artificial and vain.    Thou art eternal silence and perfect peace in what we are able to perceive of Thee.

1914 03 06p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Surely this sentimental and physical attachment which causes an agonizing wrench when bodies are separated, is childish from a certain point of view, when we contemplate the impermanence of outer forms and The Reality of Thy essential Oneness; but, on the other hand, is not this attachment, this personal affection, an unconscious effort in men to realise outwardly, as far as possible, that fundamental oneness towards which they always move without even being aware of it? And precisely because of that, is not the suffering that separation brings one of the most effective means of transcending this outer consciousness, of replacing this superficial attachment by the integral realisation of Thy eternal Oneness?    This is what I wished for them all; this is what I ardently willed for them, and that is why, assured of Thy victory, certain of Thy triumph, I confided their grief to Thee that by illuminating it Thou mayst heal it.

1914 03 12p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    O Lord, Thou art our safeguard, our only happiness, Thou art our resplendent light, our pure love, our hope and our strength. Thou art our life, The Reality of our being!    In a reverent and joyful adoration I bow to Thee.

1914 05 28p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Thou settest in motion, Thou stirrest and churnest the innumerable elements of this world, so that, from their primal darkness, their primeval chaos, they may awaken to consciousness and the full light of knowledge. And Thou usest Thy supreme love to churn all these elements in this way. And it is from Thy infinite, unfathomable heart that these inexhaustible torrents of love spring forth. Thy heart is my dwelling-place, Thy heart is The Reality of my being. In Thy heart I have nestled and I have become Thy heart.    Peace, peace upon all beings.

1914 06 04p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    O my sweet Master, Thy infinite love is The Reality of our being; who can struggle against its all-powerful action? It penetrates everything, it passes through every obstacle, whether it be the inertia of a heavy ignorance or the resistance of an uncomprehending ill-will. O my sweet Master, through and by this love, Thou shinest resplendent in all things, and this splendour of Thine, ever-increasing in its force, shall radiate its action over all the earth and become perceptible to every consciousness.    Who can resist Thy divine power?

1914 12 10p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Is it not a great folly to become identified with one form of thought, one mental construction, however vast and powerful it may be, to the point of making it the living centre of ones being, ones experience and activity? Truth is eternally beyond all that we can think or say of it. To endeavour to find the most suitable expression, the one best adapted to this truth, is of course a useful task, even an indispensable one for the integrality of ones own development and that of all humanity; but one must always feel free in front of this expression, have ones centre of consciousness above it, in The Reality which, despite the grandeur, the beauty, the perfection of a mental formula, always eludes every formula. The world is not what we think it to be. The importance of the idea we have of it lies in its effect on our attitude towards action; and this attitude may come from a much deeper, truer, more unchanging inspiration than that resulting from a mental construction, however powerful it may be. To feel in oneself the will to express for men the eternal Truth in a completer, higher, more exact form than all those which have preceded it, is good; but on condition that one does not identify ones self with this work to the point of being its slave and losing before it all independence and self-control. It is just an activity and nothing more, whatever may be its importance from the earthly point of view; but it must not be forgotten that it is relative like all activities and that we should not allow it to disturb our deep peace and that immutable calm which alone lets the divine forces manifest through us without any deformation.    O Lord, my prayer is not formulated, but Thou hearest it.

1951-03-01 - Universe and the Divine - Freedom and determinism - Grace - Time and Creation- in the Supermind - Work and its results - The psychic being - beauty and love - Flowers- beauty and significance - Choice of reincarnating psychic being, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    The word predetermined does not correspond to The Reality; the word pre-existent would be more correct. The consciousness of an unfolding has a reality, it is not only an appearance.    Imagine the world as a single whole and, in a certain sense, finite, limited but containing potentially innumerable possibilities of which the combinations are so numerous that they are equivalent to an infinite (you must be careful with words, however; I am very much cramped by words, they do not express exactly what I mean). So, the universe is objectified by the Divine Consciousness, by the Supreme, according to certain determined laws of which we shall speak later. The universe is a single whole, in the sense that it is the Divineit does not contain the whole of the Divine, but it is as though the Divine deployed Himself so as to objectify Himself; that is the raison dtre of the manifestation of the universe. It is as if the divine Consciousness wandered into all divine possibilities following a path it had chosen. Imagine then a multitude of possibles of which all the possible combinations are equivalent to an infinite. The divine Consciousness is essentially free It wanders therein and objectifies Itself. The path traversed is free in the midst of an infinite multiplicity which is at the same time pre-existent and absolutely undetermined according to the action of the free divine Will. It may be conceived that this Will, being free, is able to change the course of the deployment, change the path and, although everything is pre-existent and consequently inevitable, the road, the path is free and absolutely unexpected. These changes of the route, if one may say so, can therefore change the relations between things and circumstances, and consequently the determinism is changed. This change of the circuit is called the effect of the Grace; well, through the aid of the Grace, if the Grace decides it, things can change, the course can be different. Things can change their places and instead of following a certain circuit follow another. A circumstance which, according to a particular determinism, should occur at a certain place ahead, for instance, would instead occur behind, and so on. The relations between things consequently change.1

1951-04-05 - Illusion and interest in action - The action of the divine Grace and the ego - Concentration, aspiration, will, inner silence - Value of a story or a language - Truth - diversity in the world, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    A story is of value only to the extent it can help you to understand things. Ah! Here is an interesting subject. A story, that is, a way of saying things, is of value only if it can make you understand the thing. A language (which is a kind of story) is of value only to the extent it is capable of putting you in contact with The Reality. Science is a language, Art is a languageall activity is a sort of language, that is, a way of expression.And the way of expression is of value only in as far as it puts you in contact with what it wants to express. It is a very interesting generalisation, for you can bring into it all the categories you want and you will see that it is true.    It is the same for everything. The way of approaching the universe and the universal truth is also a language and all depends upon the person who uses it, the person to whom the understanding is to be communicated. Whatever may be the way of telling, if you understand, that is all that is necessary. If you do not understand, even if it be the wonder of wonders, the truth of truths, it will have no value for you. This is an essentially pragmatic point of view of the universe; things have value only in so far as they realise that for which they have been made, and the most beautiful philosophies of the world are of no use to those who do not understand them. The most beautiful works of art in the world are quite useless to those whom they do not put on the path of the Truth. And the most perfect yoga in the world is useless to those whom it does not lead to the Realisation. And if you have this sense of relativity, you have finished with all dogmatism, all sectarianism, all that kind of absolutism which leads one always to think that all that has done us good is the truthit is the truth for us, it is not necessarily the truth for our neighbour. And what our neighbour thinks is the truth for him, and when you say, It is idiotic, it is quite useless, if it helps him to realise the truth, it is excellent, it is the best thing possible for him. And everything, everything on earth is like that. And if you do not want to be altogether narrow, to put on visors and not see farther than the tip of your nose, you must first of all understand this. You must understand that all things in the universe tend towards a goal and that it is to the extent they help to realise this goal that they have a value, and that this value is quite relative; and what is good for one may not be so for another, what is good at one moment may not be so at another and, consequently, every kind of dogmatism is an absurdity.    It is very easy to say, That, thats true, now I know that it is true and I shall not think otherwise; this is very easy, and in fact something has suddenly put you in touch with a light, you have had an experience, you have become conscious of yourself, conscious of something which transcends you and is The Reality of your being, so for you it is perfect. But do not imagine that you must go from door to door, from city to city, country to country, telling people, I proclaim the Truth, because what is true for you may not be at all good for another. What you have seen has its truth in itselfeverything has its truth in itself but the true raison dtre of this truth is that it has helped you to find yourself, to find the truth of your being, and it may quite possibly not help your neighbour, unless you have a considerable power of persuasion and oblige him to see things as you have seen them yourself, but this is not tremendously valuable.    When you have understood this, you will no longer say, Why is there such a diversity in the world, why all this multiplicity, why all this confusion, why? It is a confusion simply because you dont understand and things are not in their place. If things were in their place, there would be no confusion. And we come to this, that you cannot take away one atom from this world without dislocating the universe. All that is, was necessaryif it had not been necessary, it would not have been. The whole totality of things is indispensable for realising the Divine. If you took away one of these things, there would be a hole in the realisation. And I am not speaking only of material things, material points, I am speaking of all the depths. So when you say as many do, Ah! If that were not there in the world, how fine the world would be, you are displaying your ignorance.

1953-06-03, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    I forgot to say in that book (perhaps I did not forget but just felt that it was useless to say it) that all these theories are only theories, that is, mental conceptions which are merely more or less imaged representations of The Reality; but it is not The Reality at all. When you say determinism and when you say freedom, you say only words and all that is only a very incomplete, very approximate and very weak description of what is in reality within you, around you and everywhere; and to be able to begin to understand what the universe is, you must come out of your mental formulas, otherwise you will never understand anything.    To tell the truth, if you live only a moment, just a tiny moment, of this absolutely sincere aspiration or this sufficiently intense prayer, you will know more things than by meditating for hours.

1953-06-10, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    There are only two cases when this is possible: you are either very unconscious of the movements of your beingyou have not studied, you have not observed, you do not know what is happening within youor you are absolutely insincere, that is, you play the ostrich in order not to see The Reality of things: you hide your head, you hide your observation, your knowledge and you say, It is not there. But indeed the latter I hope is not in question here. Hence it is simply because one has not the habit of observing oneself that one is so unconscious of what is happening within.    Have you ever practised distinguishing what comes from your mind, what comes from your vital, what comes from your physical? For it is mixed up; it is mixed up in the outward appearance. If you do not take care to distinguish, it makes a kind of soup, all that together. So it is indistinct and difficult to discover. But if you observe yourself, after some time you see certain things, you feel them to be there, like that, as though they were in your skin; for some other things you feel you would have to go within yourself to find out from where they come; for other things, you have to go still further inside, or otherwise you have to rise up a little: it comes from unconsciousness. And there are others; then you must go very deep, very deep to find out from where they come. This is just a beginning.

1953-10-07, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    It takes interest in the transformation of the worldin the descent of forces in the material world and its transformation, in its preparation so that it may be able to receive the supramental forces. And it is conscious of the difference between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. Every moment it sees the gulf between what is and what should be, between the truth and the falsehood that is expressed. And constantly it keeps this vision of the Truth which broods over the world, so that as soon as there is a little opening, it may descend and manifest itself. And what to the ordinary awareness seems quite natural is for it usually a play of obscure, ignorant, altogether unconscious forces. And it does not find that at all natural. It finds that a detestable accident and tries with all its strength to remedy it. It seeks, looks, and if there is any receptivity anywhere, it intensifies its action. It does not see men in their outward appearance but as vibrations more or less receptive and more or less dark or luminous, and wherever it sees a light it projects its force so that it may have its full effect. And instead of treating each being like a pawn on a chess-board, a small, well-defined person, it sees how forces enter, go out, stir, move and make all things move, how vibrations act. And it sees those vibrations which ascend and lead to progress and it sees those vibrations which cast you further and further into the darkness, which make you go down. And at times someone comes to you with ready-made words which he has learnt generally from books, but nevertheless, full of aspiration and goodwill, and he is answered by a strong rebuff and told that he should try to be sincerehe does not understand. This is because the Force sees that there is no sincerity the Force does not see the words, does not hear the words, doesnt even see the ideas in the head but only the state of consciousness, whether the state of consciousness is sincere or not. There are other instances of people who seem to be quite frivolous and stupid and busy with useless things, and suddenly one helps them, encourages them, treats them like friends and comrades, for one sees shining in the depth of all that a sincerity, an aspiration which may have a childish form outwardly but which is there and very pure at times. And so one does many things for them which people dont understand, for they cannot see The Reality behind the appearance. That is why I say that it is in an entirely different way that the supermind is interested, an entirely different way that it sees, an entirely different way that it knows.    Isnt it more important to know oneself than to try to know others?

1953-10-14, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    You may ask why it happened. Well, certainly it is not the mind, you know, which can say why it happened. It happened, that is all. In reality the only thing that concerns us is that it has happened. It is perhaps an accident to begin with. If you look at the thing from a philosophical point of view, it is evident that the universe in which we live is a movement among many others and this movement follows a law which is its own (and which is perhaps not the same in the others), and if the Will was for the world to be built on the principle of choice, of the freedom of choice, then one cannot prevent disorderly movements from taking place until knowledge comes and the choice is enlightened. If one is free to choose, one can also choose bad things, not necessarily the good, for if it were a thing decided beforehand, it would no longer be a free choice. You see, when such questions are put, the mind only answers and it reduces the problem, it reduces it to a more or less elementary mental formula; but that corresponds only very vaguely and superficially and incompletely with The Reality of things.    To be able to understand, one must become. If you want to understand the why and how of the universe, you must identify yourself with the universe. It is not impossible but it is not very easy either, particularly for children.

1954-02-17 - Experience expressed in different ways - Origin of the psychic being - Progress in sports -Everything is not for the best, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   It is a little philosophical You know the difference between what is subjective and what is objective? You know it! Well, imagine precisely this Reality we were speaking about, which is at the origin of all things, passing from the subjective to the objective state. That is, what was within becomes as though projected outside. It is the it same thing: it is the state that changes. And so, within it there are all the possibilities of objective existence; within they are unexpressed, unmanifested; outside they are projected, as a picture is projected on the cinema-screen: we see it before us. And every element that was a possibility within, a law, becomes the law of a realisation. And every one of these possibilities becomes The Reality of a being, of an individuality if you like, of something existing objectively. And it is that law which is the origin of the centre of the psychic being: it is the truth of the being or the law of the being. The Buddha called it the law, he spoke of the Dharma. It is the truth of the being. It is that which binds it again indestructibly to its origin. And that is the starting-point of the psychic being. And so, even as this develops, like the picture on the screen, it takes a more and more complex and precise form in the manifestation. But The Reality of that form is one, it is bound to the One. And all the units are linked together and reproduce the One.   Is it not easier? (Looking at the child) It is still more difficult! But indeed, thats what I have said here.

1955-03-02 - Right spirit, aspiration and desire - Sleep and yogic repose, how to sleep - Remembering dreams - Concentration and outer activity - Mother opens the door inside everyone - Sleep, a school for inner knowledge - Source of energy, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   There is always, as soon as theres an aspiration it may be very sincere and spontaneous but immediately the mind and vital are there, watching like robbers behind the door; and if a force answers they rush upon it for their own satisfaction. So there one must take very, very, very great care, because though the aspiration might be sincere, the call absolutely spontaneous and sincere and very pure, as soon as the answer comes the two brigands are there, trying to take possession of what comes for their own satisfaction. And what comes is very good but they immediately pervert it, they use it for personal ends, for the satisfaction of their desires or ambitions, and they spoil everything. And naturally, not only do they spoil everything but they stop the experience. So unless one takes good care, one is stuck there, and cannot move forward. If some Grace is above you, when the Grace sees this it automatically gives you a terrible blow to recall you to The Reality, to your senses; it gives you a good knock on the head or in the stomach or the heart or anywhere else so that all of a sudden you say, Oh, that wont do any more.   No questions?

1955-04-13 - Psychoanalysts - The underground super-ego, dreams, sleep, control - Archetypes, Overmind and higher - Dream of someone dying - Integral repose, entering Sachchidananda - Organising ones life, concentration, repose, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   But there is a still higher domain than this where the origins are still purer, and if one reaches this, attains this, one finds the absolutely pure types of what is manifested upon earth. And then it is very interesting to compare, to see to what an extent earthly creation is a frightful distortion. And moreover, it is only when one can reach these regions and see The Reality of things in their essence that one can work with knowledge to transform them here; otherwise on what can we take our stand to conceive a better world, more perfect, more beautiful than the existing one? It cant be on our imagination which is itself something very poor and very material. But if one can enter that consciousness, rise right up to these higher worlds of creation, then with this in ones consciousness one can work at making material things take their real form.   Mother, at night if one sees someone dying, and a few months later one sees again the same person dying, what does it mean? Is this person in danger?

1955-06-22 - Awakening the Yoga-shakti - The thousand-petalled lotus- Reading, how far a help for yoga - Simple and complicated combinations in men, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   This phenomenon is very real, concrete, it is felt with all The Reality and intensity of even a physical phenomenon. But each person describes it with a form particular to himself, except as I say, when he has read and studied, and his brain is full of all that is written in books; then automatically what he has read gives a form to his experience, and this takes away from it something of the spontaneity which gives such an impression of being sincere and truthful; it becomes a mental construction. If you have read and read much that it is like a serpent which is coiled up, well, quite naturally when you concentrate and try to awaken it, you see a serpent which is coiled, because you think about it like that. If you are told about a thousand-petalled lotus, you see a thousand-petalled lotus. But it is a mental superimposition upon the fact of the experience itself. But the feeling of something thats innumerable, thats one and innumerable at the same time, and that kind of impression of something opening, awakening, beginning to vibrate, responding to the forces and giving you an intensity of light, of understanding, of opening to higher regions, this is the substance of the experience. Yet when you begin to describe it with images which you have found in books, it is as though suddenly you were making it either superficialfossilised, so to sayor artificial or even insincere.   Always the most interesting cases for me have been those of people who had read nothing but had a very ardent aspiration and came to me saying, Something funny has happened to me, I had this extraordinary experience, what can it mean truly? And then they describe a movement, a vibration, a force, a light, whatever it might be, it depends on each one, and they describe this, that it happened like that and came like that, and then this happened and then that, and what does it all mean, all this? Then here one is on the right side. One knows that it is not an imagined experience, that it is a sincere, spontaneous one, and this always has a power of transformation much greater than the experience that was brought about by a mental knowledge.

1955-10-12 - The problem of transformation - Evolution, man and superman - Awakening need of a higher good - Sri Aurobindo and earths history - Setting foot on the new path - The true reality of the universe - the new race - ..., #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   No, not the being itself: the image he has manufactured after the event, and of which he has made a a political action. Excuse me, it is god made in mans image who has been put in temples and adored, for purely political reasons. But those who were in relation with those who manifested in themselves the Divine Reality, they have been very badly received, always. History is there to prove it. Now, you see, men dont throw stones any more, except at the poor Negroes sometimes in America; they dont burn people alive any more, it is no longer the fashion but they imprison, that happens. And in fact (I have said this already several times), what saves those who are not altogether men, is that today the world is in such a state of ignorance that people dont even believe any more in The Reality of their power. But certainly if the governments believed in The Reality of their power, they would have a bad time of it   But let us hope that I should say then as I said for men that the superman will be quite kind. Well, let us hope for the superman that he will know how to defend himself, that he will have some means of defence, not too visible but sufficient.

1956-06-20 - Hearts mystic light, intuition - Psychic being, contact - Secular ethics - True role of mind - Realise the Divine by love - Depression, pleasure, joy - Heart mixture - To follow the soul - Physical process - remember the Mother, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Pleasure in itself is something very fugitive. But if you are speaking of joy, that is something altogether different, it is a kind of warmth and illumination in the heart, you seeone may feel joy in the mind also, but it is a kind of warmth and beatific illumination occurring somewhere. That is a quality which is not yet fully developed and one is rarely in the psychological state thats needed to have it. And that is why it is fugitive. Otherwise joy is constantly there in the truth of the being, in The Reality of the being, in your true Self, in your soul, in your psychic being, joy is constantly there.   It has nothing to do with pleasure: it is a kind of inner delight.

1956-07-11 - Beauty restored to its priesthood - Occult worlds, occult beings - Difficulties and the supramental force, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   In these invisible worlds there are also regions which are the result of human mental formations. One can find there all one wants. In fact, one very often finds there exactly what one expects to find. There are hells, there are paradises, there are purgatories. There are all sorts of things in accordance with the different religions and their conceptions. These things have only a very relative existence, but with a relativity similar to that of material things here; that is to say, for someone who finds himself there, they are entirely real and their effects quite tangible. One needs an inner liberation, a wideness of the consciousness and a contact with a deeper and higher truth to be able to escape from the illusion of their reality. But this is something almost similar to what happens here: human beings here are mostly convinced that the only reality is the physical reality The Reality of what one can touch, can seeand for them, all that cannot be seen, cannot be touched, cannot be felt, is after all, problematical; well, what happens there is an identical phenomenon. People who at the moment of death are convinced, for one reason or another, that they are going to paradise or maybe to hell, do find themselves there after their death; and for them it is truly a paradise or a hell. And it is extremely difficult to make them come out of it and go to a place which is more true, more real.   So it is difficult to speak of all these worlds, these innumerable worlds, in a few minutes. It is a knowledge which needs a lived experience of many years, thoroughly systematic, and which requires, as I said, an inner preparation absolutely indispensable, to make it harmless.

1956-09-05 - Material life, seeing in the right way - Effect of the Supermind on the earth - Emergence of the Supermind - Falling back into the same mistaken ways, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   It is only lite natures, those who have already had a contact with a higher reality, with something of the divine Consciousness, who feel earthly existence in that way. And when one can become so fully conscious of all these weaknesses and stupidities of the outer consciousness, all these falsehoods of so-called material knowledge and so-called physical laws, the so-called necessities of the body, The Reality of ones needs; if one begins to see how very false, stupid, illusory, obscure, foolish all this is, one is truly very close to the solution.   That is the impression I had while reading this. In comparison with the ordinary atmosphere of people around me, I had the feeling that to see things in this way, one must have already climbed to a very high peak, and that one is at the gates of liberation. It is because I felt it so strongly that I wanted to tell you this.

1956-10-24 - Taking a new body - Different cases of incarnation - Departure of soul from body, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   If we take the best instance, of someone who has unified his being completely around the divine Presence within him, who is now only one will, one consciousness, this person will have grouped around his central psychic being a fully developed and organised mind, an absolutely surrendered and collaborating vital and an obedient, docile and supple physical being. This physical being, as it is fully developed, will have a subtle bodywhat Sri Aurobindo calls the true physicalwhich will infinitely surpass the limits of its body and have enough suppleness, plasticity, balance to be able to adhere to the inner parts of the being and follow the movement of the soul in its I dont want to say in its ascent, but in its peregrinations outside the body. What the soul will do, where it will goit all depends on what it has decided before leaving the body. And this capacity to keep around itself the being that has been fully organised and unified in its physical life, will allow it to really choose what it wants to do. And this also represents a very different field of possibilities, from sing consciously from one body into another, directly there are instances in which one of these fully conscious and fully developed beings has slowly prepared another being capable of receiving and assimilating it, and in order not to stop its material work when it leaves one body, it goes and joins another psychic being, merges with it, combines with it in another physical body; that is an extreme case, extremely rare also, but one which forms part of an altogether traditional occult knowledgeto the instance at the other extreme, where the soul having finished its bodily experience, wants to assimilate it in repose and prepare for another physical existence later, sometimes much later. And so this is what happens, among many other possibilities: it leaves in each domainin the subtle physical, in the vital, in the mental domain the corresponding beings; it leaves them with a sort of link between them, but each one keeps its independent existence, and it itself goes into the zone, The Reality, the world of the psychic proper, and enters into a blissful repose for assimilation, until it has assimilated (laughing), as described in this paper, all its good deeds, digested all its good deeds, and is ready to begin a new experience. And then, if its work has been well done and the parts or sheaths of its being which it has left in their different domains have acted as they should there, when it descends again, it will put on one after another all these parts which lived with it in a former life, and with this wealth of knowledge and experience it will prepare to enter a new body. This may be after hundreds or thousands of years, for in those domains all that is organised is no longer necessarily subject to the deposition which here we call death. As soon as a vital being is fully harmonised, it becomes immortal. What dissolves it and breaks it up are all the disorders within it and all the tendencies towards destruction and deposition; but if it is fully harmonised and organised and, so to say, divinised, it becomes immortal. It is the same thing for the mind. And even in the subtle physical, beings who are fully developed and have been impregnated with spiritual forces do not necessarily dissolve after death. They may continue to act or may take a beneficial rest in certain elements of Nature like watergenerally it is in some liquid, in water or the sap of treesor it may be, as described here (laughing), in the clouds. But they may also remain active and continue to act on the more material elements of physical Nature.   I have given you here a certain number of examples; I tell you, I could talk to you for hours and there would always be new examples to give! But this covers the subject broadly and opens the door to imagination.

1957-01-09 - God is essentially Delight - God and Nature play at hide-and-seek - Why, and when, are you grave?, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   According to what Sri Aurobindo says here, The Reality of the universe is what is called God or godhead, but essentially it is Delight. The universe is created in Delight and for Delight. But this Delight can exist only in the perfect oneness of the creation with its creator, and Sri Aurobindo describes this oneness as the Possessor that is, the Creator the Possessor being possessed by his creation, a sort of reciprocal possession which is the very essence of the Oneness and the source of all delight.   And it is because of divisionbecause the Possessor no longer possesses and because the possessed no longer possesses the Possessor, division is created and the essential Delight is changed into ignorance, and this ignorance is the cause of all suffering. Ignorance, not in the sense in which it is usually understood, for that is what Sri Aurobindo calls Nescience: that ignorance is a consequence of the other. True ignorance is ignorance of the oneness, the union, the identity. And that is the cause of all suffering.

1957-02-13 - Suffering, pain and pleasure - Illness and its cure, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   If one knows how to teach the cells the splendour that lies within them, if one knows how to make them understand The Reality which makes them exist, gives them being, then they too enter the total harmony, and the physical disorder which causes the illness vanishes as do all other disorders of the being.   But for that one must be neither cowardly nor fearful. When the physical disorder comes, one must not be afraid; one must not run away from it, must face it with courage, calmness, confidence, with the certitude that illness is a falsehood and that if one turns entirely, in full confidence, with a complete quietude to the divine Grace, It will settle in these cells as It is established in the depths of the being, and the cells themselves will share in the eternal Truth and Delight.

1957-03-06 - Freedom, servitude and love, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   One cannot love through compulsion, you cannot be compelled to love, it is no longer love. Therefore, as soon as compulsion intervenes, it becomes a falsehood. All the movements of the inner being must be spontaneous movements, with that spontaneity which comes from an inner harmony, an understandingfrom a voluntary self-givingfrom a return to the deeper truth, The Reality of being, the Origin and the Goal.     On the 27th February there was only a reading followed by a meditation, no talk was given. Since the Darshan of November 24, Mother had been having a slight haemorrhage in her left eye.

1957-06-26 - Birth through direct transmutation - Man and woman - Judging others - divine Presence in all - New birth, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   All this contact, this ordinary perception of the world loses its reality completely. This is what appears unreal, fantastic, illusory, non-existent. There is something something very material, very concrete, very physicalwhich becomes The Reality of the being, and which has nothing in common with the ordinary way of seeing. When one has this perception the perception of the work of the divine force, of the movement being worked out behind the appearance, in the appearance, through the appearanceone begins to be ready to live something truer than the ordinary human falsehood. But not before.   There is no compromise, you see. It is not like convalescence after an illness: you must change worlds. So long as your mind is real for you, your way of thinking something true for you, real, concrete, it proves that you are not there yet. You must first pass through to the other side. Afterwards you will be able to understand what I am telling you.

1957-07-10 - A new world is born - Overmind creation dissolved, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Yesterday evening, suddenly something happened which I have just described to you as best I could I dont know if I have succeeded in making myself understood but it was truly quite new and altogether unexpected. We were shown, comparatively clumsily, a picture of the temple on the banks of the Ganges, and the statue of Kali for I suppose it was a photograph of that statue, I could not manage to get any precise information about itand while I was seeing that, which was a completely superficial appearance and, as I said, rather clumsy, I saw The Reality it was trying to represent, what was behind, and this put me in touch with all that world of religion and worship, of aspiration, mans whole relationship with the gods, which was I am already speaking in the past tensewhich was the flower of the human spiritual effort towards something more divine than man, something which was the highest and almost the purest expression of his effort towards what is higher than he. And suddenly I had concretely, materially, the impression that it was another world, a world that had ceased to be real, living, an outdated world which had lost its reality, its truth, which had been transcended, surpassed by something which had taken birth and was only beginning to express itself, but whose life was so intense, so true, so sublime, that all this became false, unreal, worthless.   Then I truly understood for I understood not with the head, the intelligence but with the body, you understand what I mean I understood in the cells of the body that a new world is born and is beginning to grow.

1957-10-09 - As many universes as individuals - Passage to the higher hemisphere, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   And in fact, The Reality of the world is entirely subjective for each persons consciousness. The world has no objective reality, for in one case it can be said that it is the result of the supremely conscious, supreme Will and that all is ruled by that, and in the other case, it may be said that it is something without any reason for existence except an elusive chance and yet, these two notions apply to one and the same thing.   Have you never thought about that?

1957-12-18 - Modern science and illusion - Value of experience, its transforming power - Supramental power, first aspect to manifest, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   In fact, the value of an experience or a discovery could perhaps be proved by the power it gives, the power to change these appearances and transform things, circumstances and the world as it appears to us, in accordance with the will that manifests through that experience. It seems to me that the most universal proof of the validity of an individual or collective experience would be its power to make things these appearances that we call the worlddifferent from what they are. From the subjective point of view, the effect of the experience on an individual consciousness is an undeniable proof; for one who attains bliss, sovereign peace, unchanging delight, the profound knowledge of things, it is more than proved. The effects on the outer form depend on many other things besides the experience itselfdepend perhaps on the first cause of these experiences but out of all this, one thing seems to be a proof which is accessible to other people as well as to the one who has the experience; it is the power over other people and thingswhich for the ordinary consciousness is objective. For instance, if a person who has attained the state of consciousness I am speaking about, had the power of communicating it to others, it would be partiallyonly partiallya proof of The Reality of his experiences; but further, if the state of consciousness in which he is for instance, a state of perfect harmonycould create this harmony in the outer world, in what apparently is not harmony, it would be, I think, the proof most readily accepted, even by the materialist scientific mind. If these illusory appearances could be changed into something more beautiful, more harmonious, happier than the world we live in now, this would perhaps be an undeniable proof. And if we take it a little farther, if, as Sri Aurobindo promises us, the supramental force, consciousness and light transform this world and create a new race, then, just as the apes and animalsif they could speakcould not deny the existence of man, so too man would not be able to deny the existence of these new beingsprovided that they are different enough from the human race for this difference to be perceptible even to the deceptive organs of man.   From these deductions it would seem that the most conclusive and obvious aspect and the one which will probably be the first to manifestprobablywill be the aspect of Power, rather than the aspect of Joy or of Truth. For a new race to be founded on earth, it would necessarily have to be protected from other earthly elements in order to be able to survive; and power is protectionnot an artificial power, external and false, but the true strength, the triumphant Will. It is therefore not impossible to think that the supramental action, even before being an action of harmonisation, illumination, joy and beauty, might be an action of power, to serve as a protection. Naturally, for this action of power to be truly effective, it would have to be founded on Knowledge and Truth and Love and Harmony; but these things could manifest, visibly, little by little, when the ground, so to say, has been prepared by the action of a sovereign Will and Power.

1958-01-15 - The only unshakable point of support, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   To maintain ones endurance in spite of all oppositions, the support must be unshakable, and one support alone is unshakable, that of The Reality, the Supreme Truth.   It is useless to look for any other. This is the only one that never fails.

1958-09-24 - Living the truth - Words and experience, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   To understand these things there is only experienceto live this truth, not to feel it in the way the ordinary senses do but to realise within oneself the truth, the concrete existence of both states, simultaneously, existing together even while they are opposite conditions. All words can lead only to confusion; only experience gives the tangible reality of the thing: the simultaneous existence of the Absolute and the relativities, of Oneness and multiplicity, not as two states following each other and one resulting from the other, but as a state which can be perceived in two opposite ways depending on the position one takes in relation to The Reality.   Words in themselves falsify the experience. To speak in words one must take not a step backwards but a step downwards, and the essential truth escapes. One must use them simply as a more or less accessible path to reach the thing itself which cannot be formulated. And from this point of view no formulation is better than any other; the best of all is the one that helps each one to remember, that is, the way in which the intervention of the Grace has crystallised in the thought.

1958 10 24, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    All that Sri Aurobindo writes about knowledge, reason, Wisdom is said in order to bring us out of the rut of conventional thinking, and, if possible, make us perceive The Reality behind the appearances.    As a general rule, with a few very rare exceptions, men are content to observe more or less accurately everything that happens around them, and sometimes within themselves, and to classify all these observations according to one superficial system of logic or another. And they call this organisation, these systems, knowledge. It has never occurred to them, they have not even begun to perceive that all the things they see, touch, feel, experience, are false appearances and not reality itself.   --    For Sri Aurobindo, true knowledge is precisely Knowledge by identity, and wisdom is the state one achieves when one is in this true knowledge. He says it here: Wisdom looks behind the veil of false appearances and sees The Reality behind it. And Sri Aurobindo emphasises that when one defines something with the superficial, outer knowledge, it is always in opposition to something else; it is always by means of a contrast that one explains what one sees, feels, touchesand does not understand.    Reason always sets one thing against another and compels you to make a choice. People whose thought and reason are clear see all the differences between things. It is rather remarkable that reason can only work through differences; it is because one perceives the difference between this and that, one act and another, one object and another, that one makes decisions and that reason works.   --    And then, once you have succeeded in going within yourself deeply enough to feel The Reality of that which is within, to widen yourself progressively, systematically, to become as vast as the universe and lose the sense of limitation.    These are the first two preparatory movements.   --    This effort, this attempt must be renewed very regularly, persistently. And after a certain lapse of time, which may be longer or shorter, you begin to perceive a reality that is different from The Reality perceived in the ordinary, external consciousness.    Naturally, by the action of Grace, the veil may suddenly be rent from within, and at once you can enter the true truth; but even when that happens, in order to obtain the full value and full effect of the experience, you must maintain yourself in a state of inner receptivity, and to do that, it is indispensable for you to go within each day.

1958-11-12 - The aim of the Supreme - Trust in the Grace, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga     If it is the sole intention of Nature in the evolution of the spiritual man to awaken him to the supreme Reality and release him from herself, or from the Ignorance in which she as the Power of the Eternal has masked herself, by a departure into a higher status of being elsewhere, if this step in the evolution is a close and an exit, then in the essence her work has been already accomplished and there is nothing more to be done. The ways have been built, the capacity to follow them has been developed, the goal or last height of the creation is manifest; all that is left is for each soul to reach individually the right stage and turn of its development, enter into the spiritual ways and pass by its own chosen path out of this inferior existence. But we have supposed that there is a farther intention,not only a revelation of the Spirit, but a radical and integral transformation of Nature. There is a will in her to effectuate a true manifestation of the embodied life of the Spirit, to complete what she has begun by a passage from the Ignorance to the Knowledge, to throw off her mask and to reveal herself as the luminous Consciousness-Force carrying in her the eternal Existence and its universal Delight of being. It then becomes obvious that there is something not yet accomplished, there becomes clear to view the much that has still to be done, bhri aspaa kartvam; there is a height still to be reached, a wideness still to be covered by the eye of vision, the wing of the will, the self-affirmation of the Spirit in the material universe. What the evolutionary Power has done is to make a few individuals aware of their souls, conscious of their selves, aware of the eternal being that they are, to put them into communion with the Divinity or The Reality which is concealed by her appearances: a certain change of nature prepares, accompanies or follows upon this illumination, but it is not the complete and radical change which establishes a secure and settled new principle, a new creation, a permanent new order of being in the field of terrestrial Nature. The spiritual man has evolved, but not the supramental being who shall thenceforward be the leader of that Nature.     The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 889-90

1958 11 21, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    So when you imagine that you can know the secrets of Nature and still remain in a purely physical consciousness, you are entirely deceived. And this habit of demanding concrete, material proofs before accepting The Reality of something, is one of the most glaring effects of ignorance. With that attitude any fool imagines that he can sit in judgment on the highest things and deny the most profound experiences.    It is certainly not by dissecting a body which is dead because the soul has departed from it that the soul can be found. Had the soul not departed, the body would not have been dead! It is to bring home to us the absurdity of this claim that Sri Aurobindo has written this Aphorism.

1960 11 12? - 49, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    And it is very easy to explain how a person who has this experience can spread it, can act on others; because to have the experience you must touch the one, supreme Essence of the whole manifestation, the Origin and the Essence, the Source and The Reality of all that is; and at once you enter the realm of Unitythere is no longer any separation of individuals, there is only one single vibration that can be repeated indefinitely in external form.2    If you rise high enough, you find yourself at the heart of all things. And what is manifest in this heart can manifest in all things. That is the great secret, the secret of the divine incarnation in an individual form, because in the normal course of things what manifests at the centre is realised in the external form only with the awakening and the response of the will in the individual form. Whereas if the central Will is represented constantly and permanently in an individual being, this individual being can serve as an intermediary between this Will and all beings, and will for them. Everything this individual being perceives and offers in his consciousness to the supreme Will is answered as if it came from each individual being. And if for any reason the individual elements have a more or less conscious and voluntary relation with that representative being, their relation increases the efficacy, the effectiveness of the representative individual; and thus the supreme Action can act in Matter in a much more concrete and permanent manner. That is the reason for these descents of consciousness which we may describe as polarised, for they always come to earth with a definite purpose and for a special realisation, with a missiona mission which is decided upon, determined before the incarnation. These are the great stages of the supreme incarnations on earth.

1963 03 06, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    What men call miracles nowadays are almost always performed by vital beings or by men who are in contact with vital beings, and this is a mixtureit accepts The Reality of certain things, the truth of certain things that are not true. And this is the basis on which it works. So that is unacceptable.    I did not quite understand what you meant by saying that Sri Aurobindo performed miracles in the mind.

1964 03 25, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    This aphorism would lead to an absolute subjectivity and only this absolute subjectivity would be truewell, it is not like that. For that is Pralaya, Nirvana. But Nirvana is not the only thing, there is an objectivity which is real, which is not false but how to put it! It is something I have felt several timesseveral times, not only in a flash The Reality of how to express it? One is always betrayed by ones own words. In the perfect sense of Oneness and in the consciousness of Oneness, there is room for objectiveness, objectivity the one does not destroy the other, not at all. One can have a feeling of differentiation: not that it is not oneself, but it is a different vision. I have told you, everything one can say is nothing, it is nonsense, because words are meant to express the unreal world, but Yes, perhaps this is what Sri Aurobindo calls the sense of multiplicity in unity, it may correspond a little; just as one feels the inner multiplicity of ones being, something like that I no longer have the feeling of a separate self, not at all, not at all, even in the body, but that does not prevent me from having a certain sense of objective relationyes, lookthis is the same thing as his relation of consciousness between earth and sun, which changes (Mother laughs). It is true that this is perhaps the best way of saying it! It is a relation of consciousness. It is not at all a relation of self and othersnot at all, that is completely cancelled but it might be like a relation of consciousness between the different parts of ones being. And obviously, that gives objectivity to the different parts.    (Long silence)

1965 05 29, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    And precisely because they have acquired the capacity to explain, they explain external phenomena to themselves in such a way that they remain in their denial of The Reality of inner phenomena they say that these are, as it were, extensions of what they have studied.    Only, because of his very constitution, because there hardly exists a human being who hasnt at least a reflection, or a shadow, or a beginning of a relation with his subtle being, his inner being, his soulbecause of that there is always a flaw in their denial. But they consider that to be a weaknessit is their only strength.   --    This has been the whole object of my work recently: how to touch this refusal to know? It has been there for a long time. It is the continuation of what Sri Aurobindo said in one of his letters: he says that India has done much more for spiritual life with her methods than Europe has done with all her doubts and questionings. Thats exactly it. It is a kind of refusal the refusal to accept a particular method of knowledge which is not the purely material one, and the denial of experience, of The Reality of experience. How can one convince them of that? And then, there is the method of Kali which is to give a sound thrashing. But according to me that means a lot of damage without much result.    This is another big problem.

1970 02 19, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    345Be always vigilant against thy human proneness to persecute or ignore The Reality even while thou art worshipping its semblance or token. Not human wickedness but human fallibility is the opportunity of Evil.    No law or government can save us from meeting in life the consequences of what we are.

1.A - ANTHROPOLOGY, THE SOUL, #Philosophy of Mind, #unset, #Zen   The fact is that in the Idea of Life the self-externalism of nature is implicitly at an end: subjectivity is the very substance and conception of life - with this proviso, however, that its existence or objectivity is still at the same time forfeited to the away of self-externalism. It is otherwise with Mind. There, in the intelligible unity which exists as freedom, as absolute negativity, and not as the immediate or natural individual, the object or The Reality of the intelligible unity is the unity itself; and so the selfexternalism, which is the fundamental feature of matter, has been completely dissipated and transmuted into universality, or the subjective ideality of the conceptual unity. Mind is the existent truth of matter the truth that matter itself has no truth.   A cognate question is that of the community of soul and body. This community (interdependence) was assumed as a fact, and the only problem was how to comprehend it. The usual answer, perhaps, was to call it an incomprehensible mystery; and, indeed, if we take them to be absolutely antithetical and absolutely independent, they are as impenetrable to each other as one piece of matter to another, each being supposed to be found only in the pores of the other, i.e. where the other is not - whence Epicurus, when attri buting to the gods a residence in the pores, was consistent in not imposing on them any connection with the world. A somewhat different answer has been given by all philosophers since this relation came to be expressly discussed. Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz have all indicated God as this nexus. They meant that the finitude of soul and matter were only ideal and unreal distinctions; and, so holding, there philosophers took God, not, as so often is done, merely as another word for the incomprehensible, but rather as the sole true identity of finite mind and matter. But either this identity, as in the case of Spinoza, is too abstract, or, as in the case of Leibniz, though his Monad of monads brings things into being, it does so only by an act of judgement or choice. Hence, with Leibniz, the result is a distinction between soul and the corporeal (or material), and the identity is only like the copula of a judgement, and does not rise or develop into system, into the absolute syllogism.

1f.lovecraft - Beyond the Wall of Sleep, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen    my superior, old Dr. Fenton, denies The Reality of everything I have    related. He vows that I was broken down with nervous strain, and badly

1f.lovecraft - Facts concerning the Late, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen    Of The Reality of the jungle city described by old Sir Wade, Arthur    Jermyn had no further doubt; and was hardly astonished when early in

1f.lovecraft - Herbert West-Reanimator, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen    which make even me doubt The Reality of what I saw.    I was Wests closest friend and only confidential assistant. We had met

1f.lovecraft - The Nameless City, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen    categories. I debated for a time on The Reality of the mummies, half    suspecting they were artificial idols; but soon decided they were

1f.lovecraft - The Shadow out of Time, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen    psychologist in gauging The Reality of my experience, and communicating    this account to others.

1f.lovecraft - The Shadow over Innsmouth, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen    The grocery boy had prepared me for it, yet The Reality left me none    the less bewildered and disturbed. Puerile though the story was, old   --    The Reality of what I had been through was highly uncertain in my mind,    but I felt that something hideous lay in the background. I must get

1f.lovecraft - The Trap, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen    The Reality of the revelation. That I had actually held conversation    with a trans-dimensional Robert, rather than evoked the whole episode   --    succeed. Even to me The Reality seemed a mad one whenever I let my mind    turn from the data so compellingly presented in that tense series of

1.ia - Listen, O Dearly Beloved, #Arabi - Poems, #Ibn Arabi, #Sufism   I am The Reality of the world,   the centre of the circumference,

1.jk - Endymion - Book IV, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry   (line 668): An imagination in which Hunt would have found it difficult to discover The Reality; but probably Keats had never seen the miserable platform of dry twigs that serves for "a dove's nest among summer trees."   (line 672): Endymion's imaginary home and employments as pictured in the next fifty lines may be compared with Shelley's AEgean island described so wonderfully in Epipsychidion. Both passages are thoroughly characteristic; and they show the divergence between the modes of thought and sentiment of the two men in a very marked way.

1.jr - Inner Wakefulness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction    English version by Coleman Barks Original Language Persian/Farsi & Turkish This place is a dream only a sleeper considers it real then death comes like dawn and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief A man goes to sleep in the town where he has always lived and he dreams he's living in another town in the dream he doesn't remember the town he's sleeping in his bed in he believes The Reality of the dream town the world is that kind of sleep Humankind is being led along an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences and though we seem to be sleeping there is an inner wakefulness, that directs the dream and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are [2090.jpg] -- from The Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks <

1.pbs - Peter Bell The Third, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction   I need scarcely observe that nothing personal to the author of Peter Bell is intended in this poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth's poetry more; -- he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate its beauties. This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal. He conceived the idealism of a poet -- a man of lofty and creative genius -- quitting the glorious calling of discovering and announcing the beautiful and good, to support and propagate ignorant prejudices and pernicious errors; imparting to the unenlightened, not that ardour for truth and spirit of toleration which Shelley looked on as the sources of the moral improvement and happiness of mankind, but false and injurious opinions, that evil was good, and that ignorance and force were the best allies of purity and virtue. His idea was that a man gifted, even as transcendently as the author of Peter Bell, with the highest qualities of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be infected with dulness. This poem was written as a warning -- not as a narration of The Reality. He was unaquainted personally with Wordsworth or with Coleridge (to whom he alludes in the fifth part of the poem), and therefore, I repeat, his poem is purely ideal; -- it contains something of criticism on the compositions of those great poets, but nothing injurious to the men themselves.   No poem contains more of Shelley's peculiar views with regard to the errors into which many of the wisest have fallen, and the pernicious effects of certain opinions on society. Much of it is beautifully written: and, though, like the burlesque drama of Swellfoot, it must be looked on as a plaything, it has so much merit and poetry -- so much of himself in it -- that it cannot failt to interest greatly, and by right belongs to the world for those whose instruction and benefit it was written.'

1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen   The absolute, irrelative particle primarily created by the Volition of God, must have been in a condition of positive normality, or rightfulness -for wrongfulness implies relation. Right is positive; wrong is negative -is merely the negation of right; as cold is the negation of heat -darkness of light. That a thing may be wrong, it is necessary that there be some other thing in relation to which it is wrong -some condition which it fails to satisfy; some law which it violates; some being whom it aggrieves. If there be no such being, law, or condition, in respect to which the thing is wrong and, still more especially, if no beings, laws, or conditions exist at all -then the thing cannot be wrong and consequently must be right. Any deviation from normality involves a tendency to return to it. A difference from the normal -from the right -from the just -can be understood as effected only by the overcoming a difficulty; and if the force which overcomes the difficulty be not infinitely continued, the ineradicable tendency to return will at length be permitted to act for its own satisfaction. Upon withdrawal of the force, the tendency acts. This is the principle of reaction as the inevitable consequence of finite action. Employing a phraseology of which the seeming affectation will be pardoned for its expressiveness, we may say that Reaction is the return from the condition of as it is and ought not to be into the condition of as it was, originally, and therefore ought to be: -and let me add here that the absolute force of Reaction would no doubt be always found in direct proportion with The Reality -the truth -the absoluteness -of the originality -if ever it were possible to measure this latter: -and, consequently, the greatest of all conceivable reactions must be that produced by the tendency which we now discuss -the tendency to return into the absolutely original -into the supremely primitive. Gravity, then, must be the strongest of forces -an idea reached a priori and abundantly confirmed by induction. What use I make of the idea, will be seen in the sequel.   The atoms, now, having been diffused from their normal condition of Unity, seek to return to -what? Not to any particular point, certainly; for it is clear that if, upon the diffusion, the whole Universe of matter had been projected, collectively, to a distance from the point of irradiation, the atomic tendency to the general centre of the sphere would not have been disturbed in the least: the atoms would not have sought the point in absolute space from which they were originally impelled. It is merely the Condition, and not the point or locality at which this condition took its rise, that these atoms seek to re-establish; -it is merely that condition which is their normality, that they desire. "But they seek a centre," it will be said, "and a centre is a point." True; but they seek this point not in its character of point -(for, were the whole sphere moved from its position, they would seek, equally, the centre; and the centre then would be a new point) -but because it so happens, on account of the form in which they collectively exist -(that of the sphere) -that only through the point in question -the sphere's centre -they can attain their true object, Unity. In the direction of the centre each atom perceives more atoms than in any other direction. Each atom is impelled towards the centre because along the straight line joining it and the centre and passing on to the circumference beyond, there lie a greater number of atoms than along any other straight line -a greater number of objects that seek it, the individual atom -a greater number of tendencies to Unity -a greater number of satisfactions for its own tendency to Unity -in a word, because in the direction of the centre lies the utmost possibility of satisfaction, generally, for its own individual appetite. To be brief, the Condition, Unity, is all that is really sought; and if the atoms seem to seek the centre of the sphere, it is only impliedly, through implication -because such centre happens to imply, to include, or to involve, the only essential centre, Unity. But on account of this implication or involution, there is no possibility of practically separating the tendency to Unity in the abstract, from the tendency to the concrete centre. Thus the tendency of the atoms to the general centre is, to all practical intents and for all logical purposes, the tendency each to each; and the tendency each to each is the tendency to the centre; and the one tendency may be assumed as the other; whatever will apply to the one must be thoroughly applicable to the other; and, in conclusion, whatever principle will satisfactorily explain the one, cannot be questioned as an explanation of the other.   --   It may be said that Madler has really ascertained a curvature in the direction of our system's now well-established progress through Space. Admitting, if necessary, this fact to be in reality such, I maintain that nothing is thereby shown except The Reality of this fact the fact of a curvature. For its thorough determination, ages will be required; and, when determined, it will be found indicative of some binary or other multiple relation between our Sun and some one or more of the proximate stars. I hazard nothing however, in predicting, that, after the lapse of many centuries, all efforts at determining the path of our sun through Space, will be abandoned as fruitless. This is easily conceivable when we look at the infinity of perturbation it must experience, from its perpetually-shifting relations with other orbs, in the common approach of all to the nucleus of the Galaxy.   But in examining other "nebulae" than that of the Milky Way -in surveying, generally, the clusters which overspread the heavens -do we or do we not find confirmation of Madler's hypothesis? We do not. The forms of the clusters are exceedingly diverse when casually viewed; but on close inspection, through powerful telescopes, we recognize the sphere, very distinctly, as at least the proximate form of all: -their constitution, in general, being at variance with the idea of revolution about a common centre.

1.rb - Pippa Passes - Part I - Morning, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry   See here! "He has been accustomed," he writes, "to have Canova's women about him, in stone, "and the world's women beside him, in flesh; these "being as much below, as those above, his soul's aspi- "ration: but now he is to have The Reality." There you laugh again! I say, you wipe off the very dew of his youth.   1st Student

1.wby - A Dramatic Poem, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry     But The Reality that makes our passion     As a lamp shadow - no - no lamp, the sun.

1.wby - The Fisherman, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry   And The Reality;   The living men that I hate,

1.wby - The Shadowy Waters - The Shadowy Waters, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry     But The Reality that makes our passion     As a lamp shadownono lamp, the sun.

1.whitman - Song Of The Open Road, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen   Is the certainty of The Reality and immortality of things, and the       excellence of things;

2.01 - Habit 1 Be Proactive, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset   But that's the difference between positive thinking and proactivity. We did face reality. We faced The Reality of the current circumstance and of future projections. But we also faced The Reality that we had the power to choose a positive response to those circumstances and projections. Not facing reality would have been to accept the idea that what's happening in our environment had to determine us.   Businesses, community groups, organizations of every kind -- including families -- can be proactive.   --   They're driven by feelings. Hollywood has generally scripted us to believe that we are not responsible, that we are a product of our feelings. But the Hollywood script does not describe The Reality. If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so.   Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world. If you want to study love, study those who sacrifice for others, even for people who offend or do not love in return. If you are a parent, look at the love you have for the children you sacrificed for. Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feelings to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured.

2.01 - Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Moreover the knowledge gained is of phenomena, not of The Reality of things or of the foundations of existence. Wherever our consciousness meets what seems to be a foundation, that foundation wears the appearance of a blank, - when it is not a void, - an original state which is featureless and a multitude of consequences which are not inherent in the origin and which nothing in it seems to justify or visibly to necessitate; there is a mass of superstructure which has no clear native relation to the fundamental existence. The first aspect of cosmic existence is an Infinite which is to our perception an indeterminate, if not indeterminable. In this Infinite the universe itself, whether in its aspect of Energy or its aspect of structure, appears as an indeterminate determination, a "boundless finite", - paradoxical but necessary expressions which would seem to indicate that we are face to face with a suprarational mystery as the base of things; in that universe arise - from where? - a vast number and variety of general and particular determinates which do not appear to be warranted by anything perceptible in the nature of the Infinite, but seem to be imposed or, it may be, self-imposed upon it.   We give to the Energy which produces them the name of Nature, but the word conveys no meaning unless it is that the nature of things is what it is by virtue of a Force which arranges them according to an inherent Truth in them; but the nature of that Truth itself, the reason why these determinates are what they are is nowhere visible. It has been possible indeed for human Science to detect the process or many processes of material things, but this knowledge does not throw any light on the major question; we do not know even the rationale of the original cosmic processes, for the results do not present themselves as their necessary but only their pragmatic and actual consequence. In the end we do not know how these determinates came into or out of the original Indeterminate or Indeterminable on which they stand forth as on a blank and flat background in the riddle of their ordered occurrence. At the origin of things we are faced with an Infinite containing a mass of unexplained finites, an Indivisible full of endless divisions, an Immutable teeming with mutations and differentiae. A cosmic paradox is the beginning of all things, a paradox without any key to its significance.   --   In order to discover the secret of Consciousness it would have to know itself and determine The Reality of its own being and process; but as in animal life the emerging Consciousness is involved in vital action and movement, so in the human being mind-consciousness is involved in its own whirl of thoughts, an activity in which it is carried on without rest and in which its very reasonings and speculations are determined in their tendency, trend, conditions by its own temperament, mental turn, past formation and line of energy, inclination, preference, an inborn natural selection, - we do not freely determine our thinking according to the truth of things, it is determined for us by our nature. We can indeed stand back with a certain detachment and observe the workings of the mental Energy in us; but it is still only its process that we see and not any original source of our mental determinations: we can build theories and hypotheses of the process of Mind, but a veil is still there over the inner secret of ourselves, our consciousness, our total nature.   It is only when we follow the yogic process of quieting the mind itself that a profounder result of our self-observation becomes possible. For first we discover that mind is a subtle substance, a general determinate - or generic indeterminate - which mental energy when it operates throws into forms or particular determinations of itself, thoughts, concepts, percepts, mental sentiments, activities of will and reactions of feeling, but which, when the energy is quiescent, can live either in an inert torpor or in an immobile silence and peace of self-existence.   --   Overmind consciousness is such a state or principle beyond individual mind, beyond even universal mind in the Ignorance; it carries in itself a first direct and masterful cognition of cosmic truth: here then we might hope to understand something of the original working of things, get some insight into the fundamental movements of cosmic Nature. One thing indeed becomes clear; it is self-evident here that both the individual and the cosmos come from a transcendent Reality which takes form in them: the mind and life of the individual being, its self in nature must therefore be a partial self-expression of the cosmic Being and, both through that and directly, a self-expression of the transcendent Reality, - a conditional and half-veiled expression it may be, but still that is its significance. But also we see that what the expression shall be is also determined by the individual himself: only what he can in his nature receive, assimilate, formulate, his portion of the cosmic being or of The Reality, can find shape in his mind and life and physical parts; something that derives from The Reality, something that is in the cosmos he expresses, but in the terms of his own self-expression, in the terms of his own nature. But the original question set out for us by the phenomenon of the universe is not solved by the Overmind knowledge, - the question, in this case, whether the building of thought, experience, world of perceptions of the mental Person, the mind Purusha, is truly a self-expression, a self-determination proceeding from some truth of his own spiritual being, a manifestation of that truth's dynamic possibilities, or whether it is not rather a creation or construction presented to him by Nature, by Prakriti, and only in the sense of being individualised in his personal formation of that Nature can it be said to be his own or dependent on him; or, again, it might be a play of a cosmic Imagination, a fantasia of the Infinite imposed on the blank indeterminable of his own eternal pure existence. These are the three views of creation that seem to have an equal chance of being right, and mind is incapable of definitely deciding between them; for each view is armed with its own mental logic and its appeal to intuition and experience.   Overmind seems to add to the perplexity, for the overmental view of things allows each possibility to formulate itself in its own independent right and realise its own existence in cognition, in dynamic self-presentation, in substantiating experience.   --   And yet the universe exists. What then is it that creates this contradiction, is able to effect the impossible, bring this insoluble riddle of self-division into existence? A Power of some kind it must be, and since the Absolute is the sole reality, the one origin of all things, this Power must proceed from it, must have some relation with it, a connection, a dependence. For if it is quite other than the supreme Reality, a cosmic Imagination imposing its determinations on the eternal blank of the Indeterminable, then the sole existence of an absolute Parabrahman is no longer admissible; there is then a dualism at the source of things not substantially different from the Sankhya dualism of Soul and Nature. If it is a Power, the sole Power indeed, of the Absolute, we have this logical impossibility that the existence of the Supreme Being and the Power of his existence are entirely opposite to each other, two supreme contradictories; for Brahman is free from all possibility of relations and determinations, but Maya is a creative Imagination imposing these very things upon It, an originator of relations and determinations of which Brahman must necessarily be the supporter and witness, - to the logical reason an inadmissible formula. If it is accepted, it can only be as a suprarational mystery, something neither real nor unreal, inexplicable in its nature, anirvacanya. But the difficulties are so great that it can be accepted only if it imposes itself irresistibly as the inevitable ultimate, the end and summit of metaphysical inquiry and spiritual experience. For even if all things are illusory creations, they must have at least a subjective existence and they can exist nowhere except in the consciousness of the Sole Existence; they are then subjective determinations of the Indeterminable. If, on the contrary, the determinations of this Power are real creations, out of what are they determined, what is their substance? It is not possible that they are made out of a Nothing, a Non-Existence other than the Absolute; for that will erect a new dualism, a great positive Zero over against the greater indeterminable x we have supposed to be the one Reality. It is evident therefore that The Reality cannot be a rigid Indeterminable. Whatever is created must be of it and in it, and what is of the substance of the utterly Real must itself be real: a vast baseless negation of reality purporting to be real cannot be the sole outcome of the eternal Truth, the Infinite Existence. It is perfectly understandable that the Absolute is and must be indeterminable in the sense that it cannot be limited by any determination or any sum of possible determinations, but not in the sense that it is incapable of self-determination.   The Supreme Existence cannot be incapable of creating true self-determinations of its being, incapable of upholding a real self-creation or manifestation in its self-existent infinite.   --   These and other primal powers and aspects assume their status among the fundamental spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; all others are determinates of the fundamental spiritual determinates, significant relations, significant powers, significant forms of being, consciousness, force, delight, - energies, conditions, ways, lines of the truth-process of the Consciousness-Force of the Eternal, imperatives, possibilities, actualities of its manifestation. All this deploying of powers and possibilities and their inherent consequences is held together by supermind cognition in an intimate oneness; it keeps them founded consciously on the original Truth and maintained in the harmony of the truths they manifest and are in their nature. There is here no imposition of imaginations, no arbitrary creation, neither is there any division, fragmentation, irreconcilable contrariety or disparateness. But in Mind of Ignorance these phenomena appear; for there a limited consciousness sees and deals with everything as if all were separate objects of cognition or separate existences and it seeks so to know, possess and enjoy them and gets mastery over them or suffers their mastery: but, behind its ignorance, what the soul in it is seeking for is The Reality, the Truth, the Consciousness, the Power, the Delight by which they exist; the mind has to learn to awaken to this true seeking and true knowledge veiled within itself, to The Reality from which all things hold their truth, to the Consciousness of which all consciousnesses are entities, to the Power from which all get what force of being they have within them, to the Delight of which all delights are partial figures. This limitation of consciousness and this awakening to the integrality of consciousness are also a process of self-manifestation, are a self-determination of the Spirit; even when contrary to the Truth in their appearances, the things of the limited consciousness have in their deeper sense and reality a divine significance; they too bring out a truth or a possibility of the Infinite. Of some such nature, as far as it can be expressed in mental formulas, would be the supramental cognition of things which sees the one Truth everywhere and would so arrange its account to us of our existence, its report of the secret of creation and the significance of the universe.   At the same time indeterminability is also a necessary element in our conception of the Absolute and in our spiritual experience: this is the other side of the supramental regard on being and on things. The Absolute is not limitable or definable by any one determination or by any sum of determinations; on the other side, it is not bound down to an indeterminable vacancy of pure existence. On the contrary, it is the source of all determinations: its indeterminability is the natural, the necessary condition both of its infinity of being and its infinity of power of being; it can be infinitely all things because it is no thing in particular and exceeds any definable totality. It is this essential indeterminability of the Absolute that translates itself into our consciousness through the fundamental negating positives of our spiritual experience, the immobile immutable Self, the Nirguna Brahman, the Eternal without qualities, the pure featureless One Existence, the Impersonal, the Silence void of activities, the Nonbeing, the Ineffable and the Unknowable. On the other side it is the essence and source of all determinations, and this dynamic essentiality manifests to us through the fundamental affirming positives in which the Absolute equally meets us; for it is the Self that becomes all things, the Saguna Brahman, the Eternal with infinite qualities, the One who is the Many, the infinite Person who is the source and foundation of all persons and personalities, the Lord of creation, the Word, the Master of all works and action; it is that which being known all is known: these affirmatives correspond to those negatives. For it is not possible in a supramental cognition to split asunder the two sides of the One Existence, - even to speak of them as sides is excessive, for they are in each other, their coexistence or oneexistence is eternal and their powers sustaining each other found the self-manifestation of the Infinite.   --   It is important to observe here the sense that is acquired in such a total cognition of cosmic being by the phenomenon of the Ignorance, its assigned place in the spiritual economy of the universe. If all that we experience were an imposition, an unreal creation in the Absolute, both cosmic and individual existence would be in their very nature an Ignorance; the sole real knowledge would be the indeterminable self-awareness of the Absolute. If all were the erection of a temporal and phenomenal creation over against The Reality of the witnessing timeless Eternal and if the creation were not a manifestation of The Reality but an arbitrary self-effective cosmic construction, that too would be a sort of imposition. Our knowledge of the creation would be the knowledge of a temporary structure of evanescent consciousness and being, a dubious Becoming that passes across the vision of the Eternal, not a knowledge of Reality; that too would be an Ignorance. But if all is a manifestation of The Reality and itself real by the constituting immanence, the substantiating essence and presence of The Reality, then the awareness of individual being and world-being would be in its spiritual origin and nature a play of the infinite self-knowledge and all-knowledge: ignorance could be only a subordinate movement, a suppressed or restricted cognition or a partial and imperfect evolving knowledge with the true and total self-awareness and all-awareness concealed both in it and behind it. It would be a temporary phenomenon, not the cause and essence of cosmic existence; its inevitable consummation would be a return of the spirit, not out of the cosmos to a sole supracosmic self-awareness, but even in the cosmos itself to an integral self-knowledge and all-knowledge.   It might be objected that the supramental cognition is, after all, not the final truth of things. Beyond the supramental plane of consciousness which is an intermediate step from overmind and mind to the complete experience of Sachchidananda, are the greatest heights of the manifested Spirit: here surely existence would not at all be based on the determination of the One in multiplicity, it would manifest solely and simply a pure identity in oneness. But the supramental truth-consciousness would not be absent from these planes, for it is an inherent power of Sachchidananda: the difference would be that the determinations would not be demarcations, they would be plastic, interfused, each a boundless finite. For there all is in each and each is in all radically and integrally, - there would be to the utmost a fundamental awareness of identity, a mutual inclusion and interpenetration of consciousness: knowledge as we envisage it would not exist, because it would not be needed, since all would be direct action of consciousness in being itself, identical, intimate, intrinsically self-aware and all-aware. But still relations of consciousness, relations of mutual delight of existence, relations of self-power of being with self-power of being would not be excluded; these highest spiritual planes would not be a field of blank indeterminability, a vacancy of pure existence.

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    The human mind in dealing with the universe has to deal with certain relations of objects and rely upon the senses and other instruments and therefore it cannot be sure of what it receives of the universe and the truth of The Reality that corresponds to it. This is so because, first of all, the instruments, that is, the senses, are imperfect. Even his reason and the will to know do not give man the knowledge of the Truth; Reason is mainly useful for practical purposes because it enables man to deal with universal facts as they are organised now. That was the view which Bergson took. "Reason," he said, "is an instrument of action, not of knowledge." It is organised knowledge directed to action. When you have taken up a position intuitively, reason comes in afterwards and supplies you with the chain of justification.    Take for consideration a law: what do you mean by a law? It means that under certain conditions the same movement of forces always recurs. It depends on the human mind, the condition of mental consciousness. But suppose the consciousness changes, then the law also is bound to change and it would be seen from quite a different position. So, all the laws are relative. That seems to be the truth, from our point of view, behind Einsteins theory.   --    Disciple: Scientists study the rainbow and find that it is caused by the difference in the wave-lengths of light and they might say that is The Reality of the rainbow. But when the poet exclaims, "My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky," we have no right to say that the knowledge or experience of the scientist is right and that of the poet wrong.    Sri Aurobindo: In fact, the rainbow exists for neither. Only the scientist gets excited over the process, while the poet is excited over the result of the process.

2.01 - THE ADVENT OF LIFE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   invalidates The Reality of its historic birth.   In every domain, when anything exceeds a certain measure-   --   chemistry arc beginning to establish The Reality of molecular   aggregates which really do appear to reduce to measurable   --   in accordance with our theoretical anticipation of The Reality of a   pre-life, some natural function really does link the mega-mole-

2.01 - The Object of Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   8:The object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme, the Divine, the Infinite and the Absolute. This Supreme has its relations to our individual being and its relations to the universe and it transcends both the soul and the universe. Neither the universe nor the individual are what they seem to be, for the report of them which our mind and our senses give us, is, so long as they are unenlightened by a faculty of higher supramental and suprasensuous knowledge, a false report, an imperfect construction, an attenuated and erroneous figure. And yet that which the universe and the individual seem to be is still a figure of what they really are, a figure that points beyond itself to The Reality behind it. Truth proceeds by a correction of the values our mind and senses give us, and first by the action of a higher intelligence that enlightens and sets right as far as may be the conclusions of the ignorant sense-mind and limited physical intelligence; that is the method of all human knowledge and science. But beyond it there is a knowledge, a Truth-Consciousness, that exceeds our intellect and brings us into the true light of which it is a refracted ray. There the abstract terms of pure reason and the constructions of the mind disappear or are converted into concrete soul-vision and the tremendous actuality of spiritual experience. This knowledge can turn away to the absolute Eternal and lose vision of the soul and the universe; but it can too see that existence from that Eternal. When that is done, we find that the ignorance of the mind and the senses and all the apparent futilities of human life were not an useless excursion of the conscious being, an otiose blunder. Here they were planned as a rough ground for the self-expression of the Soul that comes from the Infinite, a material foundation for its self-unfolding and self-possessing in the terms of the universe. It is true that in themselves they and all that is here have no significance, and to build separate significances for them is to live in an illusion, Maya; but they have a supreme significance in the Supreme, an absolute Power in the Absolute and it is that that assigns to them and refers to that Truth their present relative values. This is the all-uniting experience that is the foundation of the deepest integral and most intimate self-knowledge and world-knowledge.   9:In relation to the individual the Supreme is our own true and highest self, that which ultimately we are in our essence, that of which we are in our manifested nature. A spiritual knowledge, moved to arrive at the true Self in us, must reject, as the traditional way of knowledge rejects, all misleading appearances. It must discover that the body is not our self, our foundation of existence; it is a sensible form of the Infinite. The experience of Matter as the world's sole foundation and the physical brain and nerves and cells and molecules as the one truth of all things in us, the ponderous inadequate basis of materialism, is a delusion, a half-view taken for the whole, the dark bottom or shadow of things misconceived as the luminous substance, the effective figure of zero for the Integer. The materialist idea mistakes a creation for the creative Power, a means of expression for That which is expressed and expresses. Matter and our physical brain and nerves and body are the field and foundation for one action of a vital force that serves to connect the Self with the form of its works and maintains them by its direct dynamis. The material movements are an exterior notation by which the soul represents its perceptions of certain truths of the Infinite and makes them effective in the terms of Substance. These things are a language, a notation, a hieroglyphic, a system of symbols, not themselves the deepest truest sense of the things they intimate.

2.01 - The Two Natures, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The five elemental conditions of matter are the quantitative or material element in the lower nature and are the basis of material forms. The five Tanmatras - taste, touch, scent, and the others - are the qualitative element. These Tanmatras are the subtle energies whose action puts the sensory consciousness in relation to the gross forms of matter, - they are the basis of all phenomenal knowledge. From the material point of view matter is The Reality and the sensory relations are derivative; but from the spiritual point of view the truth is the opposite. Matter and the material media are themselves derivative powers and at bottom are only concrete ways or conditions in which the workings of the quality of Nature in things manifest themselves to the sensory consciousness of the Jiva. The one original and   The Two Natures

2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   But although thus indeterminable to Mind, because of its absoluteness and infinity, we discover that this Supreme and Eternal Infinite determines itself to our consciousness in the universe by real and fundamental truths of its being which are beyond the universe and in it and are the very foundation of its existence. These truths present themselves to our conceptual cognition as the fundamental aspects in which we see and experience the omnipresent Reality. In themselves they are seized directly, not by intellectual understanding but by a spiritual intuition, a spiritual experience in the very substance of our consciousness; but they can also be caught at in conception by a large and plastic idea and can be expressed in some sort by a plastic speech which does not insist too much on rigid definition or limit the wideness and subtlety of the idea. In order to express this experience or this idea with any nearness a language has to be created which is at once intuitively metaphysical and revealingly poetic, admitting significant and living images as the vehicle of a close, suggestive and vivid indication, - a language such as we find hammered out into a subtle and pregnant massiveness in the Veda and the Upanishads. In the ordinary tongue of metaphysical thought we have to be content with a distant indication, an approximation by abstractions, which may still be of some service to our intellect, for it is this kind of speech which suits our method of logical and rational understanding; but if it is to be of real service, the intellect must consent to pass out of the bounds of a finite logic and accustom itself to the logic of the Infinite. On this condition alone, by this way of seeing and thinking, it ceases to be paradoxical or futile to speak of the Ineffable: but if we insist on applying a finite logic to the Infinite, the omnipresent Reality will escape us and we shall grasp instead an abstract shadow, a dead form petrified into speech or a hard incisive graph which speaks of The Reality but does not express it. Our way of knowing must be appropriate to that which is to be known; otherwise we achieve only a distant speculation, a figure of knowledge and not veritable knowledge.   The supreme Truth-aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this founds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature, self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory, Brahman The Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept.   The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. The Upanishads affirm that all this is the Brahman; Mind is Brahman, Life is Brahman, Matter is Brahman; addressing Vayu, the Lord of Air, of Life, it is said "O Vayu, thou art manifest Brahman"; and, pointing to man and beast and bird and insect, each separately is identified with the One, "O Brahman, thou art this old man and boy and girl, this bird, this insect." Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the Force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could brea the or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of ForceNature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is The Reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.   An absolute, eternal and infinite Self-existence, Self-awareness, Self-delight of being that secretly supports and pervades the universe even while it is also beyond it, is, then, the first truth of spiritual experience. But this truth of being has at once an impersonal and a personal aspect; it is not only Existence, it is the one Being absolute, eternal and infinite. As there are three fundamental aspects in which we meet this Reality, Self, Conscious Being or Spirit and God, the Divine Being, or to use the Indian terms, the absolute and omnipresent Reality, Brahman, manifest to us as Atman, Purusha, Ishwara, - so too its power of Consciousness appears to us in three aspects: it is the self-force of that consciousness conceptively creative of all things, Maya; it is Prakriti, Nature or Force made dynamically executive, working out all things under the witnessing eye of the Conscious Being, the Self or Spirit; it is the conscious Power of the Divine Being, Shakti, which is both conceptively creative and dynamically executive of all the divine workings. These three aspects and their powers base and comprise the whole of existence and all Nature and, taken together as a single whole, they reconcile the apparent disparateness and incompatibility of the supracosmic Transcendence, the cosmic universality and the separativeness of our individual existence; the Absolute, cosmic Nature and ourselves are linked in oneness by this triune aspect of the one Reality. For taken by itself the existence of the Absolute, the Supreme Brahman, would be a contradiction of the relative universe and our own real existence would be incompatible with its sole incommunicable Reality. But the Brahman is at the same time omnipresent in all relativities; it is the Absolute independent of all relatives, the Absolute basing all relatives, the Absolute governing, pervading, constituting all relatives; there is nothing that is not the omnipresent Reality. In observing the triple aspect and the triple power we come to see how this is possible.   --   But, in fact, the cause of this impression must necessarily be sought not in anything illusory or fantastic in the Supreme or the universal Self-existence, but in our own inability to seize the supreme clue to its manifold existence or discover the secret plan and pattern of its action. The Self-existent is the Infinite and its way of being and of action must be the way of the Infinite, but our consciousness is limited, our reason built upon things finite: it is irrational to suppose that a finite consciousness and reason can be a measure of the Infinite; this smallness cannot judge that Immensity; this poverty bound to a limited use of its scanty means cannot conceive the opulent management of those riches; an ignorant half-knowledge cannot follow the motions of an All-Knowledge. Our reasoning is based upon our experience of the finite operations of physical Nature, on an incomplete observation and uncertain understanding of something that acts within limits; it has organised on that basis certain conceptions which it seeks to make general and universal, and whatever contradicts or departs from these conceptions it regards as irrational, false or inexplicable. But there are different orders of The Reality and the conceptions, measures, standards suitable to one need not be applicable to another order. Our physical being is built first upon an aggregate of infinitesimals, electrons, atoms, molecules, cells; but the law of action of these infinitesimals does not explain all the physical workings even of the human body, much less can they cover all the law and process of action of man's supraphysical parts, his life movements and mind movements and soul movements. In the body finites have been formed with their own habits, properties, characteristic ways of action; the body itself is a finite which is not a mere aggregate of these smaller finites which it uses as parts, organs, constituent instruments of its operations; it has developed a being and has a general law which surpasses its dependence upon these elements or constituents. The life and mind again are supraphysical finites with a different and more subtle mode of operation of their own, and no dependence on the physical parts for instrumentation can annul their intrinsic character; there is something more and other in our vital and mental being and vital and mental forces than the functioning of a physical body. But, again, each finite is in its reality or has behind it an Infinite which has built and supports and directs the finite it has made as its self-figure; so that even the being and law and process of the finite cannot be totally understood without a knowledge of that which is occult within or behind it: our finite knowledge, conceptions, standards may be valid within their limits, but they are incomplete and relative. A law founded upon an observation of what is divided in Space and Time cannot be confidently applied to the being and action of the Indivisible; not only it cannot be applied to the spaceless and timeless Infinite, but it cannot be applied even to a Time Infinite or a Space Infinite. A law and process binding for our superficial being need not be binding on what is occult within us. Again our intellect, founding itself on reason, finds it difficult to deal with what is infrarational; life is infrarational and we find that our intellectual reason applying itself to life is constantly forcing upon it a control, a measure, an artificial procrustean rule that either succeeds in killing or petrifying life or constrains it into rigid forms and conventions that lame and imprison its capacity or ends by a bungle, a revolt of life, a decay or disruption of the systems and superstructures built upon it by our intelligence.   An instinct, an intuition is needed which the intellect has not at its comm and and does not always listen to when it comes in of itself to help the mental working. But still more difficult must it be for our reason to understand and deal with the suprarational; the suprarational is the realm of the spirit, and in the largeness, subtlety, profundity, complexity of its movement the reason is lost; here intuition and inner experience alone are the guide, or, if there is any other, it is that of which intuition is only a sharp edge, an intense projected ray, - the final enlightenment must come from the suprarational Truth-consciousness, from a supramental vision and knowledge.   --   If we look from this view-point of a larger more plastic reason, taking account of the logic of the Infinite, at the difficulties which meet our intelligence when it tries to conceive the absolute and omnipresent Reality, we shall see that the whole difficulty is verbal and conceptual and not real. Our intelligence looks at its concept of the Absolute and sees that it must be indeterminable and at the same time it sees a world of determinations which emanates from the Absolute and exists in it, - for it can emanate from nowhere else and can exist nowhere else; it is further baffled by the affirmation, also hardly disputable on the premisses, that all these determinates are nothing else than this very indeterminable Absolute. But the contradiction disappears when we understand that the indeterminability is not in its true sense negative, not an imposition of incapacity on the Infinite, but positive, a freedom within itself from limitation by its own determinations and necessarily a freedom from all external determination by anything not itself, since there is no real possibility of such a not-self coming into existence. The Infinite is illimitably free, free to determine itself infinitely, free from all restraining effect of its own creations. In fact the Infinite does not create, it manifests what is in itself, in its own essence of reality; it is itself that essence of all reality and all realities are powers of that one Reality. The Absolute neither creates nor is created, - in the current sense of making or being made; we can speak of creation only in the sense of the Being becoming in form and movement what it already is in substance and status. Yet we have to emphasise its indeterminability in that special and positive sense, not as a negation but as an indispensable condition of its free infinite self-determination, because without that The Reality would be a fixed eternal determinate or else an indeterminate fixed and bound to a sum of possibilities of determination inherent within it. Its freedom from all limitation, from any binding by its own creation cannot be itself turned into a limitation, an absolute incapacity, a denial of all freedom of self-determination; it is this that would be a contradiction, it would be an attempt to define and limit by negation the infinite and illimitable. Into the central fact of the two sides of the nature of the Absolute, the essential and the self-creative or dynamic, no real contradiction enters; it is only a pure infinite essence that can formulate itself in infinite ways. One statement is complementary to the other, there is no mutual cancellation, no incompatibility; it is only the dual statement of a single inescapable fact by human reason in human language.   The same conciliation occurs everywhere, when we look with a straight and accurate look on the truth of The Reality. In our experience of it we become aware of an Infinite essentially free from all limitation by qualities, properties, features; on the other hand, we are aware of an Infinite teeming with innumerable qualities, properties, features. Here again the statement of illimitable freedom is positive, not negative; it does not negate what we see, but on the contrary provides the indispensable condition for it, it makes possible a free and infinite self-expression in quality and feature. A quality is the character of a power of conscious being; or we may say that the consciousness of being expressing what is in it makes the power it brings out recognisable by a native stamp on it which we call quality or character. Courage as a quality is such a power of being, it is a certain character of my consciousness expressing a formulated force of my being, bringing out or creating a definite kind of force of my nature in action. So too the power of a drug to cure is its property, a special force of being native to the herb or mineral from which it is produced, and this speciality is determined by the Real-Idea concealed in the involved consciousness which dwells in the plant or mineral; the idea brings out in it what was there at the root of its manifestation and has now come out thus empowered as the force of its being. All qualities, properties, features are such powers of conscious being thus put forth from itself by the Absolute; It has everything within It, It has the free power to put all forth;6 yet we cannot define the Absolute as a quality of courage or a power of healing, we cannot even say that these are a characteristic feature of the Absolute, nor can we make up a sum of qualities and say "that is the Absolute". But neither can we speak of the Absolute as a pure blank incapable of manifesting these things; on the contrary, all capacity is there, the powers of all qualities and characters are there inherent within it. The mind is in a difficulty because it has to say, "The Absolute or Infinite is none of these things, these things are not the Absolute or Infinite" and at the same time it has to say, "The Absolute is all these things, they are not something else than That, for That is the sole existence and the all-existence." Here it is evident that it is an undue finiteness of thought conception and verbal expression which creates the difficulty, but there is in reality none; for it would be evidently absurd to say that the Absolute is courage or curing-power, or to say that courage and curing-power are the Absolute, but it would be equally absurd to deny the capacity of the Absolute to put forth courage or curingpower as self-expressions in its manifestation. When the logic of the finite fails us, we have to see with a direct and unbound vision what is behind in the logic of the Infinite. We can then realise that the Infinite is infinite in quality, feature, power, but that no sum of qualities, features, powers can describe the Infinite.   6 The word for creation in Sanskrit means a loosing or putting forth of what is in the being.   --   Our conception of the Infinite is formlessness, but everywhere we see form and forms surrounding us and it can be and is affirmed of the Divine Being that he is at once Form and the Formless. For here too the apparent contradiction does not correspond to a real opposition; the Formless is not a negation of the power of formation, but the condition for the Infinite's free formation: for otherwise there would be a single Form or only a fixity or sum of possible forms in a finite universe. The formlessness is the character of the spiritual essence, the spirit-substance of The Reality; all finite realities are powers, forms, self-shapings of that substance: the Divine is formless and nameless, but by that very reason capable of manifesting all possible names and shapes of being. Forms are manifestations, not arbitrary inventions out of nothing; for line and colour, mass and design which are the essentials of form carry always in them a significance, are, it might be said, secret values and significances of an unseen reality made visible; it is for that reason that figure, line, hue, mass, composition can embody what would be otherwise unseen, can convey what would be otherwise occult to the sense. Form may be said to be the innate body, the inevitable self-revelation of the formless, and this is true not only of external shapes, but of the unseen formations of mind and life which we seize only by our thought and those sensible forms of which only the subtle grasp of the inner consciousness can become aware. Name in its deeper sense is not the word by which we describe the object, but the total of power, quality, character of The Reality which a form of things embodies and which we try to sum up by a designating sound, a knowable name, Nomen. Nomen in this sense, we might say, is Numen; the secret Names of the Gods are their power, quality, character of being caught up by the consciousness and made conceivable. The Infinite is nameless, but in that namelessness all possible names, Numens of the gods, the names and forms of all realities, are already envisaged and prefigured, because they are there latent and inherent in the All-Existence.   It becomes clear from these considerations that the coexistence of the Infinite and the finite, which is the very nature of universal being, is not a juxtaposition or mutual inclusion of two opposites, but as natural and inevitable as the relation of the principle of Light and Fire with the suns. The finite is a frontal aspect and a self-determination of the Infinite; no finite can exist in itself and by itself, it exists by the Infinite and because it is of one essence with the Infinite. For by the Infinite we do not mean solely an illimitable self-extension in Space and Time, but something that is also spaceless and timeless, a selfexistent Indefinable and Illimitable which can express itself in the infinitesimal as well as in the vast, in a second of time, in a point of space, in a passing circumstance. The finite is looked upon as a division of the Indivisible, but there is no such thing: for this division is only apparent; there is a demarcation, but no real separation is possible. When we see with the inner vision and sense and not with the physical eye a tree or other object, what we become aware of is an infinite one Reality constituting the tree or object, pervading its every atom and molecule, forming them out of itself, building the whole nature, process of becoming, operation of indwelling energy; all of these are itself, are this infinite, this Reality: we see it extending indivisibly and uniting all objects so that none is really separate from it or quite separate from other objects. "It stands" says the Gita "undivided in beings and yet as if divided." Thus each object is that Infinite and one in essential being with all other objects that are also forms and names - powers, numens - of the Infinite.   --   For so too it may be said of the infinite self-multiplication of The Reality that all things are that self-multiplication; the One becomes Many, but all these Many are That which was already and is always itself and in becoming the Many remains the One.   There is no division of the One by the appearance of the finite, for it is the one Infinite that appears to us as the many finite: the creation adds nothing to the Infinite; it remains after creation what it was before. The Infinite is not a sum of things, it is That which is all things and more. If this logic of the Infinite contradicts the conceptions of our finite reason, it is because it exceeds it and does not base itself on the data of the limited phenomenon, but embraces The Reality and sees the truth of all phenomena in the truth of The Reality; it does not see them as separate beings, movements, names, forms, things; for that they cannot be, since they could be that only if they were phenomena in the Void, things without a common basis or essence, fundamentally unconnected, connected only by coexistence and pragmatic relation, not realities which exist by their root of unity and, so far as they can be considered independent, are secured in their independence of outer or inner figure and movement only by their perpetual dependence on their parent Infinite, their secret identity with the one Identical. The Identical is their root, their cause of form, the one power of their varying powers, their constituting substance.   The Identical to our notions is the Immutable; it is ever the same through eternity, for if it is or becomes subject to mutation or if it admits of differences, it ceases to be identical; but what we see everywhere is an infinitely variable fundamental oneness which seems the very principle of Nature. The basic Force is one, but it manifests from itself innumerable forces; the basic substance is one, but it develops many different substances and millions of unlike objects; mind is one but differentiates itself into many mental states, mind-formations, thoughts, perceptions differing from each other and entering into harmony or into conflict; life is one, but the forms of life are unlike and innumerable; humanity is one in nature, but there are different race types and every individual man is himself and in some way unlike others; Nature insists on tracing lines of difference on the leaves of one tree; she drives differentiation so far that it has been found that the lines on one man's thumb are different from the lines of every other man's thumb so that he can be identified by that differentiation alone, - yet fundamentally all men are alike and there is no essential difference. Oneness or sameness is everywhere, differentiation is everywhere; the indwelling Reality has built the universe on the principle of the development of one seed into a million different fashions. But this again is the logic of the Infinite; because the essence of The Reality is immutably the same, it can assume securely these innumerable differences of form and character and movement, for even if they were multiplied a trillionfold, that would not affect the underlying immutability of the eternal Identical. Because the Self and Spirit in things and beings is one everywhere, therefore Nature can afford this luxury of infinite differentiation: if there were not this secure basis which brings it about that nothing changes yet all changes, all her workings and creations would in this play collapse into disintegration and chaos; there would be nothing to hold her disparate movements and creations together. The immutability of the Identical does not consist in a monotone of changeless sameness incapable of variation; it consists in an unchangeableness of being which is capable of endless formation of being, but which no differentiation can destroy or impair or minimise. The Self becomes insect and bird and beast and man, but it is always the same Self through these mutations because it is the One who manifests himself infinitely in endless diversity.   Our surface reason is prone to conclude that the diversity may be unreal, an appearance only, but if we look a little deeper we shall see that a real diversity brings out the real Unity, shows it as it were in its utmost capacity, reveals all that it can be and is in itself, delivers from its whiteness of hue the many tones of colour that are fused together there; Oneness finds itself infinitely in what seems to us to be a falling away from its oneness, but is really an inexhaustible diverse display of unity. This is the miracle, the Maya of the universe, yet perfectly logical, natural and a matter of course to the self-vision and self-experience of the Infinite.   --   Brahman The Reality is the self-existent Absolute and Maya is the Consciousness and Force of this self-existence; but with regard to the universe Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman, the cosmic Self, but also as the Supreme Self transcendent of its own cosmicity and at the same time individual-universal in each being; Maya can then be seen as the self-power, Atma-Shakti, of the Atman. It is true that when we first become aware of this Aspect, it is usually in a silence of the whole being or at the least in a silence within which draws back or stands away from the surface action; this Self is then felt as a status in silence, an immobile immutable being, self-existent, pervading the whole universe, omnipresent in all, but not dynamic or active, aloof from the ever mobile energy of Maya. In the same way we can become aware of it as the Purusha, separate from Prakriti, the Conscious Being standing back from the activities of Nature. But this is an exclusive concentration which limits itself to a spiritual status and puts away from it all activity in order to realise the freedom of Brahman the self-existent Reality from all limitation by its own action and manifestation: it is an essential realisation, but not the total realisation. For we can see that the Conscious-Power, the Shakti that acts and creates, is not other than the Maya or all-knowledge of Brahman; it is the Power of the Self; Prakriti is the working of the Purusha, Conscious Being active by its own Nature: the duality then of Soul and WorldEnergy, silent Self and the creative Power of the Spirit, is not really something dual and separate, it is biune. As we cannot separate Fire and the power of Fire, it has been said, so we cannot separate the Divine Reality and its Consciousness-Force, Chit-Shakti. This first realisation of Self as something intensely silent and purely static is not the whole truth of it, there can also be a realisation of Self in its power, Self as the condition of world-activity and world-existence. However, the Self is a fundamental aspect of Brahman, but with a certain stress on its impersonality; therefore the Power of the Self has the appearance of a Force that acts automatically with the Self sustaining it, witness and support and originator and enjoyer of its activities but not involved in them for a moment. As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaks.a; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a   Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self.   --   It is The Reality, the Self, that takes the position of the Conscious Being regarding and accepting or ruling the works of its own Nature. An apparent duality is created in order that there may be a free action of Nature working itself out with the support of the Spirit and again a free and masterful action of the Spirit controlling and working out Nature. This duality is also necessary that the Spirit may be at any time at liberty to draw back from any formation of its Nature and dissolve all formation or accept or enforce a new or a higher formation. These are very evident possibilities of the Spirit in its dealings with its own Force and they can be observed and verified in our own experience; they are logical results of the powers of the Infinite Consciousness, powers which we have seen to be native to its infinity. The Purusha aspect and the Prakriti aspect go always together and whatever status Nature or Consciousness-force in action assumes, manifests or develops, there is a corresponding status of the Spirit. In its supreme status the Spirit is the supreme Conscious Being, Purushottama, and the Consciousness-Force is his supreme Nature, Para-Prakriti. In each status of the gradations of Nature, the Spirit takes a poise of its being proper to that gradation; in Mind-Nature it becomes the mental being, in Life-Nature it becomes the vital being, in nature of Matter it becomes the physical being, in supermind it becomes the Being of Knowledge; in the supreme spiritual status it becomes the Being of Bliss and pure Existence. In us, in the embodied individual, it stands behind all as the psychic Entity, the inner   Self supporting the other formulations of our consciousness and spiritual existence. The Purusha, individual in us, is cosmic in the cosmos, transcendent in the transcendence: the identity with the Self is apparent, but it is the Self in its pure impersonalpersonal status of a Spirit in things and beings - impersonal because undifferentiated by personal quality, personal because it presides over the individualisations of self in each individual - which deals with the works of its Consciousness-force, its executive force of self-nature, in whatever poise is necessary for that purpose.   But it is evident that whatever the posture taken or relation formed in any individual nodus of Purusha-Prakriti, the Being is in a fundamental cosmic relation lord or ruler of its nature: for even when it allows Nature to have its own way with it, its consent is necessary to support her workings. This comes out in its fullest revelation in the third aspect of The Reality, the Divine Being who is the master and creator of the universe. Here the supreme Person, the Being in its transcendental and cosmic consciousness and force, comes to the front, omnipotent, omniscient, the controller of all energies, the Conscious in all that is conscient or inconscient, the Inhabitant of all souls and minds and hearts and bodies, the Ruler or Overruler of all works, the Enjoyer of all delight, the Creator who has built all things in his own being, the All-Person of whom all beings are personalities, the Power from whom are all powers, the Self, the Spirit in all, by his being the Father of all that is, in his Consciousness-Force the Divine Mother the Friend of all creatures, the All-blissful and All-beautiful of whom beauty and joy are the revelation, the All-Beloved and All-Lover. In a certain sense, so seen and understood, this becomes the most comprehensive of the aspects of The Reality, since here all are united in a single formulation; for the Ishwara is supracosmic as well as intracosmic; He is that which exceeds and inhabits and supports all individuality; He is the supreme and universal Brahman, the Absolute, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha.8 But, very clearly, this is not the personal God of popular religions, a being limited by his qualities, individual and separate from all others; for all such personal gods are only limited representations or names and divine personalities of the one Ishwara. Neither is this the Saguna Brahman active and possessed of qualities, for that is only one side of the being of the Ishwara; the Nirguna immobile and without qualities is another aspect of His existence. Ishwara is Brahman The Reality, Self, Spirit, revealed as possessor, enjoyer of his own self-existence, creator of the universe and one with it, Pantheos, and yet superior to it, the Eternal, the Infinite, the Ineffable, the Divine Transcendence.   8 Gita.   --   If we look at things from a larger point of view, we might say that what is impersonal is only a power of the Person: existence itself has no meaning without an Existent, consciousness has no standing-place if there is none who is conscious, delight is useless and invalid without an enjoyer, love can have no foundation or fulfilment if there is no lover, all-power must be otiose if there is not an Almighty. For what we mean by Person is conscious being; even if this emerges here as a term or product of the Inconscient, it is not that in reality: for it is the Inconscient itself that is a term of the secret Consciousness; what emerges is greater than that in which it emerges, as Mind is greater than Matter, Soul than Mind; Spirit, most secret of all, the supreme emergence, the last revelation, is the greatest of all, and Spirit is the Purusha, the All-Person, the omnipresent Conscious Being. It is the mind's ignorance of this true Person in us, its confusion of person with our experience of ego and limited personality, the misleading phenomenon of the emergence of limited consciousness and personality in an inconscient existence that have made us create an opposition between these two aspects of The Reality, but in truth there is no opposition. An eternal infinite self-existence is the supreme reality, but the supreme transcendent eternal Being, Self and Spirit, - an infinite Person, we may say, because his being is the essence and source of all personality, - is The Reality and meaning of self-existence: so too the cosmic Self, Spirit, Being, Person is The Reality and meaning of cosmic existence; the same Self, Spirit, Being or Person manifesting its multiplicity is The Reality and meaning of individual existence.   If we admit the Divine Being, the supreme Person and AllPerson as the Ishwara, a difficulty arises in understanding his rule or government of world-existence, because we immediately transfer to him our mental conception of a human ruler; we picture him as acting by the mind and mental will in an omnipotent arbitrary fashion upon a world on which he imposes his mental conceptions as laws, and we conceive of his will as a free caprice of his personality. But there is no need for the Divine Being to act by an arbitrary will or idea as an omnipotent yet ignorant human being - if such an omnipotence were possible - might do: for he is not limited by mind; he has an all-consciousness in which he is aware of the truth of all things and aware of his own all-wisdom working them out according to the truth that is in them, their significance, their possibility or necessity, the imperative selfness of their nature. The Divine is free and not bound by laws of any making, but still he acts by laws and processes because they are the expression of the truth of things, - not their mechanical, mathematical or other outward truth alone, but the spiritual reality of what they are, what they have become and have yet to become, what they have it within themselves to realise. He is himself present in the working, but he also exceeds and can overrule it; for on one side Nature works according to her limited complex of formulas and is informed and supported in their execution by the Divine Presence, but on the other side there is an overseeing, a higher working and determination, even an intervention, free but not arbitrary, often appearing to us magical and miraculous because it proceeds and acts upon Nature from a divine Supernature: Nature here is a limited expression of that Supernature and open to intervention or mutation by its light, its force, its influence. The mechanical, mathematical, automatic law of things is a fact, but within it there is a spiritual law of consciousness at work which gives to the mechanical steps of Nature's forces an inner turn and value, a significant rightness and a secretly conscious necessity, and above it there is a spiritual freedom that knows and acts in the supreme and universal truth of the Spirit. Our view of the divine government of the world or of the secret of its action is either incurably anthropomorphic or else incurably mechanical; both the anthropomorphism and mechanism have their elements of truth, but they are only a side, an aspect, and the real truth is that the world is governed by the One in all and over all who is infinite in his consciousness and it is according to the law and logic of an infinite consciousness that we ought to understand the significance and building and movement of the universe.   --   Again, if we remain absorbed in the Silence, the creative Consciousness and her works disappear into the Silence; Nature and the creation for us cease to exist or be real. On the other hand, if we look exclusively at the Being in its aspect of the sole-existent Person and Ruler, the Power or Shakti by which he does all things disappears into his uniqueness or becomes an attribute of His cosmic personality; the absolute monarchy of the one Being becomes our perception of the universe. Both these experiences create many difficulties for the mind due to its nonperception of The Reality of the Self-Power whether in quiescence or in action, or to a too exclusively negative experience of the   Self, or to the too anthropomorphic character our conceptions attach to the Supreme Being as Ruler. It is evident that we are looking at an Infinite of which the Self-Power is capable of many movements, all of them valid. If we look again more largely and take account of both the impersonal and the personal truth of things as one truth, if in that light, the light of personality in impersonality, we see the biune aspect of Self and Self-Power, then in the Person Aspect a dual Person emerges, Ishwara-Shakti, the Divine Self and Creator and the Divine Mother and Creatrix of the universe; there becomes apparent to us the mystery of the masculine and feminine cosmic Principles whose play and interaction are necessary for all creation. In the superconscient truth of the Self-Existence these two are fused and implied in each other, one and indistinguishable, but in the spiritual-pragmatic truth of the dynamism of the universe, they emerge and become active; the Divine Mother Energy as the universal creatrix, Maya, Para-Prakriti, Chit-Shakti, manifests the cosmic Self and Ishwara and her own self-power as a dual principle; it is through her that the Being, the Self, the Ishwara, acts and he does nothing except by her; though his Will is implicit in her, it is she who works out all as the supreme Consciousness-Force who holds all souls and beings within her and as executive Nature; all exists and acts according to Nature, all is the Consciousness-Force manifesting and playing with the Being in millions of forms and movements into which she casts his existence. If we draw back from her workings, then all can fall into quiescence and we can enter into the silence, because she consents to cease from her dynamic activity; but it is in her quiescence and silence that we are quiescent and cease. If we would affirm our independence of   --   A certain difficulty arises for our mind in reconciling these different faces or fronts of the One Self and Spirit, because we are obliged to use abstract conceptions and defining words and ideas for something that is not abstract, something that is spiritually living and intensely real. Our abstractions get fixed into differentiating concepts with sharp lines between them: but The Reality is not of that nature; its aspects are many but shade off into each other. Its truth could only be rendered by ideas and images metaphysical and yet living and concrete, - images which might be taken by the pure Reason as figures and symbols but are more than that and mean more to the intuitive vision and feeling, for they are realities of a dynamic spiritual experience. The impersonal truth of things can be rendered into the abstract formulas of the pure reason, but there is another side of truth which belongs to the spiritual or mystic vision and without that inner vision of realities the abstract formulation of them is insufficiently alive, incomplete. The mystery of things is the true truth of things; the intellectual presentation is only truth in representation, in abstract symbols, as if in a cubist art of thought-speech, in geometric figure. It is necessary in a philosophic inquiry to confine oneself mostly to this intellectual presentation, but it is as well to remember that this is only the abstraction of the Truth and to seize it completely or express it completely there is needed a concrete experience and a more living and full-bodied language.   Here it becomes opportune to see how in this aspect of The Reality we must regard the relation we have discovered between the One and the Many; this amounts to a determination of the true connection between the individual and the Divine Being, between the Soul and the Ishwara. In the normal theistic conception the Many are created by God; made by him as a potter might make a vessel, they are dependent on him as are creatures on their creator. But in this larger view of the Ishwara the Many are themselves the Divine One in their inmost reality, individual selves of the supreme and universal Self-Existence, eternal as he is eternal but eternal in his being: our material existence is indeed a creation of Nature, but the soul is an immortal portion of the Divinity and behind it is the Divine Self in the natural creature. Still the One is the fundamental Truth of existence, the Many exist by the One and there is therefore an entire dependence of the manifested being on the Ishwara. This dependence is concealed by the separative ignorance of the ego which strives to exist in its own right, although at every step it is evidently dependent on the cosmic Power that created it, moved by it, a part of its cosmic being and action; this effort of the ego is clearly a misprision, an erroneous reflection of the truth of the self-existence that is within us. It is true that there is something in us, not in the ego but in the self and inmost being, that surpasses cosmic Nature and belongs to the Transcendence. But this too finds itself independent of Nature only by dependence on a higher Reality; it is through self-giving or surrender of soul and nature to the Divine Being that we can attain to our highest self and supreme Reality, for it is the Divine Being who is that highest self and that supreme Reality, and we are self-existent and eternal only in his eternity and by his self-existence. This dependence is not contradictory of the Identity, but is itself the door to the realisation of the Identity, - so that here again we meet that phenomenon of duality expressing unity, proceeding from unity and opening back into unity, which is the constant secret and fundamental operation of the universe. It is this truth of the consciousness of the Infinite that creates the possibility of all relations between the many and the One, among which the realisation of oneness by the mind, the presence of oneness in the heart, the existence of oneness in all the members is a highest peak, and yet it does not annul but confirms all the other personal relations and gives them their fullness, their complete delight, their entire significance. This too is the magic, but also the logic of the Infinite.   One problem still remains to be solved, and it can be solved on the same basis; it is the problem of the opposition between the Non-Manifest and the manifestation. For it might be said that all that has been advanced hitherto may be true of the manifestation, but the manifestation is a reality of an inferior order, a partial movement derived from the Non-Manifest Reality and, when we enter into that which is supremely Real, these truths of the universe cease to have any validity. The Non-Manifest is the timeless, the utterly eternal, an irreducible absolute self-existence to which the manifestation and its limitations can give no clue or only a clue that by its insufficiency is illusory and deceptive.   --   The original status is that of The Reality timeless and spaceless; Space and Time would be the same Reality self-extended to contain the deployment of what was within it. The difference would be, as in all the other oppositions, the Spirit looking at itself in essence and principle of being and the same Spirit looking at itself in the dynamism of its essence and principle.   Space and Time are our names for this self-extension of the one Reality. We are apt to see Space as a static extension in which all things stand or move together in a fixed order; we see Time as a mobile extension which is measured by movement and event: Space then would be Brahman in self-extended status; Time would be Brahman in self-extended movement. But this may be only a first view and inaccurate: Space may be really a constant mobile, the constancy and the persistent time-relation of things in it creating the sense of stability of Space, the mobility creating the sense of time-movement in stable Space. Or, again, Space would be Brahman extended for the holding together of forms and objects; Time would be Brahman self-extended for the deployment of the movement of self-power carrying forms and objects; the two would then be a dual aspect of one and the same self-extension of the cosmic Eternal.

2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    Sri Aurobindo: That is to say, you have to give life a place in The Reality.    Disciple: And we are supposed or expected to do everything for you and the Divine Mother. But in our nature we are full of ego and ignorance. So our surrender is also full of ego.

2.02 - The Bhakta.s Renunciation results from Love, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism   They feel no resentment; their minds never react in the form of hatred or jealousy. The external, the sensuous; has vanished from them for ever. How can they be angry when, through their love, they are always able to see The Reality behind the scenes ?

2.02 - THE DURGA PUJA FESTIVAL, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER (to Bhavanath): "The truth is that ordinary men cannot easily have faith. But an Isvarakoti's faith is spontaneous. Prahlada burst into tears while writing the letter 'ka'. It reminded him of Krishna. It is the nature of jivas to doubt. They say yes, no doubt, but-Oneness of akti and Brahman "Hazra can never be persuaded to believe that Brahman and akti, that akti and the Being endowed with akti, are one and the same. When The Reality appears as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, we call It akti; when It is inactive, we call It Brahman. But really It is one and the same thing-indivisible. Fire naturally brings to mind its power to burn; and the idea of burning naturally brings to mind the idea of fire. It is impossible to think of the one without the other.   "So I prayed to the Divine Mother: 'O Mother! Hazra is trying to upset the views of this place. Either give him right understanding or take him from here.' The next day he carne to me and said, 'Yes, I agree with you.' He said that God exists everywhere as All-pervading Consciousness."

2.02 - THE EXPANSION OF LIFE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   observers still refuse to see or admit The Reality of this strand of   life in the process of evolution. They do not know how to see,   --   settled once and for all. To shake our belief now in The Reality of   biogenesis, it would be necessary to uproot the tree of life and

2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen   of the appearance for The Reality, bewilderment by the force of   Maya. "This house that my fathers had was mine and alas, I

2.02 - The Mother Archetype, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   the mother only seems to possess, The Reality being composed of   more or less fantastic (i.e., archetypal) projections on the part of

2.02 - The Status of Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   This greater consciousness, this higher existence are not an enlightened or illumined mentality supported by a greater dynamic energy or supporting a purer moral life and character. Their superiority to the ordinary human consciousness is not in degree but in kind and essence. There is a change not merely of the surface or instrumental manner of our being but of its very foundation and dynamic principle. Yogic knowledge seeks to enter into a secret consciousness beyond mind which is only occultly here, concealed at the bases of all existence. For it is that consciousness alone that truly knows and only by its possession can we possess God and rightly know the world and its real nature and secret forces. All this world visible or sensible to us and all too in it that is not visible is merely the phenomenal expression of something beyond the mind and the senses. The knowledge which the senses and intellectual reasoning from the data of the senses can bring us, is not true knowledge; it is a science of appearances. And even appearances cannot be properly known unless we know first The Reality of which they are images. This Reality is their self and there is one self of all; when that is seized, all other things can then be known in their truth and no longer as now only in their appearance.   It is evident that however much we may analyse the physical and sensible, we cannot by that means arrive at the Knowledge of the Self or of ourselves or of that which we call God. The telescope, the microscope, the scalpel, the retort and alembic cannot go beyond the physical, although they may arrive at subtler and subtler truths about the physical. If then we confine ourselves to what the senses and their physical aids reveal to us and refuse from the beginning to admit any other reality or any other means of knowledge, we are obliged to conclude that nothing is real except the physical and that there is no Self in us or in the universe, no God within and without, no ourselves even except this aggregate of brain, nerves and body. But this we are only obliged to conclude because we have assumed it firmly from the beginning and therefore cannot but circle round to our original assumption.   --   It is true that intellectual deliberation arid right discrimination are an important part of the Yoga of knowledge; but their object is rather to remove a difficulty than to arrive at the final and positive result of this path. Our ordinary intellectual notions are a stumbling-block in the way of knowledge, for they are governed by the error of the senses and they found themselves on the notion that matter and body are The Reality, that life and force are The Reality, that passion and emotion, thought and sense are The Reality; arid with these things we identify ourselves, and because we identify ourselves with these things we cannot get back to the real self. Therefore, it is necessary for the seeker of knowledge to remove this stumbling-block and to get right notions about himself and the world; for how shall we pursue by knowledge the real self if we have no notion of what it is and are on the contrary burdened with ideas quite opposite to the truth? Therefore right thought is a necessary preliminary, and once the habit of right thought is established, free from sense-error and desire and old association and intellectual prejudgment, the understanding becomes, purified and offers no serious obstacle to the farther process of knowledge. Still, right thought only becomes effective when in the purified understanding it is followed by other operations, by vision, by experience, by realisation.   What are these operations? They are not mere psychological self-analysis and self-observation. Such analysis, such observation are, like the process of right thought, of immense value and practically indispensable. They may even, if rightly pursued, lead to a right thought of considerable power and effectivity. Like intellectual discrimination by the process of meditative thought they will have an effect of purification; they will lead to self-knowledge of a certain kind and to the setting right of the disorders of the soul and the heart and even of the disorders of the understanding. Self-knowledge of all kinds is on the straight path to the knowledge of the real Self. The Upanishad tells us that the Self-existent has so set the doors of the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into the appearances of things; only the rare soul that is ripe for a calm thought and steady wisdom turns its eye inward, sees the Self and attains to immortality. To this turning of the eye inward psychological self-observation and analysis is a great and effective introduction. We can look into the inward of ourselves more easily than we can look into the inward of things external to us because there, in things outside us, we are in the first place embarrassed by the form and secondly we have no natural previous experience of that in them which is other than their physical substance. A purified or tranquillised mind may reflect or a powerful concentration may discover God in the world, the Self in Nature even before it is realised in ourselves, but this is rare and difficult.289 And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the process of the Self in its becoming and follow the .process by which it draws back into self-being. Therefore the ancient counsel, know thyself, will always stand as the first word that directs us towards the knowledge. Still, psychological self-knowledge is only the experience of the modes of the Self, it is not the realisation of the Self in its pure being.

2.03 - DEMETER, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   natural and possible when once The Reality of a fundamental   impetus has been accepted. Furthermore, its micro-structure

2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen   practically The Reality of a thing and its law of working that one   can become its master and make use of it for his own purposes.   --   Hinduism, - The Reality & eternity of the Self, the transience &   unreality of all else, - is insisted upon as the guiding principle   --   Parabrahman as The Reality of things, yet phenomenal existence   itself is purely material and there is no need to call in the assistance of any other and different entity. For material energy   --   appearance in The Reality of Spirit. It is therefore through Spirit   and not through Matter that we are likely to get nearest to the

2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    Sri Aurobindo: So I say there is something behind the device which already pre-exists on some plane and it is that which adopts the device in order to manifest itself. But the device is not The Reality. The power from behind can change the device. Of course, the power working from behind comes down on the physical plane through the device, and so people generally think that it is the device which is responsible for the manifestation.    As an instance of the change of device I told you about Agamya Guru Paramahamsa. He could stop his heart-beats and go on talking and working like other men. Now, ordinarily, when the heart stops the man dies, or gets into a cataleptic Samadhi. But in his case it was not so.   --    The second thing is that our physical mind is not well developed. Being a dependent nation we have no scope for large action and therefore the development of our physical minds is poor. There must be something positive in the physical mind, an element that grasps at The Reality. In its own nature, the physical mind refuses to believe anything else except Matter to be real. There is the extreme case of X who used to switch off the electric light when he saw the Light descending in his inner being! Not that kind of thing, but some element of it is necessary so that the physical mind may question everything and accept only the Truth.    Some of these sadhaks see all kinds of visions. At times they see a buffalo and think that they have attained Siddhi! It never even once occurs to them to put the questions: "After all, what do these visions mean?" "What have I gained from them so far?" If you suggest these questions they brush them aside.

2.03 - The Christian Phenomenon and Faith in the Incarnation, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   3 . Faith in The Reality of the Church-p/iy /i*m (in which, and   centred on which, Christ continues to develop, in the World,   --   moment we admit The Reality of an answer that comes to   us from on high, we in some way enter into the order of

2.03 - The Eternal and the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   There is as a phase or movement of the self-manifestation a descent into an apparent material inconscience, an awakening of the individual out of the Inconscience and an evolution of his being into the spiritual and supramental consciousness and power of The Reality, into his own universal and transcendent Self and source of existence. It is on this foundation that we have to base our conception of a truth in our terrestrial being and the possibility of a divine Life in material Nature. There our chief need is to discover the origin and nature of the Ignorance which we see emerging out of the inconscience of matter or disclosing itself within a body of matter and the nature of the   Knowledge that has to replace it, to understand too the process of Nature's self-unfolding and the soul's recovery. For in fact the Knowledge is there concealed in the Ignorance itself; it has rather to be unveiled than acquired: it reveals itself rather than is learned, by an inward and upward self-unfolding. But first it will be convenient to meet and get out of the way one difficulty that inevitably arises, the difficulty of admitting that, even given the immanence of the Divine in us, even given our individual consciousness as a vehicle of progressive evolutionary manifestation, the individual is in any sense eternal or that there can be any persistence of individuality after liberation has been attained by unity and self-knowledge.   --   But in the end we have to see that our individualisation is only a superficial formation, a practical selection and limited conscious synthesis for the temporary utility of life in a particular body, or else it is a constantly changing and developing synthesis pursued through successive lives in successive bodies. Behind it there is a consciousness, a Purusha, who is not determined or limited by his individualisation or by this synthesis but on the contrary determines, supports and yet exceeds it. That which he selects from in order to construct this synthesis, is his total experience of the world-being. Therefore our individualisation exists by virtue of the world-being, but also by virtue of a consciousness which uses the world-being for experience of its possibilities of individuality. These two powers, Person and his world-material, are both necessary for our present experience of individuality. If the Purusha with his individualising synthesis of consciousness were to disappear, to merge, to annul himself in any way, our constructed individuality would cease because The Reality that supported it would no longer be in presence; if, on the other hand, the world-being were to dissolve, merge, disappear, then also our individualisation would cease, for the material of experience by which it effectuates itself would be wanting. We have then to recognise these two terms of our existence, a world-being and an individualising consciousness which is the cause of all our self-experience and world-experience.   But we see farther that in the end this Purusha, this cause and self of our individuality, comes to embrace the whole world and all other beings in a sort of conscious extension of itself and to perceive itself as one with the world-being. In its conscious extension of itself it exceeds the primary experience and abolishes the barriers of its active self-limitation and individualisation; by its perception of its own infinite universality it goes beyond all consciousness of separative individuality or limited soul-being. By that very fact the individual ceases to be the selflimiting ego; in other words, our false consciousness of existing only by self-limitation, by rigid distinction of ourselves from the rest of being and becoming is transcended; our identification of ourselves with our personal and temporal individualisation in a particular mind and body is abolished. But is all truth of individuality and individualisation abolished? does the Purusha cease to exist or does he become the world-Purusha and live intimately in innumerable minds and bodies? We do not find it to be so.   --   But if we look at existence as a whole, we see that infinite and finite coexist and exist in and by each other. Even if our universe were to disappear and reappear rhythmically in Time, as was the old belief, that too would be only a large detail and would not show that at a particular time all condition ceases in the whole range of infinite existence and all Being becomes the unconditioned, at another it again takes on The Reality or the appearance of conditions. The first source and the primary relations lie beyond our mental divisions of Time, in the divine timelessness or else in the indivisible or eternal Time of which our divisions and successions are only figures in a mental experience.   There we see that all meets and all principles, all persistent realities of existence, - for the finite as a principle of being is as persistent as the infinite, - stand in a primary relation to each other in a free, not an exclusive unity of the Absolute, and that the way they present themselves to us in a material or a mental world is only a working out of them in secondary, tertiary or yet lower relativities. The Absolute has not become the contrary of itself and assumed at a certain date real or unreal relativities of which it was originally incapable, nor has the One become by a miracle the Many, nor the unconditioned deviated into the conditioned, nor the unqualitied sprouted out into qualities. These oppositions are only the conveniences of our mental consciousness, our divisions of the indivisible.

2.03 - The Purified Understanding, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The second cause of impurity in the understanding is the illusion of the senses and the intermiscence of the sense-mind in the thinking functions. No knowledge can be true knowledge which subjects itself to the senses or uses them otherwise than as first indices whose data have constantly to be corrected and overpassed. The beginning of Science is the examination of the truths of the world-force that underlie its apparent workings such as our senses represent them to be; the beginning of philosophy is the examination of the principles of things which the senses mistranslate to us; the beginning of spiritual knowledge is the refusal to accept the limitations of the sense-life or to take the visible and sensible as anything more than phenomenon of The Reality.   Equally must the sense-mind be stilled and taught to leave the function of thought to the mind that judges and understands. When the understanding in us stands back from the action of the sense-mind and repels its intermiscence, the latter detaches itself from the understanding and can be watched in its separate action. It then reveals itself as a constantly swirling and eddying undercurrent of habitual concepts, associations, perceptions, desires without any real sequence, order or principle of light. It is a constant repetition in a circle unintelligent and unfruitful. Ordinarily the human understanding accepts this undercurrent and tries to reduce it to a partial order and sequence; but by so doing it becomes itself subject to it and partakes of that disorder, restlessness, unintelligent subjection to habit and blind purposeless repetition which makes the ordinary human reason a misleading, limited and even frivolous and futile instrument. There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing element.

2.04 - Concentration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   7:When we arrive at this state, all our being and consciousness being concentrated, the necessity of concentration in the Idea ceases. For there in that supramental state the whole position of things is reversed. The mind is a thing that dwells in diffusion, in succession; it can only concentrate on one thing at a time and when not concentrated runs from one thing to another very much at random. Therefore it has to concentrate on a single idea, a single subject of meditation, a single object of contemplation, a single object of will in order to possess or master it, arid this it must do to at least the temporary exclusion of all others. But that which is beyond the mind and into which we seek to rise is superior to the running process of the thought, superior to the division of ideas. The Divine is centred in itself and when it throws out ideas and activities does not divide itself or imprison itself in them, but holds them and their movement in its infinity; undivided, its whole self is behind each Idea and each movement arid at the same time behind all of them together. Held by it, each spontaneously works itself out, not through a separate act of will, but by the general force of consciousness behind it; if to us there seems to be a concentration of divine Will and Knowledge in each, it is a multiple arid equal and not an exclusive concentration, and The Reality of it is rather a free and spontaneous working in a self-gathered unity and infinity. The soul which has risen to the divine Samadhi participates in the measure of its attainment in this reversed condition of things, -the true condition, for that which is the reverse of our mentality is the truth. It is for this reason that, as is said in the ancient books, the man who has arrived at Self-possession attains spontaneously without the need of concentration in thought and effort the knowledge or the result which the Idea or the Will in him moves out to embrace.   8:To arrive then at this settled divine status must be the object of our concentration. The first step in concentration must be always to accustom the discursive mind to a settled unwavering pursuit of a single course of connected thought on a single subject and this it must do undistracted by all lures and alien calls on its attention. Such concentration is common enough in our ordinary life, but it becomes more difficult when we have to do it inwardly without any outward object or action on which to keep the mind; yet this inward concentration is what the seeker of knowledge must effect309. Nor must it be merely the consecutive thought of the intellectual thinker, whose only object is to conceive and intellectually link together his conceptions. It is not, except perhaps at first, a process of reasoning that is wanted so much as a dwelling so far as possible on the fruitful essence of the idea which by the insistence of the soul's will upon it must yield up all the facets of its truth. Thus if it be the divine Love that is the subject of concentration, it is on the essence of the idea of God as Love that the mind should concentrate in such a way that the various manifestation of the divine Love should arise luminously, not only to the thought, but in the heart and being and vision of the Sadhaka. The thought may come first and the experience afterwards, but equally the experience may come first and the knowledge arise out of the experience. Afterwards the thing attained has to be dwelt on and more and more held till it becomes a constant experience and finally the Dharma or law of the being.

2.04 - Positive Aspects of the Mother-Complex, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   otheism by main force. But since The Reality of darkness and   evil could not be denied, there was no alternative but to make

2.04 - The Divine and the Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga    contradicts by a cold intellectual conception our acute human sense of The Reality of evil and imperfection; it gives too no lead to the psychic element in our nature, the soul's aspiration towards light and truth and towards a spiritual conquest, a victory over imperfection and evil. By itself, this view of things amounts to little more than the facile dogma which tells us that all that is is right, because all is perfectly decreed by the divine   Wisdom. It supplies us with nothing better than a complacent intellectual and philosophic optimism: no light is turned on the disconcerting facts of pain, suffering and discord to which our human consciousness bears constant and troubling witness; at most there is a suggestion that in the divine reason of things there is a key to these things to which we have no access. This is not a sufficient answer to our discontent and our aspiration which, however ignorant in their reactions, however mixed their mental motives, must correspond to a divine reality deeper down in our being. A Divine Whole that is perfect by reason of the imperfection of its parts, runs the risk of itself being only perfect in imperfection, because it fulfils entirely some stage in an unaccomplished purpose; it is then a present but not an ultimate   --   Godhead the active aspect of the observing Self, the Self a witness of its own Godhead in action. A discord, a gulf between the Self in knowledge and the same Self in its works needs explanation, but it presents itself as unexplained and inexplicable. Or, again, we can posit a double consciousness of Brahman The Reality, one static and one dynamic, one essential and spiritual in which it is Self perfect and absolute, another formative, pragmatic, in which it becomes not-self and with which its absoluteness and perfection have no concern of participation; for it is only a temporal formation in the timeless Reality. But to us who even if only half-existent, half-conscious, yet inhabit the Absolute's half-dream of living and are compelled by Nature to have in it a terrible and insistent concern and to deal with it as real, this wears the appearance of an obvious mystification; for this temporal consciousness and its formations are also in the end a Power of the one Self, depend upon it, can exist only by it; what exists by the power of The Reality cannot be unrelated to   It or That unrelated to the world of its own Power's making. If the world exists by the supreme Spirit, so also its ordering and relations must exist by the power of the Spirit; its law must be according to some law of the spiritual consciousness and existence.   The Self, The Reality must be aware of and aware in the worldconsciousness which exists in its being; a power of the Self, the   Reality must be constantly determining or at least sanctioning its phenomena and operations: for there can be no independent power, no Nature not derived from the original and eternal SelfExistence. If it does no more, it must still be originating or determining the universe through the mere fact of its conscious omnipresence. It is, no doubt, a truth of spiritual experience that there is a status of peace and silence in the Infinite behind the   --    is our first insistent self-experience; this does impose on us, not a fundamentally real, but a practical division with all the untoward consequences of that separateness from The Reality. But here again we have to discover that from the point of view of   God's workings, whatever be our reactions or our experience on the surface, this fact of ignorance is itself an operation of knowledge and not a true ignorance. Its phenomenon of ignorance is a superficial movement; for behind it is an indivisible all-consciousness: the ignorance is a frontal power of that allconsciousness which limits itself in a certain field, within certain boundaries to a particular operation of knowledge, a particular mode of conscious working, and keeps back all the rest of its knowledge in waiting as a force behind it. All that is thus hidden is an occult store of light and power for the All-Consciousness to draw upon for the evolution of our being in Nature; there is a secret working which fills up all the deficiencies of the frontal Ignorance, acts through its apparent stumblings, prevents them from leading to another final result than that which the

2.05 - Habit 3 Put First Things First, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset   There are other people who spend a great deal of time in "urgent, but not important" Quadrant III, thinking they're in Quadrant I. They spend most of their time reacting to things that are urgent, assuming they are also important. But The Reality is that the urgency of these matters is often based on the priorities and expectations of others.   People who spend time almost exclusively in Quadrants III and IV basically lead irresponsible lives.

2.05 - The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Dream is felt to be unreal, first, because it ceases and has no farther validity when we pass from one status of consciousness to another which is our normal status. But this is not by itself a sufficient reason: for it may well be that there are different states of consciousness each with its own realities; if the consciousness of one state of things fades back and its contents are lost or, even when caught in memory, seem to be illusory as soon as we pass into another state, that would be perfectly normal, but it would not prove The Reality of the state in which we now are and the unreality of the other which we have left behind us. If earth circumstances begin to seem unreal to a soul passing into a different world or another plane of consciousness, that would not prove their unreality; similarly, the fact that world-existence seems unreal to us when we pass into the spiritual silence or into some Nirvana, does not of itself prove that the cosmos was all the time an illusion. The world is real to the consciousness dwelling in it, an unconditioned existence is real to the consciousness absorbed in Nirvana; that is all that is established.   But the second reason for refusing credit to our sleep experience   --   If this is a true account of dream experience, dreams can no longer be classed as a mere unreal figure of unreal things temporarily imposed upon our half-unconsciousness as a reality; the analogy therefore fails even as an illustrative support for the theory of the cosmic Illusion. It may be said, however, that our dreams are not themselves realities but only a transcript of reality, a system of symbol-images, and our waking experience of the universe is similarly not a reality but only a transcript of reality, a series or collection of symbol-images. It is quite true that primarily we see the physical universe only through a system of images impressed or imposed on our senses and so far the contention is justified; it may also be admitted that in a certain sense and from one view-point our experiences and activities can be considered as symbols of a truth which our lives are trying to express but at present only with a partial success and an imperfect coherence. If that were all, life might be described as a dream-experience of self and things in the consciousness of the Infinite. But although our primary evidence of the objects of the universe consists of a structure of sense images, these are completed, validated, set in order by an automatic intuition in the consciousness which immediately relates the image with the thing imaged and gets the tangible experience of the object, so that we are not merely regarding or reading a translation or sense-transcript of The Reality but looking through the senseimage to The Reality. This adequacy is amplified too by the action   The Cosmic Illusion   --    of a reason which fathoms and understands the law of things sensed and can observe scrupulously the sense-transcript and correct its errors. Therefore we may conclude that we experience a real universe through our imaged sense-transcript by the aid of the intuition and the reason, - an intuition which gives us the touch of things and a reason which investigates their truth by its conceptive knowledge. But we must note also that even if our image view of the universe, our sense-transcript, is a system of symbol images and not an exact reproduction or transcription, a literal translation, still a symbol is a notation of something that is, a transcript of realities. Even if our images are incorrect, what they endeavour to image are realities, not illusions; when we see a tree or a stone or an animal, it is not a non-existent figure, a hallucination that we are seeing; we may not be sure that the image is exact, we may concede that other-sense might very well see it otherwise, but still there is something there that justifies the image, something with which it has more or less correspondence. But in the theory of Illusion the only reality is an indeterminable featureless pure Existence, Brahman, and there is no possibility of its being translated or mistranslated into a system of symbol-figures, for that could only be if this Existence had some determinate contents or some unmanifested truths of its being which could be transcribed into the forms or names given to them by our consciousness: a pure Indeterminable cannot be rendered by a transcript, a multitude of representative differentiae, a crowd of symbols or images; for there is in it only a pure Identity, there is nothing to transcribe, nothing to symbolise, nothing to image. Therefore the dream analogy fails us altogether and is better put out of the way; it can always be used as a vivid metaphor of a certain attitude our mind can take towards its experiences, but it has no value for a metaphysical inquiry into The Reality and fundamental significances or the origin of existence.   If we take up the analogy of hallucination, we find it hardly more helpful for a true understanding of the theory of cosmic   --    false imaged manifestation of The Reality replacing in the mind or covering with its distorted resemblance a true manifestation.   But here the world is a non-existent form of things, an illusory construction imposed on the bare Reality, on the sole Existent which is for ever empty of things and formless: there would be a true analogy only if our vision constructed in the void air of the desert a figure of things that exist nowhere, or else if it imposed on a bare ground both rope and snake and other figures that equally existed nowhere.   --   The analogy of mental hallucination would only be applicable if we admit a Brahman without names, forms or relations and a world of names, forms and relations as equal realities imposed one upon the other, the rope in the place of the snake, or the snake in the place of the rope, - an attri bution, it might be, of the activities of the Saguna to the quiescence of the Nirguna. But if both are real, both must be either separate aspects of The Reality or co-ordinate aspects, positive and negative poles of the one   Existence. Any error or confusion of Mind between them would not be a creative cosmic Illusion, but only a wrong perception of realities, a wrong relation created by the Ignorance.   --    and silver turns also, like the rope and snake analogy, upon an error due to a resemblance between a present real and another and absent real; it can have no application to the imposition of a multiple and mutable unreality upon a sole and unique immutable Real. In the example of an optical illusion duplicating or multiplying a single object, as when we see two moons instead of one, there are two or more identical forms of the one object, one real, one - or the rest - an illusion: this does not illustrate the juxtaposition of world and Brahman; for in the operation of Maya there is a much more complex phenomenon, - there is indeed an illusory multiplication of the Identical imposed upon its one and ever-unalterable Identity, the One appearing as many, but upon that is imposed an immense organised diversity in nature, a diversity of forms and movements which have nothing to do with the original Real. Dreams, visions, the imagination of the artist or poet can present such an organised diversity which is not real; but it is an imitation, a mimesis of a real and already existent organised diversity, or it starts from such a mimesis and even in the richest variation or wildest invention some mimetic element is observable. There is here no such thing as the operation attributed to Maya in which there is no mimesis but a pure and radically original creation of unreal forms and movements that are non-existent anywhere and neither imitate nor reflect nor alter and develop anything discoverable in The Reality. There is nothing in the operations of Mind illusion that throws light upon this mystery; it is, as a stupendous cosmic Illusion of this kind must be, sui generis, without parallel. What we see in the universe is that a diversity of the identical is everywhere the fundamental operation of cosmic Nature; but here it presents itself, not as an illusion, but as a various real formation out of a one original substance. A Reality of Oneness manifesting itself in a reality of numberless forms and powers of its being is what we confront everywhere. There is no doubt in its process a mystery, even a magic, but there is nothing to show that it is a magic of the unreal and not a working of a Consciousness and   Force of being of the omnipotent Real, a self-creation operated by an eternal self-knowledge.   --   But it has not the omniscience of an infinite Consciousness; it is limited in knowledge and has to supplement its restricted knowledge by imagination and discovery. It does not, like the infinite Consciousness, manifest the known, it has to discover the unknown; it seizes the possibilities of the Infinite, not as results or variations of forms of a latent Truth, but as constructions or creations, figments of its own boundless imagination. It has not the omnipotence of an infinite conscious Energy; it can only realise or actualise what the cosmic Energy will accept from it or what it has the strength to impose or introduce into the sum of things because the secret Divinity, superconscient or subliminal, which uses it intends that that should be expressed in Nature. Its limitation of Knowledge constitutes by incompleteness, but also by openness to error, an Ignorance. In dealing with actualities it may misobserve, misuse, miscreate; in dealing with possibilities it may miscompose, miscombine, misapply, misplace; in its dealings with truths revealed to it it may deform, misrepresent, disharmonise. It may also make constructions of its own which have no correspondence with the things of actual existence, no potentiality of realisation, no support from the truth behind them; but still these constructions start from an illegitimate extension of actualities, catch at unpermitted possibilities, or turn truths to an application which is not applicable. Mind creates, but it is not an original creator, not omniscient or omnipotent, not even an always efficient demiurge. Maya, the Illusive Power, on the contrary, must be an original creator, for it creates all things out of nothing - unless we suppose that it creates out of the substance of The Reality, but then the things it creates must be in some way real; it has a perfect knowledge of what it wishes to create, a perfect power to create whatever it chooses, omniscient and omnipotent though only over its own illusions, harmonising them and linking them together with a magical sureness and sovereign energy, absolutely effective in imposing its own formations or figments passed off as truths, possibilities, actualities on the creature intelligence.   Our mind works best and with a firm confidence when it   --    is given a substance to work on or at least to use as a basis for its operations, or when it can handle a cosmic force of which it has acquired the knowledge, - it is sure of its steps when it has to deal with actualities; this rule of dealing with objectivised or discovered actualities and proceeding from them for creation is the reason of the enormous success of physical Science. But here there is evidently no creation of illusions, no creation of nonexistence in vacuo and turning them into apparent actualities such as is attri buted to the cosmic Illusion. For Mind can only create out of substance what is possible to the substance, it can only do with the force of Nature what is in accordance with her realisable energies; it can only invent or discover what is already contained in the truth and potentiality of Nature. On the other side, it receives inspirations for creation from within itself or from above: but these can only take form if they are truths or potentials, not by the mind's own right of invention; for if the mind erects what is neither true nor potential, that cannot be created, cannot become actual in Nature. Maya, on the contrary, if it creates on the basis of The Reality, yet erects a superstructure which has nothing to do with The Reality, is not true or potential in it; if it creates out of the substance of The Reality, it makes out of it things that are not possible to it or in accordance with it, - for it creates forms and The Reality is supposed to be a Formless incapable of form, it creates determinations and The Reality is supposed to be absolutely indeterminable.   But our mind has the faculty of imagination; it can create and take as true and real its own mental structures: here, it might be thought, is something analogous to the action of Maya.

2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   It can be conceded that knowledge is a useful instrument of the Illusion of Maya, for escaping from herself, for destroying herself in the Mind; spiritual knowledge is indispensable: but the one true truth, the only abiding reality beyond all duality of knowledge and ignorance is the eternal relationless Absolute or the Self, the eternal pure Existence. All here turns on the mind's conception and the mental being's experience of reality; for according to the mind's experience or conception of reality will be its interpretation of data otherwise identical, the facts of the Cosmos, individual experience, the realisation of the supreme Transcendence. All mental cognition depends on three elements, the percipient, the perception and the thing perceived or percept. All or any of these three can be affirmed or denied reality; the question then is which of these, if any, are real and to what extent or in what manner. If all three are rejected as instruments of a cosmic Illusion, the farther and consequent question arises, is there then a reality outside them and, if so, what is the relation between The Reality and the Illusion?   It is possible to affirm The Reality of the percept, of the objective universe, and deny or diminish The Reality of the percipient individual and his perceptive consciousness. In the theory of the sole reality of Matter consciousness is only an operation of   Matter-energy in Matter, a secretion or vibration of the braincells, a physical reception of images and a brain response, a reflex action or a reaction of Matter to the contacts of Matter. Even if the rigidity of this affirmation is relaxed and consciousness otherwise accounted for, still it is no more than a temporary and derivative phenomenon, not the enduring Reality. The percipient individual is himself only a body and brain capable of the mechanical reactions we generalise under the name of   --   Self are only temporary appearances; it is in its absoluteness the substratum of all things, but the universe erected on the substratum is either a non-existence, a semblance, or else in some way unreally real; it is a cosmic illusion. For The Reality is one without a second, it is immutable in eternity, it is the sole   Existence; there is nothing else, there are no true becomings of this Being: it is and must for ever remain void of name, feature, formation, relation, happening; if it has a Consciousness, it can only be a pure consciousness of its own absolute being. But what then is the relation between The Reality and the Illusion? By what miracle or mystery does the Illusion come to be or how does it manage to appear or to abide in Time for ever?   As only Brahman is real, only a consciousness or a power of Brahman could be a real creator and a creator of realities.   --   Void but stands because it is imposed on Brahman, it is based in a way on the one Reality; we ourselves in the Illusion attribute its forms, names, relations, happenings to the Brahman, become aware of all things as the Brahman, see The Reality through these unrealities. There is then a reality in Maya; it is at the same time real and unreal, existent and non-existent; or, let us say, it is neither real nor unreal: it is a paradox, a suprarational enigma.   But what then is this mystery, or is it insoluble? how comes this   --   If Maya is in some way real, the conclusion imposes itself that Brahman The Reality is in that way the percipient of Maya.   Maya may be his power of differentiating perception, for the power of Maya consciousness which distinguishes it from the true consciousness of sole spiritual Self is its creative perception of difference. Or Maya must be at least, if this creation of difference is considered to be only a result and not the essence of   Maya-force, some power of Brahman's consciousness, - for it is only a consciousness that can see or create an illusion and there cannot be another original or originating consciousness than that of Brahman. But since Brahman is also self-aware for ever, there must be a double status of Brahman-Consciousness, one conscious of the sole Reality, the other conscious of the unrealities to which by its creative perception of them it gives some kind of apparent existence. These unrealities cannot be made of the substance of The Reality, for then they also must be real. In this view one cannot accept the assertion of the Upanishads that   460   --   If there is not this dual consciousness, if Maya is the sole conscious power of Brahman, then one of two things must be true: either The Reality of Maya as a power is that it is a subjective action of Brahman-consciousness emerging out of its silence and superconscient immobility and passing through experiences that are real because they are part of the consciousness of Brahman but unreal because they are not part of Its being, or else Maya is Brahman's power of cosmic Imagination inherent in his eternal being creating out of nothing names, forms and happenings that are not in any way real. In that case Maya would be real, but her works entirely fictitious, pure imaginations: but can we affirm Imagination as the sole dynamic or creative power of the   Eternal? Imagination is a necessity for a partial being with an ignorant consciousness; for it has to supplement its ignorance by imaginations and conjectures: there can be no place for such a movement in the sole consciousness of a sole Reality which has no reason to construct unrealities, for it is ever pure and selfcomplete. It is difficult to see what in its own being could impel or induce such a Sole Existence complete in its very essence, blissful in its eternity, containing nothing to be manifested, timelessly perfect, to create an unreal Time and Space and people it to all eternity with an interminable cosmic show of false images and happenings. This solution is logically untenable.   --   These solutions then must be put aside as untenable, unless we modify our first view of The Reality and concede to it a power of manifold status of consciousness or a power of manifold status of existence.   But, again, the dual consciousness, if we admit it, cannot be explained as a dual power of Knowledge-Ignorance valid   --   Eternal's self-awareness; it would be to impose the limitations of our own consciousness on the eternal Reality. An Ignorance which occurs or intervenes in the course of manifestation as a result of a subordinate action of Consciousness and as part of a divine cosmic plan and its evolutionary meaning, is one thing and is logically conceivable; a meaningless ignorance or illusion eternal in the original consciousness of The Reality is another thing and not easily conceivable; it appears as a violent mental construction which has no likelihood of validity in the truth of the Absolute. The dual consciousness of Brahman must be in no way an ignorance, but a self-awareness coexistent with a voluntary will to erect a universe of illusions which are held in a frontal perception aware at once of self and the illusory world, so that there is no delusion, no feeling of its reality. The delusion takes place only in the illusory world itself, and the Self or   Brahman in the world either enjoys with a free participation or witnesses, itself separate and intangible, the play which lays its magical spell only upon the Nature-mind created for her action by Maya. But this would seem to signify that the Eternal, not content with its pure absolute existence, has the need to create, to occupy itself throughout Time with a drama of names and forms and happenings; it needs, being sole, to see itself as many, being peace and bliss and self-knowledge to observe an experience or representation of mingled knowledge and ignorance, delight and suffering, unreal existence and escape from unreal existence. For the escape is for the individual being constructed by Maya; the   --   Will or Power to create or manifest is undoubtedly there: but, if it is a will or power of the Brahman, it can only be for a creation of realities of the Real or a manifestation of the timeless process of its being in Time-eternity; for it seems incredible that the sole power of The Reality should be to manifest something contrary to itself or to create non-existent things in an illusory universe.   There is so far no satisfying answer to the riddle: but it may be that we err in attri buting any kind of reality, however illusory at bottom, to Maya or her works: the true solution lies in facing courageously the mystery of its and their utter unreality. This absolute unreality seems to be envisaged by certain formulations of Illusionism or by certain arguments put forward in its favour.   This side then of the problem has to pass under consideration before we can examine with confidence the solutions that rest on a relative or partial reality of the universe. There is indeed a line of reasoning which gets rid of the problem by excluding it; it affirms that the question how the Illusion generated, how the universe manages to be there in the pure existence of Brahman, is illegitimate: the problem does not exist, because the universe is non-existent, Maya is unreal, Brahman is the sole truth, alone and self-existent for ever. Brahman is not affected by any illusory consciousness, no universe has come into existence within its timeless reality. But this evasion of the difficulty is either a sophism which means nothing, an acrobacy of verbal logic, the logical reason hiding its head in the play of words and ideas and refusing to see or to solve a real and baffling difficulty, or else it means too much, since in effect it gets rid of all relation of Maya to Brahman by affirming her as an independent absolute nonreality along with the universe created by her. If a real universe does not exist, a cosmic Illusion exists and we are bound to inquire how it came into being or how it manages to exist, what is its relation or non-relation to The Reality, what is meant by our own existence in Maya, by our subjugation to her cycles, by our liberation from her. For in this view we have to suppose that Brahman is not the percipient of Maya or her works, Maya herself is not a power of Brahman-consciousness: Brahman is   464   --   It may finally be put forward as a solution that the percipient individual and the percept universe are unreal, but Maya by imposing itself on Brahman acquires a certain reality, and that reality lends itself to the individual and to its experience in the cosmic Illusion which endures so long as it is subject to the illusion. But, again, for whom is the experience valid, The Reality acquired while it endures, and for whom does it cease by liberation, extinction or withdrawal? For an illusory unreal being cannot put on reality and suffer from a real bondage or escape from it by a real act of evasion or self-extinction; it can only seem to some real self or being to exist, but in that case this real self must in some way or in some degree have become subject to Maya. It must either be the consciousness of   Brahman that projects itself into a world of Maya and issues from Maya or it must be the being of Brahman that puts forth something of itself, its reality, into Maya and withdraws it again   --   Brahman involved in the Illusion and free from the Illusion, and a certain phenomenal truth of being for Maya: there can be no solution of our existence in the universe if that existence and the universe itself have no reality, - even though The Reality be only partial, restricted, derivative. But what can be The Reality of an original universal and fundamentally baseless Illusion? The only possible answer is that it is a suprarational mystery, inexplicable and ineffable, - anirvacanya.   There are, however, two possible replies to the difficulty, if we get rid of the idea of absolute unreality and admit a qualification or compromise. A basis can be created for a subjective illusion-consciousness which is yet part of Being, if we accept in the sense of an illusory subjective world-awareness the account of sleep and dream creation given to us in the Upanishads. For the affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman, but all that is is the   --    have been constructed by Maya, - is the Brahman, The Reality.   The Brahman becomes all these beings; all beings must be seen in the Self, The Reality, and The Reality must be seen in them, The Reality must be seen as being actually all these beings; for not only the Self is Brahman, but all is the Self, all this that is is the Brahman, The Reality. That emphatic asseveration leaves no room for an illusory Maya; but still the insistent denial that there is anything other than or separate from the experiencing self, certain phrases used and the description of two of the states of consciousness as sleep and dream may be taken as if they annulled the emphasis on the universal Reality; these passages open the gates to the illusionist idea and have been made the foundation for an uncompromising system of that nature. If we take this fourfold status as a figure of the Self passing from its superconscient state, where there is no subject or object, into a luminous trance in which superconscience becomes a massed consciousness out of which the subjective status of being and the objective come into emergence, then we get according to our view of things either a possible process of illusionary creation or a process of creative Self-knowledge and All-knowledge.   In fact, if we can judge from the description of the three lower states of Self as the all-wise Intelligence,5 the Seer of the subtle and the Seer of the gross material existence, this sleep state and this dream state seem to be figurative names for the superconscient and the subliminal which are behind and beyond our waking status; they are so named and figured because it is through dream and sleep - or trance which can be regarded   --   Reality; there need be no perception of an illusionary Maya, there is only an experience of the passage from Mind to what is beyond it so that our mental structure of the universe ceases to be valid and another reality of it is substituted for the ignorant mental knowledge. In this transition it is possible to be awake to all the states of being together in a harmonised and unified experience and to see The Reality everywhere. But if we plunge by a trance of exclusive concentration into a mystic sleep state or pass abruptly in waking Mind into a state belonging to the   Superconscient, then the mind can be seized in the passage by a sense of the unreality of the cosmic Force and its creations; it passes by a subjective abolition of them into the supreme superconscience. This sense of unreality and this sublimating passage are the spiritual justification for the idea of a world created by Maya; but this consequence is not conclusive, since a larger and more complete conclusion superseding it is possible to spiritual experience.   --   In face of this solution of a perplexity by a new perplexity we begin to suspect that our original premiss must have been somewhere incomplete, - not an error, but only a first statement and indispensable foundation. We begin to envisage The Reality as an eternal oneness, status, immutable essence of pure existence supporting an eternal dynamis, motion, infinite multiplicity and diversity of itself. The immutable status of oneness brings out of itself the dynamis, motion and multiplicity, - the dynamis, motion and multiplicity not abrogating but bringing into relief the eternal and infinite oneness. If the consciousness of Brahman can be dual in status or action or even manifold, there seems to be no reason why Brahman should be incapable of a dual status or a manifold real self-experience of its being. The cosmic consciousness would then be, not a creative Illusion, but an experience of some truth of the Absolute. This explanation, if   Reality and the Cosmic Illusion   --   In a second possible answer on the illusionist basis to the problem, in the philosophy of Shankara which may be described as a qualified Illusionism, an answer which is presented with a force and comprehensiveness that are extraordinarily impressive, we make a first step towards this solution. For this philosophy affirms a qualified reality for Maya; it characterises it indeed as an ineffable and unaccountable mystery, but at the same time it does present us with a rational solution, at first sight thoroughly satisfactory, of the opposition which afflicts our mind; it accounts for our sense of the persistent and pressing reality of the universe and our sense of the inconclusiveness, insufficiency, vanity, evanescence, a certain unreality of life and phenomena. For we find a distinction made between two orders of reality, transcendental and pragmatic, absolute and phenomenal, eternal and temporal, - the former The Reality of the pure being of Brahman, absolute and supracosmic and eternal, the latter The Reality of Brahman in Maya, cosmic, temporal and relative. Here we get a reality for ourselves and the universe: for the individual self is really Brahman; it is Brahman who within the field of Maya seems phenomenally to be subjected to her as the individual and in the end releases the relative and phenomenal individual into his eternal and true being. In the temporal field of relativities our experience of the Brahman who has become all beings, the Eternal who has become universal and individual, is also valid; it is indeed a middle step of the movement in Maya towards liberation from Maya. The universe too and its experiences are real for the consciousness in Time and that consciousness is real. But the question of the nature and extent of this reality at once arises: for the universe and   472   --    ourselves may be a true reality though of a lesser order, or they may be partly real, partly unreal, or they may be an unreal reality. If they are at all a true reality, there is no place for any theory of Maya; there is no illusory creation. If they are partly real, partly unreal, the fault must lie in something wrong either in the cosmic self-awareness or in our own seeing of ourselves and the universe which produces an error of being, an error of knowledge, an error in the dynamis of existence. But that error can amount only to an ignorance or a mixed knowledge and ignorance, and what needs to be explained then is not an original Cosmic Illusion but the intervention of Ignorance in the creative consciousness or in the dynamic action of the Eternal and Infinite. But if universe and ourselves are an unreal reality, if to a transcendental consciousness all this has no truth of existence and its apparent reality ceases once we step out of the field proper to Maya, then the concession accorded with one hand is taken away by the other; for what was conceded as a truth turns out to have been all the time an illusion. Maya and cosmos and ourselves are both real and unreal, - but The Reality is an unreal reality, real only to our ignorance, unreal to any true knowledge.   It is difficult to see why, once any reality is conceded to ourselves and to the universe, it should not be a true reality within its limits. It may be admitted that the manifestation must be on its surface a more restricted reality than the Manifested; our universe is, we may say, one of the rhythms of Brahman and not, except in its essential being, the whole reality: but that is not a sufficient reason for it to be set aside as unreal. It is no doubt so felt by mind withdrawing from itself and its structures: but this is only because the mind is an instrument of Ignorance and, when it withdraws from its constructions, from its ignorant and imperfect picture of the universe, it is impelled to regard them as nothing more than its own fictions and formations, unfounded, unreal; the gulf between its ignorance and the supreme Truth and Knowledge disables it from discovering the true connections of the transcendent Reality and the cosmic Reality. In a higher status of consciousness the difficulty disappears, the connection   --   But the universe is condemned as ultimately unreal because it is temporary and not eternal, a perishable form of being imposed on the Formless and Imperishable. This relation can be illustrated by the analogy of earth and the pot made out of earth: the pot and other forms so created perish and go back to The Reality, earth, they are only evanescent forms; when they disappear there is left the formless and essential earth and nothing else. But this analogy can tell more convincingly the other way; for the pot is real by right of its being made out of the substance of earth which is real; it is not an illusion and, even when it is dissolved into the original earth, its past existence cannot be thought to have been unreal or an illusion. The relation is not that of an original reality and a phenomenal unreality, but of an original,   - or, if we go back from earth to the invisible substratum and constituent ether, an eternal and non-manifest, - to a resultant and dependent, a temporal and manifested reality. Moreover, the pot form is an eternal possibility of earth substance, or ethereal substance, and while the substance exists the form can always be manifested. A form may disappear, but it only passes out of manifestation into non-manifestation; a world may disappear, but there is no proof that world-existence is an evanescent phenomenon: on the contrary, we may suppose that the power of manifestation is inherent in Brahman and continues to act either continuously in Time-eternity or in an eternal recurrence. The cosmic is a different order of the Real from the supracosmic   --   At the basis of the refusal to recognise the universe as real is the concept or experience of The Reality as immutable, featureless, non-active and realised through a consciousness that has itself fallen into a status of silence and is immobile. The universe is a result of dynamis in movement, it is force of being throwing itself out in action, energy at work, whether that energy be conceptive or mechanical or a spiritual, mental, vital or   Reality and the Cosmic Illusion   --   Reality, therefore unreal. But as a concept this position of the thought has no inevitability; there is no reason why we should not conceive of The Reality as at once static and dynamic. It is perfectly rational to suppose that the eternal status of being of The Reality contains in it an eternal force of being, and this dynamis must necessarily carry in itself a power of action and movement, a kinesis; both status of being and movement of being can be real. There is no reason either why they should not be simultaneous; on the contrary, simultaneity is demanded, - for all energy, all kinetic action has to support itself on status or by status if it is to be effective or creative; otherwise there will be no solidity of anything created, only a constant whirl without any formation: status of being, form of being are necessary to kinesis of being. Even if energy be the primal reality, as it seems to be in the material world, still it has to create status of itself, lasting forms, duration of beings in order to have a support for its action: the status may be temporary, it may be only a balance or equilibrium of substance created and maintained by a constant kinesis, but while it endures it is real and, after it ceases, we still regard it as something that was real. The principle of a supporting status for action is a permanent principle, and its action is constant in Time-eternity. When we discover the stable   Reality underlying all this movement of energy and this creation of forms, we do indeed perceive that the status of created forms is only temporary; there is a stability of repetition of the kinesis in a same persistent action and figure of movement which maintains substance of being in stable form of itself: but this stability is created, and the one permanent and self-existent status is that of the eternal Being whose Energy erected the forms. But we need not therefore conclude that the temporary forms are unreal; for the energy of the being is real and the forms made by it are forms of the being. In any case the status of the being and the eternal dynamis of the being are both real, and they are simultaneous; the status admits of action of dynamis and the action does not abrogate the status. We must therefore conclude that eternal   --    status and eternal dynamis are both true of The Reality which itself surpasses both status and dynamis; the immobile and the mobile Brahman are both the same Reality.   But in experience we find that for us it is, normally, a quiescence that brings in the stable realisation of the eternal and the infinite: it is in silence or quietude that we feel most firmly the   Something that is behind the world shown to us by our mind and senses. Our cognitive action of thought, our action of life and being seem to overlay the truth, The Reality; they grasp the finite but not the infinite, they deal with the temporal and not the eternal Real. It is reasoned that this is so because all action, all creation, all determining perception limits; it does not embrace or grasp The Reality, and its constructions disappear when we enter into the indivisible and indeterminable consciousness of the Real: these constructions are unreal in eternity, however real they may seem or be in Time. Action leads to ignorance, to the created and finite; kinesis and creation are a contradiction of the immutable Reality, the pure uncreated Existence. But this reasoning is not wholly valid because it is looking at perception and action only as they are in our mental cognition of the world and its movement; but that is the experience of our surface being regarding things from its shifting motion in Time, a regard itself superficial, fragmentary and delimited, not total, not plunging into the inner sense of things. In fact we find that action need not bind or limit, if we get out of this moment-cognition into a status of cognition of the eternal proper to the true consciousness.   Action does not bind or limit the liberated man; action does not bind or limit the Eternal: but we can go farther and say that action does not bind or limit our own true being at all. Action has no such effect on the spiritual Person or Purusha or on the psychic entity within us, it binds or limits only the surface constructed personality. This personality is a temporary expression of our self-being, a changing form of it, empowered to exist by it, dependent on it for substance and endurance, - temporary, but not unreal. Our thought and action are means for this expression of ourselves and, as the expression is incomplete and evolutive, as it is a development of our natural being in Time, thought   --    any finality, - the conflict of an intuition intensely aware of an absolute transcendent and inmost Reality and a strong intellectual reason regarding the world with a keen and vigorous rational intelligence. The intellect of the thinker regards the phenomenal world from the standpoint of the reason; reason is there the judge and the authority and no suprarational authority can prevail against it: but behind the phenomenal world is a transcendent Reality which the intuition alone can see; there reason - at least a finite dividing limited reason - cannot prevail against the intuitive experience, it cannot even relate the two, it cannot therefore solve the mystery of the universe. The reason has to affirm The Reality of the phenomenal existence, to affirm its truths as valid; but they are valid only in that phenomenal existence. This phenomenal existence is real because it is a temporal phenomenon of the eternal Existence, The Reality: but it is not itself that Reality and, when we pass beyond the phenomenon to the Real, it still exists but is no longer valid to our consciousness; it is therefore unreal. Shankara takes up this contradiction, this opposition which is normal to our mental consciousness when it becomes aware of both sides of existence and stands between them; he resolves it by obliging the reason to recognise its limits, in which its unimpaired sovereignty is left to it within its own cosmic province, and to acquiesce in the soul's intuition of the transcendent Reality and to support, by a dialectic which ends by dissolving the whole cosmic phenomenal and rational-practical edifice of things, its escape from the limitations constructed and imposed on the mind by Maya. The explanation of cosmic existence by which this is brought about seems to be - or so we may translate it to our understanding, for there have been different expositions of this profound and subtle philosophy, - that there is a Transcendence which is for ever self-existent and immutable and a world which is only phenomenal and temporal. The eternal Reality manifests itself in regard to the phenomenal world as Self and Ishwara. The Ishwara by his Maya, his power of phenomenal creation, constructs this world as a temporal phenomenon, and this phenomenon of things which do not exist in the utterly Real is imposed by   Reality and the Cosmic Illusion   --   Reality appears in the phenomenal existence as the Self of the living individual; but when the individuality of the individual is dissolved by intuitive knowledge, the phenomenal being is released into self-being: it is no longer subject to Maya and by its release from the appearance of individuality it is extinguished in The Reality; but the world continues to exist without beginning or end as the Mayic creation of the Ishwara.   This is an arrangement which puts into relation with each other the data of the spiritual intuition and the data of the reason and sense, and it opens to us a way out from their contradiction, a spiritual and practical issue: but it is not a solution, it does not resolve the contradiction. Maya is real and unreal; the world is not a mere illusion, for it exists and is real in Time, but eventually and transcendentally it turns out to be unreal. This creates an ambiguity which extends beyond itself and touches all that is not the pure self-existence. Thus the Ishwara, though he is undeluded by Maya and the creator of Maya, seems himself to be a phenomenon of Brahman and not the ultimate Reality, he is real only with regard to the Time-world he creates; the individual self has the same ambiguous character. If Maya were to cease altogether from its operations, Ishwara, the world and the individual would no longer be there; but Maya is eternal,   --   Reason and finding out through spiritual experience where they meet and become one and what is the spiritual reality of their apparent divergence. In fact, in the Brahman-consciousness the divergences cannot exist, they must by our passage into it converge into unity; the divisions of the intellectual reason may correspond to a reality, but it must be then The Reality of a manifold Oneness. The Buddha applied his penetrating rational intellect supported by an intuitive vision to the world as our mind and sense see it and discovered the principle of its construction and the way of release from all constructions, but he refused to go farther. Shankara took the farther step and regarded the suprarational Truth, which Buddha kept behind the veil as realisable by cancellation of the constructions of consciousness but   Reality and the Cosmic Illusion   --    beyond the scope of the reason's discovery. Shankara, standing between the world and the eternal Reality, saw that the mystery of the world must be ultimately suprarational, not conceivable or expressible by our reason, anirvacanya; but he maintained the world as seen by the reason and sense as valid and had therefore to posit an unreal reality, because he did not take one step still farther. For to know the real truth of the world, its reality, it must be seen from the suprarational awareness, from the view of the Superconscience that maintains and surpasses and by surpassing knows it in its truth, and no longer from the view of the consciousness that is maintained by it and surpassed by it and therefore does not know it or knows it only by its appearance. It cannot be that to that self-creative supreme consciousness the world is an incomprehensible mystery or that it is to it an illusion that is yet not altogether an illusion, a reality that is yet unreal. The mystery of the universe must have a divine sense to the Divine; it must have a significance or a truth of cosmic being that is luminous to The Reality that upholds it with its transcending and yet immanent superconscience.   If The Reality alone exists and all is The Reality, the world also cannot be excluded from that Reality; the universe is real. If it does not reveal to us in its forms and powers The Reality that it is, if it seems only a persistent and yet changing movement in   Space and Time, this must be not because it is unreal or because it is not at all That, but because it is a progressive self-expression, a manifestation, an evolving self-development of That in Time which our consciousness cannot yet see in its total or its essential significance. In this sense we can say that it is That and not That,   - because it does not disclose all The Reality through any form or sum of its forms of self-expression; but still all its forms are forms of the substance and being of that Reality. All finites are in their spiritual essence the Infinite and, if we look deep enough into them, manifest to intuition the Identical and Infinite. It is contended indeed that the universe cannot be a manifestation because The Reality has no need of manifestation, since it is for ever manifest to itself; but so equally it can be said that The Reality has no need of self-illusion or illusion of any kind,   482   --    manifestation; for they are held always implicit and potential in the essence of things and in the essential consciousness from which they emerge: timeless consciousness can always turn their abiding potentiality into terms of time actuality. The world would be unreal only if itself and its forms were images without substance of being, figments of consciousness presented to itself by The Reality as pure figments and then abolished for ever.   But if manifestation or the power of manifestation is eternal, if all is the being of Brahman, The Reality, then this unreality or illusoriness cannot be the fundamental character of things or of the cosmos in which they make their appearance.   A theory of Maya in the sense of illusion or the unreality of cosmic existence creates more difficulties than it solves; it does not really solve the problem of existence, but rather renders it for ever insoluble. For, whether Maya be an unreality or a nonreal reality, the ultimate effects of the theory carry in them a devastating simplicity of nullification. Ourselves and the universe fade away into nothingness or else keep for a time only a truth which is little better than a fiction. In the thesis of the pure unreality of Maya, all experience, all knowledge as well as all ignorance, the knowledge that frees us no less than the ignorance that binds us, world-acceptance and world-refusal, are two sides of an illusion; for there is nothing to accept or refuse, nobody to accept or refuse it. All the time it was only the immutable superconscient Reality that at all existed; the bondage and release were only appearances, not a reality. All attachment to world-existence is an illusion, but the call for liberation is also a circumstance of the illusion; it is something that was created in Maya which by its liberation is extinguished in Maya. But this nullification cannot be compelled to stop short in its devastating advance at the boundary fixed for it by a spiritual Illusionism. For if all other experiences of the individual consciousness in the universe are illusions, then what guarantee is there that its spiritual experiences are not illusions, including even its absorbed self-experience of the supreme Self which is conceded to us as utterly real? For if cosmos is untrue, our experience of the cosmic consciousness, of the universal Self, of   --   Self, the silent, static or absolute Reality, since that too comes to us in a mind moulded of delusion and formed in a body created by an Illusion? An overwhelming self-evident convincingness, an experience of absolute au thenticity in the realisation or experience is not an unanswerable proof of sole reality or sole finality: for other spiritual experiences such as that of the omnipresent Divine Person, Lord of a real Universe, have the same convincing, au thentic and final character. It is open to the intellect which has once arrived at the conviction of the unreality of all other things, to take a farther step and deny The Reality of   Self and of all existence. The Buddhists took this last step and refused reality to the Self on the ground that it was as much as the rest a construction of the mind; they cut not only God but the eternal Self and impersonal Brahman out of the picture.   --   - ekatma-pratyaya-saram - with which this realisation seizes the consciousness of the spiritual seeker. But still all spiritual experience is experience of the Infinite and it takes a multitude of directions; some of them - and not this alone - are so close to the Divine and the Absolute, so penetrated with The Reality of Its presence or with the ineffable peace and power of the liberation from all that is less than It, that they carry with them this overwhelming sense of finality complete and decisive. There are a hundred ways of approaching the Supreme Reality and, as is the nature of the way taken, so will be the nature of the ultimate experience by which one passes into That which is ineffable, That of which no report can be given to the mind or expressed by any utterance. All these definitive culminations may be regarded as penultimates of the one Ultimate; they are steps by which the soul crosses the limits of Mind into the   Reality and the Cosmic Illusion   --   A consummating experience which proceeds by the exceeding and elimination of all other possible but lesser experiences is, as a step towards the Absolute, admissible. A supreme experience which affirms and includes the truth of all spiritual experience, gives to each its own absolute, integralises all knowledge and experience in a supreme reality, might be the one step farther that is at once a largest illuminating and transforming Truth of all things and a highest infinite Transcendence. The Brahman, the supreme Reality, is That which being known all is known; but in the illusionist solution it is That, which being known, all becomes unreal and an incomprehensible mystery: in this other experience, The Reality being known, all assumes its true significance, its truth to the Eternal and Absolute.   All truths, even those which seem to be in conflict, have their validity, but they need a reconciliation in some largest   --   But still unreality is a fact of cosmic existence, and if all is the Brahman, The Reality, we have to account for this element of unreality in the Real. If the unreal is not a fact of being, it must be an act or a formation of consciousness, and is there not   496   --    then a status or degree of consciousness in which its acts and formations are wholly or partly unreal? If this unreality cannot be attri buted to an original cosmic Illusion, to Maya, there is still in the universe itself a power of illusion of Ignorance. It is in the power of the Mind to conceive things that are not real, it is in its power even to create things that are not real or not wholly real; its very view of itself and universe is a construction that is not wholly real or wholly unreal. Where does this element of unreality begin and where does it stop, and what is its cause and what ensues on the removal of both the cause and the consequence? Even if all cosmic existence is not in itself unreal, cannot that description be applied to the world of Ignorance in which we live, this world of constant change and birth and death and frustration and suffering, and does not the removal of the Ignorance abolish for us The Reality of the world which it creates, or is not a departure out of it the natural and only issue? This would be valid, if our ignorance were a pure ignorance without any element of truth or knowledge in it. But in fact our consciousness is a mixture of the true and the false; its acts and creations are not a pure invention, a baseless structure. The structure it builds, its form of things or form of the universe, is not a mixture of reality and the unreal so much as a half comprehension, a half expression of the real, and, since all consciousness is force and therefore potentially creative, our ignorance has the result of wrong creation, wrong manifestation, wrong action or misconceived and misdirected energy of the being. All world-existence is manifestation, but our ignorance is the agent of a partial, limited and ignorant manifestation, - in part an expression but in part also a disguise of the original being, consciousness and delight of existence. If this state of things is permanent and unalterable, if our world must always move in this circle, if some Ignorance is the cause of all things and all action here and not a condition and circumstance, then indeed the cessation of individual ignorance could only come by an escape of the individual from world-being, and a cessation of the cosmic ignorance would be the destruction of world-being.   But if this world has at its root an evolutionary principle, if

2.07 - On Congress and Politics, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    Sri Aurobindo: In the first four Khalifas there was The Reality of the Khilafat. They were the centres of Islamic culture and had some spirituality. After that the Umayad and other dynasties came and it became more and more religious and external. When it passed into the hands of the Turks it became a mere political institution without the fact of it.    Disciple: The nationalists seem to be in the majority in the Indian Central Assembly.   --    Sri Aurobindo: It seems only a mental construction without any idea of The Reality. In this way sometimes people injure the very cause for which they stand. I should be on good terms with my neighbour, but that does not mean that I should allow him to come into my house and occupy it.    Disciple: He advises the Indians to extend the hand of friendship and help Europe in its forlorn condition.

2.07 - The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Knowledge and the Ignorance or of the Illusion, if it exists, and The Reality. Being is no doubt the fundamental object of inquiry, things in themselves and things in their nature; but it is only through consciousness that we can approach Being. Or if it be maintained that we can only reach Being, enter into the Real, because it is superconscient, through extinction or transcendence of consciousness or through its self-transcendence and self-transformation, it is still through consciousness that we must arrive at the knowledge of this necessity and the process or power of execution of this extinction or this self-transcendence, this transformation: then, through consciousness, to know of the   Superconscient Truth becomes the supreme need and to discover the power and process of consciousness by which it can pass into superconscience, the supreme discovery.   --   Reality; Brahman The Reality must itself either be or have or support a constructing Mind or some constructive consciousness greater than Mind but of an analogous nature, must be by its activity or its sanction the creator and even perhaps in some sort by participation a victim, like Mind, of its own illusion and error. It would not be less perplexing if Mind were simply a medium or mirror in which there falls the reflection of an original illusion or a false image or shadow of The Reality. For the origin of this medium of reflection would be inexplicable and the origin also of the false image cast upon it would be inexplicable. An indeterminable Brahman could only be reflected as something indeterminable, not as a manifold universe. Or if it be the inequality of the reflecting medium, its nature as of rippling and restless water that creates broken images of the   Reality, still it would be broken and distorted reflections of the   Truth that would appear there, not a pullulation of false names and images of things that had no source or basis of existence in The Reality. There must be some manifold truth of the one Reality which is reflected, however falsely or imperfectly, in the manifold images of the mind's universe. It could then very well be that the   The Knowledge and the Ignorance   --    world might be a reality and only the mind's construction of it or picture of it erroneous or imperfect. But this would imply that there is a Knowledge, other than our mental thought and perception which is only an attempt at knowing, a true cognition which is aware of The Reality and aware also in it of the truth of a real universe.   For if we found that the highest Reality and an ignorant   --   Ignorance could then be accepted among them as reverse aspects, as powers of an involved consciousness and a self-limited knowledge brought forward because necessary to a certain movement in Time, a movement of involution and evolution of The Reality.   If suprarational in its basis, this total conception is not altogether a paradox; it only demands a change, an enlargement in our conceptions of the Infinite.

2.07 - The Supreme Word of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The idea of the Divine on which the Gita insists as the secret of the whole mystery of existence, the knowledge that leads to liberation, is one that bridges the opposition between the cosmic procession in Time and a supracosmic eternity without denying either of them or taking anything from The Reality of either. It harmonises the pantheistic, the theistic and the highest transcendental terms of our spiritual conception and spiritual experience. The Divine is the unborn Eternal who has no origin; there is and can be nothing before him from which he proceeds, because he is one and timeless and absolute. "Neither the gods nor the great Rishis know any birth of me. . . . He who knows   Gita, X. 1-18.

2.08 - ALICE IN WONDERLAND, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism   The idea of the Ultimate Reality is the principal doctrine of Plato; and I started by saying that we are living in a world of ideas when we live a spiritual life, when we behave religiously, conduct worship and chant Mantras, do prayers, do Japa and even meditation; but there is a very uncomfortable consequence following the idea that, after all, The Reality is an idea.   Ideas are abstractions, notions which are supposed to correspond to realities, and as long as ideas correspond to realities, they are valid. I have an idea that there is a building in front of me. This idea is a valid idea, because it corresponds with the real existence of the building outside. So, the validity of my idea depends upon The Reality of the object which is in front of it, but my idea itself has no reality. It is borrowed reality. It hangs on the existence of something else outside, in this case, the building. So, if the idea of the Ultimate Reality or God is to hang on the existence of another thing, God is not a real being. This is a very subtle difficulty that may trouble the minds of even sincere seekers. Dont you think that the world is real? It is not merely real, it is very, very real, hard to the core, flint-like and no one can gainsay that it is. Perhaps that alone is.   God is an idea that has been introduced in our minds by our ancestors, by our books, by our scriptures, by our professors and our teachers and parents, and somehow, we have been forced by the logic of this teaching to believe there should be such a thing as an other-worldly existence and we have somehow reconciled ourselves to itGod must be there. But we are accepting the existence of God against our own will. We are hungry and thirsty and this hunger and thirst of the body is more real than the idea of God. No one can say that it is not so, whatever be our devotion to God. This is so even in the case of advanced seekers and sincere Sadhaks (aspirants). This subject is the principal theme of Platos doctrine.   Ideas precede reality: this one sentence is the entire philosophy of Plato. The Reality of the objective universe is subsequent to the idea of the universe. Here we have an echo of the great philosophy of Vedanta that the Hiranyagarbha (cosmic intelligence) is prior to the cosmos of physical appearance. The Panchadasi, The Upanishads and the other systems of Vedantic thinking tell us that in Hiranyagarbha the world does not exist in a concrete form as it appears, that is only an idea cosmically manifested by Isvara (God) who is even subtler than the idea. Isvara is only a possibility of the very idea that there should be a thing called the universe. So, Isvara is subtler than the idea which is Hiranyagarbha, and Virat is supposed to be the animating consciousness behind the so-called physicality of creation. So, even in the Vedantic Philosophy, there is the same doctrine of idea preceding concrete existence. But we can never believe this.   My idea that there is a desk in front of me cannot be said to be harder in its concreteness than the desk itself. I have an idea that there is a little table in front of me. Is the table more real or the idea that the table is there more real? Any man with common-sense will say that the idea is subsequent to the existence of the object called table and the idea is not preceding the object. Because there is a table, you think there is a table. You have an idea that there is an object. So, the idea that there is an object is the consequence of the existence of the object. So, the idea of God must be subsequent and not precedent.   --   This is a very terrible problem before us. Notwithstanding the fact that we are devotees of God and honest religious thinkers, the concreteness of the world and The Reality of the things we see with our eyes and contact with our senses cannot be abrogated merely by the notion that ideas are precedent. Ideas cannot be precedent as long as we are accustomed to thinking in the way we are thinking today. Here is a man coming: I am saying like this. This man is there; therefore I have an idea that he is coming. If the man was not there, the idea cannot be there. It is not the I think the man first than the man comes. The man is there and the idea comes afterwards.   So, realism has a great fort before it. There cannot be an idea unless an object exists already.   --   Read the great book of Samuel Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, which is the great exposition of the structure of the universe which is so hard and real in space-time only. Space-time is not a substance. It is not something tangible. You cannot touch it, you cannot see it, you cannot sense it, you cannot taste it, you cannot smell it. And a thing which cannot be sensed is not reality at all. But that is The Reality!   It pinpoints, pressurises into a movement, a force. And space-time becomes motion, manifesting itself into the primary qualities of length, breadth and height. Remember length, breadth and height do not mean length, breadth and height of a substance. They have never come into being. These are difficult things to understand. Only a purely impersonal thinker or mathematician will be able to appreciate or understand. How can there be a conception of length, breadth and height unless objects are there?

2.08 - Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga    self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality. Living within the Ignorance, from moment to moment, from field to field, from relation to relation, the conscious soul stumbles on in the error of a fragmentary knowledge.6 It is not a nescience, but a view and experience of The Reality which is partly true and partly false, as all knowledge must be which ignores the essence and sees only fugitive parts of the phenomenon. On the other hand, to be shut up in a featureless consciousness of unity, ignorant of the manifest Brahman, is described as itself also a blind darkness. In truth, neither is precisely darkness, but one is the dazzling by a concentrated Light, the other the illusive proportions of things seen in a dispersed, hazy and broken light, half mist, half seeing. The divine consciousness is not shut up in either, but holds the immutable One and the mutable Many in one eternal all-relating, all-uniting self-knowledge.   Memory, in the dividing consciousness, is a crutch upon which mind supports itself as it stumbles on driven helplessly, without possibility of stay or pause, in the rushing speed of Time.   --   Therefore through that it can most easily lay hold on the fact of eternal being, on The Reality; all the rest it is tempted, when it considers things narrowly, to look on not merely as phenomenon, but as, possibly, error, ignorance, illusion, because they no longer appear to it directly real. So the Illusionist considers them; the only thing he holds to be truly real is that eternal self which lies behind the mind's direct present self-consciousness. Or else, like the Buddhist, one comes to regard even that eternal self as an illusion, a representation, a subjective image, a mere imagination or false sensation and false idea of being. Mind becomes to its own view a fantastic magician, its works and itself at once strangely existent and non-existent, a persistent reality and yet a fleeting error which it accounts for or does not account for, but in any case is determined to slay and get done with both itself and its works so that it may rest, may cease in the timeless repose of the Eternal from the vain representation of appearances.   But, in truth, our sharp distinctions made between the without and the within, the present and the past self-consciousness are tricks of the limited unstable action of mind. Behind the mind and using it as its own surface activity there is a stable consciousness in which there is no binding conceptual division between itself in the present and itself in the past and future; and yet it knows itself in Time, in the present, past and future, but at once, with an undivided view which embraces all the mobile experiences of the Time-self and holds them on the foundation of the immobile timeless self. This consciousness we can become aware of when we draw back from the mind and its activities or when these fall silent. But we see first its immobile status, and if we regard only the immobility of the self, we may say of it that it is not only timeless, but actionless, without movement of idea, thought, imagination, memory, will, self-sufficient, selfabsorbed and therefore void of all action of the universe. That then becomes alone real to us and the rest a vain symbolising in non-existent forms - or forms corresponding to nothing truly existent - and therefore a dream. But this self-absorption is only

2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    Sri Aurobindo: It must be due to the fact that once you get into the vital plane you find it very difficult to get to the Truth. The general idea is that for the experience of the Brahmic consciousness one must be always indrawn. But that is not quite true. I first had the silent Brahmic consciousness at Baroda as soon as I quieted my mind. It came, of course, to the mental being and I kept it for about a month. But I was not unconscious. I saw people and things as Maya all things only small and the One, The Reality, behind them.    The experience of Shunyam is still more striking because you get into it by a sort of negation even of the Atman.

2.09 - The Release from the Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   This cannot be done without an uncompromising abolition of the ego-sense at its very basis and source. In the path of Knowledge one attempts this abolition, negatively by a denial of The Reality of the ego, positively by a constant fixing of the thought upon the idea of the One and the Infinite in itself or the One and Infinite everywhere. This, if persistently done changes in the end the mental outlook on oneself and the whole world and there is a kind of mental realisation; but afterwards by degrees or perhaps rapidly and imperatively and almost at the beginning the mental realisation deepens into spiritual experience -- a realisation in the very substance of our being. More and more frequent conditions come of something indefinable and illimitable, a peace, a silence, a joy, a bliss beyond expression, a sense of absolute impersonal Power, a pure existence, a pure consciousness, an all-pervading Presence. The ego persists in itself or in its habitual movements, but the peace of the One becomes more and more inured, the others are broken, crushed, more and more rejected, becoming weak in their intensity, limp or mechanical in their action. In the end there is a constant giving up of the whole consciousness into the being of the Supreme. In the beginning when the restless confusion and obscuring impurity of our outward nature is active, when the mental, vital, physical ego-sense are still powerful, this new mental outlook, these experiences may be found difficult in the extreme: but once that triple egoism is discouraged or moribund and the instruments of the Spirit are set right and purified, in an entirely pure, silent, clarified, widened consciousness the purity, infinity, stillness of the One reflects itself like the sky in a limpid lake. A meeting or a taking in of the reflected Consciousness by that which reflects it becomes more and more pressing and possible, the bridging or abolition of the atmospheric gulf between that immutable ethereal impersonal vastness and this once mobile whirl or narrow stream of personal existence is no longer an arduous improbability and may be even a frequent experience, if not yet an entirely permanent state. For even before complete purification, if the strings of the egoistic heart and mind are already sufficiently frayed and loosened, the Jiva can by a sudden snapping of the main cords escape, ascending like a bird freed into the spaces or widening like a liberated flood into the One and Infinite. There is first a sudden sense of a cosmic consciousness, a casting of oneself into the universal; from that universality one can aspire more easily, aspire to the Transcendent. There is a pushing back and rending or a rushing down of the walls that imprisoned our conscious being; there is, a loss of all sense of individuality and personality, of all placement in Space or Time or action and law of Nature; there is no longer an ego, a person definite and definable, but only consciousness, only existence, only peace and bliss; one becomes immortality, becomes eternity, becomes infinity. All that is left of the personal soul is a hymn of peace and freedom and bliss vibrating somewhere in the Eternal.   When there is an insufficient purity in the mental being, the release appears at first to be partial and temporary; the Jiva seems to descend again into the egoistic life and the higher consciousness to be withdrawn from him. In reality, what happens is that a cloud or veil intervenes between the lower nature and the higher consciousness and the prakriti resumes for a time its old habit of working under the pressure but not always with a knowledge or present memory of that high experience. What works in it then is a ghost of the old ego supporting a mechanical repetition of the old habits upon the remnants of confusion and impurity still left in the system. The cloud intervenes and disappears, the rhythm of ascent and descent renews itself until the impurity has been worked out. This period of alternations may easily be long in the integral Yoga; for there an entire perfection of the system is required; it must be capable at all times and in all conditions and all circumstances, whether of action or inaction, of admitting and then living in the consciousness of the supreme Truth. Nor is it enough for the Sadhaka to have the utter realisation only in the trance of Samadhi or in a motionless quietude, but he must in trance or in waking, in passive reflection or energy of action be able to remain in the constant Samadhi of the firmly founded Brahmic consciousness349a. But if or when our conscious being has become sufficiently pure and clear, then there is a firm station in the higher consciousness. The impersonalised Jiva, one with the universal or possessed by the Transcendent, lives high-seated above349b and looks down undisturbed at whatever remnants of the old working of Nature may revisit the system. He cannot be moved by the workings of the three modes of prakriti in his lower being, nor can he be shaken from his station by the attacks even of grief and suffering. And finally, there being no veil between, the higher peace overpowers the lower disturbance and mobility. There is a settled silence in which the soul can take sovereign possession of itself above and below and altogether.

2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy   Nature, all the naturalness and all The Reality, of the inner quite   as much as of the outer world. They hedged themselves in behind all

2.1.01 - God The One Reality, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   [ . . . ] & hope to get [out] of it into some other supraterrestrial state of existence. Human life on earth can then never grow into anything fundamentally other, better or more perfect than it is now. The hope that by using our reason and observing or utilising the laws of Nature we can arrive at a perfect life here is futile, for our nature here being itself ignorant and imperfect cannot arrive at anything better than a mitigated imperfection and ignorance. But if there is a means by which we can arrive at a true knowledge of The Reality behind things and enter into its Truth and Light and Power then there is no reason why our life here should not become divine and perfect. It is through Yoga that this means can be found and this emergence become possible.   A greater existence and consciousness than what we are now or are in our surface being, to which yet we can by certain means raise ourself and become or enter into that, - this is the postulate of all Yoga.

2.1.02 - Nature The World-Manifestation, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Gita, or the Divine himself in his aspect of multiplicity, or a separate being dependent on the Divine, as is held by the dualists, or an illusory self-perception of the soul subject to Maya, The Reality being the Divine himself, indivisible and ever unmanifested - one thing is certain that what appears as the Jiva is something unborn and eternal.   24   --   All existence is one in The Reality; manifold in its manifestation of The Reality. The Reality is the Absolute, the Spirit, the Self, the Being, the One-Existence, which is all and everywhere, but which is also more than all and nowhere. This One can be all because it is no one in particular, it can be all-pervading and eternal in its essence because it is not bound by Space or by Time.   It is One but it is also multitudinous, its multitudes are the selfexpression, not the denial, the abundance, not the division or fragmentation of its oneness. Each being of its multitudes seems to be a portion of the One, a finite of the Infinite, a time-face and time-form of the Eternal; but in and behind this appearance is The Reality, and there each is itself the One displaying something of itself, each is the Infinite in a finite phenomenon of itself, each is the Eternal playing in Time. But Time too is eternal, Time is eternity in extension and movement, therefore each is in its reality an eternal being of the Eternal, an infinite of the Infinite, a spirit of the One spirit, a self of the One Self. For The Reality is beyond our oppositions of one and many; its oneness and its multitude are for ever inherent in each other; yet it is bound neither by its unity nor its multiplicity, though both are true, because it is that of which both are intimate aspects, - it is the   Absolute.   --   An object changes, a person changes, a condition of things changes. But can it be said that the object is no real object but only a continuity of change, or that a person is not a person but a continuity of change, a condition of things is not a condition and there are no things but there is only a continuity of change? This seems to be an illustration of the besetting sin of metaphysics - to exalt a word into a reality or an idea into a reality - without fathoming what is The Reality which it tries to indicate. For to label with a word or name is not to fathom and to define, to erect a concept is not to fathom. Fathom for us then what is change before you ask us to accept it as the only reality. You may say I have fathomed it, I have seen it to be the one constant real, but do not ask me to define what it is; "listen rather in silence to the silence of Nature and you too will fathom". But what if, so listening, I fathom other realities than change - let us say, immutable being as well as mutable force, status as well as change? To prevent that you plunge into speech and not silence, into dialectics of the intellect instead of the undebatable certitudes of intuition, and so abandon your own methodology. If intuition alone is to be used, then you must give a place to my intuition as well as yours and all, however   Nature: The World-Manifestation   --   Self in each individual which enables him to have the knowledge by removing from him the Maya power. How this can be, can only be explained by analogies. As a man mistakes a rope for a snake, and then discovers it is a rope and there is no snake, so the mind thinks there is a world where there is only Brahman and discovers in the end that there is only Brahman; - or as a man mistakes mother of pearl for real pearl and runs after it and is then disillusioned and leaves it to go after The Reality. As a pot is only a name and form of earth and earth is the only reality, so the world and the individual are only a name and form; break the pot, it will go back to its original earth; break the name and form in the consciousness, get rid of the individual, and there will be only Brahman in the consciousness. There are many golden ornaments, but The Reality of them all is the gold; it is that alone which has value. So Brahman only is worth having; the rest is name and form and mere vanity. Or if these analogies seem to be only physical images not valid for a supraphysical fact, observe how you dream. The dream has no reality, yet is real to your consciousness while it lasts. The you in the dream is an unreal you; you awake to your real self. So the world is a dream; falling asleep to the world, the dream ceases; awake to the Brahman, the dream is convinced of unreality. That is the only possible and a quite sufficient answer.   Is it a sufficient answer? Does it prove the main point that the world consciousness is an apparent and unreal modification of the ever unmodifiable Brahman and therefore to be dispelled as quickly as possible, so that I may cease to exist, except insofar as I already eternally exist, not at all as I, but as the Brahman?

2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga    variety; it traces out the processes of thinking, demarcates the observed constituents of personality; it evaluates men from what they say and do, not from what they are, for that it cannot see. It discovers by analysis or makes a synthesis by fitting together the fragments of things. Eventually it discovers the phenomenon, but misses The Reality; it knows things as objects but knows nothing about things in themselves. Reality is beyond its grasp, it is only sure about the appearance. This is much for one who emerged out of nescient Matter and started as the ignorant animal, but it is not enough to make of man the crown of creation and the last apex of the evolution.   If man's knowledge and his way of knowledge are imperfect, still more imperfect are his living and his doing. [His] works sometimes attain perfection. Some men have done well in poetry and the arts and crafts, more have done badly, most are conventional copyists or botchers. In science and works with a scientific basis, men have certainly done well and their works were often efficient or masterly, for there all is method and rule and there the human mind seeks to master and execute what he has to do and that he can always do. Few have insight in works, fewer have any originality.   --   This consummation can only take place by an evolution of the consciousness of the individual and humanity beyond its present stage of development; it can take place only if man is ready to take the turn towards which Nature has been slowly leading him, to discover himself, to know himself as soul and spirit, to see and lay firm hold on The Reality behind world and life and things after which he has been seeking through the ages. Nature's first evolution has been an evolution of Matter, of physical objects, of the stage, scenery, external conditions and instruments of the drama of an evolving conscious Life in   Matter. In life itself she has been content at first to organise a physicality, an externality of life; the evolution of the body has been the sign, the instrument, the apparent cause of the evolution of consciousness. Even when she has arrived at the evolution of Mind, the mind of a humanity which is capable not only of knowing outwardly the external world but of going within itself, of knowing itself, of knowing the secret things, powers, forces which are behind itself and behind the works of a surface external Nature, still she has been most careful to organise a surface Mind dealing with surface and external things and an organisation of personality which is superficial and not the whole of ourselves, a wave only of the ocean of our hidden being, our secret reality. To build an ego which will deal with material life and nature as its user but also as its subject, a life that is bound by matter, a mind that is bound by both matter and life has been her main preoccupation. But still the evolution of consciousness is the real and central fact which gives a significance otherwise altogether lacking to the mechanical structure of the universe. Man is here not merely to utilise his world for the service of his individual and collective ego; he is here as a medium in which the Spirit within, the secret growing Consciousness can evolve farther its selfmanifestation, arrive from a partial to a complete consciousness and, since life itself is there only as a means of this evolution and an image of it, at a complete and perfect individual and social life. If the psychological truth of our being is the real and central truth, more central and important than the physical, this

2.10 - The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of The Reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it.   We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the worlds are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda.

2.11 - The Modes of the Self, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Since the Self which we come to realise by the path of knowledge is not only The Reality which lies behind and supports the states and movements of our psychological being, but also that transcendent and universal Existence which has manifested itself in all the movements of the universal, the knowledge of the Self includes also the knowledge of the principles of Being, its fundamental modes and its relations with the principles of the phenomenal universe. This was what was meant by the Upanishad when it spoke of the Brahman as that which being known all is known358a. It has to be realised first as the pure principle of Existence, afterwards, says the Upanishad, its essential modes become clear to the soul which realises it. We may indeed, before realisation, try to analyse by the metaphysical reason and even understand intellectually what Being is and what the world is, but such metaphysical understanding is not the Knowledge. Moreover, we may have the realisation in knowledge and vision, but this is incomplete without realisation in the entire soul-experience and the unity of all our being with that which we realise358b. It is the science of Yoga to know and the art of Yoga to be unified with the Highest so that we may live in the Self and act from that supreme poise, becoming one not only in the conscious essence but in the conscious law of our being with the transcendent Divine whom all things and creatures, whether ignorantly or with partial knowledge and experience, seek to express through the lower law of their members. To know the highest Truth and to be in harmony with it is the condition of right being, to express it in all that we are, experience and do is the condition of right living.   But rightly to know and express the Highest is not easy for man the mental being because the highest Truth and therefore the highest modes of existence are supramental. They repose on the essential unity of what seem to the intellect and mind and are to our mental experience of the world opposite poles of existence and idea and therefore irreconcilable opposites and contradictions, but to the supramental experience are complementary aspects of the same Truth. We have seen this already in the necessity of realising the Self as at once one and many; for we have to realise each thing and being as That; we have to realise the unity of all as That, both in the unity of sum and in the oneness of essence; and we have to realise That as the Transcendent who is beyond all this unity and this multiplicity which we see everywhere as the two opposite, yet companion poles of all existence. For every individual being is the Self, the Divine in spite of the outward limitations of the mental and physical form through which it presents itself at the actual moment, in the actual field of space, in the actual succession of circumstances that make up the web of inner state and outward action and event through which we know the individual. So, equally, every collectivity small or great is each the Self, the Divine similarly expressing itself in the conditions of this manifestation. We cannot really know any individual or any collectivity if we know it only as it appears inwardly to itself or outwardly to us, but only if we know it as the Divine, the One, our own Self employing its various essential modes and its occasional circumstances of self-manifestation. Until we have transformed the habits of our mentality so that it shall live entirely in this knowledge reconciling all differences in the One, we do not live in the real Truth, because we do not live in the real Unity. The accomplished sense of Unity is not that in which all are regarded as parts of one whole, waves of one sea, but that in which each as well as the All is regarded wholly as the Divine, wholly as our Self in a supreme identity.

2.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES IN CALCUTTA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Likewise, in spiritual discrimination one must first reason, following the method of 'Not this, not this': God is not the universe; God is not the living beings; Brahman alone is real, and all else is unreal. Then one realizes, as with the bel-fruit, that The Reality from which we derive the notion of Brahman is the very Reality that evolves the idea of living beings and the universe. The Nitya and the Lila are the two aspects of one and the same Reality; therefore, according to Ramanuja, Brahman is qualified by the universe and the living beings. This is the theory of Qualified Non-dualism.   Futility of mere reasoning

2.12 - The Origin of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The Reality then is neither an eternal passivity of immobile   Being nor an eternal activity of Being in movement, nor is It an alternation in Time between these two things. Neither in fact is the sole absolute truth of Brahman's reality; their opposition is only true of It in relation to the activities of Its consciousness.   --   There necessarily follows an important first result, already arrived at from other view-points, that the Ignorance cannot have the origin of its existence or the starting-point of its dividing activities in the absolute Brahman or in integral Sachchidananda; it belongs only to a partial action of the being with which we identify ourselves, just as in the body we identify ourselves with that partial and superficial consciousness which alternates between sleep and waking: it is indeed this identification putting aside all the rest of The Reality behind us that is the constituting cause of the Ignorance. And if Ignorance is not an element or power proper to the absolute nature of the Brahman or to Its integrality, there can be no original and primal Ignorance. Maya, if it be an original power of the consciousness of the Eternal, cannot itself be an ignorance or in any way akin to the nature of ignorance, but must be a transcendent and universal power of self-knowledge and all-knowledge; ignorance can only intervene as a minor and subsequent movement, partial and relative. Is it then something inherent in the multiplicity of souls? Does it come into being immediately Brahman views himself in the   The Origin of the Ignorance

2.12 - The Realisation of Sachchidananda, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   There is such a unity, impersonality, freedom from the play of qualities which lifts us above the strife and surge of Nature in her eternal seeking through mind and body for the true key and secret of all her relations. And it is the ancient highest experience of mankind that only by arriving there, only by making oneself impersonal, one, still, self-gathered, superior to the mental and vital existence in that which is eternally superior to it, can a settled, because self-existent peace and internal freedom be acquired. Therefore this is the first, in a sense the characteristic and essential object of the Yoga of Knowledge. But, as we have insisted, this, if first, is not all; if the essential, it is not the complete object. Knowledge is not complete if it merely shows us how to get away from relations to that which Is beyond relations, from personality to impersonality, from multiplicity to featureless unity. It must give us also that key, that secret of the whole play of relations, the whole variation of multiplicity, the whole clash and interaction of personalities for which cosmic existence is seeking. And knowledge is still incomplete if it gives us only an idea and cannot verify it in experience; we seek the key, the secret in order that we may govern the phenomenon by The Reality it represents, heal its discords by the hidden principle of concord and unification behind them and arrive from the converging and diverging effort of the world to the harmony of its fulfilment. Not merely peace, but fulfilment is what the heart of the world is seeking and what a perfect and effective self-knowledge must give to it; peace call only be the eternal support, the infinite condition, the natural atmosphere of self-fulfilment.   Moreover, the knowledge that finds the true secret of multiplicity, personality, quality, play of relations, must show us some real oneness in essence of being and intimate unity in power of being between the impersonal and the source of personality, the qualityless and that which expresses itself in qualities, the unity of existence and its many-featured multiplicity. The knowledge that leaves a yawning gulf between the two, can be no ultimate knowledge, however logical it may seem to the analytical intellect or however satisfactory to a self-dividing experience. True knowledge must arrive at a oneness which embraces even though it exceeds the totality of things, not at a oneness which is incapable of it and rejects it. For there can be no such original unbridgeable chasm of duality either in the All-existence itself or between any transcendent Oneness and the All-existent. And as in knowledge, so in experience and self-fulfilment. The experience which finds at the summit of things such an original unbridgeable chasm between two contrary principles and can at most succeed in overleaping it so that it has to live in one or the other, but cannot embrace and unify, is not the ultimate experience. Whether we seek to know by thought or by the vision of knowledge which surpasses thought or by that perfect self-experience in our own being which is the crown and fulfilment of realisation by knowledge, we must be able to think out, see, experience and live the all-satisfying unity. This is what we find in the conception, vision and experience of the One whose oneness does not cease or disappear from view by self-expression in the Many, who is free from bondage to qualities but is yet infinite quality, who contains and combines all relations, yet is ever absolute, who is no one person and yet all persons because He is all being and the one conscious Being. For the individual centre we call ourselves, to enter by its consciousness into this Divine and reproduce its nature in itself is the high and marvellous, yet perfectly rational and most supremely pragmatic and utilitarian goal before us. It is the fulfilment of our self-existence and at the same time the fulfilment of our cosmic existence, of the individual in himself and of the individual in his relation to the cosmic Many. Between these two terms there is no irreconcilable opposition: rather, our own self and the self of the cosmos having been discovered to be one, there must be between them an intimate unity.

2.13 - The Difficulties of the Mental Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   We have come to this stage in our development of the path of Knowledge that we began by affirming the realisation of our pure self, pure existence above the terms of mind, life and body, as the first object of this Yoga, but we now affirm that this is not sufficient and that we must also realise the Self or Brahman in its essential modes and primarily in its triune reality as Sachchidananda. Not only pure existence, but pure consciousness and pure bliss of its being and consciousness are The Reality of the Self and the essence of Brahman.   Further, there are two kinds of realisation of Self or Sachchidananda. One is that of the silent passive quietistic, self-absorbed, self-sufficient existence, consciousness and delight, one, impersonal, without play of qualities, turned away from the infinite phenomenon of the universe or viewing it with indifference and without participation. The other is that of the same existence, consciousness, delight sovereign, free, lord of things, acting out of an inalienable calm, pouring itself out in infinite action and quality out of an eternal self-concentration, the one supreme Person holding in himself all this play of personality in a vast equal impersonality, possessing the infinite phenomenon of the universe without attachment but without any inseparable aloofness, with a divine mastery and an innumerable radiation of his eternal luminous self-delight -- as a manifestation which he holds, but by which he is not held, which he governs freely and by which therefore he is not bound. This is not the personal God of the religions or the qualified Brahman of the philosophers, but that in which personal and impersonal, quality and non-quality are reconciled. It is the Transcendent possessing them both in His being and employing them both as modes for His manifestation. This then is the object of realisation for the Sadhaka of the integral Yoga.

2.1.4.2 - Teaching, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   It is not quite The Reality; they are the words which come closest to The Reality. The teachers should do that. It would be very useful instead of (gesture of going round and round in the head).   (Silence)

2.14 - The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   They live according to another idea of self than The Reality, deluded, attached, expressing a falsehood, - as if by an enchantment they see the false as the true.   Maitri Upanishad.2   --    conclusions are partial, speculative or constructed, our statement of them, which is the expression of our indirect contact with The Reality, has the nature of representations or figures, word-images of thought perceptions that are themselves images, not embodiments of Truth itself, not directly real and au thentic.   These figures or representations are imperfect and opaque and carry with them their shadow of nescience or error; for they seem to deny or shut out other truths and even the truth they express does not get its full value: it is an end or edge of it that projects into form and the rest is left in the shadow unseen or disfigured or uncertainly visible. It might almost be said that no mental statement of things can be altogether true; it is not