TOPICS

SEE ALSO

AUTH

BOOKS

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

1.096_-_Clot

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT

1.096_-_Clot

PRIMARY CLASS

chapter

SIMILAR TITLES

TERMS STARTING WITH


TERMS ANYWHERE

KEYS (10k)


NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   2 Mark Twain

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate - they would set up housekeeping and raise themselves a cozy little malignant tumor. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove

2:The best herb I smoke in Jamaica and Africa. African - Rasclot! Them people cure it in a banana. In a banana skin. A green banana. They wrap it up in a banana so when you get it, it compressed and, I'll tell you, it great! Blood clot! In Nigeria and Ghana, love that herb! Good herb, mon. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:you curdled clot of whores piss ~ Sara Douglass,

2:Springwater grow so thick it gonna clot and the pleasing ladies cease. I figure, yup, you is bad powers. ~ John Berryman,

3:Make no mistake about it, Clot: I'm a real writer. I don't have the least intention of being happy, naturally. ~ Rafael Reig,

4:Virtue!--to be good and just-- Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,

5:When the juices of trees have no means of escape, they clot and rot in them, making the trees hollow and good for nothing. ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio,

6:The other mode of defecation-associated sudden death is pulmonary embolism. The surge of blood when the person relaxes can dislodge a clot in a large blood vessel ~ Mary Roach,

7:Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours. ~ Anne Sexton,

8:Virtue - to be good and just - Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell. - The Vision of Sin ~ Alfred Tennyson,

9:Read in the name of your Lord Who created. He created man from a clot.Read and your Lord is Most Honorable, Who taught (to write) with the pen. Taught man what he knew not. ~ Anonymous,

10:Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours. ~ Anne Sexton,

11:Staring down at his button fly, he tried to find another explanation. Maybe he'd thrown a clot? A cock clot... or maybe... shit... There was no way he could be attracted to another female. ~ J R Ward,

12:Battlefield Yielding clod lulls iron off to sleep bloods clot the patches where they oozed rusts crumble fleshes slime sucking lusts around decay. Murder on murder blinks in childish eyes. ~ August Stramm,

13:He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate—they would set up housekeeping and raise themselves a cozy little malignant tumor. ~ Stephen King,

14:He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate - they would set up housekeeping and raise themselves a cozy little malignant tumor. ~ Stephen King,

15:I felt a clot in my throat, something that wouldn't let language come. ... And there is also a dream I have over and over again, of opening up my mouth and finding my tongue studded with broken glass, so every word is a wound. ~ Lauren Slater,

16:This is the mistake they make above. They think that only certain people habe a place. Only certain kinds of people belong. The rest is waste. But even waste must have a place. Otherwise it will clog and clot, and rot and fester. ~ Lauren Oliver,

17:It is more than likely that the brain itself is, in origin and development, only a sort of great clot of genital fluid held in suspense or reserved. This hypothesis would explain the enormous content of the brain as a maker or presenter of images. ~ Ezra Pound,

18:Sometimes I feel it right under my ribs. In my throat. Under my breastbone. It moves around. Sometimes it lodges in my lower back, and I slump in my chair. It’s an ache. It feels a little bit like having a mobile tumor or blood clot or kidney stone. ~ Lionel Shriver,

19:There's a place for everything and everyone, you know. That is the mistake they make above. They think that only certain people have a place. Only certain kinds of people belong. The rest is waste. But even waste must have a place. Otherwise it will clog and clot, and rot and fester. ~ Lauren Oliver,

20:The best herb I smoke in Jamaica and Africa. African - Rasclot! Them people cure it in a banana. In a banana skin. A green banana. They wrap it up in a banana so when you get it, it compressed and, I'll tell you, it great! Blood clot! In Nigeria and Ghana, love that herb! Good herb, mon. ~ Bob Marley,

21:The way we get there is through the honeyed tunnels. Into eyes that yawn open into mouths. After, I think the mouths might go on to the stars and the black they hold between them, until all we know about our world and very world and all our thoughts are just a blood clot in something's veins. ~ Michael Wehunt,

22:She was like a stranger to me then, a stranger whose life had just been made utterly meaningless. I know this because I felt the same way. Meaning had gone wholly and and in one clot right out of my life too, and as result I'm sure I was like a stranger to her as well. Our individual pain was so great that that we could not recognize any other. ~ Russell Banks,

23:As soon as he was free from the library, he raced away from the Sanctuary, returning his faithless body to his bedroom at the mansion. He was still erect when he got there. Duh. Staring down at his button fly, he tried to find another explanation. Maybe he’d thrown a clot? A cock clot … or maybe … shit… There was no way he could be attracted to another female. ~ J R Ward,

24:I love people as I meet them one by one. People are just wonderful as individuals. You see the whole universe in their eyes if you look carefully. But as soon as they begin to group, as soon as they begin to clot, when there are five of them or ten or even groups of smallest two, they begin to change, they sacrifice the beauty of the individual for the sake of the group. ~ George Carlin,

25:The head rolls over on its face (the feathers in its mouth make a horrid crumpling sound) and falls out of the refrigerator. It thuks to the floor and rolls toward him like a hideous bowling ball, its blood-matted hair changing places with its grinning face; it rolls toward him leaving a gluey trail of blood and dismembered bits of feather behind, its mouth working around its clot of feathers. ~ Stephen King,

26:Don LaFontaine passed away. He passed away from a blood clot in the lung. It was unexpected. It just happened. I was just blown away by it. He was like, "Pablo, I've got something in my lungs, I don't know what it is." And I said, "What is it?" And he says, "I don't know, it just keeps hurting." And then he left me a message saying, "I'll come see you when I get out of here." And it never happened. ~ Pablo Francisco,

27:You that change the dull field, who give conversation to damaged ears, make dying alive, award guardianship to the wandering mind, you who erase the five senses at night, who give eyes allure and a blood clot wisdom, who give the lover heroic strength, you who hear what Sanai said, Lose your life, if you seek eternity. The master who teaches us is absolute light, not this visibility. ~ Rumi,

28:I had found by experience that putting things down on paper helped to clear the mind in precisely the same way, as Mrs. Mullet had taught me, that an eggshell clarifies the consommé or the coffee, which, of course, is a simple matter of chemistry. The albumin contained in the eggshell has the property of collecting and binding the rubbish that floats in the dark liquid, which can then be removed and discarded in a single reeking clot: a perfect description of the writing process. ~ Alan Bradley,

29:She was Remade she was (Remade scum), he knew it, he saw it, and still he felt incessantly what was inside him, and he felt a great scab of habit and prejudice split from him, part from his skin where his homeland had inscribed him deep. [...]There was a caustic pain as he peeled off a clot of old life and exposed himself open and unsure to her, to new air. [...] His feelings welled out and bled together (their festering ceased) and they began to resolve, to heal in a new form, to scar. ~ China Mi ville,

30:It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is," he said. "There is much misjudgment in the world. Now, I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clot, or a betrayer, and so I must be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. ~ Peter S Beagle,

31:The lights of the city streaked off below him like the luminous spokes of a warped wheel. An indistinctly outlined, pearly moon seemed to drip down the sky, like a clot of incandescent tapioca thrown up against the night by a cosmic comic. He lit the after-the-dance, while-waiting-for-her-to-come-back cigarette. He felt good, looking down at the town that had nearly had him licked once. "I'm all set now," he thought. "I'm young. I've got love. I've got a clear track. The rest is a cinch. ~ Cornell Woolrich,

32:The Boss's Choice Listen to his wild romances: He advances foolish fancies, Each expounded as his 'view' Gu. In his brain's opacous clot, ah He has got a maggot! What a Man with 'views' to overwhelm us! Gulielmus. Hear his demagogic clamor Hear him stammer in his grammar! Teaching, he will learn to spell Gulielmus L. Slave who paid the price demanded With two-handed iron branded By the boss-pray cease to dose us, Gulielmus L. Jocosus. ~ Ambrose Bierce,

33:Časový golem povstal a byl, ignoroval linearitu kolem sebe, pouze byl. Byl narušením, strašlivým proniknutím do sledu okamžiků, sraženinou v diachronii, která s nemyslící arogancí své existence nevěnovala tomuto zprznění ontologie sebemenší pozornost. The time golem stood and was, ignored the linearity around it, only was. It was a violence, a terrible intrusion in the succession of moments, a clot in diachrony, and with the dumb arrogance of its existence it paid the outrage of ontology no mind. ~ China Mi ville,

34:Had I known, that last hour sitting there, talking and laughing about trivial things, that there was a clot forming like a time bomb close to his heart, ready to explode, I would surely have behaved differently, held on to him, at least thanked him for all my nineteen years of happiness and love. Not flipped over the photographs in the album, mocking bygone fashions, nor yawned halfway through, so that, sensing boredom, he let the album drop to the floor and murmured, “Don’t bother about me, pet, I’ll have a kip. ~ Daphne du Maurier,

35:If you want to call the designer God, that’s entirely up to you” is the intelligent design pitch—along with “teach the controversy.” The lethal inefficiencies of penguins marching across a frozen wasteland in order to reproduce, or of blood requiring the presence of numerous proteins in order to clot and prevent humans from bleeding to death, are viewed not as accidents of nature but as marvels of intention. The obvious question of why a guiding intelligence would want to make things so difficult for his or her creations is never asked because it cannot be answered. ~ Susan Jacoby,

36:We lie under the sheet after making love, speaking of loneliness relieved in a book relived in a book so on that page the clot and fissure of it appears words of a man in pain a naked word entering the clot a hand grasping through bars: deliverance What happens between us has happened for centuries we know it from literature still it happens sexual jealousy outflung hand beating bed dryness of mouth after panting there are books that describe all this and they are useless ~ Adrienne Rich,

37:The earth isn’t spinning because you told it to do so. Your intestines aren’t digesting by your command. You’re made up of a trillion cells who don’t ask your permission before offering their rakats. And we think submission is applying strict discipline to our worship? We think surrender is about not eating a pig? It’s just not that small to me. i can’t fit my deen into a neat little box, because to me everything comes from Allah. Birds sing Allah’s name. to say Allah is in this book and not that… do you know who you’re talking about? the Allah that made you from a clot and clothed in flesh… Allah is too big and open for my deen to be small and closed. ~ Michael Muhammad Knight,

38:Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of to-morrow.... In this world — as I have known it — we are made to suffer without the shadow of a reason, of a cause or of guilt.... There is no morality, no knowledge and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that... is always but a vain and floating appearance.... A moment, a twinkling of an eye and nothing remains — but a clot of mud, of cold mud, of dead mud cast into black space, rolling around an extinguished sun. Nothing. Neither thought, nor sound, nor soul. Nothing. ~ Joseph Conrad,

39:Blood is messy when it comes out. inside it runs clean and looks blue in tubes that line our bodies, that split and branch like earth's river systems. Blood is ninety percent water. And like water it must move. Blood must flow, never stray or split or clot or divide -- lose any essential amount of itself while it distributes evenly through our bodies. But blood is messy when it comes out. It dries, and cracks in the air. Native blood quantum was introduced in 1705 at the Virginia Colony. If you were at least half Native, you didn't have the same rights as white people. Blood quantum and tribal membership qualifications have since been turned over to individual tribes to decide. ~ Tommy Orange,

40:A man. Not just any man, but a tall, gloriously handsome one whose black hair streamed in rampant disarray past mighty shoulders and down a broad back; a man whose great hands were bunched into fists, a man with the devil’s own fury blazing from eyes as darkly blue as an empty midnight. Not the gallant officer she pined for . . . but a pirate. Maeve stepped forward, and gathered herself for a question that needed no answer. “Who the hell are you?” His gaze bored into hers. Furious, he reached up and flung an offending clot of slime from his dripping brow. Then, he pushed his captors aside and stepped forward, over six feet of towering male purpose, muscle, and rage. “Your gallant-bloody-knight! ~ Danelle Harmon,

41:In the days after my heart attack & before I began to write again, all I could think about was dying. I'd been spared again, and only after the danger had passed did I allow my thoughts to unravel to their inevitable end. I imagined all the ways I could go. Blood clot to the brain. Infarction. Thrombosis. Pneumonia. Grand mal obstruction to the vena cava. I saw myself foaming at the mouth, writhing on the floor. I'd wake up in the night, gripping my throat. And yet. No matter how often I imagined the possible failure of my organs, I found the consequence inconceivable. That it could happen to me. I forced myself to picture the last moments. The penultimate breath. A final sigh. And yet. It was always followed by another. ~ Nicole Krauss,

42:There was little precedent in other diseases for such an astonishing diversity of causes. Diabetes, a complex illness with complex manifestations, is still fundamentally a disease of abnormal insulin signaling. Coronary heart disease occurs when a clot, arising from a ruptured and inflamed atherosclerotic plaque, occludes a blood vessel of the heart. But the search for a unifying mechanistic description of cancer seemed to be sorely missing. What, beyond abnormal, dysregulated cell division, was the common pathophysiological mechanism underlying cancer? To answer this question, cancer biologists would need to return to the birth of cancer, to the very first steps of a cell’s journey toward malignant transformation—to carcinogenesis. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee,

43:Of course, it was completely reasonable. To know me is to love me, and I was very fond of me, too. A list of my finer qualities would easily occupy almost half the front side of a three-by-five card. Although the list does taper off rather dramatically after “good with a knife.” But such sterling traits would mean nothing to a shallow clot like Robert; he was all about surface appearances. And speaking of, I had been told on more than one occasion that I am not completely horrible to look upon, for those who like that sort of thing. It meant nothing to me, since the only purpose of good looks is to acquire sex, and I am largely uninterested. But it clearly meant something to Robert. Even with half of Hollywood to pick from, he had settled on Dexter. ~ Jeff Lindsay,

44:Again And Again And Again You said the anger would come back just as the love did. I have a black look I do not like. It is a mask I try on. I migrate toward it and its frog sits on my lips and defecates. It is old. It is also a pauper. I have tried to keep it on a diet. I give it no unction. There is a good look that I wear like a blood clot. I have sewn it over my left breast. I have made a vocation of it. Lust has taken plant in it and I have placed you and your child at its milk tip. Oh the blackness is murderous and the milk tip is brimming and each machine is working and I will kiss you when I cut up one dozen new men and you will die somewhat, again and again. ~ Anne Sexton,

45:Our brains, for instance, are 70 percent fat, mostly in the form of a substance known as myelin that insulates nerve cells and, for that matter, all nerve endings in the body. Fat is the primary component of all cell membranes. Changing the proportion of saturated to unsaturated fats in the diet, as proponents of Keys’s hypothesis recommended, might well change the composition of the fats in the cell membranes. This could alter the permeability of cell membranes, which determines how easily they transport, among other things, blood sugar, proteins, hormones, bacteria, viruses, and tumor-causing agents into and out of the cell. The relative saturation of these membrane fats could affect the aging of cells and the likelihood that blood cells will clot in vessels and cause heart attacks. ~ Gary Taubes,

46:When Homer Wells saw the stationmaster’s brain stem exposed, he felt that Dr. Larch was busy enough – with both hands – for it to be safe to say what Homer wanted to say. ‘I love you,’ said Homer Wells. He knew he had to leave the room, then – while he could still see the door – and so he started to leave. ‘I love you too, Homer,’ said Wilbur Larch, who for another minute or more could not have seen a blood clot in the brain stem if there had been one to see. He heard Homer say ‘Right’ before he heard the door close. In a while, he could make out the brain stem clearly, there was no clot. ‘Arrhythmia,’ Wilbur Larch repeated to himself. Then he added, ‘Right,’ as if he were now speaking for Homer Wells. Dr. Larch put his instruments aside; he gripped the operating table for a long time. ~ John Irving,

47:The Rose You gave me a rose last time we met. I told myself if it bloomed our love would bloom, & if it diedO I did not consider the possibility. It died. Though I cut the stem on a slant as my mother taught me, though I dropped an aspirin in the water, it hung its head like a spent cock & died. It stands on my desk nowstraight green stalk, blood-red clot of bud drooping like a hanged man's head. Does this mean we are doomed? Does this mean 229 all lovers are doomed? O my loveI have not read roses as amulets in seven years. . . . Which doom is worse? To love & lose? Or to lose love altogether & not care whether roses live or die? ~ Erica Jong,

48:Again And Again And Again You said the anger would come back just as the love did. I have a black look I do not like. It is a mask I try on. I migrate toward it and its frog sits on my lips and defecates. It is old. It is also a pauper. I have tried to keep it on a diet. I give it no unction. There is a good look that I wear like a blood clot. I have sewn it over my left breast. I have made a vocation of it. Lust has taken plant in it and I have placed you and your child at its milk tip. Oh the blackness is murderous and the milk tip is brimming and each machine is working and I will kiss you when I cut up one dozen new men and you will die somewhat, again and again. ~ Anne Sexton,

49:Again And Again And Again You said the anger would come back just as the love did. I have a black look I do not like. It is a mask I try on. I migrate toward it and its frog sits on my lips and defecates. It is old. It is also a pauper. I have tried to keep it on a diet. I give it no unction. There is a good look that I wear like a blood clot. I have sewn it over my left breast. I have made a vocation of it. Lust has taken plant in it and I have placed you and your child at its milk tip. Oh the blackness is murderous and the milk tip is brimming and each machine is working and I will kiss you when I cut up one dozen new men and you will die somewhat, again and again. ~ Anne Sexton,

50:The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatening altitude-induced blood clot. Realising that they would have to get Gilkey down immediately to have any hope of saving him, Schoening and the others started lowering him down the mountain's steep Abruzzi Ridge as the storm raged. At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schoening somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilkey and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay. ~ Jon Krakauer,

51:But it's a curse, a condemnation, like an act of provocation, to have been aroused from not being, to have been conjured up from a clot of dirt and hay and lit on fire and sent stumbling among the rocks and bones of this ruthless earth to weep and worry and wreak havoc and ponder little more than the impending return to oblivion, to invent hopes that are as elaborate as they are fraudulent and poorly constructed, and that burn off the moment they are dedicated, if not before, and are at best only true as we invent them for ourselves or tell them to others, around a fire, in a hovel, while we all freeze or starve or plot or contemplate treachery or betrayal or murder or despair of love, or make daughters and elaborately rejoice in them so that when they are cut down even more despair can be wrung from our hearts, which prove only to have been made for the purpose of being broken. And worse still, because broken hearts continue beating. ~ Paul Harding,

52:On his back nothing was what it was, there were no demarcations, no outlines; nothing was formed, it was all in the process of becoming. Except here a large eye, marbled and fluid; there a crippled hand, the fingers webbed together with sperm. Scattered purple lumps which might be grapes, but pendent from nothing, not attached; knives which looked melting but still cruel; blue fernlike hair; smeared yellowish-white spots, which might be stars dripping down the soundless void, spots of startling silence on this raucous grating jungle, the polychrome verdure suggesting an impossible pointless fecundity and even the odor of this, but the whole impression transitory as dew. Here, was this an inky bird struggling into shape? Really, were these great fish? Or bared unjoined tendons? Was this a clot of spiny seaweed?…A worm?…And now lapping over his shoulder onto his chest, covering over the scars of Mina’s bites, these looked like green licks of flame, upside-down. ~ Fred Chappell,

53:Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. ~ Seamus Heaney,

54:And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, The surface glittered out of heart of light, And they were behind us, reflected in the pool. Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty. Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, 40 Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.   II   Garlic and sapphires in the mud Clot the bedded axle-tree. The trilling wire in the blood Sings below inveterate scars And reconciles forgotten wars. The dance along the artery The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars Ascend to summer in the tree We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf And hear upon the sodden floor Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before 60 But reconciled among the stars.   At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor ~ T S Eliot,

55:An Idler Who told Creed Haymond he was witty?-who Had nothing better in this world to do? Could no greased pig's appeal to his embrace Kindle his ardor for the friendly chase? Did no dead dog upon a vacant lot, Bloated and bald, or curdled in a clot, Stir his compassion and inspire his arms To hide from human eyes its faded charms? If not to works of piety inclined, Then recreation might have claimed his mind. The harmless game that shows the feline greed To cinch the shorts and make the market bleed Is better sport than victimizing Creed; And a far livelier satisfaction comes Of knowing Simon, autocrat of thumbs. If neither worthy work nor play command This gentleman of leisure's heart and hand, Then Mammon might his idle spirit lift By hope of profit to some deed of thrift. Is there no cheese to pare, no flint to skin, No tin to mend, no glass to be put in, No housewife worthy of a morning visit, Her rags and sacks and bottles to solicit? Lo! the blind sow's precarious pursuit Of the aspiring oak's familiar fruit! 'Twould more advantage any man to steal This easy victim's undefended meal Than tell Creed Haymond he has wit, and so Expose the state to his narcotic flow! ~ Ambrose Bierce,

56:THE BALLAD OF NEARLY HEADLESS NICK BY J.K. ROWLING It was a mistake any wizard could make Who was tired and caught on the hop One piffling error, and then, to my terror, I found myself facing the chop. Alas for the eve when I met Lady Grieve A-strolling the park in the dusk! She was of the belief I could straighten her teeth Next moment she’d sprouted a tusk. I cried through the night that I’d soon put her right But the process of justice was lax; They’d brought out the block, though they’d mislaid the rock Where they usually sharpened the axe. Next morning at dawn, with a face most forlorn, The priest said to try not to cry, ‘You can come just like that, no, you won’t need a hat,’ And I knew that my end must be nigh. The man in the mask who would have the sad task Of cleaving my head from my neck, Said ‘Nick, if you please, will you get to your knees,’ And I turned to a gibbering wreck. ‘This may sting a bit’ said the cack-handed twit As he swung the axe up in the air, But oh the blunt blade! No difference it made, My head was still definitely there. The axeman he hacked and he whacked and he thwacked, ‘Won’t be too long’, he assured me, But quick it was not, and the bone-headed clot Took forty-five goes ’til he floored me. And so I was dead, but my faithful old head It never saw fit to desert me, It still lingers on, that’s the end of my song, And now, please applaud, or you’ll hurt me. ~ J K Rowling,

57:They Don't Love You Like I Love You" My mother said this to me long before Beyoncé lifted the lyrics from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and what my mother meant by Don’t stray was that she knew all about it—the way it feels to need someone to love you, someone not your kind, someone white, some one some many who live because so many of mine have not, and further, live on top of those of ours who don’t. I’ll say, say, say, I’ll say, say, say, What is the United States if not a clot of clouds? If not spilled milk? Or blood? If not the place we once were in the millions? America is Maps— Maps are ghosts: white and layered with people and places I see through. My mother has always known best, knew that I’d been begging for them, to lay my face against their white laps, to be held in something more than the loud light of their projectors of themselves they flicker—sepia or blue—all over my body. All this time, I thought my mother said, Wait, as in, Give them a little more time to know your worth, when really, she said, Weight, meaning heft, preparing me for the yoke of myself, the beast of my country’s burdens, which is less worse than my country’s plow. Yes, when my mother said, They don’t love you like I love you, she meant, Natalie, that doesn’t mean you aren’t good. ~ Natalie D az,

58:Oh Mickey, it was wonderful, it was fun - the whole kitten and kaboozle. It was like living. And to be denied that whole part would be a great loss. You gave it to me. You gave me a double life. I couldn't have endured with just one." I'm proud of you and your double life." All I regret", she said, crying again, crying with him, the two of them in tears..."is that we couldn't sleep together too many nights. To commingle with you. Commingle?" Why not." I wish tonight you could spend the night." I do, too. But I'll be here tomorrow night." I meant it up at the Grotto. I didn't want to fuck any more men even without the cancer. I wouldn't do that even if I was alive." You are alive. It is here and now. It's tonight. You're alive." I wouldn't do it. You're the one I always loved fucking. But I don't regret that I have fucked many. It would have been a great loss to have had otherwise. Some of them, they were sort of wasted times. You must have that, too. Haven't you? With women you didn't enjoy?" Yes." Yes, I had experiences where the men would just want to fuck you whether they cared about you or not. That was always harder for me. I give my heart, I give my self, in my fucking." You do indeed." And then, after just a little drifting, she fell asleep and so he went home - "I'm leaving now" - and within two hours she threw a clot and was dead. So those were her last words, in English anyway. I give my heart, I give my self, in my fucking. Hard to top that. To commingle with you, Drenka, to commingle with you now. ~ Philip Roth,

59:bleeds into itself; the heart muscle softens and has hemorrhages into its chambers, and blood squeezes out of the heart muscle as the heart beats, and it floods the chest cavity. The brain becomes clogged with dead blood cells, a condition known as sludging of the brain. Ebola attacks the lining of the eyeball, and the eyeballs may fill up with blood: you may go blind. Droplets of blood stand out on the eyelids: you may weep blood. The blood runs from your eyes down your cheeks and refuses to coagulate. You may have a hemispherical stroke, in which one whole side of the body is paralyzed, which is invariably fatal in a case of Ebola. Even while the body’s internal organs are becoming plugged with coagulated blood, the blood that streams out of the body cannot clot; it resembles whey being squeezed out of curds. The blood has been stripped of its clotting factors. If you put the runny Ebola blood in a test tube and look at it, you see that the blood is destroyed. Its red cells are broken and dead. The blood looks as if it has been buzzed in an electric blender. Ebola kills a great deal of tissue while the host is still alive. It triggers a creeping, spotty necrosis that spreads through all the internal organs. The liver bulges up and turns yellow, begins to liquefy, and then it cracks apart. The cracks run across the liver and deep inside it, and the liver completely dies and goes putrid. The kidneys become jammed with blood clots and dead cells, and cease functioning. As the kidneys fail, the blood becomes toxic with urine. The spleen turns into a single huge, hard blood clot the size of a ~ Richard Preston,

60:heart bleeds into itself; the heart muscle softens and has hemorrhages into its chambers, and blood squeezes out of the heart muscle as the heart beats, and it floods the chest cavity. The brain becomes clogged with dead blood cells, a condition known as sludging of the brain. Ebola attacks the lining of the eyeball, and the eyeballs may fill up with blood: you may go blind. Droplets of blood stand out on the eyelids: you may weep blood. The blood runs from your eyes down your cheeks and refuses to coagulate. You may have a hemispherical stroke, in which one whole side of the body is paralyzed, which is invariably fatal in a case of Ebola. Even while the body’s internal organs are becoming plugged with coagulated blood, the blood that streams out of the body cannot clot; it resembles whey being squeezed out of curds. The blood has been stripped of its clotting factors. If you put the runny Ebola blood in a test tube and look at it, you see that the blood is destroyed. Its red cells are broken and dead. The blood looks as if it has been buzzed in an electric blender. Ebola kills a great deal of tissue while the host is still alive. It triggers a creeping, spotty necrosis that spreads through all the internal organs. The liver bulges up and turns yellow, begins to liquefy, and then it cracks apart. The cracks run across the liver and deep inside it, and the liver completely dies and goes putrid. The kidneys become jammed with blood clots and dead cells, and cease functioning. As the kidneys fail, the blood becomes toxic with urine. The spleen turns into a single huge, hard blood clot the size of a ~ Richard Preston,

61:There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nurdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too—Shower with a Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who’s out there? you howled into the dark when you were frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don’t be afraid, it’s just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let’ s go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar blue cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation—in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all the oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name’s Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want— hell, we’re old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can’t stay, got to see a woman about a breach birth, then I’ve got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha. ~ Stephen King,

62:The Touch For months my hand was sealed off in a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings. Perhaps it is bruised, I thought, and that is why they have locked it up. You could tell time by this, I thought, like a clock, by its five knuckles and the thin underground veins. It lay there like an unconscious woman fed by tubes she knew not of. The hand had collapse, a small wood pigeon that had gone into seclusion. I turned it over and the palm was old, its lines traced like fine needlepoint and stitched up into fingers. It was fat and soft and blind in places. Nothing but vulnerable. And all this is metaphor. An ordinary hand - just lonely for something to touch that touches back. The dog won't do it. Her tail wags in the swamp for a frog. I'm no better than a case of dog food. She owns her own hunger. My sisters won't do it. They live in school except for buttons and tears running down like lemonade. My father won't do it. He comes in the house and even at night he lives in a machine made by my mother and well oiled by his job, his job. The trouble is that I'd let my gestures freeze. The trouble was not in the kitchen or the tulips 318 but only in my head, my head. Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours. They dance in the attic and in Vienna. My hand is alive all over America. Not even death will stop it, death shedding her blood. Nothing will stop it, for this is the kingdom and the kingdom come. ~ Anne Sexton,

63:Now, concerning their opinion that the resurrection is not a second creation but is like the first coming-to-be, that is not sound, for the resurrection is another sort of creation [insha'] quite unrelated to the first. Indeed, there are many comings-to-be proper to man, and not simply two of them. And for that reason the most high said: That we may transfigure you and make you what you know not (LVI:61). And in the same way He said after creating the little lump, the clot, and the rest: then [We] produced it as another creation. So blessed be God, the Best of Creators! (XXIII:14) Indeed, sperm originates from the earth, the clot from sperm, the lump from the clot, [135] and the spirit from the lump. It was in response to the exalted origin of the spirit, to its glory, and to its being a divine thing, that He said: 'then [We] produced it as another creation. So blessed be God the best of creators!' (XXIII:14) And the most high said: They will ask thee concerning the Spirit. Say: the Spirit is by command of my Lord (XVII:85). So the creation of sensory perceptions after creating the spiritual foundation is another creation, while the creation of discernment which appears after seven years is yet another creation, and the creation of reason after fifteen years (or thereabouts) is a further creation. So each origination is a stage, so he created you by [diverse] stages (LXXI:14). Furthermore, the appearance of the characteristic of holiness [wilaya] in the ones endowed with with this quality is another creation, while the appearance of prophethood after that is yet another, indeed it is a kind of resurrection. So God-may He be praised and exalted-is the one who raises [ba ith] up the messengers, as He is the one who will raise us all up on the day of resurrection. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,

64:Only a few days after my encounter with the police, two patrolmen tackled Alton Sterling onto a car, then pinned him down on the ground and shot him in the chest while he was selling CDs in front of a convenience store, seventy-five miles up the road in Baton Rouge. A day after that, Philando Castile was shot in the passenger seat of his car during a police traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, as his girlfriend recorded the aftermath via Facebook Live. Then, the day after Castile was killed, five policemen were shot dead by a sniper in Dallas. It felt as if the world was subsumed by cascades of unceasing despair. I mourned for the family and friends of Sterling and Castille. I felt deep sympathy for the families of the policemen who died. I also felt a real fear that, as a result of what took place in Dallas, law enforcement would become more deeply entrenched in their biases against black men, leading to the possibility of even more violence. The stream of names of those who have been killed at the hands of the police feels endless, and I become overwhelmed when I consider all the names we do not know—all of those who lost their lives and had no camera there to capture it, nothing to corroborate police reports that named them as threats. Closed cases. I watch the collective mourning transpire across my social-media feeds. I watch as people declare that they cannot get out of bed, cannot bear to go to work, cannot function as a human being is meant to function. This sense of anxiety is something I have become unsettlingly accustomed to. The familiar knot in my stomach. The tightness in my chest. But becoming accustomed to something does not mean that it does not take a toll. Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot. ~ Clint Smith,

65:Now alongside Scovell, John eased preserved peaches out of galliot pots of syrup and picked husked walnuts from puncheons of salt. He clarified butter and poured it into rye-paste coffins. From the Master Cook, John learned to set creams with calves' feet, then isinglass, then hartshorn, pouring decoctions into egg-molds to set and be placed in nests of shredded lemon peel. To make cabbage cream he let the thick liquid clot, lifted off the top layer, folded it then repeated the process until the cabbage was sprinkled with rose water and dusted with sugar, ginger and nutmeg. He carved apples into animals and birds. The birds themselves he roasted, minced and folded into beaten egg whites in a foaming forcemeat of fowls. John boiled, coddled, simmered and warmed. He roasted, seared, fried and braised. He poached stock-fish and minced the meats of smoked herrings while Scovell's pans steamed with ancient sauces: black chawdron and bukkenade, sweet and sour egredouce, camelade and peppery gauncil. For the feasts above he cut castellations into pie-coffins and filled them with meats dyed in the colors of Sir William's titled guests. He fashioned palaces from wafers of spiced batter and paste royale, glazing their walls with panes of sugar. For the Bishop of Carrboro they concocted a cathedral. 'Sprinkle salt on the syrup,' Scovell told him, bent over the chafing dish in his chamber. A golden liquor swirled in the pan. 'Very slowly.' 'It will taint the sugar,' John objected. But Scovell shook his head. A day later they lifted off the cold clear crust and John split off a sharp-edged shard. 'Salt,' he said as it slid over his tongue. But little by little the crisp flake sweetened on his tongue. Sugary juices trickled down his throat. He turned to the Master Cook with a puzzled look. 'Brine floats,' Scovell said. 'Syrup sinks.' The Master Cook smiled. 'Patience, remember? Now, to the glaze... ~ Lawrence Norfolk,

66:Miss Leighton?" "I'm here." "Why can't I see you?" he asked, greatly confused.  "Why can't I see this fire I feel against my face, or the birds I hear outside, or this room in which I find myself?  Is there something in my eyes?"  His looked around, stunned.  "By God, woman, what has happened to me?" He heard the rustle of her skirts, smelled bayberry as she knelt down beside him and took his suddenly cold hand within her own.  He rubbed his eyes and stared, blinking, into the blackness, trying to see beyond it.  But it was there when he turned his head to the right.  It was there when he turned his head to the left.  It was there when he opened his eyes as wide as they would go and looked where she should be, and it was there no matter where he directed his open, staring gaze.  A deep, involuntary shudder drove through him, and cold sweat broke out all along his spine, turning his insides to ice.  He yanked his hand from hers and reached blindly up and out into the darkness. "There is nothing wrong with your eyes, Charles," she said quietly.  "You fell and hit your head on a rock and were left for dead.  My brother went back after the fighting passed, saw that you were alive, and brought you home to us, thinking you could be saved."  Her voice grew even more gentle.  "The doctor has been visiting every day . . . he warned us that if you ever woke at all, it was likely you might not be able to see . . . that your eyes would be fine, but your brain might not be able to tell what they were seeing.  Does that make sense to you?  It doesn't to me, but then, I'm not a doctor. . ." "No.  No, I cannot accept this . . ." "You had a blood clot beneath your skull, and the doctor said that if he didn't release it, you'd die.  He had to trepan you."  Again, she took his hand, squeezing fingers gone as cold as marble.  "I'm sorry.  We did everything that could be done." "This — this is unreal, it cannot have happened to me, there is no room in my life for this!" "Is there anything I can do?  Anyone I can contact, write a letter to, summon for you?" "No — dear God, no . . ." "Please, calm down," the girl murmured, her hand stroking his shoulder as he stared blindly about him.  "You've had a terrible shock and now you must rest, get your strength back —" "Get my strength back?  For what?  I'm blind, blind, what the hell good am I if I can't see?! ~ Danelle Harmon,

67:I need to check your vitals, hon,” she explained. It had been several hours since I’d given birth. I guess this was the routine. She felt my pulse, palpated my legs, asked if I had pain anywhere, and lightly pressed on my abdomen, the whole while making sure I wasn’t showing signs of a blockage or a blood clot, a fever or a hemorrhage. I stared dreamily at Marlboro Man, who gave me a wink or two. I hoped he would, in time, be able to see past the vomit. The nurse then began a battery of questions. “So, no pain?” “Nope. I feel fine now.” “No chills?” “Not at all.” “Have you been able to pass gas in the past few hours?” *Insert awkward ten-second pause* I couldn’t have heard her right. “What?” I asked, staring at her. “Have you been able to pass gas lightly?” *Another awkward pause* What kind of question is this? “Wait…,” I asked. “What?” “Sweetie, have you been able to pass gas today?” I stared at her blankly. “I don’t…” “…Pass gas? You? Today?” She was unrelenting. I continued my blank, desperate stare, completely incapable of registering her question. Throughout the entire course of my pregnancy, I’d gone to great lengths to maintain a certain level of glamour and vanity. Even during labor, I’d attempted to remain the ever-fresh and vibrant new wife, going so far as to reapply tinted lip balm before the epidural so I wouldn’t look pale. I’d also restrained myself during the pushing stage, afraid I’d lose control of my bowels, which would have been the kiss of death upon my pride and my marriage; I would have had to just divorce my husband and start fresh with someone else. I had never once so much as passed gas in front of Marlboro Man. As far as he was concerned, my body lacked this function altogether. So why was I being forced to answer these questions now? I hadn’t done anything wrong. “I’m sorry…,” I stammered. “I don’t understand the question…” The nurse began again, seemingly unconcerned with my lack of comprehension skills. “Have you…” Marlboro Man, lovingly holding our baby and patiently listening all this time from across the room, couldn’t take it anymore. “Honey! She wants to know if you’ve been able to fart today!” The nurse giggled. “Okay, well maybe that’s a little more clear.” I pulled the covers over my head. I was not having this discussion. ~ Ree Drummond,

68:He was the one, however, with whom no one wanted his or her picture taken, the one to whom no one wanted to introduce his son or daughter. Louis and Gage knew him; they had met him and faced him down in New England, some time ago. He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a dry-cleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boggie of electricity—Available at Your Nearest Switchplate or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nurdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too—Shower with a Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who’s out there? you howled into the dark when you were frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don’t be afraid, it’s just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let’s go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar blue cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation—in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all the oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name’s Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want—hell, we’re old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can’t stay, got to see a woman about a breach birth, then I’ve got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha. And that thin voice is crying, “I love you, Tigger! I love you! I believe in you, Tigger! I will always love you and believe in you, and I will stay young, and the only Oz to ever live in my heart will be that gentle faker from Nebraska! I love you . . .” We cruise . . . my son and I . . . because the essence of it isn’t war or sex but only that sickening, noble, hopeless battle against Oz the Gweat and Tewwible. He and I, in our white van under this bright Florida sky, we cruise. And the red flasher is hooded, but it is there if we need it . . . and none need know but us because the soil of a man’s heart is stonier; a man grows what he can . . . and tends it. ~ Stephen King,

69:The Mosquito When did you start your tricks Monsieur? What do you stand on such high legs for? Why this length of shredded shank You exaltation? Is it so that you shall lift your centre of gravity upwards And weigh no more than air as you alight upon me, Stand upon me weightless, you phantom? I heard a woman call you the Winged Victory In sluggish Venice. You turn your head towards your tail, and smile. How can you put so much devilry Into that translucent phantom shred Of a frail corpus? Queer, with your thin wings and your streaming legs How you sail like a heron, or a dull clot of air, A nothingness. Yet what an aura surrounds you; Your evil little aura, prowling, and casting a numbness on my mind. That is your trick, your bit of filthy magic: Invisibility, and the anæsthetic power To deaden my attention in your direction. But I know your game now, streaky sorcerer. Queer, how you stalk and prowl the air In circles and evasions, enveloping me, Ghoul on wings Winged Victory. Settle, and stand on long thin shanks Eyeing me sideways, and cunningly conscious that I am aware, 143 You speck. I hate the way you lurch off sideways into air Having read my thoughts against you. Come then, let us play at unawares, And see who wins in this sly game of bluff. Man or mosquito. You don't know that I exist, and I don't know that you exist. Now then! It is your trump It is your hateful little trump You pointed fiend, Which shakes my sudden blood to hatred of you: It is your small, high, hateful bugle in my ear. Why do you do it? Surely it is bad policy. They say you can't help it. If that is so, then I believe a little in Providence protecting the innocent. But it sounds so amazingly like a slogan A yell of triumph as you snatch my scalp. Blood, red blood Super-magical Forbidden liquor. I behold you stand For a second enspasmed in oblivion, Obscenely ecstasied Sucking live blood My blood. Such silence, such suspended transport, Such gorging, Such obscenity of trespass. You stagger 144 As well as you may. Only your accursed hairy frailty Your own imponderable weightlessness Saves you, wafts you away on the very draught my anger makes in its snatching. Away with a pæan of derision You winged blood-drop. Can I not overtake you? Are you one too many for me Winged Victory? Am I not mosquito enough to out-mosquito you? Queer, what a big stain my sucked blood makes Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you! Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into! ~ David Herbert Lawrence,

70:He ran long at the White House, and arrived late to his next meeting with Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan and Frank Ruggiero—their first major strategy session on Taliban talks after the secret meeting with A-Rod. She was waiting in her outer office, a spacious room paneled in white and gilt wood, with tasseled blue and pink curtains and an array of colorfully upholstered chairs and couches. In my time reporting to her later, I only ever saw Clinton take the couch, with guests of honor in the large chair kitty-corner to her. She’d left it open for him that day. “He came rushing in. . . . ” Clinton later said. “And, you know, he was saying ‘oh I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’ ” He sat down heavily and shrugged off his coat, rattling off a litany of his latest meetings, including his stop-in at the White House. “That was typical Richard. It was, like, ‘I’m doing a million things and I’m trying to keep all the balls in the air,’ ” she remembered. As he was talking, a “scarlet red” flush went up his face, according to Clinton. He pressed his hands over his eyes, his chest heaving. “Richard, what’s the matter?” Clinton asked. “Something horrible is happening,” he said. A few minutes later, Holbrooke was in an ambulance, strapped to a gurney, headed to nearby George Washington University Hospital, where Clinton had told her own internist to prepare the emergency room. In his typically brash style, he’d demanded that the ambulance take him to the more distant Sibley Memorial Hospital. Clinton overruled him. One of our deputies on the SRAP team, Dan Feldman, rode with him and held his hand. Feldman didn’t have his BlackBerry, so he scrawled notes on a State Department expense form for a dinner at Meiwah Restaurant as Holbrooke dictated messages and a doctor assessed him. The notes are a nonlinear stream of Holbrooke’s indomitable personality, slashed through with medical realities. “Call Eric in Axelrod’s office,” the first read. Nearby: “aortic dissection—type A . . . operation risk @ > 50 percent”—that would be chance of death. A series of messages for people in his life, again interrupted by his deteriorating condition: “S”—Secretary Clinton—“why always together for medical crises?” (The year before, he’d been with Clinton when she fell to the concrete floor of the State Department garage, fracturing her elbow.) “Kids—how much love them + stepkids” . . . “best staff ever” . . . “don’t let him die here” . . . “vascular surgery” . . . “no flow, no feeling legs” . . . “clot” . . . and then, again: “don’t let him die here want to die at home w/ his fam.” The seriousness of the situation fully dawning on him, Holbrooke turned to job succession: “Tell Frank”—Ruggiero—“he’s acting.” And finally: “I love so many people . . . I have a lot left to do . . . my career in public service is over.” Holbrooke cracked wise until they put him under for surgery. “Get me anything you need,” he demanded. “A pig’s heart. Dan’s heart. ~ Ronan Farrow,

71:Beyond Death THIS strange morning the spread-out feather is charred and falls while the earth groans! The factory blazes in the whirl of gas that kills in a single breath Death flames all around and the headless bird wings in circles Foul is this water foul is this air foul indeed my mind this earth and heaven On the sprig flickers the dripping leaf in burnt flowers the smell of corpse Tragedy submerges the poet and the poem while the earth groans Before the bubble bursts man raises one hand and for ever sinks while the earth groans The leader at the square strangles the mike aloud he shouts; ``Give me the power!'' The deluge invades the very dais while the earth groans; ``The son of man, my last-born, has he brought but the curse of death?'' Never again will these cells wake up alive never will these genes be born again The four directions now stand aghast and wait for the white night while the earth groans. Over there: Hunger roasts a hundred twigs that curl and fall the dark continent starves and dies the developing ones swallow poison Over here; burning citizens draw back from hell the clouded sky cracks and the legacy of pain spills over generations while the earth groans The sun grows pale unable to bear this heat the sea collapses and the waves mumble as the earth groans Wierd shapes will wander this earth, curse the paternal seed forgiving none The water in cupped hands the air just breathed in the very universe is under a curse Gargoyles will arise unable to tell where father mother sister died or lie buried Cries of lamentation viscous on the earth, will clot to silence Knowing that a time will come when one may not even cry the earth now groans Here the sons cut off heads here the daughters scorch the foetus Has the time come to finish off the race has man had enough of it? The earth does groan and with it every sun every planet, every star the celestial nebula the milky highway the wails of the earth echo far away (A planet out there halts on its rounds to watch the earth!) But no one is here no son of man to listen or care when the earth groans There they hang the powers that be heads downwards fluttering like bats beckoning darkness singing the praise of power Adding capital to interest adding interest to capital flying skull and bones disfiguring science brandishing statistics to vindicate untruth They swim in these tears they fatten up on this blood sowing and reaping death they challenge man's destiny. Unless that challenge is met this earth will go barren so she groans till we listen O for a million hands a million million hands to wipe off her tears The hands of those not vain about the light of the day nor insulting to the dark of the night The hands of those that honour the past of those that look forward to the future These hands should rise and wave aloft These throats should open and sing aloud! ~ Ayyappa Paniker,

72:Snap-Dragon She bade me follow to her garden where The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup Between the old grey walls; I did not dare To raise my face, I did not dare look up Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in My windows of discovery and shrill 'Sin!' So with a downcast mien and laughing voice I followed, followed the swing of her white dress That rocked in a lilt along: I watched the poise Of her feet as they flew for a space, then paused to press The grass deep down with the royal burden of her: And gladly I'd offered my breast to the tread of her. 'I like to see,' she said, and she crouched her down, She sunk into my sight like a settling bird; And her bosom crouched in the confines of her gown Like heavy birds at rest there, softly stirred By her measured breaths: 'I like to see,' said she, 'The snap-dragon put out his tongue at me.' She laughed, she reached her hand out to the flower Closing its crimson throat: my own throat in her power Strangled, my heart swelled up so full As if it would burst its wineskin in my throat, Choke me in my own crimson; I watched her pull The gorge of the gaping flower, till the blood did float         Over my eyes and I was blind -Her large brown hand stretched over The windows of my mind, And in the dark I did discover Things I was out to find: My grail, a brown bowl twined With swollen veins that met in the wrist, Under whose brown the amethyst I longed to taste: and I longed to turn My heart's red measure in her cup, 120 I longed to feel my hot blood burn With the lambent amethyst in her cup. Then suddenly she looked up And I was blind in a tawny-gold day Till she took her eyes away. So she came down from above And emptied my heart of love . . . So I helf my heart aloft To the cuckoo that fluttered above, And she settled soft. It seemed that I and the morning world Were pressed cup-shape to take this reiver Bird who was weary to have furled Her wings on us, As we were weary to receive her: This bird, this rich Sumptuous central grain, This mutable witch, This one refrain, This laugh in the fight, This clot of light, This core of night. She spoke, and I closed my eyes To shut hallucinations out. I echoed with surprise Hearing my mere lips shout The answer they did devise. Again, I saw a brown bird hover Over the flowers at my feet; I felt a brown bird hover Over my heart, and sweet Its shadow lay on my heart. I thought I saw on the clover A brown bee pulling apart The closed flesh of the clover And burrowing into its heart. She moved her hand, and again 121 I felt the brown bird hover Over my heart . . . and then The bird came down on my heart, As on a nest the rover Cuckoo comes, and shoves over The brim each careful part Of love, takes possession and settles down, With her wings and her feathers does drown The nest in a heat of love. She turned her flushed face to me for the glint Of a moment. 'See,' she laughed, 'if you also Can make them yawn.' I put my hand to the dint In the flower's throat, and the flower gaped wide with woe. She watched, she went of a sudden intensely still, She watched my hand, and I let her watch her fill. I pressed the wretched, throttled flower between My fingers, till its head lay back, its fangs Poised at her: like a weapon my hand stood white and keen, And I held the choked flower-serpent in its pangs Of mordant anguish till she ceased to laugh, Until her pride's flag, smitten, cleaved down to the staff. She hid her face, she murmured between her lips The low word 'Don't!' I let the flower fall, But held my hand afloat still towards the slips Of blossom she fingered, and my crisp fingers all Put forth to her: she did not move, nor I, For my hand like a snake watched hers that could not fly. Then I laughed in the dark of my heart, I did exult Like a sudden chuckling of music: I bade her eyes Meet mine, I opened her helpless eyes to consult Their fear, their shame, their joy that underlies Defeat in such a battle: in the dark of her eyes My heart was fierce to make her laughter rise . . . Till her dark deeps shook with convulsive thrills, and the dark Of her spirit wavered like water thrilled with light, And my heart leaped up in longing to plunge its stark Fervour within the pool of her twilight: Within her spacious gloom, in the mystery Of her barbarous soul, to grope with ecstasy. 122 And I do not care though the large hands of revenge Shall get my throat at last -- shall get it soon, If the joy that they are lifted to avenge Have risen red on my night as a harvest moon, Which even Death can only put out for me, And death I know is beter than not-to-be. ~ David Herbert Lawrence,

73:Jenny Lazy laughing languid Jenny, Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea, Whose head upon my knee to-night Rests for a while, as if grown light With all our dances and the sound To which the wild tunes spun you round: Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen Of kisses which the blush between Could hardly make much daintier; Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair Is countless gold incomparable: Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell Of Love's exuberant hotbed:—Nay, Poor flower left torn since yesterday Until to-morrow leave you bare; Poor handful of bright spring-water Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face; Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace Thus with your head upon my knee;— Whose person or whose purse may be The lodestar of your reverie? This room of yours, my Jenny, looks A change from mine so full of books, Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth, So many captive hours of youth,— The hours they thieve from day and night To make one's cherished work come right, And leave it wrong for all their theft, Even as to-night my work was left: Until I vowed that since my brain And eyes of dancing seemed so fain, My feet should have some dancing too:— And thus it was I met with you. Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part, For here I am. And now, sweetheart, You seem too tired to get to bed. It was a careless life I led When rooms like this were scarce so strange Not long ago. What breeds the change,— 133 The many aims or the few years? Because to-night it all appears Something I do not know again. The cloud's not danced out of my brain— The cloud that made it turn and swim While hour by hour the books grew dim. Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,— For all your wealth of loosened hair, Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd And warm sweets open to the waist, All golden in the lamplight's gleam,— You know not what a book you seem, Half-read by lightning in a dream! How should you know, my Jenny? Nay, And I should be ashamed to say:— Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss! But while my thought runs on like this With wasteful whims more than enough, I wonder what you're thinking of. If of myself you think at all, What is the thought?—conjectural On sorry matters best unsolved?— Or inly is each grace revolved To fit me with a lure?—or (sad To think!) perhaps you're merely glad That I'm not drunk or ruffianly And let you rest upon my knee. For sometimes, were the truth confess'd, You're thankful for a little rest,— Glad from the crush to rest within, From the heart-sickness and the din Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch Mocks you because your gown is rich; And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke, Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak, And other nights than yours bespeak; And from the wise unchildish elf, To schoolmate lesser than himself Pointing you out, what thing you are:— Yes, from the daily jeer and jar, From shame and shame's outbraving too, 134 Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?— But most from the hatefulness of man, Who spares not to end what he began, Whose acts are ill and his speech ill, Who, having used you at his will, Thrusts you aside, as when I dine I serve the dishes and the wine. Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up: I've filled our glasses, let us sup, And do not let me think of you, Lest shame of yours suffice for two. What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep Your head there, so you do not sleep; But that the weariness may pass And leave you merry, take this glass. Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd Nor ever by a glove conceal'd! Behold the lilies of the field, They toil not neither do they spin; (So doth the ancient text begin,— Not of such rest as one of these Can share.) Another rest and ease Along each summer-sated path From its new lord the garden hath, Than that whose spring in blessings ran Which praised the bounteous husbandman, Ere yet, in days of hankering breath, The lilies sickened unto death. What, Jenny, are your lilies dead? Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread Like winter on the garden-bed. But you had roses left in May,— They were not gone too. Jenny, nay, But must your roses die, and those Their purfled buds that should unclose? Even so; the leaves are curled apart, Still red as from the broken heart, And here's the naked stem of thorns. Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns As yet of winter. Sickness here Or want alone could waken fear,— 135 Nothing but passion wrings a tear. Except when there may rise unsought Haply at times a passing thought Of the old days which seem to be Much older than any history That is written in any book; When she would lie in fields and look Along the ground through the blown grass And wonder where the city was, Far out of sight, whose broil and bale They told her then for a child's tale. Jenny, you know the city now. A child can tell the tale there, how Some things which are not yet enroll'd In market-lists are bought and sold Even till the early Sunday light, When Saturday night is market-night Everywhere, be it dry or wet, And market-night in the Haymarket. Our learned London children know, Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe; Have seen your lifted silken skirt Advertise dainties through the dirt; Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke On virtue; and have learned your look When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare Along the streets alone, and there, Round the long park, across the bridge, The cold lamps at the pavement's edge Wind on together and apart, A fiery serpent for your heart. Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud! Suppose I were to think aloud,— What if to her all this were said? Why, as a volume seldom read Being opened halfway shuts again, So might the pages of her brain Be parted at such words, and thence Close back upon the dusty sense. For is there hue or shape defin'd In Jenny's desecrated mind, Where all contagious currents meet, 136 A Lethe of the middle street? Nay, it reflects not any face, Nor sound is in its sluggish pace, But as they coil those eddies clot, And night and day remember not. Why, Jenny, you're asleep at last!— Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,— So young and soft and tired; so fair, With chin thus nestled in your hair, Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue As if some sky of dreams shone through! Just as another woman sleeps! Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps Of doubt and horror,—what to say Or think,—this awful secret sway, The potter's power over the clay! Of the same lump (it has been said) For honour and dishonour made, Two sister vessels. Here is one. My cousin Nell is fond of fun, And fond of dress, and change, and praise, So mere a woman in her ways: And if her sweet eyes rich in youth Are like her lips that tell the truth, My cousin Nell is fond of love. And she's the girl I'm proudest of. Who does not prize her, guard her well? The love of change, in cousin Nell, Shall find the best and hold it dear: The unconquered mirth turn quieter Not through her own, through others' woe: The conscious pride of beauty glow Beside another's pride in her, One little part of all they share. For Love himself shall ripen these In a kind soil to just increase Through years of fertilizing peace. Of the same lump (as it is said) For honour and dishonour made, Two sister vessels. Here is one. It makes a goblin of the sun. So pure,—so fall'n! How dare to think 137 Of the first common kindred link? Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn It seems that all things take their turn; And who shall say but this fair tree May need, in changes that may be, Your children's children's charity? Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd! Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd Till in the end, the Day of Days, At Judgment, one of his own race, As frail and lost as you, shall rise,— His daughter, with his mother's eyes? How Jenny's clock ticks on the shelf! Might not the dial scorn itself That has such hours to register? Yet as to me, even so to her Are golden sun and silver moon, In daily largesse of earth's boon, Counted for life-coins to one tune. And if, as blindfold fates are toss'd, Through some one man this life be lost, Shall soul not somehow pay for soul? Fair shines the gilded aureole In which our highest painters place Some living woman's simple face. And the stilled features thus descried As Jenny's long throat droops aside,— The shadows where the cheeks are thin, And pure wide curve from ear to chin,— With Raffael's, Leonardo's hand To show them to men's souls, might stand, Whole ages long, the whole world through, For preachings of what God can do. What has man done here? How atone, Great God, for this which man has done? And for the body and soul which by Man's pitiless doom must now comply With lifelong hell, what lullaby Of sweet forgetful second birth Remains? All dark. No sign on earth What measure of God's rest endows The many mansions of his house. 138 If but a woman's heart might see Such erring heart unerringly For once! But that can never be. Like a rose shut in a book In which pure women may not look, For its base pages claim control To crush the flower within the soul; Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings, Pale as transparent Psyche-wings, To the vile text, are traced such things As might make lady's cheek indeed More than a living rose to read; So nought save foolish foulness may Watch with hard eyes the sure decay; And so the life-blood of this rose, Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose: Yet still it keeps such faded show Of when 'twas gathered long ago, That the crushed petals' lovely grain, The sweetness of the sanguine stain, Seen of a woman's eyes, must make Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache, Love roses better for its sake:— Only that this can never be:— Even so unto her sex is she. Yet, Jenny, looking long at you, The woman almost fades from view. A cipher of man's changeless sum Of lust, past, present, and to come, Is left. A riddle that one shrinks To challenge from the scornful sphinx. Like a toad within a stone Seated while Time crumbles on; Which sits there since the earth was curs'd For Man's transgression at the first; Which, living through all centuries, Not once has seen the sun arise; Whose life, to its cold circle charmed, The earth's whole summers have not warmed; Which always—whitherso the stone Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;— 139 Aye, and shall not be driven out Till that which shuts him round about Break at the very Master's stroke, And the dust thereof vanish as smoke, And the seed of Man vanish as dust:— Even so within this world is Lust. Come, come, what use in thoughts like this? Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,— You'd not believe by what strange roads Thought travels, when your beauty goads A man to-night to think of toads! Jenny, wake up…. Why, there's the dawn! And there's an early waggon drawn To market, and some sheep that jog Bleating before a barking dog; And the old streets come peering through Another night that London knew; And all as ghostlike as the lamps. So on the wings of day decamps My last night's frolic. Glooms begin To shiver off as lights creep in Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to, And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue,— Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight, Like a wise virgin's, all one night! And in the alcove coolly spread Glimmers with dawn your empty bed; And yonder your fair face I see Reflected lying on my knee, Where teems with first foreshadowings Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings: And on your bosom all night worn Yesterday's rose now droops forlorn, But dies not yet this summer morn. And now without, as if some word Had called upon them that they heard, The London sparrows far and nigh Clamour together suddenly; And Jenny's cage-bird grown awake Here in their song his part must take, Because here too the day doth break. And somehow in myself the dawn 140 Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep. But will it wake her if I heap These cushions thus beneath her head Where my knee was? No,—there's your bed, My Jenny, while you dream. And there I lay among your golden hair, Perhaps the subject of your dreams, These golden coins. For still one deems That Jenny's flattering sleep confers New magic on the magic purse,— Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies! Between the threads fine fumes arise And shape their pictures in the brain. There roll no streets in glare and rain, Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk; But delicately sighs in musk The homage of the dim boudoir; Or like a palpitating star Thrilled into song, the opera-night Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light; Or at the carriage-window shine Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine, Whirls through its hour of health (divine For her) the concourse of the Park. And though in the discounted dark Her functions there and here are one, Beneath the lamps and in the sun There reigns at least the acknowledged belle Apparelled beyond parallel. Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams. For even the Paphian Venus seems A goddess o'er the realms of love, When silver-shrined in shadowy grove: Aye, or let offerings nicely plac'd But hide Priapus to the waist, And whoso looks on him shall see An eligible deity. Why, Jenny, waking here alone May help you to remember one, Though all the memory's long outworn 141 Of many a double-pillowed morn. I think I see you when you wake, And rub your eyes for me, and shake My gold, in rising, from your hair, A Danaë for a moment there. Jenny, my love rang true! for still Love at first sight is vague, until That tinkling makes him audible. And must I mock you to the last, Ashamed of my own shame,—aghast Because some thoughts not born amiss Rose at a poor fair face like this? Well, of such thoughts so much I know: In my life, as in hers, they show, By a far gleam which I may near, A dark path I can strive to clear. Only one kiss. Good-bye, my dear. ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

74:Rose Mary Of her two fights with the Beryl-stone Lost the first, but the second won. PART I “MARY mine that art Mary's Rose Come in to me from the garden-close. The sun sinks fast with the rising dew, And we marked not how the faint moon grew; But the hidden stars are calling you. “Tall Rose Mary, come to my side, And read the stars if you'd be a bride. In hours whose need was not your own, While you were a young maid yet ungrown You've read the stars in the Beryl-stone. “Daughter, once more I bid you read; But now let it be for your own need: Because to-morrow, at break of day, To Holy Cross he rides on his way, Your knight Sir James of Heronhaye. “Ere he wed you, flower of mine, For a heavy shrift he seeks the shrine. Now hark to my words and do not fear; Ill news next I have for your ear; But be you strong, and our help is here. “On his road, as the rumour's rife, An ambush waits to take his life. He needs will go, and will go alone; Where the peril lurks may not be known; But in this glass all things are shown.” Pale Rose Mary sank to the floor:— “The night will come if the day is o'er!” “Nay, heaven takes counsel, star with star, And help shall reach your heart from afar: A bride you'll be, as a maid you are.” The lady unbound her jewelled zone And drew from her robe the Beryl-stone. Shaped it was to a shadowy sphere,— World of our world, the sun's compeer, 219 That bears and buries the toiling year. With shuddering light 'twas stirred and strewn Like the cloud-nest of the wading moon: Freaked it was as the bubble's ball, Rainbow-hued through a misty pall Like the middle light of the waterfall. Shadows dwelt in its teeming girth Of the known and unknown things of earth; The cloud above and the wave around,— The central fire at the sphere's heart bound, Like doomsday prisoned underground. A thousand years it lay in the sea With a treasure wrecked from Thessaly; Deep it lay 'mid the coiled sea-wrack, But the ocean-spirits found the track: A soul was lost to win it back. The lady upheld the wondrous thing:— “Ill fare”(she said) “with a fiend's-faring: But Moslem blood poured forth like wine Can hallow Hell, 'neath the Sacred Sign; And my lord brought this from Palestine. “Spirits who fear the Blessed Rood Drove forth the accursed multitude That heathen worship housed herein,— Never again such home to win, Save only by a Christian's sin. “All last night at an altar fair I burnt strange fires and strove with prayer; Till the flame paled to the red sunrise, All rites I then did solemnize; And the spell lacks nothing but your eyes.” Low spake maiden Rose Mary:— “O mother mine, if I should not see!” “Nay, daughter, cover your face no more, But bend love's heart to the hidden lore, And you shall see now as heretofore.” Paler yet were the pale cheeks grown As the grey eyes sought the Beryl-stone: Then over her mother's lap leaned she, And stretched her thrilled throat passionately, And sighed from her soul, and said, “I see.” Even as she spoke, they two were 'ware 220 Of music-notes that fell through the air; A chiming shower of strange device, Drop echoing drop, once, twice, and thrice, As rain may fall in Paradise. An instant come, in an instant gone, No time there was to think thereon. The mother held the sphere on her knee:— “Lean this way and speak low to me, And take no note but of what you see.” “I see a man with a besom grey That sweeps the flying dust away.” “Ay, that comes first in the mystic sphere; But now that the way is swept and clear, Heed well what next you look on there.” “Stretched aloft and adown I see Two roads that part in waste-country: The glen lies deep and the ridge stands tall; What's great below is above seen small, And the hill-side is the valley-wall.” “Stream-bank, daughter, or moor and moss, Both roads will take to Holy Cross. The hills are a weary waste to wage; But what of the valley-road's presage? That way must tend his pilgrimage.” “As 'twere the turning leaves of a book, The road runs past me as I look; Or it is even as though mine eye Should watch calm waters filled with sky While lights and clouds and wings went by.” “In every covert seek a spear; They'll scarce lie close till he draws near.” “The stream has spread to a river now; The stiff blue sedge is deep in the slough, But the banks are bare of shrub or bough.’ “Is there any roof that near at hand Might shelter yield to a hidden band?” “On the further bank I see but one, And a herdsman now in the sinking sun Unyokes his team at the threshold-stone.” “Keep heedful watch by the water's edge,— Some boat might lurk 'neath the shadowed sedge.” “One slid but now 'twixt the winding shores, 221 But a peasant woman bent to the oars And only a young child steered its course. “Mother, something flashed to my sight!— Nay, it is but the lapwing's flight.— What glints there like a lance that flees?— Nay, the flags are stirred in the breeze, And the water's bright through the dart-rushes. “Ah! vainly I search from side to side:— Woe's me! and where do the foemen hide? Woe's me! and perchance I pass them by, And under the new dawn's blood-red sky Even where I gaze the dead shall lie.” Said the mother: “For dear love's sake, Speak more low, lest the spell should break.” Said the daughter: “By love's control, My eyes, my words, are strained to the goal; But oh! the voice that cries in my soul!” “Hush, sweet, hush! be calm and behold.” “I see two floodgates broken and old: The grasses wave o'er the ruined weir, But the bridge still leads to the breakwater; And—mother, mother, O mother dear!” The damsel clung to her mother's knee, And dared not let the shriek go free; Low she crouched by the lady's chair, And shrank blindfold in her fallen hair, And whispering said, “The spears are there!” The lady stooped aghast from her place, And cleared the locks from her daughter's face. “More's to see, and she swoons, alas! Look, look again, ere the moment pass! One shadow comes but once to the glass. “See you there what you saw but now?” “I see eight men 'neath the willow bough. All over the weir a wild growth's spread: Ah me! it will hide a living head As well as the water hides the dead. “They lie by the broken water-gate As men who have a while to wait. The chief's high lance has a blazoned scroll,— He seems some lord of tithe and toll With seven squires to his bannerole. 222 “The little pennon quakes in the air, I cannot trace the blazon there:— Ah! now I can see the field of blue, The spurs and the merlins two and two;— It is the Warden of Holycleugh!” “God be thanked for the thing we know! You have named your good knight's mortal foe. Last Shrovetide in the tourney-game He sought his life by treasonous shame; And this way now doth he seek the same. “So, fair lord, such a thing you are! But we too watch till the morning star. Well, June is kind and the moon is clear: Saint Judas send you a merry cheer For the night you lie in Warisweir! “Now, sweet daughter, but one more sight, And you may lie soft and sleep to-night. We know in the vale what perils be: Now look once more in the glass, and see If over the hills the road lies free.” Rose Mary pressed to her mother's cheek, And almost smiled but did not speak; Then turned again to the saving spell, With eyes to search and with lips to tell The heart of things invisible. “Again the shape with the besom grey Comes back to sweep the clouds away. Again I stand where the roads divide; But now all's near on the steep hillside, And a thread far down is the rivertide.” “Ay, child, your road is o'er moor and moss, Past Holycleugh to Holy Cross. Our hunters lurk in the valley's wake, As they knew which way the chase would take: Yet search the hills for your true love's sake.” “Swift and swifter the waste runs by, And nought I see but the heath and the sky; No brake is there that could hide a spear, And the gaps to a horseman's sight lie clear; Still past it goes, and there's nought to fear.” “Fear no trap that you cannot see,— They'd not lurk yet too warily. 223 Below by the weir they lie in sight, And take no heed how they pass the night Till close they crouch with the morning light.” “The road shifts ever and brings in view Now first the heights of Holycleugh: Dark they stand o'er the vale below, And hide that heaven which yet shall show The thing their master's heart doth know. “Where the road looks to the castle steep, There are seven hill-clefts wide and deep: Six mine eyes can search as they list, But the seventh hollow is brimmed with mist: If aught were there, it might not be wist.” “Small hope, my girl, for a helm to hide In mists that cling to a wild moorside: Soon they melt with the wind and sun, And scarce would wait such deeds to be done God send their snares be the worst to shun.” “Still the road winds ever anew As it hastens on towards Holycleugh; And ever the great walls loom more near, Till the castle-shadow, steep and sheer, Drifts like a cloud, and the sky is clear.” “Enough, my daughter,” the mother said, And took to her breast the bending head; “Rest, poor head, with my heart below, While love still lulls you as long ago: For all is learnt that we need to know. “Long the miles and many the hours From the castle-height to the abbey-towers; But here the journey has no more dread; Too thick with life is the whole road spread For murder's trembling foot to tread.” She gazed on the Beryl-stone full fain Ere she wrapped it close in her robe again: The flickering shades were dusk and dun And the lights throbbed faint in unison Like a high heart when a race is run. As the globe slid to its silken gloom, Once more a music rained through the room; Low it splashed like a sweet star-spray, And sobbed like tears at the heart of May, 224 And died as laughter dies away. The lady held her breath for a space, And then she looked in her daughter's face: But wan Rose Mary had never heard; Deep asleep like a sheltered bird She lay with the long spell minister'd. “Ah! and yet I must leave you, dear, For what you have seen your knight must hear. Within four days, by the help of God, He comes back safe to his heart's abode: Be sure he shall shun the valley-road.” Rose Mary sank with a broken moan, And lay in the chair and slept alone, Weary, lifeless, heavy as lead: Long it was ere she raised her head And rose up all discomforted. She searched her brain for a vanished thing, And clasped her brows, remembering; Then knelt and lifted her eyes in awe, And sighed with a long sigh sweet to draw:— “Thank God, thank God, thank God I saw!” The lady had left her as she lay, To seek the Knight of Heronhaye. But first she clomb by a secret stair, And knelt at a carven altar fair, And laid the precious Beryl there. Its girth was graved with a mystic rune In a tongue long dead 'neath sun and moon: A priest of the Holy Sepulchre Read that writing and did not err; And her lord had told its sense to her. She breathed the words in an undertone:— “None sees here but the pure alone.” “And oh!” she said, “what rose may be In Mary's bower more pure to see Than my own sweet maiden Rose Mary?” BERYL-SONG We whose home is the Beryl, Fire-spirits of dread desire, 225 Who entered in By a secret sin, 'Gainst whom all powers that strive with ours are sterile,— We cry, Woe to thee, mother! What hast thou taught her, the girl thy daughter, That she and none other Should this dark morrow to her deadly sorrow imperil? What were her eyes But the fiend's own spies, O mother, And shall We not fee her, our proper prophet and seër? Go to her, mother, Even thou, yea thou and none other, Thou, from the Beryl: Her fee must thou take her, Her fee that We send, and make her, Even in this hour, her sin's unsheltered avower. Whose steed did neigh, Riderless, bridleless, At her gate before it was day? Lo! where doth hover The soul of her lover? She sealed his doom, she, she was the sworn approver,— Whose eyes were so wondrous wise, Yet blind, ah! blind to his peril! For stole not We in Through a love-linked sin, 'Gainst whom all powers at war with ours are sterile,— Fire-spirits of dread desire, We whose home is the Beryl? PART II “PALE Rose Mary, what shall be done With a rose that Mary weeps upon?” “Mother, let it fall from the tree, And never walk where the strewn leaves be Till winds have passed and the path is free.” “Sad Rose Mary, what shall be done With a cankered flower beneath the sun?” “Mother, let it wait for the night; 226 Be sure its shame shall be out of sight Ere the moon pale or the east grow light.” “Lost Rose Mary, what shall be done With a heart that is but a broken one?” “Mother, let it lie where it must; The blood was drained with the bitter thrust, And dust is all that sinks in the dust.” “Poor Rose Mary, what shall I do,— I, your mother, that lovèd you?” “O my mother, and is love gone? Then seek you another love anon: Who cares what shame shall lean upon?” Low drooped trembling Rose Mary, Then up as though in a dream stood she. “Come, my heart, it is time to go; This is the hour that has whispered low When thy pulse quailed in the nights we know. “Yet O my heart, thy shame has a mate Who will not leave thee desolate. Shame for shame, yea and sin for sin: Yet peace at length may our poor souls win If love for love be found therein. “O thou who seek'st our shrift to-day,” She cried, “O James of Heronhaye— Thy sin and mine was for love alone; And oh! in the sight of God 'tis known How the heart has since made heavy moan. “Three days yet!” she said to her heart; “But then he comes, and we will not part. God, God be thanked that I still could see! Oh! he shall come back assuredly, But where, alas! must he seek for me? “O my heart, what road shall we roam Till my wedding-music fetch me home? For love's shut from us and bides afar, And scorn leans over the bitter bar And knows us now for the thing we are.” Tall she stood with a cheek flushed high And a gaze to burn the heart-strings by. 'Twas the lightning-flash o'er sky and plain Ere labouring thunders heave the chain From the floodgates of the drowning rain. 227 The mother looked on the daughter still As on a hurt thing that's yet to kill. Then wildly at length the pent tears came; The love swelled high with the swollen shame, And their hearts' tempest burst on them. Closely locked, they clung without speech, And the mirrored souls shook each to each, As the cloud-moon and the water-moon Shake face to face when the dim stars swoon In stormy bowers of the night's mid-noon. They swayed together, shuddering sore, Till the mother's heart could bear no more. 'Twas death to feel her own breast shake Even to the very throb and ache Of the burdened heart she still must break. All her sobs ceased suddenly, And she sat straight up but scarce could see. “O daughter, where should my speech begin? Your heart held fast its secret sin: How think you, child, that I read therein?” “Ah me! but I thought not how it came When your words showed that you knew my shame: And now that you call me still your own, I half forget you have ever known. Did you read my heart in the Beryl-stone?” The lady answered her mournfully:— “The Beryl-stone has no voice for me: But when you charged its power to show The truth which none but the pure may know, Did naught speak once of a coming woe?” Her hand was close to her daughter's heart, And it felt the life-blood's sudden start: A quick deep breath did the damsel draw, Like the struck fawn in the oakenshaw: “O mother,” she cried, “but still I saw!” “O child, my child, why held you apart From my great love your hidden heart? Said I not that all sin must chase From the spell's sphere the spirits of grace, And yield their rule to the evil race? “Ah! would to God I had clearly told How strong those powers, accurst of old: 228 Their heart is the ruined house of lies; O girl, they can seal the sinful eyes, Or show the truth by contraries!” The daughter sat as cold as a stone, And spoke no word but gazed alone, Nor moved, though her mother strove a space To clasp her round in a close embrace, Because she dared not see her face. “Oh!” at last did the mother cry, “Be sure, as he loved you, so will I! Ah! still and dumb is the bride, I trow; But cold and stark as the winter snow Is the bridegroom's heart, laid dead below! “Daughter, daughter, remember you That cloud in the hills by Holycleugh? 'Twas a Hell-screen hiding truth away: There, not i' the vale, the ambush lay, And thence was the dead borne home to-day.” Deep the flood and heavy the shock When sea meets sea in the riven rock: But calm is the pulse that shakes the sea To the prisoned tide of doom set free In the breaking heart of Rose Mary. Once she sprang as the heifer springs With the wolf's teeth at its red heart-strings. First 'twas fire in her breast and brain, And then scarce hers but the whole world's pain, As she gave one shriek and sank again. In the hair dark-waved the face lay white As the moon lies in the lap of night; And as night through which no moon may dart Lies on a pool in the woods apart, So lay the swoon on the weary heart. The lady felt for the bosom's stir, And wildly kissed and called on her; Then turned away with a quick footfall, And slid the secret door in the wall, And clomb the strait stair's interval. There above in the altar-cell A little fountain rose and fell: She set a flask to the water's flow, And, backward hurrying, sprinkled now 229 The still cold breast and the pallid brow. Scarce cheek that warmed or breath on the air, Yet something told that life was there. “Ah! not with the heart the body dies!” The lady moaned in a bitter wise; Then wrung her hands and hid her eyes. “Alas! and how may I meet again In the same poor eyes the selfsame pain? What help can I seek, such grief to guide? Ah! one alone might avail,” she cried— “The priest who prays at the dead man's side.” The lady arose, and sped down all The winding stairs to the castle-hall. Long-known valley and wood and stream, As the loopholes passed, naught else did seem Than the torn threads of a broken dream. The hall was full of the castle-folk; The women wept, but the men scarce spoke. As the lady crossed the rush-strewn floor, The throng fell backward, murmuring sore, And pressed outside round the open door. A stranger shadow hung on the hall Than the dark pomp of a funeral. 'Mid common sights that were there alway, As 'twere a chance of the passing day, On the ingle-bench the dead man lay. A priest who passed by Holycleugh The tidings brought when the day was new. He guided them who had fetched the dead; And since that hour, unwearièd, He knelt in prayer at the low bier's head. Word had gone to his own domain That in evil wise the knight was slain: Soon the spears must gather apace And the hunt be hard on the hunters' trace; But all things yet lay still for a space. As the lady's hurried step drew near, The kneeling priest looked up to her. “Father, death is a grievous thing; But oh! the woe has a sharper sting That craves by me your ministering. “Alas for the child that should have wed 230 This noble knight here lying dead! Dead in hope, with all blessed boon Of love thus rent from her heart ere noon, I left her laid in a heavy swoon. “O haste to the open bower-chamber That's topmost as you mount the stair: Seek her, father, ere yet she wake; Your words, not mine, be the first to slake This poor heart's fire, for Christ's sweet sake! “God speed!” she said as the priest passed through, “And I ere long will be with you.” Then low on the hearth her knees sank prone; She signed all folk from the threshold-stone, And gazed in the dead man's face alone. The fight for life found record yet In the clenched lips and the teeth hard-set; The wrath from the bent brow was not gone, And stark in the eyes the hate still shone Of that they last had looked upon. The blazoned coat was rent on his breast Where the golden field was goodliest; But the shivered sword, close-gripped, could tell That the blood shed round him where he fell Was not all his in the distant dell. The lady recked of the corpse no whit, But saw the soul and spoke to it: A light there was in her steadfast eyes,— The fire of mortal tears and sighs That pity and love immortalize. “By thy death have I learnt to-day Thy deed, O James of Heronhaye! Great wrong thou hast done to me and mine; And haply God hath wrought for a sign By our blind deed this doom of thine. “Thy shrift, alas! thou wast not to win; But may death shrive thy soul herein! Full well do I know thy love should be Even yet—had life but stayed with thee— Our honour's strong security.” She stooped, and said with a sob's low stir,— “Peace be thine,—but what peace for her?” But ere to the brow her lips were press'd, 231 She marked, half-hid in the riven vest, A packet close to the dead man's breast. 'Neath surcoat pierced and broken mail It lay on the blood-stained bosom pale. The clot hung round it, dull and dense, And a faintness seized her mortal sense As she reached her hand and drew it thence. 'Twas steeped in the heart's flood welling high From the heart it there had rested by: 'Twas glued to a broidered fragment gay,— A shred by spear-thrust rent away From the heron-wings of Heronhaye. She gazed on the thing with piteous eyne:— “Alas, poor child, some pledge of thine! Ah me! in this troth the hearts were twain, And one hath ebbed to this crimson stain, And when shall the other throb again?” She opened the packet heedfully; The blood was stiff, and it scarce might be. She found but a folded paper there, And round it, twined with tenderest care, A long bright tress of golden hair. Even as she looked, she saw again That dark-haired face in its swoon of pain: It seemed a snake with a golden sheath Crept near, as a slow flame flickereth, And stung her daughter's heart to death. She loosed the tress, but her hand did shake As though indeed she had touched a snake; And next she undid the paper's fold, But that too trembled in her hold, And the sense scarce grasped the tale it told. “My heart's sweet lord,” ('twas thus she read,) “At length our love is garlanded. At Holy Cross, within eight days' space, I seek my shrift; and the time and place Shall fit thee too for thy soul's good grace. “From Holycleugh on the seventh day My brother rides, and bides away: And long or e'er he is back, mine own, Afar where the face of fear's unknown We shall be safe with our love alone. 232 “Ere yet at the shrine my knees I bow, I shear one tress for our holy vow. As round these words these threads I wind, So, eight days hence, shall our loves be twined, Says my lord's poor lady, JOCELIND.” She read it twice, with a brain in thrall, And then its echo told her all. O'er brows low-fall'n her hands she drew:— “O God!” she said, as her hands fell too,— “The Warden's sister of Holycleugh!” She rose upright with a long low moan, And stared in the dead man's face new-known. Had it lived indeed? She scarce could tell: 'Twas a cloud where fiends had come to dwell,— A mask that hung on the gate of Hell. She lifted the lock of gleaming hair And smote the lips and left it there. “Here's gold that Hell shall take for thy toll! Full well hath thy treason found its goal, O thou dead body and damnèd soul!” She turned, sore dazed, for a voice was near, And she knew that some one called to her. On many a column fair and tall A high court ran round the castle-hall; And thence it was that the priest did call. “I sought your child where you bade me go, And in rooms around and rooms below; But where, alas! may the maiden be? Fear nought,—we shall find her speedily,— But come, come hither, and seek with me.” She reached the stair like a lifelorn thing, But hastened upward murmuring, “Yea, Death's is a face that's fell to see; But bitterer pang Life hoards for thee, Thou broken heart of Rose Mary!” BERYL-SONG We whose throne is the Beryl, Dire-gifted spirits of fire, Who for a twin 233 Leash Sorrow to Sin, Who on no flower refrain to lour with peril,— We cry,—O desolate daughter! Thou and thy mother share newer shame with each other Than last night's slaughter. Awake and tremble, for our curses assemble! What more, that thou know'st not yet,— That life nor death shall forget? No help from Heaven,—thy woes heart-riven are sterile! O once a maiden, With yet worse sorrow can any morrow be laden? It waits for thee, It looms, it must be, O lost among women,— It comes and thou canst not flee. Amen to the omen, Says the voice of the Beryl. Thou sleep'st? Awake,— What dar'st thou yet for his sake, Who each for other did God's own Future imperil? Dost dare to live `Mid the pangs each hour must give? Nay, rather die,— With him thy lover 'neath Hell's cloud-cover to fly,— Hopeless, yet not apart, Cling heart to heart, And beat through the nether storm-eddying winds together? Shall this be so? There thou shalt meet him, but mayst thou greet him? ah no ! He loves, but thee he hoped nevermore to see,— He sighed as he died, But with never a thought for thee. Alone! Alone, for ever alone,— Whose eyes were such wondrous spies for the fate foreshown! Lo! have not We leashed the twin Of endless Sorrow to Sin,— Who on no flower refrain to lour with peril,— Dire-gifted spirits of fire, We whose throne is the Beryl? 234 PART III A SWOON that breaks is the whelming wave When help comes late but still can save. With all blind throes is the instant rife,— Hurtling clangour and clouds at strife,— The breath of death, but the kiss of life. The night lay deep on Rose Mary's heart, For her swoon was death's kind counterpart: The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary's soul,— No hill-crown's heavenly aureole, But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal. Her senses gasped in the sudden air, And she looked around, but none was there. She felt the slackening frost distil Through her blood the last ooze dull and chill: Her lids were dry and her lips were still. Her tears had flooded her heart again; As after a long day's bitter rain, At dusk when the wet flower-cups shrink, The drops run in from the beaded brink, And all the close-shut petals drink. Again her sighs on her heart were rolled; As the wind that long has swept the wold,— Whose moan was made with the moaning sea,— Beats out its breath in the last torn tree, And sinks at length in lethargy. She knew she had waded bosom-deep Along death's bank in the sedge of sleep: All else was lost to her clouded mind; Nor, looking back, could she see defin'd O'er the dim dumb waste what lay behind. Slowly fades the sun from the wall Till day lies dead on the sun-dial: And now in Rose Mary's lifted eye 'Twas shadow alone that made reply To the set face of the soul's dark sky. Yet still through her soul there wandered past Dread phantoms borne on a wailing blast,— Death and sorrow and sin and shame; And, murmured still, to her lips there came Her mother's and her lover's name. 235 How to ask, and what thing to know? She might not stay and she dared not go. From fires unseen these smoke-clouds curled; But where did the hidden curse lie furled? And how to seek through the weary world? With toiling breath she rose from the floor And dragged her steps to an open door: 'Twas the secret panel standing wide, As the lady's hand had let it bide In hastening back to her daughter's side. She passed, but reeled with a dizzy brain And smote the door which closed again. She stood within by the darkling stair, But her feet might mount more freely there,— 'Twas the open light most blinded her. Within her mind no wonder grew At the secret path she never knew: All ways alike were strange to her now,— One field bare-ridged from the spirit's plough, One thicket black with the cypress-bough. Once she thought that she heard her name; And she paused, but knew not whence it came. Down the shadowed stair a faint ray fell That guided the weary footsteps well Till it led her up to the altar-cell. No change there was on Rose Mary's face As she leaned in the portal's narrow space: Still she stood by the pillar's stem, Hand and bosom and garment's hem, As the soul stands by at the requiem. The altar-cell was a dome low-lit, And a veil hung in the midst of it: At the pole-points of its circling girth Four symbols stood of the world's first birth,— Air and water and fire and earth. To the north, a fountain glittered free; To the south, there glowed a red fruit-tree; To the east, a lamp flamed high and fair; To the west, a crystal casket rare Held fast a cloud of the fields of air. The painted walls were a mystic show Of time's ebb-tide and overflow; 236 His hoards long-locked and conquering key, His service-fires that in heaven be, And earth-wheels whirled perpetually. Rose Mary gazed from the open door As on idle things she cared not for,— The fleeting shapes of an empty tale; Then stepped with a heedless visage pale, And lifted aside the altar-veil. The altar stood from its curved recess In a coiling serpent's life-likeness: Even such a serpent evermore Lies deep asleep at the world's dark core Till the last Voice shake the sea and shore. From the altar-cloth a book rose spread And tapers burned at the altar-head; And there in the altar-midst alone, 'Twixt wings of a sculptured beast unknown, Rose Mary saw the Beryl-stone. Firm it sat 'twixt the hollowed wings, As an orb sits in the hand of kings: And lo! for that Foe whose curse far-flown Had bound her life with a burning zone, Rose Mary knew the Beryl-stone. Dread is the meteor's blazing sphere When the poles throb to its blind career; But not with a light more grim and ghast Thereby is the future doom forecast, Than now this sight brought back the past. The hours and minutes seemed to whirr In a clanging swarm that deafened her; They stung her heart to a writhing flame, And marshalled past in its glare they came,— Death and sorrow and sin and shame. Round the Beryl's sphere she saw them pass And mock her eyes from the fated glass: One by one in a fiery train The dead hours seemed to wax and wane, And burned till all was known again. From the drained heart's fount there rose no cry, There sprang no tears, for the source was dry. Held in the hand of some heavy law, Her eyes she might not once withdraw, 237 Nor shrink away from the thing she saw. Even as she gazed, through all her blood The flame was quenched in a coming flood: Out of the depth of the hollow gloom On her soul's bare sands she felt it boom,— The measured tide of a sea of doom. Three steps she took through the altar-gate, And her neck reared and her arms grew straight: The sinews clenched like a serpent's throe, And the face was white in the dark hair's flow, As her hate beheld what lay below. Dumb she stood in her malisons,— A silver statue tressed with bronze: As the fabled head by Perseus mown, It seemed in sooth that her gaze alone Had turned the carven shapes to stone. O'er the altar-sides on either hand There hung a dinted helm and brand: By strength thereof, 'neath the Sacred Sign, That bitter gift o'er the salt sea-brine Her father brought from Palestine. Rose Mary moved with a stern accord And reached her hand to her father's sword; Nor did she stir her gaze one whit From the thing whereon her brows were knit; But gazing still, she spoke to it. “O ye, three times accurst,” she said, “By whom this stone is tenanted! Lo! here ye came by a strong sin's might; Yet a sinner's hand that's weak to smite Shall send you hence ere the day be night. “This hour a clear voice bade me know My hand shall work your overthrow: Another thing in mine ear it spake,— With the broken spell my life shall break. I thank Thee, God, for the dear death's sake! “And he Thy heavenly minister Who swayed erewhile this spell-bound sphere,— My parting soul let him haste to greet, And none but he be guide for my feet To where Thy rest is made complete.” Then deep she breathed, with a tender moan:— 238 “My love, my lord, my only one! Even as I held the cursed clue, When thee, through me, these foul ones slew,— By mine own deed shall they slay me too! “Even while they speed to Hell, my love, Two hearts shall meet in Heaven above. Our shrift thou sought'st, but might'st not bring: And oh! for me 'tis a blessed thing To work hereby our ransoming. “One were our hearts in joy and pain, And our souls e'en now grow one again. And O my love, if our souls are three, O thine and mine shall the third soul be,— One threefold love eternally.” Her eyes were soft as she spoke apart, And the lips smiled to the broken heart: But the glance was dark and the forehead scored With the bitter frown of hate restored, As her two hands swung the heavy sword. Three steps back from her Foe she trod:— “Love, for thy sake! In Thy Name, O God!” In the fair white hands small strength was shown; Yet the blade flashed high and the edge fell prone, And she cleft the heart of the Beryl-stone. What living flesh in the thunder-cloud Hath sat and felt heaven cry aloud? Or known how the levin's pulse may beat? Or wrapped the hour when the whirlwinds meet About its breast for a winding-sheet? Who hath crouched at the world's deep heart While the earthquake rends its loins apart? Or walked far under the seething main While overhead the heavens ordain The tempest-towers of the hurricane? Who hath seen or what ear hath heard The secret things unregister'd Of the place where all is past and done, And tears and laughter sound as one In Hell's unhallowed unison? Nay, is it writ how the fiends despair In earth and water and fire and air? Even so no mortal tongue may tell 239 How to the clang of the sword that fell The echoes shook the altar-cell. When all was still on the air again The Beryl-stone lay cleft in twain; The veil was rent from the riven dome; And every wind that's winged to roam Might have the ruined place for home. The fountain no more glittered free; The fruit hung dead on the leafless tree; The flame of the lamp had ceased to flare; And the crystal casket shattered there Was emptied now of its cloud of air. And lo! on the ground Rose Mary lay, With a cold brow like the snows ere May, With a cold breast like the earth till Spring, With such a smile as the June days bring When the year grows warm with harvesting. The death she had won might leave no trace On the soft sweet form and gentle face: In a gracious sleep she seemed to lie; And over her head her hand on high Held fast the sword she triumphed by. 'Twas then a clear voice said in the room:— “Behold the end of the heavy doom. O come,—for thy bitter love's sake blest; By a sweet path now thou journeyest, And I will lead thee to thy rest. “Me thy sin by Heaven's sore ban Did chase erewhile from the talisman: But to my heart, as a conquered home, In glory of strength thy footsteps come Who hast thus cast forth my foes therefrom. “Already thy heart remembereth No more his name thou sought'st in death: For under all deeps, all heights above,— So wide the gulf in the midst thereof,— Are Hell of Treason and Heaven of Love. “Thee, true soul, shall thy truth prefer To blessed Mary's rose-bower: Warmed and lit is thy place afar With guerdon-fires of the sweet Love-star Where hearts of steadfast lovers are:— 240 “Though naught for the poor corpse lying here Remain to-day but the cold white bier, But burial-chaunt and bended knee, But sighs and tears that heaviest be, But rent rose-flower and rosemary.” BERYL-SONG We, cast forth from the Beryl, Gyre-circling spirits of fire, Whose pangs begin With God's grace to sin, For whose spent powers the immortal hours are sterile,— Woe! must We behold this mother Find grace in her dead child's face, and doubt of none other But that perfect pardon, alas! hath assured her guerdon? Woe! must We behold this daughter, Made clean from the soil of sin wherewith We had fraught her, Shake off a man's blood like water? Write up her story On the Gate of Heaven's glory, Whom there We behold so fair in shining apparel, And beneath her the ruin Of our own undoing! Alas, the Beryl! We had for a foeman But one weak woman; In one day's strife, Her hope fell dead from her life; And yet no iron, Her soul to environ, Could this manslayer, this false soothsayer imperil! Lo, where she bows In the Holy House! Who now shall dissever her soul from its joy for ever While every ditty Of love and plentiful pity Fills the White City, And the floor of Heaven to her feet for ever is given? Hark, a voice cries “Flee!” Woe! woe! what shelter have We, 241 Whose pangs begin With God's grace to sin, For whose spent powers the immortal hours are sterile, Gyre-circling spirits of fire, We, cast forth from the Beryl? ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

75:The Witch Of Hebron A Rabbinical Legend Part I. From morn until the setting of the sun The rabbi Joseph on his knees had prayed, And, as he rose with spirit meek and strong, An Indian page his presence sought, and bowed Before him, saying that a lady lay Sick unto death, tormented grievously, Who begged the comfort of his holy prayers. The rabbi, ever to the call of grief Open as day, arose; and girding straight His robe about him, with the page went forth; Who swiftly led him deep into the woods That hung, heap over heap, like broken clouds On Hebron’s southern terraces; when lo! Across a glade a stately pile he saw, With gleaming front, and many-pillared porch Fretted with sculptured vinage, flowers and fruit, And carven figures wrought with wondrous art As by some Phidian hand. But interposed For a wide space in front, and belting all The splendid structure with a finer grace, A glowing garden smiled; its breezes bore Airs as from paradise, so rich the scent That breathed from shrubs and flowers; and fair the growths Of higher verdure, gemm’d with silver blooms, Which glassed themselves in fountains gleaming light Each like a shield of pearl. Within the halls Strange splendour met the rabbi’s careless eyes, Halls wonderful in their magnificance, With pictured walls, and columns gleaming white Like Carmel’s snow, or blue-veined as with life; 222 Through corridors he passed with tissues hung Inwrought with threaded gold by Sidon’s art, Or rich as sunset clouds with Tyrian dye; Past lofty chambers, where the gorgeous gleam Of jewels, and the stainèd radiance Of golden lamps, showed many a treasure rare Of Indian and Armenian workmanship Which might have seemed a wonder of the world: And trains of servitors of every clime, Greeks, Persians, Indians, Ethiopians, In richest raiment thronged the spacious halls. The page led on, the rabbi following close, And reached a still and distant chamber, where In more than orient pomp, and dazzling all The else-unrivalled splendour of the rest, A queenly woman lay; so beautiful, That though upon her moon-bright visage, pain And langour like eclipsing shadows gloomed, The rabbi’s aged heart with tremor thrilled; Then o’er her face a hectic colour passed, Only to leave that pallor which portends The nearness of the tomb. From youth to age The rabbi Joseph still had sought in herbs And minerals the virtues they possess, And now of his medicaments he chose What seemed most needful in her sore estate; “Alas, not these,” the dying woman said, “A malady like mine thou canst not cure, ’Tis fatal as the funeral march of Time! But that I might at length discharge my mind Of a dread secret, that hath been to me An ever-haunting and most ghostly fear, Darkening my whole life like an ominous cloud And which must end it ere the morning come, Therefore did I entreat thy presence here.” The rabbi answered, “If indeed it stand Within my power to serve thee, speak at once 223 All that thy heart would say. But if ’tis vain, If this thy sin hath any mortal taint, Forbear, O woman, to acquaint my soul With aught that could thenceforth with horror chase The memory of a man of Israel.” “I am,” she said “the daughter of thy friend Rabbi Ben Bachai—be his memory blest! Once at thy side a laughing child I played; I married with an Arab Prince, a man Of lofty lineage, one of Ishmael’s race; Not great in gear. Behold’st thou this abode? Did ever yet the tent-born Arab build Thus for his pride or pleasure? See’st thou These riches? An no! Such were ne’er amassed By the grey desert’s wild and wandering son; Deadly the game by which I won them all! And with a burning bitterness at best Have I enjoyed them! And how gladly now Would I, too late, forego them all, to mend My broken peace with a repentant heed In abject poverty!” She ceased, and lay Calm in her loveliness, with dreamy looks Roaming, perhaps, in thought the fateful past; Then suddenly her beauteous countenance grew Bedimm’d and drear, then dark with mortal pangs, While fierce convulsions shook her tortured frame, And from her foaming lips such words o’erran, That rabbi Joseph sank upon his knees, And bowed his head a space in horror down While ardent, pitying prayers for her great woe Rose from his soul; when, lo! The woman’s face Was cloudless as a summer heaven! The late Dark brow was bright, the late pale cheek suffused With roseate bloom; and, wondrous more than all, Here weary eyes were changed to splendours now That shot electric influence, and her lips Were full and crimson, curled with stormy pride. The doubting rabbi stood in wild amaze To see the dying woman bold and fierce 224 In bright audacity of passion’s power. “These are the common changes,” then she said, “Of the fell ailment, that with torments strange, Which search my deepest life, is tearing up The dark foundations of my mortal state, And sinking all its structures, hour by hour, Into the dust of death. For nothing now Is left me but to meet my nearing doom As best I may in silent suffering.” Then as he heard her words and saw her face, The rabbi in his wisdom knew some strong Indwelling evil spirit troubled her, And straighway for an unction sent, wherewith The famous ancestor whose name he bore, Herod the Great’s chief hakim, had expelled The daemon haunter of the dying king. With this he touched her forehead and her eyes And all her finger-tips. Forthwith he made Within a consecrated crucible A fire of citron-wood and cinnamon; Then splashed the flames with incense, mingling all With the strong influence of fervent prayer; And, as the smoke arose, he bowed her head Into its coils, that so she might inhale Its salutary odour—till the fiend That dwelt within her should be exorcised. Her face once more grew pale with pain; she writhed In burning torment, uttering many words Of most unhallowed meaning! Yet her eyes Were fixed the while, and motionless her lips! Whereby the rabbi certainly perceived ’Twas not the woman of herself that spake, But the dread spirit that possessed her soul, And thus it cried aloud. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 225 Part II. “WHY am I here, in this my last resort, Perturbed with incense and anointings? Why Compelled to listen to the sound of prayers That smite me through as with the fire of God? O pain, pain, pain! Is not this chamber full Of the implacable stern punishers? Full of avenging angels, holding each A scourge of thunder in his potent hand, Ready to lighten forth! And then, thus armed, For ever chase and wound us as we fly! Nor end with this—but, in each wound they make, Pour venom sweltered from that tree As-gard, Whose deadly shadow in its blackness falls Over the lake of everlasting doom! “Five hundred years ago, I, who thus speak, Was an Egyptian of the splendid court Of Ptolemy Philadelphus. To the top Of mountainous power, though roughened with unrest, And girt with dangers as with thunder-clouds, Had I resolved by all resorts to climb; By truth and falsehood, right and wrong alike; And I did climb! Then firmly built in power Second alone to my imperial lord’s, I crowned with its impunity my lust Of beauty, sowing broadcast everywhere Such sensual baits wide round me, as should lure Through pleasure, or through interest entrap, The fairest daughters of the land, and lo! Their lustrous eyes surcharged with passionate light The chambers of my harem! But at length Wearied of these, though sweet, I set my heart On riches, heaped to such a fabulous sum As never one man’s hoard in all the world Might match; and to acquire them, steeped my life In every public, every private wrong, In lies, frauds, secret murders; till at last A favoured minion I had trusted most, And highest raised, unveiled before the king The dark abysmal badness of my life; But dearly did he rue it; nor till then Guessed I how deadly grateful was revenge! 226 I stole into his chamber as he slept, And with a sword, whose double edge for hours I had whetted for the purpose of the deed, There staked him through the midriff to his bed. I fled; but first I sent, as oft before, A present to the household of the man Who had in secret my betrayer bribed. Twas scented wine, and rich Damascus cakes; On these he feasted, and fell sudden down, Rolling and panting in his dying pangs, A poisoned desert dog! “But I had fled. A swift ship bore me, which my forecast long Had kept prepared against such need as this. Over the waves three days she proudly rode; Then came a mighty storm, and trampled all Her masted bravery flat, and still drove on The wave-swept ruin towards a reefy shore! Meanwhile amongst the terror-stricken crew An ominous murmur went from mouth to mouth; They grouped themselves in councils, and, ere long, Grew loud and furious with surmises wild, And maniac menaces, all aimed at me! My fugitive head it was at which so loud The thunder bellowed! The wild-shrieking winds And roaring waters held in vengeful chase Me only! Me! Whose signal crimes alone Had brought on us this anger of the gods! And thus reproaching me with glaring eyes, They would have seized and slain me, but I sprang Back from amongst them, and, outstriking, stabbed With sudden blow their leader to the heart; Then, with my poniard scaring off the rest, Leaped from the deck, and swimming reached the shore, From which, in savage triumph, I beheld The battered ship, with all her howling crew, Heel, and go down, amid the whelming waves. “Inland my course now lay for many days, O’er barren hills and glens, whose herbless scopes Never grew luminous with a water gleam, 227 Or heard the pleasant bubble of a brook, For vast around the Afric desert stretched. Starving and sun-scorched and afire with thirst, I wandered ever on, until I came To where, amid the dun and level waste, In frightful loneliness, a mouldered group Of ancient tombs stood ghostly. Here at last, Utterly spent, in my despair I lay Down on the burning sand, to gasp and die! When from among the stones a withered man, Old-seeming as the desert where he lived, Came and stood by me, saying ‘get thee up! Not much have I to give, but these at least I offer to thy need, water and bread.’ “Then I arose and followed to his cell,— A dismal cell, that seemed itself a tomb, So lightless was it, and so foul with damp, And at its entrance there were skulls and bones. Long and deep drank I of the hermit’s draught, And munched full greedily the hermit’s bread; But with the strength which thence my frame derived, Fierce rage devoured me, and I cursed my fate! Whereat the withered creature laughed in scorn, And mocked me with the malice of his eyes, That sometimes, like a snake’s, shrank small, and then Enlarging blazed as with infernal fire! Then, on a sudden, with an oath that seemed To wake a stir in the grey musty tombs, As if their silence shuddered, he averred That he could life me once more to the height Of all my wishes—nay, even higher, but On one condition only. Dared I swear, By the dread angel of the second death, I would be wholly his, both body and soul, After a hundred years? “Why should I not? I answered, quivering with a stormy haste, A rampart unreluctance! For so great Was still my fury against all mankind, And my desire of pomp and riches yet 228 So monstrous, that I felt I could have drunk Blood, fire, or worse, to wear again the power That fortune, working through my enemies’ hands, Had stript away from me. So, word by word, I swore the oath as he repeated it; Nor much it moved me, in my eagerness, To feel a damp and earthy odour break Out of each tomb, from which there darkling rose At every word a hissing as of snakes; And yet the fell of hair upon my scalp Rose bristling under a cold creeping thrill: But I failed not, I swore the dread oath through, And then the tombs grew silent as their dead. But through my veins a feeling of strong youth Coursed bold along, and summered in my heart, Till there before him in my pride I stood In stately strength, and swift as is the wind, Magnificant as a desert-nurtured steed Of princeliest pedigree, with nostrils wide Dilated, and with eyes effusing flame. ‘Begone,’ he said, ’and live thy hundred years Of splendour, power, pleasure, ease.’ His voice Sighed off into the distance. He was gone: Only a single raven, far aloft, Was beating outwards with its sable wings; The tombs had vanished, and the desert grey Merged its whole circle with the bending sky. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part III. “OUT of these wilds to Egypt I returned: Men thought that I had perished with the ship, And no one knew me now, because my face And form were greatly changed,—from passing fair To fairer yet; from manly, to a pile So nobly built, that in all eyes I seemed Beauteous as Thammuz! And my heart was changed; Ambition wilder than a leopard’s thirst 229 For blood of roe, or flying hart, possessed My spirit, like the madness of a god! But this I yet even in its fiercest strain Could curb and guide with sovereign strength of will. From small beginnings onward still I worked, Stepping as up a stair from rival head To rival head,—from high to higher still, Unto the loftiest post that might be held Under the Ptolemies; and meantime paid Each old unsettled score, defeating those Who erst had worked against me, sweeping them Out of all posts, all places; for though time And change had wide dispersed them through the land, The sleuth-hounds of my vengeance found them out! Which things not being in a corner done, What wonder was it that all Egypt now, From end to end, even like a shaken hive, Buzzed as disturbed with my portentous fame? “And what to me were secret enemies? Had I not also spies, who could pin down A whisper in the dark and keep it there? Could dash a covert frown by the same means An open charge had challenged? Hence my name Became a sound that struck through every heart Ineffable dismay! And yet behold There more I trampled on mankind, the more Did fawning flatterers praise me as I swept Like a magnificant meteor through the land! The more I hurled the mighty from their seats, And triumphed o’er them prostrate in the dust, The human hounds that licked my master hand But multiplied the more! And still I strode From bad to worse, corrupting as I went, Making the lowly ones more abject yet; Awing as with a thunder-bearing hand The high and affluent; while I bound the strong To basest service, even with chains of gold. All hated, cursed and feared me, for in vain Daggers were levelled at my brazen heart— They glanced, and slew some minion at my side Poison was harmless as a heifer’s milk When I had sipped it with my lips of scorn; 230 All that paraded pomp and smiling power Could draw against me from the envious hearts Of men in will as wicked as myself I challenged, I encountered, and o’erthrew! “But, after many years, exhaustion sere Spread through the branches of my tree of life; My forces flagged, my senses more and more Were blunted, and incapable of joy; The splendours of my rank availed me not; A poverty as naked as a slave’s Peered from them mockingly. The pride of power That glowed so strong within me in my youth Was now like something dying at my heart. To cheat or stimulate my jaded taste, Feasts, choice or sumptuous, were devised in vain; there was disfavour, there was fraud within, Like that which filled the fair-appearing rind Of those delusive apples that of old Grew on the Dead Sea shore. “And yet, though thus All that gave pleasure to my younger life Was withering from my path like summer grass, I still had one intense sensation, which Grew ever keener as my years increased— A hatred of mankind; to pamper which I gloated, with a burning in my soul, Over their degradation; and like one Merry with wine, I revelled day by day In scattering baits that should corrupt them more: The covetous I sharpened into thieves, Urged the vindictive, hardened the malign, Whetted the ruffian with self-interest, And flung him then, a burning brand, abroad. And the decadence of the state in which My fortunes had recast me, served me well. Excess reeled shameless in the court itself, Or, staggering thence, was rivalled by the wild Mad looseness of the crowd. Down to its death The old Greek dynasty was sinking fast; Waste and pale want, extortion, meanness, fraud— 231 These, welling outwards from the throne itself, Spread through the land. “But now there seized my soul A new ambition—from his feeble throne To hurl the king, and mount thereon myself! To this end still I lured him into ill, And daily wove around him cunning snares, That reached and trammelled too his fawning court; And all went well, the end at last was near, But in my triumph one thing I forgot— My name was measured. At a banquet held In the king’s chamber, lo! A guest appeared, Chief of a Bactrian tribe, who tendered gold To pay for some great wrong his desert horde Had done our caravans; his age, men said, Was wonderful; his craft more wondrous still; For this his fame had spread through many lands, And the dark seekers of forbidden lore Knew his decrepit wretch to be their lord. “The first glance that I met of his weird eye Had sent into my soul a fearful doubt That I had seen that cramp-shrunk withered form And strange bright eye in some forgotten past. But at the dry croak of his raven voice Remembrance wok; I knew that I beheld The old man of the tombs: I saw, and fell Into the outer darkness of despair. The day that was to close my dread account Was come at last. The long triumphant feast Of life had ended in a funeral treat. I was to die—to suffer with the damned The hideous torments of the second death! The days, weeks, months of a whole hundred years Seemed crushed into a thought, and burning out In that brief period which was left me now. “Stung with fierce horror, shame, and hate I fled; I seized my sword, to plunge its ready point Into my maddened heart, but on my arm I felt a strong forbidding grasp! I turned; 232 The withered visage of the Bactrian met My loathing eyes; I struggled to be free From the shrunk wretch in vain; his spidery hands Were strong as fetters of Ephesian brass, And all my strength, though now with madness strung, Was as a child’s to his. He calmly smiled: ‘Forbear, thou fool! Am I not Sammael? Whom to resist is vain, and from whom yet Has never mercy flowed; for what to me Are feelings which thou knowest even in men Are found the most in fools. But wide around A prince of lies I reign. ’Tis I that fill the Persian palaces with lust and wrong, Till like the darkling heads of sewers they flow With a corruption that in fretting thence Taints all the region round with rankest ill; ’Tis I that clot the Bactrian sand with blood; And now I come to fling the brands of war Through all this people, this most ill-mixed mob, Where Afric’s savage hordes meet treacherous Greeks, And swarming Asia’s luxury-wasted sons. This land throughout shall be a deluge soon Of blood and fire, till ruin stalk alone, A grisly spectre, in its grass-grown marts.’ The fiery eyes within his withered face Glowed like live coals, as he triumphant spake, And his strange voice, erewhile so thin and dry, Came as if bellowed from the vaults of doom. Prone fell I, powerless to move or speak; And now he was about to plunge me down Ten thousand times ten thousand fathoms deep Through the earth’s crust, and through the slimy beds Of nether ocean—down! Still down, below The darkling roots of all this upper world Into the regions of the courts of hell! “To stamp me downward to the convict dead His heel was raised, when suddenly I heard Him heave a groan of superhuman pain, So deep twas drawn! And as he groaned, I saw A mighty downburst of celestial light 233 Enwrap his shrivelled form from head to foot, As with a robe within whose venomous folds He writhed in torment. Then above him stood A shining shape, unspeakably sublime, And gazed upon him! One of the high sons Of Paradise, who still keep watch and ward O’er Israel’s progeny, where’er dispersed; And now they fought for me with arms that filled The air wide round with flashes and swift gleams Of dazzling light; full soon the Evil One Fell conquered. Then forth sprang he from the ground And with dark curses wrapped him in a cloud That moved aloft, low thundering as it went. “And then the shining son of paradise Came where I lay and spoke, his glorious face Severe with wrath, and yet divinely fair— ‘O Child of Guilt! Should vengeance not be wrought On thee as well? On Sammael’s willing slave?’ I clasped his radiant knees—I wept—I groaned— I beat my bosom in my wild distress. At last the sacred Presence, who had held The blow suspended still, spoke thus: ‘Thou’rt spared; From no weak pity, but because thou art Descended from the line of Israel: For that cause spared;—yet must thou at my hand Find some meet punishment.’ And as he spake, He laid his hand with a life-crushing weight Upon my forehead—and I fell, as dead! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part IV. “AWAKING as from sleep, I bounded up, Stung with a feeling of enormous strength, Though yet half wild with horror. Onward then Ramping I went, out through the palace gates, Down the long streets, and into the highways, Forth to the wilds, amazed at my own speed! 234 And now afar, in long-drawn line appeared A caravan upon its outward way Over the desert of Pentapolis. And strange the instinct seemed that urged me then to rush amongst them—and devour: for I Was fierce with hunger, and inflamed with thirst. “Amidst a laggard company I leaped That rested yet beside a cooling spring; One of those clear springs that, like giant pearls, Inlay the burning borders of the grey Enormous desert. All at once they rose! Some fled, some threw themselves amongst the brakes, Some seized their swords and lances; this to see Filled me at once with a mysterious rage And savage joy! The sternness of their looks, Their fearful cries, the gleaming of their spears Seemed to insult me, and I rushed on them. Then sudden spasms of pain searched deep my side, Wherein a fell lance quivered. On I rushed; I roared a roar that startled e’en myself, So loud and hoarse and terrible its tone, Then bounding, irresistible it seemed As some huge fragment from a crag dislodged, Against the puny wretch that sent the lance, Instantly tore him, as he were a kid, All into gory shreds! The others fled At sight of this, nor would I chase them then, All wearied by my flight. Besides, the well Was gleaming in its coolness by me there. “And as I stooped to quench my parching thirst, Behold, reversed within the water clear, The semblance of a monstrous lion stood! I saw his shaggy mane, I saw his red And glaring eyeballs rolling in amaze, His rough and grinning lips, his long sharp fangs All foul with gore and hung with strings of flesh! I shrank away in horrible dismay. But as the sun each moment fiercer grew, I soon returned to stoop and slake my thirst. Again was that tremendous presence there Standing reversed, as erewhile, in the clear 235 And gleaming mirror of the smiling well! The horrid truth smote like a rush of fire Upon my brain! The dreadful thing I saw Was my own shadow! I was a wild beast.” “They did not fable, then, who held that oft The guilty dead are punished in the shapes Of beasts, if brutal were their lives as men.” “Long lapped I the cool lymph, while still my tongue Made drip for drip against the monstrous one, Which, as in ugly mockery, from below Seemed to lap up against it. But though thirst Was quenched at length, what was there might appease The baffled misery of my fated soul? The thought that I no more was human, ran Like scorpion venom through my mighty frame; Fiercely I bounded, tearing up the sands, That, like a drab mist, coursed me as I went Out on my homeless track. I made my fangs Meet in my flesh, trusting to find in pain Some respite from the anguish of regret. From morn to night, from night to morn, I fled, Chased by the memory of my lost estate; Then, worn and bleeding, in the burning sands I lay down, as to die. In vain!—in vain! The savage vigour of my lion-life Might yield alone to the long tract of time. “From hill to valley rushing after prey, With whirlwind speed, was now my daily wont, For all things fled before me—all things shrank In mortal terror at my shaggy front. Sometimes I sought those close-fenced villages, Wherein the desert-dwellers hide their swart And naked bodies from the scorching heats, Hoping that I might perish by their shafts. And often was I wounded—often bore Their poisoned arrows in my burning flesh— But still I lived. “The tenor of my life 236 Was always this—the solitary state Of a wild beast of prey, that hunted down The antelope, the boar, the goat, the gorged Their quivering flesh, and lapped their steaming blood; Then slept till hunger, or the hunter’s cry, Roused him again to battle or to slay, To flight, pursuit, blood, stratagem, and wounds. And to make this rude life more hideous yet, I still retained a consciousness of all The nobler habits of my eariler time, And had a keen sense of what most had moved My nature as a man, and knew besides That this my punishment was fixed by One Too mighty to be questioned, and too just One tittle of its measure to remit. “How long this haggard course of life went on I might not even guess, for I had lost The human faculty that measures time. But still from night to night I found myself Roaming the desert, howling at the moon, Whose cold light always, as she poured it down, Awoke a drear distemper in my brain: But much I shunned the sunblaze, which at once Inflamed me, and revealed my dread approach. “Homelessly roaming thus for evermore, The tempests beat on my unsheltered bulk, In those bleak seasons when the drenching rains Drove into covert all those gentler beasts That were my natural prey. I swinkt beneath The furnace heats of the midsummer sun, When even the palm of the oasis stood All withered, like a weed: and for how long, Yet knew not. “Thus the sun and moon arose Through an interminable tract of time, And yet though sense was dim, the view of all My human life was ever at my beck, Nay, opened out before me of itself Plain as the pictures in a wizard’s glass! 237 I saw again the trains that round my car Streamed countless, saw its pageants and its pomps, Its faces fair and passionate, and felt Lie’s eager pleasures, even its noble pangs! Then in the anguish of my goaded heart Would I roll howling in the burning sand. “At length this life of horror seemed to near Its fated bourn. The slow but sure approach Of old decay was felt in every limb And every function of my lion frame. My massive strength seemed spent, my speed was gone, The antelope escaped me! Wearily I sought a mountain cavern, shut from day By savage draperies of tangled briers, And only dragged my tardy bulk abroad When hunger urged. It chanced on such a day I sprange amid a herd of buffaloes And tore their leader down, who bellowing fell. When, lo! The chief of those that drove them came Against me, and I turned my rage on him: But though the long lapse of so many years Of ever-grinding wretchedness had dulled My memory, I felt that I had seen His withered visage twice before; and straight A shuddering awe subdued me, and I crouched Beneath him in the dust. My lust of blood, My ruthless joy at sight of mortal pain, Within me died, and if in human speech I might have told the wild desire that filled My being, I had prayed him once for all To crush me out of life, and to consign My misery to the pit of final death! But when, all hopeless, I again looked up, The tawney presence of the desert chief Was gone, and I beheld the shining son Of paradise, from whose majestic brow There flashed the lightings of a wrath divine. Yea, twas the angel that with Sammael Had fought for me in Egypt; and once more He laid his crushing had upon my front; And earth and sky, and all that in them is, 238 Became to me a darkness, swimming blank In the Eternal, round that point where now My body lay, stretched dead upon the sand. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part V. “AGAIN I lived—again I felt. But now The winds of heaven seemed under me, and I Was sweeping, like the spirit of a storm That bellowed round me, in its murky glooms, All heaving with a motion wide and swift That seemed yet mightier than the darkling swells Of ocean, wrestling with a midnight gale! The wild winds tossed me; I was drenched throughout With heavy moisture, and at intervals Amid the ragged gaps of moving cloud, Methought I caught dim glimpses of the sun Hanging aloft, as if in drear eclipse; But as my senses cleared, I saw my limbs Were clothed with plumage; and long-taloned claws Were closing eagerly with fierce desire And sudden hunger after blood and prey! An impulse to pursue and to destroy Both on the earth and in the air, ran quick Out from my heart and shivered in my wings; And as a thing more central yet, I felt Pregnant within me, throned o’er all, a lone And sullen, yet majestic, glow of pride. “’Twas plain that I, who had aforetime been Crushed out of human being into that Of a wild beast, had thence again passed on Into the nature of some mighty thing That now swept sailing on wide van-like wings, Amid the whirls of an aërial gloom, That out extending in one mighty cope Hung heaving, like a black tent-roof, o’er all The floor of Africa. 239 “Still on I swept, And still as far as my keen vision went, That now was gifted with a power that seemed To pierce all space, I saw the vapours roll In dreadful continuous of black And shapeless masses, by the winds convulsed; But soon in the remotest distance came A change: the clouds were touched with sunny light, And, as I nearer drew, I saw them dash, Like the wild surges of an uproused sea Of molten gold, against the marble sides Of lofty mountains, which, though far below My flight, yet pierced up through them all, and stood With splintered cones and monster-snouted crags, Immovable as fate. Beneath me, lo! The grandeur of the kingdom of the air Was circling in its magnitude! It was A dread magnificence of which before I might not even dream. I saw its quick And subtle interchange of forms and hues, Saw its black reservoirs of densest rain, Its awful forges of the thunderstorm. “At last, as onward still I swept, above A milky mass of vapour far outspread, Behold, reflected in its quiet gleam, I saw an image that swept on with me, Reversed as was the lion’s in the well, With van-like wings, with eyeballs seething fire, With taloned claws, and cruel down-bent beak,— The mightiest eagle that had ever sailed The seas of space since Adam named the first! “My fated soul had passed into the form Of that huge eagle which swept shadowed there. Cold horror thrilled me! I was once again Imprisoned in the being of a brute, In the base being of a nature yet Inferior by what infinite descent To that poor remnant of intelligence Which still kept with me,—like a put-back soul Burningly conscious of its powers foregone, 240 Its inborn sovreignty of kind, and yet So latent, self-less; once again to live A life of carnage, and to sail abroad A terror to all birds and gentle beasts That heard the stormy rushings of my wings! A royal bird indeed, who lived alone In the great stillness of the mighty hills, Or in the highest heavens. “But in truth Not much for many seasons had I need To search for prey, for countless hosts of men, Forth mustering over all the face of earth, Cast the quick gleam of arms o’er trampled leagues Of golden corn, and as they onward marched They left behind them seas of raging fire, In whose red surges cities thronged with men And happy hamlets, homes of health and peace, That rang erewhile with rural thankfulness, Were whelmed in one wide doom; or in their strength Confronted upon some set field of fight, Their sullen masses charged with dreadful roar That far out-yelled the fiercest yells of beasts, And with brute madness rushed on wounds and death; Or else about fenced cities they would pitch Their crowded camps, and leaguer them for years, Sowing the fields about them with a slime Of carnage, till their growths were plagues alone. What is the ravage made by brutes on brutes To that man makes on man? “With mingled pain And joy I saw the wondrous ways of men, (For ever when I hungered, close at hand, Some fresh slain man lay smoking in his gore) And though the instincts of the eagle’s life Were fierce within me, yet I felt myself Cast in a lot more capable of joy; Safe from pursuit, from famine, and from wounds. Some solaces, though few and far between, Were added to me; and I argued thence, In the dark musings of my eagle heart, 241 That not for ever was my soul condemned To suffer in the body of a brute; For though remembrance of the towering crimes And matchless lusts, that filled my whole career Of human life, worked in me evermore, No longer did they shed about my life So venomous a blight. Nay, I could think How often I had looked with longing eyes Up at the clear Egyptian heavens, and watched The wings that cleft them, envying every bird That, soaring in the sunshine, seemed to be Exempt from all the grovelling cares of men. I thought how once, when with my hunting train I pierced that region round the cataracts, I watched an eagle as it rose aloft Into the lovely blue, and wished to change My being with it as it floated on, So inaccessible to hate or hurt, So peaceful, at a height in heaven so safe; And then it passed away through gorgeous clouds Against the sunset, through the feathered flags Of royal purple edged with burning gold. “These fields of space were my dominion now; Motion alone within a world so rich Was something noble: but to move at will, Upward or forward, or in circles vast, Through boundless spaces with a rushing speed No living thing might rival, and to see The glory of the everlasting hills Beneath me, and the myriad-peopled plains, Broad rivers, and the towery towns that sate Beside their spacious mouths, with out beyond The lonely strength of the resounding seas— This liberty began to move my sense As something godlike; and in moving made A sure impression that kept graining still Into the texture of my brute estate— Yea, graining in through all its fleshy lusts And savage wonts. “Hence ever more and more 242 The temper of a better spirit grew Within me, as from inkling roots, and moved E’en like an embryon in its moist recess: A sensibility to beauteous things As now I saw them in the heavens displayed, And in the bright luxuriance of the earth; Some power of just comparison, some sense Of how a man would rank them, could he see Those earthly grandeurs from the sovreign height Whence I beheld them. And with this a wish To commune even with the human race, And pour the loftier wonders of my life Into their ears, through a rich-worded song Whose golden periods in mellow flow Should witch all ears that heard them—ev’n old men s, Ev’n jaded monarchs; not to speak of theirs, Those spirit-lovely ones—yea, moons of love, That rise at first in the Circassian hills— And they should tingle all like tiny shells Of roseate whiteness to its perfect chords. “One day amid the mountains of the moon, Behold a sudden storm had gatherd up Out of my view, hid by a neighbouring height, But which, thence wheeling with terrific force, Wide tossed me with its gusts—aloft, and then Downward as far; then whirlingly about, Ev’n like a withered leaf. My strength of wing Availed me nought, so mightily it raged; Then suddenly, in the dim distance, lo! I saw, as from the storm’s Plutonian heart, A mass of white-hot light come writing forth, And then the figure of a withered man Seemed dropping headlong through the lurid clouds; While full within the radiant light, again The conquering son of paradise appeared, Upon whose brow divine I yet might trace Some sing of wrath. Onward the vision rushed, Orbed in white light. I felt a stifling heat, One cruel blasting pang, and headlong then Fell earthward—dead; a plumb descending mass. 243 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part VI. “WITHIN a rustic chamber, dark and low, Thronged with wild-looking men and women strange, I seemed to waken. Inwardly I felt No briskness of existence, but a sense Of languor rather, or revival slow: And evermore the men and women came And gazed upon me, shouting in amaze, Then would they whirl about the room in dance, Abandoned to their barbarous delight. “I turned mine eyes about the low-roofed room, Half fearing and half hoping I might see The mighty angel that now ruled my life; They thought I needed air, and I was borne to a low casement. Like a picture lay The world without. On all sides wide around Nothing but mountains, feathered to their tops With a dense growth of pines, and valleys filled With a cold darkness that was lit alone By the broad flashes of the furious streams That leaped in thunder our of marble gaps! Dull vapours, like a canopy of smoke, Did so obscure the sun, that I had thought The scene that now I saw was not of earth, But for a golden flush that now and then Would touch the highest ranges. What I was I knew not, but I felt my former wants, And oft I made vain efforts to expand The wings I had no longer, and sail off, And through those sullen vapours—up, and up— Into the mighty silence of the blue. “The day was fading, and a blare of horns, With many voices and much trampling noise, Heard from without, aroused me; and, ere long, Women rushed in, each bearing some rich robe Or some gay bauble, wherewithal they next 244 Arrayed me to their taste; and then they held A mirror up before me, and I saw My soul had this time passed into the form Of a fair damsel. She, whose form I now Re-animated, was—so learned I soon— The only child of a Circassian chief, Who had been long regarded by her house As its chief treasure, for her beauty rare; Reserved for him, no matter whence he came, Whose hand could dip into the longest purse. But envy lurks in the Circassian hills As elsewhere, and a dose of opium, Administered by one who had been long The rival beauty of a neighbouring tribe, Had served to quash a bargain quite complete Save in the final payment of the gold, Which had been even offered and told down, And only not accepted, through some old Delaying ceremony of the tribe; And in this luckless circumstances, twas plain That both my admirable parents saw The unkindest turn of all. “On all hands forth Had scouts been sent to summon the whole tribe To attend my obsequies, and then forthwith Exterminate our ancient enemies Through all their tents—such was the fierce resolve. But while these things were pending, lo! The light Had broken like a new morn from the eyes Of the dead beauty; on her cheeks had dawned A roseate colour; from her moistening lips Low murmurs, too, had broken; whereupon My parents in exulting hope transformed The funeral to a general tribal feast, And loaded me with all the ancient gauds And ornaments they held. The Persian, too, Had been invited to renew his suit, And carry me at once beyond the reach Of future opium doses. “Soon he came 245 Galloping back to bear me to the arms Of his long-bearded lord. He paid the price; My worthy parents took a fond farewell Of me, with tears declaring me to be The life-light of their eyes, their rose of joy,— Then stretched their palms out for the stranger’s gold, And hurried off to count it o’er again— The dear recovered treasure they so late Had mourned as lost for ever. On that night I was packed neatly on a camel’s back Beside a precious case of porcelain pipes, And carried Persia-ward, by stages safe, From the Circassian mountains. “At the court I soon became the favourite of the king; Lived sumptuously, but in perpetual fear: For all my luxury and gold and gems, I envied the poor slaves who swept the floors. I was the favourite of my Persian lord For one whole month, perhaps a little more, And then I learned my place was to be filled; And though I loathed him, as we loathe some cold And reptile creature, yet I could not bear To see a newer rival take my place, For I was beautiful, and therefore vain: So, that I might regain his favour past, I now arrayed myself in airy robes, While scarfs of purple like an orient queen’s Barred them with brilliant tints, and gold and pearls Confined the wavelets of my sunny hair. “The harem all applauded, and there seemed Even in his own dull eyes almost a flash As of extorted joy, but this became At the next moment a malignant scowl, Which had its dark cause in such thoughts as these: ‘What! Did so soft and ignorant a thing Hope to enchant again a man so wise As he was—he! The paragon of kings! By floating in before him like a swan, A little better feathered than before?’ 246 And then he waved the harem ladies forth, And with him kept only a Nubian girl, Whom he thought dull, and altogether his: A conclave of those strange demoniac dwarfs Who from their secret dens and crypts would come On given signals forth, was summoned in: Wizard-like beings, with enormous heads, Splay-feet, and monstrous spider-fingered hands. Nor was the council long; I on that night Was to be poisoned with a pomegranate. Then stole the Nubian girl away, and brought Me word of all; yet her news moved me not, So sure I felt that this was not my doom; Or moved me only to prepare for flight With the poor Nubian girl. Unseen I came To my own chamber, where I packed my goods; And whence, unseen by all, we swiftly fled. ’Twas plain and patent to my inmost self That in this last change I had always been Regenerating more and more; for though I had a love of mischief in my head, At heart I was not bad, and they who knew Me closely, or at least the woman sort, Loved me,—nay, served me, as the Nubian did. And now, as no one else might sell me,—lo! I sold myself, and found myself installed Queen of a rude baboon-like Afric king. “Then I was captive to a Bedouin sheik, Was sold in the slave-mart of Astrachan, And carried thence to India, to be crowned A rajahpoot’s sultana; from which state Flying at length, I fell into a worse, Being pounced on by a Turkoman horse-stealer. At Alexandra I became the slave Of a harsh Roman matron, who was wont To flog and famish me to make me good, And when I owned myself converted, then She flogged and famished me the more, to make My goodness lasting; and I finally Fell stabbed in Cairo—slaughtered by a slave. 247 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part VII. “AFTER some short and intermediate terms Of transmigration, all in female forms, In which, through kindly offices performed, It seemed the temper of my spirit much Had humanized, and in the last of which Twas mine to die for once a natural death, Again I had some deep-down hold on being, Dim as an oyster’s in its ocean-bed; Then came a sense of light and air, of space, Of hunger, comfort, warmth, of sight and sound I caught at length the drift of speech, and knew That all who came to see me and admire Called me Ben Bachai’s daughter. “Dark indeed, But lovely as a starry night I grew, A maid, the glory of her father’s house, Her mother’s dovelet, filling all her wonts With tenderness and joy. Still as I grew, By strange degrees the memory of all That I had been came back upon my mind To fill it with wild sorrow and dismay; To know I was a cheat, nor wholly what I seemed to my fond parents—that I was But half their daughter, and the rest a fiend, With a fiend’s destiny,—ah! This, I say, Would smite me even in dreams with icy pangs Or wordless woe, yea, even while I slept So innocently as it seemed, and so Securely happy in the arms of love!” As this was said, the Rabbi looked, and saw That now again the woman seemed to speak As of herself, and not as heretofore With moveless lips, and prisoned voice, that came As from some dark duality within. 248 Her looks had changed, too, with the voice, and now Again she lay, a queen-like creature, racked With mortal sufferings, who, when these grew less, Or for a time remitted, even thus Took up her tale again. “At length upgrown To womanhood, by some mysterious pact Existing twixt my father’s house and that Of an Arabian prince time out of mind, I was now wedded ere I wished, and he, My husband, finally had come to claim And bear me from my home, that happiest home Which I should know no more: a man most fair To look upon, but void of force, in truth The weakling of a worn-out line, who yet (What merit in a prince!) Was not depraved, Not wicked, not the mendicant of lust, But mild, and even affectionate and just. My dowry was immense, and flushed with this The prince had summoned from his vassal tribe Five hundred horse, all spearmen, to escort And guard us desert-ward. And as we went These ever and anon, at signal given, Would whirl around us like a thunder-cloud Wind-torn, and shooting instant shafts of fire! And thus we roamed about the Arabian wastes, Pitching our camp amid the fairest spots. Beneath an awning oft I lay, and gazed Out at the cloudless ether, where it wrapt The silent hills, like to a conscious power Big with the soul of an eternal past. “But long this life might last not, for the prince Sickened and died;—died poor, his wealth and mine Having been squandered on the hungry horde That wont to prance about us; who ere long, Divining my extremity, grew loud And urgent for rewards, till on a day, By concert as it seemed, the tribe entire Came fiercely round me, all demanding gifts, Gifts that I had not; as they nearer pressed, 249 Wearing his way among them, lo! I saw The old man of the tombs! The Bactrian sage! With signs of awe they made him room to pass; He fixed me with his shrunk and serpent eyes, Waved off the abject Arabs, and then asked ‘Why art thou poor? With needs so great upon thee? I offer thee long life and wealth and power.’ “I turned to him and said: ‘Should I not know, By all the past, the nature of thy gifts? Shows and delusions, evil, sin-stained all, And terminating in eternal loss.’ ‘Well, take it as thou wilt,’ he said; ‘my gifts Are not so weighed by all.’ And saying this He went his way, while I retired within My lonely tent to weep. “Next day the tribes Again assembled, and with threats and cries, And insults loud, they raised a passion in me. My blood arose: I chid them angrily, Called them all things but men, till they, alarmed, Fell back in sullen silence for a while, Crouching like tigers ready for a spring. Humbled, perplexed, and frightened, I returned Into my tent, and there within its folds Stood the weird Bactrian with his snaky eyes, And wiry voice that questioned as before: ‘Why art thou poor? Why dost thou suffer wrong, With all this petty baseness brattling round? Am I not here to help thee? I, thy one Sole friend—not empty, but with ample means. Behold the secrets of the inner earth! There, down among the rock-roots of the hills, What seest thou there? Look, as I point, even those Strange miscreations, as they seem to thee, Are demoniac moilers that obey Such arts as I possess; the gnomish brood Of Demogorgon. See them how they moil Amid those diamonds shafts and reefs of gold Embedded in the oldest drifts of time, And in the mire that was the first crude floor 250 And blind extension of the infant earth: Why art thou poor, then, when such slaves as they Might work for thee, and glut thy need with all The matchless values which are there enwombed, Serving thee always as they now serve me? Nor these alone: turn thou thy looks aloft, And watch the stars as they go swimming past. Behold their vastness, each a world,’ he said; ‘The secrets of all these, too, thou shalt know, The spirits of all these shall be thy slaves, If thou wilt swear as erst amid the tombs.’ “The woe of desolation wrapped me round, The joy to know all mysteries tempted me, And with a shudder that shook me to the soul I swore, as erst I swore amid the tombs. “As on my hand he placed a signet-ring, Suddenly loud the desert winds arose, And blew with mighty stress among the tents; And instantly aloft the thunder ran, A mighty issue of miraculous light Burst shaft-like forward, smiting him in twain, Or so it seemed, down through the solid earth. In vain I shrunk into a dim recess; Before me stood the son of paradise. Then leapt the soul to life within my heart— Leapt into life with fear, and pain, and woe— Anger and sadness both were on his brow. “‘Could’st thou no trial bear—all but redeemed; Could’st thou not rest content? A rabbi’s child! Enjoy as best thou may this ill-won power Over the darker agencies of time, And bide the end, which end is punishment But the more terrible, the more delayed; Yet know this also, thou shalt thus no more Be punished in a body built of clay.’ He vanished, leaving me to sharp remorse, And harrowed with the thought of his grieved look. ‘And yet no power in heaven or hell,’ I said, ‘May now annul my deed.’ 251 “And not one day Of joy has brought to me my ‘ill-won power.’ I built vast palaces in quiet view Of ancient cities, or by famous streams; I filled my halls with men and women fair, And with these pages of a beauty rare Like striplings kidnapped from some skirt of heaven; Yet sorrowful of countenance withal, As knowing that their mortal doom is joined With mine irrevocably, that with me ’Tis theirs to own these shows of time, with me To live—with me to die. And as, ’tis said, A hunted roe will evermore beat round Towards whence he started first, I felt at length An ardent longing for my native place; That spot in all the earth where only I, In tasting of it, had divined the worth And Sabbath quality of household peace. Then coming hither, thus constrained, I pitched My dwelling here, even this thou seest; built fair, And filled with splendours such as never yet Under one roof-tree on this earth were stored. See yon surpassing lustres! Could this orb Show such? From Mars came that; from Venus this; And yonder mass of sun-bright glory, that From Mercury came, whence came these viols, too, Instinct with fervent music such as ne’er From earthly instruments might thrill abroad.” Then seizing one of them, even as she spake, Over its chords she moved her ivory hand, And instantly the palace domes throughout Rang resonant, as every hall and crypt Were pulsing music from a thousand shells That still ran confluent with a mellow slide And intercourse of cadence: sweet, and yet Most mournful and most weird, and oft intoned With a wild wilfulness of power that worked For madness more than joy. “Even such, ” she said “Are the delights with which I most converse In the dark loneness of my fated soul, 252 For all is show, not substance. All I hold But darkens more the certainty I have Of wrath to come, from which no change of place, No earthly power, no power of heaven nor hell, May shield me now. I see it shadowing forth Even like a coming night, in whose dark folds My soul would ask to hide itself in vain. And now I go to meet the angel’s face; I will not claim my hundred years of pride, I trample underneath my feet the gift For which I sold my soul; I will not touch The ring of Sammael, nor use his power To stay the torments that devour my life; Misery, shame, remorse, and dread are mine; Yet shall the angel see repentent eyes, And know at last I could one trial bear; Too late, too late.” As thus the woman spake, Her brow grew dark, and suddenly she shrieked In her great agony. “Oh pray for me! Pray, rabbi! For the daughter of thy friend! The hour is coming, nay, the hour is come!” There was a rustle as of wings aloft, A sudden flicker in the lights below, And she, who until now seemed speaking, sank Back on her pillow and in silence lay Beautiful in the marble calm of death. The rabbi gazed on her, and thought the while Of those far times, when, as a child, her grace Had filled with pleasantness her father’s house. Then to her servants gave in charge the corpse, And forth he paced, much musing as he went. At length he turned to gaze once more upon The silent house of death. Can such things be? All had evanished like a morning mist! Only the woods that hung like clouds about The steeps of Hebron, in the whitening dawn Lay dark against the sky! Only a pool Gleamed flat before him, where it seemed erewhile The splendid palace had adorned the view! 253 Perplexed in mind, the rabbi turned again And hurried homeward, muttering as he went: Was it a vision? Can such marvels be? But what in truth are all things, even those That seem most solid—dust and air at last ~ Charles Harpur,

  229 Poetry
  170 Integral Yoga
   75 Fiction
   73 Occultism
   58 Yoga
   48 Christianity
   45 Philosophy
   37 Mysticism
   27 Psychology
   12 Islam
   10 Mythology
   9 Sufism
   6 Philsophy
   6 Baha i Faith
   5 Buddhism
   4 Science
   3 Integral Theory
   2 Theosophy
   2 Kabbalah
   2 Hinduism
   1 Zen
   1 Thelema
   1 Education
   1 Cybernetics
   1 Alchemy


   97 The Mother
   62 Satprem
   48 Sri Ramakrishna
   46 Sri Aurobindo
   41 H P Lovecraft
   39 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   38 James George Frazer
   35 Percy Bysshe Shelley
   33 Walt Whitman
   26 William Butler Yeats
   21 William Wordsworth
   20 Carl Jung
   18 Aleister Crowley
   16 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   16 Robert Browning
   13 Anonymous
   12 Muhammad
   11 A B Purani
   10 Saint John of Climacus
   10 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   9 Friedrich Nietzsche
   8 Rabindranath Tagore
   8 Plato
   8 Lucretius
   8 Li Bai
   7 Plotinus
   7 Baha u llah
   6 Swami Krishnananda
   6 Ralph Waldo Emerson
   6 Jorge Luis Borges
   5 Saint Teresa of Avila
   5 Ovid
   5 Joseph Campbell
   5 Jordan Peterson
   5 Al-Ghazali
   5 Aldous Huxley
   4 Rainer Maria Rilke
   4 Nirodbaran
   4 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
   4 Henry David Thoreau
   4 Franz Bardon
   4 Bokar Rinpoche
   3 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
   3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   3 Paul Richard
   3 Kabir
   2 Vyasa
   2 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
   2 Mahendranath Gupta
   2 John Keats
   2 Jalaluddin Rumi
   2 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
   2 Hafiz
   2 Genpo Roshi
   2 Friedrich Schiller


   47 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   41 Lovecraft - Poems
   38 The Golden Bough
   35 Shelley - Poems
   31 Whitman - Poems
   26 Yeats - Poems
   21 Wordsworth - Poems
   16 Browning - Poems
   14 The Bible
   12 Quran
   12 Magick Without Tears
   12 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   12 City of God
   11 Words Of Long Ago
   11 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   11 Agenda Vol 01
   10 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
   9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   8 Tagore - Poems
   8 Of The Nature Of Things
   8 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   8 Li Bai - Poems
   8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   8 Agenda Vol 11
   7 Collected Poems
   7 Agenda Vol 03
   6 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
   6 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   6 The Secret Doctrine
   6 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   6 Savitri
   6 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   6 Emerson - Poems
   6 Anonymous - Poems
   6 Agenda Vol 10
   6 Agenda Vol 07
   5 The Perennial Philosophy
   5 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
   5 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
   5 The Alchemy of Happiness
   5 Talks
   5 Record of Yoga
   5 Questions And Answers 1956
   5 Metamorphoses
   5 Maps of Meaning
   5 Liber ABA
   5 Labyrinths
   5 Hymn of the Universe
   4 Walden
   4 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   4 The Way of Perfection
   4 The Practice of Magical Evocation
   4 The Divine Comedy
   4 Tara - The Feminine Divine
   4 Some Answers From The Mother
   4 Rilke - Poems
   4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   4 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
   4 Agenda Vol 06
   4 5.1.01 - Ilion
   3 Twilight of the Idols
   3 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   3 The Lotus Sutra
   3 The Book of Certitude
   3 Songs of Kabir
   3 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   3 Questions And Answers 1954
   3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
   3 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   3 On the Way to Supermanhood
   3 Isha Upanishad
   3 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
   3 Essays Divine And Human
   3 Amrita Gita
   3 Aion
   3 Agenda Vol 12
   3 Agenda Vol 09
   3 Agenda Vol 08
   3 Agenda Vol 05
   3 Agenda Vol 02
   3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
   2 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
   2 Vishnu Purana
   2 The Life Divine
   2 The Human Cycle
   2 The Future of Man
   2 The Blue Cliff Records
   2 Song of Myself
   2 Schiller - Poems
   2 Questions And Answers 1955
   2 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
   2 Prayers And Meditations
   2 On Education
   2 Let Me Explain
   2 Keats - Poems
   2 Hafiz - Poems
   2 Goethe - Poems
   2 General Principles of Kabbalah
   2 Faust
   2 Dark Night of the Soul

00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Mystics all over the world and in all ages have Clothed their sayings in proverbs and parables, in figures and symbols. To speak in symbols seems to be in their very nature; it is their characteristic manner, their inevitable style. Let us see what is the reason behind it. But first who are the Mystics? They are those who are in touch with supra-sensual things, whose experiences are of a world different from the common physical world, the world of the mind and the senses.    These other worlds are constituted in other ways than ours. Their contents are different and the laws that obtain there are also different. It would be a gross blunder to attempt a chart of any of these other systems, to use an Einsteinian term, with the measures and conventions of the system to which our external waking consciousness belongs. For, there "the sun shines not, nor the moon, nor the stars, neither these lightnings nor this fire." The difficulty is further enhanced by the fact that there are very many unseen worlds and they all differ from the seen and from one another in manner and degree. Thus, for example, the Upanishads speak of the swapna, the suupta, and the turya, domains beyond the jgrat which is that where the rational being with its mind and senses lives and moves. And there are other systems and other ways in which systems exist, and they are practically innumerable.

00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Sun is the first and the most immediate source of light that man has and needs. He is the presiding deity of our waking consciousness and has his seat in the eyecakusa ditya, ditya caku bhtvakii prviat. The eye is the representative of the senses; it is the sense par excellence. In truth, sense-perception is the initial light with which we have to guide us, it is the light with which we start on the way. A developed stage comes when the Sun sets for us, that is to say, when we retire from the senses and rise into the mind, whose divinity is the Moon. It is the mental knowledge, the light of reason and intelligence, of reflection and imagination that govern our consciousness. We have to proceed farther and get beyond the mind, exceed the derivative light of the Moon. So when the Moon sets, the Fire is kindled. It is the light of the ardent and aspiring heart, the glow of an inner urge, the instincts and inspirations of our secret life-will. Here we come into touch with a source of knowledge and realization, a guidance more direct than the mind and much deeper than the sense-perception. Still this light partakes more of heat than of pure luminosity; it is, one may say, incandescent feeling, but not vision. We must probe deeper, mount higherreach heights and profundities that are serene and transparent. The Fire is to be quieted and silenced, says the Upanishad. Then we come nearer, to the immediate vicinity of the Truth: an inner hearing opens, the direct voice of Truth the Wordreaches us to lead and guide. Even so, however, we have not come to the end of our journey; the Word of revelation is not the ultimate Light. The Word too is Clothing, though a luminous Clothinghiramayam ptram When this last veil dissolves and disappears, when utter silence, absolute calm and quietude reign in the entire consciousness, when no other lights trouble or distract our attention, there appears the Atman in its own body; we stand face to face with the source of all lights, the self of the Light, the light of the Self. We are that Light and we become that Light.    II. The Four Oblations   --    The biological process, described in what may seem to be crude and mediaeval terms, really reflects or echoes a more subtle and psychological process. The images used form perhaps part of the current popular notion about the matter, but the esoteric sense goes beyond the outer symbols. The sky seems to be the far and tenuous region where the soul rests and awaits its next birthit is the region of Soma, the own Home of Bliss and Immortality. Now when the time or call comes, the soul stirs and journeys down that is the Rain. Next, it enters the earth atmosphere and Clothes itself with the earth consciousness. Then it waits and calls for the formation of the material body, first by the contri bution of the father and then by that of the mother; when these two unite and the material body is formed, the soul incarnates.    Apart from the question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak for another order of reality, and even taking it at its face value, what is to be noted here is the idea of a cosmic cycle, and a cosmic cycle that proceeds through the principle of sacrifice. If it is asked what there is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rather naf description of a very commonplace happening that gives it an honoured place in the Upanishads, the answer is that it is wonderful to see how the Upanishadic Rishi takes from an event its local, temporal and personal colour and incorporates it in a global movement, a cosmic cycle, as a limb of the Universal Brahman. The Upanishads contain passages which a puritanical mentality may perhaps describe as 'pornographic'; these have in fact been put by some on the Index expurgatorius. But the ancients saw these matters with other eyes and through another consciousness.

0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism    The temple of Radhakanta, also known as the temple of Vishnu, contains the images of Radha and Krishna, the symbol of union with God through ecstatic love. The two images stand on a pedestal facing the west. The floor is paved with marble. From the ceiling of the porch hang chandeliers protected from dust by coverings of red Cloth. Canvas screens shield the images from the rays of the setting sun. Close to the threshold of the inner shrine is a small brass cup containing holy water. Devoted visitors reverently drink a few drops from the vessel.    --- KALI   --    Born in an orthodox brahmin family, Sri Ramakrishna knew the formalities of worship, its rites and rituals. The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived by the finite human mind. They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation from the miseries of phenomenal life. The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound by his human limitations, he cannot but worship God through human forms. He must use human symbols. Therefore Hinduism asks the devotees to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son, or the ideal friend. But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless, the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. The gods gradually merge in the one God. But until that realization is achieved, the devotee cannot dissociate human factors from his worship. Therefore the Deity is bathed and Clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep. He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity, the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy Cloth. He purifies the mind and the sense-organs by appropriate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship against evil forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water. He awakens the different spiritual centres of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart. Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image, regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit, throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest. The real devotee knows the absurdity of worshipping the Transcendental Reality with material articles — Clothing That which pervades the whole universe and the beyond, putting on a pedestal That which cannot be limited by space, feeding That which is disembodied and incorporeal, singing before That whose glory the music of the spheres tries vainly to proclaim. But through these rites the devotee aspires to go ultimately beyond rites and rituals, forms and names, words and praise, and to realize God as the All-pervading Consciousness.    Hindu priests are thoroughly acquainted with the rites of worship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They move their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transformation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of worship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep absorption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Deity.   --    The worship in the temple intensified Sri Ramakrishna's yearning for a living vision of the Mother of the Universe. He began to spend in meditation the time not actually employed in the temple service; and for this purpose he selected an extremely solitary place. A deep jungle, thick with underbrush and prickly plants, lay to the north of the temples. Used at one time as a burial ground, it was shunned by people even during the day-time for fear of ghosts. There Sri Ramakrishna began to spend the whole night in meditation, returning to his room only in the morning with eyes swollen as though from much weeping. While meditating, he would lay aside his Cloth and his brahminical thread. Explaining this strange conduct, he once said to Hriday: "Don't you know that when one thinks of God one should be freed from all ties? From our very birth we have the eight fetters of hatred, shame, lineage, pride of good conduct, fear, secretiveness, caste, and grief. The sacred thread reminds me that I am a brahmin and therefore superior to all. When calling on the Mother one has to set aside all such ideas." Hriday thought his uncle was becoming insane.    As his love for God deepened, he began either to forget or to drop the formalities of worship. Sitting before the image, he would spend hours singing the devotional songs of great devotees of the Mother, such as Kamalakanta and Ramprasad. Those rhapsodical songs, describing the direct vision of God, only intensified Sri Ramakrishna's longing. He felt the pangs of a child separated from its mother. Sometimes, in agony, he would rub his face against the ground and weep so bitterly that people, thinking he had lost his earthly mother, would sympathize with him in his grief. Sometimes, in moments of scepticism, he would cry: "Art Thou true, Mother, or is it all fiction — mere poetry without any reality? If Thou dost exist, why do I not see Thee? Is religion a mere fantasy and art Thou only a figment of man's imagination?" Sometimes he would sit on the prayer carpet for two hours like an inert object. He began to behave in an abnormal manner   --    One of the painful ailments from which Sri Ramakrishna suffered at this time was a burning sensation in his body, and he was cured by a strange vision. During worship in the temple, following the scriptural injunctions, he would imagine the presence of the "sinner" in himself and the destruction of this "sinner". One day he was meditating in the Panchavati, when he saw come out of him a red-eyed man of black complexion, reeling like a drunkard. Soon there emerged from him another person, of serene countenance, wearing the ochre Cloth of a sannyasi and carrying in his hand a trident. The second person attacked the first and killed him with the trident. Thereafter Sri Ramakrishna was free of his pain.    About this time he began to worship God by assuming the attitude of a servant toward his master. He imitated the mood of Hanuman, the monkey chieftain of the Ramayana, the ideal servant of Rama and traditional model for this self-effacing form of devotion. When he meditated on Hanuman his movements and his way of life began to resemble those of a monkey. His eyes became restless. He lived on fruits and roots. With his Cloth tied around his waist, a portion of it hanging in the form of a tail, he jumped from place to place instead of walking. And after a short while he was blessed with a vision of Sita, the divine consort of Rama, who entered his body and disappeared there with the words, "I bequeath to you my smile."    Mathur had faith in the sincerity of Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual zeal, but began now to doubt his sanity. He had watched him jumping about like a monkey. One day, when Rani Rasmani was listening to Sri Ramakrishna's singing in the temple, the young priest abruptly turned and slapped her. Apparently listening to his song, she had actually been thinking of a law-suit. She accepted the punishment as though the Divine Mother Herself had imposed it; but Mathur was distressed. He begged Sri Ramakrishna to keep his feelings under control and to heed the conventions of society. God Himself, he argued, follows laws. God never permitted, for instance, flowers of two colours to grow on the same stalk. The following day Sri Ramakrishna presented Mathur Babu with two hibiscus flowers growing on the same stalk, one red and one white.   --    There came to Dakshineswar at this time a brahmin woman who was to play an important part in Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual unfoldment. Born in East Bengal, she was an adept in the Tantrik and Vaishnava methods of worship. She was slightly over fifty years of age, handsome, and garbed in the orange robe of a nun. Her sole possessions were a few books and two pieces of wearing-Cloth.    Sri Ramakrishna welcomed the visitor with great respect, described to her his experiences and visions, and told her of people's belief that these were symptoms of madness. She listened to him attentively and said: "My son, everyone in this world is mad. Some are mad for money, some for creature comforts, some for name and fame; and you are mad for God." She assured him that he was passing through the almost unknown spiritual experience described in the scriptures as mahabhava, the most exalted rapture of divine love. She told him that this extreme exaltation had been described as manifesting itself through nineteen physical symptoms, including the shedding of tears, a tremor of the body, horripilation, perspiration, and a burning sensation. The Bhakti scriptures, she declared, had recorded only two instances of the experience, namely, those of Sri Radha and Sri Chaitanya.   --    The Brahmani was the enthusiastic teacher and astonished beholder of Sri Ramakrishna in his spiritual progress. She became proud of the achievements of her unique pupil. But the pupil himself was not permitted to rest; his destiny beckoned him forward. His Divine Mother would allow him no respite till he had left behind the entire realm of duality with its visions, experiences, and ecstatic dreams. But for the new ascent the old tender guides would not suffice. The Brahmani, on whom he had depended for, three years, saw her son escape from her to follow the command of a teacher with masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice. The new guru was a wandering monk, the sturdy Totapuri, whom Sri Ramakrishna learnt to address affectionately as Nangta, the "Naked One", because of his total renunciation of all earthly objects and attachments, including even a piece of wearing Cloth.    Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the many. The eternal Spirit appears as a manifold of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God   --    Totapuri arrived at the Dakshineswar temple garden toward the end of 1864. Perhaps born in the Punjab, he was the head of a monastery in that province of India and claimed leadership of seven hundred sannyasis. Trained from early youth in the disciplines of the Advaita Vedanta, he looked upon the world as an illusion. The gods and goddesses of the dualistic worship were to him mere fantasies of the deluded mind. Prayers, ceremonies, rites, and rituals had nothing to do with true religion, and about these he was utterly indifferent. Exercising self-exertion and unshakable will-power, he had liberated himself from attachment to the sense-objects of the relative universe. For forty years he had practised austere discipline on the bank of the sacred Narmada and had finally realized his identity with the Absolute. Thenceforward he roamed in the world as an unfettered soul, a lion free from the cage. Clad in a loin-Cloth, he spent his days under the canopy of the sky alike in storm and sunshine, feeding his body on the slender pittance of alms. He had been visiting the estuary of the Ganges. On his return journey along the bank of the sacred river, led by the inscrutable Divine Will, he stopped at Dakshineswar.    Totapuri, discovering at once that Sri Ramakrishna was prepared to be a student of Vedanta, asked to initiate him into its mysteries. With the permission of the Divine Mother, Sri Ramakrishna agreed to the proposal. But Totapuri explained that only a sannyasi could receive the teaching of Vedanta. Sri Ramakrishna agreed to renounce the world, but with the stipulation that the ceremony of his initiation into the monastic order be performed in secret, to spare the feelings of his old mother, who had been living with him at Dakshineswar.   --    In the burning flame before him Sri Ramakrishna performed the rituals of destroying his attachment to relatives, friends, body, mind, sense-organs, ego, and the world. The leaping flame swallowed it all, making the initiate free and pure. The sacred thread and the tuft of hair were consigned to the fire, completing his severance from caste, sex, and society. Last of all he burnt in that fire, with all that is holy as his witness, his desire for enjoyment here and hereafter. He uttered the sacred mantras giving assurance of safety and fearlessness to all beings, who were only manifestations of his own Self. The rites completed, the disciple received from the guru the loin-Cloth and ochre robe, the emblems of his new life.    The teacher and the disciple repaired to the meditation room near by. Totapuri began to impart to Sri Ramakrishna the great truths of Vedanta.   --    From now on Sri Ramakrishna began to seek the company of devotees and holy men. He had gone through the storm and stress of spiritual disciplines and visions. Now he realized an inner calmness and appeared to others as a normal person. But he could not bear the company of worldly people or listen to their talk. Fortunately the holy atmosphere of Dakshineswar and the liberality of Mathur attracted monks and holy men from all parts of the country. Sadhus of all denominations — monists and dualists, Vaishnavas and Vedantists, Saktas and worshippers of Rama — flocked there in ever increasing numbers. Ascetics and visionaries came to seek Sri Ramakrishna's advice. Vaishnavas had come during the period of his Vaishnava sadhana, and Tantriks when he practised the disciplines of Tantra. Vedantists began to arrive after the departure of Totapuri. In the room of Sri Ramakrishna, who was then in bed with dysentery, the Vedantists engaged in scriptural discussions, and, forgetting his own physical suffering, he solved their doubts by referring directly to his own experiences. Many of the visitors were genuine spiritual souls, the unseen pillars of Hinduism, and their spiritual lives were quickened in no small measure by the sage of Dakshineswar. Sri Ramakrishna in turn learnt from them anecdotes concerning the ways and the conduct of holy men, which he subsequently narrated to his devotees and disciples. At his request Mathur provided him with large stores of food-stuffs, Clothes, and so forth, for distribution among the wandering monks.    "Sri Ramakrishna had not read books, yet he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of religions and religious philosophies. This he acquired from his contacts with innumerable holy men and scholars. He had a unique power of assimilation; through meditation he made this knowledge a part of his being. Once, when he was asked by a disciple about the source of his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge, he replied; "I have not read; but I have heard the learned. I have made a garland of their knowledge, wearing it round my neck, and I have given it as an offering at the feet of the Mother."   --    On January 27, 1868, Mathur Babu with a party of some one hundred and twenty-five persons set out on a pilgrimage to the sacred places of northern India. At Vaidyanath in Behar, when the Master saw the inhabitants of a village reduced by poverty and starvation to mere skeletons, he requested his rich patron to feed the people and give each a piece of Cloth. Mathur demurred at the added expense. The Master declared bitterly that he would not go on to Benares, but would live with the poor and share their miseries. He actually left Mathur and sat down with the villagers. Whereupon Mathur had to yield. On another occasion, two years later, Sri Ramakrishna showed a similar sentiment for the poor and needy. He accompanied Mathur on a tour to one of the latter's estates at the time of the collection of rents. For two years the harvests had failed and the tenants were in a state of extreme poverty. The Master asked Mathur to remit their rents, distribute help to them, and in addition give the hungry people a sumptuous feast. When Mathur grumbled, the Master said: "You are only the steward of the Divine Mother. They are the Mother's tenants. You must spend the Mother's money. When they are suffering, how can you refuse to help them? You must help them." Again Mathur had to give in. Sri Ramakrishna's sympathy for the poor sprang from his perception of God in all created beings. His sentiment was not that of the humanist or philanthropist. To him the service of man was the same as the worship of God.    The party entered holy Benares by boat along the Ganges. When Sri Ramakrishna's eyes fell on this city of Siva, where had accumulated for ages the devotion and piety of countless worshippers, he saw it to be made of gold, as the scriptures declare. He was visibly moved. During his stay in the city he treated every particle of its earth with utmost respect. At the Manikarnika Ghat, the great cremation ground of the city, he actually saw Siva, with ash-covered body and tawny matted hair, serenely approaching each funeral pyre and breathing into the ears of the corpses the mantra of liberation; and then the Divine Mother removing from the dead their bonds. Thus he realized the significance of the scriptural statement that anyone dying in Benares attains salvation through the grace of Siva. He paid a visit to Trailanga Swami, the celebrated monk, whom he later declared to be a real paramahamsa, a veritable image of Siva.   --    Durgacharan Nag, also known as Nag Mahashay, was the ideal householder among the lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. He was the embodiment of the Master's ideal of life in the world, unstained by worldliness. In spite of his intense desire to become a sannyasi, Sri Ramakrishna asked him to live in the world in the spirit of a monk, and the disciple truly carried out this injunction. He was born of a poor family and even during his boyhood often sacrificed everything to lessen the sufferings of the needy. He had married at an early age and after his wife's death had married a second time to obey his father's command. But he once said to his wife: "Love on the physical level never lasts. He is indeed blessed who can give his love to God with his whole heart. Even a little attachment to the body endures for several births. So do not be attached to this cage of bone and flesh. Take shelter at the feet of the Mother and think of Her alone. Thus your life here and hereafter will be ennobled." The Master spoke of him as a "blazing light". He received every word of Sri Ramakrishna in dead earnest. One day he heard the Master saying that it was difficult for doctors, lawyers, and brokers to make much progress in spirituality. Of doctors he said, "If the mind clings to the tiny drops of medicine, how can it conceive of the Infinite?" That was the end of Durgacharan's medical practice and he threw his chest of medicines into the Ganges. Sri Ramakrishna assured him that he would not lack simple food and Clothing. He bade him serve holy men. On being asked where he would find real holy men, the Master said that the sadhus themselves would seek his company. No sannyasi could have lived a more austere life than Durgacharan.    --- GIRISH GHOSH   --    Gopal Sur of Sinthi came to Dakshineswar at a rather advanced age and was called the elder Gopal. He had lost his wife, and the Master assuaged his grief. Soon he renounced the world and devoted himself fully to meditation and prayer. Some years later Gopal gave the Master the ochre Cloths with which the latter initiated several of his disciples into monastic life.    --- NARENDRA   --    One day, soon after, Narendra requested Sri Ramakrishna to pray to the Divine Mother to remove his poverty. Sri Ramakrishna bade him pray to Her himself, for She would certainly listen to his prayer. Narendra entered the shrine of Kali. As he stood before the image of the Mother, he beheld Her as a living Goddess, ready to give wisdom and liberation. Unable to ask Her for petty worldly things, he prayed only for knowledge and renunciation, love and liberation. The Master rebuked him for his failure to ask the Divine Mother to remove his poverty and sent him back to the temple. But Narendra, standing in Her presence, again forgot the purpose of his coming. Thrice he went to the temple at the bidding of the Master, and thrice he returned, having forgotten in Her presence why he had come. He was wondering about it when it suddenly flashed in his mind that this was all the work of Sri Ramakrishna; so now he asked the Master himself to remove his poverty, and was assured that his family would not lack simple food and Clothing.    This was a very rich and significant experience for Narendra. It taught him that Sakti, the Divine Power, cannot be ignored in the world and that in the relative plane the need of worshipping a Personal God is imperative. Sri Ramakrishna was overjoyed with the conversion. The next day, sitting almost on Narendra's lap, he said to a devotee, pointing first to himself, then to Narendra: "I see I am this, and again that. Really I feel no difference. A stick floating in the Ganges seems to divide the water; But in reality the water is one. Do you see my point? Well, whatever is, is the Mother — isn't that so?" In later years Narendra would say: "Sri Ramakrishna was the only person who, from the time he met me, believed in me uniformly throughout. Even my mother and brothers did not. It was his unwavering trust and love for me that bound me to him for ever. He alone knew how to love. Worldly people, only make a show of love for selfish ends.   --    The Master did not hide the fact that he wished to make Narendra his spiritual heir. Narendra was to continue the work after Sri Ramakrishna's passing. Sri Ramakrishna said to him: "I leave these young men in your charge. See that they develop their spirituality and do not return home." One day he asked the boys, in preparation for a monastic life, to beg their food from door to door without thought of caste. They hailed the Master's order and went out with begging-bowls. A few days later he gave the ochre Cloth of the sannyasi to each of them, including Girish, who was now second to none in his spirit of renunciation. Thus the Master himself laid the foundation of the future Ramakrishna Order of monks.    Sri Ramakrishna was sinking day by day. His diet was reduced to a minimum and he found it almost impossible to swallow. He whispered to M.: "I am bearing all this cheerfully, for otherwise you would be weeping. If you all say that it is better that the body should go rather than suffer this torture, I am willing." The next morning he said to his depressed disciples seated near the bed: "Do you know what I see? I see that God alone has become everything. Men and animals are only frameworks covered with skin, and it is He who is moving through their heads and limbs. I see that it is God Himself who has become the block, the executioner, and the victim for the sacrifice.' He fainted with emotion. Regaining partial consciousness, he said: "Now I have no pain. I am very well." Looking at Latu he said: "There sits Latu resting his head on the palm of his hand. To me it is the Lord who is seated in that posture."   --    Dr. Sarkar arrived the following noon and pronounced that life had departed not more than half an hour before. At five o'clock the Masters body was brought downstairs, laid on a cot, dressed in ochre Clothes, and decorated with sandal-paste and flowers. A procession was formed. The passers-by wept as the body was taken to the cremation ground at the Baranagore Ghat on the Ganges.    While the devotees were returning to the garden house, carrying the urn with the sacred ashes, a calm resignation came to their souls and they cried, "Victory unto the Guru!"

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy     Wherefore hath Being Clothed itself with Form?     Wherefore hath Matter manifested itself in Motion?   --     sistently, while it is notorious that a red Cloth will excite     the rage of a bull.

0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   I have made a literal translation, omitting only a few pages of no particular interest to English-speaking readers. Often literary grace has been sacrificed for the sake of literal translation. No translation can do full justice to the original. This difficulty is all the more felt in the present work, whose contents are of a deep mystical nature and describe the inner experiences of a great seer. Human language is an altogether inadequate vehicle to express supersensuous perception. Sri Ramakrishna was almost illiterate. He never Clothed his thoughts in formal language. His words sought to convey his direct realization of Truth. His conversation was in a village patois. Therein lies its charm. In order to explain to his listeners an abstruse philosophy, he, like Christ before him, used with telling effect homely parables and illustrations, culled from his observation of the daily life around him.   The reader will find mentioned in this work many visions and experiences that fall outside the ken of physical science and even psychology. With the development of modern knowledge the border line between the natural and the supernatural is ever shifting its position. Genuine mystical experiences are not as suspect now as they were half a century ago. The words of Sri Ramakrishna have already exerted a tremendous influence in the land of his birth. Savants of Europe have found in his words the ring of universal truth.

0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    From 1918 to 1922, we gathered at No. 41, Rue Franois Martin, called the Guest House, upstairs, on a broad verandah into which four rooms opened and whose main piece of furniture was a small table 3' x 1' covered with a blue cotton Cloth. That is where Sri Aurobindo used to sit in a hard wooden chair behind the table with a few chairs in front for the visitors or for the disciples.    From 1922 to 1926, No. 9, Rue de la Marine, where he and the Mother had shifted, was the place where the sittings were held. There, also upstairs, was a less broad verandah than at the Guest House, a little bigger table in front of the central door out of three, and a broad Japanese chair, the table covered with a better Cloth than the one in the Guest House, a small flower vase, an ash-tray, a block calendar indicating the date and an ordinary time-piece, and a number of chairs in front in a line. The evening sittings used to be after meditation at 4 or 4.30 p.m. After 24 November 1926, the sittings began to get later and later, till the limit of 1 o'clock at night was reached. Then the curtain fell. Sri Aurobindo retired completely after December 1926, and the evening sittings came to a close.    On 8 February 1927, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother moved to No. 28, Rue Franois Martin, a house on the north-east of the same block as No. 9, Rue de la Marine.

0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   worked for many years embroidering Clothes for the Mother and   later became one of her personal attendants. She began writing   --   and then sometimes I wash our Clothes (X's and mine;   sometimes X washes them). Then I walk for an hour,   --   Ten yards of Cloth cost 25 rupees, 15 annas - that   is, 2 rupees, 9 1/2 annas per yard. This evening X and   --   Cloth first. There are irregularities, of course, but it seems to me   that they can be put right.   --   silver dragons, for 21 February 1935 - if You ask someone to do the drawing. Because the green Cloth and the   gold and silver thread are all ready.   --   a very beautiful drawing, a beautiful piece of Cloth has been   purchased at a cost of Rs. 30, you and Z have taken a great deal

0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity   transparency of his teaching and the precision of the phrases in which he Clothes it.   To judge by his language alone, one might suppose at times that he is speaking of

0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   something outside ourselves, like the Clothes we wear.   Be courageous and do not think of yourself so much. It is because

0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   storeroom of words, Clothe themselves effortlessly, automatically, with the words needed to make themselves perceptible   even in the material house.

01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The ideal or perhaps one should say the policy of Real-politick is the thing needed in this world. To achieve something actually in the physical and material field, even a lesser something, is worth much more than speculating on high flaunting chimeras and indulging in day-dreams. Yes, but what is this something that has to be achieved in the material world? It is always an ideal. Even procuring food for each and every person, Clothing and housing all is not less an ideal for all its concern about actuality. Only there are ideals and ideals; some are nearer to the earth, some seem to be in the background. But the mystery is that it is not always the ideal nearest to the earth which is the easiest to achieve or the first thing to be done first. Do we not see before our very eye show some very simple innocent social and economic changes are difficult to carry outthey bring in their train quite disproportionately gestures and movements of violence and revolution? That is because we seek to cure the symptoms and not touch the root of the disease. For even the most innocent-looking social, economic or political abuse has at its base far-reaching attitudes and life-urgeseven a spiritual outlook that have to be sought out and tackled first, if the attempt at reform is to be permanently and wholly successful. Even in mundane matters we do not dig deep enough, or rise high enough.    Indeed, looking from a standpoint that views the working of the forces that act and achieve and not the external facts and events and arrangements aloneone finds that things that are achieved on the material plane are first developed and matured and made ready behind the veil and at a given moment burst out and manifest themselves often unexpectedly and suddenly like a chick out of the shell or the young butterfly out of the cocoon. The Gita points to that truth of Nature when it says: "These beings have already been killed by Me." It is not that a long or strenuous physical planning and preparation alone or in the largest measure brings about a physical realisation. The deeper we go within, the farther we are away from the surface, the nearer we come to the roots and sources of things even most superficial. The spiritual view sees and declares that it is the Brahmic consciousness that holds, inspires, builds up Matter, the physical body and form of Brahman.

01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    We do not say that poets have never sung of God and Soul and things transcendent. Poets have always done that. But what I say is this that presentation of spiritual truths, as they are in their own home, in other words, treated philosophically and yet in a supreme poetic manner, has always been a rarity. We have, indeed, in India the Gita and the Upanishads, great philosophical poems, if there were any. But for one thing they are on dizzy heights out of the reach of common man and for another they are idolised more as philosophy than as poetry. Doubtless, our Vaishnava poets sang of God and Love Divine; and Rabindranath, in one sense, a typical modern Vaishnava, did the same. And their songs are masterpieces. But are they not all human, too human, as the mad prophet would say? In them it is the human significance, the human manner that touches and moves us the spiritual significance remains esoteric, is suggested, is a matter of deduction. Sri Aurobindo has dealt with spiritual experiences in a different way. He has not Clothed them in human symbols and allegories, in images and figures of the mere earthly and secular life: he presents them in their nakedness, just as they are seen and realised. He has not sought to tone down the rigour of truth with contrivances that easily charm and captivate the common human mind and heart. Nor has he indulged like so many poet philosophers in vague generalisations and colourless or too colourful truisms that do not embody a clear thought or rounded idea, a radiant judgment. Sri Aurobindo has given us in his poetry thoughts that are clear-cut, ideas beautifully chiselledhe is always luminously forceful.    Take these Vedantic lines that in their limpidity and harmonious flow beat anything found in the fine French poet Lamartine:

01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Poetry, actually however, has been, by and large, a profane and mundane affair: for it expresses the normal man's perceptions and feelings and experiences, human loves and hates and desires and ambitions. True. And yet there has also always been an attempt, a tendency to deal with them in such a way as can bring calm and puritykatharsisnot trouble and confusion. That has been the purpose of all Art from the ancient days. Besides, there has been a growth and development in the historic process of this katharsis. As by the sublimation of his bodily and vital instincts and impulses., man is gradually growing into the mental, moral and finally spiritual consciousness, even so the artistic expression of his creative activity has followed a similar line of transformation. The first and original transformation happened with religious poetry. The religious, one may say, is the profane inside out; that is to say, the religious man has almost the same tone and temper, the same urges and passions, only turned Godward. Religious poetry too marks a new turn and development of human speech, in taking the name of God human tongue acquires a new plasticity and flavour that transform or give a new modulation even to things profane and mundane it speaks of. Religious means at bottom the colouring of mental and moral idealism. A parallel process of katharsis is found in another class of poetic creation, viz., the allegory. Allegory or parable is the stage when the higher and inner realities are expressed wholly in the modes and manner, in the form and character of the normal and external, when moral, religious or spiritual truths are expressed in the terms and figures of the profane life. The higher or the inner ideal is like a loose Clothing upon the ordinary consciousness, it does not fit closely or fuse. In the religious, however, the first step is taken for a mingling and fusion. The mystic is the beginning of a real fusion and a considerable ascension of the lower into the higher. The philosopher poet follows another line for the same katharsisinstead of uplifting emotions and sensibility, he proceeds by thought-power, by the ideas and principles that lie behind all movements and give a pattern to all things existing. The mystic can be of either type, the religious mystic or the philosopher mystic, although often the two are welded together and cannot be very well separated. Let us illustrate a little:    The spacious firmament on high,

01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The style and manner of Sri Aurobindo's interpretation1 is also supremely characteristic: it does not carry the impress of a mere metaphysical dissertation-although in matter it Clothes throughout a profound philosophy; it is throbbing with the luminous life of a prophet's message, it is instinct with something of the Gita's own mantraakti.    Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry

01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content Clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.    But should there be an inherent incompatibility between spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the normally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the levels simultaneouslyabove, he is conscious of the source and origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of the working of the instrument, how the vehicle transcribes and embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it werethere is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also the sense of dynamism, of conscious agency as in his secret being he is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirerin other words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).   --    The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and movements of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical executor, a passive unconscious instrument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some major virtues, the basic and fundamental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not for the sake of the subject which they have to embody and Clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.    Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.

01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Socrates is said to have brought down Philosophy from Heaven to live among men upon earth. A similar exploit can be ascribed to Tagore. The Spirit, the bare transcendental Reality contemplated by the orthodox Vedantins, has been brought nearer to our planet, close to human consciousness in Tagore's vision, being Clothed in earth and flesh and blood, made vivid with the colours and contours of the physical existence. The Spirit, yes and by all means, but not necessarily asceticism and monasticism. So Tagore boldly declared in those famous lines of his:    Mine is not the deliverance achieved through mere renunciation. Mine rather the freedom that tastes itself in a thousand associations.1

0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   I caused a sensation with my new Clothes! Blue   shorts and a grey shirt. X was shocked to see me dressed   --   How frivolous and superficial people must be to attach importance to such things!! Even so, if you wore those Clothes in   your capacity as a captain, you did wrong, for the captains

0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    It is certainly not an arbitrary construction of the type built by men, where everything is put pell-mell, without any order, without reality, and which is held together by only illusory ties. Here, these ties were symbolized by the hotels walls, while actually in ordinary human constructions (if we take a religious community, for example), they are symbolized by the building of a monastery, an identity of Clothing, an identity of activities, an identity even of movementor to put it more precisely: everyone wears the same uniform, everyone gets up at the same time, everyone eats the same thing, everyone says his prayers together, etc.; there is an overall identity. But naturally, on the inside there remains the chaos of many disparate consciousnesses, each one following its own mode, for this kind of group identification, which extends right up to an identity of beliefs and dogma, is absolutely illusory.    Yet it is one of the most common types of human collectivityto group together, band together, unite around a common ideal, a common action, a common realization but in an absolutely artificial way. In contrast to this, Sri Aurobindo tells us that a true communitywhat he terms a gnostic or supramental communitycan be based only upon the INNER REALIZATION of each one of its members, each realizing his real, concrete oneness and identity with all the other members of the community; that is, each one should not feel himself a member connected to all the others in an arbitrary way, but that all are one within himself. For each one, the others should be as much himself as his own bodynot in a mental and artificial way, but through a fact of consciousness, by an inner realization.

0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    The nature of objects on this ship was not that which we know upon earth; for example, the Clothes were not made of Cloth, and this thing that resembled Cloth was not manufacturedit was a part of the body, made of the same substance that took on different forms. It had a kind of plasticity. When a change had to be made, it was done not by artificial and outer means but by an inner working, by a working of the consciousness that gave the substance its form or appearance. Life created its own forms. There was ONE SINGLE substance in all things; it changed the nature of its vibration according to the needs or uses.    Those who were sent back for more training were not of a uniform color; their bodies seemed to have patches of a grayish opacity, a substance resembling the earth substance. They were dull, as though they had not been wholly permeated by the light or wholly transformed. They were not like this all over, but in places.   --    But one thing and I wish to stress this point to youwhich now seems to me to be the most essential difference between our world and the supramental world (and it is only after having gone there consciously, with the consciousness that ordinarily works here, that this difference appeared to me in what might be called its enormity): everything here, except for what happens within and at a very deep level, seemed absolutely artificial to me. Not one of the values of ordinary physical life is based upon truth. Just as we have to buy Cloth, sew it together, then put it on our backs in order to dress ourselves, likewise we have to take things from outside and then put them inside our bodies in order to feed ourselves. For everything, our life is artificial.    A true, sincere, spontaneous life, as in the supramental world, is a springing forth of things through the fact of conscious will, a power over substance that shapes this substance according to what we decide it should be. And he who has this power and this knowledge can obtain whatever he wants, whereas he who does not has no artificial means of getting what he desires.

0 1958-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    On the way, I stopped at J and Es place. They are living like native fishermen, in loinCloths, in a coconut grove by the sea. The place is exceedingly beautiful, and the sea full of rainbow-hued coral. And suddenly, within twenty-four hours, I realized an old dreamor rather, I purged myself of an old and tenacious dream: that of living on a Pacific island as a simple fisherman. And all at once, I saw, in a flash, that this kind of life totally lacks a center. You float in a nowhere. It plunges you into some kind of higher inertia, an illumined inertia, and you lose all true substance.    As for me, I am totally out of my element in this new life, as though I were uprooted from myself. I am living in the temple, in the midst of pujas,1 with white ashes on my forehead, barefoot dressed like a Hindu, sleeping on cement at night, eating impossible curries, with some good sunburns to complete the cooking. And there I am, clinging to you, for if you were not there I would collapse, so absurd would it all be. You are the only realityhow many times have I repeated this to myself, like a litany! Apart from this, I am holding up quite well physically. But inside and outside, nothing is left but you. I need you, thats all. Mother, this world is so horrifyingly empty. I really feel that I would evaporate if you werent there. Well, no doubt I had to go through this experience Perhaps I will be able to extract some book from it that will be of use to you. We are like children who need a lot of pictures in order to understand, and a few good kicks to realize our complete stupidity.

0 1958-08-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    So the door had to be opened and I felt and said, Lord, may your will be done. I opened the door and behind it was Z1 in the same Clothes he wears when he drives, and he was leaning against one of those big tractor tiresor perhaps he was holding it at the same time. I was so dumbfounded that I woke up. It took me a little while to be able to understand what it might mean, and afterwards Even now, I still dont know What was I? Was I India, or was I the world? I dont know. And what did Z represent? It was as imperative and clear, as positive and absolute as could be: the certitude that destruction was behind the door, that it was inevitable. And it had the form of those great Tartar or Mongol invaders, those people who came from the North and invaded India, who pillaged everything Thats what it was like. But what Z was doing there I dont know. What does he represent? The first impulse was to tell Abhay Singh, Forbid him to drive the tractor.    (Pavitra:) What was he holding in his hands, Mother?

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

0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    For what occurred here, I can say only one thing: when the Supreme Lord wants to save someone, He Clothes his will in every appearance necessary.    As for the emptiness you feel (which perhaps is already better): to those who complained of this sensation of inner emptiness, Sri Aurobindo always said that it is a very good thing; it is the sign that they are going to be filled with something better and truer.

0 1959-06-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    X told me, Now it is your last birth. I have received ORDER to deliver you. So be it. I shall give you a white Cloth, he added, with my own hand.    X gave me a new mantra. My body is exhausted from too much nervous tension. I am living in a kind of cellar with four inches of filth on the floor and walls, and two openings, one onto the street of the bazaar the other onto a dilapidated courtyard with a well. On my right lives a madwoman who screams half the day. There is only my mantra which burns almost constantly in my heart, and who knows what hope that some day the future will be happy and reconciled. There is also Sujata and you.

0 1959-08-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    Now I write you what I have wanted to tell you from the beginning: when you return to the Ashram, do not put on the orange robe1 again, return with the Clothing X has given you    And we shall leave the care of deciding about the details of the future to the Supreme Lord.

0 1960-03-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    Only a few days ago, on the morning of the 29th, I had one of those experiences that mark ones life. It happened upstairs in my room. I was doing my japa, walking up and down with my eyes wide open, when suddenly Krishna camea gold Krishna, all golden, in a golden light that filled the whole room. I was walking, but I could not even see the windows or the rug any longer, for this golden light was everywhere with Krishna at its center. And it must have lasted at least fifteen minutes. He was dressed in those same Clothes in which he is normally portrayed when he dances. He was all light, all dancing: You see, I will be there this evening during the Darshan.1 And suddenly, the chair I use for darshan came into the room! Krishna climbed up onto it, and his eyes twinkled mischievously, as if to say, I will be there, you see, and therell be no room for you.    When I came down that evening for distribution,2 at first I was annoyed. I had said that I didnt want anybody in the hall, precisely because I wanted to establish an atmosphere of concentration, the immobility of the Spirit but there were at least thirty people in there, those who had decorated the hall, thirty of them stirring, stirring about, a mass of little vibrations. And before I could even say scat I had hardly taken my seatsomeone put the tray of medals on my lap and they started filing past.

0 1960-05-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    I was sick two days ago with a cold and fever. I know whya point to be transformed. The body may have put too much zeal into it, so it teetered a little. But thanks to that, I had an interesting experience. X 1 had put his force on me to speed up the healing. And of course, according to each ones nature, the force gets colored, so to speakit Clothes itself in a different color. In me, this was translated by a new physical experience which lasted from 4 in the morning till 6:30, when I had to start speaking with people and deal with outer things. It was a kind of eternity, a kind of absolute PHYSICAL immobility which contained no possibility of illness within itas a matter of fact, nothing remained in this immobility, it was a sort of nirvana. But it did not keep me from going through all my usual motions of getting dressed.    I spent the whole day yesterday trying to understand this experience.

0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    As I approached the house, but still from some distance, I suddenly saw some men busy at work. Then instantly instantly this road which was so vast, sunlit and smoothso smooth to the feet oh, it became the top level of a scaffolding. And what is more, this scaffolding was not very well made, and the closer I came the more complicated it gotthere were planks jutting out, beams off balance. In short, you had to watch every single step to keep from breaking your neck. I began getting annoyed. Moreover, my packages were heavy. They were heavy and they so saddled my arms that I was unable to hold onto anything and had constantly to do a balancing act. Then I began thinking, My God, how complicated this world is! And just at that moment, I saw a young person coming along, like a young girl dressed in European Clothes, with a hat on her head all black! This young person had white skin, but her Clothes were black, and she wore black shoes on her small white feet. She was dressed all in blackblack, all in black. Like complete unconsciousness. She also came carrying packages (many more than me), and she came hopping along the whole length of the scaffolding, putting her feet just anywhere! My God, I said to myself, shes going to break her neck!But not at all! She was totally unconscious; she wasnt even aware that it was dangerous or complicateda total unconsciousness. But her unconsciousness is what allowed her to go on like that! I watched it all. Well, sometimes its good to be unconscious! Then she disappeared; she had only come to give me a demonstration (she neither saw me nor looked at me). And looking down at the workers, I saw that everything was getting more and more complicated, more and more, more and more and there wasnt even any ladder by which to get down. In other words, it was getting unbearable. Then something in me rebelled: Ah, no! Ive had enough of all thisits too stupid!    And IMMEDIATELY, I found myself down below, relieved of my packages. And everything was perfectly simple. (I had even brought the packages along without realizing it.) All, all was in order, very neat, very luminous, very simplesimply because I had said, Ah, no! Ive had enough of this business! Why all these stupid complications!5

0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Does a servant come to your house? No one is sick in his family? Because what happens is that they dont want to lose their jobs or their salary, so they dont warn you. They may have smallpox or measles or chickenpox and they dont take the slightest care to wash or change their Clothes; they come to your house and of course they bring along the disease. So the number of cases keeps multiplying and multiplying. I have been meaning to tell Pavitra to be careful of that little character who works for himeven ordinarily I dont like to see him running around here. Its strange how it sullies the atmosphereoh, you cant imagine! Almost all of them, almost all!    Its not at all the same as in the West, in Europe or America, not at all. Basically, the people in those countries are made of the same stuff as we are. But here thats not the case, because for centuries it never changeda Brahmin, for example, always remained a Brahmin, a Kshatria was always a Kshatria and all his servants were Kshatrias. It stayed in the family, in the sense that in each caste the servantsoften poor relativesbe longed to that same caste. From a social standpoint this might not have been too pleasant, but as far as atmosphere was concerned, it was very good. This was changed, however, first by the Muslim invasion, and then especially by the British.

0 1961-06-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Yesterday, when I was in that immobility, suddenly I felt something obliging me to turn my head. I didnt turn my head, but the consciousness turned (gesture to the left), and then I saw myself standing there in the corridor (that kind of corridor separating the hall and Sri Aurobindos room) in my usual outdoor dress [Indian shirt and light trousers]. I was standing up very straight and holding a globe of light above my head and such a light! It was shining brighter than those strong electric bulbsdazzling. My own Clothing seemed to be made of golden-pink light. I was standing very straight and carrying this globe (gesture above the head). When I saw that I said to myself, Now why on earth is he making me see this? And that was all. Nothing else happened except that. But near me there was a figure I didnt know, and it reminded me of Xs great guru,1 whom I had already seen once. There he was by my side, a tall figure, and he seemed to be the one who had tugged at me to make me see that vision.    It was a large globe. Although no distinct rays could be seen, it appeared to be projecting innumerable rays like flashes of lightning. It was sparkling all over.

0 1961-08-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    I have seen you there several times. You were wearing something similar to what you are wearing now [dhoti]: not European they wear the costume of no particular country. Its usually white, but not made of Cloth. Its all on a VERY luminous, very orderly, very clear mental plane-no objects lying around, only things like sheets of paper, which seem to be ideas or compositions of ideas, but no clutter. Its vast, vast, so vast you can see no end to it! And up above its wide open, and a light is constantly descending. What you walk on is a little more solid, but not much more. Its an interesting place.    I go there almost every night for half or three-quarters of an hour, and Sri Aurobindo shows it all to me. Some people are waiting for himin certain corners everything is ready and waiting and when he comes they show him what they have done. Then he explains: a word, a gesture, not much, and then, ah! It takes a form. Its an interesting place. I am putting you in touch with it all the time, all the time, every dayit doesnt matter if you dont remember, its not important.

0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    For the first seven years he was doing the work, not me. He was the one who saw people; I looked after his personal affairs, his housekeeping, his food, his Clothes and so forth. I kept myself quietly busy with that, doing nothing else, not seeing people, simply looking after his material lifelike a child at play. It was seven years of integral peace.    Later, when he withdrew and put me in front, there was naturally a bit more activity, as well as the semblance of responsibility but it was only a semblance. What security! A sense of total, total security for thirty years. Not once. There was just a single scratch, so to speak, when he had that accident and broke his leg. There was a formation at work (an adverse force) and he wasnt taking sufficient precautions for himself because it was directed against both of us, and more especially against me (it had tried once or twice to fracture my skull, things like that). Well, he was so intent on keeping it from seriously touching my body that it managed to sneak in and break his leg. That was a shock. But he straightened everything out again almost immediatelyit all fell back into place and went on like that till the end.

0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Another thing I didnt mention to you when I related the experience was that the ship had no engine. Everything was set in motion through will powerpeople, things (even the Clothes people wore were a result of their will). And this gave all things and every persons shape a great suppleness, because there was an awareness of this willwhich is not a mental will but a will of the Self, what could be called a spiritual will or a soul-will (to give the word soul that particular meaning). I have that experience right here when theres an absolute spontaneity in action, I mean when the action for instance, an utterance or a movementis not determined by the mind, and not even (not to mention thought or intellect), not even by the mind that usually sets us in motion. Generally, when we do something, we can perceive in ourselves a will to do it; when you watch yourself, you see this: there is always (it can happen in a flash) the will to do. When you are conscious and watch yourself doing something, you see in yourself the will to do itthis is where the mind intervenes, its normal intervention, the established order in which things happen. But the supramental action is decided by a leap over the mind. The action is direct, with no need to go through the mind. Something enters directly into contact with the vital centers and activates them without going through the mindyet in full consciousness. The consciousness doesnt function in the usual sequence, it functions from the center of spiritual will straight to matter.    And so long as you can keep that absolute immobility in the mind, the inspiration is absolutely pureit comes pure. When you can catch and hold onto this while youre speaking, then what comes to you is unmixed too, it stays pure.

0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Obviously its the continuation of the same experience I told you about,1 but now it has come to this. I mean the two states are now distinctnoticeably distinct; but so far I havent found either the why or the wherefore. Is it something coming from outside or just an old rut: yes, it really feels like an old rut, like a wrinkle in a piece of Cloth; you know, you iron it out again and again, and the wrinkle comes back. Thats more the feeling it gives menot at all a conscious habit, just an old rut. But might something from outside also be provoking it?    And the dreams it gives me! Oh, theres a whole series of them, with particular styles and categories. You start down a flight of stairsno more stairs; you want to take a certain road the road closes; you want to catch someoneyou cant. All kinds of things. And although these dreams (I have a whole collection of them, in fact) recur with certain minor outward differences, they are all of the same type. Its a well-known type which I now classify as self-imposed troubles. When I get out of it and look, I see very clearly that its only this nasty habit we have of fretting over nothing! (Laughingly) Oh, whatever we want to do, immediately theres a complication, a difficulty.

0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    A whiteness and a strength is in the skies... Virgin formidable In beauty, disturber of the ancient world!... How art thou white and beautiful and calm, Yet Clothed in tumult! Heaven above thee shakes Wounded with lightnings, goddess, and the sea Flees from thy dreadful tranquil feet.    Perseus the Deliverer, Cent. Ed., VI. 6.

0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    In Bengal this weakness has gone to the extreme. The Bengali has a quick intelligence, emotional capacity and intuition. He is foremost in India in all these qualities. All of them are necessary but they do not suffice. If to these there were added depth of thought, calm strength, heroic courage and a capacity for and pleasure in prolonged labor, the Bengali might be a leader not only of India, but of mankind. But he does not want that, he wants to get things done easily, to get knowledge without thinking, the fruits without labor, siddhi by an easy sadhana [discipline]. His stock is the excitement of the emotional mind. But excess of emotion, empty of knowledge, is the very symptom of the malady. In the end it brings about fatigue and inertia. The country has been constantly and gradually going down. The life-power has ebbed away. What has the Bengali come to in his own country? He cannot get enough food to eat or Clothes to wear, there is lamentation on all sides, his wealth, his trade and commerce, his lands, his very agriculture have begun to pass into the hands of others. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the sadhana of Love, but where Knowledge and Shakti are not, there Love does not remain, there narrowness and littleness come, and in a little and narrow mind there is no place for Love. Where is Love in Bengal? There is more quarreling, jealousy, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction there than anywhere else even in India which is so much afflicted by division.    In the noble heroic age of the Aryan people4 there was not so much shouting and gesticulating, but the endeavor they undertook remained steadfast through many centuries. The Bengalis endeavor lasts only for a day or two.

0 1962-11-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    I woke up after two thousand years with a rejuvenated body. It was a very amusing little story. And I say vision, but you dont watch these things like a movie: you LIVE them. I somehow extricated myself from that sort of sealed grotto, and where Pondicherry had once stood (it had been completely razed), I came upon some people working. They were VERY DIFFERENT, and quite bizarre. I myself must have looked funny, with a kind of costume totally alien to their epoch. (My Clothing had also survived the destruction the whole thing was right out of a storybook!) So of course I attracted some curiosity and they tried to make me understand. Ah, yes I know one of them said (I understood them because I could understand their thoughtsthose two thousand years had enabled me to read peoples minds), and they led me to a very old sage, a wise old fellow. I spoke to him and he began leafing through all kinds of books (he had many, many books), and suddenly he exclaimed, Ah, French! An ancient language, you see (Mother laughs).    It was very funny. I told the story to Sri Aurobindo, and he had a good laugh.

0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    She also used to say that to stay in your body you should cover your feet with a piece of blue Cloth (when you sleep, of course, your feet are bare); put a piece of blue Cloth over your feet and it keeps you in your body.    ???

0 1964-01-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Now, according to what I have seen and tested (with little tests done casually), there are certainlyoh, being EXTREMELY generous, patient and (what shall I say?) merciful there are a good third who are here only because they are comfortable: you work if you want to, you dont work if you dont want to, you always eat, you always have shelter and Clothes, and, ultimately, you sort of do as you please (you must pretend to obey, thats all). And if youre denied a convenience, you start grumblingYoga is simply out of the picture! Its a hundred thousand miles away from their consciousness (their mouths are full of words, but its only lip service). Sometimes you have a little scruple in order to appear to be doing some work. And some have grown very old or come here because they have become unfit for life outside so we cant send them away! (It was wrong to accept them I must say I have little to do with that acceptance: Ill say no, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, theyll pretend they heard yes, but anyway thats life.) So I cant send them away. But I am going to make life ascetic for them: one wont be here to be comfortable anymore then for what?    Well, well see. We have started restrictionsoh, theyre not very serious, but anyway

0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    They come more and more often, those things that I scribble on a slip of paper, and they always follow the same process: first, always a sort of explosionlike the explosion of a power of truth; it makes great dazzling white fireworks (Mother smiles), much more than fireworks! Then it rolls and rolls (gesture above the head), it works and works; and then comes the impression of an idea (but the idea is lower down, its like Clothing), and the idea contains its sensation, it brings the sensation along with it the sensation was there before, but without any idea, so you couldnt define it. There is only one thing: its always the explosion of a luminous Power. Then, afterwards, if you look at it while remaining very still, while above all the head keeps quieteverything keeps quiet (gesture of a stillness turned upward)then, all of a sudden, somebody speaks in your head (!), somebody speaks. Its the explosion that speaks. Then I take a pencil and my paper, and I write. But between what speaks and what writes, there is still a difficult little passage, with the result that when I have written, something above isnt satisfied. So I again keep still: Ah, no, not that wordthis one sometimes it takes two days for the thing to be really definitive. But those who are satisfied with the power of the experience skimp it all and send you off into the world of sensational revelations, which are distortions of the Truth.    One must be very level-headed, very still, very criticalespecially very still, silent, silent, silent, without trying to grab at the experience: Ah, is it this? Ah, is it that? Then one spoils it all. But one must looklook at it very attentively. And in the words, there is a remnant, something left of the original vibration (so little), something remains, something which makes you smile, which is pleasant, it bubbles like a sparkling wine, and then here (Mother shows a word or a passage in an imaginary note), its lackluster; so you look at it with your knowledge of the language or sense of the rhythm of the words, and you notice: Here, a pebble the pebble must be removed; so then you wait, until suddenly it comesplop!it falls into place: the true word. If you are patient, after a day or two it becomes quite exact.

0 1964-08-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    I remember, the very day when Janina1 died (she died around 6 in the morning, I think), around 4 in the morning, something made me suddenly take interest in this question: What will the new form be like? What will it be? I was looking at man and at the animal, and then I saw that there would be a far greater difference between man and the new form than between man and the animal. I began to see certain things, and it so happened that Janina was there (in her thought, but a material enough and very concrete thought). It was very interesting (it lasted a long time, nearly two hours), because I saw all the timidity of human conceptions, while she had made contact with something: it wasnt an idea but a sort of contact [with a future reality]. And I had the sense of a more plastic Matter, more full of Light, much more directly responsive to the Will (the higher Will), and with such a plasticity that it could respond to the Will by taking on variable and changing forms. And I saw some of her own forms, forms that she conceived (rather like those beings who dont have a body as we do, but have hands and feet when they will it, a head when they will it, luminous Clothes when they will itthings of that sort), I saw that, and I remember I was congratulating her; I told her, Yours was a partial but partially very clear perception of one of the forms the new Manifestation will take. And she was very happy; I told her, You see, you have fully worked for the future. And then, suddenly, I saw a sapphire blue light, pale, very luminous, with something like the shape of a flame (with a rather broad base), and there was a kind of flashpfft!and it was gone. She wasnt there anymore. I thought, Well, thats odd! An hour later (I saw that around 6 A.M.; all the rest had lasted about two hours), they told me she was dead. Which means she spent the last moments of her life with me, and then, from me, pfft! went off towards a life elsewhere.    It was very abrupt. She was so happy, you know, I told her, How well you have worked for the future! And all of a sudden, a sort of flash (a sapphire blue light, pale, very luminous, with the shape of a flame and a rather broad base), pfft! she was gone. And that was just the time when she died.

0 1965-05-05, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    I have a feeling that only one thing exists: making contactputting the divine Vibration in contact with Matter. And this is the only thing which is REAL. Things seem to have clarified these past few days, since the 30th; and this morning when I got up, it was so strong that it was really the only thing existing. To such a point that there was a spontaneous perception that whatever thought Clothes this thing in, or whatever the organization of life, its totally unimportantits only men who attach importance to that, but from the standpoint of the Work, only this matters: being in this state I am in (which is a very particular state), in which the vibration, the vibration of Matter is put in contact, unitedunitedwith the divine Vibration.    All the rest unreal.1

0 1965-06-18 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Last night, for a long time, we went to all sorts of places unknown to me: towns, countrysides, forests, etc. It lasted a very long time. And once, we were there, near a forest (near a road that crossed the forest) and we were busy and talking when all of a sudden, he leaped to his feet. You know, he never wears any Clothes, so to speak; when I saw him the first time in his house (his supramental house), in the subtle physical, he was without Clothes; but its a kind of vibrant matter: its very material, very concrete, and it has a sort of color that isnt a color, which is a bit golden and radiantit doesnt send out rays, but it vibrates with a radiant light. And at least nine times out of ten he is that way; generally, when we are together for some work, he is that way. Last night he was that way. So then I was busy (we had arranged something and I was busy) when, suddenly, I see him leap to his feet and run a hundred-meter sprint. At first I was shocked, I said to myself, Whats this?! And with great ease, you know: he darted off, then stopped a few minutes, and then ran back. Then he stopped again, and went off a third time on a sprint: like the 100-meter race they run. But the third time, he had grown tall, with a slim body. Grown tall as if to demonstrate to me: this is the way the body will be transformed. He had grown very tall, very strong.    It was very interesting and absolutely unexpected.   --    My impression is that Sri Aurobindo already has his subtle supramental form. For instance, when he has to move, he doesnt give the impression of being subject to the same laws as we are; but as its subtle, it doesnt appear surprising. And also a sort of ubiquity: he is in several places at the same time. And a plasticity, an adaptability according to the work he wants to do, the people he meets. In those activities I am quite aware that I see him in a certain way, but I think others dont see him the same waythey see him differently, probably wearing Clothes. When he ran in the forest, we were all alone, and it was a large forest without anyone there; then a few minutes later, we were somewhere else and there were people, other people to whom he spoke, and I didnt at all feel that the others were seeing him without Clothes: they were certainly seeing him wearing Clothes.    I saw him once, rather long ago: I told you the story of his boat, made also of clay.   --    Yes, it was a sort of clay, it was pink clay. Well, at the time he seemed to be wearing Clothes. You see, it doesnt have the fixity of our matter.    It was like that vision of the supramental ship,6 in which everyone was dressed by his own will.   --    But I remember, I still have the image in which he is demonstrating things with his test tubes. There was a man who looked like a scientist (a man about forty years old, between forty and fifty, young but not very young) and very thoughtful-looking. He was sitting. I dont know what his nationality was, I dont remember, but he was modern; he was modern, with modern Clothes, and Sri Aurobindo showed him his test tubes with things in them and the effect on a totality of matter. I was there, looking on (I was looking with great interest), and I understood everything then. And I still see the image, but the mental knowledge, the mental translation that would have enabled me to say, Now I know, prrt! taken away. Its the same thing every time.    Which means it must be given to people other than me for them to use it, because they have a brain better prepared than mine, and better conditions of research.

0 1965-08-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    P.S. There may be a certain vanity in saying, Why Sri Aurobindo?Because this and that; that is still our mind trying to catch hold of things in order to put its explanations on them, as if nothing could be without its clarifications. Yet, the most potent events in our lives are those we do not explain, because their force goes on working in us without being frozen by ONE explanation there are many other levels of explanation, and there is a mute explanation that remains quietly in the depths, like an ever-calm water, as clear as a childs gaze. And there is still more vanity in saying that Sri Aurobindo is this but not tha the is this and that, and many other things, too; he is with the yes and the no, the for and the against, and with all that seeks without knowing, because everything seeks after Joy, through the yes and the no, through the darkness or the light, slowly and over the tottering centuries or all at once in an all-seizing light. From age to age, that Light comes down on the earth to help it become sooner what it always was and seeks after in its troubled heart; and that Light is Clothed in one word or another, it takes on a sweet or a terrible face, or a vast and powerful one like an all-embracing sea, but it is the same Light always, and the soul that opens itself in that ray secretly recognizes a Face it has loved many a time. From century to century it uncovers itself the same child with folded hands, gazing at the world with love.    August 12, 1965

0 1965-10-30, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Something amusing has happened. You know that there is a new comet?1 This morning around four, I saw the comet, and suddenly I found myself in a state above the earth, and I saw a being who seemed to be associated with this comet. He had red hair (but not an aggressive red), a white body, but not pure white: a golden white, as if he were naked, but he didnt give an impression of being naked, or of wearing any Clothes either (I have noticed this several times already), sexlessnei ther man nor woman. And it was a young being, charming, full of a sort of joy, like the joy that came a little in the music just now, and he was spreading in the earth atmosphere a sort of substance that was heavier than Matternot heavier, but denser and jelly-like. It was as though he had taken advantage of the comet passing near the earth to spread that substance. And at the same time, I was told it was to help for the transformation of the earth. And he showed me how to make that substance circulate in the atmosphere.    It was charming: a young being, full of joy, as if dancing, and spreading that substance everywhere.

0 1966-01-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    It was about those big shrimps that are called jumbo prawns here: they are as big as crayfish. Someone (a disciple here), who died rather a long time ago, came and brought me prawns; that is to say, I met him in the rooms downstairs There are rooms that are reproduced somewhere, in a sort of subconscient, in fact the subconscient that has to be transformed, organized and so on, and there exists a sort of reproduction of the rooms downstairs [below Mothers room], but not exactly the same (yet with the same layout), and a certain category of activities takes place there. Thats where we were together once, I told you: you were trying to clarify peoples ideas (!) Its the same place. Its not physical here, its in the subconscient. So then, there was that tall fellow who watched over the Samadhi for a long time, Haradhan; he was there. And when he saw me arrive, he told me, I have brought something for you. And in a sort of dark-blue Cloth, he had wrapped two big prawns, which he gave me! There were already cooked, ready to be eaten. The Cloth wasnt very much to my liking! So I thought, How can I make them a little cleaner before eating them? (Laughing) You know, its a farcea farce to make you understand your stupidity. I began by removing the (what is it called?), its not skin Oh, here too the word hasnt come, but on a tangent came cuirass! (Laughing) Cuirass and cartilage! Anyway I removed that, and as soon as I had removed it, I said to myself, You fool! Now its even more exposed than before! I looked for a way, and I ran to a corner (in the place of Pavitras laboratory), found a water tap and put my prawn under the tap. Immediately someone told me (not someone, the inner voice told me [laughing]), Your water is even dirtier than the Cloth! So the consciousness came along with the light, and I was shown with such a clear vision the relativity of the measures we take, which are all preconceived ideas, based on no true knowledge. And finally he told me, Come on, eat, thats the best you can do! So I ate my prawn, and it was very good!    You know, we could write a farce. And scenes of such buffoonery!

0 1966-07-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Every time I have been conscious of the Power, the experience has been similar. The Will from above is expressed by a vibration, which certainly gets Clothed in vital power but acts in a subtle physical. There is a perception of a certain quality of vibration, which is difficult to describe but gives a sense of something coagulated (not broken up), something that feels denser than air, extremely homogeneous, with a golden luminosity, an AWESOME power of propulsion, and which expresses a certain willit doesnt have the nature of human will but more the nature of vision than that of thought: its like a vision imposing itself in order to be realized, in a domain very close to material Matter, but invisible except to the inner vision. And That, that Vibration, exerts a pressure on people, on things, on circumstances, in order to fashion them according to its vision. And its irresistible. Even people who think the opposite, who want the opposite, do what is willed without wanting it; even things that are opposed in their very nature are turned around.    For national events, relations between nations, terrestrial circumstances, thats how it acts, constantly, constantly, like an AWESOME Power. So then, if you are yourself in a state of union with the divine Will, without the thought and all the conceptions and ideas interfering, you follow, see, and know.

0 1966-09-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Ive just seen in your atmosphere something abovea funny picture! It was like a very steep mountainside, and someone, who was like the symbol of man, was climbing up. A being Its strange, I have seen that several times: beings without Clothes, yet they arent naked! And I cant understand whywhat happens? They dont wear any Clothes, yet arent naked. There is a shape, you see a shape, the shape of a man; you see it and it isnt naked. Its already the third time this has happened to me. But it happened with people who had gone out of their bodies; Purani, for instance, I saw him like that: he wasnt naked, yet he didnt wear any Clothes, and you could see the shape of a body, it was blue and pink (I told you, I think). Well, just now, I saw a man, the shape of a man (who resembled you, by the way), climbing up a hill, and he wasnt naked, yet he didnt wear any Clothes. Which means they have a sort of Clothing of light. But it doesnt give the impression of a radiating light or anything of that kind. Its like an atmosphere. It might rather be the aura: the aura that has become visible; so the transparency doesnt hide the shape, and at the same time the shape isnt naked. That must be it, it must be the aura: the aura that has become visible.    It was like that. And then, from the skythere was a vast sky going all the way up from below (it was like a painting), a very clear, very luminous, very pure skyfrom the sky there came innumerable hundreds of things that looked like birds flying towards him, and he drew them to him with a gesture. They generally were pale blue or white; now and then, something like the tip of a wing or the top of a crest was somewhat dark, but that was accidental. They came and came in their hundreds, and he gathered them with a gesture, then sent them towards the earth: he was standing on a steep slope, and he sent them into the valley below. And there, they turned into (Mother laughs) opinions! They became opinions! Some were dark, others light-colored, brown, blue.   --    And that particular detail, which I now understand, of the auras becoming visible and acting as Clothing; in other words, the auras are the Clothing.    It must be in a subtle physical, maybe a true physical. Sri Aurobindo said that the subtle physical was a much truer physical than ours. Things are like that there, with a very clear symbol.

0 1966-11-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    There is the soul. There is the soul, which is quite simply an emanation of we can call it the supreme Consciousness, supreme Reality, supreme Truth, anything, whatever they like, its all the same to meany words they like. But anyway, the soul is an emanation of That, a direct emanation. In the body, That becomes Clothed in the psychic being. The psychic being is a being which is progressively formed throughout all the existences. So are you talking about the soul, are you talking about the psychic being (which is first an embryo and eventually becomes a conscious, perfectly independent being), or are you simply talking of the life of an individual consciousness after death? Because thats yet another thing. There are proofs of that; but in that case, its a quite vital consciousness of an inferior order, and it may happen to immediately come back into another body through some combination of circumstances (it was into the same family that the father had come back), and to come back with the memory. Otherwise, according to the experiences of those who have studied the question, its only the psychic being in the process of being formed that retains the memory of its former existences. But it retains the memory of the material, purely physical existence ONLY FOR THOSE MOMENTS WHEN IT PARTICIPATED. So, instead of all those stories that are told (and are made up), you only have memories like that (Mother draws a series of points in space with her fingertips), which may be more or less detailed, more or less complete, but which are only fragmentary memories of the MOMENT when the psychic physically manifested. Lots of people do have this sort of memory, but they dont know what it is. Most of the time they regard it as dreams or imaginings. Those who know (that is to say, who are conscious of what goes on in their physical consciousness) can see that its memories.    The number of memories of this kind Ive had is almost incalculable. But it doesnt have the same character as the memories of the higher consciousness (then its not a memory: its a sort of vision the higher beings2 have of life; but thats something else). The memories I speak of are memories of the psychic being, they have a different character: a rather personal character, I mean there is the sense of a PERSON remembering something. While the others, the visions from above, are memories of an acting consciousness. But the memories of the psychic being arent mentalized, that is, if for instance at the time of the recollection you werent paying attention to the way you were dressed or the surroundings, you dont remember them. You only remember what took place and especially what took place from the point of view of the consciousness and the feelings and the inner movements.

0 1966-12-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Exactly You know how there always is a vagueness. I say this because every day, and quite often several times a day, I receive something direct (gesture from above). Well, if I write it down just when I receive it, it has a certain form, and then if I remain very, very silent, very still, a word or a form often gets changed; then it becomes more precise, more exact, sometimes more harmonious. Therefore its something that comes from above and takes on a Clothing in the mental region.    I dont hear words. I receive something, which is always direct and imperative (and I clearly feel its from there [gesture above], somewhere around there). But it may, for instance, be expressed almost simultaneously, almost at the same time, in English and in French. And I am convinced that if I knew other languages, if I were familiar with other languages, it could be expressed in several languages. Its the same thing as what in the past used to be called the gift of tongues. There were prophets who spoke, and everyone heard in his native tonguehe spoke in any particular language, but each of those present heard in his native tongue. I had that experience a very long time ago (I didnt do it purposely, I knew nothing about it): I spoke at a Bahai gathering, and people from different countries came and congratulated me because I knew their language (which I didnt know at all!): they had heard in their language.    You understand, what comes is something that arousesit arouses words or gets Clothed in words. Then it depends: it may arouse different words. And its in a universal storehouse, not necessarily an individual one; its not necessarily individual since it can be Clothed in words. Languages are such narrow things, while that is universal. What could I call it? Its not the soul but the spirit of the thing (though its more concrete than that): its the POWER of the thing. And because of the quality of the power, the best quality of words is attracted. Its inspiration that arouses the words; the inspired person isnt the one who finds or adapts them, not at all: its inspiration that AROUSES the words.    But I understand what you mean. You want to know if its something ready-made, ready-prepared, which you pull down as it is. (Mother remains silent). That exists in a realm far higher than words. For example, I have often received something like that (gesture from above), direct, then I translate it; I dont try to find it (the more silent I am, the more powerful and concrete it growspowerfully concrete), but I often see, as coming from Sri Aurobindo, something that adds a correction, a precision (rarely an addition, its not that: its only in the form, especially in the line of precision); the first expression is a little hazy, then it becomes more precise. And I dont try to find it, I dont strive, there isnt any mental activity: its always like this (even, still gesture to the forehead), and its always in this [stillness] that it comes: suddenly it comesplop! plop! I say, Oh! and note it down.

0 1966-12-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    So I think the sadhana would consist in sifting it out, or rather in developing a sensitivity such that the difference would become clear, quite perceptible, so it would no longer be the mind that chose and said, This is all right, that isnt. There would be a spontaneous adherence to what is Clothed in this light from above and a rejection of what isnt. The sadhana would consist in developing this sensitivity by separating yourself from the old movement, by taking the old movement outside you.    I understand quite well, your letter was a grace for me in the sense that I saw clearly. The only thing is, its the whole book that I find inadequate.

0 1967-02-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    The "attraction" of the words in which this consciousness will be Clothed.    ***

0 1967-02-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    From the point of view of consciousness, the beings I saw1 for instance, when they wanted to be covered in a certain way (you know, Clothed), they did it through willpower; from the point of view of consciousness, thats certainly incomparable, theres no possible comparison, but    Of course, one can clo the oneself in a marvellous way.

0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    No, he was in civilian Clothes. But I tell you, the impression was that underneath it hasnt been spiritually cultivated.    Well, see him. Id like you simply to tell me yes or no, that is, Favourable impression or Unfavourable impression, something simple, one sentence, so that accordingly I may send him a line to tell him, You may stay, or It would be better if you didnt stay.

0 1968-03-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    There was the perception of what the mental consciousness ADDS to the action of the supreme Consciousness, and that addition, or judgment, was still something quite relativerelative to time, to the occasion, the person; its not an absolute: in one case, a particular Clothing will be a perfect expression, and in another case, the same Clothing wont be. It was a long experience of the relativity of the mental world with regard to the supreme Consciousness expressing itself.    It came in the wake of a sentence someone had written (I forget who, some writer or another), which said (I am adapting it), When one sees how humorous the creation is, one is certain that the Creator must be smiling. With that sentence, I saw how relative the Clothing is in the human consciousness there is no absolute, no absolute expression, the expression is always relative, and the impression it leaves is relative to the individual perceiving it.    I am trying to express it, but it was a concrete experience: the relativity of the mental Clothing on the action of the higher Consciousness.    So then, the experience came to this: being as passive and translucent as possible so as to let the vibration of the Consciousness express itself with the least possible distortion in its Clothing. And that was the attempt    (Reverting to the old Playground Talk:) I would no longer be able to deliver speeches like that! I find it presumptuous! (Mother laughs)

0 1968-05-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Consciousness is, in its very nature, immortal, and in order to manifest in the physical world, it Clothes itself in material forms that are durable to a greater or lesser degree.    The material substance is in process of transformation to become an increasingly perfect and durable multiform mode of expression for that consciousness.   --    Look, Ill give you an interesting example (Mother goes over a paragraph of her note again). You see, in my state of consciousness, I would have said (as the nearest approximation to the thing): Consciousness is, in its very nature, immortal, and in order to manifest in the physical world, it CONDENSES into material forms, etc. And there came insistently, No, ClotHES ITSELF in forms. But my spontaneous impulse was to say condenses into forms, because I saw that movement: a movement of condensation, manifestation, and, when that is over, of expansion. A continuous movement condensing and spreading, condensing and spreading (gesture like the pulsation of an ocean). But it was imperative: it had to be Clothes itself. So its quite certain its written by someone else. But theres no sense of being someone and that someone else wants to write or speakits not that! Similarly, when I say (I feel and know) its Sri Aurobindo, its not that I see him materially and he takes my hand and makes me writenothing of all that. Its something fluid that concentrates and causes to write. And its the quality of that fluidity that lets me know who it is. Its quite odd. Theres a sort of complete disappearance of the sense of separation, yet a sense of diversity remainsdiversity of modes of being but its no longer demarcated, as if cut off and separate (Mother draws small cubes): its like vibratory modes of perception and action (and the quality of the vibration is different), vibratory modes of perception and action succeeding one another, intermingling, superposed on one another. A sort of fluid play: no longer separate little puppets.    My nights are ENTIRELY like that. During the day, there is still something of the old habit, but in the night, its instantly like that.

0 1968-05-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Only He isnt a man who needs to be urged on: hes a man who needs to be held back, because the adhar (as the Indians would call it), that is, the material Clothing, isnt strong enough for the power driving it. So that results in illnesses. He isnt a man who must be urged on, hes a man who has to be held back.    But he is very consciousvery conscious, even far more conscious than the dream suggests. Very conscious For that too, the time has come for the Turning Point when all this old formidable Christian formation which has spread over the earth like this (octopus-like gesture)and which naturally fulfilled its function, did what it had to do, came just when it was needed and so on and so forth, we know all that the time has come when it must change in order to become the instrument of tomorrows truth.

0 1969-01-15, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Jain sadhus or monks cover their mouths with a patch of Cloth so as not to swallow microbes.    ***

0 1969-05-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    And then, death Just yesterday (yesterday afternoon), I had an example. An accident took place, have you heard about it?1 Theyre really wondering how it happened. As for me, I INSTANTLY saw that there was in the girl a psychic will (which she wasnt conscious of: she only felt an unease), but there was a psychic will to die (why? I dont know, I havent yet seen why). That was clear. And how everything was arranged to favor that, its almost miraculous (you dont talk about it because people will say youre going mad if you call such a misfortune miraculous). But habitually, all those who go into the swimming pool have to put their name down when they go out (thats the rule). Yesterday, the man who kept the register had asked to go to Madras at 6, so he wasnt there and no ones name was noted down, and so they didnt know Things like that. She went to see the groups captain and told her, I am tired, I dont feel well, I want to go; the captain said, Yes, yes, you can go. (Of course, it was foolish not to check that she had left; the captain was busy and just thought, All right, shes leaving.) The girl was then at the shallow end of the poolimpossible to get drowned there, unless you do it quite deliberately (they found her at the other end). But the pool was full of peoplenobody saw anything. You see, everything was arranged just to force her to die.2 Every precaution is in place, and not one worked. And as soon as they told me the news of the accident, as soon as I was told, I immediately looked, and I saw, in the place of her psychic, a peaceful will, like this (Mother stretches out her two arms in an immutable gesture). They were working hard: they worked for hours; first they took all the water out (they know how to do that), they drained the body of the water, then started workingtractions and all that to try to make her brea the againthey worked for hours (they were ready to work the whole night), they did all they could. And the psychic was like this (same gesture), that is, immutable, determined. But she didnt know [that she was going to die]: it came through her vital to reach her, and she felt quite ill at ease, she said, Oh, I want to go out. So they told her, Yes, thats right, you should go. And because she had said that, naturally no one was worried when they didnt see her (no one had put their names down, so they couldnt check); its only when they found her Clothes She had been under water for over an hour.    This Consciousness was so conscious of the movement in everyone, of every reaction, it was extraordinary! And its this Consciousness that saw this, that showed me this: a psychic like this (same immutable gesture), like an irrevocable decision. And for this Consciousness, you understand, its like someone who decides to move to a new house, or to a new room, or even to change Clothes. Why do you make so much, so much fuss about that?    I havent said any of this, because I havent said anything to anyone.

0 1969-06-28, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    There is a Consciousness within, there is a Power within, the very power that strained and strove in the dinosaur, in the crab, in the ape, in manit strives still, presses farther on, Clothes itself in a more and more perfected form as its instrument grows, and creates its own form. If we grasp the lever of that Power, it will itself create its new form, for it is itself the lever of the Transmutation. Instead of letting evolution unfold through millennia of fruitless, painful attempts and useless deaths and fake revolutions that revolutionize nothing, we can hasten the time, we can make a concentrated evolutionwe can be the conscious creators of the New Being.    In truth, this is the time of the Great Adventure. The world is closed, there are no more adventures outside: only robots go to the moon and our borders are guarded everywherein Rome or in Rangoon, the same functionaries of the great Machine are watching us, punching our cards, checking our faces and searching our pockets there is no more adventure outside! The Adventure is with inFreedom is within, Space is within, so is the transformation of our world by the power of the Spirit. Because, in truth, that Power was always there, supreme, all-powerful, prodding evolution on: it was the hidden Spirit growing to become the Spirit manifest upon earth, and if we have trust, if we want that supreme Power, if we have the courage to descend into our hearts, everything is possible, for God is in us.

0 1969-07-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Things here are always cloaked in a number of Clothes, its never the exact thing, but there, it is the exact thing. Just now Last night, I had a long activity, and I wondered, But why am I seeing all this? A long activity (Ill tell you what it was), and just now, Z was here and started telling me the difficulties they have with the servants. Ah, I thought, here we are, its my vision, what I saw last night! And in my vision You know that here, its P. who looks after the servants, but in the night, it was Amrita, and Amrita as he is now, not as he was physically (because when he left his body, Amrita came to me, and in fact, he hasnt left me, but he is free: now he rests, now he goes about). Last night, he was very active, and he symbolized Rs activity, as if his influence was what guided R But it was (Mother seems very amused) the symbols were so clear and so amusing, with such an amusing sense of humor! (The nights have really become very interesting.) Oh, last night, I did gymnastics! (Mother laughs) It was because of that business with the servants: in the end, at one spot a wall was needed as a protection from the servants invasion, and they had built a small wall (a small wall to protect a doorway); so I entered the house, and when I wanted to go out the other way, they had removed the staircase to build that small wall! So (laughing) there was a gaping hole, and I had to go back down (I was very agile) by clinging to the wall! Things of that sort, thoroughly amusing. They had put up a kind of big partition as a protection from a crowd of servants who had swarmed into the street, a partition so they wouldnt sweep in here; then Amrita came, opened the partition, and started talking with the people outside! I told him (laughing), There, youre ruining all our work!    And then, I go to America, I go to Europe, I go all the time. I go to some places in India. And all of that is work, work, workat night. But so living!

0 1969-10-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    I got a letter from N.S.4 in which she said she was almost desperate to have missed the appointment I had given her with A.R. But I am not sure [that it wasnt just as well]. She says that instead of the time she had been told, she arrived an hour later because she had been somewhere (I forget where), had got completely drenched, and had to change her Clothes; she sent word to A.R. requesting him to wait, but when she arrived, he had left. So she doesnt know whether L. didnt get her message, or didnt convey it. And she writes me that at the first opportunity she would like to come and see him. I had her told that for the moment he had withdrawn, but that as soon as he resumed his activity, I would let her know. But I didnt tell A.R., because    For her own sake I wish N.S. meets him, but I dont at all wish he should start expounding to her his great plans for the conversion of India!5

0 1969-12-13, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    I keep receiving almost daily some Aphorisms of Sri Aurobindo, which I had completely forgotten. There are really quite interesting things . Some of them give me the exact impression of a Clothing (we might say an intellectual Clothing, but its not that, its from a higher mind, but its mentalized, that is to say, accessible to thought), a Clothing of the experience I had of the supramental Consciousness, in which the difference between good and evil and all that looked like childishness, and Sri Aurobindo expresses it in those Aphorisms in a manner accessible to intelligence. Only those who understand dont understand right! Because they understand below.    Do you remember those Aphorisms? In one he says, If I cant be Rama, then I want to be Ravana and he explains why Its that series.1

0 1970-01-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    All that is certainly the consciousness of what Sri Aurobindo called the supramental:1 the being to come after man. How will he be? I havent yet seen I havent yet seen that. I did see, I did have perceptions of the superman, the intermediary being, but you clearly feel its only an intermediary being. What will that being be like who will come after the superman? I dont know. Because we are still much too human; when we visualize the Supreme Consciousness in a form, the Supreme Being and so on the Supremewe tend to give it a form similar to the human one, but thats our old habit. I saw that future being (I saw it many years ago): it was clearly a far more harmonious and expressive form than the human one, but there was a likeness, it was still a human form, that is to say, with a head and arms and legs and Will it be that? I dont know. There will necessarily be that as an intermediarynecessarily. There were all those kinds of apes which acted as intermediaries between the animal and man. But lightness, invulnerability, moving about at will, luminosity at willall that goes without saying, its part of supramental qualities, but Oh, yes, also Clothing at will: its not something foreign added on, its the substance that takes on certain forms. All that I had seen, and I told Sri Aurobindo about it, and Sri Aurobindo himself gave me certain demonstrations (I see him sometimes and he shows me). He simply said what the intermediary step will be. But all descriptions are worthless. And when I see him at night (sometimes I spend hours with him), its so natural and spontaneous that I am not even observing, This is like this, that is like thatno. In the morning, with a concentration, the impression remains very strong, but as for the details as we here understand them, you cant say.    Similarly, that sort of thing (Sri Aurobindo too calls it perception), that perception which replaces vision and all the rest is very strong at night. Its hard to say. You have an impression of it when you wake up, but not the capacity; the full capacity is not there.

0 1970-02-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Materially, the people of the [French] Consulate are set against us, and theyve succeeded in getting into the Ashram an old lady who does charitable works and wants to take S. away to keep her company I told S., If you can convert her, go and come back with her (she was to come back in six months), come back in six months after converting her. Very rich, a very rich lady whos wasting all her money in charitable works. It seems they have kinds of homes where they distribute Clothes and food, while putting on airshorrible, horrible.    Yes, charity is a horrible thing.

0 1970-03-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    He must have been a sannyasin. Besides, he had he was naked, there was just a small piece of Cloth visible, but an orange Cloth. He was the color of very fair-skinned Indians.    And at one point he looked: his eyes were very beautiful, the gaze was very beautiful.

0 1970-05-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    There were two activities. The first I cant recount, because, naturally, it cant be used. But the second vision was like this: I was walking around naked, but DELIBERATELY naked from here to there (gesture from the top of the chest to the thighs); here (above), there may have been Clothes. I was DELIBERATELY showing myself to certain people, and I had near me someone, always the same person: the physical Mother. She is the physical Mother, the image or the symbol of the physical Mother. She was with me, and I was wearing, except on the exposed part3 (Mother breaks off) Ah, and that part I was showing was sexless, that is to say, neither man nor woman: there was nothing; and its color was a little like Aurovilles color [orange], like that, but vibrant, that is, as if not luminous, but with a sort of luminosity. So then, the Mother wore a large cloak, like a large veil over her whole being, with that same color, and she told me, See, I have put it on because Ive accepted itto tell you that Ive accepted it.    That was the second dream.

0 1970-05-27, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Also Clothing at will: its not something foreign added on, its the substance that takes on certain forms.    Ah, yes, thats very important, because I POSITIVELY saw that. Its the substance itself that takes on now the form of a Cloth, now (wavy gesture)    (silence)

0 1970-07-29, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Thats amusing! (Mother looks at the photo) Oh, they no longer wear their robes, they dress in plain Clothes, do they?    It depends on the occasion!

0 1970-09-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    "We insisted on the dangerous remedies...," confesses one of the doctors who were looking after Sri Aurobindo (Nirodbaran, Sri Aurobindo"I Am Here, I Am Here!", 1951, p. 20). Sri Aurobindo refusedonce. Mother refused. Then they stopped saying anything. "He knew that [one such remedy] would be of no avail and he emphatically ruled it out, but as we had not the insight nor the proper appraisement of the value of words when they are Clothed in the common language we are habituated to use, we insisted on the dangerous remedies in which we had faith and confidence." (Ibid.) Let us note that the same phenomenon was to recur with Mother.    "A voice cried, 'Go where none have gone! Dig deeper, deeper yet Till thou reach the grim foundation stone And knock at the keyless gate.'... I left the surface gods of mind And life's unsatisfied seas And plunged through the body's alleys blind To the nether mysteries."

0 1970-10-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    (After Satprems departure, Sujata tells Mother about young women of her generation, who do not have the advantage of being close to Mother or in the circle of important persons, and who suffer from never seeing Mother. This was in factwhich is why we record ita very central problem at the Ashram: a sort of dichotomy between the simple elements who washed the dishes, stitched Clothes or greased cars, and who were there simply with their love for Mother, and the leading elements, who increasingly revealed their ambitious and therefore warped nature. Yet it was with that thick circle that Mother had to work almost daily, and that is what made her difficulty, if not suffocation. With Sujata, Mother agreed to receive in rotation a number of those young and simple elementsunfortunately, that new opening will soon be blocked by circumstances: a new serious turning point in Mothers yoga, then other impossibilities.)    On the Way to Supermanhood.

0 1971-07-14, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    A question asked by Z. She has a friend in Calcutta who wrote her about the clandestine guerilla organization in Bangladesh. He told her that they need money for the training of the guerillas, for arms, Clothing and other requisites, and he is asking her to write her friends in Switzerland, France, Germany, etc., to raise money. But she is wondering if she should do it. She doesnt want to do anything without your permission.    She can do it, only she shouldnt mention my name. I am not asking for anything. You see, if she asks, and then by chance. She can do it in her own name, as a charitable work, but I should not appear, I am not asking for anything.

0 1971-08-21, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Now I am having some activities at night, completely new as I have never had before, extremely concrete and in which living people are mingled with those we call dead and they are the SAME, they are the same there.1 For example, last night there was a very long activity with many people, and among those people was Purani (I see him very often); Purani had a major role, and M. and (whats his name?) D.D. and M. were quarreling!2 (laughter) And one thing after another. And I was like one of them, wearing strange Clothes.    I am discovering a world I didnt know, which is the world I wonder if its not the vital physical? There were dances, movements. That is, to put it in ordinary words: I have dreams such as I have never had before; only its not dreams, its an activity. Its a world I was totally unaware of, and which is like this (Mother interlaces her fingers to show a sort of interpenetration of the physical and that world).

0 1971-10-09, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Yes, just the day before I received his card, at night I saw a being dressed in golden Clothes, all golden, and he was even wearing a golden turban. And he came to me and offered me something on a tray. But the Clothes were very important! And he was quite handsome. With a turban!1    (Mother laughs much)   --    It was very striking: the Clothes were supremely important. Literary Clothing, probably.    ***

0 1972-04-26, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    Absurd. Yes. Ive reached the point where the only material life I could tolerate would be that of a sannyasin in a hutand even then, a naked sannyasin, because even Clothes are a nuisance!    Ohh!   --    As for me, the purpose of this body is now simply: the Command and the Will of the Lord, so I can do as much groundwork as possible. But it isnt the Goal at all. You see, we dont know, we dont have the slightest knowledge of what the supramental life is. Therefore we dont know if this (Mother pinches the skin of her hand) can change enough to adapt or notand to tell the truth, I am not worried about it, its not a problem that preoccupies me too much; the problem I am preoccupied with is building that supramental consciousness So IT becomes the being. Its that consciousness which must become the being. Thats whats important. As for the rest, well see (its the same as worrying over a change of Clothing). But it must truly be IT, you see. And in order to do that, all the consciousness contained in these cells must aggregate, form and organize itself into an independent conscious entity the consciousness in the cells must aggregate and form into a conscious entity capable of being conscious of Matter as well as conscious of the Supramental. Thats the thing. Thats what is being done. How far will we be able to go? I dont know.    You understand?

02.02 - Rishi Dirghatama, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    About the Word, the mystery which Dirghatama unveils is an extraordinary revelationso curious, so illuminating. In later times many lines of spiritual discipline have adopted his scheme and spread it far and wide. Dirghatama himself was an uncommon wizard of words. The truths he saw and Clothed in mantras have attained, as I have already said, general celebrity. He says: "The Word is off our categories. It has four stations or levels or gradations." The Rishi continues: "Three of them are unmanifested, unbodied; only the fourth one is manifest and bodied, on the tongue of man." This terminology embodying a fundamental principle has had many commentaries and explanations. Of these the most well-known is that given by the Tantras. They have named the fourfold words as (1) par, supreme; (2) payant, the seeing one; (3) madhyam, the middle one or the one within and (4) vaikhar, the articulate word. In modern language we may say that the first one is the self-vibration of the Supreme Being or Consciousness; the second is the vibration of the higher-mind or the pure intelligence; the third is the vibration of the inner heart; and the fourth the vibration of physical sound, of voice. In philosophical terms of current English we may name these as (1) revelatory, (2) intuitive, (3) inspirational and (4) vocal.    Now in conclusion I will just speak of the fundamental vision of the rishi. His entire realisation, the whole Veda of his life, he has, it appears, pressed into one single k We have heard it said that the entire range of all scriptures is epitomised in the Gita and the Gita' itself is epitomised in one slokasarvadharmn parityajya... Even so we may say that Rishi Dirghatama has summarised his experience, at least the fundamental basic one, and put it into a sutra. It is the famous k with which he opens his long hymn to Surya:

03.11 - True Humility, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    It is not by repeating mea culpa ad infinitum that one can show one's true humility. In owning too much and too often one's sins, one may be just on the wrong side of virtue. There lurks a strain of vanity in self-maceration: the sinner in an overdose of self-pity almost feels himself saintly. Certainly, one must stand before oneself face to face, not hide or minimise or explain away one's errors and lapses, all one's omissions and commissions. But one need not brood over them, merely repenting and repining. One sees steadily, without flinching, what one actually is and then resolutely and sincerely takes to the ways and means of changing it, becoming what one has to be. A fall, the discovery of a new frailty should be an occasion not to chastise and punish yourself, thus to depress yourself and harden your nature, but to enthuse you with a fresh resolution, to rekindle your aspiration so that you may take another step forward. And, naturally, this you must do not with the sense that you can succeed or move forward by any inherent capacity of yoursyour failures are there always as standing eye-openers to you. No, it is not your self but the Divine Self that will come to your succour and lift you up tameva ea vute tanum swam to him alone it unveils its own body. That is the humility to be learnt. But it does not mean that you are to remain merely passive, inert you cannot but be that if you are only a weeping willow a dead-weight upon the force of Grace that would carry you up. Rather you should throw your weight, whatever it is, on the side of the Divine. An atmosphere of alacrity and happiness and goodwill goes a long way to the redemption and regeneration of the consciousness. This is demanded of you; the rest is the work of the Divine. It is under such conditions that the Divine's help becomes all the more speedy and effective. Otherwise, mere contrition and lamentation and self-torture mean, as I have said, a ballast, a burden upon the force of progress and purification; as Sri Krishna says in the Gita, by oppressing oneself one oppresses only the Divine within. Humility, in order to be true and sincere, need not be sour and dour in appearance or go about in sack-Cloth and ashes. On the contrary, it can be smiling and buoyant: and it is so, because it is at ease, knowing that things will be donesome things naturally will be undone tooquietly, quickly, if necessary, and inevitably, provided the right consciousness, the right will within is maintained. The humble consciousness does not, of course, take credit for what is being done for it, nor does it concentrate wholly or chiefly on its utter futility and smallness. It feels small or helpless not in the sense as when one one feels weak and miserable and almost undone, but as a child feels, naturally and innocently, in the lap of it mother: only I perhaps it is more awake and self-conscious than the child mentality.    Humility is unreservedly humble, as it envisages the immensity of the labour the Divine has undertaken, sees the Grace, infinite and inscrutable, working miracles every moment: and it is full of gratitude and thanksgiving and quiet trust and hopefulness. Certainly, it means self-forgetfulness and selflessness, as it cannot co-exist with the sense of personal worth and merit, with any appreciation of one's own tapasya and achievement, even as it thrives ill upon self-abasement and self-denigration, for if one is rajasic, the other is tamasic egoismegoism, in any case. Absolute nullity of the egoistic self is the condition needed, but anything less than that, any lowering of the consciousness beyond this zero point means reaffirming the ego in a wrong direction. True humility has an unostentatious quietness, as it has a living and secret contact with the divine consciousness.

03.12 - The Spirit of Tapasya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Tapasya (Asceticism) is usually understood to mean the capacity to undergo physical discomfort and suffering. We are familiar with various types of Tapasya: sitting in summer with blazing fire all around and the fiery noonday sun overhead (Panchagnivrata), exposing one's bare limbs to the cold biting blasts among the eternal snows, lying down on a bed of sharp nails, betaking oneself to sack-Cloth and ashes, fasting even to the point of death: there is no end to the variety of ways and means which man's ingenuity has invented to torture himself. Somehow the feeling has grown among spiritual, religious and even moral aspirants as well that the body is the devil that has to be curbed and controlled with bit and bridle and whip. Indeed the popular view measures the greatness of a saint by the amount of his physical privations.    One seems not to know that the devil cannot be so easily checkmated or beguiled. For, indeed, it is easy for the body to take punishment, to submit to all kinds of rigours, yet feel as if it was making ample amends and atonement in that way rather than really give up its aboriginal instincts and impulses. Often one deceives oneself, succeeds in hiding, in secretly preserving one's unsaintliness behind a smoke-screen of the utmost physical tapasya.

04.01 - The Birth and Childhood of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Next through its fiery swoon or Clotted knot   Rain-tide burst in upon torn wings of heat,

04.01 - The Divine Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The world is not doomed nor man past cure; for it is not that the world has been merely created by God but that God has become and is the world at the same time: man is not merely God's creature but that he is made of God's substance and is God himself. The Spirit has shed its supreme consciousness, that is to say, overtly has become dead matter; God has veiled his effulgent infinity and has taken up a human figure. The Divine has Clothed his inviolable felicity in pain and suffering, has become an earthly creature, you and me, a mortal of mortals. And thus, viewed in another perspective because Matter is essentially Spirit, because man is essentially God, therefore Matter can be resolved and transformed into Spirit and man too can become utterly divine. The urge of the spiritual consciousness that is the essence of matter even, the massed energy imbedded or lying frozen in it, manifests itself in the forward drive of evolution that brings out gradually, step by step, the various modes of the consciousness in different degrees and potentials till the original summit is revealed.    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.

04.04 - The Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Hearing the subtle voice that Clothes the heavens,   Carrying the splendour that has lit the suns,

04.05 - To the Heights V, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Clothings and trappings, the pretences and falsities    All the proprieties that make up our adult wisdom

04.07 - Readings in Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    As, however, mortality bears ill the eternal's touch, the eternal too is intolerant of the mortal natureonly it is intolerant not in the ignorant blind squeamish weak human way, but in a divine way, for it is armed with weapons of light and knowledge, it assaults with its luminous force, the energy of ether and fire, the higher and nobler elements as against the dense dark dumb earth, the lowest element that Clothes the human consciousness. Indeed, mortality is enamoured of the tangled beam of joy and sorrow, of laughter and tears, of light and shadow and cannot contemplate the unalloyed sheer delight in Eternity. It is out of breath in the serene rarefied air of immortality; it pines for the terra firma, the mud and slime. The human consciousness has been fleeing the Hound of Heaven down the corridors of Time, and yet it will be caught in the end and wholly transmuted in the divine embrace into the substance of the Divine Himself. All the unwillingness and protestation and revolt are meant to forge and hammer the final union into something perfect, faultless, absolute.    ***

05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Indeed, although it may sound somewhat strange and wonderful, nevertheless it is literally true that the body is the fortress par excellence for the individual being: it is not merely an ugly dirty Clothing that has to be cast off so that one may go straight to the enjoyment of the beatitude of Paradise; on the contrary, it is, as it were, an armour, a steel-frame that protects the subtle body against the attacks or harsh and cruel touches of other worlds and their beings. Once outside the body, there is every danger for the individual to go astray and be hurt, unless he is guided and protected by a guardian angel, as Dante has had Virgil as his Maestro. We may note here that the passage of Dante from Hell through Purgatory to Heaven across their various levels is almost an exact image of what happens to a soul after death. The highest Heaven where Dante meets Beatrice may be considered as the psychic world and Beatrice herself the Divine Grace that bathes, illumines and comforts the psychic being.    If one has, however, within oneself an ardent and sincere and un flickering flame, one can go through more or less easily and unscathed; but that is rare. Even when alive, in sleep one goes out often into other worlds and the foreign and unpleasant contacts and experiences he has there are recorded in the brain-mind as nightmares: on such occasions the best way to escape is to rush back into the body, the best place of safety. Many have this experience of rushing headlong into the bodydropping into the body, as it werein order to escape from a threatening danger in sleep and waking up all on a sudden to find to one's relief that all was illusion and hallucination.

05.16 - A Modernist Mentality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The old, fossilised or rotten past has to be destroyed and ruthlessly eradicated, no doubt: -but, how is it to be done and who will do it? By a simple process of sledge-hammeringbreaking, burning? By anybody who cares to do it? It does not require much sense or intelligence to see that that is not the ideal nor even the most effective way of doing the thing. The best way to destroy, the wise say, is to construct. Look at Nature, how she is going about the thing. Something is crumbling, precisely because something is growing within or behind. It is the drive of a living growth in secret that pushes a limb no longer necessary or useful to decay and death. Man too in his work of reformation or regeneration should learn that lesson, whether in respect of his individual or of his 'collective growth and evolution. Discover the truth that is to replace the 'old, live it intensely and wholly the old past will automatically slip down like old Clothes or drop like yellow sapless leaves.    Further Monsieur Gide says, God is nowhere, he has to be created. If he means that God is not anywhere in the manifest physical world, especially, the physical world of today, it is true, though here too partially true. God is never truly absent; even in and through this dismal and distressed age of ours he is ever present, a living power of abounding Graceeven if behind the veil, even if not patent to the sense-bound observer. Still God has to be made patent, established concretely in the physical world also, in the everyday normal human affairs. But, again, how to do it? And who is to do it? You or I in our complete, at best half-lit hazy ignorance? By running blindly full tilt against any and all atheism and denial and egoism and arrogance, shouting at them, pointing the finger of scorn at them or being physically violent upon them? It were best if we moved with as much vigour against our own selves, against the ungodly within us. If one begins seriously at home, in dealing with oneself one will be best equipped to deal with the others and the world, in the process of new-creating in oneself one will be in a position to find out exactly what lies in the way of a new creation outside.

06.01 - The End of a Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    We know of worldsvital worldswhich are made of the most unimaginable horror and ugliness and devilry. Many have contacted such domains either consciously in the course of their yogic experiences or unconsciously in nightmare. They bear testimony to the stark monstrosity of these worlds the gloom, the fear, the pain and torture, the doom and damnation that reign there. That entire inner world seems to have precipitated itself upon earth and taken a body here. A radiant poet spoke of Paradise being transplanted upon earth in the shape of a happy city (the city of the Raghus): today we have done the opposite miracle, the devil's capital city is installed upon earth, or even something worse. For, in the subtler worlds there is a saving grace, after all. If you have within you somewhere an aspiration, a trust, a faith, a light the enemy cannot touch you or maul you badly. You may have also around you there beings who help you, a teacher, a guide who is near visibly or invisibly to give you the necessary warning or protection. But here below when the enemy has Clothed himself in a material form and armed himself with material weapons, you are almost helpless. To save yourself from a physical blow, it is not always enough to have the proper inner consciousness only. Something more is needed.    Therefore misery stalks large upon the earth. Nothing com-parable to it, either in quality or quantity, can history offer as an example. Man finds no remedy for his ills, he does not dare to hope for any. He feels he is being irretrievably drawn into the arms of the Arch-enemy.

06.29 - Towards Redemption, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    As I have often said, creation is the self-objectivisation of the Supreme Divine; it is the supreme consciousness putting itself lout of itself so that it may look at itself. In so doingin self-objectifying and self-dividingit scattered itself abroad: the one infinite multiplied itself into infinite atoms. Not only so, in detaching itself from itself the consciousness became the very opposite of itself: consciousness became unconsciousness, spirit became matter, delight became pain, knowledge' became ignorance, and light became darkness. Boundless universality was the essential nature of the Divine, now it got Clotted into the knots of egoism upon which is based this inconscient creation. In the midst of this utter negation, this denial by the universe of its origin, the Divine Love descended and lodged itself in order to bring back the erring creation to its lost home. The Divine Love became involved and entangled in the Inconscient, became one with it; only so could she (it was indeed the Divine Mother in her Grace) suffuse the inconscient universe with her own substance and transmute it into its original nature. The first effect or visible sign of this descent or divine infusion is the emergence of the psychic or the soul element in the material body: it is the speck of consciousness imbedded in matter, inhabiting the apparently dead particle or aggregate of particles, which continually grows in and through its relation of action and reaction with its surrounding unconsciousness, and at the same time extending its light into that darkness transforms it gradually into what it was originally at its source.    The origin of creation is an individualisation the manifestation or emanation of many, as units, out of the undivided and indivisible Single. It meant freedom for each unit to choose: the individual became, so to say, a unit of freedom. The immediate result, however, was not very successful, apparently, that is to say. For the individual unit chose to follow a path exactly opposite to its origin: the individualisation happened as if an element shot out of the infinite unity and flung itself in its momentum, as far away as possible, to the other pole. That is how the one spirit became the infinite particles of inconscient matter. The purpose and problem then set was to bring back the straying elements to their source and origin. The work was long travail. It took and it is taking even now ages for the one Being who could do the thing to prepare slowly, mount the steps gradually along which creation slid down, recover the ground painfully and achieve the hidden purpose, vindicating amply the deviation and the fall. Through devious ways, long, winding, arduous marches the spirit of evolution laboured through millenniums; it was the instrument utilised by the Divine Grace.

07.01 - The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Night was a chrysoprase on velvet Cloth,   A nestling darkness or a moonlit deep;

07.06 - Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Clothed with its show of hues vague empty Space,   A painting's colours hiding a surface void

08.02 - Order and Discipline, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Anyway the result is the same. That is to say, confusion. There are children who, when they undress, throw their Clothing right and left or, when they have done their task, do not know where they put their books and paper, pencil, or ink pot; it takes a lot of trouble to find them again or bring them together. In reality, all this shows an undisciplined nature, a character that is not methodical; it shows that not only in the outside but internally too the person is disorderly. There are people, perhaps considering themselves big, who even have a contempt for physical objects. But Sri Aurobindo says, people who cannot take care of things do not deserve to have them, have no right to ask for them. As I say, it shows a kind of acute egoism, much inner confusion.    There are people who live in rooms apparently clean and tidy. But open a cupboard, pull out a drawer, you will find there a battlefield: all is mixed up. They have a head too that is very much like thata poor small head where ideas are in the same condition as the objects outside in the cupboard. They have not organised them, put them in order. You may take it as an absolute rule. I have never seen a man who keeps things in a disorder and yet possesses a logical brain. In him ideas like the objects are thrown together pell-mell, the most dissimilar and contradictory ideas form a jumble, they are not organised, harmonised into a higher synthesis.

09.02 - The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   This Clotted cypher was its dark result.   In the smothering stress of this stupendous Nought   --   And Clothes all with the beauty of his dreams.   The gods who watch the earth with sleepless eyes

1.002 - The Heifer, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   233. Mothers may nurse their infants for two whole years, for those who desire to complete the nursing-period. It is the duty of the father to provide for them and Clothe them in a proper manner. No soul shall be burdened beyond its capacity. No mother shall be harmed on account of her child, and no father shall be harmed on account of his child. The same duty rests upon the heir. If the couple desire weaning, by mutual consent and consultation, they commit no error by doing so. You commit no error by hiring nursing-mothers, as long as you pay them fairly. And be wary of God, and know that God is Seeing of what you do.   234. As for those among you who die and leave widows behind, their widows shall wait by themselves for four months and ten days. When they have reached their term, there is no blame on you regarding what they might honorably do with themselves. God is fully acquainted with what you do.   --   259. Or like him who passed by a town collapsed on its foundations. He said, “How can God revive this after its demise?” Thereupon God caused him to die for a hundred years, and then resurrected him. He said, “For how long have you tarried?” He said, “I have tarried for a day, or part of a day.” He said, “No. You have tarried for a hundred years. Now look at your food and your drink—it has not spoiled—and look at your donkey. We will make you a wonder for mankind. And look at the bones, how We arrange them, and then Clothe them with flesh.” So when it became clear to him, he said, “I know that God has power over all things.”   260. And when Abraham said, “My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead.” He said, “Have you not believed?” He said, “Yes, but to put my heart at ease.” He said, “Take four birds, and incline them to yourself, then place a part on each hill, then call to them; and they will come rushing to you. And know that God is Powerful and Wise.”

10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   And thy heart's clutching greedy passion Clothe?   Daub not the web of life with magic hues:

10.04 - Lord of Time, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Thousands of crazy branches, green Clothes   Dancing at Taruraji Alaek-Utsabe 6   --   Clean Clothes in the soft dew   Snat washed and caught trembling lips

1.004 - Women, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   5. Do not give the immature your money which God has assigned to you for support. But provide for them from it, and Clothe them, and speak to them with kind words.   6. Test the orphans until they reach the age of marriage. If you find them to be mature enough, hand over their properties to them. And do not consume it extravagantly or hastily before they grow up. The rich shall not charge any wage, but the poor may charge fairly. When you hand over their properties to them, have it witnessed for them. God suffices as a Reckoner.

1.005 - The Table, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   89. God does not hold you accountable for your unintended oaths, but He holds you accountable for your binding oaths. The atonement for it is by feeding ten needy people from the average of what you feed your families, or by Clothing them, or by freeing a slave. Anyone who lacks the means shall fast for three days. That is the atonement for breaking your oaths when you have sworn them. So keep your oaths. Thus God makes clear His Revelations to you, that you may be grateful.   90. O you who believe! Intoxicants, gambling, idolatry, and divination are abominations of Satan’s doing. Avoid them, so that you may prosper.

1.006 - Livestock, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   142. Among the livestock are some for transportation, and some for Clothing. Eat of what God has provided for you, and do not follow the footsteps of Satan. He is to you an outright enemy.   143. Eight pairs: two of the sheep, and two of the goats. Say, “Did He forbid the two males, or the two females, or what the wombs of the two females contain? Inform me with knowledge, if you are truthful.”

1.007 - The Elevations, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   26. O children of Adam! We have provided you with Clothing to cover your bodies, and for luxury. But the Clothing of piety—that is best. These are some of God’s revelations, so that they may take heed.   27. O Children of Adam! Do not let Satan seduce you, as he drove your parents out of the Garden, stripping them of their garments, to show them their nakedness. He sees you, him and his clan, from where you cannot see them. We have made the devils friends of those who do not believe.

1.008 - The Principle of Self-Affirmation, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   These are things which cannot be learned theoretically by the study of books, because very few people have lost everything; we always have something with us. But to experience that moment of reckoning, we must lose everything, even our last strip of Cloth; no one should want to even look at our face, as if we are the worst perhaps in the whole of creation. Such should be the condition to come upon us nothing to eat, no food of any kind, no place to lie down, no raiment on the body, everything is horrible at that moment the true nature of a person comes out. Otherwise, whatever self-analysis we will do, it will be an analysis of the false personality. Psychological analysis or yogic investigation conducted by a false mind will produce only false results and, therefore, a very superior type of CID (Central Intelligence Division) agent, who is not involved in the case on hand, is necessary to investigate into the mind someone quite different from and outside the purview of the operation of the involved mind. Such a mind is called the higher mind, which is in us. It is this higher mind that has to do what is called the stock-taking of one's own condition.   When a person seriously takes to the practice of yoga, a thorough analysis or stock-taking may have to be done, taking into consideration one's experiences during the past many years, of whose nature a little may be still present in one's current state of affairs. Memories of the past sometimes evoke present experiences, and we must also take note of those experiences and factors which can evoke memories of the past. According to Patanjali, memory is one of the obstacles in yoga. Many people think that memory is a very good thing, and even complain that they have no memory. Well, that is all right for the workaday world, but from another angle of vision memory is regarded as an obstacle because we are repeatedly made to think of something that has happened in the past, so that it goes on annoying us constantly even though that event has passed and has no connection with our present life. Both pleasures of the past and pains of the past can evoke conditions which may force us to repeat those experiences, positively or negatively.

1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism   This is that vital and magnetic fluid which radiates from the sun, and which is transmitted to man's etheric body through the agency of certain deva entities of a very high order, and of a golden hue. It is passed through their bodies and emitted as powerful radiations, which are applied direct through certain plexi in the uppermost part of the etheric body, the head and shoulders, and passed down to the etheric correspondence of the physical organ, the spleen, and from thence forcibly transmitted into the spleen itself. These golden hued pranic entities are in the air above us, and are specially active in such parts of the world as California, in those tropical countries where the air is pure and dry, and the rays of the sun are recognised as being specially beneficial. Relations between man and this group of devas are very close, but fraught as yet with much danger to man. These devas are of a very powerful order, and, along their own line, are further evolved than man himself. Unprotected man lies at their mercy, and in this lack of protection, and man's failure to understand the laws of magnetic resistance, or of solar repulsion comes, for instance, the menace of sunstroke. When the etheric body and its assimilative processes are comprehended scientifically, man will then be immune from dangers due to solar radiation. He will protect himself by the application of the laws governing [91] magnetic repulsion and attraction, and not so much by Clothing and shelter. It is largely a question of polarisation. One hint might here be given: When men understand the deva evolution somewhat more correctly and recognise their work along certain lines in connection with the Sun and realise that they represent the feminine pole as they themselves represent the masculine (the fourth Creative Hierarchy being male) [xxxix]39 they will comprehend the mutual relationship, and govern that relationship by law.   These solar devas take the radiatory rays of the sun which reach from its centre to the periphery along one of the three channels of approach, pass them through their organism and focalise them there. They act almost as a burning glass acts. These rays are then reflected or transmitted to man's etheric body, and caught up by him and again assimilated. When the etheric body is in good order and functioning correctly, enough of this prana is absorbed to keep the form organised. This is the whole object of the etheric body's functioning, and is a point which cannot be sufficiently emphasised. The remainder is cast off in the form of animal radiation, or physical magnetismall terms expressing the same idea. Man therefore repeats on a lesser scale the work of the great solar devas, and in his turn adds his quota of repolarised or remagnetised emanation to the sumtotal of the planetary aura.   --   First. Inability to tap pranic currents, owing to the unhealthy lives passed by so many. This involves the cutting off of the source of supply, and the consequent atrophying and shrinkage of the receptive centres. This is seen in an exaggerated form in the children of the congested quarters of any great city, and in the vitiated anemic dwellers of the slums. The cure is apparent the bringing about of better living conditions, the employment [107] of more appropriate Clothing, and the adoption of a freer and more salubrious mode of living. When the pranic rays can find free access to the shoulders, and to the diaphragm, the subnormal state of the average spleen will adjust itself automatically.   Second. Over-ability to tap pranic currents. The first type of functional disorder is common and widespread. Its reverse can be found where conditions of life are such that the centres (through too direct and prolonged submittal to solar emanation) become overdeveloped, vibrate too rapidly, and receive prana in too great an amount. This is rarer, but is found in some tropical countries, and is responsible for much of the troublesome debility that attacks dwellers in these lands. The etheric body receives prana or solar rays too rapidly, passes it through and out of the system with too much force, and this leaves the victim a prey to inertia and devitalisation. Putting it otherwise, the etheric body becomes lazy, is like an unstrung web, or (to use a very homely illustration) it resembles a tennis racket which has become too soft, and has lost its resilience. The inner triangle transmits the pranic emanations with too great rapidity, giving no time for the subsidiary absorption, and the whole system is thereby the loser. Later it will be found that many of the ills that Europeans, living in India, fall heir to, originate in this way; and by attention, therefore, to the spleen, and by wise control of living conditions, some of the trouble may be obviated.

1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i   We have assigned the residence and personal Clothing of the deceased to the male, not female, offspring, nor to the other heirs. He, verily, is the Munificent, the All-Bountiful.   Should the son of the deceased have passed away in the days of his father and have left children, they will inherit their father's share, as prescribed in the Book of God. Divide ye their share amongst them with perfect justice. Thus have the billows of the Ocean of Utterance surged, casting forth the pearls of the laws decreed by the Lord of all mankind.   --   It hath been forbidden you to carry arms unless essential, and permitted you to attire yourselves in silk. The Lord hath relieved you, as a bounty on His part, of the restrictions that formerly applied to Clothing and to the trim of the beard. He, verily, is the Ordainer, the Omniscient. Let there be naught in your demeanour of which sound and upright minds would disapprove, and make not yourselves the playthings of the ignorant. Well is it with him who hath adorned himself with the vesture of seemly conduct and a praiseworthy character. He is assuredly reckoned with those who aid their Lord through distinctive and outstanding deeds.   160

1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology   Some of the prisoners, who werent dressed particularly well, offered to trade their Clothes for mine.   This did not strike me as a great bargain, but I wasnt sure how to refuse. Fate rescued me, in the form of a   --   some old Clothes in my closet and sat cross-legged on the floor. I put my head down. It became obvious to   me at that moment that I had not developed any real understanding of myself or of others. Everything I had

1.011 - Hud, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   5. They wrap their chests to hide from Him. But even as they cover themselves with their Clothes, He knows what they conceal and what they reveal. He knows what lies within the hearts.   6. There is no moving creature on earth but its sustenance depends on God. And He knows where it lives and where it rests. Everything is in a Clear Book.

10.11 - Savitri, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Plabia in fine aloe vera Cloth   Revelation of divinity in the form of nakedness

1.013 - Defence Mechanisms of the Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   Apart from the usual and obvious forms of dependence, such as the need for food, Clothing and shelter, there are other types of dependence which are secret, subtler in their nature, and these are more important for the purposes of investigation than the grosser needs, because the grosser needs are well known to everyone. Everyone knows that we will be hungry, and will feel heat and cold, and that we need a shelter for living. But there are other things which may not be known to everybody. We have weaknesses other than the feeling of hunger, thirst, etc., and these are the harassing factors of life. We are worried not so much because of food, Clothing and shelter, but due to other things which are the secret wire-pullers of the individual's existence. These other things are not minor factors. They are made to appear as if they are insignificant and secondary on account of a trick played by the mind, because if they are brought to the forefront they will not succeed in their attempts. So, a subtle devise is adopted by the mind to succeed in its attempts.   A political manoeuvre is adopted by the mind by the manufacture of certain mechanisms psychologically, which are usually called by psychologists as defence mechanisms. These defence mechanisms are very peculiar structures like bulldozers and tanks which we have in armies and public works which the mind manufactures for its stability, security, sustenance and permanent establishment in the world of diversities. These defence mechanisms are terrible machineries which the mind manufactures and keeps secret, unknown to people, like secret weapons which one may wield, not allowing them to come to the knowledge of other people. If everyone knows what weapons we have got, then they won't be effective, because others also may manufacture the same weapons. So we keep our weapons very secret and use them only when they are necessary, in warfare or on a battlefield. Everyone has these weapons, and they are not made of material objects. They are psychological apparatuses which the mind always keeps ready at hand, whenever there is any kind of threat to the psychological security or individual happiness. The adepts who have made deep study of this subject are the psychoanalysts in the Western world and the teachers of yoga in the East, particularly Sage Patanjali; and certain other texts like the Upanishads have made a study of the subtle devices that the mind employs for the purpose of its individual security and permanent satisfaction.

1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   sion for show and new Clothes. What is more, these imagesbe   they Christian or Buddhist or what you will are lovely,   --   like a new suit of Clothes, ready-made symbols grown on foreign   soil, saturated with foreign blood, spoken in a foreign tongue,

1.01 - Asana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy     WEH footnote: It is important to distinguish between cramp and severe chronic muscle spasm which can tear ligaments. Muscle spasm tends to result from pinching or compressing nerves, and can lead to permanent injury. Also beware of constricted circulation, which produces numbness more than it does pain. Wear loose Clothing and avoid pressing on hard objects.   It will require a good deal of determination to persist day after day, for in most cases it will be found that the discomfort and pain, instead of diminishing, tend to increase.

1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy   Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has invented, not only houses, but Clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well Clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting. So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his Clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, mans body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, _animal life_, is nearly synonymous with the expression, _animal heat_; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us,and Fuel serves only to prepare that   Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without,Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the _heat_ thus generated and absorbed.   The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly take, not only with our   Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-Clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &c., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live,that is, keep comfortably warm, and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course _ la mode_.   Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward.   --   What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, Clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?   When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant Clothing, more numerous incessant and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.   The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season.   --   Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of Clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits.   They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean Clothes on.   Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearers character, until we hesitate to lay them aside, without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his Clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched Clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this;who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentlemans legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his masters premises with Clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their Clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men, which belonged to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she was now in a civilized country, where people are judged of by their Clothes.   Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far hea then, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Beside, Clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a womans dress, at least, is never done.   A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet,if a hero ever has a valet,bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soires and legislative halls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old Clothes,his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new Clothes, and not rather a new wearer of Clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new Clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old Clothes. All men want, not something to _do with_, but something to _do_, or rather something to _be_. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for Clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.   We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful Clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber or true bark, which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. I believe that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap Clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of _his own earning_, there will not be found wise men to do him reverence?   When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, They do not make them so now, not emphasizing the They at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity _They_ are related to _me_, and what authority they may have in an affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the they,It is true, they did not make them so recently, but they do now. Of what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on? We worship not the Graces, nor the Parc, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a travellers cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.   --   I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get Clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.   As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances of men having done without it for long periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing says that the   Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snowin a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in any woollen Clothing. He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, They are not hardier than other people. But, probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family; though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a days march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world, and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste to clo the himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other Clothes.   Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.   --   However, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton Cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, The best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses. He adds, that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in one.   In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savages. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a   --   At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the mean while out of doors on the ground, early in the morning: which mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tableCloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.   It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a mans building his own house that there is in a birds building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer.   --   Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates, though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to                         $8.40   --     Clothing, etc., eight months,........... 8.40     Oil, &c., eight months,................. 2.00   --   Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in Cloths.   I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and refinement of this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter, till I came to good, sweet, wholesome bread, the staff of life.   --   Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get Clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a farmers family,thank Heaven there is so much virtue still in man; for   I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer;and in a new country, fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land I cultivated was soldnamely, eight dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it.   --   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.   --   Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged Clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could afford to refuse the _extra_ garments which   I offered him, he had so many _intra_ ones. This ducking was the very thing he needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sundays liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice?

1.01f - Introduction, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various   They give superb garments and Clothing   Worth thousands of myriads,

1.01 - Hatha Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism   20. Dhauti (cleansing of stomach with a piece of Cloth), Basti (drawing up of water through anus), Neti (cleansing of nostrils with the help of a thread), Nauli (manipulation of the abdominal muscles), Trataka (gazing on an object), Kapalabhati (a kind of Pranayama)are the Shad Kriyas of Hatha Yoga.   21. Sirshasana is the king of all Asanas. It streng thens the brain and the brain-centres and improves memory, and helps Brahmacharya.

1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen   1 There are three possible senses of vasyam, "to be Clothed", "to be worn as a garment" and "to be inhabited". The first is the ordinarily accepted meaning. Shankara explains it in this significance, that we must lose the sense of this unreal objective universe in the sole perception of the pure Brahman. So explained the first line becomes a contradiction of the whole thought of the Upanishad which teaches the reconciliation, by the perception of essential Unity, of the apparently incompatible opposites, God and the   World, Renunciation and Enjoyment, Action and internal Freedom, the One and the

1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology   suffice. We pay vast sums of money for articles of Clothing worn or personal items used or created by the   famous and infamous of our time.

1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Food, Clothes, and a dwelling-place - nothing more. You cannot realize God with its help. Therefore money can never be the goal of life. That is the process of discrimination. Do you understand?"   M: "Yes, sir. I recently read a Sanskrit play called Prabodha Chandrodaya. It deals with discrimination."   --   "Once a man was about to cross the sea. Bibhishana wrote Rama's name on a leaf, tied it in a corner of the man's wearing-Cloth, and said to him: 'Don't be afraid. Have faith and walk on the water. But look here - the moment you lose faith you will be drowned.'   The man was walking easily on the water. Suddenly he had an intense desire to see what was tied in his Cloth. He opened it and found only a leaf with the name of Rma written on it. 'What is this?' he thought. 'Just the name of Rma!' As soon as doubt entered his mind he sank under the water.   "If a man has faith in God, then even if he has committed the most heinous sins -

1.01 - Meeting the Master - Authors first meeting, December 1918, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    Sri Aurobindo was sitting in a wooden chair behind a small table covered with an indigo-blue Cloth in the verandah upstairs when I went up to meet him. I felt a spiritual light surrounding his face. His look was penetrating. He had known me by my correspondence. I reminded him about my brother having met him at Baroda; he had not forgotten him. Then I informed him that our group was now ready to start revolutionary activity. It had taken us about eleven years to get organised.    Sri Aurobindo remained silent for some time. Then he put me questions about my sadhana. I described my efforts and added: "Sadhana is all right, but it is difficult to concentrate on it so long as India is not free."

1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism   O seeker of the mysteries! since there is nothing nearer to thee than thyself, and that still with thy soul alone, thou canst not discriminate anything, and art impotent to find out and know thyself, in what way canst thou become acquainted with anything else, and with that which is even separate from thyself? And how should'st thou be able to comprehend God, who in his nature cannot be comprehended, [14] and of whose absolute essence it is not possible to give thee any explanation. If thou should'st say, "I perfectly know myself," we reply, that we have no doubt that what you are acquainted with is your own hand and foot, with your eye and mouth, and animals even have this kind of knowledge. You know also that if you are hungry, your stomach craves food, and that if you are cold, you desire Clothing; but other animals also understand these things.   However, that knowledge of the soul which leads to the knowledge of God, is not of this kind. The knowledge which you need to possess is, to know what you are; how you are created; whence you are; for what you are here; whither you are going; in what your happiness consists, and what you must do to secure it; in what your misery consists, and what you must do to avoid it. And further, your internal qualities are distributed into animal, ferocious, demoniacal and angelic qualities. You need to know, therefore, what qualities predominate in your character, and in the predominance of which your true happiness consists. If your qualities are chiefly animal, the essence of which is to eat and drink, you will day and night seek after these things. If your qualities are of the ferocious kind, the essence of which is to tear and rend, to injure and destroy, you will act accordingly. If you are endowed chiefly with the qualities of devils, which consist in evil machinations, deceit and delusion, then you should know and be aware of it, that you may turn towards the path of perfection. And if you possess angelic qualities, whose nature it is to worship God in sincerity and continually to await the vision of His beauty, then like them you should unceasingly, resting neither day or night, be zealous and strive that you may become worthy of the vision of the Lord. For know, O student of the mysteries! that man was created to stand at the door of service in frailty and weakness, [15] and wait for the opening of the door of spiritual union, and for the vision of beauty, as God declares in his holy word: "I have not created the genii and men except that they should worship me."1   --   Besides, beloved! if man had been created only to eat and drink, it would follow that animals are of greater worth and excellence than man; for they can eat and drink more than man can, and they have useful services devolved upon them of drawing burdens, tilling the ground, and giving meat, butter and milk for food. If also man had been created to fight, kill and domineer, it would follow that beasts of prey are nobler than he, for they are mightier in their ferocity and their power of subjugating other animals. There are, moreover, many animals of manifest utility, as the dog to watch and hunt, and the skins of some of them for Clothing. It follows, therefore, that man was not created for these things, but rather to serve God and to grow in the knowledge of him.   It is plain that mind, discernment and reason were bestowed upon man, that when he looks upon the world and sees in every object illustrations of various forms of perfection, and much to excite his wonder, he might turn his attention from the work of the artist, to the artist himself; from the thing formed to him that formed it; that he might comprehend his own excessive frailty and weakness, and the perfection of the wisdom and power, yea, of all the attributes of the eternal Creator, and that, without ceasing, he might humbly supplicate acceptance in his frailty and weakness on the one hand, and on the other might seek to draw near to the King of kings, and finally obtain rest in [22] the home of the faithful, where the angels are in the presence of God. If men refuse to recognize their own dignity, if they neglect their duty and prefer the qualities of devils and beasts of prey, they will also possess, in the future world, the qualities of beasts of prey, and will be judged with the devils. Our refuge is in God!   --   If a person possessing great knowledge of the outward world, should use his knowledge as a means of progress in the way of truth, instead of being satisfied with such disputes as of buying and selling; marrying and divorcing, and should be assiduous in gaining divine knowledge, which is the end of all other knowledge, it is all well and good. His knowledge of the outward world will give him strength in his course, and will serve as a guide to him in [32] the way to eternal truth. For if the pilgrim do not understand the grounds of the respect due to, and the law-fulness of his food and drink, his dwelling and his Clothing, if he do not understand the causes which impair or render complete acts of purification and devotion, what has a tendency to give strength to the blameable affections of the soul, and what is their nature and their remedy, he can derive no advantage from the sciences of spiritual exercise, discovery and revelation. In short to an ignorant pilgrim, the least doubt may operate as a hindrance in his course for many years. If, however, he should fall into a spirit of disputation, and should say, "knowledge implies nothing else than to be able to study a book and to correct the composition, the punctuation and the declensions," he will certainly be frustrated from obtaining and discovering inward knowledge, - that is, he will not attain to the knowledge of God, which is the object of all knowledge, which is the most sublime knowledge, and compared with which all other knowledge is but husks. Therefore, when we hear some good man, who has travelled far on the road of spiritual discovery affirm, that knowledge of the external world, in the sense which we at first alluded to, is a hindrance in the way of truth, we ought to be careful not to deny the truth of what he says.   There are, however, in our times certain weak persons and indifferent to religious truth for the most part, who in the guise of soofees,1 after learning a few of their obscure phrases and ornamenting themselves with their cap and robes, treat knowledge and the doctors of the law2 as inimical to themselves, and continually find fault with them. They are devils and deserve judicial death. They are enemies of God, and of the apostle of God. For God has extolled knowledge and the doctors of the law; and the [33] established way of salvation, with which God has inspired the prophets, has its basis in external knowledge. These miserable and weak men, since they have no acquaintance with science, and no education, and knowledge of external things, why should they indulge in such corrupt fancies, and unfounded language? They resemble, beloved, a person who having heard it said that alchemy was of more value than gold, because that whatsoever thing should be touched with the philosophers' stone would turn to gold, should be proud of the idea and should be carried away with a passion for alchemy. And when gold in full bags is offered him, he replies : "Shall I turn my attention to gold, when I am dissolving the philosophers' stone?" And he finishes with being deprived of the gold, and with only hearing the name of the philosophers' stone. He becomes forever a miserable, destitute, and naked vagabond, who wastes his life upon alchemy.

1.01 - Tara the Divine, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen   caravan, as well as food, Clothes, and valuable objects   that we carried, we represented an ideal prey for the   --   only rainbows. They shook his Clothes from which   more small rainbows escaped falling like rain! Of the

1.01 - the Call to Adventure, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology   have, dear frog,' she said; 'my Clothes, my pearls and jewels,   even the golden crown that I wear.' The frog replied, 'Your   Clothes, your pearls and jewels, and your golden crown, I do not   want; but if you will care for me and let me be your companion

1.01 - The Castle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction   As I looked around, I felt a curious sensation, or, rather, two distinct sensations, which mingled in my mind, still upset and somewhat unstable in my weariness. I seemed to be at a sumptuous court, which no one would have expected to find in such a rustic and out-of-the-way castle; and its wealth was evident not only in the costly furnishings and the graven vessels, but also in the calm and ease which reigned among those at the table, all handsome of person and Clothed with elaborate elegance. But, at the same time, I remarked a feeling of random, of disorder, if not actually of license, as if this were not a lordly dwelling but an inn of passage, where people unknown to one another live together for one night and where, in that enforced promiscuity, all feel a relaxation of the rules by which they live in their own surroundings, and-as one resigns oneself to less comfortable ways of life-so one also indulges in freer, unfamiliar behavior. In fact, the two contradictory impressions could nevertheless refer to a single object: whether the castle, for years visited only as a stopping place, had gradually degenerated into an inn, and the lord and his lady had found themselves reduced to the roles of host and hostess, though still going through the motions of their aristocratic hospitality; or whether a tavern, such as one often sees in the vicinity of castles, to give drink to soldiers and horsemen, had invaded-the castle being long abandoned-the ancient, noble halls to install its benches and hogsheads there, and the pomp of those rooms-as well as the coming and going of illustrious customers-had conferred on the inn an unforeseen dignity, sufficient to put ideas in the heads of the host and hostess, who finally came to believe themselves the rulers of a brilliant court.   These thoughts, to tell the truth, occupied me only for a moment; stronger were my relief at being safe and sound in the midst of a select company and my impatience to strike up a conversation (at a nod of invitation from the man who seemed the lord-or the host-I had sat down at the only empty place) and to exchange with my traveling companions tales of the adventures we had undergone. But at this table, contrary to the custom of inns, and also of courts, no one uttered a word. When a guest wished to ask his neighbor to pass the salt or the ginger, he did so with a gesture, and with gestures he also addressed the servants, motioning them to cut him a slice of pheasant pie or to pour him a half pint of wine.

1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   For the typal passes naturally into the conventional stage. The conventional stage of human society is born when the external supports, the outward expressions of the spirit or the ideal become more important than the ideal, the body or even the Clothes more important than the person. Thus in the evolution of caste, the outward supports of the ethical fourfold order,birth, economic function, religious ritual and sacrament, family custom,each began to exaggerate enormously its proportions and its importance in the scheme. At first, birth does not seem to have been of the first importance in the social order, for faculty and capacity prevailed; but afterwards, as the type fixed itself, its maintenance by education and tradition became necessary and education and tradition naturally fixed themselves in a hereditary groove. Thus the son of a Brahmin came always to be looked upon conventionally as a Brahmin; birth and profession were together the double bond of the hereditary convention at the time when it was most firm and faithful to its own character. This rigidity once established, the maintenance of the ethical type passed from the first place to a secondary or even a quite tertiary importance. Once the very basis of the system, it came now to be a not indispensable crown or pendent tassel, insisted upon indeed by the thinker and the ideal code-maker but not by the actual rule of society or its practice. Once ceasing to be indispensable, it came inevitably to be dispensed with except as an ornamental fiction. Finally, even the economic basis began to disintegrate; birth, family custom and remnants, deformations, new accretions of meaningless or fanciful religious sign and ritual, the very scarecrow and caricature of the old profound symbolism, became the riveting links of the system of caste in the iron age of the old society. In the full economic period of caste the priest and the Pundit masquerade under the name of the Brahmin, the aristocrat and feudal baron under the name of the Kshatriya, the trader and money-getter under the name of the Vaishya, the half-fed labourer and economic serf under the name of the Shudra. When the economic basis also breaks down, then the unclean and diseased decrepitude of the old system has begun; it has become a name, a shell, a sham and must either be dissolved in the crucible of an individualist period of society or else fatally affect with weakness and falsehood the system of life that clings to it. That in visible fact is the last and present state of the caste system in India.   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.

1.01 - The Path of Later On, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Hollow voices cry out to the traveller, "Flee this place; go back to the cross-roads; there is still time." The young man hesitates, then replies, "Tomorrow." He covers his face with his hands so as not to see the bodies rolling into the ravine, and runs along the road, drawn on by an irresistible urge to go forward. He no longer wonders whether he will find a way out. With furrowed brow and Clothes in disorder, he runs on in desperation. At last, thinking himself far away from the accursed place, he opens his eyes: there are no more fir-trees; all around are barren stones and grey dust. The sun has disappeared beyond the horizon; night is coming on. The road has lost itself in an endless desert. The desperate traveller, worn out by his long run, wants to stop; but he must walk on. All around him is ruin; he hears stifled cries; his feet stumble on skeletons. In the distance, the thick mist takes on terrifying shapes; black forms loom up; something huge and misshapen suggests itself. The traveller flies rather than walks towards the goal he senses and which seems to flee from him; wild cries direct his steps; he brushes against phantoms. At last he sees before him a huge edifice, dark, desolate, gloomy, a castle to make one say with a shudder: "A haunted castle." But the young man pays no attention to the bleakness of the place; these great black walls make no impression on him; as he stands on the dusty ground, he hardly trembles at the sight of these formidable towers; he thinks only that the goal is reached, he forgets his weariness and discouragement. As he approaches the castle, he brushes against a wall, and the wall crumbles; instantly everything collapses around him; towers, battlements, walls have vanished, sinking into dust which is added to the dust already covering the ground.   Owls, crows and bats fly out in all directions, screeching and circling around the head of the poor traveller who, dazed, downcast, overwhelmed, stands rooted to the spot, unable to move; suddenly, horror of horrors, he sees rising up before him terrible phantoms who bear the names of Desolation, Despair, Disgust with life, and amidst the ruins he even glimpses Suicide, pallid and dismal above a bottomless gulf. All these malignant spirits surround him, clutch him, propel him towards the yawning chasm. The poor youth tries to resist this irresistible force, he wants to draw back, to flee, to tear himself away from all these invisible arms entwining and clasping him. But it is too late; he moves on towards the fatal abyss. He feels drawn, hypnotized by it. He calls out; no voice answers to his cries. He grasps at the phantoms, everything gives way beneath him. With haggard eyes he scans the void, he calls out, he implores; the macabre laughter of Evil rings out at last.

1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen   Sukehiko, eldest son of the wealthy Watanabe family of Hara, for unspecified unfilial acts. Citing cautionary stories, Hakuin warns his friend of the dire karmic consequences lying in store if he doesn't mend his ways. The letter owes its survival to its inclusion in Hakuin's publication The Cloth   Drum Refitted, subtitled A Letter to an Unfilial Son, which first appeared in his fifties.   --   At some point, either when Hakuin wrote the letter itself or soon afterward, he transcribed it in manuscript form, added a short preface, and titled it The Cloth Drum: A Letter to an Unfilial Son.   Years later this brief letter became the basis for The Cloth Drum Refitted [with a New Drumhead], a series of accounts of retri bution for unfilial behavior that appeared as a single volume in 1747. It was greatly enlarged and reissued in 1753 in a five-volume edition. This edition opens with the letter to   Watanabe Sukefusa, which takes up less than a third of volume one, and is followed by twenty-two more stories of karmic cause and effect. Hakuin returned to this genre in later collections such as   --   Accounts of the Miraculous Effects describes wondrous escapes from disaster and death thanks to recitation of the Ten Phrase Kannon Sutra, all but one of the stories in The Cloth Drum Refitted are of the retri butive type and recount instead the terrible punishments meted out to unfilial sons and daughters.   In the preface Hakuin wrote for The Cloth Drum Refitted, he alludes briefly to his friendship with   Watanabe Sukefusa, then explains the circumstances that led him to send Watanabe the remonstrance.   --   [As this next paragraph seems addressed to Watanabe Sukefusa, it must have been written when Hakuin composed the original letter. Did Hakuin leave it in unintentionally when he reworked the preface for inclusion in the published edition of The Cloth Drum Refitted forty years later?]   You yourself have recently fallen prey to delusions of a similar kind. Your relations look on with wrinkled brows, your friends with foreheads furrowed. You have come right up against a firmly locked barrier that you will find extremely difficult to pass through.   --   Now, on happy and auspicious occasions, Sukefusa puts on a clean robe, clears his desk, takes out the letter, and slowly and carefully rereads it, treasuring it as a precious jewel. After I returned home from my pilgrimage in my early thirties and took up residence in Shin-ji, a strong friendship formed between us. We became closer than brothers. He kept the letter inside a fabric slipcase on which I had inscribed the characters nuno-tsutsumi (the "Cloth drum") [something that is utterly useless].   One day during a conversation he said, "You know, at first the words 'Cloth drum' seemed strange to me. But now, after having read and reread the letter with great care, I have come to understand what a welcome and valuable work it is." Seeing the joy beam from his face as he spoke, I was filled with joy as well.   Today his son cherishes the letter as a family treasure. Recently, on the occasion of an annual festival, some elderly laymen who frequent my temple borrowed the letter and brought it to my temple. They asked me to copy it out and write some prefatory remarks. I complied with their wishes, and have taken the opportunity to add much new material as well.   --   Perhaps they may even succeed in hearing the secret rhythms of the Cloth drum. However, if any of them finds the ideas set forth here absurd or unreasonable, they should return it forthwith to me!   In the spring of 1746, shortly before writing this preface, Hakuin had acted on the advice he had given thirty-three years earlier about recycling the letter. Learning that one Murabayashi Tokusabur, the son of a friend and a student in Edo, whom the father had praised as an "extremely sincere, mildmannered, and obedient young man, loved by one and all," was in fact given to wild drinking sprees and other generally reprehensible behavior, Hakuin retrieved the letter, made some necessary revisions, and sent it to the young man (also see Letter 9). As this occurred only months before   Hakuin prepared The Cloth Drum Refitted for publication, it seems reasonable to conjecture that revamping the letter for Tokusabur stimulated Hakuin to write and publish this almost entirely new    work in which he could declare the hazards of unfilial behavior to a much wider audience.

1.022 - The Pilgrimage, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   5. O people! If you are in doubt about the Resurrection—We created you from dust, then from a small drop, then from a clinging Clot, then from a lump of flesh, partly developed and partly undeveloped. In order to clarify things for you. And We settle in the wombs whatever We will for a designated term, and then We bring you out as infants, until you reach your full strength. And some of you will pass away, and some of you will be returned to the vilest age, so that he may not know, after having known. And you see the earth still; but when We send down water on it, it vibrates, and swells, and grows all kinds of lovely pairs.   6. That is because God is the truth, and because He gives life to the dead, and because He is Capable of everything.

1.023 - The Believers, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   14. Then We developed the seed into a Clot. Then We developed the Clot into a lump. Then We developed the lump into bones. Then We Clothed the bones with flesh. Then We produced it into another creature. Most Blessed is God, the Best of Creators.   15. Then, after that, you will die.

10.24 - Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Yes, she is ready to do it, but not for herself, but for her Love, the being who was the life of her life. Savitri is the Divine Consciousness but here in the mortal body' she is Clothed in the human consciousness; it is the human consciousness that she is to lead upward and beyond and it is in and through the human consciousness that the Divine Realisation has to be express and established. The human Savitri declares: If Death is conquered, it is for the sake of Satya van living eternally with her. She seems to say: What I wish to see is the living Satyavan and I united with him for ever. I do not need an earthly life without him; with him I prefer to be in another world if necessary away from the obscurity and turmoil of this earth here.    My strength is taken from me and given to Death,

1.024 - The Light, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   58. O you who believe! Permission must be requested by your servants and those of you who have not reached puberty. On three occasions: before the Dawn Prayer, and at noon when you change your Clothes, and after the Evening Prayer. These are three occasions of privacy for you. At other times, it is not wrong for you or them to intermingle with one another. God thus clarifies the revelations for you. God is Knowledgeable and Wise.   59. When the children among you reach puberty, they must ask permission, as those before them asked permission. God thus clarifies His revelations for you. God is Knowledgeable and Wise.   60. Women past the age of childbearing, who have no desire for marriage, commit no wrong by taking off their outer Clothing, provided they do not flaunt their finery. But to maintain modesty is better for them. God is Hearing and Knowing.   61. There is no blame on the blind, nor any blame on the lame, nor any blame on the sick, nor on yourselves for eating at your homes, or your fathers’ homes, or your mothers’ homes, or your brothers’ homes, or your sisters’ homes, or the homes of your paternal uncles, or the homes of your paternal aunts, or the homes of your maternal uncles, or the homes of your maternal aunts, or those whose keys you own, or the homes of your friends. You commit no wrong by eating together or separately. But when you enter any home, greet one another with a greeting from God, blessed and good. God thus explains the revelations for you, so that you may understand.

1.02 - BEFORE THE CITY-GATE, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry   A girl in Sunday Clothes,these three are my delights.   CITIZEN'S DAUGHTER   --   Their Clothes are colors that softly gleam.   I hear the noise of the village, even;

1.02 - BOOK THE SECOND, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry   Defil'd with ropy gore and Clots of blood:   Shut from the winds, and from the wholesome skies,

1.02 - Fire over the Earth, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   Clothed.   I know we cannot forestall, still less dictate to

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology   Clothed.50   We can make lists of general goods and bads, which might appear reasonable to others, because we tend to   --   gods, who eternally demand to be Clothed and fed.   The fact that goals should be reasonable, broadly speaking, does not necessarily mean that they will be,   --   Formal drama Clothes potent ideas in personality, exploring different paths of directed or motivated action,   playing out conflict, cathartically, offering ritual models for emulation or rejection. Dramatic personae   --   Ferocious dragons she Clothed with terror,   She crowned them with fear-inspiring glory and made them like gods,   --   Ferocious dragons she Clothed with terror,   She crowned them with fear-inspiring glory and made them like gods.   --   fear-producing spirits. These spirits, Clothed in particular anxiety-provoking occurrences, give form to   aspects of experience that otherwise remain inexplicable beyond understanding, from the perspective of   --   The basic plot is established. The tailor he who Clothes, mends and ties is the hero. Although simple   (poor in outward appearance, humble, willing to take risks, helpful and kind), he has the capacity to

1.02 - On the Knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism   Let us notice, also, the daily necessities of man, his need of food, of Clothing and of a dwelling; his need of rain, clouds, wind, heat and cold : and that he needs the weaver, the cotton-spinner, the Clothier and the fuller to provide him with Clothing; and that each one of these has need of so many instruments, and of so many trades, like those of the blacksmith, the farmer, the carpenter, the dyer, and the tanner; and besides, their need of iron, lead, wood and the like. Notice at the same time, the adaptation of these workmen to their instruments, and of the instruments to the trades, and how each art has given rise to several others, and the mind is astonished and distracted. The adaptation of all these instruments comes from the pure grace and perfect mercy of God, and from the fountain of his benevolence. Moreover, God's creating prophets, sending them to us, and leading us to their law and to love them, is a perfume of His universal beneficence. He proclaims himself, "My mercy surpasses my anger," and the Prophet has said: "Verily, God is more full of compassion to his servants, than the affectionate mother to her nursing child."   It has been shown that man from his own existence, knows the existence of his creator, that from his analysis of the materials of which his body is composed and of its distinctive characters he understands the almighty power of God, that from the uses, the arrangement and the combination of his organs, he knows the omniscient wisdom of God, and that his clemency and compassion extend to [45] all. He knows, also, that these many mercies and bounties are bestowed upon him without his seeking or care, from God's rich and overflowing grace. Now in this way it is possible that the knowledge of the soul should become the key to the knowledge of God. For just as from a survey of your own being and attributes, you have in a contracted form learned the being and attributes of God, it is also possible to understand how the freedom and the holiness of God, bear a resemblance to the freedom of your soul.

1.02 - Skillful Means, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various   Tin, iron, wood, mud, glue, lacquer, and Cloth,   Have certainly attained the path of the buddhas.

1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   of our very soul? . . . Now let us reverse the process, reClothing   ourselves piece by piece with those layers of education which we

1.02 - The Human Soul, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity   3.: In a state of grace the soul is like a well of limpid water, from which flow only streams of clearest crystal. Its works are pleasing both to God and man, rising from the River of Life, beside which it is rooted like a tree. Otherwise it would produce neither leaves nor fruit, for the waters of grace nourish it, keep it from withering from drought, and cause it to bring forth good fruit. But the soul by sinning withdraws from this stream of life, and growing beside a black and fetid pool, can produce nothing but disgusting and unwholesome fruit. Notice that it is not the fountain and the brilliant sun which lose their splendour and beauty, for they are placed in the very centre of the soul and cannot be deprived of their lustre. The soul is like a crystal in the sunshine over which a thick black Cloth has been thrown, so that however brightly the sun may shine the crystal can never reflect it.   4.: O souls, redeemed by the Blood of Jesus Christ, take these things to heart; have mercy on yourselves! If you realize your pitiable condition, how can you refrain from trying to remove the darkness from the crystal of your souls? Remember, if death should take you now, you would never again enjoy the light of this Sun. O Jesus! how sad a sight must be a soul deprived of light! What a terrible state the chambers of this castle are in! How disorderly must be the senses-the inhabitants of the castle-the powers of the soul its magistrates, governors, and stewards-blind and uncontrolled as they are! In short, as the soil in which the tree is now planted is in the devil's domain, how can its fruit be anything but evil? A man of great spiritual insight once told me he was not so much surprised at such a soul's wicked deeds as astonished that it did not commit even worse sins. May God in His mercy keep us from such great evil, for nothing in this life merits the name of evil in comparison with this, which delivers us over to evil which is eternal.

1.02 - The Magic Circle, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism   The diagram, that is the drawing by which the Divinity is expressed within the circle, is subject to the religious concepts of the magician. The procedure followed by an oriental magician when forming a magic circle is of no use to an occidental magician, because his ideas of the Divine and the Infinite are quite different from those of the magician from the East. If an occidental initiate drew a magic circle according to oriental instructions, with all divine names appertaining to it, it would be ineffective and completely fall short of its purpose. A Christian magician must therefore never draw a magic circle according to an Indian or any other religion if he wants to save himself from an unnecessary effort. The construction of the magic circle depends, from the beginning, on one's individual ideas and beliefs and one's individual conception of the qualities of the Divine, who is to be symbolized graphically by this circle. This is the reason why a genuine magician will never draw a circle, carry out rituals, or follow instructions concerning ceremonial magic to which he himself is not identified in his individual practice. For this would be similar to wearing oriental Clothes in the occident.   Bearing these facts in mind, it comes natural that the magic circle has to be drawn in complete accordance with the views of life and maturity of the magician. The initiate who is conscious about the Harmony of the Universe and its exact hierarchy will, of course, make use of his knowledge when drawing the magic circle. Such a magician may, if he likes, and if the circumstances permit it, draw into his magic circle diagrams representing the whole hierarchy of the universe and thus come into contact with, and awake his consciousness of, the universe much more rapidly. He is free to draw, if necessary, several circles at a certain distance from each other in order to use them for representing the hierarchy of the universe in the form of divine names, genii, princes, angels and other powers. One must, of course, meditate appropriately and take the concept of the divine aspects in question into consideration when drawing the circle. The true magician must know that divine names are symbolic designations of divine qualities and powers. It stands to reason that while drawing the circle and entering the divine names the magician must also consider the analogies corresponding to the power in question, such as colour, number and direction, if he does not want to allow a breach in his consciousness to come into existance because he has not presented the universe in its complete analogy.   --   When working in the open air, a magic weapon, dagger or sword has to be used for drawing the circle on the ground. When working in a room, the circle may be drawn on the floor with a piece of chalk. A large sheet of paper can also be used for the circle. The most ideal circle, however, is the one sewn or embroidered into a piece of Cloth, flannel or silk, for such a circle can be laid out in a room as well as outside of the house. The circles drawn on paper have the disadvantage that the paper will soon wear out and fall to pieces. In any case, the circle must be large enough to enable the magician to move about in it freely. When drawing the circle, the appropriate state of mind and full concentration are most essential. If a circle were drawn without the necessary concentration, a circle would undoubtedly be the result, but it would not be a magic one. The magic circle that has been worked into a piece of Cloth or silk has to be re-drawn symbolically with one's finger or magic wand, or with some other magic weapon; not to forget the necessary concentration, meditation and state of mind. The magician must, in such a case, be fully aware of the fact that it is not the magical weapon in use that draws the circle, but the divine faculties symbolized by that magical instrument. Furthermore, he must realize that it is not he that is drawing the magic circle at the moment of concentration, but that the Divine Spirit is actually guiding his hand and instrument to draw the circle. Therefore, before drawing the magic circle, a conscious contact with the Almighty, with the Infinite, has to be brought about by the help of meditation and identification.   The trained magician, having a thorough comm and of the practical exercises of the first tarot-card, as explained in my first work "Initiation into Hermetics" , has learned during one of the steps of that book how to become fully conscious of the spirit and how to act consciously as a spirit. It is not difficult for him to imagine that not he, but the Divine Spirit in all its high aspects is actually drawing the magic circle he wishes to have. The magician has thus learned also that in the world of the Invisible it is not the same although two persons might physically be doing the same, for a sorcerer, who does not possess the necessary maturity, will never be able to draw a true magic circle.   The magician who is also acquainted with Quabbalah can draw another snake-like circle within the inner circle and divide it into 72 fields, giving each of these fields the name of a genius. These names of genii, together with their analogies, must be drawn magically by pronouncing them correctly. If working with a circle embroidered into a piece of Cloth, the names inserted into the various fields must either be in Latin or in Hebrew. I shall give exact details about the genii and their analogies, use and effect in my next work called "The Key to the True Quabbalah". An embroidered circle has the advantage that it can easily be laid out and folded -together again without having to be drawn and charged anew each time it is to be used. The snake presented in the centre is not only the copy of an inner circle, but, above that, it is the symbol of wisdom. Besides this, other meanings may be attributed to this snake-symbol, for example the snake's strength, the power of imagination, etc. It is not possible to give a full description of all this, for this would go far beyond the aim of this book.   A Buddhist magician drawing his Mandala, putting his five deities in the form of figures or diagrams on top of the relevant emanation, is, at that moment, meditating about each single deity whose influence he is trying to evoke. This magical ceremony, too, is, in our opinion, equivalent to the drawing of a magic circle, although it actually is a genuine prayer to the Buddhist deities. To say more about this matter in this book is quite unnecessary for enough material has already been published in Eastern literature about this kind of magical practice, either in exoteric or in secret manuscripts.

1.02 - The Recovery, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga   December and January had rolled on smoothly. We were now looking forward to the removal of the splints. Dr. Rao on his weekly visits was pressing his case for the removal and was laughed at by all of us till he promised not to raise the issue again, only to break his word the next time. About the first week of February, some disquieting symptoms appeared. There was pain in the knee-joint and a mild swelling of the leg. We were very much perturbed by this unexpected intrusion. The specialist, informed about it, replied that such minor complications were not rare in fracture cases and would soon clear up. Now Rao got his chance: he argued that the unduly long immobilisation had caused the symptoms and urged the removal of the splints. Poor doctor! Nobody listened to his lonely voice. We all clung to the authority of the specialist and waited for his second visit. But Pondicherry to Madras was then no flying motor-drive! We had no cars, buses still belonged to the dreamland and the train service was as slow as it is today. I do not remember exactly when the specialist came and removed the splints, probably in the third or fourth week of February. As soon as it was done, the entire limb from the thigh downwards swelled up, to our deep consternation. The thigh looked frightful, almost double its size. The Mother kept an ominous silence, but Sri Aurobindo was as unconcerned as ever. The specialist repeated his view that such complications do set in in some cases, so we need not worry. The oedema was of no consequence and would gradually subside. He was satisfied that a firm union of the bone had taken place. With proper and careful treatment, massage, compress, gradual walking, etc., the leg would return to its normal size. The Mother was not however so easily satisfied. She questioned him very closely on the cause of the oedema, its pathology, complications and danger, or other possible sequels. When the specialist stated that sometimes movements might dislodge a venous Clot and bring about serious complications, the Mother caught him at once and asked how then could he recommend massage and passive movements. The doctor was not prepared for such an astute question from a "woman" and said that the Mother was a very intelligent person! We reported this remark to Sri Aurobindo; he simply smiled.   All of us were very much depressed by this adverse manifestation, since it would delay his recovery. I was particularly disturbed and worried, for I had not met with such a situation before and had to face it all alone as a doctor. I needed much strength and faith. So far it was Sri Aurobindo who had been giving me his constant spiritual support in my medical work. Now the Divine Physician himself was the patient. Whom should I approach for help? Though I did not openly ask him to cure himself using my poor self as the physical instrument, as I did in my other medical cases, still with the conviction that his and the Mother's force would be there, I proceeded with the instructions left by the specialist. But I was not free from anxiety. Meanwhile, I wrote to Dr. Manilal about the complication, asking him to come down and bring with him two or three pairs of crutches from Bombay.   --   The days were getting hotter and he used to perspire profusely. There was no ceiling fan. We started fanning him as he walked, but what were two small hand-fans the wing-wafts of tiny birds in the sultry heat of the closed room? Sri Aurobindo did not seem to be concerned at all, though we were. Purani hit upon a brilliant idea. He came up with a huge palm leaf fan festooned with a red Cloth border, as used for the temple Deities. The Mother smiled approvingly. Stationed near the door, he began fanning with all the vigour of his bare muscular arms and a miniature storm would sweep by. We enjoyed the grand sight. It was so becoming to his giant's nature! He handled it very well. Once for some days he could not come up, and the fan lay idle, like the mythical bow in the cave. With much trepidation I took it up, a pigmy to the giant, but seeing no question on the Mother's face, I set to work. The performance was not bad. I felt rather proud, but alas, pride had its quick fall! By same faux pas, or should I say fausse main, one day I struck Sri Aurobindo's back with the fan, as he was just turning my corner! He immediately looked around with an indulgent smile, and the Mother smiled graciously to lift me up from the crushing shame. But fortunately for the Guru and the disciple, it was not repeated. Afterwards both Champaklal and Mulshankar used the fan with a greater skill.   When at the end of the walk he would stand in the middle of the room with the stick in his right hand, his upright figure with the flowing beard on his broad bare chest, his two plaits of silken hair in front, and a far away look in his calm wide-open eyes, he would kindle a soft glow of love and adoration in our hearts. The Mother would then take the stick from him; after an exchange of sweet smiles between them, she would go away. Champaklal would then step in and wipe away the dripping perspiration.

1.02 - To Zen Monks Kin and Koku, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen

1.02 - Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy   Ground; but I was so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly Clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains.   This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood-thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. From a hill top near by, where the wood had been recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the north-west, those true-blue coins from heavens own mint, and also of some portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this point, I could not see over or beyond the woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as important as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood

1.032 - Our Concept of God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   Though this is a very satisfactory solution, and we can conceive God as an organic unifying principle of the cosmos which He has created, it becomes difficult to understand the factors that were responsible for the creation of the world, whether bondage is real or not, and what sort of relationship really exists between the soul and the body. Is the body a quality, an attribute of the soul, or is it something quite different from the soul? How does the soul pervade the body? Examples have been given. When we soak Cloth in water, we find that every fibre of the Cloth is permeated by water. The whole Cloth is wet with water. Every part of the Cloth has absorbed water, so that there is no part of the Cloth where water is not. In that sense we can say that God is everywhere in the world. Yet, water is not the Cloth they are two different things. We can wring out the water from the Cloth, and then dry it. Water and milk can be mixed together so that we cannot know where the water is and where the milk is. Yet we know that milk is milk and water is water they are not one and the same thing. Though we cannot distinguish between water and milk when they are mixed together, they are yet independent and cannot be identified one with the other.   So if God is to permeate this world, in what sense does He permeate it? How does He become immanent in this world? Does He enter into this world as water enters Cloth or electricity charges a copper wire? When electricity passes through a wire, we find that every particle of the wire is charged with electricity, so that if we touch any part of the wire, we feel the shock of the current. The force of electricity is present in every particle of the wire, and yet the wire is not electricity - they are two different things. The electrical force can be withdrawn and the wire will be just wire, dead and powerless. So, whatever be the manner in which we may conceive the presence of God in this world, a difficulty will arise in understanding the relationship between God and the world.   The organic connection that has been introduced into the field of religion is a practical solution of a difficulty that has been posed by the concept of the extra-cosmic presence of God. Yet the problem persists in a very subtle manner, so that we may be inwardly unfriendly with a person though we may be sitting on the lap of that person. As we know very well, physical proximity of even the most intense type need not be an emblem of friendship. Though I may be sitting on your head, I may not be friendly with you.

1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various   Such diseases as these will be their Clothing.   Their bodies will always be foul, lthy, and impure.

1.03 - Invocation of Tara, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen   imagines the deity's body, Clothes, ornaments,   attributes, and seed syllable in the heart is a

1.03 - Japa Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism   16. Sit on a Kusha-grass seat or deer-skin or rug. Spread a white Cloth over it. This conserves body-electricity.   17. Do some prayer before starting the Japa.

1.03 - Master Ma is Unwell, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen   Clothes in brocades and fine embroidery, with fal   cons on their wrists,

1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    Disciple: That Para Shakti man has been giving away his Clothes one by one everyday to somebody!    Sri Aurobindo: I hope he wont turn up tomorrow without anything on! (Laughter)   --    Disciple: Even the most trusted workers in Khadi Cloth have had to admit that the Charkha cannot stand as an independent industry from the economic point of view.    Sri Aurobindo: It seems to me the height of impracticality.   --    Disciple: Why not? Sometimes it is compared to pearl-white in its colour. There is the stamp of the individual on it while mill-Cloth is mechanically uniform.    Sri Aurobindo: But nobody says that mill-made Cloth is artistic!    Disciple: Khadi is an emblem of purity.

1.03 - On Knowledge of the World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism   Now the body needs in this world three things, one is food, another is Clothing, and the third is a home : and by means of these, it can be preserved from injury and ruin. If the food provided for the body is excessive, the body will be destroyed : but let the food provided for the spirit be ever so much, still is it well. On account, therefore, of man's need of Clothing and food, God has appointed sensuous desire to act as a commissary, that the animal, that is, the body, may not perish from hunger, cold or heat. But as desire, under the control of the animal soul, would not be satisfied with a sufficient quantity, but would crave to spend its life in eating and drinking, God afterwards committed the animal soul into the charge of the reason, that desire might not transgress the proper limits. Yet as the animal soul and desire, on account of their intimate relations with the body, are so essential to it, their influence would still have been predominant. But God, the holy defender, in accordance with his bounteousness and grace, (" my mercy has surpassed my anger,") has sent his law by the tongues of prophets, that it might become strength to the reason, and prevent the animal soul and desire from [68] passing beyond the due limits, and on the contrary might dispose the soul to rest satisfied with the degree of energy and force necessary for it, and by learning the design for which it had come into the world, might spend its days accordingly.   After you have learned, O student of the divine mysteries, what this world in its meaning really is, it is important that you should look at the world in detail. Every thing in the world of matter which grows, has been included under three classes, animal, vegetable and mineral, which are called the three generations or kingdoms. Animals were created some for riding, some for food, and some for tilling. Vegetables were created to afford food and conveniences to man, and sustenance to various animals. Minerals, like gold, silver, copper and iron, were created to serve as instruments to provide means of sustaining life in man. It was designed that by means of these three kingdoms, the spirit of man, while dwelling for a few days in the body, should be employed in making preparation for the future world. Man, however, forgetful of the end for which he had come hither, heedless of the fact that he was soon to depart, and that he would then repent to find that he was going unprepared, became engaged in strife with his fellows about the things of the world, fell in love with its ways, and attempted to gain its wealth. In consequence various qualities began to appear in the heart, such as avarice, envy, ambition and hatred, which are sources of its ruin. Finally the heart, forgetful of the duties for the performance of which it had come in to the world, exhausted all its energies in building up the world.   As man's primary necessities in the world are three, viz : Clothing, food and shelter, so the arts of the world are three, viz: weaving, planting and building. The rest of the arts serve either for the purpose of perfecting the others, or for repairing injuries. Thus the spinner aids the work [69] of weaving, the tailor carries out that work to perfection, while the Cloth-dresser adds beauty to the work. In the arts, there is need of iron, skins and wood, and for these many instruments are necessary. No person is able to work at all kinds of trades, but by the will of God, upon one is devolved one art and upon another two, and the whole community is made dependent, one member upon the other. When avarice, ambition and covetousness hold sway in the hearts of men, because some are not pleased to see others obtain honors, and because they do not endeavor to quell their wants, envy and hatred arise among them. Each one, dissatisfied with his own rights, plots against the property and honor of his fellows. On this account there was a necessity for three farther distinctions, viz: sovereignty, judicial authority, and jurisprudence, which contains the digest of the law. But alas ! poor and wretched man coming under the influence of all these causes, motives and instruments, spends his life in collecting wealth and lays up for himself sources of regret. And just as the pilgrim, who on his way to the Kaaba of Mecca, was engaged day and night in taking care of his camel, got separated from the caravan, and perished in the desert, so those who know not the real nature of the world and its worthlessness, and do not understand that it is the place where seed is sown for eternity, but spend all their thoughts upon it, are certainly fascinated and deceived; as the apostle of God declares. "The world is more enchanting than Harout and Marout: let men beware of it."1   After you have learned that the world is delusive, enchanting and treacherous, you need to know in what way its delusions and enchantment operate. I will, therefore, mention some things which are illustrative of the world. The world, beloved, is like an enchanter, who exhibits himself [70] to you as though he would dwell with you and would forever be at your side; while in truth this world is always upon the point of being snatched away from you, notwithstanding you are tranquilly unconscious of it. The world is like a shadow, which, while you look at it, seems fixed, although in reality, it is in motion. Life is like a running water, which is always advancing, yet yon think that it is still and permanent, and you wish to fix your abode by it. The world again is like an enchanter who performs for you acts of friendship and manifests love for yon, for the sake of winning your affections to him : but as soon as he has secured your love, he turns away his face from you and plots to destroy you....   --   Do not suppose, beloved, that every thing in the world is to be despised; for there are some things that are estimable and valuable, which belong to the world: viz : knowledge, worship, war in defence of the faith, and abstinence : and also a sufficiency of food, drink and Clothing, marriage, domestic shelter and other things; seeing that they are helps on the journey to the future world and in the path of [74] knowledge, they are all of them exceedingly important and necessary. Delight in knowledge, delight in worship, delight in prayer and delight in communion with God are things of this world, but still they are for the sake of the future world. It follows, therefore, that the pleasures of the world are not all of them blamable, but only those which entail punishment in the future world, or which are not in the path to paradise, and so the apostle declares, "The world is a curse and all that is in it is a curse, except the remembrance of God and that which is the object of his love."

1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Zen   37. QUESTION: In the holy ordinances governing inheritance, the residence and personal Clothing of the deceased have been allotted to the male offspring. Doth this provision refer only to the father's property, or doth it apply to the mother's as well?   ANSWER: The used Clothing of the mother should be divided in equal shares among the daughters, but the remainder of her estate, including property, jewellery, and unused Clothing, is to be distributed, in the manner revealed in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, to all her heirs. If, however, the deceased hath left no daughters, her estate in its entirety must be divided in the manner designated for men in the holy Text.   38. QUESTION: Concerning divorce, which must be preceded +F1 The vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere by a year of patience: if only one of the parties is inclined toward conciliation, what is to be done?   --   41. QUESTION: The residence and personal Clothing of the deceased have been assigned to the male, not female, offspring, nor to the other heirs; should the deceased have left no male offspring, what is to be done?   ANSWER: He saith, exalted be He: "Should the deceased leave no offspring, their share shall revert to the House of Justice..." In conformity with this sacred verse, the residence and personal Clothing of the deceased revert to the House of Justice.   42. QUESTION: The ordinance of Huququ'llah is revealed in the Kitab-i-Aqdas. Is the residence, with the accompanying fixtures and necessary furnishings, included in the property on which Huquq is payable, or is it otherwise?   --   56. QUESTION: Concerning the shrouding of the body of the deceased which is decreed to comprise five sheets: does the five refer to five Cloths which were hitherto customarily used or to five full-length shrouds wrapped one around the other?   ANSWER: The use of five Cloths is intended.   57. QUESTION: Concerning disparities between certain revealed verses.   --   72. QUESTION: Again a question hath been asked concerning the residence and personal Clothing: are these to revert, in the absence of male offspring, to the House of Justice, or are they to be distributed like the rest of the estate?   ANSWER: Two thirds of the residence and personal Clothing pass to the female offspring, and one third to the House of Justice, which God hath made to be the treasury of the people.   73. QUESTION: If, upon completion of the year of patience, the husb and refuseth to allow divorce, what course should be adopted by the wife?   --   78. QUESTION: Concerning Clothes and jewellery which a husb and may have purchased for his wife: are these to be distributed, after his death, amongst his heirs, or are they specially for the wife?   ANSWER: Aside from used Clothing, whatever there may be, jewellery or otherwise, belongeth to the husband, except what is proven to have been gifts to the wife.   79. QUESTION: Concerning the criterion of justness when proving some matter dependent on the testimony of two just witnesses.   --   80. QUESTION: If the deceased hath not settled his obligation to Huququ'llah, nor paid his other debts, are these to be discharged by proportionate deductions from the residence, personal Clothing and the rest of the estate, or are the residence and personal Clothing set aside for the male offspring, and consequently the debts must be settled from the rest of the estate? And if the rest of the estate is insufficient for this purpose, how should the debts be settled?   ANSWER: Outstanding debts and payments of Huquq should be settled from the remainder of the estate, but if this is insufficient for the purpose, the shortfall should be met from his residence and personal Clothing.   81. QUESTION: Should the third Obligatory Prayer be offered while seated or standing?

1.03 - Supernatural Aid, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology   Clothed, on a sofa. He said: 'It doesn't disturb you (that I am now a man)?'   The man looked old, and he had white sideburns. He reminded me of a certain

1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   his stomach by a Cloth wrapt round his body represents the child in   the womb, and, following the directions shouted to him by his   --   pull him through her Clothes; ever afterwards he is regarded as her   very son, and inherits the whole property of his adoptive parents.   --   woman's lap, then washed, dressed in swaddling-Clothes, and put out   to nurse. Not until this ceremony had been punctually performed   --   from the sky, to wipe the pimples with a Cloth or anything that   comes to hand. Just as the star falls from the sky, so the pimples   --   Clearly, she thought that the less Clothing she wore the less husk   there would be on the rice. The magic virtue of a pregnant woman to   --   transmit these happy influences are no other than grave-Clothes.   These are provided by many Chinese in their lifetime, and most   --   long must surely pass into the Clothes, and thus stave off for many   years the time when they shall be put to their proper use. Further,   --   grave-Clothes made in a year which is unusually long will possess   the capacity of prolonging life in an unusually high degree. Amongst   the Clothes there is one robe in particular on which special pains   have been lavished to imbue it with this priceless quality. It is a   --   between a person and his Clothes, so that whatever is done to the   Clothes will be felt by the man himself, even though he may be far   away at the time. In the Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria a wizard would   --   would try to get possession of a Cloth which had touched the sweat   of his enemy's body. If he succeeded, he rubbed the Cloth carefully   over with the leaves and twigs of a certain tree, rolled and bound   Cloth, twigs, and leaves into a long sausage-shaped bundle, and   burned it slowly in the fire. As the bundle was consumed, the victim   --   to exist not so much between the man and the Cloth as between the   man and the sweat which issued from his body. But in other cases of   --   through his Clothes and severed parts of himself, but also through   the impressions left by his body in sand or earth. In particular, it   --   the bed-Clothes. The rule was simply an old precaution against   magic, forming part of a whole code of superstitious maxims which

1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen   "Today's students practice the Way Clothed in warm garments and get plenty to eat, and they are as soft and weak as the eldest son of a wealthy family. Could any of them venture to stand stalwart and resolute in a courtyard on a bitterly cold night like Hui-k'o? Buried up to the waist in icy snow like a stack of firewood? Suffering of this intensity cannot be endured unless one is made of stone or metal, or has wooden legs like a statue. The marrow-chilling cold of the northern Wei winter constantly penetrated the thin cotton robe he wore, but he stood resolutely and silently through that adversity until dawn, never relaxing his efforts for a second, or weeping a single tear. Bodhidharma never offered him the slightest help whatsoever. Finally, Hui-k'o took a knife and cut off his left arm. h Hsisou Shou-t'an was perfectly justified in holding Hui-k'o up as a model for all Zen monks throughout the world.   "When the Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng raised the Dharma standard at Ts'ao-hsi, the priest Nan-yueh came to study with him. Hui-neng asked, 'What is this that thus comes?' Nan-yueh stood in a daze, unable to respond. Hui-neng did not utter a single word to relieve his confusion, and it was not until   --   Then one day he suddenly grabbed the master and hurried him to a secluded spot at the rear of the temple. He seated the master on the ground, spread out his prostration Cloth before him, and performed three bows. 'I appeal to your great mercy and compassion,' he said. 'Please teach me the principles of Zen. Guide me to sudden enlightenment.' The master ignored him, enraging the monk, who flew into a fit of passion, sprang to his feet and, eyes red with anger, broke off a large branch from a nearby tree. Brandishing it, he stood in front of the master glaring scornfully at him. 'Priest!' he cried. 'If you don't tell me what you know, I am going to club you to death, cast your body down the cliff, and leave this place for good.' 'If you want to beat me to death, go ahead,' replied the master. 'I'm not going to teach you any Zen.' What a pity. This monk was obviously gifted with special capacity and spiritual strength. He had what it takes to penetrate the truth and perish into the great death. But notice what great caution and infinite care these ancient teachers exercised when leading students to self-awakening.   "Zen Master Tao-wu responded to a monk with the words, 'I won't say living. I won't say dead.'

1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   that he was a teacher at Vidyasagar's school, the Master asked: "Can you take me to Vidyasagar? I should like very much to see him." M. told Iswar Chandra of Sri Ramakrishna's wish, and the pundit gladly agreed that M. should bring the Master, some Saturday afternoon at four o'clock. He only asked M. what kind of paramahamsa the Master was, saying, "Does he wear an ochre Cloth?" M. answered: "No, sir. He is an unusual person. He wears a red-bordered Cloth and polished slippers. He lives in a room in Rani Rasmani's temple garden. In his room there is a couch with a mattress and mosquito net. He has no outer indication of holiness. But he doesn't know anything except God. Day and night he thinks of God alone."   On the afternoon of August 5 the Master left Dakshineswar in a hackney carriage, accompanied by Bhavanath, M., and Hazra. Vidyasagar lived in Badurbagan, in central Calcutta, about six miles from Dakshineswar. On the way Sri Ramakrishna talked with his companions; but as the carriage neared Vidyasagar's house his mood suddenly changed. He was overpowered with divine ecstasy. Not noticing this, M. pointed out the garden house where Raja Rammohan Roy had lived. The Master was annoyed and said, "I don't care about such things now." He was going into an ecstatic state.   --   "One must have faith and love. Let me tell you how powerful faith is. A man was about to cross the sea from Ceylon to India. Bibhishana said to him: 'Tie this thing in a corner of your wearing-Cloth, and you will cross the sea safely. You will be able to walk on the water. But be sure not to examine it, or you will sink.' The man was walking easily on the water of the sea - such is the strength of faith - when, having gone part of the way, he thought, 'What is this wonderful thing Bibhishana has given me, that I can walk even on the water?' He untied the knot and found only a leaf with the name of Rama written on it. 'Oh, just this!' he thought, and instantly he sank.   "There is a popular saying that Hanuman jumped over the sea through his faith in Rama's name, but Rama himself had to build a bridge.   --   As soon as the Master and the devotees reached the gate, they saw an unexpected sight and stood still. In front of them was a bearded gentleman of fair complexion, aged about thirty-six. He wore his Clothes like a Bengali, but on his head was a white turban tied after the fashion of the Sikhs. No sooner did he see the Master than he fell prostrate before him, turban and all.   When he stood up the Master said: "Who is this? Balaram? Why so late in the evening?"

1.04 - ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER: "As long as they feel pinched for food and Clothing. But one need not take the responsibility of a son when he is able to support himself. When the young fledgling learns to pick its own food, its mother pecks it if it comes to her for food."   M: "How long must one do one's duty?"   --   "Once Krishnakishore asked me, 'Why have you cast off the sacred thread?' In those days of God-vision I felt as if I were passing through the great storm of win, and everything had blown away from me. No trace of my old self was left. I lost all consciousness of the world. I could hardly keep my Cloth on my body, not to speak of the sacred thread! I said to Krishnakishore, 'Ah, you will understand if you ever happen to be as intoxicated with God as I was.'   "And it actually came to pass. He too passed through a God-intoxicated state, when he would repeat only the word 'Om' and shut himself up alone in his room. His relatives thought he was actually mad, and called in a physician. Ram Kaviraj of Natagore came to see him. Krishnakishore said to the physician, 'Cure me, sir, of my malady, if you please, but not of my Om.' (All laugh.)   --   "I went to Syamakunda and Radhakunda in a palanquin and got out to visit the holy Mount Govardhan. At the very sight of the mount I was overpowered with divine emotion and ran to the top. I lost all consciousness of the world around me. The residents of the place helped me to come down. On my way to the sacred pools of Syamakunda and Radhakunda, when I saw the meadows, the trees, the shrubs, the birds, and the deer, I was overcome with ecstasy. My Clothes became wet with tears. I said: 'O Krishna! Everything here is as it was in the olden days. You alone are absent.'   Seated inside the palanquin I lost all power of speech. Hriday followed the palanquin.

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

1.04 - Communion, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   munion of bread with the Christ Clothed in the   powers which dilate the world free me from my

1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy   Natures intent is neither food, nor drink nor Clothing, nor comfort, nor anything else from which God is left out. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly Nature seeks and hunts and tries to ferret out the track in which God may be found.   Eckhart   --   You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are Clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you can never enjoy the world.   Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world. Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it; and more rejoice in the palace of your glory than if it had been made today morning.   --   The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold. The gates at first were the end of the world. The green trees, when I saw them first through one of the gates, transported and ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubim! And young men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should the. But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifested in the light of the day, and something infinite behind everything appeared; which talked with my expectation and moved my desire. The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven. The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their Clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the world was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it. And so it was that with much ado I was corrupted and made to learn the dirty devices of the world. Which now I unlearn, and become as it were a little child again, that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.   Thomas Traherne

1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   abundance, the high hills to be Clothed with forests, the bubbling   springs to rise under the rocks in the valleys, and green pastures

1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism   Let those, then, who wish to be saved from the torments of the grave, be earnest in cutting off the ties of the world; and let them acquire a habit of being satisfied with just that which is of actual necessity. Be satisfied for example with that amount of food and drink which is necessary to give strength for devotional exercises; be satisfied with the amount of Clothing necessary to protect the body from cold and heat; and so in everything else. If a man cannot purify his heart from attachment to the world let him at least be assiduous in devotion and in calling upon God, and show a preference for cultivating an intimacy with the love of God. Let him look with fear and dread upon trust in the world, and weaken and relax the demands of sense by strict obedience to the law. If notwithstanding he should prefer to yield to the animal soul and to trust in this world, let him prepare himself to experience the torment of the grave and the terrors of the future world. And may the grace and mercy of God which embrace all men, and his pardon and forgiveness which extend to rich and poor, to great and small, reach and save him !   The miterizl torments of the grave, O seeker after the divine mysteries, are those which are addressed to the body and through the body to the spirit. Spiritual torments are those which reach the spirit only. The language of God, "It is the fire of God, the lighted fire which shall reach the hearts of the reprobates," refers to spiritual torments which affect the heart. The spiritual hell then is of three kinds. The first is the fire of separation from the [88] lusts of the world; the second is the fire of shame, ignominy and reproach; and the third is the fire of exclusion from the beauty of the one Lord. These fires only burn the soul and do not touch the body.   --   Suppose a person, a prince, had been passing his life in banqueting and pleasure, and every one around him had been submissive and obedient to his orders. But an enemy comes and deprives him of his principality, enslaves his wife and servants, and they plunder him of his money and property before his eyes. His pearls and jewels are wasted upon trifles, and his beautiful studs of horses and his retinue are dispersed. He becomes a subject in his own city, is compelled to wear coarse Clothing in the presence of his former servants, and is appointed to guard and feed the dogs. Can you in any wise appreciate the misfortune into which the prince has fallen, and how deeply he must be a prey to anguish ? Probably he exclaims many times in a [89] day, "Would rather that I had fallen into the abyss of the earth and perished!" The severity of his torture is in proportion to the amount of sensual enjoyments in which he had participated while he was a prince. And it is plain that this torture is not inflicted on the body, but upon only the spirit, and that it is more excruciating than any pains of the body would be.   So long as a man is attached to the things of this world engrossed with the care of his body, and gives over his nature to intercourse with sensual enjoyments, he will not care for the warnings his spirit receives in this world, nor for the torment that it will incur in the future world. A sick man for example will not be so excessively despondent about his malady in the day time, because his senses are interested in other things, and aa his heart follows in their train, he in some measure forgets his malady. In the night, however, when his senses have nothing to be employed about, his thoughts about his malady do not leave his mind free for one moment, and his pain increases. So also in death, the cares and thoughts of the world and the external senses cease entirely to operate on account of the torment of the spirit, and then the perfect torment of the spirit becomes manifest.   --   In like manner the men of this world when they go to their graves, will see that what they called pleasure was flesh and corruption which they had unlawfully taken into their mouths. They will see that that beloved object, dressed in rich Clothing, obtained by illicit means and stained with pollution, is but the old hag the world, with her disgusting face and horrid smell and putrefied corruption, on account of whom so many drowned in illusions have become victims to shame and remorse. Still more bitter torment will that be, beloved, which will be the lot of man, when in the day of resurrection and assembly all these crimes and sins shall be laid open before all the angels and prophets. Our refuge is in God!   Think not that the shame and remorse of the future world is only of the kind that we have been describing. [93] For we have before said that nothing belonging to the future world can be understood in the present world, or be rightly conceived of by our minds. The doctors of the law however (upon whom may God show mercy!), for the sake of warning and admonition in the world, and so far as the mind can appreciate it, have spoken in parables and illustrations, and they have in various ways compared the ignominy and remorse of the future world to the shame and misery existing in the present world, notwithstanding the misery in this world is but for a moment or a few days, while the other is everlasting.

1.04 - Sounds, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy   Here come your groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And heres your pay for them! screams the countrymans whistle; timber like long battering rams going twenty miles an hour against the citys walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy laden that dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility the country hands a chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, down goes the woven Cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that writes them.   When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with planetary motion,or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning curve,with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light,as if this travelling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of his train; when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils, (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new Mythology I dont know), it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as that which floats over the farmers fields, then the elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their errands and be their escort.

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology   needs; sex; property (i.e. money, possessions, shelter, Clothing and everything that constitutes property   in the sense of what is proper to ones own life); liberty of movement. The general object of primary

1.04 - The Crossing of the First Threshold, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology   cheeked, with green Clothing and a tall cap of reeds; but he can   Compare V. J. Mansikka, in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and

1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga   Now we come to a different field of activity altogether, one whose place in Yoga will be strongly challenged, especially when the Mother herself used it as a means of sadhana: her playing tennis. I won't discuss the issue, for the quotation cited above gives the answer. Before she started playing tennis the Mother joined our young group in playing table-tennis. When a young boy asked her if he could install a table in his house for the game, the Mother replied, "Why not at Nanteuil?[4] then I can come and play too." He was much surprised and delighted at the divine proposal! She must have found it a good light exercise as well as an admirable means of contact with the young set which was gradually increasing; it was perhaps also her yogic means of action upon them. After a year or so the Mother decided to have a tennis court. She might have felt that she needed some more brisk exercise in the open air. She often talked of her project to Sri Aurobindo. One day we heard that the entire wasteland along the north-eastern seaside was taken on a long lease from the Government and a part of it would be made into tennis courts and the rest into a playground. One cannot imagine now what this place was like before. It was one of the filthiest spots of Pondicherry, full of thistles and wild undergrowth, an open place for committing nuisance as well as a pasture for pigs! The stink and the loathsome sight made the place a Stygian sore and a black spot on the colonial Government. The Mother changed this savage wasteland into a heavenly playground, almost a supramental transformation of Matter. The sea-front was Clothed in a vision of beauty and delight. If for nothing else, for this transformation at least, Pondicherry should be eternally grateful to the Mother. But who remembers the past? Gratitude is a rare human virtue. I was particularly very happy, first, because I was fond of tennis; secondly, I fancied that Yoga would be now made easy. Who could ever think of tennis in Yoga! But woe to me, how it completely upset my balance!   All this, however, is by the way. My point was to demonstrate the Mother's method of working. As soon as the plot was acquired, she went about the work in her usual one-pointed manner. And what a job it was! To build a long rampart against the surges of the sea was itself a gigantic enterprise for a private institution like our Ashram without any income of its own. But I shall confine myself to the construction of the tennis courts only. She did not count the expense; men and money were freely employed, for the courts had to be made ready within a minimum period of time. We have observed that when the Mother feels the need for a work to be done, she goes ahead, confident that the required resources will come. In the present case, there was also the question of the right worker to see the project through. The Mother said to Sri Aurobindo, "I know there is one man who can do it." It was Monoranjan Ganguli, a sadhak. I saw him at this work and was really amazed at his wonderful devotion to the Mother, his determination to fulfil the trust she had placed in him. He supervised the operation with unfailing love and duty and cool temper, making the tennis ground his home and passing many sleepless nights sitting on a stool. When I asked him why he should be in such a hurry, he replied, "Mother wants it so. I must finish it within the appointed time." "Is it possible? Only a few days are left!" I voiced my doubt. "Oh, I must!" and he did. A singular feat indeed, and again the Mother's right choice.

1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism   The Tarot attri bution is XIV. -Temperance, showing an angel crowned with the golden sigil of the Sun, Clothed in beautiful white robes, and on his breast are written the letters of the Tetragrammaton over a white square, wherein is a gold triangle. He pours a blue liquid from a gilt chalice into another.   This Path leads from Yesod to Tipharas, the sphere of 0 the Sun. The Angel of the Tarot, would typify the Holy

1.04 - The Praise, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen   encompasses all scarcity such as lack of food, Clothing,   - 110 -

1.04 - The Silent Mind, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   illusionist or skeptical, perhaps even rebellious, construction. We must go farther. Once we have begun yoga, we must go to the end, no matter what, because if we let go of the thread, we may never find it again. There, indeed, is the trial. The seeker must understand that he is being born to another life, and his new eyes, his new senses are not yet formed; he is like a newborn child just coming into the world. There is not a lessening of consciousness but, in reality, a passage to a new consciousness: The cup [has to be] left clean and empty for the divine liquor to be poured into it.34 The only resource in these circumstances is to cling to our aspiration and, precisely because everything is so terribly lacking, allow it to grow like a fire into which we throw all our old Clothes, our old life, our old ideas and old feelings; we have to have an unshakable faith that behind this transition, a door will open.   And our faith is not foolish; it is not a credulous stupidity but a foreknowledge, something within us that knows before we do, sees 34

1.04 - To the Priest of Rytan-ji, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen

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.

1.056 - Lack of Knowledge is the Cause of Suffering, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   The purpose of yoga is to cut at the root of this ignorance itself, so that its ramifications in the form of these vikshepas, or distractions, may not have vitality in them. They will be like a burnt seed or a burnt Cloth, or a lifeless snake. It is a snake, but it has no life. Likewise will be these functions, activities and enterprises of the mind when it will look as if they are there in all their shape and form, but they will be lifeless. That is the purpose of the practice of yoga.   So, this caution given to us here is that, in our practices, we should not ignore the presence of the cause and get engaged too much merely in the effect, since whatever be the intensity of the practice in respect of the control of the effect, it will not be finally successful because the major-general is alive, and he will not keep quiet like that. We are attacking the poor soldiers while the commander is still alive, and he has other resources to attack us even if a regiment is destroyed by the effort of our practice. The cause has to be tackled; unless that is overcome there is no use merely confronting the effects. This is the advice given here.

1.05 - Adam Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism   " No 1 That which constitutes the real man is the Soul, and those things which are called the skin, the flesh, the bones, and the veins, - all these are merely a veil, an out- ward covering, but not the Man himself. When a man departs, he divests himself of all these garments wherewith he is Clothed. Yet are all these bones and sinews and the different parts of the body formed in the secrets of divine wisdom, after the heavenly image. , The skin typifies the heavens that are infinite in extent, covering all things as with a garment. . . . The bones and the veins symbolize the divine chariot, the inner powers of man. But these are the outer garments, for in the inward part is the deep mystery of the Heavenly Man " ( Zohar ).   This quotation from the Sepher haZohar is the basis from which has been constructed a coherent system of psychology or pneumatology, which may strike those who   --   (b) the Astral body ( tselern ). They are considered together in the Qabalah under the title of Nephesch, because the action of prana is unknown and impossible without the medium of the astral body. There is a Zoharic section dealing with the garments with which the Soul or the In- corporeal is Clothed, and it speaks of the astral body in very peculiar terms :   " One outside garment which exists and does not exist ; is seen and not seen. In that garment, the Nephesch is Clothed and she goes and flies in it, to and fro in the world."   In another place there are unmistakable postulates of the astral body :

1.05 - Buddhism and Women, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen   beautiful Clothes she liked and dressed as a beggar.   She began to appreciate the company of . leprous   --   hips and dressed in simple cotton Clothes. The respect   they inspired was such that people prostrated and

1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga     6. This friendly Light is like a singer of the word and Clothes himself with the Rays, he rhapsodises with his flame. This is the shining One who journeys by night and by day to the Gods, the shining Immortal who journeys through the day to the Gods.     7. The cry of him is like the voice of ordaining Heaven;1 he is the shining Bull that bellows aloud in the growths of the forest. He goes with his light and his race and his running and fills Earth and Heaven with his riches; they are like wives happy in their spouse.

1.05 - On painstaking and true repentance which constitute the life of the holy convicts; and about the prison., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   Others sat on the ground in sackCloth and ashes, hiding their faces between their knees, and striking the earth with their foreheads.   Others were continually beating their breasts and recalling their past life and state of soul. Some of them watered the ground with their tears; others, incapable of tears, struck themselves. Some loudly lamented over their souls as over the dead, not having the strength to bear the anguish of their heart.   --   And that is what these blessed ones who had been called to account were actually doing. From the number of their prostrations their knees seemed to have become wooden, their eyes dim and sunk deep within their sockets. They had no hair. Their cheeks were bruised and burnt by the scalding of hot tears. Their faces were pale and wasted. They were quite indistinguishable from corpses. Their breasts were livid from blows; and from their frequent beating of the chest, they spat blood. Where was to be found in this place any rest on beds, or clean or starched Clothes? They were all torn, dirty and covered with lice. In comparison with them, what are the sufferings of the possessed, or of those weeping for the dead, or of those living in exile, or of those condemned for murder? Their involuntary torture and punishment is really nothing in comparison with this voluntary suffering. I ask you, brothers, not to regard all this as a made-up story.   1 Psalm lxxix, 4.

1.05 - On the Love of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism   just as one object is reflected in different ways by different mirrors, some showing it straight, and some distorted, some clearly and some dimly. A mirror may be so crooked as to make even a beautiful form appear misshapen, and a man may carry into the next world a heart so dark and distorted that the sight which will. be a source of peace and joy to others will he to him a source of misery. He, in whose heart the love of God has prevailed over all else, will derive more joy from this vision than he in whose heart it has not so prevailed; just as in the case of two men with equally powerful eyesight, gazing on a beautiful face, he who already loves the possessor of that face will rejoice in beholding it more than he who does not. For perfect happiness mere knowledge is not enough, unaccompanied by love, and the love of God cannot take possession of a man's heart till it be purified from love of the world, which purification can only be effected by abstinence and austerity. While he is in this world a man's condition with regard to the Vision of God is like that of a lover who should see his Beloved's face in the twilight, while his Clothes are infested   {p. 127}   --   of your Clothes, with the exception of a girdle round your loins. Take a horse's nosebag full of walnuts, hang it round your neck, go into the bazaar and cry out, 'Any boy who gives me a slap on the nape of my neck shall have a walnut.' Then, in this manner, go where the Cadi and the doctors of the law are sitting." "Bless my soul!" said his friend, "I really can't do that; do suggest some other remedy." "This is the indispensable preliminary to a cure," answered Bayazid, "but, as I told you, you are incurable."   The reason Bayazid indicated this method of cure for want of relish in devotion was that his friend was an ambitious seeker after place and honour. Ambition and pride are diseases which can only be cured in some such way. God said unto Jesus, "O Jesus! when I see in My servants' hearts pure love for Myself unmixed with any selfish desire concerning this world or the next, I act as guardian over that love." Again, when people asked Jesus "What is the highest work of all?" he answered, "To love God and to be resigned to His will." The saint Rabia was once asked whether she loved

1.05 - Problems of Modern Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   Clothed in a thousand different formulae, according to the doctors beliefs.   One doctor believes in overcoming infantilism therefore he must first

1.05 - The Belly of the Whale, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology   how, one day, as he sat drying his Clothes on a beach, he ob   served a whale-cow swimming gravely close to shore. He called:   --   your eyes." Then he slipped quickly into his raven Clothes,   pulled on his raven mask, gathered his fire sticks under his arm,

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology   Clothes are best to wear; and the Security agents keep interrupting and hurrying you:   You dont need anything. Theyll feed you there. Its warm there. (Its all lies. They keep hurrying   --   his Clothes and hair. He is treated with utmost contempt and derision, regardless of in spite of his   previous social status. This complete destruction of social context, of social identity, heightens the newly   --   Just ask the old folks: under the Tsar they were well fed, well Clothed, and they used to have so   many holidays.   --   from touching Him, or even His Clothes, comes a healing power. An old man who has been blind from   childhood suddenly cries out to Him: Cure me, oh Lord, so that I may see You too! And it is as if   --   we be Clothed?   for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.   --   peasant of my conception of a medieval peasant. She was dirty, Clothes, hair, teeth; dirty with the kind of   filth that takes months to develop. She was unbearably shy; she approached anyone who she thought was   --   and leaves, and in its crown lay a little new-born babe wrapped in swaddling Clothes, that wailed   because of Adams sin. This was Christ, the second Adam. He is found in the top of the tree that grows   --   Clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest   see. (Revelations 3:15-19).

1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   and female, must neither wash Clothes nor ba the so long as the feast   lasts, and they have all during its continuance to observe strict   --   In time of drought the Serbians strip a girl to her skin and Clothe   her from head to foot in grass, herbs, and flowers, even her face   --   off their Clothes, ba the in crowds on the day of St. John the   Baptist, while they dip in the water a figure made of branches,   --   wears black Clothes during the rainy season. Among the Matabele the   rain-charm employed by sorcerers was made from the blood and gall of

1.05 - THE MASTER AND KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "It is all a question of the mind. Bondage and liberation are of the mind alone. The mind will take the colour you dye it with. It is like white Clothes just returned from the laundry. If you dip them in red dye, they will be red. If you dip them in blue or green, they will be blue or green. They will take only the colour you dip them in, whatever it may be. Haven't you noticed that, if you read a little English, you at once begin to utter English words: Foot fut it mit? Then you put on boots and whistle a tune, and so on. It all goes together. Or, if a scholar studies Sanskrit, he will at once rattle off Sanskrit verses. If you are in bad company, then you will talk and think like your companions.   On the other hand, when you are in the company of devotees, you will think and talk only of God.   --   Keshab began to serve some puffed rice and grated coconut. The guests held these in the folds of their wearing-Cloths and presently started to eat. Everyone was joyful. The Master noticed, however, that Keshab and Vijay rather shrank from each other, and he was anxious to reconcile them.   Disagreements necessary for enriching life

1.06 - BOOK THE SIXTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry   Run down in purple streams of Clotted gore.   Ask'd by his wife to this inhuman feast,

1.06 - Dhyana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   25:Worrying about Clothes, food, money, what people may think, how and why, and above all the fear of consequences, clog nearly every one. Nothing is easier, theoretically, than for an anarchist to kill a king. He has only to buy a rifle, make himself a first-class shot, and shoot the king from a quarter of a mile away. And yet, although there are plenty of anarchists, outrages are very few. At the same time, the police would probably be the first to admit that if any man were really tired of life, in his deepest being, a state very different from that in which a man goes about saying he is tired of life, he could manage somehow or other to kill someone first.   26:Now the man who has experienced any of the more intense forms of Dhyana is thus liberated. The Universe is thus destroyed for him, and he for it. His will can therefore go on its way unhampered. One may imagine that in the case of Mohammed he had cherished for years a tremendous ambition, and never done anything because those qualities which were subsequently manifested as statesmanship warned him that he was impotent. His vision in the cave gave him that confidence which was required, the faith that moves mountains. There are a lot of solid-seeming things in this world which a child could push over; but not one has the courage to push.

1.06 - LIFE AND THE PLANETS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   more tightly upon themselves in enormous Clots their vastness,   by the law of celestial mechanics, being directly proportionate to   --   engendering smaller Clots, since cosmic matter had become heav-   ier. Thus the stars appeared.

1.06 - Magicians as Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   piece of white Cloth and a little gold or silver, and when these   things had been impregnated by his generative virtue they buried

1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy   There are some who are newly delivered from their sins and so, though they are resolved to love God, they are still novices and apprentices, soft and weak. They love a number of superfluous, vain and dangerous things at the same time as Our Lord. Though they love God above all things, they yet continue to take pleasure in many things which they do not love according to God, but besides Himthings such as slight inordinations in word, gesture, Clothing, pastimes and frivolities.   St. Franois de Sales

1.06 - On Work, #The Prophet, #Kahlil Gibran, #Poetry   It is to weave the Cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that Cloth.   It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.   --   Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil. And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a Cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.   But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;

1.06 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "Again, among the worldly there are people with the traits of rajas. Such a man has a watch and chain, and two or three rings on his fingers. The furniture of his house is all spick and span. On the walls hang portraits of the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and other prominent people; the building is whitewashed and spotlessly clean. His wardrobe is filled with a large assortment of Clothes; even the servants have their livery, and all that.   "The traits of a worldly man endowed with tamas are sleep, lust, anger, egotism, and the like.   --   His love for the body goes only as far as appeasing his hunger, and that only by means of rice and simple greens. There is no elaborate arrangement about his meals, no luxury in Clothes, and no display of furniture. Besides, such a devotee never flatters anybody for money.   "An aspirant possessed of rajasic bhakti puts a tilak on his forehead and a necklace of holy rudraksha beads, interspersed with gold ones, around his neck. (All laugh.) At worship he wears a silk Cloth.   "A man endowed with tamasic bhakti has burning faith. Such a devotee literally extorts boons from God, even as a robber falls upon a man and plunders his money. 'Bind!   --   "You are merchants. You know how to improve your business gradually. Some of you start with a castor-oil factory. After making some money at that, you open a Cloth shop. In the same way, one makes progress toward God. It may be that you go into solitude, now and then, and devote more time to prayer.   "But you must remember that nothing can be achieved except in its proper time. Some persons must pass through many experiences and perform many worldly duties before they can turn their attention to God; so they have to wait a long time. If an abscess is lanced before it is soft, the result is not good; the surgeon makes the opening when it is soft and has come to a head. Once a child said to its mother: 'Mother, I am going to sleep now. Please wake me up when I feel the call of nature.' 'My child,' said the mother, 'when it is time for that, you will wake up yourself. I shan't have to wake you.'

1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   the Babylonian fish-god Oannes and his priests who Clothed   themselves in fish-skins, to the sacred fish-meals in the cult of the

1.06 - The Three Schools of Magick 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy     And the first of the adepts covered His shame with a Cloth, walking backwards, and was white. And the second of the adepts covered his shame with a Cloth, walking sideways, and was yellow. And the third of the adepts made a mock of His nakedness, walking forwards, and was black. And these are the three great schools of the Magi, who are also the three Magi that journeyed unto Bethlehem; and because thou hast not wisdom, thou shalt not know which school prevaileth, or if the three schools be not one.*[AC14]   We are now ready to study the philosophical bases of these three Schools.

1.06 - Yun Men's Every Day is a Good Day, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen   his bejewelled regal garments and put on rough dirty Clothing.   He could not but turn towards the shallows within the gate of   --   From all sides the pure wind tugs at his Clothes.   Though you be clean and naked, bare and purified, totally

1.074 - The Enrobed, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   4. And purify your Clothes.   5. And abandon abominations.

1.075 - Resurrection, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   38. Then he became a Clot. And He created and proportioned?   39. And made of him the two sexes, the male and the female?

1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset   Clothes, my possessions, and my friend. Since your divine quality is   everything to me, let me spontaneously achieve all that I wish.   --   reciprocate. They know I need food, shelter, Clothing, and medicine. I believe   Dharma teachers, and especially monastics, should live simply. Were supposed to be practicing the three principal aspects of the path, the rst of   --   houses, go on expensive vacations, and wear fashionable Clothing?   The Dharma is not a commodity for sale. At the end of His Holiness the   --   they dont need to support a family. They wear the same Clothes every day,   dont use jewelry or cosmetics, dont listen to music or go out for entertainment. The Buddhist community was grateful to have people keeping   pure ethical discipline nearby and voluntarily gave them food, shelter, Cloth-   126   --   a car, furniture, Clothes, jewelry, magazine subscriptions, cd players, bicycles, and so on. They want their children to t in with everyone else, so they   need all the things that middle-class people have. The question then arises,   --   Clothes every day and is happy. Imagine that!   Meditating on death and impermanence is an excellent antidote to the   --   You are my guru, my yidam, my protector, my refuge, my food, my Clothes, my   possessions, and my friend. Since your divine quality is everything to me, let   --   This doesnt literally mean that Tara is our Clothes, even though its said that   a Buddha can manifest as physical objects. Rather, it means we give up clinging to the eight worldly concerns and clo the ourselves in wisdom and compassion. In other words, practicing Dharma is the meaning of my life;   --   (yidams), and Dharma protectors. Like spiritual food, the wisdom and compassion she represents nourish us. Like Clothes, the six far-reaching attitudes   she embodies adorn us. Like possessions, the enlightened qualities provide   --   beings. I imagine that a bodhisattva could want food, Clothing, and possessions, too, but not with attachment for them. These things are useful to stay   alive and can be used to benet others. Theres nothing wrong with wishing   --   us depressed, If I dont chase after food, money, Clothes, sense pleasures,   reputation, and praise, then my life has no meaning and theres nothing to   --   the same Clothes: our monastic robes. This cuts through some of our feeling   of individualism. We look like other monastics; we have the same hairdo as

1.07 - Cybernetics and Psychopathology, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics   brain lesions, such as injuries, tumors, Clots, and the like, may   be accompanied by psychic symptoms, and that certain mental

1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   Cloth, of a peculiar kind, worn round one arm, was an indication of   inspiration, or of the indwelling of the god with the individual who   --   and the Dainyal or sibyl, with a Cloth over her head, inhales the   thick pungent smoke till she is seized with convulsions and falls   --   with the use of Clothes altogether in their assemblies, looking upon   decency and modesty as marks of inward corruption, characteristics

1.07 - On mourning which causes joy., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   He who is Clothed in blessed and grace-given mourning as in a wedding garment knows the spiritual laughter of the soul.   Can anyone be found who has spent all his days in the monastic life so piously that he has never lost a day, or hour, or moment, but has spent all his time for the Lord, bearing in mind that never in your life can you see the same day twice?

1.07 - THE .IMPROVERS. OF MANKIND, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy   idea of breeding). Their Clothes shall consist only of the rags torn   from corpses, their vessels shall be the fragments of broken pottery,

1.07 - The Literal Qabalah (continued), #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism   In the Formative World, which is the plane of the Astral forces, the ideas are projected still further, being Clothed here in a design or model form of electric and magnetic matter. The astral substance is an omnipresent and all- permeating fluid of extremely subtile matter, of substance in a highly tenuous state, and in the process of further evolution, it produces, and acts as the substratum to, the material world, which is a copy of the astral in more dense and gross material.   In this manner, should a large number of triads be re- quired for comparative purposes - such as may be required for the attri buting of the triadic categories of the Hegelian

1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Since it was winter all were wrapped up in warm Clothes. Vijay had been suffering from colic and had brought some medicine with him.   Vijay, the Brahmo preacher   --   "Each upadhi changes man's nature. If he wears a fine black-bordered Cloth, you will at once find him humming Nidhu Babu's love-songs. Then playing-cards and a walking-stick follow. If even a sickly man puts on high boots, he begins to whistle and climbs the stairs like an Englishman, jumping from one step to another. If a man but holds a pen in his hand, he scribbles on any paper he can get hold of-such is the power of the pen!   "Money is also a great upadhi. The possession of money makes such a difference in a man! He is no longer the same person. A brahmin used to frequent the temple garden.   --   "When the dry branch of a coconut palm drops to the ground, it leaves only a mark on the trunk indicating that once there was a branch at that place. In like manner, he who has attained God keeps only an appearance of ego; there remains in him only a semblance of anger and lust. He becomes like a child. A child has no attachment to the three gunas-sattva, rajas, and tamas. He becomes as quickly detached from a thing as he becomes attached to it. You can cajole him out of a Cloth worth five rupees with a doll worth an nn, though at first he may say with great determination: 'No, I won't give it to you. My daddy bought it for me.' Again, all persons are the same to a child.   He has no feeling of high and low in regard to persons. So he doesn't discriminate about caste. If his mother tells him that a particular man should be regarded as an elder brother, the child will eat from the same plate with him, though the man may belong to the low caste of a blacksmith. The child doesn't know hate, or what is holy or unholy.   --   "At Hriday's house I had a vision of Gauranga. He wore a black-bordered Cloth.   "Haladhri used to say that God is beyond both Being and Non-being. I told the Mother about it and asked Her, 'Then is the divine form an illusion?' The Divine Mother appeared to me in the form of Rati's mother and said, 'Do thou remain in Bhva' I repeated this to Haladhri. Now and then I forget Her comm and and suffer. Once I broke my teeth because I didn't remain in bhava. So I shall remain in bhava unless I receive a revelation from heaven or have a direct experience to the contrary. I shall follow the path of love. What do you say?"   --   About half past nine in the morning Prankrishna took leave of the Master. Soon afterwards a minstrel sang some devotional songs to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. The Master was listening to the songs when Kedr Chatterji, a householder devotee, entered the room clad in his office Clothes. He was a man of devotional temperament and cherished the attitude of the gopis of Vrindvan. Words about God would make him weep.   The sight of Kedr awakened in the Master's mind the episode of Vrindvan in Sri Krishna's life. Intoxicated with divine love, the Master stood up and sang, addressing Kedr:

1.07 - The Primary Data of Being, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction   If the desire to be, the formative condition of the being, had not the possibility of Clothing itself incessantly in different modes and renewing its contents at each moment, the being would have been a fugitive appearance vanishing as soon as it was born. Nothing can subsist without a continual new creation into something else. But for that it is necessary that an indefinite series of possibilities should be able to awake successively into action.   And how could that be if the universe did not plunge all its roots into the fathomless ocean of the unmanifested, if after emerging itself like an island on its surface it could not draw incessantly on its depths for the elements of a perpetual transformation?

1.081 - The Application of Pratyahara, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   Thus, in the effecting of the pratyahara or the abstraction of the mind from the objects, we have to consider the thinking aspect, the willing aspect and also the feeling aspect. What are we thinking about that object towards which we are moving? What is the amount of will that we have exercised in fulfilling our wish? What is the deep-seated feeling that we have got in respect of it? All these three have to be isolated threadbare, if possible. The thinking, the willing and the feeling, though they all work together almost simultaneously, are three different aspects, and they can be pulled out independently like threads from a Cloth. The most difficult thing to tackle is feeling, and less difficult to encounter is the will, and still less is the aspect of thinking. Therefore, in the beginning, it would be to the advantage of the seeker to analyse the easier aspect namely, the thinking aspect. What are we thinking about that object? Why did we go towards it? What is our intention behind it? Then we can go to the other aspect, which is the will. We have a determination for the purpose of confirming the attitude that we have adopted on account of a thought in respect of that object. But the deepest aspect of it is the emotion the feeling.   No pratyahara can be effective unless all these three aspects are properly analysed and isolated from the nature of the object. Though the mind may not be thinking about the object, there may be feeling towards it; then there is no pratyahara. Not only that the thinking, willing, feeling aspect has also a subconscious element in it, which also is to be probed into before complete mastery is gained. There may be a subtle restlessness at the time of the effecting of this practice. That restlessness may be due to the presence of a subconscious like for that very object from which the mind has been consciously withdrawn, which aspect is pointed out in a verse of the Bhagavadgita: rasavarjam rasopy asya para dv nivartate (B.G. II.59). The mind and the senses appear to be withdrawn from the objects of sense in pratyahara, it is true. But how do we know that the mind and the senses have no taste for the object? Hence, pratyahara is not merely a physical isolation or even a conscious disconnection of oneself from the object, but is an emotional detachment that is necessary wherein alone is it possible to have no taste for a thing. The taste may go to the feeling; and as long as the taste is present, there is every possibility of the other aspects rising once again into action. As long as the root is there, there is every chance of the sprout coming up one day or the other.

1.083 - Choosing an Object for Concentration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   The mind is constituted, to some extent, in a way similar to the structure of the physical body. That means to say, even as the body is not a compact indivisible whole and is constituted of many, many minute parts, down to the most minute called cells and organisms, and yet the body appears to be a single concrete substance, so is the case with the mind. It is constituted of functions vrittis, as they are called and yet it appears to be a single entity. This singleness of its existence is an appearance, not a substantiality or reality, even as the single concrete presentation of the physical body is only an appearance. It is not there really. The peculiar structure of the mind namely, its internal disparity of character prevents it from focusing itself wholly on any objective. What is it that prevents the concentration of the mind on any one thing continuously? It is the mind itself. The nature of the mind is averse to the requisitions of concentration. Concentration is the flow of a single vritti, one continuous idea hammering itself upon an object that is presented before it. But the mind is not made up of a single idea. The mind has hundreds and thousands of ideas hidden within it, and it is made up of these ideas, like a Cloth is made up of threads. Because of this composite character of the mind, which is made up of fine elements inside in the form of these vrittis, it becomes difficult for it to gather its forces into a single focus.   The gathering of the forces of the mind into a single focus becomes difficult because the internal elements, which are the vrittis of the mind, do not agree with each other. The members of the family have independent views. If one member does not agree with another member in the family, we can imagine the nature of the family and the kind of life they live in the house. If at every step a member disagrees with the other, and yet he belongs to the family, there would be a continuous restlessness felt internally in the family. This is what is happening to the mind. It is a restlessness continuously felt inside on account of the disharmonious relationship of the ideas, or the vrittis in the mind, which hanker for different types of satisfaction in respect of different objects which they want to grab on different occasions. That the mind is ordinarily contemplating on a particular object of sense at any given moment of time is not any indication that it will not like other objects.

1.08 - Attendants, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga   I do not know if I have the right to speak of my other colleagues, but of Champaklal particularly I must write a few heart-felt words, for his spirit of service has left an indelible impression on my soul and taught me what true service is. Let me prelude it with the Mother's opinion about him when she introduced him to Andre, her son, in 1949. She said with great warmth: "He came here when he was very young. I taught him many kinds of work. He has himself taken up Sri Aurobindo's personal service. He looks into practically everything with regard to Sri Aurobindo. He is extremely careful, meticulous and very particular about details. He has no regular time for food; he takes it when he can. So it is with his sleep. That is why he cannot join the sports activities. He works with joy and devotion. He collects all our little things and keeps them with great care our Clothes, nails, hair, etc."   By the very mould of his nature a bhakta, he came into our midst by his innate right, as I have said. Not a bhakta of the traditional type, but one who has chosen service as the means of self-expression and fundamental realisation. Even the word realisation may not be correct, for self-giving alone is what counts with him. Service is his very food. If any of us did his part of the job, he would get annoyed and exclaim, "You are depriving me of my food; I can remain without food but not without work." That sums up Champaklal and that is exactly the spirit he maintained unflinchingly throughout the long decade that we lived and worked together. The Mother had entire trust in him and putting him in Sri Aurobindo's service along with us, felt quite at ease. Sri Aurobindo also relied on him for all necessary information regarding the Mother and other particulars. Once the Mother came to Sri Aurobindo's room and sat as usual on the couch opposite. We were just watching. Sri Aurobindo signed to Champaklal turning his glance towards the Mother. Champaklal understood and jumped up and put some cushions at the Mother's back. That is their way!   I am firmly convinced that through the ages he has been closely connected with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, otherwise how could he have been selected as Sri Aurobindo's personal attendant, even as a young man, as soon as he arrived? When he came to see Sri Aurobindo for the first time, he lay prostrate at his feet for an hour, all bathed in happy tears! And when he was leaving, Sri Aurobindo asked one of his older companions to bring him back with him! It is he who first accepted Sri Aurobindo as the Divine Father and called him Father, accepted the Mother as the Divine Mother and began to call her Mother. When he offered to wash the 'Father's' Clothes, Sri Aurobindo warned him that he would be mocked at, but that did not deter him. He had gone without food and sleep, had not moved from his place lest the Master should need something or should even have to wait a minute more. To serve Sri Aurobindo was in one way quite easy, for he would never make any demands on us, was content with the main necessities being met and would never express any displeasure if we failed him. This very easiness kept us alert, for one who didn't ask for more than the bare minimum, needed a careful, vigilant watch so that he could be given a little more comfort and ease. Champaklal kept that vigilant eye always. He was more familiar with Sri Aurobindo's nature and temperament by love and long experience and felt his needs on his very pulse. If he saw that Sri Aurobindo needed some side pillows, he got them made; if his footstool was a bit high or low, he adjusted it to the required height. He put a time-piece by his side, for he knew that Sri Aurobindo was in the habit of frequently seeing the time. Such small things that would pass unnoticed because our imaginative perception was perhaps dull, were caught by his sensitive insight and he tried to make "happy and comfortable" the life of the impersonal Brahman. Sri Aurobindo, when he sat on the edge of the bed and had to wait long for the Mother's arrival, seemed to feel drowsy; his body would lean backwards and would then right itself. Still, he would not ask for any assistance but this, not from any sense of egoism. He would put up with any inconvenience but if we offered him some help, he did not refuse it. We simply looked on without knowing how to meet the situation, but Champaklal rose to the occasion: he made a pile of pillows to serve as his back-rest and to prevent them from tumbling down, supported them from behind. To observe economy due to the War, the Mother advised us not to change Sri Aurobindo's bed-sheets too often, but if there was a tiny stain on an otherwise clean white sheet, Champaklal would hesitate to use it, saying, "How can we use anything unclean for the Lord?" His making the bed was a sight worth seeing. I wonder if even an expert housewife would do it so perfectly! The bed-sheet had not the slightest crease anywhere, it shone with a marble smoothness. In everything his aim was to be flawless. Thus it put others who had to work with him into a very difficult corner. He claimed to have acquired this thoroughness under the apprenticeship of the Mother. I sometimes got my share of rebuke from him if I was not tidy or clean enough: "You are a doctor and you still don't wash your hands?" he would say. The fact in his case was that over and above his own training he belonged to a very orthodox Brahmin family and had meticulously observed all the practices ordained by the Shastras and enjoined upon the children by his orthodox priest-father. We were quite modern people having our own ideas of things, so sometimes clash and conflict would arise. Besides, he was in some parts sensitive like a child. We had to be very careful not to upset him and to spare his feelings as much as we could. He could not understand jokes or any round-about manner. He told me that Sri Aurobindo had once spoken about this to the Mother. It was just after he had settled here. His father wrote a letter to Sri Aurobindo saying that Champaklal's marriage had been fixed; he had only to go, undergo the marriage ceremony and then come back. Sri Aurobindo gravely said, "I suppose we have to send back Champaklal." He was much perturbed to hear it. Then Sri Aurobindo added, "He doesn't understand jokes." He knew, however, how to get things done by the Divine, blessings written on a book, for instance, an autograph on a photo. If asked by Champaklal, Sri Aurobindo would not refuse. The Mother too has to accede to the wishes of her bhakta, her "most faithful child".   One day he conceived the idea of getting Sri Aurobindo's footprints; but how was he to do it without troubling him in any way or without informing him in advance? He had a brain-wave. He kept a white sheet of paper and pencil ready. As soon as Sri Aurobindo sat on the chair, he pushed the sheet of paper under his feet and asked, "May I draw your footprint?" Sri Aurobindo not only consented but later wrote "Love and Blessings" on the drawing. Let us not forget, by the way, that Champaklal is an artist. Whenever he saw Sri Aurobindo in what seemed to him statuesque poses his heart would go into rapture and he would call us to share his joy. He would exclaim, "Ah, if a photograph could be taken of this marvellous pose!" The Mother has said that he has "a natural talent already developed to an unusual degree". On one of his birthdays he painted two lotuses, white and red, and offered the pictures to the Mother. She was very pleased and said she would take them to Sri Aurobindo and ask him to write something. He wrote under the painting of the white lotus: Aditi, The Divine Mother. And the Mother wrote on the other: The Avatar. But she forbade Champaklal to show them to anyone, for people would not understand what they meant.

1.08 - BOOK THE EIGHTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry   Rush out, and Clotted blood distains the ground.   Perithous, no small portion of the war,

1.08 - Departmental Kings of Nature, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   The people bring him tri bute in the form of Clothes and fruits, and   cultivate for him a large field of his own. He is a kind of king,   --   the path by which he approaches is spread with white cotton Cloths.   A reason for confining the royal dignity to the same family is that

1.08 - EVENING A SMALL, NEATLY KEPT CHAMBER, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry   The Cloth upon thy board bids smoothly thee unroll,   The sand beneath thy feet makes whiter, crisper.   --   (She opens the press in order to arrange her Clothes, and perceives   the casket of jewels.)

1.08 - Origin of Rudra: his becoming eight Rudras, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism   "Having thus spoken to his beloved spouse, the mighty Maheśvara created from his mouth a being like the fire of fate; a divine being, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet; wielding a thousand clubs, a thousand shafts; holding the shell, the discus, the mace, and bearing a blazing bow and battle-axe; fierce and terrific, shining with dreadful splendour, and decorated with the crescent moon; Clothed in a tiger's skin, dripping with blood; having a capacious stomach, and a vast mouth, armed with formidable tusks: his ears were erect, his lips were pendulous, his tongue was lightning; his hand brandished the thunderbolt; flames streamed from his hair; a necklace of pearls wound round his neck; a garland of flame descended on his breast: radiant with lustre, he looked like the final fire that consumes the world. Four tremendous tusks projected from a mouth which extended from ear to ear: he was of vast bulk, vast strength, a mighty male and lord, the destroyer of the universe, and like a large fig-tree in circumference; shining like a hundred moons at once; fierce as the fire of love; having four heads, sharp white teeth, and of mighty fierceness, vigour, activity, and courage; glowing with the blaze of a thousand fiery suns at the end of the world; like a thousand undimmed moons: in bulk like Himādri, Kailāsa, or Meru, or Mandara, with all its gleaming herbs; bright as the sun of destruction at the end of ages; of irresistible prowess, and beautiful aspect; irascible, with lowering eyes, and a countenance burning like fire; Clothed in the hide of the elephant and lion, and girt round with snakes; wearing a turban on his head, a moon on his brow; sometimes savage, sometimes mild; having a chaplet of many flowers on his head, anointed with various unguents, and adorned with different ornaments and many sorts of jewels; wearing a garland of heavenly Karnikāra flowers, and rolling his eyes with rage. Sometimes he danced; sometimes he laughed aloud; sometimes he stood wrapt in meditation; sometimes he trampled upon the earth; sometimes he sang; sometimes he wept repeatedly: and he was endowed with the faculties of wisdom, dispassion, power, penance, truth, endurance, fortitude, dominion, and self-knowledge.   "This being, then, knelt down upon the ground, and raising his hands respectfully to his head, said to Mahādeva, 'Sovereign of the gods, command what it is that I must do for thee.' To which Maheśvara replied, Spoil the sacrifice of Dakṣa.' Then the mighty Vīrabhadra, having heard the pleasure of his lord, bowed down his head to the feet of Prajāpati; and starting like a lion loosed from bonds, despoiled the sacrifice of Dakṣa, knowing that the had been created by the displeasure of Devī. She too in her wrath, as the fearful goddess Rudrakālī, accompanied him, with all her train, to witness his deeds. Vīrabhadra the fierce, abiding in the region of ghosts, is the minister of the anger of Devī. And he then created, from the pores of his skin, powerful demigods, the mighty attendants upon Rudra, of equal valour and strength, who started by hundreds and thousands into existence. Then a loud and confused clamour filled all the expanse of ether, and inspired the denizens of heaven with dread. The mountains tottered, and earth shook; the winds roared, and the depths of the sea were disturbed; the fires lost their radiance, and the sun grew pale; the planets of the firmament shone not, neither did the stars give light; the Ṛṣis ceased their hymns, and gods and demons were mute; and thick darkness eclipsed the chariots of the skies[5].   --   kara Ācārya, and since. There is no discussion in the Bhāgavata, but Rudra is described as present at a former assembly, when his father-in-law censured him before the guests, and in consequence he departed in a rage. His follower Nandī curses the company, and Bhrigu retorts in language descriptive of the Vāmācāris, or left hand worshippers of Śiva. "May all those," he says, "who adopt the worship of Bhava (Śiva), all those who follow the practices of his worshippers, become heretics, and oppugners of holy doctrines; may they neglect the observances of purification; may they be of infirm intellects, wearing Clotted hair, and ornamenting themselves with ashes and bones; and may they enter the Śaiva initiation, in which spirituous liquor is the libation."   [4]: This simple account of Sati's share in the transaction is considerably modified in p. 64 other accounts. In the Kūrma, the quarrel begins with Dakṣa the patriarch's being, as he thinks, treated by his son-in-law with less respect than is his due. Upon his daughter Satī's subsequently visiting him, he abuses her husband, and turns her out of his house. She in spite destroys herself. Śiva, hearing of this, comes to Dakṣa, and curses him to be born as a Kṣetriya, the son of the Pracetasas, and to beget a son on his own daughter. It is in this subsequent birth that the sacrifice occurs. The Li

1.08 - The Historical Significance of the Fish, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   woman Clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet,   lEisler, Orpheus- The Fisher, pp. 51ft. 2 [Cf. par. 127, n. 4.]

1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   After bathing, the Master put on a new wearing-Cloth, all the while chanting the name of God. Accompanied by one or two disciples he walked across the courtyard to the temple of Kli, still chanting Her hallowed name. His eyes had an indrawn look, like that of a bird hatching her eggs.   On entering the temple, he prostrated himself before the image and worshipped the Divine Mother. But he did not observe any ritual of worship. Now he would offer flowers and sandal-paste at the feet of the image, and now he would put them on his own head.   --   When it was time for his noon meal, Sri Ramakrishna put on a new yellow Cloth and sat on the small couch. His golden complexion, blending with his yellow Cloth, enchanted the eyes of the devotees.   After his meal Sri Ramakrishna rested a little on the small couch. Inside and outside his room crowded the devotees, among them Kedr, Suresh, Ram, Manomohan, Girindra, Rakhal, Bhavanath, and M. Rakhal's father was also present.   --   An unknown Bengali, dressed in the ochre Cloth of a monk, entered the room and sat on the floor. The Master's mind was coming down to the ordinary plane of consciousness.   Presently he began to talk, though the spell of samdhi still lingered.   MASTER (at the sight of the ochre Cloth): "Why this gerrua? Should one put on such a thing for a mere fancy? A man once said, 'I have exchanged the Chandi for a drum.' At first he used to sing the holy songs of the Chandi; now he beats the drum. (All laugh.) "There are three or four varieties of renunciation. Afflicted with miseries at home, one may put on the ochre Cloth of a monk; but that renunciation doesn't last long. Again, a man out of work puts on an ochre wearing-Cloth and goes off to Benares. After three months he writes home: 'I have a job here. I shall come home in a few days. Don't worry about me.' Again, a man may have everything he wants. He lacks nothing, yet he does not enjoy his possessions. He weeps for God alone. That is real renunciation.   "No lie of any sort is good. A false garb, even though a holy one, is not good. If the outer garb does not correspond to the inner thought, it gradually brings ruin. Uttering false words or doing false deeds, one gradually loses all fear. Far better is the white Cloth of a householder. Attachment to worldliness, occasional lapses from the ideal, and an outer garb of gerrua-how dreadful!   "It is not proper for a righteous person to tell a lie or do something false even in a dramatic performance. Once I went to Keshab's house to see the performance of a play called Nava-Vrindvan. They brought something on the stage which they called the 'Cross'. Another actor sprinkled water, which they said was the 'Water of Peace'. I saw a third actor staggering and reeling in the role of a drunkard."

1.08 - Wherein is expounded the first line of the first stanza, and a beginning is made of the explanation of this dark night, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity   3. Since, then, the conduct of these beginners upon the way of God is ignoble,61 and has much to do with their love of self and their own inclinations, as has been explained above, God desires to lead them farther. He seeks to bring them out of that ignoble kind of love to a higher degree of love for Him, to free them from the ignoble exercises of sense and meditation (wherewith, as we have said, they go seeking God so unworthily and in so many ways that are unbefitting), and to lead them to a kind of spiritual exercise wherein they can commune with Him more abundantly and are freed more completely from imperfections. For they have now had practice for some time in the way of virtue and have persevered in meditation and prayer, whereby, through the sweetness and pleasure that they have found therein, they have lost their love of the things of the world and have gained some degree of spiritual strength in God; this has enabled them to some extent to refrain from creature desires, so that for God's sake they are now able to suffer a light burden and a little aridity without turning back to a time62 which they found more pleasant. When they are going about these spiritual exercises with the greatest delight and pleasure, and when they believe that the sun of Divine favour is shining most brightly upon them, God turns all this light of theirs into darkness, and shuts against them the door and the source of the sweet spiritual water which they were tasting in God whensoever and for as long as they desired. (For, as they were weak and tender, there was no door closed to them, as Saint John says in the Apocalypse, iii, 8). And thus He leaves them so completely in the dark that they know not whither to go with their sensible imagination and meditation; for they cannot advance a step in meditation, as they were wont to do afore time, their inward senses being submerged in this night, and left with such dryness that not only do they experience no pleasure and consolation in the spiritual things and good exercises wherein they were wont to find their delights and pleasures, but instead, on the contrary, they find insipidity and bitterness in the said things. For, as I have said, God now sees that they have grown a little, and are becoming strong enough to lay aside their swaddling Clothes and be taken from the gentle breast; so He sets them down from His arms and teaches them to walk on their own feet; which they feel to be very strange, for everything seems to be going wrong with them.   4. To recollected persons this commonly happens sooner after their beginnings than to others, inasmuch as they are freer from occasions of backsliding, and their desires turn more quickly from the things of the world, which is necessary if they are to begin to enter this blessed night of sense. Ordinarily no great time passes after their beginnings before they begin to enter this night of sense; and the great majority of them do in fact enter it, for they will generally be seen to fall into these aridities.

1.096 - Clot, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   object:1.096 - Clot   class:chapter   --   2. Created man from a Clot.   3. Read: And your Lord is the Most Generous.

1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy   Clothing, the gratification of the instinct of sex; beauty must have   been preferred to profit, to habit, to opinion and to indolence. The   --   [8] Clothilde de Veaux.--TR.   [9] See my note on p. 147 of Vol. I. of the _Will to Power._--TR.

1.09 - The Absolute Manifestation, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction   If from the pure Absolute unseizable by our thought the relative cannot originate, yet may that relative appear to us, beyond our experimental concepts, in forms more and more remote from those in which it is Clothed by the concrete reality, more and more approximating to the Indiscernable. In other words, it is in the Absolute itself, at the limits of our concepts, that we may attempt to imagine what the relative may have been before it became the relative.   For if the principle of the relative, such as it is known to us in the manifested world, is an exclusive affirmation, a desire to be, that is to say, to preserve the fixed form of an ego, are we not led thereby logically to postulate a state anterior to this desire in which all the numberless possible forms of the absolute I affirmed themselves, not exclusively?

1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   Anderida, which once Clothed the whole of the south-eastern portion   of the island. Westward it seems to have stretched till it joined   --   which Clothed great tracts in antiquity, and which at a more remote   epoch may have spanned the Greek peninsula from sea to sea.   --   furnish it with tiny Clothes and some food and gold. Then they call   together all the spirits of the wood, offer them the little house   --   of a man, in virtue of a general tendency of early thought to Clothe   all abstract spiritual beings in concrete human form. Hence in   --   dressed in fine Clothes and wearing necklaces and earrings, sang the   Rain Song.

1.10 - Mantra Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism   14. Those who utilise the Mantra power in curing snake bites, scorpion stings and chronic diseases should not accept any kind of presents or money. They must be absolutely unselfish. They should not accept even fruits or Clothes. They will lose the power if they utilise the power for selfish purposes. If they are absolutely unselfish, if they serve the humanity with Sarvatma Bhava, their power will increase through the grace of the Lord.   15. He who attained Mantra Siddhi can cure cobra bite or scorpion sting or any chronic disease by mere touch on the affected part. When a man is bitten by a cobra a telegram is sent to the Mantra Siddha. The Mantra Siddha recites the Mantra and the man who is bitten by a cobra is cured. What a grand marvel! Does this not prove the tremendous power of Mantra?

1.10 - Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   birch-tree, which they dress up in woman's Clothes, or adorn with   many-coloured shreds and ribbons. After that comes a feast, at the   --   Clothes shows how clearly the tree is personified; and the throwing   it into a stream is most probably a raincharm.   --   Cloth, gilt egg-shells, etc.; and on the top of it is a large vane,   or it may be a flag." The raising of the May-pole, the decoration of   --   Cloths, a variety of victuals such as sausages, cakes, and eggs. The   young folk exerted themselves to obtain these prizes. In the greasy   --   conceived and represented as detached from the tree and Clothed in   human form, and even as embodied in living men or women. The   --   dressed in white Clothes to look like a woman; with this tree and   puppet they go from house to house collecting gratuities and singing   --   is dressed in woman's Clothes and set up in the house. Clearly   equivalent to this is the custom observed on Whit-Monday by Russian   --   Cloth tied to it is set up in a meadow, and the young men ride past   it on horseback, each trying to snatch away the Cloth as he gallops   by. The one who succeeds in carrying it off and dipping it in the   --   clown with his Clothes turned inside out, a great flaxen beard on   his chain, and the Whitsuntide crown on his head. Two riders   --   many-coloured sash, a Cloth, and an apron. The king got as a prize,   a vest, a neck-Cloth, and so forth, and had the right of setting up   the May-bush or Whitsuntide-tree before his master's yard, where it

1.10 - The Magical Garment, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism   This is to be treated in the same manner as the cap or magusband. The magical gament is a long robe made of silk, buttoned from the neck to the toes. The sleeves of the robe end at the wrists. The robe looks like the vestment of a clergyman and symbolizes the absolute purity of all ideas, and the purity of the magician's soul. It is also the symbol of protection. Just as a common garment protects a man's physical body from outside influences, rain, cold etc. so the magical garment of the magician shelters him from outside influences which may attact his body through its astral or mental matrix. As already mentioned several times, silk is the best insulating material against any astral or mental influences. A robe made of silk is therefore an excellent means of in61 sulation and may also be successfully used for other operations not directly connected with ritual magic; for instance, protection of the astral or physical body when projecting the mental or astral body so that no being can take possession of the magician's astral or physical body without his approval. A magic robe may also be successfully used for similar operations for which the insulation of the mental, astral and physical body is necessary. It is, however, up to the magician which possible variations he wants to make use of. Under no circumstances may the magician use a garment for ritual magic or evocations which has been used for common purposes such as, for example, training, or current magical operations. A special robe must be taken for this special kind of magic, and its colour must suit the purpose. Here I should point out that for common mental and astral operations or experiments, the insulating garment may be put on top of any other Clothes; for evocations and ritual magic; however, the magical garment is to be worn over the naked body. The magician may, however, in cold weather, put on a shirt or pants made of pure silk und put the robe over them, but the pants or shirt must be of the same colour as the robe. The magician may use house-shoes of the same colour as the robe. The soles of the shoes can be made of leather or rubber.   The colour of the robe corresponds to the work, idea and purpose the magician wishes to carry out. He may choose one of the three universal colours: white, violet or black. Violet is equivalent to the Akasha-colour and may be used for nearly all magical operations. White is chosen for the robe only, when dealing with high and good beings. Black is the appropriate colour for negative powers and beings. The magician is able to carry out almost all ritual operations with these colours. If he can afford the expense, he can have three robes made, one of each colour. A wealthy magician may choose, for his robes, colours analogous to the individual spheres of the planets he works with. Thus he will take for:

1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Eternal One! Thou great First Cause, Clothed in the form of the Void   Thou wearest the moon upon Thy brow,   --   Thou hast Thy home; though Clothed with form, Yet art Thou formless Reality.   The Master sang a few more songs in praise of the Divine Mother. Then he said to the devotees: "It is not always best to tell householders about the sorrows of life. They want bliss. Those who suffer from chronic poverty can go without food for a day or two.

1.11 - BOOK THE ELEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry   With Clotted gore, and still fresh-dropping blood.   Phoebus, at last, his kind protection gives,

1.11 - The Seven Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   "He moved everywhere about the Mighty Ones of Heaven, and they devoured not, neither were overcome, - they were not Clothed, neither were they naked. Here the eternal and ever young goddesses from one womb held the one Child, they the   Seven Words. (6)   --   The sevenfold waters thus rise upward and become the pure mental activity, the Mighty Ones of Heaven. They there reveal themselves as the first eternal ever-young energies, separate streams but of one origin - for they have all flowed from the one womb of the super-conscient Truth - the seven Words or fundamental creative expressions of the divine Mind, sapta van.h.. This life of the pure mind is not like that of the nervous life which devours its objects in order to sustain its mortal existence; its waters devour not but they do not fail; they are the eternal truth robed in a transparent veil of mental forms; therefore, it is said, they are neither Clothed nor naked (v. 6).   But this is not the last stage. The Force rises into the womb or birthplace of this mental clarity (ghr.tasya) where the waters flow as streams of the divine sweetness (srava the madhunam); there the forms it assumes are universal forms, masses of the vast and infinite consciousness. As a result, the fostering rivers in the lower world are nourished by this descending higher sweetness and the mental and physical consciousness, the two first mothers of the all-effecting Will, become in their entire largeness perfectly equal and harmonised by this light of the

1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "But the Bhakti scriptures admit that the manifestations of Power are different in different beings. It is Rma who has become everything, no doubt; but He manifests Himself more in some than in others. There is one kind of manifestation of Rma in the Incarnation of God, and another in men. Even the Incarnations are conscious of the body. Embodiment is due to maya. Rma wept for Sita. But the Incarnation of God puts a bondage over His eyes by His own will, like children playing blindman's buff. The children stop playing when their mother calls them. It is quite different, however, with the ordinary man. The Cloth his eyes are bandaged with is fastened to his back with screws, as it were. There are eight fetters. Shame, hatred, fear, caste, lineage, good conduct, grief, and secretiveness-these are the eight fetters. And they cannot be unfastened without the help of a guru.   Earnestness in spiritual life extolled   --   "A man who has realized God shows certain characteristics. He becomes like a child or a madman, or an inert thing or a ghoul. Further, he is firmly convinced that he is the machine and God is its Operator, that God alone is the Doer and all others are His instruments. As some Sikh devotees once said to me, even the leaf moves because of God's will. One should be aware that everything happens by the will of Rma. The weaver said: 'The price of the Cloth, by the will of Rma, is one rupee six annas. By the will of Rma the robbery was committed. By the will of Rma the robbers were arrested. By the will of Rma I too was arrested by the police. And at last, by the will of Rma, I was released.' "   It was dusk. Sri Ramakrishna had had no rest since his midday meal. He had talked unceasingly to the devotees about God. At last the visitors took their leave and went home.   --   "If you move about in a room filled with soot, you will soil your body, however slightly, no matter how clever you may be. I have seen householder devotees filled with spiritual emotion while performing their daily worship wearing their silk Clothes. They maintain that attitude even until they take their refreshments after the worship. But afterwards they become their old selves again. They display their rajasic and tamasic natures.   "Sattva begets bhakti. Even bhakti has three aspects: sattva, rajas, and tamas. The sattva of bhakti is pure sattva. When a devotee acquires it he doesn't direct his mind to anything but God. He pays only as much attention to his body as is absolutely necessary for its protection.

1.12 - Brute Neighbors, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy   The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my Clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my Clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.   A phbe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge (_Tetrao umbellus_,) which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mothers directions given from a distance, nor will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. I have held them in my open hand at such a time, and still their only care, obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects.

1.12 - God Departs, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga   On 9th December, the Light faded and signs of discoloration here and there were visible. Then, according to the Mother's direction, the body was put into a specially prepared rosewood casket lined with silver sheet and satin and the bottom made comfortable with cushions. Sri Aurobindo's body was wrapped in a gold-embroidered Cloth. At 5 p.m. the body was carried by the sadhaks to the Ashram courtyard under the Service tree where a cement vault had been under construction from 5th December. Udar climbed down into the vault to receive the casket and put it in its proper position. As the box was lowered a friend of mine said that a prayer sprang spontaneously from his heart: "Now that you have gone physically, assure us that your work will be done." Something made him look up at the Service tree and suddenly he saw against it Sri Aurobindo; his undraped upper body was of a golden colour. He said firmly with great energy and power in Bengali, "Habe, habe, habe" "It will be done, it will be done, it will be done." Then, as wished by the Mother, Champaklal came first to place a potful of earth upon the slate of the vault, followed by Moni, Nolini and other sadhaks. The ceremony was quiet and solemn. The Mother watched it from the terrace above Dyuman's room. Hundreds of sadhaks stood in the courtyard in silent prayer and consecration. The most blessed Service tree amply fulfils its name by offering the Samadhi day and night, a cool shade and sweet-scented flowers.   Thus came to a close the physical life of the One who, without the world knowing it, worked unceasingly for the world and will continue doing so, careless of human reward of any kind and accepting the success of his mission as the only recompense. Of the latter he was absolutely sure, but were it to end in failure, he said that he would still go on unperturbed, because "I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do, and what is so done counts always in the economy of the universe." Was it the sacrifice that he called, "paying here God's debt to earth and man"? Never has there been recorded in earth-history a phenomenon where a person of Sri Aurobindo's supreme eminence has lived secluded from the world-gaze and quietly and unobtrusively passed away. Such a complete self-effacement can be thought of only of one who is a god or has become a god. It is certain that one day the world will wake up to realise who he was and what it owes to him as it becomes more and more enlightened in its consciousness. Already, some faint glimmerings of that recognition are visible in the Eastern sky, "a long lone line of hesitating hue". His Birth Centenary is knocking at our door. Rabindranath's salutation to him in his political days will turn into a salutation of the whole of humanity as its lover and saviour. The long lone hue will be transformed into a full blaze of the living Sun.

1.13 - And Then?, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   But his tranquil silence is not inactivity nothing is inactive in the world, not even the inertia of the clod, even the silence of the immobile Buddha on the verge of Nirvana.33 He is distinguished from others neither by ecstatic meditations atop a festooned gaddhi34 nor by a white beard and immaculate Clothing. He attends to the trifling details of life, and no one knows who he is. He cares nothing about being recognized, he who recognizes all. And those trifling details are the minute lever with which he operates on all similar substance throughout the world, for there are no boundaries anywhere, except in our heads and our small imprisoned body life extends infinitely, and this birdcall answers that birdcall, this sorrow, a thousand sorrows. His whole life is a meditation.   Its stillness bears the voice of the world35

1.13 - BOOK THE THIRTEENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry   Sweeping her hair amidst the Clotted gore;   Whilst her sad accents thus her loss deplore.

1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy   Then Prajapati ordered them to put on their finest Clothes and look again at their selves in the water. This they did and when asked again what they had seen, they answered: We see the Self, exactly like ourselves, well adorned and in our finest Clothes.   Then said Prajapati: The Self is indeed seen in these. That Self is immortal and fearless, and that is Brahman. And the pupils went away, pleased at heart.

1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER: "Someone said to Sen, about Hriday: 'He is very ill. Please bring two pieces of Cloth and a couple of shirts for him. We will send them to his village.' Sen offered only two rupees. How do you explain that? He has so much money, and yet he is so miserly!   What do you say to that?"

1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Sri Ramakrishna stood in front of the shrine of Kli and prostrated himself before the Divine Mother. M. followed him. Then the Master sat on the lower floor in front of the shrine room, facing the blissful image, and leaned against a pillar of the natmandir. He wore a red-bordered Cloth, part of which was on his shoulder and back. M. sat by his side.   M: "Since there is no unbroken happiness in the world, why should one assume a body at all? I know that the body is meant only to reap the results of past action. But who knows what sort of action it is performing now? The unfortunate part is that we are being crushed."   --   "A certain man had a tub. People would come to him to have their Clothes dyed. The tub contained a solution of dye. Whatever colour a man wanted for his Cloth, he would get by dipping the Cloth in the tub. One man was amazed to see this and said to the dyer, 'Please give me the dye you have in your tub.' "   Was the Master hinting that people professing different religions would come to him and have their spiritual consciousness awakened according to their own ideals?   --   "Aspirants endowed with rajas exhibit outward pomp-a string of beads around the neck, a mark on the forehead, an ochre robe, a silk Cloth, a rosary with a gold bead, and so on. They are like stall-keepers advertising their wares with signboards.   "All religions and all paths call upon their followers to pray to one and the same God.   --   BALARM'S FATHER: "Yes, sir. It is like a woman's recognizing her husband, whatever Clothes he wears."   Unwavering devotion to God   MASTER: "But again, there is a thing called nishtha, single-minded devotion. When the gopis went to Mathura they saw Krishna with a turban on His head. At this they pulled down their veils and said, 'Who is this man? Where is our Krishna with the peacock feather on His crest and the yellow Cloth on His body?' Hanuman also had that unswerving devotion. He came to Dwaraka in the cycle of Dwapara. Krishna said to Rukmini, His queen, 'Hanuman will not be satisfied unless he sees the form of Rm.'   So, to please Hanuman, Krishna assumed the form of Rma.   --   "Let me tell you one thing, Vijay. Don't trust a sdhu if he keeps bag, and baggage with him and a bundle of Clothes with many knots. I have seen such sdhus under the banyan tree in the Panchavati. Two or three of them were seated there. One was picking over lentils, some were sewing their Clothes, and all were gossiping about a feast they had enjoyed in a rich man's house. They said among themselves, 'That rich man spent a hundred thousand rupees on the feast and fed the sdhus sumptuously with cake, sweets, and many such delicious things.' " (All laugh) VIJAY: "It is true, sir. "I have seen such sdhus at Gaya. They are called the lotawalla sdhus of Gaya."   MASTER (to Vijay): "When love of God is awakened, work drops away of itself. If God makes some men work, let them work. It is now time for you to give up everything.

1.14 - On the clamorous, yet wicked master-the stomach., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   knit to your breathing, the word of him who says: But I, when demons troubled me, put on sackCloth, and humbled my soul with fasting, and my prayer stuck to the bosom of my soul.1   33. Fasting is the coercion of nature and the cutting out of everything that delights the palate, the prevention of lust, the uprooting of bad thoughts, deliverance from dreams, purity of prayer, the light of the soul, the guarding of the mind, deliverance from blindness, the door of compunction, humble sighing, glad contrition, a lull in chatter, a means to silence, a guard of obedience, lightening of sleep, health of body, agent of dispassion, remission of sins, the gate of Paradise and its delight.

1.14 - ON THE FRIEND, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy   ashamed of your Clothes. You cannot groom yourself   too beautifully for your friend: for you shall be to him

1.14 - The Book of Magic Formulae, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism   7. The drawing of the magic circle according to the magician's connection with the deity. If the operations are carried out with a magic circle sewn on a piece of linen, piece of Cloth, or the like, it has to be re-drawn   8. Drawing of the magic triangle

1.14 - The Victory Over Death, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   But death is a word for something that does not exist. One does not die when one leaves one's body, any more than when one goes from one room to another or changes Clothes. Actually, death is not on the other side; it is right here, at every instant, inextricably mingled with life; we take it along everywhere we go and, sometimes, it becomes death. That sometimes, that moment, or more complete movement of death in us, is what we must catch hold of. Death is not another state, an accident suddenly thrusting us into something else. It is ingrained in life itself; it is its base, its dark foundation. And if we could unravel those tightly knit threads, that death in the quick, that self of death that beats softly within us and tries day after day, almost hour after hour and every instant, to supplant life at will. One dies only from want of truth. It is the only want in the world. If we were totally true, we would be totally immortal. Death is dissolution of falsehood for falsehood is in essence decay and we will die only so long as we are not truthful from head to toe and in every cell of our body. In short, death is the keeper of Truth, the dark angel standing at the immortal threshold that destroys anything incapable of passing purely into Truth. We have already crossed the threshold in our purified mind; we have perhaps crossed it in our heart and feelings we must cross it in our body. The self of truth must completely replace the self of death. The process of immortalization takes place from the top down: first in the mind, then in the heart and senses, then in the body but the supreme resistance is also the supreme victory.   It is indeed a resistance. Death is a resistance to the law of Truth, to the ever-renewed flow of Harmony. Deep down, we are founded on the rock of the Inconscient45 the Vedic Rishis spoke of, the rock that is perhaps the first moment when the great Energy solidified, turned into matter, plunged into a dark contraction of itself, sank into an inert stillness of its triumphant flow, lost itself in a black, motionless ecstasy that was like the inversion of its solar ecstasy on the summits. Those who have had the experience of descending into the material Inconscient know that the image of the Vedic Rishis is not just an image but a rather formidable reality to go through. It is truly a rock immense and seemingly bottomless a sheer drop into a basalt chasm, which cannot even be termed black because there is not one spark of blackness there, not one glimmer that would permit one to call it black it is the Blackness, absolute, without one breath, without one vibration of anything whatever: an instantaneous suffocation, a mortal stifling, a world utterly still, utterly closed, as if strangled on itself, without a sound, without a movement, without an echo of anything whatsoever. An utter void, and yet like a black, asphyxiating existence, something that is in spite of everything but is like a density of absolute negation, a tremendous refusal which raises its walls of basalt and plunges, plunges like an abyss into an abyss, like a death into a death. To descend there is in fact like dying. It is death. It is the Inconscient. One cannot be there; one must not be there. It is like a supreme repudiation of everything that moves and breathes, everything that bears a particle of light making it possible to live. It does not move. It does not breathe. It is a NO. A tremendous NO to everything and of everything, which swallows you or expels you or forces you to summon a light greater than that Darkness.

1.15 - Index, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   woman: in Apocalypse, 105; Clothed   with the sun, 103; image of, 13;

1.15 - LAST VISIT TO KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER: "Yes, they can be found, though they may be very rare. Worldly people cannot recognize them. In order to lead such a life both husb and and wife must be spiritual. It is possible to lead such a life if both of them have tasted the Bliss of God. God's special grace is necessary to create such a couple; otherwise there will always be misunderstanding between them. In that case the one has to leave the other. Life becomes very miserable if husb and and wife do not agree. The wife will say to her husb and day and night: 'Why did my father marry me to such a person? I can't get enough to eat or to feed my children. I haven't Clothes enough to cover my body or to give to my children. I haven't received a single piece of jewelry from you. How happy you have made me! Ah! You keep your eyes closed and mutter the name of God! Now do give up all these crazy ideas.' "   DEVOTEE: "There are such obstacles, certainly. Besides, the children may be disobedient. There is no end of difficulties. Now, sir, what is the way?"

1.15 - On incorruptible purity and chastity to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   In sensual people (as one who had experienced this passion personally told me after he had got over it) there is a feeling of a sort of love for bodies and a kind of shameless and inhuman spirit which openly asserts itself in the very feeling of the heart. This spirit produces a feeling of physical pain in the heart, fierce as from a blazing stove. As a result of this the sufferer does not fear God, despises the remembrance of punishment as of no consequence, disdains prayer, and during the very act itself regards the body almost as a dead corpse, as though it were an inanimate stone. He is like someone out of his mind and in a trance, perpetually drunk with desire for creatures, rational and irrational. And if the days of this spirit were not cut short, not a soul would be saved, Clothed as it is in this clay, mingled with blood and foul moisture. How could they be? For everything created longs insatiably for what is akin to itblood desires blood, the worm desires a worm, clay desires clay. And does not flesh too desire flesh? Yet we who bridle nature and desire the Kingdom try various tricks to deceive this deceiver. Blessed are they who have not experienced the conflict described above! Let us pray that we may always be delivered from such a trial, because those who slip into the pit we have mentioned fall   1 Lit. clay.   --   On these occasions1 the best aids for us are: sackCloth, ashes, all-night standing, hunger, moistening the tongue in moderation when parched with thirst, dwelling amongst the tombs, and above all humility of heart; and if possible a spiritual father or a careful brother, an elder in spirit to help us. But I shall be surprised if anyone will be able to save his ship from the sea by himself.   One and the same sin often incurs a condemnation a hundred times greater for one person than for another, according to character, place, progress, and a good deal else.   --   It is those who are subject to the demon of arrogance who especially suffer in this way; because, as their hearts are no longer continually occupied with impure thoughts, they are prone to the passion of pride. And in order to be convinced of the truth of what has been said, when they have achieved a certain measure of holy quiet, let them discreetly examine themselves. Then they will certainly find that some thought is concealed in the depth of their heart like a snake in dung, suggesting to them that they have made some progress in purity of heart by their own effort and zeal. Poor wretches! They do not think of what was said: What hast thou that thou didst not receive3 as a free gift, either from God, or by the co-operation and prayers of others? And so let them look to their own affairs, and let them cast out of their heart with all speed the snake mentioned above, killing it by much humility, so that when they have got rid of it they may in time be stripped of their Clothing of skin4 and as chaste children sing   1 Cf. Step 27: 45. The discerning father appears to be St. Mark the Ascetic in his Admonition to Nicholas (PG. 65 col. 1036 B).

1.15 - The Transformed Being, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   It will be the end of the Artifice. This fabulous, monstrous world bristling with machines on every floor and every level swallowed up by a machinery that swallows us and swallows life's slightest movement, the least breath of thought, the lightest heartbeat, that rolls us under its enormous armored tank in which those richest in false powers, most armed with deceptive words, most affluent in false colors and tinsel and fake, artificial television lights, whose shell of triumphant unconsciousness is the heaviest, dominate a hypnotized mass which consents to this barbarous sacrifice to Moloch, this universal and total slavery, detailed down to the tiniest subconscious reaction, in which even the most enlightened men are still impelled by the muffled reverberation of the Machine, alienated from their own powers of seeing, feeling and communicating, smothered beneath an enormous apparatus that conditions their thought and feelings and beliefs, regimented by science, regimented by the law, regimented by the Machine one must keep clicking in order to live, eat, brea the and travel, keep alive in order to stay alive will vanish like some unreal nightmare under the tranquil gaze of Truth, which will put each thing in its place, endow the truer ones with power, clo the each according to his own light, illuminate each one in his true color, expose the innermost vibration without subterfuge, without false Clothing, rank beings spontaneously, automatically, visibly, according to the quality of their flame and the intensity of their joy, impart its powerful rhythm to the clearer ones, give to each a world in his measure, a dwelling in his color, an immortal body attuned to his joy, a scope of action commensurate with the scope of his own ray, a power to mold and use matter proportionate to his intensity of truth, his capacity for beauty and his degree of genuine imagination. For, in the end, Truth is Beauty, is supreme Imagination which, through those millions of years and billions of sorrows, sought to make us rediscover our own power of loving, of creating and of uprooting death through immortal joy.   But how will this matter, as heavy and stubborn as it is, this unfeeling rock, obey the power of the Spirit? How will the earth's matter allow itself to be transformed without being crushed, violated, pulverized by some sledgehammer of one kind or another, heated to a few thousand degrees in our nuclear kettles? We might as well ask how that rock could ever escape the tortuous climb of the caterpillar we see no farther than our mental conditioning, but our vision is false and the matter we crush without mercy is as living, active, responsive as the stream of stars above our heads or the invisible quivering of the lotus under the summer sun. Matter too is living; it too is a substance of the Eternal, and it can respond as much as the mind, heart or plant. Only we have to find the point of contact, to know the true language, just as we have found the language of numbers, only to extract a few monsters. Another language needs to be found for another vision, a concrete language that imparts the experience of what it names, brings to light what it says, touches what it expresses, which does not translate but materializes the vibrations and moves things by emitting the same note. A whole magic of the Word needs to be found again.

1.16 - The Suprarational Ultimate of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Let us then look at this vital instinct and life dynamism in its own being and not merely as an occasion for ethical or religious development and see whether it is really rebellious in its very nature to the Divine. We can see at once that what we have described is the first stage of the vital being, the infrarational, the instinctive; this is the crude character of its first native development and persists even when it is trained by the growing application to it of the enlightening reason. Evidently it is in this natural form a thing of the earth, gross, earthy, full even of hideous uglinesses and brute blunders and jarring discords; but so also is the infrarational stage in ethics, in aesthetics, in religion. It is true too that it presents a much more enormous difficulty than these others, more fundamentally and obstinately resists elevation, because it is the very province of the infrarational, a first formulation of consciousness out of the Inconscient, nearest to it in the scale of being. But still it has too, properly looked at, its rich elements of power, beauty, nobility, good, sacrifice, worship, divinity; here too are highreaching gods, masked but still resplendent. Until recently, and even now, reason, in the garb no longer of philosophy, but of science, has increasingly proposed to take up all this physical and vital life and perfect it by the sole power of rationalism, by a knowledge of the laws of Nature, of sociology and physiology and biology and health, by collectivism, by State education, by a new psychological education and a number of other kindred means. All this is well in its own way and in its limits, but it is not enough and can never come to a truly satisfying success. The ancient attempt of reason in the form of a high idealistic, rational, aesthetic, ethical and religious culture achieved only an imperfect discipline of the vital man and his instincts, sometimes only a polishing, a gloss, a Clothing and mannerising of the original uncouth savage. The modern attempt of reason in the form of a broad and thorough rational, utilitarian and efficient instruction and organisation of man and his life is not succeeding any better for all its insistent but always illusory promise of more perfect results in the future. These endeavours cannot indeed be truly successful if our theory of life is right and if this great mass of vital energism contains in itself the imprisoned suprarational, if it has, as it then must have, the instinctive reaching out for something divine, absolute and infinite which is concealed in its blind strivings. Here too reason must be overpassed or surpass itself and become a passage to the Divine.   The first mark of the suprarational, when it intervenes to take up any portion of our being, is the growth of absolute ideals; and since life is Being and Force and the divine state of being is unity and the Divine in force is God as Power taking possession, the absolute vital ideals must be of that nature. Nowhere are they wanting. If we take the domestic and social life of man, we find hints of them there in several forms; but we need only note, however imperfect and dim the present shapes, the strivings of love at its own self-finding, its reachings towards its absolute the absolute love of man and woman, the absolute maternal or paternal, filial or fraternal love, the love of friends, the love of comrades, love of country, love of humanity. These ideals of which the poets have sung so persistently, are not a mere glamour and illusion, however the egoisms and discords of our instinctive, infrarational way of living may seem to contradict them. Always crossed by imperfection or opposite vital movements, they are still divine possibilities and can be made a first means of our growth into a spiritual unity of being with being. Certain religious disciplines have understood this truth, have taken up these relations boldly and applied them to our souls communion with God; and by a converse process they can, lifted out of their present social and physical formulas, become for us, not the poor earthly things they are now, but deep and beautiful and wonderful movements of God in man fulfilling himself in life. All the economic development of life itself takes on at its end the appearance of an attempt to get rid of the animal squalor and bareness which is what obligatory poverty really means, and to give to man the divine ease and leisure of the gods. It is pursued in a wrong way, no doubt, and with many ugly circumstances, but still the ideal is darkly there. Politics itself, that apparent game of strife and deceit and charlatanism, can be a large field of absolute idealisms. What of patriotism,never mind the often ugly instincts from which it starts and which it still obstinately preserves,but in its aspects of worship, self-giving, discipline, self-sacrifice? The great political ideals of man, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, apart from the selfishnesses they serve and the rational and practical justifications with which they arm themselves, have had for their soul an ideal, some half-seen truth of the absolute and have carried with them a worship, a loyalty, a loss of self in the idea which have made men ready to suffer and die for them. War and strife themselves have been schools of heroism; they have preserved the heroic in man, they have created the katriys tyaktajvit of the Sanskrit epic phrase, the men of power and courage who have abandoned their bodily life for a cause; for without heroism man cannot grow into the Godhead; courage, energy and strength are among the very first principles of the divine nature in action. All this great vital, political, economic life of man with its two powers of competition and cooperation is stumbling blindly forward towards some realisation of power and unity,in two divine directions, therefore. For the Divine in life is Power possessed of self-mastery, but also of mastery of His world, and man and mankind too move towards conquest of their world, their environment. And again the Divine in fulfilment here is and must be oneness, and the ideal of human unity however dim and far off is coming slowly into sight. The competitive nation-units are feeling, at times, however feebly as yet, the call to cast themselves into a greater unified cooperative life of the human race.

1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "I saw Sita in a vision. I found that her entire mind was concentrated on Rma. She was totally indifferent to everything-her hands, her feet, her Clothes, her jewels. It seemed that Rma had filled every bit of her life and she could not remain alive without Rma."   M: "Yes, sir. She was mad with love for Rma."

1.17 - Astral Journey Example, How to do it, How to Verify your Experience, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   I certainly have no intention of "holding you down" to "a narrow path of work" or any path. All I can do is to help you to understand clearly the laws of your own nature, so that you may go ahead without extraneous influence. It does not follow that a plan that I have found successful in my own case will be any use to you. That is another cardinal mistake of most teachers. One must have become a Master of the Temple to annihilate one's ego. Most teachers, consciously or unconsciously, try to get others to follow in their steps. I might as well dress you up in my castoff Clothing! (In the steps of the Master. At the feet of the Master. Steward!)   Please observe that the further you get on, the higher your potential, the greater is the tendency to leak, or even to break the containing vessel. I can help you by warning you against setting up obstacles, real or imaginary, in your own path; which is what most people do. It is almost laughable to think that the Great Work consists merely in "letting her rip;" but Karma bumps you from one side of the toboggan slide to the other, until you vcome into the straight." (There's a chapter or two in the The Book of Lies about this, but I haven't got a copy. I must find one, and put them in here. Yes: p. 22)[26]

1.17 - Geryon. The Violent against Art. Usurers. Descent into the Abyss of Malebolge., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity   Never in Cloth did Tartars make nor Turks,   Nor were such tissues by Arachne laid.

1.17 - Legend of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism   [6]: Alluding, says the commentator, to the fable of a washerman, who, whilst washing his Clothes in the Ganges, proposed daily to drink of its waters, but forgot his purpose in his occupation: or of a boy, who proposed the same as he pursued fish after fish, and never accomplished his intention, being engrossed by his sport: both died without drinking.   [7]: The three kinds of affliction of the Sā

1.17 - The Burden of Royalty, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   nothing that comes from the whites; European Cloth never touches his   person, and he scorns tobacco, rum, and even salt.

1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Rkhl , Ltu, Harish, Ramlal, and M. had been staying with Sri Ramakrishna at the temple garden. About three o'clock in the afternoon M. found the Master on the west porch of his room engaged in conversation with a Tantrik devotee. The Tantrik was wearing an ochre Cloth. Sri Ramakrishna asked M. to sit by his side. Perhaps the Master intended to instruct him through his talk with the Tantrik devotee. Mahima Chakravarty had sent the latter to the Master.   MASTER (to the Tantrik): "It is a part of the Tantrik discipline to drink wine from a human skull. This wine is called 'karana'. Isn't that so?"

1.18 - The Perils of the Soul, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   come to offer to you, O devil, this offering of food, Clothes, gold,   and so on; take it and release the soul of the patient for whom we   --   Cloth, he is preceded by a girl holding the large leaf of a certain   palm over his head as an umbrella to keep him and the soul from   --   shadows firmly to their persons by tying a strip of Cloth tightly   round their waists. Nor is it human beings alone who are thus liable   --   insisted on peeping under the Cloth. Being allowed to do so, he   gazed intently for a minute at the moving figures on the ground

1.19 - Tabooed Acts, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   drink." When offered a drink they often ask that a Cloth may be held   up to hide them whilst drinking.

1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER (to the devotees): "The Mother has put me in such a state of mind that I cannot hide anything from anyone. Mine is the condition of a child. Rkhl doesn't understand it. He covers my injured arm, wrapping my body with a Cloth lest others should see my injury and criticize me. He took Dr. Madhu aside and reported my illness. But I shouted and said: 'Hello! Where are you, Madhusudan? Come and see. My arm is broken!'   "I used to sleep in the same room with Mathur and his wife. They took care of me as if I were their own child. I was then passing through a state of divine madness. Mathur would ask me, 'Father, do you hear our conversation?' 'Yes', I would reply.

1.19 - The Practice of Magical Evocation, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism   Before starting the evocation the magician takes a bath or at least cleans his whole body, for one should not evoke a being in an unclean state, especially if a high and good intelligence is to be evoked. An evocation not only requires a clean spirit and a clean soul, it also requires a clean body. If it is not possible to ba the or to wash the whole body, the magician must at least carefully wash his hands. Everybody is able to do this, and therefore it must never be forgotten. When washing the magician has to concentrate on the idea that all unfavourable physical and psychic influences run off with the water. Prepared in this manner, the magician takes his magical implements, one after the other, from their depository and puts them on a clean, preferably new, piece of Cloth which has been kept in the depository especially for this purpose and which is to protect the implements from dust. Let us assume that the evocation of Hagiel is carried out in a normal living-room. See that during the whole evocation you are not disturbed by anything, and, in order to evade any glances of curiosity, cover the windows carefully with a curtain. Then go and change your Clothes, i. e. put on your magic garments: first your silk stockings - in cold weather your silk underwear - and houseshoes. The evocation already starts with the act of dressing; for you must concentrate on the thoughts which are to do with the evocation only. So bear in mind that by putting on the Clothes you are insulated against all unfavourable influences that may come from the universe or the invisible world. When dressing, you must be entirely sure that your body is not being influenced by any being, whether good or evil. Then, after having dressed, this meditative attitude of being completely insulated and protected must be maintained. Then put round your waist your magic belt and be completely taken up by the thought that you are the sovereign over all elements, the master of all powers.   Finally you put round your head your magus-band or put on the magic headgear with a feeling of true relationship to God, and that not you as a magician, but that God is actually carrying through the whole operation. You must unite yourself with the divine principle inside you in such a way that you have the feeling that you are the deity itself. Having done all this, you are able to go a further step in your operation. You light the magic lamp, which, in our case, must fill the room with a lightgreen light. Set the magic lamp in a place round which you will be able to draw the magic circle or hang it up in the centre of the room. This does not mean that the lamp must be exactly in the centre of the room though it would have the advantage that the whole room gets an equal light. Your next task will be the setting up and impregnation of the magic mirror, if you like, of two magic mirrors. In this example instructions are given for the use of two mirrors. One mirror is to bring about the materialization of Hagiel in the physical world, the other is to keep off unwanted influences. Being conscious of the fact that not you, but the deity is carrying out the procedure, you create, by the help of the imagination, a great sea of light in a wonderful emerald colour, which, also by imagination, you accumulate from the whole universe into the mirror in a manner that the whole surface of the mirror is taken up by this colour. The power of illumination of the condensed green light must be so strong as to illuminate completely the room in which you work. At that moment you must have the imaginative impression that this accumulated light is actually a power matrix, a fluid, which can almost be seen by the physical eye. In any case you must have the permanent impression that you are moving about in the room in an oscillation of green light. This is the way to prepare, magically, the room for the being to be evoked, and in a room like this there will be no more obstacles for the being and it will feel the atmosphere of its own sphere. Already at the moment you accumulate the light you concentrate on the idea that the purpose of this accumulation is to condense the evoked spirit being in a manner that you can see it with your physical eyes and hear it with your physical ears. The stronger your imagination, belief, will and conviction, the better condensed and truer Hagiel will appear to you. When impregnating the room, do not forget to include that you wish the accumulated planetary light-power to remain in the mirror and in the room until you dissolve it again by force of your imagination.   --   As far as the earth.zone or any other zones are concerned the round shape of the seal is to be maintained. seal is now ready and you can start preparing the circle and the triangle. If you have a circle sewn into a piece of Cloth or painted on a piece of paper you put it on the floor beside the triangle and once more run over its lines with the magic wand or with your right hand, or with one finger of your right hand, meditating on the idea that they represent the eternity, the microcosm and macrocosm, that they are symbolizing the whole universe in its great and in its small aspect. The circle, in the middle of which you must stand when calling the intelligence, is for you the small and the great world. Your meditative attitude must be so strong that no other idea can exist in your mind at that moment.   You follow the same procedure when re-drawing the triangle, which represents the three dimensional world, i. e. the mental, astral and physical world. In order that the intelligence you intend to evoke should appear not only in its mental, but also in its astral and physical shape, you must include this wish when you concentrate on your meditative attitude towards the triangle.

12.01 - This Great Earth Our Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Thus to recapitulate, the transcendent Spirit came down from above and stood behind the creationstood behind for long. And then it advanced towards the front here upon earth: life appeared, the inorganic material particles became organised cells with the first incidence of an incipient consciousness and will. With its growth and the appearance of mind there grew the psychic element, the beginning of the individual, in the higher animal for example. And the psychic element with the growth of consciousness and will and individuality in man, developed into the psychic being which moves on towards the Divine impersonation on the earth. This is Earth's divine fulfilment in and through her earthly son, man. She Clothes herself more and more with the developing psychic consciousness of man meeting the Divine Consciousness finally incorporating in herself and as herself her lord, the Supreme Divine and in her individual formations his parts and portions to make the whole a divine Play.    The rishi speaks of the young mother holding her child tight in her womb and not offering it to the father. add-column2log.sh Agenda_header Agenda_Vol_1 Agenda_works1 aplayer.sh asay_loop.sh author_sampler.sh BACKUPS bashrc-BACKUP bind_arrowkeys.sh black_wallpaper.jpg book_editting.sh center.sh changedir.sh checkcrontemp.sh cw.sh date-2-masslog.sh Desktop docprocessor.sh Documents Downloads eth96l ethnow.sh getaddress.sh getbook.sh getsource.sh history_su ifempty.sh if.sh infinite_alarm.sh infinite_sav.sh keys_authoring.sh lambda2.sh lambda.sh lesserlog.sh lesslog.sh majlog.sh map-math.sh map.sh mem_encoder.sh mem_player.sh Music new_subject.sh Pictures POS_file.sh Public quicklisp quotes_switcher.sh randomfooterwp.sh random_sentence.sh random-test.sh read.sh result2.png result.png rip_pic.sh sav_wp.sh say_loop.sh screenshot2.sh screenshot.sh sent_compressor.sh simple_az_loop.sh simple_for_loop.sh simple_for_savitri.sh simple_infinite_loop2.sh simple_infinite_loop3.sh simple_infinite_loop.sh sourcerer.sh Steam subject_grouping.sh subject_tagging_keys.sh subject_tagging_newfull.sh subject_tagging.sh T1_wp.sh temp4 temp_christ Templates temp-wordlist temp-wordlist2 terminal_colors2.sh terminal_colors.sh test15.sh test_for_loop.sh test.sh timestamp.sh Videos when.sh wikipedia-extractor.sh WORDLIST wordlist-backup-daily.sh wordlist-backup.sh wordlisteditcode.sh wordlistedit.sh wordlisteditxed.sh wp_maker.sh xdo_download_agenda_audio.sh xdo_grab_agenda.sh She does so as long as she is the inconscient Matter but as she grows conscious she starts making.

12.04 - Love and Death, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    The Viziers of Bassora represents Love in its mood of frolicsome, almost frivolous dalliance, Clothed, it would appear, in a body purely made of the fluid, i.e., playful senses. There is no need, no question of moral or social inhibitionslove is in its absolute spontaneous sportive natural state, natural to an earthly being. The beauty that unhindered love displays here has no stain in it, a stain that a more sophisticated and cultured nature contracts: it is the smiling radiance of the unspoiled limpid consciousness of a child. Yes, it is the Brindaban-lila of Love in its very human, very secular movement. Love is here of earth and of an earthy mode and yet somehow it has maintained its purity, its very spontaneity and simplicity has, as it were, miraculously by its very naturalness purified it of its dross and made it akin to something aerial and heavenly.    In Vasavadutta, Love is depicted as something royal and noble and aristocratic, it is something refined and beautiful, an adornment of a consciousness cultured and luminous; it is a special gift bestowed by the Gods only upon a few godly creatures, men and women.

1.20 - RULES FOR HOUSEHOLDERS AND MONKS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "At one time two men were engaged to wrestle. One of them was Hanuman Singh and the other a Mussalman from the Punjab. The Mussalman was a strong, stout man. He had eaten lustily of butter and meat for fifteen days before the day of the wrestling-match, and even on that day. All thought he would be the victor. Hanuman Singh, on the other hand, clad in a dirty Cloth, had eaten sparingly for some days before the day of the match and devoted himself to repeating the holy name of Mahavir. On the day of the match he observed a complete fast. All thought that he would surely be defeated.   But it was he who won, while the man who had feasted for fifteen days lost the fight.

1.20 - Tabooed Persons, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   Mikado's Clothes without his leave; he would have swellings and   pains all over his body. In Fiji there is a special name (_kana   --   chief's dishes or wearing his Clothes. "The throat and body swell,   and the impious person dies. I had a fine mat given to me by a man   --   vessels or Clothes of the Mikado and a Fijian chief we see that   other side of the god-man's character to which attention has been   --   his defilement among others, just as the vessels and Clothes of   sacred kings and chiefs are destroyed or cast away for a similar   --   we have seen that the vessels and Clothes of the sacred Mikado, of   women at childbirth and menstruation, and of persons defiled by   --   far as to hold that to touch a loom or women's Clothes would so   weaken a man that he would have no success in hunting, fishing, and   --   dismantled it and Clothed it with everything that to their ideas   seemed most repulsive. On the evening of the day on which they had

1.21 - A DAY AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "A child has no attachment. He makes a play house, and if anyone touches it, he will jump about and cry. The next moment he himself will break it. This moment he may be very attached to his Cloth. He says: 'My daddy has given it to me. I won't part with it.'   But the next moment you can cajole him away from it with a toy. He will go away with you, leaving the Cloth behind.   "These are the characteristics of a Jnni.

1.21 - Tabooed Things, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   to the throne. When the wicked brothers Clotaire and Childebert   coveted the kingdom of their dead brother Clodomir, they inveigled   --   sword to the children's grandmo ther, Queen Clotilde, at Paris. The   envoy showed the scissors and the sword to Clotilde, and bade her   choose whether the children should be shorn and live or remain   --   shorn. And murdered they were by their ruthless uncle Clotaire with   his own hand. The king of Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands, must   --   carefully every knot in the Clothes of the bride and bridegroom   before the celebration of the marriage ceremony. We meet with the   --   Cloth like a collar, with strings and many knots on the strings.   They took it from her, sorely against her will, for she seemed to   think that she could not die in the fire, if only the Cloth with the   knotted strings was on her. When it was taken away, she said, "Now I   --   of Carpathus people never button the Clothes they put upon a dead   body and they are careful to remove all rings from it; "for the

1.22 - ADVICE TO AN ACTOR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Narendra told the story of two yogis in Bhutan who used to drink daily a pound of the bitter juice of neem-leaves. He had also visited the hermitage of a holy man on the bank of the Narmada. At the sight of the Bengali Babu dressed in European Clothes, the sdhu had remarked, "He has a knife hidden under his Clothes, next to his belly."   Keeping the pictures of holy persons   --   MASTER: "You see, all these sufferings are 'because of a piece of loin Cloth'. A man takes a wife and begets children; therefore he must secure a job. The sdhu is worried about his loinCloth, and the householder about his wife. Further, the householder may not live on good terms with his relatives; so he must live separately with his wife. (With a laugh) Chaitanya once said to Nityananda: 'Listen to me, brother. A man entangled in worldliness can never be free.' "   M. (to himself): "Perhaps the Master is referring to the world of avidy. It is the world of avidy that entangles a householder."   --   MASTER (smiling): "God is our England. Now and then I used to leave off my Clothes and joyfully roam about naked. Once Sambhu said to me: 'It is very comfortable to walk about naked. That is why you do it. Once I did it myself.' "   SURENDRA: "On returning from the office, as I put away my coat and trousers, I say to the Divine Mother, 'O Mother, how tightly You have bound me to the world!' "

1.22 - How to Learn the Practice of Astrology, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   I will end by betting you six Clothing coupons to a pound of sugar that in two years' concentrated work on these lines you will become a better astrologer than ever I was. (This is very cunning of me; in two years we shall all be getting Clothes without coupons.)   Love is the law, love under will.

1.22 - On the many forms of vainglory., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   Observe and you will find unholy vainglory abounding till the very grave in Clothes, oils, servants, perfumes and the like.   The sun shines on all alike, and vainglory beams on all activities. For instance, I am vainglorious when I fast, and when I relax the fast in order to be unnoticed I am again vainglorious over my prudence. When well-dressed I am quite overcome by vainglory, and when I put on poor Clothes I am vainglorious again. When I talk I am defeated, and when I am silent I am again defeated by it. However I throw this prickly-pear, a spike stands upright.   A vainglorious person is a believing idolater; he apparently honours God, but he wants to please not God but men.

1.23 - Escape from the Malabranche. The Sixth Bolgia Hypocrites. Catalano and Loderingo. Caiaphas., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity     So that she Clothes her only with a shift;     And downward from the top of the hard bank

1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "The man who has seen God becomes like a child. He is beyond the three gunas; he is unattached to any of them. He behaves like a ghoul, for he maintains the same attitude toward things holy and unholy. Again, like a madman, he sometimes laughs and sometimes weeps. Now he dresses himself like a dandy and the next moment he goes entirely naked and roams about with his Cloth under his arm. Therefore he seems to be a lunatic. Again, at times he sits motionless like an inert thing."   Harmless ego   --   "Bhavanath, Baburam, and a few others have a feminine nature. Harish sleeps in a woman's Cloth.   Baburam says that he too likes the womanly attitude. So I am right. Bhavanath also is like that.

1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   (7) Sri Bhagavan related the following funny anecdote; Ezhuthachan, a great Malayali saint and author, had a few fish concealed in him when he entered the temple. Some enemy reported it to the worshippers in the temple. The man was searched and taken to the king. The king asked him Why did you take the fish into the temple? He replied: It is not my fault. I had it concealed in my Clothes. The others exposed the fish in the temple. The fault lies in exposure. Excreta within the body are not considered filthy; but when excreted, they are considered filthy. So also with this.   12th January, 1937   --   D.: Why then did the bathing angels don Clothes when he appeared before them, but not when Suka passed?   M.: That same Vyasa sent Suka to Janaka for instruction; Suka was tested by Janaka and finally he returned convinced of Vyasas greatness.   --   He remembered how on a festive occasion he was asked to help her in making some modakas (delicacies), but he hesitated and finally refused, because he was obliged to change his Clothes and he could put on only koupina (loin-Cloth or codpiece) which made him feel shy.   He was reprimanded by his uncle and this lady. The uncles wife said with humility and gentleness: Quite. No wonder that one destined for this high state could not do such humble work in those days.   --   (favourite examples of the logicians, meaning the pot and the Cloth) save you in a crisis? Why then waste yourself thinking of them and on discussion? Stop exercising the vocal organs and giving them pain. Think of the Feet of the Lord and drink the nectar! (6)   (5) Immortality is the fruit of Devotion:

1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   white Cloth over his face and knees as he lay slumbering in the heat   of the sultry afternoon. Execution soon followed the sentence of

1.24 - The Seventh Bolgia - Thieves. Vanni Fucci. Serpents., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity   This was no way for one Clothed with a cloak;     For hardly we, he light, and I pushed upward,

1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "But one should learn the contents of the scriptures and then act according to their injunctions. A man lost a letter. He couldn't remember where he had left it. He began to search for it with a lamp. After two or three people had searched, the letter was at last found. The message in the letter was: 'Please send us five seers of sandesh and a piece of wearing-Cloth.' The man read it and then threw the letter away. There was no further need of it; now all he had to do was to buy the five seers of sandesh and the piece of Cloth.   Reading, hearing, and seeing   --   "But the nature of the vijnni is different. He is unconcerned about anything. Perhaps he carries his wearing-Cloth loose under his arm, like a child; or perhaps the Cloth has dropped from his body altogether.   "The man who knows that God exists is called a Jnni. A Jnni is like one who knows beyond a doubt that a log of wood contains fire. But a vijnni is he who lights the log, cooks over the fire, and is nourished by the food. The eight fetters have fallen from the vijnni. He may keep merely the appearance of lust, anger, and the rest."   --   A man gets the fulfillment of the desire he cherishes while practising sadhana. As one thinks, so one receives. A magician was showing his tricks before a king. Now and then he exclaimed: 'Come confusion! Come delusion! O King, give me money! Give me Clothes!' Suddenly his tongue turned upward and clove to the roof of his mouth. He experienced kumbhaka. He could utter neither word nor sound, and became motionless.   People thought he was dead. They built a vault of bricks and buried him there in that posture. After a thousand years someone dug into the vault. Inside it people found a man seated in samdhi. They took him for a holy man and worshipped him. When they shook him his tongue was loosened and regained its normal position. The magician became conscious of the outer world and cried, as he had a thousand years before: 'Come confusion! Come delusion! O King, give me money! Give me Clothes!'   "I used to weep, praying to the Divine Mother, 'O Mother, destroy with Thy thunderbolt my inclination to reason.' "   --   Red hibiscus flowers and vilwa-leaves adorned the Mother's feet. Her three eyes radiated love for Her devotees. Two of Her hands were raised as if to give them boons and reassurance; the other two hands held symbols of death. She was Clothed in a sari of Benares silk and was decked with ornaments.   Image of Kli   --   "Sometimes the paramahamsa behaves like a madman. When I experienced that divine madness I used to worship my own sexual organ as the iva-phallus. But I can't do that now. A few days after the dedication of the temple at Dakshineswar, a madman came there who was really a sage endowed with the Knowledge of Brahman. He had a bamboo twig in one hand and a potted mango-plant in the other, and was wearing torn shoes. He didn't follow any social conventions. After bathing in the Ganges he didn't perform any religious rites. He ate something that he carried in a corner of his wearing-Cloth. Then he entered the Kli temple and chanted hymns to the Deity. The temple trembled. Haladhri was then in the shrine. The madman wasn't allowed to eat at the guesthouse, but he paid no attention to this slight. He searched for food in the rubbish heap where the dogs were eating crumbs from the discarded leaf-plates. Now and then he pushed the dogs aside to get his crumbs. The dogs didn't mind either. Haladhri followed him and asked: 'Who are you? Are you a purnajnani?' The madman whispered, 'Sh! Yes, I am a purnajnani.' My heart began to palpitate as Haladhri told me about it. I clung to Hriday.   I said to the Divine Mother, 'Mother, shall I too have to pass through such a state?' We all went to see the man. He spoke words of great wisdom to us but behaved like a madman before others. Haladhri followed him a great way when he left the garden.   --   "A man with rajasic bhakti feels like making a display of his devotion before others. He worships the Deity with 'sixteen ingredients', enters the temple wearing a silk Cloth, and puts around his neck a string of rudrksha beads interspersed here and there with beads of gold and ruby.   "A man with tamasic bhakti shows the courage and boisterousness of a highway robber.

1.25 - Fascinations, Invisibility, Levitation, Transmutations, Kinks in Time, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy     Nearly midnight. At this moment we stopped dictating, and began to converse. Then Fra. P. said: "Oh, if I could only dictate a book like the Tao Teh King!" Then he closed his eyes as if meditating. Just before I had noticed a change in his face, most extraordinary, as if he were no longer the same person; in fact, in the ten minutes we were talking he seemed to be any number of different people. I especially noticed the pupils of his eyes were so enlarged that the entire eye seemed black. (I tremble so and have such a quaking feeling inside, simply in thinking of last night, that I can't form letters). Then quite slowly the entire room filled with a thick yellow light (deep golden, but not brilliant. I mean not dazzling, but soft.) Fra. P. Looked like a person I had never seen but seemed to know quite well his face, Clothes and all were of the same yellow. I was so disturbed that I looked up to the ceiling to see what caused the light, but could only see the candles. Then the chair on which he sat seemed to rise; it was like a throne, and he seemed to rise; it was like a throne, and he seemed to be either dead or sleeping; but it was certainly no longer Fra. P. This frightened me, and I tried to understand by looking round the room; when I looked back the chair was raised, and he was still the same. I realized I was alone; and thinking he was dead or gone or some other terrible thing I lost consciousness.     This discourse has been thus left unfinished: but it is only necessary to add that the capacity to extract such spiritual honey from these unpromising flowers is the mark of an adept who has perfected his Magick Cup. This method of Qabalistic exegesis is one of he best ways of exalting the reason to the higher consciousness. Evidently it started Fra. P. so that in a moment he become completely concentrated and entranced.[45]

1.25 - On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual feeling., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   44. If the limit and rule and characteristic of extreme pride is for a man to feign such virtues as he does not possess for the sake of glory, then it follows that a sign of the deepest humility will be to cheapen ourselves by pretending to have faults that we do not possess. It was in this way that he behaved who took into his hands bread and cheese.3 Likewise the exponent of purity who took off his Clothes and, free of passion, went through the whole city.4 Such men care nothing for human censure. They have already received invisible power through prayer to reassure all. But he who is anxious about the former will show a lack of the latter.5 When God is prepared to attend to our prayer, then we can do anything.   45. It is better to offend men than God. God rejoices when He sees us running to meet dishonour, so as to crush, strike and destroy our vain self-esteem.

1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy   St Franois de Sales used to say, I hear of nothing but perfection on every side, so far as talk goes; but I see very few people who really practice it. Everybody has his own notion of perfection. One man thinks it lies in the cut of his Clothes, another in fasting, a third in almsgiving, or in frequenting the Sacraments, in meditation, in some special gift of contemplation, or in extraordinary gifts or graces but they are all mistaken, as it seems to me, because they confuse the means, or the results, with the end and cause.   For my part, the only perfection I know of is a hearty love of God, and to love ones neighbour as oneself. Charity is the only virtue which rightly unites us to God and man. Such union is our final aim and end, and all the rest is mere delusion.   --   Finally, there is the exercise, much employed in India, which consists in dispassionately examining the distractions as they arise and in tracing them back, through the memory of particular thoughts, feelings and actions, to their origins in temperament and character, constitution and acquired habit. This procedure reveals to the soul the true reasons for its separation from the divine Ground of its being. It comes to realize that its spiritual ignorance is due to the inert recalcitrance or positive rebelliousness of its selfhood, and it discovers, specifically, the points where that eclipsing selfhood congeals, as it were, into the hardest, densest Clots. Then, having made the resolution to do what it can, in the course of daily living, to rid itself of these impediments to Light, it quietly puts aside the thought of them and, empty, purged and silent, passively exposes itself to whatever it may be that lies beyond and within.   Noverim me, noverim Te, St. Francis of Assisi used to repeat. Self-knowledge, leading to self-hatred and humility, is the condition of the love and knowledge of God. Spiritual exercises that make use of distractions have this great merit, that they increase self-knowledge. Every soul that approaches God must be aware of who and what it is. To practice a form of mental or vocal prayer that is, so to speak, above ones moral station is to act a lie: and the consequences of such lying are wrong notions about God, idolatrous worship of private and unrealistic phantasies and (for lack of the humility of self-knowledge) spiritual pride.

1.25 - Temporary Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   over, covered with a white Cloth, and hung with tapestry. He is   supported by a wooden frame with a gilt canopy, and two Brahmans   --   on new Clothes and cut their hair and beards. Then they repaired to   a forest near the capital where they shot arrows on horseback for

1.26 - FESTIVAL AT ADHARS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Sri Ramakrishna returned to his room and sat on the small couch. He began to praise a medicine that a certain brahmachari had prepared for him. Referring to this man, Hazra said: "He is now entangled in many worldly anxieties. What a shame! Look at Nabai Chaitanya of Konnagar. Though a householder, he has put on a red Cloth."   MASTER: "What shall I say? I clearly see that it is God Himself who has assumed all these human forms. Therefore I cannot take anybody to task."

1.26 - On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   (C) sackCloth (O) contrition   (D) ashes (P) forgetfulness of wrongs

1.27 - AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   A brahmin devotee was reading to the Master from a book of devotional songs by Ramprasad. Sri Ramakrishna asked him to continue. The brahmin read a song, the first line of which was: "O Mother, put on Thy Clothes."   MASTER: "Stop, please! These ideas are outlandish and bizarre. Read something that will awaken bhakti."

1.27 - CONTEMPLATION, ACTION AND SOCIAL UTILITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy   Now, the last end of each thing is that which is intended by the first author or mover of that thing; and the first author and mover of the universe is an intellect. Consequently, the last end of the universe must be the good of the intellect; and this is truth. Therefore truth must be the last end of the whole universe, and the consideration thereof must be the chief occupation of wisdom. And for this reason divine Wisdom, Clothed in flesh declares that He came into the world to make known the truth. Moreover Aristotle defines the First Philosophy as being the knowledge of truth, not of any truth, but of that truth which is the source of all truth, of that, namely, which refers to the first principle of being of all things; wherefore its truth is the principle of all truth, since the disposition of things is the same in truth as in being.   St. Thomas Aquinas

1.27 - Describes the great love shown us by the Lord in the first words of the Paternoster and the great importance of our making no account of good birth if we truly desire to be the daughters of God., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity   hast Clothed Thyself with humanity: Thou hast therefore some reason to care for our advantage.   But behold, Thy Father is in Heaven, as Thou hast told us, and it is right that Thou shouldst consider

1.27 - On holy solitude of body and soul., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   11. It is not safe to swim in ones Clothes, nor should a slave of passion touch theology.   12. The cell of the solitary is the confines of his body; he has within a shrine of knowledge.

1.28 - On holy and blessed prayer, mother of virtues, and on the attitude of mind and body in prayer., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   3. If we wish to stand before our King and God and converse with Him we must not rush into this without preparation, lest, seeing us from afar without weapons and suitable Clothing for those who stand before the King, He should order His servants and slaves to seize us and banish us from His presence and tear up our petitions and throw them in our face.   4. When you are going to stand before the Lord, let the garment of your soul be woven throughout with the thread that has become oblivious of wrongs. Otherwise, prayer will bring you no benefit.   --   15. If you are Clothed in all meekness and freedom from anger, you will not have much trouble in loosing your mind from captivity.   16. Until we have acquired genuine prayer we are like people teaching children to begin to walk.   --   51. It is one thing frequently to keep watch over the heart, and another to supervise the heart by means of the mind, that ruler and bishop that offers spiritual sacrifices to Christ. When the holy and heavenly fire comes to dwell in the souls of the former, as says one of those who have received the title of Theologian,4 it burns them because they still lack purification, whereas it enlightens the latter according to the degree of their perfection. For one and the same fire is called both the fire which consumes and the light which illuminates.5 That is why some people come from prayer as if they were marching out of a fiery furnace and feel relief as from some defilement and from all that is material, while others are as if illumined with light and Clothed in a garment of joy and humility. But those who come from prayer without experiencing either of these two effects have prayed bodily (not to say after the Jewish fashion), and not spiritually.   52. If a body is changed in its activity from contact with another body, then how can he remain unchanged who touches the body of God with innocent hands?6

1.28 - The Killing of the Tree-Spirit, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   the King kneels on a white Cloth, all heads are bared, and a soldier   sets three or four hats, one above the other, on his Majesty's head.   --   effigy scantily Clothed in rags, a battered old hat crushed down on   his dirty face, his great round paunch stuffed with straw,   --   Cloth; beside him is a cart-wheel which is kept turning round. Two   lads disguised as old men follow the sledge lamenting. The rest of   --   dressed as a woman in black Clothes is carried on a litter or bier   by four men; he is lamented over by men disguised as women in black   Clothes, then thrown down before the village dung-heap, drenched   with water, buried in the dung-heap, and covered with straw. On the   --   which were adorned with leaves and covered with white Cloths. These   they took from house to house in pairs, stopping at every door where   --   figure of straw or the like materials, dress it in old Clothes,   which they have begged from houses in the village, and carry it out   --   dress up a straw figure with women's Clothes and carry it out of the   village towards the setting sun. At the boundary they strip it of   its Clothes, tear it in pieces, and scatter the fragments about the   fields. This is called "Burying Death." As they carry the image out,   --   an effigy is made of old Clothes, hay, and straw, for the purpose of   driving Death out of the village. On Sunday the people, armed with   --   with respect, is stript of its Clothes and flung with curses into   the water, or torn to pieces in a field. Then the young folk repair   --   bits of Cloth, and so forth. The tree thus adorned is called Summer   or May. Boys carry it from house to house singing appropriate songs   --   bright-coloured ribbons and Cloths, and fastened to the top of a   long pole, the effigy was then borne with singing and clamour to the   --   customs: the dressing of a girl in the Clothes worn by the Death,   and the leading her about the village to the same song which had   --   reviving vegetation of spring is Clothed in the shirt worn by the   Death which has just been destroyed, the object certainly cannot be   --   Lent is dressed by the girls in woman's Clothes and hung with   ribbons, necklace, and garlands. Attached to a long pole it is   --   stripped of its Clothes and ornaments; then the crowd rushes at it   and tears it to bits, scuffling for the fragments. Every one tries   --   straw and "is dressed in woman's Clothes, with a necklace and a   floral crown. Then a tree is felled, and, after being decked with   --   Clothes and flowers. This was laid in a trough and carried with   songs to the bank of a lake or river. Here the crowd divided into

1.29 - Concerning heaven on earth, or godlike dispassion and perfection, and the resurrection of the soul before the general resurrection., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset   10. If it is the acme of gluttony to force oneself to eat even when one has no appetite, then it is certainly the acme of temperance for a hungry man to overcome nature when it is blameless.8 If it is extreme sensuality to rave over irrational and even inanimate creatures, then it is extreme purity to hold all persons in the same regard as inanimate things. If it is the height of cupidity to go on collecting and never be satisfied, it is the height of poverty not to spare even ones own body. If it is the height of despondency, while living in complete peace, not to acquire patience, then it is the height of patience to think of oneself even in affliction as being at rest. If it is called a sea of wrath for a person to be savage even when no one is about, then it will be a sea of long-suffering to be as calm in the presence of your slanderer as in his absence. If it is the height of vainglory when a person, seeing no one near him to praise him, puts on affected behaviour, it is certainly a mark of its absence, not to let your thought be beguiled in the presence of those who praise you. If it is a sign of perdition (that is to say, pride) to be arrogant even in poor Clothing, then it is a mark of saving humility to have humble thoughts in the midst of high undertakings and achievements. If it is a sign of complete enslavement to the passions to yield readily to everything the demons sow in us, then I take it as a mark of holy dispassion to be able to say honestly: The evil one who dodges me, I have not known;9 nor how he came, nor why, nor how he went; but I am completely unaware of everything of this kind, because I am wholly united with God, and always will be.   11. He who has been granted such a state, while still in the flesh, always has God dwelling within him as his Guide in all his words, deeds and thoughts. Therefore, through illumination he apprehends the Lords will as a sort of inner voice. He is above all human instruction and says: When shall I come and appear before the face of God?10 For I can no longer bear the force of love; I long for the immortal beauty which Thou hast given me in exchange for this clay.

1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   (7) Sri Bhagavan related the following funny anecdote; Ezhuthachan, a great Malayali saint and author, had a few fish concealed in him when he entered the temple. Some enemy reported it to the worshippers in the temple. The man was searched and taken to the king. The king asked him "Why did you take the fish into the temple"? He replied: "It is not my fault. I had it concealed in my Clothes. The others exposed the fish in the temple. The fault lies in exposure. Excreta within the body are not considered filthy; but when excreted, they are considered filthy. So also with this."   12th January, 1937   --   D.: Why then did the bathing angels don Clothes when he appeared before them, but not when Suka passed?   M.: That same Vyasa sent Suka to Janaka for instruction; Suka was tested by Janaka and finally he returned convinced of Vyasa's greatness.

1.31 - Continues the same subject. Explains what is meant by the Prayer of Quiet. Gives several counsels to those who experience it. This chapter is very noteworthy., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity   more than the glorious Infant-a poor little Child, Who, to judge from the swaddling-Clothes in   which He was wrapped and from the small number of the people whom He had as a retinue to take

1.33 - Count Ugolino and the Archbishop Ruggieri. The Death of Count Ugolino's Sons., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity   And eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on Clothes."   "In moat above," said he, "of Malebranche,

1.33 - The Gardens of Adonis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   round the Karma-tree, which is decked with strips of coloured Cloth   and sham bracelets and necklets of plaited straw. As a preparation   --   Eve of St. John the window-sills are draped with rich Cloths, on   which the pots are placed, adorned with crimson and blue silk and   --   to place a statuette or Cloth doll dressed as a woman, or a   Priapus-like figure made of paste; but this custom, rigorously

1.34 - Continues the same subject. This is very suitable for reading after the reception of the Most Holy Sacrament., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity   If, while He went about in the world, the sick were healed merely by touching His Clothes, how   can we doubt that He will work miracles when He is within us, if we have faith, or that He will

1.38 - Treats of the great need which we have to beseech the Eternal Father to grant us what we ask in these words: Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Explains certain temptations. This chapter is noteworthy., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity   something laid by; if he can get a habit of good Cloth, he will not ask for one of coarse material.   He likes to have some trifle, if only books, which he can pawn or sell, for if he falls ill he will need

1.39 - The Ritual of Osiris, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   of grain wrapped up in Cloth and roughly shaped like an Osiris, and   placed inside a bricked-up recess at the side of the tomb, sometimes

1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   He remembered how on a festive occasion he was asked to help her in making some modakas (delicacies), but he hesitated and finally refused, because he was obliged to change his Clothes and he could put on only koupina (loin-Cloth or codpiece) which made him feel shy.   He was reprimanded by his uncle and this lady. The uncle's wife said with humility and gentleness: "Quite. No wonder that one destined for this high state could not do such humble work in those days."   --   (favourite examples of the logicians, meaning the pot and the Cloth) save you in a crisis? Why then waste yourself thinking of them and on discussion? Stop exercising the vocal organs and giving them pain. Think of the Feet of the Lord and drink the nectar! (6)   (5) Immortality is the fruit of Devotion:   --   Sri Bhagavan said that a saint Namah Sivaya who was formerly living in Arunachala must have undergone considerable difficulties. For he has sung a song saying: "God proves the devotee by means of severe ordeals. A washerman beats the Cloth on a slab, not to tear it, but only to remove the dirt."   432   --   The first challenged her to prove his mind. She accepted. The second desired to be left alone with only a shred of garment in which to clo the herself. The first sister returned home, leaving the other alone with flimsy Clothing. As the latter continued to remain under the tree, she appeared penitent and humble. The saint noticed her and approached her after some time. He asked what had happened to her that she   435   --   One rainy night this woman was found standing under the eaves of the thatched shed in which the saint was. Her Clothes were dripping and she was shivering with cold. The master asked why she was in such a pitiable state. She said that her place was exposed to the rains and so she sought shelter under the eaves and that she would retire as soon as the rain ceased. He asked her to move into the hut and later told her to change her wet Clothes. She did not have dry Cloth to put on. So he offered her one of his own Clothes. She wore it, still later she begged permission to massage his feet. He consented. Eventually they embraced.   The next day she returned home, had good food and wore fine Clothes.   She still continued to work in the garden.

14.02 - Occult Experiences, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    "Prs du mur de Cloture"    (Near the cloister wall)

1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   Sri Bhagavan said that a saint Namah Sivaya who was formerly living in Arunachala must have undergone considerable difficulties. For he has sung a song saying: God proves the devotee by means of severe ordeals. A washerman beats the Cloth on a slab, not to tear it, but only to remove the dirt.   25th January. 1938   --   The first challenged her to prove his mind. She accepted. The second desired to be left alone with only a shred of garment in which to clo the herself. The first sister returned home, leaving the other alone with flimsy Clothing. As the latter continued to remain under the tree, she appeared penitent and humble. The saint noticed her and approached her after some time. He asked what had happened to her that she   Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi looked so lowly. She pleaded penitence for her past life, desired to lead a purer and nobler life and finished with a prayer to him to accept her humble services in the garden or attendance on himself. He advised her to return home and lead a normal life. But she protested. So he detained her for watering the tulasi plants. She accepted the function with delight and began to work in the garden.   One rainy night this woman was found standing under the eaves of the thatched shed in which the saint was. Her Clothes were dripping and she was shivering with cold. The master asked why she was in such a pitiable state. She said that her place was exposed to the rains and so she sought shelter under the eaves and that she would retire as soon as the rain ceased. He asked her to move into the hut and later told her to change her wet Clothes. She did not have dry Cloth to put on. So he offered her one of his own Clothes. She wore it, still later she begged permission to massage his feet. He consented. Eventually they embraced.   The next day she returned home, had good food and wore fine Clothes.   She still continued to work in the garden.   --   Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi universe in diverse forms. But if he sees his Self he is not aware of his separateness from the universe; in fact his individuality and the other entities vanish although they persist in all their forms. Siva is seen as the universe. But the seer does not see the background itself. Think of the man who sees only the Cloth and not the cotton of which it is made; or of the man who sees the pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show and not the screen itself as the background; or again the man who sees the letters which he reads but not the paper on which they are written. The objects are thus Consciousness and forms. But the ordinary person sees the objects in the universe but not Siva in these forms. Siva is the Being assuming these forms and the Consciousness seeing them. That is to say, Siva is the background underlying both the subject and the object, and again Siva in Repose and Siva in Action, or   Siva and Sakti, or the Lord and the Universe. Whatever it is said to be, it is only Consciousness whether in repose or in action. Who is there that is not conscious? So, who is not realised? How then can questions arise doubting realisation or desiring it? If I am not pratyaksha to me, I can then say that Siva is not pratyaksha.   --   Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi the body; there is something in me the separate objects are seen as if lying outside. Know that they are all within yourself. Is a piece of Cloth independent of yarn? Can the objects remain without Me?   Talk 479.   --   for taking food, the loin Cloth was his Clothing and thus there was   no want for him.   --   Then Sri Bhagavan continued: I had no Cloth spread on the floor in   earlier days. I used to sit on the floor and lie on the ground. That

1.450 - 1.500 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi universe in diverse forms. But if he sees his Self he is not aware of his separateness from the universe; in fact his individuality and the other entities vanish although they persist in all their forms. Siva is seen as the universe. But the seer does not see the background itself. Think of the man who sees only the Cloth and not the cotton of which it is made; or of the man who sees the pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show and not the screen itself as the background; or again the man who sees the letters which he reads but not the paper on which they are written. The objects are thus Consciousness and forms. But the ordinary person sees the objects in the universe but not Siva in these forms. Siva is the Being assuming these forms and the Consciousness seeing them. That is to say, Siva is the background underlying both the subject and the object, and again Siva in Repose and Siva in Action, or   Siva and Sakti, or the Lord and the Universe. Whatever it is said to be, it is only Consciousness whether in repose or in action. Who is there that is not conscious? So, who is not realised? How then can questions arise doubting realisation or desiring it? If 'I' am not pratyaksha to me, I can then say that Siva is not pratyaksha.   --   Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi the body; there is something in me" the separate objects are seen as if lying outside. Know that they are all within yourself. Is a piece of Cloth independent of yarn? Can the objects remain without Me?   Talk 479.

1.45 - The Corn-Mother and the Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   in woman's Clothes and called the Corn-mother. It is carried home on   the last waggon, and then thoroughly drenched with water. The   --   homewards. Then they make a puppet out of it, dress it with Clothes   belonging to the farmer, and adorn it with a crown and a blue or   --   Sometimes they stripped him of most of his Clothes, sometimes they   would drench him with water which had been carefully stored in   --   oats-straw; the Oats-bride is a man dressed in woman's Clothes, but   not wrapt in straw. They are drawn in a waggon to the ale-house,

1.46 - The Corn-Mother in Many Lands, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   plants; they were dressed in women's Clothes and worshipped. Thus   the Maize-mother was represented by a puppet made of stalks of maize   --   incense, and having wrapt them in a white Cloth deposited them in a   little oval-shaped basket. These seven ears were the infant Soul of   --   corn-spirit, and is dressed in Clothes and handled with reverence,   the spirit is clearly regarded as immanent in the corn. But when the

1.47 - Lityerses, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   fastened on the reaper's face and he is dressed in woman's Clothes;   or if the reaper is a woman, she is dressed in man's Clothes. A   dance follows. At the supper the Old Man gets twice as large a   --   corn-stalks, dressed in Clothes, and placed on the threshing-floor,   under the heap of corn which was to be threshed last. Whoever   --   they were sacrificed; for example, the priests, Clothed in red and   smeared with blood, offered a red-haired, red-cheeked man to "the

1.47 - Reincarnation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   What is it that reincarnates? We have had this before, in another connection; it is the Supernal Triad of Jechidah, Chiah and Neschamah that Clothes the original Hadit or Point-of-View, with as much of the Ruach as the Human Consciousness, Tiphareth, has been able during a given life to attach to itself by dint of persistent Aspiration. If there is not enough Ruach to ensure an adequate quota of Memories, one could never become conscious of the continuity between one life and the next.   Briefly, the orthodox theory as put forth by H.P.B. is that one works off one's Karma after death in Devachan, or Kama Loka, or some such place; when the balance is exhausted, one may come back to earth, or in some other way carry on the Great Work. One theory see Opus Lutetianum, the Paris Working says that when one has quite finished with Earth-problems, one is promoted to Venus, where "bodies" are liquid, and thence to Mercury, where they are gaseous, finally to the Sun, where they are composed of pure Fire. Eliphaz Lvi says: "In the Suns we remember; in the planets we forget."

1.48 - The Corn-Spirit as an Animal, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   Wolf is made up in human form and dressed in Clothes. This indicates   a confusion of ideas between the corn-spirit conceived in human and

1.49 - Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   passing, he stepped into the river with all his Clothes on, to wash   off the taint. To drink pig's milk was believed to cause leprosy to   --   himself and his Clothes, also favours the view of the sanctity of   the pig. For it is a common belief that the effect of contact with a   --   after the offering was made, he must wash his body and his Clothes   in a river or spring before he could enter a city or his own house.

1.50 - Eating the God, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   people provided themselves with new Clothes and new household   utensils and furniture; they collected their old Clothes and   rubbish, together with all the remaining grain and other old   --   pillow and Clothes. This dummy the demon is supposed to mistake for   the sick man, who consequently recovers. Cure or prevention of this

1.51 - How to Recognise Masters, Angels, etc., and how they Work, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy     Consider now: the Work whereby I am a Magus began in Cairo (1904) with the discovery of the Stl of Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, in which the principal object is the Body of our Lady Nuit. It is reproduced in colours in the Equinox, Vol. I, No. 7. Jane Chron has a copy of this book. On Friday afternoon, then, I was in her apartment. I had attained none of my objectives in calling on her, and was about to depart. She detained me to show me this "something." She went and took a folded Cloth from a drawer. "Shut your eyes," she said.     When I opened them they saw a Cloth four feet or more in length, on which was a magnificent copy, mostly in applique silk, of the Stl. She then told me that in February 1917, she and her young man had gone to the South of France to get cured of the opium habit. In such cases insomnia is frequent. One night, however, he had gone to sleep, and on waking in the morning found the she, wakeful, had drawn a copy of the Stl on a great sheet of paper.     It is very remarkable that so large a sheet of paper should have been at hand; also that they should have taken that special book on such a journey; but still more that she should have chosen that picture, nay that she, who had never done anything of the sort before, should have done it at all. More yet, that she should have spent three months in making a permanent thing of it. Most of all, that she should have shown it to me at the very moment when I was awaiting an "unmistakable" sign.

1.52 - Family - Public Enemy No. 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   (The Baltis are like this, you know; they wrap the baby when it is born, and add rag after rag, never removing any, until a prosperous citizen at 40 is more like a bale of Cloth than a human being!) May I add that you are going to be shocked? Ideas of the most atrocious and abominable nastiness, things literally unthinkable by your normal conscious apparatus, are discovered as the mainsprings of your character!   Those in attendance at confinements are always at first amazed and horrified by the remarks of the most virtuous and refined ladies; but that is the mere loosening of a few superficial layers, such as are accessible to anaesthetics. These revelations amount to not 1/10 of 1% of the grisly horrors that are revealed by Sammasati.

1.52 - Killing the Divine Animal, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   festival of Ammon they killed a ram, skinned it, and Clothed the   image of the god in the skin. Then they mourned over the ram and   --   beast is plainly shown by the custom of Clothing his image in the   skin of the slain ram. The reason for thus killing the ram-god   --   fresh and salted; and the skins of bears furnish them with Clothing.   In fact, the worship of which writers on this subject speak appears   --   besmear themselves and their Clothes with the blood in order to   ensure success in hunting. When the animal has been strangled to   --   the earth Clothed with a body; and they believe, further, that they   appear here for the special benefit of men, particularly Ainu

1.53 - The Propitation of Wild Animals By Hunters, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   the bones are preserved, they will in course of time be reClothed   with flesh, and thus the animal will come to life again. It is,   --   Clothed with renewed flesh, and quickened with life, and become fat,   and fit for slaughter the succeeding June." Hence on the western   --   offer it food, rice-spirit, and Cloth, and sacrifice a fowl and a   pig before it. Mollified by these attentions, the ferocious animal

1.54 - Types of Animal Sacrament, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   them food and Clothing; but since the bear is an intelligent and   powerful animal, it is necessary to offer some satisfaction or   --   and a quarter, or some Cloth. Sometimes the bearers of the snake   also sing:   "Give the snake a piece of Cloth, and he will send a lively bride!"   When every house has been thus visited, the dough snake is buried   --   not hurt them. If they find a dead snake, they put Clothes on it and   give it a regular funeral.   --   and timber! In plenty of meat, of bed and body Clothes, and health   of men may it ever abound!" Then each of the party singed in the

1.55 - The Transference of Evil, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   means of Clothes, from herself to a cat or dog. Unfortunately the   attempt partly miscarried. The disease missed the animal and hit

1.56 - The Public Expulsion of Evils, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   Clothes violently, calling on the spirit to leave him and go into   the fire. Two men now stepped forward with rifles loaded with blank   --   evil spirits from the village took place. Men Clothed in the skins   of wild beasts, their faces covered with hideous masks, and their   --   with great shouts of joy and gladness shook their Clothes, as if   they were shaking off dust, while they cried, "Let the evils be   --   feast like this." After they had shaken their Clothes, they passed   their hands over their heads, faces, arms, and legs, as if in the

1.57 - Public Scapegoats, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   cloves, and red lead in a yellow Cloth on its back they turn it out   of the village. The animal is conducted beyond the boundary and not   --   suffering from a plague, they loaded a black llama with the Clothes   of the plague-stricken people, sprinkled brandy on the Clothes, and   then turned the animal loose on the mountains, hoping that it would   --   moored to the bank. It contains offerings of food, Cloth,   cooking-pots, and swords; and the deck is crowded with figures of   --   of Cloth and bedizened with gew-gaws, are set before the door of   every house. About three o'clock in the morning of the day appointed   --   to produce, especially amongst ill-fed, ill-Clothed, and ill-housed   savages, is set down by primitive man to the agency of demons, who

1.58 - Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   Clothed in royal attire to resemble Saturn. Thus arrayed and   attended by a multitude of soldiers he went about in public with

1.59 - Killing the God in Mexico, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   mantle of network, and round his middle a rich waistCloth. When this   bejewelled exquisite lounged through the streets playing on his   --   behind the other, carrying saucers full of dry and Clotted blood   which they had drawn from their ears by way of penance during the   --   her Clothes, which must have been much too small for a grown man.   In the foregoing custom the identification of the young girl with

1.60 - Between Heaven and Earth, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   of her confinement her old Clothes were burnt, new ones were made,   and a feast was given, at which a slit was cut in her under lip

1.61 - The Myth of Balder, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   Cloths.   Whatever may be thought of an historical kernel underlying a