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1.105_-_The_Elephant

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   1 Sri Ramakrishna

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   11 Jonathan Haidt
   7 Jodi Picoult
   5 Stephen King
   4 Nathan Hill
   4 Lawrence Anthony
   4 John Hurt
   3 Sri Ramakrishna
   3 Richard Dawkins
   3 Libba Bray
   3 Jim Butcher
   3 Gautama Buddha
   3 Anonymous
   2 William Shakespeare
   2 Richard Leakey
   2 Ralph Helfer
   2 Peter Matthiessen
   2 Neil Gaiman
   2 Michael Chabon
   2 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
   2 Mahatma Gandhi

1:A man thinks of God, no doubt, but he has no faith in Him. Again and again he forgets God and becomes attached to the world. It is like giving the elephant a bath; afterwards he covers his body with mud and dirt again. 'The mind is a mad elephant.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove

2:I know my Republican friends were glad to see my wife feeding an elephant in India. She gave him sugar and nuts. But of course the elephant wasn't satisfied. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove

3:It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove

4:We have all seen these circus elephants complete with tusks, ivory in their head and thick skins, who move around the circus ring and grab the tail of the elephant ahead of them. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:seeing the elephant. ~ Dave Grossman,

2:She is the elephant’s eyebrows, ~ Libba Bray,

3:the elephant can remember. ~ Agatha Christie,

4:The elephant, the huge old beast, ~ D H Lawrence,

5:Mediocrity is the elephant in the room. ~ Kevin Spacey,

6:And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze ~ Ted Hughes,

7:The rider evolved to serve to the elephant. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

8:Sometimes the elephant is just too big for the room ~ Rosie Walsh,

9:What is true for E. coli is also true for the elephant. ~ Jacques Monod,

10:If size mattered, the elephant would be king of the jungle. ~ Rickson Gracie,

11:Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. ~ Henry David Thoreau,

12:The knife flaying the elephant does not have to be large, only sharp! ~ Andre Norton,

13:Band of Skulls is joining Cage the Elephant as my new musical caffeine. ~ Michael Koryta,

14:All the religions are true, they just see a different part of the elephant. ~ George Lucas,

15:The elephant in the room. It can't be talked about. It can't be ignored. ~ Michael Robotham,

16:Even on the Internet, the elephant that never forgets, memories are still forgotten. ~ Nick Bilton,

17:Never ignore the elephant in the room. That’s rude; play with it and introduce it. ~ Donna Lynn Hope,

18:Race in this country is still the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss. ~ Lenny Kravitz,

19:I really wanted to work with David Lynch. I was a big fan of The Elephant Man and Eraserhead. ~ Sting,

20:We are, more and more, our own defects and not our qualties. The Elephant's Journey ~ Jos Saramago,

21:...there is a delicacy in it equalled only by the daintiness of the elephant's trunk. ~ Herman Melville,

22:What if you like the elephant were gone to the place you were meant, after all, to be? ~ Kate DiCamillo,

23:When the elephant decides to walk through the village, all the dogs come out and bark. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,

24:The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

25:The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

26:Life after death is the elephant in the living room, the one that we are not supposed to notice. ~ Dinesh D Souza,

27:The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth. ~ John Dryden,

28:I was called 'Dumbo,' like the elephant, as a child because I couldn't understand things at school. ~ Anthony Hopkins,

29:Life blew in gusts from the hole in the side of the elephant with a rank smell and a comic flatulence. ~ Michael Chabon,

30:The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure. ~ William Shakespeare,

31:The elephant needs a thousand times more food than the ant but that is not an indication of inequality. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,

32:But my mother loved The Elephant Man, and my father gave David Lynch a scholarship to study in Rome. ~ Isabella Rossellini,

33:Of all footprints That of the elephant is supreme; Of all mindfulness meditations That on death is supreme.7 ~ Sogyal Rinpoche,

34:The modern spirit is the genius of Greece with the genius of India for its vehicle; Alexander upon the elephant. ~ Victor Hugo,

35:Ella is nervous,” the harpy muttered from her perch on the railing. “The elephant. The elephant is watching Ella. ~ Rick Riordan,

36:I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders; and now you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious. ~ M r b,

37:I'm just getting settled as a responsible man - but if you split the elephant into little mouthfuls it will be fine. ~ Tom Hardy,

38:Q: What's the difference between a tweaker and an elephant? A: The elephant will eat all your peanut butter. ~ Bucky Sinister,

39:She nods and the elephant in the room throws back its head and trumpets so loud I think the roof might come off. ~ Sharon J Bolton,

40:Carl walked around the room studying the art hanging on the walls. Seriously, the elephant in Mexico had more talent. ~ Christie Craig,

41:The Bible is a stream of running water, where alike the elephant may swim, and the lamb walk without losing its feet. ~ Pope Gregory I,

42:Of all footprints, that of the elephant is supreme. Similarly, of all mindfulness meditations, that on death is supreme. ~ Gautama Buddha,

43:Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library. ~ Michael Caine,

44:Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage. ~ Henry David Thoreau,

45:Isn’t it obvious?” he said, grinning. “That was the elephant of surprise. And you, my robotic friend, are totally fonked. ~ Barry J Hutchison,

46:In America you have the mouse now trying to sit down on the elephant, thinking that he's going somewhere. And it's - and it's absurd. ~ Malcolm X,

47:Awake. Be the witness of your thoughts. The elephant hauls himself from the mud. In the same way drag yourself out of your sloth. ~ Gautama Buddha,

48:The Elephant Man claimed his head was big because, it's so full of dreams. Actually, it's because his skull was shaped like a turkey. ~ Dana Gould,

49:In the divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps; shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim. ~ John Owen,

50:When she's gone, Tom dares to look at Sam and then the ultrasound photo again. "You've fathered the elephant man. Someone has to tell her. ~ Melina Marchetta,

51:Better it is to live alone; there is no fellowship with a fool. Live alone and do no evil; be carefree like an elephant in the elephant forest. ~ Gautama Buddha,

52:God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things. ~ Pablo Picasso,

53:There is a vast asymmetry in the dynamic here that Billy can’t quite put his finger on, even though it’s the elephant shitting all over the room. ~ Ben Fountain,

54:Real strategists are warriors and must be willing and able to fight battles, to “see the elephant,” as Civil War soldiers were fond of saying. ~ Robert L O Connell,

55:Did Maleldil suggest that our own world might have been saved if the elephant had accidentally trodden on the serpent a moment before Eve was about to yield? ~ C S Lewis,

56:Time magazine put Chris Christie on the cover with the caption, 'The Elephant in the Room.' And People magazine named him 'Sexiest Garbage Truck in a Suit.' ~ Bill Maher,

57:I’ve been scouting that town, Mabberton, yes,” I said. “So we could come at it with what your idiot brother has been known to call the elephant of surprise. ~ Mark Lawrence,

58:The elephant’s trunk strokes her cheek, her throat, her forehead, before slipping the scarf free and lifting it, so that the wind carries it off like a rumor. ~ Jodi Picoult,

59:I know my Republican friends were glad to see my wife feeding an elephant in India. She gave him sugar and nuts. But of course the elephant wasn't satisfied. ~ John F Kennedy,

60:Michelangelo was once asked how he would carve an elephant. He replied, “I would take a large piece of stone and take away everything that was not the elephant. ~ Sharon Salzberg,

61:It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss. ~ C S Lewis,

62:Patriarchy is like the elephant in the room that we don't talk about, but how could it not affect the planet radically when it's the superstructure of human society? ~ Ani DiFranco,

63:In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also; as the green grass. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,

64:status competition and the opportunistic making and breaking of alliances that marks political strife. For this, we have to go to the males, also in the elephant. For ~ Frans de Waal,

65:the problem with the blind men and the elephant. It wasn’t that they were blind—it’s that they stopped too quickly, and so never knew there was a larger truth to grasp. ~ Nathan Hill,

66:Giving advice is like seeing an elephant in someone’s path and suggesting they remove it. Heeding advice requires forcing the elephant to budge. Huge difference. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,

67:It is small comfort to a mouse, if an elephant is standing on its tail, to say 'I am impartial.' In this instance, you are really supporting the elephant in its cruelty. ~ Desmond Tutu,

68:If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done. ~ Kate DiCamillo,

69:The problem with all this was that it ignored the elephant in the elevator. You can’t discern the elephant by studying the plan because the plan doesn’t mention it. The ~ Richard P Rumelt,

70:The elephant goad represents Yama, the god of death and bondage. Ganesha thus acknowledges the life-giving aspect of nature as well as the life-taking aspect of nature. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,

71:We have all seen these circus elephants complete with tusks, ivory in their head and thick skins, who move around the circus ring and grab the tail of the elephant ahead of them. ~ John F Kennedy,

72:To a real elephant, and not a sheep, wolf, or gnu in elephant’s clothing, you are not there. There is no You. There is no Is. There is only the Elephant. Don’t you see how silly that ~ Stanley Bing,

73:I like to think of my people as mute optimists - leave the elephant alone and, eventually, perhaps with the help of a couple mimosas, he will disappear from the room on his own accord. ~ Julie Buxbaum,

74:It's amazing how quickly human beings adapt, isn't it? It was such a great crew, and David [Lynch] was wonderful to work with [on 'The Elephant Man']. It was a very thrilling time, actually. ~ John Hurt,

75:Beware! the tower said. You are entering the realm of the Elephant King, a sovereign so rich in pachyderms that he can waste the gnashers of a thousand of the beasts just to decorate me. ~ Salman Rushdie,

76:There was a low rumbling. “I’m going to kill somebody,” said the Elephant. “As soon as I figure out who.” “Whoa, dear heart,” said the Marquis, rubbing his hands together. “You mean whom. ~ Neil Gaiman,

77:The mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. Like a rider on the back of an elephant, the conscious reasoning part of the mind has only limited control of what the elephant does. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

78:The Elephant of Depression wasn't just parked on my chest, it was relaxing there with the Walrus of Gloom and the Hippo of Bleak Friday Nights in Alone. They had beers. They were settling in. ~ Hester Browne,

79:'The Elephant Man' was hugely enjoyable to do. I thought the one stage, when Chris Tucker did the first makeup and it took 12 hours, I thought they'd actually found a way for me not to enjoy filming. ~ John Hurt,

80:So, gently, and using the greatest of care, the elephant stretched his great trunk through the air, and he lifted the dust speck and carried it over and placed it down, safe, on a very soft clover ~ Dr Seuss,

81:I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life. ~ Richard Dawkins,

82:Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once said: “Living next to the Americans is like sleeping next to an elephant—no matter how friendly and even-tempered the elephant, one is affected by every twitch! ~ Caroline Taggart,

83:I often say, with something like 'The Elephant Man,' had it been an American series for television, where you have to sign your life away for seven years...well, maybe I would never have made 'Sailcloth.' ~ John Hurt,

84:As the elephant is powerless to think in the terms of the ant, in spite of the best intentions in the world, even so is the Englishman powerless to think in the terms of, or legislate for, the Indian. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,

85:I had no time to make a world of my own: I had to stay fixed like Atlas, my feet on the elephant's back and the elephant on the tortoise's back. To inquire on what the tortoise stood would be to go mad. ~ Henry Miller,

86:I saw David Lynch’s “The Elephant Man” (1980) when I was 15. I was completely bowled over. I found it so beautiful, strange and mesmerizing that I went back to the cinema every night for a week to see it. ~ Ben Daniels,

87:whimper in the dark, and knew that Vixen had found me at last. She knew as well as I did that if there is one thing in the world the elephant is more afraid of than another it is a little barking dog. So she ~ Rudyard Kipling,

88:Manifesting. Same way you made the elephant, and this beach. It's simple quantum physics. Consciousness brings matter into being where there was once merely energy. Not nearly as difficult as people choose to think. ~ Alyson Noel,

89:You Scotsmen: you wish to be like the elephant, hacked to pieces for refusing to bow. You should follow my rule: here am I, supple and amenable as a goatskin glove of Vendôme and pleasant to all, Duke and dotard alike. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,

90:Their version of rock-paper-scissors was elephant—fist, mouse—palm, and ant—little finger. The elephant crushed the mouse, the mouse squashed the ant, and the ant crawled up the elephant’s trunk and paralyzed his brain. ~ Colin Cotterill,

91:From inside the elephant, the bird had sounded like it could convince a mountain to turn into a volcano. Now it sounded like her math teacher that one time he had tried to perform a cappella but had stepped on a Lego piece. ~ Roshani Chokshi,

92:Do we really want to know how Michael Jackson makes his music? No. We want to understand why he needs the bones of the Elephant Man -- and, until he tells us, it doesn't make too much difference whether or not he really is ''bad. ~ Frank Zappa,

93:The elephant in the room time and time again when it comes to work and promotions is maternity leave. We need to work with businesses so they work with women and make it easy and supportive for them to come back into the workplace. ~ Mary Portas,

94:Always drawn to the theatric, Bowie also performed in stage productions of "The Elephant Man" and just recently collaborated on "Lazarus," an off-Broadway musical that's a sequel to his 1976 role in the film "The Man Who Fell To Earth." ~ David Bowie,

95:If the bees which seek the liquid oozing from the head of a lust-intoxicated elephant are driven away by the flapping of his ears, then the elephant has lost only the ornament of his head. The bees are quite happy in the lotus filled lake. ~ Chanakya,

96:The Knowledge of Brahman is the goal. Devotion is meant to maintain the external aspect of life. The elephant has outer tusks and inner grinders as well. The tusks are mere ornaments; but the elephant chews its food with the grinders. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

97:Everything must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindus give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,

98:She looked up to see all three of them looking at her. She put her spoon down, knowing she wasn't going to be able to eat until they got the elephant out of the room. What happened a year ago... shouldn't have happened, she said in a low voice ~ Maya Banks,

99:He felt his fear twisting and turning inside him beneath his poker face. Sometimes it was a big and panicky elephant, trampling everything: the elephant. Sometimes it was small and gnawing, ripping with sharp teeth: the rat. It was always with with. ~ Stephen King,

100:He wondered what lay in the far distance where he had never gone. The land didn’t end beyond those nearby communities. Were there hills Elsewhere? Were there vast wind-torn areas like the place he had seen in memory, the place where the elephant died? ~ Lois Lowry,

101:She is the elephant’s eyebrows,” Evie whispered appreciatively. “Those jewels! How her neck must ache.” “That’s why Bayer makes aspirin,” Mabel whispered back, and Evie smiled, knowing that even a socialist wasn’t immune to the dazzle of a movie star. ~ Libba Bray,

102:A man thinks of God, no doubt, but he has no faith in Him. Again and again he forgets God and becomes attached to the world. It is like giving the elephant a bath; afterwards he covers his body with mud and dirt again. 'The mind is a mad elephant.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

103:Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs, tossing grass up to heaven—as a distraction, not a prayer. That’s not humility you see on our long final journeys: it’s procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down. —DAN CHIASSON, “The Elephant ~ Jodi Picoult,

104:A man thinks of God, no doubt, but he has no faith in Him. Again and again he forgets God and becomes attached to the world. It is like giving the elephant a bath; afterwards he covers his body with mud and dirt again. 'The mind is a mad elephant.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

105:What I love about comedians is their instinct is always to go against the grain. Their whole existence is pointing out the elephant in the room. Already you can see audiences are pushing back, but we're the ones who really can take it more than anybody. ~ Colin Quinn,

106:I sounded like Horton the Elephant. "A person is a person no matter how small." What the hell was I doing standing in the middle of a cave, in the dark, surrounded by wererats, quoting Dr. Seuss, and trying to kill a one-thousand-year-old vampire? ~ Laurell K Hamilton,

107:The world rests upon a turtle, which itself stands on the back of an elephant!” Alek tried not to laugh. “Then what does the elephant stand on, madam?” “Don’t try to be clever, young man.” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s elephants all the way down! ~ Scott Westerfeld,

108:She is the elephant’s eyebrows,” Evie whispered appreciatively. “Those jewels! How her neck must ache.” “That’s why Bayer makes aspirin,” Mabel whispered back, and Evie smiled, knowing that even a socialist wasn’t immune to the dazzle of a movie star. ~ Libba Bray,

109:And that is how the problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room. It was practically our family pet. ~ Cecelia Ahern,

110:Was it home, the mercury-lit street? Was he returning like the elephant to his graveyard, to lie down and soon become ivory in whose bulk slept, latent, exquisite shapes of chessmen, backscratchers, hollow open-work Chinese spheres nested one inside the other? ~ Thomas Pynchon,

111:When someone tries to put you back into a box from which you’ve already escaped, you might recall a line from the Indian poet Mirabai. She said, “I have felt the swaying of the elephant’s shoulders and now you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious!”13 ~ Sue Monk Kidd,

112:That's odd. It looks almost as if Nick is picking a fight with that elephant." "Well, the elephant started it." "That's irrelevant. Fighting with civilians is against the rules. Go break it up." -Admiral Breya Andreyasn & Sergeant Schlock ~ Howard Tayler,

113:Unlike the primate hand, the elephant's grasping organ is also its nose. Elephants use their trunks not only to reach food but also to sniff and touch it. With their unparalleled sense of smell, the animals know exactly what they are going for. Vision is secondary. ~ Frans de Waal,

114:It's the way he gets noticed, you know? I mean, imagine what it would be like if you were a squirrel living in the elephant cage at the zoo. Does anyone ever go there and say, Hey check out that squirrel? No, because there's something so much bigger you notice first. ~ Jodi Picoult,

115:This man, lady, hath robb'd many beasts of their particular additions: he is as valiant as a lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant-a man into whom nature hath so crowded humours that his valour is crush'd into folly, his folly sauced with discretion. ~ William Shakespeare,

116:And that is how Goodwin problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room of my life. It was practically our family pet. ~ Cecelia Ahern,

117:India is not a tiger, and change will always be slower than in East Asia. India is an elephant which has stirred from its slumber and has finally begun to move ahead with a degree of determination. However, unlike a sprinting tiger that runs out of steam, the elephant has stamina. ~ Gurcharan Das,

118:I'll do anything to keep everyone laughing. Things get too intense on film sets. I remember on The Elephant Man, I used to imitate a cat without moving my lips. David Lynch would say, "Cut! Sorry, we've got a noise somewhere on set." Everyone would be looking around for this cat. ~ Anthony Hopkins,

119:By the way, is it a boy or a girl?’ Bahadur opened his mouth to speak and then realised that he did not know the answer. ‘One minute, sahib.’ Without further ado, he scrambled onto the ground, lifted the elephant’s tail and attempted to ascertain the creature’s sex. ‘It is a boy, sahib. ~ Vaseem Khan,

120:bells. “I accept your kind invitation,” Zelikman said. “My services as a physician ought just to offset my fare.” The elephant gave a low moan, startling them, and a moment later they heard a faint trill, carried on the wind from off the river, and then another. “Trumpets,” the nephew said. ~ Michael Chabon,

121:Like the blind men and the elephant, it’s often the case that people see the same thing, but they see it differently, and the argument over who is right and wrong distracts them from learning or doing anything productive with the situation they find themselves in. The obvious is not obvious. Even ~ Dave Gray,

122:It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution. ~ Havelock Ellis,

123:In the story of the blind men and the elephant, what’s usually ignored is the fact that each man’s description was correct. What Faye won’t understand and may never understand is that there is not one true self hidden by many false ones. Rather, there is one true self hidden by many other true ones. ~ Nathan Hill,

124:...every elephant contains two elephants, one who learns what he’s taught and another who insists on ignoring it all, How do you know, When I realized that I’m just like the elephant, that a part of me learns and the other part ignores everything I’ve learned, and the longer I live, the more I ignore, ~ Jos Saramago,

125:... where do they go when they die? We hear of the elephant graveyards, where the elephants go to die, but how much more curious it is that birds are not falling out of the sky all the time, on our heads, at our feet, dying and falling and flopping to the ground. I rarely see a dead bird on the ground. ~ Sophy Burnham,

126:Interestingly, Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu deity, is known as the remover of obstacles. When I first heard that, I thought it meant obstacles like a boss who irritates you or a boyfriend of a girl you like. Now I think it means the obstacles within the self that prevent you from being in harmony with “God. ~ Anonymous,

127:By 10:00 P.M. it decided to pull out all the stops: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. An early election-eve edition of the San Francisco Call-Bulletin carried a cartoon depicting a jubilant elephant and a doleful donkey. Only in the next edition was there a fast retouch: the elephant was now startled, the donkey joyous.62 ~ James T Patterson,

128:The wind becomes your indispensable ally. When the trees and undergrowth and sometimes the elephant grass begin to thrash, the object that does not move or the shadow that remains like a tin cutout becomes the entity that is out there in the darkness, preparing to take your life. Except in this case, the presence on ~ James Lee Burke,

129:Animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature’s fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world’s most emotionally human land mammal. ~ Daphne Sheldrick,

130:You can see the rider serving the elephant when people are morally dumbfounded. They have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong, and they struggle to construct post hoc justifications for those feelings. Even when the servant (reasoning) comes back empty-handed, the master (intuition) doesn't change his judgment. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

131:The zoologists who came from Germany to inseminate the elephant wore bicycle helmets and protective rubber suits. So as not to be soiled by effluvium and excrement, which will alchemize to produce laughter in the human species, how does that work biochemically is a question to which I have not found an answer yet. ~ Lucia Perillo,

132:The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning-the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes-the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

133:I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange... There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea. ~ Peter Matthiessen,

134:Like the blind men of the proverb, each individual feels a piece of the elephant, and the enormity of what he has found is overwhelming enough to convince each blindly groping observer that he has found the essence of the beast. But the whole beast is far more enormous and vastly more terrifying than society as a whole is prepared to believe. ~ Dave Grossman,

135:On the other couch a women sits with a young boy looking through a picture book about Babar the Elephant. When I find a magazine and I lean back to start reading it, I can see the women watching me out of the corner of her eye. She moves closer to the child and she leans over and kisses his forehead. I know why she does it and i don't blame her. ~ James Frey,

136:Three blind men were shown an elephant. They touched it with their hands to determine what the creature was. The first man felt the trunk, and claimed that an elephant was like a snake. The second man touched its leg and claimed that an elephant was like a tree. The third man touched its tail, and claimed that the elephant was like a slender rope. ~ Jim Butcher,

137:Three blind men were shown an elephant. They touched it with their hands to determine what the creature was. The first man felt the trunk, and claimed that an elephant was like a snake. The second man touched its leg and claimed that an elephant was like a tree. The third man touched its tail, and claimed that the elephant was like a slender rope.” I ~ Jim Butcher,

138:It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind… And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! – John Godfrey Saxe ~ Rashmi Bansal,

139:The restless monkey breathes at the rate of 32 times a minute, in contrast to man’s average of 18 times. The elephant, tortoise, snake, and other creatures noted for their longevity have a respiratory rate that is less than man’s. The giant tortoise, for instance, which may attain the age of three hundred years, breathes only 4 times a minute. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,

140:Sometimes waiting for a question to finish is like watching someone draw an elephant starting with the tail first. As soon as you see the tail your mind wanders all over the place and you think of a million other animals that also have tails until you don’t care about the elephant because it’s only one thing when you’ve been thinking about a million others. ~ Jack Gantos,

141:Where are we bound? Is it any different, in fact, from where we were going in the first place? Perhaps all of creation from the coddling moth to the elephant was just a grandly detailed thought that God was engrossed in elaborating upon, when suddenly God fell asleep. We are an idea, then. Maybe God has decided that we are not an idea worth thinking anymore. ~ Louise Erdrich,

142:Anthony, Lawrence. The Elephant Whisperer. Thomas Dunne Books, 2009. Bradshaw, G. A. Elephants on the Edge. Yale University Press, 2009. Coffey, Chip. Growing Up Psychic. Three Rivers Press, 2012. Douglas-Hamilton, Iain, and Oria Douglas-Hamilton. Among the Elephants. Viking Press, 1975. King, Barbara J. How Animals Grieve. University of Chicago Press, 2013. Moss, ~ Jodi Picoult,

143:Beg for mercy,” said the Elephant. That one was easy. “Mercy!” said the Marquis. “I beg! I plead! Show me mercy—the finest of all gifts. It befits you, mighty Elephant, as lord of your own demesne, to be merciful to one who is not even fit to wipe the dust from your excellent toes …” “Did you know,” said the Elephant, “that everything you say sounds sarcastic? ~ Neil Gaiman,

144:To be born, to live and to die is merely to change forms... And what does one form matter any more than another?... Each form has its own sort of happiness and unhappiness. From the elephant down to the flea... from the flea down to the sensitive and living molecule which is the origin of all, there is not a speck in the whole of nature that does not feel pain or pleasure. ~ John Dewey,

145:Machine learners, like all scientists, resemble the blind men and the elephant: one feels the trunk and thinks it’s a snake, another leans against the leg and thinks it’s a tree, yet another touches the tusk and thinks it’s a bull. Our aim is to touch each part without jumping to conclusions; and once we’ve touched all of them, we will try to picture the whole elephant. ~ Pedro Domingos,

146:I think that the reason that people are so up in arms about movies that have historical inaccuracies is because now that we've trashed our education institutions beyond repair, people fear that the only people are getting their histories is through the movies, so the elephant in the room is that no one wants to talk about why we're so passionately obsessed with accuracy. ~ Nicholas Meyer,

147:The largest land animal is the elephant, and it is the nearest to man in intelligence: it understands the language of its country and obeys orders, remembers duties that it has been taught, is pleased by affection and by marks of honour, nay more it possesses virtues rare even in man, honesty, wisdom, justice, also respect for the stars and reverence for the sun and moon. ~ Pliny the Elder,

148:Courage~ What makes the flag on the mast to wave? What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot?~Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz ~ L Frank Baum,

149:Elephant and Piggie could just Google themselves! With the Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! series, we're picking artists who have a voice already. They have a sensibility. I don't want to make a book about blades of grass. That doesn't interest me. I want to make a book that Laurie Keller uses to express herself in this format. That's the key. That's what's going to keep it individual. ~ Mo Willems,

150:If you've got a great crew it's intense, but its quite short. 'The Elephant Man' was longer than most, for an independent film. That was a 14 week film. But it was because of the intrinsic difficulties. We had to invent a different way of filming, because the makeup was so long. A working day for me with a full makeup on was nineteen hours. So obviously you couldn't do that twice running. ~ John Hurt,

151:Are we going to do this now, brother?” Kade asked, his voice deceptively smooth, though Blane could see a flicker of fear in his eyes. Kade’s hold tightened on Kathleen, as though he was afraid that Blane would take her from him. “You mean talk about the elephant in the room?” Blane said dryly, cocking an eyebrow. “She’d get pretty pissed off if she heard you call her an elephant. ~ Tiffany Snow,

152:In terms of economical aspects, reinforcing those national parks with sophisticated anti-poaching patrols - these poachers are beefed up like the army. In the case of Cameroon, that's a perfect example of the lack of finance. The government could not provide the national park with more guards. Therefore, they lost the majority of the elephant population. I don't want to see that anywhere else. ~ Veronika Varekova,

153:I can look to Hanuman for energy, Varuna (the God of water) if I want rain, Lakshmi (Vishnu's consort, the goddess of wealth) if I need money and Saraswathi (Brahma's consort, the goddess of knowledge) ifI have an exam coming up. Ganesh the elephant god and the child of Shiva and Parvati) can be called on when starting a new journey or venture and Vishnu, Ram or Krishna if I want purity of spirit. ~ Sarah Macdonald,

154:People of conscience in our leadership in Washington have been scared off by the right and the fossil fuel lobbies. They won't even use the term "sustainability" or "climate change" in an energy bill, which is ludicrous on its face. It completely ignores the elephant in the room that we're all dealing with. The average American doesn't even believe climate change is real, they think it's all a hoax. ~ James Cameron,

155:Courage~ L Frank Baum What makes the flag on the mast to wave? What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot?~ L Frank BaumCowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz ~ L Frank Baum,

156:The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes. The healthcare industry makes more money treating chronic diseases (which account for three quarters of the $2 trillion plus we spend each year on health care in this country) than preventing them. So we ignore the elephant in the room and focus instead on good and evil nutrients, the identities of which seem to change with every new study. ~ Michael Pollan,

157:Her train came, and she wrestled her burden through the doors, trying not to think too much about what was in it, or the magnificent life that had been ended somewhere in Africa, though probably not recently. These tusks were massive, and Karou happened to know that elephant tusks rarely grew so big anymore—poachers had seen to that. By killing all the biggest bulls, they’d altered the elephant gene pool. ~ Laini Taylor,

158:Making wishes on the elephant is emotionally dangerous, because inevitably one's hopes rise abnormally high, unhealthily high, and when the wish does not come true, one's high hopes get crushed more painfully than if one had not asked for the help of supernatural powers. Therefore, one should always try to make the wish casually and forget about it instantly after making it, which is what I try to do now. ~ Amanda Filipacchi,

159:I am persuaded that if the brutes even--if the dog, the horse, the ox, the elephant, the bird, could speak, they would confess, that, at the bottom of their nature, their instincts, their sensations, their obtuse intelligence, assisted by organs less perfect than ours, there is a clouded, secret sentiment of this existence of a superior and primordial Being, from whom all emanates, and to whom all returns. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine,

160:Mother,” Hyacinth said, pausing for slightly longer than normal to steal a bit of time to organize her thoughts, “I am not going to chase after Mr. St. Clair. He’s not at all the right sort of man for me.” “I’m not certain you’d know the right sort of man for you if he arrived on our doorstep riding an elephant.” “I would think the elephant would be a fairly good indication that I ought to look elsewhere. ~ Julia Quinn,

161:As it turns out, though, it’s like the old bit about trying not to think about an elephant, except that in this case, the elephant is a preternaturally hot naked woman who is currently lounging in my bed, waiting for me to get done in the shower so that she can have sex with me and possibly suck out and devour my soul, all of which I would guess is actually more difficult to put out of your head than some stupid elephant. ~ Edward Ashton,

162:Few had much room to cast stones, but hypocrisy has never failed the English middle class in any latitude, and they flung them in plenty with delighted, shocked abandon – rocks, boulders, limited in size only by fear for their husband’s advancement. Conciliating discretion had never been among Mrs Villiers’s qualities, and if subjects for malignant gossip had been wanting she would have provided them by the elephant-load. ~ Patrick O Brian,

163:They were presented to Louis XV, who installed them in his museum, the Cabinet du Roi. Decades later, maps of the Ohio River valley were still largely blank, except for the Endroit où on a trouvé des os d’Éléphant—the “place where the elephant bones were found.” (Today the “place where the elephant bones were found” is a state park in Kentucky known as Big Bone Lick.) Longueuil’s bones confounded everyone who examined them. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert,

164:squirrel is in a pine tree, when all of a sudden, it starts shaking. He looks down, and sees an elephant climbing the tree. ‘What are you doing? Why are you climbing my tree?’ the squirrel calls down to the elephant. ‘I’m coming up there to eat some pears!’ the elephant responds. ‘You fool! This is a pine tree! There aren’t any pears up here!’ The elephant looks perplexed for a moment, and then says, ‘Well, I brought my own pears. ~ Adrian McKinty,

165:To keep a man a slave you do much the same as the cruel circus masters did to the elephant around the turn of last century. Clamp heavy chains around their legs and stake them to the ground. Then beat and terrorize them. After a while you no longer even have to stake the chain; the elephant gives up and just the mere rattle of the chain convinces the elephant there is no hope, so they give up and do whatever it is the circus requires. ~ Glenn Beck,

166:You still with your floozy girlfriend?” Ah, there is was. The elephant in the car… He gave her an incredulous look. “Obviously not.” She smacked him on his arm. “Don’t look at me like I asked a stupid question. Because it not a stupid question at all, and you damn well know it.” “Fine.” “So you broke up with her?” “Yes,” he said sharply. “Way to find your balls, man,” Ada congratulated him and sat back in her seat. ~ Karina Halle,

167:A Burdock&Mdash;Clawed My Gown 229 A Burdock—clawed my Gown— Not Burdock's—blame— But mine— Who went too near The Burdock's Den— A Bog—affronts my shoe— What else have Bogs—to do— The only Trade they know— The splashing Men! Ah, pity—then! 'Tis Minnows can despise! The Elephant's—calm eyes Look further on! ~ Emily Dickinson,

168:I'm sorry," he says. "What? Why?" "You're fixing everything I set down." He nods at my hands, which are readjusting the elephant. "It wasn't polite of me to come in and start touching your things." "Oh, it's okay," I say quickly, letting go of the figurine. "You can touch anything of mine you want." He freezes. A funny look runs across his face before I realize what I've said. I didn't mean it like that. Not that that would be so bad. ~ Stephanie Perkins,

169:Suppose you came across a woman lying on the street with an elephant sitting on her chest. You notice she is short of breath. Shortness of breath can be a symptom of heart problems. In her case, the much more likely cause is the elephant on her chest. For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences. That is the elephant. Until the playing field has veen leveled and lingering stereotypes are gone, you can't even ask the question. ~ Sally Ride,

170:The elephant, not only the largest but the most intelligent of animals, provides us with an excellent example. It is faithful and tenderly loving to the female of its choice, mating only every third year and then for no more than five days, and so secretly as never to be seen, until, on the sixth day, it appears and goes at once to wash its whole body in the river, unwilling to return to the herd until thus purified. Such good and modest habits are an example to husband and wife. ~ Saint Francis de Sales,

171:Every thing must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindoos give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,

172:Rambha had given Gandhi an enchanting image to describe the power of mantra. She compared the practice of mantra to the training of an elephant. “As the elephant walks through the market,” taught Rambha, “he swings his trunk from side to side and creates havoc with it wherever he goes—knocking over fruit stands and scattering vendors, snatching bananas and coconuts wherever possible. His trunk is naturally restless, hungry, scattered, undisciplined. This is just like the mind—constantly causing trouble. ~ Stephen Cope,

173:One winter night during one of the many German air raids on Moscow in World War II, a distinguished Soviet professor of statistics showed up in his local air-raid shelter. He had never appeared there before. “There are seven million people in Moscow,” he used to say. “Why should I expect them to hit me?” His friends were astonished to see him and asked what had happened to change his mind. “Look,” he explained, “there are seven million people in Moscow and one elephant. Last night they got the elephant. ~ Peter L Bernstein,

174:Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts,--the first and the wisest of beasts, it may be, but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree and not in kind,--just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

175:But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable. ~ Bertrand Russell,

176:Yet it had been delicious to touch her grandfather's robe. It was as different from ordinary material as something sung from something spoken. In a way she liked her grandfather. Once she had seen children crawling under a circus-tent so that they could see the elephant, and she would have done that to see her grandfather; and what she like in him was the upside-downness of him, as this inverted luxury which gave him an everyday possession--for she supposed this robe was just a dressing gown--which was uniquely exquisite... ~ Rebecca West,

177:I am she who lifts the mountains When she goes to hunt, Who wears mamba for a headband And a lion for a belt. Beware! I swallow elephants whole And pick my teeth with rhinoceros horns, I drink up rivers to get at the hippos. Let them hear my words! Nhamo is coming And her hunger is great. I am she who tosses trees Instead of spears. The ostrich is my pillow And the elephant is my footstool! I am Nhamo Who makes the river my highway And sends crocodiles scurrying into the reeds! ~ Nancy Farmer,

178:It wasn't that I hated being asked a bunch of questions. I had nothing against questions. I just didn't like listening to them, because some questions take forever to make sense. Sometimes waiting for a question to finish is like watching someone draw an elephant starting with the tail first. As soon as you see the tail your mind wanders all over the place and you think of a million other animals that also have tails until you don't care about the elephant because it's only one thing when you've been thinking about a million others. ~ Jack Gantos,

179:We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other people do us this favor, just as we are quite good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs. When discussions are hostile, the odds of change are slight. The elephant leans away from the opponent, and the rider works frantically to rebut the opponent’s charges. But if there is affection, admiration, or a desire to please the other person, then the elephant leans toward that person and the rider tries to find the truth in the other person’s arguments. The ~ Jonathan Haidt,

180:About the Author Delia Owens is the coauthor of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa—Cry of the Kalahari, The Eye of the Elephant, and Secrets of the Savanna. She has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing and has been published in Nature, the African Journal of Ecology, and International Wildlife, among many other publications. She currently lives in Idaho, where she continues her support for the people and wildlife of Zambia. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel. ~ Delia Owens,

181:Similarly at the Washington Post in 2005, one of the paper’s editors, Marie Arana, wrote “The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions. . . . We’re not very subtle about it at this paper: If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat.” She added, “I’ve been in communal gatherings in the Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats. ~ Kirsten Powers,

182:There’s a phrase, the elephant in the living room, which purports to describe what it’s like to live with a drug addict, an alcoholic, an abuser. People outside such relationships will sometimes ask, ‘How could you let such a business go on for so many years? Didn’t you see the elephant in the living room?’ And it’s so hard for anyone living in a more normal situation to understand the answer that comes closest to the truth: ‘I’m sorry, but it was there when I moved in. I didn’t know it was an elephant; I thought it was part of the furniture. ~ Stephen King,

183:There’s a phrase, the elephant in the living room, which purports to describe what it’s like to live with a drug addict, an alcoholic, an abuser. People outside such relationships will sometimes ask, “How could you let such a business go on for so many years? Didn’t you see the elephant in the living room?” And it’s so hard for anyone living in a more normal situation to understand the answer that comes closest to the truth: “I’m sorry, but it was there when I moved in. I didn’t know it was an elephant; I thought it was part of the furniture. ~ Stephen King,

184:Tails A lion has a tail and a very fine tail, And so has an elephant, and so has a whale, And so has a crocodile, and so has a quail– They’ve all got tails but me. If I had sixpence I would buy one; I’d say to the shopman, ‘Let me try one’; I’d say to the elephant, ‘This is my one.’ They’d all come round to see. Then I’d say to the lion, ‘Why, you’ve got a tail! And so has the elephant, and so has the whale! And, look! There’s a crocodile! He’s got a tail! You’ve all got tails like me!’ ~ Alan Alexander Milne,

185:Jonas went and sat beside them while his father untied Lily's hair ribbons and combed her hair. He placed one hand on each of their shoulders. With all of his being he tried to give each of them a piece of the memory: not of the tortured cry of the elephant, of their towering, immense creature and the meticulous touch with which it had tended its friend at the end. But his father had continued to comb Lily's long hair, and Lily, impatient, had finally wriggled under her brother's touch. "Jonas," she said, "you're hurting me with your hand. ~ Lois Lowry,

186:In The Fashion A lion has a tail and a very fine tail And so has an elephant and so has a whale, And so has a crocodile, and so has a quailThey’ve all got tails but me. If I had sixpence I would buy one; I’d say to the shopman, ‘Let me try one’; I’d say to the elephant, ‘This is my one.’ They’d all come round to see. Then I’d say to the lion, ‘Why, you’ve got a tail! And so has the elephant, and so has the whale! And, look! There’s a crocodile! He’s got a tail ! You’ve all got tails like me!’ ~ Alan Alexander Milne,

187:Elephant Memories. William Morrow, 1988. Moss, Cynthia J., Harvey Croze, and Phyllis C. Lee, eds. The Amboseli Elephants. University of Chicago Press, 2011. Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff, and Susan McCarthy. When Elephants Weep. Delacorte Press, 1995. O’Connell, Caitlin. The Elephant’s Secret Sense. Free Press, 2007. Poole, Joyce. Coming of Age with Elephants. Hyperion, 1996. Sheldrick, Daphne. Love, Life, and Elephants. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012. And dozens of academic papers written by researchers who continue to study elephants and elephant society. There ~ Jodi Picoult,

188:The French…wave flags for me,” Ho told an American reporter, “but it is a masquerade. We will have to fight.” It would be a war between the French elephant and the Vietnamese tiger, he said. If the tiger ever stands still the elephant will crush him with his mighty tusks. But the tiger does not stand still. He lurks in the jungle by day and emerges by night. He will leap upon the back of the elephant, tearing huge chunks from his hide, and then he will leap back into the dark jungle. And slowly the elephant will bleed to death. That will be the war of Indochina. ~ Geoffrey C Ward,

189:Ermaline has entered the room noiselessly and is whispering to Nana. When she leaves, Nana and Papa start talking about friends of Mom's who are in the middle of a scandalous divorce. Mom and Dad keep glancing at Adam, and Nana keeps asking Mom and Dad questions, pulling their attention back to the conversation. I have seen this before. It's Nana's highly effective and very annoying way of not mentioning the elephant in the living room. But why does she have to think of Adam as an elephant? Why can't he just be their son? ~ Ann M Martinpgs 40-42; Hattie on adults ~ Ann M Martin,

190:What is the elephant in all our rooms? It is the global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat even in old-established democracies such as Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does capitalism. Americans and Europeans do it. Indians do it. Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes do it. Even Chinese communists do it... Karl Marx would be turning in his grave. Or perhaps not, since some of his writings eerily foreshadowed our era of globalised capitalism. His prescription failed but his description was prescient. ~ Timothy Garton Ash,

191:Those who are unwilling to face the flinch are obvious, too. Their eyes are dead. Their voices sound defeated. They have defensive body language. They’re all talk. They see obstacles as assailants instead of adversaries. Their flinch is the elephant in the room, and they don’t want to hear about it. Any fight you want to win, a habit of pushing past the flinch can make it happen. Once you have adjusted to the pressure, once you learn to flinch forward, you have the resolve to pass through the impassible. In fact, it becomes certain that you will—it’s only a matter of time. ~ Julien Smith,

192:Aristotle asked about aretē (excellence/virtue) and telos (purpose/goal), and he used the metaphor that people are like archers, who need a clear target at which to aim.13 Without a target or goal, one is left with the animal default: Just let the elephant graze or roam where he pleases. And because elephants live in herds, one ends up doing what everyone else is doing. Yet the human mind has a rider, and as the rider begins to think more abstractly in adolescence, there may come a time when he looks around, past the edges of the herd, and asks: Where are we all going? And why? ~ Jonathan Haidt,

193:We are like a rider on top of a gigantic elephant. We can steer the elephant, and if he's not busy, he'll go where we want, but if he has other desires, he'll often go where he wants. How can one control the elephant? In part, this comes with maturity. In part, this comes with the development of your frontal cortex, so the frontal areas of the brain are especially involved in self-control, in suppressing your initial instinct to act. This is why teenagers are so impulsive. So it's terrible to allow the death penalty for teenagers, because they really don't have working brains yet. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

194:After that day when I saw the elephant, I let myself see more and believe more. It was a game I played with myself. When I told Alma the things I saw she would laugh and tell me she loved my imagination. For her I changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, I changed glass into water, I gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found the feathers, I asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become the moon, and the moon to become a coin I flipped for her love, both sides were heads: I knew I couldn't lose. ~ Nicole Krauss,

195:Psychotherapy can help some people, especially people who are neurotic, who are always making problems for themselves. We are like a rider on an elephant. We can steer the elephant, and if he's not busy, he'll go where we want, but if he has other desires, he'll go where he wants. They need to get a better relationship between the rider and the elephant. In part, you get it just from watching yourself stumble around in life, make mistakes, then read a little psychology and stop blaming yourself. Realize that I am flawed. I am complicated. I am divided, and I'm doing the best I can. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

196:This is what metaphor is. It is not saying that an ant is an elephant. Perhaps; both are alive. No. Metaphor is saying the ant is an elephant. Now, logically speaking, I know there is a difference. If you put elephants and ants before me, I believe that every time I will correctly identify the elephant and the ant. So metaphor must come from a very different place than that of the logical, intelligent mind. It comes from a place that is very courageous, willing to step out of our preconceived ways of seeing things and open so large that it can see the oneness in an ant and in an elephant. ~ Natalie Goldberg,

197:Japan and Hong Kong are steadily whittling away at the last of the elephants, turning their tusks (so much more elegant left on the elephant) into artistic carvings. In much the same way, the beautiful furs from leopard, jaguar, Snow leopard, Clouded leopard and so on, are used to clad the inelegant bodies of thoughtless and, for the most part, ugly women. I wonder how many would buy these furs if they knew that on their bodies they wore the skin of an animal that, when captured, was killed by the medieval and agonizing method of having a red-hot rod inserted up its rectum so as not to mark the skin. ~ Gerald Durrell,

198:Once upon a time, in a faraway land, four blind wise men were asked to describe the true nature of an elephant. Each took a turn touching the beast. One by one, they spoke. “This animal is long and curved like a spear,” said the first blind man after grabbing a tusk. The next, clutching the giant’s leg, raised his voice. “I disagree! This animal is thick and upright—like a tree.” As they began to argue, the next man touched the ear and compared it to a giant leaf. Finally, the last man, wrapped up in the elephant’s trunk, declared triumphantly that they were all wrong—the animal was like a big, fat snake. ~ Anonymous,

199:Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentlema. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschole with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs VErschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody. ~ James Joyce,

200:You know you really need some help. A regular psychiatrist couldn't even help you. You need to go to like Vienna or something. You know what I mean? You need to get involved at the University level. Like where Freud studied and have all those people looking at you and checking up on you. That's the kind of help you need. Not the once a week for eighty bucks. No. You need a team. A team of psychiatrists working round the clock thinking about you, having conferences, observing you, like the way they did with the Elephant Man. That's what I'm talking about because that's the only way you're going to get better. ~ Jerry Seinfeld,

201:Henderson nodded, and closed his eyes. Then he said, “The murder.” “I’d want to stay on that,” Lucas said. “I’d insist. This thing will leak five minutes after you call St. Paul, and there’s gonna be a shit storm. I’ll be outraged, and you’ll be my minister plenipotentiary to the investigation. That’ll give us a reason for these . . . conferences.” “That’ll work, I think,” Lucas said. They sat there for a minute, then Henderson said, “There’s the elephant in the room . . . that we haven’t talked about.” Lucas nodded: “Who did it. Who killed Tubbs.” “If he’s dead.” “Yeah, if he’s dead. But . . . it feels like it. ~ John Sandford,

202:Of all African animals, the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with, yet its passing - if this must come - seems the most tragic of all. I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange such as mow grass with its toenails or draw the tusks from the rotted carcass of another elephant and carry them off into the bush. There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea. ~ Peter Matthiessen,

203:the elephant in the room.” That we won’t say, simply, that it is men who are violent. It is men who take their violence out on masses of others. School shootings are carried out by young men. Mass murders. Gang warfare, murder-suicides and familicides and matricides and even genocides: all men. Always men. “Every commonly available domestic violence and official general violence statistic, and every anecdotal account about domestic and all other kinds of violence throughout the United States and around the world, point clearly to the fact that men almost monopolize all sectors of violence perpetration,” Sinclair wrote. ~ Rachel Louise Snyder,

204:The Babar the Elephant book is sitting in front of me. I pick it up and start reading it. I remember reading it as a small Boy and enjoying it and imagining that I was friends with Babar, his constant Companion during all of his adventures. He went to the moon, I went with him. He fought Tomb Raiders in Egypt, I fought alongside him. He rescued his elephant girlfriend from Ivory Hunters on the Savanna, I coordinated the getaway. I loved that goddamn Elephant and I loved being his friend. In a childhood full of unhappiness and rage, Babar is one of the few pleasant memories that I have. Me and Babar, kicking some motherfucking ass. ~ James Frey,

205:I had no time to make a world of my own. I had to stay fixed, like Atlas, my feet on the elephant's back, and the elephant on the tortoise's back. To inquire on what the tortoise stood would be to go mad. I didn't dare to think of anything then except the facts. To get beneath the facts, I would have to be an artist, and one doesn't become an artist overnight. First, you have to be crushed. To have your conflicting points of view annihilated, you have to be wiped out as a human being in order to be born again an individual. You have to be carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the last common denominator of the self. ~ Henry Miller,

206:The heart of a man is a small thing but it desires great matters. It is not big enough for a dog’s dinner but the whole world is not big enough for it. Man spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound; from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child.(...)And who will exterminate him who exterminates all others? ~ Paul Hoffman,

207:When a poacher kills an elephant, he doesn’t just kill the elephant who dies. The family may lose the crucial memory of their elder matriarch, who knew where to travel during the very toughest years of drought to reach the food and water that would allow them to continue living. Thus one bullet may, years later, bring more deaths. Watching dolphins while thinking of elephants, what I realized is: when others recognize and depend on certain individuals, when a death makes the difference for individuals who survive, when relationships define us, we have traveled across a certain blurry boundary in the history of life on Earth—“it” has become “who. ~ Carl Safina,

208:There'a a phrase, "the elephant in the living room", which purports to describe what it's like to live with a drug addict, an alcoholic, an abuser. People outside such relationships will sometimes ask, "How could you let such a business go on for so many years? Didn't you see the elephant in the living room?" And it's so hard for anyone living in a more normal situation to understand the answer that comes closest to the truth; "I'm sorry, but it was there when I moved in. I didn't know it was an elephant; I thought it was part of the furniture." There comes an aha-moment for some folks - the lucky ones - when they suddenly recognize the difference. ~ Stephen King,

209:The distinctive features of the world's civilisations are not simply and solely the giraffe and the city of Rome, as the children may perhaps have been led to imagine on the first evening, but also the elephant and the country of Denmark, beside many other things. Yes, everyday brought its new animal and its new country, its new kings and its new gods, its quota of those tough little figures which seem to have no significance, but are nevertheless endowed with a life and a value of their own, and may be added together or subtracted from one another at will. And finally poetry, which is grater than any country ; poetry with its bright palaces. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness,

210:We were supposed to keep tabs on the institutions as a whole, but by law we had to defer to the primary supervisor, in those cases the OCC for their commercial banks and the Securities and Exchange Commission for their investment banks. The Fed also shared responsibility for the U.S. affiliates of foreign banks with state regulators, as well as home-country supervisors in London, Zurich, Frankfurt, and around the world. These divisions of labor evoked the parable of the blind men and the elephant, with nobody accountable for seeing the full picture of a corporation, much less the interconnections of the entire system. This glut of watchdogs with overlapping ~ Timothy F Geithner,

211:Elephant, beyond the fact that their size and conformation are aesthetically more suited to the treading of this earth than our angular informity, have an average intelligence comparable to our own. Of course they are less agile and physically less adaptable than ourselves -- nature having developed their bodies in one direction and their brains in another, while human beings, on the other hand, drew from Mr. Darwin's lottery of evolution both the winning ticket and the stub to match it. This, I suppose, is why we are so wonderful and can make movies and electric razors and wireless sets -- and guns with which to shoot the elephant, the hare, clay pigeons, and each other. ~ Beryl Markham,

212:In giving rise to man, the evolutionary process has, apparently for the first and only time in the history of the Cosmos, become conscious of itself. So, the Devil's Chaplain might conclude, Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence; the gift of revulsion against its implications; the gift of foresight — something utterly foreign to the blundering short-term ways of natural selection — and the gift of internalizing the very cosmos. ~ Richard Dawkins,

213:A terrorist, I think, is simply another kind of pornographer. The pornographer pretends he is disgusted by his work; the terrorist pretends he is uninterested in the means. The ends, they say, are what they care about. But they are both lying. Ernst loved his pornography; Ernst worshiped the means. It is never the ends that matter -- it is only the means that matter. The terrorist and the pornographer are in it for the means. The means is everything to them. The blast of the bomb, the elephant position, the Schlagobers and blood -- they love it all. Their intellectual detachment is a fraud; their indifference is feigned. They both tell lies about having ‘higher purposes.’ A terrorist is a pornographer. ~ John Irving,

214:In the story of the blind men and the elephant, what’s usually ignored is the fact that each man’s description was correct. What Faye won’t understand and may never understand is that there is not one true self hidden by many false ones. Rather, there is one true self hidden by many other true ones. Yes, she is the meek and shy and industrious student. Yes, she is the panicky and frightened child. Yes, she is the bold and impulsive seductress. Yes, she is the wife, the mother. And many other things as well. Her belief that only one of these is true obscures the larger truth, which was ultimately the problem with the blind men and the elephant. It wasn’t that they were blind—it’s that they stopped too quickly, ~ Nathan Hill,

215:So, the Devil’s Chaplain might conclude, Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence; the gift of revulsion against its implications; the gift of foresight – something utterly foreign to the blundering short-term ways of natural selection – and the gift of internalizing the very cosmos. We are blessed with brains which, if educated and allowed free rein, are capable of modelling the universe, with its physical laws in which the Darwinian algorithm is embedded. ~ Richard Dawkins,

216:In the story of the blind men and the elephant, what’s usually ignored is the fact that each man’s description was correct. What Faye won’t understand and may never understand is that there is not one true self hidden by many false ones. Rather, there is one true self hidden by many other true ones. Yes, she is the meek and shy and industrious student. Yes, she is the panicky and frightened child. Yes, she is the bold and impulsive seductress. Yes, she is the wife, the mother. And many other things as well. Her belief that only one of these is true obscures the larger truth, which was ultimately the problem with the blind men and the elephant. It wasn’t that they were blind—it’s that they stopped too quickly, and so never knew there was a larger truth to grasp. ~ Nathan Hill,

217:Three blind men were shown an elephant. They touched it with their hands to determine what the creature was. The first man felt the trunk, and claimed the elephant was like a snake. The second man touched its leg and claimed the elephant was like a tree. The third man touched its tail, and claimed that the elephant was like a slender rope." I nodded. "Oh, I get it. All of them were right. All of them were wrong. They couldn't get the whole picture." Shirk nodded. "Precisely. I am just another blind man. I do not get the whole picture of what transpires in all places. I am blind and limited. I would be a fool to think myself wise. And so, not knowing what the universe means, I can only try to be responsible with the knowledge, the strength, and the time given to me. ~ Jim Butcher,

218:English version by Robert Bly The colors of the Dark One have penetrated Mira's body; all the other colors washed out. Making love with the Dark One and eating little, those are my pearls and my carnelians. Meditation beads and the forehead streak, those are my scarves and my rings. That's enough feminine wiles for me. My teacher taught me this. Approve me or disapprove me: I praise the Mountain Energy night and day. I take the path that ecstatic human beings have taken for centuries. I don't steal money, I don't hit anyone. What will you charge me with? I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders; and now you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious. [2226.jpg] -- from The Winged Energy of Delight, Translated by Robert Bly ~ Mirabai, Why Mira Cant Come Back to Her Old House ,

219:His great bulk swaying to and fro as he threw his weight first upon one side and then upon the other, Tantor the elephant lolled in the shade of the father of forests. Almost omnipotent, he, in the realm of his people. Dango, Sheeta, even Numa the mighty were as naught to the pachyderm. For a hundred years he had come and gone up and down the land that had trembled to the comings and the goings of his forebears for countless ages. In peace he had lived with Dango the hyena, Sheeta the leopard and Numa the lion. Man alone had made war upon him. Man, who holds the unique distinction among created things of making war on all living creatures, even to his own kind. Man, the ruthless; man, the pitiless; man, the most hated living organism that Nature has evolved. Always during the long hundred years of ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs,

220:There is a story of a hummingbird who lives in a beautiful forest. One day that forest goes up in flames. All the animals watch on in dismay as flames destroy their home. Only the tiny hummingbird tries to stop the fire. Backwards and forwards he flies, with drop after drop of precious water. Feeling helpless, the elephant with his big trunk and the giraffe with his long neck watch the flames in dismay. They stand and do nothing. The hummingbird continues in vain and the animals start to laugh. They laugh at how small he is and how hard he is trying to save the forest that he loves. “What are you doing?” they ask him, “You can’t save the forest.” He stops, just for a second, to look at all the hopeless animals. He knows that he cannot save the forest but it doesn’t matter. “I’m doing the best that I can,” he says. ~ Anonymous,

221:Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie—Durkheim’s word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order.63 (It means, literally, “normlessness.”) We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

222:The Elephant Is Slow To Mate The elephant, the huge old beast, is slow to mate; he finds a female, they show no haste they wait for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts slowly, slowly to rouse as they loiter along the river-beds and drink and browse and dash in panic through the brake of forest with the herd, and sleep in massive silence, and wake together, without a word. So slowly the great hot elephant hearts grow full of desire, and the great beasts mate in secret at last, hiding their fire. Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts so they know at last how to wait for the loneliest of feasts for the full repast. They do not snatch, they do not tear; their massive blood moves as the moon-tides, near, more near till they touch in flood. ~ David Herbert Lawrence,

223:Some Hindus have an elephant to show. No one here has ever seen an elephant. They bring it at night to a dark room. One by one, we go in the dark and come out saying how we experience the animal. One of us happens to touch the trunk. A water-pipe kind of creature. Another, the ear. A strong, always moving back and forth, fan-animal. Another, the leg. I find it still, like a column on a temple. Another touches the curve back. A leathery throne. Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk. A rounded sword made of porcelain. He is proud of his description. Each of us touches one place and understands the whole in that way. The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant. If each of us held a candle there, and if we went in together, we could see it. ~ Rumi,

224:Katrina held Bram in her arms, speaking softly, reassuringly, as they approached baby Modoc. This was an important moment, a beginning, for she knew the boy would spend his life with animals, especially elephants, and the meeting was of utmost importance. Neither the elephant nor the baby said a word. All was quiet as they looked at each other. Mo’s small trunk wormed its way up, reaching to the baby. As Bram leaned over, his little hand pulled loose from Katrina’s grasp found its way down toward the trunk. A finger extended to meet the tip of the trunk. Bram’s expression was one of curiosity; he felt the wet tip, Modoc moved her “finger” all around Bram’s hand, sliding it across each finger and the palm. A big tickle grin spread across Bram’s face, Modoc did her elephant “chirp,” a tear glistened as it ran down Katrina’s face. All was well. The future had been written. ~ Ralph Helfer,

225:If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause. ~ Bertrand Russell,

226:when male whales sing, those who have the most complex songs are the ones who get the females. On the contrary, in the elephant world, a musth male will mate with anyone he can; it’s the female who sings, and it’s out of biological necessity. A female elephant is in estrus for only six days, and the only available males may be miles away. Pheromones don’t work at those distances, so she has to do something else to attract potential mates. It has been proven that whale songs are passed down from generation to generation, that they exist in all the oceans of the world. I have always wondered if the same holds true for elephants. If the calves of elephants learn the estrus song from their older female relatives during mating season, so that when it’s their own turn, they know how to sing to attract the strongest, fiercest males. If, by doing this, the daughters learn from their mothers’ mistakes. ~ Jodi Picoult,

227:A woman from the Hunan Province told it to me,” said Charon. “Once upon a time a stranger came to a remote village with an elephant. Everyone got excited, including three blind men who didn’t know what an elephant was. They decided to find out for themselves. “The first man approached the elephant near its head. He reached his hand out and felt the leathery ear. The second man approached from behind and brushed the elephant’s bristly tail. The third came at it from the side and stroked its wide midsection. “ ‘What a strange creature an elephant is,’ the first man said. ‘So flat and thin, like wash hung from the line.’ “ ‘What are you talking about?’ said the second man. ‘That animal was hairy and coarse, like the bristles on a stiff broom.’ “ ‘You are both wrong!’ said the third. ‘The beast was as broad and sturdy as a wall.’ They three men argued and argued, but they never could come to an agreement.” Charon ~ William Ritter,

228:She walked through the underpass at the Elephant and Castle, enjoying the sense that nothing really mattered, not the truth about the past, nor whether they believed her, not Winnie’s drinking or Vik’s ultimatum. It was the perfect place to escape from a painful past. She could waste years at home trying to make sense of a random series of events. There was no meaning, no lessons to be learned, no moral—none of it meant anything. She could spend her entire life trying to weave meaning into it, like compulsive gamblers and their secret schema. Nothing mattered, really, because an anonymous city is the moral equivalent of a darkened room. She understood why Ann had come here and stayed here and died here. It wouldn’t be hard. All she had to do was let go of home. She would phone Leslie and Liam sometimes, say she was fine, fine, let the calls get farther apart, make up a life for herself and they’d finally forget. ~ Denise Mina,

229:I guess, even before that, I'd get them to empty out everything their parents and everybody ever told them. I mean even if their parents just told them an elephant's big, I'd make them empty that out. An elephant's only big when it's next to something else--a dog or a lady, for example." "I wouldn't even tell them an elephant has a trunk. I might show them an elephant, if I had one handy, but I'd let them just walk up to the elephant not knowing anything more about it than the elephant knew about them. The same thing with grass, and other things. I wouldn't even tell them grass is green. Colors are only names. I mean if you tell them the grass is green, it makes them start expecting the grass to look a certain way--your way--instead of some other way that may be just as good, and may be much better . . . I don't know. I'd just make them vomit up every bit of the apple their parents and everybody made them take a bite out of. ~ J D Salinger,

230:Questions are a child’s way of expressing love and trust. They are a child’s way of starting a conversation. So instead of simply insisting over and over again that the object of my son’s attention is, in fact, an elephant, I might tell him about how, in India, elephants are symbols of good luck, or about how some say elephants have the best memories of all the animals. I might tell him about the time I saw an elephant spin a basketball on the tip of his trunk, or about how once there was an elephant named Horton who heard a Who. I might tell him that once upon a time, there was an elephant and four blind men; each man felt a different part of the elephant’s body: the ears, the tail, the side, and the tusk . . . Sometimes, as I’m doing this, my son will crawl into my lap, put his head on my chest, and just listen to the story, his questions quieted, his body relaxed. And I realize this is all he wanted to begin with—to be near me, to hear the familiar cadence of my voice, to know he’s safe and not alone. ~ Rachel Held Evans,

231:So," he began." Are you trying to drive me insane, or do you genuinely want me to throw you across this table and fuck you 'til neither of us can stand?" ~~ As Sam whacked Sheri on the back, trying to get her to stop choking on her wine, it occurred to him he needed to work on his communication skills. "Sorry," he said, giving her one more solid thump as she blinked up at him through teary eyes. "I probably could have broached the subject better." "You think?" she gasped. "Just trying to get a handle on the elephant in the room." She coughed again and gave him an incredulous look. "By shooting it with a grenade launcher instead of a tranquilizer dart?" He grinned as he handed her back into her chair and returned to his seat a safe distance away. He shrugged and picked up his fork. "Why use a big gun when a bigger one will do?" "I really don't think we should be talking about the size of your gun," she said, stabbing into her salad with more force than necessary. ~ Tawna Fenske,

232:Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. Proud and terrible king, he needs everything and nothing resists him ... from the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound ... from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child - his table is covered with corpses ... And who in all of this will exterminate him who exterminates all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man ... So it is accomplished ... the first law of the violent destruction of living creatures. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death. ~ Joseph de Maistre,

233:Ready to have some fun?” She didn’t give him time to answer. Weighed down with the chains, she flashed to a busy street in New York—fingers crossed he would be run over—then to a gay strip club in Italy—fingers crossed he would be groped—then to a zoo in Oklahoma—fingers crossed the elephant shit was ripe. “Enjoy,” she muttered with relish. Anya flashed one final time, back to where she’d begun: his home in Greece. Lucien was still following her trail. Lightning-quick, she hid the chains under the bed and palmed her Taser. When she straightened he was there, just in front of her. Her breath caught. He was still scowling, teeth bared and sharp, Death glowing in his eyes. He had a bleeding cut on his leg and he smelled like shit. Her nose wrinkled. “Step in something?” she asked innocently. “That, I did not mind.” He took a menacing step toward her. “What I did mind was being hit by a cab, then landing on the lap of a naked man. With an erection, Anya. He had an erection.” She grinned. She just couldn’t help herself. ~ Gena Showalter,

234:So," he began." Are you trying to drive me insane, or do you genuinely want me to throw you across this table and fuck you 'til neither of us can stand?" ~ Tawna Fenske~ Tawna Fenske As Sam whacked Sheri on the back, trying to get her to stop choking on her wine, it occurred to him he needed to work on his communication skills. "Sorry," he said, giving her one more solid thump as she blinked up at him through teary eyes. "I probably could have broached the subject better." "You think?" she gasped. "Just trying to get a handle on the elephant in the room." She coughed again and gave him an incredulous look. "By shooting it with a grenade launcher instead of a tranquilizer dart?" He grinned as he handed her back into her chair and returned to his seat a safe distance away. He shrugged and picked up his fork. "Why use a big gun when a bigger one will do?" "I really don't think we should be talking about the size of your gun," she said, stabbing into her salad with more force than necessary. ~ Tawna Fenske,

235:Psychologists say the best way to handle children at this stage of development is not to answer their questions directly but instead to tell them a story. As pediatrician Alan Greene explained, “After conversing with thousands of children, I’ve decided that what they really mean is, ‘That’s interesting to me. Let’s talk about that together. Tell me more, please?’ Questions are a child’s way of expressing love and trust. They are a child’s way of starting a conversation. So instead of simply insisting over and over again that the object of my son’s attention is, in fact, an elephant, I might tell him about how, in India, elephants are symbols of good luck, or about how some say elephants have the best memories of all the animals. I might tell him about the time I saw an elephant spin a basketball on the tip of his trunk, or about how once there was an elephant named Horton who heard a Who. I might tell him that once upon a time, there was an elephant and four blind men; each man felt a different part of the elephant’s body: the ears, the tail, the side, and the tusk . . . ~ Rachel Held Evans,

236:And across the water, you would swear you could sniff it all; the cinnamon and the cloves, the frankincense and the honey and the licorice, the nutmeg and citrons, the myrrh and the rosewater from Persia in keg upon keg. You would think you could glimpse, heaped and glimmering, the sapphires and the emeralds and the gauzes woven with gold, the ostrich feathers and the elephant tusks, the gums and the ginger and the coral buttons mynheer Goswin the clerk of the Hanse might be wearing on his jacket next week. . . . The Flanders galleys put into harbor every night in their highly paid voyage from Venice, fanned down the Adriatic by the thick summer airs, drifting into Corfu and Otranto, nosing into and out of Sicily and round the heel of Italy as far as Naples; blowing handsomely across the western gulf to Majorca, and then to the north African coast, and up and round Spain and Portugal, dropping off the small, lucrative loads which were not needed for Bruges; taking on board a little olive oil, some candied orange peel, some scented leather, a trifle of plate and a parrot, some sugar loaves. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,

237:How to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel that my body was inflated by a mischievous boy. Once I was the size of a falcon, the size of a lion, once I was not the elephant I find I am. My pelt sags, and my master scolds me for a botched trick. I practiced it all night in my tent, so I was somewhat sleepy. People connect me with sadness and, often, rationality. Randall Jarrell compared me to Wallace Stevens, the American poet. I can see it in the lumbering tercets, but in my mind I am more like Eliot, a man of Europe, a man of cultivation. Anyone so ceremonious suffers breakdowns. I do not like the spectacular experiments with balance, the high-wire act and cones. We elephants are images of humility, as when we undertake our melancholy migrations to die. Did you know, though, that elephants were taught to write the Greek alphabet with their hooves? Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs, tossing grass up to heaven—as a distraction, not a prayer. That’s not humility you see on our long final journeys: it’s procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down. —DAN CHIASSON, “The Elephant ~ Jodi Picoult,

238:Many more villagers, who have seen an elephant for the first time in their lives, give absurd exaggerations regarding his size, weight, and height. One of them describes him as ‘a fundament!’. Another, elaborating, alludes to the term ‘firmament,’ because of the elephant’s hugeness. He felt as though the sky was obliterated from his vision. The last to be interviewed by the local TV station swears that he sensed the world lean forward as the elephant came closer and tilt backwards as the beast walked away. This large mammal ambles purposefully. He pays no heed to the crowded silence following him in stealthy consciousness. One of the villagers, a woman often suspected of dabbling in witchcraft, talks of her inspired theory: that this was no elephant, more like a human on a holy mission of avenging justice. Two other witnesses, neither having had any contact with the woman, speak in substantiation of the woman’s claims, giving as evidence the observation that the elephant turned around when someone said something in Somali. Several villagers will not comment, afraid of a fitting retribution should they do so. ~ Nuruddin Farah,

239:When I contacted her about my research, Dr. Dalmau's colleague Dr. Rita Balice-Gorodn brought up the old Indian proverb, often used by neuroscientists studying the brain, about six blind men trying to identify an elephant, offering it as a way of understanding how much more we have to learn about the disease. Each man grabs hold of a different part of the animal and tries to identify the unnamed object. One man touches the tail and says, "rope"; one touches a leg and says, "pillar"; one feels a trunk and says, "tree"; one feels an ear and says, "fan"; one feels the belly and says, "wall"; the last one feels the tusk and is certain it's a "pipe." (The tale has been told so many times that the outcomes differ widely. In a Buddhist iteration, the mean are told they are all correct and rejoice; in another, the men break out in violence when they can't agree.) Dr. Balice-Gordon has a hopeful interpretation of the analogy: "We're sort of approaching the elephant from the front end and from the back end in the hopes of touching in the middle. We're hoping to paint a detailed enough landscape of the elephant. ~ Susannah Cahalan,

240:Meanwhile, it needs to be recognized, and talked about more frankly, that for philosophy the elephant in the kitchen is organized religion. More precisely, the understanding of human condition often foretold by the blending of science and religion is inhibited by the intervention of supernatural creation stories, each defining a separate tribe. It is one thing to hold and share the elevated spiritual values of theological religion, with a belief in the divine and trust in the existence of an afterlife. It is another thing entirely to adopt a particular supernatural creation story. Faith in a creation story gives comforting membership in a tribe. But it bears stressing that not all creation stories can be true, no two can be true, and most assuredly, all are false. Each is sustained by blind tribalistic faith alone. The study of religion is an essential part of the humanities. It should nonetheless be studied as an element of human nature, and the evolution thereof, and not, in the manner of Christian bible colleges and Islamic madaris, a manual for the promotion of a faith defined by a particular creation story. ~ Edward O Wilson,

241:As we become adept in communication, we forget that the concepts and words that we use in language are abstractions. In other words, we fall asleep to what is real--actual experience-- and take concepts to be real. As with language, so with every other aspect of experience. We forget that thoughts are thoughts, feelings are feelings, and sensations are sensations. We instead take the contents of thoughts to be real entities, feelings to be what we are, and sensations to be external objects. Think of an elephant, for instance. If you forget that you are thinking about an elephant, then you take the elephant you are thinking about to be an actual elephant. 'Absurd!' you say, but isn't that exactly what happens when you are distracted in meditation? A thought of a dispute with a friend arises. You don't recognize it as a thought. In the next moment, you are engrossed in an argument with your friend. You forget not only your meditation practice but also where you are. Your world of experience has collapsed down to the dispute with your friend. You are completely obsessed with it. The only argument that is taking place, however, is the one in your mind. ~ Ken McLeod,

242:But underneath all this reasonable talk, this scientific speculating, no white Afrikaner could quite put down the way it felt…Something sinister was moving out in the veld: he was beginning to look at their faces, especially those of the women, lined beyond the thorn fences, and he knew beyond logical proof: there was a tribal mind at work out here, and it had chosen to commit suicide…Puzzling. Perhaps we weren’t as fair as we might have been, perhaps we did take their cattle and their lands away…and then the work-camps of course, the barbed wire, and the stockades…Perhaps they feel it is a world they no longer want to live in. Typical of them, though, giving up, crawling away to die…why won’t they even negotiate? We could work out a solution, some solution… It was a simple choice for the Hereros, between two kinds of death: tribal death, or Christian death. Tribal death made sense. Christian death made none at all. It seemed an exercise they did not need. But to the Europeans, conned by their own Baby Jesus Con Game, what they were witnessing among these Hereros was a mystery potent as that of the elephant graveyard, or the lemmings rushing into the sea. ~ Thomas Pynchon,

243:Men have nothing in common with me--there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin's head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him-- caring whether he is happy or isn't, or whether he is wealthy or poor, whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, whether his mother is sick or well, whether he is looked up to in society or not, whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider--he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent. ~ Mark Twain,

244:That is the bizarre thing about the good news: who knows how you will really hear it one day, but once you have heard it, I mean really HEARD it, you can never UNHEAR it. Once you have read it, or spoken it, or thought it, even if it irritates you, even if you hate hearing it or cannot find it feasible, or try to dismiss it, you cannot UNREAD it, or UNSPEAK it, or UNTHINK it. It is like a great big elephant in a tiny room. Its obvious presence begins to squeeze out everything else, including your own little measly self. Some accept it easily, some accept it quickly, and some are struck with the mystical reality of it right away. These people have no trouble bringing the unseen into the realm of the seen. But others of us fight the elephant; we push back on it, we try to ignore it, get it to leave the room, or attempt to leave the room ourselves. But it does not help. The trunk keeps curling around the doorknob. The hook is there. It may snooze or loom or rise and recede, but regardless of the time passed or the vanity endured, the idea keeps coming back, like a cosmic boomerang you just cannot throw away. I did not realize this was part of the grace of it all-such relentless truthfulness. ~ Carolyn Weber,

245:author class:Jalaluddin Rumi /Farsi & Turkish By the God who was in pre-eternity living and moving and omnipotent, everlasting. His light lit the candles of love so that a hundred thousand secrets became known. By one decree of Him the world was filled -- lover and loved, ruler and ruled. In the talismans of Shams-e Tabrizi the treasure of His marvels became concealed. For from the moment that you journeyed forth, we became separated from sweetness like wax; All the night we are burning like candles, paired to his flame and deprived of honey. In separation from his beauty, my body is a waste, and the soul in it is like an owl. Turn those reins in this direction, twist the trunk of the elephant of joy. Without your presence concert is not lawful; music has been stoned like Satan. Without you not one ode has been uttered, until that gracious vision of yours arrived and was understood; Then out of the joy of hearing your letter five or six odes were composed. May our eventide through you be radiant dawn, O you in whom Syria and Armenia and Rum glory. [1494.jpg] -- from Mystical Poems of Rumi: Volume 2, Translated by A. J. Arberry ~ the God who was in pre-eternity living and moving and omnipotent, everlasting ,

246:I've never been to the ocean, never heard the waves lick the sand in that quiet shushing you read about in books. I've never been to the zoo, smelled the elephant piss, and heard the cries of the monkeys. I've never had frozen yogurt from one of those places where you pull on the handle and fill your own cup with whatever you like. I've never eaten dinner at a restaurant with napkins that you set on your lap and silverware that isn't plastic. I've never painted my nails like the other girls at school, in bright neons and decadent reds. I've never been more than ten miles from home. Ten miles. It's like I live in the forever ago, not where buses rumble and trains have racks. I've never had a birthday cake, though I've wanted one very much. I've never owned a bra that is new, and had to cut the tags off with the scissors from the kitchen drawer. I've never been loved in a way that makes me feel as if I was supposed to be born, if only to feel loved. I've never, I've never, I've never. And it's my own fault. The things that we never do because someone makes us fearful of them, or makes us believe we don't deserve them. I want to do all my nevers-- alone or with someone who matters. I don't care. I just want to live. ~ Tarryn Fisher,

247:Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie—Durkheim’s word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order.63 (It means, literally, “normlessness.”) We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago.64 Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few). THE ~ Jonathan Haidt,

248:Elephants Are Different To Different People Wilson and Pilcer and Snack stood before the zoo elephant. Wilson said, 'What is its name? Is it from Asia or Africa? Who feeds it? Is it a he or a she? How old is it? Do they have twins? How much does it cost to feed? How much does it weigh? If it dies, how much will another one cost? If it dies, what will they use the bones, the fat, and the hide for? What use is it besides to look at?' Pilcer didn't have any questions; he was murmering to himself, 'It's a house by itself, walls and windows, the ears came from tall cornfields, by God; the architect of those legs was a workman, by God; he stands like a bridge out across the deep water; the face is sad and the eyes are kind; I know elephants are good to babies.' Snack looked up and down and at last said to himself, 'He's a tough son-of-a-gun outside and I'll bet he's got a strong heart, I'll bet he's strong as a copper-riveted boiler inside.' They didn't put up any arguments. They didn't throw anything in each other's faces. Three men saw the elephant three ways And let it go at that. They didn't spoil a sunny Sunday afternoon; 'Sunday comes only once a week,' they told each other. ~ Carl Sandburg,

249:The Republican Party spent the year of the liberal apotheosis enacting the most unlikely political epic ever told: a right-wing fringe took over the party from the ground up, nominating Barry Goldwater, the radical-right senator from Arizona, while a helpless Eastern establishment-that-was-now-a-fringe looked on in bafflement. Experts, claiming the Republican tradition of progressivism was as much a part of its identity as the elephant, began talking about a party committing suicide. The Goldwaterites didn’t see suicide. They saw redemption. This was part and parcel of their ideology—that Lyndon Johnson’s “consensus” was their enemy in a battle for the survival of civilization. For them, the idea that calamitous liberal nonsense—ready acceptance of federal interference in the economy; Negro “civil disobedience”; the doctrine of “containing” the mortal enemy Communism when conservatives insisted it must be beaten—could be described as a “consensus” at all was symbol and substance of America’s moral rot. They also believed the vast majority of ordinary Americans already agreed with them, whatever spake the polls—“crazy figures,” William F. Buckley harrumphed, doctored “to say, ‘Yes, Mr. President.’” It was their article of faith. And faith, and the uncompromising passions attending it, was key to their political makeup. ~ Rick Perlstein,

250:A dove gazed in through a latticed window: there balm rained down on her face, raining from lucent Maximin. The heat of the sun blazed out to irradiate the dark: a bud burst open, jewel-like, in the temple of the heart (limpid and kind his heart). A tower of cypress is he, and of Lebanon's cedars -- rubies and sapphires frame his turrets -- a city passing the arts of all other artisans. A swift stag is he who ran to the fountain -- pure wellspring from a stone of power -- to water sweet-smelling spices. O perfumers! you who dwell in the luxuriance of royal gardens, climbing high when you accomplish the holy sacrifice with rams: Among you this architect is shining, a wall of the temple, he who longed for an eagle's wings as he kissed his foster-mother Wisdom in Ecclesia's garden. O Maximin, mountain and valley, on your towering height the mountain goat leapt with the elephant, and Wisdom was in rapture. Strong and sweet in the sacred rites and the shimmer of the altar, you rise like incense to the pillar of praise -- where you pray for your people who strive toward the mirror of light. Praise him! Praise in the highest! [1826.jpg] -- from Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the Symphonia armonie celstium revelationum, by Hildegard of Bingen / Translated by Barbara Newman ~ Saint Hildegard von Bingen, Columba aspexit - Sequence for Saint Maximin ,

251:On your left you can see the Stationary Circus in all its splendor! Not far nor wide will you find dancing bears more nimble than ours, ringmasters more masterful, Lunaphants more buoyant!” September looked down and leftward as best she could. She could see the dancing bears, the ringmaster blowing peonies out of her mouth like fire, an elephant floating in the air, her trunk raised, her feet in mid-foxtrot—and all of them paper. The skin of the bears was all folded envelopes; they stared out of sealing-wax eyes. The ringmaster wore a suit of birthday invitations dazzling with balloons and cakes and purple-foil presents; her face was a telegram. Even the elephant seemed to be made up of cast-off letterheads from some far-off office, thick and creamy and stamped with sure, bold letters. A long, sweeping trapeze swung out before them. Two acrobats held on, one made of grocery lists, the other of legal opinions. September could see Latin on the one and lemons, ice, bread (not rye!), and lamb chops on the other in a cursive hand. When they let go of the trapeze-bar, they turned identical flips in the air and folded out into paper airplanes, gliding in circles all the way back down to the peony-littered ring. September gasped and clapped her hands—but the acrobats were already long behind them, bowing and catching paper roses in their paper teeth. ~ Catherynne M Valente,

252:The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans today. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild Clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent—others merely SENSIBLE, as the phrase is,—others prophetic. Some forms of disease, even, may prophesy forms of health. The geologist has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which were extinct before man was created, and hence "indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence." The Hindus dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of time and development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. The partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot. In short, all good things are wild and free. ~ Henry David Thoreau,

253:For centuries poets, some poets, have tried to give a voice to the animals, and readers, some readers, have felt empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, and they could speak with the tongues of angels--at the very least with the tongues of angels--they would be unable to save themselves from us. What good would language do? Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells and eyes. We discover the remarkable intelligence of the whale, the wolf, the elephant--it does not save them, nor does our awareness of the complexity of their lives. Their strength, their skills, their swiftness, the beauty of their flights. It matters not, it seems, whether they are large or small, proud or shy, docile or fierce, wild or domesticated, whether they nurse their young or brood patiently on eggs. If they eat meat, we decry their viciousness; if they eat grasses and seeds, we dismiss them as weak. There is not one of them, not even the songbird who cannot, who does not, conflict with man and his perceived needs and desires. St. Francis converted the wolf of Gubbio to reason, but he performed this miracle only once and as miracles go, it didn’t seem to capture the public’s fancy. Humans don’t want animals to reason with them. It would be a disturbing, unnerving, diminishing experience; it would bring about all manner of awkwardness and guilt. ~ Joy Williams,

254:Sudden Things A storm was coming, that was why it was dark. The wind was blowing the fronds of the palm trees off. They were maples. I looked out the window across the big lawn. The house was huge, full of children and old people. The lion was loose. Either because of the wind, or by malevolent human energy, which is the same thing, the cage had come open. Suppose a child walked outside! A child walked outside. I knew that I must protect him from the lion. I threw myself on top of the child. The lion roared over me. In the branches and the bushes there was suddenly a loud crackling. The lion cringed. I looked up and saw that the elephant was loose! The elephant was taller than the redwoods. He was hairy like a mammoth. His tusks trailed vines. Parrots screeched around his head. His eyes rolled crazily. He trumpeted. The ice-cap was breaking up! The lion backed off, whining. The boy ran for the house. I covered his retreat, locked all the doors and pulled the bars across them. An old lady tried to open a door to get a better look. I spoke sharply to her, she sat down grumbling and pulled a blanket over her knees. Out of the window I saw zebras and rattlesnakes and wildebeests and cougars and woodchucks on the lawns and in the tennis courts. I worried how, after the storm, we would put the animals back in their cages, and get to the mainland. ~ Donald Hall,

255:The Blind Men and the Elephant9 It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: “God bless me! but the Elephant Is very like a wall!” The Second, feeling of the tusk Cried, “Ho! what have we here, So very round and smooth and sharp? To me `tis mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear!” The Third approached the animal, And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up he spake: “I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant Is very like a snake!” The Fourth reached out an eager hand, And felt about the knee: “What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain,” quoth he; “’Tis clear enough the Elephant Is very like a tree!” The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: “E’en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan!” The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope. “I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant Is very like a rope!” And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! Moral So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen! ~ Douglas N Graham,

256:I believe Nancy said that her aunt married beneath her.” Which you wouldn’t let me do. He went rigid beside her. “Ah. That does happen.” Unless you’re Dom the Almighty. “The marriage seems to have turned out well enough.” Jane would goad him into revealing the truth of what he’d done, no matter what it took. “Nancy said Mrs. Patch misses her late husband dreadfully and refuses to decamp from York, though she could easily live with my uncle. Apparently, she doesn’t miss her life as a knight’s daughter.” “Oh? And exactly how far beneath herself she marry?” Jane colored as she dredged that little detail from her memory. “Her late husband was an architect, I believe.” “So, not a gentleman of leisure but still in a profession respectable enough that Nancy felt no compunction about visiting her.” He smirked as he navigated the phaeton expertly through the narrow streets of York. “There are levels of marrying beneath one, after all.” Oh, she could just smack his face for that. After all these years, that he could still be so certain of the wisdom of the course he’d set them upon…”Yes, just as there are levels of being in love. Some people’s love for each other transcends all obstacles. Some people’s love does not.” His smug expression vanished. “And some people do not understand the meaning of the word.” “Really? I thought love was about enduring any sacrifice to be with the object of one’s affection.” He drove through an archway and reined in the horses. “Here we are. The Elephant and Castle.” So he was avoiding the subject. Again. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,

257:The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess, together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness, treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of perjury far more often than men. It is questionable whether they ought to be allowed to take an oath at all. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,

258:He shouldn’t have walked out, because now the awkwardness was going to fester until she felt a need to talk about the incident in the bathroom. He could have laughed it off as morning wood, making it clear the pronounced lump had nothing to do with her. That would have been a lie, of course. He’d been up for several hours and it most definitely had something to do with her. But she might have bought the story and not had to talk about it. The kitchen felt claustrophobic all of a sudden, what with the two women he barely knew and the elephant in the room, so he took his coffee and muttered about catching the morning news. He turned on the TV in the living room and sank onto the couch with a sigh of relief. It would take a few minutes to make the French toast, so he had a few minutes of normal. “Can I talk to you for a second?” It was Emma, of course, and there went his normal. He sighed and moved over on the couch. “Knock yourself out.” She sat down, far enough away so none of their body parts touched. “I get the whole guy thing. Morning…you know, and I don’t want this to be weird.” “It’s no big deal.” “Okay.” She took a sip of her coffee, then wrapped both hands around the mug. “We’ll probably have more moments like this if we’re going to live together for a month. Probably best to just laugh them off.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Actually, when a guy’s standing in front of you, fully hard and wearing nothing but a towel, laughing might not be the best way to handle it.” “True.” Her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink and she laughed softly. “If we were in a movie, the towel would have fallen off. Could’ve been worse.” “With my luck, I’m surprised it didn’t. ~ Shannon Stacey,

259:Most of us operate from a narrower frame of reference than that of which we are capable, failing to transcend the influence of our particular culture, our particular set of parents and our particular childhood experience upon our understanding. It is no wonder, then, that the world of humanity is so full of conflict. We have a situation in which human beings, who must deal with each other, have vastly different views as to the nature of reality, yet each one believes his or her own view to be the correct one since it is based on the microcosm of personal experience. And to make matters worse, most of us are not even fully aware of our own world views, much less the uniqueness of the experience from which they are derived. Bryant Wedge, a psychiatrist specializing in the field of international relations, studied negotiations between the United States and the U.S.S.R. and was able to delineate a number of basic assumptions as to the nature of human beings and society and the world held by Americans which differed dramatically from the assumptions of Russians. These assumptions dictated the negotiating behavior of both sides. Yet neither side was aware of its own assumptions or the fact that the other side was operating on a different set of assumptions. The inevitable result was that the negotiating behavior of the Russians seemed to the Americans to be either crazy or deliberately evil, and of course the Americans seemed to the Russians equally crazy or evil.24 We are indeed like the three proverbial blind men, each in touch with only his particular piece of the elephant yet each claiming to know the nature of the whole beast. So we squabble over our different microcosmic world views, and all wars are holy wars. ~ M Scott Peck,

260:The Buddha, too, goes into the forest and has conferences there with the leading gurus of his day. Then he goes past them and, after a season of trials and search, comes to the bo tree, the tree of illumination, where he, likewise, undergoes three temptations. The first is of lust, the second of fear, and the third of submission to public opinion, doing as told. In the first temptation, the Lord of Lust displayed his three beautiful daughters before the Buddha. Their names were Desire, Fulfillment, and Regrets - Future, Present, and Past. But the Buddha, who had already disengaged himself from attachment to his sensual character, was not moved. Then the Lord of Lust turned himself into the Lord of Death and flung at the Buddha all the weapons of an army of monsters. But the Buddha had found himself that still point within, which is of eternity, untouched by time. So again, he was not moved, and the weapons flung at him turned into flowers of worship. Finally the Lord of Lust and Death transformed himself into the Lord of Social Duty and argued, "Young man, haven't you read the morning papers? Don't you know what there is to be done today?" The Buddha responded by simply touching the earth with the tips of the fingers of his right hand. Then the voice of the goddess mother of the universe was heard, like thunder rolling on the horizon, saying, "This, my beloved son, has already so given of himself to the world that there is no one here to be ordered about. Give up this nonsense." Whereupon the elephant on which the Lord of Social Duty was riding bowed in worship of the Buddha, and the entire company of the Antagonist dissolved like a dream. That night, the Buddha achieved illumination, and for the next fifty years remained in the world as teacher of the way to the extinction of the bondages of egoism. p171-2 ~ Joseph Campbell,

261:Psychologists often approach personality by measuring basic traits such as the “big five”: neuroticism, extroversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness (warmth/niceness), and conscientiousness.15 These traits are facts about the elephant, about a person’s automatic reactions to various situations. They are fairly similar between identical twins reared apart, indicating that they are influenced in part by genes, although they are also influenced by changes in the conditions of one’s life or the roles one plays, such as becoming a parent.16 But psychologist Dan McAdams has suggested that personality really has three levels... The third level of personality is that of the “life story.” Human beings in every culture are fascinated by stories; we create them wherever we can. (See those seven stars up there? They are seven sisters who once . . . ) It’s no different with our own lives. We can’t stop ourselves from creating what McAdams describes as an “evolving story that integrates a reconstructed past, perceived present, and anticipated future into a coherent and vitalizing life myth.”18 Although the lowest level of personality is mostly about the elephant, the life story is written primarily by the rider. You create your story in consciousness as you interpret your own behavior, and as you listen to other people’s thoughts about you. The life story is not the work of a historian—remember that the rider has no access to the real causes of your behavior; it is more like a work of historical fiction that makes plenty of references to real events and connects them by dramatizations and interpretations that might or might not be true to the spirit of what happened. Adversity may be necessary for growth because it forces you to stop speeding along the road of life, allowing you to notice the paths that were branching off all along, and to think about where you really want to end up. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

262:In the whole vast domain of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom. As soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom, you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die, and how many are killed. But from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A power of violence at once hidden and palpable … has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. Thus there are insects of prey, reptiles of prey, birds of prey, fishes of prey, quadrupeds of prey. There is no instant of time when one creature is not being devoured by another. Over all these numerous races of animals man is placed, and his destructive hand spares nothing that lives. He kills to obtain food and he kills to clothe himself. He kills to adorn himself, he kills in order to attack, and he kills in order to defend himself. He kills to instruct himself and he kills to amuse himself. He kills to kill. Proud and terrible king, he wants everything and nothing resists him. From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound ... from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child - his table is covered with corpses ... And who in all of this will exterminate him who exterminates all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man ... So it is accomplished ... the first law of the violent destruction of living creatures. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death. ~ Joseph de Maistre,

263:speed in which he shifts nearly stops my heart. One moment I’m talking to him, the next a gigantic feline prowls over the long dining room table, batting plates aside and growling as he stalks toward me. Scooting my chair back, properly terrified, I quickly say, “Apparently I was wrong.” The lion still appears as if he’s going to attack. “A lion is impressive, yes, but what about an elephant?” I continue. “Can you change into a beast that large? Surely not.” With a loud crack and flying wood, the table collapses as the lion morphs into a creature so gigantic, there is scarcely room for him. Dishes, settings, and candelabras fly this way and that. The elephant holds a huge foot over me. “Are you impressed yet, Carabas?” “Quite,” I squeak and then clear my throat. “But, now that I think of it, it’s only natural that a large creature such as yourself can change into other large creatures. Not that difficult, really.” Slowly, the ogre-elephant lowers his foot, looking as if he’s about to gore me with his tusks. Standing, hoping to put a little distance between me and the beast, I add, “But to change into something tiny, something insignificant—now that would be a feat.” “Like what, Carabas?” the ogre glares at me with foreign eyes. “A rabbit? A grouse?” I shrug. “Certainly, but what about something as tiny as…a mouse? That would be quite impossible, would it not?” And just like that, the elephant is gone, vanished before my very eyes. I frantically look for him in the broken plates, splintered table, and mess of molten wax on the floor. Before I even spot the rodent the ogre shifted into, Puss leaps into the middle of the mess, pouncing with outstretched paws and a greedy look in his bright green eyes. A tiny gray tail disappears into the cat’s mouth, and that is my very last glimpse of the ogre. I stare at Puss with disbelief. The world slows, and the steady thrum of the grandfather clock in the corner is the only thing that tells me that time hasn’t actually stopped. “It ~ Shari L Tapscott,

264:Mercury And The Elephant As Merc'ry travell'd thro' a Wood, (Whose Errands are more Fleet than Good) An Elephant before him lay, That much encumber'd had the Way: The Messenger, who's still in haste, Wou'd fain have bow'd, and so have past; When up arose th' unweildy Brute, And wou'd repeat a late Dispute, In which (he said) he'd gain'd the Prize From a wild Boar of monstrous Size: But Fame (quoth he) with all her Tongues, Who Lawyers, Ladies, Soldiers wrongs, Has, to my Disadvantage, told An Action throughly Bright and Bold; Has said, that I foul Play had us'd, And with my Weight th' Opposer bruis'd; Had laid my Trunk about his Brawn, Before his Tushes cou'd be drawn; Had stunn'd him with a hideous Roar, And twenty-thousand Scandals more: But I defy the Talk of Men, Or Voice of Brutes in ev'ry Den; Th' impartial Skies are all my Care, And how it stands Recorded there. Amongst you Gods, pray, What is thought? Quoth Mercury–Then have you Fought! Solicitous thus shou'd I be For what's said of my Verse and Me; Or shou'd my Friends Excuses frame, And beg the Criticks not to blame (Since from a Female Hand it came) Defects in Judgment, or in Wit; They'd but reply - Then has she Writ! Our Vanity we more betray, 94 In asking what the World will say, Than if, in trivial Things like these, We wait on the Event with ease; Nor make long Prefaces, to show What Men are not concern'd to know: For still untouch'd how we succeed, 'Tis for themselves, not us, they Read; Whilst that proceeding to requite, We own (who in the Muse delight) 'Tis for our Selves, not them, we Write. Betray'd by Solitude to try Amusements, which the Prosp'rous fly; And only to the Press repair, To fix our scatter'd Papers there; Tho' whilst our Labours are preserv'd, The Printers may, indeed, be starv'd. ~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,

265:You're fixing everything I set down." He nods at my hands, which are readjusting the elephant. "It wasn't polite of me to come in and start touching your things." "Oh,it's okay," I say quickly, letting go of the figurine. "You can touch anything of mine you want." He freezes. A funny look runs across his face before I realize what I've said. I didn't mean it like that. Not that that/i> would be so bad. But I like Toph,and St. Clair has a girlfriend. And even if the situation were different, Mer still has dibs. I'd never do that to her after how nice she was my first day.And my second. And every other day this week. Besides,he's just an attractive boy. Nothing to get worked up over. I mean, the streets of Europe are filled with beautiful guys, right? Guys with grooming regimens and proper haircuts and stylish coats.Not that I've seen anyone even remotely as good-looking as Monsieur Etienne St.Clair.But still. He turns his face away from mine. Is it my imagination or does he look embarrassed? But why would he be embarrassed? I'm the one with the idiotic mouth. "Is that your boyfriend?" He points to my laptop's wallpaper, a photo of my coworkers and me goofing around. It was taken before the midnight release of the lastest fantasy-novel-to-film adaptation. Most of us were dressed like elves or wizards. "The one with his eyes closed?" "WHAT?" He thinks I'd date a guy like Hercules Hercules is an assistant manager. He's ten years older than me and,yes, that's his real name. And even though he's sweet and knows more about Japanese horror films than anyone,he also has a ponytail. A ponytail. "Anna,I'm kidding.This one. Sideburns." He points to Toph,the reason I love the picture so much.Our heads are turned into each other, and we're wearing secret smiles,as if sharing a private joke. "Oh.Uh...no.Not really.I mean, Toph was my almost-boyfriend.I moved away before..." I trail off, uncomfortable. "Before much could happen. ~ Stephanie Perkins,

266:When Dacey Rode The Mule ’TWAS to a small, up-country town, When we were boys at school, There came a circus with a clown, Likewise a bucking mule. The clown announced a scheme they had Spectators for to bring— They’d give a crown to any lad Who’d ride him round the ring. And, gentle reader, do not scoff Nor think a man a fool— To buck a porous-plaster off Was pastime to that mule. The boys got on he bucked like sin; He threw them in the dirt. What time the clown would raise a grin By asking, “Are you hurt?” But Johnny Dacey came one night, The crack of all the school; Said he, “I’ll win the crown all right; Bring in your bucking mule.” The elephant went off his trunk, The monkey played the fool, And all the band got blazing drunk When Dacey rode the mule. But soon there rose a galling shout Of laughter, for the clown From somewhere in his pants drew out A little paper crown. He placed the crown on Dacey’s head While Dacey looked a fool; “Now, there’s your crown, my lad,” he said, “For riding of the mule!” The band struck up with “Killaloe”, And “Rule Britannia, Rule”, And “Young Man from the Country”, too, 525 When Dacey rode the mule. Then Dacey, in a furious rage, For vengeance on the show Ascended to the monkeys’ cage And let the monkeys go; The blue-tailed ape and the chimpanzee He turned abroad to roam; Good faith! It was a sight to see The people step for home. For big baboons with canine snout Are spiteful, as a rule— The people didn’t sit it out, When Dacey rode the mule. And from the beasts he let escape, The bushmen all declare, Were born some creatures partly ape And partly native-bear. They’re rather few and far between, The race is nearly spent; But some of them may still be seen In Sydney Parliament. And when those legislators fight, And drink, and act the fool, Just blame it on that torrid night When Dacey rode the mule. A.B. (Banjo) Pasterson ~ Banjo Paterson,

267:Jalal-ud-Din Rumi used to tell a story about a far distant country, somewhere to the north of Afghanistan. In this country there was a city inhabited entirely by the blind. One day the news came that an elephant was passing outside the walls of this city. ‘The citizens called a meeting and decided to send a delegation of three men outside the gates so that they could report back what an elephant was. In due course, the three men left the town and stumbled forwards until they eventually found the elephant. The three reached out, felt the animal with their hands, then they all headed back to the town as quickly as they could to report what they had felt. ‘The first man said: “An elephant is a marvellous creature! It is like a vast snake, but it can stand vertically upright in the air!” The second man was indignant at hearing this: “What nonsense!” he said. “This man is misleading you. I felt the elephant and what it most resembles is a pillar. It is firm and solid and however hard you push against it you could never knock it over.” The third man shook his head and said: “Both these men are liars! I felt the elephant and it resembles a broad pankah. It is wide and flat and leathery and when you shake it it wobbles around like the sail of a dhow.” All three men stuck by their stories and for the rest of their lives they refused to speak to each other. Each professed that they and only they knew the whole truth. ‘Now of course all three of the blind men had a measure of insight. The first man felt the trunk of the elephant, the second the leg, the third the ear. All had part of the truth, but not one of them had even begun to grasp the totality or the greatness of the beast they had encountered. If only they had listened to one another and meditated on the different facets of the elephant, they might have realized the true nature of the beast. But they were too proud and instead they preferred to keep to their own half-truths. ‘So it is with us. We see Allah one way, the Hindus have a different conception, and the Christians have a third. To us, all our different visions seem incompatible and irreconcilable. But what we forget is that before God we are like blind men stumbling around in total blackness ... ~ Anonymous,

268:How important was mantra to Gandhi’s transformation? Extremely. When done systematically, mantra has a powerful effect on the brain. It gathers and focuses the energy of the mind. It teaches the mind to focus on one point, and it cultivates a steadiness that over time becomes an unshakable evenness of temper. The cultivation of this quality of “evenness” is a central principle of the Bhagavad Gita. It is called samatva in Sanskrit, and it is a central pillar of Krishna’s practice. When the mind develops steadiness, teaches Krishna, it is not shaken by fear or greed. So, in his early twenties, Gandhi had already begun to develop a still-point at the center of his consciousness—a still-point that could not be shaken. This little seed of inner stillness would grow into a mighty oak. Gandhi would become an immovable object. Rambha had given Gandhi an enchanting image to describe the power of mantra. She compared the practice of mantra to the training of an elephant. “As the elephant walks through the market,” taught Rambha, “he swings his trunk from side to side and creates havoc with it wherever he goes—knocking over fruit stands and scattering vendors, snatching bananas and coconuts wherever possible. His trunk is naturally restless, hungry, scattered, undisciplined. This is just like the mind—constantly causing trouble.” “But the wise elephant trainer,” said Rambha, “will give the elephant a stick of bamboo to hold in his trunk. The elephant likes this. He holds it fast. And as soon as the elephant wraps his trunk around the bamboo, the trunk begins to settle. Now the elephant strides through the market like a prince: calm, collected, focused, serene. Bananas and coconuts no longer distract.” So too with the mind. As soon as the mind grabs hold of the mantra, it begins to settle. The mind holds the mantra gently, and it becomes focused, calm, centered. Gradually this mind becomes extremely concentrated. This is the beginning stage of meditation. All meditation traditions prescribe some beginning practice of gathering, focusing, and concentration—and in the yoga tradition this is most often achieved precisely through mantra. The whole of Chapter Six in the Bhagavad Gita is devoted to Krishna’s teachings on this practice: “Whenever the mind wanders, restless and diffuse in its search for satisfaction without, lead it within; train it to rest in the Self,” instructs Krishna. “When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place. ~ Stephen Cope,

269:growing, like a storm on the horizon, gathering, the echo of thunder distant but present. For whatever reason, it doesn’t affect me. I am certain that there is something out there, waiting for us. We press on, into the darkness, barreling at maximum speed, the three nuclear warheads on our ship armed and ready. I feel like Ahab hunting the white whale. I am a man possessed. When I launched into space aboard the Pax, my life was empty. I didn’t know Emma. My brother was a stranger to me. I had no family, no friends. Only Oscar. Now I have something to lose. Something to live for. Something to fight for. My time in space has changed me. When I left Earth the first time, I was still the rebel scientist the world had cast out. I felt like an outsider, a renegade. Now I have become a leader. I’ve learned to read people, to try to understand them. That was my mistake before. I trudged ahead with my vision of the world, believing the world would follow me. But the truth is, true leadership requires understanding those you lead, making the best choices for them, and most of all, convincing them when they don’t realize what’s best for them. Leadership is about moments like this, when the people you’re charged with protecting have doubts, when the odds are against you. Every morning, the crew gathers on the bridge. Oscar and Emma strap in on each side of me and we sit around the table and everyone gives their departmental updates. The ship is operating at peak efficiency. So is the crew. Except for the elephant in the room. “As you know,” I begin, “we are still on course for Ceres. We have not ordered the other ships in the Spartan fleet to alter course. The fact that the survey drones have found nothing, changes nothing. Our enemy is advanced. Sufficiently advanced to alter our drones and hide itself. With that said, we should discuss the possibility that there is, in fact, nothing out there on Ceres. We need to prepare for that eventuality.” Heinrich surveys the rest of the crew before speaking. “It could be a trap.” He’s always to the point. I like that about him. “Yes,” I reply, “it could be. The entity, or harvester, or whatever is out there, could be manufacturing the solar cells elsewhere—deeper in the solar system, or from another asteroid in the belt. It could be sending the solar cells to Ceres and then toward the sun, making them look as though they were manufactured on Ceres. There could be a massive bomb or attack drones waiting for us at Ceres.” “We could split our fleet, ~ A G Riddle,

270:Cover the war, what a gig to frame for yourself, going out after one kind of information and getting another, totally other, to lock your eyes open, drop your blood temperature down under the 0, dry your mouth out so a full swig of water disappeared in there before you could swallow, turn your breath fouler than corpse gas. There were times when your fear would take directions so wild that you had to stop and watch the spin. Forget the Cong, the trees would kill you, the elephant grass grew up homicidal, the ground you were walking over possessed malignant intelligence, your whole environment was a bath. Even so, considering where you were and what was happening to so many people, it was a privilege just to be able to feel afraid. So you learned about fear, it was hard to know what you really learned about courage. How many times did somebody have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice? What about those acts that didn’t require courage to perform, but made you a coward if you didn’t? It was hard to know at the moment, easy to make a mistake when it came, like the mistake of thinking that all you needed to perform a witness act were your eyes. A lot of what people called courage was only undifferentiated energy cut loose by the intensity of the moment, mind loss that sent the actor on an incredible run; if he survived it he had the chance later to decide whether he’d really been brave or just overcome with life, even ecstasy. A lot of people found the guts to just call it all off and refuse to ever go out anymore, they turned and submitted to the penalty end of the system or they just split. A lot of reporters, too, I had friends in the press corps who went out once or twice and then never again. Sometimes I thought that they were the sanest, most serious people of all, although to be honest I never said so until my time there was almost over. “We had this gook and we was gonna skin him” (a grunt told me), “I mean he was already dead and everything, and the lieutenant comes over and says, ‘Hey asshole, there’s a reporter in the TOC, you want him to come out and see that? I mean, use your fucking heads, there’s a time and place for everything.…” “Too bad you wasn’t with us last week” (another grunt told me, coming off a no-contact operation), “we killed so many gooks it wasn’t even funny.” Was it possible that they were there and not haunted? No, not possible, not a chance, I know I wasn’t the only one. Where are they now? (Where am I now?) I stood as close to them as I could without actually being one of them, and then I stood as far back as I could without leaving the planet. Disgust doesn’t begin to describe what they made me feel, they threw people out of helicopters, tied people up and put the dogs on them. Brutality was just a word in my mouth before that. But disgust was only one color in the whole mandala, gentleness and pity were other colors, there wasn’t a color left out. I think that those people who used to say that they only wept for the Vietnamese never really wept for anyone at all if they couldn’t squeeze out at least one for these men and boys when they died or had their lives cracked open for them. But of course we were intimate, I’ll tell you how intimate: they were my guns, and I let them do it. ~ Michael Herr,

271:Lenox Hill (In Lenox Hill Hospital, after surgery, my mother said the sirens sounded like the elephants of Mihiragula when his men drove them off cliffs in the Pir Panjal Range.) The Hun so loved the cry, one falling elephant's, he wished to hear it again. At dawn, my mother heard, in her hospital-dream of elephants, sirens wail through Manhattan like elephants forced off Pir Panjal's rock cliffs in Kashmir: the soldiers, so ruled, had rushed the elephant, The greatest of all footprints is the elephant's, said the Buddha. But not lifted from the universe, those prints vanished forever into the universe, though nomads still break news of those elephants as if it were just yesterday the air spread the dye ("War's annals will fade into night / Ere their story die"), the punishing khaki whereby the world sees us die out, mourning you, O massacred elephants! Months later, in Amherst, she dreamt: She was, with diamonds, being stoned to death. I prayed: If she must die, let it only be some dream. But there were times, Mother, while you slept, that I prayed, 'Saints, let her die.' Not, I swear by you, that I wished you to die but to save you as you were, young, in song in Kashmir, and I, one festival, crowned Krishna by you, Kashmir listening to my flute. You never let gods die. Thus I swear, here and now, not to forgive the universe that would let me get used to a universe without you. She, she alone, was the universe as she earned, like a galaxy, her right not to die, defying the Merciful of the Universe, Master of Disease, "in the circle of her traverse" of drug-bound time. And where was the god of elephants, plump with Fate, when tusk to tusk, the universe, dyed green, became ivory? Then let the universe, like Paradise, be considered a tomb. Mother, they asked me, So how's the writing? I answered My mother 17 is my poem. What did they expect? For no verse sufficed except the promise, fading, of Kashmir and the cries that reached you from the cliffs of Kashmir (across fifteen centuries) in the hospital. Kashmir, she's dying! How her breathing drowns out the universe as she sleeps in Amherst. Windows open on Kashmir: There, the fragile wood-shrines—so far away—of Kashmir! O Destroyer, let her return there, if just to die. Save the right she gave its earth to cover her, Kashmir has no rights. When the windows close on Kashmir, I see the blizzard-fall of ghost-elephants. I hold back—she couldn't bear it—one elephant's story: his return (in a country far from Kashmir) to the jungle where each year, on the day his mother died, he touches with his trunk the bones of his mother. 'As you sit here by me, you're just like my mother,' she tells me. I imagine her: a bride in Kashmir, she's watching, at the Regal, her first film with Father. If only I could gather you in my arms, Mother, I'd save you—now my daughter—from God. The universe opens its ledger. I write: How helpless was God's mother! Each page is turned to enter grief's accounts. Mother, I see a hand. Tell me it's not God's. Let it die. I see it. It's filling with diamonds. Please let it die. Are you somewhere alive, somewhere alive, Mother? Do you hear what I once held back: in one elephant's cry, by his mother's bones, the cries of those elephants that stunned the abyss? Ivory blots out the elephants. I enter this: The Beloved leaves one behind to die. For compared to my grief for you, what are those of Kashmir, and what (I close the ledger) are the griefs of the universe when I remember you—beyond all accounting—O my mother? ~ Agha Shahid Ali,

272:'Peaceable Expulsion' DRAMATIS PERSONAE. MOUNTWAVE _a Politician_ HARDHAND _a Workingman_ TOK BAK _a Chinaman_ SATAN _a Friend to Mountwave_ CHORUS OF FOREIGN VOTERS. MOUNTWAVE: My friend, I beg that you will lend your ears (I know 'tis asking a good deal of you) While I for your instruction nominate Some certain wrongs you suffer. Men like you Imperfectly are sensible of all The miseries they actually feel. Hence, Providence has prudently raised up Clear-sighted men like me to diagnose Their cases and inform them where they're hurt. The wounds of honest workingmen I've made A specialty, and probing them's my trade. HARDHAND: Well, Mister, s'pose you let yer bossest eye Camp on my mortal part awhile; then you Jes' toot my sufferin's an' tell me what's The fashionable caper now in writhesThe very swellest wiggle. MOUNTWAVE: Well, my lad, 'Tis plain as is the long, conspicuous nose Borne, ponderous and pendulous, between The elephant's remarkable eye-teeth (_Enter Tok Bak._) 383 That Chinese competition's what ails _you_. BOTH (_Singing_): O pig-tail Celestial, O barbarous bestial, Abominable Chinee! Simian fellow man, Primitive yellow man, Joshian devotee! Shoe-and-cigar machine, Oleomargarine You are, and butter are weFat of the land are we, Salt of the earth; In God's image planned to beNoble in birth! You, on the contrary, Modeled upon very Different lines indeed, Show in conspicuous, Base and ridiculous Ways your inferior breed. Wretched apology, Shame of ethnology, Monster unspeakably low! Fit to be buckshottedBe you 'steboycotted. Vanish-vamoose-mosy-Go! TOK BAK: You listen me! You beatee the big dlum An' tell me go to Flowly Kingdom Come. You all too muchee fool. You chinnee heap. Such talkee like my washee-belly cheap! (_Enter Satan._) You dlive me outee clunty towns all way; Why you no tackle me Safflisco, hay? SATAN: 384 Methought I heard a murmuring of tongues Sound through the ceiling of the hollow earth, As if the anti-coolie ques--ha! friends, Well met. You see I keep my ancient word: Where two or three are gathered in my name, There am I in their midst. MOUNTWAVE: O monstrous thief! To quote the words of Shakespeare as your own. I know his work. HARDHAND: Who's Shakespeare?-what's his trade? I've heard about the work o' that galoot Till I'm jest sick! TOK BAK: Go Sunny school-you'll know Mo' Bible. Bime by pleach-hell-talkee. Tell 'Bout Abel-mebby so he live too cheap. He mebby all time dig on lanch-no dlink, No splee-no go plocession fo' make voteNo sendee money out of clunty fo' To helpee Ilishmen. Cain killum. Josh He catchee at it, an' he belly madSay: 'Allee Melicans boycottee Cain.' Not muchee-you no pleachee that: You all same lie. MOUNTWAVE: This cuss must be expelled. (_Draws pistol_.) MOUNTWAVE, HARDHAND, SATAN (_singing_): For Chinese expulsion, hurrah! To mobbing and murder, all hail! 385 Away with your justice and lawWe'll make every pagan turn tail. CHORUS OF FOREIGN VOTERS: Bedad! oof dot tief o'ze vorldZat Ivan Tchanay vos got hurled In Hella, da debil he say: 'Wor be yer return pairmit, hey?' Und gry as 'e shaka da boot: 'Zis haythen haf nevaire been oot!' HARDHAND: Too many cooks are working at this brothI think, by thunder, t'will be mostly froth! I'm cussed ef I can sarvy, up to date, What good this dern fandango does the State. MOUNTWAVE: The State's advantage, sir, you may not see, But think how good it is for me. SATAN: And me. (_Curtain_.) ~ Ambrose Bierce,

273:The Sphinx The Sphinx is drowsy,    The wings are furled; Her ear is heavy,    She broods on the world. "Who'll tell me my secret,    The ages have kept? I awaited the seer,    While they slumbered and slept; "The fate of the man-child;    The meaning of man; Known fruit of the unknown;    Daedalian plan; Out of sleeping a waking,    Out of waking a sleep; Life death overtaking;    Deep underneath deep? "Erect as a sunbeam,    Upspringeth the palm; The elephant browses,    Undaunted and calm; In beautiful motion    The thrush plies his wings; Kind leaves of his covert,    Your silence he sings. "The waves, unashamed,    In difference sweet, Play glad with the breezes,    Old playfellows meet; The journeying atoms,    Primordial wholes, Firmly draw, firmly drive,    By their animate poles. "Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,    Plant, quadruped, bird, By one music enchanted,    One deity stirred, Each the other adorning,    Accompany still; Night veileth the morning,    The vapor the hill. "The babe by its mother    Lies bathed in joy; Glide its hours uncounted,    The sun is its toy; Shines the peace of all being,    Without cloud, in its eyes; And the sum of the world    In soft miniature lies. "But man crouches and blushes,    Absconds and conceals; He creepeth and peepeth,    He palters and steals; Infirm, melancholy,    Jealous glancing around, An oaf, an accomplice,    He poisons the ground. "Outspoke the great mother,    Beholding his fear; At the sound of her accents    Cold shuddered the sphere: 'Who has drugged my boy's cup?    Who has mixed my boy's bread? Who, with sadness and madness,    Has turned the man-child's head?'" I heard a poet answer,    Aloud and cheerfully, "Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges    Are pleasant songs to me. Deep love lieth under    These pictures of time; They fad in the light of    Their meaning sublime. "The fiend that man harries    Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon,    Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of nature    Can't trace him again, Whose soul sees the perfect,    Which his eyes seek in vain. "Profounder, profounder,    Man's spirit must dive; To his aye-rolling orbit    No goal will arrive; The heavens that now draw him    With sweetness untold, Once found,for new heavens    He spurneth the old. "Pride ruined the angels,    Their shame them restores; And the joy that is sweetest    Lurks in stings of remorse. Have I a lover    Who is noble and free? I would he were nobler    Than to love me. "Eterne alternation    Now follows, now flied; And under pain, pleasure,    Under pleasure, pain lies. Love works at the centre,    Heart-heaving alway; Forth speed the strong pulses    To the borders of day. "Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits!    Thy sight is growing blear; Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx    Her muddy eyes to clear!" The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,    Said, "Who taught thee me to name? I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow,    Of thine eye I am eyebeam. "Thou art the unanswered question;    Couldst see they proper eye, Alway it asketh, asketh;    And each answer is a lie. So take thy quest through nature,    It through thousand natures ply; Ask on, thou clothed eternity;    Time is the false reply." Uprose the merry Sphinx,    And crouched no more in stone; She melted into purple cloud,    She silvered in the moon; She spired into a yellow flame;    She flowered in blossoms red; She flowed into a foaming wave;    She stood Monadnoc's head. Through a thousand voices    Spoke the universal dame: "Who telleth one of my meanings,    Is master of all I am." by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Sphinx ,

274:Jubilate Agno: Fragment A Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues; give the glory to the Lord, and the Lamb. Nations, and languages, and every Creature, in which is the breath of Life. Let man and beast appear before him, and magnify his name together. Let Noah and his company approach the throne of Grace, and do homage to the Ark of their Salvation. Let Abraham present a Ram, and worship the God of his Redemption. Let Isaac, the Bridegroom, kneel with his Camels, and bless the hope of his pilgrimage. Let Jacob, and his speckled Drove adore the good Shepherd of Israel. Let Esau offer a scape Goat for his seed, and rejoice in the blessing of God his father. Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter, bind a Leopard to the altar, and consecrate his spear to the Lord. Let Ishmael dedicate a Tyger, and give praise for the liberty, in which the Lord has let him at large. Let Balaam appear with an Ass, and bless the Lord his people and his creatures for a reward eternal. Let Anah, the son of Zibion, lead a Mule to the temple, and bless God, who amerces the consolation of the creature for the service of Man. Let Daniel come forth with a Lion, and praise God with all his might through faith in Christ Jesus. Let Naphthali with an Hind give glory in the goodly words of Thanksgiving. Let Aaron, the high priest, sanctify a Bull, and let him go free to the Lord and Giver of Life. 32 Let the Levites of the Lord take the Beavers of the brook alive into the Ark of the Testimony. Let Eleazar with the Ermine serve the Lord decently and in purity. Let Ithamar minister with a Chamois, and bless the name of Him, which cloatheth the naked. Let Gershom with an Pygarg Hart bless the name of Him, who feedeth the hungry. Let Merari praise the wisdom and power of God with the Coney, who scoopeth the rock, and archeth in the sand. Let Kohath serve with the Sable, and bless God in the ornaments of the Temple. Let Jehoida bless God with an Hare, whose mazes are determined for the health of the body and to parry the adversary. Let Ahitub humble himself with an Ape before Almighty God, who is the maker of variety and pleasantry. Let Abiathar with a Fox praise the name of the Lord, who ballances craft against strength and skill against number. Let Moses, the Man of God, bless with a Lizard, in the sweet majesty of goodnature, and the magnanimity of meekness. Let Joshua praise God with an Unicorn -- the swiftness of the Lord, and the strength of the Lord, and the spear of the Lord mighty in battle. Let Caleb with an Ounce praise the Lord of the Land of beauty and rejoice in the blessing of his good Report. Let Othniel praise God with the Rhinoceros, who put on his armour for the reward of beauty in the Lord. Let Tola bless with the Toad, which is the good creature of God, tho' his virtue is in the secret, and his mention is not made. Let Barak praise with the Pard -- and great is the might of the faithful and great is the Lord in the nail of Jael and in the sword of the Son of Abinoam. 33 Let Gideon bless with the Panther -- the Word of the Lord is invincible by him that lappeth from the brook. Let Jotham praise with the Urchin, who took up his parable and provided himself for the adversary to kick against the pricks. Let Boaz, the Builder of Judah, bless with the Rat, which dwelleth in hardship and peril, that they may look to themselves and keep their houses in order. Let Obed-Edom with a Dormouse praise the Name of the Lord God his Guest for increase of his store and for peace. Let Abishai bless with the Hyaena -- the terror of the Lord, and the fierceness, of his wrath against the foes of the King and of Israel. Let Ethan praise with the Flea, his coat of mail, his piercer, and his vigour, which wisdom and providence have contrived to attract observation and to escape it. Let Heman bless with the Spider, his warp and his woof, his subtlety and industry, which are good. Let Chalcol praise with the Beetle, whose life is precious in the sight of God, tho his appearance is against him. Let Darda with a Leech bless the Name of the Physician of body and soul. Let Mahol praise the Maker of Earth and Sea with the Otter, whom God has given to dive and to burrow for his preservation. Let David bless with the Bear -- The beginning of victory to the Lord -- to the Lord the perfection of excellence -- Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in sweetness magnifical and mighty. Let Solomon praise with the Ant, and give the glory to the Fountain of all Wisdom. Let Romamti-ezer bless with the Ferret -- The Lord is a rewarder of them, that diligently seek him. Let Samuel, the Minister from a child, without ceasing praise with the Porcupine, 34 which is the creature of defence and stands upon his arms continually. Let Nathan with the Badger bless God for his retired fame, and privacy inaccessible to slander. Let Joseph, who from the abundance of his blessing may spare to him, that lacketh, praise with the Crocodile, which is pleasant and pure, when he is interpreted, tho' his look is of terror and offence. Let Esdras bless Christ Jesus with the Rose and his people, which is a nation of living sweetness. Let Mephibosheth with the Cricket praise the God of chearfulness, hospitality, and gratitude. Let Shallum with the Frog bless God for the meadows of Canaan, the fleece, the milk and the honey. Let Hilkiah praise with the Weasel, which sneaks for his prey in craft, and dwelleth at ambush. Let Job bless with the Worm -- the life of the Lord is in Humiliation, the Spirit also and the truth. Let Elihu bless with the Tortoise, which is food for praise and thanksgiving. Let Hezekiah praise with the Dromedary -- the zeal for the glory of God is excellence, and to bear his burden is grace. Let Zadoc worship with the Mole -- before honour is humility, and he that looketh low shall learn. Let Gad with the Adder bless in the simplicity of the preacher and the wisdom of the creature. Let Tobias bless Charity with his Dog, who is faithful, vigilant, and a friend in poverty. Let Anna bless God with the Cat, who is worthy to be presented before the throne of grace, when he has trampled upon the idol in his prank. Let Benaiah praise with the Asp -- to conquer malice is nobler, than to slay the 35 lion. Let Barzillai bless with the Snail -- a friend in need is as the balm of Gilead, or as the slime to the wounded bark. Let Joab with the Horse worship the Lord God of Hosts. Let Shemaiah bless God with the Caterpiller -- the minister of vengeance is the harbinger of mercy. Let Ahimelech with the Locust bless God from the tyranny of numbers. Let Cornelius with the Swine bless God, which purifyeth all things for the poor. Let Araunah bless with the Squirrel, which is a gift of homage from the poor man to the wealthy and increaseth good will. Let Bakbakkar bless with the Salamander, which feedeth upon ashes as bread, and whose joy is at the mouth of the furnace. Let Jabez bless with Tarantula, who maketh his bed in the moss, which he feedeth, that the pilgrim may take heed to his way. Let Jakim with the Satyr bless God in the dance. -Let Iddo praise the Lord with the Moth -- the writings of man perish as the garment, but the Book of God endureth for ever. Let Nebuchadnezzar bless with the Grashopper -- the pomp and vanities of the world are as the herb of the field, but the glory of the Lord increaseth for ever. Let Naboth bless with the Canker-worm -- envy is cruel and killeth and preyeth upon that which God has given to aspire and bear fruit. Let Lud bless with the Elk, the strenuous asserter of his liberty, and the maintainer of his ground. Let Obadiah with the Palmer-worm bless God for the remnant that is left. Let Agur bless with the Cockatrice -- The consolation of the world is deceitful, and temporal honour the crown of him that creepeth. 36 Let Ithiel bless with the Baboon, whose motions are regular in the wilderness, and who defendeth himself with a staff against the assailant. Let Ucal bless with the Cameleon, which feedeth on the Flowers and washeth himself in the dew. Let Lemuel bless with the Wolf, which is a dog without a master, but the Lord hears his cries and feeds him in the desert. Let Hananiah bless with the Civet, which is pure from benevolence. Let Azarias bless with the Reindeer, who runneth upon the waters, and wadeth thro the land in snow. Let Mishael bless with the Stoat -- the praise of the Lord gives propriety to all things. Let Savaran bless with the Elephant, who gave his life for his country that he might put on immortality. Let Nehemiah, the imitator of God, bless with the Monkey, who is work'd down from Man. Let Manasses bless with the Wild-Ass -- liberty begetteth insolence, but necessity is the mother of prayer. Let Jebus bless with the Camelopard, which is good to carry and to parry and to kneel. Let Huz bless with the Polypus -- lively subtlety is acceptable to the Lord. Let Buz bless with the Jackall -- but the Lord is the Lion's provider. Let Meshullam bless with the Dragon, who maketh his den in desolation and rejoiceth amongst the ruins. Let Enoch bless with the Rackoon, who walked with God as by the instinct. Let Hashbadana bless with the Catamountain, who stood by the Pulpit of God against the dissensions of the Heathen. Let Ebed-Melech bless with the Mantiger, the blood of the Lord is sufficient to do 37 away the offence of Cain, and reinstate the creature which is amerced. Let A Little Child with a Serpent bless Him, who ordaineth strength in babes to the confusion of the Adversary. Let Huldah bless with the Silkworm -- the ornaments of the Proud are from the bowells of their Betters. Let Susanna bless with the Butterfly -- beauty hath wings, but chastity is the Cherub. Let Sampson bless with the Bee, to whom the Lord hath given strength to annoy the assailant and wisdom to his strength. Let Amasiah bless with the Chaffer -- the top of the tree is for the brow of the champion, who has given the glory to God. Let Hashum bless with the Fly, whose health is the honey of the air, but he feeds upon the thing strangled, and perisheth. Let Malchiah bless with the Gnat -- it is good for man and beast to mend their pace. Let Pedaiah bless with the Humble-Bee, who loves himself in solitude and makes his honey alone. Let Maaseiah bless with the Drone, who with the appearance of a Bee is neither a soldier nor an artist, neither a swordsman nor smith. Let Urijah bless with the Scorpion, which is a scourge against the murmurers -the Lord keep it from our coasts. Let Anaiah bless with the Dragon-fly, who sails over the pond by the wood-side and feedeth on the cressies. Let Zorobabel bless with the Wasp, who is the Lord's architect, and buildeth his edifice in armour. Let Jehu bless with the Hornet, who is the soldier of the Lord to extirpate abomination and to prepare the way of peace. Let Mattithiah bless with the Bat, who inhabiteth the desolations of pride and 38 flieth amongst the tombs. Let Elias which is the innocency of the Lord rejoice with the Dove. Let Asaph rejoice with the Nightingale -- The musician of the Lord! and the watchman of the Lord! Let Shema rejoice with the Glowworm, who is the lamp of the traveller and mead of the musician. Let Jeduthun rejoice with the Woodlark, who is sweet and various. Let Chenaniah rejoice with Chloris, in the vivacity of his powers and the beauty of his person. Let Gideoni rejoice with the Goldfinch, who is shrill and loud, and full withal. Let Giddalti rejoice with the Mocking-bird, who takes off the notes of the Aviary and reserves his own. Let Jogli rejoice with the Linnet, who is distinct and of mild delight. Let Benjamin bless and rejoice with the Redbird, who is soft and soothing. Let Dan rejoice with the Blackbird, who praises God with all his heart, and biddeth to be of good cheer. ~ Christopher Smart,

275:Prince Dorus In days of yore, as Ancient Stories tell, A King in love with a great Princess fell. Long at her feet submiss the Monarch sigh'd, While she with stern repulse his suit denied. Yet was he form'd by birth to please the fair, Dress'd, danc'd, and courted, with a Monarch's air; But Magic Spells her frozen breast had steel'd With stubborn pride, that knew not how to yield. This to the King a courteous Fairy told, And bade the Monarch in his suit be bold; For he that would the charming Princess wed, Had only on her cat's black tail to tread, When straight the Spell would vanish into air, And he enjoy for life the yielding fair. He thank'd the Fairy for her kind advice.Thought he, 'If this be all, I'll not be nice; Rather than in my courtship I will fail, I will to mince-meat tread Minon's black tail.' To the Princess's court repairing strait, He sought the cat that must decide his fate; But when he found her, how the creature stared! How her back bristled, and her great eyes glared! That tail, which he so fondly hop'd his prize, Was swell'd by wrath to twice its usual size; And all her cattish gestures plainly spoke, She thought the affair he came upon, no joke. With wary step the cautious King draws near, And slyly means to attack her in her rear; But when he thinks upon her tail to pounce, Whisk-off she skips-three yards upon a bounceAgain he tries, again his efforts fail- 96 Minon's a witch-the deuce is in her tail.- The anxious chase for weeks the Monarch tried, Till courage fail'd, and hope within him died. A desperate suit 'twas useless to prefer, Or hope to catch a tail of quicksilver.When on a day, beyond his hopes, he found Minon, his foe, asleep upon the ground; Her ample tail hehind her lay outspread, Full to the eye, and tempting to the tread. The King with rapture the occasion bless'd, And with quick foot the fatal part he press'd. Loud squalls were heard, like howlings of a storm, And sad he gazed on Minon's altered form,No more a cat, but chang'd into a man Of giant size, who frown'd, and thus began: 'Rash King, that dared with impious design To violate that tail, that once was mine; What tho' the spell be broke, and burst the charms, That kept the Princess from thy longing arms,Not unrevenged shalt thou my fury dare, For by that violated tail I swear, From your unhappy nuptials shall be born A Prince, whose Nose shall be thy subjects' scorn. Bless'd in his love thy son shall never be, Till he his foul deformity shall see, Till he with tears his blemish shall confess, Discern its odious length, and wish it less!' This said, he vanish'd; and the King awhile Mused at his words, then answer'd with a smile, 'Give me a child in happy wedlock born, And let his Nose be made like a French horn; His knowledge of the fact I ne'er can doubt,If he have eyes, or hands, he'll find it out.' So spake the King, self-flatter'd in his thought, 97 Then with impatient step the Princess sought; His urgent suit no longer she withstands, But links with him in Hymen's knot her hands. Almost as soon a widow as a bride, Within a year the King her husband died; And shortly after he was dead and gone She was deliver'd of a little son, The prettiest babe, with lips as red as rose, And eyes like little stars-but such a noseThe tender Mother fondly took the boy Into her arms, and would have kiss'd her joy; His luckless nose forbade the fond embraceHe thrust the hideous feature in her face. Then all her Maids of Honour tried in turn, And for a Prince's kiss in envy burn; By sad experience taught, their hopes they miss'd, And mourn'd a Prince that never could be kiss'd. In silent tears the Queen confess'd her grief, Till kindest Flattery came to her relief. Her maids, as each one takes him in her arms, Expatiate freely o'er his world of charmsHis eyes, lips, mouth-his forehead was divineAnd for the nose-they call'd it AquilineDeclared that Cæsar, who the world subdued, Had such a one-just of that longitudeThat Kings like him compell'd folks to adore them, And drove the short-nos'd sons of men before themThat length of nose portended length of days, And was a great advantage many waysTo mourn the gifts of Providence was wrongBesides, the Nose was not so very long.- These arguments in part her grief redrest, A mother's partial fondness did the rest; And Time, that all things reconciles by use, Did in her notions such a change produce, That, as she views her babe, with favour blind, 98 She thinks him handsomest of human kind. Meantime, in spite of his disfigured face, Dorus (for so he's call'd) grew up a pace; In fair proportion all his features rose, Save that most prominent of all-his Nose. That Nose, which in the infant could annoy, Was grown a perfect nuisance in the boy. Whene'er he walk'd, his Handle went before, Long as the snout of Ferret, or Wild Boar; Or like the Staff, with which on holy day The solemn Parish Beadle clears the way. But from their cradle to their latest year, How seldom Truth can reach a Prince's ear! To keep the unwelcome knowledge out of view, His lesson well each flattering Courtier knew; The hoary Tutor, and the wily Page, Unmeet confederates! dupe his tender age. They taught him that whate'er vain mortals boastStrength, Courage, Wisdom-all they value mostWhate'er on human life distinction throwsWas all comprized-in what?-a length of nose! Ev'n Virtue's self (by some suppos'd chief merit) In short-nosed folks was only want of spirit. While doctrines such as these his guides instill'd, His Palace was with long-nosed people fill'd; At Court whoever ventured to appear With a short nose, was treated with a sneer. Each courtier's wife, that with a babe is blest, Moulds its young nose betimes; and does her best, By pulls, and hauls, and twists, and lugs, and pinches, To stretch it to the standard of the Prince's. Dup'd by these arts, Dorus to manhood rose, Nor dream'd of ought more comely than his Nose; Till Love, whose power ev'n Princes have confest, 99 Claim'd the soft empire o'er his youthful breast. Fair Claribel was she who caus'd his care; A neighb'ring Monarch's daughter, and sole heir. For beauteous Claribel his bosom burn'd; The beauteous Claribel his flame return'd; Deign'd with kind words his passion to approve, Met his soft vows, and yielded love for love. If in her mind some female pangs arose At sight (and who can blame her?) of his Nose, Affection made her willing to be blind; She loved him for the beauties of his mind; And in his lustre, and his royal race, Contented sunk-one feature of his face. Blooming to sight, and lovely to behold, Herself was cast in Beauty's richest mould; Sweet female majesty her person deck'dHer face an angel's-save for one defectWise Nature, who to Dorus over kind, A length of nose too liberal had assign'd, As if with us poor mortals to make sport, Had given to Claribel a nose too short: But turn'd up with a sort of modest grace; It took not much of beauty from her face; And subtle Courtiers, who their Prince's mind Still watch'd, and turn'd about with every wind, Assur'd the Prince, that though man's beauty owes Its charms to a majestic length of nose, The excellence of Woman (softer creature) Consisted in the shortness of that feature. Few arguments were wanted to convince The already more than half persuaded Prince; Truths, which we hate, with slowness we receive, But what we wish to credit, soon believe. The Princess's affections being gain'd, What but her Sire's approval now remain'd? Ambassadors with solemn pomp are sent To win the aged Monarch to consent (Seeing their States already were allied) 100 That Dorus might have Claribel to bride. Her Royal Sire, who wisely understood The match propos'd was for both kingdoms' good, Gave his consent; and gentle Claribel With weeping bids her father's court farewell. With gallant pomp, and numerous array, Dorus went forth to meet her on her way; But when the Princely pair of lovers met, Their hearts on mutual gratulations set, Sudden the Enchanter from the ground arose, (The same who prophesied the Prince's nose) And with rude grasp, unconscious of her charms, Snatch'd up the lovely Princess in his arms, Then bore her out of reach of human eyes, Up in the pathless regions of the skies. Bereft of her that was his only care, Dorus resign'd his soul to wild despair; Resolv'd to leave the land that gave him birth, And seek fair Claribel throughout the earth. Mounting his horse, he gives the beast the reins, And wanders lonely through the desert plains; With fearless heart the savage heath explores, Where the wolf prowls, and where the tiger roars, Nor wolf, nor tiger, dare his way oppose; The wildest creatures see, and shun, his Nose. Ev'n lions fear! the elephant alone Surveys with pride a trunk so like his own. At length he to a shady forest came, Where in a cavern lived an aged dame; A reverend Fairy, on whose silver head A hundred years their downy snows had shed. Here ent'ring in, the Mistress of the place Bespoke him welcome with a cheerful grace; Fetch'd forth her dainties, spread her social board With all the store her dwelling could afford. The Prince, with toil and hunger sore opprest, 101 Gladly accepts, and deigns to be her guest. But when the first civilities were paid, The dishes rang'd, and Grace in order said; The Fairy, who had leisure now to view Her guest more closely, from her pocket drew Her spectacles, and wip'd them from the dust, Then on her nose endeavour'd to adjust; With difficulty she could find a place To hang them on in her unshapely face; For, if the Princess's was somewhat small, This Fairy scarce had any nose at all. But when by help of spectacles the Crone Discern'd a Nose so different from her own, What peals of laughter shook her aged sides! While with sharp jests the Prince she thus derides. FAIRY. 'Welcome, great Prince of Noses, to my cell; 'Tis a poor place,-but thus we Fairies dwell. Pray, let me ask you, if from far you comeAnd don't you sometimes find it cumbersome?' PRINCE. 'Find what?' FAIRY. 'Your Nose-' PRINCE. 'My Nose, Ma'am!' FAIRY. 'No offenceThe King your Father was a man of sense, A handsome man (but lived not to be old) And had a Nose cast in the common mould. Ev'n I myself, that now with age am grey, 102 Was thought to have some beauty in my day, And am the Daughter of a King.-Your Sire In this poor face saw something to admireAnd I to shew my gratitude made shiftHave stood his friend-and help'd him at a lift'Twas I that, when his hopes began to fail, Shew'd him the spell that lurk'd in Minon's tailPerhaps you have heard-but come, Sir, you don't eatThat Nose of yours requires both wine and meatFall to, and welcome, without more adoYou see your fare-what shall I help you to? This dish the tongues of nightingales contains; This, eyes of peacocks; and that, linnets' brains; That next you is a Bird of ParadiseWe Fairies in our food are somewhat nice.And pray, Sir, while your hunger is supplied, Do lean your Nose a little on one side; The shadow, which it casts upon the meat, Darkens my plate, I see not what I eat-' The Prince, on dainty after dainty feeding, Felt inly shock'd at the old Fairy's breeding, But held it want of manners in the Dame, And did her country education blame. One thing he only wonder'd at,-what she So very comic in his Nose could see. Hers, it must be confest, was somewhat short, And time and shrinking age accounted for't; But for his own, thank heaven, he could not tell That it was ever thought remarkable; A decent nose, of reasonable size, And handsome thought, rather than otherwise. But that which most of all his wonder paid, Was to observe the Fairy's waiting Maid; How at each word the aged Dame let fall; She curtsied low, and smil'd assent to all; But chiefly when the rev'rend Grannam told Of conquests, which her beauty made of old.He smiled to see how Flattery sway'd the Dame, Nor knew himself was open to the same! He finds her raillery now increase so fast, 103 That making hasty end of his repast, Glad to escape her tongue, he bids farewell To the old Fairy, and her friendly cell. But his kind Hostess, who had vainly tried The force of ridicule to cure his pride, Fertile in plans, a surer method chose, To make him see the error of his Nose; For, till he view'd that feature with remorse, The Enchanter's direful spell must be in force. Midway the road by which the Prince must pass, She rais'd by magic art a House of Glass; No mason's hand appear'd, nor work of wood; Compact of glass the wondrous fabric stood. Its stately pillars, glittering in the sun, Conspicuous from afar, like silver, shone. Here, snatch'd and rescued from th' Enchanter's might, She placed the beauteous Claribel in sight. The admiring Prince the chrystal dome survey'd, And sought access unto his lovely Maid: But, strange to tell, in all that mansion's bound, Nor door, nor casement, was there to be found. Enrag'd he took up massy stones, and flung With such a force, that all the palace rung; But made no more impression on the glass, Than if the solid structure had been brass. To comfort his despair, the lovely maid Her snowy hand against her window laid; But when with eager haste he thought to kiss, His Nose stood out, and robb'd him of the bliss. Thrice he essay'd th' impracticable feat; The window and his lips can never meet. The painful Truth, which Flattery long conceal'd, Rush'd on his mind, and 'O!' he cried, 'I yield; Wisest of Fairies, thou wert right, I wrong- 104 I own, I own, I have a Nose too long.' The frank confession was no sooner spoke, But into shivers all the palace broke. His Nose of monstrous length, to his surprise Shrunk to the limits of a common size: And Claribel with joy her Lover view'd, Now grown as beautiful as he was good. The aged Fairy in their presence stands, Confirms their mutual vows, and joins their hands. The Prince with rapture hails the happy hour, That rescued him from self-delusion's power; And trains of blessings crown the future life Of Dorus, and of Claribel, his wife. THE END ~ Charles Lamb,

   21 Yoga
   21 Integral Yoga
   9 Occultism
   8 Hinduism
   7 Poetry
   3 Christianity
   2 Philosophy
   1 Thelema
   1 Sufism
   1 Science
   1 Psychology
   1 Philsophy
   1 Mythology
   1 Islam
   1 Integral Theory
   1 Fiction
   1 Alchemy


   19 Sri Ramakrishna
   9 Sri Aurobindo
   9 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   8 The Mother
   7 Vyasa
   6 James George Frazer
   4 Aleister Crowley
   3 Satprem
   3 A B Purani
   2 Swami Vivekananda
   2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   2 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   2 Lucretius


   18 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   7 Vishnu Purana
   6 The Golden Bough
   5 Talks
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
   3 Words Of Long Ago
   3 The Secret Doctrine
   3 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   2 Of The Nature Of Things
   2 Liber ABA
   2 Essays On The Gita
   2 Essays Divine And Human
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy             The Elephant AND THE TORTOISE     The Absolute and the Conditioned together make   --     Fourfold is He, The Elephant upon whom the      Universe is poised: but the carapace of the   --     26. The Elephant and the Tortoise.     27. The Sorcerer.

01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and The Elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2    This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.

0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen    I remember wandering about one night some time ago. Its no longer very clear, but one thing has remained I had gone out of India, and then when I returned to India, I found huge elephants installed EVERYWHEREenormous elephants. At that time I was not at all aware that the Communists in India had adopted The Elephant as their symbol; I only learned that later. What does this mean, I said to myself. Does it signify the Indian army? But they did not resemble war elephants. These elephants were like immense mammoths, and they looked like they were settling down with all the power of a tremendous inertia. That was the impression something heavy in an inert and very tamasic way, forever immovable. I did not like this occupation. When I came back, I had a rather painful feeling, and for several days I wondered if it did not mean war. Then by chance, in a conversation, I learned that the Communists had selected The Elephant as their symbol whereas the Congress had chosen the bullock In my vision, I was moving (as I always do), I was moving among them, and nothing moved. And if I needed room, some of them even tried to stir a little.    But when human beings are involved, I believe that visions take on a special formits a special image. Not an inundation like this. That was very, very impersonal. They were forces. A feeling of floodgates bursting open, of something being held back, retained or prevented, then suddenly

0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    An illustration of this is the well-known story about the man who refused to move out of the path of an elephant on the pretext that he was Brahman and that Brahman had told him to stay put. And the mahout replied, 'But Brahman has told me that you should get out of the way and let The Elephant Brahman pass.' Although childishly simplified, it's the same thing. It's because we look 'in this way' yet not , in that way' at the same time, and above all, because we don't look at EVERYTHING at the same time. From the minute we could be integral in our perception, all relationships would remain the same, but instead of being in a state of ignorance, we would experience them in a state of knowledge.    Would remain the same? You mean they would physically be the same as they are now, but would be seen in a different way?

0 1968-05-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    [Satprem reads:] It is feast day in the Vatican. St. Peters Square is jammed with people. The Popes procession begins; I have witnessed it many times, very near the Pope, next to the cardinals. But instead of the sedia gestatoria [the chair in which the Pope is carried], there is a huge elephant carrying someone. Who is this someone? Sweet Mother? No, its Pavitra. Not at all, its Satprem! No, its the Schools director. The more I try to fix my attention on him, the more his face changes, as in a kaleidoscope. In reality, I have difficulty fixing my attention, because I strain under the weight of The Elephant, which is now entering St. Peters Basilica. In fact, I am in a very uncomfortable posture, for I am not The Elephant: I am in his legs, in his nails, and his weight is very, very great, which is why I cant see who is sitting on him. Meanwhile, The Elephant has reached Berninis Baldaquin, inside St. Peters Basilica, and finally comes up to the Popes throne, in which he sits down.    (Mother laughs)    On his head sits the same person as before: Sweet Mother? Pavitra? Satprem? A teacher? I do not know. I cannot make out the persons body, only his changing face. All of a sudden, the multitude, the huge crowd there receives a tremendous vibration: everything is shaken, and from this change of mentality, there springs a very powerful cry, applause towards this Force that has just penetrated their souls the whole crowd is transformed. Once the ceremony is over, The Elephant comes out of the Basilica. I stand near the door and contemplate the endless crowd stretching far, far away. I am curious to know how many people are there, and at the end, a number appears on the horizon: 1,600,000,000.    This man is prodigiously receptive!

06.35 - Second Sight, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    We will now better understand the process of contact in sense perception. The purely material contact, physical vibration touching the physical nerves of the particular organ is an instance of the physical physical perception: the dog smelling or The Elephant hearing at extraordinary distances. We have heard of men who, by putting their ear upon the ground, are able to catch sounds coming from a great distance and practically inaudible to others standing by. But there is another class where the material vibration is not at issue, it is the vital vibration in the physical touching the vital physical of the receiver. The Elephant finding the water or sensing the hollow road is an instance in point. The mental physical, the last of the three is a kind of intuition in the physical, that is what is usually called instinct. A cat, for example, put in a sack and banished miles away from its home, will find its way back; a dog will go round the world almost and find and recognise its master even many years after (the first to recognise Ulysses was his dog). In man too the vital physical, more especially the mental physical not unoften finds room for play, although his physical physical i.e. purely material sensibility is extremely limited. This limitation of the physical sensibility in general, to whatever sphere it may belong, is due to the intellectual or rational bias that has developed in him. In the more unsophisticated races or types the sensibility is still maintained. Man can, however, cultivate, consciously develop these faculties: it then becomes what is called a system of Yoga. A familiar example of the mental physical action as cultivated in man is offered by the water diviner or dowser, as he is called. But, as I have said, the normal effect of human rationality is to inhibit the spontaneous action of the senses as it is natural with the animal.    It is interesting to note that animals in the wild state maintain intact their instinctive capacity, their second sight, but begin to lose it when they live with men, come under the influence of human mind and reason, become domesticated. A cow habituated to free grazing in the fields will never touch the poisonous grass, will always avoid it and take only the harm-less and healthy variety; but kept within the stable, accustomed to a closed life, it loses its natural instinct, gets confused, does not know how to distinguish the right from the wrong food, being always given ready-made things by the master.

1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER (to Narendra): "How do you feel about it? Worldly people say all kinds of things about the spiritually minded. But look here! When an elephant moves along the street, any number of curs and other small animals may bark and cry after it; but The Elephant doesn't even look back at them. If people speak ill of you, what will you think of them?"   NARENDRA: "I shall think that dogs are barking at me."   --   One day he taught them to see God in all beings and, knowing this, to bow low before them all. A disciple went to the forest to gather wood for the sacrificial fire. Suddenly he heard an outcry: 'Get out of the way! A mad elephant is coming!' All but the disciple of the holy man took to their heels. He reasoned that The Elephant was also God in another form. Then why should he run away from it? He stood still, bowed before the animal, and began to sing its praises. The mahut of The Elephant was shouting: 'Run away! Run away!' But the disciple didn't move. The animal seized him with its trunk, cast him to one side, and went on its way. Hurt and bruised, the disciple lay unconscious on the ground. Hearing what had happened, his teacher and his brother disciples came to him and carried him to the hermitage. With the help of some medicine he soon regained consciousness. Someone asked him, 'You knew The Elephant was coming - why didn't you leave the place?' 'But', he said, 'our teacher has told us that God Himself has taken all these forms, of animals as well as men. Therefore, thinking it was only The Elephant God that was coming, I didn't run away.' At this the teacher said: 'Yes, my child, it is true that The Elephant God was coming; but the mahut God forbade you to stay there. Since all are manifestations of God, why didn't you trust the mahut's words? You should have heeded the words of the mahut God.' (Laughter) "It is said in the scriptures that water is a form of God. But some water is fit to be used for worship, some water for washing the face, and some only for washing plates or dirty linen. This last sort cannot be used for drinking or for a holy purpose. In like manner, God undoubtedly dwells in the hearts of all - holy and unholy, righteous and unrighteous; but a man should not have dealings with the unholy, the wicked, the impure. He must not be intimate with them. With some of them he may exchange words, but with others he shouldn't go even that far. He should keep aloof from such people."   How to deal with the wicked

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   Know, thou seeker of divine mysteries! that there is no end to the wonderful operations of the heart. For, to pursue the same subject, the dignity of the heart is of two kinds; one kind is by means of knowledge, and the other through the exertion of divine power. Its dignity by means of knowledge is also of two kinds. The first is external knowledge, which every one understands: the second kind is veiled and cannot be understood by all, and is extremely precious. That which we have designated as external, refers to that faculty of the heart by which the sciences of geometry, medicine, astronomy, numbers, the science of law and all the arts are understood; and although the heart is a thing which cannot be divided, still the knowledge of all the world exists in it. All the world indeed, in comparison with it, is as a grain compared with the sun, or as a drop in the ocean. In a second, by the power of thought, the soul passes from the abyss to the highest heaven, and from the east to the west. Though on the earth, it knows the latitude of the stars and their distances. It knows the course, the size and the peculiarities of the sun. It knows the nature and cause of the clouds and the rain, the lightning and the thunder. It ensnares the fish from the depths of the sea, and the bird from the end of heaven. By knowledge it subdues The Elephant, the camel and the tiger. All these kinds of knowledge, it acquires with its internal and external senses.   The most wonderful thing of all is, that there is a window in the heart from whence it surveys the world. This is called the invisible world, the world of intelligence, [23] or the spiritual world. People in general look only at the visible world, which is called also the present world, the sensible world and the material world; their knowledge of it also is trivial and limited. And there is also a window in the heart from whence it surveys the intelligible world. There are two arguments to prove that there are such windows in the heart. One of the arguments is derived from dreams. When an individual goes to sleep, these windows remain open and the individual is able to perceive events which will befall him from the invisible world or from the hidden table of decrees,1 and the result corresponds exactly with the vision. Or he sees a similitude, and those who are skilled in the science of interpretation of dreams understand the meaning. But the explanation of this science of interpretation would be too long for this treatise. The heart resembles a pure mirror, you must know, in this particular, that when a man falls asleep, when his senses are closed, and when the heart, free and pure from blameable affections, is confronted with the preserved tablet, then the tablet reflects upon the heart the real states and hidden forms inscribed upon it. In that state the heart sees most wonderful forms and combinations. But when the heart is not free from impurity, or when, on waking, it busies itself with things of sense, the side towards the tablet will be obscured, and it can view nothing. For, although in sleep the senses are blunted, the imaginative faculty is not, but preserves the forms reflected upon the mirror of the heart. But as the perception does not take place by means of the external senses, but only in the imagination, the heart does not see them with absolute clearness, but sees only a phantom. But in death, as the senses are completely separated and the veil of the body is removed, the heart can contemplate the invisible [24] world and its hidden mysteries, without a veil, just as lightning or the celestial rays impress the external eye.

10.35 - The Moral and the Spiritual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Indian artists and poets were steeped in that tradition, wholly inspired by that spirit. Orthodox morality often wonders, is even shocked at the frankness, the daring nonchalance in Indian art creations ,a familiar prudery would call it shamelessness and even vulgarity, but to the Indian view, 'the Brahmin and the cow and The Elephant' are of equal value and merit. The movement conventional morality calls 'libidinous' has a nobler name in Indian tradition: it is dirasa, the first or primary delight of existence. As I have said, the modern consciousness finds it a horror and is therefore all the more fascinated by it and dives into it head foremost.    To cure the modern malady we have to go back again to something of the ancient mentality. We have to cultivate a consciousness, now forgotten and alienated but once natural to the human mind, the consciousness and status of a transcendence built with the sense of absolute calm, an equality, all serene and all englobing, that is God's consciousness.

1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   she cut her hair The Elephant would burst the toils, if she oiled   herself it would slip through them. When a Dyak village has turned   --   unfaithful in their absence, this gives The Elephant power over his   pursuer, who will accordingly be killed or severely wounded. Hence

1.03 - Tara, Liberator from the Eight Dangers, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset   disturbing attitude or emotion: the lion of pride, The Elephant of ignorance,   the re of anger, the snakes of jealousy, the thieves of wrong views, the   --   The Elephant of Ignorance   Not tamed by the sharp hooks of mindfulness and vigilance,   --   The Elephant of ignoranceplease protect us from this danger!   Powerful, yet out of control, a mad elephant terrorizes all in its path. It

1.03 - The Phenomenon of Man, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   cules) he clearly stands below The Elephant or the whale.   But on the other hand, it is certainly in him, in the thousands

1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism   Ganesha, The Elephant God who breaks down all obstacles, and supports the universe while himself standing on a tortoise. Diana was the Goddess of Light and in the   Roman Temples represented the moon. The general conception of Yesod is of change with stability. Some writers have referred to the Astral Light which is the sphere of Yesod as the Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World. The psycho-analyst Jung has a very similar concept which he terms the Collective Unconscious which, as I see it, differs in no wise from the Qabalistic idea.

1.03 - YIBHOOTI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism   By making Samyama on the strength of The Elephant,   etc., that strength comes to the Yogi.   --   he makes a Samyama on the strength of The Elephant, and gets   it. Infinite energy is at the disposal of everyone, if he only

1.05 - The Belly of the Whale, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology   many cattle; all was there inside The Elephant."   The Irish hero, finn MacCool, was swallowed by a monster of

1.05 - Vishnu as Brahma creates the world, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism   Brahmā having created, in the commencement of the Kalpa, various plants, employed them in sacrifices, in the beginning of the Tretā age. Animals were distinguished into two classes, domestic (village) and wild (forest): the first class contained the cow, the goat, the hog, the sheep, the horse, the ass, the mule: the latter, all beasts of prey, and many animals with cloven hoofs, The Elephant, and the monkey. The fifth order were the birds; the sixth, aquatic animals; and the seventh, reptiles and insects[20].   From his eastern mouth Brahmā then created the Gayatrī metre, the Rig veda, the collection of hymns termed Trivrit, the Rathantara portion of the Sāma veda, and the Agniṣṭoma sacrifice: from his southern mouth he created the Yajur veda, the Tṛṣṭubh metre, the collection of hymns called Pañcadaśa, the Vrihat Sāma, and the portion of the Sāma veda termed Uktha: from his western mouth he created the Sāma veda, the Jayati metre, the collection of hymns termed Saptadaśa, the portion of the Sāma called Vairūpa, and the Atirātra sacrifice: and from his northern mouth he created the Ekavinsa collection of hymns, the Aṭharva veda, the Āptoryāmā rite, the Anuṣṭubh metre, and the Vairāja portion of the Sāma veda[21].

1.06 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER (to the Marwari devotees): "You see, the feeling of 'I' and 'mine' is the result of ignorance. But to say, 'O God, Thou art the Doer; all these belong to Thee' is the sign of Knowledge. How can you say such a thing as 'mine'? The superintendent of the garden says, 'This is my garden.' But if he is dismissed because of some misconduct, then he does not have the courage to take away even such a worthless thing as his mango-wood box. Anger and lust cannot be destroyed. Turn them toward God. If you must feel desire and temptation, then desire to realize God, feel tempted by Him. Discriminate and turn the passions away from worldly objects. When The Elephant is about to devour a plaintain-tree in someone's garden, the mahut strikes it with his iron-tipped goad.   "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.

1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   of The Elephant-headed god Gunputty. That celebrated deity was first   made flesh about the year 1640 in the person of a Brahman of Poona,

1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "A frog had a rupee, which he kept in his hole. One day an elephant was going over the hole, and the frog, coming out in a fit of anger, raised his foot, as if to kick The Elephant, and said, 'How dare you walk over my head?' Such is the pride that money begets!   "One can get rid of the ego after the attainment of Knowledge. On attaining Knowledge one goes into samdhi, and the ego disappears. But it is very difficult to obtain such Knowledge.

1.07 - The Three Schools of Magick 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   A fairly pure example of the first stage of this type of thought is to be found in the Vedas, of the second stage, in the Upanishads. But the answer to the question, "How is the illusion of evil to be destroyed?", depends on another point of theory. We may postulate a Parabrahm infinitely good, etc. etc. etc., in which case we consider the destruction of the illusion of evil as the reuniting of the consciousness with Parabrahm. The unfortunate part of this scheme of things is that on seeking to define Parabrahm for the purpose of returning to Its purity, it is discovered sooner or later, that It possesses no qualities at all! In other words, as the farmer said, on being shown The Elephant: There ain't no sich animile. It was Gautama Buddha who perceived the inutility of dragging in this imaginary pachyderm. Since our Parabrahm, he said to the Hindu philosophers, is actually nothing, why not stick to or original perception that everything is sorrow, and admit that the only way to escape from sorrow is to arrive at nothingness?   We may complete the whole tradition of the Indian peninsula very simply. To the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, we have only to add the Tantras of what are called the Vamacharya Schools. Paradoxical as it may sound the Tantrics are in reality the most advanced of the Hindus. Their theory is, in its philosophical ultimatum, a primitive stage of the White tradition, for the essence of the Tantric cults is that by the performance of certain rites of Magick, one does not only escape disaster, but obtains positive benediction. The Tantric is not obsessed by the will-to-die. It is a difficult business, no doubt, to get any fun out of existence; but at least it is not impossible. In other words, he implicitly denies the fundamental proposition that existence is sorrow, and he formulates the essential postulate of the White School of Magick, that means exist by which the universal sorrow (apparent indeed to all ordinary observation) may be unmasked, even as at the initiatory rite of Isis in the ancient days of Khem. There, a Neophyte presenting his mouth, under compulsion, to the pouting buttocks of the Goat of Mendez, found himself caressed by the chaste lips of a virginal priestess of that Goddess at the base of whose shrine is written that No man has lifted her veil.

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].

1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   What is the use of giving an elephant a bath? It will cover itself with dirt and dust again and become its former self. But if someone removes the dust from its body and gives it a bath just before it enters the stable, then The Elephant remains clean. .   "Suppose a man becomes pure by chanting the holy name of God, but immediately afterwards commits many sins. He has no strength of mind. He doesn't take a vow not to repeat his sins. A bath in the Ganges undoubtedly absolves one of all sins; but what does that avail? They say that the sins perch on the trees along the bank of the Ganges.   --   Parable of The Elephant and the blind men   "Once some blind men chanced to come near an animal that someone told them was an elephant. They were asked what The Elephant was like. The blind men began to feel its body. One of them said The Elephant was like a pillar; he had touched only its leg.   Another said it was like a winnowing-fan; he had touched only its ear. In this way the others, having touched its tail or belly, gave their different versions of The Elephant. Just so, a man who has seen only one aspect of God limits God to that alone. It is his conviction that God cannot be anything else.   Illustration of the ocean and the ice

1.09 - Legend of Lakshmi, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism   kara (Śiva)[1], was wandering over the earth; when be beheld, in the hands of a nymph of air[2], a garland of flowers culled from the trees of heaven, the fragrant odour of which spread throughout the forest, and enraptured all who dwelt beneath its shade. The sage, who was then possessed by religious phrensy[3], when he beheld that garland, demanded it of the graceful and full-eyed nymph, who, bowing to him reverentially, immediately presented it to him. He, as one frantic, placed the chaplet upon his brow, and thus decorated resumed his path; when he beheld (Indra) the husband of Śacī, the ruler of the three worlds, approach, seated on his infuriated elephant Airāvata, and attended by the gods. The phrensied sage, taking from his head the garland of flowers, amidst which the bees collected ambrosia, threw it to the king of the gods, who caught it, and suspended it on the brow of Airāvata, where it shone like the river Jāhnavī, glittering on the dark summit of the mountain Kailāsa. The Elephant, whose eyes were dim with inebriety, and attracted by the smell, took hold of the garland with his trunk, and cast it on the earth. That chief of sages, Durvāsas, was highly incensed at this disrespectful treatment of his gift, and thus angrily addressed the sovereign of the immortals: "Inflated with the intoxication of power, Vāsava, vile of spirit, thou art an idiot not to respect the garland I presented to thee, which was the dwelling of Fortune (Śrī). Thou hast not acknowledged it as a largess; thou hast not bowed thyself before me; thou hast not placed the wreath upon thy head, with thy countenance expanding with delight. Now, fool, for that thou hast not infinitely prized the garland that I gave thee, thy sovereignty over the three worlds shall be subverted. Thou confoundest me, Śakra, with other Brahmans, and hence I have suffered disrespect from thy arrogance: but in like manner as thou hast cast the garland I gave thee down on the ground, so shall thy dominion over the universe be whelmed in ruin. Thou hast offended one whose wrath is dreaded by all created things, king of the gods, even me, by thine excessive pride."   Descending hastily from his elephant, Mahendra endeavoured to appease the sinless Durvāsas: but to the excuses and prostrations of the thousand-eyed, the Muni answered, "I am not of a compassionate heart, nor is forgiveness congenial to my nature. Other Munis may relent; but know me, Śakra, to be Durvāsas. Thou hast in vain been rendered insolent by Gautama and others; for know me, Indra, to be Durvāsas, whose nature is a stranger to remorse. Thou hast been flattered by Vaśiṣṭha and other tender-hearted saints, whose loud praises (lave made thee so arrogant, that thou hast insulted me. But who is there in the universe that can behold my countenance, dark with frowns, and surrounded by my blazing hair, and not tremble? What need of words? I will not forgive, whatever semblance of humility thou mayest assume."   --   gā and other holy streams attended for her ablutions; and The Elephants of the skies, taking up their pure waters in vases of gold, poured them over the goddess, the queen of the universal world. The sea of milk in person presented her with a wreath of never-fading flowers; and the artist of the gods (Viswakermā) decorated her person with heavenly ornaments. Thus bathed, attired, and adorned, the goddess, in the view of the celestials, cast herself upon the breast of Hari; and there reclining, turned her eyes upon the deities, who were inspired with rapture by her gaze. Not so the Daityas, who, with Viprachitti at their head, were filled with indignation, as Viṣṇu turned away from them, and they were abandoned by the goddess of prosperity (Lakṣmī.)   The powerful and indignant Daityas then forcibly seized the Amrita-cup, that was in the hand of Dhanwantari: but Viṣṇu, assuming a female form, fascinated and deluded them; and recovering the Amrita from them, delivered it to the gods. Śakra and the other deities quaffed the ambrosia. The incensed demons, grasping their weapons, fell upon them; but the gods, into whom the ambrosial draught had infused new vigour, defeated and put their host to flight, and they fled through the regions of space, and plunged into the subterraneous realms of Pātāla. The gods thereat greatly rejoiced, did homage to the holder of the discus and mace, and resumed their reign in heaven. The sun shone with renovated splendour, and again discharged his appointed task; and the celestial luminaries again circled, oh best of Munis, in their respective orbits. Fire once more blazed aloft, beautiful in splendour; and the minds of all beings were animated by devotion. The three worlds again were rendered happy by prosperity; and Indra, the chief of the gods, was restored to power[8]. Seated upon his throne, and once more in heaven, exercising sovereignty over the gods, Śakra thus eulogized the goddess who bears a lotus in her hand:-   --   ga, and Kūrma Purāṇas. The Vāyu and Padma have much the same narrative as that of our text; and so have the Agni and Bhāgavata, except that they refer only briefly to the anger of Durvāsas, without narrating the circumstances; indicating their being posterior, therefore, to the original tale. The part, however, assigned to Durvāsas appears to be an embellishment added to the original, for no mention of him occurs in the Matsya P. nor even in the Hari Vaṃśa, neither does it occur in what may be considered the oldest extant versions of the story, those of the Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata: both these ascribe the occurrence to the desire of the gods and Daityas to become immortal. The Matsya assigns a similar motive to the gods, instigated by observing that the Daityas slain by them in battle were restored to life by Śukra with the Sañjīvinī, or herb of immortality, which he had discovered. The account in the Hari Vaṃśa is brief and obscure, and is explained by the commentator as an allegory, in which the churning of the ocean typifies ascetic penance, and the ambrosia is final liberation: but this is mere mystification. The legend of the Rāmāyana is translated, vol. I. p. 410. of the Serampore edition; and that of the Mahābhārata by Sir C. Wilkins, in the notes to his translation of the Bhāgavata Gītā. See also the original text, Cal. ed. p. 40. It has been presented to general readers in a more attractive form by my friend H. M. Parker, in his Draught of Immortality, printed with other poems, Lond. 1827. The Matsya P. has many of the stanzas of the Mahābhārata interspersed with others. There is some variety in the order and number of articles produced from the ocean. As I have observed elsewhere (Hindu Theatre, I. 59. Lond. ed.), the popular enumeration is fourteen; but the Rāmāyana specifies but nine; the Mahābhārata, nine; the Bhāgavata, ten; the Padma, nine; the Vāyu, twelve; the p. 78 Matsya, perhaps, gives the whole number. Those in which most agree, are, 1. the Hālāhala or Kālakūta poison, swallowed by Śiva: 2. Vārunī or Surā, the goddess of wine, who being taken by the gods, and rejected by the Daityas, the former were termed Suras, and the latter Asuras: 3. the horse Uccaiśśravas, taken by Indra: 4. Kaustubha, the jewel worn by Viṣṇu: 5. the moon: 6. Dhanwantari, with the Amrita in his Kamaṇḍalu, or vase; and these two articles are in the Vāyu considered as distinct products: 7. the goddess Padmā or Śrī: 8. the Apsarasas, or nymphs of heaven: 9. Surabhi, or the cow of plenty: 10. the Pārijāta tree, or tree of heaven: 11. Airāvata, The Elephant taken by Indra. The Matsya adds, 12. the umbrella taken by Varuna: 13. the earrings taken by Indra, and given to Aditī: and apparently another horse, the white horse of the sun: or the number may be completed by counting the Amrita separately from Dhanwantari. The number is made up in the popular lists by adding the bow and the conch of Viṣṇu; but there does not seem to be any good authority for this, and the addition is a sectarial one: so is that of the Tulaśī tree, a plant sacred to Kṛṣṇa, which is one of the twelve specified by the Vāyu P. The Uttara Khanda of the Padma P. has a peculiar enumeration, or, Poison; Jyeṣṭhā or Alakṣmī, the goddess of misfortune, the elder born to fortune; the goddess of wine; Nidrā, or sloth; the Apsarasas; The Elephant of Indra; Lakṣmī; the moon; and the Tulaśī plant. The reference to Mohinī, the female form assumed by Viṣṇu, is very brief in our text; and no notice is taken of the story told in the Mahābhārata and some of the Purāṇas, of the Daitya Rāhu's insinuating himself amongst the gods, and obtaining a portion of the Amrita: being beheaded for this by Viṣṇu, the head became immortal, in consequence of the Amrita having reached the throat, and was transferred as a constellation to the skies; and as the sun and moon detected his presence amongst the gods, Rāhu pursues them with implacable hatred, and his efforts to seize them are the causes of eclipses; Rāhu typifying the ascending and descending nodes. This seems to be the simplest and oldest form of the legend. The equal immortality of the body, under the name Ketu, and his being the cause of meteorical phenomena, seems to have been an after-thought. In the Padma and Bhāgavata, Rāhu and Ketu are the sons of Sinhikā, the wife of the Dānava Viprachitti.   [9]: The four Vidyās, or branches of knowledge, are said to be, Yajña vidyā, knowledge or performance of religious rites; Mahā vidyā, great knowledge, the worship of the female principle, or Tāntrika worship; Guhya vidyā, knowledge of mantras, mystical prayers, and incantations; and Ātma vidyā, knowledge of soul, true wisdom.

1.1.01 - The Divine and Its Aspects, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga       Their mental differences have been illustrated in the apologue of the blind men who all felt The Elephant and described it in different figures according to the part they felt. One must go beyond mind altogether, even beyond the spiritualised mind, to have the real complete experience. "Rare", says Sri Krishna, "are the few among the seekers who know me in my totality in all the truth of my being." In fact, it is only in the supramental light that all opposition disappears and the aspects are indivisibly united in the Whole. One must go on enlarging knowledge, adding experience to experience till all the limitation disappears.     The Transcendent, Cosmic and Individual Divine

1.105 - The Elephant, #Quran, #unset, #Zen   object:1.105 - The Elephant   class:chapter   --   1. Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with the People of The Elephant?   2. Did He not make their plan go wrong?

1.11 - Powers, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset   25. By making Samyama on the strength of The Elephant and others, their respective strength comes to the Yogi.   When a Yogi has attained to this Samyama and wants strength, he makes a Samyama on the strength of The Elephant and gets it. Infinite energy is at the disposal of everyone if he only knows how to get it. The Yogi has discovered the science of getting it.    --

1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Kamalakanta has guessed who She is, with The Elephant's gait; She is none other than Kli, Mother of all the worlds.   Sri Ramakrishna was in deep samdhi.   --   MASTER: "How is that? A man gives his word and doesn't take it back! 'The words of a man are like the tusks of The Elephant: they come out but do not go back.' A man must be true to his word. What do you say?"   JADU (with a smile): "You are right."

1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "It is good to prepare for death. One should constantly think of God and chant His name in solitude during the last years of one's life. If The Elephant is put into the stable after its bath it is not soiled again by dirt and dust."   Balarm's father, Mani Mallick, and Beni Pl were all elderly men. Did the Master give this instruction especially for their benefit?   --   "When the heart becomes pure through the practice of spiritual discipline, then one rightly feels that God alone is the Doer. He alone has become mind, life, and intelligence. We are only His instruments. Thou it is that holdest The Elephant in the mire; Thou, that helpest the lame man scale the loftiest hill.   "When your heart becomes pure, then you will realize that it is God who makes us perform such rites as the Purascharana.

1.15 - LAST VISIT TO KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "An elephant entering a hut creates havoc within and ultimately shakes it down. The Elephant of divine emotion enters the hut of this body and shatters it to pieces.   "Do you know what actually happens? When a house is on fire, at first a few things inside burn. Then comes the great commotion. Just so, the fire of Knowledge at first destroys such enemies of spiritual life as passion, anger, and so forth. Then comes the turn of ego. And lastly a violent commotion is seen in the physical frame.

1.16 - Inquiries of Maitreya respecting the history of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism   Venerable Muni, you have described to me the races of human beings, and the eternal Viṣṇu, the cause of this world; but who was this mighty Prahlāda, of whom you have last spoken; whom fire could not burn; who died not, when pierced by weapons; at whose presence in the waters earth trembled, shaken by his movements, even though in bonds; and who, overwhelmed with rocks, remained unhurt. I am desirous to hear an account of the unequalled might of that sage worshipper of Viṣṇu, to whose marvellous history you have alluded. Why was he assailed by the weapons of the sons of Diti? why was so righteous a person thrown into the sea? wherefore was he overwhelmed with rocks? why bitten by venomous snakes? why hurled from the mountain crest? why cast into the flames? why was he made a mark for the tusks of The Elephants of the spheres? wherefore was the blast of death directed against him by the enemies of the gods? why did the priests of the Daityas practise ceremonies for his destruction? why were the thousand illusions of Samvara exercised upon him? and for what purpose was deadly poison administered to him by the servants of the king, but which was innocuous as food to his sagacious son? All this I am anxious to hear: the history of the magnanimous Prahlāda; a legend of great marvels. Not that it is a wonder that he should have been uninjured by the Daityas; for who can injure the man that fixes his whole heart on Viṣṇu? but it is strange that such inveterate hatred should have been shewn, by his own kin, to one so virtuous, so unweariedly occupied in worshipping Viṣṇu. You can explain to me for what reason the sons of Diti offered violence to one so pious, so illustrious, so attached to Viṣṇu, so free from guile. Generous enemies wage no war with such as he was, full of sanctity and every excellence; how should his own father thus behave towards him? Tell me therefore, most illustrious Muni, the whole story in detail: I wish to hear the entire narrative of the sovereign of the Daitya race.

1.17 - Legend of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism   and Andhaka, charged with fatal poison, bit the prince in every part of his body; but he, with thoughts immovably fixed on Kṛṣṇa, felt no pain from their wounds, being immersed in rapturous recollections of that divinity. Then the snakes cried to the king, and said, "Our fangs are broken; our jewelled crests are burst; there is fever in our, hoods, and fear in our hearts; but the skin of the youth is still unscathed: have recourse, monarch of the Daityas, to some other expedient." "Ho, elephants of the skies!" exclaimed the demon; "unite your tusks, and destroy this deserter from his father, and conspirer with my foes. It is thus that often our progeny are our destruction, as fire consumes the wood from which it springs." The young prince was then assailed by The Elephants of the skies, as vast as mountain peaks; cast down upon the earth, and trampled on, and gored by their tusks: but he continued to call to mind Govinda, and the tusks of The Elephants were blunted against his breast. "Behold," he said to his father, "the tusks of The Elephants, as hard as adamant, are blunted; but this is not by any strength of mine: calling upon Janārddana is my defence against such fearful affliction."   Then said the king to his attendants, "Dismiss The Elephants, and let fire consume him; and do thou, deity of the winds, blow up the fire, that this wicked wretch may be consumed." And the Dānavas piled a mighty heap of wood around the prince, and kindled a fire, to burn him, as their master had commanded. But Prahlāda cried, "Father, this fire, though blown up by the winds, burneth me not; and all around I behold the face of the skies, cool and fragrant, with beds of lotus flowers."   Then the Brahmans who were the sons of Bhārgava, illustrious priests, and reciters of the Sāma-Veda, said to the king of the Daityas, "Sire, restrain your wrath against your own son. How should anger succeed in finding a place in heavenly mansions? As for this lad, we will be his instructors, and teach him obediently to labour for the destruction of your foes. Youth is the season, king, of many errors; and you should not therefore be relentlessly offended with a child. If he will not listen to us, and abandon the cause of Hari, we will adopt infallible measures to work his death." The king of the Daityas, thus solicited by the priests, commanded the prince to be liberated from the midst of the flames.

1.18 - Hiranyakasipu's reiterated attempts to destroy his son, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism   Thus spoken to by the youth, the priests of the Daitya sovereign were incensed, and instantly had recourse to magic incantations, by which a female form, enwreathed with fiery flame, was engendered: she was of fearful aspect, and the earth was parched beneath her tread, as she approached Prahlāda, and smote him with a fiery trident on the breast. In vain! for the weapon fell, broken into a hundred pieces, upon the ground. Against the breast in which the imperishable Hari resides the thunderbolt would be shivered, much more should such a weapon be split in pieces. The magic being, then directed against the virtuous prince by the wicked priest, turned upon them, and, having quickly destroyed them, disappeared. But Prahlāda, beholding them perish, hastily appealed to Kṛṣṇa, the eternal, for succour, and said, "Oh Janārddana! who art every where, the creator and substance of the world, preserve these Brahmans from this magical and insupportable fire. As thou art Viṣṇu, present in all creatures, and the protector of the world, so let these priests be restored to life. If, whilst devoted to the omnipresent Viṣṇu, I think no sinful resentment against my foes, let these priests be restored to life. If those who have come to slay me, those by whom poison was given me, the fire that would have burned, The Elephants that would have crushed, and snakes that would have stung me, have been regarded by me as friends; if I have been unshaken in soul, and am without fault in thy sight; then, I implore thee, let these, the priests of the Asuras, be now restored to life." Thus having prayed, the Brahmans immediately rose up, uninjured and rejoicing; and bowing respectfully to Prahlāda, they blessed him, and said, "Excellent prince, may thy days be many; irresistible be thy prowess; and power and wealth and posterity be thine." Having thus spoken, they withdrew, and went and told the king of the Daityas all that had passed.   Footnotes and references:

1.19 - Dialogue between Prahlada and his father, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism   On hearing this, Hiraṇyakaśipu started up from his throne in a fury, and spurned his son on the breast with his foot. Burning with rage, he wrung his hands, and exclaimed, "Ho Viprachitti! ho Rāhu! ho Bali[2]! bind him with strong bands[3], and cast him into the ocean, or all the regions, the Daityas and Dānavas, will become converts to the doctrines of this silly wretch. Repeatedly prohibited by us, he still persists in the praise of our enemies. Death is the just retribution of the disobedient." The Daityas accordingly bound the prince with strong bands, as their lord had commanded, and threw him into the sea. As he floated on the waters, the ocean was convulsed throughout its whole extent, and rose in mighty undulations, threatening to submerge the earth. This when Hiraṇyakaśipu observed, he commanded the Daityas to hurl rocks into the sea, and pile them closely on one another, burying beneath their iñcumbent mass him whom fire would not burn, nor weapons pierce, nor serpents bite; whom the pestilential gale could not blast, nor poison nor magic spirits nor incantations destroy; who fell from the loftiest heights unhurt; who foiled The Elephants of the spheres: a son of depraved heart, whose life was a perpetual curse. "Here," he cried, "since he cannot die, here let him live for thousands of years at the bottom of the ocean, overwhelmed by mountains. Accordingly the Daityas and Dānavas hurled upon Prahlāda, whilst in the great ocean, ponderous rocks, and piled them over him for many thousand miles: but he, still with mind undisturbed, thus offered daily praise to Viṣṇu, lying at the bottom of the sea, under the mountain heap. "Glory to thee, god of the lotus eye: glory to thee, most excellent of spiritual things: glory to thee, soul of all worlds: glory to thee, wielder of the sharp discus: glory to the best of Brahmans; to the friend of Brahmans and of kine; to Kṛṣṇa, the preserver of the world: to Govinda be glory. To him who, as Brahmā, creates the universe; who in its existence is its preserver; be praise. To thee, who at the end of the Kalpa takest the form of Rudra; to thee, who art triform; be adoration. Thou, Achyuta, art the gods, Yakṣas, demons, saints, serpents, choristers and dancers of heaven, goblins, evil spirits, men, animals, birds, insects, reptiles, plants, and stones, earth, water, fire, sky, wind, sound, touch, taste, colour, flavour, mind, intellect, soul, time, and the qualities of nature: thou art all these, and the chief object of them all. Thou art knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, poison and ambrosia. Thou art the performance and discontinuance of acts[4]: thou art the acts which the Vedas enjoin: thou art the enjoyer of the fruit of all acts, and the means by which they are accomplished. Thou, Viṣṇu, who art the soul of all, art the fruit of all acts of piety. Thy universal diffusion, indicating might and goodness, is in me, in others, in all creatures, in all worlds. Holy ascetics meditate on thee: pious priests sacrifice to thee. Thou alone, identical with the gods and the fathers of mankind, receivest burnt-offerings and oblations[5]. The universe is thy intellectual form[6]; whence proceeded thy subtile form, this world: thence art thou all subtile elements and elementary beings, and the subtile principle, that is called soul, within them. Hence the supreme soul of all objects, distinguished as subtile or gross, which is imperceptible, and which cannot be conceived, is even a form of thee. Glory be to thee, Puruṣottama; and glory to that imperishable form which, soul of all, is another manifestation[7] of thy might, the asylum of all qualities, existing in all creatures. I salute her, the supreme goddess, who is beyond the senses; whom the mind, the tongue, cannot define; who is to be distinguished alone by the wisdom of the truly wise. Om! salutation to Vāsudeva: to him who is the eternal lord; he from whom nothing is distinct; he who is distinct from all. Glory be to the great spirit again and again: to him who is without name or shape; who sole is to be known by adoration; whom, in the forms manifested in his descents upon earth, the dwellers in heaven adore; for they behold not his inscrutable nature. I glorify the supreme deity Viṣṇu, the universal witness, who seated internally, beholds the good and ill of all. Glory to that Viṣṇu from whom this world is not distinct. May he, ever to be meditated upon as the beginning of the universe, have compassion upon me: may he, the supporter of all, in whom every thing is warped and woven[8], undecaying, imperishable, have compassion upon me. Glory, again and again, to that being to whom all returns, from whom all proceeds; who is all, and in whom all things are: to him whom I also am; for he is every where; and through whom all things are from me. I am all things: all things are in me, who am everlasting. I am undecayable, ever enduring, the receptacle of the spirit of the supreme. Brahma is my name; the supreme soul, that is before all things, that is after the end of all. ootnotes and references:   [1]: These are the four Upāyas, 'means of success,' specified in the Amera-koṣa.

1.20 - Equality and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The result is, says the Gita, a perfect equality to all things and all persons; and then only can we repose our works completely in the Brahman. For the Brahman is equal, samam brahma, and it is only when we have this perfect equality, samye sthitam manah., "seeing with an equal eye the learned and cultured Brahmin, the cow, The Elephant, the dog, the outcaste" and knowing all as one Brahman, that we can, living in that oneness, see like the Brahman our works proceeding from the nature freely without any fear of attachment, sin or bondage. Sin and stain then cannot be; for we have overcome that creation full of desire and its works and reactions which belongs to the ignorance, tair jitah. sargah., and living in the supreme and divine Nature there is no longer fault or defect in our works; for these are created by the inequalities of the ignorance. The equal Brahman is faultless, nirdos.am hi samam brahma, beyond the confusion of good and evil, and living in the Brahman we   The Rigveda so speaks of the streams of the Truth, the waters that have perfect knowledge, the waters that are full of the divine sunlight, r.tasya dharah., apo vicetasah., svarvatr apah.. What are here metaphors, are there concrete symbols.

1.21 - A DAY AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "But my zeal for truthfulness has abated a little now. Once I said I would go to the pine-grove, but then I felt I had no particular urge to go. What was to be done? I asked Ram about it. He said I didn't have to go. Then I reasoned to myself: 'Well, everyone is Narayana. So Ram, too, is Narayana. Why shouldn't I listen to him? The Elephant is Narayana no doubt; but the mahut is Narayana too. Since the mahut asked me not to go near The Elephant, then why shouldn't I obey him?' Through reasoning like this my zeal for truthfulness is slightly less strong now than before.   "I find a change, coming over me. Years ago Vaishnavcharan said to me, 'One attains Perfect Knowledge when one sees God in man.' Now I see that it is God alone who is moving about in various forms: as a holy man, as a cheat, as a villain. Therefore I say, 'Narayana in the guise of the Sdhu, Narayana in the guise of the cheat, Narayana in the guise of the villain, Narayana in the guise of the lecher.'

1.22 - ADVICE TO AN ACTOR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Rma said to Lakshmana: 'Look at The Elephant, brother. He is such a big animal, but he cannot think of God.'   Divine Incarnation

1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   Or again The Elephant has one trunk with which it breathes and does work such as drinking water, etc.   Again serpents are said to use the same apparatus for either seeing or hearing.   --   Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi to hold in its trunk. The trunk of The Elephant is usually restless. It puts it out in all directions when taken out in the streets of the town.   If given a chain to carry the restlessness is checked. Similarly with the restless mind. If made to engage in japa or dhyana, other thoughts are warded off: and the mind concentrates on a single thought. It thus becomes peaceful. It does not mean that peace is gained without a prolonged struggle. The other thoughts must be fought out.   --   In sleep you are centred within. Simultaneously with waking your mind rushes out, thinking this, that and all else. This must be checked. It is possible only for the agent who can work both within and without. Can he be identified with a body? We think that the world can be conquered by our efforts. When frustrated externally and driven internally, we feel Oh! oh! There is a power higher than man. The existence of the higher power must be admitted and recognised. The ego is a very powerful elephant and cannot be brought under control by anyone less than a lion, who is no other than the Guru in this instance; whose very look makes The Elephant tremble and die. We will know in due course that our   Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi glory lies where we cease to exist. In order to gain that state, one should surrender oneself saying LORD! Thou art my Refuge! The master then sees This man is in a fit state to receive guidance, and so guides him.   --   M.: It is not enough that light is seen; it is also necessary to have the mind engaged in a single activity, e.g., The Elephant trunk and the chain.   D.: How long will it take for one to gain Chintamani (the celestial gem granting all the wishes of its owner)?   --   Again, an elephant used to be often teased by its keeper. He once had an accident and fell down. The Elephant could have killed him on the spot but did not do so. Later, however, the keeper dug a big pit in the forest and killed The Elephant.   Chudala illustrated Sikhidhvajas error by this story. He had vairagya even while ruling his kingdom and could have realised the Self if only he had pushed his vairagya to the point of killing the ego. He did not do it, but came to the forest, had a timetable of tapas and yet did not improve even after 18 years of tapas. He had made himself a victim of his own creation. Chudala advised him to give up the ego and realise the Self which he did and was liberated.

1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   an official who bore the title of Killer of The Elephant appeared   and throttled him.

1.25 - Temporary Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   gave orders that The Elephants should trample under foot the   "mountain of rice," which was a scaffold of bamboo surrounded by

1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   Or again The Elephant has one trunk with which it breathes and does work such as drinking water, etc.   Again serpents are said to use the same apparatus for either seeing or hearing.   --   Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi to hold in its trunk. The trunk of The Elephant is usually restless. It puts it out in all directions when taken out in the streets of the town.   If given a chain to carry the restlessness is checked. Similarly with the restless mind. If made to engage in japa or dhyana, other thoughts are warded off: and the mind concentrates on a single thought. It thus becomes peaceful. It does not mean that peace is gained without a prolonged struggle. The other thoughts must be fought out.   --   In sleep you are centred within. Simultaneously with waking your mind rushes out, thinking this, that and all else. This must be checked. It is possible only for the agent who can work both within and without. Can he be identified with a body? We think that the world can be conquered by our efforts. When frustrated externally and driven internally, we feel "Oh! oh! There is a power higher than man." The existence of the higher power must be admitted and recognised. The ego is a very powerful elephant and cannot be brought under control by anyone less than a lion, who is no other than the Guru in this instance; whose very look makes The Elephant tremble and die. We will know in due course that our   383

1.3.02 - Equality The Chief Support, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   One in spite of all differences, degrees, disparities in the manifestation. The mental principle of equality tries to ignore or else to destroy the differences, degrees and disparities, to act as if all were equal there or to try and make all equal. It is like Hriday, the nephew of Ramakrishna, who when he got the touch from Ramakrishna began to shout, "Ramakrishna, you are the Brahman and I too am the Brahman; there is no difference between us", till Ramakrishna, as he refused to be quiet, had to withdraw the power. Or like the disciple who refused to listen to the Mahout and stood before The Elephant, saying, "I am   Brahman", until The Elephant took him up in his trunk and put him aside. When he complained to his Guru, the Guru said,   "Yes, but why didn't you listen to the Mahout Brahman? That was why The Elephant Brahman had to lift you up and put you out of harm's way." In the manifestation there are two sides to the Truth and you cannot ignore either.   130

1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   M.: It is not enough that light is seen; it is also necessary to have the mind engaged in a single activity, e.g., The Elephant trunk and the chain.   D.: How long will it take for one to gain Chintamani (the celestial gem granting all the wishes of its owner)?   --   Again, an elephant used to be often teased by its keeper. He once had an accident and fell down. The Elephant could have killed him on the spot but did not do so. Later, however, the keeper dug a big pit in the forest and killed The Elephant.   Chudala illustrated Sikhidhvaja's error by this story. He had vairagya even while ruling his kingdom and could have realised the Self if only he had pushed his vairagya to the point of killing the ego. He did not do it, but came to the forest, had a timetable of tapas and yet did not improve even after 18 years of tapas. He had made himself a victim of his own creation. Chudala advised him to give up the ego and realise the Self which he did and was liberated.

1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   A certain wealthy mans house was closely guarded. It had also a ferocious dog chained to a pillar at the gate. The dog and the chain were however very skilful pieces of art. They were sculptured in stone but appeared life-like. A pedestrian on the road once took fright at the sight of the ferocious animal and hurt himself in his attempt to dodge it. A kindly neighbour took pity on him and showed him that it was not a living dog. When the man passed by it the next time he admired the skill of the sculptor and forgot his old experience. Thus when he found it to be a dog, he could not see the stone of which it was made; and again when he found it a piece of sculpture he did not see any dog to hurt him. Hence the proverb. Compare it with The Elephant hides the wood and the wood hides The Elephant. Here it is a wooden elephant.   Atma is always Sat-Chit-Ananda. Of these, the first two are experienced in all the states, whereas the last one is said to be experienced in sleep only.

1.53 - The Propitation of Wild Animals By Hunters, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   his trunk with much solemn ceremony; for they say that "The Elephant   is a great lord; his trunk is his hand." Before the Amaxosa Caffres

1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism   A certain wealthy man's house was closely guarded. It had also a ferocious dog chained to a pillar at the gate. The dog and the chain were however very skilful pieces of art. They were sculptured in stone but appeared life-like. A pedestrian on the road once took fright at the sight of the ferocious animal and hurt himself in his attempt to dodge it. A kindly neighbour took pity on him and showed him that it was not a living dog. When the man passed by it the next time he admired the skill of the sculptor and forgot his old experience. Thus when he found it to be a dog, he could not see the stone of which it was made; and again when he found it a piece of sculpture he did not see any dog to hurt him. Hence the proverb. Compare it with 'The Elephant hides the wood and the wood hides The Elephant.' Here it is a wooden elephant.   Atma is always Sat-Chit-Ananda. Of these, the first two are experienced in all the states, whereas the last one is said to be experienced in sleep only.

1.56 - The Public Expulsion of Evils, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism   mortality amongst men, The Elephants or horses of the general's   stable, or the cattle of the country, "the cause of which they   --   moon volleys of musketry were fired and The Elephants charged   furiously to put the devils to flight. The ceremony was performed on

19.22 - Of Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Miscellany Of The Elephant    Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta DhammapadaPaliOf Hell   --    Miscellany Of The Elephant

19.23 - Of the Elephant, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga   object:19.23 - Of The Elephant   author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta   --    Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta DhammapadaPaliOf The Elephant    Of The Elephant    [1]   --    The Elephant, by name Dhanapala, is hard to control when in heat. Not a morsel would he eat, if bound; he remembers only his free forest herd.    [6]

19.24 - The Canto of Desire, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Of The Elephant The Bhikkhu    Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta DhammapadaPali The Canto of Desire   --    Of The Elephant The Bhikkhu

1951-03-14 - Plasticity - Conditions for knowing the Divine Will - Illness - microbes - Fear - body-reflexes - The best possible happens - Theories of Creation - True knowledge - a work to do - the Ashram, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    You know the story of the irritable elephant, his mahout, and the man who would not make way for The Elephant. Standing in the middle of the road, the man said to the mahout, The divine Will is in me and the divine Will wants me not to move. The driver, a man of some wit, answered, But the divine Will in The Elephant wants you to move!    Mother passes on to another question: illnesses. During the talk in 1929 someone asked whether illnesses were not due to microbes rather than to adverse forces or to fluctuations of yoga. Mother answered:

1953-09-02, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga    And then since she possesses (as you see) a wonderful ingenuity and a truly fantastic imagination. You have only to look at animals or to photograph them. If you look at that and compare the little mouse with the giraffe or The Elephant with the cat, all those animals that were once there and all the animals that still have extraordinary and queer formswhat an imagination, what a tremendous imagination! If you had to create all the animals that are on earth, you would have found it rather difficult! Now that you see them, it appears to you quite natural. I saw the other day a picture representing simply a giraffe picking fruits from far up a tree. I said: One must have some imagination to find that, an animal having a neck long enough to reach the top of a tree so that it may eat the fruit! It is wonderful. And everything is like that. It appears to us quite natural because we have always lived with it, but one must truly have a genius.    So, the person who has the genius as well as the power to realise whatever she imagines, does not like very much people meddling in her affairs! She says: Are you capable of doing what I do?

1955-02-16 - Losing something given by Mother - Using things well - Sadhak collecting soap-pieces - What things are truly indispensable - Natures harmonious arrangement - Riches a curse, philanthropy - Misuse of things creates misery, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Nature is foreseeing enough, she produces in each climate the right thing for it. Of course, one should not put man at the centre and say that Nature has made this for the good of man, I dont think it is like that, because she had invented all this long before man appeared on the earth. But it is a kind of harmony which develops between the climatic conditions of a country and its produce, as we know that there is a harmony between the size of animals and the largeness of the country they live in. For example, The Elephants of India are much smaller than those of Africa. And it is said that this is because in Africa the spaces are immense, so the animals are very big.   It is a kind of harmony established in the creation and as the countries become smaller, as the zones in which these animals live grow smaller, well, the animal becomes smaller until it disappears completely when there is no proper relation left between the free space and its own size. If you construct many houses, well, there will no longer be any bears, any wolves; naturally, first the lions and tigers disappear, but in this I believe men have done something Fear makes them very destructive. But the greater the masses of human beings and the lesser the free spaces, the more do the animal species grow smaller. So how can we make rules?

1956-02-22 - Strong immobility of an immortal spirit - Equality of soul - Is all an expression of the divine Will? - Loosening the knot of action - Using experience as a cloak to cover excesses - Sincerity, a rare virtue, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   This is one point of view. Only it happens that perhapsperhaps, the divine Will is not quite like that. And perhaps it is as in that storyyou all know the story of The Elephant and its mahout?The Elephant, its mahout and the Brahmin on the road who refused to get out of the way of The Elephant and, when the mahout told him, Go away, he replied, No, God in me wants to stay here, and the mahout answered, Pardon me, but God in me tells you to go away!   So the reply to Anatole France is perhaps just this that there is a will higher than that of man which wants things to change. And so there is nothing to do but obey and make them change.

1957-10-23 - The central motive of terrestrial existence - Evolution, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Then you come to the animal. The first animals, yes, it is difficult to distinguish them from plants, there is almost no consciousness. But there you see all the animal species, you know them, dont you, right up to the higher animals which, indeed, are very conscious. They have their own completely independent will. They are very conscious and marvellously intelligent, like The Elephant, for instance; you know all the stories about elephants and their wonderful intelligence. Therefore, it is already a very perceptible appearance of mind. And through this progressive development, we suddenly pass on to a species which has probably disappearedtraces of which have been foundan intermediate animal like a monkey or of the same line as the monkey something close to it, similar, if not the monkey as we know it but already an animal that walks on two legs. And from there we come to man. There is an entire beginning of the evolution of man; we cant say, can we, that he shows a brilliant intelligence, but there is already an action of the mind, a beginning of independence, of independent reaction to the environment and the forces of Nature. And so, in man there is the whole range, right up to the higher being capable of spiritual life.   That is what Sri Aurobindo tells us on this page.

1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen    as James Green, at the Sign of The Elephant in Cheapside, the Russells,    at the Sign of the Golden Eagle across the Bridge, or Clark and

1.hcyc - 63 - However the burning iron ring revolves around my head (from The Shodoka), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction    English version by Robert Aitken Original Language Chinese However the burning iron ring revolves around my head, With bright completeness of dhyana and prajna I never lose my equanimity. If the sun becomes cold, and the moon hot, Evil cannot shatter the truth. The carriage of The Elephant moves like a mountain, How can the mantis block the road? <

1.jr - By the God who was in pre-eternity living and moving and omnipotent, everlasting, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction    English version by A. J. Arberry Original Language Persian/Farsi & Turkish By the God who was in pre-eternity living and moving and omnipotent, everlasting. His light lit the candles of love so that a hundred thousand secrets became known. By one decree of Him the world was filled -- lover and loved, ruler and ruled. In the talismans of Shams-e Tabrizi the treasure of His marvels became concealed. For from the moment that you journeyed forth, we became separated from sweetness like wax; All the night we are burning like candles, paired to his flame and deprived of honey. In separation from his beauty, my body is a waste, and the soul in it is like an owl. Turn those reins in this direction, twist the trunk of The Elephant of joy. Without your presence concert is not lawful; music has been stoned like Satan. Without you not one ode has been uttered, until that gracious vision of yours arrived and was understood; Then out of the joy of hearing your letter five or six odes were composed. May our eventide through you be radiant dawn, O you in whom Syria and Armenia and Rum glory. [1494.jpg] -- from Mystical Poems of Rumi: Volume 2, Translated by A. J. Arberry <

1.mb - Why Mira Cant Come Back to Her Old House, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction    English version by Robert Bly The colors of the Dark One have penetrated Mira's body; all the other colors washed out. Making love with the Dark One and eating little, those are my pearls and my carnelians. Meditation beads and the forehead streak, those are my scarves and my rings. That's enough feminine wiles for me. My teacher taught me this. Approve me or disapprove me: I praise the Mountain Energy night and day. I take the path that ecstatic human beings have taken for centuries. I don't steal money, I don't hit anyone. What will you charge me with? I have felt the swaying of The Elephant's shoulders; and now you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious. [2226.jpg] -- from The Winged Energy of Delight, Translated by Robert Bly <

1.rwe - The Sphinx, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy   The Elephant browses,      Undaunted and calm;

1.shvb - Columba aspexit - Sequence for Saint Maximin, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction    English version by Barbara Newman Original Language Latin A dove gazed in through a latticed window: there balm rained down on her face, raining from lucent Maximin. The heat of the sun blazed out to irradiate the dark: a bud burst open, jewel-like, in the temple of the heart (limpid and kind his heart). A tower of cypress is he, and of Lebanon's cedars -- rubies and sapphires frame his turrets -- a city passing the arts of all other artisans. A swift stag is he who ran to the fountain -- pure wellspring from a stone of power -- to water sweet-smelling spices. O perfumers! you who dwell in the luxuriance of royal gardens, climbing high when you accomplish the holy sacrifice with rams: Among you this architect is shining, a wall of the temple, he who longed for an eagle's wings as he kissed his foster-mother Wisdom in Ecclesia's garden. O Maximin, mountain and valley, on your towering height the mountain goat leapt with The Elephant, and Wisdom was in rapture. Strong and sweet in the sacred rites and the shimmer of the altar, you rise like incense to the pillar of praise -- where you pray for your people who strive toward the mirror of light. Praise him! Praise in the highest! [1826.jpg] -- from Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the Symphonia armonie celstium revelationum, by Hildegard of Bingen / Translated by Barbara Newman <

20.01 - Charyapada - Old Bengali Mystic Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Even like The Elephant in rut for his mate    He rains Truth's own realities.   --    The creation is a stringed musical instrument. Knowledge is its base, the delight is the row of strings tied to the base, the inner silence is the body (rod) on which the strings are laid. The woman is the inspiration of the inner soul, creating the music, she is the mate of the singer, the poet himself. What kind of music is it? It is the music of the Void pouring out the light of compassion all over the creation. The strings are in two layers; the vowels (beginning with aalpha series) are the top series, the consonants the series below (Indian K series, European beta series). That marks the echoing and the re-echoing of the melody, also the right hand and the left hand movements of the consciousness (Knowledge and Power) according to the occultistsit means the total encircling consciousness, the global music. The bridge tightens and maintains the poise of the strings. We may remember here the two subtle nervous lines of 'Ida' and 'Pingala' and the middle one, 'Sushumna' that balances the two. The psychological sense is that the dualities of the world-experience are resolved in the consciousness of the sadhak by a supreme sense of equality. The Elephant may mean the strength of physical resolution. The fingers pressing indicate the same thing, the pressure of almost physical consciousness to bring out the vast music that is Nirvana. The Gods and Goddesses are all happy for the curtain is rung down on the play, it is the endNirvana.    You have to cross the three worldsphysical, vital and mental, pass through the three states of consciousness jgrat (waking), swapna (dreaming) and suupta (sleeping)-to enjoy the transcendent delight. It is the ecstasy of union with one's soul, the divine Beloved secreted within our inner heart. This divinity, this beloved deity is utter freedomno mental reservations or restrictions, no vital preferences or prejudices, no physical rules or regulations.

2.01 - AT THE STAR THEATRE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER (to M. and the others): "Why should I be one-sided? The goswamis belong to the Vaishnava school and are very bigoted. They think that their opinion alone is right and all other opinions are wrong. My words have hit him hard. (Smiling) One must strike The Elephant on the head with the goad; that is The Elephant's most sensitive spot."   Then Sri Ramakrishna told a few naughty jokes for the young men.   --   So saying, he took a pinch of dust, muttered some mantras over it, and threw it at The Elephant. The beast struggled awhile in pain and then dropped dead. The Lord said: 'What power you have! You have killed The Elephant!' The sdhu laughed. Again the Lord spoke: 'Now can you revive The Elephant?' 'That too is possible', replied the sdhu. He threw another pinch of charmed dust at the beast. The Elephant writhed about a litle and came back to life. Then the Lord said: 'Wonderful is your power. But may I ask you one thing? You have killed The Elephant and you have revived it. But what has that done for you? Do you feel uplifted by it? Has it enabled you to realize God?' Saying this the Lord vanished.   "Subtle are the ways of dharma. One cannot realize God if one has even the least trace of desire. A thread cannot pass through the eye of a needle if it has the smallest fibre sticking out.

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    There is a very fine and humourous passage in which a disciple asks the Guru whether the king is riding The Elephant, or The Elephant the king?    Disciple: The king must be Ramamurthy if The Elephant was on him! Besides, this may be the theory of relativity in embryo.    Sri Aurobindo: The method of reply adopted by the Guru is original. He jumps upon the shoulders of the disciple and then asks him whether he is on the disciple's back or the disciple is on his back?

2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Reason with its partial vision sets up constructed conclusions which it strives to turn into general rules of knowledge and action and it compels into its rule by some mental device or gets rid of what does not suit with it: an infinite Consciousness would have no such rules, it would have instead large intrinsic truths governing automatically conclusion and result, but adapting them differently and spontaneously to a different total of circumstances, so that by this pliability and free adaptation it might seem to the narrower faculty to have no standards whatever. In the same way, we cannot judge of the principle and dynamic operation of infinite being by the standards of finite existence, - what might be impossible for the one would be normal and self-evidently natural states and motives for the greater freer Reality. It is this that makes the difference between our fragmentary mind consciousness constructing integers out of its fractions and an essential and total consciousness, vision and knowledge. It is not indeed possible, so long as we are compelled to use reason as our main support, for it to abdicate altogether in favour of an undeveloped or half-organised intuition; but it is imperative on us in a consideration of the Infinite and its being and action to enforce on our reason an utmost plasticity and open it to an awareness of the larger states and possibilities of that which we are striving to consider. It will not do to apply our limited and limiting conclusions to That which is illimitable. If we concentrate only on one aspect and treat it as the whole, we illustrate the story of the blind men and The Elephant; each of the blind inquirers touched a different part and concluded that the whole animal was some object resembling the part of which he had had the touch. An experience of some one aspect of the Infinite is valid in itself; but we cannot generalise from it that the Infinite is that alone, nor would it be safe to view the rest of the Infinite in the terms of that aspect and exclude all other view-points of spiritual experience. The Infinite is at once an essentiality, a boundless totality and a multitude; all these have to be known in order to know truly the Infinite. To see the parts alone and the totality not at all or only as a sum of the parts is a knowledge, but also at the same time an ignorance; to see the totality alone and ignore the parts is also a knowledge and at the same time an ignorance, for a part may be greater than the whole because it belongs to the transcendence; to see the essence alone because it takes us back straight towards the transcendence and negate the totality and the parts is a penultimate knowledge, but here too there is a capital ignorance. A whole knowledge must be there and the reason must become plastic enough to look at all sides, all aspects and seek through them for that in which they are one.   Thus too, if we see only the aspect of self, we may concentrate on its static silence and miss the dynamic truth of the Infinite; if we see only the Ishwara, we may seize the dynamic truth but miss the eternal status and the infinite silence, become aware of only dynamic being, dynamic consciousness, dynamic delight of being, but miss the pure existence, pure consciousness, pure bliss of being. If we concentrate on Purusha-Prakriti alone, we may see only the dichotomy of Soul and Nature, Spirit and Matter, and miss their unity. In considering the action of the Infinite we have to avoid the error of the disciple who thought of himself as the Brahman, refused to obey the warning of The Elephant-driver to budge from the narrow path and was taken up by The Elephant's trunk and removed out of the way; "You are no doubt the Brahman," said the master to his bewildered disciple, "but why did you not obey the driver Brahman and get out of the path of The Elephant Brahman?" We must not commit the mistake of emphasising one side of the Truth and concluding from it or acting upon it to the exclusion of all other sides and aspects of the Infinite. The realisation "I am That" is true, but we cannot safely proceed on it unless we realise also that all is That; our self-existence is a fact, but we must also be aware of other selves, of the same Self in other beings and of That which exceeds both own-self and other-self. The Infinite is one in a multiplicity and its action is only seizable by a supreme Reason which regards all and acts as a one-awareness that observes itself in difference and respects its own differences, so that each thing and each being has its form of essential being and its form of dynamic nature, svarupa, svadharma, and all are respected in the total working. The knowledge and action of the Infinite is one in an unbound variability: it would be from the point of view of the infinite Truth equally an error to insist either on a sameness of action in all circumstances or on a diversity of action without any unifying truth and harmony behind the diversity. In our own principle of conduct, if we sought to act in this greater Truth, it would be equally an error to insist on our self alone or to insist on other selves alone; it is the Self of all on which we have to found a unity of action and a total, infinitely plastic yet harmonious diversity of action; for that is the nature of the working of the Infinite.   If we look from this view-point of a larger more plastic reason, taking account of the logic of the Infinite, at the difficulties which meet our intelligence when it tries to conceive the absolute and omnipresent Reality, we shall see that the whole difficulty is verbal and conceptual and not real. Our intelligence looks at its concept of the Absolute and sees that it must be indeterminable and at the same time it sees a world of determinations which emanates from the Absolute and exists in it, - for it can emanate from nowhere else and can exist nowhere else; it is further baffled by the affirmation, also hardly disputable on the premisses, that all these determinates are nothing else than this very indeterminable Absolute. But the contradiction disappears when we understand that the indeterminability is not in its true sense negative, not an imposition of incapacity on the Infinite, but positive, a freedom within itself from limitation by its own determinations and necessarily a freedom from all external determination by anything not itself, since there is no real possibility of such a not-self coming into existence. The Infinite is illimitably free, free to determine itself infinitely, free from all restraining effect of its own creations. In fact the Infinite does not create, it manifests what is in itself, in its own essence of reality; it is itself that essence of all reality and all realities are powers of that one Reality. The Absolute neither creates nor is created, - in the current sense of making or being made; we can speak of creation only in the sense of the Being becoming in form and movement what it already is in substance and status. Yet we have to emphasise its indeterminability in that special and positive sense, not as a negation but as an indispensable condition of its free infinite self-determination, because without that the Reality would be a fixed eternal determinate or else an indeterminate fixed and bound to a sum of possibilities of determination inherent within it. Its freedom from all limitation, from any binding by its own creation cannot be itself turned into a limitation, an absolute incapacity, a denial of all freedom of self-determination; it is this that would be a contradiction, it would be an attempt to define and limit by negation the infinite and illimitable. Into the central fact of the two sides of the nature of the Absolute, the essential and the self-creative or dynamic, no real contradiction enters; it is only a pure infinite essence that can formulate itself in infinite ways. One statement is complementary to the other, there is no mutual cancellation, no incompatibility; it is only the dual statement of a single inescapable fact by human reason in human language.

2.03 - DEMETER, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   sicerata, The Elephants, the sabre-toothed tigers, and so many   others, there are the primates.

2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    Sri Aurobindo: Yes, the Indian also was considered docile and mild like The Elephant, but once he is off the line you better keep out of his way.    Now there is a new morality in the air. They talk of pacifism, anti-nationalism, anti-militarism, etc. But it is talked of by those who can't do anything. In any case, it has to stand the test of time.

2.05 - VISIT TO THE SINTHI BRAMO SAMAJ, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER: "A man thinks of God, no doubt, but he has no faith in Him. Again and again he forgets God and becomes attached to the world. It is like giving The Elephant a bath; afterwards he covers his body with mud and dirt again. 'The mind is a mad elephant.'   But if you can make The Elephant go into the stable immediately after bathing him, then he stays clean. Just so, if a man thinks of God in the hour of death, then his mind becomes pure and it gets no more opportunity to become attached to 'woman and gold'.   "Man has no faith in God. That is the reason he suffers so much. They say that when you plunge into the holy waters of the Ganges your sins perch on a tree on the bank. No sooner do you come out of the water after the bath than the sins jump back on your shoulders. (All laugh.) A man must prepare the way beforehand, so that he may think of God in the hour of death. The way lies through constant practice. If a man practises meditation on God, he will remember God even on the last day of his life."

2.06 - The Wand, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   54:But even though every man is "determined" so that every action is merely the passive resultant of the sumtotal of the forces which have acted upon him from eternity, so that his own Will is only the echo of the Will of the Universe, yet that consciousness of "free-will" is valuable; and if he really understands it as being the partial and individual expression of that internal motion in a Universe whose sum is rest, by so much will he feel that harmony, that totality. And though the happiness which he experiences may be criticised as only one scale of a balance in whose other scale is an equal misery, there are those who hold that misery consists only in the feeling of separation from the Universe, and that consequently all may cancel out among the lesser feelings, leaving only that infinite bliss which is one phase of the infinite consciousness of that ALL. Such speculations are somewhat beyond the scope of the present remarks. It is of no particular moment to observe that The Elephant and flea can be no other than they are; but we do perceive that one is bigger than the other. That is the fact of practical importance.   55:We do know that persons can be trained to do things which they could not do without training - and anyone who remarks that you cannot train a person unless it is his destiny to be trained is quite unpractical. Equally it is the destiny of the trainer to train. There is a fallacy in the determinist argument similar to the fallacy which is the root of all "systems" of gambling at Roulette. The odds are just over three to one against red coming up twice running; but after red has come up once the conditions are changed. WEH footnote: Exactly four to one before and even after.

2.08 - God in Power of Becoming, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga    among The Elephants, among the birds Garuda, Vasuki the snakegod among the serpents, Kamadhuk the cow of plenty among cattle, the alligator among fishes, the lion among the beasts of the forest. I am Margasirsha, first of the months; I am spring, the fairest of the seasons.   In living beings, the Godhead tells Arjuna, I am consciousness by which they are aware of themselves and their surroundings. I am mind among the senses, mind by which they receive the impressions of objects and react upon them. I am man's qualities of mind and character and body and action; I am glory and speech and memory and intelligence and steadfastness and forgiveness, the energy of the energetic and the strength of the mighty. I am resolution and perseverance and victory, I am the sattwic quality of the good, I am the gambling of the cunning; I am the mastery and power of all who rule and tame and vanquish and the policy of all who succeed and conquer; I am the silence of things secret, the knowledge of the knower, the logic of those who debate. I am the letter A among letters, the dual among compounds, the sacred syllable OM among words, the Gayatri among metres, the Sama-veda among the Vedas and the great

2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The perfection of species or of types is not what is aimed at; the type is often perfect [within its] limits, for it is the limits that make the type; the species too can be perfect in itself, perfect in its own variation of the genus and the genus perfect by the number and beauty or curiosity of its variations. But what we see in Nature is that it strives ever to exceed itself, to go beyond what it has yet done. For having achieved in the animal the whole of which animality was capable, it did not in achieving man endeavour to produce the perfect synthetic animal, it began at once working out something more than the animal. Man is to a certain extent a synthesis of several animals; he might even be said to synthetise all, from the worm and the skink, to The Elephant and the lion; but as an animal he is terribly imperfect.   His greatness lies in his being more than an animal and by this new nature he has exceeded the animal and made up for all his deficiencies even in the region of the struggle for life.

2.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES IN CALCUTTA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   M: "You told us that if a man is a 'small receptacle' he cannot control spiritual emotion; but if he is a 'large receptacle' he experiences intense emotion without showing it outwardly. You said that a big lake does not become disturbed when an elephant enters it; but when The Elephant enters a pool, one sees tremendous confusion and the water splashes on the banks."   MASTER: "Purna will not show his emotion outwardly; he hasn't that kind of temperament. His other signs are good. What do you say?"

2.13 - THE MASTER AT THE HOUSES OF BALARM AND GIRISH, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   BHAVANTH: "M. says: 'As long as I have not seen The Elephant, how can I know whether it can pass through the eye of a needle? I do not, know God; how can I understand through reason whether or not He can incarnate Himself as man?"   MASTER: "Everything is possible for God. It is He who casts the spell. The magician swallows the knife and takes it out again; he swallows stones and bricks."

2.16 - VISIT TO NANDA BOSES HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   Thou it is that holdest The Elephant in the mire; Thou, that helpest the lame man scale the loftiest hill.   On some Thou dost bestow the bliss of Brahmanhood; Yet others Thou dost hurl into this world below.

2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    There is a humorous passage in it, where a disciple asks the Guru whether the king is on The Elephant or The Elephant on the king. (Laughter)    Disciple: The king must be Ramamurthy if The Elephant was to be on him.    Sri Aurobindo: Then the Guru jumps on the shoulders of the disciple and asks him whether he is on the disciples back or the disciple on his back. (Laughter)   --    Disciple: Vedanta for some time was a byword for hypocrisy. People used to speak of them as Bedantins with two sets of teeth, one for showing and another for chewing, like The Elephant. What is the truth of Varna Marga?    Sri Aurobindo: I don't know. It must have been with the idea of taking up forces and pulling them high up. Even the sexual act has to be done from a high consciousness. The Upanishad also says it is possible.

2.18 - SRI RAMAKRISHNA AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   "I must tell you something else. Why should I not listen to the 'mahut Narayana'? The guru had taught his disciple that everything was Narayana. A mad elephant was coming toward the disciple, but he did not move away since he believed the guru's words. He thought that The Elephant was Narayana. The mahut shouted to him: 'Get away! Get away!' But the disciple did not move. The Elephant picked him up and threw him to the ground. The disciple was not quite dead; when his face was sprinkled with water he regained consciousness. Being asked why he had not moved away, he said: 'why should I? The guru said, "Everything is Narayana."' 'But, my child,' said the Guru, 'Why didn't you listen to the words of the mahut Narayana?'   "It is God who dwells within as the Pure Mind and Pure Intelligence. I am the machine and He is its Operator. I am the house and He is the Indweller. It is God who is the mahut Narayana."

2.20 - THE MASTERS TRAINING OF HIS DISCIPLES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   M: "We know that you do not care for a display of feelings. Perhaps you remember that the Master now and then refers to you as a 'deep soul'. He said to you yesterday that when an elephant plunges into a small pool it makes a big splash, but when it goes into a big lake you see hardly a ripple. The Elephant of emotion cannot produce any effect at all in a deep soul. The Master says that you are a 'deep soul'."   DOCTOR: "I don't deserve the compliment. After all, what is bhava? It is only a feeling.

2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   MASTER: "If a man practises spiritual discipline before his death and if he gives up his body praying to God and meditating on Him, when will sin touch him? It is no doubt The Elephant's nature to smear his body with dust and mud, even after his bath. But he cannot do so if the mahut takes him into the stable immediately after his bath."   In spite of his serious illness the Master keenly felt the sorrow and suffering of men. Day and night he thought about their welfare. The devotees wondered at his compassion.

2.3.03 - Integral Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   It is inevitable therefore that our spiritual experience should be not that of a concrete integrality of this Absolute or Infinite, but of aspects of it; we are, so long at least as we are mental beings, the blind men of the story trying to tell what The Elephant Infinite is in its totality by our touch upon a part of it, some member of its spiritual body, tanum svam. One experiences it as Self or   Spirit. It may be a Self of himself in which he finds his spiritual consummation, integrality, infinity, perfection. It may be a Self of the universe in which his individuality loses itself forever. It may be a Self transcendent in which the Ego disappears, but cosmos too is annulled forever in a formless Eternal and Infinite. Another may experience it as God; and God may be either the All of the

3.08 - Of Equilibrium, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   unsuited to thy tender podex [Lat., anus] as The Elephant to the nightingale. By   Allah, I say, go not! twere shame, when thou returnest, that thou shouldest seem

31.10 - East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Beethoven characteristically represents the West in music. The soul of the West is reflected in the symphonies of Beethoven more than perhaps in anything else. He has expressed human emotion in its different modes with their opulence, their concords and even more their contrasts and clashes. Verily Beethoven's world consists in Nature's dual, i.e.,polarized, mood, manifesting itself in innumerable channels. It is like an elephant running amuck and trampling underfoot all that it meets in a virgin forest densely covered with trees and bushes, thickets and creepers. The Elephant's trumpeting, the yelling of animals, the chirping of birds and the rustle of leaves - all these go to form what would appear to be like the devastating clamour of the periodic dissolution of the world. The genius of Beethoven has raised the unrhythmic hulla-balloo of the world to a lofty pitch capable of charming the human heart. As a contrast how calm, profound and unitonal is the kirtanof Tyagraj! No doubt, his music has not the rich variation, the polyphonism of his European counterpart; and yet rising on the crest of a single tune we are transported to the Elysian lap of an infinite calm leaving behind this whirl of the earth. We know European music takes pride in harmony, while Indian music is noted for its melody. In other words, Occidental music expresses the multitudinous diversity of Nature, while Oriental music represents the oneness of the truth beyond Nature.    Further, let us turn to the spiritual practices of the East and the West and their effects on life. What is the nature of European religion? Greece is the mother of modern Europe. The Europe of to-day is the outcome of Graeco-Roman culture. What was the conception of religion in Greece? Her religion surely consisted in all that is decent, lovely and harmonious. But the Greek people failed to discover or envisage the self-existent truth that reigns supreme within the heart of man. They were solely interested in external expression through rhythm; cadence and harmony of a mental or rational idealism. There was Plato, no doubt, and the Platonists and esoterics (like Pythagoras), but Aristotle and not Plato came to be their teacher and legislator. The virtue of the Romans lay in virility and the spirit of conquest and effective organisation of life. And the virtue of Europe has combined in itself the aesthetic sense of Greece and the military and state spirit of Rome. In Europe they want to regulate life through codes, moral and legal. Forced by circumstances and for the sake of mutual interest they have set up a mode of moral standard, and this they want to impose on all peoples and countries. The utmost contri bution of European religion has been a kind of temporising and understanding with the lower propensities of men and somehow presenting a smooth and decorous surface of life. Association, Arbitration, Federation, Co-existence and such other mottoes and shibboleths that are in the air to-day are but the echoes of that mentality. Deutschtum of Germany sought to transcend this religion of morality. It tried to found religion on some deeper urge within. But in its quest it took the ego for the Self and the demoniac vital energy for the Divine Power.

33.17 - Two Great Wars, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    I may in this connection tell you another story, a true story and a very pleasant and reassuring one. Some of you may have been actually eye-witnesses. Not so long ago, the air was thick with rumours of a possible danger of a crisis for India: this was a little before the Chinese attack. Was India going to be invaded and subjugated by a foreign Power once again? India was no doubt big and had ample .resources in manpower. But her manpower was little more than that of a rabble, it lacked the cohesion of organised military strength. The question was put to the Mother at the Playground. The Mother gave a smile and, pointing to the map of India on the wall, said, "Can't you see. who is guarding India? Isn't the north-eastern portion of Kashmir a lion's head with its jaws wide open?" The portion indicated does have the appearance of a lion's head as you can see if you look at it closely. Its nozzle projects with wide open mouth facing the front, as if ready to swallow up anyone who dares to come. It is the Lion of Mother Durga. Another little piece might be added to this story. Matching the lion on our northern frontier, there is an elephant dangling its trunk on the southern tip of India bordering the sea; that too is clearly visible on the map. It is as if giving the warning, "Here am I, the coast-guard ever on the watch. Beware!" It is The Elephant on which rides Lakshmi - gajalaksmi,the divine Mother of Plenty and Beauty. The Elephant is the symbol of material power,    As Hitler was threatening to cover, as with an ominous comet's tail, the whole of earth and sky, one of our sadhaks here sent up to Sri Aurobindo his wail, "What, O Guru, is this happening to the comforting words you gave? Don't you see that the earth is getting on to the verge of ruin? Where, O Saviour, are you?" Sri Aurobindo's reply was a quiet admonition, "Where is the worry? Hitler is not immortal." After a short while the castle that Hitler had built was blown to the winds like a pack of cards. It was as if an all-englobing fog had been puffed away by a breath, a frightful nightmare had got dissolved in the light of the dawn.

4.3.1 - The Hostile Forces and the Difficulties of Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Do you not know the story of The Elephant Brahman? All is Brahman, but in action you have to treat The Elephant as The Elephant Brahman and the Asura as the Asura Brahman and neither as merely Brahman pure and simple. One has either to avoid the Rakshasa or overcome him; otherwise the Rakshasa may eat up the man, all Brahman though both be. The Brahman realisation is an inner static realisation, until one has become the dynamic instrument of the Divine Consciousness and Force then the problem of The Elephant and the Rakshasa wont arise, for the Divine Consciousness will know and the Divine Force will execute what is to be done in each case. There is no need to have vaira inside, but to be friendly with the Rakshasa is not prudent, as the Rakshasa is impervious to that kind of thinghe will take advantage of it to farther his own purpose.   ***

5.07 - Beginnings Of Civilization, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry   The Punic folk did train The Elephants-   Those curst Lucanian oxen, hideous,

6.03 - Extraordinary And Paradoxical Telluric Phenomena, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry   There is The Elephant-disease which down   In midmost Aegypt, hard by streams of Nile,

7.02 - Courage, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   At first The Elephant retreated before this terrifying rain.   But the man who had trained him ran towards him crying:

7.13 - The Conquest of Knowledge, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Although he has less power over the great ocean, he has made his strength felt on land. And while he has rid himself of the animals that are harmful to him, he has kept and bred the animals that are useful to him: the ox, the horse, the sheep, The Elephant, etc.   But all this is the conquest of things by his hands and by his tools and weapons. And hands and tools and weapons are the servants of his thought.

7.15 - The Family, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   The Elephant-king knelt down and invited the lost man to climb on to his back; then he took him to the path which led to   Benares and showed him the way.   --   The white elephant was in a stable all bright with flowers, and the King himself came to feed him. But The Elephant would eat nothing.   "My mother is not here," he said.   --   So the King commanded his people to set The Elephant free, and the great creature ran swiftly away from the city into the jungle; he drew water from a pool, hurried to the cave and showered his blind mother with the cool water.   She cried, "It is raining! Alas, my son is not here to take care of me."   --   The mother died and was burnt, and in time the white elephant also died. The King made a stone image of him; and from every part of India people gathered each year for the Festival of The Elephant.   275

9.99 - Glossary, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism     Ganesa: The god with The Elephant's head; the god of success, the son of Siva.     Ganga: The Ganges.

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy   * The Protestant Bible defines Behemoth innocently -- "The Elephant as some think" (See marginal   note in Job xl. 19) in the authorised versions.

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy   man and the ant, of The Elephant, and of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle -whether you call it organic or inorganic -- is a life. Every atom and molecule in the Universe is both   life-giving and death-giving to that form, inasmuch as it builds by aggregation universes and the

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy   No Occultist would deny that man -- no less than The Elephant and the microbe, the crocodile and the   lizard, the blade of grass or the crystal -- is, in his physical formation, the simple product of the

Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction   The Elephant That Foretold the Birth of the   Buddha   --   magnification of The Elephant or of the hippopotamus, or a   mistaken and alarmist version of these animals; it is now precisely - the ten famous verses describing it in Job (XL:   --   men, it means The Elephant, so called because of its inordinate size; and being but a single animal it counts for   many.   --   The Elephant That Foretold   the Birth of the Buddha   --   In India The Elephant is a domestic animal. White stands   for humility and the number six is sacred, corresponding to   --   The Leveller has ten times the girth of The Elephant, to   which it bears a striking resemblance. It is provided with a   --   foray on The Elephant, coil round it, and plunge its teeth into   it. The bloodless elephant rolls on the ground and dies; so

BOOK VIII. - Some account of the Socratic and Platonic philosophy, and a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods and men, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity   Wherefore let not the mind truly religious, and submitted to the true God, suppose that demons are better than men, because they have better bodies. Otherwise it must put many beasts before itself which are superior to us both in acuteness of the senses, in ease and quickness of movement,[Pg 328] in strength and in long-continued vigour of body. What man can equal the eagle or the vulture in strength of vision? Who can equal the dog in acuteness of smell? Who can equal the hare, the stag, and all the birds in swiftness? Who can equal in strength the lion or The Elephant? Who can equal in length of life the serpents, which are affirmed to put off old age along with their skin, and to return to youth again? But as we are better than all these by the possession of reason and understanding, so we ought also to be better than the demons by living good and virtuous lives. For divine providence gave to them bodies of a better quality than ours, that that in which we excel them might in this way be commended to us as deserving to be far more cared for than the body, and that we should learn to despise the bodily excellence of the demons compared with goodness of life, in respect of which we are better than they, knowing that we too shall have immortality of body,not an immortality tortured by eternal punishment, but that which is consequent on purity of soul.   But now, as regards loftiness of place, it is altogether ridiculous to be so influenced by the fact that the demons inhabit the air, and we the earth, as to think that on that account they are to be put before us; for in this way we put all the birds before ourselves. But the birds, when they are weary with flying, or require to repair their bodies with food, come back to the earth to rest or to feed, which the demons, they say, do not. Are they, therefore, inclined to say that the birds are superior to us, and the demons superior to the birds? But if it be madness to think so, there is no reason why we should think that, on account of their inhabiting a loftier element, the demons have a claim to our religious submission. But as it is really the case that the birds of the air are not only not put before us who dwell on the earth, but are even subjected to us on account of the dignity of the rational soul which is in us, so also it is the case that the demons, though they are aerial, are not better than we who are terrestrial because the air is higher than the earth, but, on the contrary, men are to be put before demons because their despair is not to be compared to the hope of pious men. Even that law of[Pg 329] Plato's, according to which he mutually orders and arranges the four elements, inserting between the two extreme elementsnamely, fire, which is in the highest degree mobile, and the immoveable earth the two middle ones, air and water, that by how much the air is higher up than the water, and the fire than the air, by so much also are the waters higher than the earth,this law, I say, sufficiently admonishes us not to estimate the merits of animated creatures according to the grades of the elements. And Apuleius himself says that man is a terrestrial animal in common with the rest, who is nevertheless to be put far before aquatic animals, though Plato puts the waters themselves before the land. By this he would have us understand that the same order is not to be observed when the question concerns the merits of animals, though it seems to be the true one in the gradation of bodies; for it appears to be possible that a soul of a higher order may inhabit a body of a lower, and a soul of a lower order a body of a higher.

IS - Chapter 1, #Invisible Cities, #Italo Calvino, #Fiction   with the odor of The Elephants after the rain and the sandalwood ashes growing cold in the braziers, a dizziness that   makes rivers and mountains tremble on the fallow curves of

Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   714. The Elephant has two sets of teeth, the tusks visible externally, and the grinders inside the mouth.   Similarly God-men like Sri Krishna have an external manifestation and behave like common men in the   --   The Elephant. What fear has God from Himself?" Reflecting thus, he did not move. So The Elephant   caught hold of him by his trunk and dashed him aside. He was hurt severely, and going back to his   teacher, related the whole story. The teacher then said, "All right. You are God and The Elephant too is   God; but God in the shape of The Elephant-driver was warning you from above. Why did you not pay   heed to His warning?   --   1078. Four blind men went out to see an elephant. One touched the leg of The Elephant and said, "The   elephant is like a pillar." The second touched the trunk and said, "The Elephant is like a thick club." The   third touched the belly and said, "The Elephant is like a big jar". The fourth touched the ears and said,   "The Elephant is like a big winnowing basket." Thus they began to dispute hotly amongst themselves as   to the shape of The Elephant. A passer-by seeing them thus quarrelling, said, "What is it you are   disputing about?" They told him everything and asked him to arbitrate. The man said, "None of you has   seen The Elephant. The Elephant is not like a pillar, its legs are like pillars. It is not like a winnowing   basket, its ears are like winnowing baskets. It is not like a stout club, its trunk is like a club. The Elephant   is the combination of all these legs, ears, belly, trunk and so on." In the same manner, :"'those who   --   elephant, chanting certain incantations. The Elephant at once fell down dead, writhing in agony. Then   the Sannyasin observed, "Oh! how wonderful is your power! How easily have you killed The Elephant!"   The Sadhu smiled at these words of praise. The Sannyasin said again, "Well, can you bring The Elephant   back to life?" "Yes, that too can be done," he replied, and threw again a handful of dust at the dead   --   indeed is your power! But I would like to ask you one question. Just now you killed The Elephant and   then revived it, but what benefit did it bring to you? What improvement has it brought in you? Did it

Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction   SRI AUROBINDO: Yes; India also was considered docile and mild, like an elephant, but once The Elephant is off the line you had better keep out of his   way!   --   Guru whether the king is on The Elephant or The Elephant on the king.   PURANI: The king must be a Ramamurti if The Elephant were to be on him.   159   --   difficult to say whether the king is on The Elephant or The Elephant is on the   king.

The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology   The quotations show that the visual image of The Elephant was not   in fact a 'perceptual whole* but a melange of perceptual and conceptual   --   which constitutes the image of The Elephant. Thus hearing is inex-   tricably bound up with interpreting, seeing with knowing, perceiving

The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction   water". The Elephant, considered the most sober of animals, is her symbol. Ripa gives two of   her emblems: one of a woman with a turtle on her head, holding a bridle and silver money; the

The Riddle of this World, #unknown, #Unknown, #unset   Mahout and stood before The Elephant, saying, "I am Brahman", until   The Elephant took him up in his trunk and put him aside. When he   complained to his Guru, the Guru said, "Yes, but why didn't you listen to   the Mahout Brahman? That was why The Elephant Brahman had to lift   you up and put you out of harm's way." In the manifestation there are

Verses of Vemana, #is Book, #unset, #Zen   Surya lover of the lotus, was born in the race of Vishnu, husb and of Lakshmi, the noble mother and as he duly goes his course, going about the lands and the earth; Vishnu nourisher of The Elephant, travels as he does (for Surya is in reality but a form of Vishnu).   281   --   He that eats dogs (quells his passions) is the (linga) Janga Teacher. He that eats hog (quells his bodily lusts) is the Parama yogee. He that eats The Elephant, how wise must he be!   p. 88   --   If after mounting this creature, the horse, he cannot manage him, the tatwa yogee is in trouble. Let him mount The Elephant of knowledge.   p. 122

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Batman Forever(1995) - The Dark Knight of Gotham City confronts a dastardly duo: Two-Face and the Riddler. Formerly District Attorney Harvey Dent, Two-Face believes Batman caused the courtroom accident which left him disfigured on one side. And Edward Nygma, computer-genius and former employee of millionaire Bruce Wayne,...

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Kujakuou -- -- - -- 3 eps -- - -- Action Demons Horror -- Kujakuou Kujakuou -- A young mystic without a past, Kujaku was born under a dark omen possessed of incredible supernatural powers. Raised by priests, he has learned to use these powers for good. But the evil Siegfried von Mittgard seeks to steal his birthright, and rule the world as the Regent of Darkness. He has dispatched bloodthirsty minions to destroy Kujaku before he can awaken to his destiny. Now, Kujaku must unravel the riddle of his past, before the power within consumes him! -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- -- Licensor: -- Central Park Media -- OVA - Apr 29, 1988 -- 2,073 5.91

Shin Kujakuou -- -- Madhouse -- 2 eps -- - -- Action Demons Horror -- Shin Kujakuou Shin Kujakuou -- A young mystic without a past, Kujaku was born under a dark omen possessed of incredible supernatural powers. Raised by priests, he has learned to use these powers for good. But the evil Siegfried von Mittgard seeks to steal his birthright, and rule the world as the Regent of Darkness. He has dispatched bloodthirsty minions to destroy Kujaku before he can awaken to his destiny. Now, Kujaku must unravel the riddle of his past, before the power within consumes him! -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- -- Licensor: -- Central Park Media -- OVA - May 20, 1994 -- 1,653 5.96

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