TERMS STARTING WITH
difficulty ::: 1. The condition or quality of being difficult; 2. Something that is hard to do, understand or surmount; an impediment or obstacle.
difficulty ::: n. --> The state of being difficult, or hard to do; hardness; arduousness; -- opposed to easiness or facility; as, the difficulty of a task or enterprise; a work of difficulty.
Something difficult; a thing hard to do or to understand; that which occasions labor or perplexity, and requires skill and perseverance to overcome, solve, or achieve; a hard enterprise; an obstacle; an impediment; as, the difficulties of a science; difficulties in theology.
TERMS ANYWHERE
2. In its rational aspect, as developed especially by Plato and Aristotle, aristocracy is the rule of the best few, in a true, purposeful, law-abiding and constitutional sense. As a political ideal, it is a form of government by morally and intellectually superior men for the common good or in the general interests of the governed, but without participation of the latter. Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing the best men for directing the life of the community, and of setting in motion the process of training and selecting such models of human perfection, aristocracy becomes practically the rule of those who are thought to be the best. [Plato himself proposed his ideal State as "a model fixed in the heavens" for human imitation but not attainment; and in the Laws he offered a combination of monarchy and democracy as the best working form of government.] Though aristocracy is a type of government external to the governed, it is opposed to oligarchy (despotic) and to timocracy (militaristic). With monarchy and democracy, it exhausts the classification of the main forms of rational government.
abstruseness ::: n. --> The quality of being abstruse; difficulty of apprehension.
" . . . a compromise is not a solution; it only salves over the difficulty and in the end increases the complexity of the problem and multiplies its issues.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“ . . . a compromise is not a solution; it only salves over the difficulty and in the end increases the complexity of the problem and multiplies its issues.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Actio in Distans (Latin) Action at a distance. Can force be transmitted across an empty space? On the automechanical theory of the universe, such action is inexplicable and yet inevitable, for if the universe consists entirely of matter made of atoms separated from each other by empty spaces, the transmission of force from one atom to another cannot be explained except by supposing some medium to intervene. If this medium is atomic, the old difficulty reappears; if it is continuous, there is no reason for supposing it, since matter might in the first place have been supposed to be continuous. Thus if we choose to represent reality as a system of points in space, we must assume actio in distans as an axiom. The difficulty that a body cannot act where it is not, may be gotten over by stating that wherever it can act, there it is. Scientific theories, carried to a logical conclusion, support the idea that all things in the universe are connected with each other, so that whatever affects one part affects every other part. Notions of physical space do not enter to the realm of mind, thought, and feeling.
Adhyatmika-duhkha (Sanskrit) Ādhyātmika-duḥkha [from adhi above + ātman self; duḥkha trouble, difficulty from dush to be defiled] The first of the three kinds of klesa (affliction) or worldly pain (cf VP 6:5). Those arising from oneself, generally classed as bodily ailments (headaches, fevers, diseases, etc.), but more properly those pains or troubles originating from mental and other inner causes such as weakness of will, vagrant and misleading emotions, and imperfect mentation, which lead to physical ailments. The other two klesas are adhibhautika and adhidaivika.
ado ::: n. --> To do; in doing; as, there is nothing ado.
Doing; trouble; difficulty; troublesome business; fuss; bustle; as, to make a great ado about trifles.
adroit ::: a. --> Dexterous in the use of the hands or in the exercise of the mental faculties; exhibiting skill and readiness in avoiding danger or escaping difficulty; ready in invention or execution; -- applied to persons and to acts; as, an adroit mechanic, an adroit reply.
Agnishvatta(s) ::: (Sanskrit) ::: A compound of two words: agni, "fire"; shvatta, "tasted" or "sweetened," from svad, verb-rootmeaning "to taste" or "to sweeten." Therefore, literally one who has been delighted or sweetened by fire.A class of pitris: our solar ancestors as contrasted with the barhishads, our lunar ancestors.The kumaras, agnishvattas, and manasaputras are three groups or aspects of the same beings: thekumaras represent the aspect of original spiritual purity untouched by gross elements of matter. Theagnishvattas represent the aspect of their connection with the sun or solar spiritual fire. Having tasted orbeen "sweetened" by the spiritual fire -- the fire of intellectuality and spirituality -- they have beenpurified thereby. The manasaputras represent the aspect of intellectuality -- the functions of higherintellect.The agnishvattas and manasaputras are two names for the same class or host of beings, and set forth orsignify or represent two different aspects or activities of this one class of beings. Thus, for instance, aman may be said to be a kumara in his spiritual parts, an agnishvatta in his buddhic-manasic parts, and amanasaputra in his purely manasic aspect. Other beings could be called kumaras in their highest aspects,as for instance the beasts, but they are not imbodied agnishvattas or manasaputras.The agnishvattas are the solar spiritual-intellectual parts of us, and therefore are our inner teachers. Inpreceding manvantaras, they had completed their evolution in the realms of physical matter, and whenthe evolution of lower beings had brought these latter to the proper state, the agnishvattas came to therescue of these who had only the physical "creative fire," thus inspiring and enlightening these lowerlunar pitris with spiritual and intellectual energies or "fires."When this earth's planetary chain shall have reached the end of its seventh round, we, as then havingcompleted the evolutionary course for this planetary chain, will leave this planetary chain asdhyan-chohans, agnishvattas; but the others now trailing along behind us -- the present beasts -- will bethe lunar pitris of the next planetary chain to come.While it is correct to say that these three names appertain to the same class of beings, nevertheless eachname has its own significance in the occult teaching, which is why the three names are used with threedistinct meanings. Imagine an unconscious god-spark beginning its evolution in any one solar ormaha-manvantara. We may call it a kumara, a being of original spiritual purity, but with a destinythrough karmic evolution connected with the realms of matter.At the other end of the line, at the consummation of the evolution in this maha-manvantara, when theevolving entity has become a fully self-conscious god or divinity, its proper appellation then isagnishvatta, for it has been "sweetened" or purified by means of the working through it of the spiritualfires inherent in itself.Now then, when such an agnishvatta assumes the role of a bringer of mind or of intellectual light to alunar pitri which it overshadows and in which a ray from it incarnates, it then, although in its own realman agnishvatta, functions as a manasaputra or child of mind or mahat. A brief analysis of the compoundelements of these three names may be useful.Kumara is from ku meaning "with difficulty" and mara meaning "mortal." The significance of the wordtherefore can be paraphrased as "mortal with difficulty," and the meaning usually given to it by Sanskritscholars as "easily dying" is wholly exoteric and amusing, and doubtless arose from the fact that kumarais a word frequently used for child or boy, everybody knowing that young children "die easily." The ideatherefore is that purely spiritual beings, although ultimately destined by evolution to pass through therealms of matter, become mortal, i.e., material, only with difficulty.Agnishvatta has the meaning stated above, "delighted" or "pleased" or "sweetened," i.e., "purified" byfire -- which we may render in two ways: either as the fire of suffering and pain in material existenceproducing great fiber and strength of character, i.e., spirituality; or, perhaps still better from thestandpoint of occultism, as signifying an entity or entities who have become one in essence throughevolution with the aethery fire of spirit.Manasaputra is a compound of two words: manasa, "mental" or "intellectual," from the word manas,"mind," and putra, "son" or "child," therefore a child of the cosmic mind -- a "mind-born son" as H. P.Blavatsky phrases it. (See also Pitris, Lunar Pitris)
AI-complete ::: In the field of artificial intelligence, the most difficult problems are informally known as AI-complete or AI-hard, implying that the difficulty of these computational problems is equivalent to that of solving the central artificial intelligence problem—making computers as intelligent as people, or strong AI.[18] To call a problem AI-complete reflects an attitude that it would not be solved by a simple specific algorithm.
aniyatagotra. (T. rigs ma nges pa; C. buding zhongxing; J. fujoshusho; K. pujong chongsong 不定種姓). In Sanskrit, "indeterminate lineage"; referring to those beings who are not predestined to a particular path and who, depending on circumstances, may follow one path and then change to another. According to some YOGACARA schools, at birth some beings are endowed with an inherent lineage (PRAKṚTISTHAGOTRA) directing them toward one of three vehicles: the sRAVAKAYANA, PRATYEKABUDDHAYANA, or BODHISATTVAYANA. The difficulty or ease with which they proceed on the path results from a developed lineage (SAMUDANĪTAGOTRA) obtained from cultivating earlier wholesome roots (KUsALAMuLA). For such persons, the lineages of the srAvaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva remain definite even when facing great hindrances. There are also persons of indeterminate or indefinite lineage. For such persons, whether they follow the srAvaka, pratyekabuddha, or bodhisattva path depends on circumstances, such as which teacher they encounter. Persons of this lineage can therefore change their path. For example, beginner (ADIKARMIKA) bodhisattvas may revert to a srAvaka path and seek personal NIRVAnA when faced with either the prospect of the difficult deeds (duskaracaryA) that bodhisattvas must perform for the sake of others or the seemingly interminable length of time (see ASAMKHYEYAKALPA) required to achieve full enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI). In addition, a srAvaka may be inspired to seek buddhahood for the sake of all beings and thus switch to the bodhisattva path.
anutpattikadharmaksAnti. (T. mi skye ba'i chos la bzod pa; C. wushengfaren; J. mushobonin; K. musaeng pobin 無生法忍). In Sanskrit, the "acquiescence" or "receptivity" "to the nonproduction of dharmas." In the MAHAYANA, a BODHISATTVA is said to have attained the stage of "nonretrogression" (AVAIVARTIKA) when he develops an unswerving conviction that all dharmas are "unproduced" (ANUTPADA) and "empty" (suNYATA) in the sense that they lack any intrinsic nature (NIḤSVABHAVA). This stage of understanding has been variously described as occurring on either the first or eighth BHuMIs of the bodhisattva path. This conviction concerning emptiness is characterized as a kind of "acquiescence," "receptivity," or "forbearance" (KsANTI), because it sustains the bodhisattva on the long and arduous path of benefiting others, instilling an indefatigable equipoise, and preventing him from falling back into the selfish preoccupation with personal liberation. The bodhisattva "bears" or "acquiesces to" the difficulty of actively entering the world to save others by residing in the realization that ultimately there is no one saving others and no others being saved. In other words, all dharmas-including sentient beings and the rounds of rebirth-are originally and eternally "unproduced" or "tranquil." This realization of nonduality-of the self and others, and of SAMSARA and NIRVAnA-inoculates the bodhisattva from being tempted into a premature attainment of "cessation," wherein one would escape from personal suffering through the extinction of continual existence, but at the cost of being deprived of the chance to attain the even greater goal of buddhahood through sustained practice along the bodhisattva path. AnutpattikadharmaksAnti is sometimes used in a nonpolemical context, where it refers both to the MahAyAna realization of the truth of "emptiness" and to the non-MahAyAna realization of no-self (ANATMAN) and the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. In a non-MahAyAna context, the term corresponds to the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA).
Aporia: (Gr. aporla) A theoretical difficulty or puzzle. -- G.R.M.
applet "web" A {Java} program which can be distributed as an attachment in a {web} document and executed by a Java-enabled {web browser} such as Sun's {HotJava}, {Netscape Navigator} version 2.0, or {Internet Explorer}. Navigator severely restricts the applet's file system and network access in order to prevent accidental or deliberate security violations. Full Java applications, which run outside of the browser, do not have these restrictions. Web browsers can also be extended with {plug-ins} though these differ from applets in that they usually require manual installation and are {platform}-specific. Various other languages can now be embedded within {HTML} documents, the most common being {JavaScript}. Despite Java's aim to be a "write once, run anywhere" language, the difficulty of accomodating the variety of browsers in use on the Internet has led many to abandon client-side processing in favour of {server}-side Java programs for which the term {servlet} was coined. Merriam Webster "Collegiate Edition" gives a 1990 definition: a short application program especially for performing a simple specific task. (2002-07-12)
applet ::: (World-Wide Web) A Java program which can be distributed as an attachment in a World-Wide Web document and executed by a Java-enabled web browser such as Sun's HotJava, Netscape Navigator version 2.0, or Internet Explorer.Navigator severely restricts the applet's file system and network access in order to prevent accidental or deliberate security violations. Full Java applications, which run outside of the browser, do not have these restrictions.Web browsers can also be extended with plug-ins though these differ from applets in that they usually require manual installation and are platform-specific. Various other languages can now be embedded within HTML documents, the most common being JavaScript.Despite Java's aim to be a write once, run anywhere language, the difficulty of accomodating the variety of browsers in use on the Internet has led many to abandon client-side processing in favour of server-side Java programs for which the term servlet was coined.Merriam Webster Collegiate Edition gives a 1990 definition: a short application program especially for performing a simple specific task.(2002-07-12)
arduously ::: adv. --> In an arduous manner; with difficulty or laboriousness.
arduousness ::: n. --> The quality of being arduous; difficulty of execution.
ARRESTS IN SADHANA. ::: A difficulty comes or an arrest in some movement which you have begun or have been carrying on for some time. Such arrests are inevitably frequent enough; one might almost say that every step forward is followed by an arrest. It is to be dealt with by becoming always more quiet, more firm in the will to go through, by opening oneself more and more so that any obstructing non-receptivity in the nature may diminish or disappear, by an affirmation of faith even in the midst of obscurity, faith in the presence of a Power that is working behind the cloud and the veil, in the guidance of the Guru, by an observation of oneself to find any cause of the arrest, not in a spirit of depression or discouragement but with the will to find out and remove it. This is the only right attitude and, if one is persistent in taking it, the periods of arrest are not abolished, - for that cannot be at this stage, - but greatly shortened and lightened in their incidence. Sometimes these arrests are periods, long or short, of assimilation or unseen preparation, their appearance of sterile immobility is deceptive ::: in that case, with the right attitude, one can after a time, by opening, by observation, by accumulated experience, begin to feel, to get some inkling of what is being prepared or done. Sometimes it is a period of true obstruction in which the Power at work has to deal with the obstacles in the way, obstacles in oneself, obstacles of the opposing cosmic forces or any other or of all together, and this kind of arrest may be long or short according to the magnitude or obstinacy or complexity of the impediments that are met. But here, too, the right attitude can alleviate or shorten and, if persistently taken, help to a more radical removal of the difficulties and greatly diminish the necessity of complete arrests hereafter.
On the contrary, an attitude of depression or unfaith in the help or the guidance or in the certitude of the victory of the guiding Power, a shutting up of yourself in the sense of the difficulties, helps the obstructions to recur with force instead of progressively diminishing in their incidence.
asperity ::: n. --> Roughness of surface; unevenness; -- opposed to smoothness.
Roughness or harshness of sound; that quality which grates upon the ear; raucity.
Roughness to the taste; sourness; tartness.
Moral roughness; roughness of manner; severity; crabbedness; harshness; -- opposed to mildness.
Sharpness; disagreeableness; difficulty.
assail ::: v. t. --> To attack with violence, or in a vehement and hostile manner; to assault; to molest; as, to assail a man with blows; to assail a city with artillery.
To encounter or meet purposely with the view of mastering, as an obstacle, difficulty, or the like.
To attack morally, or with a view to produce changes in the feelings, character, conduct, existing usages, institutions; to attack by words, hostile influence, etc.; as, to assail one with
asthma ::: n. --> A disease, characterized by difficulty of breathing (due to a spasmodic contraction of the bronchi), recurring at intervals, accompanied with a wheezing sound, a sense of constriction in the chest, a cough, and expectoration.
aware ::: a. --> Watchful; vigilant or on one&
bad lands ::: --> Barren regions, especially in the western United States, where horizontal strata (Tertiary deposits) have been often eroded into fantastic forms, and much intersected by caons, and where lack of wood, water, and forage increases the difficulty of traversing the country, whence the name, first given by the Canadian French, Mauvaises Terres (bad lands).
baryphony ::: n. --> Difficulty of speech.
boron ::: n. --> A nonmetallic element occurring abundantly in borax. It is reduced with difficulty to the free state, when it can be obtained in several different forms; viz., as a substance of a deep olive color, in a semimetallic form, and in colorless quadratic crystals similar to the diamond in hardness and other properties. It occurs in nature also in boracite, datolite, tourmaline, and some other minerals. Atomic weight 10.9. Symbol B.
Brain fag is an example of a culture-bound syndrome. Once a common term for mental exhaustion, it is now encountered almost exclusively in West Africa. Seen predominantly in male students, it generally manifests as vague somatic symptoms, depression, and difficulty concentrating. Read the article for details.
Broca’s aphasia ::: Difficulty producing speech as a result of damage to Broca’s area in the left frontal lobe.
burden ::: n. --> That which is borne or carried; a load.
That which is borne with labor or difficulty; that which is grievous, wearisome, or oppressive.
The capacity of a vessel, or the weight of cargo that she will carry; as, a ship of a hundred tons burden.
The tops or heads of stream-work which lie over the stream of tin.
The proportion of ore and flux to fuel, in the charge of a
But at first there is a difficulty in keeping it intact when there is the contact wth others because the consciousness has the habit of running outwards in speech or external interchange or else coming down to the normal fevel. One must therefore be very careful until it is fixed ; once fixed it usually defends itself, for all outer contacts become surface things to a consciousness full of the higher peace.
"But our more difficult problem is to liberate the true Person and attain to a divine manhood which shall be the pure vessel of a divine force and the perfect instrument of a divine action. Step after step has to be firmly taken; difficulty after difficulty has to be entirely experienced and entirely mastered. Only the Divine Wisdom and Power can do this for us and it will do all if we yield to it in an entire faith and follow and assent to its workings with a constant courage and patience.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“But our more difficult problem is to liberate the true Person and attain to a divine manhood which shall be the pure vessel of a divine force and the perfect instrument of a divine action. Step after step has to be firmly taken; difficulty after difficulty has to be entirely experienced and entirely mastered. Only the Divine Wisdom and Power can do this for us and it will do all if we yield to it in an entire faith and follow and assent to its workings with a constant courage and patience.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"By individual we mean normally something that separates itself from everything else and stands apart, though in reality there is no such thing anywhere in existence; it is a figment of our mental conceptions useful and necessary to express a partial and practical truth. But the difficulty is that the mind gets dominated by its words and forgets that the partial and practical truth becomes true truth only by its relation to others which seem to the reason to contradict it, and that taken by itself it contains a constant element of falsity. Thus when we speak of an individual we mean ordinarily an individualisation of mental, vital, physical being separate from all other beings, incapable of unity with them by its very individuality. If we go beyond these three terms of mind, life and body, and speak of the soul or individual self, we still think of an individualised being separate from all others, incapable of unity and inclusive mutuality, capable at most of a spiritual contact and soul-sympathy. It is therefore necessary to insist that by the true individual we mean nothing of the kind, but a conscious power of being of the Eternal, always existing by unity, always capable of mutuality. It is that being which by self-knowledge enjoys liberation and immortality.” The Life Divine
“By individual we mean normally something that separates itself from everything else and stands apart, though in reality there is no such thing anywhere in existence; it is a figment of our mental conceptions useful and necessary to express a partial and practical truth. But the difficulty is that the mind gets dominated by its words and forgets that the partial and practical truth becomes true truth only by its relation to others which seem to the reason to contradict it, and that taken by itself it contains a constant element of falsity. Thus when we speak of an individual we mean ordinarily an individualisation of mental, vital, physical being separate from all other beings, incapable of unity with them by its very individuality. If we go beyond these three terms of mind, life and body, and speak of the soul or individual self, we still think of an individualised being separate from all others, incapable of unity and inclusive mutuality, capable at most of a spiritual contact and soul-sympathy. It is therefore necessary to insist that by the true individual we mean nothing of the kind, but a conscious power of being of the Eternal, always existing by unity, always capable of mutuality. It is that being which by self-knowledge enjoys liberation and immortality.” The Life Divine
Cartesianism: The philosophy of the French thinker, Rene Descartes (Cartesius) 1596-1650. After completing his formal education at the Jesuit College at La Fleche, he spent the years 1612-1621 in travel and military service. The reminder of his life was devoted to study and writing. He died in Sweden, where he had gone in 1649 to tutor Queen Christina. His principal works are: Discours de la methode, (preface to his Geometric, Meteores, Dieptrique) Meditationes de prima philosophia, Principia philosophiae, Passions de l'ame, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Le monde. Descartes is justly regarded as one of the founders of modern epistemology. Dissatisfied with the lack of agreement among philosophers, he decided that philosophy needed a new method, that of mathematics. He began by resolving to doubt everything which could not pass the test of his criterion of truth, viz. the clearness and distinctness of ideas. Anything which could pass this test was to be readmitted as self-evident. From self-evident truths, he deduced other truths which logically follow from them. Three kinds of ideas were distinguished: innate, by which he seems to mean little more than the mental power to think things or thoughts; adventitious, which come to him from without; factitious, produced within his own mind. He found most difficulty with the second type of ideas. The first reality discovered through his method is the thinking self. Though he might doubt nearly all else, Descartes could not reasonably doubt that he, who was thinking, existed as a res cogitans. This is the intuition enunciated in the famous aphorism: I think, therefore I am, Cogito ergo sum. This is not offered by Descartes as a compressed syllogism, but as an immediate intuition of his own thinking mind. Another reality, whose existence was obvious to Descartes, was God, the Supreme Being. Though he offered several proofs of the Divine Existence, he was convinced that he knew this also by an innate idea, and so, clearly and distinctly. But he did not find any clear ideas of an extra-mental, bodily world. He suspected its existence, but logical demonstration was needed to establish this truth. His adventitious ideas carry the vague suggestion that they are caused by bodies in an external world. By arguing that God would be a deceiver, in allowing him to think that bodies exist if they do not, he eventually convinced himself of the reality of bodies, his own and others. There are, then, three kinds of substance according to Descartes: Created spirits, i.e. the finite soul-substance of each man: these are immaterial agencies capable of performing spiritual operations, loosely united with bodies, but not extended since thought is their very essence. Uncreated Spirit, i.e. God, confined neither to space nor time, All-Good and All-Powerful, though his Existence can be known clearly, his Nature cannot be known adequately by men on earth, He is the God of Christianity, Creator, Providence and Final Cause of the universe. Bodies, i.e. created, physical substances existing independently of human thought and having as their chief attribute, extension. Cartesian physics regards bodies as the result of the introduction of "vortices", i.e. whorls of motion, into extension. Divisibility, figurability and mobility, are the notes of extension, which appears to be little more thin what Descartes' Scholastic teachers called geometrical space. God is the First Cause of all motion in the physical universe, which is conceived as a mechanical system operated by its Maker. Even the bodies of animals are automata. Sensation is the critical problem in Cartesian psychology; it is viewed by Descartes as a function of the soul, but he was never able to find a satisfactory explanation of the apparent fact that the soul is moved by the body when sensation occurs. The theory of animal spirits provided Descartes with a sort of bridge between mind and matter, since these spirits are supposed to be very subtle matter, halfway, as it were, between thought and extension in their nature. However, this theory of sensation is the weakest link in the Cartesian explanation of cognition. Intellectual error is accounted for by Descartes in his theory of assent, which makes judgment an act of free will. Where the will over-reaches the intellect, judgment may be false. That the will is absolutely free in man, capable even of choosing what is presented by the intellect as the less desirable of two alternatives, is probably a vestige of Scotism retained from his college course in Scholasticism. Common-sense and moderation are the keynotes of Descartes' famous rules for the regulation of his own conduct during his nine years of methodic doubt, and this ethical attitude continued throughout his life. He believed that man is responsible ultimately to God for the courses of action that he may choose. He admitted that conflicts may occur between human passions and human reason. A virtuous life is made possible by the knowledge of what is right and the consequent control of the lower tendencies of human nature. Six primary passions are described by Descartes wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sorrow. These are passive states of consciousness, partly caused by the body, acting through the animal spirits, and partly caused by the soul. Under rational control, they enable the soul to will what is good for the body. Descartes' terminology suggests that there are psychological faculties, but he insists that these powers are not really distinct from the soul itself, which is man's sole psychic agency. Descartes was a practical Catholic all his life and he tried to develop proofs of the existence of God, an explanation of the Eucharist, of the nature of religious faith, and of the operation of Divine Providence, using his philosophy as the basis for a new theology. This attempted theology has not found favor with Catholic theologians in general.
choke pear ::: --> A kind of pear that has a rough, astringent taste, and is swallowed with difficulty, or which contracts the mucous membrane of the mouth.
A sarcasm by which one is put to silence; anything that can not be answered.
chromium ::: n. --> A comparatively rare element occurring most abundantly in the mineral chromite. Atomic weight 52.5. Symbol Cr. When isolated it is a hard, brittle, grayish white metal, fusible with difficulty. Its chief commercial importance is for its compounds, as potassium chromate, lead chromate, etc., which are brilliantly colored and are used dyeing and calico printing. Called also chrome.
clambers ::: climbs, using both feet and hands; climbs with effort or difficulty; scrambles on all fours. clambered, clambering.
clamber ::: v. i. --> To climb with difficulty, or with hands and feet; -- also used figuratively. ::: n. --> The act of clambering. ::: v. t.
complexity ::: (algorithm) The level in difficulty in solving mathematically posed problems as measured by the time, number of steps or arithmetic operations, or memory space required (called time complexity, computational complexity, and space complexity, respectively).The interesting aspect is usually how complexity scales with the size of the input (the scalability), where the size of the input is described by some doubles in size, the computation will take four times as many steps. The ideal is a constant time algorithm (O(1)) or failing that, O(N).See also NP-complete. (1994-10-20)
complexity "algorithm" The level in difficulty in solving mathematically posed problems as measured by the time, number of steps or arithmetic operations, or memory space required (called time complexity, computational complexity, and space complexity, respectively). The interesting aspect is usually how complexity scales with the size of the input (the "{scalability}"), where the size of the input is described by some number N. Thus an {algorithm} may have computational complexity O(N^2) (of the order of the square of the size of the input), in which case if the input doubles in size, the computation will take four times as many steps. The ideal is a constant time algorithm (O(1)) or failing that, O(N). See also {NP-complete}. (1994-10-20)
computational complexity theory ::: Focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved by a computer. A computation problem is solvable by mechanical application of mathematical steps, such as an algorithm.
concrete operational period: In Piaget's stages of cognitive development, a period between ages seven and eleven during which children gain a better understanding of mental operations. Children begin thinking logically about concrete events, but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts.
conduction aphasia ::: Difficulty producing speech as a result of damage to the connection between Wernicke’s and Broca’s language areas.
constraint satisfaction "application" The process of assigning values to {variables} while meeting certain requirements or "{constraints}". For example, in {graph colouring}, a node is a variable, the colour assigned to it is its value and a link between two nodes represents the constraint that those two nodes must not be assigned the same colour. In {scheduling}, constraints apply to such variables as the starting and ending times for tasks. The {Simplex} method is one well known technique for solving numerical constraints. The search difficulty of constraint satisfaction problems can be determined on average from knowledge of easily computed structural properties of the problems. In fact, hard instances of {NP-complete} problems are concentrated near an abrupt transition between under- and over-constrained problems. This transition is analogous to phase transitions in physical systems and offers a way to estimate the likely difficulty of a constraint problem before attempting to solve it with search. {Phase transitions in search (ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/dynamics/constraints.html)} (Tad Hogg, {XEROX PARC}). (1995-02-15)
constraint satisfaction ::: (application) The process of assigning values to variables while meeting certain requirements or constraints. For example, in graph colouring, a node same colour. In scheduling, constraints apply to such variables as the starting and ending times for tasks.The Simplex method is one well known technique for solving numerical constraints.The search difficulty of constraint satisfaction problems can be determined on average from knowledge of easily computed structural properties of the problems. the likely difficulty of a constraint problem before attempting to solve it with search. (1995-02-15)
conveniency ::: n. --> The state or quality of being convenient; fitness or suitableness, as of place, time, etc.; propriety.
Freedom from discomfort, difficulty, or trouble; commodiousness; ease; accommodation.
That which is convenient; that which promotes comfort or advantage; that which is suited to one&
conveniently ::: adv. --> In a convenient manner, form, or situation; without difficulty.
cornered ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Corner ::: p. a. --> 1 Having corners or angles.
In a possition of great difficulty; brought to bay.
danger ::: n. --> Authority; jurisdiction; control.
Power to harm; subjection or liability to penalty.
Exposure to injury, loss, pain, or other evil; peril; risk; insecurity.
Difficulty; sparingness.
Coyness; disdainful behavior. ::: v. t.
demur ::: v. i. --> To linger; to stay; to tarry.
To delay; to pause; to suspend proceedings or judgment in view of a doubt or difficulty; to hesitate; to put off the determination or conclusion of an affair.
To scruple or object; to take exception; as, I demur to that statement.
To interpose a demurrer. See Demurrer, 2.
Stop; pause; hesitation as to proceeding; suspense of
Despite the best efforts of the king of Tibet more than a thousand years ago, it has always been difficult for scholars of Buddhism to agree on translations. That difficulty persists in the present work for a variety of reasons, including the different ways that Buddhist scholiasts chose to translate technical terms into their various languages over the centuries, the preferences of the many modern scholars whose works we consulted, and the relative stubbornness of the authors. As a result, there will inevitably be some variation in the renderings of specific Buddhist terminology in the pages that follow. In our main entries, however, we have tried to guide users to the range of possible English translations that have been used to render a term. In addition, a significant effort has been made to provide the original language equivalencies in parentheses so that specialists in those languages can draw their own conclusions as to the appropriate rendering.
deter ::: v. t. --> To prevent by fear; hence, to hinder or prevent from action by fear of consequences, or difficulty, risk, etc.
Deus ex machina: Literally, the god from the machine; an allusion to the device whereby in ancient drama a god was brought on the stage, sometimes to provide a supernatural solution to a dramatic difficulty, hence any person, thing, or concept artificially introduced to solve a difficulty. -- G.R.M.
Dharmakaya(Sanskrit) ::: This is a compound of two words meaning the "continuance body," sometimes translatedequally well (or ill) the "body of the Law" -- both very inadequate expressions, for the difficulty intranslating these extremely mystical terms is very great. A mere correct dictionary-translation oftenmisses the esoteric meaning entirely, and just here is where Occidental scholars make such ludicrouserrors at times.The first word comes from the root dhri, meaning "to support," "to sustain," "to carry," "to bear," hence"to continue"; also human laws are the agencies supposed to carry, support, sustain, civilization; thesecond element, kaya, means "body." The noun thus formed may be rendered the "body of the Law," butthis phrase does not give the idea at all. It is that spiritual body or state of a high spiritual being in whichthe restricted sense of soulship and egoity has vanished into a universal (hierarchical) sense, and remainsonly in the seed, latent -- if even so much. It is pure consciousness, pure bliss, pure intelligence, freedfrom all personalizing thought.In the Buddhism of Central Asia, the dharmakaya is the third and highest of the trikaya. The trikayaconsists of (1) nirmanakaya, (2) sambhogakaya, and (3) dharmakaya. We may look upon these threestates, all of them lofty and sublime, as being three vestures in which the consciousness of the entityclothes itself. In the dharmakaya vesture the initiate is already on the threshold of nirvana, if not indeedalready in the nirvanic state. (See also Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya)
difficult ::: a. --> Hard to do or to make; beset with difficulty; attended with labor, trouble, or pains; not easy; arduous.
Hard to manage or to please; not easily wrought upon; austere; stubborn; as, a difficult person. ::: v. t. --> To render difficult; to impede; to perplex.
difficulties ::: pl. --> of Difficulty
difficultly ::: adv. --> With difficulty.
difficultness ::: n. --> Difficulty.
difficulty ::: 1. The condition or quality of being difficult; 2. Something that is hard to do, understand or surmount; an impediment or obstacle.
difficulty ::: n. --> The state of being difficult, or hard to do; hardness; arduousness; -- opposed to easiness or facility; as, the difficulty of a task or enterprise; a work of difficulty.
Something difficult; a thing hard to do or to understand; that which occasions labor or perplexity, and requires skill and perseverance to overcome, solve, or achieve; a hard enterprise; an obstacle; an impediment; as, the difficulties of a science; difficulties in theology.
D. Interpretations of Probability. The methods and results of mathematical probability (and of probability in general) are the subject of much controversy as regards their interpretation and value. Among the various theories proposed, we shall consider the following Probability as a measure of belief, probability as the relative frequency of events, probability as the truth-frequency of types of argument, probability as a primitive notion, probability as an operational concept, probability as a limit of frequencies, and probability as a physical magnitude determined by axioms. I. Probability as a Measure of Belief: According to this theory, probability is the measure or relative degree of rational credence to be attached to facts or statements on the strength of valid motives. This type of probability is sometimes difficult to estimate, as it may be qualitative as well as quantitative. When considered in its mathematical aspects, the measure of probable inference depends on the preponderance or failure of operative causes or observed occurrences of the case under investigation. This conception involves axioms leading to the classic rule of Laplace, namely: The measure of probability of any one of mutually exclusive and apriori equiprobable possibilities, is the ratio of the number of favorable possibilities to the total number of possibilities. In probability operations, this rule is taken as the definition of direct probability for those cases where it is applicable. The main objections against this interpretation are: that probability is largely subjective, or at least independent of direct experience; that equiprobability is taken as an apriori notion, although the ways of asserting it are empirical; that the conditions of valid equiprobability are not stated definitely; that equiprobability is difficult to determine actually in all cases; that it is difficult to attach an adequate probability to a complex event from the mere knowledge of the probabilities of its component parts, and that the notion of probability is not general, as it does not cover such cases as the inductive derivation of probabilities from statistical data. II. Probability as a Relative Frequency. This interpretation is based on the nature of events, and not on any subjective considerations. It deals with the rate with which an event will occur in a class of events. Hence, it considers probability as the ratio of frequency of true results to true conditions, and it gives as its measure the relative frequency leading from true conditions to true results. What is meant when a set of calculations predict that an experiment will yield a result A with probability P, is that the relative frequency of A is expected to approximate the number P in a long series of such experiments. This conception seems to be more concerned with empirical probabilities, because the calculations assumed are mostly based on statistical data or material assumptions suggested by past experiments. It is valuable in so far as it satisfies the practical necessity of considering probability aggregates in such problems. The main objections against this interpretation are: that it does not seem capable of expressing satisfactorily what is meant by the probability of an event being true; that its conclusions are more or less probable, owing to the difficulty of defining a proper standard for comparing ratios; that neither its rational nor its statistical evidence is made clear; that the degree of relevance of that evidence is not properly determined, on account of the theoretical indefinite ness of both the true numerical value of the probability and of the evidence assumed, and that it is operational in form only, but not in fact, because it involves the infinite without proper limitations. III. Probability as Truth-Frequency of Types of Arguments: In this interpretation, which is due mainly to Peirce and Venn, probability is shifted from the events to the propositions about them; instead of considering types and classes of events, it considers types and classes of propositions. Probability is thus the ability to give an objective reading to the relative tiuth of propositions dealing with singular events. This ability can be used successfully in interpreting definite and indefinite numerical probabilities, by taking statistical evaluations and making appropriate verbal changes in their formulation. Once assessed, the relative truth of the propositions considered can be communicated to facts expressed by these propositions. But neither the propositions nor the facts as such have a probability in themselves. With these assumptions, a proposition has a degree of probability, only if it is considered as a member of a class of propositions; and that degree is expressed by the proportion of true propositions to the total number of propositions in the class. Hence, probability is the ratio of true propositions to all the propositions of the class examined, if the class is finite, or to all the propositions of the same type in the long run, if the class is infinite. In the first case, fair sampling may cover the restrictions of a finite class; in the second case, the use of infinite series offers a practical limitation for the evidence considered. But in both cases, probability varies with the class or type chosen, and probability-inferences are limited by convention to those cases where numerical values can be assigned to the ratios considered. It will be observed that this interpretation of probability is similar to the relative frequency theory. The difference between these two theories is more formal than material in both cases the probability refers ultimately to kinds of evidence based on objective matter of fact. Hence the Truth-Frequency theory is open to the sime objections as the Relative-Frequency theory, with proper adjustments. An additional difficulty of this theory is that the pragmatic interpretation of truth it involves, has yet to be proved, and the situation is anything but improved by assimilating truth with probability.
discouraged ::: 1. Deprived of courage, hope, or confidence; disheartened; dispirited. 2. Obstructed by opposition or difficulty; hindered. discouraging.
Disorientation ::: Inability to recognize or be aware of who we are (person), what we are doing (situation), the time and date (time), or where we are in relation to our environment (place). To be considered a problem, it must be consistent, result in difficulty functioning, and not due to forgetting or being lost.
drag ::: n. 1. A slow, laborious motion or movement against resistance. v. 2. To pull along with difficulty or effort; haul. 3. To trail along the ground. 4. To be drawn or hauled along. 5. To introduce; inject; insert. drags, dragged, dragging.
DRY PERIOD. ::: There is a long stage of preparation neces- sary in order to arrive at the moer psychologic^ condition in which the doors of experience can open and one can walk from vista to vista — though even then new gates may present them- selves and refuse to open until all is ready. This period can be dry and desert-like unless one has the ardour of self-introspec- tion and self-conquest and finds every step of the effort and struggle interesting or unless one has or gets the secret of trust and self-giving which secs the hand of the Divine in every step of the path and even in the difficulty the grace or the guidance.
Such interval periods come to all and cannot be avoided.
The main thing is to meet them with quietude and not become restless, depressed or despondent. A constant fire can be there only when a certain stage has been reached, that is when one is always inside consciously living in the psychic being, but for that all this preparation of the mind, vital, physical is necessary.
For this fire belongs to the psychic and one cannot command it always merely by the mind's effort. The psychic has to be fully liberated and that is what the Force is working to make fully possible.
The difficulty comes when either the vital with its desires or the physical with its past habitual movements comes in — as they do with almost everyone. It is then that the dryness and difficulty of spontaneous aspiration come. This dryness is a well- known obstacle in all sadhana. But one has to persist and not be discouraged. If one keep? the will fixed even in these barren periods, they pass and after their passage a greater force of aspiration and experience becomes possible.
Dryness comes usually when the vital dislikes a movement or' condition or the refusal of its desires and starts non-co-operation.
But sometimes it is a condition that has to be crossed through, e.g. the neutral or dry quietude which sometimes comes when the ordinary movements have been thrown out but nothing positive has yet come to take their place, i.e, peace, joy, a higher know- ledge or force or action.
duhkham avapyate ::: [is attained with difficulty]. [see the following]
duhkham dehavadbhih ::: [with difficulty by embodied souls]. [see the following]
duhkham dehavadbhir avapyate ::: [is attained with difficulty by embodied souls]. [Gita 12.5]
dysarthria ::: Difficulty producing speech as a result of damage to the primary motor centers that govern the muscles of articulation; distinguished from aphasia, which results from cortical damage.
dysphagy ::: n. --> Difficulty in swallowing.
dysphony ::: n. --> A difficulty in producing vocal sounds; enfeebled or depraved voice.
dyspnoea ::: n. --> Difficulty of breathing.
dystome ::: a. --> Cleaving with difficulty.
ease ::: 1. Freedom from labour, pain, or physical annoyance; tranquil rest; comfort. 2. Freedom from difficulty, hardship, or effort. 3. Freedom from concern or anxiety; a quiet state of mind.
ease ::: n. --> Satisfaction; pleasure; hence, accommodation; entertainment.
Freedom from anything that pains or troubles; as: (a) Relief from labor or effort; rest; quiet; relaxation; as, ease of body.
Freedom from care, solicitude, or anything that annoys or disquiets; tranquillity; peace; comfort; security; as, ease of mind.
Freedom from constraint, formality, difficulty, embarrassment, etc.; facility; liberty; naturalness; -- said of manner, style, etc.; as, ease of style, of behavior, of address.
easily ::: adv. --> With ease; without difficulty or much effort; as, this task may be easily performed; that event might have been easily foreseen.
Without pain, anxiety, or disturbance; as, to pass life well and easily.
Readily; without reluctance; willingly.
Smoothly; quietly; gently; gracefully; without /umult or discord.
easily ::: with ease; without difficulty, labour or exertion.
easiness ::: n. --> The state or condition of being easy; freedom from distress; rest.
Freedom from difficulty; ease; as the easiness of a task.
Freedom from emotion; compliance; disposition to yield without opposition; unconcernedness.
Freedom from effort, constraint, or formality; -- said of style, manner, etc.
Freedom from jolting, jerking, or straining.
economy of things, be solved otherwise than by the predestined instrument making the difficulty his own.
Effort and surrender ::: Surrender is not a thing that can be done in a day. The mind has its ideas and clings to them ; the human vital resists surrender, for what it calls surrender in the early stages is a doubtful kind of self-giving with a demand in it ; the physical consciousness is like a stone and what it calls surrender is often no more Ilian Inertia. It is only the psychic that knows how to surrender and the psychic is usually very much veiled in the beginning. When the psychic awakes, it can bring a sudden and true surrender of the whole being, for the difficulty of the rest is rapidly dealt with and disappears. But till then effort is indispensable. Or else it is necessary till the
eluctation ::: n. --> A struggling out of any difficulty.
embarrassment ::: n. --> A state of being embarrassed; perplexity; impediment to freedom of action; entanglement; hindrance; confusion or discomposure of mind, as from not knowing what to do or to say; disconcertedness.
Difficulty or perplexity arising from the want of money to pay debts.
enodation ::: n. --> The act or operation of clearing of knots, or of untying; hence, also, the solution of a difficulty.
entangle ::: v. t. --> To twist or interweave in such a manner as not to be easily separated; to make tangled, confused, and intricate; as, to entangle yarn or the hair.
To involve in such complications as to render extrication a bewildering difficulty; hence, metaphorically, to insnare; to perplex; to bewilder; to puzzle; as, to entangle the feet in a net, or in briers.
entrapped ::: caught in or as if in a trap; lured or tricked into danger or difficulty.
Euthanasia [from Greek eu well +thanatos death] Easy death, a painless death; used for the practice of mercifully killing people who would otherwise suffer a painful death. To decide if a person should or should not be kept alive by artificial means or a life ended by artificial means requires almost superhuman discernment. An individual is not his body nor even his mind, but fundamentally a spiritual being. Physical suffering from bodily ills, however unpleasant, provides an opportunity to meet and dispose of certain karmic causes, and thereby learn and grow. Aside from the difficulty of preventing abuses in legalized euthanasia, the ethical and spiritual questions surrounding artificial prolongation and shortening of life remain extremely complex. The Stoics held that life is a gift of the gods and therefore no person has the right to reject that gift — for oneself or another — until the gods themselves call it back.
facilitate ::: v. t. --> To make easy or less difficult; to free from difficulty or impediment; to lessen the labor of; as, to facilitate the execution of a task.
facility ::: n. --> The quality of being easily performed; freedom from difficulty; ease; as, the facility of an operation.
Ease in performance; readiness proceeding from skill or use; dexterity; as, practice gives a wonderful facility in executing works of art.
Easiness to be persuaded; readiness or compliance; -- usually in a bad sense; pliancy.
Easiness of access; complaisance; affability.
fastidious ::: a. --> Difficult to please; delicate to a fault; suited with difficulty; squeamish; as, a fastidious mind or ear; a fastidious appetite.
formidable ::: 1. Arousing fear, dread, or alarm. 2. Of discouraging or awesome strength, size, difficulty, etc.; intimidating. 3. Arousing feelings of awe or admiration because of grandeur, strength, etc. 4. Of great strength; forceful; powerful.
“For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations,—as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
For the others, the “ baby monkey ” type or those who are still more independent, following their own ideas, doing their own sadhana, asking only for some instruction or help, the grace of the Guru is there, but it acts according to the nature of the sadhaka and counts upon his efforts to a greater or less degree ; it helps, succours in difficulty, saves in the time of danger ; the disciple is not always, is perhaps hardly at all aware of what is being done as he is absorbed in himself and his endeavour. In such cases the decisive psychological movement, the touch that makes all clear, may lake longer to come.
Free yourself from all exaggerated self-depredation and the habit of getting depressed by the sense of sin, difficulty or failure.
front ::: n. 1. That part or side that is forward, prominent, or most often seen or used. 2. Outward aspect or bearing as when dealing with a situation. 3. Demeanour or bearing, especially in the presence of danger or difficulty. 4. At a position before, in advance of, facing, or confronting; at the head of. 5. The most forward line of a combat force. 6. A position of leadership in a particular endeavour or field. front"s, fronts. v. 7. To look out on; face. 8. To meet face to face; in opposition; confront. fronts, fronted, fronting.
Fumu enzhong jing. (J. Bumo onjugyo; K. Pumo ŭnjung kyong 父母恩重經). In Chinese, "The Scripture on the Profundity of Parental Kindness," an indigenous Buddhist scripture, composed in the seventh century that extols the virtues of filial piety (C. xiao). There are several different recensions of this sutra, including one discovered in the caves of DUNHUANG. The scripture denounces unfilial sons who, after their marriages, neglect and abuse their parents, and instead urges that they requite the kindness of their parents by making offerings at the ghost festival (C. YULANBEN; S. *ULLAMBANA) and by copying this scripture and reciting it out loud. This text seems to be related to other earlier Chinese APOCRYPHA, such as the Fumu enzhong nanbao jing ("The Scripture on the Difficulty of Requiting Parental Kindness") and the YULANPEN JING ("Ullambana Scripture"), and displays the possible influence of the indigenous Confucian tradition. The Fumu enzhong jing continues to be one of the most popular scriptures in East Asian Buddhism and is frequently cited in the Buddhist literature of China, Korea, and Japan.
GCOS "operating system" /jee'kohs/ An {operating system} developed by {General Electric} from 1962; originally called GECOS (the General Electric Comprehensive Operating System). The GECOS-II operating system was developed by {General Electric} for the 36-bit {GE-635} in 1962-1964. Contrary to rumour, GECOS was not cloned from {System/360} [{DOS/360}?] - the GE-635 architecture was very different from the {IBM 360} and GECOS was more ambitious than DOS/360. GE Information Service Divsion developed a large special multi-computer system that was not publicised because they did not wish {time sharing} customers to challenge their bills. Although GE ISD was marketing {DTSS} - the first commercial time sharing system - GE Computer Division had no license from Dartmouth and GE-ISD to market it to external customers, so they designed a time-sharing system to sell as a standard part of GECOS-III, which replaced GECOS-II in 1967. GECOS TSS was more general purpose than DTSS, it was more a programmer's tool (program editing, e-mail on a single system) than a BASIC TSS. The {GE-645}, a modified 635 built by the same people, was selected by {MIT} and {Bell} for the {Multics} project. Multics' infancy was as painful as any infancy. Bell pulled out in 1969 and later produced {Unix}. After the buy-out of GE's computer division by {Honeywell}, GECOS-III was renamed GCOS-3 (General Comprehensive Operating System). Other OS groups at Honeywell began referring to it as "God's Chosen Operating System", allegedly in reaction to the GCOS crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about the superiority of their product. [Can anyone confirm this?] GCOS won and this led in the orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell {Multics}. Honeywell also decided to launch a new product line called Level64, and later DPS-7. It was decided to mainatin, at least temporarily, the 36-bit machine as top of the line, because GCOS-3 was so successfull in the 1970s. The plan in 1972-1973 was that GCOS-3 and Multics should converge. This plan was killed by Honeywell management in 1973 for lack of resources and the inability of Multics, lacking {databases} and {transaction processing}, to act as a business operating system without a substantial reinvestment. The name "GCOS" was extended to all Honeywell-marketed product lines and GCOS-64, a completely different 32-bit operating system, significanctly inspired by Multics, was designed in France and Boston. GCOS-62, another different 32-bit low-end DOS level was designed in Italy. GCOS-61 represented a new version of a small system made in France and the new {DPS-6} 16-bit {minicomputer} line got GCOS-6. When the intended merge between GCOS-3 and Multics failed, the Phoenix designers had in mind a big upgrade of the architecture to introduce {segmentation} and {capabilities}. GCOS-3 was renamed GCOS-8, well before it started to use the new features which were introduced in next generation hardware. The GCOS licenses were sold to the Japanese companies {NEC} and {Toshiba} who developed the Honeywell products, including GCOS, much further, surpassing the {IBM 3090} and {IBM 390}. When Honeywell decided in 1984 to get its top of the range machines from NEC, they considered running Multics on them but the Multics market was considered too small. Due to the difficulty of porting the ancient Multics code they considered modifying the NEC hardware to support the Multics compilers. GCOS3 featured a good {Codasyl} {database} called IDS (Integrated Data Store) that was the model for the more successful {IDMS}. Several versions of transaction processing were designed for GCOS-3 and GCOS-8. An early attempt at TP for GCOS-3, not taken up in Europe, assumed that, as in {Unix}, a new process should be started to handle each transaction. IBM customers required a more efficient model where multiplexed {threads} wait for messages and can share resources. Those features were implemented as subsystems. GCOS-3 soon acquired a proper {TP monitor} called Transaction Driven System (TDS). TDS was essentially a Honeywell development. It later evolved into TP8 on GCOS-8. TDS and its developments were commercially successful and predated IBM {CICS}, which had a very similar architecture. GCOS-6 and GCOS-4 (ex-GCOS-62) were superseded by {Motorola 68000}-based {minicomputers} running {Unix} and the product lines were discontinued. In the late 1980s Bull took over Honeywell and Bull's management chose Unix, probably with the intent to move out of hardware into {middleware}. Bull killed the Boston proposal to port Multics to a platform derived from DPS-6. Very few customers rushed to convert from GCOS to Unix and new machines (of CMOS technology) were still to be introduced in 1997 with GCOS-8. GCOS played a major role in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the {mainframe} market. Some early Unix systems at {Bell Labs} used GCOS machines for print spooling and various other services. The field added to "/etc/passwd" to carry GCOS ID information was called the "{GECOS field}" and survives today as the "pw_gecos" member used for the user's full name and other human-ID information. [{Jargon File}] (1998-04-23)
GCOS ::: (operating system) /jee'kohs/ An operating system developed by General Electric from 1962; originally called GECOS (the General Electric Comprehensive Operating System).The GECOS-II operating system was developed by General Electric for the 36-bit GE-635 in 1962-1964. Contrary to rumour, GECOS was not cloned from System/360 [DOS/360?] - the GE-635 architecture was very different from the IBM 360 and GECOS was more ambitious than DOS/360.GE Information Service Divsion developed a large special multi-computer system that was not publicised because they did not wish time sharing customers to GECOS TSS was more general purpose than DTSS, it was more a programmer's tool (program editing, e-mail on a single system) than a BASIC TSS.The GE-645, a modified 635 built by the same people, was selected by MIT and Bell for the Multics project. Multics' infancy was as painful as any infancy. Bell pulled out in 1969 and later produced Unix.After the buy-out of GE's computer division by Honeywell, GECOS-III was renamed GCOS-3 (General Comprehensive Operating System). Other OS groups at Honeywell their product. [Can anyone confirm this?] GCOS won and this led in the orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell Multics.Honeywell also decided to launch a new product line called Level64, and later DPS-7. It was decided to mainatin, at least temporarily, the 36-bit machine as lacking databases and transaction processing, to act as a business operating system without a substantial reinvestment.The name GCOS was extended to all Honeywell-marketed product lines and GCOS-64, a completely different 32-bit operating system, significanctly inspired small system made in France and the new DPS-6 16-bit minicomputer line got GCOS-6.When the intended merge between GCOS-3 and Multics failed, the Phoenix designers had in mind a big upgrade of the architecture to introduce segmentation and capabilities. GCOS-3 was renamed GCOS-8, well before it started to use the new features which were introduced in next generation hardware.The GCOS licenses were sold to the Japanese companies NEC and Toshiba who developed the Honeywell products, including GCOS, much further, surpassing the IBM 3090 and IBM 390.When Honeywell decided in 1984 to get its top of the range machines from NEC, they considered running Multics on them but the Multics market was considered too small. Due to the difficulty of porting the ancient Multics code they considered modifying the NEC hardware to support the Multics compilers.GCOS3 featured a good Codasyl database called IDS (Integrated Data Store) that was the model for the more successful IDMS.Several versions of transaction processing were designed for GCOS-3 and GCOS-8. An early attempt at TP for GCOS-3, not taken up in Europe, assumed that, as in required a more efficient model where multiplexed threads wait for messages and can share resources. Those features were implemented as subsystems.GCOS-3 soon acquired a proper TP monitor called Transaction Driven System (TDS). TDS was essentially a Honeywell development. It later evolved into TP8 on GCOS-8. TDS and its developments were commercially successful and predated IBM CICS, which had a very similar architecture.GCOS-6 and GCOS-4 (ex-GCOS-62) were superseded by Motorola 68000-based minicomputers running Unix and the product lines were discontinued.In the late 1980s Bull took over Honeywell and Bull's management choose Unix, probably with the intent to move out of hardware into middleware. Bull killed technology) are still to be introduced in 1997 with GCOS-8. GCOS played a major role in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market.Some early Unix systems at Bell Labs used GCOS machines for print spooling and various other services. The field added to /etc/passwd to carry GCOS ID information was called the GECOS field and survives today as the pw_gecos member used for the user's full name and other human-ID information.[Jargon File] (1998-04-23)
ghaus ::: call for help; helper; one who aids, delivers from difficulty, removes trouble or affliction. (in some
Gödel's theorems (see Logic, formal, § 6) are a difficulty for the Hilbert program because they show that the methods employed in a consistency proof must also be in some sense more than those which the logistic system formalizes. Godel himself remarks that the difficulty may not be insuperable.
hardly ::: adv. --> In a hard or difficult manner; with difficulty.
Unwillingly; grudgingly.
Scarcely; barely; not guite; not wholly.
Severely; harshly; roughly.
Confidently; hardily.
Certainly; surely; indeed.
hard-won ::: achieved with difficulty.
Harmony, Pre-Established: The perfect functioning of mind and body, as ordained by God in the beginning. The dualism of Descartes (1596-1650) had precluded interaction between mind or soul and body by its absolute difference and opposition between res cogitans and res extensa. How does it happen, then, that the mind perceives the impressions of the body, and the body is ready to follow the mind's will? The Cartesians, in order to correct this difficulty, introduced the doctrine of "occasionalism", whereby when anything happens to either mind or body, God interferes to make the corresponding change in the other. Leibniz (1646-1716) countered by suggesting that the relation between mind and body is one of harmony, established by God before their creation. Earlier than mind or body, God had perfect knowledge of all possible minds and bodies. In an infinite number of creations all possible combinations are possible, including those minds whose sequence of ideas perfectly fits the motions of some bodies. In the latter, there is a perfect and pre-established harmony. A parallelism between mind and body exists, such that each represents the proper expression of the other. Leibniz compares their relation to that of two clocks which have been synchronized once for all and which therefore operate similarly without the need of either interaction or intervention. Expressed by Leibniz' follower, C. Wolff (1679-1754) as "that by which the intercourse of soul and bodv is explained by a series of perceptions and desires in the soul, and a series of motions in the body, which are harmonic or accordant through the nature of soul and body." -- J.K.F.
hazard ::: n. 1. An unavoidable danger or risk, even though often foreseeable. 2. Something causing unavoidable danger, peril, risk, or difficulty. 3. The absence or lack of predictability; chance; uncertainty. hazard"s, hazards. *v. 4. To expose to hazard or risk. 5. To venture (something); dare. 6. To venture upon (anything of doubtful issue). *hazards, hazarded.
heavily ::: adv. --> In a heavy manner; with great weight; as, to bear heavily on a thing; to be heavily loaded.
As if burdened with a great weight; slowly and laboriously; with difficulty; hence, in a slow, difficult, or suffering manner; sorrowfully.
heavily ::: very slowly and with difficulty; laboriously.
Higher Triad ::: The imperishable spiritual ego considered as a unity. It is the reincarnating part of man's constitutionwhich clothes itself in each earth-life in a new personality or lower quaternary. The higher triad, speakingin the simplest fashion, is the unity of atman, buddhi, and the higher manas; and the lower quaternaryconsists of the lower manas or kama-manas, the prana or vitality, the linga-sarira or astral model-body,and the physical vehicle.Another manner of considering the human constitution in its spiritual aspects is that viewed from thestandpoint of consciousness, and in this latter manner the higher triad consists of the divine monad, thespiritual monad, and the higher human monad. The higher triad is often spoken of in a collective sense,and ignoring details of division, as simply the reincarnating monad, or more commonly the reincarnatingego, because this latter is rooted in the higher triad.Many theosophists experience quite unnecessary difficulty in understanding why the human constitutionshould be at one time divided in one way and at another time divided in another way. The difficulty liesin considering these divisions as being absolute instead of relative, in other words, as representingwatertight compartments instead of merely indefinite and convenient divisions. The simplestpsychological division is probably that which divides the septenary constitution of man in three parts: anuppermost duad which is immortal, an intermediate duad which is conditionally immortal, and a lowertriad which is unconditionally mortal. (See Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, 1st ed., pp. 167,525; 2nd rev. ed., pp. 199, 601).
hydrophobia ::: n. --> An abnormal dread of water, said to be a symptom of canine madness; hence:
The disease caused by a bite form, or inoculation with the saliva of, a rabid creature, of which the chief symptoms are, a sense of dryness and construction in the throat, causing difficulty in deglutition, and a marked heightening of reflex excitability, producing convulsions whenever the patient attempts to swallow, or is disturbed in any way, as by the sight or sound of water; rabies; canine madness.
If biological scientists recognize that inner and invisible worlds are the noumenal causes of the exterior or physical world, the difficulty in reconciling the perfectly true adage “nature makes no jumps,” would then vanish; they would then see that the physical plane in its manifestation is the effect of inner and driving causes, and that what appears separate on the physical plane is only so because it is the plane of bodies of a physically material character. Indeed, had we the percipient vision to see it and therefore to know it, we should perceive that even this apparently discrete physical plane, broken up as it apparently is into uncounted myriads of different entities, is really itself no exception to nature’s rule of unbroken continuity throughout; for even the apparently separate entities composing the physical plane are inextricably woven together into a vast web of life by the underlying substances of nature and the ever-active and continuously moving forces which are physical nature itself.
If difficulty comes, even that can be faced with a smife.
If one bear in mind the hierarchical system on which nature is constructed — one life, one intelligence, and hence one plan ruling throughout all the hierarchical branches, and yet every hierarchical branch containing in its inmost essence all free action within the confines of its field — one sees that there is no reconciliation needed between free will of individuals in any part of boundless nature and the common life, vitality, or intelligence which permeate the All. The difficulty arises in exoteric theological systems which from the beginning envisage a will in man wrongly supposed to be disjunct or different from the spiritual cosmic laws founded in the cosmic intelligence. A person uses his free will as much in refraining as acting — in other words, we cannot help using our free will. Neither can we help acting in accordance with the laws of our own nature and the laws of the universe in which we find ourselves.
Ignorance ; when a certain inner perception loosens the knot, the worst of the difficulty is over.
In 496 B.C., he began 14 years of travelling from state to state, offering his service. He was politely consulted by princes and dukes, but no one would put his moral doctrines into practice. He was even sent away from Ch'i, threatened in Sung, driven out of Sung and Wei, and surrounded between Ch'en and Ts'ai. When in difficulty, he exclaimed, "Heaven has endowed me with a moral destiny. What can Huan Tuei (who threatened him) do to me?" Eventually he retired to Lu to study, teach and write.
inaccessible ::: 1. Capable of being reached only with great difficulty or not at all. 2. Not able to be (easily) approached, reached or obtained.
inconvenience ::: n. --> The quality or condition of being inconvenient; want of convenience; unfitness; unsuitableness; inexpediency; awkwardness; as, the inconvenience of the arrangement.
That which gives trouble, embarrassment, or uneasiness; disadvantage; anything that disturbs quiet, impedes prosperity, or increases the difficulty of action or success; as, one inconvenience of life is poverty.
inextricable ::: a. --> Incapable of being extricated, untied, or disentangled; hopelessly intricate, confused, or obscure; as, an inextricable knot or difficulty; inextricable confusion.
Inevitable.
infusibility ::: n. --> Capability of being infused, pouredin, or instilled.
Incapability or difficulty of being fused, melted, or dissolved; as, the infusibility of carbon.
In seeking to explain the meaning of these records we are faced with the difficulty of interpreting an ancient science into terms of modern ideas. The science of those days was a comprehensive whole, which has become decomposed into sundered fragments, which seem to us, because of having lost the keys to the ancient wisdom which brought about the construction of these noble monuments, to be unrelated to each other. Were the pyramids initiation chambers, records of astronomical data, of mathematical truths, or of standard measurements? They were all of these and more. When the candidate passed through the processes of initiation he enacted in his own person the self-same processes which occur on the cosmic scale, on the principle of the master-key of analogy, the size, shape, and orientation of the passages and chambers signifying at once cosmic and human mysteries.
insoluble ::: a. --> Not soluble; in capable or difficult of being dissolved, as by a liquid; as, chalk is insoluble in water.
Not to be solved or explained; insolvable; as, an insoluble doubt, question, or difficulty.
Strong.
insolvable ::: a. --> Not solvable; insoluble; admitting no solution or explanation; as, an insolvable problem or difficulty.
Incapable of being paid or discharged, as debts.
Not capable of being loosed or disentangled; inextricable.
insomnia: the unusually prolonged inability to fall asleep or difficulty staying asleep.
insurmountable ::: a. --> Incapable of being passed over, surmounted, or overcome; insuperable; as, insurmountable difficulty or obstacle.
intercede ::: to act or interpose on behalf of someone in difficulty or trouble, as by pleading or petition. interceding.
“In the way that one treads with the greater Light above, even every difficulty gives its help and has its value and Night itself carries in it the burden of the Light that has to be.” Letters on Yoga
intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: "Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine
"Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.
"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine
". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga
“… intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
inwrap ::: v. t. --> To cover by wrapping; to involve; to infold; as, to inwrap in a cloak, in smoke, etc.
To involve, as in difficulty or perplexity; to perplex.
It is only if you keep quiet and steady within that the lines of experience can go on with some steadiness — though they are never without periods of interruption and fluctuation ; but these if properly treated, can then become periods of assimilation and exhaustion of difficulty rather than denials of sadhana.
::: **"It is therefore necessary from the beginning to understand and accept the arduous difficulty of the path and to feel the need of a faith which to the intellect may seem blind, but yet is wiser than our reasoning intelligence. For this faith is a support from above; it is the brilliant shadow thrown by a secret light that exceeds the intellect and its data; it is the heart of a hidden knowledge that is not at the mercy of immediate appearances.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“It is therefore necessary from the beginning to understand and accept the arduous difficulty of the path and to feel the need of a faith which to the intellect may seem blind, but yet is wiser than our reasoning intelligence. For this faith is a support from above; it is the brilliant shadow thrown by a secret light that exceeds the intellect and its data; it is the heart of a hidden knowledge that is not at the mercy of immediate appearances.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Jātakamālā. (T. Skyes pa'i rabs kyi rgyud; C. Pusa benshengman lun; J. Bosatsu honjomanron; K. Posal ponsaengman non 菩薩本生鬘論). In Sanskrit, "Garland of Birth Stories," by the poet sura [alt. Āryasura; c. second-century CE], a collection of thirty-four JĀTAKA tales related in an elegant and elliptical literary style. Each story includes sura's introduction relating the specific point of morality illustrated in the story. This narrative is in mixed prose and verse (a style that comes to be termed campu), with a variety of different meters employed. The beauty of sura's literary renderings was so renowned that the Jātakamālā often came to be even more widely read than the Jātaka collections themselves. In Tibet it is a custom for a senior monk to give an explanation of one of the tales from the Jātakamālā on the opening day of the SMON LAM CHEN MO (Great Prayer Festival). ¶ The story surrounding the Chinese "translation" of the Jātakamālā, the Pusa benshengman lun ("Treatise on the Bodhisattva's Garland of Birth Stories"), may be one of the strangest tales in the annals of the translation of Buddhist texts. As modern scholarship has shown, the Chinese "translators" had so much difficulty in construing sura's elaborate style that they managed to produce an "apocryphal" scripture while having the Sanskrit text right in front of them. Working without dictionary or grammar, or the luxury of an Indian pandita to help them construe the text, and apparently faced with an impossible deadline, the translators simply resorted to forgery: where they found a few random words of sura's that they could construe, they lifted wholesale from other texts stories that happened to contain the same words. Except for the titles of some of the stories, there is almost nothing in the Chinese translation that corresponds to sura's Sanskrit.
kaliyuga (kaliyuga; kali yuga) ::: the last age in a caturyuga, whose master-spirit is the sūdra; a period of the world in which the harmony created in the satyayuga and maintained with increasing difficulty in the treta and dvapara "finally collapses and is destroyed", while at the same time "the necessary conditions are progressively built up for a new Satya, another harmony, a more advanced perfection".
Kalpa(Sanskrit) ::: This word comes from a verb-root klrip, meaning "to be in order"; hence a "period of time," ora "cycle of time." Sometimes a kalpa is called the period of a mahamanvantara -- or "great manvantara"-- after which the globes of a planetary chain no longer go into obscuration or repose, as they periodicallydo, but die utterly. A kalpa is also called a Day of Brahma, and its length is 4,320,000,000 years. Sevenrounds form a Day of Brahma, or a planetary manvantara. (See also Brahma, Manvantara)Seven planetary manvantaras (or planetary cycles, each cycle consisting of seven rounds) form one solarkalpa (or solar manvantara), or seven Days of Brahma -- a week of Brahma.The difficulty that many Western students have had in understanding this word lies in the fact that it isunavoidably a "blind," because it does not apply with exclusive meaning to the length of one time periodalone. Like the English word age, or the English phrase time period, the word kalpa may be used forseveral different cycles. There is likewise the maha-kalpa or "great kalpa," which frequently is the namegiven to the vast time period contained in a complete solar manvantara or complete solar pralaya.
kicking dead whales down the beach "jargon, humour" A simile for a slow, difficult, and disgusting process. First popularised by a famous quote about the difficulty of getting work done under one of {IBM}'s {mainframe} {OS}es. "Well, you *could* write a C compiler in COBOL, but it would be like kicking dead whales down the beach." [{Jargon File}] (2012-09-21)
klesodhikataras tesam ::: [their difficulty is greater]. [Gita 12.5]
knot ::: n. --> A fastening together of the pars or ends of one or more threads, cords, ropes, etc., by any one of various ways of tying or entangling.
A lump or loop formed in a thread, cord, rope. etc., as at the end, by tying or interweaving it upon itself.
An ornamental tie, as of a ribbon.
A bond of union; a connection; a tie.
Something not easily solved; an intricacy; a difficulty; a
knottiness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being knotty or full of knots.
Difficulty of solution; intricacy; complication.
Kumaras (Sanskrit) Kumāra-s [from ku with difficulty + māra mortal] Mortal with difficulty; often used for child or youth; and philosophically, pure spiritual beings, unself-conscious god-sparks uninvolved with matter who, destined by evolution to pass through the realms of matter, become mortal, i.e., material, only with difficulty because of their lofty spirituality. They are the classes of arupa or solar pitris, along with the agnishvattas and manasaputras. Of all the seven great divisions of dhyani-chohans, there is none with which humanity is more concerned than with the kumaras, the mind-born sons of Brahma-Rudra or Siva, the inveterate destroyer of human passions: “it is they who, by incarnating themselves within the senseless human shells of the two first Root-races, and a great portion of the Third Root-race — create, so to speak, a new race: that of thinking, self-conscious and divine men” (SD 1:456-7). In the Puranas their number varies, given as seven, four, and five. They are often called the Four, because Sanaka, Sanada, Sanatana, and Sanat-Kumara are the names of four important groups of kumaras as they spring from the fourfold mystery. The three secret names of the seven are variously given: Sana, Sanat-Sujata, and Kapila; or Kapila, Ribhu, and Panchasikha; or Jata, Vodhu, and Panchasikha, all of which are but aliases. The patronymic name of the kumaras is Vaidhatra [from vidhatri a title of Brahma as creator of the universe].
laboured ::: done or made with difficulty.
labyrinth ::: n. --> An edifice or place full of intricate passageways which render it difficult to find the way from the interior to the entrance; as, the Egyptian and Cretan labyrinths.
Any intricate or involved inclosure; especially, an ornamental maze or inclosure in a park or garden.
Any object or arrangement of an intricate or involved form, or having a very complicated nature.
An inextricable or bewildering difficulty.
lame ::: superl. --> Moving with pain or difficulty on account of injury, defect, or temporary obstruction of a function; as, a lame leg, arm, or muscle.
To some degree disabled by reason of the imperfect action of a limb; crippled; as, a lame man.
Hence, hobbling; limping; inefficient; imperfect. ::: v. t.
lanthanum ::: n. --> A rare element of the group of the earth metals, allied to aluminium. It occurs in certain rare minerals, as cerite, gadolinite, orthite, etc., and was so named from the difficulty of separating it from cerium, didymium, and other rare elements with which it is usually associated. Atomic weight 138.5. Symbol La.
lassitude ::: n. --> A condition of the body, or mind, when its voluntary functions are performed with difficulty, and only by a strong exertion of the will; languor; debility; weariness.
lightly ::: adv. --> With little weight; with little force; as, to tread lightly; to press lightly.
Swiftly; nimbly; with agility.
Without deep impression.
In a small degree; slightly; not severely.
With little effort or difficulty; easily; readily.
Without reason, or for reasons of little weight.
Commonly; usually.
like kicking dead whales down the beach ::: (jargon, humour) Describes a slow, difficult, and disgusting process. First popularised by a famous quote about the difficulty of getting work done under one of IBM's mainframe OSes. Well, you *could* write a C compiler in COBOL, but it would be like kicking dead whales down the beach.[Jargon File] (1997-12-23)
like nailing jelly to a tree ::: (jargon, humour) Used to describe a task thought to be impossible, especially one in which the difficulty arises from poor specification or arrangement of nodes and arcs that diagrams a given graph is like nailing jelly to a tree, because nobody's sure what prettiest means algorithmically.[Jargon File] (1997-12-23)
like nailing jelly to a tree "jargon, humour" Used to describe a task thought to be impossible, especially one in which the difficulty arises from poor specification or inherent slipperiness in the problem domain. "Trying to display the "prettiest" arrangement of nodes and arcs that diagrams a given graph is like nailing jelly to a tree, because nobody's sure what "prettiest" means algorithmically." [{Jargon File}] (1997-12-23)
Logic An attempt to formulate the processes of the ratiocinative mind, connecting idea with idea in a causal sequence, leading from predicate to conclusion. When the predicate consists of axioms, the species of logic is called deductive, or reasoning from the general to the particular; when the predicate is facts of experience, the logic is called inductive, or proceeding from particulars to generals. As a means of arriving at truth it alone is quite unreliable, as it is but a body of rules based on human experiences, and hence it is often rather a means of justifying conclusions after they have already been formed. This unreliability arises both from the difficulty of applying the process with rigid precision, and also from the uncertainty of the predicates in both systems. A study of what is written on logic will show that there is no agreement as to what constitutes an axiom — whether it is an intuitive perception of truth, or whether it is merely an inference from experience. The same uncertainty exists as to the validity of the assumptions from which inductive chains of reasoning are drawn.
magnify ::: v. t. --> To make great, or greater; to increase the dimensions of; to amplify; to enlarge, either in fact or in appearance; as, the microscope magnifies the object by a thousand diameters.
To increase the importance of; to augment the esteem or respect in which one is held.
To praise highly; to land; to extol.
To exaggerate; as, to magnify a loss or a difficulty.
manganese ::: n. --> An element obtained by reduction of its oxide, as a hard, grayish white metal, fusible with difficulty, but easily oxidized. Its ores occur abundantly in nature as the minerals pyrolusite, manganite, etc. Symbol Mn. Atomic weight 54.8.
Mathurā. [alt. Madhurā] (T. Bcom rlag; C. Motouluo; J. Machura; K. Mat'ura 摩偸羅). North central Indian city on the Yamunā River, located approximately thirty miles (fifty kms.) north of Agra, and renowned as the birthplace of Kṛsna. During the time of the Buddha, it was the capital of surasena and was ruled by King Avantiputra. The Buddha seems to have visited the city but did not preach there. Indeed, he seems to have disliked it; in the Madhurasutta, he enumerates its five disadvantages: uneven ground, excessive dust, fierce dogs, bestial spirits (YAKsA), and difficulty in obtaining alms. Buddhism gained favor there in later years, and Mathurā became one of the major scholastic centers of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA and/or MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA school; both FAXIAN and XUANZANG describe it as a flourishing Buddhist city.
Mental call (in difficulty): there is only one way if you cannot. exert your will: it is lo call the Force; csen the call
MENTAL ENVELOPE The monad&
MENTAL LIBERATION FROM EMOTIONALITY During incarnation the emotional and mental envelopes coalesce so as to form, as it were, one single envelope from the functional point of view. Since the emotional is incomparably more developed, it completely dominates the mental. A prerequisite of liberating the mental from the dependence on the emotional is that the coalescence be discontinued. This also results in mental objective consciousness. The method will remain esoteric until mankind has become humanized. Until then, the lowest mental (47:7) can at best dominate the two lowest emotional ones (48:6,7) and the two lowest mental ones (47:6,7) the four lower emotional
(48:4-7). K 6.8.8
From this it follows that only 47:5, perspective thinking, can control the higher emotionality (48:2,3). This explains why the great majority of people have difficulty in discovering the untenability of fictions that appeal to wishful thinking.
Mental World ::: the powers of Mind, its ideas and principles that influence our earth-being, are found to have in the greater Mind-world their own field of fullness of self-nature, while here in human existence they throw out only partial formations which have much difficulty in establishing themselves because of their meeting and mixture with other powers and principles; this meeting, this mixture curbs their completeness, alloys their purity, disputes and defeats their influence
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 814
mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ‘Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words ‘mind" and ‘mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer.” The Life Divine
"Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely from the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or delimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole into its parts which it regards as separate mental objects.” The Life Divine
"The mind proper is divided into three parts — thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind — the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).” Letters on Yoga
"The difference between the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the darkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as they are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs by imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts things which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices, unreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities which do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this artificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the truth to manifest in it and organise its own constructions.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"He [man] has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation. . . .” *The Life Divine
"The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.” Letters on Yoga
"For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, — as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
The Mother: "The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations — whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul — and simply formulating the plan of action — in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations — it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But is can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.” Questions and Answers 1956, MCW Vol. 8.*
molehill ::: n. --> A little hillock of earth thrown up by moles working under ground; hence, a very small hill, or an insignificant obstacle or difficulty.
molybdenum ::: n. --> A rare element of the chromium group, occurring in nature in the minerals molybdenite and wulfenite, and when reduced obtained as a hard, silver-white, difficulty fusible metal. Symbol Mo. Atomic weight 95.9.
Natura Non Facit Saltum (Latin) Nature makes no leap, nature does not go by jumps; used by biological evolutionists, especially Darwin, to denote the uniformity and unbroken continuity of natural processes of physical transformation. In this respect Darwin seems to have been a philosopher and idealist, since here he was trying to find factual evidence for an idea which he felt to be true, rather than making inferences from facts as observed. His difficulty in finding that evidence is well known. Since there is continuous development throughout nature, we infer that the hypothesis of separate organisms is an incomplete picture of reality. It will never be easy to explain how things are linked with one another, so long as we begin with the false assumption that they are radically separate.
night ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Night is the symbol of the Ignorance or Avidya in which men live just as Light is the symbol of Truth and Knowledge.” *Letters on Yoga
"In the way that one treads with the greater Light above, even every difficulty gives its help and has its value and Night itself carries in it the burden of the Light that has to be.” Letters on Yoga **Night, Night"s.
nonconductor ::: n. --> A substance which does not conduct, that is, convey or transmit, heat, electricity, sound, vibration, or the like, or which transmits them with difficulty; an insulator; as, wool is a nonconductor of heat; glass and dry wood are nonconductors of electricity.
Object Constraint Language ::: (language) (OCL) A formal specification language extension to UML. The Object Constraint Language is a precise text language that provides constraint and object query expressions on an object-oriented model that cannot otherwise be expressed by diagrammatic notation.OCL supplements UML by providing expressions that have neither the ambiguities of natural language nor the inherent difficulty of using complex mathematics.OCL is a descendent of Syntropy, a second-generation object-oriented analysis and design method. The OCL 1.4 definition specified a constraint language. In OCL 2.0, the definition has been extended to include general object query language definitions. . . .(2003-11-15)
Object Constraint Language "language" (OCL) A formal specification language extension to {UML}. The Object Constraint Language is a precise text language that provides {constraint} and {object query} expressions on an {object-oriented} model that cannot otherwise be expressed by diagrammatic notation. OCL supplements UML by providing expressions that have neither the ambiguities of {natural language} nor the inherent difficulty of using complex mathematics. OCL is a descendent of {Syntropy}, a second-generation object-oriented analysis and design method. The OCL 1.4 definition specified a constraint language. In OCL 2.0, the definition has been extended to include general object query language definitions. {OMG UML Home (http://uml.org/)}. {Rational UML Resource Center (http://rational.com/uml/index.jsp)}. {OCL 2.0 Submission to UML (http://omg.org/docs/ad/03-01-07.pdf)}. (2003-11-15)
obstinacy ::: n. --> A fixedness in will, opinion, or resolution that can not be shaken at all, or only with great difficulty; firm and usually unreasonable adherence to an opinion, purpose, or system; unyielding disposition; stubborness; pertinacity; persistency; contumacy.
The quality or state of being difficult to remedy, relieve, or subdue; as, the obstinacy of a disease or evil.
Of the seven Revelation angels I had no difficulty in establishing the identity of three:
one-banana problem ::: At mainframe shops, where the computers have operators for routine administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend to look down on the scale to describe the difficulty of a task. A one-banana problem is simple; hence, It's only a one-banana job at the most; what's taking them so long?At IBM, folklore divides the world into one-, two-, and three-banana problems. Other cultures have different hierarchies and may divide them more finely; at to local variations, cosmic rays and ISO). At a complication level any higher than that, one asks the manufacturers to send someone around to check things.See also Infinite-Monkey Theorem.[Jargon File]
one-banana problem "jargon, abuse" At computer installations where the computers have operators for routine administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend to look down on the operators and claim that a trained monkey could do their job. The incentives offered to said monkeys would then describe the difficulty of a task. A one-banana problem is simple; hence, "It's only a one-banana job at the most; what's taking them so long?" See also {Infinite-Monkey Theorem}. [{Jargon File}] (2010-03-20)
One carries it with oneself, for the difficulty is truly inside, not outside. Outside circumstances only give it the occasion to manifest itself and so long as the inner difficulty is not conquered, the circumstances will always crop up one way or another
ontology ::: 1. (philosophy) A systematic account of Existence.2. (artificial intelligence) (From philosophy) An explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them.For AI systems, what exists is that which can be represented. When the knowledge about a domain is represented in a declarative language, the set of interpretation and well-formed use of these terms. Formally, an ontology is the statement of a logical theory.A set of agents that share the same ontology will be able to communicate about a domain of discourse without necessarily operating on a globally shared theory. consistent with the definitions in the ontology. The idea of ontological commitment is based on the Knowledge-Level perspective.3. (information science) The hierarchical structuring of knowledge about things by subcategorising them according to their essential (or at least the previous senses of ontology (above) which has become common in discussions about the difficulty of maintaining subject indices. (1997-04-09)
ontology 1. "philosophy" A systematic account of Existence. 2. "artificial intelligence" (From philosophy) An explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them. For {AI} systems, what "exists" is that which can be represented. When the {knowledge} about a {domain} is represented in a {declarative language}, the set of objects that can be represented is called the {universe of discourse}. We can describe the ontology of a program by defining a set of representational terms. Definitions associate the names of entities in the {universe of discourse} (e.g. classes, relations, functions or other objects) with human-readable text describing what the names mean, and formal {axioms} that constrain the interpretation and well-formed use of these terms. Formally, an ontology is the statement of a {logical theory}. A set of {agents} that share the same ontology will be able to communicate about a domain of discourse without necessarily operating on a globally shared theory. We say that an agent commits to an ontology if its observable actions are consistent with the definitions in the ontology. The idea of ontological commitment is based on the {Knowledge-Level} perspective. 3. "information science" The hierarchical structuring of knowledge about things by subcategorising them according to their essential (or at least relevant and/or cognitive) qualities. See {subject index}. This is an extension of the previous senses of "ontology" (above) which has become common in discussions about the difficulty of maintaining {subject indices}. (1997-04-09)
orthopny ::: n. --> Specifically, a morbid condition in which respiration can be performed only in an erect posture; by extension, any difficulty of breathing.
::: "Our incapacity does not matter — there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable — but the Divine Force also is there. If one puts one"s trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.” Letters on Yoga
“Our incapacity does not matter—there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable—but the Divine Force also is there. If one puts one’s trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.” Letters on Yoga
parallel processing "parallel" (Or "multiprocessing") The simultaneous use of more than one computer to solve a problem. There are many different kinds of parallel computer (or "parallel processor"). They are distinguished by the kind of interconnection between processors (known as "processing elements" or PEs) and between processors and memory. {Flynn's taxonomy} also classifies parallel (and serial) computers according to whether all processors execute the same instructions at the same time ("{single instruction/multiple data}" - SIMD) or each processor executes different instructions ("{multiple instruction/multiple data}" - MIMD). The processors may either communicate in order to be able to cooperate in solving a problem or they may run completely independently, possibly under the control of another processor which distributes work to the others and collects results from them (a "{processor farm}"). The difficulty of cooperative problem solving is aptly demonstrated by the following dubious reasoning: If it takes one man one minute to dig a post-hole then sixty men can dig it in one second. {Amdahl's Law} states this more formally. Processors communicate via some kind of network or bus or a combination of both. Memory may be either {shared memory} (all processors have equal access to all memory) or private (each processor has its own memory - "{distributed memory}") or a combination of both. Many different software systems have been designed for programming parallel computers, both at the {operating system} and programming language level. These systems must provide mechanisms for partitioning the overall problem into separate tasks and allocating tasks to processors. Such mechanisms may provide either {implicit parallelism} - the system (the {compiler} or some other program) partitions the problem and allocates tasks to processors automatically or {explicit parallelism} where the programmer must annotate his program to show how it is to be partitioned. It is also usual to provide synchronisation primitives such as {semaphores} and {monitors} to allow processes to share resources without conflict. {Load balancing} attempts to keep all processors busy by allocating new tasks, or by moving existing tasks between processors, according to some {algorithm}. Communication between tasks may be either via {shared memory} or {message passing}. Either may be implemented in terms of the other and in fact, at the lowest level, shared memory uses message passing since the address and data signals which flow between processor and memory may be considered as messages. The terms "parallel processing" and "multiprocessing" imply multiple processors working on one task whereas "{concurrent processing}" and "{multitasking}" imply a single processor sharing its time between several tasks. See also {cellular automaton},{symmetric multi-processing}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.parallel}. {Institutions (http://ccsf.caltech.edu/other_sites.html)}, {research groups (http://cs.cmu.edu/~scandal/research-groups.html)}. (2004-11-07)
parallel processing ::: (parallel) (Or multiprocessing) The simultaneous use of more than one computer to solve a problem. There are many different kinds of parallel computer the same time (single instruction/multiple data - SIMD) or each processor executes different instructions (multiple instruction/multiple data - MIMD).The processors may either communicate in order to be able to cooperate in solving a problem or they may run completely independently, possibly under the results from them (a processor farm). The difficulty of cooperative problem solving is aptly demonstrated by the following dubious reasoning: If it takes one man one minute to dig a post-hole then sixty men can dig it in one second. Amdahl's Law states this more formally.Processors communicate via some kind of network or bus or a combination of both. Memory may be either shared memory (all processors have equal access to all memory) or private (each processor has its own memory - distributed memory) or a combination of both.Many different software systems have been designed for programming parallel computers, both at the operating system and programming language level. These such as semaphores and monitors to allow processes to share resources without conflict.Load balancing attempts to keep all processors busy by allocating new tasks, or by moving existing tasks between processors, according to some algorithm.Communication between tasks may be either via shared memory or message passing. Either may be implemented in terms of the other and in fact, at the lowest level, shared memory uses message passing since the address and data signals which flow between processor and memory may be considered as messages.The terms parallel processing and multiprocessing imply multiple processors working on one task whereas concurrent processing and multitasking imply a single processor sharing its time between several tasks.See also cellular automaton,symmetric multi-processing.Usenet newsgroup: comp.parallel. , .(2004-11-07)
parallel processing ::: (parallel) (Or multiprocessing) The simultaneous use of more than one computer to solve a problem. There are many different kinds of parallel computer the same time (single instruction/multiple data - SIMD) or each processor executes different instructions (multiple instruction/multiple data - MIMD).The processors may either communicate in order to be able to cooperate in solving a problem or they may run completely independently, possibly under the results from them (a processor farm). The difficulty of cooperative problem solving is aptly demonstrated by the following dubious reasoning: If it takes one man one minute to dig a post-holethen sixty men can dig it in one second. Amdahl's Law states this more formally.Processors communicate via some kind of network or bus or a combination of both. Memory may be either shared memory (all processors have equal access to all memory) or private (each processor has its own memory - distributed memory) or a combination of both.Many different software systems have been designed for programming parallel computers, both at the operating system and programming language level. These such as semaphores and monitors to allow processes to share resources without conflict.Load balancing attempts to keep all processors busy by allocating new tasks, or by moving existing tasks between processors, according to some algorithm.Communication between tasks may be either via shared memory or message passing. Either may be implemented in terms of the other and in fact, at the lowest level, shared memory uses message passing since the address and data signals which flow between processor and memory may be considered as messages.The terms parallel processing and multiprocessing imply multiple processors working on one task whereas concurrent processing and multitasking imply a single processor sharing its time between several tasks.See also cellular automaton,symmetric multi-processing.Usenet newsgroup: comp.parallel. , .(2004-11-07)
perplexity ::: n. --> The quality or state of being perplexed or puzzled; complication; intricacy; entanglement; distraction of mind through doubt or difficulty; embarrassment; bewilderment; doubt.
phthisicky ::: a. --> Having phthisis, or some symptom of it, as difficulty in breathing.
Plato's theory of knowledge can hardly be discussed apart from his theory of reality. Through sense perception man comes to know the changeable world of bodies. This is the realm of opinion (doxa), such cognition may be more or less clear but it never rises to the level of true knowledge, for its objects are impermanent and do not provide a stable foundation for science. It is through intellectual, or rational, cognition that man discovers another world, that of immutable essences, intelligible realities, Forms or Ideas. This is the level of scientific knowledge (episteme); it is reached in mathematics and especially in philosophy (Repub. VI, 510). The world of intelligible Ideas contains the ultimate realities from which the world of sensible things has been patterned. Plato experienced much difficulty in regard to the sort of existence to be attributed to his Ideas. Obviously it is not the crude existence of physical things, nor can it be merely the mental existence of logical constructs. Interpretations have varied from the theory of the Christian Fathers (which was certainly not that of Plato himself) viz , that the Ideas are exemplary Causes in God's Mind, to the suggestion of Aristotle (Metaphysics, I) that they are realized, in a sense, in the world of individual things, but are apprehended only by the intellect The Ideas appear, however, particularly in the dialogues of the middle period, to be objective essences, independent of human minds, providing not only the foundation for the truth of human knowledge but afso the ontological bases for the shadowy things of the sense world. Within the world of Forms, there is a certain hierarchy. At the top, the most noble of all, is the Idea of the Good (Repub. VII), it dominates the other Ideas and they participate in it. Beauty, symmetry and truth are high-ranking Ideas; at times they are placed almost on a par with the Good (Philebus 65; also Sympos. and Phaedrus passim). There are, below, these, other Ideas, such as those of the major virtues (wisdom, temperance, courage, justice and piety) and mathematical terms and relations, such as equality, likeness, unlikeness and proportion. Each type or class of being is represented by its perfect Form in the sphere of Ideas, there is an ideal Form of man, dog, willow tree, of every kind of natural object and even of artificial things like beds (Repub. 596). The relationship of the "many" objects, belonging to a certain class of things in the sense world, to the "One", i.e. the single Idea which is their archetype, is another great source of difficulty to Plato. Three solutions, which are not mutually exclusive, are suggested in the dialogues (1) that the many participate imperfectly in the perfect nature of their Idea, (2) that the many are made in imitation of the One, and (3) that the many are composed of a mixture of the Limit (Idea) with the Unlimited (matter).
portable ::: a. --> Capable of being borne or carried; easily transported; conveyed without difficulty; as, a portable bed, desk, engine.
Possible to be endured; supportable.
presbyopia ::: --> A defect of vision consequent upon advancing age. It is due to rigidity of the crystalline lens, which produces difficulty of accommodation and recession of the near point of vision, so that objects very near the eyes can not be seen distinctly without the use of convex glasses. Called also presbytia.
Principle of non-sufficient reason: According to this law, the probabilities of two propositions may be said to be equal, if there is no adequate ground for declaring them unequal. When applied without qualification, this principle may lead to unwarranted results. Such a difficulty may be avoided by an adequate formulation of the Principle of Indifference. -- T.G.
PROCESS. ::: At first what has (o be established comes with difficulty and is felt as if abnormal, an experience that one loses easily: afterwards it comes of itself, but docs not )ci stay; finally it becomes a frequent and intimate state of the being and makes itself constant and normal On the other hand all the confusions and erron habitual to the nature arc pushed out ; at first they return frequently, but afterxsards they in their turn
punched card "storage, history" (Or "punch card") The signature medium of computing's Stone Age, now long obsolete outside of a few {legacy systems}. The punched card actually predates computers considerably, originating in 1801 as a control device for {Jacquard looms}. {Charles Babbage} used them as a data and program storage medium for his {Analytical Engine}: "To those who are acquainted with the principles of the Jacquard loom, and who are also familiar with analytical formulæ, a general idea of the means by which the Engine executes its operations may be obtained without much difficulty. In the Exhibition of 1862 there were many splendid examples of such looms. [...] These patterns are then sent to a peculiar artist, who, by means of a certain machine, punches holes in a set of pasteboard cards in such a manner that when those cards are placed in a Jacquard loom, it will then weave upon its produce the exact pattern designed by the artist. [...] The analogy of the Analytical Engine with this well-known process is nearly perfect. There are therefore two sets of cards, the first to direct the nature of the operations to be performed -- these are called operation cards: the other to direct the particular variables on which those cards are required to operate -- these latter are called variable cards. Now the symbol of each variable or constant, is placed at the top of a column capable of containing any required number of digits." -- from Chapter 8 of Charles Babbage's "Passages from the Life of a Philosopher", 1864. The version patented by {Herman Hollerith} and used with mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 US Census was a piece of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm. There is a widespread myth that it was designed to fit in the currency trays used for that era's larger dollar bills, but recent investigations have falsified this. {IBM} (which originated as a tabulating-machine manufacturer) married the punched card to computers, encoding binary information as patterns of small rectangular holes; one character per column, 80 columns per card. Other coding schemes, sizes of card, and hole shapes were tried at various times. The 80-column width of most character terminals is a legacy of the IBM punched card; so is the size of the quick-reference cards distributed with many varieties of computers even today. See {chad}, {chad box}, {eighty-column mind}, {green card}, {dusty deck}, {lace card}, {card walloper}. [{Jargon File}] (1998-10-19)
Purani: “The Red-Wolf is the symbol of the powers that tear the ‘being’, that suddenly fall upon it to destroy it. They are persistent, destructive, cruel, unscrupulous powers of the lower Darkness. Sri Aurobindo in his expression has made the symbol more effective, improving spontaneously upon the original in the alchemy of his poetical process by the image of ‘fordless steam’. In the original hymn there is only ‘path’. The ‘fordless stream’ brings in the needed element of danger and difficulty of the path of the aspirant when he has to cross this dangerous region.”“Savitri”—An Approach and a Study
quandary ::: n. --> A state of difficulty or perplexity; doubt; uncertainty. ::: v. t. --> To bring into a state of uncertainty, perplexity, or difficulty.
Quantum-dot Cellular Automata ::: (electronics, computing) (QCA) Quantum logic circuits created by orientating pairs of quantum cells so that their relative positions determine different from how individual gates in integrated circuits are combined to create logical and memory circuitry.The advantages of quantum-dot cellular automata over conventional circuitry are extremely small size/high density, low power requirements, and potentially high processing speeds. Disadvantages (in 2000) are difficulty of fabrication and low yield.See also: quantum cell wire. . .[Quantum Dot Heterostructures, D. Bimberg, et al, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Dec 1998].(2001-07-17)
Quantum-dot Cellular Automata "electronics, computing" (QCA) Quantum logic circuits created by orientating pairs of {quantum cells} so that their relative positions determine their affect on each other. This is functionally analogous but structurally different from how individual {gates} in {integrated circuits} are combined to create logical and memory circuitry. The advantages of quantum-dot cellular automata over conventional circuitry are extremely small size/high density, low power requirements, and potentially high processing speeds. Disadvantages (in 2000) are difficulty of fabrication and low yield. See also: {quantum cell wire}. {(http://nd.edu/~qcahome/)}. {(http://mitre.org/research/nanotech/quantum_dot_cell.html)}. ["Quantum Dot Heterostructures", D. Bimberg, et al, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Dec 1998]. (2001-07-17)
questioning ::: n. 1. The act of asking or inquiring. 2. A matter of some uncertainty or difficulty. questionings. adj. 3. That questions or doubts. 4. Indicating or implying a question.
quicksand ::: n. --> Sand easily moved or readily yielding to pressure; especially, a deep mass of loose or moving sand mixed with water, sometimes found at the mouth of a river or along some coasts, and very dangerous, from the difficulty of extricating a person who begins sinking into it.
rave [WPI] 1. To persist in discussing a specific subject. 2. To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very little. 3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to correct the difficulty. 4. To purposely annoy another person verbally. 5. To evangelise. See {flame}. 6. Also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting. "Rave" differs slightly from {flame} in that "rave" implies that it is the persistence or obliviousness of the person speaking that is annoying, while {flame} implies somewhat more strongly that the tone or content is offensive as well. [{Jargon File}]
rave ::: [WPI] 1. To persist in discussing a specific subject.2. To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very little.3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to correct the difficulty.4. To purposely annoy another person verbally.5. To evangelise. See flame.6. Also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting. Rave differs slightly from flame in that rave implies that it while flame implies somewhat more strongly that the tone or content is offensive as well.[Jargon File]
recourse ::: n. --> A coursing back, or coursing again, along the line of a previous coursing; renewed course; return; retreat; recurence.
Recurrence in difficulty, perplexity, need, or the like; access or application for aid; resort.
Access; admittance. ::: v. i.
resource ::: n. --> That to which one resorts orr on which one depends for supply or support; means of overcoming a difficulty; resort; expedient.
Pecuniary means; funds; money, or any property that can be converted into supplies; available means or capabilities of any kind.
RSA encryption "cryptography, algorithm" A {public-key cryptosystem} for both {encryption} and {authentication}, invented in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman. Its name comes from their initials. The RSA {algorithm} works as follows. Take two large {prime numbers}, p and q, and find their product n = pq; n is called the modulus. Choose a number, e, less than n and {relatively prime} to (p-1)(q-1), and find its reciprocal mod (p-1)(q-1), and call this d. Thus ed = 1 mod (p-1)(q-1); e and d are called the public and private exponents, respectively. The public key is the pair (n, e); the private key is d. The factors p and q must be kept secret, or destroyed. It is difficult (presumably) to obtain the private key d from the public key (n, e). If one could factor n into p and q, however, then one could obtain the private key d. Thus the entire security of RSA depends on the difficulty of factoring; an easy method for factoring products of large prime numbers would break RSA. {RSA FAQ (http://rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/faq_home.html)}. (2004-07-14)
rub ::: a difficulty or obstacle.
ruttle ::: n. --> A rattling sound in the throat arising from difficulty of breathing; a rattle.
saMnāha. (T. go cha; C. beijia; J. hiko; K. p'igap 被甲). In Sanskrit, "armor"; a term that occurs especially in the tradition of the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, where the term "armor practice" (saMnāhapratipatti) refers both to the bodhisattva path in general as well as to specific practices begun on the path of accumulation or equipment (SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA). In the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutras (which are termed the jinajananī, "mother of victors"), bodhisattvas are said to be armed with a great armor (saMnaddhasaMnāha), an equipment made out of the interwoven six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ); and to set out (prasthāna) for the difficult work (duskaracaryā) necessary to become "victors" (JINA). This "difficult work" involves activities done for the sake of others. Each of the perfections is said to subsume all the other perfections, so that, for example, when bodhisattvas engage in exceptional acts of giving away their wealth or limbs (DĀNA), the act is informed by the bodhisattva's morality (sĪLA); done with forbearance (KsĀNTI) that can withstand the difficulty involved; propelled by perseverance (VĪRYA), and informed by concentration (SAMĀDHI), which enables the bodhisattva to stay focused on the aim of enlightenment while remaining tranquil and at ease; and is grounded on the wisdom (PRAJNĀ) that understands that the act of giving, the carrying out of the act, and the donor are all interdependent and without any inherent nature (SVABHĀVA). When bodhisattvas are armed with this great armor, they do not become discouraged by the long and difficult task of looking after the welfare of others (PARĀRTHA) who are "numberless like the sands of the Ganges" (GAnGĀNADĪVĀLUKĀ). Buckling on the armor (saMnāha) and setting out (prasthāna) on their quest, bodhisattvas ultimately accumulate all their necessary equipment (SAMBHĀRA) and go forth (niryāna) to the final goal of buddhahood.
Sanat-kumara (Sanskrit) Sanat-kumāra [from sanat from of old, always + kumāra youth from ku with difficulty + māra mortal] Eternal youth; the most important of the four groups of kumaras, the mind-born sons of Brahma who “refused to create.” These purely spiritual beings, being cosmically youthful, were destined by evolution to pass through the realms of matter. The four groups of kumaras — Sanat, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanatana — as names, “are all significant qualifications of the degrees of human intellect” (TG 289). Personified, Sanat is the oldest of the progenitors of mankind. Although Hindu literature usually speaks of four kumaras, nevertheless it frequently hints at there being seven such mind-born sons. The four kumaras named above are considered exoteric, while three others are considered esoteric, and their names are given as Sana, Kapila, and Sanat-sujata.
Sattvic difficulty ::: The greatest difficulty of the sattvic man is the snare of virtue and self-righteousness, the ties of philanthropy, mental idealisations, family affections etc.
scarcely ::: adv. --> With difficulty; hardly; scantly; barely; but just.
Frugally; penuriously.
scruple ::: n. --> A weight of twenty grains; the third part of a dram.
Hence, a very small quantity; a particle.
Hesitation as to action from the difficulty of determining what is right or expedient; unwillingness, doubt, or hesitation proceeding from motives of conscience. ::: v. i.
sensory aphasia ::: Difficulty in communicating with language that derives from cortical damage to those areas concerned with the comprehension of speech.
sharding "database" A form of {data partitioning} in which a large {database} {table} is split over multiple {servers} in order to {balance load (load balancing)}. Some property of the data is used to select which server should handle a given row, e.g. the {primary id} {modulo} the number of servers. Sharding should be a last resort in database performance optimisation because of the difficulty of changing the allocation of data to servers, e.g. if the number of servers changes or the distribution is found to be uneven. {Sharding Your Database, Ovid, perl.org (http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2010/05/sharding-your-database.html)}. (2010-05-16)
Shobogenzo. (正法眼藏). In Japanese, "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye"; the magnum opus of the Japanese ZEN master DoGEN KIGEN (1200-1253); the title refers to the Zen (C. CHAN) school, which is considered to be the repository of the insights of the buddha sĀKYAMUNI himself, transmitted through the lineage of the CHAN patriarchs (ZUSHI) starting with MAHĀKĀsYAPA. A work bearing the same title (C. ZHENGFAYANZANG) by the eminent Song-dynasty Chinese monk DAHUI ZONGGAO was probably the inspiration for Dogen's own title. Dogen's oeuvre contains two works with this title. The first is a collection of 301 koan (C. GONG'AN) cases, composed in literary Chinese, known as the Shinji Shobogenzo or the Mana Shobogenzo. The second is a collection of essays written in Japanese, known as the Kana [viz., "vernacular"] Shobogenzo, which is the better known of the two and which will be the focus of this account. The Shobogenzo is a collection of individual essays and treatises that Dogen composed throughout his eventful career. Its earliest included treatise is the BENDoWA composed in 1231 and the latest is the Hachidainingaku composed in 1253, the year of Dogen's death. Although the Shobogenzo seems to have been all but forgotten after Dogen's death, later successors in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition, such as MANZAN DoHAKU (1636-1715), TENKEI DENSON (1648-1735), and MENZAN ZUIHo (1683-1769), and the layman ouchi Seiran (1845-1918) rediscovered the text and their influential commentaries on it helped to make Dogen's magnum opus the central scripture of the Soto Zen tradition. Six different editions of the Shobogenzo are known to exist: the "original" volume edited by Dogen in seventy-five rolls, the twelve-roll Yokoji edition, the sixty-roll Eiheiji edition edited by Giun (1253-1333), the eighty-four roll edition edited by Bonsei (d. 1427) in 1419, the eighty-nine roll edition edited by Manzan Dohaku (1636-1715) in 1684 at Daishoji, and the ninety-five roll edition edited by Kozen (1627-1693) in 1690 at Eiheiji. The seventy-five roll edition is today the most widely consulted and cited. Many of the essays were originally sermons delivered by Dogen, such that some are written by him and others were recorded by his disciples. Late in his life, he began to revise the essays, completing the revision of twelve of them before his death. The essays are renowned for their subtle and elliptical style, clever word play, and sometimes enigmatic meanings. Part of their difficulty arises from the fact that Dogen quotes liberally from Buddhist sutras and the works of Chinese masters, but also interprets these passages quite ingeniously. Dogen also invented a number of Buddhist neologisms that were largely unique to him, including creative "mis"-readings of original Chinese passages. For example, in his famous essay "Uji" ("Being Time"), Dogen reads the quotidian Chinese compound youshi ("at a certain time") to suggest the identity of "being" (C. you, J. u) and "time" (C. shi, J. ji): i.e., since impermanency governs all compounded things, those things are in fact time itself. The text includes extensive discussions of the foundations of Zen thought, the meaning and significance of awakening (SATORI), as well as detailed instructions on the ritual procedures for performing sitting meditation (J. ZAZEN; C. ZUOCHAN), as in the chapter FUKAN ZAZENGI. The Shobogenzo remains a source of great interest to scholars and practitioners of Zen. See also SoToSHu.
situational attribution: attributing behaviour to be caused by factors outside of a persons control, for instance task difficulty or weather.
solubility ::: n. --> The quality, condition, or degree of being soluble or solvable; as, the solubility of a salt; the solubility of a problem or intricate difficulty.
The tendency to separate readily into parts by spurious articulations, as the pods of tick trefoil.
solvability ::: n. --> The quality or state of being solvable; as, the solvability of a difficulty; the solvability of a problem.
The condition of being solvent; ability to pay all just debts; solvency; as, the solvability of a merchant.
Sometimes it comes of itself with the deepening of the conscious- ness by bhakti or otherwise, sometimes it comes by practice — a sort of referring the matter and listening for the answer. It does not mean that the answer comes necessarily in the shape of words, spoken or unspoken, though it does sometimes or for some it can take any shape. The main difficulty for many is to be sure of the right answer. For that it is necessary to be able to contact the consciousness of the Guru inwardly — that comes best by bhakti. Otherwise, the attempt to get the feeling from within by practice may become a delicate and ticklish job.
sopor ::: n. --> Profound sleep from which a person can be roused only with difficulty.
Sri Aurobindo: "What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental awareness of outer objects into our subliminal self-awareness and into our awareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or ``dead"" or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought because it is proved at every point by experience.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
struggle ::: n. 1. A strenuous effort; a striving against difficulty. *v. 2. To exert strenuous effort against opposition, often of a stronger or superior adversary. 3. To make a strenuous or labored effort; contend against difficulty; to advance with great or violent effort. *struggles, struggled, struggling.
struggle ::: v. i. --> To strive, or to make efforts, with a twisting, or with contortions of the body.
To use great efforts; to labor hard; to strive; to contend forcibly; as, to struggle to save one&
succour ::: relief, help or assistance, esp. in time of difficulty.
Surgical patients suffering from fright and fear before or during the induction of an anesthetic take it with more difficulty, and feel more aftereffects, than those who meet it without anxiety. The first stage of general anesthesia, usually not unpleasant, ends with the loss of physical consciousness. Then begins the second, or stage of struggling more or less vigorously, evidently due to the automatic reaction of the physical body, from which its conscious astral soul is being dissociated. In the third stage, the muscles relax and the disturbed heart and lungs settle down to regular rhythm, controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, as in a deep, dreamless sleep. The self-conscious ego, thus withdrawing from its ordinary state of being, enters more or less deeply into the subjective realm of its inner life. It is in a state of what has been called, paradoxically, conscious unconsciousness. The danger here is that the soul may become so far separated from its body that it does not come back again, and then death results.
tāran ::: causing or enabling to cross; helping over a difficulty; liberating, saving; who or what causes or enables to cross, one who delivers, deliverer, savior; a raft, float; crossing, passing over, reaching the opposite shore; salvation, deliverance.
task ::: 1. A piece of work assigned or done as part of one"s duties. 2. A matter of considerable labour or difficulty. task"s, tasks, World-task.
The atomo-mechanical theory of physics starts with atoms and a vacuum and then tries to fill the vacuum; here the notion of emptiness has become confused with spatial extension, giving rise to the idea that there can be an extended and measurable void, and raising the difficulty of the transmission of influence across it.
The consistency of the functional calculus of first order can also be proved without great difficulty.
The crown centre open removes the difficulty of the lid bet- ween the ordinary mind and the higher consciousness above.
The difficulty encountered by vitalists, as regards the nature of the vital principle and its power of acting upon matter, is fundamental in the entire materialistic philosophy. The matter and force of materialistic science are highly metaphysical abstractions. No such thing as an inert material particle exists or can exist, for all such inert matter is but life or force in one of its multiform phases of quiescence or equilibrium. Nor can there be an absolutely immaterial force, without relation of function or action in the material worlds. The universe consists of living beings, whose activities may be expressed collectively by the word life. The term matter has been applied to the static aspect of life, and the term force to the dynamic aspect. No distinction valid for this purpose can be drawn between organic and inorganic beings. If there is need of a vital principle for animals and plants, working upon yet other than essential stuff or substance, there is equal need in the case of minerals; but there is no need to postulate such divorce between force and matter in either case.
The difficulty lies in the misuse of the adjective free, which is apparently understood to mean a will free from the cosmic unity, and all too often envisaged as running more or less wild if not contrary to the cosmic structure. Man is but a child of the universe, and is so in all his parts, but precisely because the part must contain everything that exists in the whole, therefore there is in man and in every other entity, an inseparable union with the cosmic root. Reluctance by man to acknowledge and to perform in his life the silent mandates of cosmic law induces the varieties of evil, disharmony, and even disease with which human life is all too often cursed; and the way to freedom, spiritual peace, wisdom, and love is by subordinating the individual human will to harmony with the divine. In such cases man becomes a Buddha or Christ, a conscious and willing instrument of divinity.
The difficulty of its coming when you are at work is only at the beginning — afterwards when it is more settled one finds that one can carry on all the activities of life whether in the pervading silence itself or at least with that as the support and background.
The difficulty of the difficulties is self-created, a knot of the
The evident meaning must be connected with the old occult thought that wine, or the mead of the northern peoples where the grape and soma were unknown or uncultivated, all had the meaning of the inspiration of initiation, a kind of ecstasy of vision and knowledge brought about through initiation, of which the physical intoxication of wine, mead, or the soma juice has all the lower and materialized aspect, every spiritual thing having its material counterpart, every right-hand thought or rule in occultism having its left-hand or sorcerer perversion or counterpart. Thus in the highest initiation, even today and from immemorial time, the holy drink or potation was entirely mystical, and had a dozen of these significances, all bound up together; yet despite this fact, for some of the lower initiations where a student found difficulty in throwing off the physical and astral influences, a harmless — when administered rightly — drug or drink was given which temporarily stupefied the lower quaternary; but it is to be noted that this substitute of the physical drink came about when neophytes began to find it very difficult to do what their more spiritual forerunners had done: raising themselves solely by inner aspiration up to inspiration, by inner insight up to the epopteia or vision.
The first Dalai Lama, DGE 'DUN GRUB, was known as a great scholar and religious practitioner. A direct disciple of TSONG KHA PA, he is remembered for founding BKRA SHIS LHUN PO monastery near the central Tibetan town of Shigatse. The second Dalai Lama, Dge 'dun rgya mtsho, was born the son of a RNYING MA YOGIN and became a renowned tantric master in his own right. ¶ It is with the third Dalai Lama, BSOD NAMS RGYA MTSHO, that the Dalai Lama lineage actually begins. Recognized at a young age as the reincarnation of Dge 'dun rgya mtsho, he was appointed abbot of 'BRAS SPUNGS monastery near LHA SA and soon rose to fame throughout central Asia as a Buddhist teacher. He served as a religious master for the Mongol ruler Altan Khan, who bestowed the title "Dalai Lama," and is credited with converting the Tümed Mongols to Buddhism. Later in life, he traveled extensively across eastern Tibet and western China, teaching and carrying out monastic construction projects. ¶ The fourth Dalai Lama, Yon tan rgya mtsho, was recognized in the person of the grandson of Altan Khan's successor, solidifying Mongol-Tibetan ties. ¶ While the first four Dalai Lamas served primarily as religious scholars and teachers, the fifth Dalai Lama, NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, combined religious and secular activities to become one of Tibet's preeminent statesmen. He was a dynamic political leader who, with the support of Gushi Khan, defeated his opponents and in 1642 was invested with temporal powers over the Tibetan state, in addition to his religious role, a position that succeeding Dalai Lamas held until 1959. A learned and prolific author, he and his regent, SDE SRID SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO, were largely responsible for the identification of the Dalai Lamas with the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. The construction of the PO TA LA palace began during his reign (and was completed after this death). He is popularly known as the "Great Fifth." ¶ The sixth Dalai Lama, TSHANGS DBYANGS RGYA MTSHO, was a controversial figure who chose to abandon the strict monasticism of his predecessors in favor of a life of society and culture, refusing to take the vows of a fully ordained monk (BHIKsU). He is said to have frequented the drinking halls below the Po ta la palace. He constructed pleasure gardens and the temple of the NAGAs, called the KLU KHANG, on the palace grounds. He is remembered especially for his poetry, which addresses themes such as love and the difficulty of spiritual practice. Tibetans generally interpret his behavior as exhibiting an underlying tantric wisdom, a skillful means for teaching the dharma. His death is shrouded in mystery. Official accounts state that he died while under arrest by Mongol troops. According to a prominent secret biography (GSANG BA'I RNAM THAR), however, he lived many more years, traveling across Tibet in disguise. ¶ The seventh Dalai Lama, SKAL BZANG RGYA MTSHO, was officially recognized only at the age of twelve, and due to political complications, did not participate actively in affairs of state. He was renowned for his writings on tantra and his poetry. ¶ The eighth Dalai Lama, 'Jam dpal rgya mtsho (Jampal Gyatso, 1758-1804), built the famous NOR BU GLING KHA summer palace. ¶ The ninth through twelfth Dalai Lamas each lived relatively short lives, due, according to some accounts, to political intrigue and the machinations of power-hungry regents. According to tradition, from the death of one Dalai Lama to the investiture of the next Dalai Lama as head of state (generally a period of some twenty years), the nation was ruled by a regent, who was responsible for discovering the new Dalai Lama and overseeing his education. If the Dalai Lama died before reaching his majority, the reign of the regent was extended. ¶ The thirteenth Dalai Lama, THUB BSTAN RGYA MTSHO, was an astute and forward-looking political leader who guided Tibet through a period of relative independence during a time of foreign entanglements with Britain, China, and Russia. In his last testament, he is said to have predicted Tibet's fall to Communist China. ¶ The fourteenth and present Dalai Lama, Bstan 'dzin rgya mtsho, assumed his position several years prior to reaching the age of majority as his country faced the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950. In 1959, he escaped into exile, establishing a government-in-exile in the Himalayan town of Dharamsala (DHARMAsALA) in northwestern India. Since then, he has traveled and taught widely around the world, while also advocating a nonviolent solution to Tibet's occupation. He was born in the A mdo region of what is now Qinghai province in China to a farming family, although his older brother had already been recognized as an incarnation at a nearby important Dge lugs monastery (SKU 'BUM). On his becoming formally accepted as Dalai Lama, his family became aristocrats and moved to Lha sa. He was educated traditionally by private tutors (yongs 'dzin), under the direction first of the regent Stag brag rin po che (in office 1941-1950), and later Gling rin po che Thub bstan lung rtogs rnam rgyal (1903-1983) and Khri byang rin po che Blo bzang ye shes (1901-1981). His modern education was informal, gained from conversations with travelers, such as the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer. When the Chinese army entered the Khams region of eastern Tibet in 1951, he formally took over from the regent and was enthroned as the head of the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG government. In the face of Tibetan unrest as the Chinese government brought Tibet firmly under central control, the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959; the Indian government accorded the Dalai Lama respect as a religious figure but did not accept his claim to be the head of a separate state. In 1989, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an event that increased his prominence around the world. He is the author of many books in English, most of them the written record of lectures and traditional teachings translated from Tibetan.
The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces. Left to itself, it Is skeptical of the existence of supra-physical things of which it has no direct experience and to which it can find no due ; even when it has spiritual experi- ences, it forgets them easily, loses (he impression and result and finds it difficult to believe. To enlighten the physical mind by the consciousness of the higher spiritual and Supramental planes is one object of this yoga, just as to enlighten it by the power of the higher vital and higher mental elements of the being is the greatest part of human self-development, civilisation and culture.
::: "The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces.” *Letters on Yoga
“The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces.” Letters on Yoga
The power needed in yoga is the power to go through elTort, difficulty or trouble without getting fatigued, depressed, dis- couraged or impatient and without breaking off the effort or giwng up one’s aim or resolution.
The problem of attributes gave rise to extensive discussions. In general, the attempt is made to convey some knowledge about God and yet maintain that His essence is inconceivable. The number of attributes varies with individual philosophers, from three of Bahya to eight of Ibn Daud. Saadia counts one, living, potent and wise as essential attributes; Bahya one, existent, and eternal. Ha-Levi substitutes living for existent. Ibn Daud adds to those of Saadia and Bahya three more: true, willing, and potent. Maimonides considers living, potent, wise, and willing as those agreed upon by philosophers. The difficulty, however, does not consist in the number but in their content, or in other words, how to speak of essential attributes and not to impair the simplicity of God's essence. Bahya was the first to assert that their content is negative, e.g., existent means not non-existent. He was followed in this by all others. Maimonides is especially insistent upon the negative meaning and asserts that they are to be applied to God and man in an absolute homonymic manner, i.e., there is no possible relation between God and other beings. Gersonides and Crescas, on the other hand, believe that the essential attributes are positive though we cannot determine their content. There are, of course, other attributes which are descriptive of His action, but these are not essential.
"There is a sunlit path as well as a gloomy one and it is the better of the two — a path in which one goes forward in absolute reliance on the Mother, fearing nothing, sorrowing over nothing. Aspiration is needed but there can be a sunlit aspiration full of light and faith and confidence and joy. If difficulty comes, even that can be faced with a smile.” Letters on Yoga
“There is a sunlit path as well as a gloomy one and it is the better of the two—a path in which one goes forward in absolute reliance on the Mother, fearing nothing, sorrowing over nothing. Aspiration is needed but there can be a sunlit aspiration full of light and faith and confidence and joy. If difficulty comes, even that can be faced with a smile.” Letters on Yoga
There is, however, greater difficulty in making freedom of the will compatible with divine prescience of human action. The question arises, does God know beforehand what man will do or not? If he does, it follows that the action is determined, or if man can choose, His knowledge is not true. Various answers were proposed by Jewish philosophers to this difficult problem. Saadia says that God's knowledge is like gazing in a mirror of the future which does not influence human action. He knows the ultimate result. Maimonides says that God's knowledge is so totally different from human that it remains indefinable, and consequently He may know things beforehand, and yet not impair the possibility of man to choose between two actions. Ibn Daud and Gersonides limit God's knowledge and say that He only knows that certain actions will be present to man for choice but not the way he will choose. Crescas is more logical and comes to the conclusion that action is possible only per se, i.e., when looked upon singly, but is necessary through the causes. Free will is in this case nominal and consist primarily in the fact that man is ignorant of the real situation and he is rewarded and punished for his exertion to do good or for his neglect to exert himself.
There is little agreement as to the correct analytical definition. To define a sentence as a complete utterance (Bloomfield, Language, 27) merely shifts the difficulty to that of deciding when symbols are not incomplete. A similar objection applies to Gardiner's definition (Speech and Language, 182) "those single words or combinations of words which taken as complete in themselves give satisfaction by shadowing forth the intelligible purpose of a speaker."
The right attitude is neither to worry always about the sex weakness and be obsessed by its importance so as to be in constant struggle and depression over it, nor to be too careless as to allow it to grow'. It is perhaps the most difficult of all to get rid of entirely ; one has to recogjise quietly its importance and its difficulty nod go quietly and steadily about the control of it.
the sex difficulty, then these dreams or discharges without dream can only be a rising up of old dormant impressions in the sub- conscient. Such risings often take place when the Force is work- ing in the subconscient to clear it. It is also just possible that the discharges may be due, especially when there are no dreams, to purely materia? causes, c.g. the pressure of undischar^d urine or faecal matter near the bladder. But in any case, the thing is not to be disturbed and to put a force or will on the sex-cenlre or sex organ for these things to cease. This can be done just before sleeping. Usually after a time, if done regularly, it has an effect. A calm general pressure of will or force on the physi- cal subconscient is to be put. The subconscient may be often obstinate in its continual persistence, but it can and does accom- modate itself quickly or slowly to the will of the conscious being.
The six, seven, or ten paramitas have reference to the three fundamental grades of training in discipleship: six for the beginner, seven for the one who is more advanced, and ten which are practiced by the adept. A faithful following of these virtues is incumbent upon every disciple, and fidelity and perseverance in performance mark progress along the mystic way. The other three paramitas, making ten, are adhishthana (inflexible courage) that goes forward to meet danger or difficulty; upeksha (discrimination) which seeks and finds the right way of applying the paramitas; and prabodha (awakened inner consciousness) or sambuddhi (complete or perfect illumination).
The theory amounts to trying to correct one error by means of another. If we suppose the physical universe to be composed of inert particles, how can we explain their activity? Materialistic science has simply shelved the difficulty. It is necessary to postulate an immaterial force, which in its origin is immaterial and in its manifestations substantial or material, but materialistic science does not recognize anything basically immaterial. It speaks of energy and matter as twin in destructibles, but merely assumes the former without explaining its nature. Moreover the words force and energy are used by science to denote effects occurring in matter. Are these effects without causes?
"The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. Those who aspire in their human strength by effort of knowledge or effort of virtue or effort of laborious self-discipline, grow with much anxious difficulty towards the Eternal; but when the soul gives up its ego and its works to the Divine, God himself comes to us and takes up our burden.” Essays on the Gita
“The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. Those who aspire in their human strength by effort of knowledge or effort of virtue or effort of laborious self-discipline, grow with much anxious difficulty towards the Eternal; but when the soul gives up its ego and its works to the Divine, God himself comes to us and takes up our burden.” Essays on the Gita
Tiantong Rujing. (J. Tendo Nyojo; K. Ch'ondong Yojong 天童如浄) (1162-1227). Chinese CHAN master in the CAODONG ZONG, also known as Jingchang (Pure Chang) and Changweng (Old Man Chang); he received his toponym Tiantong after the mountain where he once dwelled. Rujing was a native of Shaoxing in Yuezhou (present-day Zhejiang province) and was ordained at a local monastery named Tianyisi. Rujing later went to the monastery of Zishengsi on Mt. Xuedou to study under Zu'an Zhijian (1105-1192) and eventually became his dharma heir. Rujing spent the next few decades moving from one monastery to the next. In 1220, he found himself at Qingliangsi in Jiankang (Jiangsu province) and then at Rui'ansi in Taizhou and Jingcisi in Linan. In 1224, Rujing was appointed by imperial decree to the abbotship of the famous monastery of Jingdesi on Mt. Tiantong, where the Chan master HONGZHI ZHENGJUE had once resided. Rujing's teachings can be found in his recorded sayings (YULU), which were preserved in Japan. Although Rujing was a relatively minor figure in the history of Chinese Chan, he was profoundly influential in Japanese ZEN, due to the fact that the Japanese SoToSHu founder DoGEN KIGEN (1200-1253) considered himself to be Rujing's successor. Dogen attributes many of the distinctive features of his own approach to practice, such as "just sitting" (SHIKAN TAZA) and "body and mind sloughed off" (SHINJIN DATSURAKU) to this man whom he regarded as the preeminent Chan master of his era. Little of this distinctively Soto terminology and approach actually appears in the records of Rujing's own lectures, however. Instead, he appears in his discourse record as a fairly typical Song-dynasty Chan master, whose only practical meditative instruction involves the contemplation of ZHAOZHOU's "no" (see WU GONG'AN). This difference may reflect the differing editorial priorities of Rujing's Chinese disciples. It might also derive from the fact that Dogen misunderstood Rujing or received simplified private instructions from him because of Dogen's difficulty in following Rujing's formal oral presentations in vernacular Chinese.
tiryak. [alt. tiryascīna, tiryaNc] (P. tiracchāna; T. dud 'gro; C. chusheng; J. chikusho; K. ch'uksaeng 畜生). In Sanskrit, lit. "going horizontally" (i.e., not erect), viz., an animal; one of five or six rebirth destinies (GATI) in SAMSĀRA. Among these, animals are classified as the one of the three (or four) unfortunate rebirth destinies (APĀYA; DURGATI), along with denizens of hell (NĀRAKA), ghosts (PRETA), and in some lists demigods or titans (ASURA). The category of animals includes both land and sea creatures, as well as insects. The specific kinds of suffering that animals undergo are frequently mentioned in Buddhist texts; these include the constant need to search for their own food while always seeking to avoid becoming food for others. Unlike humans, animals are generally killed not for some deed they have done but for the taste of their flesh or the texture of their skin. The possibility of achieving rebirth out of the realm of animals is said to be particularly difficult because of either the inevitable killing in which predators engage or because of animals' constant fear of becoming prey; neither mental state is conducive to higher rebirth. Despite this difficulty, there are many stories in Buddhist literature of predators who have willed themselves to stop killing (the first of the lay precepts) in order to create a karmic propensity that will be more conducive to rebirth out of the animal destiny. See also DAOTU.
To be an Aristotelian under such extremely complicated circumstances was the problem that St. Thomas set himself. What he did reduced itself fundamentally to three points: (a) He showed the Platonic orientation of St. Augustine's thought, the limitations that St. Augustine himself placed on his Platonism, and he inferred from this that St. Augustine could not be made the patron of the highly elaborated and sophisticated Platonism that an Ibn Gebirol expounded in his Fons Vitae or an Avicenna in his commentaries on the metaphysics and psychology of Aristotle. (b) Having singled out Plato as the thinker to search out behind St. Augustine, and having really eliminated St. Augustine from the Platonic controversies of the thirteenth century, St. Thomas is then concerned to diagnose the Platonic inspiration of the various commentators of Aristotle, and to separate what is to him the authentic Aristotle from those Platonic aberrations. In this sense, the philosophical activity of St. Thomas in the thirteenth century can be understood as a systematic critique and elimination of Platonism in metaphysics, psychology and epistemology. The Platonic World of Ideas is translated into a theory of substantial principles in a world of stable and intelligible individuals; the Platonic man, who was scarcely more than an incarcerated spirit, became a rational animal, containing within his being an interior economy which presented in a rational system his mysterious nature as a reality existing on the confines of two worlds, spirit and matter; the Platonic theory of knowledge (at least in the version of the Meno rather than that of the later dialogues where the doctrine of division is more prominent), which was regularly beset with the difficulty of accounting for the origin and the truth of knowledge, was translated into a theory of abstraction in which sensible experience enters as a necessary moment into the explanation of the origin, the growth and the use of knowledge, and in which the intelligible structure of sensible being becomes the measure of the truth of knowledge and of knowing.
To meet this difficulty of action at a distance, early European scientists invented various kinds of ethers to bridge the supposed gap of nothingness between atom and atom or body and body. These finally were abandoned, with the exception of the luminiferous or light-carrying ether, which remained until the Michelson-Morley experiment, after which it was abandoned.
To yield to depression when things go wrong is the worst way of meeting the difficulty There must be some desire or demand within, conscious or subconscious, that gets excited and revolts against its not being satisfied. The best way is to be conscious of it, face it calmly and steadily throw it out.
TWAIN "graphics, standard" An {image capture} {API} for {Microsoft Windows} and {Apple Macintosh} {operating systems} that enables the user to control a {scanner} or {digital camera} from {image processing} software. TWAIN was first released on 1992-02-29 and is currently ratified at version 2.0 as of 2005-11-28. It is maintained by the TWAIN Working Group. Kevin Bier, chairman-emeritus of the TWAIN Working Group and the one of the original co-author/editors of TWAIN 1.0, chose the name TWAIN after reading letters by Mark Twain. It was unofficially considered to mean "toolkit without an important name." The word "twain" is an archaic form meaning "two". It appears in Kipling's "The Ballad of East and West" - "...and never the twain shall meet...", reflecting the difficulty, at the time, of connecting scanners and personal computers. It was up-cased to TWAIN to make it more distinctive. This led people to believe it was an acronym, and then to a contest to come up with an expansion. None were selected, but the entry "Technology Without An Interesting Name" continues to haunt the standard. {The TWAIN Working Group (http://twain.org/)}. (2000-02-25)
TWAIN ::: (graphics, standard) An image capture API for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. The standard was first released in 1992, and is currently ratified at version 1.9 as of January 2000. TWAIN is typically used as an interface between image processing software and a scanner or digital camera.The word TWAIN is from Kipling's The Ballad of East and West - ...and never the twain shall meet..., reflecting the difficulty, at the time, of connecting to come up with an expansion. None were selected, but the entry Technology Without An Interesting Name continues to haunt the standard. .(2000-02-25)
unconsciousness ::: “What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental awareness of outer objects into our subliminal self-awareness and into our awareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or ``dead’’ or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought because it is proved at every point by experience.” The Synthesis of Yoga
unethes ::: adv. --> With difficulty; scarcely. See Uneath.
unnethes ::: adv. --> With difficulty. See Uneath.
unravel ::: v. t. --> To disentangle; to disengage or separate the threads of; as, to unravel a stocking.
Hence, to clear from complication or difficulty; to unfold; to solve; as, to unravel a plot.
To separate the connected or united parts of; to throw into disorder; to confuse. ::: v. i.
^Vhen one tries to meditate, there is a pressure to go inside, lose the waking consciousness and wake inside, in a deeper inner consciousness. But at first the mind takes it for a pressure to go to sleep, since sleep is the only kind of inner consciousness to which it has been accustomed. In yoga by meditation, sleep is therefore often the first difficulty — but if one perseveres, then gradually the sleep changes to an inner conscious state.
VI. Probability as a Limit of Frequencies. According to this view, developed especially by Mises and by Wald, the probability of an event is equal to its total frequency, that is to the limit, if it exists, of the frequency of that event in n trials, when n tends to infinity. The difficulty of working out this conception led Mises to propose the notion of a collective in an attempt to evolve conditions for a true random sequence. A collective is a random sequence of supposed results of trials when (1) the total frequency of the event in the sequence exists, and (2) the same property holds with the same limiting value when the sequence is replaced by any sequence derived from it. Various methods were devised by Copeland, Reichenbach and others to avoid objections to the second condition: they were generalized by Wald who restricted the choice of the "laws of selection" defining the ranks of the trials forming one of the derived sequences, by his postulate that these laws must form a denumerable set. This modification gives logical consistency to this theory at the expense of its original simplicity, but without disposing of some fundamental shortcomings. Thus, the probability of an event in a collective remains a relative notion, since it must be known to which denumerable set of laws of selection it has been defined relatively, in order to determine its meaning, even though its value is not relative to the set. Controversial points about the axiomatization of this theory show the possibility of other alternatives.
Wernicke’s aphasia ::: Difficulty comprehending speech as a result of damage to Wernicke’s language area.
wheezy ::: a. --> Breathing with difficulty and with a wheeze; wheezing. Used also figuratively.
Within its sacred precincts, the Aesir and Asynjor (gods and goddesses) meet to assess the previous life of the world tree and to determine their course for the future. The Lay of Odin’s Corpse give insight into the gods’ council following the death of a planet, and their difficulty in extracting the essence of that experience.
Wu Wei (Chinese) Inaction, inactivity; quiescence, placidity. Used in Taoism in relation to the tao of man, the idea being that “Heaven is emptiness” and by practicing wu wei (inaction) and becoming “empty” one becomes at one with heaven or tao. Reminiscent of the highly mystical import of the Buddhist sunyata (Sanskrit, “emptiness,” “void”). In all such words the difficulty is in finding ordinary language to convey the thought. There is not an absolutely empty point of space in all infinitude; what seems to the human senses to be cosmic vacuity is actually complete or absolute fullness, a pleroma as the Gnostics said. Cosmic sunyata or wu wei is emptiness simply because it lacks the lowest forms of matter — forms and bodies which are like the spume or bubbles on the sea of cosmic reality, which to human senses is empty because invisible, intangible, and not subject to sense perception.
Yoga has always its difficulties, whatever yoga it be. More- over, it acts in a different way on different seekers. Some have to overcome the difficulties of their nature first before they get any experiences to speak of, others get a splendid beginning and all the difficulties afterwards, others go on for a long time having alternate risings to the top of the wave and then a descent into the gulfs and so on till the difficulty is worked out, others have a smooth path which does not mean that they have no diffi- culties — they have plenty, but they do not care a straw for them, because they feel that the Divine will help them to the goal or that he is with them even when they do not feel him
You will see that in only one of these cases, the first, can a soul be posited and there no difficulty arises.” Letters on Yoga
Yu sim allak to. (C. Youxin anledao; J. Yushin anrakudo 遊心安樂道). In Korean, "Wandering the Path to Mental Peace and Bliss"; traditionally attributed to the Korean monk WoNHYO, its authorship remains a matter of debate. No early references to this text are found in Korean canonical catalogues, and the earliest extant version was found in the library of the Raigoin in Kyoto, Japan. The prevailing scholarly view is that the text was composed in tenth-century Japan, perhaps by an adherent of the TENDAISHu, with the first half of the work taken virtually verbatim from Wonhyo's Muryangsugyong chongyo ("Doctrinal Essentials of the SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA"). The Yu sim allak to was influential in Japan, especially during the Kamakura period, when it was quoted in such texts as the Komyo shingon dosha kanjinki by MYoE KoBEN, An'yoshu by Minamoto Takakuni (1004-1077), Ketsujo ojoshu by Chinkai (1087-1165), and the SENCHAKU HONGAN NENBUTSUSHu by HoNEN. The Yu sim allak to consists of seven sections: (1) the central tenet (i.e., the benefits of rebirth), (2) the whereabouts of the land of peace and happiness (ANLEGUO, viz., SUKHĀVATĪ), (3) clarification of doubts and concerns, (4) the various causes and conditions of rebirth in the PURE LAND, (5) the nine grades (JIUPIN) of rebirth, (6) the ease and difficulty of rebirth in the different buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA), (7) and the rebirth of women, those with dull faculties, and sinners. The last section also contains a MANTRA from the Amoghapāsakalparājāsutra and an empowerment (ADHIstHĀNA) ritual.
KEYS (10k)
44 Sri Aurobindo
24 The Mother
3 Thomas A Kempis
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Saint Thomas Aquinas
2 Saint Augustine of Hippo
2 Aleister Crowley
1 Tolstoi
1 Sri Aurobindo
1 Soren Kierkegaard
1 Shunryu Suzuki
1 Satprem
1 SATM?
1 Saint John of the Cross
1 Pema Chödrön
1 not only those considered clever
1 Lewis Carroll
1 Joseph Campbell
1 JohnyTex
1 John Stewart Bell
1 John Maynard Keynes
1 Isocrates
1 Dhammapada
1 Carl Jung
1 Arthur Schopenhauer
1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
1 Epictetus
1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
30 Anonymous
19 Sri Aurobindo
13 Douglas Adams
11 The Mother
10 Epictetus
10 Albert Einstein
8 Charles Dickens
8 Arthur Conan Doyle
8 Alexandre Dumas
7 Winston Churchill
7 Terry Pratchett
7 Paulo Coelho
7 C S Lewis
6 Samuel Johnson
6 Norman Vincent Peale
6 Michel de Montaigne
6 Lisa Kleypas
6 Leo Tolstoy
6 John Maynard Keynes
6 Israelmore Ayivor
1:Difficulty shows what men are. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
2:With patience any difficulty can be overcome.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
3:It is not the path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which is the path.
~ Soren Kierkegaard,#KEYS
4:Make solitude a part of your life. In order to work with difficulty, we need to gather our inner strength." ~ Pema Chödrön, #KEYS
5:The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #KEYS
6:Ego is the reason of the difficulty in everybody. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Ego and Its Forms, #KEYS
7:For we are always glad to have something to comfort us, and only with difficulty does a man divest himself of self. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
8:The real difficulty is always in ourselves, not in our surroundings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Real Difficulty, #KEYS
9:Through the shocks of difficulty and death
Man shall attain his godhead. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Prologue,#KEYS
10:Whatever the difficulty if we keep truly quiet the solution will come. With my blessings,
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, [T5],#KEYS
11:Yoga is the unravelling of the knot of Life's difficulty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology of Self-Perfection, #KEYS
12:The will of a single hero can breathe courage into the hearts of a million cowards. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Real Difficulty, #KEYS
13:The idea of self is the Maya of the soul. It is our egotism that shuts out the light. When this "I" is gone, all difficulty will vanish. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
14:All movement forward implies a certain amount of friction and difficulty of adjustment ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Problem of Uniformity and Liberty, #KEYS
15:Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate:
Accept the difficulty and godlike toil
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, [T5],#KEYS
16:The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #KEYS
17:What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but identifying them. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS
18:A present incapacity, however heavy may seem its pressure, is only a trial of faith and a temporary difficulty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
19:The path is long, but self-surrender makes it short; the way is difficult, but perfect trust makes it easy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Real Difficulty, #KEYS
20:The self is the master of the self, what other master wouldst thou have? A self well-controlled is a master one can get with difficulty. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
21:The thought of a solitary man can become, by exercise of selfless and undoubting Will, the thought of a nation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Real Difficulty, #KEYS
22:When once the higher consciousness begins to act, the difficulty diminishes and there is a clear progress from truth to greater truth.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
23:No difficulty can be presented to the human mind which the human mind, if it will, cannot solve. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Problem of a Federated Heterogeneous Empire, #KEYS
24:Employ all the leisure you have in listening to the well-informed; so you shall learn without difficulty what they have learned by long labour. ~ Isocrates, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
25:God and the angels have a ready free choice of the will, whereas man suffers difficulty in choosing because of uncertainty and hesitation ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (DV 24.3)., #KEYS
26:A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Steps of Nature, #KEYS
27:Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction." ~ Saint John of the Cross, #KEYS
28:In times of difficulty to stop still for a long time is a cardinal error, the best way is to move slowly forward, warily watching each step but never faltering. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Facts and Opinions, #KEYS
29:The devil is said to rejoice most over the sin of lust because it involves the greatest attachment and it is only with difficulty that a man can be torn away from it ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.73.5ad2)., #KEYS
30:Whenever there is any difficulty we must always remember that we are here exclusively to accomplish the Divine's will.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Elements of Yoga, Surrender to the Divine Will, Surrender, [T1],#KEYS
31:The present difficulty is that man thinks he is the doer. But it is a mistake. It is the higher power which does everything and man is only a tool. If he accepts that position he is free from troubles, otherwise he courts them. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
32:What wonder if feel no burden when borne up by the Almighty and led on by the Supreme Guide! For we are always glad to have something to comfort us, and only with difficulty does a man divest himself of self. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
33:Love is an excellent thing, a very great blessing, indeed. It makes every difficulty easy, and bears all wrongs with equanimity. For it bears a burden without being weighted and renders sweet all that is bitter. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
34:The present difficulty is that man thinks that he is the doer. But it is a mistake. It is the Higher Power which does everything and man is only a tool. If he accepts that position he is free from troubles; otherwise he courts them. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
35:You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
36:Some persons, however, find a difficulty in this faith; when they hear that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the Holy Spirit God, and yet that this Trinity is not three Gods, but one God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, #KEYS
37:The dying man understands with difficulty what lives, not because his mental faculties are dulled, but because he understands something the living do not and cannot understand, and in this he is entirely absorbed. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
38:Real enlightenment is always with you, so there is no need for you to stick to it or even think about it. Because it is always with you, difficulty itself is enlightenment. Your busy life itself is enlightened activity. ." ~ Shunryu Suzuki, (1904-1971), Zen master, Wikipedia., #KEYS
39:patience or resoluteness? :::
The power needed in yoga is the power to go through effort, difficulty or trouble without getting fatigued, depressed, discouraged or impatient and without breaking off the effort or giving up one's aim or resolution. ~ ?, Collaboration Journal, Vol 41 No 2,#KEYS
40:We must lie before the Divine always like a page perfectly blank, so that the Divine's will may be inscribed in us without any difficulty or mixture. 20 November 1954
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Surrender to the Divine Will, TO WILL WHAT THE DIVINE WILLS [108],#KEYS
41:Intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #KEYS
42:Music is sweet; to rule the heart's rich chords
Of human lyres much sweeter. Art's sublime
But to combine great ends more sovereign still,
Accepting danger and difficulty to break
Through proud and violent opposites to our will.
Song is divine, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act III,#KEYS
43:That is the inconvenience of going away from a difficulty,—it runs after one,—or rather one carries it with oneself, for the difficulty is truly inside, not outside. Outside circumstances only give it the occasion to manifest itself and so long as the inn ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Difficulties of the Path - VII, #KEYS
44:It is no doubt as you say, [1] but that is always the difficulty of the physical consciousness until it has been enlightened from within.
[1] The correspondent wrote that although she wanted to get rid of her desires, confusions and wrong movements, the outward, physical part of her being wanted to hold on to them.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
45:The main difficulty in the sadhana consists in the movements of the lower nature, ideas of the mind, desires and attractions of the vital, habits of the body consciousness that stand in the way of the growth of the higher consciousness - there are other difficulties, but these make the bulk of the opposition.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III, Difficulties of the Path,#KEYS
46:I know that most men ~ not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems ~ can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty ~ conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives., #KEYS
47:for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee. Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
48:The only way out of your difficulty is to find the psychic being and to live entirely in its consciousness. Life upon earth as it is now is full of miseries and any sensitive heart is full of sorrow because of that. To get in contact with the Divine Consciousness and to live in its mercy, its strength and its light is the only truly effective way to get out of this difficulty and suffering and by uniting with the psychic we can obtain this condition. My help and blessings are with you for this purpose.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
49:Talk 10.
A visitor asked how to realise oneself in accordance with Maharshi's instructions, contained in his text of Truth Revealed, verse 9, supplement. The difficulty was in controlling the mind.
M.: It is to be done by controlling the breath. If you practise it by yourself without other help, then the mind is controlled. Otherwise the mind comes under control spontaneously in the presence of a superior power. Such is the greatness of association with the wise (satsanga). ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramanasramam,#KEYS
50:What is needed is perseverance-to go on without discouragement, recognising that the process of the nature and the action of the Mother's force is working through the difficulty even and will do all that is needed. Our incapacity does not matter-there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable-but the Divine Force is also there. If one puts one's trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
51:aspiration and dryness :::
Naturally, the more one-pointed the aspiration the swifter the progress. The difficulty comes when either the vital with its desires or the physical with its past habitual movements comes in - as they do with almost everyone. It is then that the dryness and difficulty of spontaneous aspiration come. This dryness is a well-known obstacle in all sadhana. But one has to persist and not be discouraged. If one keeps the will fixed even in these barren periods, they pass and after their passage a greater force of aspiration and experience becomes possible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
52:Apart from the individual difficulty there is a general difficulty in the physical earth-nature. Physical nature is slow and inert and unwilling to change; its tendency is to be still and take long periods of time for a little progress. It is very difficult for even the strongest mental or vital or even psychic will to overcome this inertia. It is only by bringing down constantly the consciousness and force and light from above that it can be done. Therefore there must be a constant will and aspiration for that and for the change and it must be a steady and patient will not tired out even by the utmost resistance of the physical nature.
~ SATM?,#KEYS
53:Vainly the sands of Time have been strewn with the ruins of empires,
Signs that the gods had left, but in vain. For they look for a nation,
One that can conquer itself having conquered the world, but they find none. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Self-conquest
When one conquers a difficulty or goes forward, it creates a right current in the atmosphere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: The Right Attitude towards Difficulties
Self-Conquest
Self-denial is a necessary discipline for the soul of man, because his heart is ignorantly attached. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation,#KEYS
54:Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, experience shows that there are certain features which offer the most obstinate resistance to moral control and prove almost impossible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognized as such, and their recognition is a moral achievement beyond the ordinary. While some traits peculiar to the shadow can be recognized without too much difficulty as one's personal qualities, in this case both insight and good will are unavailing because the cause of the emotion appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in the other person. ~ Carl Jung, CW 9ii, par. 16., #KEYS
55:The dream is evidently an indication of the difficulty you are experiencing. The sea is the sea of the vital nature whose flood is pursuing you (desires are the sea water) on your road of sadhana.
The Mother is there in your heart but sleeping - i.e. her power has not become conscious in your inner consciousness because she is surrounded by the thin curtain of skin (the obscurity of the physical nature). It is this (it is not thick any longer but still effective to veil her from you) which has to go so that she may awake. It is a matter of persistence in the will and the endeavour - the response from within, the awaking of the Mother in the heart will come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#KEYS
56:Faith :::
One must say, "Since I want only the Divine, my success is sure, I have only to walk forward in all confidence and His own Hand will be there secretly leading me to Him by His own way and at His own time." That is what you must keep as your constant mantra. Anything else one may doubt but that he who desires only the Divine shall reach the Divine is a certitude and more certain than two and two make four. That is the faith every sadhak must have at the bottom of his heart, supporting him through every stumble and blow and ordeal. It is only false ideas still casting their shadows on your mind that prevent you from having it. Push them aside and the back of the difficulty will be broken. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
57:But what Nature aims at for the mass in a slow evolution, Yoga effects for the individual by a rapid revolution. It works by a quickening of all her energies, a sublimation of all her faculties. While she develops the spiritual life with difficulty and has constantly to fall back from it for the sake of her lower realisations, the sublimated force, the concentrated method of Yoga can attain directly and carry with it the perfection of the mind and even, if she will, the perfection of the body. Nature seeks the Divine in her own symbols: Yoga goes beyond Nature to the Lord of Nature, beyond universe to the Transcendent and can return with the transcendent light and power, with the fiat of the Omnipotent.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions Of The Synthesis, The Threefold Life, 29,#KEYS
58:There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance. But it involves absolutedeterminism in the universe, the complete absence of free will. Suppose the world is super-deterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined, including the 'decision' by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears. There is no need for a faster-than-light signal to tell particle Awhat measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already 'knows' what that measurement, and its outcome, will be.
~ John Stewart Bell, 1985 BBC Radio Interview,#KEYS
59:
To learn to be quiet and silent... When you have a problem to solve, instead of turning over in your head all the possibilities, all the consequences, all the possible things one should or should not do, if you remain quiet with an aspiration for goodwill, if possible a need for goodwill, the solution comes very quickly. And as you are silent you are able to hear it.
When you are caught in a difficulty, try this method: instead of becoming agitated, turning over all the ideas and actively seeking solutions, of worrying, fretting, running here and there inside your head - I don't mean externally, for externally you probably have enough common sense not to do that! but inside, in your head - remain quiet. And according to your nature, with ardour or peace, with intensity or widening or with all these together, implore the Light and wait for it to come.
In this way the path would be considerably shortened. 5 November 1958
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, 422,#KEYS
60:Therefore, we can attain the overmental consciousness in many different ways: through religious passion, through poetic, intellectual, artistic, or heroic zeal, or through anything that helps man to exceed himself. - Sri Aurobindo assigned a special place to art, which he considered one of the major means of spiritual progress. Unfortunately, artists and creators too often have a considerable ego standing in the way, which is their main difficulty. The religious man, who has worked to dissolve his ego, finds it easier, but he rarely attains universality through his own individual efforts, leaping instead beyond the individual without bothering to develop all the intermediate rungs of the personal consciousness, and when he reaches the top he no longer has a ladder to come down, or he does not want to come down, or there is no individual self left to express what he sees, or else his old individual self tries its best to express his new consciousness, provided he feels the need to express anything at all.
~ Satprem,#KEYS
61:All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind. This support can be reached through an insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart. Any one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must in the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely founded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be lit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is an awakening to the souls call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Consecration, 81,#KEYS
62:8. The Woman As Temptress:The crux of the curious difficulty lies in the fact that our conscious views of what life ought to be seldom correspond to what life really is. Generally we refuse to admit within ourselves, or within our friends, the fullness of that pushing, self-protective, malodorous, carnivorous, lecherous fever which is the very nature of the organic cell. Rather, we tend to perfume, whitewash, and reinterpret; meanwhile imagining that all the flies in the ointment, all the hairs in the soup, are the faults of some unpleasant someone else. But when it suddenly dawns on us, or is forced to our attention that everything we think or do is necessarily tainted with the odor of the flesh, then, not uncommonly, there is experienced a moment of revulsion: life, the acts of life, the organs of life, woman in particular as the great symbol of life, become intolerable to the pure, the pure, pure soul. The seeker of the life beyond life must press beyond (the woman), surpass the temptations of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
63:What you write is no doubt true and it is necessary to see it so as to be able to comprehend and grasp the true attitude necessary for the sadhana. But, as I have said, one must not be distressed or depressed by perceiving the weaknesses inherent in human nature and the difficulty of getting them out. The difficulty is natural, for they have been there for thousands of lives and are the very nature of man's vital and mental ignorance. It is not surprising that they should have a power to stick and take time to disappear. But there is a true being and a true consciousness that is there in us hidden by these surface formations of nature and which can shake them off once it emerges. By taking the right attitude of selfless devotion within and persisting in it in spite of the surface nature's troublesome self-repetitions one enables this inner being and consciousness to emerge and with the Mother's Force working in it deliver the being from all return of the movements of the old nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
64:In the depths of your consciousness is the psychic being, the temple of the Divine within you. This is the centre round which should come about the unification of all these divergent parts, all these contradictory movements of your being. Once you have got the consciousness of the psychic being and its aspiration, these doubts and difficulties can be destroyed. It takes more or less time, but you will surely succeed in the end. Once you have turned to the Divine, saying, "I want to be yours", and the Divine has said, "Yes", the whole world cannot keep you from it. When the central being has made its surrender, the chief difficulty has disappeared. The outer being is like a crust. In ordinary people the crust is so hard and thick that they are not conscious of the Divine within them. If once, even for a moment only, the inner being has said, "I am here and I am yours", then it is as though a bridge has been built and little by little the crust becomes thinner and thinner until the two parts are wholly joined and the inner and the outer become one. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #KEYS
65:I think one of the most important thing is to know why one meditates; this is what gives the quality of the meditation and makes it of one order or another.
You may meditate to open yourself to the divine Force, you may meditate to reject the ordinary consciousness, you may meditate to enter the depths of your being, you may meditate to learn how to give yourself integrally; you may meditate for all kinds of things. You may meditate to enter into peace and calm and silence - this is what people generally do, but without much success. But you may also meditate to receive the Force of transformation, to discover the points to be transformed, to trace out the line of progress. And then you may also meditate for very practical reasons: when you have a difficulty to clear up, a solution to find, when you want help in some action or another. You may meditate for that too.
I think everyone has his own mode of meditation. But if one wants the meditation to be dynamic, one must have an aspiration for progress and the meditation must be done to help and fulfill this aspiration for progress. Then it becomes dynamic. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
66:In the early part of the sadhana - and by early I do not mean a short part - effort is indispensable. Surrender of course, but surrender is not a thing that is done in a day. The mind has its ideas and it clings to them; the human vital resists surrender, for what it calls surrender in the early stages is a doubtful kind of self-giving with a demand in it; the physical consciousness is like a stone and what it calls surrender is often no more then inertia. It is only the psychic that knows how to surrender and the psychic is usually very much veiled in the beginning. When the psychic awakens, it can bring a sudden and true surrender of the whole being, for the difficulty of the rest is rapidly dealt with and disappears. But till then effort is indispensable. Or else it is necessary till the Force comes flooding down into the being from above and takes up the sadhana, does it for one more and more and leaves less and less to individual effort - but even then, it not effort, at least aspiration and vigilance are needed till the possession of mind, will, life and body by the Divine Power is complete. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #KEYS
67:Two Paths Of Yoga :::
There are two paths of Yoga, one of tapasya (discipline), and the other of surrender. The path of tapasya is arduous. Here you rely solely upon yourself, you proceed by your own strength. You ascend and achieve according to the measure of your force. There is always the danger of falling down. And once you fall, you lie broken in the abyss and there is hardly a remedy. The other path, the path of surrender. is a safe and sure. It is here, however, that the Western people find their difficulty. They have been taught to fear and avoid all that threatens their personal independence. They have imbibed with their mothers milk the sense of individuality. And surrender means giving up all that. In other words, you may follow, as Ramakrishna says, either the path of the baby monkey or that of the baby cat. The baby monkey holds to its mother in order to be carried about and it must hold firm, otherwise if it loses its grip, it falls. On the other hand, the baby cat does not hold to its mother, but is held by the mother and has no fear nor responsibility; it to nor has nothing do but to let the mother hold it and cry ma ma.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
68:Endure and you will triumph. Victory goes to the most enduring. And with the Grace and divine love nothing is impossible. My force and love are with you. At the end of the struggle there is Victory And so we find once more that the Ego-idea must be ruthlessly rooted out before Understanding can be attained The emptiness that you described in your letter yesterday was not a bad thing - it is this emptiness inward and outward that often in Yoga becomes the first step towards a new consciousness. Man's nature is like a cup of dirty water - the water has to be thrown out, the cup left clean and empty for the divine liquor to be poured into it. The difficulty is that the human physical consciousness feels it difficult to bear this emptiness - it is accustomed to be occupied by all sorts of little mental and vital movements which keep it interested and amused or even if in trouble and sorrow still active. The cessation of these things is hard to bear for it. It begins to feel dull and restless and eager for the old interests and movements. But by this restlessness it disturbs the quietude and brings back the things that had been thrown out. It is this that is creating the difficulty and the obstruction for the moment. If you can accept emptiness as a passage to the true consciousness and true movements, then it will be easier to get rid of the obstacle.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#KEYS
69:the joy of progress :::
It is the will for progress and self-purification which lights the [psychic] fire. The will for progress. Those who have a strong will, when they turn it towards spiritual progress and purification, automatically light the fire within themselves.
And each defect one wants to cure or each progress one wants to make - if all that is thrown into the fire, it burns with a new intensity. And this is not an image, it is a fact in the subtle physical. One can feel the warmth of the flame, one can see in the subtle physical the light of the flame. And when there is something in the nature which prevents one from advancing and one throws it into this fire, it begins to burn and the flame becomes more intense....
How can one feel sweetness and joy when one is in difficulty?
Exactly, when the difficulty is egoistic or personal, if one makes an offering of it and throws it into the fire of purification, one immediately feels the joy of progress. If one does it sincerely, at once there is a welling up of joy.
That is obviously what ought to be done instead of despairing and lamenting. If one offers it up and aspires sincerely for transformation and purification, one immediately feels joy springing up in the depths of the heart. Even when the difficulty is a great sorrow, one may do this with much success. One realises that behind the sorrow, no matter how intense it may be, there is divine joy. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
70:If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. The indispensable surrender of all our will and works and activities to the Supreme is indeed only perfect and perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All life turned into this cult, all actions done in the love of the Divine and in the love of the world and its creatures seen and felt as the Divine manifested in many disguises become by that very fact part of an integral Yoga.
It is the inner offering of the heart's adoration, the soul of it in the symbol, the spirit of it in the act, that is the very life of the sacrifice. If this offering is to be complete and universal, then a turning of all our emotions to the Divine is imperative. This is the intensest way of purification for the human heart, more powerful than any ethical or aesthetic catharsis could ever be by its half-power and superficial pressure. A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it. In that fire all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements and those that are undivine perversions are burned away and the others discard their insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine delight arises out of the flame and smoke and frankincense. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 165, [T2],#KEYS
71:
If one is too serious in yoga, doesn't one become obsessed by the difficulty of the task?
There is a limit to be kept!... But if one chooses one's obsession well, it may be very useful because it is no longer quite an obsession. For example, one has decided to find the Divine within oneself, and constantly, in every circumstance, whatever happens or whatever one may do, one concentrates in order to enter into contact with the inner Divine. Naturally, first one must have that little thing Sri Aurobindo speaks about, that "lesser truth" which consists in knowing that there is a Divine within one (this is a very good example of the "lesser truth") and once one is sure of it and has the aspiration to find it, if that aspiration becomes constant and the effort to realise it becomes constant, in the eyes of others it looks like an obsession, but this kind of obsession is not bad. It becomes bad only if one loses one's balance. But it must be made quite clear that those who lose their balance with that obsession are only those who were quite ready to lose their balance; any circumstance whatever would have produced the same result and made them lose their balance - it is a defect in the mental structure, it is not the fault of the obsession. And naturally, he who changes a desire into an obsession would be sure to go straight towards imbalance. That is why I say it is important to know the object of the obsession. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,#KEYS
72:Inspiration is always a very uncertain thing; it comes when it chooses, stops suddenly before it has finished its work, refuses to descend when it is called. This is a well-known affliction, perhaps of all artists, but certainly of poets. There are some who can command it at will; those who, I think, are more full of an abundant poetic energy than careful for perfection; others who oblige it to come whenever they put pen to paper but with these the inspiration is either not of a high order or quite unequal in its levels. Again there are some who try to give it a habit of coming by always writing at the same time; Virgil with his nine lines first written, then perfected every morning, Milton with his fifty epic lines a day, are said to have succeeded in regularising their inspiration. It is, I suppose, the same principle which makes Gurus in India prescribe for their disciples a meditation at the same fixed hour every day. It succeeds partially of course, for some entirely, but not for everybody. For myself, when the inspiration did not come with a rush or in a stream,-for then there is no difficulty,-I had only one way, to allow a certain kind of incubation in which a large form of the thing to be done threw itself on the mind and then wait for the white heat in which the entire transcription could rapidly take place. But I think each poet has his own way of working and finds his own issue out of inspiration's incertitudes.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Inspiration and Effort - I,#KEYS
73:Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
Personal salvation he does not seek except as a necessity for the human fulfilment and because he who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others,—though to God nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral Yoga
For a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral yoga
To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to demand and acquire a thing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, The Mother's Love,#KEYS
74:Why Ubuntu: If I were you I'd just install Ubuntu into a dual-boot partition (the Ubuntu website has instructions for this) and learn as you go. Ubuntu is similar enough to Windows that you should be able to start using it right away without much difficulty.
For running your Python scripts you'll want to drop into the shell (Ctrl + Alt + T If memory serves me right). As you become more comfortable with Ubuntu, you can start using the shell more and more. The shell is what gives you access to the power of Unix; every time you need to do something tedious and repetitive, try to find out how to do it through the shell.
Eventually you will find yourself using the shell constantly. You'll wonder how you ever managed without it, and deride other operating systems for their lack of sensible programming tools. One day you'll realise that desktop window managers are a needless distraction. You start using xmonad or awesomewm. Eventually you realise that this, too, is a bastardisaton of the Unix vision and start using tmux exclusively. Then suddenly it hits you - every computer, every operating system, no matter how insignificant or user-friendly, has the Unix nature. All of them are merely streams from where you can ssh back into the ocean of Unix. Having achieved enlightenment you are equally content using an iPad as your main work computer, using powershell in Windows or SSH into a Digital Ocean droplet from your parent's computer. This is the Zen of Unix.
~ JohnyTex, https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/38zytg/is_it_worth_my_time_to_learn_linux_while_learning,#KEYS
75:[the value of sublimation:]
And since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication. On the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of the higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress. It is the difficulty of this wholesale conversion that is the source of all the stumblings in the path of Yoga. For our entire nature and its environment, all our personal and all our universal self, are full of habits and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth and work against the whole-heartedness of our endeavour.
In a certain sense we are nothing but a complex mass of mental, nervous and physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations, - an amalgam of many small self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations. What we propose in our Yoga is nothing less than to break up the whole formation of our past and present which makes up the ordinary material and mental man and to create a new centre of vision and a new universe of activities in ourselves which shall constitute a divine humanity or a superhuman nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, [71] [T1],#KEYS
76:The whole crux and difficulty of human life lies here. Man is this mental being, this mental consciousness working as mental force, aware in a way of the universal force and life of which he is part but, because he has not knowledge of its universality or even of the totality of his own being, unable to deal either with life in general or with his own life in a really effective and victorious movement of mastery. He seeks to know Matter in order to be master of the material environment, to know Life in order to be master of the vital existence, to know Mind in order to be master of the great obscure movement of mentality in which he is not only a jet of light of self-consciousness like the animal, but also more and more a flame of growing knowledge. Thus he seeks to know himself in order to be master of himself, to know the world in order to be master of the world. This is the urge of Existence in him, the necessity of the Consciousness he is, the impulsion of the Force that is his life, the secret will of Sachchidananda appearing as the individual in a world in which He expresses and yet seems to deny Himself. To find the conditions under which this inner impulsion is satisfied is the problem man must strive always to resolve and to that he is compelled by the very nature of his own existence and by the Deity seated within him; and until the problem is solved, the impulse satisfied, the human race cannot rest from its labour. Either man must fulfil himself by satisfying the Divine within him or he must produce out of himself a new and greater being who will be more capable of satisfying it. He must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
77:One can concentrate in any of the three centres which is easiest to the sadhak or gives most result. The power of the concentration in the heart-centre is to open that centre and by the power of aspiration, love, bhakti, surrender remove the veil which covers and conceals the soul and bring forward the soul or psychic being to govern the mind, life and body and turn and open them all-fully-to the Divine, removing all that is opposed to that turning and opening.
This is what is called in this Yoga the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental vital-physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher Consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual or divine) Consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this Yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement, then the Power from above has in its descent to open all the centres (including the lowest centre) and to bring out the psychic being; for until that is done there is likely to be much difficulty and struggle of the lower consciousness obstructing, mixing with or even refusing the Divine Action from above. If the psychic being is once active this struggle and these difficulties can be greatly minimised. The power of concentration in the eyebrows is to open the centre there, liberate the inner mind and vision and the inner or Yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [where to concentrate?],#KEYS
78:It is not very easy for the customary mind of man, always attached to its past and present associations, to conceive of an existence still human, yet radically changed in what are now our fixed circumstances.We are in respect to our possible higher evolution much in the position of the original Ape of the Darwinian theory. It would have been impossible for that Ape leading his instinctive arboreal life in primeval forests to conceive that there would be one day an animal on the earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature's forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of conduct, evolve conscious methods for his mental and spiritual development. And if such a conception had been possible for the Ape-mind, it would still have been difficult for him to imagine that by any progress of Nature or long effort of Will and tendency he himself could develop into that animal. Man, because he has acquired reason and still more because he has indulged his power of imagination and intuition, is able to conceive an existence higher than his own and even to envisage his personal elevation beyond his present state into that existence. His idea of the supreme state is an absolute of all that is positive to his own concepts and desirable to his own instinctive aspiration,-Knowledge without its negative shadow of error, Bliss without its negation in experience of suffering, Power without its constant denial by incapacity, purity and plenitude of being without the opposing sense of defect and limitation. It is so that he conceives his gods; it is so that he constructs his heavens. But it is not so that his reason conceives of a possible earth and a possible humanity. His dream of God and Heaven is really a dream of his own perfection; but he finds the same difficulty in accepting its practical realisation here for his ultimate aim as would the ancestral Ape if called upon to believe in himself as the future Man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Ego and the Dualities, #KEYS
79:For centuries and centuries humanity has waited for this time. It is come. But it is difficult.
I don't simply tell you we are here upon earth to rest and enjoy ourselves, now is not the time for that. We are here..... to prepare the way for the new creation.
The body has some difficulty, so I can't be active, alas. It is not because I am old, I am not old, I am younger than most of you. If I am here inactive, it is because the body has given itself definitely to prepare the transformation. But the consciousness is clear and we are here to work - rest and enjoyment will come afterwards. Let us do our work here.
So I have called you to tell you that. Take what you can, do what you can, my help will be with you. All sincere effort will be helped to the maximum.
It is the hour to be the heroic. Heroism is not what it is said to be; it is to become wholly unified - and the Divine help will always be with those who have resolved to be heroic in full sincerity.
There!
You are here at this moment that is to say upon earth, because you chose it at one time - you do not remember it any more, but I know it - that is why you are here. Well, you must rise to the height of the task. You must strive, you must conquer all weakness and limitations; above all you must tell your ego: "Your hour is gone." We want a race that has no ego, that has in place of the ego the Divine Consciousness. It is that which we want: the Divine Consciousness which will allow the race to develop itself and the Supramental being to take birth.
If you believe that I am here because I am bound - it is not true. I am not bound, I am here because my body has been given for the first attempt at transformation. Sri Aurobindo told me so. Well, I am doing it. I do not wish anyone to do it for me because.... Because it is not very pleasant, but I do it willingly because of the result; everybody will be able to benefit from it. I ask only one thing: do not listen to the ego.
If there is in your hearts a sincere Yes, you will satisfy me completely. I do not need words, I need the sincere adhesion of your hearts. That's all. ~ The Mother, (This talk was given by the Mother on April 2,1972,#KEYS
80:I know perfectly well that pain and suffering and struggle and excesses of despair are natural - though not inevitable - on the way, - not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light. . . .
The dark path is there and there are many who make like the Christians a gospel of spiritual suffering; many hold it to be the unavoidable price of victory. It may be so under certain circumstances, as it has been in so many lives at least at the beginning, or one may choose to make it so. But then the price has to be paid with resignation, fortitude or a tenacious resilience. I admit that if borne in that way the attacks of the Dark Forces or the ordeals they impose have a meaning. After each victory gained over them, there is then a sensible advance; often they seem to show us the difficulties in ourselves which we have to overcome and to say, "Here you must conquer us and here."
But all the same it is a too dark and difficult way which nobody should follow on whom the necessity does not lie.
In any case one thing can never help and that is to despond always and say, "I am unfit; I am not meant for the Yoga." And worse still are these perilous mental formations such as you are always accepting that you must fare like X (one whose difficulty of exaggerated ambition was quite different from yours) and that you have only six years etc. These are clear formations of the Dark Forces seeking not only to sterilise your aspiration but to lead you away and so prevent your sharing in the fruit of the victory hereafter. I do not know what Krishnaprem has said but his injunction, if you have rightly understood it, is one that cannot stand as valid, since so many have done Yoga relying on tapasya or anything else but not confident of any Divine Grace. It is not that, but the soul's demand for a higher Truth or a higher life that is indispensable. Where that is, the Divine Grace whether believed in or not, will intervene. If you believe, that hastens and facilitates things; if you cannot yet believe, still the soul's aspiration will justify itself with whatever difficulty and struggle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
81:The most disconcerting discovery is to find that every part of us -- intellect, will, sense-mind, nervous or desire self, the heart, the body-has each, as it were, its own complex individuality and natural formation independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor with the others nor with the representative ego which is the shadow cast by some central and centralising self on our superficial ignorance. We find that we are composed not of one but many personalities and each has its own demands and differing nature. Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order. Moreover, we find that inwardly too, no less than outwardly, we are not alone in the world; the sharp separateness of our ego was no more than a strong imposition and delusion; we do not exist in ourselves, we do not really live apart in an inner privacy or solitude. Our mind is a receiving, developing and modifying machine into which there is being constantly passed from moment to moment a ceaseless foreign flux, a streaming mass of disparate materials from above, from below, from outside. Much more than half our thoughts and feelings are not our own in the sense that they take form out of ourselves; of hardly anything can it be said that it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our life and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made use offer the manifestation of their forms and forces. The difficulty of our separate salvation is immensely increased by this complexity and manifold openness and subjection to tile in-streaming energies of the universe. Of all this we have to take account, to deal with it, to know what is the secret stuff of our nature and its constituent and resultant motions and to create in it all a divine centre and a true harmony and luminous order. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 1.02, #KEYS
82:the ways of the Bhakta and man of Knowledge :::
In the ordinary paths of Yoga the method used for dealing with these conflicting materials is direct and simple. One or another of the principal psychological forces in us is selected as our single means for attaining to the Divine; the rest is quieted into inertia or left to starve in its smallness. The Bhakta, seizing on the emotional forces of the being, the intense activities of the heart, abides concentrated in the love of God, gathered up as into a single one-pointed tongue of fire; he is indifferent to the activities of thought, throws behind him the importunities of the reason, cares nothing for the mind's thirst for knowledge. All the knowledge he needs is his faith and the inspirations that well up from a heart in communion with the Divine. He has no use for any will to works that is not turned to the direct worship of the Beloved or the service of the temple. The man of Knowledge, self-confined by a deliberate choice to the force and activities of discriminative thought, finds release in the mind's inward-drawn endeavour. He concentrates on the idea of the self, succeeds by a subtle inner discernment in distinguishing its silent presence amid the veiling activities of Nature, and through the perceptive idea arrives at the concrete spiritual experience. He is indifferent to the play of the emotions, deaf to the hunger-call of passion, closed to the activities of Life, -- the more blessed he, the sooner they fall away from him and leave him free, still and mute, the eternal non-doer. The body is his stumbling-block, the vital functions are his enemies; if their demands can be reduced to a minimum, that is his great good fortune. The endless difficulties that arise from the environing world are dismissed by erecting firmly against them a defence of outer physical and inner spiritual solitude; safe behind a wall of inner silence, he remains impassive and untouched by the world and by others. To be alone with oneself or alone with the Divine, to walk apart with God and his devotees, to entrench oneself in the single self-ward endeavour of the mind or Godward passion of the heart is the trend of these Yogas. The problem is solved by the excision of all but the one central difficulty which pursues the only chosen motive-force; into the midst of the dividing calls of our nature the principle of an exclusive concentration comes sovereignly to our rescue.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration. 76-77,#KEYS
83:A difficulty comes or an arrest in some movement which you have begun or have been carrying on for some time. How is it to be dealt with?—for such arrests are inevitably frequent enough, not only for you, but for everyone who is a seeker; one might almost say that every step forward is followed by an arrest—at least, that is a very common, if not a universal experience. It is to be dealt with by becoming always more quiet, more firm in the will to go through, by opening oneself more and more so that any obstructing non-receptivity in the nature may diminish or disappear, by an affirmation of faith even in the midst of the obscurity, faith in the presence of a Power that is working behind the cloud and the veil, in the guidance of the Guru, by an observation of oneself to find any cause of the arrest, not in a spirit of depression or discouragement but with the will to find out and remove it. This is the only right attitude and, if one is persistent in taking it, the periods of arrest are not abolished,—for that cannot be at this stage,—but greatly shortened and lightened in their incidence. Sometimes these arrests are periods, long or short, of assimilation or unseen preparation, their appearance of sterile immobility is deceptive: in that case, with the right attitude, one can after a time, by opening, by observation, by accumulated experience, begin to feel, to get some inkling of what is being prepared or done. Sometimes it is a period of true obstruction in which the Power at work has to deal with the obstacles in the way, obstacles in oneself, obstacles of the opposing cosmic forces or any other or of all together, and this kind of arrest may be long or short according to the magnitude or obstinacy or complexity of the impediments that are met. But here too the right attitude can alleviate or shorten and, if persistently taken, help to a more radical removal of the difficulties and greatly diminish the necessity of complete arrests hereafter.
On the contrary, an attitude of depression or unfaith in the help or the guidance or in the certitude of the victory of the guiding Power, a shutting up of yourself in the sense of the difficulties impedes the recovery, prolongs the difficulties, helps the obstructions to recur with force instead of progressively diminishing in their incidence. It is an attitude whose persistence or recurrence you must resolutely throw aside if you want to get over the obstruction which you feel so much—which the depressed attitude only makes, while it lasts, more acute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, LOY4, Imperfections and Periods of Arrest,#KEYS
84:How can one become conscious of Divine Love and an instrument of its expression?
First, to become conscious of anything whatever, you must will it. And when I say "will it", I don't mean saying one day, "Oh! I would like it very much", then two days later completely forgetting it.
To will it is a constant, sustained, concentrated aspiration, an almost exclusive occupation of the consciousness. This is the first step. There are many others: a very attentive observation, a very persistent analysis, a very keen discernment of what is pure in the movement and what is not. If you have an imaginative faculty, you may try to imagine and see if your imagination tallies with reality. There are people who believe that it is enough to wake up one day in a particular mood and say, "Ah! How I wish to be conscious of divine Love, how I wish to manifest divine Love...." Note, I don't know how many millions of times one feels within a little stirring up of human instinct and imagines that if one had at one's disposal divine Love, great things could be accomplished, and one says, "I am going to try and find divine Love and we shall see the result." This is the worst possible way. Because, before having even touched the very beginning of realisation you have spoilt the result. You must take up your search with a purity of aspiration and surrender which in themselves are already difficult to acquire. You must have worked much on yourself only to be ready to aspire to this Love. If you look at yourself very sincerely, very straight, you will see that as soon as you begin to think of Love it is always your little inner tumult which starts whirling. All that aspires in you wants certain vibrations. It is almost impossible, without being far advanced on the yogic path, to separate the vital essence, the vital vibration from your conception of Love. What I say is founded on an assiduous experience of human beings. Well, for you, in the state in which you are, as you are, if you had a contact with pure divine Love, it would seem to you colder than ice, or so far-off, so high that you would not be able to breathe; it would be like the mountain-top where you would feel frozen and find it difficult to breathe, so very far would it be from what you normally feel. Divine Love, if not clothed with a psychic or vital vibration, is difficult for a human being to perceive. One can have an impression of grace, of a grace which is something so far, so high, so pure, so impersonal that... yes, one can have the feeling of grace, but it is with difficulty that one feels Love.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,#KEYS
85:
"Without conscious occult powers, is it possible to help or protect from a distance somebody in difficulty or danger? If so, what is the practical procedure?"
Then a sub-question:
"What can thought do?"
We are not going to speak of occult processes at all; although, to tell the truth, everything that happens in the invisible world is occult, by definition. But still, practically, there are two processes which do not exclude but complete each other, but which may be used separately according to one's preference.
It is obvious that thought forms a part of one of the methods, quite an important part. I have already told you several times that if one thinks clearly and powerfully, one makes a mental formation, and that every mental formation is an entity independent of its fashioner, having its own life and tending to realise itself in the mental world - I don't mean that you see your formation with your physical eyes, but it exists in the mental world, it has its own particular independent existence. If you have made a formation with a definite aim, its whole life will tend to the realisation of this aim. Therefore, if you want to help someone at a distance, you have only to formulate very clearly, very precisely and strongly the kind of help you want to give and the result you wish to obtain. That will have its effect. I cannot say that it will be all-powerful, for the mental world is full of innumerable formations of this kind and naturally they clash and contradict one another; hence the strongest and the most persistent will have the best of it.
Now, what is it that gives strength and persistence to mental formations? - It is emotion and will. If you know how to add to your mental formation an emotion, affection, tenderness, love, and an intensity of will, a dynamism, it will have a much greater chance of success. That is the first method. It is within the scope of all those who know how to think, and even more of those who know how to love. But as I said, the power is limited and there is great competition in that world.
Therefore, even if one has no knowledge at all but has trust in the divine Grace, if one has the faith that there is something in the world like the divine Grace, and that this something can answer a prayer, an aspiration, an invocation, then, after making one's mental formation, if one offers it to the Grace and puts one's trust in it, asks it to intervene and has the faith that it will intervene, then indeed one has a chance of success.
Try, and you will surely see the result.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, 253,#KEYS
86:10000 :::
The Only Way Out:
... Once you have no more desires, no more attachments, once you have given up all necessity of receiving a reward from human beings, whoever they are - knowing that the only reward that is worth getting is the one that comes from the Supreme and that never fails - once you give up attachment to all exterior beings and things, you at once feel in your heart this Presence, this Force, this Grace that is always with you. And there is no other remedy. It's the only remedy, for everybody without exception. To all those who suffer, for the same thing that has to be said: all suffering is the sign that the surrender is not total. Then, when you feel in you a 'bang' like that, instead of saying, 'Oh, this is bad' or 'This circumstance is difficult,' you say, 'My surrender is not perfect.' Then it's all right. And then you feel the Grace that helps you and leads you, and you go on. And one day you emerge into that peace that nothing can trouble.
You answer to all the contrary forces, the contrary movements, the attacks, the misunderstandings, the bad wills, with the same smile that comes from full confidence in the Divine Grace. And that is the only way out, there is no other.
But where to get such a strength?
Within you. The Divine Presence is in you. It is in you. You look for it outside; look inside. It is in you. The Presence is there. You want the appreciation of others to get strength - you will never get it. The strength is in you. If you want, you can aspire for what seems to you the supreme goal, supreme light, supreme knowledge, supreme love. But it is in you - otherwise you would never be able to contact it. If you go deep enough inside you, you will find it there, like a flame that is always burning straight up. And don't believe that it is difficult to do. It is because the look is always turned outside that you don't feel the Presence. But if, instead of looking outside for support, you concentrate and you pray - inside, to the supreme knowledge - to know at each moment what is to be done, the way to do it, and if you give all you are, all you do in order to acquire perfection, you will feel that the support is always there, always guiding, showing the way. And if there is a difficulty, then instead of wanting to fight, you hand it over, hand it over to the supreme wisdom to deal with it - to deal with all the bad wills, all the misunderstandings, all the bad reactions. If you surrender completely, it is no more your concern: it's the concern of the Supreme who takes it up and knows better than anybody else what is to be done. That is the only way out, only way out. There, my child
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, [T1],#KEYS
87:Sri Aurobindo tells us that surrender is the first and absolute condition for doing the yoga. Therefore it is not merely one of the required qualities, it is the very first indispensable attitude for commencing the yoga.
If you are not decided to make a total surrender, you cannot begin. But to make your surrender total, all the other qualities are necessary: sincerity, faith, devotion and aspiration.
And I add another one : endurance. Because if you are not able to face difficulties without getting discouraged, without giving up under the pretext that it is too difficult, if you are not able to receive blows and continue all the same, to "pocket" them, as it is said,—you receive blows because of your defects : you put them into your pocket and continue to march on without faltering; if you cannot do that with endurance, you will not go very far; at the first turning, when you lose sight of the little habitual life, you despair and give up the game.
The most material form of endurance is perseverance. Unless you are resolved to begin the same thing over again a thousand times if needed, you will arrive nowhere.
People come to me in despair : "But I thought it had been done, and I have to begin again !" And if they are told, "But it is nothing, you have to begin probably a hundred times, two hundred times, a thousand times", they lose all courage.
You take one step forward and you believe you are solid, but there will be always something that will bring about the same difficulty a little farther ahead.
You believe you have solved the problem, but will have to solve it again, it will present itself with just a little difference in its appearance, but it will be the same problem.
Thus there are people who have a fine experience and they exclaim, "Now, it is done !" Then things settle down, begin to fade, go behind a veil, and all on a sudden, something quite unexpected, a thing absolutely commonplace, that appears to be of no interest at all, comes before them and closes up the road. Then you lament: "Of what use is this progress that I have made, if I am to begin again !
Why is it so? I made an effort, I succeeded, I arrived at something and now it is as if I had done nothing. It is hopeless". This is because there is still the "I" and this "I" has no endurance.
If you have endurance, you say : "All right, I will begin again and again as long as necessary, a thousand times, ten thousand times, a million times, if necessary, but I will go to the end and nothing can stop me on the way".
That is very necessary.
Now, to sum up, we will put at the head of our list surrender. That is to say, we accept the fact that one must, in order to do the integral yoga, take the resolution of surrendering oneself wholly to the Divine. There is no other way, it is the way. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
88:3. Conditions internal and external that are most essential for meditation. There are no essential external conditions, but solitude and seculsion at the time of meditation as well as stillness of the body are helpful, sometimes almost necessary to the beginning. But one should not be bound by external conditions. Once the habit of meditation is formed, it should be made possible to do it in all circumstances, lying, sitting, walking, alone, in company, in silence or in the midst of noise etc.
The first internal condition necessary is concentration of the will against the obstacles to meditation, i.e. wandering of the mind, forgetfulness, sleep, physical and nervous impatience and restlessness etc. If the difficulty in meditation is that thoughts of all kinds come in, that is not due to hostile forces but to the ordinary nature of the human mind. All sadhaks have this difficulty and with many it lasts for a very long time. There are several was of getting rid of it. One of them is to look at the thoughts and observe what is the nature of the human mind as they show it but not to give any sanction and to let them run down till they come to a standstill - this is a way recommended by Vivekananda in his Rajayoga. Another is to look at the thoughts as not one's own, to stand back as the witness Purusha and refuse the sanction - the thoughts are regarded as things coming from outside, from Prakriti, and they must be felt as if they were passers-by crossing the mind-space with whom one has no connection and in whom one takes no interest. In this way it usually happens that after the time the mind divides into two, a part which is the mental witness watching and perfectly undisturbed and quiet and a part in which the thoughts cross or wander. Afterwards one can proceed to silence or quiet the Prakriti part also. There is a third, an active method by which one looks to see where the thoughts come from and finds they come not from oneself, but from outside the head as it were; if one can detect them coming, then, before enter, they have to be thrown away altogether. This is perhaps the most difficult way and not all can do it, but if it can be done it is the shortest and most powerful road to silence. It is not easy to get into the Silence. That is only possible by throwing out all mental-vital activities. It is easier to let the Silence descend into you, i.e., to open yourself and let it descend. The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of efforts to pull down the Power or the Silence but keeping only a silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active one has to learn to look at it, drawn back and not giving sanction from within, until its habitual or mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. if it is too persistent, a steady rejection without strain or struggle is the one thing to be done.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes,#KEYS
89:What do you mean by these words: 'When you are in difficulty, widen yourself'?
I am speaking, of course, of difficulties on the path of yoga, incomprehension, limitations, things like obstacles, which prevent you from advancing. And when I say "widen yourself", I mean widen your consciousness.
Difficulties always arise from the ego, that is, from your more or less egoistic personal reaction to circumstances, events and people around you, to the conditions of your life. They also come from that feeling of being closed up in a sort of shell, which prevents your consciousness from uniting with higher and vaster realities.
One may very well think that one wants to be vast, wants to be universal, that all is the expression of the Divine, that one must have no egoism - one may think all sorts of things - but that is not necessarily a cure, for very often one knows what one ought to do, and yet one doesn't do it, for one reason or another.
But if, when you have to face anguish, suffering, revolt, pain or a feeling of helplessness - whatever it may be, all the things that come to you on the path and which precisely are your difficulties-if physically, that is to say, in your body- consciousness, you can have the feeling of widening yourself, one could say of unfolding yourself - you feel as it were all folded up, one fold on another like a piece of cloth which is folded and refolded and folded again - so if you have this feeling that what is holding and strangling you and making you suffer or paralysing your movement, is like a too closely, too tightly folded piece of cloth or like a parcel that is too well-tied, too well-packed, and that slowly, gradually, you undo all the folds and stretch yourself out exactly as one unfolds a piece of cloth or a sheet of paper and spreads it out flat, and you lie flat and make yourself very wide, as wide as possible, spreading yourself out as far as you can, opening yourself and stretching out in an attitude of complete passivity with what I could call "the face to the light": not curling back upon your difficulty, doubling up on it, shutting it in, so to say, into yourself, but, on the contrary, unfurling yourself as much as you can, as perfectly as you can, putting the difficulty before the Light - the Light which comes from above - if you do that in all the domains, and even if mentally you don't succeed in doing it - for it is sometimes difficult - if you can imagine yourself doing this physically, almost materially, well, when you have finished unfolding yourself and stretching yourself out, you will find that more than three-quarters of the difficulty is gone. And then just a little work of receptivity to the Light and the last quarter will disappear.
This is much easier than struggling against a difficulty with one's thought, for if you begin to discuss with yourself, you will find that there are arguments for and against which are so convincing that it is quite impossible to get out of it without a higher light. Here, you do not struggle against the difficulty, you do not try to convince yourself; ah! you simply stretch out in the Light as though you lay stretched on the sands in the sun. And you let the Light do its work. That's all. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers, Volume-8, page no.286-288),#KEYS
90:
Sweet Mother, how can one feel the divine Presence constantly?
Why not?
But how can one do it?
But I am asking why one should not feel it. Instead of asking the question how to feel it, I ask the question: "What do you do that you don't feel it?" There is no reason not to feel the divine Presence. Once you have felt it, even once, you should be capable of feeling it always, for it is there. It is a fact. It is only our ignorance which makes us unaware of it. But if we become conscious, why should we not always be conscious? Why forget something one has learnt? When one has had the experience, why forget it? It is simply a bad habit, that's all.
You see, there is something which is a fact, that's to say, it is. But we are unaware of it and do not know it. But after we become conscious and know it, why should we still forget it? Does it make sense? It's quite simply because we are not convinced that once one has met the Divine one can't forget Him any more. We are, on the contrary, full of stupid ideas which say, "Oh! Yes, it's very well once like that, but the rest of the time it will be as usual." So there is no reason why it may not begin again.
But if we know that... we did not know something, we were ignorant, then the moment we have the knowledge... I am sincerely asking how one can manage to forget. One might not know something, that is a fact; there are countless things one doesn't know. But the moment one knows them, the minute one has the experience, how can one manage to forget? Within yourself you have the divine Presence, you know nothing about it - for all kinds of reasons, but still the chief reason is that you are in a state of ignorance. Yet suddenly, by a clicking of circumstances, you become conscious of this divine Presence, that is, you are before a fact - it is not imagination, it is a fact, it's something which exists. Then how do you manage to forget it once you have known it?
...
It is because something in us, through cowardice or defeatism, accepts this. If one did not accept it, it wouldn't happen.
Even when everything seems to be suddenly darkened, the flame and the Light are always there. And if one doesn't forget them, one has only to put in front of them the part which is dark; there will perhaps be a battle, there will perhaps be a little difficulty, but it will be something quite transitory; never will you lose your footing. That is why it is said - and it is something true - that to sin through ignorance may have fatal consequences, because when one makes mistakes, well, these mistakes have results, that's obvious, and usually external and material results; but that's no great harm, I have already told you this several times. But when one knows what is true, when one has seen and had the experience of the Truth, to accept the sin again, that is, fall back again into ignorance and obscurity - this is indeed an infinitely more serious mistake. It begins to belong to the domain of ill-will. In any case, it is a sign of slackness and weakness. It means that the will is weak.
So your question is put the other way round. Instead of asking yourself how to keep it, you must ask yourself: how does one not keep it? Not having it, is a state which everybody is in before the moment of knowing; not knowing - one is in that state before knowing. But once one knows one cannot forget. And if one forgets, it means that there is something which consents to the forgetting, it means there is an assent somewhere; otherwise one would not forget.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 403,405,406,#KEYS
91:DHARANA
NOW that we have learnt to observe the mind, so that we know how it works to some extent, and have begun to understand the elements of control, we may try the result of gathering together all the powers of the mind, and attempting to focus them on a single point.
We know that it is fairly easy for the ordinary educated mind to think without much distraction on a subject in which it is much interested. We have the popular phrase, "revolving a thing in the mind"; and as long as the subject is sufficiently complex, as long as thoughts pass freely, there is no great difficulty. So long as a gyroscope is in motion, it remains motionless relatively to its support, and even resists attempts to distract it; when it stops it falls from that position. If the earth ceased to spin round the sun, it would at once fall into the sun. The moment then that the student takes a simple subject - or rather a simple object - and imagines it or visualizes it, he will find that it is not so much his creature as he supposed. Other thoughts will invade the mind, so that the object is altogether forgotten, perhaps for whole minutes at a time; and at other times the object itself will begin to play all sorts of tricks.
Suppose you have chosen a white cross. It will move its bar up and down, elongate the bar, turn the bar oblique, get its arms unequal, turn upside down, grow branches, get a crack around it or a figure upon it, change its shape altogether like an Amoeba, change its size and distance as a whole, change the degree of its illumination, and at the same time change its colour. It will get splotchy and blotchy, grow patterns, rise, fall, twist and turn; clouds will pass over its face. There is no conceivable change of which it is incapable. Not to mention its total disappearance, and replacement by something altogether different!
Any one to whom this experience does not occur need not imagine that he is meditating. It shows merely that he is incapable of concentrating his mind in the very smallest degree. Perhaps a student may go for several days before discovering that he is not meditating. When he does, the obstinacy of the object will infuriate him; and it is only now that his real troubles will begin, only now that Will comes really into play, only now that his manhood is tested. If it were not for the Will-development which he got in the conquest of Asana, he would probably give up. As it is, the mere physical agony which he underwent is the veriest trifle compared with the horrible tedium of Dharana.
For the first week it may seem rather amusing, and you may even imagine you are progressing; but as the practice teaches you what you are doing, you will apparently get worse and worse. Please understand that in doing this practice you are supposed to be seated in Asana, and to have note-book and pencil by your side, and a watch in front of you. You are not to practise at first for more than ten minutes at a time, so as to avoid risk of overtiring the brain. In fact you will probably find that the whole of your willpower is not equal to keeping to a subject at all for so long as three minutes, or even apparently concentrating on it for so long as three seconds, or three-fifths of one second. By "keeping to it at all" is meant the mere attempt to keep to it. The mind becomes so fatigued, and the object so incredibly loathsome, that it is useless to continue for the time being. In Frater P.'s record we find that after daily practice for six months, meditations of four minutes and less are still being recorded.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS
92:In the process of this change there must be by the very necessity of the effort two stages of its working. First, there will be the personal endeavour of the human being, as soon as he becomes aware by his soul, mind, heart of this divine possibility and turns towards it as the true object of life, to prepare himself for it and to get rid of all in him that belongs to a lower working, of all that stands in the way of his opening to the spiritual truth and its power, so as to possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his natural movements into free means of its self-expression. It is by this turn that the self-conscious Yoga aware of its aim begins: there is a new awakening and an upward change of the life motive. So long as there is only an intellectual, ethical and other self-training for the now normal purposes of life which does not travel beyond the ordinary circle of working of mind, life and body, we are still only in the obscure and yet unillumined preparatory Yoga of Nature; we are still in pursuit of only an ordinary human perfection. A spiritual desire of the Divine and of the divine perfection, of a unity with him in all our being and a spiritual perfection in all our nature, is the effective sign of this change, the precursory power of a great integral conversion of our being and living. By personal effort a precursory change, a preliminary conversion can be effected; it amounts to a greater or less spiritualising of our mental motives, our character and temperament, and a mastery, stilling or changed action of the vital and physical life. This converted subjectivity can be made the base of some communion or unity of the soul in mind with the Divine and some partial reflection of the divine nature in the mentality of the human being. That is as far as man can go by his unaided or indirectly aided effort, because that is an effort of mind and mind cannot climb beyond itself permanently: at most it arises to a spiritualised and idealised mentality. If it shoots up beyond that border, it loses hold of itself, loses hold of life, and arrives either at a trance of absorption or a passivity. A greater perfection can only be arrived at by a higher power entering in and taking up the whole action of the being. The second stage of this Yoga will therefore be a persistent giving up of all the action of the nature into the hands of this greater Power, a substitution of its influence, possession and working for the personal effort, until the Divine to whom we aspire becomes the direct master of the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and ideal conversion of the being. Two rules there are that will diminish the difficulty and obviate the danger. One must reject all that comes from the ego, from vital desire, from the mere mind and its presumptuous reasoning incompetence, all that ministers to these agents of the Ignorance. One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the Divine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent ignorance, the dictates of his personal mind unsilenced and unillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find the true inner law and is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment. Whoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and to discern and follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga. A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Integral Perfection [618],#KEYS
93: Sri Aurobindo writes here: "...Few and brief in their visits are the Bright Ones who are willing or permitted to succour." Why?
(1 "The Way", Cent. Vol. 17, p. 40.)
One must go and ask them! But there is a conclusion, the last sentences give a very clear explanation. It is said: "Nay, then, is immortality a plaything to be given lightly to a child, or the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling?" This comes back to the question why the adverse forces have the right to interfere, to harass you. But this is precisely the test necessary for your sincerity. If the way were very easy, everybody would start on the way, and if one could reach the goal without any obstacle and without any effort, everybody would reach the goal, and when one has come to the end, the situation would be the same as when one started, there would be no change. That is, the new world would be exactly what the old has been. It is truly not worth the trouble! Evidently a process of elimination is necessary so that only what is capable of manifesting the new life remains. This is the reason and there is no other, this is the best of reasons. And, you see, it is a tempering, it is the ordeal of fire, only that which can stand it remains absolutely pure; when everything has burnt down, there remains only the little ingot of pure gold. And it is like that. What puts things out very much in all this is the religious idea of fault, sin, redemption. But there is no arbitrary decision! On the contrary, for each one it is the best and most favourable conditions which are given. We were saying the other day that it is only his friends whom God treats with severity; you thought it was a joke, but it is true. It is only to those who are full of hope, who will pass through this purifying flame, that the conditions for attaining the maximum result are given. And the human mind is made in such a way that you may test this; when something extremely unpleasant happens to you, you may tell yourself, "Well, this proves I am worth the trouble of being given this difficulty, this proves there is something in me which can resist the difficulty", and you will notice that instead of tormenting yourself, you rejoice - you will be so happy and so strong that even the most unpleasant things will seem to you quite charming! This is a very easy experiment to make. Whatever the circumstance, if your mind is accustomed to look at it as something favourable, it will no longer be unpleasant for you. This is quite well known; as long as the mind refuses to accept a thing, struggles against it, tries to obstruct it, there are torments, difficulties, storms, inner struggles and all suffering. But the minute the mind says, "Good, this is what has to come, it is thus that it must happen", whatever happens, you are content. There are people who have acquired such control of their mind over their body that they feel nothing; I told you this the other day about certain mystics: if they think the suffering inflicted upon them is going to help them cross the stages in a moment and give them a sort of stepping stone to attain the Realisation, the goal they have put before them, union with the Divine, they no longer feel the suffering at all. Their body is as it were galvanised by the mental conception. This has happened very often, it is a very common experience among those who truly have enthusiasm. And after all, if one must for some reason or other leave one's body and take a new one, is it not better to make of one's death something magnificent, joyful, enthusiastic, than to make it a disgusting defeat? Those who cling on, who try by every possible means to delay the end even by a minute or two, who give you an example of frightful anguish, show that they are not conscious of their soul.... After all, it is perhaps a means, isn't it? One can change this accident into a means; if one is conscious one can make a beautiful thing of it, a very beautiful thing, as of everything. And note, those who do not fear it, who are not anxious, who can die without any sordidness are those who never think about it, who are not haunted all the time by this "horror" facing them which they must escape and which they try to push as far away from them as they can. These, when the occasion comes, can lift their head, smile and say, "Here I am."
It is they who have the will to make the best possible use of their life, it is they who say, "I shall remain here as long as it is necessary, to the last second, and I shall not lose one moment to realise my goal"; these, when the necessity comes, put up the best show. Why? - It is very simple, because they live in their ideal, the truth of their ideal; because that is the real thing for them, the very reason of their being, and in all things they can see this ideal, this reason of existence, and never do they come down into the sordidness of material life.
So, the conclusion:
One must never wish for death.
One must never will to die.
One must never be afraid to die.
And in all circumstances one must will to exceed oneself. ~ The Mother, Question and Answers, Volume-4, page no.353-355,#KEYS
94:Chapter LXXXII: Epistola Penultima: The Two Ways to Reality
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
How very sensible of you, though I admit somewhat exacting!
You write-Will you tell me exactly why I should devote so much of my valuable time to subjects like Magick and Yoga.
That is all very well. But you ask me to put it in syllogistic form. I have no doubt this can be done, though the task seems somewhat complicated. I think I will leave it to you to construct your series of syllogisms yourself from the arguments of this letter.
In your main question the operative word is "valuable. Why, I ask, in my turn, should you consider your time valuable? It certainly is not valuable unless the universe has a meaning, and what is more, unless you know what that meaning is-at least roughly-it is millions to one that you will find yourself barking up the wrong tree.
First of all let us consider this question of the meaning of the universe. It is its own evidence to design, and that design intelligent design. There is no question of any moral significance-"one man's meat is another man's poison" and so on. But there can be no possible doubt about the existence of some kind of intelligence, and that kind is far superior to anything of which we know as human.
How then are we to explore, and finally to interpret this intelligence?
It seems to me that there are two ways and only two. Imagine for a moment that you are an orphan in charge of a guardian, inconceivably learned from your point of view.
Suppose therefore that you are puzzled by some problem suitable to your childish nature, your obvious and most simple way is to approach your guardian and ask him to enlighten you. It is clearly part of his function as guardian to do his best to help you. Very good, that is the first method, and close parallel with what we understand by the word Magick.
We are bothered by some difficulty about one of the elements-say Fire-it is therefore natural to evoke a Salamander to instruct you on the difficult point. But you must remember that your Holy Guardian Angel is not only far more fully instructed than yourself on every point that you can conceive, but you may go so far as to say that it is definitely his work, or part of his work; remembering always that he inhabits a sphere or plane which is entirely different from anything of which you are normally aware.
To attain to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is consequently without doubt by far the simplest way by which you can yourself approach that higher order of being.
That, then, is a clearly intelligible method of procedure. We call it Magick.
It is of course possible to strengthen the link between him and yourself so that in course of time you became capable of moving and, generally speaking, operating on that plane which is his natural habitat.
There is however one other way, and one only, as far as I can see, of reaching this state.
It is at least theoretically possible to exalt the whole of your own consciousness until it becomes as free to move on that exalted plane as it is for him. You should note, by the way, that in this case the postulation of another being is not necessary. There is no way of refuting the solipsism if you feel like that. Personally I cannot accede to its axiom. The evidence for an external universe appears to me perfectly adequate.
Still there is no extra charge for thinking on those lines if you so wish.
I have paid a great deal of attention in the course of my life to the method of exalting the human consciousness in this way; and it is really quite legitimate to identify my teaching with that of the Yogis.
I must however point out that in the course of my instruction I have given continual warnings as to the dangers of this line of research. For one thing there is no means of checking your results in the ordinary scientific sense. It is always perfectly easy to find a subjective explanation of any phenomenon; and when one considers that the greatest of all the dangers in any line of research arise from egocentric vanity, I do not think I have exceeded my duty in anything that I have said to deter students from undertaking so dangerous a course as Yoga.
It is, of course, much safer if you are in a position to pursue in the Indian Jungles, provided that your health will stand the climate and also, I must say, unless you have a really sound teacher on whom you can safely rely. But then, if we once introduce a teacher, why not go to the Fountain-head and press towards the Knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel?
In any case your Indian teacher will ultimately direct you to seek guidance from that source, so it seems to me that you have gone to a great deal of extra trouble and incurred a great deal of unnecessary danger by not leaving yourself in the first place in the hands of the Holy Guardian Angel.
In any case there are the two methods which stand as alternatives. I do not know of any third one which can be of any use whatever. Logically, since you have asked me to be logical, there is certainly no third way; there is the external way of Magick, and the internal way of Yoga: there you have your alternatives, and there they cease.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666 ~ Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears,#KEYS
95:summary of the entire process of psychic awakening :::
You have asked what is the discipline to be followed in order to convert the mental seeking into a living spiritual experience. The first necessity is the practice of concentration of your consciousness within yourself. The ordinary human mind has an activity on the surface which veils the real Self. But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real Self and of a larger deeper truth of nature, can realise the Self and liberate and transform the nature. To quiet the surface mind and begin to live within is the object of this concentration. Of this true consciousness other then the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The concentration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it an d all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and Consciousness which is waiting above us. To concentrate in the heart centre with the offering of oneself to the Divine and the aspiration for this inward opening and for the Presence in the heart is the first way and, if it can be done, the natural beginning; for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way.
That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind. After a time one feels the consciousness rising upward and it the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a centre above the head where it is liberated into the Infinite. There it behind to come into contact with the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Bliss, to enter into that and become that, to feel the descent of these things into the nature. To concentrate in the head with the aspiration for quietude in the mind and the realisation of the Self and Divine above is the second way of concentration. It is important, however, to remember that the concentration of the consciousness in the head is only a preparation for its rising to the centre above; otherwise, one may get shut up in one's own mind and its experiences or at best attain only to a reflection of the Truth above instead of rising into the spiritual transcendence to live there. For some the mental consciousness is easier, for some the concentration in the heart centre; some are capable of doing both alternatively - but to begin with the heart centre, if one can do it, is the more desirable.
The other side of the discipline is with regard to the activities of the nature, of the mind, of the life-self or vital, of the physical being. Here the principle is to accord the nature with the inner realisation so that one may not be divided into two discordant parts. There are here several disciplines or processes possible. One is to offer all the activities to the Divine and call for the inner guidance and the taking up of one's nature by a Higher Power. If there is the inward soul-opening, if the psychic being comes forward, then there is no great difficulty - there comes with it a psychic discrimination, a constant intimation, finally a governance which discloses and quietly and patiently removes all imperfections, bring the right mental and vital movements and reshapes the physical consciousness also. Another method is to stand back detached from the movements of the mind, life, physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part of our real being; in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within us - inner mental, inner vital, inner physical - silent, calm, unbound, unattached which reflects the true Self above and can be its direct representative; from this inner silent Being proceeds a rejection of all that is to be rejected, an acceptance only of what can be kept and transformed, an inmost Will to perfection or a call to the Divine Power to do at each step what is necessary for the change of the Nature. It can also open mind, life and body to the inmost psychic entity and its guiding influence or its direct guidance. In most cases these two methods emerge and work together and finally fuse into one. But one can being with either, the one that one feels most natural and easy to follow.
Finally, in all difficulties where personal effort is hampered, the help of the Teacher can intervene and bring above what is needed for the realisation or for the immediate step that is necessary.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, 6, {871},#KEYS
96:[an Integral conception of the Divine :::
But on that which as yet we know not how shall we concentrate? And yet we cannot know the Divine unless we have achieved this concentration of our being upon him. A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge. It is not enough to devote ourselves by the reading of Scriptures or by the stress of philosophical reasoning to an intellectual understanding of the Divine; for at the end of our long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought about the Infinite and yet we might not know him at all. This intellectual preparation can indeed be the first stage in a powerful Yoga, but it is not indispensable : it is not a step which all need or can be called upon to take. Yoga would be impossible, except for a very few, if the intellectual figure of knowledge arrived at by the speculative or meditative Reason were its indispensable condition or a binding preliminary. All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind. This support can be reached through an insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart. Any one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must in the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely founded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be lit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is an awakening to the soul's call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose. Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man's avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice.
But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 82-83 [T1],#KEYS
97:The Two Paths Of Yoga :::
14 April 1929 - What are the dangers of Yoga? Is it especially dangerous to the people of the West? Someone has said that Yoga may be suitable for the East, but it has the effect of unbalancing the Western mind.
Yoga is not more dangerous to the people of the West than to those of the East. Everything depends upon the spirit with which you approach it. Yoga does become dangerous if you want it for your own sake, to serve a personal end. It is not dangerous, on the contrary, it is safety and security itself, if you go to it with a sense of its sacredness, always remembering that the aim is to find the Divine.
Dangers and difficulties come in when people take up Yoga not for the sake of the Divine, but because they want to acquire power and under the guise of Yoga seek to satisfy some ambition. if you cannot get rid of ambition, do not touch the thing. It is fire that burns.
There are two paths of Yoga, one of tapasya (discipline), and the other of surrender. The path of tapasya is arduous. Here you rely solely upon yourself, you proceed by your own strength. You ascend and achieve according to the measure of your force. There is always the danger of falling down. And once you fall, you lie broken in the abyss and there is hardly a remedy. The other path, the path of surrender, is safe and sure. It is here, however, that the Western people find their difficulty. They have been taught to fear and avoid all that threatens their personal independence. They have imbibed with their mothers' milk the sense of individuality. And surrender means giving up all that. In other words, you may follow, as Ramakrishna says, either the path of the baby monkey or that of the baby cat. The baby monkey holds to its mother in order to be carried about and it must hold firm, otherwise if it loses its grip, it falls. On the other hand, the baby cat does not hold to its mother, but is held by the mother and has no fear nor responsibility; it has nothing to do but to let the mother hold it and cry ma ma.
If you take up this path of surrender fully and sincerely, there is no more danger or serious difficulty. The question is to be sincere. If you are not sincere, do not begin Yoga. If you were dealing in human affairs, then you could resort to deception; but in dealing with the Divine there is no possibility of deception anywhere. You can go on the Path safely when you are candid and open to the core and when your only end is to realise and attain the Divine and to be moved by the Divine. There is another danger; it is in connection with the sex impulses. Yoga in its process of purification will lay bare and throw up all hidden impulses and desires in you. And you must learn not to hide things nor leave them aside, you have to face them and conquer and remould them. The first effect of Yoga, however, is to take away the mental control, and the hungers that lie dormant are suddenly set free, they rush up and invade the being. So long as this mental control has not been replaced by the Divine control, there is a period of transition when your sincerity and surrender will be put to the test. The strength of such impulses as those of sex lies usually in the fact that people take too much notice of them; they protest too vehemently and endeavour to control them by coercion, hold them within and sit upon them. But the more you think of a thing and say, "I don't want it, I don't want it", the more you are bound to it. What you should do is to keep the thing away from you, to dissociate from it, take as little notice of it as possible and, even if you happen to think of it, remain indifferent and unconcerned. The impulses and desires that come up by the pressure of Yoga should be faced in a spirit of detachment and serenity, as something foreign to yourself or belonging to the outside world. They should be offered to the Divine, so that the Divine may take them up and transmute them. If you have once opened yourself to the Divine, if the power of the Divine has once come down into you and yet you try to keep to the old forces, you prepare troubles and difficulties and dangers for yourself. You must be vigilant and see that you do not use the Divine as a cloak for the satisfaction of your desires. There are many self-appointed Masters, who do nothing but that. And then when you are off the straight path and when you have a little knowledge and not much power, it happens that you are seized by beings or entities of a certain type, you become blind instruments in their hands and are devoured by them in the end. Wherever there is pretence, there is danger; you cannot deceive God. Do you come to God saying, "I want union with you" and in your heart meaning "I want powers and enjoyments"? Beware! You are heading straight towards the brink of the precipice. And yet it is so easy to avoid all catastrophe. Become like a child, give yourself up to the Mother, let her carry you, and there is no more danger for you.
This does not mean that you have not to face other kinds of difficulties or that you have not to fight and conquer any obstacles at all. Surrender does not ensure a smooth and unruffled and continuous progression. The reason is that your being is not yet one, nor your surrender absolute and complete. Only a part of you surrenders; and today it is one part and the next day it is another. The whole purpose of the Yoga is to gather all the divergent parts together and forge them into an undivided unity. Till then you cannot hope to be without difficulties - difficulties, for example, like doubt or depression or hesitation. The whole world is full of the poison. You take it in with every breath. If you exchange a few words with an undesirable man or even if such a man merely passes by you, you may catch the contagion from him. It is sufficient for you to come near a place where there is plague in order to be infected with its poison; you need not know at all that it is there. You can lose in a few minutes what it has taken you months to gain. So long as you belong to humanity and so long as you lead the ordinary life, it does not matter much if you mix with the people of the world; but if you want the divine life, you will have to be exceedingly careful about your company and your environment.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
98:Depression, unless one has a strong will, suggests, "This is not worth while, one may have to wait a lifetime." As for enthusiasm, it expects to see the vital transformed overnight: "I am not going to have any difficulty henceforth, I am going to advance rapidly on the path of yoga, I am going to gain the divine consciousness without any difficulty." There are some other difficulties.... One needs a little time, much perseverance. So the vital, after a few hours - perhaps a few days, perhaps a few months - says to itself: "We haven't gone very far with our enthusiasm, has anything been really done? Doesn't this movement leave us just where we were, perhaps worse than we were, a little troubled, a little disturbed? Things are no longer what they were, they are not yet what they ought to be. It is very tiresome, what I am doing." And then, if one pushes a little more, here's this gentleman saying, "Ah, no! I have had enough of it, leave me alone. I don't want to move, I shall stay in my corner, I won't trouble you, but don't bother me!" And so one has not gone very much farther than before.
This is one of the big obstacles which must be carefully avoided. As soon as there is the least sign of discontentment, of annoyance, the vital must be spoken to in this way, "My friend, you are going to keep calm, you are going to do what you are asked to do, otherwise you will have to deal with me." And to the other, the enthusiast who says, "Everything must be done now, immediately", your reply is, "Calm yourself a little, your energy is excellent, but it must not be spent in five minutes. We shall need it for a long time, keep it carefully and, as it is wanted, I shall call upon your goodwill. You will show that you are full of goodwill, you will obey, you won't grumble, you will not protest, you will not revolt, you will say 'yes, yes', you will make a little sacrifice when asked, you will say 'yes' wholeheartedly."
So we get started on the path. But the road is very long. Many things happen on the way. Suddenly one thinks one has overcome an obstacle; I say "thinks", because though one has overcome it, it is not totally overcome. I am going to take a very obvious instance, of a very simple observation. Someone has found that his vital is uncontrollable and uncontrolled, that it gets furious for nothing and about nothing. He starts working to teach it not to get carried away, not to flare up, to remain calm and bear the shocks of life without reacting violently. If one does this cheerfully, it goes quite quickly. (Note this well, it is very important: when you have to deal with your vital take care to remain cheerful, otherwise you will get into trouble.) One remains cheerful, that is, when one sees the fury rise, one begins to laugh. Instead of being depressed and saying, "Ah! In spite of all my effort it is beginning all over again", one begins to laugh and says, "Well, well! One hasn't yet seen the end of it. Look now, aren't you ridiculous, you know quite well that you are being ridiculous! Is it worthwhile getting angry?" One gives it this lesson cheerfully. And really, after a while it doesn't get angry again, it is quiet - and one relaxes one's attention. One thinks the difficulty has been overcome, one thinks a result has at last been reached: "My vital does not trouble me any longer, it does not get angry now, everything is going fine." And the next day, one loses one's temper. It is then one must be careful, it is then one must not say, "Here we are, it's no use, I shall never achieve anything, all my efforts are futile; all this is an illusion, it is impossible." On the contrary, one must say, "I wasn't vigilant enough." One must wait long, very long, before one can say, "Ah! It is done and finished." Sometimes one must wait for years, many years....
I am not saying this to discourage you, but to give you patience and perseverance - for there is a moment when you do arrive. And note that the vital is a small part of your being - a very important part, we have said that it is the dynamism, the realising energy, it is very important; but it is only a small part. And the mind!... which goes wandering, which must be pulled back by all the strings to be kept quiet! You think this can be done overnight? And your body?... You have a weakness, a difficulty, sometimes a small chronic illness, nothing much, but still it is a nuisance, isn't it? You want to get rid of it. You make efforts, you concentrate; you work upon it, establish harmony, and you think it is finished, and then.... Take, for instance, people who have the habit of coughing; they can't control themselves or almost can't. It is not serious but it is bothersome, and there seems to be no reason why it should ever stop. Well, one tells oneself, "I am going to control this." One makes an effort - a yogic effort, not a material one - one brings down consciousness, force, and stops the cough. And one thinks, "The body has forgotten how to cough." And it is a great thing when the body has forgotten, truly one can say, "I am cured." But unfortunately it is not always true, for this goes down into the subconscient and, one day, when the balance of forces is not so well established, when the strength is not the same, it begins again. And one laments, "I believed that it was over! I had succeeded and told myself, 'It is true that spiritual power has an action upon the body, it is true that something can be done', and there! it is not true. And yet it was a small thing, and I who want to conquer immortality! How will I succeed?... For years I have been free from this small thing and here it is beginning anew!" It is then that you must be careful. You must arm yourself with an endless patience and endurance. You do a thing once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times if necessary, but you do it till it gets done. And not done only here and there, but everywhere and everywhere at the same time. This is the great problem one sets oneself. That is why, to those who come to tell me very light-heartedly, "I want to do yoga", I reply, "Think it over, one may do the yoga for a number of years without noticing the least result. But if you want to do it, you must persist and persist with such a will that you should be ready to do it for ten lifetimes, a hundred lifetimes if necessary, in order to succeed." I do not say it will be like that, but the attitude must be like that. Nothing must discourage you; for there are all the difficulties of ignorance of the different states of being, to which are added the endless malice and the unbounded cunning of the hostile forces in the world.... They are there, do you know why? They have been.... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,#KEYS
99:The Science of Living
To know oneself and to control oneself
AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection.
All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness.
There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill.
Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness.
Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us.
In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.
When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
Bulletin, November 1950
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
100:Mental Education
OF ALL lines of education, mental education is the most widely known and practised, yet except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make it something very incomplete and in the end quite insufficient.
Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language.
A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases. Normally these phases follow one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may alternate or even proceed simultaneously. These five phases, in brief, are:
(1) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
(2) Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
(3) Organisation of one's ideas around a central idea, a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life.
(4) Thought-control, rejection of undesirable thoughts, to become able to think only what one wants and when one wants.
(5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.
It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be given.
Undeniably, what most impedes mental progress in children is the constant dispersion of their thoughts. Their thoughts flutter hither and thither like butterflies and they have to make a great effort to fix them. Yet this capacity is latent in them, for when you succeed in arousing their interest, they are capable of a good deal of attention. By his ingenuity, therefore, the educator will gradually help the child to become capable of a sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete absorption in the work in hand. All methods that can develop this faculty of attention from games to rewards are good and can all be utilised according to the need and the circumstances. But it is the psychological action that is most important and the sovereign method is to arouse in the child an interest in what you want to teach him, a liking for work, a will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more.
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
You will gradually show the child that everything can become an interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy.
In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his mind, one should see not only that he studies many varied topics, but above all that a single subject is approached in various ways, so that the child understands in a practical manner that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual problem, of considering it and solving it. This will remove all rigidity from his brain and at the same time it will make his thinking richer and more supple and prepare it for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental learning and, little by little, an aspiration for a truer source of knowledge will awaken in him.
Indeed, as the child grows older and progresses in his studies, his mind too ripens and becomes more and more capable of forming general ideas, and with them almost always comes a need for certitude, for a knowledge that is stable enough to form the basis of a mental construction which will permit all the diverse and scattered and often contradictory ideas accumulated in his brain to be organised and put in order. This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's thoughts. All contradictions can be transformed into complements, but for that one must discover the higher idea that will have the power to bring them harmoniously together. It is always good to consider every problem from all possible standpoints so as to avoid partiality and exclusiveness; but if the thought is to be active and creative, it must, in every case, be the natural and logical synthesis of all the points of view adopted. And if you want to make the totality of your thoughts into a dynamic and constructive force, you must also take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of this synthesis. The higher and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise.
It goes without saying that this work of organisation cannot be done once and for all. The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of new knowledge, enlarge its frame-work to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and reorganise its thoughts, so that each of them may find its true place in relation to the others and the whole remain harmonious and orderly.
All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great that they appear almost insurmountable.
And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions.
For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.
But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.
The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep.
When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity. Bulletin, November 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
101:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
102:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.
The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.
The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.
It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.
As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.
And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.
It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!
This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.
My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?
A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.
Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.
Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.
If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.
First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!
Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"
I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.
Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.
These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."
Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.
If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'
The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passage
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae.
Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?
And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?
And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.
I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!
"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,
'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'
Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,
Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vain
Upon the axis of its pain,
Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,
Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."
Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!
One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.
But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!
'Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Difficulty is what wakes up the genius. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 2:There is no excellency without difficulty. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 3:The best way out of a difficulty is through it. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 4:In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 5:Settle one difficulty, and you keep a hundred away. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 6:Where there is no difficulty there is no praise. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 7:Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 8:A [psychological] difficulty is not an impossibility. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 9:Never trust advice from a man in the throes of his own difficulty. ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove 10:I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 11:The divine power moves with difficulty, but at the same time surely. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 12:I attempt a difficult work; but there is no excellence without difficulty. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 13:Scientists have a grave difficulty dealing with the reality of God. ~ m-scott-peck, @wisdomtrove 14:It is not possible to refer a complex difficulty to a single cause. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 15:The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 16:The greatest difficulty always comes right before the birth of a dream. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 17:the-ultimate-path-is-without-difficulty-just-avoid-picking-choosing ~ jianzhi-sengcan, @wisdomtrove 18:The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo. ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 19:The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 20:The difficulty is that we try to perfect others before we perfect ourselves. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 21:The ultimate Path is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing. ~ jianzhi-sengcan, @wisdomtrove 22:Difficulty on the way to victory is opportunity for God to work ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 23:Resolve in advance to persist until you succeed, no matter what the difficulty. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 24:He has fought a good fight and has had to face every difficulty except popularity. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 25:The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 26:The great difficulty with politics is, that there are no established principles. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 27:The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 28:The explanation avails nothing, which in leading us from one difficulty involves us in another. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 29:When a man feels the difficulty of doing, can he be other than cautious and slow in speaking? ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 30:Everyone my age had written a novel and I was still having difficulty writing a paragraph. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 31:The superior man makes the difficulty to be overcome his first interest; success only comes later. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 32:It is not the path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which is the path. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 33:The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first interest; success only comes later. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 34:The short successes that can be gained in a brief time and without difficulty, are not worth much. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 35:The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly nothing. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 36:In a difficulty in the company of the central and the instigator, be successful your central. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 37:Emotion is always new and the word has always served; therein lies the difficulty of expressing emotion. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 38:For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 39:The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 40:The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 41:The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 42:Divide each difficulty at hand into as many pieces as possible and as could be required to better solve them. ~ rene-descartes, @wisdomtrove 43:Your rewards in life will be determined by what you do, how well you do it, and the difficulty of replacing you. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 44:A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 45:I think because I have great difficulty saying the word, & 46:If you find yourself in some difficulty, step aside, and allow Buddha to take your place. The Buddha is in you. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 47:A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly. ~ jean-vanier, @wisdomtrove 48:Morality is good, and is accepted of God, as far as it goes; but the difficulty is, it does not go far enough. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 49:If we are to go only halfway or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty... it would be better to not go at all. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 50:After every difficulty, ask yourself two questions: & 51:Faith is the ability to see things that don't yet exist. Faith, though, can turn difficulty into reality, positive reality. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 52:A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 53:Knightley seemed to be trying not to smile; and succeeded without difficulty, upon Mrs. Elton's beginning to talk to him. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 54:Out of every difficulty Omnipotence can bring us, only let us in childlike confidence cast our burden upon the Lord. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 55:The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skilful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. ~ epictetus, @wisdomtrove 56:The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 57:The world is impermanent. [All things change. Knowing this helps you see the end of any difficulty and thereby have hope.] ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 58:In trying to count our many blessings the difficulty is not to find things to count, but to find time to enumerate them all. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 59:What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with the determination to get out of it all the good there is. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 60:When someone we love is having difficulty and is giving us a bad time, it's better to explore the cause than to criticize the action. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 61:Your self-sacrificin g devotion to your purpose in life and your unwavering faith will carry you through times of difficulty. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 62:When we complain about our current situation, we remain in it; when we praise God in the midst of difficulty, He raises us out of it. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 63:When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I'm writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 64:How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there? ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 65:The greater the Difficulty the more Glory in surmounting it, and the loss of false Joys secures to us a much better Possession of real ones. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 66:He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 67:If you have difficulty feeling your emotions, start by focusing attention on the inner energy field of your body. Feel the body from within. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 68:The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior. ~ m-scott-peck, @wisdomtrove 69:Jealousy is a painful passion; yet without some share of it, the agreeable affection of love has difficulty to subsist in its full force and violence. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 70:The light around someone who speaks truth, who consistently acts with compassion for all, even in great difficulty, is visible to all around them. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 71:When all combine in every way to make everything easier, people will want difficulty. I conceived it as my task to make difficulties everywhere. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 72:The difficulty of explaining ‚Äòwhy I am a Catholic‚Äô is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 73:The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 74:They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 75:For every difficulty that supposedly stops a person from succeeding there are thousands who have had it a lot worse and have succeeded anyway. So can you. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 76:The amount of money we receive will always be in direct ratio to the demand for what we do; our ability to do it; and the difficulty in replacing us. ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 77:I'm up to here with cool, okay? I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 78:The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 79:Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 80:It is in times of difficulty that great nations like great men display the whole energy of their character and become an object of admiration to posterity. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 81:The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 82:The central difficulty lies in the fact that all of the sciences have made such great progress during the last century that they have got quite beyond the reach of man ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 83:Therefore, to estimate the enemy situation and to calculate distances and the degree of difficulty of the terrain so as to control victory are virtues of the superior general. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 84:If proper in their own conduct, what difficulty would they have in governing? But if not able to be proper in their own conduct, how can they demand such conduct from others? ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 85:But the life of freedom requires a beginning, and here a beginning is a resolution, and the resolution has its work and its pain-thus the beginning has its difficulty. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 86:Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 87:The forces that affect our lives, the influences that mold and shape us, are often like whispers in a different room, teasingly indistinct, apprehended only with difficulty. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 88:[Perfection] is only possible if the mind of man is changed, if he, of his own sweet will, changes his mind; and the great difficulty is, neither can he force his own mind. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 89:If you are having difficulty loving or relating to an individual, take him to God. Bother the Lord with this person. Don't you be bothered with him - leave him at the throne. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 90:It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 91:I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, and fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural . . to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 92:The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to undervalue the times when you’re apparently doing nothing, and those are very important times. ~ brian-eno, @wisdomtrove 93:We never want Him. We say, "Lord, give me a fine house." We want the house, not Him. "Give me health! Save me from this difficulty!" When a man wants nothing but Him, [he gets Him]. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 94:Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 95:The finest flowers are those transplanted, for transplanting means difficulty, a readjusting to new conditions, and through the effort put forth to find adjustment does the plant progress. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 96:You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 97:There are two key lessons: a) The only way to survive in business is to be profitable, unless you have an unlimited amount of money; b) Get through your difficulty and learn to do better next time. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 98:If you are going to set out to develop mystical powers to impress your friends and do other things to your enemies, the difficulty with it is that you will not be moving towards enlightenment. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 99:What is easy and obvious is never valued; and even what is in itself difficult, if we come to knowledge of it without difficulty, and without and stretch of thought or judgment, is but little regarded. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 100:The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us. The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 101:The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us. The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to virtuous balance with himself. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 102:The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,... The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 103:If I were to search for the central core of difficulty in people as I have come to know them, it is that in the great majority of cases they despise themselves, regarding themselves as worthless and unlovable. ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove 104:Good painting is nothing else but a copy of the perfections of God and a reminder of His painting. Finally, good painting is a music and a melody which intellect only can appreciate, and with great difficulty. ~ michelangelo, @wisdomtrove 105:Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and bring Him nearer to our own image. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 106:Hope - Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us... A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead. ~ barack-obama, @wisdomtrove 107:Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 108:The time comes when each of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 109:What judgment I had increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or reject; to run them into verse or to give them the other harmony of prose. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 110:Young men and young women meet each other with much less difficulty than was formerly the case, and every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 111:Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it. Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on. Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 112:Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty‚¶ I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 113:Q: When they have some spiritual experience, another difficulty arises. They complain that the experience does not last, that it comes and goes in a haphazard way. Having got hold of the lollipop, they want to suck it all the time. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 114:Yes, there are troubles in the world. There's war and hatred, there's sickness and difficulty. And there is also an undying spirit, an inviolable consciousness that is born in each of us. It is who we are, and it's everything and it's nothing. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 115:But in truth I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 116:The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital... the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 117:It may look like the difficulty is going to defeat you. But you need to keep telling yourself, "This sickness can't take my life." "This cancer can't defeat me." "No bad break, no disappointment, no accident can shorten one second of my divine destiny." ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 118:I concluded that I might take as a general rule the principle that all things which we very clearly and obviously conceive are true: only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive. ~ rene-descartes, @wisdomtrove 119:Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome. ~ francis-bacon, @wisdomtrove 120:The difficulty in weaning the mind from worldly thoughts, from external objects, and fixing it on God is the same as in making the Ganga flow towards Gangotri instead of its natural flow towards Ganga-Sagar. It is like rowing against the current of the Yamuna. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 121:The perfect way is without difficulty, for it avoids picking and choosing. Only when you stop liking and disliking will all be clearly understood. Be not concerned with right or wrong, for the conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind. ~ jianzhi-sengcan, @wisdomtrove 122:You can recollect the sayings of great men, you treasure up verse of renowned poets; ought you not be equally profound in your knowledge of the words of God, so that you may be able to quote them readily when you would solve a difficulty or overthrow a doubt? ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 123:Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 124:Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 125:The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital from static to more dynamic situations, the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth of the economy. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 126:There may be difficulty at the moment, but I will not lose the Virtue that I possess. It is when the ice and snow are on them that we see the strength of the cypress and the pine. I am grateful for this trouble around me, because it gives me an opportunity to realize how fortunate I am. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 127:The difficulty in the way of writing a children's play is that Barrie was born too soon. Many people must have felt the same about Shakespeare. We who came later have no chance. What fun to have been Adam, and to have had the whole world of plots and jokes and stories at one's disposal. ~ a-a-milne, @wisdomtrove 128:The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 129:For, in the language of Heraclitus, the virtuous soul is pure and unmixed light, springing from the body as a flash of lightning darts from the cloud. But the soul that is carnal and immersed in sense, like a heavy and dank vapor, can with difficulty be kindled, and caused to raise its eyes heavenward. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 130:I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing what you really felt, rather that what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things which produced the emotion that you experienced. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 131:& 132:As long as there are guns, the individual that wants a gun for a crime is going to have one and going to get it. The only person who's going to be penalized and have difficulty is the law-abiding citizen, who then cannot have [it] if he wants protection - the protection of a weapon in his home. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 133:We all have unfair situations and things we don't like. You can get bitter, discouraged and sour, or you can see it as fertilizer and say, ú This difficulty is not going to defeat me; it's going to promote me. It's not going to hinder me; it's going to help me.ù Don't just go through it, grow through it. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 134:In all states of dilemma or of difficulty, prayer is an available source. The ship of prayer may sail through all temptations, doubts and fears, straight up to the throne of God; and though she may be outward bound with only griefs, and groans, and sighs, she shall return freighted with a wealth of blessings! ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 135:In my life, what I want and what I need are exactly the same. Anything in excess of needs is burdensome to me. You couldn't give me anything I don't need. I am penniless, but have difficulty remaining so. Several of my well meaning, well-to-do friends have offered me large sums of money, which I of course refused. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 136:One whose troops repeatedly congregate in small groups here and there, whispering together, has lost the masses. One who frequently grants rewards is in deep distress. One who frequently imposes punishments is in great difficulty. One who is at first excessively brutal and then fears the masses is the pinnacle of stupidity. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 137:Your success and happiness lie in you. External conditions are the accidents of life, its outer trappings. The great, enduring realities are love of service. Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulty. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 138:I am persuaded that a leader is not made in one life. He has to be born for it. For the difficulty is not in organisation and making plans; the test, the real test, of the leader, lies in holding widely different people together along the line of their common sympathies. And this can only be done unconsciously, never by trying. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 139:Your call will become clear as as your mind is transformed by the reading of Scripture and the internal work of God's Spirit. The Lord never hides His will from us. In time, as you obey the call first to follow, your destiny will unfold before you. The difficulty will lie in keeping other concerns from diverting your attention. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 140:The wishes of the people, seldom founded in deep disquisitions, or resulting from other reasonings than their present feelings, may not entirely accord with our true policy and interest. If they do not, to observe a proper line of conduct for promoting the one, and avoiding offence to the other, will be a work of great difficulty. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 141:It often happens that the universal belief of one age of mankind ‚î a belief from which no one was, nor without an extraordinary effort of genius and courage, could at that time be free ‚î becomes to a subsequent age so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 142:A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 143:Charity is not a potency of the soul, because if it were it would be natural. Nor is it a passion, because it is not in a sensitive potency in which are all passions. Nor is it a habit, because a habit is removed with difficulty; charity, however, is easily lost through one act of mortal sin. Therefore charity is not something created in the soul. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 144:Charity is not a potency of the soul, because if it were it would be natural. Nor is it a passion, because it is not in a sensitive potency in which are all passions. Nor is it a habit, because a habit is removed with difficulty; charity, however, is easily lost through one act of mortal sin. Therefore charity is not something created in the soul. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 145:This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise. Every failure is a stepping stone to success. Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith. Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength. Therefore nil desperandum. March forward hero! ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 146:There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and he wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 147:Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 148:In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 149:[My father] impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made me?" cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "Who made God? ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 150:The prejudice of unfounded belief often degenerates into the prejudice of custom, and becomes at last rank hypocrisy. When men, from custom or fashion or any worldly motive, profess or pretend to believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believing, they unship the helm of their morality, and being no longer honest to their own minds they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to others. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 151:Investors should remember that their scorecard is not computed using Olympic-diving methods: Degree-of-difficulty doesn't count. If you are right about a business whose value is largely dependent on a single key factor that is both easy to understand and enduring, the payoff is the same as if you had correctly analyzed an investment alternative characterized by many constantly shifting and complex variables. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 152:Q: Another difficulty one comes across quite often in talking with the Westerners is that to them everything is experience - as they want to experience food, drink and women, art and travels, so do they want to experience Yoga, realisation and liberation. To them it is just another experience, to be had for a price. They imagine such experience can be purchased and they bargain about the cost. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 153:Christianity does not oppose debauchery and uncontrollable passions and the like as much as it opposes... flat mediocrity, this nauseating atmosphere, this homey, civil togetherness, where admittedly great crimes, wild excesses, and powerful aberrations cannot easily occur - but where God's unconditional demand has even greater difficulty in accomplishing what it requires: the majestic obedience of submission. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 154:He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 155:The insight of polytheism is conducive to far-reaching religious tolerance. Since polytheists believe, on the one hand, in one supreme and completely disinterested power, and on the other hand in many partial and biased powers, there is no difficulty for the devotees of one god to accept the existence and efficacy of other gods. Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes ‘heretics’ and ‘infidels’. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 156:I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from an obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 157:One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 158:Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles... .He's our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 159:He must be able to hear them [the counter arguments] from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 160:It is through solving problems correctly that we grow spiritually. We are never given a burden unless we have the capacity to overcome it. If a great problem is set before you, this merely indicates that you have the great inner strength to solve a great problem. There is never really anything to be discouraged about, because difficulties are opportunities for inner growth, and the greater the difficulty the greater the opportunity for growth. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 161:There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed. ... These things are so ancient within us that they're ground into each separate cell of our bodies... It's as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 162:It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 163:It is said that the Christian mystic Theresa of Avila found difficulty at first in reconciling the vastness of the life of the spirit with the mundane tasks of her Carmelite convent: the washing of pots, the sweeping of floors, the folding of laundry. At some point of grace, the mundane became for her a sort of prayer, a way she could experience her ever-present connection to the divine pattern which is the source of life. She began then to see the face of God in the folded sheets. ~ rachel-naomi-remen, @wisdomtrove 164:There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 165:Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), `you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.' And what does IT live on?' Weak tea with cream in it.' A new difficulty came into Alice's head. `Supposing it couldn't find any?' she suggested. Then it would die, of course.' But that must happen very often,' Alice remarked thoughtfully. It always happens,' said the Gnat. ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 166:The benefits of becoming fluent in a foreign tongue are as underestimated as the difficulty is overestimated. Thousands of theoretical linguists will disagree, but I know from research and personal experimentation with more than a dozen languages that (1) adults can learn languages much faster than children when constant 9-5 work is removed and that (2) it is possible to become conversationally fluent in any language in six months or less. At four hours per day, six months can be whittled down to less than three months. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 167:We often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers a lively apprehension of the truth which they nominally recognize, so that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the conduct... . When it has come to be a hereditary creed, and to be received passively, not actively ... there is a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except the formularies ... until it almost ceases to connect itself at all with the inner life of the human being. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 168:The notion is that human beings are born, (as my Guru has explained many times,) with equivalent potential for both contraction and expansion. The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us, and then it's up to the individual (or the family, or the society) to decide what will be brought forth - the virtues or the malevolence. The madness of this planet is largely a result of human being's difficulty in coming into virtuous balance with himself. Lunacy (both collective and individual) results. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 169:We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted... So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 170:Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 171:At one time,' Golenishchev continued, either not observing or not willing to observe that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, & 172:The only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 173:Much indeed to be regretted, party disputes are now carried to such a length, and truth is so enveloped in mist and false representation, that it is extremely difficult to know through what channel to seek it. This difficulty to one, who is of no party, and whose sole wish is to pursue with undeviating steps a path which would lead this country to respectability, wealth, and happiness, is exceedingly to be lamented. But such, for wise purposes, it is presumed, is the turbulence of human passions in party disputes, when victory more than truth is the palm contended for. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 174:The need for collecting large campaign funds would vanish if Congress provided an appropriation for the proper and legitimate expenses of each of the great national parties, an appropriation ample enough to meet the necessity for thorough organization and machinery, which requires a large expenditure of money. Then the stipulation should be made that no party receiving campaign funds from the Treasury should accept more than a fixed amount from any individual subscriber or donor; and the necessary publicity for receipts and expenditures could without difficulty be provided. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 175:Suppose that you are in love with a lady on Neptune and that she returns the sentiment. It will be some consolation for the melancholy separation if you can say to yourself at some possibly pre-arranged moment, “She is thinking of me now.” Unfortunately a difficulty has arisen because we have had to abolish Now. There is no absolute Now, but only the various relative Nows, differing according to their reckoning of different observers and covering the whole neutral wedge which at the distance of Neptune is about eight hours thick. She will have to think of you continuously for eight hours on end in order to circumvent the ambiguity “Now.” ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 176:It is of interest to inquire what happens when the aviator’s speed… approximates to the velocity of light. Lengths in the direction of flight become smaller and smaller, until for the speed of light they shrink to zero. The aviator and the objects accompanying him shrink to two dimensions. We are saved the difficulty of imagining how the processes of life can go on in two dimensions, because nothing goes on. Time is arrested altogether. This is the description according to the terrestrial observer. The aviator himself detects nothing unusual; he does not perceive that he has stopped moving. He is merely waiting for the next instant to come before making the next movement; and the mere fact that time is arrested means that he does not perceive that the next instant is a long time coming. Arthur S. Eddington ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 177:A PRAYER The supreme prayer of my heart is not to be learned, rich, famous, powerful, or good, but simply to be radiant. I desire to radiate health, cheerfulness, calm courage and good will. I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural, clean in mind and clean in body, unaffected—ready to say I do not know, if it be so, and to meet all men on an absolute equality—to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid. I wish others to live their lives, too—up to their highest, fullest and best. To that end I pray that I may never meddle, interfere, dictate, give advice that is not wanted, or assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people, I’ll do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference, and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 178:As simple as that sounds, it is nevertheless extremely difficult to adequately discuss no-boundary awareness or nondual consciousness. This is because our language — the medium in which all verbal discussion must float — is a language of boundaries. As we have seen, words and symbols and thoughts themselves are actually nothing but boundaries, for whenever you think or use a word or name, you are already creating boundaries. Even to say "reality is no-boundary awareness" is still to create a distinction between boundaries and no-boundary! So we have to keep in mind the great difficulty involved with dualistic language. That "reality is no-boundary" is true enough, provided we remember that no-boundary awareness is a direct, immediate, and nonverbal awareness, and not a mere philosophical theory. It is for these reasons that the mystic-sages stress that reality lies beyond names and forms, words and thoughts, divisions and boundaries. Beyond all boundaries lies the real world of Suchness, the Void, the Dharmakaya, Tao, Brahman, the Godhead. And in the world of suchness, there is neither good nor bad, saint nor sinner, birth nor death, for in the world of suchness there are no boundaries. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Difficulty shows what men are. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
2:Difficulty shows what men are. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
3:Difficulty is what wakes up the genius. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
4:There is no excellency without difficulty. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
5:Self-reliance conquers any difficulty ~ Yogi Bhajan, #NFDB
6:The difficulty in life is the choice. ~ Noah Gordon, #NFDB
7:I don't understand the difficulty, people; ~ Heavy D, #NFDB
8:Presence knows no order of difficulty. ~ Michael Brown, #NFDB
9:gritty in the face of difficulty. ~ Heidi Grant Halvorson, #NFDB
10:The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
11:There is possibility in every difficulty. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
12:Difficulty is inevitable. Drama is a choice. ~ Anita Renfroe, #NFDB
13:I like difficulty. It's what makes my job fun. ~ Sue Grafton, #NFDB
14:A true friend is a friend when in difficulty ~ Quintus Ennius, #NFDB
15:His eyes expressed the difficulty he felt. ~ Theodore Dreiser, #NFDB
16:Self-reliance conquers any difficulty. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
17:Difficulty is what wakes up the genius ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
18:Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
19:In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
20:In the midst of difficulty lies opportunity. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
21:Where you see difficulty, I see opportunity. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
22:Settle one difficulty, and you keep a hundred away. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
23:I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
24:The difficulty is capturing surprise on film. ~ F Murray Abraham, #NFDB
25:Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. ~ Edward R Murrow, #NFDB
26:We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty. ~ Quintilian, #NFDB
27:Where there is no difficulty there is no praise. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
28:created a new difficulty for mankind: how to die. * ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
29:The merit of all things lies in their difficulty. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
30:My method to overcome a difficulty is to go round it. ~ George Polya, #NFDB
31:We have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
32:A difficulty for every solution. ~ Herbert Samuel 1st Viscount Samuel, #NFDB
33:In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
34:Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty. ~ Alfie Kohn, #NFDB
35:Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
36:Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
37:There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer. ~ Emmet Fox, #NFDB
38:He had always had difficulty in recognising an emotion. ~ Sue Townsend, #NFDB
39:He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
40:And try as I might, I am having difficulty giving a f**k. ~ Jon Stewart, #NFDB
41:difficulty in convincing yourself that you will acquire it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
42:An optimist sees the oportunity in every difficulty. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
43:A [psychological] difficulty is not an impossibility. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
44:Difficulty is a miracle in its first stage. —Amish proverb ~ Susan Wiggs, #NFDB
45:I used to find great difficulty in drawing feet. ~ Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, #NFDB
46:Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing. ~ Elvis Costello, #NFDB
47:There's a kind of virgin one only becomes with difficulty. ~ Marian Engel, #NFDB
48:A wounded heart can with difficulty be cured. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
49:Facing a difficulty requires a willingness of heart. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher, #NFDB
50:Here was one more difficulty for him to meet and conquer. ~ Upton Sinclair, #NFDB
51:Never trust advice from a man in the throes of his own difficulty. ~ Aesop, #NFDB
52:The easiest way to manage a difficulty is to think before ~ Michelle Griep, #NFDB
53:The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
54:It is hard now, very hard, but the difficulty is familiar. ~ Naomi Alderman, #NFDB
55:Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
56:that difficulty and ease produce the one (the idea of) the other; ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
57:The honor of the conquest is rated by the difficulty. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
58:Difficulty becomes familiar, at least, if no less difficult. ~ Sarah Manguso, #NFDB
59:I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
60:it is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
61:People with bipolar disorder have difficulty with boundaries. ~ Claire Danes, #NFDB
62:The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
63:The sage regards things as difficult, and thereby avoids difficulty. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
64:Information is uncertainty, surprise, difficulty, and entropy: ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
65:(The Gentle Reader may perhaps have suffered from this difficulty.) ~ E Nesbit, #NFDB
66:To work is simple enough; but to rest, there is the difficulty. ~ Ernest Hello, #NFDB
67:When you resist a difficulty you antagonize it, and it bites back. ~ Emmet Fox, #NFDB
68:Where there is no choice, we do well to make no difficulty. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
69:A difficulty is a light ; an insurmountable difficulty is a sun . ~ Paul Val ry, #NFDB
70:A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
71:The difficulty is to know conscience from self-interest. ~ William Dean Howells, #NFDB
72:The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
73:Design: holding conflicting ideas in your head without difficulty ~ Danny Hillis, #NFDB
74:Scientists have grave difficulty dealing with the reality of God. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
75:The divine power moves with difficulty, but at the same time surely. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
76:The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
77:After my mother's death, I had such difficulty relating to people. ~ Jaron Lanier, #NFDB
78:I attempt a difficult work; but there is no excellence without difficulty. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
79:The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
80:Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. ~ Richard Rhodes, #NFDB
81:It is not possible to refer a complex difficulty to a single cause. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
82:The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
83:If you just think about the difficulty you'll never get anywhere. ~ Brian Lindstrom, #NFDB
84:It's not just we Italians who are caught up in the difficulty. ~ Giorgio Napolitano, #NFDB
85:I was expelled from four schools. Today I still read with difficulty. ~ Sarah Miles, #NFDB
86:Sick people have no difficulty in telling you why healing is important. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
87:The ultimate Path is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing. ~ Sengcan, #NFDB
88:Whatever plan one makes, there is a hidden difficulty somewhere. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
89:It's the good minds that find difficulty in committing themselves ~ James A Michener, #NFDB
90:Survivors of trauma may have difficulty initiating relationships ... ~ Asa Don Brown, #NFDB
91:The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
92:The difficulty with any sort of esteem is that more is expected of you. ~ Judi Dench, #NFDB
93:With patience any difficulty can be overcome.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
94:You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve ~ Elon Musk, #NFDB
95:Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty. ~ William James, #NFDB
96:It’s about using difficulty to discover what resonates and what does not. ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
97:Never underestimate the difficulty of changing false beliefs by facts ~ Henry Rosovsky, #NFDB
98:The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat. It is to prevail. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
99:Whatever is the difficulty if we keep truly quiet the solution will come. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
100:A pacifist has a lot of difficulty reconciling pacifism with scripture. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
101:Defectors often cause more difficulty than disinterested disbelievers. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
102:Difficulty’s potential to grow us is not confined to working out. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
103:The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo. ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
104:The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
105:There is seldom a difficulty with religion where there is friendship. ~ Sebastian Barry, #NFDB
106:Whatever is the difficulty if we keep truly quiet the solution will come . ~ The Mother, #NFDB
107:Whatever is the difficulty, if we keep truly quiet the solution will come. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
108:Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty. ~ Edgar Degas, #NFDB
109:Nor let a god come in, unless the difficulty be worthy of such an intervention. ~ Horace, #NFDB
110:The difficulty of being a Latin kid, a Latin man in this country [U.S]. ~ John Leguizamo, #NFDB
111:an old-looking ghost rose with some difficulty (do ghosts have arthritis?) ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
112:Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion. ~ Suzan Lori Parks, #NFDB
113:The difficulty in governing the people arises from their having much knowledge. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
114:To kiss and to kill are similar words to eyes that focus with difficulty. ~ Patrick White, #NFDB
115:Your greatest difficulty is with yourself; for you are your own stumbling-block. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
116:Be resolute, fear no sacrifice, and surmount every difficulty to win victory. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
117:Effort is the unconstrained willingness to persevere through difficulty. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
118:That which has been endured with difficulty is remedied with delight. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
119:The difficulty in life is the choice. —George Moore The Bending of the Bough ~ Noah Gordon, #NFDB
120:The difficulty is that we try to perfect others before we perfect ourselves. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
121:The difficulty lies not in writing well but in earning that ability. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
122:The illustration which solves one difficulty by raising another, settles nothing. ~ Horace, #NFDB
123:There are some things which men confess with ease, and others with difficulty. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
124:When you are face to face with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery. ~ Lord Kelvin, #NFDB
125:As long as we wish for safety, we will have difficulty pursuing what matters. ~ Peter Block, #NFDB
126:But he is only stunned by the unvanquishable difficulty of his existence. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
127:Life must pass through difficulty in order to achieve any modicum of beauty. ~ Colum McCann, #NFDB
128:The occasion is piled high with difficulty. We must rise to the occasion. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
129:The President Donald Trump has great difficulty with the truth on many issues. ~ Bob Corker, #NFDB
130:There is an island of opportunity in the middle of every difficulty. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, #NFDB
131:You will live as you live in any world...With difficulty, and grief. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
132:Difficulty on the way to victory is opportunity for God to work ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
133:Her very difficulty created friction, and friction led to satisfaction... ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB
134:So he with difficulty and labour hard Mov'd on, with difficulty and labour he. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
135:The difficulty is not in finding men to advance but men willing to be advanced. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
136:as Confucius says, “Settle one difficulty and you keep a hundred away. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
137:In adversity keep motivated, for often the best comes from difficulty. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
138:Most people would have difficulty explaining how they know two and two make four. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
139:Fina had always had difficulty with the concept of sin. Who defined it and how? ~ Ingrid Thoft, #NFDB
140:It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest. ~ Paul Klee, #NFDB
141:The difficulty lies, not in finding a producer, but in finding a consumer. ~ Jean Baptiste Say, #NFDB
142:The difficulty one experiences in meeting himsa arises from weakness of mind. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
143:But how to raise a sum in the different States has been my greatest difficulty. ~ Robert Fulton, #NFDB
144:How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure! ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
145:How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
146:It is only when a person gets into difficulty that one can truly see his heart. ~ Matthew Polly, #NFDB
147:Sometimes my mother had difficulty communicating with me about certain topics. ~ Gloria Estefan, #NFDB
148:The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for. ~ Homer, #NFDB
149:Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on. ~ Frederic Chopin, #NFDB
150:Only by coming to grips with difficulty can you realize your full potential. ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
151:The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for. ~ Homer, #NFDB
152:The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
153:Example output: Challenge Question 25: Top Territories Difficulty: Intermediate ~ Brian Cohen, #NFDB
154:I had to escape the destruction of my fathers bankruptcy and all that difficulty. ~ Brendan Coyle, #NFDB
155:Man's upward progress means ever increasing difficulty, which is to be welcomed. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
156:Real courage embraces the twin realities of current difficulty and ultimate triumph. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
157:Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty. ~ John Carmack, #NFDB
158:The truth is that a life well lived is always lived on a rising scale of difficulty. ~ N D Wilson, #NFDB
159:An author never does more damage to his readers than when he hides a difficulty. ~ Evariste Galois, #NFDB
160:The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
161:When I paint I am ageless, I just have the pleasure or the difficulty of painting. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
162:If there is a remedy or a cure, a solution to a problem or difficulty, why worry? ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
163:Life is enriched by difficulty; love is made more acute when it requires exertion. ~ Andrew Solomon, #NFDB
164:Noblest. Bravest. What rot. There was no bravery in buying oneself out of difficulty. ~ Peter David, #NFDB
165:No circumstance, person, or difficulty can stop the plans and the promises of God. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
166:Our most significant opportunities will be found in times of greatest difficulty. ~ Thomas S Monson, #NFDB
167:The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
168:They have done what they like. Their difficulty is to like what they have done. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
169:Difficulty adds to result, as the ramming of powder sends the bullet the further. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
170:"Do not be afraid of your difficulty. Turn toward it. Learn to lean into the wind." ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
171:The really important difficulty is the place, room, cave, cabin to write in. – Jean Rhys ~ Jean Rhys, #NFDB
172:To go in search of what once was is to postpone the difficulty of living with what is. ~ Barry Lopez, #NFDB
173:Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
174:in Ovid, difficulty is what wakes up the genius (ingenium mala saepe movent), ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
175:Oh, the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them! ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
176:stories of evil can be projected on them with as little difficulty as stories of good. ~ Mohsin Hamid, #NFDB
177:The great difficulty with politics is, that there are no established principles. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
178:The great difficulty with politics is, that there are no established principles. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
179:Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
180:It is easy to look down on others; to look down on ourselves is the difficulty. ~ Walter Savage Landor, #NFDB
181:The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
182:Close to birth... I lost, like, 80 percent of my hearing, and I had difficulty speaking. ~ Lou Ferrigno, #NFDB
183:People are very varied: some change their feelings easily, others with difficulty. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
184:would have a chance.” “Did you hear about the dementors too?” said Harry with difficulty. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
185:Faith does help us navigate difficulty while trusting God to deliver us at the right time. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
186:Report followeth not all goodness, except difficulty and rarity be joined thereto. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
187:The explanation avails nothing, which in leading us from one difficulty involves us in another. ~ Horace, #NFDB
188:The man who most vividly realizes a difficulty is the man most likely to overcome it. ~ Joseph P Farrell, #NFDB
189:The writer, an old man with a white moustache, had some difficulty getting into bed. ~ Sherwood Anderson, #NFDB
190:To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance. ~ Pierre Joseph Proudhon, #NFDB
191:I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist. ~ Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, #NFDB
192:In that sense, film is superior, but the difficulty is your lack of control as a writer. ~ Terry Southern, #NFDB
193:When a man feels the difficulty of doing, can he be other than cautious and slow in speaking? ~ Confucius, #NFDB
194:(Australia. The only continent designed with a difficulty rating of “ha ha fuck you no.”) ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB
195:Better far in the Lord’s strength to meet the difficulty, and glorify Him in it. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
196:Don't let the difficulty of actually achieving a shot make you think that the shot is good. ~ Sidney Lumet, #NFDB
197:If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
198:If you stand, worship, and love God in the midst of lack and difficulty, you will never lose ~ Heidi Baker, #NFDB
199:reasonable people often have difficulty anticipating irrationality from unreasonable people. ~ Bobby Adair, #NFDB
200:She gave the impression of smiling with difficulty, possibly for fear of getting wrinkles. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
201:The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping the old ones. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
202:The ordinary affairs of a nation offer little difficulty to a person of any experience. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
203:The real difficulty about volcanism is not to see how it can start, but how it can stop. ~ Harold Jeffreys, #NFDB
204:The writer, an old man with a white mustache, had some difficulty in getting into bed. ~ Sherwood Anderson, #NFDB
205:We prove what we want to prove, and the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove. ~ Emile Chartier, #NFDB
206:What is life without its angles of difficulty and defeat, and its tip of triumph and power? ~ Ameen Rihani, #NFDB
207:What parent has it easy? I just never make the difficulty of it an obstacle. I just do it. ~ Marlee Matlin, #NFDB
208:With difficulty he is beaten who can estimate his own forces and those of his enemy. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
209:Ego is the reason of the difficulty in everybody. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Ego and Its Forms, #NFDB
210:The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
211:The difficulty, my asclepid, is not to govern people, but to make them govern themselves, ~ Kerry Greenwood, #NFDB
212:The pragmatist knows that doubt is an art which hs to be acquired with difficulty. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce, #NFDB
213:We take care of each other and each other’s families, especially during a time of difficulty. ~ Sarah Price, #NFDB
214:When energy prices go up, the difficulty of projecting demand also goes up - uncertainty goes up. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
215:Everyone faces difficulties; not everyone looks for the opportunities in every difficulty. ~ Tony Alessandra, #NFDB
216:Hope - Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
217:Increasing the strength of our minds is the only way to reduce the difficulty of life. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
218:mostof what makes us unhappy involves difficulty dealing with the inevitability of change. ~ Ronald D Siegel, #NFDB
219:Stop killing your brothers and your sisters and help them out in any difficulty. That's my message. ~ Sizzla, #NFDB
220:The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for,’ ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
221:The hill, though high, I desire to ascend, The difficulty will not me offend;
For Iperceive ~ John Bunyan,#NFDB
222:There has to be a measure of difficulty or problem-solving in travel for it to be worthwhile. ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB
223:Everyone my age had written a novel and I was still having difficulty writing a paragraph. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
224:It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
225:They have a genius, young ladies, for getting into various kinds of trouble and difficulty. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
226:underscore the difficulty inherent in any attempt by black artists to metabolize real rage. ~ Claudia Rankine, #NFDB
227:Honestly, I've always had difficulty relaxing, unwinding and going to bed - that kind of stuff. ~ Adam Carolla, #NFDB
228:In fact, lots of good poetry doesn't work , so I don't mind a bit of mystification or difficulty. ~ Nick Laird, #NFDB
229:m o re times a c u s t omer agr e es to a p r o b l em or difficulty, t he m o re likely t he sale ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
230:My approach to gymnastics in Beijing was heavily based on the amount of difficulty I could do. ~ Shawn Johnson, #NFDB
231:The superior man makes the difficulty to be overcome his first interest; success only comes later. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
232:We know so little, and have difficulty learning: so we have to lie for that reason only. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
233:Difficulty attracts the characterful man, for it is by grasping it that he fulfils himself. ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
234:Difficulty" is the name of an ancient tool that was created purely to help us define who we are. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
235:I have always believed that I should have had no difficulty in causing my rights to be respected. ~ Eli Whitney, #NFDB
236:In a discussion, the difficulty lies, not in being able to defend your opinion, but to know it. ~ Andre Maurois, #NFDB
237:It is not the path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which is the path. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
238:The price of corn will naturally rise with the difficulty of producing the last portions of it. ~ David Ricardo, #NFDB
239:The short successes that can be gained in a brief time and without difficulty, are not worth much. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
240:The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly nothing. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
241:"Difficulty" is the name of an ancient tool that was created purely to help us define who we are. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
242:Do not be afraid to face your difficulty. Turn toward it. Lean into the wind. Hold your ground. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
243:It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being... ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
244:The very best things in life are born of difficulty. Whatever comes too easily is easily abandoned. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
245:Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can't bear to see it. ~ Bertolt Brecht, #NFDB
246:To find extraordinary difficulty in doing an ordinary action is a favor which calls for gratitude. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
247:A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as so much as existing. Away with it! ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #NFDB
248:but there really is no difficulty one cannot overcome if there is determination in the heart. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
249:In a difficulty in the company of the central and the instigator, be successful your central. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
250:Some things get written more quickly than others, but I can't really measure degrees of difficulty. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
251:Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
252:He who allows himself to be halted by the first difficulty in his path does not go far in life. ~ Laurent Gounelle, #NFDB
253:It is not the path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which is the path.
~ Soren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
254:See every difficulty as a challenge, a stepping stone, and never be defeated by anything or anyone. ~ Eileen Caddy, #NFDB
255:Teain had no difficulty generating the indignation of a satirist. He lack the patience of a reformer. ~ H W Brands, #NFDB
256:The difficulty is no longer to find candidates for the offices, but offices for the candidates. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
257:The price of change is measured by our will and courage, our persistence, in the face of difficulty. ~ Peter Block, #NFDB
258:What is behind you is forgotten. You can't remember danger and difficulty when it is behind you ~ Wanda Rutkiewicz, #NFDB
259:You could say she was having difficulty breathing but I doubt they will believe that is CPR.” Her ~ Laurann Dohner, #NFDB
260:Awakening does not mean a change in difficulty, it means a change in how those difficulties are met. ~ Mark Epstein, #NFDB
261:Difficulty attracts the man of character because it is in embracing it that he realizes himself ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
262:...God knows you can have complication and difficulty without any compensating depth or seriousness ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
263:if you don't believe in yourself, you'll have some difficulty in making other people believe in you. ~ May Sinclair, #NFDB
264:It seems that the greatest difficulty is to find the end. Don't try to find it, it's there already. ~ Sofia Coppola, #NFDB
265:Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
266:Serious circumstances remind us that the difficulty of finding the truth is no excuse for not looking. ~ Paul Copan, #NFDB
267:The difficulty that accompanies you is less like the dark than a trusted lantern to see your way by. ~ Eudora Welty, #NFDB
268:A lot of these industries are having difficulty finding reliable workers with the skills they require. ~ Jerry Rubin, #NFDB
269:I hate false words, and seek with care, difficulty, and moroseness, those that fit the thing. ~ Walter Savage Landor, #NFDB
270:I devoutly believe that there is no difficulty between two people for which both are not responsible. ~ Margaret Mead, #NFDB
271:Sturdy contentment that can weather the storms of difficulty and want is always rooted in worship. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
272:The biggest difficulty in getting to the top of the ladder is getting through the crowd at the bottom. ~ Bobby Knight, #NFDB
273:You can say that designing is quite easy; the difficulty lies in finding a new way to explore beauty ~ Yohji Yamamoto, #NFDB
274:Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
275:Emotion is always new and the word has always served; therein lies the difficulty of expressing emotion. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
276:For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
277:She was keen on the idea that a strong mind, enforced with a strong will, could overcome any difficulty. ~ Karen Essex, #NFDB
278:(straits) used in reference to a situation characterized by a specified degree of trouble or difficulty: ~ Erin McKean, #NFDB
279:The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
280:Simply changing how you talk to yourself about a difficulty or a challenge changes how you approach it. ~ Valerie Young, #NFDB
281:And if the righteous man is being saved with difficulty, what will happen to the ungodly man and the sinner? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
282:He who knows how to fall without hurting himself will also know how to rise without any difficulty! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
283:If we are meant to only have children who never encounter difficulty in life, then no one should be born. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
284:Making a living is nothing; the great difficulty is making a point, making a difference-with words. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick, #NFDB
285:Russia is a part of European culture. Therefore, it is with difficulty that I imagine NATO as an enemy. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
286:Those who can't imagine change reveal the deficits of their imaginations, not the difficulty of change. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
287:Coming out involves varying degrees of difficulty that are affected by class, race, religion, and geography. ~ Lance Loud, #NFDB
288:Difficulty’ is the name of an ancient tool that was created purely to help us define who we are. Religions ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
289:I suggest that there is a splendid way out of the difficulty of marriage, and that is my way - stay out. ~ Agnes Macphail, #NFDB
290:The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. ~ Plato, #NFDB
291:The difficulty of writing about sex, for women, is that sex is best when not thought about, not analysed. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
292:The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character. ~ Peter De Vries, #NFDB
293:He who has resolved to conquer or die is seldom conquered; such noble despair perishes with difficulty. ~ Pierre Corneille, #NFDB
294:In order to write a book, it is necessary to sit down (or stand up) and write. Therein lies the difficulty. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
295:I think because I have great difficulty saying the word, 'no,' almost every day's a different adventure. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
296:I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets. ~ James Laughlin, #NFDB
297:Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty, however difficult it may actually have been. ~ Robert Henri, #NFDB
298:People don't alter. They may with enormous difficulty modify themselves, but they never really change. ~ Margery Allingham, #NFDB
299:so that even a Woman in reasonable health can journey several furlongs northward without much difficulty— ~ Edwin A Abbott, #NFDB
300:There’s no such thing as difficulty when you live in the present moment, doing only what you can right now. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
301:Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it. ‣ René Descartes ~ Venkat Subramaniam, #NFDB
302:If you find yourself in some difficulty, step aside, and allow Buddha to take your place. The Buddha is in you. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
303:I have absolutely no difficulty myself with the playing of God Save the Queen in the presence of Her Majesty. ~ John Howard, #NFDB
304:No man is brave and earnest if he avoids danger, if his spirit does not grow with the very difficulty of his task. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
305:The difficulties come always to make us progress. The greater the difficulty, the greater can be the progress. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
306:The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
307:The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
308:the quadrature problem is a measure of the greatest difficulty, since it was shown in 1882 to be impossible. ~ Paul J Nahin, #NFDB
309:There is no great difficulty to separate the soul from the body, but it is not so easy to restore life to the dead. ~ Saadi, #NFDB
310:When one is in a difficulty or at a loss, one never knows in what direction a way out may chance to open. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
311:A well-trained mind has less difficulty in submitting to than in guiding an ill-trained mind. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
312:If there is any difficulty in what I write, it is because of the material I use. The thought is always simple. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
313:Improve yourself by other men's writings thus attaining effortlessly what they acquired through great difficulty. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
314:It is hard now, very hard, but the difficulty is familiar. Her body wants something, and she is denying it. ~ Naomi Alderman, #NFDB
315:Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
316:The Pessimist Sees Difficulty In Every Opportunity. The Optimist Sees Opportunity In Every Difficulty. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
317:There is a correlation between people who attack same-sex marriage and have difficulty maintaining their own. ~ Barney Frank, #NFDB
318:Those heavily invested in the status quo had difficulty thinking outside of it—and were often tainted by it. ~ Daniel Suarez, #NFDB
319:Until one acknowledges the genius within oneself, one will have great difficulty recognizing it in others. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
320:Your difficulty, your disease, your conflict are preparing you to be a voice of encouragement to your brothers. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
321:I had no difficulty as Secretary of Defense moving from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. ~ Robert M Gates, #NFDB
322:I have difficulty orienting myself in space, and I'm probably one of the few people who gets lost in Manhattan. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
323:The disorientation, the distraction, the difficulty focusing-all classic. Phase One signs of deliria. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
324:though the matter of getting on well with young men in no circumstances presented serious difficulty to her. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
325:What makes us erratic, what makes us slow down, is the accidental difficulty. We call this difficulty “bad code”. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
326:Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way? ~ John Barth, #NFDB
327:Accept the difficulty of what you cannot yet change. But do not accept the impossibility of ever changing it. ~ Aubrey de Grey, #NFDB
328:A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
329:But I begin to think the chief difficulty in writing a book must be to keep out what does not belong to it. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
330:Divide each difficulty at hand into as many pieces as possible and as could be required to better solve them. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
331:Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
332:Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty. ~ Cormac McCarthy, #NFDB
333:The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
334:Where we find a difficulty we may always expect that a discovery awaits us. Where there is cover we hope for game. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
335:A child who has been taught to respect the laws of God will have little difficulty respecting the laws of men. ~ J Edgar Hoover, #NFDB
336:A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
337:A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
338:I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty. ~ James A Garfield, #NFDB
339:Leaving aside the consideration that academics might always favour poetic difficulty—it makes them indispensable— ~ Clive James, #NFDB
340:The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
341:The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. ~ Plato, #NFDB
342:The difficulty that negotiators have is often based on the cultural difference that various countries have. ~ Christine Lagarde, #NFDB
343:Buffett quoted Keynes: “The difficulty lies not in the new ideas but in escaping from the old ones.” Buffett ~ Robert G Hagstrom, #NFDB
344:It is not a ridiculous question. It is a very simple one. The difficulty lies in the answer. Why do you love her? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
345:New York had impressed me as a place where there was lots of money and not much difficulty in getting it. ~ James Weldon Johnson, #NFDB
346:Positive thinkers look for good in every situation. In times of difficulty, the can find many opportunities. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
347:Various are the uses of friends, beyond all else in difficulty, but joy also looks for trust that is clear in the eyes. ~ Pindar, #NFDB
348:A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it. ~ W Somerset Maugham, #NFDB
349:Grasp a difficulty by the “blade” and it cuts; grasp it by the “handle” and you can use it constructively. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
350:I have a problem with procrastination. I have a great deal of difficulty deciding what to wear. It's a woman thing. ~ Lauryn Hill, #NFDB
351:In trial or difficulty I have recourse to Mother Mary, whose glance alone is enough to dissipate every fear. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #NFDB
352:Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
353:Perhaps; but I am a difficult person to live with. My difficulty consists in not wanting to live with other people. ~ J M Coetzee, #NFDB
354:Some people have difficulty telling the difference between something great and something they've simply heard of. ~ Arthur Golden, #NFDB
355:He who only sees the obvious, wins his battles with difficulty; he who looks below the surface of things, wins with ease ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
356:I always have difficulty with people who are not openly warm, expressive. I need a certain sign, a certain invitation. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
357:Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
358:Such loyalty is admirable, of course,” said Scrimgeour, who seemed to be restraining his irritation with difficulty, ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
359:The difficulty lies in being able to break away from the pack and pursue other slipstreams or wormholes. Darren ~ Benjamin P Hardy, #NFDB
360:The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
361:Wisdom is not found with those who dwell at their ease; rather nature, when she adds brain, adds difficulty. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
362:A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly. ~ Jean Vanier, #NFDB
363:But all of my efforts served only to make me better acquainted with the difficulty, which in itself was something. ~ Henri Poincare, #NFDB
364:Do not become upset when difficulty comes your way. Laugh in its face and know that you are in the hands of God. ~ Francis de Sales, #NFDB
365:Morality is good, and is accepted of God, as far as it goes; but the difficulty is, it does not go far enough. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
366:... Nine-year-old boys usually turn ten at some point. It's the nineteen-year-olds who have difficulty turning twenty. ~ John Boyne, #NFDB
367:The difficulty with telling stories about real people is you have to find a way of mixing yourself into the matter. ~ Olivier Dahan, #NFDB
368:The real difficulty is always in ourselves, not in our surroundings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Real Difficulty, #NFDB
369:Through the shocks of difficulty and death
Man shall attain his godhead. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Prologue,#NFDB
370:Among the many short cuts to science, we badly need someone to teach us the art of learning with difficulty. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
371:For a child, parents’ warning is like a rose blooming in the brain; it opens with difficulty and fades quickly. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
372:If we are to go only halfway or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty... it would be better to not go at all. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
373:I must admit, Peter, I have difficulty in understanding why an innocent man would want to spend twelve years as a rat. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
374:It is obvious that no difficulty in the way of world government can match the danger of a world without it. ~ Carl Clinton Van Doren, #NFDB
375:Ninety percent of the difficulty in your intellectual life would never have happened if you just had better taste. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
376:To live as true children of God means to love our neighbour and to be close to those who are lonely and in difficulty ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
377:Yoga is the unravelling of the knot of Life’s difficulty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology of Self-Perfection, #NFDB
378:All real difficulty stems from no responsibility. Full responsibility is not fault; it is recognition of being cause. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
379:I believe in the power of Jesus Christ to resolve any difficulty, to remove any weakness, to heal any disease. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
380:Realize that your present difficulty is only a small part of you, and the rest of you is doing quite well, thank you. ~ Lynn Grabhorn, #NFDB
381:Souls generally do not fall away from Christ because of the Creed; they first have difficulty with the Commandments. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
382:There is something about veganism that is not easy, but the difficulty is not inherent in veganism, but in our culture. ~ Will Tuttle, #NFDB
383:A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
384:But it’s not perfect. The GPA does not reflect the difficulty of the courses that different students may have taken. ~ Charles Wheelan, #NFDB
385:Do only what you could do before me without feeling embarrassed, say only what you could repeat to me without difficulty. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
386:Faith in God is the instrument which enables men and women to remove the hills of difficulty which block their path. ~ William Barclay, #NFDB
387:Faith is the ability to see things that don't yet exist. Faith, though, can turn difficulty into reality, positive reality. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
388:Given the difficulty of using wait and notify correctly, you should use the higher-level concurrency utilities instead. ~ Joshua Bloch, #NFDB
389:I have a great deal of difficulty recognizing faces, especially if I haven't - if I've just met somebody, it's hopeless. ~ Chuck Close, #NFDB
390:In science novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. ~ Thomas Kuhn, #NFDB
391:Whatever the difficulty if we keep truly quiet the solution will come. With my blessings,
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, [T5],#NFDB
392:A hidden reservoir of strength lies dormant in each of us. Waiting for a challenge, a difficulty, an ‘impossible’ task. ~ Rashmi Bansal, #NFDB
393:Everybody free-solos. When you walk to the store, you're free-soloing. It's just a matter of the difficulty of the route. ~ John Bachar, #NFDB
394:Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it. ~ Niels Bohr, #NFDB
395:He looked around for some way out of this difficulty and caught sight of a stick insect, commonly known as a godhorse. The ~ Karen Lord, #NFDB
396:In trial or difficulty I have recourse to Mother Mary, whose glance alone is enough to dissipate every fear. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #NFDB
397:Out of every difficulty Omnipotence can bring us, only let us in childlike confidence cast our burden upon the Lord. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
398:Thuvia of Ptarth was having difficulty in determining the exact status of the Prince of Helium in her heart. She ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs, #NFDB
399:You got to insist on your success, resist every obstacle and persist in times of difficulty and you will get there. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
400:Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself it’s own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it. ~ Niels Bohr, #NFDB
401:In trying to count our many blessings the difficulty is not to find things to count, but to find time to enumerate them all. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
402:people overestimate the relative difficulty of science and engineering, because the challenges of those fields are obvious ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
403:Test a servant while in the discharge of his duty, a relative in difficulty, a friend in adversity, and a wife in misfortune. ~ Chanakya, #NFDB
404:The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas,” John Maynard Keynes famously observed, “but in escaping from the old ones. ~ Philip K Howard, #NFDB
405:The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
406:An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
407:Do not become upset when difficulty comes your way. Laugh in its face and know that you are in the hands of God. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
408:do: PERIODICALLY INSPECT YOURSELF FOR CHARACTER ARMOR: PREJUDICES, RIGID THINKING, AUTOMATIC JUDGMENTS, DIFFICULTY LISTENING. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
409:In times of difficulty we must not lose sight of our achievements, must see the bright future and must pluck up our courage. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
410:Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate:
Accept the difficulty and godlike toil
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, [T5],#NFDB
411:The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
412:The whole difficulty is that we wish to pray in the Spirit and at the same time walk after the flesh. This is impossible. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
413:Two human beings have such difficulty in understanding each other - there is nothing so sad as two human beings. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness, #NFDB
414:All difficulties in this life, every moment of difficulty, come from the distance between what is and what we want to be. ~ Roland Merullo, #NFDB
415:Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
416:It's not an easy choice, but that's OK. Easy doesn't equal good. Difficulty doesn't equal bad.
It's just life, is all. ~ Barry Lyga,#NFDB
417:Mathematicians seem to have no difficulty in creating new concepts faster than the old ones become well understood. ~ Edward Norton Lorenz, #NFDB
418:Read The Golden Key several times. Do exactly what it says, and if you are persistent enough you will overcome any difficulty. ~ Emmet Fox, #NFDB
419:Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. ~ John Henry Newman, #NFDB
420:The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
421:When you are embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well. When you are in a difficulty, judge for yourself. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
422:for the Owl there was something Infinitely Preferable About the Night. The Owl had difficulty explaining this to other birds. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
423:How do you do, Captain,” she said, unfastening her eyes from his with difficulty, as though they had become entangled. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
424:It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
425:Mr. Knightley seemed to be trying not to smile; and succeeded without difficulty, upon Mrs. Elton's beginning to talk to him. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
426:The difficulty is partly that I am hesitant to go seventy-two and partly that the minivan itself is hesitant to go seventy-two ~ John Green, #NFDB
427:The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection. ~ Winifred Holtby, #NFDB
428:An arrogance that has difficulty fitting into his clothes. Some people are simply too powerful to pretend a lower status. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi, #NFDB
429:As I always say, I do not wish you an easy time, but I wish you that whatever difficulty you may have, you will overcome it. ~ Indira Gandhi, #NFDB
430:Holy Week is a privileged time when we are called to draw near to Jesus: friendship with him is shown in times of difficulty. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
431:I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
432:Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
433:People tend to want to follow the beaten path. The difficulty is that the beaten path doesn't seem to be leading anywhere. ~ Charles Mathias, #NFDB
434:The Law of Attraction allows for infinite possibilities, infinite abundance & infinite joy. It knows no order of difficulty. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
435:The world is impermanent. [All things change. Knowing this helps you see the end of any difficulty and thereby have hope.] ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
436:Sometimes, God brings His greatest rains with a storm. Sometimes, God brings His greatest blessings with your difficulty. ~ Alisa Hope Wagner, #NFDB
437:When you begin to control your thought processes, you can apply the powers of your subconscious to any problem or difficulty. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
438:The chief difficulty which prevents men of science from believing in divine as well as in nature Spirits is their materialism. ~ H P Blavatsky, #NFDB
439:The distortion of a text resembles a murder: the difficulty is not in perpetrating the deed, but in getting rid of its traces. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
440:When a kingdom rests on it, I always expect difficulty. Then, if there is none, no blame. But if there is, one is prepared. ~ Geraldine Brooks, #NFDB
441:when we are living in the middle of difficulty, we are tempted to view it as a sign of God’s unfaithfulness or inattention. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
442:A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural felicity and an acquired difficulty. ~ Joseph Joubert, #NFDB
443:It is worth remembering that the time of greatest gain in terms of wisdom and inner strength is often that of greatest difficulty. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
444:The game was in his eyes a contest, a struggle with a difficulty, yet a motionless, unwearying struggle, congenial to his tastes. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
445:The very best things in life are born of difficulty. Whatever comes too easily is easily abandoned.” “It is the height of irony. I ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
446:Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
447:Time of difficulty test our faith, our fortitude and our strenght. During these times, the level of our imaan becomes manifest ~ Yasmin Mogahed, #NFDB
448:186. " I never have any difficulty believing in miracles, since I experienced the miracle of change in my own heart." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
449:Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
450:Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy. ~ Pope Paul VI, #NFDB
451:Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. ~ Saint John Henry Newman, #NFDB
452:The leader is one who, out of the clutter, brings simplicity... out of discord, harmony... and out of difficulty, opportunity. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
453:The problem in narcissism is not the high ideals and ambitions, it's the difficulty one encounters when trying to give them body. ~ Thomas Moore, #NFDB
454:....those who become princes through their skill acquire the pricipality with difficulty, buy they hold onto it with ease. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
455:We are being called into realization with great urgency and extraordinary beauty, and oftentimes not without difficulty. ~ Judith Hanson Lasater, #NFDB
456:What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
457:205. "Endure every difficulty and hardship with a dilated heart, attract spirit and eloquent tongue, in remembrance of the merciful."~ Abdu l Bah, #NFDB
458:Children who had difficulty in learning basic skills were to be given special instruction to remedy those weak or unlearned skills. ~ Dave Pelzer, #NFDB
459:Doubt is unacceptable and should not enter you; it is merely evil trying to divert you and increase the difficulty of your task ~ William O Brien, #NFDB
460:I could not let my emotions, my fear, rule me; I had to be practical; I had to figure out a way around this difficulty. ~ Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, #NFDB
461:In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, #NFDB
462:Martin…I’m…” I shook my head, having difficulty finding words. They were hiding in all the closets of my brain, the little bastards. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
463:Michael O'Toole had no difficulty recognizing which questions in life should be answered by physics and which ones by religion. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
464:What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with the determination to get out of it all the good there is. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
465:What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
466:Honestly, Im having trouble with the fact that youre having difficulty believing us. You are the only one in the room levitating. ~ Dakota Cassidy, #NFDB
467:In the midst of hardship and fear, suffering and difficulty, the person who’s built the habit of focus harnesses tremendous power. ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB
468:The best way to avoid a bad action is by doing a good one, for there is no difficulty in the world like that of trying to do nothing. ~ John Clare, #NFDB
469:The complaint of bad pay, and difficulty in obtaining it, is almost generally reiterated through every department of education. ~ Joseph Lancaster, #NFDB
470:The greatest difficulty in antiquity with that of altering the law; among the moderns, it is that of altering the manners. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
471:The most effective time to resolve to obey Christ is in advance of difficulty. Planning to stay faithful can greatly enhance victory. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
472:The will of a single hero can breathe courage into the hearts of a million cowards. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Real Difficulty, #NFDB
473:Think beyond the pain. Think beyond the difficulty. Commit to having one good idea every day. What new idea will you claim today? ~ Mary Morrissey, #NFDB
474:Life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore, nor actual difficulty in our life. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
475:Not every day can be an easy one, nor every day fully happy; but even a day of tough going and difficulty can be a good day. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
476:The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don’t—whichever seems likelier to win an effect. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
477:Anytime you have difficulty making an important decision, you can be sure that it’s the result of being unclear about your values. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
478:By complaining that something we have to do is too hard, we add another layer of difficulty. Take a deep breath, and then just do it. ~ Haemin Sunim, #NFDB
479:ECassChoosesPikachu: TheContainerStore is having a sale!!! I’m having difficulty *containing* my excitement… get it? #SeeWhatIDidThere? ~ L H Cosway, #NFDB
480:The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't; whichever seems likelier to win an effect. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
481:The moment you surrender to love and allow it to lead you to exactly where your soul wants to go, you will have no difficulty. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
482:When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I'm writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
483:Ignorance, according to the Buddha, is our basic difficulty. Psychedelics and the process of aging make that clear to me all the time. ~ Laura Huxley, #NFDB
484:In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
485:Most men are reasonably useful in a crisis. The difficulty lies in convincing them that the situation has reached a critical point ~ Elizabeth Peters, #NFDB
486:The self is the master of the self, what other master wouldst thou have? A self well-controlled is a master one can get with difficulty. ~ Dhammapada, #NFDB
487:Your self-sacrificin g devotion to your purpose in life and your unwavering faith will carry you through times of difficulty. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
488:Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary line and adding to one's liberty. ~ Henri Fr d ric Amiel, #NFDB
489:Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
490:I always had difficulty as a model just being myself. I can be very shy, and I used to have a lot of anxiety about working on set. ~ Stephanie Seymour, #NFDB
491:That, my dear Kjell, is a good thing. The very best things in life are born of difficulty. Whatever comes too easily is easily abandoned. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
492:The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact—of absolute undeniable fact—from the embellishments of theorists and reporters. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
493:The Difficulty lies, in finding out an exact Measure but eat for Necessity, not Pleasure, for Lust knows not where Necessity ends. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
494:Difficulty need not foreshadow despair or defeat. Rather achievement can be all the more satisfying because of obstacles surmounted. ~ William H Hastie, #NFDB
495:He often has difficulty conceiving of her as a human being. This tendency in abusers is known as objectification or depersonalization. ~ Lundy Bancroft, #NFDB
496:How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there? ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
497:If you learn indoor techniques, you will think narrowly and forget the true Way. Thus you will have difficulty in actual encounters. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #NFDB
498:The greater the Difficulty the more Glory in surmounting it, and the loss of false Joys secures to us a much better Possession of real ones. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
499:To me, honesty and the difficulty of honest communication are at the heart of both my life and my movies. The difficulty of being yourself. ~ Ira Sachs, #NFDB
500:We can solve many problems in an appropriate way, without any difficulty, if we cultivate harmony, friendship and respect for one another. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
501:A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
502:Do you have a learning difficulty of some sort?” The old woman raised the rifle higher. “Because I’d hate to shoot a disabled person. If ~ Tamra Baumann, #NFDB
503:God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty. ~ Peter Marshall, #NFDB
504:I do a TV show about a priest in London, and he is also slightly beleaguered and is subject to fate and misfortune and daily difficulty. ~ Tom Hollander, #NFDB
505:Three Rules of Work:
Out of clutter find simplicity.
From discord find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. ~ Albert Einstein,#NFDB
506:We are always in a hurry to be happy...; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
507:Your path will diverge for a while, but do not let that worry you. You have known difficulty before, but you will survive and thrive. ~ Joanne Guidoccio, #NFDB
508:What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but identifying them. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
509:Why is it that we remember with difficulty and without difficulty forget? Learn with difficulty and without difficulty remain ignorant? ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
510:He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
511:I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive. ~ Nora Ephron, #NFDB
512:In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees. Thank ~ Felix Dennis, #NFDB
513:It's a matter of each of the two churches being very deeply enculturated in its own setting and having difficulty understand the other. ~ Justo L Gonzalez, #NFDB
514:Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty. ~ Lionel Trilling, #NFDB
515:The difficulty that WikiLeaks has, of course, is that we can't go around speculating on who our sources are. That would be irresponsible. ~ Julian Assange, #NFDB
516:The difficulty with businessmen entering politics, after they've had a successful business career, is that they want to start at the top. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
517:What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
518:What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but identifying them. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
519:Employ all the leisure you have in listening to the well-informed; so you shall learn without difficulty what they have learned by long labour. ~ Isocrates, #NFDB
520:He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
521:I mean, in any case, that when you really feel something, you face the difficulty of expressing it. And that, after all, forms your style. ~ George Seferis, #NFDB
522:Jesus is not asking us to do anything for him that he hasn’t already done for us, under conditions of difficulty beyond our comprehension. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
523:Literature is the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty. ~ Lionel Trilling, #NFDB
524:The great difficulty is to save the fantasy which is life giving and cut away the childishness of the wish to realize it. ~ Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy, #NFDB
525:Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
526:Who invented political tolerance? The English invented it, it's something which has taken roots with some difficulty in Scottish politics. ~ Neal Ascherson, #NFDB
527:Every major difficulty you face in life is a fork in the road. You choose which track you will head down, toward breakdown or breakthrough. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
528:That’s the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered. ~ Francine Prose, #NFDB
529:The difficulty of looking at a system like natural selection if you have any sort of moral sense yourself, is almost what makes it beautiful. ~ Paul Bettany, #NFDB
530:The problem of creating something new, but which is consistent with everything which has been seen before, is one of extreme difficulty. ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
531:There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure-all your life. ~ John W Gardner, #NFDB
532:...burying themselves in his arm was more about feeling his love in the confusion, in the difficulty, than it was about having moved past it. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
533:How I hate these follies of not believing in the Eucharist, &c.! If the Gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there? ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
534:I am inclined to think from my own experience that the difficulty to eminence lies not in the road, but in the timidity of the traveler. ~ Washington Allston, #NFDB
535:. . . I know, by sad experience, with what difficulty a mind, weakened by long and uninterrupted suffering, admits hope, much less assurance. ~ Sarah Siddons, #NFDB
536:Jesus is not asking us to do anything for him that he hasn’t already done for us, under conditions of difficulty beyond our comprehension. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
537:The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
538:Truths are not the better nor the worse for their obviousness or difficulty, but their value is to be measured by their usefulness and tendency. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
539:You say you experience great difficulty in the mission. Alas! Monsieur, there is no lot in life where there is nothing to be endured. ~ Saint Vincent de Paul, #NFDB
540:People who are not prepared to do unpopular things and defy the clamor of the multitude are not fit to be ministers in time of difficulty. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
541:Sometimes the truth has difficulty breaching the city walls of our beliefs. A lie, dressed in the correct livery, passes through more easily. ~ Rachel Hartman, #NFDB
542:The last of the ten unwholesome actions is wrong view, basic misperceptions that become the cause of difficulty and suffering in our lives. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
543:The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
544:you will presently find that you are safely and comfortably out of your difficulty — that your demonstration is made. In order to "Golden Key" a ~ Emmet Fox, #NFDB
545:All movement forward implies a certain amount of friction and difficulty of adjustment ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Problem of Uniformity and Liberty, #NFDB
546:…I’m fed up with myself—with my difficulty in expressing myself in words about anything. I’m imprisoned in myself—even symbolically. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
547:Our difficulty is not that we don't know God's will. Our discomfort comes from the fact that we do know His will, but we do not want to do it. ~ Henry Blackaby, #NFDB
548:Parents are much more likely to be attuned to what they don't like than they are to the expectations that the kid is having difficulty meeting. ~ Ross W Greene, #NFDB
549:Perhaps here we have a clue to the reason why royal rule used to exist formerly, namely the difficulty of finding enough men of outstanding virtue. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
550:The ability to hear someone is really about trust, not simply about communication. A trust issue always lurks beneath a communication difficulty. ~ David Richo, #NFDB
551:Those who receive with most pains and difficulty, remember best; every new think they learn, being, as it were, burnt and branded in on their minds. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
552:To me, one of the primary reasons E’s and S’s have difficulty moving to the B and I side is because they are too afraid of making mistakes. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
553:Aline,” he said with difficulty, “I love you enough for the both of us. And there must be something about me worth loving. If you would just try… ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
554:Another difficulty to be added to the one mentioned above is that a state that becomes free creates for itself enemies rather than friends. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
555:He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
556:If you don’t give a damn what the rest of the world is up to, you can be alone for a hundred years—a thousand years—with no difficulty whatsoever. ~ Osamu Dazai, #NFDB
557:I had great difficulty in school interacting with others, and I took refuge in the contrived setting of play acting, which is what I still do. ~ Jesse Eisenberg, #NFDB
558:immediately before a great victory, one will often experience some form of difficulty. The key is to maintain your focus and keep on believing. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
559:The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact — of absolute undeniable fact — from the embellishments of theorists and reporters. Then, ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
560:Wit, like hunger, will be with great difficulty restrained from falling on vice and ignorance, where there is great plenty and variety of food. ~ Henry Fielding, #NFDB
561:hard times do make better people. That in the middle of difficulty lives opportunity. And that each of us is built to win—in both work and life. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
562:Why? The ease with which he manipulates words is his greatest talent. Was his difficulty a result of his torture? Something more? Like madness? ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
563:Winston Churchill once quipped, “The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” He ~ William Ury, #NFDB
564:I only used a cell phone for the first time after I was released. I had difficulty coping with it because it seemed so small and insubstantial. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi, #NFDB
565:It is easy to make a picture of someone and call it a portrait. The difficulty lies in making a picture that makes the viewer care about a stranger. ~ Paul Strand, #NFDB
566:parent who was not able to play, freely and pleasurably, in earlier stages of his own life will have difficulty enjoying play with his or her children ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
567:The difficulty with humanity's previous attempts at reinventing itself is that we've always started with behaviors rather than with beliefs. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
568:The need to find out what will happen if I don't relent or moderate my actions has been a constant source of difficulty and discomfort in my life. ~ Russell Brand, #NFDB
569:We are always in a hurry to be happy, M. Danglars; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
570:A successful surgeon should be a man who, when asked to name the three best surgeons in the world, would have difficulty deciding on the other two. ~ Denton Cooley, #NFDB
571:I'd like to be proven wrong firstly on the difficulty of building a self-sustaining closed circuit ecosystem in space that can support human life. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
572:I sometimes think you despise poetry,' said Phineas.
'When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true. ~ Anthony Trollope,#NFDB
573:Jealousy is a painful passion; yet without some share of it, the agreeable affection of love has difficulty to subsist in its full force and violence. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
574:The light around someone who speaks truth, who consistently acts with compassion for all, even in great difficulty, is visible to all around them. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
575:For his part, Blind Seer had no difficulty accepting idleness. A wolf proverb stated: “Hunt when hungry, sleep when not, for hunger always returns. ~ Jane Lindskold, #NFDB
576:When all combine in every way to make everything easier, people will want difficulty. I conceived it as my task to make difficulties everywhere. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
577:You see, if you are 30 years ahead of your time, you will always have difficulty speaking with the bosses in the industry. They are too conservative. ~ Luigi Colani, #NFDB
578:Certainly there is no contending against the Will of God; but still there is some difficulty in ascertaining, and applying it, to particular cases. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
579:One striking consequence of the disintegration of the public sector has been an increased difficulty in comprehending what we have in common with others. ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
580:Liberals and international diplomats (a distinction without a difference) have notorious difficulty understanding how to deal with totalitarian regimes. ~ Mona Charen, #NFDB
581:The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
582:We are always in a hurry to be happy, M. Danglars; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune. But ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
583:Your difficulty can be hard enough, but the resentment or anger you drag along with it can be even more debilitating than the difficulty itself. ~ Jennifer Rothschild, #NFDB
584:I am called to man's labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for? ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
585:Rarely is any good done without difficulty; the devil is too subtle and the world too corrupt not to attempt to nip such a good work in the bud ~ Saint Vincent de Paul, #NFDB
586:The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
587:The parents who are most frustrated by high-need babies have difficulty unloading the baggage of a control mind-set. “High-need baby” says it all. It’s ~ William Sears, #NFDB
588:There were seven thermonuclear devices?" queried Parks, who had latched on to Jack's outlandish explanation without too much difficulty, as should you. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
589:They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
590:What separates people, Stockdale taught me, is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
591:When people have difficulty achieving regular releases of dopamine through these kinds of socially accepted activities, they will often seek a shortcut. ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
592:Among nonclassical ions the ratio of conceptual difficulty to molecular weight reaches a maximum with the cyclopropylcarbinyl-cyclobutyl system. ~ Paul Doughty Bartlett, #NFDB
593:Directing the process by the mind can only lead to difficulty, for the mind does not know. Commitment to the Truth is sufficient for the process to unfold. ~ A H Almaas, #NFDB
594:It is best to know when to keep your salami in your pants and when to pull it out, however, and even my priests have had some difficulty with that issue. ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
595:I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty. ~ Barbara Kruger, #NFDB
596:My friend, when a man has anything to tell in this world, the difficulty is not to make him tell it, but to prevent him from telling it too often. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
597:one who thinks in Chinese has little difficulty in seeing that objects are also events, that our world is a collection of processes rather than entities. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
598:Their homes were not the nurturing places they once were. The little people had difficulty sleeping and were having nightmares about not finding any Cheese. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
599:A present incapacity, however heavy may seem its pressure, is only a trial of faith and a temporary difficulty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #NFDB
600:Challenging behavior is just a signal, the fever, the means by which the kid is communicating that he or she is having difficulty meeting an expectation. ~ Ross W Greene, #NFDB
601:First, one has the difficulty of emancipating oneself from one’s chains; and, ultimately, one has to emancipate oneself from this emancipation too. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
602:He who is a sceptic in regard to faith, in regard to science, conservatism, progress, and so on, has indeed difficulty in finding anything to do. In ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz, #NFDB
603:I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
604:I really worked to try and be creative enough on the guitar parts so those who aren't real educated would know that there was some difficulty in doing it. ~ Brad Paisley, #NFDB
605:It seems a universal rule in this world that people will always look for victims and scapegoats, does it not? Especially at times of difficulty and tension. ~ C J Sansom, #NFDB
606:It’s nothing to be ashamed of—often the greatest difficulty faced by people suffering from mental illness is society’s inexcusable ignorance of the subject. ~ David Wong, #NFDB
607:The difficulty, in sociology, is to manage to think in a completely astonished and disconcerted way about things you thought you had always understood. ~ Pierre Bourdieu, #NFDB
608:We do not choose between a life of difficulty and a life of ease. We simply choose for what purpose we will work, sometimes suffer, and hopefully endure. ~ Daniel Taylor, #NFDB
609:A man may call to mind the face of his friend, but not his own. Here, then, is an initial difficulty in the way of applying the maxim, Know Thyself. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
610:associational logic,” a muscle rarely worked by prose: its “occlusion, or difficulty,” she wrote, “healing me, forcing me to privilege my heart, my intuition. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
611:It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character. ~ Rowan Atkinson, #NFDB
612:The difficulty of IVF or of any fertility issues is the hope and the shattered hope, the dream that it might happen this time and then it doesn't happen. ~ Brooke Shields, #NFDB
613:The difficulty with pragmatic arguments for a religion is that truths do not always "work", and beliefs that "work" are by no means always true. ~ John Warwick Montgomery, #NFDB
614:The only cure [for envy] in the case of ordinary men and women is happiness, and the difficulty is that envy is itself a terrible obstacle to happiness ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
615:The path is long, but self-surrender makes it short; the way is difficult, but perfect trust makes it easy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Real Difficulty, #NFDB
616:(About parenthood and BDSM)
Note that a difficulty in shifting gears, or a struggle to find the time, is not the same thing as an ontological either/or. ~ Maggie Nelson,#NFDB
617:Anybody can have ideas-the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
618:Difficulty of subsistence made the invaders reduce the numbers of the army to a point at which it might live on the country during the prosecution of the war. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
619:Nothing is more difficult than surrendering to the instant. That difficulty is human pain. It is ours. I surrender in words and surrender when I paint. ~ Clarice Lispector, #NFDB
620:One of the rooted convictions of each member of the human race is that he or she is able without difficulty to open a door which has baffled their fellows. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
621:Spain is facing an economic situation of extreme difficulty, I repeat, of extreme difficulty, and anyone who doesn't understand that is fooling themselves. ~ Mariano Rajoy, #NFDB
622:You know well that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #NFDB
623:But the basic difficulty still remains: It is the expansion of Federal power, about which I wish to express my alarm. How easily we embrace such business. ~ Everett Dirksen, #NFDB
624:I'm up to here with cool, okay? I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
625:In science, as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. ~ Thomas S Kuhn, #NFDB
626:The human race is always trying this dodge of making everything entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it shifts to another. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
627:The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
628:The supreme need in every hour of difficulty and distress is for a fresh vision of God. Seeing Him, all else takes on proper perspective and proportion. ~ G Campbell Morgan, #NFDB
629:Approach every difficulty as if it were sent to you at that moment and in that way to teach you something you need to learn so you can continue moving forward. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
630:Each time we confront some intense difficulty, we know there is something we haven’t learned yet, and the universe is now giving us the opportunity to learn. ~ Susan Jeffers, #NFDB
631:Herein lies the main objective of portraiture and also its main difficulty. The photographer probes for the innermost. The lens sees only the surface... . ~ Philippe Halsman, #NFDB
632:I blush easily. I have difficulty meeting people's eye, difficulty with public speaking, the normal afflictions of the shy, but not to a paralysing degree. ~ Nicholson Baker, #NFDB
633:It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very simply and neatly arranged; the only difficulty was, that she had not the smallest idea how to set about it. ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
634:Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power. ~ John Henry Newman, #NFDB
635:slavery’s demise had been hastened by large slave revolts in the British West Indies, brutally and with increasing difficulty suppressed by British troops. ~ Adam Hochschild, #NFDB
636:The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
637:Despite all that I know rationally, and everything that I can put into words, I can say that I have difficulty giving up the notion of the nobility of art. ~ Aleksandar Hemon, #NFDB
638:Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
639:Instant gratification is so overrated. It's about the process. It's the difficulty. It's the grind of all of it that you better enjoy. That's what makes it great. ~ Bob Myers, #NFDB
640:The thought of a solitary man can become, by exercise of selfless and undoubting Will, the thought of a nation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Real Difficulty, #NFDB
641:To understand the difficulty of predicting the next 100 years, we have to appreciate the difficulty that the people of 1900 had in predicting the world of 2000. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
642:One white reviewer in 1937 [said he] had difficulty believing that such a town as Eatonville, "inhabited and governed entirely by negroes," could be real. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, #NFDB
643:Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficult of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us. ~ Michael Joseph Oakeshott, #NFDB
644:The difficulty that contestation must be done in the name of an authority is resolved this: I contest in the name of contestation what experience itself is. ~ Georges Bataille, #NFDB
645:What I've learned about my self over the years is that I'm pretty restless. If I multitask it's probably because I have difficulty just focusing on one thing. ~ Demetri Martin, #NFDB
646:When once the higher consciousness begins to act, the difficulty diminishes and there is a clear progress from truth to greater truth.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#NFDB
647:280 : If the debtor is in a difficulty, grant him time Till it is easy for him to repay. But if ye remit it by way of charity, that is best for you if ye only knew. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
648:A Louisiana politician can't afford to let his animosities carry him away, and still less his principles, although there is seldom difficulty in that department. ~ A J Liebling, #NFDB
649:A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities. ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
650:Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
651:I don't think for this generation, but for my generation and my father's generation, men had difficulty in accessing emotion and then being able to talk about it. ~ Liam Neeson, #NFDB
652:It is in times of difficulty that great nations like great men display the whole energy of their character and become an object of admiration to posterity. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
653:Some managers are able to let go of the past better than others. Those that have the greatest difficulty abandoning things are often those unable to face reality. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
654:The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending Western subjects. ~ Lafcadio Hearn, #NFDB
655:We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
656:We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
657:A man's love, till it has been chastened and fastened by the feeling of duty which marriage brings with it, is instigated mainly by the difficulty of pursuit. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
658:Anybody can have ideas—the difficulty is to express them
without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that
ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph. ~ Mark Twain,#NFDB
659:ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
660:that childhood said to have been mine the difficulty of believing in it the feeling rather of having been born octogenarian at the age when one dies in the dark ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
661:The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
662:Those who look for the people or the animals in need of help will never have a difficulty in finding them because our world is a world of desperate needers! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
663:years. What separates people, Stockdale taught me, is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life. In ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
664:You know well that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #NFDB
665:An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty. ~ Samuel Butler, #NFDB
666:Nobody has the right to put another under such a difficulty that he must either hurt the person by telling the truth or hurt himself by telling what is not true. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
667:So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
668:…the greatest obstacle to my progress is me. I myself have been the biggest difficulty in my path. It’s with enormous effort that I’m able to overcome myself. ~ Clarice Lispector, #NFDB
669:The problem stems from our great difficulty in believing that God is glorified in our utter humanity rather than in our spiritually programmed responses. ~ Rebecca Manley Pippert, #NFDB
670:You know well enough that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions,nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #NFDB
671:Before my commercial success, I had difficulty doing what I wanted, but my sincere short films always won prizes in festivals. So I was ready for larger successes. ~ Michel Ocelot, #NFDB
672:I had noticed that I had no difficulty conversing with robots, because absolutely nothing surprised them. They were incapable of surprise. A very sensible quality. ~ Stanis aw Lem, #NFDB
673:I've been hearing-impaired, not quite since birth, but I've been wearing hearing aids since I was 13, so I'm very conscious of the difficulty of voice communication. ~ Vinton Cerf, #NFDB
674:No difficulty can be presented to the human mind which the human mind, if it will, cannot solve. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Problem of a Federated Heterogeneous Empire, #NFDB
675:Of a disposition at once unsociable and talkative, desiring to see no one, yet wishing to converse with some one, he got out of the difficulty by talking to himself. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
676:Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power. ~ Saint John Henry Newman, #NFDB
677:The best bosses break down problems into bite-sized pieces and talk and act like each little task is something that people can complete without great difficulty. ~ Robert I Sutton, #NFDB
678:The difficulty with Poe is not figuring out which of his stories rise to the level required of this collection, but rather which of his stories to exclude from it. ~ Andrew Barger, #NFDB
679:And I really do think that the difficulty of research makes it more real to you than punching a thing to find out how many men were killed at this particular action. ~ Shelby Foote, #NFDB
680:Choices are our choices so I am not taking away anyone's personal choice, but we run into difficulty when we're having choices made for us rather than making our own. ~ Robert Moss, #NFDB
681:Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty. ~ Isocrates, #NFDB
682:The man who says to one, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
683:The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
684:Which is strange - I've always thought of myself as someone who writes out of difficulty. And I did do that, but I came out on the side of light more often than not. ~ Maggie Smith, #NFDB
685:A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms. ~ Gregory Bateson, #NFDB
686:Change only comes when we face the difficulty of reality head-on. Fantasy changes nothing, which is why, once we're done fantasizing, it feels like a bankrupt story. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
687:Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively working together. ~ Augustus Hare, #NFDB
688:The central difficulty lies in the fact that all of the sciences have made such great progress during the last century that they have got quite beyond the reach of man ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
689:Truly the angels are come among us every day. Our difficulty is so often that in our vanity and worldliness we so utterly fail to recognise them for what they are. ~ Joseph O Connor, #NFDB
690:With your reorientation as awareness, difficulty calls upon your resources - not first the resources that you're familiar with, but the resources of your own being. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
691:In times of difficulty, if we die to self and put God’s will first (Matt. 6:33), we can be sure that He will either take us out of the trouble or bring us through. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
692:This hill though high I covent ascend; The difficulty will not me offend; For I perceive the way of life lies here. Come, pluck up, heart; let's neither faint nor fear. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
693:You smile, but I’ve seen my share of greatness over the years, and it’s not a blessing. The only difficulty is that escaping greatness brings an even greater curse. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
694:Do not lose hope; St. Joseph also experienced moments of difficulty, but he never lost faith and was able to overcome them, in the certainty that God never abandons us. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
695:Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
696:Of all the vulgar arts of government, that of solving every difficulty that might arise by thrusting the hand into the public purse is the most illusory and contemptible. ~ Robert Peel, #NFDB
697:Please do not worry so much, my child. Let the will of God be done. You have been following the right path. The Lord will never put you to any difficulty. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
698:Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day. ~ Vaclav Havel, #NFDB
699:The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
700:Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. ~ Frederick Douglass, #NFDB
701:White men seem to have difficulty in realizing that people who live differently from themselves still might be traveling the upward and progressive road of life. ~ Luther Standing Bear, #NFDB
702:A supreme difficulty is Nature’s indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Steps of Nature, #NFDB
703:No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking. ~ J P Morgan, #NFDB
704:The essence of a vow does not consist in the difficulty of its performance but in the determination behind it unflinchingly to stick to it in the teeth of difficulties. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
705:Therefore, to estimate the enemy situation and to calculate distances and the degree of difficulty of the terrain so as to control victory are virtues of the superior general. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
706:If I had learned one thing from Homer over the years, it was that just because you couldn’t quite see your way out of a difficulty, that didn’t mean a way out didn’t exist. ~ Gwen Cooper, #NFDB
707:If proper in their own conduct, what difficulty would they have in governing? But if not able to be proper in their own conduct, how can they demand such conduct from others? ~ Confucius, #NFDB
708:I shall be neutral and inert. No difficulty there. Throes are the only trouble, I must be on my guard against throes. But I am less given to them now, since coming here. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
709:I think a lot of tunes can suffer from being so simple, so either they get over-complicated or their simplicity means the simple way to lay them down becomes the difficulty. ~ Thom Yorke, #NFDB
710:The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
711:The harder you chase something, the faster you go and the less you're able to let life meet life. If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down. ~ Natalie Goldberg, #NFDB
712:The Occultists, however, know that the traditions of Esoteric Philosophy must be the right ones, simply because they are the most logical, and reconcile every difficulty. ~ H P Blavatsky, #NFDB
713:The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty. ~ Emile Durkheim, #NFDB
714:You may say you won’t interfere with another person’s soul, but you do—merely by existing. The snag about it is the practical difficulty, so to speak, of not existing. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
715:But the life of freedom requires a beginning, and here a beginning is a resolution, and the resolution has its work and its pain-thus the beginning has its difficulty. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
716:Every acting gig isn't the same, every writing job isn't the same, every live performance isn't the same - the challenge is the level of difficulty or ease, and that may vary. ~ Ricky Jay, #NFDB
717:I am having difficulty in maintaining contact with Earth. The trouble is in the AE-35 unit. My Fault Prediction Center reports that it may fail within seventy-two hours. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
718:I have no difficulty with the recognition of civil unions for non-traditional relationships but I believe in law we should protect the traditional definition of marriage. ~ Stephen Harper, #NFDB
719:Managers are to information as alcoholics are to booze. They consume enormous amounts, constantly crave more, but have great difficulty in digesting their existing intake. ~ Robert Heller, #NFDB
720:I need [Beijing's] trust in order to develop universal suffrage. The more suspicions being expressed, the more difficulty we'll have in moving towards the final destination. ~ Donald Tsang, #NFDB
721:Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
722:The deeper the difficulty in fulfilling a dream, the brighter the outcome of its fulfillment and the sweeter the celebration thereof. Persist to the end; don't give up! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
723:This is the way to get ideas: never to let adverse circumstances discourage you, but to believe there is a way out of every difficulty, which may be found by earnest though. ~ L Frank Baum, #NFDB
724:What we're seeing early on is Democrats rallying around Al Gore, Republicans rallying around George Bush and the difficulty of anybody else to get any room in the race. ~ Stuart Rothenberg, #NFDB
725:And whosoever fears Allah and keeps his duty to Him, He will make a way for him to get out (from every difficulty).And He will provide him from (sources) he never could imagine. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
726:As for critical writing about modernism, its moments of lucidity are but fulgurations illuminating the dark and incomprehensible landscape of its subject's unabashed difficulty. ~ Will Self, #NFDB
727:Secure against the designs of men, secure against the malignity of the Gods, they have accomplished a thing of infinite difficulty; that to them nothing remains even to be wished. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
728:The lesson of the trickster tales is the third desirable difficulty: the unexpected freedom that comes from having nothing to lose. The trickster gets to break the rules. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
729:This is the way to get ideas: never to let adverse circumstances discourage you, but to believe there is a way out of every difficulty, which may be found by earnest thought. ~ L Frank Baum, #NFDB
730:A leading difficulty with the average player is that he totally misunderstands what is meant by concentration. He may think he is concentrating hard when he is merely worrying. ~ Bobby Jones, #NFDB
731:Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq. ~ Eric Alterman, #NFDB
732:The difficulty of carrying on a leisure-oriented tradition of culture in a work-oriented society is enough in itself to keep the present crisis in our culture unresolved. ~ Clement Greenberg, #NFDB
733:This party is a bit like an old stagecoach. If you drive along at a rapid rate everyone aboard is either so exhilarated or so seasick that you don't have a lot of difficulty. ~ Harold Wilson, #NFDB
734:Compassion and empathy are two of the best gifts we receive when we become neutral, unbiased, and unattached to the outcome of a difficulty we are facing or a fault in someone. ~ John Kuypers, #NFDB
735:The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
736:The forces that affect our lives, the influences that mold and shape us, are often like whispers in a different room, teasingly indistinct, apprehended only with difficulty. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
737:The library was full of wizards, who care about their books in the same way that ants care about their eggs and in time of difficulty carry them around in much the same way. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
738:This hill though high I covent ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend;
For I perceive the way of life lies here.
Come, pluck up, heart; let's neither faint nor fear. ~ John Bunyan,#NFDB
739:Maybe the hardest lesson is the one I have to learn over and over again, that each story is its own animal, that every story I write is going to come only with difficulty. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell, #NFDB
740:[Perfection] is only possible if the mind of man is changed, if he, of his own sweet will, changes his mind; and the great difficulty is, neither can he force his own mind. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
741:The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children. ~ Andr Breton, #NFDB
742:The technological perils that science serves up, its implicit challenge to received wisdom, and its perceived difficulty, are all reasons for some people to mistrust and avoid it. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
743:Even a wizard would have a great deal of difficulty repealing the economic law that higher minimum wages reduce employment. Since politicians are not wizards, they should not try. ~ Gary Becker, #NFDB
744:I don’t know how to do that, and I don’t want to think about that.” It is a challenging problem. It’s harder to engineer a system to do it, but engineering is a one-time difficulty. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
745:It’s a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man’s oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
746:Look,” said Zaphod, “I’m up to here with cool, okay? I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
747:The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children. ~ Andre Breton, #NFDB
748:Here it is,' Nigel said. Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI, Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY. That spells difficulty.' How perfectly ridiculous!' snorted Miss Trunchbull. 'Why are all these women married? ~ Roald Dahl, #NFDB
749:He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, unlike those of the wise, harden with age. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
750:Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been to fall in love. But how a princess who had no gravity could fall into anything is a difficulty–perhaps the difficulty. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
751:The sense organs experience the external light, sound, etc. with difficulty; the different sense organs only have a so-called specific receptivity for particular stimuli. ~ Johannes Peter Muller, #NFDB
752:I'd like to be proven wrong on the difficulty of handling the medical side-effects of long term exposure to deep space (both microgravity induced illnesses and radiation damage). ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
753:In my paper the fact the XY was not equal to YX was very disagreeable to me. I felt this was the only point of difficulty in the whole scheme...and I was not able to solve it. ~ Werner Heisenberg, #NFDB
754:It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
755:Lampis the ship owner, on being asked how he acquired his great wealth, replied, My great wealth was acquired with no difficulty, but my small wealth, my first gains, with much labor. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
756:The difficulty comes from this, that Christianity (Christian orthodoxy) is exclusive and that belief in its truth excludes belief in any other truth. It does not absorb; it repulses. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
757:The difficulty of accurate recognition constitutes one of the most serious sources of friction in war, by making things appear entirely different from what one had expected. ~ Carl von Clausewitz, #NFDB
758:The difficulty of writing a good theatre play set in new reality was even greater given that the level of similitude to life that is allowed in a film would not work on the stage. ~ Andrzej Wajda, #NFDB
759:There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
760:Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an idea almost at the same moment. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
761:And once we cease to value the public over the private, surely we shall come in time to have difficulty seeing just why we should value law (the public good par excellence) over force. ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
762:At this point in history, people didn’t know how to react to “Eddie, the mysterious wizard from the Orient.” They already had difficulty dealing with Eddie’s thick New Jersey accent. ~ Scott Meyer, #NFDB
763:Do nondoing, strive for non-stiving, savor the flavourless, make much of little, repay enmity with virture; plan for difficulty when it is still easy, do the great while it is still small. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
764:I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, and fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural . . to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
765:Listen," Mac interrupted, "you still have to knock it out of the park. But it's a degree-of-difficulty thing. You're doing a triple lutz and she's skating. You're the Sasha Cohen here. ~ Zoey Dean, #NFDB
766:Our cultural dilemma has nothing to do with children who don't read very well. It lies instead in the difficulty of finding a way to restore meaning and purpose to modern life. ~ John Taylor Gatto, #NFDB
767:The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to undervalue the times when you’re apparently doing nothing, and those are very important times. ~ Brian Eno, #NFDB
768:The mind carries you with it, away from what you are supposed to do, toward things that cannot be explained rationally, toward difficulty, lack of clarity, late-afternoon light. ~ Donald Barthelme, #NFDB
769:Employees in large, older firms often have difficulty getting a transformation process started because of the lack of leadership coupled with arrogance, insularity, and bureaucracy. ~ John P Kotter, #NFDB
770:Paul’s model of parenting is distinctly redemptive, but when parents forget that moments of difficulty are moments of redemption, they stand in the way of what the Lord is doing. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
771:Some difficulty is warranted and other difficulty I think is gratuitous. And I think I can tell the difference. There are certainly very difficult poets that I really enjoy reading. ~ Billy Collins, #NFDB
772:Sometimes writers like to imagine that the difficulty of becoming a writer resides in convincing others that that is what you are. But really the problem is in convincing yourself. ~ Hanif Kureishi, #NFDB
773:To decent Avernus is easy;
the gate of Pluto stands
open night and day; but to
retrace onesʼs steps and
return to the upper air, that
is the toil, that is the
difficulty. ~ Virgil,#NFDB
774:Trouble, hardship, difficulty, pain, suffering, conflict, tragedy, evil - they're all part of the [Christian] Story. Indeed, the problem of evil is the reason there's any Story at all. ~ Greg Koukl, #NFDB
775:Dogs never have any difficulty in remembering the slightest event or the lightest word that has ever occurred or was ever spoken in their presence. Our power of memory is something marvelous ~ Ouida, #NFDB
776:forsan et haec olim meminisse invabit.” After great difficulty and with much help from the teacher I had worked this out to mean, “Someday we shall recall these trials with pleasure. ~ Russell Baker, #NFDB
777:If Diogenes with his lantern twenty-three centuries ago had difficulty finding an honest man, today he would have perhaps an even more troublesome time finding a happy one. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
778:I like to think that each book I start is a completely new departure But I’ve learned that whatever you do, readers will have no difficulty assimilating it into what you’ve done before. ~ Ian Mcewan, #NFDB
779:Sensing the difficulty in producing change, some people try to manipulate events quietly behind the scenes and purposefully avoid any public discussion of future direction. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
780:Spend 5 minutes breathing in, cherishing yourself; and, breathing out cherishing others. If you think about people you have difficulty cherishing, extend your cherishing to them anyway. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
781:the difficulty with people who rely on systems is that they begin to believe that nearly everything is in some way a system and therefore, sooner or later, they become bureaucrats. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
782:The effort kids simply thought the difficulty meant “Apply more effort or try new strategies.” They didn’t see it as a failure, and they didn’t think it reflected on their intellect. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
783:The human imagination... has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open. ~ John Berger, #NFDB
784:Being positive does not mean we deny the existence of difficulty; it means we believe God is greater than our difficulties. Believing in God can cause us to win any battle we face. When ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
785:Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
786:Pinner. "'Thank you very much,' said he; 'I fear that I underrated the difficulty of the task. This list will be of very material assistance to me.' "'It took some time,' said I. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
787:V. Our resolutions to cleave to and follow those that are turning to God, and joining themselves to his people, ought to be fixed and strong, because of the great difficulty of it. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
788:Have you ever noticed how much emphasis some people place on even the smallest amount of difficulty in their lives, and how little time they spend reflecting on moments of happiness? ~ Andy Puddicombe, #NFDB
789:I have a great deal of difficulty with those who live in a hugely prosperous country telling people in the developing world that they should be deprived of a critical source of energy. ~ Lee R Raymond, #NFDB
790:In the past few decades, medical science has rendered obsolete centuries of experience, tradition, and language about our mortality and created a new difficulty for mankind: how to die. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
791:Liberals have difficulty understanding the Tea Party because they think it is a bunch of selfish racists. But I think the Tea Party is driven in large part by concerns about fairness. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
792:This is the great difficulty of service: dying to self. How much easier to hear and obey God’s call to leave all for a tribe in Africa than to let the car to my left have the right of way. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
793:Almost everybody thinks about philosophy, even if they don't realize it's philosophy and even if they have no sense of the difficulty of the problems, the array of possible answers. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, #NFDB
794:I write books and either people read them or they don't read them. The rise of Facebook or e-books doesn't change the difficulty level of writing sentences and thinking up new ideas. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
795:The real difficulty is, isn’t it, to adapt ones steady beliefs about tribulation to this particular tribulation; for the particular, when it arrives, always seems so peculiarly intolerable. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
796:We never want Him. We say, "Lord, give me a fine house." We want the house, not Him. "Give me health! Save me from this difficulty!" When a man wants nothing but Him, [he gets Him]. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
797:Evidently there is difficulty, real difficulty, in learning a foreign language at all, as if it sprinkled all the sweet flavor of the Greek mythical stories with a foul taste. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
798:For an artist, a good place to be is you have some kind of influence and power to get things done, but in your essence you remain a nomad or a soldier facing a difficulty to be overcome. ~ Cai Guo Qiang, #NFDB
799:My own story, anyone's own story, is always told against me, even what I myself am writing here, because I have no heroic history to offer. There is no difficulty not of my own making. ~ Sebastian Barry, #NFDB
800:THE MISCONCEPTION: You can predict how well you would perform in any situation. THE TRUTH: You are generally pretty bad at estimating your competence and the difficulty of complex tasks. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB
801:The truth is if I had a gay son, I would love him just as much as if he was straight… I might have to try to love even more because I know of the difficulty that he would have in society. ~ Tracy Morgan, #NFDB
802:This is the problem for which revolutionary theory has yet to find the right solution, if there is one. The difficulty is that the economic interests of the two classes are antagonistic. ~ Garet Garrett, #NFDB
803:Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as soon as you connect with your true subject you will write. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
804:Ironically, the more intensive and far-reaching a historian's research, the greater the difficulty of citation. As the mountain of material grows, so does the possibility of error. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
805:It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
806:There is a widespread difficulty in the Muslim world, which has to do with how the people are taught about examining their own history. A whole range of stuff has been placed off limits. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
807:I great difficulty having any respect for a religion that has so little confidence in the truth of its beliefs that it feels reduced to using threats in order to propagate those beliefs. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
808:I quickly convinced myself that the true key to material happiness lay in a modest standard of living which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
809:I think in many ways the problem that my writing would have with an American reviewer is that Americans find difficulty very hard to take. They are inevitably looking for a happy ending. ~ Jamaica Kincaid, #NFDB
810:Jayce continued to stare at her,his chest falling and rising erratically.Oh,yeah,she´d pissed him off really good.
"Get.On.My.Bike."The words tore from his throat with apparent difficulty. ~ Katie Reus,#NFDB
811:Parkinson's is a slow but inevitable process. It's hard living with it on a daily basis. The difficulty facing people with it is that they never quite know 'Can I or can't I do this today?' ~ Helen Mirren, #NFDB
812:Transformation helps us more clearly see Jesus. And when we more clearly see Him, we can more clearly see the miracle in our mess, the good in our difficulty, the redemption in rejection. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
813:clearly it’s not what’s happening outside of ourselves that causes us the most difficulty, but rather what’s going on inside our own minds—which, thankfully, is something that can change. ~ Andy Puddicombe, #NFDB
814:Darnell had received what is called a sound commercial education, and would therefore have found very great difficulty in putting into articulate speech any thought that was worth thinking; ~ Arthur Machen, #NFDB
815:I think we're going to have some difficulty in front of us. I have absolutely no doubt the next three, four years Europe are going to be at best stagnation. We are preparing for tough times. ~ Carlos Ghosn, #NFDB
816:Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
817:The finest flowers are those transplanted, for transplanting means difficulty, a readjusting to new conditions, and through the effort put forth to find adjustment does the plant progress. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
818:8:20 no place to lay his head. The proper response to a leader’s warning about difficulty ahead (as in 2Sa 15:19–20) was to follow him anyway (2Sa 15:21–22). 8:21 bury my father. Many considered ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
819:I remember the difficulty we had in the beginning replacing magnetic cores in memories and eventually we had both cost and performance advantages. But it wasn't at all clear in the beginning. ~ Gordon Moore, #NFDB
820:I should prefer that you do not mention my name at all in connection with this case, as I choose to be only associated with those crimes which present some difficulty in their solution. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
821:People that go through what I went through and people going through divorce, it's really a difficulty process; it's heartbreaking and it hurts really bad. It can really mess with your head. ~ David Arquette, #NFDB
822:We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read- ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
823:You may have been too quick to admit the difficulty of a specific task. The question is "how many times have you tried dealing with it"? Don't say it's difficult if you haven't tried it! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
824:You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
825:And from the first time I picked up a basketball at age eight - I had a lot of difficulty when I first picked up a basketball, because I was a scrub - there were things that I liked about it. ~ Julius Erving, #NFDB
826:And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
827:How you turn out depends on where you've been. So when it comes to thinking about blameworthiness, the first difficulty to consider is that people do not choose their own developmental path. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
828:Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
829:In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice…, the path of faith, the path of hope, and the path of love toward our fellow man. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
830:Take the very hardest thing in your life - the place of difficulty, outward or inward, and expect God to triumph gloriously in that very spot. Just there He can bring your soul into blossom. ~ Lilias Trotter, #NFDB
831:Those who will not take the trouble to think for themselves, have always somebody that thinks for them; and the difficulty in writing is to please those from whom others learn to be pleased. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
832:1. Self-image disturbance. 2. Difficulty identifying and expressing one’s individuated thoughts, wishes and feelings and autonomously regulating self-esteem. 3. Difficulty with self-assertion. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
833:But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie, #NFDB
834:There are two key lessons: a) The only way to survive in business is to be profitable, unless you have an unlimited amount of money; b) Get through your difficulty and learn to do better next time. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
835:Fate loves to invent patterns and designs. Its difficulty lies in complexity. But life itself is difficult because of its simplicity. It has only a few things of a grandeur not fit for us. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
836:Given the difficulty of resisting such temptations over the longer run, a proper concern for the welfare of congressional souls may well be the ultimate argument in favor of term limitations. ~ James L Buckley, #NFDB
837:If you are going to set out to develop mystical powers to impress your friends and do other things to your enemies, the difficulty with it is that you will not be moving towards enlightenment. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
838:In times of difficulty to stop still for a long time is a cardinal error, the best way is to move slowly forward, warily watching each step but never faltering. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Facts and Opinions, #NFDB
839:The difficulty of reconciling the existence of evil with God’s alleged omnipotence and mercy has, it can plausibly be argued, defeated every orthodox theologian in the history of monotheism. ~ Anthony Gottlieb, #NFDB
840:When anyone of them lets God have charge of his life the power and, glory are amazingly demonstrated. The book is written with deep concern for the pain, difficulty and struggle of human existence. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
841:Holmes realizes both the necessity of getting into the mindset of the actors involved in the drama and the immediate difficulty of doing so, with all of the elements that could at any point go wrong ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
842:The notion that 'it all somehow must make sense', or 'there is a best decision here', preserves from despair: the difficulty is how to entertain this consoling notion in a way which is not false. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
843:Being a musician, you want to be able to do the hardest stuff there is. People would think it's classical, but in classical, it's all on the page and the difficulty is keeping up with the music. ~ Brian McKnight, #NFDB
844:If he should wish it, she would make no difficulty of parting with the things around her. Of what concern were the prettinesses of life to one whose inner soul was hampered with such ugliness? ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
845:The beef and pudding are ponderous, and unless there be absolute children in the party there is a difficulty in grafting any special afternoon amusements on the Sunday pursuits of the morning. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
846:I do not underestimate the difficulty of the challenge that global climate change presents to us. It will take a significant effort and the best talent and technology we have to solve the problem. ~ Federico Pena, #NFDB
847:Pray to God with tears in your eyes whenever you want illumination or find yourself faced with any doubt or difficulty. The Lord will remove all your impurities, assuage your mental. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
848:A peculiarity of the higher arithmetic is the great difficulty which has often been experienced in proving simple general theorems which had been suggested quite naturally by numerical evidence. ~ Harold Davenport, #NFDB
849:If you have difficulty sleeping or are not getting enough sleep or sleep of good quality, you need to learn the basics of sleep hygiene, make appropriate changes, and possibly consult a sleep expert. ~ Andrew Weil, #NFDB
850:I'm happy with my language progress - the only difficulty when I tour Premier League matches is that different people talk to me in different accents - and sometimes I can hardly understand a word! ~ Fabio Capello, #NFDB
851:Tempus never left a problem for another to solve. Tempus never let the pain or difficulty of an undertaking persuade him not to pursue a resolution his heart thought was right. Tempus never gave up. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
852:A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men. ~ John Holdren, #NFDB
853:I imagine that a few of the gentlefolks of Cranford were poor, and had some difficulty in making both ends meet; but they were like the Spartans, and concealed their smart under a smiling face. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
854:On the basis of the familiar experience that that which is learned with difficulty is better retained, it would have been safe to prophesy such an effect from the greater number of repetitions. ~ Hermann Ebbinghaus, #NFDB
855:The difficulty for me is that I'm interested in so many different things. I could never really imagine myself doing one thing, and I'm pretty sure that I'll end up doing four or five different things. ~ Emma Watson, #NFDB
856:There was also no character arc. Change only comes when we face the difficulty of reality head-on. Fantasy changes nothing, which is why, once we're done fantasizing, it feels like a bankrupt story. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
857:What is easy and obvious is never valued; and even what is in itself difficult, if we come to knowledge of it without difficulty, and without and stretch of thought or judgment, is but little regarded. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
858:A lament is an act of worship, a faith statement of trust, in the face of difficulty. It's a wonderfully honest way to acknowledge our trouble to God as we also acknowledge our hope is in him. ~ Linda Evans Shepherd, #NFDB
859:That's all the difficulty and the challenge and the battle: to look through this mechanical thing, these bits of glass and metal, at someone. And not lose the sense that this shape is a human being. ~ Eva Rubinstein, #NFDB
860:Wishy-Washy Wimps are passive-aggressive individuals who are spineless wonders, lacking guts and backbone. They bend in whatever direction the wind is blowing and have difficulty making any decision. ~ Lillian Glass, #NFDB
861:You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
862:When I went into the publishing industry, many women talked about the difficulty they had in persuading their families to let them go to college. They educated the boys, and the girls had to struggle. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
863:Fleury had succeeded (but only with difficulty) in overcoming certain qualms as to whether selling one’s life as dearly as possible, or even putting it up for sale at all, was, in fact, the wisest course ~ J G Farrell, #NFDB
864:However, Gideon seemed to follow without difficulty. He exhibited no blank stare or puzzled frown the way most people did when she made a radical mental shift. Instead, his eyes danced with mischief. ~ Karen Witemeyer, #NFDB
865:I have difficulty putting words in peoples' mouths. The best dialogue is very, very thin dialogue; you let people improvise and then basically you record what they've improvised and then write it down. ~ Steve McQueen, #NFDB
866:It is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws of election so as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
867:She was having some difficulty piecing together exactly why she deserved to be in this place, but she wasn't stupid enough to deny that in the end life was cruel and didn't pay attention to what was fair. ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
868:The greatest difficulty is that men do not think enough of themselves, do not consider what it is that they are sacrificing when they follow in a herd, or when they cater for their establishment. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
869:The most important thing is not to let fundraising get you down. Startups live or die on morale. If you let the difficulty of raising money destroy your morale, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. ~ Paul Graham, #NFDB
870:We can more easily avenge an injury than requite a kindness; on this account, because there is less difficulty in getting the better of the wicked than in making one's self equal with the good. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
871:He seemed to have extraordinary difficulty in comprehending her, but then again, she did not know how severe his head injury had been. Perhaps he was now an idiot, or perhaps he had always been an idiot. ~ Amy D Orazio, #NFDB
872:I have a lot of difficulty in a business culture that is only interested in making money. I can't see the point. What's the point of spending £10,000 just to make £20,000? Why not just keep the £10,000? ~ Peter Saville, #NFDB
873:Whatever the medium, there is the difficulty, challenge, fascination and often productive clumsiness of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials. ~ Helen Frankenthaler, #NFDB
874:Cinema d'auteur, cinema about people, about emotions. About la difficulté d'être, the difficulty of being, existential problems. That's what the nouvelle vague is. The early '60s was all about that. ~ Charlotte Rampling, #NFDB
875:I am driven to literary examples because you, the reader, and I do not live in the same neighbourhood; if we did, there would unfortunately be no difficulty about replacing them with examples from real life. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
876:I seem to be having difficulty—my first instructor was Dr. Chandra. He taught me to sing a song, it goes like this, ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you.’” The ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
877:Last year I had difficulty with my income tax. I tried to take my analyst off as a business deduction. The Government said it was entertainment. We compromised finally and made it a religious contribution. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
878:The difficulty with coming up with a curriculum is mainly that faculty aren't trained to think in terms of general education. They're trained to think in terms of their own discipline, or their specialty. ~ Louis Menand, #NFDB
879:Believe you can, and you can. Belief is one of the most powerful of all problem dissolvers. When you believe that a difficulty can be overcome, you are more than halfway to victory over it already. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
880:Delaura was aware of his own awkwardness with women. To him they seemed endowed with an untransferable use of reason that allowed them to navigate without difficulty among the hazards of reality. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
881:I was painfully shy, and I had tremendous difficulty making friends. So, lacking friends, I watched other people. Watching is something all writers must do, and it was in junior high that I learned to do it. ~ Alex Flinn, #NFDB
882:Many now veer away from the time-honored use of the term Father as applied to the Christian God ... This difficulty rests mainly, I believe, on failure to distinguish between a symbol and a definition. ~ Georgia Harkness, #NFDB
883:She wondered why she, who had such difficulty talking about herself with people of flesh and blood, could blithely reveal her most intimate secrets to a bunch of completely unknown freaks on the Internet. ~ Stieg Larsson, #NFDB
884:South Africa is labouring to find its revolutionary path; the colours of the Rainbow Nation have difficulty blending together; the wealthy elites (white, black or Indian) profit from de facto segregation. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
885:The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
886:The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,...The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
887:A creature that cannot grasp the mutual exclusiveness of A and not A has no difficulty in lying; more than that, such a creature has not even any consciousness of lying, being without a standard of truth. ~ Otto Weininger, #NFDB
888:But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
889:It often happens that when a soul under duress is required to attend to a separate difficulty, one that does not concern him in the least, then this second problem works upon the first as a kind of salve. ~ Eleanor Catton, #NFDB
890:It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact. ~ Sherlock Holmes ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
891:Many foster children have had difficulty making the transition to independent living. Several are homeless, become single parents, commit crimes, or live in poverty. They are also frequent targets of crime. ~ Charles Bass, #NFDB
892:My real difficulty was to become a normal person again, after having been a movie actress for so long. For me, at the time I was living in New York and Hollywood, a normal person was someone who made movies. ~ Grace Kelly, #NFDB
893:Robert Cialdini can explain the success of this and other such campaigns. He has studied the phenomenon of reciprocity and has established that people have extreme difficulty being in another person’s debt. ~ Rolf Dobelli, #NFDB
894:Shadows which you see with difficulty, and whose boundaries you cannot define... these you should not represent as finished or sharply defined, for the result would be that your work would seem wooden. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
895:9. Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
896:I don’t think they’ll judge you severely, so long as they believe that you’re not judging them. Just try to be sincere, and you should have no difficulty.”
“I have no talent for sincerity,” West muttered. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
897:Instead, every precaution was taken not to violate his rights. Remember, many administrators have no difficulty in expelling a student who utters an unwelcome opinion about the immorality of homosexuality. ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
898:The difference between classes of men is that the vast majority remember youth as their glory, and the tiniest fraction, in escaping a life of drudgery and increasing difficulty, finds something even better. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
899:If a philosophical writer cannot be followed, the difficulty of his subject can be placed only in mitigation of his offense, not in condonation of it. There are too many expert witnesses on the other side. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
900:If I were to search for the central core of difficulty in people as I have come to know them, it is that in the great majority of cases they despise themselves, regarding themselves as worthless and unlovable. ~ Carl Rogers, #NFDB
901:One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that. But the difficulty is to remove the prejudice which stands in the way of doing this. It is not a stupid prejudice. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
902:The dying man understands with difficulty what lives, not because his mental faculties are dulled, but because he understands something the living do not and cannot understand, and in this he is entirely absorbed. ~ Tolstoi, #NFDB
903:Whenever there is any difficulty we must always remember that we are here exclusively to accomplish the Divine's will.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Elements of Yoga, Surrender to the Divine Will, Surrender, [T1],#NFDB
904:Do we approach God from a beggar's perspective or as His cherished child? If we have any difficulty seeing Him as our loving Father, we need to ask Him to help us develop a healthy Father/child relationship. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
905:Good painting is nothing else but a copy of the perfections of God and a reminder of His painting. Finally, good painting is a music and a melody which intellect only can appreciate, and with great difficulty. ~ Michelangelo, #NFDB
906:It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
907:The difficulty of learning spoken English for a person profoundly deaf from an early age has been likened to a hearing American trying to learn spoken Japanese while locked within a soundproof glass cubicle. ~ Andrew Solomon, #NFDB
908:The more you read, the more you write, the more the ideas will appear. They’ll fall like confetti around your head and your only difficulty will be deciding which ones to catch and which to let fall to the floor. ~ John Boyne, #NFDB
909:There is a God of awesome grace who meets his children in moments of darkness and difficulty. He is worth running to. He is worth waiting for. He brings rest when it seems like there is no rest to be found. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
910:The response man has the greatest difficulty in tolerating is pity, especially when he warrants it. Hatred is a tonic, it makes one live, it inspires vengeance, but pity kills, it makes our weakness weaker. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
911:What about a doctor who treats herself? The difficulty with this case is that when the doctor removes her ingrown toenail, it is not the ingrown toenail that does the treating, it is other parts of the doctor. ~ Mark Siderits, #NFDB
912:I can't recall any difficulty in making the C language definition completely open - any discussion on the matter tended to mention languages whose inventors tried to keep tight control, and consequent ill fate ~ Dennis Ritchie, #NFDB
913:Perhaps you will ask whether I can raise these three millions without difficulty. Well, nearly all my capital is invested in land, but I have some money out at interest and I can borrow without any trouble. ~ Pliny the Younger, #NFDB
914:Resignedly and with difficulty Tom removed the cigar—that is, he removed part of it, and then blew the remainder with a whut sound across the room, where it landed liquidly and limply in Mrs. Ahearn’s lap. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
915:The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across to ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
916:"Though the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost the personal unconscious, and its content can therefore be made conscious without too much difficulty." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
917:As I noted in my Nobel lecture, an early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability - the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns. ~ Joseph Stiglitz, #NFDB
918:Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
919:What is easy and obvious is never valued; and even what is in itself difficult, if we come to the knowledge of it without difficulty, and without any stretch of thought or judgment, is but little regarded. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
920:While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
921:If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it's because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change. ~ Kathleen Norris, #NFDB
922:The dogmas of the quiet past,76 are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new,77 so we must think anew, and act anew. ~ Ronald C White Jr, #NFDB
923:The greater the difficulty of the change, the greater the need for enchantment. Factors that cause friction include expense, risk, and “politics.” If a change is a big deal, then it’s a big deal to make it happen. ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
924:The Senate is extremely slow: They have enormous difficulty passing the bills that even get through the House. That's the reality that I've recognized in my two years: that it takes time to change the world. ~ Kirsten Gillibrand, #NFDB
925:The task of an inspiring leader in Kali Yuga is not just to think about the difficulty of being good but how to confront that difficulty—and to place that thinking in the great textual confrontations of the past. ~ Gurcharan Das, #NFDB
926:A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
927:Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us...A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
928:The hypothesis of surviving intelligence and personality - not only surviving but anxious and able with difficulty to communicate - is the simplest and most straightforward and the only one that fits all the facts. ~ Oliver Lodge, #NFDB
929:There is a rumour going around that I have found god.
I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
– ‘The God Moment’, ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
930:Using your intelligence and your compassion, you’ll be able to find your way out of any difficulty that arises in daily life. This gives you greater confidence in your own capability, making you even more solid. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
931:A consensus slowly gathered among us. We had given up something important, we believed: the fire, the vigor, that came with a lack of ease. We had lost some of the difficulty of our lives, and we wanted it back. ~ Kevin Brockmeier, #NFDB
932:I know nothing about education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
933:It was one of Mrs. Hale's fitful days, when everything was a difficulty and a hardship; and Mr Lennox's appearance took this shape, although secretly she felt complimented by his thinking it worthwhile to call. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
934:On the contrary, he was a man with both feet firmly on the ground, the only difficulty being that the ground in question was on some other planet, the one with the fluffy pink clouds and the happy little bunnies. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
935:The only real difficulty with becoming disciplined is when you buy into the notion that happiness comes at the price of sacrifice. The reality is this: Discipline becomes freedom when you are doing what you love. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
936:By overwhelming consensus, our culture locates the primary difficulty of relationships in finding the ‘right’ person rather than in knowing how to love a real — that is, a necessarily rather unright — human being. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
937:He opened his eyes and focused on her with difficulty. “If I need divine grace,” he whispered, “I’m in trouble…unless we can find some corrupt angel to bribe.”
A startled laugh escaped her. “Don’t be blasphemous. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
938:I just think I've always been sensitive and had difficulty containing my feelings, and I've always searched for outlets for that, because otherwise those feelings come out in chaotic ways that aren't always great. ~ Andrew Garfield, #NFDB
939:One of the most distressing predicaments any earnest, open-minded spiritual seeker might face is the sheer difficulty of choosing from among the bewildering diversity of religious and spiritual teachings available. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
940:The difficulty lies in the very expression “relation to the world,” which presupposes two sorts of domains, that of nature and that of culture, domains that are at once distinct and impossible to separate completely. ~ Bruno Latour, #NFDB
941:Though the path is plain and smooth for men of good will, he who walks it will not travel far, and will do so only with difficulty, if he does not have good feet: that is, courage and a persevering spirit. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
942:Tyranny is a form of perversion. We come to love it. Every government is a tyranny to a degree, and the more evil it is, the more it is loved. The difficulty lies in judging the degree of tyranny under which you live. ~ Geoff Ryman, #NFDB
943:I had difficulty being friends with women who hadn't worked in either the sex or beauty industries. I felt like other women sometimes overvalued beauty and sexuality, when in actuality, they're just parts of a job. ~ Molly Crabapple, #NFDB
944:It is good to reflect about whatever forces us to come out of ourselves. I have difficulty in imagining how it can be that you really have some friendship for me; but as you apparently have, it may be for this purpose. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
945:Pray to God with tears in your eyes whenever you want illumination or find yourself faced with any doubt or difficulty. The Lord will remove all your impurities, assuage your mental anguish, and give you enlightenment. ~ Sarada Devi, #NFDB
946:There never seems to be any difficulty in stretching the laws and the constitution to fit any kind of a political deal, but when it is proposed to make some concession to women they loom up like an unscalable wall. ~ Susan B Anthony, #NFDB
947:Young people coming up who are having difficulty with their so-called celebrity need to get back into their lives. It's your life and you can't let the fact that you do something pretty good take away the joy of it. ~ Nikki Giovanni, #NFDB
948:It reassures parents that we are aware of the employment difficulty and that we are doing as much as we can to provide information to their sons and daughters, and to help them deal with the post-graduate reality. ~ Michael Parkinson, #NFDB
949:More often than not in poetry I find difficulty to be gratuitous and show-offy and camouflaging, experimental to a kind of insane degree - a difficulty which really ignores the possibility of having a sensible reader. ~ Billy Collins, #NFDB
950:Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation. That has always been part of its charm, Laroche loved orchids, but I came to believe he loved the difficulty and fatality of getting them almost as much as the flowers themselves. ~ Susan Orlean, #NFDB
951:Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
952:If I give someone a horsetail he will have no difficulty making a photographic enlargement of it - anyone can do that. But to observe it, to notice and discover its forms, is something that only a few are capable of. ~ Karl Blossfeldt, #NFDB
953:In this office we do not have problems. We have interesting developments. We have challenges. If we absolute must we may, on occasion, have a slight difficulty. But under no circumstances whatsoever do we have problems. ~ Karen Miller, #NFDB
954:Many have argued that a vacuum does not exist, others claim it exists only with difficulty in spite of the repugnance of nature; I know of no one who claims it easily exists without any resistance from nature. ~ Evangelista Torricelli, #NFDB
955:Never focus your eyes on the obstacle or the difficulty. The obstacle will be a matter of total indifference to the river that will flow steadily through you if you will simply remember to stay focused on the Source. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
956:People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
957:Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
958:What dependence can I have on the alleged events of ancient history, when I find such difficulty in ascertaining the truth regarding a matter that has taken place only a few minutes ago, and almost in my own presence! ~ Walter Raleigh, #NFDB
959:It is easy to love perfection. The difficulty consists in loving the human with his good and bad. We mostly know as much as we love. Only loving God but not its creatures, you can never really know, neither really love. ~ Shams Tabrizi, #NFDB
960:Mankind is tribes within tribes. Or, putting it more beautifully, like the Korean proverb: “Over the mountains, mountains.” That’s the ruggedness of their peninsula and the endless difficulty of our fractured human terrain. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
961:Some parents mistakenly view guilt as a sign that they care about their teen. But guilt is more about the parent, because guilt centers on the parent’s failures and badness rather than on the teen’s difficulty and hurt. ~ John Townsend, #NFDB
962:Uncertainty is always uncertain, but the difficulty with people who rely on systems is that they begin to believe that nearly everything is in some way a system and therefore, sooner or later, they become bureaucrats. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
963:Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
964:Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
965:Elinor had some difficulty here to refrain from observing, that she thought Fanny might have borne with composure, an acquisition of wealth to her brother, by which neither she nor her child could be possibly impoverished. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
966:Evening Talks With Sri AurobindoA.B.Purani31-8-1926Disciple : A difficulty is with regard to time and space : they are always taken together as if they were inseparable, but space is reversible for man while time is not. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
967:Damn these indecisions! This accursed difficulty of deciding, of deciding anything at all, seemed to have grown into an obsession with him. To have to decide...that was the worst misery on earth! ~ John Cowper Powys, #NFDB
968:People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
969:The difficulty then, for me, of being a Negro writer was the fact that I was, in effect, prohibited from examining my own experience too closely by the tremendous demands and the very real dangers of my social situation. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
970:The more closed the circle, the more difficult it is for 'outsiders' to break in. Their very difficulty in entering may be taken as a sign of incompetence, a sign that the insiders were right to close their ranks. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter, #NFDB
971:When a man is willing to find an excuse for being God's enemy he need never be at a loss. He who hath to find a fact may find some difficulty; but he who would forge a lie may sit at his own fireside and do it. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
972:When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
973:A good strategy of life is obvious: When the right path is found, it must be walked no matter how hard it is and the precious target this path destined to must be arrived at by defeating every difficulty encountered! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
974:it was incredible that this thing should be happening to him. It was what he had read of and had found some difficulty in crediting. It was what they were supposed to do to Jews in concentration camps. It could not be true. ~ Nevil Shute, #NFDB
975:Modernism in other arts brought extreme difficulty. In poetry, the characteristic difficulty imported under the name of modernism was obscurity. But obscurity could just as easily be a quality of metrical as of free verse. ~ James Fenton, #NFDB
976:The difficulty involved in the proper and adequate means of describing changes in continuous deformable bodies is the method of differential equations. ... They express mathematically the physical concept of contiguous action. ~ Max Born, #NFDB
977:But people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
978:I feel like we want to compartmentalise things and say, 'Well, that's emotional, artistic and subjective, while this is intellectual, objective and measured.' I have difficulty thinking that's the way we experience things. ~ Shane Carruth, #NFDB
979:It was the very worst kind of Banbury-Road house, depressing, with laurels. The front door was opened by a slut. I had never seen a slut before but recognized the genus without difficulty as soon as I set eyes on this one. ~ Nancy Mitford, #NFDB
980:Leave complains behind; Stop worrying and murmuring about the difficulty of something that you have not even attempted doing! How do you know that it's difficult if you have not even attempted doing it? Go, give a try! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
981:[Photography] is the non-complacence of the eye. To practice my right to look is also a critical attitude. If I stare at you, I will make you uncomfortable, and culturally we have a difficulty of staring and being stared at. ~ Pedro Meyer, #NFDB
982:Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City. It ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
983:An introverted person obviously affected by her past. Lived alone, had no sex life, had difficulty getting close to people. Kept her distance, and when she let loose there was no restraint. She chose a stranger for a lover. ~ Stieg Larsson, #NFDB
984:As a storyteller, you also don't want to make people feel like they're left out, like other people who have read the book have an interior knowledge of this show, and the degree of difficulty in watching it is much higher. ~ Damon Lindelof, #NFDB
985:Cease to think of an impossibility and you will seize an opportunity for productivity. Excellence comes when you leave thoughts of imposibilities behind and live by the focus of faith and hope in the face of difficulty. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
986:It was Magnus who first told me the story of the Garden of Eden. I had great difficulty imagining it,” he remarked. “A garden where nothing dies or decays, where no one grows old, and the seasons never change. How miserable. ~ Tan Twan Eng, #NFDB
987:Men are so self-complacent in their own affairs, and so willing to deceive themselves, that they are rescued with difficulty from this pest. If they wish to defend themselves they run the risk of becoming contemptible. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
988:Remember that no matter what the difficulty is, no matter where it is, no matter who is affected, you have no patient but yourself; you have nothing to do but convince yourself of the truth which you desire to see manifested ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
989:Solace is not meant to be an answer, but an invitation, through the door of pain and difficulty, to the depth of suffering and simultaneous beauty in the world that the strategic mind by itself cannot grasp nor make sense of. ~ David Whyte, #NFDB
990:So, verily, with every difficulty, there is relief;
Verily, with every difficulty there is relief.
Therefore, when thou art free (from thine immediate task), still labour hard,
And to thy Lord turn [all] thy attention. ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
991:We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your potential fully upon it. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi, #NFDB
992:Another difficulty with the reservation scheme was that it reinforced the popular association of Christianity with foreign imperialism, and thus with enmity to the nationalism that was rising in the early twentieth century. ~ Philip Jenkins, #NFDB
993:But people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life. I ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
994:Once established, an original river advances through its long life, manifesting certain peculiarities of youth, maturity and old age, by which its successive stages of growth may be recognized without much difficulty. ~ William Morris Davis, #NFDB
995:The time comes when each of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
996:As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em'ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
997:Usually the poems are written in one sitting. There's always a groping towards some satisfying ending. But I'd say the hardest part is not writing. Once the writing starts, it's too pleasurable to think of it as a difficulty. ~ Billy Collins, #NFDB
998:For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents - as an element - the greatest difficulty in manipulation. ~ Sergei Eisenstein, #NFDB
999:I like to speak with the youth, and I like to hear the youth. They always put me in difficulty. They tell me things that I haven't thought of, or that I've partly thought of. The restless youth, the creative youth, I like them! ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1000:indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1001:In mari's view this difficulty was due not to chaos or disorganization or anarchy , but to an excess of order. Society had more & more rules , and laws that contradicted the rules , and new rules that contradicted the laws. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1002:The central question of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day? ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
1003:There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn't want to penetrate it if I could, perhaps. ~ Billy Collins, #NFDB
1004:Cat was searching for the company of one who would make her happy. Some of us did not have to look long for that person, some of us found him or her with little difficulty; others had longer to look, and had less luck. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
1005:I could not recall the last time I had been so flagrantly insulted.
Don't make enemies, I told myself.
Swallow your pride.
Hold your tongue.
But the fact was, I had real difficulty with those particular virtues. ~ Jen Crane,#NFDB
1006:The old man, who shuffled along with great difficulty, bent double, was blind. To attract the attention of passersby,he sang a heart wrenching tune. Every time my father heard the song, he said to himself that society must change. ~ Jung Chang, #NFDB
1007:I do have a lot of difficulty figuring out what I want to be working on, but what's the alternative? To be one of those people who has a million things they want to do, and then never does any of them? And then where will you be? ~ Cyndi Lauper, #NFDB
1008:Required to be constantly recumbent I write slowly and with difficulty.... Weakened in body by infirmities and in mind by age, now far gone into my 83rd year, reading one newspaper only and forgetting immediately what I read. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1009:What the United States has to do is send a clear message to Iran that they will not be able to develop nuclear weapons. Why endure the difficulty of sanctions if they are not going to be able to develop nuclear weapons anyway? ~ Alan Dershowitz, #NFDB
1010:When you don't have any money, any things, any house - if you are unattached, what is the difficulty in it? But when you have everything and you remain unattached - a beggar in the palace - then something very deep has been attained. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1011:Each time, the tests will become greater. The more you struggle, the greater person you can become. Each test is not a difficulty—it is a precious opportunity. Be thankful for it. The more you suffer, the more thankful you must be. ~ Morgan Rice, #NFDB
1012:I enjoy being surprised by mathematics and its intrinsic difficulty. The moment I enjoy best is when the pieces of the puzzle fall into one coherent whole. ~ Katrin Wendland, Women in Mathematics Throughout Europe. A Gallery of Portraits (2016)., #NFDB
1013:If certain individuals fall in love from motives of convenience, they can be contrasted with plenty of others in whom passion seems principally aroused by the intensity of administrative difficulty in procuring its satisfaction. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
1014:James Jackson actually made menacing faces at the Quakers in the gallery, calling them outright lunatics, then launched into a tirade so emotional and incoherent that reporters in the audience had difficulty recording his words. ~ Joseph J Ellis, #NFDB
1015:Mistakes are very seldom permanent, most of them can be fixed with less difficulty and drama than one imagines, and there's nothing shameful about them. There is, however, something sad and limiting about the fear of making them. ~ Peter Buffett, #NFDB
1016:I don't know if I have a problem expressing joy, but the difficulty is in making an album, a piece of music that really does reflect life rather than the one dimension. I have a problem in trying to make a complete trip record. ~ Richard Ashcroft, #NFDB
1017:There's that difficulty with delirium too: You see it raging in another person's eyes and then it flickers out. That's the most dangerous moment; it's impossible to see something that's so swiftly and suddenly swallowed you whole. ~ Helen Oyeyemi, #NFDB
1018:As recent history of the web demonstrates, the ease or difficulty of doing a particular action impacts the likelihood that a behavior will occur. To successfully simplify a product, we must remove obstacles that stand in the user’s way. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
1019:Her exceptional beauty also helps her to keep her secrets. Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1020:It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,#NFDB
1021:The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. ~ Vannevar Bush, #NFDB
1022:To treat a big subject in the intensely summarized fashion demanded by an evening's traffic of the stage when the evening, freely clipped at each end, is reduced to two hours and a half, is a feat of which the difficulty looms large. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
1023:We know certainly that our God calls us to a holy life. We know that he gives us every grace, every abundant grace; and though we are so weak of ourselves, this grace is able to carry us through every obstacle and difficulty. ~ Elizabeth Ann Seton, #NFDB
1024:An ideal system, arranged of itself, without a precedent design, is not a whit more explicable than a material one which attains its order in a like manner; nor is there any more difficulty in the latter supposition than in the former. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
1025:But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth, nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
1026:No, you pessimistic fool, I am saying that if we can find it in ourselves to be miserable even when things are actually pretty good then there should be no difficulty being happy even when there is gloom and doom all around us. ~ Anuja Chandramouli, #NFDB
1027:Pray to God with tears in your eyes whenever you want illumination or find yourself faced with any doubt or difficulty. The Lord will remove all your impurities, assuage your mental anguish, and give you enlightenment. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
1028:To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1029:What judgment I had increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or reject; to run them into verse or to give them the other harmony of prose. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
1030:Because most people have great difficulty recognizing the humanity of another person if they can't recognize that person's gender, the gender-changing person can evoke in others a primordial fear of monstrosity, or loss of humanness. ~ Susan Stryker, #NFDB
1031:I began a poem in lines of one syllable. It's rather difficult, but the merit of all things lies in their difficulty. The subject matter is gallant. I'll read you the first canto; it's four hundred verses long and takes one minute. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
1032:We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; were always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn't act as we should have. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1033:Laws, when good, should be supreme; and that the magistrate or magistrates should regulate those matters only on which the laws are unable to speak with precision owing to the difficulty of any general principle embracing all particulars. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1034:Moral epochs have their course as well as the seasons. We can no more hold them fast than we can hold sun, moon, and stars. Our faults perpetually return upon us; and herein lies the subtlest difficulty of self-knowledge. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
1035:Think of the difficulty in forecasting in terms of branches growing out of a tree; at every fork we have a multiplication of new branches. To see how our intuitions about these nonlinear multiplicative effects are rather weak, ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
1036:When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so. ~ Beverly Cleary, #NFDB
1037:Winston Churchill once quipped, “The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” He went on to say, “I am an optimist. It does not seem much use being anything else.” Trust ~ William Ury, #NFDB
1038:He therefore built a bridge over the Saône and led his army across. Alarmed by his unexpected arrival and seeing that he had effected in one day the crossing which they had the greatest difficulty in accomplishing in twenty days, ~ Gaius Julius Caesar, #NFDB
1039:Let there be no illusions about the difficulty of forming this kind of a national community. It's tough, difficult, not easy. But a spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny. ~ Barbara Jordan, #NFDB
1040:Men were only made into 'men' with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally 'a man' any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse. ~ Wyndham Lewis, #NFDB
1041:I find beauty almost everywhere. Now more and more I find almost everything beautiful. That is why I have great difficulty in throwing away things because I think they are quite beautiful. Even the garbage, but I have to throw that away! ~ Laura Huxley, #NFDB
1042:Leaders require courage of the highest order -- always moral courage -- and often physical courage as well. Courage is that quality of mind that enables people to encounter danger or difficulty firmly, without fear or discouragement. ~ J Oswald Sanders, #NFDB
1043:The more humanity owes him, the more society denies him. Every door is shut against him, even when he has a right to its being opened: and if he ever obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty than others obtain favors. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
1044:Trying not to grasp is the same thing as to grasp since it's motivation is the same, my urgent desire to save my self from a difficulty. I can not get rid of this desire since it is one and the same desire as the desire to get rid of it. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1045:Youth is the age of extremes: “if the young commit a fault it is always on the side of excess and exaggeration.” The great difficulty of youth (and of many of youth’s elders) is to get out of one extreme without falling into its opposite. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1046:Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it. Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on. Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
1047:I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
1048:When a new way of doing things is vastly superior to another, then the merits of change outweigh the difficulty of change. Just because something is different does not mean it is bad. If we only kept to the old, we could never improve. ~ Donald A Norman, #NFDB
1049:When I started experimenting with fantasy and horror films and looking for characters who had some sort of emotional or mental difficulty, I saw opportunities to express my music - dare I say art - in a way that I could get a bit surreal. ~ Nicolas Cage, #NFDB
1050:You will live as you live in any world,' Madame Lebedeva said. She reached out her hand as if to grasp Marya's, as if to press it to her cheek, then closed her fingers, as if Marya's hand were in hers. 'With difficulty, and grief. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
1051:After saying yes to Turkey, the EU is having difficulty finding clear and consistent grounds for saying no to other, still more remote candidates - but being in the general vicinity of Europe does seem to be a continuing requirement. ~ Timothy Garton Ash, #NFDB
1052:Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. How does it feel to be a problem? ~ W E B Du Bois, #NFDB
1053:I do not mean the difficulty. I do not mean the sex. I mean there are too many failings. Not enough hope. Everything is despair. Everything is suffering. What I mean is don't be a person who seeks out grief. There is enough of that in life. ~ Nina LaCour, #NFDB
1054:Once you begin to control your thought processes, you can apply the powers of your subconscious to any problem or difficulty. You will actually be consciously cooperating with the infinite power and omnipotent law that governs all things. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
1055:...and no new difficulty arising, no sudden recollection, no unexpected summons, no impertinent intrusion to disconcert their measures, my heroine was most unnaturally able to fulfill her engagement, though it was made with the hero himself. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1056:If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all noble things are difficult. The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but the difficulty of it does not make us faint and cave in, it rouses us up to overcome. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
1057:Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. I am constantly filled with wonder at the number of things that other people do without any evident difficulty that are pretty much beyond me. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1058:The difficulty, then, is when you create a church, an institution, and you create a dogma. When you create an ideology, that's the danger. Communism, too, is a beautiful idea, but millions of people died when communism became an ideology. ~ Michael Haneke, #NFDB
1059:The heavy casualties, the constant retreat, the shortage of food and munitions, the difficulty of receiving reinforcements... all this had a very bad effect on morale. Many longed to get across the Volga, to escape the hell of Stalingrad. ~ Vasily Chuikov, #NFDB
1060:We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1061:Accustom yourself to master and overcome things of difficulty; for if you observe, the left hand for want of practice is insignificant, and not adapted to general business; yet it holds the bridle better than the right, from constant use. ~ Pliny the Elder, #NFDB
1062:The difficulty with a disguise is that it must be worn for some time before it hangs credibly upon the shoulders. But if worn too long, a costume becomes comfortable, natural. A man always in disguise must take care lest he become the disguise. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1063:The problem to solve is, whether a single or a double government would be most advantageous; and, in considering that point, I am met by this difficulty - that I cannot see that the present form of government is a double government at all. ~ Richard Cobden, #NFDB
1064:I think the films Insomnia and Memento share all sorts of thematic concerns, such as the relationship between motivation and action, and the difficulty of reconciling your view of the story with the supposed objective view of that story. ~ Christopher Nolan, #NFDB
1065:Let us become intentional to use personal slights, inconveniences, acts of gossip and slander, times of difficulty, and even sickness as opportunities to grow in patience and understanding and humility instead of bitterly resenting each one. ~ Gary L Thomas, #NFDB
1066:The lover's pleasure, like that of the hunter, is in the chase, and the brightest beauty loses half its merit, as the flower its perfume, when the willing hand can reach it too easily. There must be doubt; there must be difficulty and danger. ~ Walter Scott, #NFDB
1067:…the work of the (Muslim Sufi) dervish community
was to open the heart,
explore the mystery of union,
to fiercely search for and try to say the truth,
and to celebrate the glory and difficulty
in being in human incarnation. ~ Coleman Barks,#NFDB
1068:A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have a little, it is often easier to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
1069:I am a comfortable sort of person when alone, and found no difficulty in passing this time profitably. Being very orderly, as you must have remarked, I have everything at hand for making myself a cup of tea at any time of day or night; ~ Anna Katharine Green, #NFDB
1070:I don't profess any religion; I don't think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.'
[Interview, The New Yorker, Dec. 26, 2005] ~ Philip Pullman,#NFDB
1071:I notice a lot of younger artists have difficulty telling stories. They might have short stories where they express themselves well, but they don't really know how to tell stories with characters. That craft just passed them by. ~ Gilberto Hernandez Guerrero, #NFDB
1072:Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
1073:Take one thing with another, there are few places I know better than the heart of Africa. Set me down in Bechuanaland or the Cameroons and I will find my way home with less difficulty than I would from Rittenhouse Square or Boylston Street. My ~ S J Perelman, #NFDB
1074:The difficulty lies within the man for whom God has not yet become everything. If God were everything, the man would get along well wherever he went and among whatever people, for he would possess God and no one could rob him or disturb his work. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1075:Flow is the intersection of what you are good at and what challenges you—where difficulty and competency meet. When your competency exceeds the difficulty of a task, you are bored. And when the difficulty exceeds your competency, you are anxious. ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
1076:Having difficulty deciding? Or are you afraid of tapping into that emotion? I'm sorry you have to feel it, but I think you can create something amazing if you let yourself explore it. It may not help you heal, but it may help you process it. ~ Rebecca Donovan, #NFDB
1077:In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,” James Madison pointed out, “the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. ~ Ben Carson, #NFDB
1078:This is the crisis! Difficulty getting credit, slow growth, high unemployment, low consumer confidence-these are challenges entrepreneurs can overcome with hard work, smart risk and tenacious teamwork. This is precisely what entrepreneurs do! ~ Oliver DeMille, #NFDB
1079:The difficulty with this option is simple: it is threatening. It requires us to accept that we are not as smart as we like to think. It forces us to acknowledge that we can sometimes be wrong, even on issues on which we have staked a great deal. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
1080:Yes, there are troubles in the world. There's war and hatred, there's sickness and difficulty. And there is also an undying spirit, an inviolable consciousness that is born in each of us. It is who we are, and it's everything and it's nothing. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
1081:I quickly convinced myself that the true key to material happiness lay in a modest standard of living which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions”—the margin-of-safety idea applied to personal finance.21 ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
1082:I walked on, my footfalls melancholy, respectful of the thick silence around me. Unlike the surrounding city, Aoyama Bochi is changeless, and I had no difficulty finding what drew me despite the decades that had passed since I had last come here. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1083:Any product that is sufficiently big or urgent to require the effort of many minds thus encounters a peculiar difficulty: the result must be conceptually coherent to the single mind of the user and at the same time designed by many minds. ~ Frederick P Brooks Jr, #NFDB
1084:It was with the utmost difficulty that ancient Rome could support the institution of six vestals; but the primitive church was filled with a great number of persons of either sex who had devoted themselves to the profession of perpetual chastity. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1085:were having difficulty reaching the submerged parts of the plane, a city government statement quoted Hsu Ching-sheng, a deputy fire chief, as saying. Because the plane traveled some distance after striking the road, emergency responders had to expand ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1086:Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly. ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
1087:It seemed he’d recently learned the value of playing up the difficulty of accomplishing whatever he was tasked with, the better to play the hero when he subsequently pulled it off. He was overusing the technique the way a child overuses a new word. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1088:Perhaps we were each allotted only a certain amount of love - enough for only an initial meeting - a serendipitous clumsiness. When it leaves to find others, the difficulty begins because we are faced with our humanness, our past, our very being. ~ Simon Van Booy, #NFDB
1089:The job is, however, not to set priorities. That is easy. Everybody can do it. The reason why so few executives concentrate is the difficulty of setting “posteriorities”—that is, deciding what tasks not to tackle—and of sticking to the decision. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
1090:The relevant measures are not ease and difficulty. The relevant measures are readiness and unreadiness. If the time isn’t right for a new idea, no power on earth can make it catch on, but if the time is right, it will sweep the world like wildfire. ~ Daniel Quinn, #NFDB
1091:The spontaneous tendency to invoke a Final Cause in explanation of every difficulty is characteristic of metaphysical philosophy. It arises from a general tendency towards the impersonation of abstractions which is visible throughout History. ~ George Henry Lewes, #NFDB
1092:When I first arrived in London, I so quickly tired of being surrounded by so many people that it was only with great difficulty that I refrained from seizing the next unfortunate who crossed my path and committing violent acts upon their person. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1093:I figure that I'm always going to be fine, one way or another, but I do worry about other people who have difficulty moving from one world to the next. It's the folks who are truly invested in their lives who have the hardest time with change. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell, #NFDB
1094:LEP trainees often had difficulty developing the double focus needed to watch the terrain and their helmet screens. This often resulted in an action known as filling the vase, which was how LEP officers referred to throwing up in one's helmet. ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
1095:The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry... The difficulty may just be that we have never yet discovered a way to communicate with the female mind. If it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it. ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
1096:The perfect way is without difficulty, for it avoids picking and choosing. Only when you stop liking and disliking will all be clearly understood. Be not concerned with right or wrong, for the conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind. ~ Sengcan, #NFDB
1097:The Russian Bolsheviks have discovered that truth does not matter so long as there is reiteration. They have no difficulty whatever in countering a fact by a lie which, if repeated often enough and loudly enough, becomes accepted by the people. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1098:The very best things in life are born of difficulty. Whatever comes too easily is easily abandoned.
"The best thing about books is that you can start wherever you like. The pages are in order, but no one will know if you read the last one first ~ Amy Harmon,#NFDB
1099:You do not know, you cannot know, the difficulty of the life of a politician. It means every minute of the day or night, every ounce of your energy. There is no rest, no relaxation. Enjoyment? A politician does not know the meaning of the word. ~ Nikita Khrushchev, #NFDB
1100:A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
1101:Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don't dance, or who never did dance, don't really understand the beat... I know musicians who don't and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating. ~ Duke Ellington, #NFDB
1102:Few economic problems, if any, are difficult of solution. The difficulty, all but invariably, is in confronting them. We know what needs to be done; for reasons of inertia, pecuniary interest, passion or ignorance, we do not wish to say so. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
1103:It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
1104:Q: Did he think that love could last forever? A: Well, no, but the limits to eternity didn’t lie specifically with love. They lay in the general difficulty of maintaining an appreciative relationship with anything or anyone that was always around. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1105:She hated to admit that money was the most serious difficulty. Knowing full well that it was important, she nevertheless rebelled at the unalterable truth that it could influence her actions, block her desires. A sordid necessity to be grappled with. ~ Nella Larsen, #NFDB
1106:Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law. ~ Iris Chang, #NFDB
1107:When? In Gone with the Wind, my mother’s favorite book, Scarlett O’Hara, when confronted with a difficulty, says, “I’ll think about it tomorrow … After all, tomorrow is another day.” If we are to evolve instead of revolve, it’s time to take action now. ~ Edith Eger, #NFDB
1108:A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
1109:Difficulty shows what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. Why? So that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1110:The root difficulty in all cases was the state of being blind and deaf to words-- not seeing the words for the prose. Being adults, they had forgotten what every child understands, which is giving and taking a meaning is not automatic and inevitable ~ Jacques Barzun, #NFDB
1111:I had a recent delivery of new fashion plates from Paris, and you hardly glanced at the hairstyles. My husband tells me you are still having difficulty controlling the change. And your cravat has been tied very simply of late, even for evening events. ~ Gail Carriger, #NFDB
1112:I have never united myself to any church because I found difficulty in giving my assent without mental reservation to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize the articles of belief and the usual confession of faith. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
1113:I suppose that every time there is difficulty. I remember about Space Mountain: It took us ten years before we found the technology that would allow such a ride. And during these ten years, I had a model that I kept, waiting for the technology we needed. ~ John Hench, #NFDB
1114:Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural. ~ Alexander Graham Bell, #NFDB
1115:The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to diminish the difficulty of producing manufactured goods, has not been beneficial to that country alone in which it is concentrated distant kingdoms have participated in its advantages. ~ Charles Babbage, #NFDB
1116:We may talk of the best means of doing good; but, after all, the greatest difficulty lies in doing it in a proper spirit. Speak- the truth in love, "in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves" - with the meekness and gentleness of Christ. ~ Asahel Nettleton, #NFDB
1117:A defining reality for me is what Scripture teaches in Hebrews 12, that God is our father, and that a sign that he loves us is that he disciplines us, he takes us through hardship to build character in us that could not be shaped apart from difficulty. ~ Joshua Harris, #NFDB
1118:if you had no language, then what form did your thoughts take—if you thought at all? Of course you thought—she had never had any difficulty with accepting that—but how limited would your thoughts be in the absence of any words to express them? ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
1119:I think that the resistance against Darwin is not just the difficulty of seeing the power of a spectacularly beautiful explanation: it is the fear of realizing the extraordinary power that such an explanation has in shattering rests of old world views. ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
1120:The difficulty, if you're in the world - and this is for anybody - is the eventual disappointment that comes with having to meet other versions of reality. Imposed systems that ask you to compromise or sacrifice things which you consider holy or sacred. ~ Billy Corgan, #NFDB
1121:With Django Unchained, when you're dealing with slavery, it's like a gymnastics routine with the highest amount of difficulty. Quentin Tarantino is not going to do a movie that's just going to lay there and be safe. There's going to be twists and flips. ~ Jamie Foxx, #NFDB
1122:Considering the great importance to the public liberty of the freedom of the press, and the difficulty of submitting it to very precise rules, the laws have thought it less mischievous to give greater scope to its freedom than to the restraint of it. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1123:I concluded that I might take as a general rule the principle that all things which we very clearly and obviously conceive are true: only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
1124:In a word, why were they not men at worst, when at best they ought to be more of men than other men?--And here lay the difficulty: by no effort could I get the face before me to fit into the clerical mould which I had all ready in my own mind for it. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1125:One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
1126:One of the greatest journalists of all time was Walter Cronkite, whose integrity was never questioned. Although his political leanings were decidedly left-wing, you would have had great difficulty detecting it because of his balanced treatment of the news. ~ Ben Carson, #NFDB
1127:A certain saint said, "During one space of thirty years I performed my night-devotions with great difficulty, but during a second space of thirty years they became a delight." When love to God is complete no joy is equal to the joy of worship. The ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #NFDB
1128:Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. The church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little of one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s soul. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1129:Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays cosily tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly. ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
1130:It is difficulties that show what men are. For the future, in case of any difficulty, remember that God, like a gymnastic trainer, has pitted you against a rough antagonist. For what end? That you may be an Olympic conqueror; and this cannot be without toil. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1131:The real difficulty for smaller films, when they're made independently and it's time to go for a distributor, sometimes if it's a tough film and the people who financed it need their money back right away, it's much easier and lucrative to take a DVD deal. ~ Willem Dafoe, #NFDB
1132:The solution of the difficulty is that the two mental pictures which experiment lead us to form - the one of the particles, the other of the waves - are both incomplete and have only the validity of analogies which are accurate only in limiting cases. ~ Werner Heisenberg, #NFDB
1133:I learned the tricks... If you want to do academic things, you can do them. It is not difficult. Yet it is from this difficulty - the mistakes and dead ends - that artists develop, not through the quick solutions and not from something you learn and apply. ~ Isamu Noguchi, #NFDB
1134:I think the key divide between the interactive media and the narrative media is the difficulty in opening up an empathic pathway between the gamer and the character, as differentiated from the audience and the characters in a movie or a television show. ~ Steven Spielberg, #NFDB
1135:The purpose is to be in gratitude forever. Live with applied consciousness, prosperity will break through the walls, flood you with it. You do prayer when you are in difficulty. Pray when you are not in difficulty! That is the attitude of gratitude. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
1136:All bleed who fight with the sword. All confront, with greater or lesser difficulty, the worship of their own flesh. The swordmaiden faces particular obstacles in this matter: she will have seen, in the temples and elsewhere, many images of unscarred women. ~ Sofia Samatar, #NFDB
1137:Our difficulty is that we have become autistic. We no longer listen to what the Earth, its landscape, its atmospheric phenomena and all its living forms, its mountains and valleys, the rain, the wind, and all the flora and fauna of the planet are telling us. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
1138:We must lie before the Divine always like a page perfectly blank, so that the Divine's will may be inscribed in us without any difficulty or mixture. 20 November 1954
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Surrender to the Divine Will, TO WILL WHAT THE DIVINE WILLS [108],#NFDB
1139:Your greatest difficulty is with yourself; for you are your own stumbling-block. You do not know what you want. You are better at approving the right course than at following it out. You see where the true happiness lies, but you have not the courage to attain it. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
1140:You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead, like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
1141:Like many, I suspect, I found the difficulty of analytic philosophy unglamorous and therefore less appealing. This is regrettably superficial but superficiality is characteristic of youth. In my late teens I became enamored of Nietzsche, Bataille, and Artaud. ~ Ray Brassier, #NFDB
1142:Many Christians estimate difficulty in the light of their own resources, and thus they attempt very little, and they always fail. All giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and His presence to be with them. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1143:Anyone can live contentedly in circumstances of ease and comfort, health and well-being gratification and felicity; but to remain happy and contented in the face of difficulty, hardship and the onslaught of disease and sickness-this is an indication of nobility. ~ Abdu l Bah, #NFDB
1144:Owing to the difficulty of dealing with substances of high molecular weight we are still a long way from having determined the chemical characteristics and the constitution of proteins, which are regarded as the principal con-stituents of living organisms. ~ Karl Landsteiner, #NFDB
1145:At first, as we undertake the cultivation of compassion, we may feel genuine empathy with others in pain or difficulty. This happens when we take the time to stop and feel what is really going on—even for just a few moments before rushing on with our lives. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
1146:If you truly desire money so keenly that your desire is an obsession, you will have no difficulty in convincing yourself that you will acquire it. The object is to want money, and to be so determined to have it that you convince yourself that you will have it. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
1147:The difficulty of any trial was subjective, and there was no way to compare two individuals’ experiences. And just as those whose suffering seemed greater than his should have compassion for him, so should he have compassion for those whose suffering seemed less. ~ Ted Chiang, #NFDB
1148:Although physicians, as part of their training, are taught that the dosage of a drug that is prescribed for the patient must be very carefully determined and controlled, they seem to have difficulty in remembering that the same principle applies to the vitamins. ~ Linus Pauling, #NFDB
1149:I do worry a lot about the time it takes for people to get a PhD, about the difficulty of finding employment, about the difficulty of getting tenure, and generally about the perception that undergraduates have, that this is a very high-risk career to get started. ~ Louis Menand, #NFDB
1150:To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted my no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness? ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
1151:You can recollect the sayings of great men, you treasure up verse of renowned poets; ought you not be equally profound in your knowledge of the words of God, so that you may be able to quote them readily when you would solve a difficulty or overthrow a doubt? ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1152:One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop. Marijuana can be grown almost anywhere, with little difficulty. It might not be easily marketable by major corporations. Tobacco is quite another story. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1153:The hill, though high, I covet to ascend; The difficulty will not me offend, For I perceive the way to life lies here. Come, pluck up, heart, let's neither faint nor fear. Better, though difficult, the right way to go, Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1154:The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual? ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1155:If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race. ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
1156:I’m in difficulty, lord, and pitiable: no one cares about me, no one helps me; I’m the object of universal scorn.’ [49] Is that the witness you are going to bear, making a mockery of God’s summons, when he honoured you and judged you worthy to be his public spokesman? ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1157:doubtless imagine that I have acquired all the wealth and luxury that you see me enjoy without difficulty or danger, but this is far indeed from being the case. I have only reached this happy state after having for years suffered every possible kind of toil and danger. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1158:It is a total mystery how we evolved minds capable of piloting cars through wild maneuvers using a wrist to steep while shouting at a cell phone. The creationists are fools for focusing on animal evolution. Darwin explains nature! He has more difficulty explaining us. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
1159:I've been reading [Nikita] Khrushchev Remembers. I know he's a bit of a lad himself - but he seemed to think that making a religion out of an individual was bad; that doesn't seem to be part of the basic Communist idea. Still people are people, that's the difficulty. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
1160:The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved. ~ Paul Dirac, #NFDB
1161:There is no difficulty that enough LOVE will not conquer, no disease that enough LOVE will not heal, no door that enough LOVE will not open, no gulf that enough LOVE will not bridge, no wall that enough LOVE will not throw down, no sin that enough LOVE will not redeem. ~ Emmet Fox, #NFDB
1162:When, after having examined in detail the organization of the Supreme Court, one comes to consider in sum the prerogatives that have been given it, one discovers without difficulty that a more immense judicial power has never been constituted in any people. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
1163:With some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own. ~ Kingsley Amis, #NFDB
1164:with some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own. ~ Kingsley Amis, #NFDB
1165:... do you truly expect that the two of us are going to share a bed tonight- and tomorrow night- as chastely as a pair of nuns on holiday?"
"That will pose no difficulty for me," Evie said gingerly, conscious that she was delivering an insult of the highest order. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1166:Harriet resisted, until Tara pulled out the big move...the combination "lean-against nuzzle, with a slight lick and an adoring glance." In dog-land the move had a degree of difficulty of nine point seven, and as far as I know, there is no known defense against it. ~ David Rosenfelt, #NFDB
1167:If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
1168:Many patients who come to my office are unable to make eye contact. I immediately know how distressed they are by their difficulty meeting my gaze. It always turns out that they feel disgusting and that they can’t stand having me see how despicable they are. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
1169:That prince is highly esteemed who conveys this impression of himself, and he who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against; for, provided it is well known that he is an excellent man and revered by his people, he can only be attacked with difficulty. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
1170:The difficulty in weaning the mind from worldly thoughts, from external objects, and fixing it on God is the same as in making the Ganga flow towards Gangotri instead of its natural flow towards Ganga-Sagar. It is like rowing against the current of the Yamuna. ~ Sivananda Saraswati, #NFDB
1171:The difficulty with the present state of affairs is that there is no legislation on the sources of funding for the Polish film industry. There is no legislation concerning filmmaking. And, there is no legislation on television that would be beneficial to filmmaking. ~ Andrzej Wajda, #NFDB
1172:The great difficulty with large canvases is that they should by right be painted as fast as a sketch. By speed only can you gain an appearance of fleeting effect. But to paint a three yard canvas with the same dispatch as one of ten inches is well-nigh impossible. ~ Joaquin Sorolla, #NFDB
1173:This is why people who have experienced severe abuse and trauma often have difficulty explaining their experiences. They have a problem because clinicians, friends, and family often don’t have the concept of an immobilization defensive system in their vocabulary. ~ Stephen W Porges, #NFDB
1174:We are running up against the difficulty of maintaining a coherent philosophical distinction between giving people the right to stop external or artificial processes that prolong their lives and giving them the right to stop the natural, internal processes that do so ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
1175:But our deepest difficulties cannot be resolved merely on a narrowly intellectual plane. Our deepest difficulty is sin, rebellion against God. We have desires in our hearts that resist the Bible’s views and what God has to say. We want to be our own master. ~ Vern Sheridan Poythress, #NFDB
1176:Intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #NFDB
1177:The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
1178:affair struck me as so very absurd; but now I determined to be wiser, and begin at once with as much form and ceremony as any member of the family would be likely to require: and, indeed, the children being so much older, there would be less difficulty; though the little ~ Anne Bront, #NFDB
1179:Both poetry and philosophy are prodigal of eulogy over the mind which ransoms itself by its own energy from a captivity to custom, which breaks the common bounds of empire, and cuts a Simplon over mountains of difficulty for its own purposes, whether of good or of evil. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
1180:Happiness is sorrow; sorrow is happiness. There is happiness in difficulty; difficulty in happiness. Even though the ways we feel are different, they are not really different, in essence they are the same. This is the true understanding transmitted from Buddha to us. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
1181:It strikes me as very strange that whereas Tennyson could support most of Mr. Buckley's propositions about free trade, and the private sector, and private enterprise, Tennyson found no difficulty also in lending intellectual support to the idea of Women's Liberation. ~ Germaine Greer, #NFDB
1182:Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
1183:Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
1184:So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this - the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast. ~ Clay Shirky, #NFDB
1185:Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City. It had never heard of Salt Lake City, of course. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1186:Living in the midst of abundance we have the greatest difficulty in seeing that the supply of natural wealth is limited and that the constant increase of population is destined to reduce the American standard of living unless we deal more sanely with our resources. ~ Wallace Carothers, #NFDB
1187:The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
1188:The smaller the sample size, the more likely that it is unrepresentative of the wider population..."people can be taught the correct rule, perhaps even with little difficulty. The point remains that people do not follow the correct rule, when left to their own devices. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1189:An enormously vast field lies between "God exists" and "there is no God." The truly wise man traverses it with great difficulty. A Russian knows one or the other of these two extremes, but is not interested in the middle ground. He usually knows nothing, or very little. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
1190:Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1191:I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
1192:It is quite easy to understand what China would need from the African continent with regards to its own economy, raw materials, oil and a market for manufactured goods. As I say it is not difficulty to understand and perfectly legitimate. There is nothing wrong with that. ~ Thabo Mbeki, #NFDB
1193:Much of economics isn't difficult, or rather, the difficulty is in cooking up arguments to "prove" that commonsense conclusions are wrong. The fact is that many commonsense conclusions are quite correct, and it takes a lot of education to get you to believe different. ~ Jerry Pournelle, #NFDB
1194:What do I want? I want to accelerate my personal evolution. I want Spirit to assist me in a greater capacity. I want my body to regenerate itself. I want to emanate health. I am willing to give up difficulty so that I can be a living example of what humanity can be. ~ Barbara Marciniak, #NFDB
1195:All womankind, from the highest to the lowest love jokes; the difficulty is to know how they choose to have them cut; and there is no knowing that, but by trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting down their breeches, till we hit the mark. ~ Laurence Sterne, #NFDB
1196:Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
1197:But I believe the measure of a vow does not lie in saying it, or upholding it when things are easy. The power of a promise is proven in times of difficulty, when keeping that pledge is hard. My husband was giving me ample opportunity to prove the strength of my vows. ~ Stephen P Kiernan, #NFDB
1198:I try to presume that no one is interested in me. And I think experience bears that out. No one's interested in the experiences of a stranger - let's put it that way. And then you have difficulty combined with presumptuousness, which is the most dire trouble with poetry. ~ Billy Collins, #NFDB
1199:Such loyalty is admirable, of course,” said Scrimgeour, who seemed to be restraining his irritation with difficulty, “but Dumbledore is gone, Harry. He’s gone.” “He will only be gone from the school when none here are loyal to him,” said Harry, smiling in spite of himself. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1200:I knew I must write a novel. But it seemed an impossible thing to do when I had been trying with great difficulty to write paragraphs that would be the distillation of what made a novel. It was necessary to write longer stories now as you would train for a longer race. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
1201:It is fatal for any body of workers to have forever hanging from the fringes of its skirts other bodies on a level just below its own; for that means continual pressure downward, additional difficulty to be overcome in the struggle to maintain reasonable rates of wages. ~ Florence Kelley, #NFDB
1202:The best opinion now is, that there are multitudinous forms which are not sufficiently differentiated to be distinctively either plant or animal, while, as respects ordinary plants and animals, the difficulty of laying down a definition has become far greater than ever before. ~ Asa Gray, #NFDB
1203:The difficulty is, all swing thoughts decay, like radium. What burnt up the course on Wednesday has turned to lead on Sunday. Yet it does not do to have a blank mind: the terrible hugeness of the course will rush into the vacuum and the ball will spray like a thing berserk. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
1204:There is one vast human experience that confronts us so formidably that we cannot pretend to overlook it. There is no solution to death. There is no means whatever whereby you or I, by taking thought, can solve this difficulty in such a manner that it no longer exists. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
1205:Whatever difficulty you face, there are time-tried ways you can listen your way through. Because listening is the doorway to everything that matters. It enlivens the heart the way breathing enlivens the lungs. We listen to awaken our heart. We do this to stay vital and alive. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
1206:You know, if you're a human and living on the planet, it doesn't matter what you do; you are not immune to the challenges, the trials, the difficulty. And that fact that I happen to be a coach and a minister and a spiritual teacher doesn't mean anything. I'm still human. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
1207:I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
1208:I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning. ~ Chiaki Kuriyama, #NFDB
1209:I used to write a monthly column for the 'New York Times' syndicate. But I stopped because I found it really hard to have one extreme opinion a month. I don't know how these columnists have two or three ideas a week; I was having difficulty having 12 things to say a year. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1210:She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. [...] He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1211:So I believe then that the primary motive, the most intelligible motive of the doctrine of eternal return in Nietzsche is to make intelligible nature as humanly willed and not given. And the whole difficulty in Nietzsche’s philosophy, I believe, is concentrated in this point. ~ Leo Strauss, #NFDB
1212:Such loyalty is admirable, of course,” said Scrimgeour, who seemed to be restraining his irritation with difficulty, “but Dumbledore is gone, Harry. He’s gone.”
“He will only be gone from the school when none here are loyal to him,” said Harry, smiling in spite of himself. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
1213:The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
1214:If we imagine that God is somehow punishing us, then we will live our lives in desperation and in fear that we are somehow avoiding displeasing God. The difficulty with that is as many ideas about how to displease and how to please God, as there are hairs on your head. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1215:In Deuteronomy 11, God offers Israel a choice; either a life of productivity and enjoyment made possible by obedience to Him, or a life of difficulty and opposition made necessary by disobedience. The happiness Israel desires can only be theirs by being properly related to Him. ~ Max Anders, #NFDB
1216:I think that when it comes to Social Security, all of us want to make sure that our senior citizens can retire with dignity and respect. And everybody has to be open-minded in thinking how do we firm up a system that, in fact, is going to be in difficulty in the coming years. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1217:It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1218:People think the gold medal is yours and they say you're going to win - but they have no idea how hard it is. People aren't doing it negatively - they're mostly lovely and they really do want you to win - but they don't understand the difficulty and intensity of competition. ~ Jessica Ennis, #NFDB
1219:The idea of difficulty animates us all the time. We don’t want man to be an angel; we want him to be a hero. That is to say, a man like us, but who does extraordinary things. He jumps, yes, but in spite of the law of gravity. And everything he does is always ‘in spite of.’ ~ Etienne Decroux, #NFDB
1220:The natural inequality of the two powers of population and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their efforts equal, form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society. ~ Thomas Malthus, #NFDB
1221:We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment[.] ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1222:Although it may be difficult in theory to know what is just and equal, the practical difficulty of inducing those to forbear who can, if they like, encroach, is far greater, for the weaker are always asking for equality and justice, but the stronger care for none of these things. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1223:A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in the face of distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
1224:Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
1225:patience or resoluteness? :::
The power needed in yoga is the power to go through effort, difficulty or trouble without getting fatigued, depressed, discouraged or impatient and without breaking off the effort or giving up one's aim or resolution. ~ ?, Collaboration Journal, Vol 41 No 2,#NFDB
1226:Accustom yourself to Master tilings of the greatest difficulty, and which you seem to despair of. For if you observe, the Left-hand, tho' for want of Practice, 'tis insignificant to other Business, yet it holds the Bridle better than the Right, because it has been used to it. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1227:I have already expressed the conviction which I entertain as to the latter event. *r I do not imagine that the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
1228:. . .Consciousness came and went.
Consciousness went and came like the errant winds of spring, and I, who so often have had difficulty in falling asleep among the besieging shades of memory, now fought to stay awake as a child struggles to lift a faltering kite by the string. ~ Gene Wolfe,#NFDB
1229:If you've just left a place of difficulty, don't then move into the shadows, alone with your thoughts. Spend your time with friends, or even just people who care about you. It might feel more self-protective to isolate yourself, but the reality is that you need to let the light in. ~ Sally Hanan, #NFDB
1230:It was with extreme difficulty that Nipper, the black-eyed, who looked on steadfastly, contained herself at this crisis, and, until the subsequent departure of Mrs. Chick. But the nursery being at length free of visitors, she made herself some recompense for her late restraint. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1231:One is so apt to think of people's affection as a fixed quantity, instead of a sort of moving so with the tide, always going out or coming in but still fundamentally there: and I believe this difficulty in making allowance for the tide is the reason for half the broken friendships. ~ Freya Stark, #NFDB
1232:The difficulty in dealing with a maze or labyrinth lies not so much in navigating the convolutions to find the exit but in not entering the damn thing in the first place.
Or, at least not yet again.
As a creature of free will, do not be tempted into futility. ~ Vera Nazarian,#NFDB
1233:The difficulty is to learn to perceive with your whole body, not with just your eyes and reason. The world becomes a stream of tremendously rapid, unique events. So you must trim your body to make it a good receptor. The body is an awareness; and it must be treated impeccably. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
1234:Any problem you recognize represents but a tiny blip on the radar screen of your well-being. Even while you are experiencing a difficulty, homeostasis is working on your behalf to return you to perfect balance. Your role is simply to relax and allow nature to take its healing course. ~ Alan Cohen, #NFDB
1235:However, sexual anorexics do have a definite profile that separates them from the larger population of those having difficulty being sexual: They are often extremely competent people who are committed to doing things very well and have a fear of making mistakes and being human. ~ Patrick J Carnes, #NFDB
1236:People who are enlightened in previous lifetimes have a certain degree of difficulty in regaining their enlightenment. Sometimes it comes in childhood. Sometimes it takes many years to reintegrate the personality structure that they gained when they first entered into this world. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1237:Sometimes there are customers who get in difficulty because of situations that are out of their control. These are customers with genuine needs, and the role of the bank is to accommodate these customers, and there is a real need to reschedule the loans of these customers. ~ Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, #NFDB
1238:The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital from static to more dynamic situations, the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth of the economy. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
1239:They also had nightmares and flashbacks. They also alternated between occasional bouts of explosive rage and long periods of being emotionally shut down. Most of them had great difficulty getting along with other people and had trouble maintaining meaningful relationships. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
1240:You have the privilege of praying to a loving, understanding Father, who knows your condition. He guides you through difficulty to victory. When your faith, hope, and love are fixed on the Lord, you can face any difficulty or problem, and God will give you joy and peace within. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1241:Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1242:He noticed Miss Bettie was wearing a watch, a steel Rolex with diamond chips. "What time is it?" he asked. Miss Bettie glanced at him and laughed. "You do seem to have difficulty remembering, don't you? Well, then, I shall tell you. It's now, Joshua Cane. Always and only now. ~ Sean Stewart, #NFDB
1243:If you think about the contexts in which we talk about things being fun, often there's a certain kind of misery or effort that's involved with it. The difficulty of travel, getting all your bags packed and your work done and navigating the airports and all that. That sort of struggle. ~ Ian Bogost, #NFDB
1244:People may be persuaded that the machine is doing good. In fact, good is only capable of being done on a small scale. Evil is more versatile. You can hate those you have never seen, all the vast multitudes of them, but you can only love those you know — and that with difficulty. ~ John Christopher, #NFDB
1245:By continually increasing the difficulty of the sport, we are discouraging younger athletes from starting and continuing in the sport. But most importantly, we are losing the beauty of our sport. We do not want gymnastics to lose what makes it so great - its artistic beauty. ~ Svetlana Boginskaya, #NFDB
1246:Despite his unimpressive appearance and manner, he was a brilliant fellow with a crystal-clear mind.... It was just that, when it came time for him to act like an executive, he was like a great many other people; when the time comes to make decisions, they have difficulty doing it. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
1247:Of course, the more you read, the more you learn, and ultimately there is more information than you can ever use. The difficulty is that as an outsider, you know you're too ignorant for your own good, and so the urge to keep researching and *never* start writing is pretty strong. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi, #NFDB
1248:The difficulty in the way of writing a children's play is that Barrie was born too soon. Many people must have felt the same about Shakespeare. We who came later have no chance. What fun to have been Adam, and to have had the whole world of plots and jokes and stories at one's disposal. ~ A A Milne, #NFDB
1249:Those who are willing to sacrifice and be of service have very little difficulty with people. They know what they are all about. People can't help but want to be near them. They help them; they work with them. That's what love is all about. It starts with your heart and radiates out. ~ Cesar Chavez, #NFDB
1250:Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words. —RAINER MARIA RILKE ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1251:If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
1252:I think that the scientists are right. People who are always laughing have a sense of abandon and ease. They are less likely to have a heart attack than those people who are really serious and who have difficulty connecting with other people. Those serious people are in real danger. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1253:This hill, though high, I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend.
For I perceive the way to life lies here.
Come, pluck up, heart; let's neither faint nor fear.
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe. ~ John Bunyan,#NFDB
1254:Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words. — RAINER MARIA RILKE ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1255:Each time you prove yourself, you will be tested again. Each time, the tests will become greater. The more you struggle, the greater person you can become. Each test is not a difficulty—it is a precious opportunity. Be thankful for it. The more you suffer, the more thankful you must be. ~ Morgan Rice, #NFDB
1256:Those who are ignorant of Geology, find no difficulty in believing that the world was made as it is; and the shepherd, untutored in history, sees no reason to regard the green mounds which indicate the site of a Roman camp, as aught but part and parcel of the primeval hill-side. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
1257:Today, each time an election rolls around Christians debate whether this or that candidate is “God’s man” for the White House. Projecting myself back into Jesus’ time, I had difficulty imagining him pondering whether Tiberius, Octavius, or Julius Caesar was “God’s man” for the empire. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1258:Clearly Democrats are not united in what is the critique of what we're doing there and what is the answer to what we do next. The difficulty of coming to a unified position is that for a lot of people who voted for it, they have to decide whether they can admit that they were misled. ~ Steve Elmendorf, #NFDB
1259:DAY THREE I DECLARE I have the grace I need for today. I am full of power, strength, and determination. Nothing I face will be too much for me. I will overcome every obstacle, outlast every challenge, and come through every difficulty better off than I was before. This is my declaration. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1260:Few Bibles were printed in the South before the war and the Confederate Bible Society had great difficulty in obtaining Testaments. Most of the Northern societies took the view that scriptures were contraband and stopped making their publications available for Southern distribution. ~ Bell Irvin Wiley, #NFDB
1261:I find when most people are honest about their spiritual pilgrimage, they admit to the difficulty of maintaining the habit of a spiritual discipline. What attracks me most about the Anglican spiritual tradition is that it provides purposeful spiritual direction in the life of Christ. ~ Robert E Webber, #NFDB
1262:If much difficulty should be experienced in the elementary chapters, I know of no work which I can so confidently recommend to be used with the present one, as that of M. Duhamel. ~ Augustus De Morgan, Note: Duhamel, Cours d'Analyse de l'Ecole Polytechnique. Paris, Bachelier. vol i 1841 vol. ii. 1840., #NFDB
1263:I have seen a lot of people, by the way, who were pro-life become pro-choice. No one seems to have any difficulty with that at all. That's easily accepted. But, if you are pro-choice and you become pro-life, there are a lot of folks, particularly in the media, who find that unacceptable. ~ Mitt Romney, #NFDB
1264:I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels of books and periodicals, and towards the latter part of my residence from ill health arising from bad and insufficient food. ~ Henry Walter Bates, #NFDB
1265:Nobody ever left the presidency with less regret, less disappointment, fewer heart burnings, or any general content with the result of his term (in his own heart, I mean) than I do. Full of difficulty and trouble at first, I now find myself on smooth waters and under bright skies. ~ Rutherford B Hayes, #NFDB
1266:We have no adequate conception of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The pleasure which the greeks received from it had for its basis difference; & the more unfit the vehicle, the more lively was the curiosity & intense the delights at seeing the difficulty overcome. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
1267:Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1268:I had placed my stick on the table, as I do every evening. It had been specially made to suit my height, to enable me to walk without too much difficulty. As I was standing up, a customer called to me: 'Monsieur, don't forget your pencil.' It was very unkind, but most funny. ~ Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, #NFDB
1269:It's not difficult to appear bright, don't worry. The main thing is never to show obvious ignorance of anything. You prevaricate, avoid the difficulty, steer clear of the problem and then catch other people out by using a dictionary. All men are stupid oafs and ignorant nincompoops. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
1270:seems Valentine Mitchell is in the mood to talk. All I did was listen. What you don’t know, nor did I know, is this. The Colemans are in serious financial difficulty. They’re about to lose the ranch because of a severe drought. They’ve had to sell off the cattle and Thoroughbreds. There ~ Fern Michaels, #NFDB
1271:Somehow the fact of enormous privilege and freedom carries with it a sense of impotence, which is a strange, but striking, phenomenon. The fact is, we can do just about anything. There is no difficulty, wherever you are, in finding groups that are working hard on things that concern you. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1272:Turn your mind completely away from your difficulty, concentrate exclusively on the Light and the Force coming from above; let the Lord do for your body whatever He pleases. Hand over to Him totally the entire responsibility of your physical being.
Words Of The Mother, vol 15, p.150 ~ The Mother,#NFDB
1273:I've found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard new things: that is things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new. ~ P D Ouspensky, #NFDB
1274:Part of the resistance to Darwin and Wallace derives from our difficulty in imagining the passage of the millennia, much less the aeons. What does seventy million years mean to beings who live only one-millionth as long? We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1275:Salander leaned back against the pillow and followed the conversation with a smile. She wondered why she, who had such difficulty talking about herself with people of flesh and blood, could blithely reveal her most intimate secrets to a bunch of completely unknown freaks on the Internet. ~ Steig Larsson, #NFDB
1276:Salander leaned back against the pillow and followed the conversation with a smile. She wondered why she, who had such difficulty talking about herself with people of flesh and blood, could blithely reveal her most intimate secrets to a bunch of completely unknown freaks on the Internet. ~ Stieg Larsson, #NFDB
1277:She felt really quite unequal to the tedious process of reconciliation which, in view of the fact that she was sorry, seemed to her highly unnecessary, like some legal routine or the difficulty of getting passports. Her interest in expiation quickly vanished in the face of its actuality. ~ Mary McCarthy, #NFDB
1278:Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code - a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren't any right people. ~ B F Skinner, #NFDB
1279:Moreover, a Republic trusting to her own forces, is with greater difficulty than one which relies on foreign arms brought to yield obedience to a single citizen. Rome and Sparta remained for ages armed and free. The Swiss are at once the best armed and the freest people in the world. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
1280:Our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
1281:Put your whole energy into meditation. Once you are centered in your being, once you know the inner path, then wherever you are you can manage to go to the center without any difficulty. Even when you are dying, it will not make any difference. You may be sick, it will not make any difference. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1282:The strange and mysterious and highly amusing thing is that probably you would have very great difficulty in finding a single Marxist in the U.S.S.R. You would only find Marxists among left-wing Jesuits in the faculties of universities in the West, which is one of God's little jokes. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge, #NFDB
1283:Irving Wallace wrote a bestselling novel, The Man, in the 1960s about a black man becoming president of the United States. We thought that such a possibility was thousands of years in the future. Some people may still have some difficulty with the idea, but that's a major cultural meme shift. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
1284:Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code -- a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people--or, rather, there aren't any right people. ~ B F Skinner, #NFDB
1285:'The difficulty with this conversation,' said Arthur after a sort of pondering look had crawled slowly across his face like a mountaineer negotiating a tricky outcrop, 'is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.' ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1286:We are so constituted by Nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard such things more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the superstitions by which men everywhere are troubled. For the rest, I don ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
1287:Failure to recognize the difficulty in escaping a situation of high debt intolerance simply through growth and gently falling ratios of debt to GNP is one of the central errors underlying many standard calculations employed both by the private sector and by official analysts during debt crises. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1288:No type has everything. The introverts and thinkers, though likely to arrive at the most profound decisions, may have the most difficulty in getting their conclusions accepted. The opposite types are best at communicating, but not as adept at determining the truths to be communicated. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers, #NFDB
1289:What happens when we acknowledge the sovereignty and power of God without trusting in His goodness and faithfulness? A pitcher who saw God's power behind his extremely unlikely rise to the big leagues wondered if, at any difficulty he encountered there, God might be taking his ability away. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1290:With growing sorrow and fear, the poor man painfully saw how wasted and empty the life that lay behind him had become. It no longer belonged to him but was strange and disconnected, like something once memorized that could be recalled only with difficulty in the form of barren fragments. He ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1291:Work on your stony qualities and become resplendent like the ruby. Practice self-denial and accept difficulty. Always see infinite life in letting the self die. Your stoniness will decrease; your ruby nature will grow. The signs of self-existence will leave your body, and ecstasy will take you over. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1292:From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to share my views.
- Cyprian Overbeck Wells: A Literary Mosaic ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,#NFDB
1293:It is important to distinguish the difficulty of describing and learning a piece of notation from the difficulty of mastering its implications. [...] Indeed, the very suggestiveness of a notation may make it seem harder to learn because of the many properties it suggests for exploration. ~ Kenneth E Iverson, #NFDB
1294:No. I had successfully solved the difficulty of finding a description of the electron which was consistent with both relativity and quantum mechanics. Of course, when you solve one difficulty, other new difficulties arise. You then try to sove them. You can never solve all difficulties at once. ~ Paul Dirac, #NFDB
1295:So, you see, what kept me from rushing in with an answer to you was not the difficulty of so doing, nor pressure of other work, nor the grandeur of your eloquence, nor fear of you, but simply disgust, disinclination, and distaste--which, if I may say so, express my judgment of your Diatribe. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1296:A large part of the art of instruction lies in making the difficulty of new problems large enough to challenge thought, and small enough so that, in addition to the confusion naturally attending the novel elements, there shall be luminous familiar spots from which helpful suggestions may spring. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
1297:Every man, who proposes to grow eminent by learning, should carry in his mind, at once, the difficulty of excellence, and the force of industry; and remember that fame is not conferred but as the recompense of labour, and that labour, vigorously continued, has not often failed of its reward. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1298:Galm's tone was reserved, each of his words precisely enunciated, almost as if it required extra concentration for him to speak. He was thousands of years old, and I wondered if he was so ancient and powerful that he sometimes had difficulty remembering simple things, like how to use language. ~ Tim Waggoner, #NFDB
1299:how Marx, though obviously aware of the effect of the superstructure on the productive forces, could so confidently assert that the productive forces determine the relations of production and hence the social superstructure. Why did he not see the difficulty posed by the existence of interaction? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1300:I'm a reader of Chinese literature, I like their films, but also: I've had great difficulty getting my work published in China; very little of it has been published there. The first two attempts to have all of my work published, for instance, were refused without any reason ever being given. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1301:My greatest disappointment in all the projects I worked on during the White House years was the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified. ... Why all the controversy and why such difficulty in giving women the protection of the Constitution that should have been theirs long ago? ~ Rosalynn Carter, #NFDB
1302:There was a long period of time when Sam Fuller had a lot of projects fall through and had a lot of difficulties getting a project off the ground. And I was able to observe him during that period, and see his incredible resiliency and courage as he faced this difficulty and just kept working. ~ Curtis Hanson, #NFDB
1303:Aversion is a form of bondage. We are tied to what we hate or fear. That is why, in our lives, the same problem, the same danger or difficulty, will present itself over and over again in various prospects, as long as we continue to resist or run away from it instead of examining it and solving it. ~ Patanjali, #NFDB
1304:I found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard ‘new things’: that is, things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new.”—Ouspensky ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
1305:I leave, and I should earn a commendation for self-restraint. I’m going to contact the Guys’ Committee and let them know what I accomplished tonight in the resistance category. I’ll fully expect a gold medal in the morning and, frankly, an awards ceremony, considering the level of difficulty. ~ Lauren Blakely, #NFDB
1306:I say, then, that hereditary States, accustomed to the family of their Prince, are maintained with far less difficulty than new States, since all that is required is that the Prince shall not depart from the usages of his ancestors, trusting for the rest to deal with events as they arise. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
1307:Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing. And you start talking yourself out of the bold melody and start wanting to arrange it in another key or something. Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me. ~ Elvis Costello, #NFDB
1308:Why should not He had made all things, still having something immediately to do with the things that He has made? Where lies the great difficulty, if we own the being of a God, that He created all things out of nothing, I'll be allowing something immediate influence of God on creation still? ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
1309:As long as there are guns, the individual that wants a gun for a crime is going to have one and going to get it. The only person who's going to be penalized and have difficulty is the law-abiding citizen, who then cannot have [it] if he wants protection -- the protection of a weapon in his home. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
1310:Everybody is on a lifelong journey toward trying to live more deeply. There is nobody who can say, "Well, I've got that one checked off my to-do list." We have to be honest with ourselves about where we are on this journey and about the difficulty of living in our own identities and integrity. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
1311:Just try to be sincere, and you should have no difficulty.”
“I have no talent for sincerity,” West muttered.
“It’s not a talent,” Kathleen said. “It’s a willingness to speak from your heart, rather than trying to be amusing or evasive.”
“Please,” West said tersely. “I’m already nauseous. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1312:The great difficulty in education is that we give rules instead of inspiring sentiments. ... it is not possible to make rules enough to apply to all manner of cases; and if it were possible, a child would soon forget them. But if you inspire him with right feelings, they will govern his actions. ~ Lydia M Child, #NFDB
1313:When we are in times of difficulty and distress, the important thing is not that we get out of it but what we get out of it. “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work” (James 1:2–4). If ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1314:Oh, this yearning to be white, this yearning to have straight hair, this lifelong striving to be different from the way one is created this great difficulty in accepting oneself, I knew it and saw only my own longing from outside, saw the absurdity of our yearning to be different from what we are... ~ Max Frisch, #NFDB
1315:The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1316:The people, which is surrounded by flatterers, has great difficulty in surmounting its inclinations, and whenever it is solicited to undergo a privation or any kind of inconvenience, even to attain an end which is sanctioned by its own rational conviction, it almost always refuses to comply at first. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1317:They've (Israel) lost the battle for public opinion. They claim it's because American Jews know too little.. I claim it's because they know too much about the conflict, and young liberal Jews have difficulty defending the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon or supporting the Israeli settlements. ~ Norman Finkelstein, #NFDB
1318:For, in the language of Heraclitus, the virtuous soul is pure and unmixed light, springing from the body as a flash of lightning darts from the cloud. But the soul that is carnal and immersed in sense, like a heavy and dank vapor, can with difficulty be kindled, and caused to raise its eyes heavenward. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
1319:Mostly getting old is boring. I hate the stiffness in the bones. I was physically arrogant for years. I don't like it now that I have difficulty getting around. But a certain equanimity sets in, a certain detachment. Things seem less desperately important than they once did, and that's a pleasure. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
1320:Music is sweet; to rule the heart’s rich chords
Of human lyres much sweeter. Art’s sublime
But to combine great ends more sovereign still,
Accepting danger and difficulty to break
Through proud and violent opposites to our will.
Song is divine, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act III,#NFDB
1321:People who have happiness as their goal get locked into the pain/pleasure motivation cycle. They never do what causes them pain, but always do what brings them pleasure. This puts us on the same thinking level as a child, who has difficulty seeing past his or her fear of pain and love of pleasure. ~ John Townsend, #NFDB
1322:All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it? ~ Philip Pullman, #NFDB
1323:I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1324:This was the fundamental problem with rockets—and no one had ever discovered any alternative for deep-space propulsion. It was just as difficult to lose speed as to acquire it, and carrying the necessary propellant for deceleration did not merely double the difficulty of a mission; it squared it. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
1325:What you want to acquire, you should dare to acquire by any means. What you want to see, even though it is with difficulty, you should see. You should not let it pass, thinking there will be another chance to see it or acquire it. It is quite unusual to have a second chance to materialize your desire. ~ Yosa Buson, #NFDB
1326:DAY TWENTY I DECLARE that I am calm and peaceful. I will not let people or circumstances upset me. I will rise above every difficulty, knowing that God has given me the power to remain calm. I choose to live my life happy, bloom where I am planted, and let God fight my battles. This is my declaration. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1327:It was with some difficulty that I got through the multiplication tables. The fact that I recollect nothing more of those days than having learnt, in company with other boys, to call our teacher all kinds of names, would strongly suggest that my intellect must have been sluggish, and my memory raw. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1328:I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing what you really felt, rather that what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things which produced the emotion that you experienced. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
1329:Number Two's eyes narrowed and became what are known in the Shouting and Killing People trade as cold slits, the idea presumably being to give your opponent the impression that you have lost your glasses or are having difficulty keeping awake. Why this is frightening is an, as yet, unsolved problem. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1330:Shelves full of books are all around me. Opening the different volumes I take a look, and find the pages covered with writings in unknown scripts — tadpole traces, bird feet markings, twisted branches. And in my dream I am able to read them all, to make sense of everything despite its difficulty. ~ Jonathan D Spence, #NFDB
1331:The world calls for and expects from us simplicity of life, the spirit of prayer, charity towards all, especially towards the lowly and the poor, obedience and humility... Without this mark of holiness, our word will have difficulty in touching the heart of modern man. It risks being vain and sterile. ~ Pope Paul VI, #NFDB
1332:Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. We are not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. ~ Peter McWilliams, #NFDB
1333:A life without problems or limitations or challenges--life without "opposition in all things," as Lehi phrased it (2 Nephi 2:11)--would paradoxically but in very fact be less rewarding and less ennobling than one which confronts--even frequently confronts--difficulty and disappointment and sorrow. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
1334:AS a rule Crassus did not bear grudges. This was not because he had a good heart but because other people rarely engaged his emotions. He had little difficulty in dropping friends or making up quarrels as occasion served. Cicero, whose view of friendship was different, had a very low opinion of him. ~ Anthony Everitt, #NFDB
1335:I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing what you really felt, rather that what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things which produced the emotion that you experienced... ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
1336:Lastly, the great uncertainty of all data in War is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not unfrequently — like the effect of a fog or moonshine — gives to things exaggerated dimensions and an unnatural appearance. ~ Carl von Clausewitz, #NFDB
1337:Number Two’s eyes narrowed and became what are known in the Shouting and Killing People trade as cold slits, the idea presumably being to give your opponent the impression that you have lost your glasses or are having difficulty keeping awake. Why this is frightening is an, as yet, unresolved problem. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1338:The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact—of absolute undeniable fact— from the embellishments of theorists and reporters. Then, having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty to see what inferences may be drawn and what are the special points upon which the whole mystery turns ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1339:The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
1340:And what about Mr. Tumnus?” said Lucy. “Where is he?”
“S-s-s-sh,” said the Beaver, “not here. I must bring you where we can have a real talk and also dinner.”
No one except Edmund felt any difficulty about trusting the Beaver now and everyone, including Edmund, was very glad to hear the word “dinner. ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB
1341:I hate and I love, Catullus said, speaking of that Clodia Pulcher whose family caused so much difficulty in Rome, even in our time and long after her death. It is not enough; but what better way might we begin to discover that self which is never wholly pleased or displeased with what the world offers? ~ John Williams, #NFDB
1342:Lincoln Road that sorrow is most difficult for the young because it, "takes them unawares." The old, he said, have learned to anticipate difficulty. Lincoln wrote that sorrow is most difficult for the young because it, "takes them unawares." The old, he said, have learned to anticipate difficulty. ~ Richard Brookhiser, #NFDB
1343:The American public has difficulty believing ... [that] injustice continues to be inflicted upon Indian people because Americans assume that the sympathy and tolerance they feel toward Indians is somehow 'felt' or transferred to the government policy that deals with Indians. This is not the case. ~ Leslie Marmon Silko, #NFDB
1344:The main difficulty stemmed from Elizabeth’s insistence that they use very little blood. She’d inherited from her mother a phobia of needles; Noel Holmes fainted at the mere sight of a syringe. Elizabeth wanted the Theranos technology to work with just a drop of blood pricked from the tip of a finger. ~ John Carreyrou, #NFDB
1345:The wealth of society is created by the workers, peasants and working intellectuals. If they take their destiny into their own hands, follow a Marxist-Leninist line and take an active attitude in solving problems instead of evading them, there will be no difficulty in the world which they cannot overcome. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
1346:Do you have difficulty sleeping?”
“Sometimes not. When I do it’s bad, though. I lie there thinking about how everything I’ve done is a failure, death and failure, and there’s no hope for me except being homeless, because I’m never going to be able to hold a job because everyone else is so much smarter. ~ Ned Vizzini,#NFDB
1347:As someone who struggles with anxiety and cowardice, as we all do, I’m profoundly inspired by. . . . full-on commitment to wonder, to wonder as a response to anguish or difficulty. It makes everything a puzzle, right? A catastrophe is nothing but a puzzle with the volume of drama turned up very high. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1348:Number Two’s eyes narrowed and became what are known in the Shouting and Killing People trade as cold slits, the idea presumably being to give your opponent the impression that you have lost your glasses or are having difficulty keeping awake. Why this is frightening is an, as yet, unresolved problem. He ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1349:One of Josh’s primary presenting complaints was of being incapable of choosing and committing to a career. He had great difficulty figuring out what he was interested in, what he would be good at, or where he might fit in. It was evident that he had low self-esteem and a fragile, poorly developed identity. ~ Jonice Webb, #NFDB
1350:Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty, complication, and stress of its reasonings; the perfect exactitude of its results; their broad universality; their practical infallibility. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce, #NFDB
1351:Much of the difficulty in attempting to restructure American and other societies arises form this resistance by groups with vested interests in the status quo. Significant change might require those who are now high in the hierarchy to move downward many steps. This seems to them undesirable and its resisted. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1352:Among the idle rich, boredom is one of the most common causes of unhappiness. People who have difficulty in earning their living may suffer greatly, but they are not bored. Wealthy men and women become bored when they depend upon the theater for their enjoyment instead of making their own lives interesting. ~ Andre Maurois, #NFDB
1353:In my case, I think my exile saved my life, for it inexorably confirmed something which Americans appear to have great difficulty accepting. Which is, simply, this: a man is not a man until he is able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from others. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1354:No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB
1355:The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble... ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, #NFDB
1356:The popular masses are like water, and the army is like a fish. How then can it be said that when there is water, a fish will have difficulty in preserving its existence? An army which fails to maintain good discipline gets into opposition with the popular masses, and thus by its own action dries up the water. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
1357:The vast majority of things parents and kids get in conflict over are highly predictable. We're disagreeing about the same expectations the kid is having difficulty meeting every hour, every day, every week. Because it's predictable, we can have these conversations proactively. That is very hard for people. ~ Ross W Greene, #NFDB
1358:Work is freighted with difficulty and possibility of visible failure, failure to provide, to succeed, to make a difference, to be seen and to be seen to be seen. Work, therefore is robust vulnerability, and a good part of the time, a journey leading us through very unbeautiful private and public humiliations. ~ David Whyte, #NFDB
1359:I know what the problem is, of course. The disorientation, the distraction, the difficulty focusing - all classic Phase One signs of deliria. But I don't care. If pneumonia felt this good I'd stand out in the snow in the winter with bare feet and no coat, or march into the hospital and kiss pneumonia patients ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
1360:In my case, I think my exile saved my life, for it inexorably confirmed something which Americans appear to have great difficulty accepting. Which is, simply, this: a man is not a man until he is able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from others. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
1361:Of the church itself I will say the fewest possible number of words. It was a church such as there are, I think, thousands in England — low, incommodious, kept with difficulty in repair, too often pervious to the wet, and yet strangely picturesque, and correct too, according to great rules of architecture. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
1362:Work on your strong qualities
and become resplendent like the ruby.
Practice self-denial and accept difficulty.
Always see infinite life in letting the self die.
Your stoniness will decrease; your ruby nature will grow.
The signs of self-existence will leave your body,
and ecstasy will take you over. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
1363:Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1364:Mortimer!" Orpheus produced a derisive smile, although with some difficulty. "Is your head buried so deep in your wine jug that you don't know what's going on in this world of yours? He's not doing any reading now. The bookbinder prefers to play the outlaw these days - the role you created especially for him. ~ Cornelia Funke, #NFDB
1365:That is the inconvenience of going away from a difficulty,—it runs after one,—or rather one carries it with oneself, for the difficulty is truly inside, not outside. Outside circumstances only give it the occasion to manifest itself and so long as the inn ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Difficulties of the Path - VII, #NFDB
1366:You can curl up in the fetal position and try to wish away all the things that need doing, or you can get started on that uphill battle to reclaim your life. The difficulty isn’t what choice to make, because that part is obvious. The difficulty lies in finding the energy and inspiration to make the right choice. ~ Noel Fisher, #NFDB
1367:Everybody sees a difficulty in the question of relations between Arabs and Jews. But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf, and nothing can bridge it... We, as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs. ~ David Ben Gurion, #NFDB
1368:I know part of the problem, of course. The disorientation, the distraction, the difficulty focusing-all classic Phase one signs of deliria. But I don't care. If pneumonia felt this good I'd stand out in the snow in the winter with bare feet and no coat on, or march into the hospital and kiss pneumonia patients. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
1369:I think of Milan every day, really. I was really happy at Milanello. I love the team, the staff, everybody who works there. I love the fans. I miss Milan badly, I miss Italy. I don't miss a single [Milan] game, and I don't understand those that say that Calcio is in difficulty. It's so competitive and complete. ~ David Beckham, #NFDB
1370:Simple people with less education, sophistication, social ties, and professional obligations seem in general to have somewhat less difficulty in facing this final crisis than people of affluence who lose a great deal more in terms of material luxuries, comfort, and number of interpersonal relationships. ~ Elisabeth K bler Ross, #NFDB
1371:Turn your mind completely away from your difficulty,
concentrate exclusively on the Light and
the Force coming from above;
let the Lord do for your body whatever He pleases.
Hand over to Him totally the entire responsibility
of your physical being.
ref. Words Of The Mother, vol 15, p.150 ~ The Mother,#NFDB
1372:In all states of dilemma or of difficulty, prayer is an available source. The ship of prayer may sail through all temptations, doubts and fears, straight up to the throne of God; and though she may be outward bound with only griefs, and groans, and sighs, she shall return freighted with a wealth of blessings! ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1373:I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced. Your mind slides into a groove, and once it is in that groove, has difficulty noticing anything outside of it. During this time, my sense must be sharp; that is the main thing - to be sharp, yet open. ~ Bernd Heinrich, #NFDB
1374:There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
1375:When she visited me in New York during her sixties and seventies, she always told taxi drivers that she was eighty years old (“so they will tell me how young I look”), and convinced theater ticket sellers that she had difficulty in hearing long before she really did (“so they’ll give us seats in the front row”). ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
1376:And then there are difficulties. Computers are famous for difficulties. A difficulty is just a blockage from progress. You have to try a lot of things. When you finally find what works, it doesn't tell you a thing. It won't be the same tomorrow. Getting the computer to work is so often dealing with difficulties. ~ Ward Cunningham, #NFDB
1377:A strategy is a way through a difficulty, an approach to overcoming an obstacle, a response to a challenge. If the challenge is not defined, it is difficult or impossible to assess the quality of the strategy. And if you cannot assess a strategy’s quality, you cannot reject a bad strategy or improve a good one. ~ Richard P Rumelt, #NFDB
1378:A woman's difficulty is that she has a much wider choice of men to provide her with genes than she has of long-term partners. She could probably persuade many men of her choice to give her their genes — it takes only a few minutes of sex, after all. Her options for a long-term partner, though, are much more limited. ~ Robin Baker, #NFDB
1379:Suffering has no value, but you have to suffer in order to know that. I never found it easy to travel, yet the difficulty in it made it satisfying because it seemed in that way to resemble the act of writing - groping around in the dark, wandering into the unknown, coming to understand the condition of strangeness. ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB
1380:Don’t worry about design, if you listen to your code a good design will appear...Listen to the technical people. If they are complaining about the difficulty of making changes, then take such complaints seriously and give them time to fix things. -Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks (from Is Design Dead?) If ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
1381:I find as long as I acknowledge the truth of something, then that's it. I know what it is and then I can operate. But if I overestimate the downside of something or the challenge of something and I get too obsessed about the difficulty of it, then I don't leave enough room to be open to the upside, the possibility. ~ Michael J Fox, #NFDB
1382:If they do not share equally enjoyments and toils, those who labor much and get little will necessarily complain of those who labor little and receive or consume much. But indeed there is always a difficulty in men living together and having all human relations in common, but especially in their having common property. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1383:In the United States, if you ask teachers, "Are there children whom we should call 'gifted?'", many if not most will say 'No.' That's the politically correct answer. But if you then ask the teacher to rank order students in terms of how well they paint or write or dance, they'll have little difficulty in doing so. ~ Howard Gardner, #NFDB
1384:It has been said that with great power comes great responsibility and that is true. However, what should have been added to that saying was that with great responsibility must come even greater self-control. For those with great power often seem to lack the power of self-control. Not that I have any such difficulty. ~ Quinn Loftis, #NFDB
1385:It's no easy matter to paint a background. I venture to say that the old painters had more difficulty with their grounds than with their figures. You know the story of Vandyke brought to Rubens with this recommendation: 'He already knows how to paint a background.' 'That is more than I can do!' was the reply. ~ William Morris Hunt, #NFDB
1386:Our difficulty is that human consciousness has not adjusted itself to a relational and integrated view of nature. We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1387:We were an ill-matched pair, my husband and I, from the very outset; he, with very high ideas of a husband's authority and a wife's submission, holding strongly to the 'master-in-my-own-house theory,' thinking much of the details of home arrangements, precise, methodical, easily angered and with difficulty appeased. ~ Annie Besant, #NFDB
1388:Creation,' in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some preexisting Being. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
1389:Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. Isaiah 43:1–2 ~ Sheila Walsh, #NFDB
1390:The accidents of my life have given me the ability to make stories in which different parts of the world are brought together, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes both - usually both. The difficulty in these stories is that if you write about everywhere you can end up writing about nowhere. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1391:He made the analogy, sometimes, almost bitterly, between Harald’s collection of wing-cases and empty ribcages, elephant’s feet and Paradise plumes, and Harald’s interminably circular book on Design, which rambled on from difficulty to difficulty, from momentarily illuminated clearing to prickling thicket of honest doubt. ~ A S Byatt, #NFDB
1392:The play is really a kind of nightmare. It ought to flow rapidly and effortlessly from one moment to another. In London, we had difficulty with the set, which required too much effort to move around. Having gotten the benefit of seeing it done once, I wanted to work on the script, to make it sharper and more pointed. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
1393:We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1394:A black African, she should have been able to fit without difficulty into a black African society, Senegal and the Ivory Coast both having experienced the same colonial power. But Africa is diverse, divided. The same country can change its character and outlook several times over, from north to south or from east to west. ~ Mariama B, #NFDB
1395:As much as I think about sex, I can only with extreme difficulty conceive of myself actually performing the act. And here's another thing I wonder about. How could you ever look a girl in the eye after you've had your winkie up her wendell? I mean, doesn't that render normal social conversation impossible? Apparently not. ~ C D Payne, #NFDB
1396:One whose troops repeatedly congregate in small groups here and there, whispering together, has lost the masses. One who frequently grants rewards is in deep distress. One who frequently imposes punishments is in great difficulty. One who is at first excessively brutal and then fears the masses is the pinnacle of stupidity. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
1397:The difficulty, after having the experience to symbolize, lies only in having enough imagination to suspend it in a thought; and further to give this thought such verbal expression that others may be able to decipher it, and to be stirred by it as by a wind of suggestion sweeping the whole forest of their memories. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
1398:You know, I was a kid who had difficulty speaking English when I first immigrated. But in my head, when I read a book, I spoke English perfectly. No one could correct my Spanish. And I think that I retreated to books as a way, you know, to be, like, masterful in a language that was really difficult for me for many years. ~ Junot Diaz, #NFDB
1399:difficulty is not lack of knowledge, but moral weakness. If you love Jesus with a pure heart, you will know where He feeds His flock as surely as every man who loves drugs or alcohol knows where to find them (Matthew 5:8). “Who is the man that fears the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way He chooses” (Psalm 25:12). ~ Richard Wurmbrand, #NFDB
1400:Every man, knowing to the smallest detail all the complexity of the conditions surrounding him, involuntarily assumes that the complexity of these conditions and the difficulty of comprehending them are only his personal, accidental peculiarity, and never thinks that others are surrounded by the same complexity as he is. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1401:True sleep eluded me. Morpheus is a capricious god; he comes easily to some and only with greatest difficulty to others. To lure him, it is best to pretend disinterest. Engage the mind in some pursuit unrelated to what is truly desired and allow no distraction from it. For me, nothing works so well as a walk through Rome. ~ Sara Poole, #NFDB
1402:While I undressed I reflected on the difficulty of believing in the existence of certain human beings, my uncle among them, even in the face of unquestionable evidence—indications sometimes even wanting in the case of persons for some reason more substantial to the mind—that each had dreams and desires like other men. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
1403:It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue. ~ Henry St John 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, #NFDB
1404:We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers. ~ Edsger Dijkstra, #NFDB
1405:When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1406:Another common issue is over-parenting. Sometimes a parent confuses loving a grown child with bailing them out of every difficulty. At a certain age, sometimes love means “tough love,” that is, letting the child find his own way out of the mess he made so that he has the opportunity to discover his own inner resources. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
1407:Do not write to impress others. Authors who write to impress people have difficulty remaining true to themselves. A better path is to write what pleases you and pray that there are others like you. Your first and most important reader is you. If you write a book that pleases you, at least you know one person will like it. ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
1408:The difficulty, as I saw it, was that she was trying to manage a public self whereas she was by nature a miniaturist who excelled at drawing into her field of activity nuances, intimations, unspoken thought, the most tenuous of personal statements. She was better at the glancing criticism than at spontaneous magnanimity ~ Anita Brookner, #NFDB
1409:What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be "boiled down" and "simplified"? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading. Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information. ~ Edward R Tufte, #NFDB
1410:What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating. ~ Paul Dirac, #NFDB
1411:Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the beginning, I have seemed to go wild, and to get into all sorts of difficulty. When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!” I ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1412:A parent who from his own childhood experience is convinced of the value of fairy tales will have no difficulty in answering his child's questions; but an adult who thinks these tales are only a bunch of lies had better not try telling them; he won't be able to related them in a way which would enrich the child's life. ~ Bruno Bettelheim, #NFDB
1413:Diversity" is a difficulty to be overcome, not an advantage to be sought. True, America does a better job than most at accommodating a diverse population. We also do a better job at curing cancer and containing pollution. But no one goes around mindlessly exclaiming: "Cancer is a strength!" "Pollution is our greatest asset! ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
1414:I didn’t lack thoughts nor words nor the power of expression— I lacked something much more important: the lever which would shut off the juice. The bloody machine wouldn’t stop, that was the difficulty. I was not only in the middle of the current but the current was running through me and I had no control over it whatever. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
1415:We have different tactics for dealing with sexism and racism; and one difficulty is that these tactics can be in tension. When we give problems their names, we can become a problem for those who do not want to talk about a problem even though they know there is a problem. You can cause a problem by not letting things recede. ~ Sara Ahmed, #NFDB
1416:Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811) records that: The Welch are said to be so remarkably fond of cheese, that in cases of difficulty their midwives apply a piece of toasted cheese to the janua vita [gates of life] to attract and entice the young Taffy, who on smelling it makes most vigorous efforts to come forth. ~ Mark Forsyth, #NFDB
1417:Instances such as my failure to qualify for the Indian Air Force and the other adversities I have been witness to, have all brought home to me the necessity of setbacks in one's life. Yes, they seem insurmountable at the time, but there really is no difficulty one cannot overcome if there is determination in the heart. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
1418:That eminence of learning is not to be gained without labour, at least equal to that which any other kind of greatness can require, will be allowed by those who wish to elevate the character of a scholar; since they cannot but know that every human acquisition is valuable in proportion to the difficulty of its attainment. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1419:The best sequence is this: clothes first, then books, papers, komono (miscellany), and lastly, mementos. This order has also proven to be the most efficient in terms of the level of difficulty for the subsequent task of storing. Finally, sticking to this sequence sharpens our intuitive sense of what items spark joy inside us. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
1420:Eventually we'll use a CO2 tax offset by a reduction in taxes elsewhere alongside a cap-and-trade plan, but the degree of difficulty associated with a CO2 tax far exceeds that with a cap-and-trade plan. We're seeing it's hard to get a cap-and-trade plan and it's much easier to use as a basis for a global agreement than a CO2 tax. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
1421:Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them, like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value; and the precious particles are generally combined with the baser in such a manner that the separation is a task of the utmost difficulty. ~ Thomas B Macaulay, #NFDB
1422:If it is true that it is the simplicity of the Einsteinian formulae which constitutes their difficulty, that they are so obvious as to escape notice, it seems to me that this applies to events in life, numberless happenings, perhaps the basic ones, which we, saturated in detail and hurrying through subdivisions, lose sight of. ~ Mary Butts, #NFDB
1423:In the intricate paths of life when difficulties and hardships confront a man, and the darkness of difficulty and suffering becomes long, it is patience only that acts like a light for a Muslim, that keeps him safe from wandering here and there, and saves him from the muddy marsh of disappointment, desperation and frustration. ~ Al-Ghazali, #NFDB
1424:Sitting full in the moment, I practiced on the god-awful difficulty of just paying attention. It's a contention of Heat Moon's - believing as he does any traveler who misses the journey misses about all he's going to get - that a man becomes his attentions. His observations and curiosity, they make and remake him. ~ William Least Heat Moon, #NFDB
1425:The most obvious difficulty with the notion that a retarded metabolism explains the idiosyncratic nature of fattening is that it never had any evidence to support it. Before von Noorden proposed his hypothesis, Magnus-Levy had reported that the metabolism of fat patients seemed to run as fast if not faster than anyone else’s. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1426:We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure-all your life. ~ John W Gardner, #NFDB
1427:It is especially imperative for Congress to exercise careful judgment in this area, because of the difficulty under existing laws, in obtaining judicial review of Postal Service abuses. ...We strongly oppose the legislation's infringement of rights guaranteed under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. ~ John Shattuck, #NFDB
1428:love what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said so eloquently: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge.” When you press on despite difficulty, tedium, and hardship, that’s when you earn your improvement and gain strides on the competition ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
1429:Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word "publishing" means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That's not a job anymore. That's a button. There's a button that says "publish," and when you press it, it's done. ~ Clay Shirky, #NFDB
1430:Keep your vocabulary as wide as you can. I have some difficulty with the word ‘cool’, and I’m not too bothered about the word ‘awesome’. People like me are looking to people like you guys of the next generation to deal with this shit. It’s like seeing a rock guitarist pick up a Fender Stratocaster and hold it the wrong way. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1431:Our 1 Corinthians is an occasional, ad hoc response to the situation that had developed in the Corinthian church between the time Paul left the city, sometime in A.D. 51-52,13 and the writing of our letter approximately three years later. The difficulty in determining the nature of that situation is intrinsic to the text. Paul ~ Gordon D Fee, #NFDB
1432:The difficulty is the levels of secrecy we had to maintain around the project at all different times. We had to keep it a secret while making it so we could move under the radar so we could get the stories. Before it came out we had to keep it on lock down to protect the safety and security of some people who appear in the film. ~ Amy Ziering, #NFDB
1433:The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence. ~ Benjamin Haydon, #NFDB
1434:The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
1435:THE MALE JOURNEY t some point in time, a man needs to embark on a risky -journey. It's a necessary adventure that takes him into uncertainty, and it almost always involves some form of difficulty or failure. On this journey the man learns to trust God more than he trusts a sense of right and wrong or his own sense of self-worth. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1436:The number of games went up or down according to the brutal, elegant logic of the economics of fun:
a certain amount of difficulty
plus
a certain amount of your friends
plus
a certain amount of interesting strangers
plus
a certain amount of reward
plus
a certain amount of opportunity
equaled
fun ~ Cory Doctorow,#NFDB
1437:With most of us, the difficulty is that we are unaware of our escapes. We are so conditioned, so accustomed to our escapes, that we take them as realities. But if we will look more deeply into ourselves, we will see how extraordinarily lonely, how extraordinarily empty, we are under the superficial covering of our escapes. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1438:Caleb was in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling, and can let it fall like a giant's club on your neatly-carved argument for a social benefit which they do not feel. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1439:Caleb was in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling, and can let it fall like a giant’s club on your neatly carved argument for a social benefit which they do not feel. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1440:Publishing is no longer simply a matter of picking worthy manuscripts and putting them on offer. It is now as important to market books properly, to work with the bookstore chains to getterms, co-op advertising, and the like. The difficulty is that publishers who can market are most often not the publishers with worthy lists. ~ Olivia Goldsmith, #NFDB
1441:We must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, to find that enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song. But in that dance, and in that song, the most ancient rites of our conscience fulfill themselves in the awareness of being human. —Pablo Neruda, Toward the Splendid City ~ Dan Millman, #NFDB
1442:We need ritual because it is an expression of the fact that we recognize the difficulty of creating a different and special kind of community. A community that doesn’t have a ritual cannot exist. A corporate community is not a community. It’s a conglomeration of individuals in the service of an insatiable soulless entity. ~ Malidoma Patrice Som, #NFDB
1443:The atom can't be seen, yet its existence can be proved. And it is simple to prove that it can't ever be seen. It has to be studied by indirect evidence - and the technical difficulty has been compared to asking a man who has never seen a piano to describe a piano from the sound it would make falling downstairs in the dark. ~ Carl David Anderson, #NFDB
1444:Then he prayed for themselves and all who were dear to them, and lastly, that light might be swiftly granted to Dirk in his present difficulty. No, not quite lastly, for he ended with a petition that their enemies might be forgiven, yes, even those who tortured them and burnt them at the stake, since they knew not what they did ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
1445:The work ... was ... so blinding that I could scarcely see afterwards, and the difficulty was increased by the fact that my microscope was almost worn out, the screws being rusted with sweat from my hands and forehead, and my only remaining eye-piece being cracked... Fortunately invaluable oil-imraersion object-glass remained good. ~ Ronald Ross, #NFDB
1446:Though I am never exactly "blocked" I do have difficult periods. I am led by a fascination with material - the challenge of presenting it in an original and engaging way. I have no problem imagining stories, characters, distinctive settings & themes - but the difficulty is choosing a voice & a language in which to present it. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
1447:You can’t measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. “Time” doesn’t pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we’re always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn’t act as we should have. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1448:If humanity’s central existential difficulty comes from the fact that we have humanness—consciousness, hopes, dreams, loneliness, shame, plans, memory, a sense of fairness, love—and the universe does not, that means that we are constantly trying to wrangle our needs out of a universe that does not tend in such directions. ~ Jennifer Michael Hecht, #NFDB
1449:I hope your mamma is quite well?"
This unexpected inquiry put me into such a difficulty that I began saying in the absurdest way that if there had been any such person I had no doubt that she would have been quite well and would have been very much obliged and would have sent her compliments, when the nurse came to my rescue. ~ Charles Dickens,#NFDB
1450:In Mari's view this difficulty was due not to chaos or disorganization or anarchy, but to an excess of order. Society had more and more rules, and laws that contradicted the rules, and new rules that contradicted the laws. People felt too frightened to take even a step outside the invisible regulations that guided everyone's lives. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1451:Our difficulty is no longer how to contain people densely in metropolitan areas and avoid the ravages of disease, bad sanitation and child labor. To go on thinking in these terms is anachronistic. Our difficulty today is rather how to contain people in metropolitan areas and avoid the ravages of apathetic and helpless neighborhoods. ~ Jane Jacobs, #NFDB
1452:she was expected, last Wednesday morning, at quarter past nine, she did not arrive at the Starbucks in Harvard Square until nine-nineteen. “I’m so sorry!” she said, removing her hat. “I don’t even have an excuse. I’m just slow.” She placed an order, with some difficulty (“This menu requires a body of knowledge that I do not possess”), ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1453:English the differences between things and actions are clearly, if not always logically, distinguished, but a great number of Chinese words do duty for both nouns and verbs–so that one who thinks in Chinese has little difficulty in seeing that objects are also events, that our world is a collection of processes rather than entities. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1454:I am persuaded that a leader is not made in one life. He has to be born for it. For the difficulty is not in organisation and making plans; the test, the real test, of the leader, lies in holding widely different people together along the line of their common sympathies. And this can only be done unconsciously, never by trying. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1455:I think China is laughing about the results of the presidential elections. China, Russia, they all laugh about it. They see how dramatic U.S. has to be put this kind of shame on its own - cannot handle the situation. Or show such a difficulty with this liberal ideas. Men or women created equal. And to defend those very essential ideas. ~ Ai Weiwei, #NFDB
1456:Richard and I looked at one another again. It was a most singular thing that the arrest was our embarrassment and not Mr. Skimpole's. He observed us with a genial interest, but there seemed, if I may venture on such a contradiction, nothing selfish in it. He had entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1457:There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live - this very difficulty being necessary. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1458:The value of doing something does not lie in the ease or difficulty, the probability or improbability of its achievement, but in the vision, the plan, the determination and the perseverance, the effort and the struggle which go into the project. Life is enriched by aspiration and effort, rather than by acquisition and accumulation. ~ Helen Nearing, #NFDB
1459:Those of us who believe in God and derive our sense of right and wrong and ethics from God's Word really have no difficulty whatsoever defining where our ethics come from. People who believe in survival of the fittest might have more difficulty deriving where their ethics come from. A lot of evolutionists are very ethical people. ~ Benjamin Carson, #NFDB
1460:was calling for us like a madman. When we reached him he was dripping with perspiration, and trembling like a startled horse. We had great difficulty in soothing him. He complained that he was in civilian kit, and wanted to tear my clothes off his body. I ordered him to strip, and we made a second exchange as quickly as possible. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
1461:'But I might ask you as profitably why you've never seen fit to invent airborne vehicles? One small stolen airplane would have spared you and me a great deal of difficulty!'
'How would it ever occur to a sane man that he could fly?' Estraven said sternly. It was a fair response, on a world where no living thing is winged. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,#NFDB
1462:The kindness which consists in upholding a woman of the town against a citizen, the police agent against the mayor, the man who is down against the man who is up in the world, is what I call false kindness. That is the sort of kindness which disorganizes society. Good God! it is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1463:Your call will become clear as as your mind is transformed by the reading of Scripture and the internal work of God's Spirit. The Lord never hides His will from us. In time, as you obey the call first to follow, your destiny will unfold before you. The difficulty will lie in keeping other concerns from diverting your attention. ~ Charles R Swindoll, #NFDB
1464:The wood...taught us about survival, about overcoming difficulty, about prevailing over adversity, but it also taught us something about the underlying reason for surviving in the first place. Something about infinite beauty, about undying grace, about things larger and greater than ourselves. About the reasons we were all here. ~ Daniel James Brown, #NFDB
1465:What I saw so clearly when I started climbing was adventure. Difficulty was only an ingredient. I never thought to wonder about grades, just as I never thought to wonder what Tarzan might bench press. I found the closer I moved to sport, the closer I felt to science - and the closer I moved to adventure, the closer I felt to greatness. ~ Peter Croft, #NFDB
1466:There is another connection between infancy and dreams: both are followed by amnesia. When we emerge from either state, we have great difficulty remembering what we have experienced. In both cases, I would suggest, the left hemisphere of the neocortex, which is responsible for analytic
recollection, has been functioning ineffectively. ~ Carl Sagan,#NFDB
1467:The wishes of the people, seldom founded in deep disquisitions, or resulting from other reasonings than their present feelings, may not entirely accord with our true policy and interest. If they do not, to observe a proper line of conduct for promoting the one, and avoiding offence to the other, will be a work of great difficulty. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
1468:Writers shouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of what they’re doing, and they should treat it with great seriousness. You’re doing something that really matters, you’re telling stories that have an impact on other people and on the culture. You should tell the best stories you can possibly tell and put everything you’ve got into it. ~ David Guterson, #NFDB
1469:And if there is one thing more that I must say to you, it is this: Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1470:In the peace process, the partner doesn't just sit and allow things to deteriorate to the point of disaster. The United States is needed with thoughts and with ideas, not only with the attitude of a messenger between parties, but - when things get rough - to come in and help with what is just and what is right, to overcome difficulty. ~ King Hussein I, #NFDB
1471:It often happens that the universal belief of one age of mankind — a belief from which no one was, nor without an extraordinary effort of genius and courage, could at that time be free — becomes to a subsequent age so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1472:The idea that a book can advise a woman how to capture a man is touchingly naive. Books advising men how to capture a woman are far less common, perhaps because few men are willing to admit to such a difficulty. For both sexes, I recommend a good novel, offering scenarios you might learn from, if only because they reflect a lot of doubt. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
1473:Many young people strangely boast of being "motivated"; they re-request apprenticeships and permanent training. It's up to them to discover what they're being made to serve, just as their elders discovered, not without difficulty, the telos of the disciplines. The coils of a serpent are even more complex that the burrows of a molehill. ~ Gilles Deleuze, #NFDB
1474:the absurdity of the situation struck home and she began to laugh. “What,” he ground out, dropping her hand, “is so amusing?” With difficulty she calmed herself enough to speak. “We’ve established we don’t wish each other dead. I suppose it’s a beginning.” He stared at her, blinked, then laughed along with her. “An excellent beginning. ~ Susanna Fraser, #NFDB
1475:To live fully we would need to let go of our fear of dying. That fear can only be addressed by the love of living. We have a long history in this nation of believing that to be too celebratory is dangerous, that being optimistic is foolhardy, hence our difficulty in celebrating life, in teaching our children and ourselves how to love life. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
1476:When you plan a lesson, you start with the information you want students to know by its end. As a next step, consider what the key question for that lesson might be and how you can frame that question so it will have the right level of difficulty to engage your students and so you will respect your students’ cognitive limitations. ~ Daniel T Willingham, #NFDB
1477:He spoke of human solitude, about the intrinsic loneliness of a sophisticated mind, one that is capable of reason and poetry but which grasps at straws when it comes to understanding another, a mind aware of the impossibility of absolute understanding. The difficulty of having a mind that understands that it will always be misunderstood. ~ Nicole Krauss, #NFDB
1478:The immediate difficulty, Florence realised while riding the high rail back to Brooklyn, was how to break the news to her parents, even if she could convince them that being a chaperone to six foreign men was a legitimate occupation for a twenty-three-year-old girl. What choice did she have? A paycheck could not win a girl’s independence ~ Sana Krasikov, #NFDB
1479:And you're not the kind of girl I want." Surely he couldn't mean the fact that I was Mexican. From what I knew of Hardy, there wasn't a bit of prejudice in him. He never used racist words, never looked down on someone for things they couldn't help. "What kind do you want?" I asked with difficulty. "Someone I can leave without looking back. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
1480:Most people who have had a rough background will admit there’s something unsettling about finding happiness after difficulty – that even after we unwrap this gift, we don’t know how to stop searching, rummaging, pilfering for something else. We walk haltingly through life, ready for the other shoe to drop. The question is not if, but when. ~ Sasha Martin, #NFDB
1481:If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down. For me, slowing down has been a tremendous source of creativity. It has allowed me to open up -- to know that there's life under the earth and that I have to let it come through me in a new way. Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else. ~ Natalie Goldberg, #NFDB
1482:I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan’t I? (looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on every body’s assent)— Do not you all think I shall?”
Emma could not resist.
“Ah! ma’am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me— but you will be limited as to number—only three at once. ~ Jane Austen,#NFDB
1483:But Pierre did not know that; entirely absorbed by what lay before him, he suffered, as people suffer who stubbornly undertake something impossible—not because of its difficulty, but because of its unsuitability to their nature; he suffered from fear that he would weaken at the decisive moment and, as a result, would lose respect for himself. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1484:Is it so easy to change a cultural vision? Ease and difficulty are not the relevant measures. Here are the relevant measures: Readiness and unreadiness. If people aren’t ready for it, then no power on earth can make a new idea catch on. But if people are ready for it (and I think they are), then a new idea will sweep the world like wildfire. ~ Daniel Quinn, #NFDB
1485:It turns out that human beings yearn not only for freedom, autonomy, individuality, and recognition. Especially in times of difficulty, they also yearn for security, order, and a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves, something that submerges autonomy and individuality—which autocracies often provide better than democracies. ~ Robert Kagan, #NFDB
1486:A baby starved of social contact has difficulty developing a regulated nervous system. Young men with few social acquaintances develop high adrenaline levels. Lonely students have low levels of immune cells. Prison inmates prefer violence to solitary confinement. In the US, social isolation is a greater public health problem than obesity. ~ Douglas Rushkoff, #NFDB
1487:Either as a metaphor or because it reflects the nature of the mind, that psychological experiment provides a wonderfully simple and cogent schema for the process of scientific discovery. In science, as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. ~ Thomas S Kuhn, #NFDB
1488:This preoccupation with the difficulty of getting a thought out of one head and into another is something the industrialists share with a substantial number of intellectuals and creative writers, more and more of whom seem inclined to regard communication, or the lack of it, as one of the greatest problems not just of industry but of humanity. ~ John Brooks, #NFDB
1489:It is no doubt as you say, [1] but that is always the difficulty of the physical consciousness until it has been enlightened from within.
[1] The correspondent wrote that although she wanted to get rid of her desires, confusions and wrong movements, the outward, physical part of her being wanted to hold on to them.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#NFDB
1490:Luckily, we humans evolved not only mental habits that lead us into emotional difficulty but also faculties through which we can free ourselves from them. The same skills we have used for millennia to understand and thrive in our environment can help us understand how our minds create unnecessary suffering and how to free ourselves from it. ~ Ronald D Siegel, #NFDB
1491:As I stood there surrounded by three people who had the ability to do just that-crack my chest open to all the disappointment and difficulty and grief-I knew I still wanted it. The risk of the bad stuff was so worth the good stuff. People who would be there for you even when you messed up and behaved like a little jerk? They were the good stuff. ~ Maurene Goo, #NFDB
1492:Have a project to work on, some reason to get out of bed in the morning and preferably something that serves other people. 2. Have a redemptive perspective on life’s challenges. That is, when something difficult happens, recognize the ways that difficulty also serves you. 3. Share your life with a person or people who love you unconditionally. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
1493:Honest James, forgetting the injury he had so lately received from him, flew to his assistance, and, with great difficulty, hauled him in again, but, in the attempt, was, by a sudden jerk of the ship, thrown overboard himself, in sight of the very fellow whom he had risked his life to save, and who took not the least notice of him in this distress. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1494:While the joke goes that every senator looks in the mirror each morning and sees a potential occupant of the Oval Office, senators do have automatic fund-raising bases and little difficulty attracting the spotlight. Still, since 1960, only two — John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Barack Obama of Illinois — have risen directly to the White House. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1495:Because of the difficulty involved in hiring new employees, and in making new contacts in the import and export game, drug traffickers may in fact be more forgiving of mistakes than legitimate firms, they suggest: “Given the impediments to information flows in these markets, relationships may be even more important than in legal markets.” What ~ Tom Wainwright, #NFDB
1496:I wrote a letter to Harvard, explaining that I was having difficulty deciding between it and the University of Pennsylvania. Could I come and visit? Years later, the dean of students at Harvard told me that my letter had been posted in the dean’s office for the amusement of the staff. Thus did I learn the measure of institutional arrogance. ~ J Michael Bishop, #NFDB
1497:Every culture, every era, exploits some few out of a great number of possibilities [of traditional institutions]. Changes may be very disquieting, and involve great losses, but this is due to the difficulty of change itself, not to the fact that our age and country has hit upon the one possible motivation under which human life can be conducted. ~ Ruth Benedict, #NFDB
1498:story. A study of more than seven thousand adults showed that introverts who had moved frequently when they were growing up, compared to those who rarely moved, had more difficulty developing strong personal relationships and maintaining them over time; and those difficulties seemed to undermine their happiness and satisfaction with their lives. ~ Bella DePaulo, #NFDB
1499:A classic illustration of this difficulty is that countries with more telephone poles often have a higher incidence of heart disease, and many other diseases. Therefore, telephone poles and heart disease are positively correlated. But this does not prove that telephone poles cause heart disease. In effect, correlation does not equal causation. ~ T Colin Campbell, #NFDB
1500:I have a name for people who went to the extreme efficient market theory-which is "bonkers". It was an intellectually consistent theory that enabled them to do pretty mathematics. So I understand its seductiveness to people with large mathematical gifts. It just had a difficulty in that the fundamental assumption did not tie properly to reality. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
763 Integral Yoga
54 Occultism
51 Yoga
46 Christianity
30 Fiction
28 Philosophy
24 Psychology
11 Poetry
8 Science
7 Education
6 Integral Theory
5 Cybernetics
4 Sufism
4 Islam
3 Hinduism
2 Theosophy
1 Thelema
1 Mythology
1 Buddhism
1 Alchemy
483 Sri Aurobindo
398 The Mother
287 Satprem
60 Nolini Kanta Gupta
34 Aleister Crowley
30 H P Lovecraft
27 Swami Krishnananda
23 Carl Jung
22 Saint Augustine of Hippo
21 Sri Ramakrishna
20 A B Purani
15 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
10 Plato
8 James George Frazer
6 Sri Ramana Maharshi
6 Plotinus
5 Norbert Wiener
5 Friedrich Nietzsche
5 Aldous Huxley
4 Swami Vivekananda
4 Rudolf Steiner
4 Muhammad
4 Jordan Peterson
4 George Van Vrekhem
4 Edgar Allan Poe
4 Al-Ghazali
3 Saint John of Climacus
3 Nirodbaran
2 William Wordsworth
2 Vyasa
2 Lewis Carroll
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Anonymous
168 Record of Yoga
65 The Synthesis Of Yoga
38 Letters On Yoga IV
33 Letters On Yoga II
30 The Life Divine
30 Lovecraft - Poems
29 Agenda Vol 10
28 Agenda Vol 11
27 The Study and Practice of Yoga
25 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
25 Agenda Vol 01
24 Agenda Vol 04
22 Agenda Vol 07
22 Agenda Vol 06
22 Agenda Vol 05
22 Agenda Vol 02
21 Agenda Vol 08
20 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
20 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
20 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
19 City of God
18 Liber ABA
17 Questions And Answers 1956
17 Essays On The Gita
16 Magick Without Tears
15 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
15 Agenda Vol 13
15 Agenda Vol 09
15 Agenda Vol 03
13 The Human Cycle
13 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
12 Questions And Answers 1955
12 Questions And Answers 1953
12 Letters On Yoga I
12 Letters On Poetry And Art
12 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
11 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
11 Letters On Yoga III
10 Questions And Answers 1954
10 Agenda Vol 12
9 The Practice of Psycho therapy
9 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
8 The Golden Bough
8 Talks
8 Some Answers From The Mother
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
7 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
7 The Future of Man
7 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
7 Prayers And Meditations
7 On Education
7 Mysterium Coniunctionis
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
7 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
6 Words Of Long Ago
6 The Secret Of The Veda
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Phenomenon of Man
6 On the Way to Supermanhood
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
5 Vedic and Philological Studies
5 The Perennial Philosophy
5 Essays Divine And Human
5 Cybernetics
4 The Problems of Philosophy
4 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
4 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
4 The Alchemy of Happiness
4 Savitri
4 Quran
4 Preparing for the Miraculous
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Isha Upanishad
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
3 Words Of The Mother II
3 Twilight of the Idols
3 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
3 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
3 Poe - Poems
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
3 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
3 Aion
2 Wordsworth - Poems
2 Vishnu Purana
2 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2 The Bible
2 Labyrinths
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Bhakti-Yoga
2 Alice in Wonderland
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every Difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
--
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a Difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, everything, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
These other worlds are constituted in other ways than ours. Their contents are different and the laws that obtain there are also different. It would be a gross blunder to attempt a chart of any of these other systems, to use an Einsteinian term, with the measures and conventions of the system to which our external waking consciousness belongs. For, there "the sun shines not, nor the moon, nor the stars, neither these lightnings nor this fire." The Difficulty is further enhanced by the fact that there are very many unseen worlds and they all differ from the seen and from one another in manner and degree. Thus, for example, the Upanishads speak of the swapna, the suupta, and the turya, domains beyond the jgrat which is that where the rational being with its mind and senses lives and moves. And there are other systems and other ways in which systems exist, and they are practically innumerable.
If, however, we have to speak of these other worlds, then, since we can speak only in the terms of this world, we have to use them in a different sense from those they usually bear; we must employ them as figures and symbols. Even then they may prove inadequate and misleading; so there are Mystics who are averse to all speech and expression they are mauni; in silence they experience the inexpressible and in silence they communicate it to the few who have the capacity to receive in silence.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Totapuri asked the disciple to withdraw his mind from all objects of the relative world, including the gods and goddesses, and to concentrate on the Absolute. But the task was not easy even for Sri Ramakrishna. He found it impossible to take his mind beyond Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe. "After the initiation", Sri Ramakrishna once said, describing the event, "Nangta began to teach me the various conclusions of the Advaita Vedanta and asked me to withdraw the mind completely from all objects and dive deep into the Atman. But in spite of all my attempts I could not altogether cross the realm of name and form and bring my mind to the unconditioned state. I had no Difficulty in taking the mind from all the objects of the world. But the radiant and too familiar figure of the Blissful Mother, the Embodiment of the essence of Pure Consciousness, appeared before me as a living reality. Her bewitching smile prevented me from passing into the Great Beyond. Again and again I tried, but She stood in my way every time. In despair I said to Nangta: 'It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with Atman.' He grew excited and sharply said: 'What? You can't do it? But you have to.' He cast his eyes around. Finding a piece of glass he took it up and stuck it between my eyebrows. 'Concentrate the mind on this point!' he thundered. Then with stern determination I again sat to meditate. As soon as the gracious form of the Divine Mother appeared before me, I used my discrimination as a sword and with it clove Her in two. The last barrier fell. My spirit at once soared beyond the relative plane and I lost myself in samadhi."
Sri Ramakrishna remained completely absorbed in samadhi for three days. "Is it really true?" Totapuri cried out in astonishment. "Is it possible that he has attained in a single day what it took me forty years of strenuous practice to achieve? Great God! It is nothing short of a miracle!" With the help of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna's mind finally came down to the relative plane.
--
Sri Ramakrishna visited Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jamuna, and then proceeded to Vrindavan and Mathura, hallowed by the legends, songs, and dramas about Krishna and the gopis. Here he had numerous visions and his heart overflowed with divine emotion. He wept and said: "O Krishna! Everything here is as it was in the olden days. You alone are absent." He visited the great woman saint, Gangamayi, regarded by Vaishnava devotees as the reincarnation of an intimate attendant of Radha. She was sixty years old and had frequent trances. She spoke of Sri Ramakrishna as an incarnation of Radha. With great Difficulty he was persuaded to leave her.
On the return journey Mathur wanted to visit Gaya, but Sri Ramakrishna declined to go. He recalled his father's vision at Gaya before his own birth and felt that in the temple of Vishnu he would become permanently absorbed in God. Mathur, honouring the Master's wish, returned with his party to Calcutta.
--
Sunday, August 15, 1886. The Master's pulse became irregular. The devotees stood by the bedside. Toward dusk Sri Ramakrishna had Difficulty in breathing. A short time afterwards he complained of hunger. A little liquid food was put into his mouth; some of it he swallowed, and the rest ran over his chin. Two attendants began to fan him. All at once he went into samadhi of a rather unusual type. The body became stiff. Sashi burst into tears. But after midnight the Master revived. He was now very hungry and helped himself to a bowl of porridge. He said he was strong again. He sat up against five or six pillows, which were supported by the body of Sashi, who was fanning him. Narendra took his feet on his lap and began to rub them. Again and again the Master repeated to him, "Take care of these boys." Then he asked to lie down. Three times in ringing tone's he cried the name of Kali, his life's Beloved, and lay back. At two minutes past one there was a low sound in his throat and he fell a little to one side. A thrill passed over his body. His hair stood on end. His eyes became fixed on the tip of his nose. His face was lighted with a smile. The final ecstasy began. It was mahasamadhi, total absorption, from which his mind never returned. Narendra, unable to bear it, ran downstairs.
Dr. Sarkar arrived the following noon and pronounced that life had departed not more than half an hour before. At five o'clock the Masters body was brought downstairs, laid on a cot, dressed in ochre clothes, and decorated with sandal-paste and flowers. A procession was formed. The passers-by wept as the body was taken to the cremation ground at the Baranagore Ghat on the Ganges.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Paragraph 7 explains the theological Difficulty referred
to above. There is only one symbol, but this symbol has
--
The next paragraph expresses the Difficulty of
expressing thought in writing; it seems, on the face of
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
I have made a literal translation, omitting only a few pages of no particular interest to English-speaking readers. Often literary grace has been sacrificed for the sake of literal translation. No translation can do full justice to the original. This Difficulty is all the more felt in the present work, whose contents are of a deep mystical nature and describe the inner experiences of a great seer. Human language is an altogether inadequate vehicle to express supersensuous perception. Sri Ramakrishna was almost illiterate. He never clothed his thoughts in formal language. His words sought to convey his direct realization of Truth. His conversation was in a village patois. Therein lies its charm. In order to explain to his listeners an abstruse philosophy, he, like Christ before him, used with telling effect homely parables and illustrations, culled from his observation of the daily life around him.
The reader will find mentioned in this work many visions and experiences that fall outside the ken of physical science and even psychology. With the development of modern knowledge the border line between the natural and the supernatural is ever shifting its position. Genuine mystical experiences are not as suspect now as they were half a century ago. The words of Sri Ramakrishna have already exerted a tremendous influence in the land of his birth. Savants of Europe have found in his words the ring of universal truth.
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
This transformation of the human personality into the Divine perhaps even the mere connection of the human with the Divine is probably regarded as a chimera by the modern mind. To the modern mind it would appear as the apotheosis of a human personality which is against its idea of equality of men. Its Difficulty is partly due to the notion that the Divine is unlimited and illimitable while a 'personality', however high and grand, seems to demand imposition, or assumption, of limitation. In this connection Sri Aurobindo said during an evening talk that no human manifestation can be illimitable and unlimited, but the manifestation in the limited should reflect the unlimited, the Transcendent Beyond.
This possibility of the human touching and manifesting the Divine has been realised during the course of human history whenever a great spiritual Light has appeared on earth. One of the purposes of this book is to show how Sri Aurobindo himself reflected the unlimited Beyond in his own self.
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of overcoming some material Difficulty.
The cause of reserve in asking is that a person is full
--
fatigue? What is the Difficulty in keeping such a concentration for all the 24 hours?
The physical being is always fatigued when it is asked to keep a
--
of thoroughness, since this awareness allows you to make further progress. Indeed, making progress, overcoming a Difficulty,
learning something, seeing clearly into an element of unconsciousness - these are the things that make one truly happy.
--
I have great Difficulty in following him. I miss more than
half.
--
But when we came to the details of carrying this out, we always found ourselves confronted with the same Difficulty: whom
to dismiss? And according to your answers the Difficulty seemed
insurmountable.
--
the Difficulty of supervision.
This is what I see most clearly at the moment.
--
of effort. No. 2 wants to conquer the Difficulty, not run away
from it. I suggest that for the time being you avoid contact with
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If, then, this inferior equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates and if it constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the right attitude for certain individuals, but never the aim intended for mankind. It can be, therefore, no integral Yoga which ignores the body or makes its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rather, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit and to make the bodily life also divine must be God's final seal upon His work in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme Difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee.
Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is therefore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of matter, this stream of life is freed only with Difficulty and can
hardly emerge into the light. But with a little concentration and
--
drawing, and if by chance another Difficulty crops up, this little
child may once again say: "I am disappointed, I don't want to
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But what Nature aims at for the mass in a slow evolution, Yoga effects for the individual by a rapid revolution. It works by a quickening of all her energies, a sublimation of all her faculties. While she develops the spiritual life with Difficulty and has constantly to fall back from it for the sake of her lower realisations, the sublimated force, the concentrated method of Yoga can attain directly and carry with it the perfection of the mind and even, if she will, the perfection of the body. Nature seeks the Divine in her own symbols: Yoga goes beyond Nature to the Lord of Nature, beyond universe to the Transcendent and can return with the transcendent light and power, with the fiat of the Omnipotent.
But their aim is one in the end. The generalisation of Yoga in humanity must be the last victory of Nature over her own delays and concealments. Even as now by the progressive mind in Science she seeks to make all mankind fit for the full development of the mental life, so by Yoga must she inevitably seek to make all mankind fit for the higher evolution, the second birth, the spiritual existence. And as the mental life uses and perfects the material, so will the spiritual use and perfect the material and the mental existence as the instruments of a divine self-expression.
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Why does this Difficulty come? Do I open myself to
it or is it something else? Mother, after having come so
--
I understand your Difficulty very well. It is very common
and can only be solved with much endurance in the will and
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Hathayoga and Rajayoga are thus successively practised. And in a recent unique example, in the life of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the divine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the realisation and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be generalised. Its object also was special and temporal, to exemplify in the great and decisive experience of a master-soul the truth, now most necessary to humanity, towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with Difficulty labouring, that all sects are forms and fragments of a single integral truth and all disciplines labour in their different ways towards one supreme experience. To know, be and possess
The Conditions of the Synthesis
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
presence and through You. I was in a great Difficulty and
was feeling quite lost. Suddenly I felt something that
--
not had any Difficulty which could bar my way.
What was this thing, Mother?
--
This is not at all correct; the experience of all recluses, all ascetics, proves indisputably the contrary. The Difficulty comes
from oneself, from one's own nature, and one takes it along
--
is but one way of getting out of it - it is to conquer the Difficulty,
overcome one's lower nature. And is this not easier here, with
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nothing special to you. It is the same Difficulty that exists for all
human beings: the pride and blindness of the physical mind.
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
from any obstacle, any Difficulty. It is a long and minute work
which must be undertaken with sincerity and continued with an
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He measured the Difficulty with the might
And dug more deep the gulf that all must cross.
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now the question is, does Reason never fail? Is it such a perfect instrument as intellectualists think it to be? There is ground for serious misgivings. Reason says, for example, that the earth revolves round the sun: and reason, it is argued, is right, for we see that all the facts are conformableto it, even facts that were hitherto unknown and are now coming into our ken. But the Difficulty is that Reason did not say that always in the past and may not say that always in the future. The old astronomers could explain the universe by holding quite a contrary theory and could fit into it all their astronomical data. A future scientist may come and explain the matter in quite a different way from either. It is only a choice of workable theories that Reason seems to offer; we do not know the fact itself, apart perhaps from exactly the amount that immediate sense-perception gives to each of us. Or again, if we take an example of another category, we may ask, does God exist? A candid Rationalist would say that he does not know although he has his own opinion about the matter. Evidently, Reason cannot solve all the problems that it meets; it can judge only truths that are of a certain type.
It may be answered that Reason is a faculty which gives us progressive knowledge of the reality, but as a knowing instrument it is perfect, at least it is the only instrument at our disposal; even if it gives a false, incomplete or blurred image of the reality, it has the means and capacity of correcting and completing itself. It offers theories, no doubt; but what are theories? They are simply the gradually increasing adaptation of the knowing subject to the object to be known, the evolving revelation of reality to our perception of it. Reason is the power which carries on that process of adaptation and revelation; we can safely rely upon Reason and trust It to carry on its work with increasing success.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The best way to prepare oneself for the spiritual life when one has to live in the ordinary occupations and surroundings is to cultivate an entire equality and detachment and the samata of the Gita with the faith that the Divine is there and the Divine Will at work in all things even though at present under the conditions of a world of Ignorance. Beyond this are the Light and Ananda towards which life is working, but the best way for their advent and foundation in the individual being and nature is to grow in this spiritual equality. That would also solve your Difficulty about things unpleasant and disagreeable. All unpleasantness should be faced with this spirit of samata.
I may say briefly that there are two states of consciousness in either of which one can live. One is a higher consciousness which stands above the play of life and governs it; this is variously called the Self, the Spirit or the Divine. The other is the normal consciousness in which men live; it is something quite superficial, an instrument of the Spirit for the play of life. Those who live and act in the normal consciousness are governed entirely by the common movements of the mind and are naturally subject to grief and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life.
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One is not sure if such reasoning is convincing to the intellect; but perhaps it is a necessary stage in conversion. At least we can conclude that Pascal had to pass through such a stage; and it indicates the Difficulty his brain had to undergo, the tension or even the torture he made it pass through. It is true, from Reason Pascal went over to Faith, even while giving Reason its due. Still it seems the two were not perfectly synthetised or fused in him. There was a gap between that was not thoroughly bridged. Pascal did not possess the higher, intuitive, luminous mind that mediates successfully between the physical discursive ratiocinative brain-mind and the vision of faith: it is because deep in his consciousness there lay this chasm. Indeed,Pascal's abyss (l' abme de Pascal) is a well-known legend. Pascal, it appears, used to have very often the vision of an abyss about to open before him and he shuddered at the prospect of falling into it. It seems to us to be an experience of the Infinity the Infinity to which he was so much attracted and of which he wrote so beautifully (L'infiniment grand et l'infiniment petit)but into which he could not evidently jump overboard unreservedly. This produced a dichotomy, a lack of integration of personality, Jung would say. Pascal's brain was cold, firm, almost rigid; his heart was volcanic, the faith he had was a fire: it lacked something of the pure light and burned with a lurid glare.
And the reason is his metaphysics. It is the Jansenist conception of God and human nature that inspired and coloured all his experience and consciousness. According to it, as according to the Calvinist conception, man is a corrupt being, corroded to the core, original sin has branded his very soul. Only Grace saves him and releases him. The order of sin and the order of Grace are distinct and disparate worlds and yet they complement each other and need each other. Greatness and misery are intertwined, united, unified with each other in him. Here is an echo of the Manichean position which also involves an abyss. But even then God's grace is not a free agent, as Jesuits declare; there is a predestination that guides and controls it. This was one of the main subjects he treated in his famous open letters (Les Provinciales) that brought him renown almost overnight. Eternal hell is a possible prospect that faces the Jansenist. That was why a Night always over-shadowed the Day in Pascal's soul.
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, there are one or two points, notes for the guidance of the aspirant, which I would like to mention here for their striking appositeness and simple "soothfastness." First of all with regard to the restless enthusiasm and eagerness of a novice, here is the advice given: "The fervour is so mickle in outward showing, is not only for mickleness of love that they have; but it is for littleness and weakness of their souls, that they may not bear a little touching of God.. afterward when love hath boiled out all the uncleanliness, then is the love clear and standeth still, and then is both the body and the soul mickle more in peace, and yet hath the self soul mickle more love than it had before, though it shew less outward." And again: "without any fervour outward shewed, and the less it thinketh that it loveth or seeth God, the nearer it nigheth" ('it' naturally refers to the soul). The statement is beautifully self-luminous, no explanation is required. Another hurdle that an aspirant has to face often in the passage through the Dark Night is that you are left all alone, that you are deserted by your God, that the Grace no longer favours you. Here is however the truth of the matter; "when I fall down to my frailty, then Grace withdraweth: for my falling is cause there-of, and not his fleeing." In fact, the Grace never withdraws, it is we who withdraw and think otherwise. One more Difficulty that troubles the beginner especially is with regard to the false light. The being of darkness comes in the form of the angel of light, imitates the tone of the still small voice; how to recognise, how to distinguish the two? The false light, the "feigned sun" is always found "atwixt two black rainy clouds" : they are "highing" of oneself and "lowing" of others. When you feel flattered and elated, beware it is the siren voice tempting you. The true light brings you soothing peace and meekness: the other light brings always a trail of darknessf you are soothfast and sincere you will discover it if not near you, somewhere at a distance lurking.
The ultimate truth is that God is the sole doer and the best we can do is to let him do freely without let or hindrance. "He that through Grace may see Jhesu, how that He doth all and himself doth right nought but suffereth Jhesu work in him what him liketh, he is meek." And yet one does not arrive at that condition from the beginning or all at once. "The work is not of the hour nor of a day, but of many days and years." And for a long time one has to take up one's burden and work, co-operate with the Divine working. In the process there is this double movement necessary for the full achievement. "Neither Grace only without full working of a soul that in it is nor working done without grace bringeth a soul to reforming but that one joined to that other." Mysticism is not all eccentricity and irrationality: on the contrary, sanity seems to be the very character of the higher mysticism. And it is this sanity, and even a happy sense of humour accompanying it, that makes the genuine mystic teacher say: "It is no mastery to me for to say it, but for to do it there is mastery." Amen.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
human Difficulty, and that this Difficulty will be mastered
and transformed in him in his lifetime.10
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This Difficulty usually comes from a lack of unification of the
being. Certain parts are recalcitrant and refuse to receive. They
--
I want to overcome a Difficulty: it is that when I perceive
faults or weaknesses in myself, something tries to justify
--
the long duration and Difficulty of the creation if its goal is that
all and everything should once more become consciously divine.
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But actually, to tell you the truth, I think your lives are so easy that you dont exert yourselves very much! How many among you have truly an INTENSE need to find their psychic beings? To find out truly who they are? To find out what their roles are, why they are here? You just let yourselves drift. You even complain when things arent easy enough! You just take things as they come. And sometimes, should an aspiration arise in you and you encounter some Difficulty in yourself, you say, Oh, Mother is there! Shell take care of it for me! And you think about something else.
Mother, previously things were very strict in the Ashram, but not now. Why?
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Can you solve that problem for me? If you find the solution to this problem, you will have the solution to the Difficulty.
I am not speaking of people from outside who have never thought about it, who have never felt concerned and who do not even know that there may be something like the Supermind to receive, in fact. I am speaking of people who have built their lives upon this aspiration (and I dont doubt their sincerity for a minute), who have workedsome of them for thirty years, some for thirty-five, others somewhat lessall the while saying, When the supermind comes When the supermind comes That was their refrain: When the supermind comes Consequently, they were really in the best possible frame of mind, one could not have dreamt of a better predisposition. How is it, then, that their inner preparation was so lets just say incomplete, that they did not feel the Vibration immediately, as soon as it came, through a shock of identity?
0 1957-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There is no question of my abandoning the path and I remain convinced that the only goal in life is spiritual. But I need things to help me along the way: I am not yet ripe enough to depend upon inner strength alone. And when I speak of the forest or a boat, it is not only for the sake of adventure or the feeling of space, but also because they mean a discipline. Outer constraints and difficulties help me, they force me to remain concentrated around that which is best in me. In a sense, life here is too easy. Yet it is also too hard, for one must depend on ones own discipline I do not yet have that strength, I need to be helped by outer circumstances. The very Difficulty of life in the outside world helps me to be disciplined, for it forces me to concentrate all my vital strength in effort. Here, this vital part is unemployed, so it acts foolishly, it strains at the leash.
I doubt that a new experience outside can really resolve things, but I believe it might help me make it to the next stage and consolidate my inner life. And if you wish, I would return in a year or two.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The Difficulty is greater for Westerners than for Indians. Its as though their substance were steeped in falsehood. It also happens with Indians, of course, but generally the falsehood is much more in the vital than in the physicalbecause after all, the physical has been utilized by bodies belonging to enlightened beings. The European substance seems steeped in rebellion; in the Indian substance this rebelliousness is subdued by an influence of surrender. The other day, someone was telling me about some Europeans with whom he corresponds, and I said, But tell them to read, to learn, to follow The Synthesis of Yoga!it leads you straight to the path. Whereupon he replied, Oh, but they say its full of talk on surrender, surrender, always surrender and they want none of it.
They want none of it! Even if the mind accepts, the body and the vital refuse. And when the body refuses, it refuses with the stubbornness of a stone.
0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I dont know when it begana very long time ago, before I came here, although some of them came while I was here. But in my case, they were always very short. For example, when Sri Aurobindo was here in his body, at any moment, in any Difficulty, for anything, it always came like this: My Lord!simply and spontaneouslyMy Lord! And instantly, the contact was established. But since He left, it has stopped. I can no longer say it, for it would be like saying My Lord, My Lord! to myself.
I had a mantra in French before coming to Pondicherry. It was Dieu de bont et de misricorde [God of kindness and mercy], but what it means is usually not understoodit is an entire program, a universal program. I have been repeating this mantra since the beginning of the century; it was the mantra of ascension, of realization. At present, it no longer comes in the same way, it comes rather as a memory. But it was deliberate, you see; I always said Dieu de bont et de misricorde, because even then I understood that everything is the Divine and the Divine is in all things and that it is only we who make a distinction between what is or what is not the Divine.
My experience is that, individually, we are in relationship with that aspect of the Divine which is not necessarily the most in conformity with our natures, but which is the most essential for our development or the most necessary for our action. For me, it was always a question of action because, personally, individually, each aspiration for personal development had its own form, its own spontaneous expression, so I did not use any formula. But as soon as there was the least little Difficulty in action, it sprang forth. Only long afterwards did I notice that it was formulated in a certain way I would utter it without even knowing what the words were. But it came like this: Dieu de bont et de misricorde. It was as if I wanted to eliminate from action all aspects that were not this one. And it lasted for I dont know, more than twenty or twenty-five years of my life. It came spontaneously.
Just recently one day, the contact became entirely physical, the whole body was in great exaltation, and I noticed that other lines were spontaneously being added to this Dieu de bont et de misricorde, and I noted them down. It was a springing forth of states of consciousness not words.
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The Difficultyits not even a Difficulty, its just a kind of precaution that is taken (automatically, in fact) in order to For example, the volume of Force that was to be expressed in the voice was too great for the speech organ. So I had to be a little attentive that is, there had to be a kind of filtering in the outermost expression, otherwise the voice would have cracked. But this isnt done through the will and reason, its automatic. Yet I feel that the capacity of Matter to contain and express is increasing with phenomenal speed. But its progressive, it cant be done instantly. There have often been people whose outer form broke because the Force was too strong; well, I clearly see that it is being dosed out. After all, this is exclusively the concern of the Supreme Lord, I dont bother about itits not my concern and I dont bother about itHe makes the necessary adjustments. Thus it comes progressively, little by little, so that no fundamental disequilibrium occurs. It gives the impression that ones head is swelling so tremendously it will burst! But then if there is a moment of stillness, it adapts; gradually, it adapts.
Only, one must be careful to keep the sense of the Unmanifest sufficiently present so that the various things the elements, the cells and all thathave time to adapt. The sense of the Unmanifest, or in other words, to step back into the Unmanifest.6 This is what all those who have had experiences have done; they always believed that there was no possibility of adaptation, so they left their bodies and went off.
0 1958-10-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Rather, simply say, We do not know how to do things as they should be done, well then, let them be done for us and come what may! If we could only see how everything that looks like a Difficulty, an error, a failure or an obstacle is simply there to help us make the realization more perfect.
Once we know this, everything becomes easy.
0 1958-11-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Do not flee the Difficulty, face it courageously and carry home the victory.
My love is with you.
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Last night, my effort to understand what was missing in order to help you completely and truly come out of the Difficulty reminded me of what I said the other day about Power, the transforming power, the true realizing power, the supramental power. When you enter that, when you suddenly surge into that Thing, then you seeyou see that it is truly almighty in comparison to what we are here. So once again, I touched it, I experienced both states simultaneously.
But as long as this is not an accomplished fact, it will still be a progressiona progression, an ascension; you gain a little, you gain some ground, you rise higher and higher. But as long as the new reversal has not taken place, its as if everything had still to be done. It is a repetition of the experience below, reproduced above.
0 1958-11-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So the Difficulty and the victory go together. Its very interesting.
But what had I done in that life? What did I do? WHAT?!?
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And ifit can happenif the second attempt also miscarries, if the conditions make the experience the soul is seeking still more difficult for example, if one is in a body with an inadequate will or some distortion in the thought, or an egoism too too hardened, and it ends in suicide, it is dreadful. I have seen this many times, it creates a dreadful karma that can be repeated for lifetimes on end before the soul can conquer it and manage to do what it wants. And each time, the conditions become more difficult, each time it requires a still greater effort. And people who know this say, You cannot get out! In fact, it is this kind of desire to escape which pushes you into more foolish things3 that result in a still greater accumulation of Difficulty. There are momentsmoments and circumstanceswhen no one is there to help you, and then things become so horrible, the circumstances become so abominable.
But if the soul has had but ONE call, but ONE contact with the Grace, then in your next life you are put in the conditions, once, whereby EVERYTHING can be swept away at one stroke. And at this present moment on earth, you cannot imagine the number of people I have met that is, the number of soulswho had reached out towards this possibility with such an intensity and they have all found themselves on my path.
At that point, sometimes a great courage is needed, sometimes a great endurance is needed, sometimes a true love is enough, sometimes, oh! if only faith were there, one thing, one tiny little thing is enough, and everything can be swept away. I have done it often; there are times when I have failed. But more often than not I have been able to remove it. But then, what is needed is a great, stoical courage or a capacity to endure and to SEE IT THROUGH. The resistance (especially in cases of former suicide), the resistance to the temptation of renewing this stupidity creates a terrible formation. Or else this habit of fleeing when suffering comes: flee, flee, instead of absorbing the Difficulty, holding on.
But just this, a faith in the Grace, or an awareness of the Grace, or the intensity of the call, or else naturally the response the response, the thing that opens, that breaks the response to this marvelous love of the Grace.
--
As soon as you had left, and since I was following you, I saw that nothing of the kind was going to happen, but rather something very superficial which would not be of much use. And when I received your letters and saw that you were in Difficulty, I did something. There are places that are favorable for occult experiences. Benares is one of these places, the atmosphere there is filled with vibrations of occult forces, and if one has the slightest capacity, it spontaneously develops there, in the same way that a spiritual aspiration develops very strongly and spontaneously as soon as one lands in India. These are Graces. Graces, because it is the destiny of the country, it has been so throughout its history, and because India has always been turned much more towards the heights and the inner depths than towards the outer world. Now, it is in the process of losing all that and wallowing in the mud, but thats another story it was like that and it is still like that. And in fact, when you returned from Rameswaram with your robes, I saw with much satisfaction that there was still a GREAT dignity and a GREAT sincerity in this endeavor of the Sannyasis towards the higher life and in the self-giving of a certain number of people to realize this higher life. When you returned, it had become a very concrete and a very real thing that immediately commanded respect. Before, I had seen only a copy, an imitation, an hypocrisy, a pretentionnothing that was really lived. But then, I saw that it was true, that it was lived, that it was real and that it was still Indias great heritage. I dont believe it is very prevalent now, but in any case, it is still there, and as I told you, it commands respect. And then, as I felt you in Difficulty and as the outer conditions were not only veiling but spoiling the inner, well, on that day I wrote you a short note I no longer recall when it was exactly, but I wrote you just a word or two, which I put in an envelope and sent you I concentrated very strongly upon those few words and sent you something. I didnt note the date, I dont remember when it was, but its likely that it happened as I wished when you were in Benares; and then you had this experience.
But when you returned the second time, from the Himalayas, you didnt have the same flame as when you returned the first time. And I understood that this kind of difficult karma still clung to you, that it had not been dissolved. I had hoped that your contact with the mountains but in a true solitude (I dont mean that your body had to be all alone, but there should not have been all kinds of outer, superficial things) Anyway, it didnt happen. So it means that the time had not come.
--
Mother specified: 'The subconscious memory of the past creates a kind of irresistible desire to escape from the Difficulty, and you recommence the same foolishness, or an even greater foolishness.'
The disciple wanted to leave for the forest, the Congo, to do the most unlikely things there.
0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
My explanations will have to be simple, for X speaks English with Difficulty, thus subtleties are out of the question. (I am teaching him a little English while he is teaching me Sanskrit, and we manage to understand each other rather well all the same. He understands more than he can speak.)
I do not want to mention this to Swami, as X is not very happy about the way Swami seizes upon every occasion to appropriate things, and particularly mantras (I will explain this to you when we meet again). It is especially the way he says I. Nothing very seriousit is Swamis bad side, though he has good ones too. You know that, however.
--
I have reflected a great deal on a possible mantra, and I have also seen the Difficulty of receiving something that does not have a narrowing effect One must at least have an idea of the possibility (at least) of the supermind to understand what I need
As for your arrival here, the day you mentioned is the Saraswati Puja I will go downstairs to give blessings. If you arrive on the previous day, the 11th I will arrange to see you at 10 oclock, and then you can begin your mantra on the 12th.
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have also come to realize that for this sadhana of the body, the mantra is essential. Sri Aurobindo gave none; he said that one should be able to do all the work without having to resort to external means. Had he reached the point where we are now, he would have seen that the purely psychological method is inadequate and that a japa is necessary, because only japa has a direct action on the body. So I had to find the method all alone, to find my mantra by myself. But now that things are ready, I have done ten years of work in a few months. That is the Difficulty, it requires time
And I repeat my mantra constantlywhen I am awake and even when I sleep. I say it even when I am getting dressed, when I eat, when I work, when I speak with others; it is there, just behind in the background, all the time, all the time.
0 1960-01-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I started my japa one year ago, I had to struggle with every possible Difficulty, every contradiction, prejudice and opposition that fills the air. And even when this poor body began walking back and forth for japa, it used to knock against things, it would start breathing all wrong, coughing; it was attacked from all sides until the day I caught the Enemy and said, Listen carefully. You can do whatever you want, but Im going right to the end and nothing will stop me, even if I have to repeat this mantra ten crore1 times. The result was really miraculous, like a cloud of bats flying up into the light all at once. From that moment on, things started going better.
You have no idea what an irresistible effect a well-determined will can have.
--
Of course, things are now going better, especially since Sri Aurobindo became established in the subtle physical, an almost material subtle physical.2 But there are still plenty of question marks The body understands once, and then it forgets. The Enemys opposition is nothing, for I can see clearly that it comes from outside and that its hostile, so I do whats necessary. But where the Difficulty lies is in all the small things of daily material lifesuddenly the body no longer understands, it forgets.
Yet its HAPPY. It loves doing the work, it lives only for thatto change, to transform itself is its reason for being. And its such a docile instrument, so full of good will! Once it even started wailing like a baby: O Lord, give me the time, the time to be transformed It has such a simple fervor for the work, but it needs timetime, thats it. It wants to live only to conquer, to win the Lords Victory.3
0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At times, I feel that Ill never get over the Difficulty. We are besieged by this enormous world of hostile forcesoceans of forces, churning and combining and submerging each other in gigantic pralayas,1 then again regrouping and combining. When you see that, it feels as if you had to be the Divine Himself to get over the Difficulty. Precisely so! (And its the hostile forces who help you to see this, its their role.) You have TO BE THE DIVINE, that is the solution, that is the true divine purity.
***
--
For example, there was one Difficulty he helped me resolve. I have always been literally pestered, constantly, night and day, by all kinds of thoughts coming from peopleall kinds of calls, questions, formations2 that have naturally to be answered. For I have trained myself to be conscious of everything, always. But it disturbed me in the work, particularly when I needed absolute concentration and I could never cut myself off from people or cut myself off from the world. I had to answer all these calls and these questions, I had to send the necessary force, the necessary light, the healing power, I constantly had to purify all these formations, these thoughts, these wills, these false movements that were falling on me.
What was needed was to effect a shift, a sort of transference upwards, a lifting up of all these things that come to meso that each one, each thing, each circumstance could directly and automatically receive the force from above, the light, the response from above, and I would be a mere intermediary and a channel of the Light and the Force.
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
These experiences are always absolute, as long as they last; then, through certain signs that I know (I am accustomed to it), I notice that the body consciousness begins closing up again. Or rather, somethingevidently a Supreme Wisdomdecides its sufficient for this time and that the body has had enough. It ought not to break, which is why certain precautions are taken. So this comes in several little stages that I know quite well. The final one is always a bit unpleasant because my body gets into rather peculiar positions as a result of the work. As its only a sort of machine, towards the end I have some Difficulty straightening my knees, for example, or opening my fingers I think they even make a noise, like something forced into one position whose life has become purely spontaneous and mechanical. There are plenty of people like that, plenty, who enter into trance and then can no longer get out by themselves; they get themselves into a certain position and someone has to free them. This has never happened to me; I have always managed to extricate myself. But yesterday evening, the experience lasted a very long time. There was even a little cracking at the end, as when people have rheumatism.
And during all this time, approximately three hours, the consciousness was completely, completely different. It was here, however; it was not outside the earth, it was on earth, but it was completely differenteven the body consciousness was different. And what remained was very mechanical; it was a body, but it could just as well have been anything. All this power of consciousness that for more than seventy years Ive gradually pushed into each of the bodys cells so that each cell could become conscious (and it goes on constantly, constantly), all this seemed to have withdrawn there only remained one almost lifeless thing. However, I could raise myself up from my bed and even drink a glass of water, but it was all so bizarre. And when I went back to bed, it took nearly forty-five minutes for the body to regain its normal state. Only after I had entered into another type of samadhi2 and again come out of it did my consciousness fully return. It is the first time I have had an experience of this kind.
0 1960-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
No, on the contrary, I have Difficulty
But my little one, its useless to see me physically!
0 1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I had a startling experience one day when X was doing his pujas to encircle the titans. He was in Difficulty and I was about to intervene to help him when I was abruptly stopped. I was faced by a massive blackness (blacker than the blackest physical thing) and suddenly, right at its center, I saw the Divine Love shining with such a splendor I had never seen it so splendid.
And now it has become constant; each time I hear or see something ugly or horrible, or each time something ugly or horrible happens, something which is a negation of the divine life just behind is this flameso wonderful. And then the effect is annulled.
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 myself am clearly seeing it from the other side; I see a black, muddy forma black, black force. And I see the [Divine] Force acting on people and, miraculously, the money comesand then its like something armored1it seeps in with Difficulty, a thin trickle from day to day.
Provided the sadhana works, thats all that is needed.
--
And sometimes things stagnate, they seem so absolutely obscure and stupid. And then, if you simply go like this (gesture of offering), simply, trulydo it, not think itits instantly like a shower of bliss A tiny point, something very small which looks stubbornly stupid and obstinate, if only you do this (and if you want, you can): Take, take! Give it to Him, simply, like this, truly give it to Him: Its You, its Yours, take it, do with it what You want. And instantly, instead of this shrinking and this painful feelingWhat in the world can I do with all this?a shower, it comes like a shower. Truly Ananda. Of course, if you are stupid enough to call back the Difficulty, it returns. But if you remain quiet, if you keep your head quiet, it goesfinished, cured. But there are thousands and thousands and thousands of such points
With my japa, Ive reached about seven lakhs2. I repeat it 1,400 times a day. But you must be much further than I!3
0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There is no need to react against difficulties; you are immediately pulled out of them, as if you were taken out like this (gesture of pulling someone out of a Difficulty with her two fingers).
Original English.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And life itself has responded by bringing people forward to form a nucleus. Of course, we clearly saw that this would make the work a bit more complex and difficult (it gives me a heavy responsibility, an enormous material work), but from the overall point of view for the Workits indispensable and even inevitable. And in any case, as we were later able to verify, each one represents simultaneously a possibility and a special Difficulty to resolve. I have even said, I believe, that each one here is an impossibility.3
But this way of seeing is too far removed from the state of mind and spiritual education in which X has lived,4 of course, for him to understand. Nor am I in favor of proselytizing (to convince X); it would disturb him quite needlessly. He has not come here for that. He came here for something special, something I wanted which he brought, and I have learnt it. Now its excellent, he is a part of the group in his own fashion, thats all. And in a certain way, his presence here is having a very good effect on a whole category of people who had not been touched but who are now becoming more and more favorably inclined. It was difficult to reach all the traditionalists, for example, the people attached to the old spiritual forms; well, they seem now to have been touched by something.
--
Actually, it was very different at that time because I was not even aware of any resistance or any Difficulty in the outer being; it was automatic, the work was done automatically. Later on, when I had to do both thingswhat he had been doing as well as what I was doingit became rather complicated and I realized there were many what we could call gapsthings which had to be worked out, transformed, set right before the total work could be done without hindrance. So then I began. And several times I thought how unfortunate it was that I had never studied or pursued certain ancient Indian disciplines. Because, for example, when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the supramental forces, a descent from the mental plane to the vital plane, he was always telling me that everything I did (when we meditated together, when we worked)all my movements, all my gestures, all my postures, all my reactionswas absolutely tantric, as if I had pursued a tantric discipline. But it was spontaneous, it did not correspond to any knowledge, any idea, any will, nothing, and I thought it was like that simply because, as He knew, naturally I followed.
Later on, when Sri Aurobindo left his body, I said to myself, If only I knew what he had known, it would be easier! So when Swami and later X came, I thought, I am going to take advantage of this opportunity. I had written to Swami that I was working on transforming the cells of the body and that I had noticed the work was going faster with Xs influence. So it was understood that X would help when he came thats how things began, and this idea has remained with X. But I have raced on I dont wait. Ive raced on, Ive gone like wildfire. And now the situation is reversed. What I wanted to find out, I found out. I experienced what I wanted to experience, but he is still He is very kind, actually, he wants really to help me. So, when I identified with him the other day during our meditation, I realized that he wanted to give silence, control and perfect peace to the physical mind. My own trick, if you will, is to have as little relationship with the physical mind as possible, to go up above and stay therethis (Mother indicates her forehead), silent, motionless, turned upwards, while That (gesture above the head) sees, acts, knows, decidesall is done from there. Only there can you feel at ease.
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For some time now Ive been experiencing a precise moment during my japa when something takes hold of me and I have all the Difficulty in the world to keep from entering into trance. Yet I remain standing. Usually Im walking, but some things I say while leaning up against the windownot a very good place to go into trance! And it grabs me exactly at the same place each time.
Yesterday, I suddenly saw a huge living head of blue lightthis blue light which is the force, the powerful force in material Nature (this is the light the tantrics use). The head was made entirely of this light, and it wore a sort of tiaraa big head, so big (Mother indicates the length of her forearm); its eyes werent closed, but rather lowered, like this. The immobility of eternity, absolutely the repose, the immobility of eternity. A magnificent head, quite similar to the way the gods here are represented, but even better; something between certain heads of the Buddha and (these heads most probably come to the artists). Everything else was lost in a kind of cloud.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I had X informed. But I didnt tell him my Difficulty (this mantra they threw on me to kill me), I didnt speak of that at all. For he had insisted, from the beginning he had said, Mother must see to it, only Mothers grace can save them. And I understood their attack came just at the time of Durga Puja, so I understood that Durga had to intervene. So thats the story.
Things are not going so well for X either; everywhere its grating. It was probably very important I am hopeful that it can bring some change.
--
Whereas whatever the effort, whatever the Difficulty, whatever time it takes, whatever number of lives, you must know that all this doesnt matter: you KNOW you ARE the Master, that the Master and you are the same. All thats necessary is to know it INTEGRALLY, and nothing must belie it. Thats the way out.
When I tell people that their health depends on their inner life (an intermediate inner life, not the deepest), its because of this.
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Not last night but the night before, I touched at least one of the causes (at that time it felt like THE cause) of a certain powerlessness to act directly on Matter You see, when the Will and the Power come, they are extremely effective everywhere UP TO A CERTAIN REGION (in other words, whether people are receptive or not, open or not, makes no differencewhen the Will is applied it is all-powerful UP TO a certain region) but once it arrives here, at the most material material, its efficacy depends on many thingsand a power which depends on something is no power! For a long, long time I have been searching for the reasons behind this powerlessness. Ive located a few, one after another, and upon these points there was an immediate effect. But some things resisted (oh, quite a number, in a number of ways), for example it had Difficulty acting on illnesses, on the cells, on doubt (not mental doubt, but rather the doubt of the physical consciousness which cant accept certain things that seem impossible to itwhat Sri Aurobindo calls disbelief,1 not a mental doubt, but the disbelief of the physical consciousness which cant accept what is contrary to its own nature and its own working). And as for illnesses, sometimes it has an immediate effect, but sometimes it drags on and has to follow its so-called normal course. On all these three points, I clearly felt that something was hampering it. These are the Enemys strongholds; all that doesnt want the Divine seizes upon it and even the working of the Power coming from above is obstructed, for when it must work here in the body, it is stopped or deformed or altered or diminished.
All this goes on in the subconscient; these are things that were pushed out of the physical consciousness down into the subconscient, so theyre there and they come back up whenever they please.
--
Before I fell sick, I had a peculiar dream. I was here in the corridor, and someone quite dark came to tell me that Mother wanted me to change my work. And I recall trying with all my might to ask him, But why, why? Finally you arrived. You were there at a table with some others. I was quite annoyed because all these people upset me, they were hindering me from being with you. And you said to me very clearly, Its time this gentleman goes. perhaps this gentleman represented a part of my being which had to disappear or change, but anyway you asked me to do something extremely difficultl felt a very great Difficulty doing it. I even remember, in my dream, having left you for an instant, as if I wanted to leave the Ashram, then I must have walked up and down for a while. Finally, I must have made an enormous effort to come back and sit next to you on a bench which symbolically was very hard The next morning I woke up with the flu.
So, its very simple. The sickness was due to one part of your being going faster than the rest. A part of the physical consciousness probably remained behind, and that created this imbalance and triggered the sickness.
0 1960-12-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its quite a nasty habit, for it keeps the most material state in a condition of disharmony, disorder, ugliness and Difficulty.
I tried every possible way To get out of it is relatively easy. But then it doesnt change.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Love, in its essence and in its origin, is like a white flame obliterating ALL resistances. You can have the experience yourself: whatever the Difficulty in your being, whatever the weight of accumulated mistakes, the ignorance, incapacity, bad will, a single SECOND of this Lovepure, essential, suprememelts everything in its almighty flame. One single moment and an entire past can vanish. One single TOUCH of That in its essence and the whole burden is consumed.
Its easy to understand how someone who has this experience can spread it and act upon others, since to have it you must touch the unique, supreme Essence of the whole manifestation the Origin and the Essence, the Source and the Reality of all that is; then you immediately enter the realm of Unity where there is no more separation among individuals: its a single vibration that can repeat itself endlessly in outer forms.2
--
What I say to people depends entirely upon their inner state. Thats precisely why I had such enormous Difficulty at the Playground3the atmosphere was so mixed! It was a STRUGGLE to find someone receptive so I could speak. And if Im in the presence of people who understand nothing, I cant say a word. On the other hand, some people come prepared to receive and then suddenly it all comes but usually theres no tape-recorder!
I have replied endlessly, I have given all sorts of explanations about the organization of the School, about World Union,4 about the true way to organize industry (its true functioning)so many things! If all that were compiled we could publish brochures! Sometimes Ive spoken three-quarters of an hour non-stop to people who listened with delight and were receptive but quite incapable of making a written report of it. At times like that we could have used one of your machines! But when things are organized in advance, it may well be that nothing comes out at allmentalizing stops the flow. If I is in front of me, I cant say anything to her because she doesnt understand. I already have trouble writing to herwhat I have to say is always brought down a bit; but if she were here in the room and I had to speak to her, nothing at all would come out!
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the Difficulty isnt so much not hating the sinner, but not hating the virtuous! Thats far more difficult! Because one readily understands sinners, those poor people, but the virtuous.
Actually, what you hate in them is their self-righteousness, only that. After all, theyre right not to do evilthey cant be blamed for that! But whats hard to tolerate is their sense of superiority, the way they look down their noses at all these poor fellows who are no worse than they!
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then, with the same precision, the same calm, the same deliberate, clear and concentrated consciousness (absolutely NOTHING MENTAL), I began to come back down. And as I was descending, I realized that all the Difficulty I had been fighting the other day and which had created this illness was absolutely ended, ANNULLEDmastered. Actually, it was not even mastery but the non-existence of anything to be mastered: Simply THE vibration from top to bottom; yet there was neither high nor low nor any direction.
And it went on like that. After this, Slowly, Still WITHOUT MOVING, everything went back into each of the different centers of the being. (Ah, let me say parenthetically that it wasnt AT ALL the ascent of a force like the ascent of the Kundalini! It had absolutely nothing to do with the Kundalini movement and the centers, it wasnt that at all.) But while re-descending, it was as though WITHOUT LEAVING THIS STATE, without leaving this state which remained conscious ALL the time, this supreme Consciousness began to reactivate the different centers: first here (Mother points to the center above the head and then touches the crown of the head, the forehead, throat, chest, etc.) then there, there, there. At each there was a pause while this new realization organized everything. It organized and made the necessary decisions, sometimes down to the most minute details: what had to be done in this case or said in that case; and all of that TOGETHER, at once, not one by one but seen entirely as a whole. It kept on descending I noted many things, it was extremely interestingdown and down, farther and farther, right to the depths. Everything went on at the same time,7 simultaneously, and at the same time this supreme Consciousness was organizing everything separately.8
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, yes! (How to explain?) On the 21st, these photos could still have created a kind of Difficulty in Xs consciousness (a semiconscious Difficulty) because of all the obstacles, all the contradictions, all that was coming to put up a figh the is very sensitive to these things and I didnt want to put him in contact with that realm. Later, though they had been given a good thump on the head (Mother abruptly bangs down both hands) and were keeping still. Then I said, All right, now you can send them.
I always avoid putting him in contact with the realm of conflicts and contradictions because he is extremely sensitive and it causes him difficulties. Thats why I said, No, dont bother. Afterwards, it was fine!
0 1961-02-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Since mid-November, this body has been living through every possible Difficulty, one after another, one after another sometimes all togetherwith relentless violence!
It has been good for it (not externally, but inwardly, for its state of consciousness: the body-consciousness), it has done the body some good, but. Now its like this (Mother opens her hands in a gesture of total surrender). For each blow it receives (its a bludgeoning, my child!), for each blow, it remains like this (same gesture). Yesterday, to make it happy, I wrote down something like this (concerning its latest Difficulty): If this present Difficulty is useful (its the body addressing the Lord, and the Lord. its a perpetual adoration: all the cells vibrate, vibrate with the joy of Love; yet despite that ), if this or that Difficulty is useful for Your Workso be it. But if it is an effect of my stupidity (its the body speaking), if its an effect of my own stupidity, then I beseech You to cure me of this stupidity as quickly as possible.
It doesnt ask to be cured of the illness! It doesnt ask, it is ready; All right, it says. As long as I can keep going, I will keep going. As long as I can last, I will last. But thats not what Im asking for: I am asking to be cured of my stupidity. I believe this is what enables it to yes, what gives it the necessary endurance.
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I know differently and so does my bodyto me its all foolishness and has no importance. For instance, when Vinoba Bhave came to see me4 (the man who takes care of poor people), he looked at me and said, Oh, youll live a hundred years! And I simply said, Yes, it all seemed so natural. At that moment, there wasnt even (how to put it?) the least intimation of a doubt. Of course its a clich, but nevertheless, he said it; afterwards he told people that this was what he had felt. And it seems completely natural I know if my body can last till its a hundred (a little less than twenty years more), then we will be on the other side the Difficulty will be over.
I rather feel that your dream is another part of this present mass attack, but.
--
The whole disorder evidently originates from the subconscient and inconscient; all the more so as it came with various indications (sent by the hostile forces but this can always be useful, provided you are careful) saying, Yes, everything is going well in your higher centers, but(because the different points of attack have clearly followed the order of the centers). Four or five days ago, or maybe a week, before this latest Difficulty occurred, I saw little beings coming out of the subconscient and saying, Ah! Your legs havent had any trouble for a long time! Its the turn of the lower centers! I swept it all away, of course, but.
Taken this way, it could be an indication that all this needs a somewhat brutal preparation in order to be put in the necessary condition.
--
Of course, theres the constant Difficulty of all the thoughts coming from outside and from the people you live with. But now the consciousness is such that these outer things are seen objectively (Mother makes a gesture of seeing vibrations coming and stopping before her eyes)automatically I see everything that comes from the surrounding vibrations objectively: far, near, above, below, everywhere. The vibration comes WITH THE KNOWLEDGE. In other words, its not that you see what it is only after it has been received and absorbed: it comes with the knowledge, and this is a great help. This type of perception has considerably increased and become much more precise since that experience [of January 24], much more; it has made a big difference.
But perhaps there will have to be many experiences of this nature before the work is done. It is possible.
--
Three years earlier, in 1958, Mother had told Satprem that February and March were 'bad months,' and she had spoken of cyclical movements in Nature like those in the individual consciousness, with alternating periods of Difficulty and progress.
Four times a year, for 'darshan,' visitors poured into the Ashram to pass one by one before Mother (and formerly Sri Aurobindo as well) to receive her look.
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have a feeling (but these are old ideas) that if I were all alone somewhere and didnt have to look after these people and things, it would be easier. But that would not be the TRUE thing. For when I had the experience [of January 24], all that is normally under my care was present: the whole earth seemed to be present at the experience. There is no individuality (Mother indicates her body). I have Difficulty finding an individuality now, even in my own body. What I do find in this body are the subconscious vibrations (conscious as well as subconscious) of a WORLD, a whole world of things. So it can be done ONLY on a large scale, otherwise its the same old story but then its not the power HERE [in matter]one simply quits this world. Oh, these people cant imagine what it is! They have made such a fuss over their departure. They have wanted us to believe it was something quite extraordinary. But its infantile, its childs play, its nothing at all to quit this world! One simply goes poff!, like diving into watera little kick and one resurfaces, and thats all there is to it, its done (Mother laughs).
And the same goes for their stories about attachments and desiresmy god! Theres nothing to it! Imagine, with anything concerning my body, through all this horror of the subconscient, NOT ONCE have I had to bear the consequence of a desire; I have always had to bear the consequences of the battle against lifes unconscious and malicious resistances, but not once has something come up like that (gesture of something resurging from below) to tell me, You see! You had a desire, now heres the result of it! Not oncevery, very sincerely.
Thats really not the Difficulty the Difficulty is that the world is not ready! The very substance one is made of (Mother touches her body) shares in the worlds lack of preparationnaturally! Its the same thing, the very same thing. Perhaps there is a tiny bit more light in this body, but so little that its not worth mentioning-its all the same thing. Oh, a sordid slavery!
(silence)
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, the body needed a test, a VERY SEVERE test, because from a personal viewpoint, its the only explanation I can find for all these disorders. There are many explanations from a general viewpoint, but. Anyway, I will know the day I am toldall these imaginings are useless. But from a personal viewpoint. You see, for a long time (more than a year now, probably almost two), this body hasnt felt its limits.14 It is not at all its former self; it is scarcely more than a concentration now, a kind of agglomeration of something; it is not a body in a skinnot at all. Its a sort of agglomeration, a concentration of vibrations. And even what is normally called illness (but it is not illness, these are not illnesses, they are functional disorders), even these functional disorders dont have the same meaning for the body as they have for the doctor, for instance, or for ordinary people. Its not like that, the body doesnt feel it like that. It feels it rather as as a kind of Difficulty in adjusting to some new vibratory need.
(silence)
--
All this [the world, the Ashram] is held in my consciousness with a kind of essential compassion applying equally to all things, all difficulties, all obstacles. I receive letters by the dozens, as you know, and each person comes to me with his own little misery or problem, inner or outer (a tiny pimple becomes a mountain). When people come to me, my inner consciousness always responds in the same way, with a kind of equality and compassion for all. But when people are talking to me or I am reading a letter and my body grows conscious of what it calls the to-do they make over their miseries, it has a kind of feeling (I mean there is a feeling in the cells): Why do they take things like that! They are making things much more difficult. The body understands. It understands that their way of taking the least little Difficulty in such a blind, egotistical and self-centered manner, increases its difficulties furiously!
Its a rather amusing sensation, a combination of sensation and feeling, that the ordinary human attitude towards things multiplies and magnifies the difficulties to FANTASTIC proportions; while if they simply had the true attitudea NORMAL attitude, quite simple, uncomplicatedahh, all life would be much easier. For the body feels the vibrations (those very vibrations which concentrate to form a body), it feels their nature and sees that its normal reaction, a peaceful and confident reaction, makes things so much easier! But as soon as this agitation of anxiety, fear, discontent comes in, the reaction of a will that doesnt want any of it oh, right away it becomes like water boiling: pff! pff! pff! like a machine. While if the Difficulty is accepted with confidence and simplicity, its reduced to its minimum, and I mean purely materially, in the material vibration itself.
Almost (I say almost because the body hasnt had every experience), but almost all pains can be reduced to something absolutely negligible. (Of course, some pains it hasnt had, but it has had a sufficient number!) Its this anxiety resulting from a semi-mental vibration (the first stirrings of Mind) that complicates everything, everything! For example, take this Difficulty I mentioned of climbing the stairs: in the doctors consciousness or anyone elses, pain causes it. According to their ordinary reasoning, pain is what tenses the nerves and muscles so one can no longer walk but this is absolutely FALSE. Pain does not prevent my body from doing anything at all. Pain isnt a factor, or rather its a factor that can be easily dealt with. Its not that: it is Matter; Matter (probably cellular matter, or) losing its capacity to respond to the will, to will-power. But why? I dont know! It depends upon the particular disorganization; but why is it like that? I dont know. Now each time I climb the stairs, I am trying to find the means of infusing Will in such a way that this lack of response doesnt last but I still havent found it. Although theres all this accumulated force and power and will (a tremendous accumulation, I am BATHED in it, the whole body is bathed in it!), yet for some reason it doesnt respond. Here and there, groups of cells fail to respond, and the Force cannot act. So what must be found is.
(silence)
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a long time X has said nothing about his meditations with me, but just yesterday he told N. that he had some Difficulty at the start of the meditation due to the presence of an adverse force, and it took him five minutes to overcome it!
Evidently he was in a completely different state of consciousness.
--
You know he said someone has been doing black magic against me; but I have never felt anything of the sort in the room where we meditate, because I make a point of coming half an hour early and this of course clears the atmosphere: everything is always ready when he arrives, in silence, in perfect peace. Hasnt he always told you that when he comes into that room he enters another world, like Kailas?1 And thats the way it has always been. If there has been a change, its that now its even more like thatbecause (how to put it?) its more stable. Before, it fluctuated a bit: it came, went, came. But now its like a tranquil mass (Mother lowers her arms) that doesnt stir. Yesterday in particular, this was the experience: I felt him coming (when he is about to come in, I always sense something drawing me outward a little so that I wont be completely in trance and can stand up), and this prayer came so spontaneously, oh! And then (laughing) in the afternoon N. tells me, Oh, X said he had some Difficulty at the start of todays meditationa hostile force was present and it took him five minutes to clarify the atmosphere!
It gave me the impression you get in outer life: all the pieces more or less dovetail but with no inner unitytheres not ONE thing, not one, that is true, essentially and always true. We know it is like that outwardly, of course; but I have always felt that with people who have an inner life, one could attain a kind of identity of vibration and knowledge but no!
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I am really in the most favorable conditions, because my body says yes. It says yes, yes, yesit doesnt complain. This may be the sense behind all this illness and Difficulty. Not a single day of complaint.
The night before last I was again awakened at midnight (not awakened: I came out of my trance) with those stings burning from inside out, from the tips of the feet up to here, everywhere, in the back it lasted four hours, non-stop. Well, my body didnt once complain. Not once did it ask for it to stop; it just kept quiet, saying: Thy Will be done. And not only saying it but FEELING it, quietlyfour hours of minuscule tortures. It didnt say a thing.
0 1961-04-08, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He is used to maintaining a kind of poise, the poise of the traditional attitude of indifference towards everything material: Its an illusion, it has no importance, theres no need to be concerned with it. Nature is acting, not 1; Nature is acting and Nature is built like that, so why bother about it, why worry. Thats how he lived until he came here, and its why he had this attitude of indifference. But here it began to change. And of course his body isnt used to it; it has Difficulty keeping up, it lacks plasticity.
The first thing he did was to go see the Doctor and ask him to heal his ear, heal his stomach, heal. So the Doctor told him, But why do you eat just anything at any time of day? Naturally youre sick. And then he was constantly running up against our ways of organizing material things herepeople like him dont organize, they dont care, they just let things drift. Regarding his son, for instance, the Doctor told him, Its because you dont look after him. If you did, this wouldnt happen. And X very bluntly replied, But why!?
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have had this particular consciousness in flashes. The Difficulty is that in expressing it, we use all our mental faculties, and they themselves are falseso we are cornered. Because when you follow through. Whatever you say,If this, if that, if the otheris all part of our general stupidity. Going right to the end of it, you are suddenly like this: Ah! (Mother remains suspended midway in her sentence) There is nothing more to do, not a move to make.
Only, as I have told you, practically speaking this experience can be dangerous. When it came, you see, one part of me was having the experience, and one part wasnt yet ready for it. Well, I was awake enough to tell myself, The part experiencing this prevails and keeps the rest calm, yet if the preparation had not been adequate, it could have produced an imbalance. And if by mischance someone without sufficient strength had the possibility of picking up something of that, well, he would lose his head.
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the Difficulty. You see, so far as Mind is concerned, the whole yoga has been donelike a path blazed through the virgin forest. And since it has been done, its relatively simple: the landmarks are there and one follows them. But here, nothing has been done! One doesnt know which end to take hold ofno one has ever done it! [186] You meet all the same obstacles before which others have simply said, Its impossible. Sri Aurobindo explains that its not impossible, but nothing more. And he himself hadnt done it.
No, for the least little thing, the whole mechanism has to be discovered, and discovered in a realm of the most total ignorance, where, really, unconsciousness is the most unconscious and ignorance the most ignorant.
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(During the work, the Difficulty of competently translating Sri Aurobindo comes up.)
Something is inevitably lost in translating; we translate, we lose something.
--
But then the Difficulty is that for the ordinary consciousness and unfortunately I am surrounded by a lot of people who have a very ordinary consciousness (at least it seems very ordinary to me, although from the human standpoint they are probably rather remarkable people)for the ordinary consciousness I seem to be in a stupor, a coma, a state of imbecility, of yes, of torpor. It has all those appearances. Something which becomes immobile, unresponsive, stopped short (same gesture as before); one can no longer think, one can no longer observe, one can no longer react, one can no longer do anything, one is like that (same gesture). But all these things keep coming from outside, all the time, coming and trying to interrupt that state; yet if I manage to prevent this, if I can keep this condition, after a while it becomes something so MASSIVE! So concrete in its power, so massive in its immobility, ohh! It must lead somewhere.
But I could not remain in that state long enough (it would have to go on for HOURS), I could not, due to all these constant interruptions. And then, when the body is pulled brusquely out of it, it seems to lose its balanceit has a few difficult moments.
0 1961-06-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats why I had Difficulty listening to you just now [during the work], because since last night I have been constantly facing this problem, and all morning long Ive had to you know, do like this (Mother clenches her fist, as though getting a grip on herself) in order to come here and listen. I didnt feel like seeing anyone, doing anything only staying like this (Mother keeps still, her arms at her sides) until that problem is willing to explain itself.
But if you had seen me yesterday. I would probably have said nothing, but it was so lovely! Exactly the same thing, the same people, the same circumstances, the same conditions in the body. Everything, everything was the same.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, there comes a time when, really, you can no longer say anything; you feel that whatever you say is, if not absolute rubbish, then the next thing to it, and that in practice its best to keep silent. Thats the Difficulty. And in some of these aphorisms you get the feeling that he has suddenly captured something beyondbeyond anything which can be thought. So what to do?
(silence)
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
After my interview with Nature, when she told me that she would collaborate,2 I thought this Difficulty would cease; many things have improved considerably (ONE part of Nature is collaborating), but not this. Plainly and clearly, it comes from the subconscient and the inconscient (wherever there is consciousness, all is well); its rising up all the time, all the time, and withoh, disgusting persistence!
And then of course its accompanied by all the usual suggestions (but thats nothing, it comes from a domain which is easily controlled). Suggestions of this type: Well, but Sri Aurobindo himself didnt do it! (I know why he didnt. but people in general dont know.) And every adverse vibration naturally takes advantage of this: How do you expect to succeed where he didnt! But my answer is always the same: When the Lord says its all over with, I will know its all over with; that will be the end of it, and so what! This stops them short.
--
That was the basic problembecause the identification of the two [Sri Aurobindo and Mother] was almost childs play, it was nothing: for me to merge into him or him to merge into me was no problem, it wasnt difficult. We had some conversations on precisely this subject, because we saw that (there were many other things, too, but this isnt the time to speak of them) the prevailing conditions were such that I told him I would leave this body and melt into him with no regret or Difficulty; I told him this in words, not just in thought. And he also replied to me in words: Your body is indispensable for the Work. Without your body the Work cannot be done. After that, I said no more. It was no longer my concern, and that was the end of it.
This was said in 1949, just a little more than a year before he left.
--
Oh, its measured out with such wisdom! I mean the awarenessnot exactly consciousness, but a state between consciousness and perception the awareness of the stupendous Difficulty of the thing is given to me drop by drop so that it wont be crushing.
But there has evidently been some rather considerable progress, because lately the enormity of the thing has been shown to me far more concretely, oh! I tell you, it has reached the point where all spiritual life, all these peoples and races who have been trying since the beginning of the earth, who have made so many efforts to realize somethingit all seems like nothing, like childs play. Its nothing: you smile and then you are joyous. Its nothing at all, nothing at all!
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are stories like this, you know, about people who lived in an ideal solitude, and its not at all impossible to imagine. When one is in contact with this Power, when it is within you, you can see that such things are childs play! It even reaches the point where there is the possibility of changing certain things, of influencing vibrations and forms in the surrounding environment by contagion, so that automatically they begin to be supramentalized. All that is possible but confined to the individual scale. While if we take the example of what is happening here, where the individual remains right in the midst of all this chaos. Thats the Difficulty! Doesnt this very fact make a certain perfection in realization impossible to attain? But the other case, the individual isolated in the forest, is always the same thingan example giving no proof that the rest will be able to follow; while whats happening here should already have a much broader radiating influence. At some point this has to happenit MUST happen. But the problem still remains: can it happen simultaneously with or even before the supramentalization of the single individual?
(silence)
--
It makes you sense so clearly that things in themselves dont count. What we call things in themselves are of no true importance! What really counts is the relationship of consciousness to these things. And theres a formidable power in this, since in one instance you touch something and drop or mishandle it, while in the other its so lovely, it works so smoothly. Even the most difficult movements are made without Difficulty. Its an unheard-of power! We dont give it importance because it has no grandiose effects, its not spectacular. Yes, there are indeed states of grace when one is in the presence of a great Difficulty and suddenly has all the power needed to face ityes, but thats something else. I am speaking of a power active in ordinary life.
There was an instance of this the other day: someone in a completely detestable mood wrote me a letter; it was impossible, I couldnt reply I didnt know what to say. I simply applied the Force and remained like this (gesture of an offering to the Light). I said, We shall see. Several hours later (I knew I was going to see this person) I didnt even know if I was going to say I had read the letteror rather if what I was going to say would result from having read it. I had come to that pointnothing. But that very morning a little circumstance occurred that changed everything! And when I met the person I knew immediately what had to be said, what had to be done, and everything worked out.
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In fact, we are the first possible instruments for making the world progress. For example (this is one way of putting it), the transformation of the Inconscient into the Subconscient is probably far more rapid and complete now than it was before man appeared upon earth; man is one of the first transformative elements. Animals are obviously more conscious than plants, but WILLED (and thus more rapid) progress belongs to humanity. Likewise, what one hopes (more than hopes!), what one expects is that when the new supramental race comes upon earth, the work will go much more swiftly; and man will necessarily benefit from this. And since things will be done in true order instead of in mental disorder, animals and everything else will probably benefit from it also. In other words, the whole earth, taken as one entity, will progress more and more rapidly. The Inconscient (oh, all this comes to me in English, thats the Difficulty!) is meant to go and necessarily the Subconscient will go too.
Broadly speaking, does this mean that physical Matter will become conscious?
--
Years ago, when Sri Aurobindo and I descended together from plane to plane (or from mode of life to mode of life) and reached the Subconscient, we saw that it was no longer individual: it was terrestrial. The rest the mind, the vital and of course the bodyis individualized; but when you descend below this level, thats no longer the case. There is indeed something between the conscious life of the body and this subconscious terrestrial lifeelements are thrown out1 as a result of the action of individual consciousness upon the subconscious substance; this creates a kind of semiconsciousness, and that stays. For example, when people are told, You have pushed your Difficulty down into the subconscient and it will resurface, this does not refer to the general Subconscient, but to something individualized out of the Subconscient through the action of individual consciousness and remaining down there until it resurfaces. The process is, so to speak, interminable, even the personal part of it.
Every night, you know, I continue to see more and more astounding things emerging from the Subconscient to be transformed. Its a kind of mixturenot clearly individualizedof all the things that have been more or less closely associated in life. For example, some people are intermingled there. One relives things almost as in a dream (although these are not dreams), one relives it all in a certain setting, within a certain set of symbolic, or at any rate expressive, circumstances. Just two days ago I had to deal with someone (I am actively at work there and I had to do something with him), and upon seeing this person, I asked myself, is he this one or that one? As I became less involved in the action and looked with a more objective consciousness, the witness-consciousness, I saw that it was simply a mixture of both personseverything is mixed in the Subconscient. Already when I lived in Japan there were four people I could never distinguish during my nighttime activitiesall four of them (and god knows they werent even acquainted!) were always intermingled because their subconscious reactions were identical.
0 1961-08-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Three or four years ago I had to make a little effort to meditate or give a meditation to someone in a very bad condition. But now absolutely no more effort. No effort at all. And I dont notice a bit when X is having Difficulty, not a bit. I prepare myself as usual before he comes and as soon as he arrives, all I have to do is call (although generally thats not necessary); I call, and then I become blissful. And I havent found more difficulties in certain cases than in others I DONT FEEL THE RESISTANCE, neither in the atmosphere nor in people. The Force is imperative. Thats why I was so astounded those other times when he began to say he needed at least ten minutes to put himself into meditationit seemed fantastic to me! He said so himself, otherwise I would never have believed it.3
Well, we shall see.
0 1961-09-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have to face a similar Difficulty, mind you, although its on another level. There is such a tremendous accumulation of people to see, things to do, questions to be resolvedeverything. The accumulation is So TIGHTLY packedso compact! Too compact for the life for the hours, the time, the forcesof an ordinary body. Yet behind it all, there is a sort of constant active immobility, in the sense that the consciousness has the impression of being immobile, of being borne along on the stream of progress and evolution. But this immobility. If I should try to do what I have to do, you know, everything I have to do, well it becomes impossible, things clog up, it gets painful. And here his answer is the same: Be simple, be simple.
This morning when I was walking, the program of the day and the work ahead of me was so formidable that I felt it to be impossible. And yet simultaneously there was this immobile inner POSITION in me; as soon as I stop my movement of formation and action, it becomes like a dance of joy: all the cells vibrating (there is a sort of vivacity, and an extraordinary music), all the cells vibrant with the joy of the Presence the divine Presence. But when I see the outside world entering and attacking, well this joy doesnt exactly disappear, but it retreats. And the result is that I always feel like sitting down and keeping stillwhen I can do that it is marvelous. But of course, all the suggestions from outside come in: suggestions of helplessness and old age, of wear and tear, of diminishing power, all thatand I know positively that its false. But calm in the body is indispensable. Well, for me also Sri Aurobindos answer is always the same: Be simple, be simple, very simple.
0 1961-11-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Maybe in a few minutesin any case not more than a few daysit would be finished. And ORIGINAL. The main impression is that it would be something new, original, unexpected, and thats just whats needed: something unexpected, unlike anything ever done before. Something sudden. At the risk of being a bit bewildering that doesnt matter! It doesnt matter. With all those pictures it will always be accessible to everyone. Especially each time you express this fatigue, this Difficulty, what Sri Aurobindo seems to be saying comes back to me: But of course! He is banging up against something that shouldnt even be there!
(Laughing) Perhaps thats why you were angry with me! Because I insist! Upstairs [in Mothers room, during japa], it keeps coming all the time, all the time: Go ontake the plunge! Clear the hurdle, take the plunge, cross to the other side. Constantly, constantly.
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No one can imagine what it was, those thirty years I had beyond all problems and difficulties; we went through every possible Difficulty and it was nothing, NOTHING. It was nothing, it was like a great harmonious orchestra.
(silence)
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And, over and above this, for the realization to be total, there are two other conditions, which arent easy either. Intellectually, theyre not too difficult; in fact, for someone who has practiced yoga, followed a discipline (I am not speaking here of just anyone), theyre relatively easy. Psychologically too, given this equality, theres no great Difficulty. But as soon as you come to the material plane the physical plane and then to the body, it isnt easy. These two conditions are first, the power to expand, to widen almost indefinitely, enabling you to widen to the dimensions of the supramental consciousness which is total. The supramental consciousness is the consciousness of the Supreme in his totality. By totality, I mean the Supreme in his aspect of Manifestation. Naturally, from a higher point of view, from the viewpoint of the essence the essence of that which in Manifestation becomes the Supermindwhats necessary is a capacity for total identification with the Supreme, not only in his aspect of Manifestation, but in his static or nirvanic aspect, outside of the Manifestation: Nonbeing. But in addition, one must be capable of identifying with the Supreme in the Becoming. And that implies both these things: an expansion that is nothing less than indefinite, and that should simultaneously be a total plasticity enabling one to follow the Supreme in his Becoming. You dont merely have to be as vast as the universe at one point in time, but indefinitely in the Becoming. These are the two conditions. They must be potentially present.
Down to the vital, we are still in the realm of things that are more than feasible they are done. But on the material level it results in my misadventures of the other day.2
0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Automatically, everything that exists is a natural expression of divine Joy, even the things human consciousness finds most horrifyingthis is understandable. But at the same time there is this aspiration, so intense that its almost anguish, for a perfection of creation to come. And it does seem that this intense aspiration and anguish in the material world is a necessary preparation for this perfection to come. Yet at the same time, whatever exists is perfect at each moment, since it is ENTIRELY the Divine. There is nothing other than the Divine. So there is simultaneously this plenitude of Divine Joy in each second, in whatever exists, and the aspiration, the anguish and the Difficulty lies in joining the two, there you have it.
Practically, you go from one to the other, or one is in front and the other behind, one active and the other passive. With the feeling of perfect joy comes an almost static state (certainly the joy of movement is also there, but all anticipation of the goal stays in the background). Then, when the aspiration of the Becoming is there, the joy of divine perfection at each moment withdraws into a static state.
0 1962-02-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Take Z, for instanceshe told me that Maharshi1 wrote in his book that if I were Hindu and did asanas every day, all India would be at my feet! This has certainly been Zs biggest Difficulty: it was easy to come here, she could speak to me perfectly freely, I didnt behave mysteriously. So of course, it was too simple!
***
0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, its peoples thoughts that are so annoying! Everybody, everybody is constantly thinking about old age and death, and death and old age and illness oh, theyre such a nuisance! Me, I never think of it. Thats not the question. The Difficulty lies in the Work itself; it doesnt depend on a certain number of years, which besides is completely its nothing, one second in eternity, a mere nothing!
But truly, if someone (I dont know who or what this Someone is) if I am given the time, I will know I am convinced of it. For despite all the growing difficulties, there is also a growing knowledge, a constant progress. So from that standpoint, I CANNOT be mistaken; it is impossible. This Presence is becoming so concrete and so (what shall I say?) so helpful, so concrete in its help. But it obviously takes a long time.
0 1962-03-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I remember the whole experience, of course, but the body-consciousness forgot. The slightest Difficulty, even the shadow or the recollection of a Difficulty, was enough for it to start up all over again: Oh oh! Now whats going to happen? The same old anxieties and stupidities.
So I realize that we have to keep on trying.
0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the dreams it gives me! Oh, theres a whole series of them, with particular styles and categories. You start down a flight of stairsno more stairs; you want to take a certain road the road closes; you want to catch someoneyou cant. All kinds of things. And although these dreams (I have a whole collection of them, in fact) recur with certain minor outward differences, they are all of the same type. Its a well-known type which I now classify as self-imposed troubles. When I get out of it and look, I see very clearly that its only this nasty habit we have of fretting over nothing! (Laughingly) Oh, whatever we want to do, immediately theres a complication, a Difficulty.
Yes, these dreams arise from the subconscient; they are primarily subconscious habits. But the pain, the thorns in the garmentits so clear! (Mother laughs) And no way to get comfortable!
0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But one thing has happened practically without my noticing it. In the past, before that experience [April 13], the body used to feel the struggle against the forces of wear and tear (different organs wearing out, losing their endurance, their power of reaction, and certain movements, for instance, becoming less easy to make). Thats what the body felt, although the body-consciousness never sensed any aging, never, none that simply didnt exist. But in actual material fact, there was some Difficulty. And now, looking at it in the ordinary way, externally, superficially, you might say there has been a great deterioration; well, the body doesnt feel that way at all! What it feels is that a particular movement, effort, gesture or action belongs to the worldthis world of ignorance and isnt being performed in the true way: its not the true movement, done in the true way. And its sensation or perception is that the state I was speaking of, soft, with no angles, has to develop along a certain line and produce effects on the body that will make true action possible, action expressing the true will. With no difference on the surface, perhaps (I dont know about that yet) but done in another way. And I am not talking about grandiose things, mind you, but of everyday activities: getting up, walking, taking a bath. I no longer have a feeling of incapacity, but a feeling of (whats the word for it?) an unwillingnessa bodily unwillingnessto do things in the old way.
There is another way to be found.
--
And I have Difficulty (its almost an unwillingness too) seeing things the way others see them. Its difficult for me, not spontaneous: it would take an effort I dont care to make.
As for the head, it has learned to keep still. I walk in the mornings and afternoons, saying the mantra as I did before; but while before I had to drive thoughts away, concentrate and make an effort, now this state comes and takes over everything the head, the body, everything and then I walk in that woolly dream (woolly isnt the right word, but its all I can find!). Its smooth, soft, without angles and supple! No resistance, no resistance. Oh, that peace!
0 1962-07-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This has never happened before, its brand-new. Before, there was always that Power transmitted through the higher mind (what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind); it was up there, dissolving, dispersing, changing, doing a whole lot of work, without any Difficulty, effortlessly (gesture above the head showing the tranquil, irresistible flowing of a stream), nothing to it. That was my constant, second-to-second action, everywhere, all the time, for everything that came to me. But THIS is completely, completely new. Its a sort of imposition, almost like an imposition on the PHYSICAL brain (I presume it must be for changing the brain cells). And I am allowed to do only one thing (Mother grips the mental construction presented to her); its right in front of me like this and wont leave me, it clings like a leech, stock-still. So I have to bring in the supreme, divine Vibration, the Vibration I experienced the other day [April 13], and hold it steadily (sometimes it takes quite a while) until all is hushed in a divine silence.
(silence)
0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, wellwhy has that returned? I wondered. And then I saw that this body has been built in such a way that it instinctively ATTRACTS ordeals, painful experiences. And in the face of such formations, it is always passive, consenting, accepting, and totally confident in the ultimate outcome, with such an ingrained certitude that even at the moment of greatest Difficulty, it will be helped and saved, and that the purpose behind all those ordeals is to speed up, to gain time, and to exhaust all the I cant say the evil possibilities, but all the hindrancesthings that hamper, block the way and seem to negate the goalso that they are pushed back into the past and no longer hinder progress.
Once I saw that, the formation went away. It had come just to show me that. And once again the body gave its eternal assent: no matter what its burdened with, it will always be ready to receive and to bear it.
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was a period when I used to sort of curl up into a ball Within. For the least Difficulty I became just like a circumference! All curled up into a ball Within.
And you feel Him everywhere, everywhere, everywherewithin, without, everywhere. Him, nothing but HimHim, His Vibration.
0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He had seen it happen. After ten years, when that man who headed Pakistan died,4 they found themselves in grave Difficulty and were unable to get organized; so they sent somebody (unofficially, of course) to ask India to reestablish union on certain bases but they refused, the Indians refused. It was a repetition of the same stupidity as when Cripps came to make his proposal, when Sri Aurobindo sent a message saying, Accept, whatever the conditions, otherwise it will be worse later on. Thats what Sri Aurobindo told them. Gandhi was there and he retorted, Why is that man meddling? He should be concerned only with spiritual life.5
They have conscientiously ruined the country.
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The big difference compared to my meditations at home is that immediately theres complete immobility and with no Difficulty. Its truly immobile.
I myself had an experience lasting the full half hour of the meditation.
0 1962-12-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the body had a lot of Difficulty putting up with all thata lot of Difficulty.
How about youdid it take a psychological or a physical form?
0 1962-12-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres just one thing I dont know its when you say Sri Aurobindo succumbed on December 5, 1950. He didnt succumb. Its not that he couldnt have done otherwise. Its not the Difficulty of the work that made him leave; its something else. You cant mention this in your book, of course, its impossible to talk about for the moment, but I would like you to use another word. What was your sentence again?
I said: Sri Aurobindo succumbed to this work on December 5, 1950.
0 1963-01-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Terrible. A strange Difficulty.
If the inner being the true beingis the ruler, the power of the true being makes the body act automatically; but then it doesnt grow conscious of its own change, it doesnt collaborate in its change, so for the change to happen it would take maybe millennia. The true being has to be like this (gesture to the background, standing back) and the body has to do everything BY ITSELF, in other words, contain the Lord, receive the Lord, give itself to the Lord, BE the Lord. It does aspireoh, its intense, aflame thats very good. But the Lord (smiling) doesnt conform to the ordinary habit! So all the habits, the minute He just tries to take possession of one function or another, even partially (not totally), all the interrelationships, all the movements are changed instantlypanic. Panic at the particular spot. And the result: you faint, or you are just about to faint, or you have an excruciating pain, or anyway something APPARENTLY breaks down completely. So whats to be done? Wait patiently until that small number or large number of cells, that little spot of consciousness, has learned its lesson. It takes one day, two days, three days, then the chaotic, upsetting big event calms down, is explained, and those particular cells say to themselves (or begin saying to themselves), God, how dumb we are! It takes a little while, then they understand.
--
Even now I have to proceed very, very slowlynot to go off at a gallop. I am surrounded by people who say, Oh, shes seriously ill! Whats going to happen? and they make things difficult for me. Because I still have to sweep it all aside with the Force: Keep quiet! Dont you go making formations that add to the Difficulty.
You see how far we are from those romantic transformations where people emerge from their meditation rejuvenated, transfigured, luminousoh, dear me! That will be mere childs play. At the end, it will be nothing: well just have to do this (Mother blows one puff in the air), and it will be there.
0 1963-01-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, the whole Difficulty is the mixing of two things: on one hand, the responsibility of everything, the entire organization, all these people hanging on to me (and naturally giving me work, even if we cut out whatever we can), and on the other, the study or recording of what goes on. If I had nothing to do and could note down my nights, what fascinating things there would be!
For instance, two or three nights ago (I dont remember), I was with Sri Aurobindo, we were doing a certain work (it was in a mental zone with certain vital reactions mixed in), well, a general work. I was with Sri Aurobindo and we were doing the work together. He wanted to explain to me how a particular movement is turned into a distorted movement; he was explaining this to me (but theres nothing mental or intellectual about it, nothing to do with theories). And without even (how can I put it?) without even a thought or an explanation to forewarn you, a true movement is changed into a movement that is not false but distorted. I was speaking to Sri Aurobindo and he was answering, then I turn my head away like this (not physicallyall this is an inner life, naturally), I turned my head as if to see the [vibratory] effect. Then I turn back and send Sri Aurobindo the movement necessary to carry on with the experience, and I receive a reply which surprises me because of the quality of its vibration (it was a reply of ignorance and weakness). So I turn my attention back again, and as a matter of fact in Sri Aurobindos place I saw the doctor. Then I understood! Superficially, one may say, So, Sri Aurobindo and the doctor are the same! (To people who would see such a thing it would occur that they are the sameof course its all, all the same! All is one, people just dont understand this complete oneness.) Naturally it didnt surprise me for the thousandth of a second, there wasnt any surprise, but oh, I understood! This way (Mother slightly tilts her hand to the left), its Sri Aurobindo, and that way (slightly to the right), its the doctor. This way its the Lord, and that way its a man!!
0 1963-01-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In fact, even the greatest Difficulty, even the greatest grief, even the greatest physical pain, if you can look at them from THERE, take your stand THERE, you see the unreality of the Difficulty, the unreality of the grief, the unreality of the pain and all becomes a joyful and luminous vibration.
It is ultimately the most powerful means of dissolving difficulties, overcoming grief and getting rid of pain. The first two [difficulties and grief] are relatively easy (relatively), the last [pain] is more difficult because of our habit of regarding the body and its sensations as extremely concrete and positive but actually it is the same thing, its just that we havent been taught and accustomed to seeing our body as something fluid, plastic, uncertain, malleable. We havent learned to permeate it with this luminous Laughter which dissolves all shadows and difficulties, all discords, all disharmony, all that grates, cries and weeps.
--
But its true. The other day I was telling you about some cellular difficulties. I noticed that as soon as they start, I start laughing! But if someone is here and I tell him the Difficulty solemnly, it goes from bad to worse; if I start laughing and talk about it laughingly, it vanishes. Really, its dreadful to take life seriously! Dreadful. Those who have given me the most difficulties have always been the people who take life seriously.
Ive had this experience even just recently. All that comes to me from people who have dedicated their lives to spiritual life, people who do a yoga in the traditional way, who are very solemn, who see adversaries everywhere, obstacles everywhere, taboos everywhere, prohibitions everywhere, oh, how they complicate life and how far they are from the Divine! I saw this the other day with someone you know. With that kind of people, you should not do this, should not do that, should not At such and such time you must not do this, on such and such day you must not do that; you should not eat this, you should not And then, for heavens sake, dont you go mixing your daily life with your sacred life!thats how you dig an abyss.
--
And I very well see (because I told Him several times, You know, it would be great fun if I had plenty of money to play with), so I see that He laughs, but He doesnt answer! He teaches me to be able to laugh at this Difficulty, to see the cashier send me his book in which the figures are growing astronomical ([laughing] its by 50,000, 60,000, 80,000, 90,000), while the drawer is nearly empty! And He wants me to learn to laugh at it. The day when I can really laughlaugh, enjoy myselfSINCERELY (not through effortyou can do anything you want through effort), when it makes me laugh spontaneously, I think it will change. Because otherwise its impossible. You see, we have fun with all sorts of things, theres no reason we couldnt have fun with more money than we need and do things in style! It will surely happen one day, but we shouldwe shouldnt be overwhelmed by the amount, and for that we shouldnt take money seriously.
We shouldnt take money seriously.
0 1963-04-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, its not a question of just these cells here: its a question of cells in, well, quite a lot of people, hundreds, maybe thousandsall that clings anywhere and in any way to the higher Consciousness. And since my mind is silent (I deliberately keep the mind absolutely still, trying not to react to all that constantly comes to it from outside, or trying to react almost subconsciously), nothing is there to think, Oh, its this ones body, its that ones body its THE Body! Thats what is so difficult for people to understand. It is THE bodythis (Mother touches her body) is not my body any more than other bodies (a bit more, in the sense that it is more directly the object of the concentration of the Force). So everything, all the sensations, the movements of consciousness, the battles, all of it is everywhere. And suddenly, with this little affair, oh, I understood a fantastic number of thingsand also the Difficulty, mon petit! The Difficulty because really, after this experience, the body was not ill but very tired. But then it is seized with such things all the time! All the time, all the time, all the time, you know, they spring up, brrm! pounce on it, brrm! from this side, that side, every which way. So I have to keep still (gesture of stopping, silent, in the midst of other activities), and then I start waging the battle.
(silence)
0 1963-05-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Seeing that, there is obviously a similar experience in connection with what is called life and death. Its a sort of overhanging (it comes to me in English, thats why I have Difficulty) of that constant presence of Death or possibility of death. As he says in Savitri, we have a constant companion all the way from the cradle to the grave, we are constantly shadowed by the threat or presence of Death. Well, this gives the cells an intensity in their call for a Power of Eternity which would not be there without that constant threat. Then we understandwe begin to understand very concretely that all those things are only goads to make the Manifestation progress and grow more intense, more perfect. If the goads are crude, it is because the Manifestation is very crude. As it grows more and more perfect and apt to manifest something ETERNALLY PROGRESSIVE, those very crude methods will give way to more refined ones, and the world will progress without the need for such brutal oppositions. It is only because the world is in infancy and the human consciousness in its very early infancy.
Its a very concrete experience.
0 1963-05-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, all these things are lights, so you cant reproduce them. But still, it must be a violet that is not dull and not dark (Mother starts from the most material Nature). What she has put is too red, but if its too blue, it wont be good eitheryou understand the Difficulty? Then after violet there is blue, which must be truly blue, not too light, but it must be a bright blue. Not too light because there are three consecutive blues: there is the blue of the Mind, and then comes the Higher Mind, which is paler, and then the Illumined Mind, which is the color of the flag [Mothers flag], a silver blue, but naturally paler than that. And after this comes yellow, a yellow that is the yellow of the Intuitive Mind; it must not be golden, it must be the color of cadmium. Then after this yellow, which is pale, we have the Overmind with all the colors they must all be bright colors, not dark: blue, red, green, violet, purple, yellow, all of them, all the colors. And after that, we then have all the golds of the Supermind, with its three layers. And then, after that, there is one layer of golden whiteit is white, but a golden white. After this golden white, there is silver whitesilver white: how can I explain that? (H. has sent me some ridiculous pictures of a sun shining on waterit has nothing to do with that.) If you put silver, silver gray (Mother shows a silver box nearby shining brilliantly in the sun), silver gray together with white that is, it is white, but if you put the four whites together you see the difference. There is a white white, then there is a white with a touch of pink, then a silvery white and a golden white. It makes four worlds.
I have explained this [to H.] as I am explaining it to you, but H. has not seen it so she cant understand. I want to show her on paper. It is twelve different things [or twelve worlds], one after another.1
--
Maybe someone much more intelligent, much smarter than me would find the work easier; but he would probably have more difficulties insideno such difficulties here! But outside For example, the chemical discovery of the structure of Matter would seem to be sufficient to serve as a base for true knowledge to act on Matter.3 And maybe those scientists, those who have discovered and experimented with the structure of Matter, would have no Difficulty. But the field of the greatest Difficulty is the medical field, the therapeutic field: their science is still ABSOLUTELY contrary to the true knowledge. And when it comes to the bodys equilibrium They know anatomy, they even know a little (not very, very much) a little about the bodys chemistry, they know all kinds of things that the common man doesnt, on the strength of which they make dogmatic assertions and send you packing like an ignorant fool. All this business about the bodys workingshow much do they know? Naturally, when you ask them, But why is it like that? they reply, Oh, why? I have no idea.
And their way of telling you, Thats how things are and they cannot be otherwise! But if you tell them, Your experience is ultimately based on statistics, but your statistics are useless, they cover such a limited field of experience that they are worthless there is also all that you dont know, then they feel sorry for you.
0 1963-06-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I heard it I heard THE CELLS repeating the mantra. Automatically, in the Difficulty (there was a Difficulty), they were repeating the mantra. Like a choir, an immense choir in a church, it was very odd. As if there were lots of little voices, innumerable little voices repeating and repeating the same sound. It gave me the impression of a church choir, but with lots and lots and lots of choirboystiny little voices. Yet the sound was very clear, I was dumbfounded: very clear. The sound of the mantra.
But is this the mind the Tantrics use? For instance, when you speak of the deep blue light in the physical mind, is it the same cellular mind?
0 1963-06-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother often said that each of the Ashram disciples was the symbol of a particular Difficulty to be conquered.
***
0 1963-06-29, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But clay, that was something really newand lovely! Pink. Pink, a warm, golden pink. They were cutting out [of the clay] rooms, stairways, ship decks and funnels, captains cabins. Sri Aurobindo himself is as he was, but more with a harmony of form: very, very broad here (in the chest), broad and solid. And very agile: he comes and goes, sits down, gets up, always with great majesty. His color is a sort of golden bronze, a color like the coagulation of his supramental gold, of his golden supramental being; as if it were very concentrated and coagulated to fashion his appearance; and it doesnt reflect light: it seems as if lit from within (but it doesnt radiate), and it doesnt cast any shadows. But perfectly natural, it doesnt surprise you, the most natural thing in the world: thats the way he is. Ageless; his hair has the same color as his body: he has hair, but you cant say if its hair, its the same color; the eyes too: a golden look. Yet its perfectly natural, nothing surprising. He sits down just as he used to, with his leg as he used to put it [the right leg in front], and at the same time, when he gets up, he is agile: he comes and goes. Then when he went out of the house (he had told me he would have to go, he had an appointment with someone: he had promised to see two people, he had to go), he went out into a big garden, and down to the boatwhich wasnt exactly a boat, it was a flat boatand he had to go to the captains cabin (he had to see the captain about some work), but it was with that boat that he was returning to his room elsewherehe has a room elsewhere. Then after a while I thought, Ill follow him so I can see. So I followed him; as long as I saw him in front of me I followed him. And when I came to the boat, I saw it was entirely built out of pink clay! Some workmen were working thereadmirable workmen. So Sri Aurobindo went down quite naturally, down into the ship under construction, without (I dont think there were any stairs), and I followed him down. Then I saw him enter the captains room; as he had told me he had some work to do, I thought (laughing), I dont want to meddle in others business! Ill go back home (and I did well, I was already late in waking up!), Ill go back home. And I saw one of the workmen leaving (as Sri Aurobindo had come back to the ship, they stopped the work). He was leaving. I called him, but he didnt know my language or any of the languages I know; so I called him in thought and asked him to pull me up, as I was below and there was a sheer wall of slippery clay. Then he smiled and with his head he said, I certainly dont mind helping you, but it isnt necessary! You can climb up all by yourself. And indeed he held out his hand, I took it (I only touched him slightly), and climbed up all by myself without the slightest Difficulty I was weightless! I didnt have to pull at his hand, he didnt pull me up. And as soon as I was up, I went back home I woke up and found myself in my bed five minutes later than my usual time.
But what struck me was the clayit means something very material, doesnt it? And pink! A pink, oh, lovely! A golden pink.
0 1963-07-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In other words, one domain after another, one Difficulty after another, one kind of obstacle after another (obstacles that are either subconscious or in the most material consciousness or the lower vital), it all comes for an ACTION. An action which is very sustained and varied; even when some other thing (some other Difficulty or problem) is in the foreground, predominant in the consciousness, everything is there [in the surrounding atmosphere], and all the time there is that Light (Mother makes a gesture of cleaning in the atmosphere) which has always been with meof which I became totally conscious with Madame Thon, who told me what it wasa Light I have always kept with me, a white Light, absolutely pure, so dazzlingly white that eyes cannot look at it, a Light which is
(long silence Mother goes off into that Light, her eyes closed)
--
But it isnt total Victory, no. It isnt the power of transformation. The other day, I told you, I think, that one of my present activities consisted of a sort of conscious concentration on one person or another, one thing or another, to obtain the desired result. For years on end, the Will and Force acted from above, and the outer conscious being [of Mother] wasnt concerned with anything further, knowing that it would only make things more complicated instead of helping them, and that the Force left to itself, directly under the supreme Impulsion, worked things out far better and far more accurately. But over these last months, there have come a will and a tendency to make the material being [of Mother] participate consciously in the details of execution. It has a kind of passive obedience, and so, once that was willed [the need for Mothers material intervention], it began to happen. There was a case recently, with a very good friend of the Ashram, a man with an important position who has been very, very useful. He had to be operated on (I wont tell the whole story, it would be too long); we received two or three wires a day, I followed the thing step by step. There was a very powerful force of destructionit was a very grim battle and there was a will to keep him, because in this body he had been very useful, he was still very useful and could still be very useful. He had a great faith, a great trust, and he was conscious (his consciousness was very sufficiently developed: I saw him constantly and constantly he came to me). He fell into a butchers hands; anyway, it was a wretched thing. Still, even though everyone expected him to leave his body, he held on and was constantly saying (we were kept informed by his son) and feeling that it was I who was keeping him alive. I could even see what they should have done and constantly I sent the formation, the thought, But THIS is what should be done, insistently. Finally they caught my thought, but I think (I cant say, I dont know the details, the small material details), I think probably they didnt do exactly what they should have thats why I say they must have been butchers. Thus they performed three operations in a row, and after undergoing all that, he came to me (before also he used to come very oftenthey said he was drowsy all the time, in a semi-coma, but thats not it: he was living inwardly), he came to me, totally conscious as usual, but he said, I am afraid my body is irretrievably ruined, and if I survive now, instead of this body being a help and a tool of work, it will be a hindrance, an impediment, a source of Difficulty, so I have come to ask to be freed I prefer to enter a new body. I answered immediately, But as you are, you are useful, very useful; the position you occupy makes you very useful; you are totally conscious; it would be good if you could recover. He listened, again insisted a little, I too insisted, and then he left.
The next morning, he was much better. I was hoping he had decided to stay, but we were without news for about twenty-four hours, till suddenly we were told he had stopped breathing and was being given oxygen. And then he left.
0 1963-07-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have great Difficulty keeping a hold on it. A domestic detail, for instance, some utterly material things invade my consciousness. The rest is always quiet, but utterly material things become very active.
Probably it pulls the Force down into a very material domain.
--
So there is a period when you are in suspense: no longer this, not yet that, just in between. Its a difficult period when you have to be very quiet, very patient, and above allabove allnever become afraid or irritated or impatient, because thats catastrophic. And the Difficulty is that from all quarters and without letup come all the idiotic suggestions of ordinary thinking: age, deterioration, the possibility of death, the constant threat of illness, of the slightest thingillness, dotage decay. It comes all the time, all the time, all the time; and all the time this poor harried body has to remain very quiet and not to listen, preoccupied only with maintaining its vibrations in a harmonious state.
Sometimes I catch it (that must be something quite common among human beings) in a sort of hastea haste, a kind of impatience, and also, I cant say fear or anxiety, but a sense of uncertainty. The two together: impatience to get out of the present moment to the immediately next, and at the same time uncertainty as to what that immediately next moment is going to bring. The whole thing makes a vibration of restlessnesswhats the word in French?
0 1963-07-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The greatest Difficulty is that the bodys texture is made of Ignorance, so that every time the Force, the Light, the Power try to penetrate somewhere, that Ignorance has to be dislodged. Every time the experience is similar, renewed in detail (but not in essence; I mean, every time its a particular point, but the essence of the problem is always the same): its a sort of Negation out of ignorant stupiditynot out of ill will, there is no ill will: its an inert and ignorant stupidity which, by the very fact of what it is, DENIES the possibility of the divine Power. And thats what has to be dissolved every time. At every step, in every detail, its always the same thing that has to be dissolved.
Its repeated again and again. Its not as in the realm of ideas, where once you have seen the problem clearly and have the knowledge, its over; some doubts or absurdities may come back to you from outside, but the thing is established, the Light is there, and automatically things are either repelled or transformed. But this here isnt the same thing! Every single aggregate of cells. Not that it comes from outside: its BUILT that way! Built by an inert and stupid Ignorance. An inert and stupid automatism. And so, automatically, it deniesnot denies, theres no will to deny: it is an opposite, I mean it CANNOT understand, its an oppositean ESTABLISHED oppositeof the divine Power. And every time, there is a kind of action which really in every detail is almost miraculous: suddenly that negation is compelled compelled to recognize that the divine Force is all-powerful. Seen from another angle, its a sort of perpetual little miracle.
0 1963-08-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Physical Matter, physical substance the very elementary consciousness thats in physical substancehas been so ill-treated (since mans presence on earth, I suppose, because before man, there probably wasnt enough self-consciousness to be aware of being ill-treated; the substance wasnt conscious enough, I suppose, to make a distinction between a normal peaceful state and unfavorable conditions; but anyway, that goes back quite long time), so ill-treated that it finds it very hard to believe things can be different. That consciousness has an aspirationan aspiration especially for a LUMINOUS peace, something that isnt the dark peace of Unconsciousness, which it doesnt like (I dont know if it ever liked it, but it no longer does). It aspires to a luminous peace; not to a consciousness full of various things, not that: simply to a peaceful consciousness, very peaceful, very quiet, very luminous thats what it wants. Yet at the same time, it has some Difficulty believing that its possible. I am experiencing it: the concrete and absolutely tangible intervention of the supreme Power, supreme Light and supreme Goodnessit [the consciousness in physical substance] has the experience of that, and every time it has a new sense of wonder, but in that sense of wonder I can see something like: Is it really possible?
It gives me the impression, you know, of a dog that has been beaten so much that it expects nothing but blows.
--
Yet the proofs are accumulating. If faith and trust could settle permanently, the Difficulty would probably be over.
(silence)
0 1963-08-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Just this morning, it was the same thing for me. You see, when the Difficulty comes, there is a kind of general disorganization in the body, with intense pains, and (I observe, I want to follow the thing) its not at all a progressive abatement followed by recovery, thats not how it works: its absolutely like the reversal of a prismeverything vanishes at one stroke. There remains only that stupid habit the body has of remembering. And in remembering the remembrance makes you feel tired and out of sorts but the thing is over.
The bodys remembrance is yet another thing that will have to be worked upon.
0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No! That Sri Aurobindo wrote very clearly: for all those who have faith and open themselves in surrender and faith, the work will be done automatically.4 As long as he was here, mon petit, all the thirty years I spent with him working, NOT ONCE did I have to make an effort for a transformation. Simply, whenever there was a Difficulty, I repeated, My Lord, my Lord, my Lord I just thought of himhop! it went away. Physical pain: he annulled it. You know, some things that were hampering the body, some old habits that had come back, I only had to tell him: off they would go. And through me, he did the same for others. He always said that he and I did the Work (in fact, when he was here, it was he who did it; I only did the external work), that he and I did the Work, and that all that was asked from the others was faith and surrender, nothing more.
If they had trust and gave themselves in perfect trust, the Work was done automatically.
--
But what I was shown clearly and what I saw was (I have Difficulty talking because it all came to me in English: Sri Aurobindo was there and it was in English), it was the stupidity and carelessness, really, the ignorance the stupid ignorance and I-couldnt-care-less attitude the living have towards the dead. Thats something frightful. Frightful. Frightful. Ive heard stories from everywhere, all sorts of appalling things. For instance, one of the stories (it took place while Sri Aurobindo was here): there was a disciple whose son died (or at least they thought him dead), and as they werent Hindus, they didnt burn him: they buried him. Then at night, his son came to him and told him you see, he saw his son at the window, knocking at the window and telling him, But why did you bury me alive? (I dont know in what language, but anyway) And that idiot of a father thought, Im dreaming!! Then the next day, long afterwards, he had second thoughts and asked himself, What if we took a look? And they found him turned over in his coffin.
When the man told me the story and how he found it quite natural to think, I am dreaming, I cant find words to tell my indignation at that moment, when I saw that you know, its such a crass, such an inert stupidity! It didnt even occur to him how he would have felt if the thing had happened to HIM. It didnt even occur to him!
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I SAW myself the way I am, and quite obviously (Mother laughs) my body seems to have been shrunk to enable me to dominate it and exceed it on all sides without Difficulty! Thats my impression, something thats shrunk! The English word is very expressive (Mother laughs).
Now, of course, when I say that, people imagine its a psychic or mental vision thats not it, I dont mean that! I mean a PHYSICAL vision, with these very eyes (Mother touches her eyes). But a TRUE physical vision, instead of the distorted vision we have now.
--
We can very well conceive (its something easy to conceive) that beings may be born in another manner, through a power of concentration, and that those beings may materialize without any of the miseries that beset us thats all very well, but its for later. We are in between, thats where the Difficulty is.
"All renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond."
0 1963-09-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then its the same problem, the same Difficulty.
Its quite simply an incomprehension.
--
But naturally, from an intellectual point of view, all those things are explained and find their placeman has never thought anything that wasnt the distortion of a truth. Thats not the Difficulty, its that for religious people there are certain things they have a DUTY to believe, and to allow the mind to discuss them is a sinso naturally they close themselves and will never be able to make any progress. Whereas the materialists, on the other hand, are on the contrary supposed to know and explain everything they explain everything rationally. So (Mother laughs), precisely because they explain everything, you can lead them where you want to.
There.
0 1963-09-28, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont see how it would be possible for one point of the Supreme not to be the whole Supreme. If there is a Difficulty here, its a Difficulty for the WHOLE, isnt it?
Not necessarily.
0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The big Difficulty is that tamasic stupidity. Yesterday, in this connection, I had the experience of a young couple who came to see me. (It has become a custom nowadays that young people who are going to marry and whose families I know, or who live here, come to receive my blessings before marrying! Thats the new fashion.) So they came. The girl was educated here and the boy stayed here for quite a long time, working here; anyway, they want to marry. The boy went searching for a job; he had trust [in Mother] and found one. He is I cant say conscious because it isnt like consciousness, I would call it rather superstition (!) but its a superstition on the right target! The movement is ignorant, but well directed, so it works; not that he has an enlightened faith, but he has faith. All right. Things are fine and he does very well. So they came yesterday to receive my blessings. Then they went. And they left behind in the room a vital formation, very bubbly, absolutely ignorant, very bubbly with a joie de vivre, a joie de vivre so blissfully ignorant of all possible difficulties, all possible miseries, and not only for oneself but for everyone! You know, that joie de vivre that says, Oh, it doesnt matter to me if we are born and dielife is short, well, let it be good, thats enough. No mental curiosity, no urge to know the why of the worldall that is nonsense, we neednt bother about it! Lets be happy, have some fun, and do as well as we can. Thats all. That formation was so strong, you know, in the room that I saw it and had to find a place for it. It put me in contact with a whole domain of the earth, of mankind, and I had to put it in its proper place, put it in order and organize it. It took me a little time (long enough, maybe three quarters of an hour or an hour), I had to order and organize everything. Then I saw how widespread it is on earth. (Note that these young people belong to the top of society, they are regarded as very intelligent, they are very well educated, in a word, its about the best you can find in mankind! Not the dregs, far from it.) And I wondered if it isnt even more widespread in Western countries than here I think it is. At that moment I came into contact with everywhere, and, well, the everywhere was really quite extensive.
Afterwards, I asked myself, But what the devil can be done with all this? Disturb these people? They are quite incapable of getting out of their condition in this life and will probably need many, many, many lives to awaken to the NEED TO KNOWas long as they can move about, you know (laughing), as long as they can move about and things arent too painful, theyre quite contented! And then, in addition, there is, all the way down, that whole inert mass, you know, of men who are very close to the animalwhat can be done with that? If that too has to be ready, it seems to me impossible. Because that young couple, according to human opinion, are very fine people!
--
So, yesterday, there was first the visit of those young people, then that question of money, and then that manifestation [of Power], which comes from time to time. Afterwards, I asked myself, How is it..? How is it that I was that way? It lasts for a time, I do a certain thing, then it disappears completely. And I feel surprised, you know, surprised. The first times it happened, something in the body was having some Difficulty holding it [the Power]; now, nothing whatsoever, the body doesnt feel anything, its grown accustomed to it. Perhaps thats what is being done: the body is being accustomed. But if that Power were there all the time, good grief! People would have to behave themselves, because
So I was looking at it and thinking, How come? I was neither angry nor upset nor anything at allwithin, there was always that same Love, unchanging, always, always there, for everything; even when I perceive things with a kind of discernment (not even an intuitive one, a discernment higher than intuitive, which is like a clear visionclear, precise, in the white Light), the discernment of all the stupidity, all the ill will, all the crookednessa very clear discernmentit is always with a Smile, there is always that same Vibration of an eternal Love. Then that Power comesit doesnt disturb anything, it doesnt take the place of anything: its an addition. Its an action: it does its action and then goes away. But while its there you know, the Force that made me bang my fist on the table could have smashed everything. But of course, a poor little hand, a poor little arm, could only shake the table! (Mother laughs) It could only make a lot of noise and shake the table. But the perception was tremendous.
0 1963-11-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are times when one is disgusted, and thats just when one should remember this. Now, your disgust may have reasons of its own (!) But you have only to endure. You know, there is one thing, I dont know if you have savored it yet: as soon as you have a Difficulty, dissatisfaction, revolt, disgustanythingfatigue, tension, discomfort, all, all that negative side (there are lots and lots and lots of such things, they take on all kinds of different colors), the immediate movementimmediateof calling the Lord and saying, Its up to You. As long as you try (instinctively you try to arrange things with your best light, your best consciousness, your best knowledge), its stupid, because that prolongs the struggle, and ultimately its not very effective. There is only one effective thing, thats to step back from whats still called me and with or without words, it doesnt matter, but above all with the flame of aspiration, this (gesture to the heart), and something perfectly, perfectly sincere: Lord, its You; and only You can do it, You alone can do it, I cant. Its excellent, you cant imagine how excellent! For instance, someone comes and deluges you with impossible problems, wants you to make instant decisions; you have to write, you have to answer, you have to sayall of itand its like truckloads of darkness and stupidity and wrong movements and all that being dumped on you; and its dumped and dumped and dumpedyou are almost stoned to death with all that. You begin to stiffen, you get tense; then, immediately (gesture of stepping back): O Lord. You stay quiet, take a little step back (gesture of offering): Its up to you.
But you cant imagine, its wonderful! Immediately there comesclear, simple, effortlessly, without seeking for itexactly what has to be done or said or written: the whole tension stops, its over. And then, if you need paper, the paper is there; if you need a fountain pen, you find just the one you need; if you need (theres no seeking: above all dont seek, dont try to seek, youll just make another mess)its there. And thats a fact of EVERY MINUTE. You have the field of experience every second. For instance, youre dealing with a servant who doesnt do things properly or as you think they should be done, or youre dealing with a stomach that doesnt work the way youd like it to and it hurts: its the same method, there is no other. You know, at times situations get so tense that you feel as if youre about to faint, the body cant stand it any more, its so tense; or else theres a pain, something wrong, things arent sorting themselves out, and theres a tension; so immediately you stop everything: Lord, You, its up to You. At first there comes a peace, as if you were entirely outside existence, and then its gone the pain goes, the dizziness disappears. And what is to happen happens automatically. And, you see, its not in meditation, not in actions of terrestrial importance: its the field of experience you have ALL the time, without interruptionwhen you know how to put it to use. And for everything: when something hurts, for instance, when things resist or grate or howl inside there, instead of your saying, Oh, how it hurts! you call the Lord in there: Come in here, and then you stay calm, not thinking of anythingyou simply stay still in your sensation. And more than a thousand times, you know, I was almost bewildered: Look! The pain is gone! You didnt even notice how it went. So people who want to lead a special life or have a special organization to have experiences, thats quite silly the greatest possible diversity of experiences is at your disposal every minute, every minute. Only you must learn not to have a mental ambition for great things. Just the other day, I was shown in such a clear way a very small thing I had done (I, its the body speaking), a very small things that had been done by the Lord in this body (thats a long sentence!), and I was shown the terrestrial consequence of that very small thingit was visible, I mean, as my hand is visible to my eyesand the terrestrial correspondence. Then I understood.
0 1963-12-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was only one Difficulty: the little children, who cannot be conscious of a test, of course, and who remained four and a half hours in the rain. I didnt want it to do any damage there were about a hundred small ones, tiny tots. I spent the night in concentration to bring into their material sensation the true reaction (because, for a short while, children love rain, they have a lot of fun in it), so I said to myself, That part of their consciousness should predominate so there is no damage. And I waited for the day after. The day after, no one was sick.
Then I received a letter from M., the captain, saying that they had felt it was a test, the lila2 of the Lord (he called it the lila of the universal Mother) and asking me if it was true. I was happy and answered him that it was true and that I was happy. And everyone told me, They were wonderful. As if doing that performance in the rain had given rise to a kind of will in them, and they were remarkable: everybody was enthusiastic. So instead of saying to the Lord, Thats not nice, I thanked Him heartily! And I laughed, I thought, There you have it! Its always that way.
0 1963-12-07 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The way to get faith and all things else is to insist on having them and refuse to flag or despair or give up until one has themit is the way by which everything has been got since this difficult earth began to have thinking and aspiring creatures upon it. It is to open always, always to the Light and turn ones back on the Darkness. It is to refuse the voices that say persistently, You cannot, you shall not, you are incapable, you are the puppet of a dream,for these are the enemy voices, they cut one off from the result that was coming, by their strident clamour and then triumphantly point to the barrenness of the result as a proof of their thesis. The Difficulty of the endeavour is a known thing, but the difficult is not the impossibleit is the difficult that has always been accomplished and the conquest of difficulties makes up all that is valuable in the earths history. In the spiritual endeavour also it shall be so.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1963-12-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The way the world is now physically organized, with the difference and specialization in the forms, in sexes, encourages a kind of opposition between the two poles, the union of which results in creation. So, naturally, each pole has enormous Difficulty understanding the other (although it thinks and believes it does), especially understanding the pole I place underneath (gesture signifying the basis of the world), which is the effectively creative pole, that is to say, what is expressed by woman. She feels very well that without this (gesture above) the full understanding isnt there; but this, which is above, doesnt AT ALL understand the creative power of that which is belowit knows it in principle, but doesnt understand it. And there is a lack of adaptation, a sort of conflict, which shouldnt exist. It never existedneverbetween Sri Aurobindo and me, but I could see it didnt exist because he had adopted the attitude of complete surrender to the eternal Mother (the stage, in the creation, of complete surrender). I would see it, and it embarrassed me! It embarrassed me, I thought, But why does he think he has to do that (laughing), as if I couldnt understand! On the contrary, I thirst for the other attitude for identifying myself this way instead of that way (Mother presses her fist upward against her hand above): for identifying myself from below upward instead of from above downward. It was an aspiration, which has been there almost for eternities for the universal creative Force to identify itself with the Creator. And to identify itself not through the descent of the Creator, but through the ascent of the Force the conscious ascent. But Sri Aurobindo willed it that way, so it was that way and then I was very busy with my work. For the thirty years we lived together, it went on that way, perfectly smoothly; and I kept my aspiration quiet because I knew that it was his will. But since he left and I was obliged to do his work, so to speak, things have changed. But I didnt in the least want the Creator, because of my taking up the work, to be obliged to adapt himself to the creative Force (that wont do at all!), and my whole aspiration has been for the creative Force to consciously BECOME the Creator. Its becoming increasingly that way. And at the last meeting [with Sri Aurobindo], for a time (not the whole time, but some time), it was that way. Then I understood; it made me understand the play of all the forces in the two elements the two polesand how they could be joined, through what process that opposition could disappear so that the total Being might exist.
Were on the way. And its growing clearer and clearer. It will be tremendously interesting. But thats for later on.
0 1963-12-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But that [Falsehood] is the great obstacle, the extreme Difficulty. Its something gluey which entered the creation and sticks to everything, and which has become a material habit too, because its not only Mind that has Falsehood in it: theres Falsehood in Life, in Life itself. In the completely inanimate, I dont know. Maybe it came with Life? (According to Savitri, the origin of Falsehood lies in Life.) But its as though Unconsciousness, in order to go towards Consciousness, to return to Consciousness, had taken the path of Falsehood and Death instead of the path of Truth.
And Falsehood is this: the sorrow of the Lord.
0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You are saved from that Difficulty by the fact that up above you understand fully. But thats very rareyou should be infinitely grateful! (Mother laughs)
Oh, but I AM grateful!
0 1964-01-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And always the same thing (the first vision was quite correct, I mean the vision of the cells was quite correct): it isnt something coming from outside, its the impulse that comes from outside, its the wrong vibration that comes from outside, and the Difficulty is that you are unable to replace this wrong vibration or, rather, CANCEL it, with the True Vibration. Thats what I had already said: the proportion isnt sufficient, so it takes time. I can understand that with a sufficient proportion of cells remaining in the True Vibration, the cure should be instantaneous, that is, the effect of the wrong vibrations should be canceled automatically. But I had seen the thing and spent almost an hour, three quarters of an hour [in concentration], and the little bit that had been affected (it was in the throat) was canceledit didnt return. It was canceled. But after those three quarters of an hour, I had to resume my activities, see people, do things, take my bath, too (although the bath is always beneficial), and a sort of memory lingered. And then, from three oclock, a quarter to three, the invasion started: first one, then another, then two more, then a third, then So all at once, because my attention had been DIVERTED to what I had to do (scores of answers to be written, of blessings to be sent, of problems to be resolvedall of it dumped on me), as my attention was diverted to that, naturally all at once I started sneezing and so forththere was nothing to do but go through it.
Still, for actions in this domain, actions of transformation, I dont say solitude because thats sillythere is no such thing as solitude but peace is necessary, that is, the perfect control over the activity: the activity must be kept on a level where it doesnt interfere with the inner work thats the point. That was why, in fact, I was forced (apparently) to remain upstairs, because downstairs it had become it was infernalinfernal, no one can imagine! Its always the same principle: Why not me? And there are 1,300 of them, you understand let alone the visitors who come in their hundreds (some days, there are more than 200 or 300 of them at one time); they hear that there is someone worth seeing, and when I was downstairs and one of the circus showmen ([laughing] excuse me!) came, he would bring a troop along.
0 1964-01-29, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Doubt, discouragement, diminution or loss of faith, waning of the vital enthusiasm for the ideal, perplexity and a baffling of the hope for the future are the common features of the Difficulty. In the world outside there are much worse symptoms such as the general increase of cynicism, a refusal to believe in anything at all, a decrease of honesty, an immense corruption, a preoccupation with food, money, comfort, pleasure, to the exclusion of higher things, and a general expectation of worse and worse things awaiting the world. All that, however acute, is a temporary phenomenon for which those who know anything about the workings of the world-energy and the workings of the Spirit were prepared. I myself foresaw that this worst would come, the darkness of night before the dawn; therefore I am not discouraged. I know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and feel the first signs of its coming. Those who seek for the Divine have to stand firm and persist in their seeking; after a time, the darkness will fade and begin to disappear and the Light will come.
(XXVI.169-170, April 9, 1947)
0 1964-03-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And to me, as I see it, the eyes are the will, while the lower part of the face is the struggle, the Difficultyit represents the Difficulty with the earth. But the eyes are the will to make contact (Mother pulls from above downward to make high and low meet).
They arent eyes of entreaty, look at them closely: they are eyes of willalmost eyes of command.
0 1964-03-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had precisely that great Difficulty (it was on February 29): all the time while I was living in that consciousness of the DIRECT manifestation of the Truth, I tried to formulate what I was feeling, what I was seeingit was impossible. There were no words. And immediately, merely formulating things made me instantly fall back into the other consciousness.
On that occasion, the memory of this aphorism on the sun and the earth came back to me. Even to say a change of consciousness a change of consciousness is still a movement.
0 1964-03-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The big Difficulty is that all of N.s experiences are in his mind. He has worked in his mind, transformed his mind; he has experiences, hes had all the experiences but IN THE MIND: not at all in the body. But then all that I am saying here, all these experiences I have now are in the bodyhe doesnt understand. Thats the Difficulty. He cannot understand. And who can? I dont know:
As soon as it concerns mental things, he understands perfectly well; as soon as it concerns material things, he doesnt understand anymore. But who can understand?
--
And that goes on twenty-four hours a day, and, I can say, as many thousand seconds as there are in a day, spontaneously, sincerely, absolutely (gesture of offering): Here, I give it to you. Oh, here comes a Difficulty; oh, so-and-so has a Difficulty; oh, these circumstances are bad, oh Here, here, here, I cannot sort it out with the knowledge I havedo what needs to be done; do what needs to be done, I give it to You. Its a gesture of every minute, every second.
Then, after some time, you see such an OBVIOUS Response, you know, so clear that all that has doubts or lacks understanding is compelled first to keep quiet, and then to give in.
0 1964-04-08, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I cannot say that a single day passes entirely without my having to fight against one suffering or another, one Difficulty or anotheryou know, the feeling that things are grating.
Of course, the body notices that when its entire consciousness is exclusively centered on the Divine, it no longer feels its suffering: if it has a pain, it no longer feels it. But the minute it is slightly aware of the outer world, it sees that the pain is there all right.
0 1964-06-27, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont feel tiredwhat tires me is rather human beings with their constant agitation and troubled atmosphere. Anyway, I am happy to be with my brother. The Difficulty is that I no longer know how to speak, I have lost the habit of conversation, and people talk and talk, ask questions without giving you time to answer, and in that whirl it is quite hard to pull down true words. In fact, my only rest is when I am alone doing my japa; then everything seems to open, to relax, and I feel I am back home. Otherwise I am like a cork tossed about on the sea and turned in all directions. People dont livethey bustle about. It is painful to be constantly pulled outside, constantly torn from oneself. I am not able to live in this world any longer, I think I would die if I had to stay here.
S.
0 1964-07-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I saw that human imagination has great Difficulty getting out of a sort of enslavement to the physical machinery. Thats what Sri Aurobindo means here.
***
0 1964-08-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think you have in a corner of your being what I could call a grumbler. I became aware of thatnot particularly for you, but as one of the manifestations of that onion skin I mentioned just a moment ago (!) Some people in that way are grumblers, for them everything is an occasion to grumble and complain. Its very interesting, you know, because owing to the work I am doing, all those ways of being or reacting are taking place WITHIN me, and I catch myself being like this, being like that, doing this, doing that, being thereall the things one shouldnt be! Everything comes to me in that form: as if it took place within me. Ill catch myself being like that and Ill say, What! Some time ago, I was haunted by this for a long while: something which always sees the bad side of things, the Difficulty, which even foresees the Difficulty, which is in contact with all that protests, complains and grumbles I saw that very strongly. Then I started to work and work on it; and when I set to work, there is a sort of awareness that comes to me of the different places or elements where the same thing is: it shows itself very clearly, so then I can do something. But you know, its an incalculable work of every minute, and for a considerable number of people! Quite a lot. The larger part of the work is impersonal, in the sense that I dont know to whom its going or what, but it is often as an illustration (you know, like when you tell a story to make an idea better understood; they are illustrations to make me understand the work better), then I see in everyone the different ways of being and reacting. But its so incalculable in the perception, so constant, that its very hard to express I would have to say lots of things at the same time, which is impossible.
No, but theres obviously a link missing between something I sense in the background and something I am here.
0 1964-08-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The situation in which we ourselves are [at the Ashram], this Difficulty, doesnt come from anything else: the governments interference in everything, its meddling in other peoples affairs and putting spokes in the wheels of everything, but everything. Ive got a pile of examples, of proof for every minuteall the proof.
So there are two possibilities: violence, or Transformation. Violence means invasion or revolutionits hanging in the air, it could break out any moment. The government Nehru wasnt worth much, but still for the masses he represented a certain ideal (which he was quite incapable of living up to, but anyway). After him, its finished; the present Prime Minister is a man with great goodwill, who has no character, to such a point that in the presence of difficulties he falls illhes ill! Ill, he cant work! Thats where we are.2
0 1964-08-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its very different from what it was before for so many yearsvery different. I feel a sort of Oh, its an impression equivalent to the one I had when Sri Aurobindo gave my mind silence. It became perfectly blank and empty (gesture to the forehead), blank and empty, and there was nothing anymore: I couldnt think anymore, not one idea, not one system anymore, nothingin a word, total imbecility! It never came back. You see, it went up above, and here there was nothing. Well, this time, it was the same thing for the body consciousness: before, it was everywhere like something holding everything together (to such a point that when there was a Difficulty, I only had to stop bothering about it all and let that act, and the Difficulty would automatically be sorted out by that body consciousness, which knows far better than our active thought what the body should do), and that day it left DELIBERATELY. The decision had been made the night before, but I was resisting it, as I knew the normal consequence was fainting. But that willed it so and that chose its own time (when there was no danger, when no accident could happen and someone was there to help me), that chose its own time and that did it deliberatelygone. And it has never returned.
So the first day, I was almost dazed; I was constantly groping for the way to do things. Yesterday, it was still strong. And this morning, suddenly I began to understand (what I call to understand is to have control), I understood: Ah, thats it! Because I was wondering, But what on earth does all this mean? How can I do my work? I remember, yesterday I had to see a host of people, people who arent close and whose atmosphere isnt good: it was very difficult, I had to keep a hold on myself, and I must have looked strange, very absent I was very far away, in a very deep consciousness, so that my body wouldnt be you know, that gave it discomfort of sortsdiscomfort, yesit was hard to bear. Yesterday the body was still that way the whole morning; towards evening it got better. But the night wasnt good, oh! In the night, I am always given a state of human consciousness to put right, one after another there are millions of them. And there are always all the images and events that illustrate that particular state of consciousness. At times, its very hard going: I wake up tired, as after a long period of work. And last night, thats how it was; its always the various, multiple ways which men have of complicating the original Simplicity: of turning a simple vibration into extremely complicated eventswhere the thing should be simple and flow naturally, there are endless complications, and such difficulties! Unbearable and insuperable difficulties. I dont know if you have experienced that: you want to go somewhere, but there are hindrances everywhere; you want to go out of a room, but there is no way out, or there is one, but you have to crawl on the ground under kinds of rocks and then something in the being refuses, No, I wont do it. And with a sense of insecurity, as if at any moment the thing could topple over and crush you. There are people who want to help you, but they cant do anything at all, they only make the complication still more complicated; you start on a road with the certainty of reaching a particular place, then all of a sudden, in the middle of it the road changes, everything changes, and you have your back to the place you wanted to go. All kinds of things like that. The symbolism of it is extremely clear. But then, it makes for a lot of work.
0 1964-08-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When there is someone who has made the experiment and naturally has Wisdom, its so simple! Before, whenever there was the slightest Difficulty, I didnt even need to say anything to Sri Aurobindo, everything would sort itself out. Now, I am the one who is doing the work, I have no one to turn to, no one has done it! So this, too, makes for a sort of tension.
One cannot imagineone cannot imagine what a grace it is to have someone in whose hands you can place yourself entirely! By whom you can let yourself be guided without having the need to seek. I had that, I was very, very conscious of it as long as Sri Aurobindo was there. And when he left his body, it was a dreadful collapse. One cannot imagine. Someone you can refer to with the certainty that what he says will be the truth.
0 1964-09-16, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it cannot even be said it was a mistake in recruitingit would be tempting to believe this, but its not true, because the recruiting was done on the basis of a rather precise and clear inner sign. Its probably the Difficulty of keeping the inner attitude unalloyed. Thats exactly what Sri Aurobindo wanted and attempted; he used to say, If I can find a hundred people, it will be enough for my purpose.
But it wasnt a hundred for long, and I must say that when it was a hundred, it was already mixed.
--
Yes, Ive noticed that in the extreme Difficulty of the worlds external conditions, the aspiration is far more intense.
Isnt it!
0 1964-09-23, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And in the morning, oh! All mornings are difficult. Its odd: life as a whole goes by with almost dizzying speedweeks and months go by like thatand mornings, about three hours every morning, last like a century! Each minute is won at the cost of an effort. It is the time of the work in the body, for the body, and not just one body: for instance, all the vibrations from sick people, all those problems of life come from everywhere. And for those three hours, there is tension, struggle, acute seeking for what should be done or for the attitude to be taken. Its at that time that I have tested the power of the mantra. For those three hours, I repeat my mantra automatically, without stopping; and every time the Difficulty increases, a kind of Power comes into those words and acts on Matter. And thats how I know: without the mantra, that work couldnt be done. But thats why I say it has to be YOUR mantra, not something you received from whomever the mantra that arose spontaneously from your deeper being (gesture to the heart), from your inner guide. Thats what holds out. When you dont know, when you dont understand, when you dont want to let the mind intervene and you are THAT is there; the mantra is there; and it helps you to get through. It helps to get through. It saves the situation at critical moments, its a considerable support, considerable.
For those three hours (three or three and a half hours), its constant, constant, without stop. So then the words well up (gesture from the heart). And when the situation becomes critical, when that disorder, that disintegration seem to be gaining in power, its as if the mantra were becoming swollen with force, and it restores order.
0 1964-10-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The big Difficulty, in Matter, is that the material consciousness, that is to say, the mind in Matter, was formed under the pressure of difficultiesdifficulties, obstacles, suffering, struggle. It was, so to speak, worked out by those things, and that gave it an imprint almost of pessimism and defeatism, which is certainly the greatest obstacle.
This is the thing I am conscious of in my own work.
The most material consciousness, the most material mind, is in the habit of having to be whipped into acting, into making effort and moving forward, otherwise its tames. So then, if it imagines, it always imagines the Difficultyalways the obstacle, always the opposition, always the Difficulty and that slows down the movement terribly. So it needs very concrete, very tangible and VERY REPEATED experiences to be convinced that behind all its difficulties, there is a Grace; behind all its failures, there is the Victory; behind all its pain and suffering and contradictions, there is Ananda. Of all the efforts, this is the one that has to be repeated most often: you are constantly forced to stop, put an end to, drive away, convert a pessimism, a doubt or a totally defeatist imagination.
I am speaking exclusively of the material consciousness.
0 1964-10-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the realm of ideas, there arent any problems, everything was resolved long ago the problem is in the fact, in the material fact of the body. It is beginning to learn its lesson. Its beginning to learn. And then, instead of the selfish answer that consists in saying, Ah, no! I dont want that, I dont want any of it! (Laughing) I am above that weakness and disorder, let it come, accept it and see what the solution is. In other words, instead of the old problemrejection of life, rejection of the Difficulty, rejection of the disorder and the flight into Nirvanaits the acceptance of everything and Victory.
This is really (as far as I know) the new thing Sri Aurobindo has brought. Not only the idea that its possible, but that its the true solution, and the idea that we can start now. I am not saying well reach the end now, I dont know, but the idea is that we can begin right now, the time has come when we can begin, and its the only true solution, the other solution is no solutionwell, it was a necessary experiment in the universal march, but flight is no solution: the solution is Victory. And the time has come when we can try.
0 1964-10-24a, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Youll have a lot of Difficulty driving that into peoples heads!
Oh, but there has been a dreadful revolt in the Ashrams atmosphere! Not in their conscious mind, but in the subconscienta terrible revolt. In order to write down my declaration, in order to formulate it, I had to overcome a whole mass of things, it was extraordinary! There have even been individual reactions: Then I am going away. I said, Very well, here is the exact proof.
0 1964-10-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, the body is learning one thing, and learning it not as an effort that has to be made, but as a spontaneous condition: its that ALL that happens is for progress. All that happens is for reaching the true state, the one that is expected of the cells so that the Realization may be accomplishedeven the blows, even the pains, even apparent disorganizations, all that is on purpose. And its only when the body takes it in the wrong way, like a fool, that it gets worse and insists; whereas if the body immediately says, Very well, Lord, what do I have to learn? and responds with calm, calm, the relaxation of calm, immediately the Difficulty becomes tolerable, and after a moment, it gets better.
(silence)
--
Yes, what it still has is the fear of joynot positively fear, but a timidity in the face of joy. Sometimes waves of an intense Bliss come to it, waves of Ananda, in which all the cells begin to swell with a joyous golden light, and then its as if one dared notone dare not. Thats the Difficulty.
The people around me dont help. Those immediately around me have no faith.
--
But you know, for hours, sometimes for hours something becomes fixed, really concentrated (in the true sense of the word) on the relationship between Eternity and the Unfolding. More and more, what comes is a vision, a certainty that its only ONE way of seeing, adapted to our humanized consciousness, and there is a kind of unmoving perception (which has more to do with sensation than with thought), a perception that what iswhat truly isis something else altogether: neither the Unfolding as we conceive of it and perceive it, nor Eternity (coexistent Eternity, one might say) as we can understand it. And its because of our incapacity to truly grasp the Thing that we are like this, having Difficulty combining these two things properly.
I am putting it into words very poorly, but it isnt a vision, in the sense that it isnt an objective perception: it is a vibration, a way of being that you BECOME for a few seconds, and then you understand, but you cant put it into words.
0 1964-11-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Difficulty is that one lives with others I understand very well that those who wanted to follow the inner law, the Impulse from above every second, were obliged to withdraw, because then they depend only on themselves (they depend on themselves, on Nature, that is to say, on the rising and setting of the sun, and then on plants and animals but those make no demands). But in a human life, you need set times to get up, to go to bed, to eat; especially for food: there are those who do the cooking. It has its advantages: there were periods in my life when I lived all alone (not long ones, not for a long time, but I had some), well, during those periods, more often than not I would forget to eat and forget to sleep. Thats a drawback.
But there is a great advantage.
0 1964-11-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it has become very subtle, very hidden, difficult to ferret out. When almost everything was like that, it was visible, it was conspicuous; but that state changed very fast: the Difficulty is whats hidden underneath and isnt voluminous enough to draw attention to itself. And, oh, those habits, those habits. For instance (magnifying it to make it more easily visible), the habit of foreseeing catastrophes.
And anything that disturbs the Inertia is, for Inertia, a catastrophe. In the world, the earthly world (its the only one I can speak of with competence; of the others, I have only overall visions), in the earthly world, for Inertia (which is the basis of the creation and is necessary to fix, to concretize things), anything that disturbs it is a catastrophe. That is to say, the advent of Life was a monstrous catastrophe, and the advent of intelligence in Life another monstrous catastrophe, and now the advent of Supermind is the final catastrophe! Thats how it is. And for the unenlightened mind, it really is a catastrophe! I know cases, for instance, of people who are sick: if they follow the routine of the doctor and medicines and treatment and disease, they get well; if by some mischance (!) they call on the Force and I apply it, the more I apply, the more terrified they are! They feel absolutely unexpected phenomena and they are terrified: Whats happening to me! Whats happening to me! As if it were absolutely catastrophic. The minute the Force comes and they feel just a bit of it, like one drop, they tense up, they resist, they panic, they become absolutely restless. Thats right: they become so restless, so absolutely restless! That is, the whole system spends its time rejecting and rejecting all that comes.
0 1964-12-02, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Basically, in the being, its the vital that has Difficulty; it is the most impulsive part and has the greatest Difficulty in changing its way of being. And its always the vital that feels free, encouraged and more alive during travels, because it has an opportunity to manifest freely in a new environment in which everything has to be learned: reactions, adaptations, etc. On the contrary, in the routine of a life that has nothing particularly exciting, it strongly feels (I mean, if it has goodwill and an aspiration for progress), it strongly feels its inadequacies and desires, its reactions, repulsions, attractions, etc. When one doesnt have that intense will to progress, it feels imprisoned, disgusted, crushed the whole habitual refrain of revolt.
(silence)
--
Ah, thats just what I thought! There is in the Illustrated Weekly the history of those Eucharistic Congresses, and it seems a French lady was behind the origin of the first Congress (not so long ago, in the last century, I believe). And then (Mother smiles), theres a magnificent portrait of the Pope with a message he wrote specially for the Weeklys readers, in which he took great care not to use Christian words. He wishes them I dont know what, and (its written in English) a celestial grace. Then I saw (he tried to be as impersonal as possible), I saw that in spite of everything, the Christians greatest Difficulty is that their happiness and fulfillment are in heaven.
Instead of a celestial grace, they read to me, or I heard, a terrestrial grace! When I heard that, something in me started vibrating: What! But this man has been converted! Then I had it repeated and heard it wasnt that but really a celestial grace.
0 1965-01-09, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All I can say is that there is a fierceness in the resistance to the descent of the Truth. This descent is totally concrete and evident, of course, and everything averse to it is resisting with terrible fiercenessit cant last. But we must bear up, thats the Difficulty.
For me, there is a struggle every minute with all that is most negative in life, in the terrestrial consciousness, with what REFUSES to admit the possibility of divinity. In other words, the materialistic concept in its most stubbornly dark aspect.
0 1965-01-12, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My Difficulty is that Im very absorbed by this body. It absorbs me, it absorbs a lot of my consciousness. The physical mind, for instance, invades me completely.
Yes, I know very well! But thats always the Difficulty, its everyones Difficulty. Thats why in the past you were told, Get away from it all! Let it puddle about peacefullyget away from it all. But we dont have the right to do that, its contrary to our work. And you know, I had reached an almost absolute freedom with regard to my body, to such a point that I was able not to feel anything at all; but now I am not even allowed to exteriorize, can you imagine! Even when I am in some pain or when things are rather difficult, or even when I have some quiet (at night, that is) and I say to myself, Oh, to go into my beatitudes , I am not allowed to. I am tied like this (Mother touches her body). Its HERE, here, right here that we must realize.
Thats why.
--
And because, first, of what you know, because of what you have seen, because of your contact with Sri Aurobindo, because of your contact with me, the same thing is happening to you, and thats what makes the Difficulty. Thats why I am telling you, It doesnt matter, dont worry if you are preoccupied with your body: simply try to take ADVANTAGE of thisadvantage of this preoccupationto bring the Peace, the Peace into your body. I am constantly enveloping you, as it were, in a cocoon of peace. And then if in this mind, too, which vibrates and vibrates, fidgets all the time (really like a monkey), if you can bring into it its a Peace that doesnt come through the higher mind: its a Peace that acts DIRECTLY in this material vibrationa Peace in which everything relaxes.
Dont thinkdont think you have to transform this physical mind or oblige it to fall silent or abolish it: all that is still activity. Simply let it run, but bring the Peace, feel the Peace, live the Peace, know the Peace the Peace, the Peace, the Peace.
0 1965-03-20, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For me, the problem is completely different. Up there in the Mind and above, everything is fineeverything is fine; but the big Difficulty is to change the physical, to change Matter. You get a feeling that you have touchedtouched a secret, found a keyand the next minute, pfft! it no longer works, its inadequate.
I was telling Pavitra a few days ago: all those physical disorders of the body, those disorders in the functioning or even organic disorders, suddenly (naturally, the constant state is one of aspiration: an intense, continuous, conscious aspiration) and suddenlysuddenlyan almost stupefying Response: all disorder disappears, not only inside but around (around, sometimes over a rather vast extent), and everything becomes automatically organized, harmonized, without the least effort, and it starts (Mother draws the great waves of the eternal Movement) moving within an extraordinary progressive harmony; then, with no apparent reason, without anything having changed in the consciousness and any outer circumstances making a difference, pfft! it reverts to what it was before: disorder, conflict, chaos, things that grate. And then, as you arent conscious of the why, you dont have the key!
0 1965-03-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let me give you an example to make it a little clearer: I constantly have whats conventionally called a toothache (it doesnt correspond to anything in reality, but anyway people call it having a toothache). I had Difficulty eating, a congestion, and so on. The attitude: you endureyou endure to the point when you dont even notice that things are going wrong. You endure, but you are aware (and besides, the external signs are there: a swelling of the gums, etc.). There was a period (its been in that state for a long time, but anyway), a period that began with a first swelling, in Decembercontrol, work, etc., all the necessary inner precautions. Then one observes the movement; one wants to know where it leads, what it is (its a long story, quite uninterestinginteresting only because it is instructive). And two nights ago, the situation was apparently the same as usual, the same thing, when suddenly there was a will to stay awake, not to sleep, and then I had the clear perception of a congestion and that it was becoming necessary to take out those things (bits of tooth that were moving they were moving now more, now less, but it began in December), to take them out in order to let the congestion out. Previously, too, bits of tooth had moved, and one day they had come out by themselves, without Difficultywhen the time had come for them to go, they had gone; so I remembered that: why not wait for that moment? That was the attitude for a long time. And then the cells were curiously shrinking back from a very close contact with something [a dentist] that wasnt in complete harmony with the directing force of the body. This is how, in common language, it was translated: T. (who is very nice, no question of that) doesnt know either the habits or the reactions or the type of vibration or whats necessaryshe doesnt know anything. So how to make contact? Two nights ago, this came to me clearly: this is what you must tell her (and the exact words of the letter to be written), and you MUST send for her tomorrow morning. Then everything fell quiet, it was over, I went on with my night as usual, as every night. The next morning, I wrote what had been decided and she came; and, well, when she came she knew what she had to know and she did exactly what had to be done. She even said, I will do only what you tell me to do.
And I will add a detail (not a very pleasant one, but it gives the measure of the truth): there were two bits of tooth she had to extract; first she extracted one, and it was just about normal, then she pulled the second one out, and there was a sort of hemorrhage: a huge quantity of blood had accumulated, thick and black the blood of a dangerous congestion. But I had felt it (there was a pain in the brain, a pain in the ear, a pain), and I thought, Thats not good, I should take care. The body was conscious that something was amiss. And quite an unusual hemorrhage. I even remarked to T., Its good it came out. She said, Oh, yes!
0 1965-03-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In reality, I deserve some credit for asking people to eat well. You know that I had difficulties: for two days, it was nearly impossible for me to eatand I am so glad! But I always scold myself: its a weaknessa moral weakness. I am in a very good position to say so, because I have the same Difficulty as you with those questions of food, and thats very bad. Its not out of personal taste for food that I am preaching (!), but in order to react against the other tendency. Every time something comes and prevents me from eating, immediately, spontaneously, the body says, Oh, thank you, Lord, I dont have to eat! I catch myself and give myself a slap.
***
0 1965-04-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Switching to a new body. The method may be used again, IF IT IS FELT TO BE NECESSARY. It wasnt the central idea, it was perfectly incidentalit may happen. And all I said was that the consciousness of these cells having lost the sense of ego (I think they have lost it, though this body was formed without the sense of egoat any rate, if it was necessary at a given time, it no longer is), having lost the sense of ego, it finds no Difficulty in manifesting in another body. And this is a perfectly practical and material experience, I mean I have had multiple experiences of this consciousness using that body, this body, that other body for certain things; of course it was momentary, not in a permanent way, but at will and anyway lasting long enough to make me experience it concretely.
But this is a personal affair, it has nothing to do with the public or collectivity, while the other point is interesting: I have a feeling it is Natures collaboration, pushing humanity in that direction in order to prepare a matter more receptive to the ideal that wants to manifest.
0 1965-04-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a little tiring. Every time theres a new Difficulty to be overcome, a problem to be solved, something to be set in order.
***
0 1965-05-08, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other day, after you left, I couldnt eat anything! I couldnt eat because the body felt it was being diluted in the world like that (expansive gesture); so it was being diluted (which is quite all right, the experience is proceeding well), but it had a feeling that it couldnt eatwhy? I dont know. And it was impossible. The doctor, who was there as always during my meals, said, Whats wrong? (Because the day before, there had been an attack, a sort of malice: I started vomiting; it happens to me once in six or seven years; an affair recurring at long intervals; and it was serious, but it didnt last long.) But the other day it was something else: the body felt it was being diluted (you remember, you said I was white), and when it came to eating, the body said (in a moaning tone), Look how I am, I cant eat. If I had had a little time (laughing), I would have given it a good smack and told it not to make such a fuss! But I didnt have time, it was time for me to sit down and eatand I couldnt eat. So I had Difficulty the whole day, because naturally those little pranks make life difficult.
But what to people is unconscious, what they dont understand or call illness, is to me as clear as daylight; and its always a CHOICE, there is always a choice every minute (for the material nature), and if the will isnt unshakable, if you arent holding on to the higher Will with desperate and unrelenting eagerness, you let yourself go; and then the body becomes stupid: it faints, it has pains. That same day when I couldnt eat (after lunch I always rest for some time to well, those are the hours when I put the body in direct reception of the Forceit doesnt last very long, I dont have much time), but as soon as I lay down on the chaise longue, such pains! Howling pains that take hold of you (gesture to the waist) at those spots that are open to the adverse attacks. I was lying down, but I was fully conscious then and I said to myself, Oh, very well! You want to make a big scene. All right, I will bear everything and I wont make a sound and I wont budge, and youre going to keep still. Then I started repeating my mantra quietly, as though the body werent in any pain. And after a while, the pain went away. The body saw it was no use, so it went away!
0 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The power isnt so much of acting on Matter thats something happening CONSTANTLYbut unless hypnotic means are used (and they are worthless, they dont lead anywhere), the Difficulty is to open the understanding (gesture of breaking free at the top of the head), thats what is so difficult. The thing which you havent experienced is nonexistent.
Even if in front of them a kind of miracle takes place, they will find a material explanation for it; to them, it wont be a miracle in the sense of the intervention of a force and power different from material forces and powers. They will find their own material explanation for it, it wont be convincing.
--
It seems that the only method capable of overcoming all resistances is the method of Love; but in fact, the adverse forces have perverted it in such a way that a large quantity of sincere people, of sincere seekers, seem to be armor-plated against this method, because of its distortion. Thats the Difficulty. Thats why it takes time. Anyway
Purohit: priest.
0 1965-06-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I often have underwater dreams: the other day, for instance, I went under water (and without any Difficulty) and there were hosts of fish I was fishing under water. But those fish were dead, or had just diedhosts of fish that werent decomposing, that were still good, but dead, because they didnt have any more air or water.
Generally, fish in the sea mean Multitude.1 But there must be many meanings; I have told you that Buddhism often uses the image of fish as a symbol.
0 1965-06-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The financial organization, for the moment, is looked after by N., because he is the one who receives the money through that Sri Aurobindo Society and who has bought the landsthere is already a good amount of land bought. Thats going well. Naturally the Difficulty is to find enough money, but for example, for the pavilions, its each country that will meet the expenses for its pavilion; for the industries, its each industry that puts its money into the business; for the residents, each will give the money necessary for his land. And the government (Madras has already promised it to us) gives between 60% and 80% (partly a grant, which means its given, and partly a loan, free of interest and repayable over ten years, twenty years, forty yearsa long-term repayment). N. knows his way about,4 he has already got results. But depending on whether money comes in fast or only little by little, it will go faster or slower.
As regards the construction, it will depend on R.s plasticity. I am not concerned about the details at all, there is only that pavilion that I would like to be very pretty I see it. Because I saw it, I had a vision of it, so Ill try to make him understand what I saw. The park, too, I sawthose are old visions I had repeatedly. But thats not difficult.
The biggest Difficulty is water, because there is no nearby river up there; but they are already trying to harness rivers. There is even a project to divert water from the Himalayas and bring it across the whole of India (L. had made a plan and discussed it in Delhi; of course, they objected that it would be a little costly!). But anyway, without going into such grandiose things, something has to be done to bring water; that will be the biggest Difficulty, thats what will take the longest time. As for the restlight, powerit will be made on the spot in the industrial section but you cant manufacture water! The Americans have given serious thought to a way of using sea water, because the earth no longer has enough drinking water for people (the water they call fresh5 its ironical); the amount of water is insufficient for peoples use, so they have already started chemical experiments on a big scale to transform sea water and make it usableobviously that would be the solution to the problem.
But it already exists.
0 1965-07-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So whats wrong? Do you have Difficulty breathing?
Its a bit like that. And also hot, very hot.
0 1965-07-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But this mind itself is making effort, anyway it has become aware, it has realized; it has understood that that condition wasnt very praiseworthy (!), and its trying to change. Once the problem is identified, it goes fairly fast. Only, the Difficulty is that most of our material movements are mechanical; we dont concern ourselves with them, and thats why they always remain as they are. But for some time now I have made it a habit to concern myself with them. Its no fun, but it must be done, that must be rectified.
It is a constant, constant work, for everything, but everything. Its odd: if the question is food, it thinks the food is poisoned or that it wont be digested, or this or that, or that the whole functioning will be upset; you go to sleepimmediately comes the suggestion that you will be agitated, unable to rest, that you will have bad dreams; you speak to someone the suggestion that you didnt say what you should have said or that it will cause the person harm; you write something that it wasnt exactly right. Its frightening, frightening.
0 1965-08-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thought, here in this brain, has Difficulty adapting.
Because for two days (I mean two days without stop), there was a constant aspiration: How will this new world be when it becomes material here? How will this new world be? And that put me so deep inside that I was I wasnt far away, but there was that blanket of fog between me and the world as it is.
0 1965-09-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, because it isnt manifested, its outside the manifestation. But what Sri Aurobindo wants is for us to bring it down here. Thats just the Difficulty. Thats it. And one must accept infirmity and the very appearance of stupidity and everything, and there isnt one being in fifty million (Sri Aurobindo told me I was the only one! [laughing] It may be so!) who has the courage for that.
Just yesterday I was looking at this body, and there were no the reactions that might be called personal were truly reduced to an imperceptible minimum, which means there was a sense I cant say a universal sense because its not certain that Matter in other universes follows the same law, I dont know (I dont know I once knew: there was a time when I was in contact with this and that and I could have said, but now I dont want to concern myself with it: I am concerned only with the earth). Because this is always there, too: the possibility of escaping by going elsewhere. Lots of people did that in fact: they went off elsewhere, into another, more or less subtle world. Of course, there are millions of ways to escape there is only one way to stay, and thats to truly have courage and endurance, to accept all the appearance of infirmity, the appearance of powerlessness, the appearance of incomprehension, the appearance, yes, of a negation of the Truth. But if one doesnt accept all that, nothing will ever be changed! Those who want to remain great, luminous, strong, powerful and what have you, well, let them stay up there, they can do nothing for the earth.
0 1965-10-13, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it can be felt only when you are not turned in on yourself, that is, when you DONT FEEL YOURSELF FEELING IT. And that is the great Difficulty, because as soon as it comes, something wants to feel it, and then instantly you fall back into the grating. And it cannot be felt: if you feel yourself feeling it, its already no longer the thing.
Oh, its already spoilt.
0 1965-11-06, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As big as this, a sun, a sun scintillating with Sri Aurobindos light, when I write, between me and the notebook, and it moves about with the pen! Its this big (a big orange), its Sri Aurobindos light, blue, that special blue, silver blue, scintillating, and it moves about every time I write in this notebook! (Laughing) Thats why I have Difficulty seeing: it moves about with the pen!
***
0 1965-12-04, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once I am in it, its fine, its comfortable. But anyway, we can do our translation. The Difficulty is that I cant see and cant hear I am not there!
Because as for me, I have no reason to get out of it [the meditation]. This way I feel the world is fine at last! When I get out of it, the grating starts. When I am there, the world and everything is quite fine!
0 1965-12-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday evening, I gave him a little over twenty minutes of concentration. He was sitting and I was standing, holding his hands. Never pull down on yourself, it is said, but you can pull down on someone else I pulled the Force all out. It was so powerful that his hand kept trembling2 while mine was still! Afterwards, once it was over, I wondered how it could be, I didnt understand: my hand, which was holding his, stayed still, but his was shaking; I felt his tremor in my hand. Then I stopped, when, all of a sudden, everything came to a halt: he stopped moving. And relaxation came, a relaxation. I was concentrating there, on his headrelaxation. Then I stopped. Time was up, anyway. Therefore IT CAN BE DONE. But this lack of faith based on the higher intelligence, the higher reason, prevents it from staying: it brings back the Difficulty instantly. But I saw I saw it: it did stop. For me that was an obvious proof.
And I did it deliberately. Its true that it is dangerous to pull down because if the resistance is too great, something gets demolished, but there was nothing to risk anymore since he himself was ready to go to Madras to be sent to another world. I did it.
--
You know, the big Difficulty is that importance and above all that sense of absolute reality we attach to physical life.
Its not physical life thats important: its Life; its not physical consciousness thats important: its Consciousness. So when you are free, you can use well, all the materiality you want. One should be able to pick and choose and leave the rest out and make use of it as one wants; one should be the master of Matter, not Matter sitting on top of you and coercing youwhats that!
0 1965-12-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ultimately, the whole Difficulty comes from the amount of unconsciousness left in the Matter we are made of. Thats thats terrible. And then, thats what it takes to pull this Matter out of its unconsciousness: all the suffering, all the disorder, all the pummeling. Thats what I see every day. And the degree of stupidity To us its stupidity, we call it stupidity, but You know, the intermediary to which this unconsciousness responds is the mentality of the cell, the material mentality, but then, when this material mentality is seized with an idea, it is actually possessed by the idea and its almost impossible (not impossible but extremely difficult) for it to free itselfit takes an intervention from another domain.
Diseases are just that. Its the same thing with the doctors illness: this tremor is the possession by an idea, its what in the conscious intelligence is expressed as the possession by an idea, a hypnosisa sort of hypnosis accompanied by a fear in matter. The two things together: possession and fear, a sort of fearfulness. And a sense of helplessness in all that. The possession by an idea and a helplessness to reject it, and a fear, a helplessness to resist. And then a sort of fearfulness that is translated in us by, Oh, its going to be that way oh, its going to be a disease.
0 1965-12-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But she is sweet, your mother. She is going to have the joy of her soul. You know, there is a joy in being more conscious of ones soul than of the material worldyou may keep yourself busy, you may see clearly, you may understand, you may do what you have to do, all that remains, its very fine, but, behind, there is a Light. A light, something warm, warm with a luminous, golden warmth. Its really the sense of immortality, of something that doesnt depend on a form or on circumstances. Its a consciousness in which one instantly has the feeling that there was no beginning, there is no end. And a sort of very strong sweetness, very strong, behind everything. It takes you through life; even all the difficulties dont matter when you have caught hold of that. Its something very intimate, which expresses itself with Difficulty, but which is like a support, something that holds you up always, in any circumstances.
Thats what your mother will have.
0 1965-12-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother laughs, then after a silence) Dont you really feel where your Difficulty is? Its a lack of satisfaction, no? Whats called in English frustration, something thats disappointed.
Yes, but thats just one way of putting it. Another way would be, Something unaccomplished.
--
You know (shall I be frank?), its purely a vital dissatisfaction. And I know that, because it has been (how can I put it?) my great Difficulty with you. It was a hundred, a thousand times more violent formerly; now its beginning to calm down. Its a vital thats very intense in its desires (which may not be ordinary desires at all), but with a sort of almost aggressive intensity, and essentially dissatisfied. It was very, very strong before, years ago; now it has quieted down. But every time the vital comes into play (and one is obliged to let the vital play because of the physical health; one cant calm it down totally because that would make the physical body suffer), its like that. It gives me, if you like, the impression of a cats vital! Cats have a wonderful vital (laughing), far, far more clever and intense than human beings have, but the cat claws, you know, and the feeling is: Im not happy, thats that. Im not happy! (Mother laughs)
No, but for instance, the first years when I was here, almost every night I had a sort of sign that I was moving along,1 making headwaytrifling signs, nothing to speak of: a car taking me along, a walk in a mountain, mere nothings, but they were telling me, Oh, good, Im getting on. Its all right, Im moving along. But for years now, not only have I had no sign, but all I see is negative things: I see pits, I see accidents, I see infernos, I see But I never see a sign telling me, Oh, yes, Im making headway. Its all right, Im getting alongnot that, never. So am I making headway? I dont know. What I am asking for is an encouragement, just a little gesture telling me, Yes, youre getting along, its all right. Youre getting along, dont fret.
0 1966-01-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats the point, isnt it: it touches on the very crux of the Difficulty (Mother pinches something tiny and very hard between her fingers). Despite everything, even though you may give everything, surrender everything, there is something (same gesture), and that something always remains there, behind.
Yesterday evening I was so glad to read this. I said, There! This is what we need.
--
No, my Difficulty isnt that, my Difficulty is that there are too many people handling my papers. Curiously enough, its almost material: Ill put something away, and if nobody touches it, Ill find it again; I dont have to search for it: Ill find the thing immediately. But even if someone takes it without disturbing it, the atmosphere is gone and I no longer know how I arranged it. And here, there are four, five, six people handling my papersseven. So (Mother points to the stacks in every corner): chaos.
0 1966-01-22, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Recently (for some time), there was that same Difficulty of the body, which isnt limited and shut inside a shell as is generally the case, and which freely receives not even with the feeling of receivingwhich HAS the vibrations of everything around it; and then, when everything around it is, mentally or morally, closed, unwilling to understand, its a bit difficult, which means that the elements that come have to be transformed. Its a sort of totalitya very manifold and unsteady totalityrepresenting your field of consciousness and action and on which you must work constantly to reestablish a harmony (a minimum of harmony), and when something around you goes wrong according to the ordinary idea, it makes the work a bit difficult. Its subtle, persistent, and obstinate at the same time. I remember, last night when I stretched out on my bed, there was in the body an aspiration for Harmony, for Light, for a sort of smiling peace; the body aspired above all for harmony because of all those things that grate and scrape. And the experience was probably the result of that aspiration: I went there and met a pink and light-blue Purani (!)what a blue! The pretty, very pretty light blue of Sri Aurobindo.
Only, I have noticed that in this bodys life, Ive never had the same experience twice I may have the same type of experience to a higher degree or to a much vaster degree, but never identically the same. And I dont retain the experience: I am constantly, constantly (gesture forward), constantly forging ahead; you know, the work of transformation of the consciousness is so rapid, it must be done so fast that you dont have time to enjoy or dwell upon an experience or draw long-lasting satisfaction from it, its impossible. It comes powerfully, very powerfully, it changes everything, then something else comes. Its the same thing with the transformation of the cells: all kinds of little disorders come, but to the consciousness they are clearly disorders related to the transformation, so you see to that particular point, you want order to be restored; at the same time, something knows full well that the disorder came to make the transition from the ordinary automatic functioning to the conscious functioning under the direct Direction and the direct Influence of the Supreme. And the body itself knows this (still, its no fun to have a pain here or a pain there, or this or that being disorganized, but it KNOWS). And when that point has reached a certain stage of transformation, you move on to another point, then on to another, and on to another again. So nothing is done, no work is definitively done until everything is ready. So you have to do the same work again, but on a higher or a vaster level, or with more intensity or in greater detail (it depends on the case), until EVERYTHING has been brought to a homogeneous point and is ready in the same way.
0 1966-01-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The thing is there in its old form.3 That you have things to say is beyond doubt, and that you will say them is beyond doubt; but it has remained in that form because of precisely because of a certain Difficulty you complained about in your letter, and which persists. So its to get rid at the same time of a certain state of consciousness and, yes, of a certain Difficulty. Your true consciousness, you know, the consciousness of your true being, is in a very rapid ascent; something in you isnt aware of that and lags behind, and thats what causes an unease in you. So its clear that writing is a good means (probably the best means) of getting rid of it: you throw it outside yourself by expressing it, and then its finished, youve got rid of it. Its the FORM, you understand, only the form; its always the same thing: the essence and spirit, and on the other hand the form. You are rising like an arrow, and you dont know it because something remains like that, hard, tight, and its only a form. Well, its better to get rid of it; its the most natural way for you to exteriorize the form, the state of consciousness and the Difficulty, all of it together, at the same time as you write the book.
I am sure of it because I spent a large part of the night looking at it.
--
Thats true indeed! (Mother laughs) Thats just why your Difficulty is persisting, otherwise it should have been gone long ago. It should have been gone. It will go, but it has got a certain right to linger, a right given by yes, a certain attitude of your consciousness towards life. Thats in fact one of the things I saw.
Ah, let a whole past be dissolved, rejected outsideexpressed and rejected: Its over, now its over, I no longer have anything to do with you: I have given you birth.
0 1966-03-04, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am absolutely conscious of the inadequacy of words, but through the words, we must catch hold of the Thing. The Difficulty for human thought, and still more for expression, is that words always have a sense of beginning.
(silence)
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have tried many things, a great many, I have looked a great deal, and I see only one thats absoluteonly one thats absolute and can bring the absolute result, its this (gesture turned Upward): the complete annulment of all that, leaving it all, To You, LordYou, You, to You. And it isnt a being with a form, thats not it; it isnt a formless force, its It has nothing to do with thought, only with this: the contact. And the contact, an unmistakable contact, which nothing can imitatenothing, nothing at all has the power to imitate it. And for every Difficulty, every time, whatever it is, simply this: Everything to You, Lord. Everything for You, to You. You alone can do it, You, You alone, You alone. You alone are the Truth; You alone are the Power. And those words are nothing, they are only the very clumsy expression of something a stupendous Power.
Its only the incapacity, the clumsiness, the lack of faith we mix into it that takes away His power. The minute we are truly pure, that is, under His influence alone, there are no limits, no limitsnothing, nothing, there is nothing, no law of Nature that can resist, nothing, nothing.
0 1966-04-13, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And also I have great Difficulty getting rid of the old form.
Yes, yes.
--
And also the old way of working, thats the Difficulty.
I realize it immediately, because right away I feel its literature.
0 1966-04-20, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
She must find peace near you, and a clear-sighted consciousness: she will have some Difficulty with her familys grief, they are going to be very troubled indeed, and she must at least have the possibility of taking refuge in an atmosphere of total peace and trust.
And she is the one who is saying this to you.
0 1966-05-22, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the Difficulty you are referring to is something I have every minute.
People who dont know (there are many of them, almost all of them dont know) feel they are ill. But its not an illness: its a change of balance, which takes on all kinds of forms depending on each ones character and nature. So when you dont pay attention and there is a loss of balance, something happens which results in what doctors call an illness, but if I had the time to have fun and ask them questions, they would be forced to tell me that each case is differenteach case: there arent two identical cases. They say, Yes, it looks like this or it looks like that or it looks like this. And its nothing but the transition from the old millennial equilibrium to a new equilibrium which isnt yet established, and in the transition between the two, well one must be careful, thats all. And cling very, very firmly to the higher Harmony.
0 1966-06-02, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is the Difficulty of the other day over?
Oh, Ive had an experience, a new experience. I mean, its the cells of the body that have had a new experience.
0 1966-06-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding an old Talk of 19 April 1951 in which Mother said: "You seem to be on an inner hunt, you go hunting for the dark little corners.... You offer the Difficulty, whether it is in yourself or in others, whatever the seat of its manifestation, to the Divine Consciousness, asking It to transform it.")
Thats precisely what I have been doing for two days! For the last two days I have spent all my time seeing all that oh, an accumulation of heaps of sordid little things we constantly live in, sordid tiny little things. And then, there is only one wayonly one way, always the same: to offer it.
0 1966-06-11, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The conversation begins with the book Satprem is writing, which Mother "dictates" at night, but which Satprem has Difficulty receiving.)
Mon petit, I keep on writing! Its incredible! It has never happened to me.
0 1966-07-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, a few days ago the consciousness was under attack. All that is petty, sordid, ugly, oh poor, helpless, all thatit was such an avalanche! This poor body, it cried over its incapacity to express anything superior. And then, the answer was very simpleit was very clear, very strong and the experience came: the only solution the only way out of the Difficulty is to BECOME divine Love. And the experience was there at the same time for a few moments (it lasted long enough, maybe more than half an hour). Then you understand that everything you have to go through, all these ordeals, all this suffering, all these miseries, is nothing in comparison with the experience of what will be (and what is). But we are still incapable, meaning that the cells havent the strength yet. They are beginning to have the capacity to be, but not the strength to keep ThatThat cannot stay yet.
And That has such an extraordinary power to transform what is! All our notions (and this had become visible), our notions of miracle, of marvelous change, all the stories of miracles that have been told, all of it becomes a childs prattleits nothing! Nothing. All that we try to have, all that we aspire to have, all that is childishness.
0 1966-08-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When the mind is active, or rather, as long as the mind is active, when you have dedicated your life and are fully convinced that its your only raison dtre, you tend to imagine that if you work for the Divine, the whole being participates, and if you aspire to progress, the whole being participates. You are satisfied once all contradiction has disappeared either in the vital or in the mind, and once everything is in agreement and harmonious. You think you have won a victory. But then, now now that its the cells of the body that want and aspire, they have been forced to note that suffering, Difficulty, opposition, complication, all that is only to make them be wholly, completely, totally and CONSTANTLY in their aspiration.
Its extremely interesting, really very interesting.
I told you last time about those moments I had, which really were moments of realization [of divine Love]; then I clearly saw that it went away because it couldnt stay, and I immediately wanted to know why it couldnt stay. To just say, Things arent ready things arent ready, is quite meaningless. Then the cells themselves observed a sort of its something between torpor, drowsiness, numbness and indifference; and that state is mistaken for peace, quietude and acceptance, but it really is it really is a form of tamas.1 And thats the reason why it may last for what, to our consciousness, is almost an eternity. And there was, as I told you, an experience [a painful attack]; it recurred in another form (it never recurs in the same form), in another form, and then the cells noticed that that sort of intensity, of ardor of will taking hold of them, that something concrete in the self-giving, in the surrender, does not exist when everything is fine (what people are in the habit of calling everything is fine, which means that you dont feel your body, there is no Difficulty and things are just getting along).
It was almost a disappointment for these cells, which thought they were very ardent (!) and have had to realize that that semi-drowsiness was entirely responsible for all thats habitually called illnesses but I dont believe in illnesses anymore. I believe in them less and less. Everything that comes is a particular form of disorder, resistance, incomprehension or incapacityit all belongs to the domain of resistance. And there isnt really a deliberate resistance [in Mothers cells], I mean, whats conventionally called bad will (I hope this is true! If there is any, they havent become aware of it yet), but those things come as keen indications of the different points [of work or resistance in Mothers body], so it results in whats called pains, or a sense of disorder, or a discomfort. (A discomfort, that is to say, a sense of disorder or disharmony, is much harder to bear than a sharp pain, much harder; its like something that starts grating and gets stuck and cant get back into place.) All that, in the ordinary consciousness or the ordinary human view, is what people call illnesses.
--
But to be able to observe (this is something being worked out on a parallel line), to observe exactly what goes on in this cellular realm, one must be perfectly free from and independent of other human beings influence. And this is extremely difficult because of that habit of mixture. Its the sensitiveness of the cells which has Difficulty. So constant care must be taken to fasten all that sensitiveness on to the aspiration for the Supreme alone; thats the only way, the solution. You have to do that constantly, every time you feel the influence of others contact. In ordinary life, of course, to get rid of influences you cut off the contact; well, that movement of withdrawal, recoil, isolation, all those psychological movements (through material isolation in the physical; in the vital, in the psychic, in the mind, everywhere, it always consists in cutting oneself off, in separating oneself), all that is false; its contrary to the truth. The truth is to (outspread gesture) to feel the union. And yet, for the cellular work of cellular transformation, an isolation must be reached that isnt a contradiction of the essential unity. And thats a little difficult; it makes for a very delicate, very painstaking, very microscopic work which somewhat complicates matters. But its possible, for instance, to touch someone, to take someones hand, and for union to be achieved only in the deeper truth, while outwardly there is just a bringing together of cells.
The work is very intensive, very intensive indeed.
0 1966-08-15, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Not the blind round of the material existence alone and not a retreat from the Difficulty of life in the world into the silence of the Ineffable, but the bringing down of the peace and light and power of a greater divine Truth and consciousness to transform Life is the endeavour today of the greatest spiritual seekers in India. Here in the heart of such an endeavour pursued through many years with a single-hearted purpose, living constantly in that all-founding peace and feeling the near and greatening descent of that light and power, the way becomes increasingly clear. One sees the soul of India ready to enter into the fullness of her heritage and the hour of an unparalleled greatness approaching when from her soil shall go forth the call and the leading to the highest destinies of the race.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1966-09-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You remember that sketch I did, the Ascent to the Truth? It was like that, there was that sheer rock, and he was climbing (without Difficulty, besides), he was climbing like that, and then, not quite at the top but far enough from the earth (the earth could no longer be seen), he received all that and sent it down again. I can still see the picture, it was pretty.
And that particular detail, which I now understand, of the auras becoming visible and acting as clothing; in other words, the auras are the clothing.
0 1966-09-28, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This has become a certitude because the aspiration has been born in all these cells, and its growing more and more intense and is surprised at the resistance. But they have observed that when something is upset in the functioning (which means that instead of being supple, spontaneous, natural, the functioning becomes a painful effort, a struggle with something that takes on the appearance of a bad will but is only a reluctance devoid of understanding), at such times the intensity of the aspiration, of the call, grows tenfold: it becomes constant. The Difficulty is to keep up this state of intensity; generally it all falls back into, I cant say drowsiness, but its a sort of slackening: you take things easy. And its only when the inner disorder becomes hard to bear that the intensity grows and becomes permanent. For hourshourswithout flagging, the call, the aspiration, the will to unite with the Divine, to become the Divine, is kept up at its peakwhy? Because there was whats outwardly called a physical disorder, a suffering. Otherwise, when there isnt any suffering, there is now and then an upsurge, then it flags and falls back; then at some other time, another upsurge It never ends! It lasts for eternities. If we want things to go fast (fast relatively to the rhythm of our lives), the whiplash is necessary. I am convinced of this, because as soon as you are in your inner being, you treat this with contempt (for yourself).
But then, when that true Compassion of divine Love comes and you see all those things that look so horrible, so abnormal, so absurd, that great pain over all beings and even over things Then there was born in this physical being the aspiration to relieve, to cure, to make all that disappear. There is something in Love in its Origin that is constantly expressed by the intervention of the Grace; a force, a sweetness, something like a vibration of solace, spread everywhere, but which an enlightened consciousness can direct, concentrate on certain points. And thats just where I saw the true use one could make of thought: thought is used as a channel to carry the vibration from place to place, wherever its necessary. This force, this vibration of sweetness is there over the world in a static way, pressing to be received, but its an impersonal action, and thoughtenlightened thought, surrendered thought, the thought that is nothing more than an instrument, that no longer tries to set things in motion, that is satisfied with being moved by the higher Consciousness thought is used as an intermediary to make contact, to build a connection and allow this impersonal Force to act wherever its necessary, on precise points.
0 1966-09-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I quite understand a progressive change and that this substance could be made into something capable of renewing itself eternally from within outward. That would be immortality. But it seems to me that between what is now, what we are, and that other mode of life, a lot of stages might be necessary. You see, if for instance you ask these cells, with all the consciousness and experience they now have, Is there something you cannot do?, in their sincerity they will answer, No, what the Lord wills, I can do. Thats their state of consciousness. But the appearance is otherwise. The personal experience is like this: all that I do with the Lords Presence, I do effortlessly, without Difficulty, without fatigue, without wear and tear, like that (Mother spreads out her arms in a great, harmonious Rhythm), but its still open to the whole influence from outside and the body is forced to do things that arent directly the expression of the supreme Impulsion, hence the fatigue, the friction. So a supramental body suspended in a world thats not the earth is not the thing!
No.
--
Because I dont see the Difficulty of the transformation in itself. It rather seems to be the Difficulty of the world.
If everything could be transformed at the same time, it would be all right, but its clearly not like that. If one being were transformed all alone
0 1966-10-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like the meeting of two curves: one curve coming from the past and another curve going towards the future, and that day is the meeting point of these two curves. So then, I saw your book as a sort of culmination of the curve coming from the past. And there is a point that isnt yet clear in your thought or your conception there (gesture above the head): its something that belongs to the ascending curve of the future. That point is where the Difficulty is: the movement that belongs to the curve of the past has Difficulty connecting with the movement of the future. I see it as a graph. Its not a thought: its a graph. There is a point where the two curves havent connected.
I chose two cards. They are here. I am not showing them to you: you will have them on the 29th. I dont yet know what I will write or whether I will write anything.
But this year seems to me to be a very decisive year in your individual lifeyour LIFE, you understand (how can I explain?), the eternal life in you. The eternal life in your individuality. The Difficulty seems to be in connecting the two movements. They arent connected yet. Its very interesting. I saw the curves, they are quite pretty.
All this is going on up above. And then, whats very amusing is that when I see, I dont see like that (gesture from below upward), I see like this (gesture from above downward), and I see up above. Its a little higher than this (gesture above the head), and I see from above.
--
By the Body of the Earth or the Sannyasin. Satprem complained of Difficulty in writing the end of his book.
***
0 1966-10-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
She would come, she was absolutely present during the six days of pranam downstairs. But now, since I dont know (I dont remember because for me time isnt quite clear anymore, it no longer has the same value), but I remember it happened while I was walking for my japa. I told her there was something more important than that semireligious recollection people have, that what was more important was the deeper nature of the Work and the choice of the adverse aspect (represented by a universal Difficulty, or, at any rate, if we only consider the earth, a human Difficulty), the aspect that had to be vanquished, dominated in order to lead it to the transformation. And its in this connection that I told her that receiving the indication from the Supreme was the true thing; that He saw better than we did what had to be done and the order in which it had to be done. And I felt (she was very concrete [Mother makes a gesture as if Durga was in her]), I felt she was immensely interested. Then I told her, Well, you see, hasnt the time come (I am putting it into words, but there werent any words), hasnt the time come to receive from Him the direct impulsion for your action? And she responded joyfully and spontaneously.
The difference is that, now, wherever she manifests, I feel the call to the supreme Truth, to manifest it, is truly there.
Which is the aspect of the Difficulty this year?
I dont know. I havent concerned myself with it recently, it begins only tomorrow.
0 1966-10-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a big work of transformation of the material states of consciousness going on: the states of consciousness nearest to the Inconscient, the most material states of consciousness. They come like that [to present themselves to Mother], with one or two examples of their previous manifestation (perhaps even their first emergence from the Inconscient), and then I see the transition (along with what has transformed them, changed them or even simply altered them through successive manifestations), the transition up to the point when they are now presented before the supreme Consciousness for the final transformation. This is a perpetual work, so to speak, because, interestingly, its a work I can go on doing while seeing people. Generally my work was interrupted when I saw people, because I was busy with them and that diminished and limited the work: they represented a small aggregate of difficulties that enormously shrank the Action [of Mother]. But now its no longer like that. And the interesting point is that it places people in this or that curve of transformation of the consciousness. For some time I have been seeing a considerable number of people I had never seen before (with all the old or familiar people there was no Difficulty, but with the new ones it generally caused a shrinking of the work), and now with this study of states of consciousness, people are placed: here, there, here (Mother draws different levels in space). And if they are receptive, they must go away [after seeing Mother] with a new impulse to transform themselves. Those who arent receptive just miss it; but they are no longer a disturbance: they come in and go out. And from that I know what state they are in I can even do it with photos, but when I see people its much more complete. Photos are no more than one moment of their being, while here, even what isnt being manifested is there, hidden behind, and can be seen, so I see the person more completely. Its very interesting. It transforms this whole burden of visitors into something interesting.
On October 21.
0 1966-11-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I saw this note of yesterday as indicative of the key (I mean inwardly, in the universal attitudes). It was all clearly seen: men always believe that the guilty must be punished, that its the way out of the Difficulty, but the true way is compassion and mercy. Its not that you are ignorant of the true movement and the false one, but you have SPONTANEOUS mercy, effortlessly and at all times. The vision was very clear that this is how progress is possibleif the fault were always punished, there wouldnt be anyone left to progress!
Thats the conclusion.
0 1966-11-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There, the problem comes up again. Because there are various detailed experiences (in tiny details), detailed experiences of different attitudes of consciousness to find out which of them is effective. Its a whole field of study. Its microscopic, of course, but extremely interesting. And then, the answer is always the same; its so lovely: When you forget that you are, when there only remains the Lord, all difficulties instantly disappear. Instantly: the previous second, the Difficulty was there; the next second, gone. But its not something that can be done artificially; its not some mental or personal will to take this attitude: it must be spontaneous. And when its spontaneous, then all difficulties INSTANTLY disappear.
Stop existing the Lord alone exists.
--
Inwardly its easy, but outwardly There is all of a sudden, especially in the brains matter, here (gesture to the temples), that movement of descent, of the Lord taking possession, and then outwardly you feel as if youre fainting. Thats why you cant remain standing and have to lie down; but when you lie down, its almost instantaneous, everything disappears: the sense of time, of Difficulty, absolutely everything there only remains a luminous immensity, peaceful and so strong!
Thats the days lesson.
0 1967-01-09, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know if its an effect of your experience, but I have great Difficulty being in physical things: in words, gestures, all outward things. A great Difficulty.
It began yesterday, with the sense of a very widespread action being done.
0 1967-01-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This long period of "invasion" from outside since the previous year, and of increased Difficulty with "people," as Mother would say, was to effectively end in a first serious warning to Mother some days later, on January 14 (when Sri Aurobindo dictated to Mother a note on the "cataleptic trance" in order to undergo the transformation undisturbed).
***
0 1967-02-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It can only be done This is my experience: if I want to express clearly what Sri Aurobindo says (he doesnt say, I dont know how to explain it its his consciousness doing thisgesture of projectionexpressing itself), well, first the mind must be silent, that goes without saying. But the Difficulty is the passage to expression; thats what I have studied and where I have seen the extent of that sort of spontaneous and automatic attachment to the old habits.
Yes!
0 1967-03-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Then it is question of Mothers last birthday, on February 21, and the Difficulty in containing the increasingly chaotic stream of outer activities.)
I live amidst a growing confusion. It has one advantage, I see that very clearly: there can no longer be any automatism. When you live a well-organized life, things become automatic thats not possible anymore, at each minute the consciousness must be like a guiding light that is projected in order to know what must be done. I clearly see its meant to be like that. Its deliberate.
0 1967-04-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I do see the Difficulty he alludes to: most people (in what we see written or in the conferences they have here), use pompous words
Yes.
0 1967-04-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Difficulty is always the transition. You see, the body acts (it is carried, so to speak: things are done without the sense of resistance or fatigue, nothing of the sort, that doesnt exist), and then, if for some reason or other (generally an influence or a thought coming from someone else), if the memory of the other method (the ordinary method, the universal method of all human beings) comes all of a sudden, it is as if (its very strange) it is as if the body could no longer DO ANYTHING, absolutely as if it were about to faint. Then, there immediately comes the reaction, and the other movement gets the upper hand again. But that makes for a difficult time. When these lapses will become impossible, there will be security. But as it is now, its difficult.
Only, now (formerly there was a moment when it was dangerous), now there is immediately in the cells that movement of adoration, which calls, You, You, You Then its all right.
0 1967-06-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the Difficulty is to find the someone, because it should be a man who knows Sri Aurobindo thoroughly to begin with, who is capable of receiving his inspirations directly (a very difficult condition), and has at the same time a very strong character with a powera contagious power and a force that can arouse the inert masses. For years I have been looking for that man, without finding him.
There was a man who would have donenot fully well, not with enough breadth of mind to fully understand Sri Aurobindo, but very straight and stronghe was assassinated in Kashmir.
0 1967-06-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive made discoveries. Diseases, accidents, catastrophes, wars, all that, is because the human material consciousness is so small, so narrow that it has a rabid taste for drama. And of course, behind there is the vital being having fun, influences too anyway all that enjoys an opportunity to delay the divine Work and make things difficult. And all that takes pleasure in that naturally encourages drama. But the seed of the Difficulty is that pettiness, extreme pettiness of the physical consciousness the material physical consciousness which has an absolutely perverse taste for drama. Drama the slightest thing has to make a drama: if you have a toothache, it becomes a drama1; if you bang against something, it becomes a drama; if two nations quarrel, it becomes a dramaeverything becomes a drama. The taste for drama. The slightest upset in the body, the least disorder, which should go completely unnoticed, oh, it makes a big fuss, a drama. The taste for drama. I was thoroughly disgusted.
Everything, everything Like the loud buzz at a fair.
0 1967-07-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the same time, there was a sort of capacity or possibility, a state in which one was able to understand all languages; that is, every language was understood because of its connection with that region (gesture to the heights, at the origin of sounds). There didnt seem to be any Difficulty in understanding any language. There was a sort of almost graphic explanation (same sinuous descending line branching out) showing how the sound had been distorted to express this or that or
Its a whole field of observation thats part of the study of vibrations: how essential vibrations are distorted as they spread out, and produce the different stateson the psychological level, on the level of thought, on the level of action, and also of languages, of expression.
0 1967-08-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actually, there are, inside oneself naturally (and consequently around oneself), forces that oppose ones realization, and the system of those [Tantric] mantras is to look for the support of those Overmind beings against those forces, which are much more powerful than they (the gods)the proof is that despite all their goodwill, they (the Overmind gods) have never been able to make the earth a harmonious place. We cant help noting the fact. So I told him it was a direct fight, all those mantras are a direct fight against the Difficulty, whereas (and thats what gave him the terrible headache he complains about: its dangerous, of course, it can unsettle the whole functioning). I told him to stop and use that (Mothers Mantra). I explained it all to him yesterday. I told him he shouldnt wage a direct fight: one must try to find the support in the force one has inside oneself, which is everywhere and can overcome the Difficulty: Instead of fighting, live in the other consciousness. But I saw he was closedlocked inwith a hard look. He didnt want to understand. So
For half an hour he kept me here. It was half past twelve!
--
Your Difficulty comes from the fact that you have still the old belief that in life, there are some things high and some things low. It is not exact. It is not the things or the activities that are high or low, it is the consciousness of the doer which is true or false.
That is the interesting point.
0 1967-08-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It may be noted that this lady holds an important diplomatic post, hence the Difficulty to send her ... for a "breath of fresh air."
***
0 1967-09-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, in olden days you were put through ordeals they were symbolic things, naturally, but you were aware that they were ordeals, so you were on your guard. But now I remember, in the very beginning, when I started working with Sri Aurobindo, he warned me (I had already noticed it long before) that the circumstances of life are at each minute organized in such a way that the one who is destined to do the work is confronted with his own difficulties, which he must conquer, and with the difficulties of the world he works in, which he must conquer too. If he has the necessary humility to see in himself what must be transformed so he can become capable of doing the Work, then all goes well. Naturally, if he is full of pride and vanity and believes the whole fault lies outside and there is none in him, then naturally things go wrong. And the difficulties become more pronounced. And for as long as I did the work, for (how many years?) the thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo and he was there, I was like this (gesture hidden behind Sri Aurobindo), so comfortable, you know I was in front, I seemed to be the one doing the work but for my part, I felt completely protected, behind him like this (same gesture); I was very tranquil, not trying to understand or know or anything I was simply attentive to what had to be done, what had to be done. It was rarely necessary to tell him; sometimes I was faced with a Difficulty then I would tell him, but he didnt need to answer: it was immediately understoodthirty years like that.
And when he left, there was a whole part the most material part of the descent of the supramental body down to the mind that visibly came out of his body like that and entered mine, and it was so concrete that I felt the FRICTION of forces passing through the pores of the skin. I remember having said at the time, Well, anyone who has had this experience can, by this experience, bring the proof of afterlife to the world. It was it was as concrete as if it had been material. So naturally, after that it was there in the field of consciousness. But I have seen more and more, more and more, that all that happens, all the people we meet, all that happens to us personally (that is, taking this little body as being the person), all of that is ALWAYS a test: you stand firm or you dont; if you stand firm, you make a progress forward; if you dont, you have to go through it again.
0 1967-09-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the Difficulty with all those people the Pope, this German, those Rosicruciansis that basically they only think in terms of a Church.
Of course!
--
Thats the Difficulty.
Exactly. That German, for instance (I am not sure because I havent read the whole thing), gives baptismhe baptizes, which means putting ones hand on the person and keeping him under it (gesture over a bowing head).
0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont feel this man is an intellectual, thats not the Difficulty. But how to free them from the hold? Thats the question.
Yes, it is. Thats what I felt when I saw him: that thing which was there over him. Its a sort of thing common to all those people.
--
But that division, that separated part came about when they burned him. Until then, I had kept him whole, and would have made him pass into the psychic as I do with everyone, peacefully, smoothly, without Difficulty. But brrt! (same gesture of bursting) Its a frightful shock, you know! They put the fire in the mouth first. Its Oh, the way men behave with each other I have SEEN all that, I have SEEN it. Its such a frightful, frightful thing!
And to think that It has happened not once or twice but hundreds of times that people who loved someone (they loved their father or brother, or their mother), as soon as that person is dead, if they see him in a dream or vision, they get terribly frightened and want to chase him away! Why? If I ask them why, its such a spontaneous movement in them that they cant answer me. They cant, they find it so natural that they are surprised I should ask the question.
0 1967-10-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its precisely because there are too many people like this that the earth is in Difficulty! Too many, too many people are in the mind: mental difficulties mental difficulties. You cant get through (impenetrable gesture) it doesnt go through, it doesnt touch. Its an endless process. And thats what makes those bang! those battles, wars, conflicts necessary.
You know, an ardent faith, a psychic aspiration, a fervour, a self-giving, instead of being forever turned in on oneself, turned in on oneself. A self-giving, thats what is needed to save the world!
0 1967-10-21, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there is such idiocy in this body. For instance, there is at each moment (each second or minute), at each moment there is the choice between the continuation of the old habit or progress towards consciousness. Its constantly like that. And through (what can I call it?) sloppiness (what is it? Its not bad will because its idiotic; its more idiotic than bad will), there is a spontaneous tendency to choose deterioration rather than the effort of progress, and its only when there is something like a slightly awakened consciousness that says, You silly fool! Youve gone through many more difficulties than the little Difficulty of making an effort of progress, then that has some weightnot always.
There is a sort of passive knowledge (not that the body doesnt know how it is, it knows how it isits sloppiness), but when it knows and makes the effort, it is always, every time, expressed as lights, yes, like vibratory waves, and those of progress are the ones which have all the colours, that stippling of all the colours: a light made of a stippling of all the colours. Those are the lights that choose the immediate little effort to reject the sloppiness. But they are not important events: its something going on each minute, for everything, all the time, all the time, all the time for everything.
--
But the great Difficulty is mental observation: the observing mind (not a personal mind: an observing Mind), and that makes things much more difficult. If one can keep the mind busy, its easier. Because the mind is something extremely hard, dry, positive, phew! and logical, reasonableits dreadful. Dreadful. And yet, to put things at their best, the general waves are full (especially now, in our time) full of doubtsuch a foul and obstinate doubt! They treat all this as fantastic imagination.
You are led to tell the mind, Id rather be mistaken this way than be mistaken in your way.
0 1967-10-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When R. (Aurovilles architect) was here last time, he said to me, When are we going to create Aurovilles atmosphere? Everyone is quarrelling! (Mother laughs) I said, Yes, thats the Difficulty. And its continuing. But anyway, there is a Pressure from above, like that, a Pressure. We shall see.
Its still a symbol.
0 1967-10-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I also worry a lot over this book, this Sannyasin that I am rewriting. That Difficulty of a PURE transcription.
(After a long silence) For my part, I have always felt that writing was your way of doing the sadhana. That is, not meditating or anything of the sort, but writing, is your way of doing the sadhana. When you write, I see a sort of transmutation taking place in you. Not only something you call personal, something which is your way of writing or your book, not only that, but formulating things in the most accurate, the most precise fashion, is your way of doing the sadhana. Its a sadhana up above.
0 1967-12-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As a result, my impression was that unless the whole universe becomes THAT, well whats the use? All, all that isnt Consciousness, the supreme consciousness, I mean, yes, supreme and supremely divine, all the rest Its the first time Ive felt so intensely the uselessness of all outward activities their uselessness IN THEMSELVES, like a blossoming, because when there is the divine Play, then the same things become lovely, it all becomes interesting, but in themselves, for themselves, they are NOTHING. Its the first time I have felt that so intensely. Because I felt it in the subtle world (in the material world its always mixed with all kinds of trouble and effort and Difficulty, so its completely different), there, things are absolutely free of difficulties, completely harmonious, really, and it was NOTHING. You understand, when Sri Aurobindo was there, it was perfect, but when he withdrew tasteless.
And its the PHYSICAL consciousness that has those experiences at night: the body remains in trance, its the physical consciousness; it was the physical consciousness, but in a subtle physical freed from all difficultiesand it was no better. You know, it was like a reply to the ambition of people here on earth who want life to be pleasant, easy, without difficulties, without conflicts and clashes and diseases and they say, Oh, how charming all would be!Its not true: if THAT isnt there, empty.
0 1967-12-08, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You understand, its only happy in what it regards as its normal state when its fully conscious and vibrating with the Presence. But in the nights activities (how can I explain?) its becomes more more like something one is used to, you know, like a habit (gesture of a wave flowing); theres no longer the joy of a vibrating observation, but a normal state of things, and its not happy with that: it wants the same intensity (vibrating gesture) to be there at night. For instance, it doesnt tolerate the idea of fatigue, of the necessity of rest (although that never arises from the inconscient any more), but rest as a sort of turning in on oneself, like that, to repair wear and tearit doesnt like that: there must be no wear and tear, there must be a constant adaptation to anything asked of it. Later, it will probably not even accept effort there isnt much effort left, but instead of effort, theres a sort of conscious receptivity that enables it to do things; and there are constant examples to show that if this conscious receptivity isnt there, well, theres an awkwardness, or an impossibility, things like that, but it in the past, it used to feel that was unavoidable, but now it no longer wants it. Now it no longer wants it: it must not be like that. For example, to tidy up, or find something or do something, it sometimes feels a sense of Difficulty (its never quite impossible because nothing is asked of it which is impossible), but at times its difficultit starts being displeased. It feels that as an infirmity, or a lack of receptivity, you understand. Also the fact that it has become stooped: in the past it would say, Itll get better; now its beginning to lose patience. Thats quite new. It is since November 24. Because its not a selfish turning in on itself, its not that, its not for itself, its the sense of a lack of receptivity to the Force, of limitation arising from incapacityit doesnt like that anymore.
***
0 1967-12-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For me it would be very easy. The Difficulty is all the people, all those around me, whose life (laughing) is like this (chaotic gesture), without meaning. It looks incoherent. I cant tell someone, Ill see you at such and such time, because thats not true! I dont know at what time Ill see him. And so, as people are used to eating, sleeping, working at regular hours and all that is regulated, it causes a dreadful confusion but whats to be done?
Its not easy. When you are alone, it doesnt matter, but when you are with many, many people, its very difficult.
0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know! Ive known it for a long time. There are people here who have common sense, but had Difficulty getting out of that. And they dont want to say anything because the disciples (who believe they have a fantastic power) fly into great rages and make such scenes! Of course you dont like to have scenes, so you dont say anything. You simply abstain from going there. But its been going on for a long time, more than a year.
Without mentioning names, A., G., etc. [Western disciples]. Again, its the non-Indian disciples who go there.6
--
Very nice. Only, the trouble for the child is that the mothers blood and the fathers dont agree. Theres a Difficulty there, but anyway I think hell pull through.
(silence)
0 1968-02-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every time the rule or domination of Natures ordinary laws is, on one point or another, replaced (or must be or is going to be replaced on any point) by the authority of the Divine Consciousness, that creates a state of transition with all the appearances of a tremendous disorder and a very great danger. And as long as the body doesnt know, as long as its in its state of ignorance, it gets panic-stricken (which is what happens in almost everyone), panic-stricken, it thinks its a serious illness, and sometimes, with the help of imagination, it may even result in an illness. But originally its not that: its a withdrawal, the withdrawal of Natures ordinary law with its adjunct of personal vital and mental law (but Natures law in the body is generally much stronger than the minds and the vitals law); well, its the withdrawal of that law and its replacement by the other. So there is a moment when its neither this nor that, and that moment is critical. But if the body begins to know, it remains still and has faithtrust and faith; it remains still, then all goes well. The Difficulty soon passes and all goes well. So long as the body doesnt know its reactions are disastrous. But for it to know automatically and spontaneously, it means that a large part of its elements must already be conscious and transformed. Now, its all right. Not so long ago it was still necessary to stop, to fall silent, concentrate, to call the Presence, call on its faith, then everything was back in order. Now the movement is spontaneous.
And the surface, the very part that gives the sense of bark, is what will change lastwhats going to happen? I dont know I dont know. But it will change last.
0 1968-04-06, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But this (Mother points to her note) is a concession to the present state of mankind, because, to tell the truth, in Auroville there should only be individual cases. What I mean is this: there may be people who get drunk and are nonetheless fit to live in Auroville. So we cant make a general rule. But if we dont make a general rule, on what ground can we say to someone (whos been accepted, thats the Difficulty), No, you must changeei ther you stop this, or else you cant stay in Auroville?
What is said of alcohol can be said of drugs; and it can be said of many other things.
0 1968-05-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for me, Ill tell them this (Mother reads with Difficulty):
Death is the phenomenon of decentralization and scattering of the cells making up the physical body.
--
And then, after that, without trying or thinking or anything, this note came. It came in such an impersonal way that you saw the Difficulty I had reading it: I didnt remember one word of what I had written. It came, I wrote it down, and that was that. I wrote, that is, I was made to write it down so as to send it to them.
Ill make a decent copy of it (Mother looks for a paper and goes on). So then, it put everything in perspective. Ah, I must add something to let you understand. I saw D. yesterday, and as she had written to me that she didnt know how to meditate, but that anyhow she would keep quiet so as not to disturb me (!), naturally I started talking! But then, I said things to her that I had never said before (and which I wouldnt be able to repeatnei ther would she, because she understood only very, very little of what I said). I told her that from the standpoint of the manifestation (I didnt speak about beyond the manifestation), from the standpoint of the manifestation, there is only one thing that is true: Consciousness. And that all the rest is the APPEARANCE of something, but not the thing; that THE thing is Consciousness, and all the rest is a sort of play in which everyone has the illusion of being a personality, but its an illusion. While I was speaking, I had the perfectly sincere and spontaneous experience of it. And I realized that this experience of the SINGLE Consciousness playing through innumerable forms (Mother breaks off)
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)
--
With this latest adventure [the attack on Mother], this body has learned trust. It was very much steeped in pessimism because of its material antecedents. Certain antecedents, that is, father and mother, had been chosen for their great practicality and a very concrete material honesty, but no mysticism, nothing of the sortdeliberately. But then, it gave a kind of not exactly pessimism, but a very sharp vision of how things go wrong. The body had that, and its faith had to struggle against a habit of expecting Difficulty, obstacles, resistance; although it had complete faith in the final Victory, it couldnt overcome the habit of expecting difficulties on the path. This latest adventure has given it a good push forward: its trust is much more smiling. And the general vision is as I told you. And constantly, all the time, even at the time of the worst difficulties, all the time there is it wells up from the cells, like a golden hymn: an incantation, you know, a call, an incantation to the supreme Power. And with such faith! A marvelous faith.
(silence)
0 1968-06-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Following a letter in which Satprem had complained about the Difficulty he had writingor rewriting, ratherhis "Sannyasin," and about the complete unconsciousness of his sleep.)
I didnt answer you because there was nothing to say I am trying my best!
0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats the sort of work being done at present, these last few daysconstantly, constantly. The only moment when its not done is when I see people, because when I see people, theres only one thing left: the Lords Presence, and plunging them in that bath of the Lord. That goes on, its always there. So that even if, before [seeing people], there was a Difficulty or struggle or conflict between the two states, and a will to hold on, at such times it goes away, because thats not the work then: the work is to plunge all those coming near into the Presence the immutable Presence, constant, active close.
(silence)
--
The whole inner functioning is becoming more and more the result of that conscious action and conscious will; with, even, in part (at least in part) clearly the true functioning already. You understand, the impression is of a remnant, but the remnant isnt something thats rejected: its something which hesitates, lags behind, has Difficulty and triesit would be only too pleased: if, for instance, there is in one spot a perceptible disorder, a pain, the body no longer starts fidgeting, worrying, wanting medicine or doctors or interventions, no, not at all; it asks it goes, O Lord, like that. Thats all. And it waits. And generally, in the space of a few seconds, the pain goes away.
What complicates matters is the ENTRY from outside of formations, with thoughts, ignorant attitudes (swarming gesture around), impressionsall kinds of impressions. Most of the time it has no effect, but sometimes it gives a shock. So that complicates matters somewhat.
--
This question of free-will and determination is the most knotty of all metaphysical questions and nobody has been able to solve it for a good reason that both destiny and will exist and even a freewill exists somewhere; the Difficulty is only how to get at it and make it effective.
Thats perfectly true! Its perfectly true, its again part of my present experience. Its as if, somewhere, I were suddenly told, But just say, I want this! (But not with words: words are a travesty.) Then a little something in the being goes like this (gesture of gathering), and there it is. And its true. FOR THE BODY (I dont mean for thought or feelings: once and for all, we are leaving all that aside), only for the body, something that says, But you just have to say, I want this, this must be (not with words), and something does indeed go like this (same gesture of gathering), goes like this in a blue lighta bright sapphire and there it is. There it is. Its very simple.
0 1968-06-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
P. L. could be very, very useful if he wanted tovery useful. But theres a little something that resists, I dont know whatmaybe like a slight lack of courage somewhere, I dont know what. When he is in front of Difficulty, he is instantly tormented.
Thats what bothers me. Because I have put on him enough force for him to pull through in any event, but if inwardly he starts vibrating, it cant work anymore.
0 1968-07-06, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Finally, a letter from P.L. telling the story: I somewhat restrained myself from writing to you and telling you about my new situation, which might have been precipitated at any moment. On my return, the Vatican adopted a dual policy: threats on one hand, and on the other, promotions and offers of fine situations. I had been absent from Rome since December 9: what strange illness could last such a long time? There was talk of subjecting me to a medical examination by three physicians, demanding the names of the clinics2 visited, and so forth. I consulted His Eminence and Msgr. R. Being expelled by the application of the rule suited no one neither my family, nor the Cardinal himself. So the solution was to take up my new post, assuring them that I had fully recovered: thus the investigations stopped; I was no longer prosecuted, my case was shelved. No doubt, curiosity and suspicion havent been allayed, but my life has gone back to routine, and after some time everyone will forget. I will see the Pope next month, and I may accompany him in his journey to Colombia at the end of August I will keep you informed. There is still the Difficulty of his health which may prevent the journey. All that I have just told you is quite external to myself and I hardly participate in it; Id rather write about my consciousness: it hasnt changedit has remained fastened to Mothers influence. I feel her protection; everything is easy, for she is with me; she gives me the suitable answer. Like a mantra, I repeat, Oh, Mother, with your help is anything impossible? More than that, the joy she has put in my heart remains unshakable. My thought flies away towards her, full of gratitude. Msgr. R. told His Eminence I had been at the Ashram: the Cardinal is delighted. R. has finished reading your book: in his mass he has preached Aurobindos ideas. He told me he has come into contact with Mother: he is going to write to her, and later will go and see her. He has accepted Aurobindos message as a solution for the world. I must still tell you the joy the telegram gave me: to Mother all my gratitude.
(Mother goes into a long contemplation)
0 1968-07-17, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother is running a temperature, breathing with Difficulty and coughing. She hasn't eaten anything. She receives Satprem lying on her couch.)
Its the same thing going on.
0 1968-07-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now there is no longer any human person in my life, nothing anymore; this void may be what gave rise to the recent crisis. I vaguely feel something unclear, which I cannot define but do not like, as if a part of me were trying to live with You what it can no longer live with human beings. My present Difficulty comes from the impossibility to reconcile the two parts of my being, inner and outer, and from the ensuing divorce as far as you are concerned. Could you please enlighten me on the following points:
Ah, here are her questions.
--
Sri Aurobindo said that when you go beyond the Impersonal, you find the Personal: THE Person. I am sure he had the experience. My own sensation is a sort of fusiona fusion of all sense of personality into I dont mean into an impersonality, thats not true, but its something limitless, yet you get a sense, not personal at all in the narrow meaning of the word, but with all the concrete reality of the Person. You understand, its the bodys experience (I never had any Difficulty in the other regions), the experience OF THE BODY. The body has the experience of that fusion, constantly; it constantly seems to melt, but for it, its nevertheless from the identical to the identical; the feeling (feeling or sensation) of otherness, of being other, it perceives as its own imperfection. Yet its not at all the experience of an immoderately magnified self, absolutely nothing of that sort, but Whats wholly concrete is the All-Consciousness (the body does feel its much more than that, its only one aspect and is much more than that). But its the constant, constant experience.
This idea of Personal or Impersonal has no meaning. It doesnt correspond to anything. The body has completely lost the sense of its personality, completely, and strangelyits strange. For instance (for the moment, everything, but everything expresses itself as phenomena of consciousness), for instance, I dont know how many times a day, there will suddenly come the awareness of a disorder, a pain or suffering somewheresomewhere in some part, but not a part shut in here (Mother points to her own body): like a spot in an immense body; and after a while, or a few hours later, Ill be told that someone or other has had such and such a pain, which was felt as being part of that immense body. It has become very odd. It has considerably increased with this cold. You see, Ive been seeing fewer people, doing less work, resting more I am putting it that way out of habit, but it doesnt quite correspond to the state When I say I, its as if I were putting myself in peoples thought and speaking of what corresponds in it to all that; but its not felt that way at all.
0 1968-10-26, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, for a very long time for years the spontaneous attitude (its not the result of an effort), the bodys spontaneous attitude has been, Its my incapacity, my ignorance, my helplessness, my stupidity that bring about my misery. It considers itself to be solely responsible for all its miseries. But then, thats the Difficulty, its this contradiction: Why, why do You want things to be like this? Why?
So I spend almost entire days and nights in silence (I mean, without speaking), but seeingseeing And there isnt any sensation or perception of a separate individuality; there are innumerable experiences, dozens of them every day, showing that its the identification or unification with other bodies that makes you feel this persons misery, that persons misery, the misery of Its a fact. And its not felt as being another bodys misery, its felt as your own. Which means it has become difficult to make a distinction on a plane (Mother stretches her hands out into the distance). There is a plane ever so slightly more subtle than the quite material plane. So one isnt complaining about ones own misery, its that EVERYTHING is ones misery.
--
Now, at any rate, I know. The work in the other states (even, even in a subtle physical) is relatively childs play. The Difficulty is here.
(silence)
0 1968-11-13, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Difficulty, too, is that there have been so many false prophets and charlatans of Hinduism and of Asias Truth that the true thing cant get in. Its full of charlatans. The atmosphere is as if rotten.
(Mother nods her head)
0 1968-12-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So as a matter of fact, the bodys advantage over the mind is that it understands very well (for it, its natural) that all that way of seeing and speaking is only a way of seeing and speaking; you may have the opposite way and it may be just as true, and yet another way would be quite true, and finally all that one says and thinks is only ways of seeing. The mind has Difficulty with that, but the body knows it very well, very well. But
(long silence)
0 1968-12-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For at least two days in a row, I felt he was in a great Difficulty. I thought it was the others causing him difficulties.
I didnt say it with those words [I am with you] because I never say I am, but the consciousness was like this: The Lord is with you. Only, I cant say it with words, because for them, as soon as you speak about God, their whole religion comes back. It was the FACT of consciousness that I put on him. But you can tell him that its exactly what I wanted to say to him. It took that expression in him because, in him, I represent the other side of life.
0 1969-01-15, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems he said yesterday (he came yesterday) that he hadnt yet begun his sadhana, that he was going round India and would begin his sadhana afterwards. He asked me for a message; I didnt tell him anything, but inwardly I said to him, Be sincere, be sincere. But I didnt speak. He even tried flattery, but it didnt work! He said, Oh (looking closely to see whether it had any effect), Oh, Ive heard about you a lot, but to see you is something else altogether. I only had a slight Difficulty not to laugh!
There were men and women, they call the women nuns, and they too have their mouths covered.
0 1969-02-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All the groups of cells, all the cellular organizations have to do their not surrender, a complete self-abandon, in complete trust. Thats indispensable. For some, its the spontaneous, inevitable, constant movement; with others, it comes as soon as theres a Difficulty; yet others need to be churned a little in order to learn. So then, the various functions are taken up in turn, in a marvelously logical order, following the bodys functioning. Its something marvelous, only the body is a poor thing, very poor thing thats very true.
Some even (as I have said) spontaneously repeat the mantra. Spontaneously, the mantra goes on and on being repeated, sometimes with a very great intensity; sometimes there is a sort of (do you know the English word shyness?), a shyness to invoke the Divine, so strongly That is felt. But it meltsit melts in an awareness, a conscious perception of such a Clemency! Unbelievableunbelievable, unthinkable, its so wonderful. (In its very small human manifestation, thats what has become goodness, but thats a distortion.) A marvel! The cells are in ecstasy before this vibration. But then, you see and hear this CLAMOR of protest, misery, sufferingits a clamor all over the earth, and that makes the cells feel a little ashamed.
0 1969-03-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then he sends another note. In Rome they had the visit of Swami Z, and our friend P.L. had lunch with him (because they took the Swami to see the Pope, he had an audience with the Pope), they had lunch together and, writes Msgr. R., The Swami declared himself very happy about the audience with the Pope. He was able to give one of his books to the Holy Father, who told him (in English) that he liked India very much, that he thanked him for his spiritual work undertaken for the good of humanity, and encouraged him to pursue his mission. The Pope gave him a papal medal, and even added that he had great Difficulty in developing his spirituality owing to his present entourage.
Oh, this is interesting! Its interesting.
0 1969-03-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its given him a lot of Difficulty.
Has he finished?
0 1969-03-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, the way of seeing, way of feeling, way of reacting, of doingcompletely new, and based on this I might say, this eternal Smile, like that (same vast, rhythmical gesture, like great wings). And thats completely new. When I see people I havent seen for a long time (those I see once a year, on their birthdays), now when they come its completely different: this Consciousness immediately becomes active, it takes its stand between me and the person, like this (gesture like a rampart), and it starts speaking to them, telling them things. And I am a spectator. I dont speak, of course, I dont say anything, I remain like that, but I see this Consciousness begin to act, telling people giving them extraordinary revelations. Things I wouldnt say, it tells them (in silence, naturally). And it immediately discovers, it knows what the persons Difficulty is, the sensitive spot on which pressure can be applied to bring about change. its surprising.
I see a lot of people, and I can imagine that while this Consciousness is so active, its really useful.
--
(Mother reads her text by lamp light, with great Difficulty)
Since the beginning of this year a new consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare men for a new creation, the superman. For this creation to be possible the substance that constitutes mans body must undergo a big change.
0 1969-04-02, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The trouble is that all these people take their desires for inspirations. And then I have this Difficulty with Auroville too, thats why I take every opportunity to repeat to them (they all keep saying that they come to Auroville to be free), I answer them that one can be free only if one is united with the Supreme; and to be united with the Supreme, one must have no more desires!
Oh, all that [i.e., desires] was necessary, but one cant remain stuck there.
0 1969-04-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(We publish here the letter Satprem wrote to the editor of Fayard publishers, as we find it touchesor touchedon a Difficulty quite central to the Western mind. Since 1969, things have much changed.)
March 27, 1969
I had felt your reaction. It does not surprise me. It is precisely one of the general difficulties to be conquered. Perhaps the most hardened one (it seems especially localized in France): the intellectual Difficulty It is really a veil that blocks ones view and makes one read or understand things on a very narrow range. It almost seems as if people are looking through a slit and catch a thin layer, tiny and bright, and all the rest eludes them: mountaintops are cut off, abysses are filled, and there remains one pure line. And if one happens to try and open them to a broader view, the line of sight gets lost in the mists or muggy vapors you mention. A curious phenomenon. I do not know if you trust me, but I will tell you that every sentence of Sri Aurobindo is the expression or translation of a precise experience, and not only is it like a world enclosed in a few words, but it also contains the vibration of the experience, almost the quality of light of the particular world he contacts; and through the words one contacts, or can very well contact, the experience. I tell you, Sri Aurobindo is full of marvelspure marvelsand I discover new ones every time I read his texts again, I say to myself, Oh, how well he saw this! And if there happens to be some haziness, I am sure a discovery remains to be made there. Sri Aurobindo never used one word too much. As soon as he comes to the mentally obviouswhat would be for you precisely the starting point of a brilliant developmen the cuts off. He smiles and leaves you hanging in midairoh, he is surprisingly discreet, as you yourself put it, for a man who wrote thousands of pages!
You have not stepped into Sri Aurobindo. On the other hand, I quite understand if intellectuals so easily step into Zen! But I do not want to compare merits. With Sri Aurobindo, I am content to see and smile. You have better understood my book, you say it has brought you more than Sri Aurobindo but of course! That does not surprise me, I am afraid: I simply entered the regions of the mentally obvious he neglected, I climbed down a number of degrees. The lines of force you felt are simply the little strings I hung here and there to try and hook people on to the true lines of force that seem to elude them completely, because they see and feel just at the level of the mental slit. But I will tell you again, if you have the least trust in me, that Sri Aurobindo is a tremendous giant and not one word of his is without a full meaning. Some time ago I wanted to have a music lover (a Westerner nurtured on true music like myself, formed in music) listen to a music of genius composed by an Indian; well, this poor boy could make no sense of it! He could not hear! His musical slit was open at one particular level, and he literally could not hear what was abovea true marvel, immense streams of music flowing straight from the Origin of Music.6 For him, it had no structure, it was shapeless musicwhereas I saw, I could see that marvel, I knew where it was coming from, I could touch that world, and as soon as that high musical tension slackened in the least, I instantly felt that it came down to touch a center on a lower level. It was the same thing in Egypt. For weeks I lived in an ecstatic state in Upper Egypt; I was with people who were looking at ruins, seeing beautiful statueswhile for me those statues were living, those places talked to me, those so-called ruins were full of overflowing life.
0 1969-04-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, previously, Amrita used to centralize many things. He had organized them, and I didnt concern myself with them; he would only tell me where I needed to intervene, and all the rest was arranged. But now, for the least thing they come to me, and as they dont know what he used to do and how, everything needs to be done. It has caused a lot of Difficulty.
Now, I know I have something to tell you, but I dont know what!
0 1969-04-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At any rate, it was one more decisive turning point in this bodys development. It once again felt that all it knew, all it thought it knew, all that was rubbish, as they say in English, and that unless you are in this absolutely luminous and tranquil and allcontaining Consciousness [you cannot understand]. Containing still gives the impression of a limit; its not all-containing, its vaster than anything existing. This Consciousness is vaster than the manifested world; theres almost a sort of sensation that theres a vaster Consciousness: the manifested world takes up a certain place in this Consciousness (how can I explain?), its not the WHOLE Consciousness. (Thats probably the bodys Difficulty in being completely receptive, yet its for IT to understand.) And that seems to be the attitude to be kept. Is it an attitude?Its a way of being. A way of being. First, there are no limits (but thats an old experience the body has had for a long time), no limits: theres a sort of capacity to identify with things; but thats a consequence, as it were, of the impelling Will (this central Will, if I may say so, which impels to action). And the body is like that (outspread gesture). Its become so acute, this impression of The two things (two absolutely contradictory things) have become so intense: one is an absolute incapacity to understand anything about anything, the realization that the thing anyhow eludes understanding; and at the same time, the experience that the limits of power are progressively lessening, fading, receding. This Power it has become fantastic! Fantastic, this Power.
At the same time, it showed (oh, its constantly, constantly teaching something), it showed how with people who still have the sense of ego, when they receive a little bit of this Power (that is, when this Power uses them), that causes a sort of panic, and it showed why: the ego becomes tremendous. And that was to show, to make the body clearly understand the necessity of its present state: it has almost no more sense of its existence, as little as possible; that mostly comes back with things that still grate quite materially. But if, at such times, the body can, or has the time to, or knows how to go into this state of then the Difficulty vanishes as if by miracle, in a trice. There was even something to show how, this way (Mother presses her two index fingers together, then slightly lowers the index finger of her right hand), there is sufferingthis way, theres suffering and when its like that (Mother raises slightly the index finger of her left hand), it no longer exists. (Mother does the same gesture again): This way, suffering; that way, it no longer exists. So the body may know exactly in which position suffering no longer exists.
That goes on all the time, all the time, night and day, constantly, continuouslyone thing after another, one thing after another. I would have to spend hours to narrate it all.
0 1969-05-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nothing? Mon petit, I can tell you (I dont like to tell things that look like compliments or flattery, thats why I dont say anything, but since youve asked me). As a matter of fact, I feel that this Consciousness moves about in you without meeting obstacles. Its only materially: the physical needs a slight encouragement to let itself be kneaded, so to speak, so you may become physically really receptive but in my case, my body cant say anything, because it too is like that: it has that same Difficulty, a pain here, a pain there, this here, and that all the time small things that For them to disappear, it has to remember. Its the only thing, its analogous to you. But the Consciousness moves about (Mother makes a wavy gesture, pointing to Satprems body), I see it move about, always unhinderedunhindered, like something natural. You understand, its like something natural: it goes through like this (same wavy gesture), perfectly natural. So its all right! (Mother laughs)
***
0 1969-05-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because he did not want to show A. the Difficulty he had moving.
No more consciousness left in the body.
0 1969-05-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I didnt even know if I would say anything, because its really not really not pleasant to say How long is it going to last? I dont know There are times when you feel it cant last, its going to end; and there are times when you feel it can go on like that for an eternity. And then, when its like that, when there is that feeling Why? Why, why all this? Is it really any use to have a manifestation like this, which lasts eternally like this? Whats the use? If you have the vision of a Beauty and a Joy, a Harmony, then you say, All right, lets go through the Difficulty and then well arrive there, but this way, if things must always be as they are So there.
And then, as I have said, from time to time, for ONE second (not even one second), a joy something I cant say, its neither joy nor pleasure nor happiness, nor any of all that, its something adorablewhich may be nothing: it may be a taste, or a perfume, or a gesture, and then it disappears. If the world were constantly like that, it would be a wonderful thing! Wonderful, inexpressibly wonderful, but But impossible to be all alone like that, its not possible. Its not possible, there is all that comes from outside (gesture like a truckload being dumped) and which So if we have to wait till everything is changed phew!
0 1969-05-28, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This work progressively became more and more difficult for me. I moved about with Difficulty, walked more and more slowly, as though overburdened, until it finally became difficult for me to find my way to escape.
These experiences seemed to last for a long time. When they ended, I found myself in my physical body, surprised that it bore no marks of all that I had just undergone.
--
But the bodys cells (I dont know whether its specific to this body; I cant believe this body to be so exceptional), they are ABSOLUTELY convinced, and they keep trying and trying and trying all the time, all the time, for every misery, every Difficulty, every Theres only one solution, only one thing: You, You alone, to YouYou alone exist. Thats what expressed itself as the illusion of the world in the consciousness of people such as Buddhists and others, but that was a half translation.
The true translation is, You alone exist, You alone. All the rest all the rest is misery. Misery, suffering darkness.
--
"That" seems to refer to the Difficulty of the present situation, but Mother may also be alluding to Pavitra's departure.
***
0 1969-06-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And for for weeks, it acted only on this body, which was in a very concentrated state; since not long, since yesterday, it has started (gesture of expansion) acting on other people. And then, some entirely unexpected things happen, that is, which were neither planned nor willed nor devised, absolutely nothing: all of a sudden, this Consciousness comes, seizes the person whos here (gesture like a tornado), then through this body [of Mother] does something, and takes the person away in its whirl. Especially today. Yesterday, it was a sort of Forceactive Forcewhich came into the body, not bothering anymore about all thats in a bad state.5 And this morning, I twice saw this occurrence: I saw (when I say I, I mean the consciousness there [gesture above the head], which is a Witness quite like this [immutable gesture], without any reaction, without a shadow of personal will to intervene in the work of this Consciousness; it was simply a spectator), I saw how through this body, the Force came, seized the other person (same gesture of a tornado) and took him away That was amusing! They were two difficult cases, two cases in which I really met with a Difficulty to be conqueredyou could see how it seized the person, oh, like a child playing with a ball. Like that. Extraordinary! Extraordinary. So if that comes and settles I dont know.
Well see.
0 1969-07-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then, the contact with people I have made it a rule not to speak to those who come, the visitors; I only speak to those I work with, because the body itself feels its consciousness go down as soon as I start speaking. If I dont speak, its consciousness is very (what should I say?) very even and vast (much vaster than the body), very vast, even, and very receptive without distortion; as soon as I speak its not longer that. So I dont like to speak, but I am obliged to somehow, as I speak to you or when I have work to do to organize things. This morning, I had the visit of the Commission sent by the government to see if we are good children (!) and deserve the money which they are to give us. So that Commission asked to see me. I said, I agree, provided we do not talk and I say nothing. When I see people they are transparent, you know, and generally I see what they think, I see what they want, or their impulsion orits very amusing. And I talk to them. I talk to them in the sense that I tell them something inwardly (I doesnt know: its the consciousness that knows precisely what they should be told). Sometimes I know nothing about them; theyve just arrived, I see them and give them a speech! I give them a speech, and I am myself surprised: Well! Why am I telling him all this? And later on, I learn that its precisely the persons preoccupations or Difficulty or
Which means there is some progress. There is progress in the consciousness, but not yet in the equilibrium of health; thats very difficult. It has become extremely sensitive and the least thing causes reactions. Well see.
--
But I told you, the body repeats the mantra (which is also japa) spontaneously, and absolutely without the intervention of the consciousness. It has got into the habit; as soon as it has the least Difficulty, it repeats the mantra. So you can obtain the same result.
Of course, but how? It would have to be ingrained.
--
You could try, perhaps simply as an experiment, to see if it has effect. Maybe not as you used to do it, but as I did it, at the slightest activity, or the slightest Difficulty, repeating the mantra or the japa. And almost uttering it, you understand.
But Mother, in fact I do it almost all the time.
0 1969-07-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But theres an interesting thing Nolini showed me yesterday. Theres a French lady, an astrologer, it seems, who has the reputation of being very skilled;4 she has made a prediction based on the stars, according to which in July this year (that is, this month), India would be in a very great Difficulty (just what is happening), but she adds that India would come out of it with a great improvement of consciousness. I havent seen [her prediction] in detail, I dont know, but it seems she almost announces a sort of change of government. But the disorder is there, oh, awful!5 Everybody quarrels! And some people are without any scruples whatsoever. They are all against the prime minister because she wants to nationalize the banks; she wants to nationalize the banks because she has realized that theres a gang of rich men (whom I know and had been denouncing for a very long time) who monopolize everything and cause general miserypeople absolutely devoid of scruples. So then, by nationalizing the banks, she hopes to prevent them from I told you theres a gang of people (Id rather not name them) who have money everywhere, and huge amounts abroad. So they have the country by the throat, because they can cause a bankruptcy here whenever they like. She knows it, and those are people no one has ever dared to touch. But as for her, she has found this solution: if she nationalizes the banks, they wont be able to do their mischief anymore. So theyre furiousfurious. And they have all kinds of means at their disposal.6 And through N.S., she is in constant contact with me, asking for help, for an indication, and so on.
Well see. I was happy with this prediction because All depends on whether shell stand firm. If she stands firm, it will be all right.
0 1969-08-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did I tell you that in Italy a veterinarian has found a cure for cancer? This man has discovered that goats, the goat species (male and female), never have cancer! They even went as far as trying to make them have cancer, and they didnt succeed. Conclusion: in their makeup, theres something opposed to cancer; theyve discovered that something in the stomach (I forget the details), and he made a serum. As he is a veterinarian, he doesnt have the right to give it, but he has doctor friends, and those doctors (a dozen or so) have tried it outextraordinary cure, without fail. But with a difference: the female goat cures certain cases, while the male cures other cases; its not the same with the male or the female, they cure different types of cancer (I understand nothing about it). Anyway, he lives somewhere in Italy, I dont know where, and I had him asked if he would like to come herehe has accepted. And hes going to come: theres a whole group of young Italians who want to come at the end of the year for Sri Aurobindos yoga, and hell probably come with them, or else he will come with Paolo if Paolo doesnt mind paying for his travel. My intention is to put him in touch with Dr. S., to let them study that together, and if it works well, Ill ask him to stay on. Because you know that S. now has a sort of dispensary in Auromodle [in Auroville] (theres even a young French medical student who has come and stays there too, he is very happy). So we could open a cancer clinic, that would be very interesting! Because with S.s presence here, theres no Difficultyin Auroville he can do what he likes. That would be wonderful!
He is coming before the end of the year. And the other man, the healer, is coming in September The other, well see if he wants to cure some people here, that would be good.
0 1969-09-06, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it was really interesting: there was an overall vision of things to be learned, and we were on a beautiful road, quite a smooth road, and Sri Aurobindo said, No, see, you have to climb thatit was a steep path going up, a path of black, gluey soil (one wondered if ones foot wasnt going to slip at every step), as difficult as could be, and he said, See, thats what you have to climb; when you reach the top, you will truly see. I was there, saying to myself (he was speaking to someone, I didnt notice who it was, but now I think it must have been your brother), I said to myself, Its strange (because I didnt think Sri Aurobindo felt that way), Its strange; so then, one should never be afraid of Difficulty It went on for a long time, but it struck me a lot. I still see him, I remember, I saw Sri Aurobindo next to someone who was taller (your brother is tall, isnt he?), and he spoke to him, explained, then showed him the path; I saw the path: a path of quite a disgusting black soil, going up almost sheer, it was difficult. And he said, Thats it, that is what you must climb, and at the top, you seeat the top, you have the vision.
In the morning, I wondered who was the person Sri Aurobindo spoke to, and now I clearly see it must have been your brother. Sri Aurobindo spoke in French, so your brother said, Oh, you speak French, and I said, Oh, but Sri Aurobindo knows French very well! (Mother laughs) Its amusing.
0 1969-09-20, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, it was in English thats it (I was trying to remember in French!), Let us all work for the greatness of India. You understand, its a platitudeit became a revelation. I notice this: when it makes me say something and I see it later with the ordinary consciousness, I find it such a platitude! Or something perfectly obvious, or which isnt worth saying. But when it descends, it takes such a force! And it HAS a force (Mother brings down her two fists). It has told me all kinds of things like that; it told me, If this person (Indira, for instance), if this person had said this (in her meeting, when she is in Difficulty), everyone would have been won over. And its such a compact Power that you feel as if you could cut slices out of it, you understand, so material it is! Its a rather deep golden color (rather deep when it comes like that), and then it goes like this (gesture of pressure on the head), you feel it might very well crush you (!) And it has an extraordinary action on people.
On that day, it was really remarkable.
0 1969-09-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I dont at all feel that he draws anything from here (Mother points to her body or to herself), its I might say theres the Presence (vast gesture everywhere), and so its all the time like that. But what I am wondering about is why my body is in this state? I told you, I WANT to take it like that, as an acceleration of the work, and it seems to be true, but its very difficult. You see, for months and months and months, the work never used to tire me; now, all of a sudden, Ill feel exhausted the body. It has Difficulty eating, and a constant impression of nausea. At the same time, if I concentrate and am careful, I feel the Presence as usual. But as I said, all this (Mother points to her head) is emptyalmost painfully empty.
(silence)
0 1969-10-15, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother laughs) I find it hard to realize, that is, to understand or explain (it enters my consciousness with Difficulty) that people, when they are in front of me, could dare say something untrue. In the past, it seemed impossible to me, but from experience Ive learned (!) that they do it. How they do it, I dont know
And thats not the only thing, there are many others.
0 1969-10-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For me, the Difficulty I very often come up against, is a need of activity in the aspiration, too.
Yes, yes.
0 1969-10-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for me, I never believed: I had a lot of Difficulty, its Sri Aurobindo who made me believe in the physical reality of Christ; I always thought it was some story people toldthey took hold of just anybody and built a story around him. But Sri Aurobindo believed in it. He said it was an Avatara partial Avatar.
(silence)
0 1969-11-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its interesting because, I remember, I had already been doing the yoga; I already had an experience greater than most people have when I had that Difficulty with the nerves (it was in 1915), I remember how it was and how I held out. And it has come back after 1915 and now its 1969, that is to say more than fifty years later. And I really felt the difference in my body, really. The first day it came (I should tell you that its one of the pains regarded as hardest to bear), when it came, the only there was nothing but, Ah, You. Thats all. Like that. And clinging like this (same gesture with clenched fists), not moving anymore. Those are pains that prevent you from breathing, prevent you from moving; theyre extreme, all the nerves go awry; well, before, I knew, I would call, but I was somehow (at least partly) identified with the pain, whereas this time, the reaction wasnt one of suffering the suffering was there, but no reaction of oh, what might be expressed as that wonderful self-pity people always have. Well, that was completely gone, there was only, Ah! You, You, You, You, You And there was a pressure on the person who was therewho by the way wasnt aware of anything, neither the other day nor yesterday (the first time, it was a woman; yesterday it was a man): they didnt notice anything.
But I said to myself, Well, well, things are getting serious! The vital world has started rebelling.
0 1969-11-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, despite everything, the body retained some slight consciousness of its needs all these days (though its not concerned with itself I always said it isnt concerned with itself, not interested), but thats what Sri Aurobindo said: I feel I am still the old man. This morning I understood that, because it was no longer there! You see, that sort of very calm perception, but still of what goes wrong (a pain here, a Difficulty there), very calm, very indifferent, but the thing is still PERCEIVED (without becoming more important)even that, prrt! gone, completely swept away!
I do hope it wont come back. Thats really thats what I understand to be a transformation! You are conscious in a golden immensity (its wonderful, mon petit!), luminous, golden, peaceful, eternal, all-powerful.
--
Naturally, the body had the experience. Something took place which I wont tell, and it had the true reaction; it didnt have the old reaction, it had the true one: it smiled, you know, with this Smile of the supreme Lordit smiled. That remained there for a day and a half. And that Difficulty was what let the body make the last progress, let it live in that Consciousness; if everything had been harmonious, things might have dragged on for yearsits wonderful, you know, wonderful!
How stupid people are! When the Grace comes to them, they drive it away, saying, Oh, how horrible! Id known that for a long time, but my experience is a bedazzlement.
0 1969-11-29, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And everyone is there, comes I no longer feel this (Mother points to her body), I no longer feel it, but I SEE, I see it like this (enveloping gesture), and I see the Difficulty for everyone to pierce through that in order to get to something true. Thats what they expect of me, of course. So then, when theyre here (its uniform and general), its as if I were clinging to the Supreme Consciousness and pulling it like that, onto the person whos there, without uttering a word. And then, the interesting thing is that this Consciousness is there and it sees, it sees the reactions, and from the reactions of the people, I know the way they are: in which state, at which level.
But in your case its your mission, you understand. I dont know how to explain. I always, always see you in direct and constant contact with with this Consciousness expressing itself; so when it reaches the mental level, youre as if arranging pawns on a chessboard. Ive looked very, very often: its indispensable, its an indispensable work, and extremely useful. Naturally, my body, too, might say, If instead of seeing all these people I were all the time like this (gesture huddled in the Lord), working to hasten the transformation, it would be very pleasant! For you too, its like that, but were here to do something. Thats it. And its a certainty, a certainty because several times when things became critical, I have told the Lord, There, its for You to decidewhe ther to stay on or to go and rest blissfully. And the answer has ALWAYS, always been the same: Theres work to be done.
0 1969-12-10, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The training of the physical consciousness is continuing at an accelerated pace, very accelerated. The body has some slight Difficulty in keeping its equilibrium. Its as if it were getting blows from every side! (Mother laughs)
Inwardly, its quite fine. Outwardly, for these last three days things have been very difficult, so its been a bit tiredformerly, it no longer knew fatigue, it no longer knew what it was. But that didnt last: as soon as it had a moment when it could concentrate and get back into the true attitude, that went away And the progress (gesture like a leap), oh, its quite out of proportion with the effort. The effort is quite small and the progress is big. One can see that clearly.
0 1969-12-13, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am convinced that every Difficulty is a special problem. We cant make a general rule.
The other day, for instance, you said that birth is a purge
0 1969-12-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Will I hear him? Because the Difficulty is that people dont know how to speak; they speak too fast, and I cant follow.
Tell me what he wants to tell me!
--
I am afraid they may not even have the land. Thats the Difficulty Because the center of the city has been fixed, but theres still a large part of the center which, I think, belongs to the government, so theyre trying to negotiate so as to have it.
(silence)
--
There is water, but its enough for one or two houses, anyway not enough to create a permanent flow. We would need transformed sea water. In Israel they have found a way to do it economically (we even have brochures on this), but you understand, economical for a city, not economical for an individual! So then, wed need to have water to make this islet, thats the Difficulty.
But before building the islet, we can begin building the temple itself Begin by lifting a pebble.
0 1970-01-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The trouble ([laughing] I say trouble!) is that in people it expresses itself as disorders. People close to me for the work fall ill. One of them is at the nursing home, the other is in Difficulty. And depending on their receptivity, I must find a way to make them understand that they shouldnt worry, that its not an illness, but the bodys resistance. The body [Mothers body] has learned that at its own expense!Its constantly like that: if you are in the true position, everything is fineprovided you dont observe yourself, dont keep observing, Oh, the body is like this, or like that, it feels this way or As soon as you pay attention to it, as soon as the consciousness is turned to it, something goes wrong. It goes wrong. One has to be like this (gesture turned upward). And then, there is something that KNOWS all the same, something that knows, but without observing (I dont know how to explain). And you can see that as soon as the consciousness of the cells takes the true attitude, the thing that manifested as a disorder no longer manifests as such: the nature of the manifestation changeshow?
Not only that, the may Your Will be done (without worrying in the least about what it is, what that Will may be, in other words an acceptance of anything in advance) is replaced in a strange waya strange wayby something that has nothing to do with thought and less and less to do with vision, something superior which is a kind of perceptiona new kind of perception: you KNOW. But that has already come for a few seconds. Now and then it comes, and then the old habits start up again. Its above, far, far above thought, and above vision. Its a kind of perception: there is no more differentiation of the organs (Mother touches her eyes, her ears). And its a perception yes, which is total: its at the same time (if you want to explain it), at the same time vision, hearing, and knowledge. A perception something that is a new type of perception. So then, you KNOW. It replaces learning. But the moment you want to bring it to the plane of learning, its over, you lose contact.
0 1970-01-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
See Agenda X of 12 November and 24 December 1969. We may be touching here the central physical Difficulty which was to become Mother's agony. It was not the "problem of the transformation," but the problem of the disciples.
***
0 1970-01-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theyd be only too happy! For them it would be an extraordinary amusement! I have more Difficulty preventing them from dissipating their energies than I would have trying to get them to do some work! For them it would be an amusement.
Because he says that if there isnt the inner force of the Ashram people mingling with the Aurovilians, the Aurovilians will remain what they are. There is a break between Auroville and the Ashram.
--
Exactly. But everywhere thats the Difficulty: the person first. So that spoils everything.
You speak the truth objectively as you see it, and its as if you were attacking them!
0 1970-01-21, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
People have a thousand and one difficulties, but there is only ONE Difficulty; there are a thousand and one facets but theres only ONE problem. Its clearly put here.
Theyre going to be terrified!
0 1970-03-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its not quite that, but somewhat: all the cells seem to be attunedattuned to something higher than they, even in space, but which they feel as being their center. But a center not like this (Mother gestures onto herself) and not (whats the word?) localized; its neither here [the body] nor above, nor Its not localized. Yet the cells impression is that the Force the impelling force or will-forceemanating from that spreads out (gesture fanning out downward) to enter into the body And (this is interesting) the body feels its more DIRECTLY in relationship with that and, through it, that acts on others, on those around but its not others, its The body has sometimes even had the impression that some of those things [others, those around] are closer to it than others. Its very hard to explain. But its spontaneous. You see, the Difficulty is that in order to express it, I have to start thinking it, while its spontaneous: its a sensation, not a thought.
For instance, at night when I am alone, at times theres the impression of a disorder or an anguish somewhere [in those around], and then, the bodys remedy (it clearly feels it comes from outside towards it but outside isnt the word, its a distance I dont know how to explain), its sole movement of remedy is to rush into this luminous centerits not to attract something to it, its to rush into that.
--
My Difficulty in distinguishing forces or influences is that its always translated as an intensity of force in me, so I dont know how to untangle: its always force, you understand, intensity.
Yes, and his must be VERY intense!
0 1970-03-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Difficulty is the appreciation of the value of things. You understand, that requires a very wide vision. Moneys convenience was that it became mechanical. But this new system cannot become quite mechanical, so For instance, the idea is that those who will live in Auroville will have no moneythere is no circulation of money but to eat, for instance, everyone has the right to eat, naturally, but On quite a practical level, we had conceived the possibility of all types of food according to everyones tastes or needs (for example, vegetarian cooking, non-vegetarian cooking, diet cooking, etc.), and those who want to get food from there must do something in exchangework, or Its hard to organize in practice, on a quite practical level. You see, we had planned a lot of lands around the city for large-scale agriculture for the citys consumption. But to cultivate those lands, for the moment we need money, or else materials. So Now I have to face the whole problem in every detail, and its not easy!
There are some who understand.
--
You see, there is this fact that existence itself needs to depend on something material, which naturally brings back every time an old recurring Difficulty. That question of food All that is under observation at the moment (a very minute observation, which I might almost call scientific), and, well, the cells are conscious of the divine Force and of the power that Force gives, but they are also conscious that in order to last as they are, even in a state of transformation, they still need this complement of something coming from outsidewith that, every time you swallow a new Difficulty. All that I said on the [change of] functioning is increasingly proven, but there is this thing [food] that remains, and that means stomach and blood and all the rest With that, can we conceive (I dont know), can we conceive something that works in this way yet without deteriorating? Something capable of constant progression? (One can last only if the progression is constant.) Is this capable of progress? For the moment, its like this (gesture hanging in balance).
All that was automatic has almost disappearedwhich has caused a great reduction from the standpoint of capacities; its replaced by a consciousness with a certain power, which didnt exist previously: thats an improvement. But all things considered, well, if I take the ordinary stand, I can no longer do what I used to do when I was twenty, quite obviously. Perhaps I know a hundred thousand times more than I knew, but This body, the body itself knows: it feels, its capable of knowing all that it didnt know then. But from a purely material standpoint (Mother shakes her head, pointing to her bodys incapacity). Could it come back? I dont know. Theres a question mark there. I dont know. And it could last only if the capacities came back; as Sri Aurobindo very wisely put it, who would want to go on in a body that keeps losing all its capacities?3 You know, sight isnt clear anymore, you dont hear clearly anymore, cant speak clearly anymorev anyway you cant walk freely, you can no longer carry a weightall kinds of things.
0 1970-04-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My health problem [serious heart attacks] has led me to reveal many hidden elements in the body, like Mothers love, grace, and Mother herself with me. My body seems no more at the mercy of old beliefs. Thus, my confidence in the body is increasing more and more day by day, and I feel and see clearly that the body can throw away any kind of Difficulty in it by coming in the contact with Mothers love and grace. One day, I asked Mother from within not to allow more such attacks which bring me almost to a condition of collapse every now and then and, Mother, it never came afterwards since about ten days!2
(Mother remains silent)
0 1970-04-08, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a Difficulty. I am beginning to be unable to eat, so Things are becoming difficult.
Is it the consciousness or the body?
--
There is also a Difficulty breathing. Breath is is short.
(silence)
0 1970-04-15, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think it will be better if you bring questions. I have Difficulty speaking, but I can speak.
***
0 1970-04-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I had the clear knowledge that what I was conscious of last night is something taking place all the time, but I am not aware of it because so as not to increase the burden of consciousness. Right now, from an ordinary standpoint, for an ordinary human being, the number of things that are conscious at the same time [in Mother] is something tremendous! And its without fatigue, effort, Difficulty, its NATURAL, but many more get done consciously and without being relayed to the center of consciousness so so it doesnt get too much!
There is also this well-known thing: according to the concentration of the consciousness, the value of time changes. Thats perpetual and constant. The same circumstances, the same everyday little events I am made to feel with the ordinary consciousness, and then three or four different consciousness esand their value changes. It goes from a long, interminable time to a second. Which means a demonstration of the unreality of time as we perceive it here thats every day, all the time.
0 1970-04-22, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But with people, when I am told about a circumstance, when someone (directly or through someone else) tells me some Difficulty, some circumstance there comes the clear, precise vision of what needs to be done, and it doesnt correspond to any thought, nothing at all (once I have said it, generally I dont even remember what I have said). And downright practical: this must be done, that must not be done.
Ordinary life, the ordinary way is as if projected onto a screen (its not at all within, its), and constantly the disorder of ordinary life is as if showninsubstantial, but perceptible. And if there were something [in Mother] still open to that, or even (lets put it very simply), if there is something still open, the result is a fact: a discomfort, or quite unpleasant thingsmore and more its beginning to be unreal and unable to touch [Mother] but you cant be sure.
0 1970-05-02, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But now, its no longer just sight and hearing: its everything. Speaking becomes increasingly difficult. Eating is very difficult: its a mixture of something going on quite easily, without your noticing it, or else a struggle against a GREAT Difficulty. Its only now, because I want to say it, that I observe it and try to express it, otherwise there is no mental activity.
Those things have imposed themselves.
0 1970-05-06, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother is unwell again. She has Difficulty speaking and is very short of breath.)
Im not well.
0 1970-05-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have Difficulty keeping that, because all contacts bring back the old consciousness I dont know anyone in this condition. When I am very quiet
But it wasnt like last night, it wasnt so complete, so total. There is still the memory, and then the impression that the body has tipped over to the right side. You understand, it was it was doing what they all dodisintegrating and getting disorganized. The impression that that seems to be over.2 But its not THAT yet, its only But it was wonderful.
0 1970-05-13, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have Difficulty speaking.
***
--
Then I started wiping so it could take place without Difficulty.
What?
(Satprem:) She started wiping and cleaning the wall so the picture would come out without Difficulty.
Oh!
0 1970-05-20, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The biggest Difficulty, as always, is the mind, BECAUSE IT TRIES TO UNDERSTAND IN ITS OWN WAY. Thats the Difficulty. Some people would go much faster if they didnt have that. They feel that if they dont understand mentally, they havent understood.
Yes, I understand that very well!
0 1970-05-23, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The country seems to be falling apart, so there [in Delhi] they asked me what should be done. I told them that this Centenary [of Sri Aurobindo, in 1972] has come ON PURPOSE. Its certainly something thats coming now because the ONLY salvation for the country, the ONLY thing that can unify it, is for it to adopt Sri Aurobindos ideal for the countryhe had a plan, he very clearly saw how the country should be organized, he said it to me. Its there, if one reads his books seriously, one can see it. So I said that things should be so organized that THROUGHOUT India there should be study groups, libraries, lectures, anything whatever, so the whole country should know Sri Aurobindos thought and will. And the Centenary is an excellent opportunity. They asked me, Whats the way out of this chaos? On my advice, Indira has been trying to surround herself with people of value. (She had me told that she had forgotten questions of party and wants to surround herself with capable people.) The Difficulty is to find upright people. So they need to be educated they dont even have a NOTION of how they can be! So I said, This Centenary should be organized right now, at once, like something covering the whole country on the occasion of the Centenary. And in what Sri Aurobindo wrote, they will find all they need to organize the country, and much better, I tell them, infinitely better than what I may say, because he knew the country infinitely better than I do, and the mental formation and everything.
People need occasions to do things. But this seems to have been wonderfully prepared ON PURPOSE.
0 1970-07-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think (the other day you told me something was wrong in your body), I think that on those spots that arent yet on the way to transformation, theres an increase, as though a concentration of the Difficulty: one feels more ill at such spots.
The only possible thing is (Mother opens her hands) the peace of total surrender, like this (absolutely flat gesture, vast, immutable): come what may. There. Then things are fine.
--
If I were to tell in detail what goes on, its absolutely wonderful! For instance, while eating, when the body keeps its true attitude and the perception of the Divine presence in all things, and naturally in what it absorbs, and when it absorbs it automatically with that attitude, without any contradiction, everything takes place without any Difficulty. To such a point that if the attitude deteriorates (whatever), things can go to (gesture of choking) swallowing the wrong way, like that, in the space of a few seconds. Its clearly a transitional period, but how long will it last? I dont know. The harmony of the functioning is becoming miraculousmiraculous. Only, its not automatic, it still depends on the attitude. Its not something that imposes itself, its a consequence.
(long silence)
0 1970-07-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, yes, exactly! Its the precision, the exactnessits the Supreme Consciousness everywhere. We even have Difficulty conceiving it, but its obvious blindingly obvious.
(silence)
0 1970-09-02, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, the little body the little body is like a point, but its impression is of being the expression of an AWESOME power, and its like this: no capacity, no expression, nothing and rather rather miserable. And yet its like a condensationcondensationlike the condensation of an AWESOME power! At times, it even has Difficulty bearing it, you understand.
All experiences are as if multiplied a hundred times. Only, it has Difficulty learning.
(Satprem lays his forehead on Mothers knees. Mother gropes for flowers by her side.)
0 1970-09-05, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother looks exhausted. She speaks with great Difficulty, as if out of breath.)
Me, I have nothing to say; if you have something to ask, I can speak a little.
--
And then, earlier I would always take refuge in silence and concentration, but now this thing comes3that has been the biggest Difficulty. In silence and concentration I could spend hours and hours and hours, but now those uncontrolled movements come, and Thats Thats really what saddened me, you understand?
(Satprem feels tears flow on his cheeks)
--
And I have great Difficulty eating, a great Difficulty.
(Then she goes into a long meditation, now quieter, now panting for breath; she emerges from it with a start4)
--
Let us note that some time earlier, a disciple with noteworthy visions saw this: "Mother was descending, descending, sinking into the earth, then she was fully wrapped as if in a layer of carbon. Where she was there was light, but the thread connecting her to her Origin was very slender, a fine thread of light running through the layer of carbon. At times the contact was cut off, the thread disappeared, and Mother was in Difficulty."
***
0 1970-09-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like this (same gesture of suffocation), and its still there. There is one spot, like a spot where there is such a dreadful anguish. Do you feel how I have Difficulty breathing?Thats it. Its constant.
(silence)
0 1970-09-12, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am not allowed to take salt (Mother gives Satprem soup packets), it seems that this Difficulty [in the left eye] comes from eating too much salt.
What do you have to say?
--
Theres a physical diminution, of course (Mother touches her legs). I walk with Difficulty and I have become stooped in a way quite Its bad for breathing.
Only, I have noticed that it depends on a certain attitude. The trouble is that circumstances (gesture around) force me to think of this body, you understand? Thats troublesome. When I dont think of it, I am finewhen I think of the work or look at things, I am relatively fine. But this body has become very very cumbersome.
--
That is to say, material life is given an importance infinitely greater than it has ever had, and its no fun! Its just when its full of Difficulty, grating
So naturally, as I look tired, they dont want to tell me about whats going on, dont want to give me work, dont want to And it makes for me an atmosphere exactly opposite to the one I would need.
0 1970-09-16, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So this morning I pondered a lot about that. Probablyprobably a large part of the Difficulty in the work comes from some stupidity on my part, you could say.
Yet, to my conscious consciousness, I constantly keep saying, What You will, Lord, what You will. But there must be in my body the habit of an unnecessary effort.
0 1970-10-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After Satprems departure, Sujata tells Mother about young women of her generation, who do not have the advantage of being close to Mother or in the circle of important persons, and who suffer from never seeing Mother. This was in factwhich is why we record ita very central problem at the Ashram: a sort of dichotomy between the simple elements who washed the dishes, stitched clothes or greased cars, and who were there simply with their love for Mother, and the leading elements, who increasingly revealed their ambitious and therefore warped nature. Yet it was with that thick circle that Mother had to work almost daily, and that is what made her Difficulty, if not suffocation. With Sujata, Mother agreed to receive in rotation a number of those young and simple elementsunfortunately, that new opening will soon be blocked by circumstances: a new serious turning point in Mothers yoga, then other impossibilities.)
On the Way to Supermanhood.
0 1970-10-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother still breathes with Difficulty)
The message should be put as it is; if, later, we change it into a mantra, then we can put Ma.
0 1970-10-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother tries to read with Difficulty a few lines from Savitri written in large characters. These passages are meant to be set to music.)
At times I read very clearly, and at other times
0 1970-10-31, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother tries to read with Difficulty a few lines from Savitri specially written for her in large characters.)
Its a curious phenomenon: its F. who writes this, and she doesnt understand well: for her its just wordsand I cant read!
0 1971-01-16, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its really interesting. I think something has been achieved from a general standpoint (Mother makes a grinding gesture); it wasnt just the Difficulty of one body or one person: I think something was achieved in terms of preparing Matter to receive in the right way, correctlyits as if it had been received incorrectly before, and it has learned to receive in the true way.
It will come. I dont know whether it will take months or years for the thing to become clear. Then it can be cured.
0 1971-03-03, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I could scold myself, because I set a bad example: I shouldnt have such a worn-out body, but its as if. At night, for instance, I dont sleep, but I go into a very deep repose; and then everything that isnt well (Mother touches her swollen cheek) worsens. Its only when I concentrate here that it starts to get better; when I leave the body to its own peace it still isnt on the right sideit shouldnt be like that. I know that the greatest Difficulty for people is my agethey all think: Oh, shes old, shes old, shes old. And so I. As a fact I am younger than they! (laughter)
Yes.
--
But the Difficulty comes from the fact that many do not understand the simplicity of the thing.
Yes.
0 1971-05-08, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, there are different (what shall I say?) theyre like layers of conditioning (gesture of levels), and I always try to lead people to the highest layer so that things happen without too much Difficulty; but they always insist on being on the lowest layer, the nearest one. So that causes. Thats how things get complicated. If those who are capable of pulling down from above at one stroke were there [in the government], things would go swiftly and smoothly, but its those who have the nearest conditioning and naturally understand the nearest who are therethose people are there [in the government]. And so things have to follow a certain (meandering gesture) path, and its endless.
Well, that means the world is not ready!
0 1971-06-12, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This kind of condition which is between two things one of which is being left but will not let go its hold and the other is almost or near to be grasped but cannot be brought into action, always comes at a certain stage in the transition between the ordinary consciousness and the Yogic consciousness. It is obviously very troublesome. One has to keep a firm mind as much as possible. There are two ways of dealing with it. One is to sit quiet with a silent will to get rapidly through to the true thing and allow the Force to work out the Difficulty. The other is effort, but this effort too must be a quiet effort,if it is a struggling or over eager effort, it may increase the struggle and restlessness in the mind or body. The best way is to keep quiet, observe, will for the change in reliance on the working of the Force, but also to use a quiet effort whenever that is possible. If one does that, after a time one finds a quiet action becoming habitual which whenever the outer force comes to pull the mind out, repels it automatically and maintains the poise of the consciousness.
January 19, 1937
0 1971-07-14, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The whole earth is now under one law and answers to the same vibrations and I am sceptical of finding any place where the clash of the struggle will not pursue us. In any case, an effective retirement does not seem to be my destiny. I must remain in touch with the world until I have either mastered adverse circumstances or succumbed or carried on the struggle between the spiritual and physical so far as I am destined to carry it on. This is how I have always seen things and still see them. As for failure, Difficulty and apparent impossibility I am too much habituated to them to be much impressed by their constant self-presentation except for passing moments.
One needs to have a calm heart, a settled will, entire self-abnegation and the eyes constantly fixed on the beyond to live undiscouraged in times like these which are truly a period of universal decomposition. For myself, I follow the Voice and look neither to right nor to the left of me. The result is not mine and hardly at all now even the labour.
0 1971-09-04, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But as soon as you let go of the concentration, well, you again have to. Thats the Difficulty. There would have to be some kind of possession. But how is that done?
I dont know.
0 1971-11-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then its extremely concrete: when I am in that consciousness, my whole lunch is taken effortlessly, without any Difficulty; I am given food, I swallow and I dont notice not that I dont notice it (I have taste, I have everything), but the position is different.
Yes, at that moment its part of the universal movement.
0 1971-12-18, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a third attitude. Its the best. To be very attentive; rather than being passive and inert, to be very attentive and alert. And then, to feel when the Impulsion to do something comes, and to do it. I have put that into practice these last few days, and thats the solution. You see, the Difficulty lies in having action WITHOUT the personal limitations they are inextricably bound up in our consciousness, and the passivity you speak of is there to separate the two; but once you have I dont know, the perception or sensation of the state in which you are completely open to the Divine Impulsion, then you can allow action to take place again. And that is the solution.
Its very difficult to explain, but Ive had the experience recently (yesterday or the day before, its very recent), the experience of an attitude of unmixed receptivityunmixed with any personal activityan activity whose impulse comes only from the Divine (I had this in connection with the war, the current events, and thats how I understood). But its beyond words.
0 1971-12-22, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have received a brief note from P.L. You had said that the people at the Mission should be calmed down, they were creating a lot of Difficulty, and you said we could ask P.L. to do something. So hes done something.
Aha!
0 1971-12-25, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
More and more I am convinced that we have a way of receiving things and reacting to them that CREATES difficulties I am more and more convinced of it. Because, for example, I have rather unpleasant physical and material experiences about food. You know that for a very long time now I have completely stopped being hungry (I eat only to be reasonable, because one must eat, otherwise), and I have some small Difficulty in swallowing, or breathing (ridiculous things), but everything changes depending on whether you pay attention to them or not, depending on an attitude like this (gesture of being focused on oneself) in which you watch yourself living, or an attitude in which youre (vast gesture) in things, in movement, in life; and a third attitude in which you pay attention only to the Divine. If you succeed in being like that all the time, there are no difficultiesand yet things are the same. Thats the experience: the thing in itself is as it is, but it is our reaction to it that differs. The experience is more and more conclusive. You see, there are three categories: our attitude with respect to things, the things in themselves (those two always give you trouble), and there is a third category in which everything, but everything is in regard to the Divine, in the Consciousness of the Divineall is marvelous, all is easy! And I am speaking of material things, of the material, physical life (for psychological things, weve known it for long), I mean material things like little discomforts of the body, or reactions, feeling pain or not, circumstances going wrong, not being able to swallow your dinner the most banal things you dont pay attention to when youre young and strong and in good health (you dont pay any attention to them, and its like that for everyone), but when you live in the consciousness of your body and what happens to it and its ways of receiving things that come and so onoh, its misery! When you live in the consciousness of others, of what they want, what they need, their relationship with youits misery! But if you live in the Divine Presence and its the Divine who does everything, sees everything, is everything its Peaceits Peace, time has no duration, everything is easy and. Not that you feel joy or feel its not so its the Divine who is there. And its the ONLY solution. Thats where the world is going: the Consciousness of the Divine the Divine who does, the Divine who is, the Divine. So then, the same IDENTICAL circumstance (I am not speaking of different circumstances), the same IDENTICAL circumstance (its my experience these last few days, so concrete, you know, so concrete); day before yesterday I was sick as a dog, and yesterday circumstances were the same, my body was in the same state, all was the same and yet all was peaceful.
I am thoroughly convinced of that.
0 1972-02-09, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know. The 29th is just one week later. Its a big strainnot a strain, but a Difficulty.
What if everyone passed in front of you, would that be more difficult?
0 1972-02-19, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As you are now, near me, its very goodvery good, its smooth. I dont know how to put it, smooth. I dont sense any struggle or conflict or Difficulty in you, none at all. Perhaps I dont see it or.
No, no! Of course, you see, Mother!
0 1972-03-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know. I know that. All depends on what the Divine Will isHe doesnt tell me! When I ask Him, I have the impression (once or twice, in moments of Difficulty, I have put the question regarding this body), and then (laughing) I seem to see a smile, you know, a smile as big as the world, but no answer.
I can still see that smile: Dont try to know, it is not yet time.
0 1972-03-29b, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But thats not true! Its not true, mon petit! These last few days, I stopped everything because I had to, but again and again I thought it would be good if you were here. Only you see my Difficulty to speak, so.
Listen to me nowwill you do as I say? Come to see me every day. Come to see me every day as before. If I have nothing to say, Ill give you flowers; if there is something I want you to convey to Satprem, I will tell you. But come, just come.
--
Thats what it is: I have Difficulty speaking, I immediately (Mother gasps for breath). Theres obviously something happening here (Mother touches her chest).
But the consciousness is clearer and stronger than EVER before. And I see that people think I am getting soft in the head because I cant speak anymore. But the consciousness is clearer and stronger than ever before.
--
The biggest Difficulty is this: if only there were someone to tell me what I should take. Although I must say glucose is what I drink the most easilyso Ill just take more of it.
I think its the only physical, material means; people who are hospitalized for months at a time take only glucose (usually intravenously). Well Mother, you can be fed that way indefinitely.
0 1972-04-02b, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body has some Difficulty, so I cant be active, alas. It is not because I am old I am not old. I am not old, I am younger than most of you. If I am here inactive, it is because the body has given itself definitely to prepare the transformation. But the consciousness is clear and we are here to workrest and enjoyment will come afterwards. Let us do our work here.
So I have called you to tell you that. Take what you can, do what you can, my help will be with you. All sincere efforts will be helped to the maximum.
0 1972-04-04, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The architect:) The question in our minds, Mother, was to know whether you saw these people as being useful in providing Auroville with a certain type of Difficulty.
No! Certainly not! No, no, I dont favor deliberately adding difficulties! I know they come for. But they shouldnt be invitedon the contrary. They shouldnt. Things should be made as easy as possible. Only, we shouldnt be ruffled by Difficulty, thats the point. I am not at all saying that difficulties should be accepteddont invite them at all, at all, at all; life is difficult enough as it is! But when a Difficulty comes, you must take heart and face it courageously.
We must strive for Order, Harmony, Beauty and collective aspirationall the things which for the moment are not there. We must you see, being the organizers, our task is to set the example of what we want others to do. We must rise above personal reactions, be exclusively attuned to the divine Will and be the docile instruments of the divine Willwe must be impersonal, without any personal reaction.
--
It may take time, there may be turmoil and Difficultyyou must be inflexible: I am for the Divine and the divine manifestation, in spite of everything and anything. Voil. Then it is omnipotenceEVEN OVER DEATH.
I am not saying tomorrow, I am not saying immediately, but its a certainty.
0 1972-04-05, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Possible, but not certain it will happen [the deep trance]. Sometimes, when I see all these things, I am. My Difficulty of speech is caused by that weakness, you see; I have trouble expressing myself; all of a sudden, I feel I feel a sort of I dont know, I cant say fatigue or exhaustion but as though life were literally drained out of meand yet the consciousness is more ALIVE, stronger than ever!
Suddenly, the body doesnt know if it will be able to hold on thats what happens.
--
The big Difficulty is the government, you see: a bunch of dimwits who know nothing outside of their rules and regulations.
(Satprem:) No, no, Mother, I can assure you that.
0 1972-04-26, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It does permeate, but. To be exact, we can say that it permeates with Difficulty, but it does permeate. Thats what causes the impression that life is awful. Personally, I feel that life is downright ridiculousgrotesque. Grotesque.
(silence)
0 1972-05-17, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Afterwards I had great Difficulty coming out of that sleep. I had to exert a great effort to come out of it.
But why did you want to come out of it!
0 1972-05-20, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother plunges in, has great Difficulty surfacing, then plunges in again)
***
0 1972-06-28, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These are like two different ways of being in relationship with the Divineboth are relationships with the Divine: one is the old way and the other the new way. Formerly, you see, whenever I had a Difficulty, I would immediately curl up in my relationship with the Divine, and it would go away. But now its no longer the same. The relationship with the Divine is itself on a different footing.
So really (Mother gestures to indicate that she does not know).
0 1972-07-22, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ohh! But, you know, I have such Difficulty speaking.
Yes, Mother, I know, and I hate to draw you into this.
0 1972-08-05, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let me give you an example: I see almost (its an almost which sometimes is beyond almost, you understand: the extreme limit of almost) almost as well with my eyes closed as with my eyes open. See, really SEE (Mother touches her physical eyes). When I have Difficulty writing, for example, instead of peering and straining, I shut my eyes. And then I see.
And the same for everything, for all the senses. To swallow food, if I try to swallow in the usual way, I literally choke, but when I am in a certain state I find Ive swallowed everything, and I didnt even notice it! And everything is like that.
0 1973-01-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My consolation was that I thought I was doing this for everybody; that once I had done it, it would be done but evidently a lot of people are in the same Difficulty.
Yes, but when you have finished, itll be finished for them too.
0 1973-03-26, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Cohesion! But thats because people are accustomed to using the mind to organize things, thats all they know: organization as devised by the mind. While we here are trying to change that pattern. We seek a change of government but the new government isnt very well-known yet, thats the Difficulty.
Maybe I want to go too fast.
02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Agni feared and tried to escape from the burden of his responsibility. He wrapped himself in a thick and vast cloak and hid in the depths of far waters. That is the parable way of describing the Difficulty, the apparent impossibility of the undertaking Agni has to shoulder. Curiously however he has taken shelter just in the spot which seemed safest to him, from where begins his work, whose nature and substance he has to transform, that is to say, the nether regions of inconscience which is to be raised and transfigured into the solar region of the supra-consciousness.
One interesting point in the story is the choice of the gods who formed the search party. They were Mitra, Varuna and Yama. Varuna is the god of the vast consciousness (Brihat), the wide universal, the Infinite. His eye naturally penetrates everywhere and nothing can escape his notice. Mitra is harmony and rhythm of the infinity. Every individual element he embraces and he holds them all together in loving unionhis is the friendly tie of comradeship with all. Finally Yama is the master of the lower regions, the underworld of physical and material consciousness, where precisely Agni has taken refuge. Agni is within the jurisdiction of this trinity and it devolves upon them to tackle the truant god.
02.11 - New World-Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The relation between India and Britain is peculiar and has an especial significance. It is not enough to say that Britain is the imperialist overlord and India the subject underling. The two stand for two world-forces and their relation is symbolic. The Difficulty that will be solved between them will be a world- Difficulty solved; what they achieve in common will be a world-achievement. India means nations in bondage aspiring to be free, peoples living in conditions of want and weakness and internecine quarrel, still struggling towards a harmonious and prosperous organised life; she is the cry of the down-trodden demanding her share of earth's air and lightlife-room. Britain represents the other side, the free people, organised, strong and successful. Neither America nor Russia fills this role. America is young; she has a wonderful grasp over life's externals; none can compare or compete with her in the ordering and marshalling of an efficient pattern of life, but what escapes her is the more abiding and deeper truth of life and living. Russia started to create on totally new foundations, indeed the outer aspect here has changed very much. But the forces that ruled Russia's past do not seem to have changed to the same extent. In spite of the rise of the proletariate, in spite of all local autonomies, it is doubtful if the true breath of freedom is blowing over the country, if the country is creating out of a deeper soul-vision. Life movement in either of these two countries seems to have a rigid mould; that is because they seek to build or reform, that is to say, fabricate life, in other words, they impose upon life a pattern conceived by notions and prejudgments, even perhaps idio-syncracies. The British are more amenable to change, precisely because they do not force a change and do not know they are changing. The British Empire is more loosely formed, its units have more freedom than is the case with other Empires built upon the pattern of the extremely centralised Roman Empire. Truly it has the spirit of a commonwealth. The spirit of decentralisation and federation that is increasing today and has seized even old-world Empires the Dutch, the French, the Russianhas come largely from the British example. Therefore, the unravelling of the Britain and India tangle would mean the solution of a world-problem. These two countries have been put together precisely because the solution is possible here and an ideal solution for all others to profit by.
The British people do not move by ideals and idealism, as the French do, for example. The French rise naturally in revolt and rebellion and revolution for the sake of an idea the motto of the Great Revolution was "Liberty or Death". Without an upsetting they cannot bring about a change; for the social moulds are rigid and more presistent. The AngloSaxons, on the contrary, go by an unfailing instinct, as it were, gradually and slowly, but surely and inevitablyfrom precedent to precedent", as they themselves say. A life-intuition guides them: the inherent merit of an ideal has not such a great value in their eye, but if the ideal means a practical utility, a thing demanded by time and circumstances, a clear issue out of a dead impasse, well, they hesitate no longer and go about it in right earnest as practical men of affairs.
03.04 - The Body Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The human frame is the abode of the gods; it is a temple of God, as we all know. But the most significant thing about it is that the gods alone do not dwell there: all being, all creatures crowd there, even the ungodly and the undivine. The Pashu (the animal), the Pishacha (the demon), the Asura (the Titan), and the Deva (the god), all find comfortable lodging in itthere are many chambers indeed in this mansion of the Lord. Man was made after the image of God and yet Lucifer had access into that tabernacle and all his entire host with him. This duality of the divine and the undivine, the characteristic mark of human nature as it is, presents a field and a labour through which man's progress has to be worked out. The soul, the divine flame, has, been placed in Ignorance, that is to say, what is apparent Ignorance, the frame of Matter, just because this Matter in Ignorance is to be smelted, purified, given its original and intrinsic substance, shape and character. The human person in its actual form is not obviously something absolutely perfect and divine. The type, the norm it represents is divine, but it has been overlaid with all obscure and base elementsit has to be washed and cleaned thoroughly, smelted and reconditioned. The dark ungodly elements mar and vitiate; they must be removed on the one hand, but on the other, they point out and test the salvaging work that has to be done and is being done. Man is always at the crossroads. This is his especial Difficulty and this is also his unique opportunity. His consciousness has a double valency, in contradistinction to the animal's which is, it can be said, monovalent, in that it is amoral, has not the sense of divided loyalty and hence the merit of choice. The movements of the animal follow a fixed stereotyped pattern; it has not got to deviate from the beaten track of its instincts. But man with his sense of the moral, of the good, of the progressive is at every step of his life faced with a dilemma, has to pause at a parting of the ways, always looks before and after and is puzzled at a cas de conscience. That, we have said, has been made for him the condition of growth, of a conscious and willed change with an ever-increasing tempo towards perfect perfection. That furnishes the occasion and circumstance by which he rises to divinity itself, becomes the Divine. He becomes the Divine thus not merely in the own home of the Divine, but on all the levels of the manifestation: all the planes of consciousness with all the hierarchy of beingspowers and personalitiesfind a new play of harmony, a supreme and global fulfilment in the transfigured human vehicle. The frame itself that encases the human consciousness acts as a living condenser: the very contour in its definiteness seems to exert a pressure towards an ever larger and higher synthesis, it may be compared to a kind of field office (Einsteinian, for example) that controls, regulates, moves and configurates all elements within its range. The human frame even as a frame possesses a magic virtue.
Vaishnavism sees the Divine as a human person, the human person par excellence. Krishna's body is a radiant form of consciousness (cinmaya), no doubt, but it is as definite, determinate, and concrete as the physical body, it is the physical itself but in its true substance. And its exquisiteness consists in its being human in form. The Vedantin's Maya does not touch it, it is beyond the illusory consciousness. For they say Goloka stands above Brahmaloka.
03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Accept the Difficulty and godlike toil,
335
03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
For fanaticism may be defined as duty running away with itself; but duty proper, the genuine form of it is something self-poised, its natural and inherent tendency being rather to give than to demand, it is less easily provoked to aggression and battle. Even so, it may be claimed on behalf of Right that the right hand of Right is not likely to do harm, for itis then another name for liberty, it means the freedom to live one's life unhampered without infringing on an equal facility for others to do the same. But the whole Difficulty comes in precisely with regard to the frontier of each other's sphere of rights. It is easy to declare the principle, but to carry it out in life and action is a different matter. The line of demarcation between one's own rights and the rights of another is always indeterminate and indefinable. In establishing and maintaining one's rights there is always the possibility, even the certainty of "frontier incidents", of encroaching upon other's rights. Liberty, alone and by itself, is not a safe guidetherefore so much stress is being laid nowadays upon discipline and obedience in modern ideologies.
But perhaps the real truth of the matter here is that all these termsliberty or right or even dutyare mental conceptions. They are indeed ideals, that is to say, made of the stuff of ideas and do not always coincide with the deeper realities of life and hence are not able to produce the perfect and durable harmony among warring members whether in the individual or in the collective life.
--
The real truth is that a group has the soul the spiritual being that is put into it. How can that be done? It is done by the individual, in and through the individual. Not a single individual perhaps, but a few, a select body, a small minority who by their conscious will and illumined endeavour form the strong nucleus that builds up automatically and inevitably the larger organisation instinct with its spirit and dharma. In fact all collective organisations are made in the same way. The form that a society takes is given to it by the ideology of one man or of a few men. All depends upon the truth and reality, the depth and fecundity of the inspiration and vision, whether it will last a day or be the eternal law of life, whether it will be a curse for mankind or work for its supreme good. Naturally, the higher the aim, the more radical the remedy envisaged, the greater the Difficulty that has to be surmounted. An aggregate always tends to live and move on a lower level of consciousness than the individual's. It is easy to organise a society on forces and passions that belong to the lower nature of manalthough it can be questioned whether such a society will last very long or conduce to the good or happiness of man.
On the other hand, although difficult, it may not prove impossible to cast the nature, character and reactions of the aggregate into the mould prepared out of spiritual realities by those who have realised and lived them. Some theocratic social organisations, at least for a time, during the period of their apogee illustrate the feasibility of such a consummation. Only, in the present age, when all foundations seem to be shaking, when all principles on which we stood till now are crumbling down, when even fundamentalsthose that were considered as suchcan no more give assurance, well, in such a revolutionary age, one has perforce to be radical and revolutionary to the extreme: we have to go deep down and beyond, beyond the shifting sands of more or less surface realities to the un-shaking bed-rock, the rock of ages.
03.06 - The Pact and its Sanction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Difficulty comes from the middle region, from the second element of the tripartite sanction. It is the "middle class", not quite in the economic but in the ideological sense. In other words, in every society there are people who have risen or are attempting to rise above the mass level. They look around and above: they are not satisfied with their lot, they aspire towards higher and wider ideals. They are the material out of which what we call reformers and revolutionaries are made. In the general mass who are more or less contented, they are the discontented: they form the leaven of cells that move and stir and work for change. Now all depends on what kind of leaven it is, what is the quality of the force that is called up, the nature of the ideal or idea that is invoked. For it can be either way, for good or for evil. There are elements that belong to the light, and there are elements that belong to darkness. There are mixtures in men no doubt, but on the whole there are these two types: one helps humanity's progress, the other retards and sometimes blocks completely. If the mass of mankind is tamasinertia there is a kind of rajasdynamism that drives towards greater tamas, as the Upanishad says, towards disintegration, under the garb of reformation it brings about disruption.
So we have to see the type of cells that grow and become consciously active in the body politic. It is sattwalight that brings in knowledge and harmony. And the movement for reformation and growth among the mass has to be inspired by that quality or mode of consciousness. A sound and healthy structure can be raised effectively upon that basis alone. The man in the mass, as I have said and as is well known, is a good-natured malleable material, but it is ignorant and inert: it can easily be worked upon by any kind of strong force, worked up to any kind of mischief. Shakespeare has made us very graphically familiar with the reaction of a mob and that remains true even today. Even if right direction is there at the top, at the higher governmental level, reflecting the mind of the true intelligentsia, a well-meaning plan is doomed to failure if it does not touch and move the middle strata that are the real executive agents.
The government in modern times represents indeed the executive power of the nation, itself is composed of the three social elements we speak of. First of all, the high or top-ranking officials, as they are called, who can think out and initiate a policy; next, the intermediate services who form the dynamic limb of the organism; lastly, there is the rung of the subordinate services. Here too the Difficulty is with the intermediate grade. It is there that the "disaffected" are born and breddisaffected not because of grievances or injustices done, but because of the urge of ideals and purposes, ideas and designs. The subordinate manpostman, railwayman, clerk, school master, daily labourerhas no ambitions, is not tortured by nostalgic notions: left to themselves, these people accommodate themselves to circumstances and take things as they come without worrying too much. But the point is that they are never left to themselves. It is told to themnot without reason, though that they do not live, they vegetate: they are dead, otherwise they would be living and kicking. The rousing of the masses has always been the sacred mission of all reformers and saviours of humanity. For they form the bulk of humanity and its future is bound up with their destiny.
The whole Difficulty centres upon the question: who rouses whom, and what is the principle that is meant to rouse. There is a slogan that incited the Red Terror of the French Revolution; there is the other one which inspired the Nazis; there is still another one rampant that had the seal and sanction of Stalin and his politburo. These have spread their dark wings and covered the saviour light. On the other hand, the voice of the Vedic Rishi that hymned the community of faith and speech and act, the kindly light that Buddha carried to suffering humanity, the love and sacrifice of Christ showing and embleming the way of redemption, the saints and sages in our own epoch who have visioned the ideal of human unity in a divine humanity, even secular leaders who labour for "one world", "a brave new world"all point to the other line of growth and development that man can follow and must and shall follow. The choice has to be made and the right direction given. In India today, there are these two voices put against each other and clear in their call: one asks for unity and harmony, wideness and truth, the other its contrary working for separativeness, disintegration, narrowness, and make-believe and falsehood. One must have the courage and the sagacity to fix one's loyalty and adhesion.
A true covenant there can be only between parties that work for the light, are inspired by the same divine purpose. Otherwise if there is a fundamental difference in the motive, in the soul-impulse, then it is no longer a pact between comrades, but a patchwork of irreconcilable elements. I have spoken of the threefold sanction of the covenant. The sanction from the top initiates, plans and supports, the sanction from the bottom establishes and furnishes the field, but it is the sanction from the mid-region that inspires, executes, makes a living reality of what is no more than an idea, a possibility. On one side are the Elders, the seasoned statesmen, the wise ones; on the other, the general body of mankind waiting to be moved and guided; in between is the army of young enthusiasts, enlightened or illumined (not necessarily young in age) who form the pra, the vital sheath of the body politic. Allby far the largest part of itdepends upon the dreams that the Prana has been initiated and trained to dream.
03.07 - The Sunlit Path, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This may not always mean that all is easy and Difficulty is simply not, once the psychic is there. It becomes so when the psychic is there fully in front; even otherwise when the inner being is in the background, still sensed and, on the whole, obeyed, although there are battles, hard battles to be fought and won, then even a little of this Consciousness saves from a great fear. For, then, in all circumstances, you will have found a secret joy and cheer and strength that buoy you up and carry you through.
Like the individual, nations too have their sunlit path and the path of the doldrum as well. So long as a nation keeps to the truth of its inner being, follows its natural line of development, remains faithful to its secret godhead, it will have chosen that good part which will bring it divine blessings and fulfilment. But sometimes a nation has the stupidity to deny its self, to run after an ignis fatuus, a mymrga, then grief and sorrow and frustration lie ahead. We are afraid India did take such a wrong step when she refused to see the great purpose behind the present war and tried to avoid contri buting her mite to the evolutionary Force at work. On the other hand Britain in a moment of supreme crisis, that meant literally life or death, not only to herself or to other nations, but to humanity itself, had the good fortune to be led by the right Inspiration, the whole nation rose as one man and swore allegiance to the cause of humanity and the gods. That was how she was saved and that was how she acquired a new merit and a fresh lease of life. Unlike Britain, France bowed down and accepted what should not have been accepted and cut herself adrift from her inner life and truth, the result was five years of hell. Fortunately, the hell in the end proved to be a purgatory, but what a purgatory! For there were souls who were willing to pay the price and did pay it to the full cash and nett. So France has been given the chance again to turn round and take up the thread of her life where it snapped.
03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Arjuna tided over the crisis as he could avail himself of the knowledge of the way out and the necessary help that was given by the Divine Guide. Hamlet bears the full crash of doom upon his head and makes others also share its consequences with him. At one point, however, he seemed to make just a move towards the right solution of the Difficulty. He finds that the avoidance of the Evil by self-destructionwhich is a common and natural temptation in like situationsis no solution: it may lead you into a still greater evil. One has to face the evil, stand and fight it. Once this is decided, the right course for the hero (the Aryan fighter, as the Gitawould say) would be to live
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
--- Overview of noun difficulty
The noun difficulty has 4 senses (first 4 from tagged texts)
1. (18) trouble, difficulty ::: (an effort that is inconvenient; "I went to a lot of trouble"; "he won without any trouble"; "had difficulty walking"; "finished the test only with great difficulty")
2. (13) difficulty ::: (a factor causing trouble in achieving a positive result or tending to produce a negative result; "serious difficulties were encountered in obtaining a pure reagent")
3. (11) difficulty ::: (a condition or state of affairs almost beyond one's ability to deal with and requiring great effort to bear or overcome; "grappling with financial difficulties")
4. (6) difficulty, difficultness ::: (the quality of being difficult; "they agreed about the difficulty of the climb")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun difficulty
4 senses of difficulty
Sense 1
trouble, difficulty
=> effort, elbow grease, exertion, travail, sweat
=> labor, labour, toil
=> work
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
difficulty
=> cognitive factor
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
difficulty
=> condition, status
=> state
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
difficulty, difficultness
=> quality
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun difficulty
4 senses of difficulty
Sense 1
trouble, difficulty
=> the devil
=> tsuris
Sense 2
difficulty
=> trouble, problem
=> facer
=> killer
=> kink
=> pisser
=> pitfall, booby trap
=> snorter
=> hindrance, hinderance, deterrent, impediment, balk, baulk, check, handicap
=> wrinkle
Sense 3
difficulty
=> bitch
=> predicament, quandary, plight
=> rattrap
=> pinch
=> fix, hole, jam, mess, muddle, pickle, kettle of fish
=> hard time, rough sledding
=> stress, strain
=> mire
=> problem, job
=> situation
=> urinary hesitancy
=> wall
Sense 4
difficulty, difficultness
=> effortfulness
=> asperity, grimness, hardship, rigor, rigour, severity, severeness, rigorousness, rigourousness
=> hardness, ruggedness
=> formidability, toughness
=> burdensomeness, heaviness, onerousness, oppressiveness
=> subtlety, niceness
=> troublesomeness, inconvenience, worriment
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun difficulty
4 senses of difficulty
Sense 1
trouble, difficulty
=> effort, elbow grease, exertion, travail, sweat
Sense 2
difficulty
=> cognitive factor
Sense 3
difficulty
=> condition, status
Sense 4
difficulty, difficultness
=> quality
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun difficulty
4 senses of difficulty
Sense 1
trouble, difficulty
-> effort, elbow grease, exertion, travail, sweat
=> struggle
=> trouble, difficulty
=> least effort, least resistance
=> strain, straining
=> exercise, exercising, physical exercise, physical exertion, workout
=> pull
=> application, diligence
=> overkill
=> supererogation
=> overexertion
=> friction, detrition, rubbing
Sense 2
difficulty
-> cognitive factor
=> divine guidance, inspiration
=> difficulty
=> determinant, determiner, determinative, determining factor, causal factor
Sense 3
difficulty
-> condition, status
=> diversity
=> anchorage
=> health
=> mode
=> niche, ecological niche
=> noise conditions
=> participation, involvement
=> prepossession
=> regularization, regularisation
=> saturation
=> silence
=> situation, position
=> ski conditions
=> nomination
=> standardization, standardisation
=> stigmatism
=> astigmatism, astigmia
=> way
=> circumstance
=> homelessness
=> reinstatement
=> place
=> celibacy
=> virginity
=> innocence
=> purity, pureness, sinlessness, innocence, whiteness
=> guilt, guiltiness
=> encapsulation
=> polarization, polarisation
=> physical condition, physiological state, physiological condition
=> hyalinization, hyalinisation
=> vacuolization, vacuolisation, vacuolation
=> protuberance
=> curvature
=> psychological state, psychological condition, mental state, mental condition
=> difficulty
=> improvement, melioration
=> decline, declination
=> ennoblement
=> dominance, ascendance, ascendence, ascendancy, ascendency, control
=> comfort, comfortableness
=> discomfort, uncomfortableness
=> need, demand
=> fullness
=> emptiness
=> nakedness, nudity, nudeness
=> hairlessness, depilation
=> dishabille, deshabille
=> hopefulness
=> despair, desperation
=> purity, pureness
=> impurity, impureness
=> financial condition
=> economic condition
=> sanitary condition
=> tilth
=> orderliness, order
=> disorderliness, disorder
=> normality, normalcy
=> lactosuria
=> environmental condition
=> climate, mood
=> atmosphere, ambiance, ambience
=> unsusceptibility, immunity
=> immunity, resistance
=> subservience
=> susceptibility, susceptibleness
=> wetness
=> dryness, waterlessness, xerotes
=> safety
=> danger
=> tension, tensity, tenseness, tautness
=> atonicity, atony, atonia, amyotonia
=> laxness, laxity
=> repair
=> soundness
=> mutism, muteness
=> eye condition
=> unsoundness
=> impropriety
=> iniquity, wickedness, darkness, dark
=> light, illumination
=> malady
=> serration
=> absolution
=> automation
=> brutalization, brutalisation
=> condemnation
=> deification
=> diversification
=> exoneration
=> facilitation
=> frizz
=> fruition
=> hospitalization
=> identification
=> impaction
=> ionization, ionisation
=> irradiation
=> leakiness
=> lubrication
=> mechanization, mechanisation
=> motivation
=> mummification
=> preservation
=> prognathism
=> rustication
=> rustiness
=> scandalization, scandalisation
=> submission
=> urbanization, urbanisation
Sense 4
difficulty, difficultness
-> quality
=> appearance, visual aspect
=> attraction, attractiveness
=> clearness, clarity, uncloudedness
=> opacity, opaqueness
=> divisibility
=> ease, easiness, simplicity, simpleness
=> difficulty, difficultness
=> combustibility, combustibleness, burnability
=> suitability, suitableness
=> arability
=> impressiveness
=> navigability
=> neediness
=> painfulness, distressingness
=> piquancy, piquance, piquantness
=> publicity
=> spinnability
=> unsuitability, unsuitableness, ineptness
=> protectiveness
=> nature
=> humanness, humanity, manhood
=> air, aura, atmosphere
=> excellence
=> ultimate
=> characteristic
=> salability, salableness
=> changeableness, changeability
=> changelessness, unchangeability, unchangeableness, unchangingness
=> sameness
=> difference
=> certainty, sure thing, foregone conclusion
=> probability
=> uncertainty, uncertainness, precariousness
=> factuality, factualness
=> counterfactuality
=> materiality, physicalness, corporeality, corporality
=> immateriality, incorporeality
=> particularity, specialness
=> generality
=> simplicity, simpleness
=> complexity, complexness
=> regularity
=> irregularity, unregularity
=> mobility
=> immobility
=> pleasantness, sweetness
=> unpleasantness
=> credibility, credibleness, believability
=> incredibility, incredibleness
=> logicality, logicalness
=> illogicality, illogicalness, illogic, inconsequence
=> naturalness
=> unnaturalness
=> virtu, vertu
=> wholesomeness
=> unwholesomeness, morbidness, morbidity
=> satisfactoriness
=> unsatisfactoriness
=> ordinariness, mundaneness, mundanity
=> extraordinariness
=> ethnicity
=> foreignness, strangeness, curiousness
=> nativeness
=> originality
=> unoriginality
=> correctness, rightness
=> incorrectness, wrongness
=> accuracy, truth
=> accuracy
=> inaccuracy
=> distinction
=> popularity
=> unpopularity
=> lawfulness
=> unlawfulness
=> elegance
=> elegance
=> inelegance
=> urbanity
=> comprehensibility, understandability
=> expressiveness
=> incomprehensibility
=> humaneness
=> inhumaneness, inhumanity
=> morality
=> immorality
=> amorality
=> divinity
=> holiness, sanctity, sanctitude
=> ideality
=> unholiness
=> parental quality
=> fidelity, faithfulness
=> infidelity, unfaithfulness
=> sophistication, worldliness, mundaneness, mundanity
=> naivete, naivety, naiveness
=> hardness
=> penetrability, perviousness
=> impenetrability, imperviousness
=> soapiness
=> fibrosity, fibrousness
=> directivity, directiveness
=> extremeness
=> stuffiness, closeness
=> sufficiency, adequacy
=> worth
=> worthlessness, ineptitude
=> good, goodness
=> bad, badness
=> fruitfulness, fecundity
=> fruitlessness, aridity, barrenness
=> utility, usefulness
=> inutility, uselessness, unusefulness
=> asset, plus
=> constructiveness
=> destructiveness
=> positivity, positiveness, positivism
=> negativity, negativeness, negativism
=> occidentalism
=> orientalism
=> power, powerfulness
=> ability
=> powerlessness, impotence, impotency
=> inability, unfitness
=> romanticism, romance
=> domesticity
=> infiniteness, infinitude, unboundedness, boundlessness, limitlessness
=> finiteness, finitude, boundedness
=> quantifiability, measurability
=> solubility
=> insolubility
=> stuff
=> hot stuff, voluptuousness
=> humor, humour
=> pathos, poignancy
=> tone
=> brachycephaly, brachycephalism
=> dolichocephaly, dolichocephalism
=> relativity
=> responsiveness
=> unresponsiveness, deadness
=> subjectivism
=> snootiness
=> ulteriority
=> memorability
=> woodiness, woodsiness
=> waxiness
--- Grep of noun difficulty
difficulty
Wikipedia - Adjustment disorder -- Psychiatric disorder involving emotional difficulty in response to a stressor
Wikipedia - Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder -- Neurodevelopmental disorder marked by difficulty focusing, or excessive activity and impulsive behavior
Wikipedia - Chronic granulomatous disease -- Diverse group of hereditary diseases in which certain cells of the immune system have difficulty forming the reactive oxygen compounds used to kill certain ingested pathogens.
Wikipedia - Computational complexity theory -- Study of inherent difficulty of computational problems
Wikipedia - Degree of difficulty -- measure of difficulty in sport
Wikipedia - Difficulty level
Wikipedia - Dynamic game difficulty balancing
Wikipedia - Dyscalculia -- Difficulty in learning or comprehending arithmetic
Wikipedia - Emotional dysregulation -- Difficulty controlling and moderating one's emotional reactions
Wikipedia - Explanatory gap -- Difficulty that physicalist theories have in explaining how physical properties give rise to the way things feel when they are experienced
Wikipedia - Grade (climbing) -- Degree of difficulty of a climbing route
Wikipedia - Hard-easy effect -- A cognitive bias relating to mis-estimating success based on perceived difficulty
Wikipedia - Motor speech disorders -- Speech disorders involving difficulty articulating phonemes
Wikipedia - Oropharyngeal dysphagia -- Difficulty controlling the mouth or throat for swallowing
Wikipedia - Reach Every Reader -- A web based project aims to screen children with reading difficulty and develop personalized intervention
Wikipedia - Schwarz lantern -- Pathological example devised by Hermann Schwarz to demonstrate the difficulty of defining smooth surface area
Wikipedia - Sexual dysfunction -- Difficulty experienced by humans during any stage of normal sexual activity
Wikipedia - Shortness of breath -- Feeling of difficulty breathing
Wikipedia - The Difficulty of Being Good -- Book on Dharma, Indian concept of righteousness
Wikipedia - Unring the bell -- Analogy in law, used to suggest the difficulty of forgetting information once it is known
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34448134-the-fate-of-difficulty-in-the-poetry-of-our-time
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37832801-the-fate-of-difficulty-in-the-poetry-of-our-time
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6971900.The_Difficulty_of_Being_Good
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6971900-the-difficulty-of-being-good
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80273.The_Difficulty_of_Being
selforum - difficulty in fusing predictable
selforum - sri aurobindos books present difficulty
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fr/FakeDifficulty
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/DynamicDifficulty
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/FakeDifficulty
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DifficultyByAcceleration
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DifficultyByRegion
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DifficultyLevels
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DifficultySpike
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DynamicDifficulty
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MultiplayerDifficultySpike
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NonIndicativeDifficulty
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SchizophrenicDifficulty
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SequelDifficultySpike
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StoryDifficultySetting
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SurpriseDifficulty
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnlockableDifficultyLevels
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VideoGameDifficultyTropes
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/FakeDifficulty
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Difficulty
Battletoads (1991 - 1991) - The Battletoads gained fame in their 1991 Nintendo game. The game featured pretty decent graphics for the time, and an insane difficulty level that made you want throw the controller at the TV. The cartoon, which came out shortly after the game, serves as a prequel and looks into how the toads becam...
Pippi Longstocking (1997 - 1999) - Pippi is a nine-year-old girl, who lives with a complete lack of adult supervision. She is very unconventional, assertive, rich and extraordinarily strong, being able to lift her horse one-handed without difficulty. She frequently mocks and dupes the adults she does encounter, an attitude likely to...
Battletoads (1991 - 1991) - The Battletoads gained fame in their 1991 NES game. The game featured pretty decent graphics for the time, and an insane difficulty level that made you want throw the controller at the TV. The cartoon, which came out shortly after the game, serves as a prequel and looks into how the toads became who...
The Four Diamonds(1995) - TV Movie Based on the true story of Chris Mallard who died in 1972 from cancer. The story around which the film revolves was written by him while he was ill. Young Christopher Millard fantasizes about being a squire of the Round Table and studies the stars. But when his difficulty breathing turns ou...
Waiting to Exhale(1995) - Four African American women living in Phoenix are having poor luck with men and life. Savannah Jackson (Whitney Houston) is a successful television producer who's lover is married. Bernadine Harris (Angela Bassett) is wealthy and is suffering the difficulty of going through a divorce. Gloria Johnso...
Isn't It Romantic?(2019) - Architect Natalie develops a strong hatred for romantic comedies at an early age, which is exacerbated by her low self-esteem and difficulty in finding love. Her assistant Whitney, a fan of romantic comedies, believes their co-worker Josh is in love with Natalie, but Natalie dismisses the notion bec...
White God (2014) ::: 6.9/10 -- Fehr isten (original title) -- White God Poster -- Thirteen-year-old Lili fights to protect her dog Hagen. She is devastated when her father eventually sets Hagen free on the streets. Still innocently believing love can conquer any difficulty, Lili sets out to find her dog and save him. Director: Kornl Mundrucz
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Akuma no Riddle -- -- Diomedéa -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action School Shoujo Ai -- Akuma no Riddle Akuma no Riddle -- Tokaku Azuma has just transferred to the elite Myoujou Academy, a private girls' boarding school. But there's a catch: she, along with 11 of her fellow students in Class Black, is an assassin taking part in the challenge to kill their sweet-natured classmate, Haru Ichinose. Whoever succeeds will be granted their deepest desire, no matter the difficulty or cost. However, each assassin only gets one chance; if they fail to kill her, they will be expelled. -- -- Despite the extraordinary reward, Tokaku decides to take a different course of action. Though Haru is her target, the young assassin soon finds herself drawn to the very girl she is supposed to kill. With the entire class out for Haru, Tokaku refuses to let her friend die, vowing to protect her from a growing bloodlust. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- TV - Apr 4, 2014 -- 228,817 6.63
Bakuon!! -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Seinen Slice of Life -- Bakuon!! Bakuon!! -- Every day Hane Sakura makes the arduous trip to school, cycling up a large hill on her bicycle. After encountering the motorcycle enthusiast Onsa Amano one morning, she is introduced to the motorcycle club, led by the ever-silent Raimu Kawasaki. New to motorcycles, Sakura experiences firsthand the difficulty of learning to ride again. However, through this, she hopes to once again recreate her first biking experience, which was filled with both horror and exhilaration. -- -- Alongside Baita, the talking motorcycle; Rin Suzunoki, a Suzuki model enthusiast; Hijiri Minowa, a wealthy girl who dreams of being a thug; and professional racer Chisame Nakano, Sakura strives toward getting her bike license and experiencing the joys and hardships of motorcycles. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 53,371 6.48
Binzume Yousei -- -- Xebec -- 13 eps -- Original -- Comedy Fantasy Magic Slice of Life -- Binzume Yousei Binzume Yousei -- Set in the year 2004, Binzume Yousei is a slice-of-life fairy tale that revolves around four fairies, each represented by four unique colors as seen with their magical bottle jars. These fairies are the extremely peppy Kururu, the reserved and feminine Chiriri, the samurai-loving tomboy Sarara, and the quiet yet quirky Hororo. -- -- Fascinated by the human world, these fairies arrived from the fairy world in hopes of participating in the annual traditions and overall way of human life. However, they have a very limited understanding of the human world. Luckily, they are befriended and guided by two humans—"Sensei-san," a university student who they live with, and a first-grade girl they call "Tama-chan," who is sometimes as naive as the fairies themselves. -- -- Though these bottle fairies have strange ideas and sometimes have difficulty understanding this new world, they try to make the most of the human experience in their own cute little ways. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA -- TV - Oct 3, 2003 -- 16,654 6.44
Chainsaw Maid -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Comedy Horror Supernatural Thriller -- Chainsaw Maid Chainsaw Maid -- A family and their maid are going about their daily lives when, unexpectedly, a woman bursts into their home shouting, "They're coming!" She then vomits out her organs, turns into a zombie, and attacks the master of the house. The maid saves her employer, but he and his daughter are stunned and have difficulty processing the events. As more and more zombies invade the residence, the maid decides it is her duty to defend the house from unwanted guests—using a chainsaw! -- -- ONA - Dec 8, 2007 -- 5,173 4.97
Fragtime -- -- Tear Studio -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Slice of Life Romance School Shoujo Ai -- Fragtime Fragtime -- Misuzu Moritani is an introvert who has always had difficulty interacting with her classmates, quickly becoming flustered whenever someone tries to talk to her. Sometimes, she will use her ability to stop time for three minutes to escape troublesome social situations. -- -- One day, as Misuzu watches the suspended environment around her, she observes that her classmate, Haruka Murakami, is somehow able to move despite her temporal influence. From that moment on, Misuzu experiences new wonders as she explores more of the world she has long avoided; no matter where time may take her, Misuzu can count on Haruka to always be at her side. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- Movie - Nov 22, 2019 -- 25,209 6.52
Hanyou no Yashahime: Sengoku Otogizoushi - Ni no Shou -- -- - -- ? eps -- Original -- Action Adventure Comedy Historical Demons Supernatural Magic Fantasy -- Hanyou no Yashahime: Sengoku Otogizoushi - Ni no Shou Hanyou no Yashahime: Sengoku Otogizoushi - Ni no Shou -- Second season of Hanyou no Yashahime: Sengoku Otogizoushi. -- TV - ??? ??, ???? -- 9,028 N/A -- -- Toshokan Sensou: Koi no Shougai -- -- Production I.G -- 1 ep -- Novel -- Action Military Comedy Drama Romance -- Toshokan Sensou: Koi no Shougai Toshokan Sensou: Koi no Shougai -- An unaired episode included in the Toshokan Sensou DVD volume 3, and later on Blue-ray Box (June 8, 2012) that celebrates the airing of Toshokan Sensou Movie. -- -- Komaki was arrested for the violation of human rights of his girl friend Marie, who had difficulty in hearing. He was kept in custody and tortured by the Media Improvement Forces. The members of the Task Forces made a desperate effort to rescue him. -- Special - Oct 1, 2008 -- 9,024 7.38
High☆Speed!: Free! Starting Days -- -- Kyoto Animation -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Comedy Drama School Slice of Life Sports -- High☆Speed!: Free! Starting Days High☆Speed!: Free! Starting Days -- High☆Speed!: Free! Starting Days plunges into the past of the Iwatobi Swim Club members alongside their fellow swimmers and competitors. -- -- Haruka Nanase and Makoto Tachibana have started middle school and must adjust to the changes that come along with growing up. While Makoto fits in with his classmates and remains positive about swimming, Haruka struggles to befriend others or join his school's swim club, as his previous issues with swimming trouble him. Distancing himself from his lively classmates and the swimming club, he has difficulty deciding which club to join instead. The rest of his classmates, including Makoto, are also hesitant as to which clubs to participate in. After an argument leads them to join the swimming club anyway, the boys strive to hone their skills, harmonize their swimming styles, and refine their conflicting feelings toward swimming and each other. -- -- As determination and talent run high, witness Haruka and Makoto—along with their classmates—discover themselves and improve their talents during their starting days. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Movie - Dec 5, 2015 -- 70,343 7.87
High☆Speed!: Free! Starting Days -- -- Kyoto Animation -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Comedy Drama School Slice of Life Sports -- High☆Speed!: Free! Starting Days High☆Speed!: Free! Starting Days -- High☆Speed!: Free! Starting Days plunges into the past of the Iwatobi Swim Club members alongside their fellow swimmers and competitors. -- -- Haruka Nanase and Makoto Tachibana have started middle school and must adjust to the changes that come along with growing up. While Makoto fits in with his classmates and remains positive about swimming, Haruka struggles to befriend others or join his school's swim club, as his previous issues with swimming trouble him. Distancing himself from his lively classmates and the swimming club, he has difficulty deciding which club to join instead. The rest of his classmates, including Makoto, are also hesitant as to which clubs to participate in. After an argument leads them to join the swimming club anyway, the boys strive to hone their skills, harmonize their swimming styles, and refine their conflicting feelings toward swimming and each other. -- -- As determination and talent run high, witness Haruka and Makoto—along with their classmates—discover themselves and improve their talents during their starting days. -- -- Movie - Dec 5, 2015 -- 70,343 7.87
Hitsugi no Chaika -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Comedy Romance Fantasy -- Hitsugi no Chaika Hitsugi no Chaika -- For 500 years, the Taboo Emperor, Arthur Gaz, ruled the Gaz Empire with an iron fist and conducted inhumane experiments on his own people. But his reign came to an end five years ago, when mighty warriors—later known as the Eight Heroes—defeated him in a battle for the capital. His death ended the 300-yearlong war between the Gaz Empire and the alliance of six nations. -- -- In the present day, Tooru Acura is a former saboteur from the war who has difficulty settling into the peaceful world, as he cannot find a job where he can put his fighting skills to use. An opportunity appears before him, however, when he meets a white-haired Wizard named Chaika Trabant. With a coffin on her back, she is searching for the scattered remains of her father in order to give him a proper burial, and she hires Tooru and his adoptive sister Akari to help her. However, the six nations alliance, which have now formed the Council of Six Nations, dispatches Albéric Gillette and his men from the Kleeman Agency to pursue and apprehend the late Emperor Gaz's daughter—Chaika. -- -- With the shocking revelation of Chaika's identity, the Acura siblings must choose between helping her gather the remains of the tyrannical emperor and upholding the peace the continent strives to maintain. -- -- 317,823 7.27
Hitsugi no Chaika -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Comedy Romance Fantasy -- Hitsugi no Chaika Hitsugi no Chaika -- For 500 years, the Taboo Emperor, Arthur Gaz, ruled the Gaz Empire with an iron fist and conducted inhumane experiments on his own people. But his reign came to an end five years ago, when mighty warriors—later known as the Eight Heroes—defeated him in a battle for the capital. His death ended the 300-yearlong war between the Gaz Empire and the alliance of six nations. -- -- In the present day, Tooru Acura is a former saboteur from the war who has difficulty settling into the peaceful world, as he cannot find a job where he can put his fighting skills to use. An opportunity appears before him, however, when he meets a white-haired Wizard named Chaika Trabant. With a coffin on her back, she is searching for the scattered remains of her father in order to give him a proper burial, and she hires Tooru and his adoptive sister Akari to help her. However, the six nations alliance, which have now formed the Council of Six Nations, dispatches Albéric Gillette and his men from the Kleeman Agency to pursue and apprehend the late Emperor Gaz's daughter—Chaika. -- -- With the shocking revelation of Chaika's identity, the Acura siblings must choose between helping her gather the remains of the tyrannical emperor and upholding the peace the continent strives to maintain. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 317,823 7.27
Nihon Chinbotsu 2020 -- -- Science SARU -- 10 eps -- Novel -- Sci-Fi Drama -- Nihon Chinbotsu 2020 Nihon Chinbotsu 2020 -- The Mutou family leads a peaceful life: Kouichirou works at a construction site and his wife Mari is returning from an overseas trip. Their daughter Ayumu has just finished her track practice while their son Gou is playing video games at home. However, life as they know it is flipped upside down when a calamitous earthquake strikes the entire Japanese archipelago—obliterating the face of the country in an instant. -- -- With society crumbling around them and their nation gradually sinking into the ocean, the Mutou family must band together to survive the catastrophe. Treading the near-apocalyptic setting, they struggle not only to stay alive, but also to learn the difficulty of coping with loss. -- -- ONA - Jul 9, 2020 -- 100,291 6.43
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari -- -- Kinema Citrus -- 25 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Drama Fantasy -- Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari -- The Four Cardinal Heroes are a group of ordinary men from modern-day Japan summoned to the kingdom of Melromarc to become its saviors. Melromarc is a country plagued by the Waves of Catastrophe that have repeatedly ravaged the land and brought disaster to its citizens for centuries. The four heroes are respectively bestowed a sword, spear, bow, and shield to vanquish these Waves. Naofumi Iwatani, an otaku, becomes cursed with the fate of being the "Shield Hero." Armed with only a measly shield, Naofumi is belittled and ridiculed by his fellow heroes and the kingdom's people due to his weak offensive capabilities and lackluster personality. -- -- When the heroes are provided with resources and comrades to train with, Naofumi sets out with the only person willing to train alongside him, Malty Melromarc. He is soon betrayed by her, however, and becomes falsely accused of taking advantage of her. Naofumi then becomes heavily discriminated against and hated by the people of Melromarc for something he didn't do. With a raging storm of hurt and mistrust in his heart, Naofumi begins his journey of strengthening himself and his reputation. Further along however, the difficulty of being on his own sets in, so Naofumi buys a demi-human slave on the verge of death named Raphtalia to accompany him on his travels. -- -- As the Waves approach the kingdom, Naofumi and Raphtalia must fight for the survival of the kingdom and protect the people of Melromarc from their ill-fated future. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 980,884 8.00
Tokyo Ghoul:re 2nd Season -- -- Pierrot Plus, Studio Pierrot -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Drama Horror Mystery Psychological Seinen Supernatural -- Tokyo Ghoul:re 2nd Season Tokyo Ghoul:re 2nd Season -- After the conclusion of the Tsukiyama Family Extermination Operation, the members of the Commission of Counter Ghouls (CCG) have grown exponentially in power and continue to pursue their goal of exterminating every ghoul in Japan. Having resigned from Quinx Squad, the now seemingly emotionless Haise Sasaki begins taking on more and more tasks from the CCG with no regard to the difficulty. Despite his vacant expressions, Ken Kaneki's memories are resurfacing in Haise, leaving him in a state of internal conflict. Meanwhile, his new coldhearted behavior is affecting the people around him. Quinx Squad are left in shambles, having to cope with the death of one of their members without the support of their former mentor. -- -- Amidst this turmoil, both Quinx Squad and Haise must continue to fulfill their duties to the CCG, whether willingly or not. However, the presence of a mysterious group behind the CCG has been made known to Haise, and certain whispers of corruption have not gone unheard by the Quinx Squad as well. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 521,694 6.35
Toshokan Sensou: Koi no Shougai -- -- Production I.G -- 1 ep -- Novel -- Action Military Comedy Drama Romance -- Toshokan Sensou: Koi no Shougai Toshokan Sensou: Koi no Shougai -- An unaired episode included in the Toshokan Sensou DVD volume 3, and later on Blue-ray Box (June 8, 2012) that celebrates the airing of Toshokan Sensou Movie. -- -- Komaki was arrested for the violation of human rights of his girl friend Marie, who had difficulty in hearing. He was kept in custody and tortured by the Media Improvement Forces. The members of the Task Forces made a desperate effort to rescue him. -- Special - Oct 1, 2008 -- 9,024 7.38
Zero no Tsukaima F -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Magic Romance Ecchi Fantasy -- Zero no Tsukaima F Zero no Tsukaima F -- Saito Hiraga and Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière go on the offensive after the events of Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo. Together, they face off against King Joseph in the Holy City of Romalia with the help of two others who control the power of the “void”. But in the midst of the many conflicts ahead of them, an ancient evil begins to stir in the shadows. -- -- Will their close bonds blossom into something more or will they be shattered through the ever increasing difficulty of the tasks that they must undertake? Zero no Tsukaima F follows the story of Louise and Saito as they face their final challenges together. -- -- 342,865 7.50
Zero no Tsukaima F -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Magic Romance Ecchi Fantasy -- Zero no Tsukaima F Zero no Tsukaima F -- Saito Hiraga and Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière go on the offensive after the events of Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo. Together, they face off against King Joseph in the Holy City of Romalia with the help of two others who control the power of the “void”. But in the midst of the many conflicts ahead of them, an ancient evil begins to stir in the shadows. -- -- Will their close bonds blossom into something more or will they be shattered through the ever increasing difficulty of the tasks that they must undertake? Zero no Tsukaima F follows the story of Louise and Saito as they face their final challenges together. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 342,865 7.50
Counter-majoritarian difficulty
Degree of difficulty
Desirable difficulty
Difficulty
Dynamic game difficulty balancing
Periphery III: Select Difficulty
The Difficulty of Being Good
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