DEFINITIONS
Faith is the union of God and the soul. ~ Saint John of the Cross,
Faith is not intellectual belief but a function of the soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II Baha i Faith,
Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. ~ C S Lewis,
Faith is spontaneous knowledge in the psychic. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II 3.03 - Faith and the Divine Grace,
Faith is only a will aiming at greater truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 4.14 - The Power of the Instruments,
Real faith is something spiritual, a knowledge of the soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I Morality and Yoga,
Faith is the surest guide in the darkest days. 16 August 1954 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II 3.03 - Faith and the Divine Grace,
Faith is a general word = Sraddha -the soul's belief in the Divine's existence, wisdom, power, love and grace-confidence and trust are aspects of faith and results of it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga II
Faith in its essence is a light in the soul which turns towards the truth even when the mind doubts or the vital revolts or the physical consciousness denies it. When this extends itself to the instruments, it becomes a fixed belief in the mind, a sort of inner knowledge which resists all apparent denial by circumstances or appearances, a complete confidence, trust, adhesion in the vital and in the physical consciousness, an invariable clinging to the truth in which one has faith even when all is dark around and no cause of hope seems to be there. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,
- As described above and all about this page, Faith is spoken of at times as if it were a power of incalculable importance. As it has been said to move mountains, or to make the impossible possible. The truth of faith is said to be everpresent to the Soul, for to the Soul God is there, and there is no doubt in thisto it. As it is said also that certain types of knowledge can be considered true by self-evidence, this then seems like it could only be tested by finding the Soul where by conscious experience Faith would pass into Knowledge. Until then it is justifyingly obscured by the rest of the nature.
IMPORTANCE / MERITS
Man suffers through lack of faith in God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
Faith has need of the whole truth. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
Once a person has faith, he has achieved everything. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
Anything done against faith or conscience is sinful. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
They who have faith will go through. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II
All difficulties are there to test the endurance of the faith. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II
It is our lack of faith that creates our limitations. With my blessings, ~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother,
For anyone, man or woman, who has faith in me, I have never departed. I sleep on their threshold. ~ Guru Rinpoche,
Have a sincere faith in the Divine and you will clearly know what you have to do. Blessings. ~ The Mother,
For those with faith, no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
It is good to have this unshakable faith - it makes your path easier and shorter. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,
But for one who has faith in the Divine Grace, the return to the Light becomes easy. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,
In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. ~ Saint Paul
The Supreme's power is infinite -it is our faith that is small. With my Blessings. ~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, 23 August,
If you have faith and confidence, it is not the human form of the guru that you worship, but the Supreme Lord who manifests through him. ~ The Mother,
Mental knowledge cannot replace faith; so long as there is only mental knowledge, faith is still needed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Baha i Faith,
It can come early or it can come late, but come it will if one is faithful in one’s call. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II 1.4.01 - The Divine Grace and Guidance,
CHAPTERS
Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, 1.18 - FAITH
Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears, 1.67 - Faith
Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga II, 1.2.08 - Faith
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 4.18 - Faith and shakti
The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, 3.03 - Faith and the Divine Grace
The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, 2.14 - Faith
QUOTES UNSORTED
--- THE MOTHER, WORDS OF THE MOTHER II
Confidence is a feeling of sureness that the Divine will hear when sincerely called and help and that all the Divine does is for the best.
Trust is the mind's and heart's complete reliance on the Divine and its guidance and protection.
Faith ::: a dynamic entire belief and acceptance.
Belief ::: intellectual acceptance only.
Conviction ::: intellectual belief held on what seem to be good reasons.
Reliance ::: dependence on another for something, based on trust.
Trust ::: the feeling of sure expectation of another's help and reliance on his word, character etc.
Confidence ::: the sense of security that goes with trust.
Faith in its essence is a light in the soul which turns towards the truth even when the mind doubts or the vital revolts or the physical consciousness denies it. When this extends itself to the instruments, it becomes a fixed belief in the mind, a sort of inner knowledge which resists all apparent denial by circumstances or appearances, a complete confidence, trust, adhesion in the vital and in the physical consciousness, an invariable clinging to the truth in which one has faith even when all is dark around and no cause of hope seems to be there.
Faith in the spiritual sense is not a mental belief which can waver and change. It can wear that form in the mind, but that belief is not the faith itself, it is only its external form. Just as the body, the external form, can change but the spirit remains the same, so it is here. Faith is a certitude in the soul which does not depend on reasoning, on this or that mental idea, on circumstances, on this or that passing condition of the mind or the vital or the body. It may be hidden, eclipsed, may even seem to be quenched, but it reappears again after the storm or the eclipse; it is seen burning still in the soul when one has thought that it was extinguished for ever. The mind may be a shifting sea of doubts and yet that faith may be there within and, if so, it will keep even the doubt-racked mind in the way so that it goes on in spite of itself towards its destined goal. Faith is a spiritual certitude of the spiritual, the divine, the soul's ideal, something that clings to that even when it is not fulfilled in life, even when the immediate facts or the persistent circumstances seem to deny it. This is a common experience in the life of the human being; if it were not so, man would be the plaything of a changing mind or a sport of circumstance.
Faith: According to St. Augustine, faith means, to believe that which one does not see. (Fides ergo est, quod non vides credere.) That is the reason why faith is praiseworthy.
Faith ::: A general term for religious belief used both of an attitude (to have faith) and of a collection of doctrines (the faith). See also "emuna".
Faith::: Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 191
Faith — fouf kinds ::: Mental fmth combats doubt and helps to open to the true knowledge ; \Ual faith prevents the attacks of the hostile forces or defeats them and helps to open to the true spiritual will and action ; physical faith keeps one firm through all physical obscurity, inertia or suffering and helps to open to the foundation of the true consciousness ; psychic faith
Faithfulness to the Light and the Call — to refuse to listen to any suggestions, impulses, lures and to oppose to them all the call of the Truth, the imperative beckoning of the Light. In all doubt and depression, to say, “ I belong to the Divine, I cannot fail ” ; to all suggestions of impurity and unfitness, to reply, “ I am a child of Immortality chosen by the Divine ; I have but to be true to myself and to Him — the victory is sure ; even if I fell, I would rise again " ; to all impulses to depart and serve some smaller ideal, to reply, "This is the greatest, this is the Truth that alone can satisfy the soul within me ;
Faith healing: A cure effected by the belief that disease and pain can be counteracted and cast out by faith in the Divine Power.
Faith Healing, Drugless Healing Apart from the regular medical and surgical practice, widespread forms of drugless healing are employed today. Public opinion generally is either frankly skeptical about the whole matter, or believes that such afford safe and easy means of relief and escape from suffering and disease. As a whole, these forms of faith or magnetic healing depend on the “inborn or inherent, ability of the ‘healer’ or practitioner to convey healthy life-force from himself to the diseased person. This is the key to success, or the lack of success, in all cases, and in all kinds of healing of whatever so-called ‘school’ ” (SOPh 622). If the practitioner succeeds in conveying the vitality of the pranic fluids from his own healthy body to the diseased body or organ of another person, that healthy life-force “expels” or changes the inharmonious vibrations in the afflicted part and, by restoring harmony there, brings about health. Such cures can be permanent; usually they are temporary, lasting from a few days to a few years.
Faith is a certitude In the soul which does not depend on reasoning, on this or that menial idea, on circumstances. Faith is a spiritual certitude of the spiritual, the divine, the soul’s ideal, something that clings to that even when it is not fulfilled in life, even when the immediate facts or the persistent circum- stances seem to deny it.
Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation, because we arc ignorant and do not yet know that which we arc seeking to realise ; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun.
Faith: (Kant. Ger. Glaube) The acceptance of ideals which are theoretically indemonstrable, yet necessarily entailed by the indubitable reality of freedom. For Kant, the Summum Bonum, God, and immortality are the chief articles of faith or "practical" belief. See Kantianism. Cf. G. Santayana, Skepticism and Animal Faith, where faith is the non-rational belief in objects encountered in action. -- O.F.K.
Faith —one of the 3 theological virtues (with
Faith ::: See Pistis.
FAITH—Active belief; belief which amounts to a basis for action upon the accepted premises.
FAITH. ::: A dynamic entire belief and acceptance.
faith ::: a dynamic intuitive conviction in the inner being of the truth of supersensible things which cannot be proved by any physical evidence but which are a subject of experience; the soul's witness to something not yet manifested, achieved or realised, but which yet the Knower within us feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving; the soul's belief in the Divine's existence, wisdom, power, love, and grace.
faithed ::: a. --> Having faith or a faith; honest; sincere.
faithful ::: a. --> Full of faith, or having faith; disposed to believe, especially in the declarations and promises of God.
Firm in adherence to promises, oaths, contracts, treaties, or other engagements.
True and constant in affection or allegiance to a person to whom one is bound by a vow, be ties of love, gratitude, or honor, as to a husband, a prince, a friend; firm in the observance of duty; loyal; of true fidelity; as, a faithful husband or servant.
FAITHFULNESS. ::: To admit and to manifest no other move- ments but only the movements prompted and guided by the
faithful
faithful; tutelary prince of Israel; angel of
faithless ::: a. --> Not believing; not giving credit.
Not believing on God or religion; specifically, not believing in the Christian religion.
Not observant of promises or covenants.
Not true to allegiance, duty, or vows; perfidious; trecherous; disloyal; not of true fidelity; inconstant, as a husband or a wife.
Serving to disappoint or deceive; delusive;
faithless
faith ::: n. --> Belief; the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting solely and implicitly on his authority and veracity; reliance on testimony.
The assent of the mind to the statement or proposition of another, on the ground of the manifest truth of what he utters; firm and earnest belief, on probable evidence of any kind, especially in regard to important moral truth.
The belief in the historic truthfulness of the Scripture
faiths—Christian (mainly Catholics), Jewish (mainly orthodox), Mohammedan.
faith. See ŚRADDHĀ; XINXIN.
faith.
faith
KEYS (10k)
113 Sri Aurobindo
63 The Mother
6 Sri Ramakrishna
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4 Robert Heinlein
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4 Manly P Hall
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3 Saint Augustine of Hippo
3 Patrul Rinpoche
3 Essential Integral
2 Taigen Dan Leighton
2 Saint John of the Cross
2 Rabindranath Tagore
2 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
2 Nichiren
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2 James W Fowler
2 Ibn Arabi
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2 Epictetus
2 Anonymous
2 Anon
1 William Wordsworth
1 William James
1 Vincent van Gogh
1 Theodore Dalrymple
1 The Mother?
1 Terry Brooks
1 Swami Vivekananda
1 Swami Avdheshanand
1 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
1 Soren Kierkegaard
1 Saint Teresa of Avila
1 Saint Paul
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1 Saint Augustine
1 Reverend Chad Ripperger
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1 Jean Gebser
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1 Friedrich Nietzsche
1 Eugene Paul Wigner
1 Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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1 Dr Robert A Hatch
1 C S Lewis
1 collab summer & fall 2011
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1 C.G. Jung
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1 Archibald Thomas Robertson
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1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
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4 Mahatma Gandhi
4 Chris Rock
3 Tony Evans
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3 Soren Kierkegaard
1:Faith Alone is what really matters. ~ Nichiren, #KEYS
2:Faith is a passionate intuition.
~ William Wordsworth,#KEYS
3:Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo #KEYS
4:Have faith and go on. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, #KEYS
5:Man suffers through lack of faith in God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
6:Faith has need of the whole truth. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS
7:Faith is the union of God and the soul. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #KEYS
8:Once a person has faith, he has achieved everything. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
9:Faith first, knowledge afterwards. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, #KEYS
10:Put no faith in salvation through the political order. ~ Saint Augustine, #KEYS
11:Have faith in the Lord's mercy and all can and will change.
~ The Mother,#KEYS
12:Anything done against faith or conscience is sinful. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
13:With faith in the Divine Grace, all difficulties are solved.
~ The Mother,#KEYS
14:Man has become disconnected from his faith in perceptions. ~ Claudio Naranjo, #KEYS
15:They who have faith will go through. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T0], #KEYS
16:to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #KEYS
17:All my words are but chaff next to the faith of a simple man. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
18:Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
~ Khalil Gibran,#KEYS
19:For what is faith unless it is to believe what you do not see? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
20:The difficult is not the impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
21:The enemy of faith is doubt. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
22:Faith that is allergic to questioning is just fundamentalist blind dogma. ~ Taigen Dan Leighton, #KEYS
23:Faith is a dark night for man, but in this very way it gives him light. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #KEYS
24:Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, [T5],#KEYS
25:A faith she craves that can survive defeat, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
26:One description of faith involves letting go of our resistance to receiving. ~ Taigen Dan Leighton, #KEYS
27:Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
~ Blaise Pascal,#KEYS
28:Be always faithful to your faith and you will feel no sorrow.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
29:All difficulties are there to test the endurance of the faith.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
30:Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.,#KEYS
31:Faithfulness is the antidote to bitterness and confusion. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
32:Faith is hidden household capital. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #KEYS
33:Miracle is the pet child of faith. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #KEYS
34:Day after day our aspiration will grow and our faith will intensify. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, #KEYS
35:The eye of Faith is not one with the eye of Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
36:There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
~ William James,#KEYS
37:Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. ~ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, #KEYS
38:It is our lack of faith that creates our limitations. With my blessings,
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother,#KEYS
39:Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
40:Faith is not intellectual belief but a function of the soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
41:For anyone, man or woman, who has faith in me, I have never departed. I sleep on their threshold. ~ Guru Rinpoche, #KEYS
42:Have a sincere faith in the Divine and you will clearly know what you have to do. Blessings.
~ The Mother, [T5],#KEYS
43:Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. ~ C S Lewis, #KEYS
44:man carries the seed of the divine life in himself ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
45:Faith fights for God, while Knowledge is waiting for fulfilment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
46:The supreme faith is that which sees God in all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Way and the Bhakta, #KEYS
47:To the soul and Shakti in man nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
48:To the soul and Shakti in man nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
49:For those with faith, no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
50:Have faith in the Divine, and go deep inside yourself. My help is always with you. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, #KEYS
51:How can I have more and more faith and calm, Mother?
Aspiration and will.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
52:Without a great ideal there can be no great movement. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Leverage of Faith, #KEYS
53:Faith is spontaneous knowledge in the psychic.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Faith and the Divine Grace, Faith,#KEYS
54:It is good to have this unshakable faith - it makes your path easier and shorter.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
55:Faith divines in the large what Knowledge sees distinctly and clearly. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
56:Faith is only a will aiming at greater truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #KEYS
57:Its faith is perfectibility, its watchword is progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
58:Real faith is something spiritual, a knowledge of the soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Morality and Yoga, #KEYS
59:Faith demands piety rather than truth. Consequently, nobody is faithful except by reason of their obedience.~ Baruch Spinoza, #KEYS
60:Without indomitable Faith or inspired Wisdom no great cause can conquer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
61:For a subject people there is no royal road to emancipation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Leverage of Faith, #KEYS
62:I am with you and I will take you to the goal. Have an unshakable faith and all will go well. Blessings.
~ The Mother?, [T2],#KEYS
63:Religious Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness.
~ Robert Heinlein, Jubal Hershaw, in Stranger in a Strange Land, (1961).,#KEYS
64:The mind forms or accepts the theories that support the turn of the being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
65:Faith, Princess, the Prism Cat repeated. It is a highly underrated weapon against the dark things in this world.
~ Terry Brooks,#KEYS
66:Faith is like pure eyes that enable us to see a pure and perfect world beyond the suffering world of samsara. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #KEYS
67:The strength is always with you to be always faithful to the Divine Will.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Faithfulness, [T5],#KEYS
68:But for one who has faith in the Divine Grace, the return to the Light becomes easy.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, [T7],#KEYS
69:Faith is the first condition of success in every great undertaking. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Leverage of Faith, #KEYS
70:If you are keen on realising God, repeat His name with firm faith, and try to discriminate the Real from the unreal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
71:Man demands miracles that he may have faith; he wishes to be dazzled in order that he may see
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
72:Once the seed of faith takes root, it cannot be blown away, even by the strongest wind. Now that's a blessing.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, [T5],#KEYS
73:Always joyfully accept what is given you by the Divine.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Gratitude and Faithfulness, GRATITUDE [155],#KEYS
74:Any advice?
Be steady and confident.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Elements of Yoga, Faith and the Divine Grace, Confidence,#KEYS
75:Ask: 'Who am I?' until well-established in the conviction that a Higher Power guides us. That is firmness of faith.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,#KEYS
76:One has not only to be sincere but to be faithful through all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Grace and Guidance, #KEYS
77:Faith is the surest guide in the darkest days. 16 August 1954
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Faith and the Divine Grace, FAITH [79],#KEYS
78:Outward circumstances are only a cover for the real workings of the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
79:In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. ~ Saint Paul, (Eph. 6:16), #KEYS
80:If you desire only the Divine, there is an absolute certitude that you will reach the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
81:The Supreme's power is infinite -it is our faith that is small. With my Blessings.
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, 23 August, [T5],#KEYS
82:Be confident, you will become what you have to be and achieve what you have to do.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Faith and the Divine Grace,#KEYS
83:If you have faith and confidence, it is not the human form of the guru that you worship, but the Supreme Lord who manifests through him. ~ The Mother, #KEYS
84:The Grace will never fail us - such is the faith we must keep constantly in our heart. With my blessings
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, 10 May,#KEYS
85:Your trust in God is sufficient to save you from rebirths. Cast all burden on Him. Have faith and that will save you. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 30, #KEYS
86:Bare your forehead, waiting for the first blessing of light, and sing with the bird of the morning in glad faith. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit Gathering, #KEYS
87:It is indispensable to keep the faith and the will to conquer. 2 May 1949
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Faith and the Divine Grace, FAITH [80],#KEYS
88: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
89:In the present growing conflict what should be our attitude?
Faith and total confidence in the Divine's Grace.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
90:Mental knowledge cannot replace faith; so long as there is only mental knowledge, faith is still needed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
91:It is in the transparency of faith and knowledge, and not with their aid, that the sphere of Being becomes perceptible in its entire diaphaneity. ~ Jean Gebser, #KEYS
92:Make your entire life an expression of your faith and love for your teacher. This is real dwelling with the Guru. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, Ch 32, #KEYS
93:The prayer of faith is the only kind that is real prayer, and it is trust in God with full acknowledgment of God's power and love. ~ Archibald Thomas Robertson, #KEYS
94:By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
95:The whole future of the Earth, as of religion, seems to me to depend on the awakening of our faith in the future. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, #KEYS
96:Faith and courage are the true attitude to keep in life and work always and in the spiritual experience also. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
97:The vision of faith penetrates into the remote future and turns the impossible into the possible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Leverage of Faith, #KEYS
98:The intellect and life and emotion always grasp too much at things, fasten on premature certitudes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
99:The Divine holds our hand through all and if he seems to let us fall, it is only to raise us higher. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
100:It can come early or it can come late, but come it will if one is faithful in one’s call. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Grace and Guidance, #KEYS
101:The perfect faith is an assent of the whole being to the truth seen by it or offered to its acceptance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
102:The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith. ~ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, #KEYS
103:In the long and difficult integral Yoga there must be an integral faith and an unshakable patience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, #KEYS
104:Gratitude: it is you who open all the closed doors and let the Grace which saves penetrate deeply.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Gratitude and Faithfulness, [T5],#KEYS
105:When the sun of the gnosis has risen, doubt itself will pass away because its cause and utility have ended. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
106:In those who lack faith
Nothing positive will grow
Just as from a burnt seed
No green shoot will ever sprout.
~ Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher,#KEYS
107:Three are the words that sum up the first state of the Yoga of devotion, faith, worship, obedience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human, Partial Systems of Yoga, #KEYS
108: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
109:Bestow upon me, O Lord my God, understanding to know thee, diligence to seek thee, wisdom to find thee, and a faithfulness that may finally embrace thee. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
110:Have faith and complete trust in the ways of God. relentless prayers offered with a pure and devoted heart have the power to make the impossible possible.
~ Swami Avdheshanand,#KEYS
111:In spiritual matters mental logic easily blunders; intuition, faith, a plastic spiritual reason are here the only guides. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Guru, #KEYS
112:Sri Aurobindo is always with us, enlightening, guiding, protecting. We must answer to his grace by a perfect faithfulness.
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, 14 AUGUST, [T1],#KEYS
113:Concentrate more upon what you are to be, on the ideal, with the faith that, since it is the goal before you, it must and will come.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, [T1],#KEYS
114:The faith of total trust allows blessings to enter you.
When the mind is free of doubt, whatever you wish can be achieved.
~ Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher,#KEYS
115:For all who think of him with faith
The Buddha is there in front of them
And will give empowerments and blessings.
~ Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher, [T5],#KEYS
116:I am never far from those with faith, or even from those without it, though they do not see me. My children will always, always, be protected by my compassion. ~ Guru Rinpoche, [T5], #KEYS
117:Let us unite our will in a great aspiration; let us pray for an intervention of the Grace. A miracle can always happen. Faith has a sovereign power. ~ The Mother, On Education, [T5], #KEYS
118:The future is for those who have the soul of a hero. The stronger and more sincere our faith, the more powerful and effective will be the help received.
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
119:All is possible if there is a true faith, a complete consecration, a sincere and pure aspiration and a persistent endeavour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Himself And The Ashram, 539,#KEYS
120:The circumstances that provoke our first entry into the path are not the real index of the thing that is at work in us. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
121:When we trust in the Divine's Grace we get an unfailing courage. 15 May 1954
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Faith and the Divine Grace, TRUST IN THE DIVINE GRACE AND HELP [92],#KEYS
122:Faith is indispensable to man, for without it he could not proceed forward in his journey through the Unknown. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
123:It is when all seems lost that all can be saved. When you have lost confidence in your personal power, then you should have faith in the Divine Grace.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
124:Liberty is a goddess who is exacting in her demands on her votaries, but, if they are faithful, she never disappoints them of their reward. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Elections, #KEYS
125:Behind every exoteric religion there is an esoteric Yoga, an intuitive knowledge to which its faith is the first step. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Lower Triple Purusha, #KEYS
126:Have faith in Guru, in his teachings, and in the surety that you can get free. Think day and night that this universe is zero, only God is. Have intense desire to get free. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
127:Every faith is to a certain extent rational, it has its own analysis and synthesis by which it seeks to establish itself intellectually. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Opinion and Comments, #KEYS
128:Even a blind and ignorant faith is a better possession than the sceptical doubt which turns its back on our spiritual possibilities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
129:Out of suffering comes the serious mind; out of salvation, the grateful heart; out of endurance, fortitude; out of deliverance faith. Patient endurance attends to all things. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, #KEYS
130:In moments of trial faith in the Divine protection and the call for that protection; at all times the faith that what the Divine wills is the best. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
131:Until we know the Truth (not mentally but by experience, by change of consciousness) we need the soul’s faith to sustain us and hold on to the Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
132:The heart’s faith and will in good are founded on a perception of the one Divine immanent in all things and leading the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #KEYS
133:Faith is necessary throughout and at every step because it is a needed assent of the soul and without this assent there can be no progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
134:Knowledge and tapasya, whatever their force, have a less sustaining power—faith is the strongest staff for the journey. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, The Mother’s Protection, #KEYS
135:The faith of the heart and the life mind, like that of the intelligence, must be capable of a constant correction, enlarging and transformation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
136:An absolute faith and trust in the Grace is, in the last analysis, the Supreme Wisdom. 15 August 1956
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Faith and the Divine Grace, FAITH IN THE DIVINE AND HELP [106], [T9],#KEYS
137:Very few are those who can stand firm on the rock of their faith and trust in the Divine.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Elements of Yoga, Faith and the Divine Grace, Trust in the Divine Grace and Help,#KEYS
138:The Grace and the help are always there for all who aspire for them and their power is limitless when received with faith and confidence.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Faith in the Divine Grace and Help,#KEYS
139:If we had a truly living faith, an absolute certitude of the almighty power of the Divine, His manifestation could be so evident that the whole earth would be transformed by it. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, #KEYS
140:What the thought, the inner regard, the faith, śraddhā, settles itself upon with a complete and definite insistence, into that our inner being tends to change. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Supreme Divine, #KEYS
141:There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit’s omnipotence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
142:266. There are three forms in which the command may come, the will and faith in thy nature, thy ideal on which heart and brain are agreed and the voice of Himself or His angels.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
143:Like the child who does not reason and has no care, trust thyself to the Divine that His will may be done.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Elements of Yoga, Faith and the Divine Grace, Trust in the Divine Grace and Help,#KEYS
144:To understand divine movements one must enter into the divine consciousness, till then faith and surrender are the only right attitude. How can the mind judge what is beyond all its measures?
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
145:The artificiality of much in human life is the cause of its most deep-seated maladies; it is not faithful to itself or sincere with Nature and therefore it stumbles and suffers. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Diversity in Oneness, #KEYS
146:Courage their armour, faith their sword, they must walk,
The hand ready to smite, the eye to scout,
Casting a javelin regard in front,
Heroes and soldiers of the army of Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#KEYS
147:I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man's unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,#KEYS
148:Faith, more faith! Faith in your possibilities, faith in the Power that is at work behind the veil, faith in the work that is to be done and the offered guidance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Steps towards Overcoming Difficulties, #KEYS
149:I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith - it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
~ Robert Heinlein, Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land, (1961).Quotes About Religion & Theology,#KEYS
150:Man is given faith in himself, his ideas and his powers that he may work and create and rise to greater things and in the end bring his strength as a worthy offering to the altar of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
151:It [the effectiveness of namajapa] depends on the person and how he does it. The Name of the Divine is in itself a power, if it is taken with the right faith and in the right attitude. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Namajapa or Repetition of the Name, #KEYS
152:Reliable friendship is almost always with a very few; to have a horde of loving, unselfishly faithful friends is a phenomenon so rare that it can be safely taken as an illusion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Human Relations and the Spiritual Life, #KEYS
153:Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love, Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy.
~ Saint Francis of Assisi,#KEYS
154:In the region of politics faith is the result of imagination working in the light of history; it takes its stand on reason and experience and aspires into the future from the firm ground of the past. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Leverage of Faith, #KEYS
155:A man thinks of God, no doubt, but he has no faith in Him. Again and again he forgets God and becomes attached to the world. It is like giving the elephant a bath; afterwards he covers his body with mud and dirt again. 'The mind is a mad elephant.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
156:The gods have invented
Only one way for a man through the world, O my slavegirl Briseis,
Valiant to be and noble and truthful and just to the humble,
Only one way for a woman, to love and serve and be faithful. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
157:Do not accept any of my words on faith, believing them just because I said them. Be like an analyst buying gold, who cuts, burns, and critically examines his product for authenticity. Only accept what passes the test by proving useful and beneficial in your life. ~ Buddha, #KEYS
158:The human intellect is too much afraid of error precisely because it is too much attached to a premature sense of certitude and a too hasty eagerness for positive finality in what it seems to seize of knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
159:There Good, a faithless gardener of God,
Watered with virtue the world’s upas-tree
And, careful of the outward word and act,
Engrafted his hypocrite blooms on native ill. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness,#KEYS
160: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. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, #KEYS
161:As for the attacks, it is a long-standing affair and it may not be easy to make them stop at once-but one day they will have to cease. And meanwhile they can be made shorter and less acute, by keeping faith in my promise and calling for my help that is always available.
~ The Mother,#KEYS
162:Only were safe who kept God in their hearts:
Courage their armour, faith their sword, they must walk,
The hand ready to smite, the eye to scout,
Casting a javelin regard in front,
Heroes and soldiers of the army of Light.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night, [T5],#KEYS
163:The Divine accepts whatever symbol, form or conception of himself is present to the mind of the worshipper, yāṁ yāṁ tanuṁ śraddhayā arcati, as it is said elsewhere, and meets him according to the faith that is in him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge, #KEYS
164:I have said that we are always with you and it is true, but to feel it you must draw back from your vital and be able to concentrate in your inner being. If you do that faithfully and sincerely, after a time you will feel the connection and the support.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
165:Contradicted by the human law,
A faith in things that are not and must be
Lives comrade of this world’s delight and pain,
The child of the secret soul’s forbidden desire
Born of its amour with eternity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#KEYS
166:White Magic leans more toward the acquisition of wisdom and a general feeling of faith in the universe. The Black form in concerned more with the acquisition of power and is reflective of a basic faith in oneself.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null, The Initiate Syllabuses 3o IOT, Liber Lux, Liber Nox [25],#KEYS
167:Then if the tempest be loud and the thunderbolt leaping incessant
Shatters the roof, if the lintels flame at last and each cornice
Shrieks with the pain of the blast, if the very pillars totter,
Keep yet your faith in Zeus, hold fast to the word of ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
168:For just as the first general precepts of the law of nature are self-evident to one in possession of natural reason, and have no need of promulgation, so also that of believing in God is primary and self-evident to one who has faith: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
169:Fear is hidden consent. When you are afraid of something, it means that you admit its possibility and thus strengthen its hand. It can be said that it is a subconscient consent. Fear can be overcome in many ways. The ways of courage, faith, knowledge are some of them. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, 243, #KEYS
170:...
12-Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13-And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:13, King James Version,#KEYS
171:Sincerity, Aspiration, Faith, Devotion and Self-Giving, Surrender to the Divine Will, Love, Openness and Receptivity, Purity and Humility, Gratitude and Faithfulness, Will and Perseverance, Enthusiasm, Hope and Straightforwardness, Happiness and Joy, Heroism and Bravery, Prudence and Balance, Truth and Speech ~ ?, toc, #KEYS
172:To understand any one sacred book completely it is necessary to understand all other sacred books. In spite of human prejudice to the contrary, there is but one religion and one truth and all the great faiths of the world are parts or fragments of the Anscient Wisdom.
~ Manly P Hall, The Students Monthly Letter 1973,#KEYS
173:I have said that science is impossible without faith. ... Inductive logic, the logic of Bacon, is rather something on which we can act than something which we can prove, and to act on it is a supreme assertion of faith ... Science is a way of life which can only fluorish when men are free to have faith. ~ Norbert Wiener, #KEYS
174:Whoever builds his faith exclusively on demonstrative proofs and deductive arguments, builds a faith on which it is impossible to rely. For he is affected by the negativities of constant objections. Certainty(al-yaqin) does not derive from the evidences of the mind but pours out from the depths of the heart. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
175:Always we must repeat to the doubting intellect the promise of the Master, 'I will deliver thee from all sin and evil; do not grieve.' At the end, the flickerings of faith will cease; for we shall see his face and feel always the Divine Presence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, 245, [T3],#KEYS
176:God is our wise and perfect friend, because he knows when to smite and when to fondle; when to slay us no less then when to save and to succour... There must be faith in the love and wisdom of God,... working out all for our good even when it is apparently veiled in evil. ~ Sri Aurobindo, 1984 Ashram Diary, July 3 and Augst 22, #KEYS
177:As for cancer, the first thing is that you should drive off all fear. \* If you want to get cured there are two conditions. First you must be without fear, absolutely fearless, you understand, and secondly you must have a complete faith in the Divine protection. These two things are essential.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS
178:Bhagavan: God is of course necessary, for most people. They can go on with one, till they find out that they and God are not different.
The Swami continued, "In actual practice, sadhakas, even sincere ones, sometimes become dejected and lose faith in God. How to restore their faith? What should we do for them?" ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day,#KEYS
179:Stronger than every obstacle and counter-argument is the instinct which tells us that, to be faithful to Life, we must know; we must know more and still more; we must tirelessly and increasingly search for Something, we know not what, which will appear in the end to those who have penetrated to the very heart of reality.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,#KEYS
180:In fact, however, the divine Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for our weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 46,#KEYS
181:... In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. ...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Sacrifice and the Lord of the Sacrifice [112] [T1],#KEYS
182:Never forget that you are not alone. The Divine is with you helping and guiding you. He is the companion who never fails, the friend whose love comforts and strengthens. The more you feel lonely, the more you are ready to perceive His luminous Presence. Have faith and He will do everything for you.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The Divine Is with You, [T5],#KEYS
183:A mind now clouded by the illusions of the innate darkness of life is like a tarnished mirror, but when polished, it is sure to become like a clear mirror, reflecting the essential nature of phenomena and the true aspect of reality. Arouse deep faith, and diligently polish your mirror day and night. How should you polish it? Only by chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo ~ Nichiren, #KEYS
184:I was a terrible believer in things,but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith,or if there was such a place,or even what the word faith meant, in all of it's complexity. Everything seemed to be possibly potent and possibly fake. ~ Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, #KEYS
185:We cannot counteract the harm done by mental faith in the need for drugs by any external measures. Only by escaping from the mental prison and emerging consciously into the light of the spirit, by a conscious union with the Divine, can we enable Him to give back to us the balance and health we have lost.The supramental transformation is the only true remedy.
~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms,#KEYS
186:But from time to time Thy sublime light shines in a being and radiates through him over the world, and then a little wisdom, a little knowledge, a little disinterested faith, heroism and compassion penetrates men's hearts, transforms their minds and sets free a few elements from that sorrowful and implacable wheel of existence to which their blind ignorance subjects them.
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations,#KEYS
187:Certainty [of faith] will remain incomplete as long as there is an atom of love of this world in the heart. When faith has become certitude, certitude has become knowingness, and knowingness has become Knowledge, you will become an expert in distinguishing between the good and the bad in the service of Allah (mighty and glorified is He). ~ Abd Al-Qadir al-Jilani, Purification of the Mind (Jila' Al-Khatir), Second Edition, #KEYS
188:secondly, what the nature of God is. Whatever that nature is discovered to be, the man who would please and obey Him must strive with all his might to be made like unto him. If the Divine is faithful, he also must be faithful; if free, he also must be free; if beneficent, he also must be beneficent; if magnanimous, he also must be magnanimous. Thus as an imitator of God must he follow Him in every deed and word. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
189:So, the only thing to do is to accept quietly the conditions in which you find yourself, knowing that for him who has faith in the Divine it is always the best for him that happens. The Divine does not want human beings to suffer, but, in their ignorance, human beings react in such a way that they bring suffering upon themselves. In peace, quietness and surrender is the only solution.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
190:All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances. ~ Jetsun Milarepa, #KEYS
191:...to do the integral yoga one must first resolve to surrender entirely to the Divine, there is no other way, this is the way. But after that one must have the five psychological virtues, five psychological perfections and we say that the perfections are 1.Sincerity or Transparency 2.Faith or Trust (Trust in the Divine) 3.Devotion or Gratitude 4.Courage or Inspiration 5.Endurance or Perseverance
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956,#KEYS
192:A DEVOTEE:"Sir, is there no help, then, for such a worldly person?"
MASTER:"Certainly there is. From time to time he should live in the company of holy men, and from time to time go into solitude and meditate on God. Furthermore, he should practice discrimination and pray to God, 'Give me faith and devotion.' Once a person has faith he has achieved everything. There is nothing greater than faith. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospels of Ramakrishna,#KEYS
193:A religion is sometime a source of happiness, and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong. The great trouble with religion - any religion - is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak certainty of reason- but one cannot have both.
~ Robert Heinlein, from Friday.,#KEYS
194:I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle. ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS
195:5'If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. 6'But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. 7'Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8'Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, James 1, #KEYS
196:The sadhana of this Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart, and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T3],#KEYS
197: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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Consecration, 81,#KEYS
198:The faith in which I was brought up assured me that I was better than other people; I was saved, they were damned ...Our hymns were loaded with arrogance -- self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us, what hell everybody else would catch come Judgment Day.
~ Robert Heinlein, from Laurence J. Peter, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time, also James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years Of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt.Quotes About Priests,#KEYS
199:The Real made me contemplate the light of the veils as the star of strong backing rose, and He said to me, "Do you know how many veils I have veiled you with?"
"No", I replied.
He said, "With seventy veils. Even if you raise them you will not see Me, and if you do not raise them you will not see Me."
"If you raise them you will see Me and if you do not raise them you will see Me."
"Take care of burning yourself!"
"You are My sight, so have faith. You are My Face, so veil yourself" ~ Ibn Arabi,#KEYS
200:These questionings and depressions are very foolish movements of the mind. If you were not open to the Grace, you would not have had these descents or experiences and there would have been no such progress as you have made. You have not to put such questions but to take it as a settled fact, and with full faith in the Mother and her working in you go on with your sadhana. Whatever difficulties there may be, will be solved in time by the natural progress of the sadhana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
201:It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course-for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him. ~ C.G. Jung, Aion, #KEYS
202:There are not many, those who have no secret garden of the mind. For this garden alone can give refreshment when life is barren of peace or sustenance or satisfactory answer. Such sanctuaries may be reached by a certain philosophy or faith, by the guidance of a beloved author or an understanding friend, by way of the temples of music and art, or by groping after truth through the vast kingdoms of knowledge. They encompass almost always truth and beauty, and are radiant with the light that never was on sea or land. - Clare Cameron, Green Fields of England ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden Of Pomegranates, #KEYS
203:way of the Integral Yogin :::
Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. ... An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 78,#KEYS
204:I believe faith is a human universal. We are endowed at birth with nascent capacities for faith. How these capacities are activated and grow depends to a large extent on how we are welcomed into the world and what kinds of environments we grow in. Faith is interactive and social; it requires community, language, ritual and nurture. Faith is also shaped by initiatives from beyond us and other people, initiatives of spirit or grace. How these latter initiatives are recognized and imaged, or unperceived and ignored, powerfully affects the shape of faith in our lives.
~ James W Fowler, Stages Of Faith,#KEYS
205:Those who love much, do much and accomplish much, and whatever is done with love is done well.... Love is the best and noblest thing in the human heart, especially when it is tested by life as gold is tested by fire. Happy is he who has loved much, and although he may have wavered and doubted, he has kept that divine spark alive and returned to what was in the beginning and ever shall be.
If only one keeps loving faithfully what is truly worth loving and does not squander one's love on trivial and insignificant and meaningless things then one will gradually obtain more light and grow stronger. ~ Vincent van Gogh,#KEYS
206:There are only three fundamental obstacles that can stand in the way: (1) Absence of faith or insufficient faith. (2) Egoism - the mind clinging to its own ideas, the vital preferring its own desires to a true surrender, the physical adhering to its own habits. (3) Some inertia or fundamental resistance in the consciousness, not willing to change because it is too much of an effort or because it does not want to believe in its own capacity or the power of the Divine - or for some other more subconscient reason. You have to see for yourself which of these it is.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III, Difficulties of the Path,#KEYS
207:In all doubt and depression, to say 'I belong to the Divine, I cannot fail'; to all suggestions of impurity and unfitness, to reply 'I am a child of Immortality chosen by the Divine; I have but to be true to myself and to Him-the victory is sure; even if I fell, I would be sure to rise again'; to all impulses to depart and serve some smaller ideal, to reply 'This is the greatest, this is the Truth that alone can satisfy the soul within me; I will endure through all tests and tribulations to the very end of the divine journey.' This is what I mean by faithfulness to the Light and the Call.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
208:Faith is a coat against ... nakedness. For most of us, most of the time, faith functions so as to screen off the abyss of mystery that surrounds us. But we all at certain times call upon faith to provide nerve to stand in the presence of the abyss--naked, stripped of life supports, trusting only in the being, the mercy and the power of the Other in the darkness. Faith helps us form a dependable 'life space,' an ultimate environment. At a deeper level, faith undergirds us when our life space is punctured and collapses, when the felt reality of our ultimate environment proves to be less than ultimate.
~ James W Fowler, Stages Of Faith,#KEYS
209:Although there is a difference of procedure between a Shaman of the Tungas and a Catholic prelate of Europe or between a coarse and sensual Vogul and a Puritan Independent of Connecticut, there is no difference in the principle of their creeds; for they all belong to the same category of people whose religion consists not in becoming better, but in believing in and carrying out certain arbitrary regulations. Only those who believe that the worship of God consists in aspiring to a better life differ from the first because they recognize quite another and certainly a loftier principle uniting all men of good faith in an invisible temple which alone can be the universal temple. ~ Immanuel Kant, #KEYS
210:But while it is difficult for man to believe in something unseen within himself, it is easy for him to believe in something which he can image as extraneous to himself. The spiritual progress of most human beings demands an extraneous support, an object of faith outside us. It needs an external image of God; or it needs a human representative, - Incarnation, Prophet or Guru; or it demands both and receives them. For according to the need of the human soul the Divine manifests himself as deity, as human divine or in simple humanity - using that thick disguise, which so successfully conceals the Godhead, for a means of transmission of his guidance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #KEYS
211:The ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts against the leading, loses confidence, loses courage. These failings would not matter; for the divine Guide within is not offended by our revolt, not discouraged by our want of faith or repelled by our weakness; he has the entire love of the mother and the entire patience of the teacheR But by withdrawing our assent from the guidance we lose the consciousness, though not all the actuality-not, in any case, the eventuality -of its benefit. And we withdraw our assent because we fail to distinguish our higher Self from the lower through which he is preparing his self-revelation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 64,#KEYS
212:Practical Review Tools ::: Flash cards, Chapter Outlines, 4x6 Summaries: You need to find ways to repeat and rehearse information and ideas that work for you. Any number of creative tools can be used to help you organize and remember information and make it manageable. I like 4x6 cards. They are sturdy, large enough to hold succinct information, and you can scribble ideas that jog the memory. The beauty 4x6's is that they can be carried anywhere. You can study them at the library, laundry, or lavatory. They travel on the bus, they can save you from a boring date, they can be thrown away immediately without guilt or survive years of faithful service. ~ Dr Robert A Hatch, How to Study, #KEYS
213:There is no method in this Yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eyebrows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one's own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother's Power and Presence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
214: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
215:The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem. ~ G K Chesterton, Tolstoy, #KEYS
216:The surest way towards this integral fulfilment is to find the Master of the secret who dwells within us, open ourselves constantly to the divine Power which is also the divine Wisdom and Love and trust to it to effect the conversion. But it is difficult for the egoistic consciousness to do this at all at the beginning. And, if done at all, it is still difficult to do it perfectly and in every strand of our nature. It is difficult at first because our egoistic habits of thought, of sensation, of feeling block up the avenues by which we can arrive at the perception that is needed. It is difficult afterwards because the faith, the surrender, the courage requisite in this path are not easy to the ego-clouded soul.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [63] [T7],#KEYS
217:The Divine is with you according to your aspiration. Naturally that does not mean that He bends to the caprices of your outer nature,-I speak here of the truth of your being. And yet, sometimes he does fashion himself according to your outer aspirations, and if, like the devotees, you live alternately in separation and union, ecstasy and despair, the Divine also will separate from you and unite with you, according as you believe. The attitude is thus very important, even the outer attitude. People do not know how important is faith, how faith is miracle, creator of miracles. If you expect at every moment to be lifted up and pulled towards the Divine, He will come to lift you and He will be there, quite close, closer, ever closer.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, Faith,#KEYS
218:Why does one feel afraid?
I suppose it is because one is egoistic.
There are three reasons. First, an excessive concern about one's security. Next, what one does not know always gives an uneasy feeling which is translated in the consciousness by fear. And above all, one doesn't have the habit of a spontaneous trust in the Divine. If you look into things sufficiently deeply, this is the true reason. There are people who do not even know that That exists, but one could tell them in other words, 'You have no faith in your destiny' or 'You know nothing about Grace' - anything whatever, you may put it as you like, but the root of the matter is a lack of trust. If one always had the feeling that it is the best that happens in all circumstances, one would not be afraid
~ The Mother,#KEYS
219:Certainly we have had our Napoleons and our Hitlers, but we have also had Jesus and Buddha. We have had tyrants, but also great humanitarians. We have had corrupt politicians, but also noble rulers. Even in the most selfish of times, the world has brought forth idealists, philanthropists, great artists, musicians, and poets. If we have inherited ages of feuding and intolerance, we have also inherited the magnificence of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. For each tyrant who has profaned the pages of history, there have been thousands, even millions, of gentle people who have lived unhonored and unknown, keeping principles and living convictions under the most difficult situations. To see this good, and to know it, is to find a new courage and a new faith. ~ Manly P Hall, PRS Journal Summer 1961, p.7, #KEYS
220:The more complete your faith, sincerity and surrender, the more will grace and protection be with you. And when the grace and protection of the Divine Mother are with you, what is there that can touch you or whom need you fear? A little of it even will carry you through all difficulties, obstacles and dangers, surrounded by its full presence you can go securely on your way because it is hers, careless of all menace, unaffected by any hostility however powerful, whether from this world or from worlds invisible. Its touch can turn difficulties into opportunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaltering strength. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
221:From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols (a number which, though extremely vast, is not infinite): in other words, all that it is given to express, in all languages. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogue of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, #KEYS
222:Often he went to the workshop, to encourage the assistant Erich, who continued working at the altar and eagerly awaited his master's return. Sometimes the Abbot unlocked Goldmund's room, where the Mary figure stood, lifted the cloth from the figure carefully and stayed with her awhile. He knew nothing of the figure's origin; Goldmund had never told him Lydia's story. But he felt everything; he saw that the girl's form had long lived in Goldmund's heart. Perhaps he had seduced her, perhaps betrayed and left heR But, truer than the most faithful husband, he had taken her along in his soul, preserving her image until finally, perhaps after many years in which he had never seen her again, he had fashioned this beautiful, touching statue of a girl and captured in her face, her bear ing, her hands all the tenderness, admiration, and longing of their love.
~ Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund,#KEYS
223:Please initiate me into a tangible form of Yoga. I make this assurance that I shall follow your instructions to the very letter and refer to you my doubts and difficulties on the way.
There is no method in this Yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eyebrows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one's own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother's Power and Presence. 30 November 1934 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
224:The hostile forces have a certain self-chosen function: it is to test the condition of the individual, of the work, of the earth itself and their readiness for the spiritual descent and fulfilment. At every step of the journey, they are there attacking furiously, criticising, suggesting, imposing despondency or inciting to revolt, raising unbelief, amassing difficulties. No doubt, they put a very exaggerated interpretation on the rights given them by their function, making mountains even out of what seems to us a mole-hill. A little trifling false step or mistake and they appear on the road and clap a whole Himalaya as a barrier across it. But this opposition has been permitted from of old not merely as a test or ordeal, but as a compulsion on us to seek a greater strength, a more perfect self-knowledge, an intenser purity and force of aspiration, a faith that nothing can crush, a more powerful descent of the Divine Grace.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
225:To be able to receive the Divine Power and let act through you in the things of the outward life, there are three necessary conditions:
(i) Quietude, equality - not to be disturbed by anything that happens, to keep the mind still and firm, seeing the play of forces, but itself tranquil.
(ii) Absolute faith - faith that what is for the best will happen, but also that if one can make oneself a true instrument, the fruit will be that which one's will guided by the Divine Light sees as the thing to be done - kartavyam karma.
(iii) Receptivity - the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guiding one's sight and will and action. If this power and presence can be felt and this plasticity made the habit of the consciousness in action, - but plasticity to the Divine force alone without bringing in any foreign element, - the eventual result is sure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
226: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
227:When man's thoughts rise upon the wings of aspiration, when he pushes back the darkness with the strength of reason and logic, then indeed the builder is liberated from his dungeon and the light pours in, bathing him with life and power. This light enables us to seek more clearly the mystery of creation and to find with greater certainty our place in the Great Plan, for as man unfolds his bodies he gains talents with which he can explore the mysteries of Nature and search for the hidden workings of the Divine. Through these powers the Builder is liberated and his consciousness goes forth conquering and to conquer. These higher ideals, these spiritual concepts, these altruistic, philanthropic, educative applications of thought power glorify the Builder; for they give the power of expression and those who can express themselves are free. When man can mold his thoughts, his emotions, and his actions into faithful expressions of his highest ideals then liberty is his, for ignorance is the darkness of Chaos and knowledge is the light of Cosmos.
~ Manly P Hall,#KEYS
228:It is here upon earth, in the body itself, that you must acquire a complete knowledge and learn to use a full and complete power. Only when you have done that will you be free to move about with entire security in all the worlds. Only when you are incapable of having the slightest fear, when you remain unmoved, for example, in the midst of the worst nightmare, can you say, “Now I am ready to go into the vital world.” But this means the acquisition of a power and a knowledge that can come only when you are a perfect master of the impulses and desires of the vital nature. You must be absolutely free from everything that can bring in the beings of the darkness or allow them to rule over you; if you are not free, beware!
No attachments, no desires, no impulses, no preferences; perfect equanimity, unchanging peace and absolute faith in the Divine protection: with that you are safe, without it you are in peril. And as long as you are not safe, it is better to do like little chickens that take shelter under the mother’s wings. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
229:There is nothing unintelligible in what I say about strength and Grace. Strength has a value for spiritual realisation, but to say that it can be done by strength only and by no other means is a violent exaggeration. Grace is not an invention, it is a face of spiritual experience. Many who would be considered as mere nothings by the wise and strong have attained by Grace; illiterate, without mental power or training, without "strength" of character or will, they have yet aspired and suddenly or rapidly grown into spiritual realisation, because they had faith or because they were sincere. ...
Strength, if it is spiritual, is a power for spiritual realisation; a greater power is sincerity; the greatest power of all is Grace. I have said times without number that if a man is sincere, he will go through in spite of long delay and overwhelming difficulties. I have repeatedly spoken of the Divine Grace. I have referred any number of times to the line of the Gita:
"I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve." ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
230:It is necessary to observe and know the wrong movements in you; for they are the source of your trouble and have to be persistently rejected if you are to be free.
But do not be always thinking of your defects and wrong movements. Concentrate more upon what you are to be, on the ideal, with the faith that, since it is the goal before you, it must and will come.
To be always observing faults and wrong movements brings depression and discourages the faith. Turn your eyes more to the coming Light and less to any immediate darkness. Faith, cheerfulness, confidence in the ultimate victory are the things that help, - they make the progress easier and swifter. Make more of the good experiences that come to you; one experience of the kind is more important than the lapses and failures. When it ceases, do not repine or allow yourself to be discouraged, but be quiet within and aspire for its renewal in a stronger form leading to still deeper and fuller experience. Aspire always, but with more quietude, opening yourself to the Divine simply and wholly. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
231:It is a fact always known to all yogis and occultists since the beginning of time, in Europe and Africa as in India, that wherever yoga or Yajna is done, there the hostile Forces gather together to stop it by any means. It is known that there is a lower nature and a higher spiritual nature - it is known that they pull different ways and the lower is strongest at first and the higher afterwards. It is known that the hostile Forces take advantage of the movements of the lower nature and try to spoil through them, smash or retard the siddhi. It has been said as long ago as the Upanishads (hard is the path to tread, sharp like a razor's edge); it was said later by Christ 'hard is the way and narrow the gate by which one enters into the kingdom of heaven' and also 'many are called, few chosen' - because of these difficulties. But it has also always been known that those who are sincere and faithful in heart and remain so and those who rely on the Divine will arrive in spite of all difficulties, stumbles or falls.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III, Opposition of the Hostile Forces - I,#KEYS
232:The alchemist of today is not hidden in caves and cellars, studying alone, but as he goes on with his work, it is seen that walls are built around him, and while he is in the world, like the master of old, he is not of it. As he goes further in his work, the light of other people's advice and outside help grows weaker and weaker, until finally he stands alone in darkness, and then comes the time that he must use his own lamp, and the various experiments which he has carried on must be his guide. He must take the Elixir of Life which he has developed and with it fill the lamp of his spiritual consciousness, and holding that above his head, walk into the Great Unknown, where if he has been a good and faithful servant, he will learn of the alchemy of Divinity. Where now test tubes and bottles are his implements, then worlds and globes he will study, and as a silent watcher will learn from that Divine One, who is the Great Alchemist of all the universe, the greatest alchemy of all, the creation of life, the maintenance of form, and the building of worlds. ~ Manly P Hall, The Initiates of the Flame, #KEYS
233:Prayer helps to prepare this relation for us at first on the lower plane even while it is there consistent with much that is mere egoism and self-delusion; but afterwards we can draw towards the spiritual truth which is behind it. It is not then the giving of the thing asked for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of mans life with God, the conscious interchange. In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a much greater power than our own entirely self-reliant struggle and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience. Necessarily, in the end prayer either ceases in the greater thing for which it prepared us, -- in fact the form we call prayer is not itself essential so long as the faith, the will, the aspiration are there, -- or remains only for the joy of the relation. Also its objects, the artha or interest it seeks to realise, become higher and higher until we reach the highest motiveless devotion, which is that of divine love pure and simple without any other demand or longing.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Love,#KEYS
234:By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology; in the language of St. James, "faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." In other words, no man is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On the other hand, mere practice, divested of all religious belief, is also not religion. Two men may behave in exactly the same way, and yet one of them may be religious and the other not. If the one acts from the love or fear of God, he is religious; if the other acts from the love or fear of man, he is moral or immoral according as his behaviour comports or conflicts with the general good. ~ James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, #KEYS
235:Anyway, in instances of this kind, I think it is people's faith, above all, which saves them. When they have performed their little ceremony properly, they feel confident, "Oh! now it will be over, for she is satisfied." And because they feel confident, it helps them to react and the illness disappears. I have seen this very often in the street. There might be a small hostile entity there, but these are very insignificant things.
In other cases, in some temples, there are vital beings who are more or less powerful and have made their home there. But what Sri Aurobindo means here is that there is nothing, not even the most anti-divine force, which in its origin is not the Supreme Divine. So, necessarily, everything goes back to Him, consciously or unconsciously. In the consciousness of the one who makes the offering it does not go to the Divine: it goes to the greater or smaller demon to whom he turns. But through everything, through the wood of the idol or even the ill-will of the vital adversary, ultimately, all returns to the Divine, since all comes from Him. Only, the one who has made the offering or the sacrifice receives but in proportion to his own consciousness... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956,#KEYS
236:I have got three letters from you, but as I was busy with many things I couldn't answer them-today I am answering all the three together. It was known that it wouldn't be possible for you to come for darshan this time, it can't be easy to come twice within this short time. Don't be sorry, remain calm and remember the Mother, gather faith and strength within. You are a child of the Divine Mother, be tranquil, calm and full of force. There is no special procedure. To take the name of the Mother, to remember her within, to pray to her, all this may be described as calling the Mother. As it comes from within you, you have to call her accordingly. You can do also this - shutting your eyes you can imagine that the Mother is in front of you or you can sketch a picture of her in your mind and offer her your pranam, that obeissance will reach her. When you've time, you can meditate on her with the thinking attitude that she is with you, she's sitting in front of you. Doing these things people at last get to see her. Accept my blessings, I send the Mother's blessings also at the same time. From time to time Jyotirmoyee will take blessing flowers during pranam and send them to you. ~ The Mother, Nirodbaran Memorable contacts with the Mother, #KEYS
237:the three results of effective practice: devotion, the central liberating knowledge and purification of ego; :::
...it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible;.. There is bound up a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our through, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved conscecration to the Divine of the totality of our being....
...next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, ... In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. ...
Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Sacrifice, The Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [T1],#KEYS
238:I accept, will not give up, and will practice each of the Three Jewels,
And will not let go of my guru or my yidam deity.
As the samaya of the Buddha, first among the Three Jewels,
I will apply myself to the true, essential reality.
As the samaya of sacred Dharma, second among the Three Jewels,
I will distill the very essence of all the vehicles' teachings.
As the samaya of the Sangha, the third and final Jewel,
I will look upon reality; I will behold pure awareness.
And as the samaya of the guru and the yidam deity,
I will take my very own mind, my pure mind, as a witness.
Generally speaking, the Three Jewels should be regarded as the ultimate place to take refuge. As was taught in the section on taking refuge, your mind should be focused one-pointedly, with all your hopes and trust placed in their care. The gurus are a lamp that dispels the darkness of ignorance.
As the guides who lead you along the path to liberation, they are your sole source of refuge and protection, from now until you attain enlightenment.
For these reasons, you should act with unwavering faith, pure view and devotion, and engage in the approach and accomplishment of the divine yidam deity. ~ Dzogchen Rinpoche III, Great Perfection Outer and Inner Preliminaries,#KEYS
239:"Q: What is the right attitude to stick on to this path till the Supramental Truth is realised?
"A: There is the psychic condition and sincerity and devotion to the Mother."
What is "the psychic condition"?
The psychic condition? That means being in relation with one's psychic, I suppose, being governed by one's psychic being.
Sweet Mother, I don't understand very clearly the difference between faith, belief and confidence.
But Sri Aurobindo has given the full explanation here. If you don't understand, then...
He has written "Faith is a feeling in the whole being."
The whole being, yes. Faith, that's the whole being at once. He says that belief is something that occurs in the head, that is purely mental; and confidence is quite different. Confidence - one can have confidence in life, trust in the Divine, trust in others, trust in one's own destiny, that is, one has the feeling that everything is going to help him, to do what he wants to do.
Faith is a certitude without any proof.
Mother, on what does faith depend?
Probably on Divine Grace. Some people have it spontaneously. There are others who need to make a great effort to have it.
~ The Mother, Question and Answers, Volume-6, page no.120,#KEYS
240:Considered from this point of view, the fact that some of the theories which we know to be false give such amazingly accurate results is an adverse factor. Had we somewhat less knowledge, the group of phenomena which these "false" theories explain would appear to us to be large enough to "prove" these theories. However, these theories are considered to be "false" by us just for the reason that they are, in ultimate analysis, incompatible with more encompassing pictures and, if sufficiently many such false theories are discovered, they are bound to prove also to be in conflict with each other. Similarly, it is possible that the theories, which we consider to be "proved" by a number of numerical agreements which appears to be large enough for us, are false because they are in conflict with a possible more encompassing theory which is beyond our means of discovery. If this were true, we would have to expect conflicts between our theories as soon as their number grows beyond a certain point and as soon as they cover a sufficiently large number of groups of phenomena. In contrast to the article of faith of the theoretical physicist mentioned before, this is the nightmare of the theorist. ~ Eugene Paul Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, #KEYS
241:keep faith :::
We must have faith that always what is for the best happens. We may for the moment not consider it as the best because we are ignorant and also blind, because we do not see the consequences of things and what will happen later. But we must keep the faith that if it is like that, if we rely on the Divine, if we give Him the full charge of ourselves, if we let Him decide everything for us, well, we must know that it is always what is best for us that happens. This is an absolute fact. To the extent to which you surrender, the best happens to you. This may not be in conformity with what you would like, your preferences or desire, because these things are blind: it is the best from thespiritual point of view, the best for your progress, your development, your spiritual growth, your true life. It is always that. And you must keep this faith, because faith is the expression of a trust in the Divine and the full self-giving you make to the Divine. And when you make it, it is something absolutely marvellous. That's a fact, these are not just words, you understand, it is a fact. When you look back, all kinds of things which you did not understand when they happened to you, you realise as just the thing which was necessary in order to compel you to make the needed progress. Always, without exception. It is our blindness which prevents us from seeing it. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
242:the first necessity; :::
The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being - soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body - must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore. Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 72,#KEYS
243:Life clung to its seat with cords of gasping breath;
Lapped was his body by a tenebrous tongue.
Existence smothered travailed to survive;
Hope strangled perished in his empty soul,
Belief and memory abolished died
And all that helps the spirit in its course.
There crawled through every tense and aching nerve
Leaving behind its poignant quaking trail
A nameless and unutterable fear.
As a sea nears a victim bound and still,
The approach alarmed his mind for ever dumb
Of an implacable eternity
Of pain inhuman and intolerable.
This he must bear, his hope of heaven estranged;
He must ever exist without extinction's peace
In a slow suffering Time and tortured Space,
An anguished nothingness his endless state.
A lifeless vacancy was now his breast,
And in the place where once was luminous thought,
Only remained like a pale motionless ghost
An incapacity for faith and hope
And the dread conviction of a vanquished soul
Immortal still but with its godhead lost,
Self lost and God and touch of happier worlds.
But he endured, stilled the vain terror, bore
The smothering coils of agony and affright;
Then peace returned and the soul's sovereign gaze.
To the blank horror a calm Light replied:
Immutable, undying and unborn,
Mighty and mute the Godhead in him woke
And faced the pain and danger of the world.
He mastered the tides of Nature with a look:
He met with his bare spirit naked Hell.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#KEYS
244:Why God sometimes allows people who are genuinely good to be hindered in the good that they do. God, who is faithful, allows his friends to fall frequently into weakness only in order to remove from them any prop on which they might lean. For a loving person it would be a great joy to be able to achieve many great feats, whether keeping vigils, fasting, performing other ascetical practices or doing major, difficult and unusual works. For them this is a great joy, support and source of hope so that their works become a prop and a support upon which they can lean. But it is precisely this which our Lord wishes to take from them so that he alone will be their help and support. This he does solely on account of his pure goodness and mercy, for God is prompted to act only by his goodness, and in no way do our works serve to make God give us anything or do anything for us. Our Lord wishes his friends to be freed from such an attitude, and thus he removes their support from them so that they must henceforth find their support only in him. For he desires to give them great gifts, solely on account of his goodness, and he shall be their comfort and support while they discover themselves to be and regard themselves as being a pure nothingness in all the great gifts of God. The more essentially and simply the mind rests on God and is sustained by him, the more deeply we are established in God and the more receptive we are to him in all his precious gifts - for human kind should build on God alone. ~ Meister Eckhart, #KEYS
245:9. Atonement with the Father/Abyss:Atonement consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster-the dragon thought to be God (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed id). But this requires an abandonment of the attachment to ego itself, and that is what is difficult. One must have a faith that the father is merciful, and then a reliance on that mercy. Therewith, the center of belief is transferred outside of the bedeviling god's tight scaly ring, and the dreadful ogres dissolve. It is in this ordeal that the hero may derive hope and assurance from the helpful female figure, by whose magic (pollen charms or power of intercession) he is protected through all the frightening experiences of the father's ego-shattering initiation. For if it is impossible to trust the terrifying father-face, then one's faith must be centered elsewhere (Spider Woman, Blessed Mother); and with that reliance for support, one endures the crisis-only to find, in the end, that the father and mother reflect each other, and are in essence the same. The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands-and the two are atoned. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
246:challenge for the Integral Yogin :::
Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. To him as to all seekers of the spirit there are offered for solution the oppositions of the reason, the clinging hold of the senses, the perturbations of the heart, the ambush of the desires, the clog of the physical body; but he has to deal in another fashion with their mutual and internal conflicts and their hindrance to his aim, for he must arrive at an infinitely more difficult perfection in the handling of all this rebel matter. Accepting them as instruments for the divine realisation and manifestation, he has to convert their jangling discords, to enlighten their thick darknesses, to transfigure them separately and all together, harmonising them in themselves and with each other, -- integrally, omitting no grain or strand or vibration, leaving no iota of imperfection anywhere. All exclusive concentration, or even a succession of concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 78, [T9],#KEYS
247:How can faith be increased?
Through aspiration, I suppose. Some have it spontaneously... You see, it is difficult to pray if one doesn't have faith, but if one can make prayer a means of increasing one's faith, or aspiring, having an aspiration, having an aspiration to have faith... Most of these qualities require an effort. If one does not have a thing and wants to have it, well, it needs great, great, great sustained efforts, a constant aspiration, an unflagging will, a sincerity at each moment; then one is sure, it will come one day - it can come in a second. There are people who have it, and then they have contrary movements which come and attack. These people, if their will is sincere, can shield their faith, repel the attacks. There are others who cultivate doubt because it is a kind of dilettantism - that, there's nothing more dangerous than that. It is as though one were letting the worm into the fruit: it eventually eats it up completely. This means that when a movement of this sort comes - it usually comes first into the mind - the first thing to do is to be very determined and refuse it. Surely one must not enjoy looking on just to see what is going to happen; that kind of curiosity is terribly dangerous.
It is perhaps more difficult for intellectuals to have faith than for those who are simple, sincere, who are straightforward, without intellectual complications. But I think that if an intellectual person has faith, then that becomes very powerful, a very powerful thing which can truly work miracles. ~ The Mother, Question and Answers, Volume-6, page no.121),#KEYS
248:the powers of concentration :::
By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, but the one Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power, if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself, we can become whatever we choose; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fear, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, [318],#KEYS
249:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,#KEYS
250:The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute wisdom and eternal consciousness in ignorant Nature-Force and suffers her to drive the individual being, with its complicity, as the ego; this lower action of Nature continues to prevail, often even in spite of man's half-lit imperfect efforts at a nobler motive and a purer self-knowledge. Our human effort at perfection fails, or progresses very incompletely, owing to the force of Nature's past actions in us, her past formations, her long-rooted associations; it turns towards a true and high-climbing success only when a greater Knowledge and Power than our own breaks through the lid of our ignorance and guides or takes up our personal will. For our human will is a misled and wandering ray that has parted from the supreme Puissance. The period of slow emergence out of this lower working into a higher light and purer force is the valley of the shadow of death for the striver after perfection; it is a dreadful passage full of trials, sufferings, sorrows, obscurations, stumblings, errors, pitfalls. To abridge and alleviate this ordeal or to penetrate it with the divine delight faith is necessary, an increasing surrender of the mind to the knowledge that imposes itself from within and, above all, a true aspiration and a right and unfaltering and sincere practice. "Practise unfalteringly," says the Gita, "with a heart free from despondency," the Yoga; for even though in the earlier stage of the path we drink deep of the bitter poison of internal discord and suffering, the last taste of this cup is the sweetness of the nectar of immortality and the honey-wine of an eternal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 219, #KEYS
251:There is the one door in us that sometimes swings open upon the splendour of a truth beyond and, before it shuts again, allows a ray to touch us, - a luminous intimation which, if we have the strength and firmness, we may hold to in our faith and make a starting-point for another play of consciousness than that of the sense-mind, for the play of Intuition. For if we examine carefully, we shall find that Intuition is our first teacher. Intuition always stands veiled behind our mental operations. Intuition brings to man those brilliant messages from the Unknown which are the beginning of his higher knowledge. Reason only comes in afterwards to see what profit it can have of the shining harvest. Intuition gives us that idea of something behind and beyond all that we know and seem to be which pursues man always in contradiction of his lower reason and all his normal experience and impels him to formulate that formless perception in the more positive ideas of God, Immortality, Heaven and the rest by which we strive to express it to the mind. For Intuition is as strong as Nature herself from whose very soul it has sprung and cares nothing for the contradictions of reason or the denials of experience. It knows what is because it is, because itself it is of that and has come from that, and will not yield it to the judgment of what merely becomes and appears. What the Intuition tells us of, is not so much Existence as the Existent, for it proceeds from that one point of light in us which gives it its advantage, that sometimes opened door in our own self-awareness. Ancient Vedanta seized this message of the Intuition and formulated it in the three great declarations of the Upanishads, I am He, Thou art That, O Swetaketu, All this is the Brahman; this Self is the Brahman.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge,#KEYS
252:It doesnt interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing. It doesnt interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesnt interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by lifes betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesnt interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when its not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, Yes! It doesnt interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesnt interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesnt interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer,#KEYS
253:I know some individuals who make this their daily practice: starting at the beginning and reading a canto or half a canto every day till they reach the end and then starting at the beginning again, and in that way they have gone through the whole of Savitri many times. When this is done in groups there's really no doubt that by this going through the whole soundbody of the epic from beginning to end aloud, there must be built up a very strong force field of vibrations. It is definitely of benefit to the people who participate in it. But again I would say that the effect or benefit of this sacrifice will be richer to the extent that the reading is done with understanding and above all with soul surrender. It shouldn't become a mere ritual.
Sri Aurobindo's mantric lines, repeated one after the other, will always have their power; but the power will be much greater if the mind can participate, and the will and the heart.
I have also heard of some groups who select one line that seems to have a particular mantric power and then within the group they chant that line many, many times. They concentrate on that one special line, and try to take its vibrations deep into themselves. Again I am sure that this is very beneficial to those who practice it.
In that way the words enter very deeply into the consciousness. There they resonate and do their work, and perhaps not just the surface meaning but the deeper meaning and the deeper vibrations may reveal their full depth to those who undertake this exercise if it is done with self-dedication, with a true aspiration to internalise the heart of the meaning, not just as a mere repetition.
At another end of the spectrum of possible approaches to Savitri, we can say there would be the aesthetic approach, the approach of enjoying it for its poetic beauty. I met a gentleman a couple of months ago, who told me, "We have faith in Sri Aurobindo, but it is so difficult to understand his books. We tried with The Life Divine, we tried with The Synthesis of Yoga but we found them so difficult. ~ collab summer & fall 2011,#KEYS
254:the characteristics of Life, Mind and Spirit :::
The characteristic energy of bodily Life is not so much in progress as in persistence, not so much in individual self-enlargement as in self-repetition. There is, indeed, in physical Nature a progression from type to type, from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to man; for even in inanimate Matter Mind is at work. But once a type is marked off physically, the chief immediate preoccupation of the terrestrial Mother seems to be to keep it in being by a constant reproduction. For Life always seeks immortality; but since individual form is impermanent and only the idea of a form is permanent in the consciousness that creates the universe, -for there it does not perish,- such constant reproduction is the only possible material immortality. Self-preservation, self-repetition, self-multiplication are necessarily, then, the predominant instincts of all material existence.
The characteristic energy of pure Mind is change and the more it acquires elevation and organisation, the more this law of Mind assumes the aspect of a continual enlargement, improvement and better arrangement of its gains and so of a continual passage from a smaller and simpler to a larger and more complex perfection. For Mind, unlike bodily life, is infinite in its field, elastic in its expansion, easily variable in its formations. Change, then, self-enlargement and self-improvement are its proper instincts. Its faith is perfectibility, its watchword is progress.
The characteristic law of Spirit is self-existent perfection and immutable infinity. It possesses always and in its own right the immortality which is the aim of Life and the perfection which is the goal of Mind. The attainment of the eternal and the realisation of that which is the same in all things and beyond all things, equally blissful in universe and outside it, untouched by the imperfections and limitations of the forms and activities in which it dwells, are the glory of the spiritual life.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions Of the Synthesis, The Threefold Life,#KEYS
255:And therefore, all of those for whom authentic transformation has deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the profound moral obligation to shout form the heart-perhaps quietly and gently, with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakable public example-but authentically always and absolutely carries a a demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you.
Alas, if you fail to do so, you are betraying your own authenticity. You are hiding your true estate. You don't want to upset others because you don't want to upset your self. You are acting in bad faith, the taste of a bad infinity.
Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any realization of depth carries a terrible burden: those who are allowed to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain terms: that is the bargain. You were allowed to see the truth under the agreement that you would communicate it to others (that is the ultimate meaning of the bodhisattva vow). And therefore, if you have seen, you simply must speak out. Speak out with compassion, or speak out with angry wisdom, or speak out with skillful means, but speak out you must.
And this is truly a terrible burden, a horrible burden, because in any case there is no room for timidity. The fact that you might be wrong is simply no excuse: You might be right in your communication, and you might be wrong, but that doesn't matter. What does matter, as Kierkegaard so rudely reminded us, is that only by investing and speaking your vision with passion, can the truth, one way or another, finally penetrate the reluctance of the world. If you are right, or if you are wrong, it is only your passion that will force either to be discovered. It is your duty to promote that discovery-either way-and therefore it is your duty to speak your truth with whatever passion and courage you can find in your heart. You must shout, in whatever way you can. ~ Ken Wilber, One Taste,#KEYS
256:At the basis of this collaboration there is necessarily the will to change, no longer to be what one is, for things to be no longer what they are. There are several ways of reaching it, and all the methods are good when they succeed! One may be deeply disgusted with what exists and wish ardently to come out of all this and attain something else; one may - and this is a more positive way - one may feel within oneself the touch, the approach of something positively beautiful and true, and willingly drop all the rest so that nothing may burden the journey to this new beauty and truth.
What is indispensable in every case is the ardent will for progress, the willing and joyful renunciation of all that hampers the advance: to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward, and to set out into the unknown with the ardent faith that this is the truth of tomorrow, inevitable, which must necessarily come, which nothing, nobody, no bad will, even that of Nature, can prevent from becoming a reality - perhaps of a not too distant future - a reality which is being worked out now and which those who know how to change, how not to be weighed down by old habits, will surely have the good fortune not only to see but to realise. People sleep, they forget, they take life easy - they forget, forget all the time.... But if we could remember... that we are at an exceptional hour, a unique time, that we have this immense good fortune, this invaluable privilege of being present at the birth of a new world, we could easily get rid of everything that impedes and hinders our progress.
So, the most important thing, it seems, is to remember this fact; even when one doesn't have the tangible experience, to have the certainty of it and faith in it; to remember always, to recall it constantly, to go to sleep with this idea, to wake up with this perception; to do all that one does with this great truth as the background, as a constant support, this great truth that we are witnessing the birth of a new world.
We can participate in it, we can become this new world. And truly, when one has such a marvellous opportunity, one should be ready to give up everything for its sake. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, [T1],#KEYS
257:What is the ape to a human? A laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. And that is precisely what the human shall be to the overman: a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment.
You have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now a human is still more ape than any ape.
But whoever is wisest among you is also just a conflict and a cross between plant and ghost. But do I implore you to become ghosts or plants?
Behold, I teach you the overman!
The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth!
I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes! They are mixers of poisons whether they know it or not.
They are despisers of life, dying off and self-poisoned, of whom the earth is weary: so let them fade away!
Once the sacrilege against God was the greatest sacrilege, but God died, and then all these desecrators died. Now to desecrate the earth is the most terrible thing, and to esteem the bowels of the unfathomable higher than the meaning of the earth!
Once the soul gazed contemptuously at the body, and then such contempt was the highest thing: it wanted the body gaunt, ghastly, starved.
Thus it intended to escape the body and the earth.
Oh this soul was gaunt, ghastly and starved, and cruelty was the lust of this soul!
But you, too, my brothers, tell me: what does your body proclaim about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and filth and a pitiful contentment?
Truly, mankind is a polluted stream. One has to be a sea to take in a polluted stream without becoming unclean.
Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this sea, in him your great contempt can go under.
What is the greatest thing that you can experience? It is the hour of your great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness turns to nausea and likewise your reason and your virtue.
The hour in which you say: 'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth, and a pitiful contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself!' ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Fred Kaufmann,#KEYS
258:formal-operational ::: The orange altitude emerged a few hundred years ago with the European Rennisance. Its modern, rational view grew in prominance through the Age of Enlightenment and came to its fullest expression during the Industrial Revolution.
Fueling this age of reason and science was the emergence of formal operational cognition, or the ability to operate on thoughts themselves. No longer limited to reflection on concrete objects, cognition moves from representations to abstractions and can now operate on a range of non-tangiable propositions that may not reflect the concrete world. This is the basis of scientific reasoning through hypothesis. Orange also brings multiplistic thinking, or the realization that there are several possible ways of approaching a situation, even though one is still considered most right. Self-sense at orange features two shifts, first to expert and then to achiever, these moves feature an increase in self-awareness and appreciation for multiple possibilities in a given situation. Recognition that one doesnt always live up to idealized social expectations is fueled by an awareness that begins to penetrate the inner world of subjectivity. This is the beginning of introspection. An objectifiable self-sense and the capacity to take a third person perspective. Needs shift from belonging to self-esteem. And values land on pragmatic utiliarian approaches to life that rely on ... and thinking to earn progress, prosperity and self-reliance. Morality at orange sees right defined by universal ethical principles. The emergence of formal operational thinking at orange enables a world-centric care for universal human rights and the right of each individual for autonomy and the pursuit of happiness. A desire for individual dignity and self-respect are also driving forces behind orange morality. A significant number of the founding fathers of the United States harbored orange values. ...
Faith at orange is called Individual Reflective and so far as identity and world-view are differentiated from others, and faith takes on an essence of critical thought. Demythologizing symbols into conceptual meanings. At orange we see the emergence of rational deism and secularism. ~ Essential Integral, 4.1-51, Formal Operational,#KEYS
259:Are there no false visions?
There are what in appearance are false visions. There are, for instance, hundreds or thousands of people who say that they have seen the Christ. Of that number those who have actually seen Him are perhaps less than a dozen, and even with them there is much to say about what they have seen. What the others saw may be an emanation; or it may be a thought or even an image remembered by the mind. There are, too, those who are strong believers in the Christ and have had a vision of some Force or Being or some remembered image that is very luminous and makes upon them a strong impression. They have seen something which they feel belongs to another world, to a supernatural order, and it has created in them an emotion of fear, awe or joy; and as they believe in the Christ, they can think of nothing else and say it is He. But the same vision or experience if it comes to one who believes in the Hindu, the Mohammedan or some other religion, will take a different name and form. The thing seen or experienced may be fundamentally the same, but it is formulated differently according to the different make-up of the apprehending mind. It is only those that can go beyond beliefs and faiths and myths and traditions who are able to say what it really is; but these are few, very few. You must be free from every mental construction, you must divest yourself of all that is merely local or temporal, before you can know what you have seen.
Spiritual experience means the contact with the Divine in oneself (or without, which comes to the same thing in that domain). And it is an experience identical everywhere in all countries, among all peoples and even in all ages. If you meet the Divine, you meet it always and everywhere in the same way. Difference comes in because between the experience and its formulation there is almost an abyss. Directly you have spiritual experience, which takes place always in the inner consciousness, it is translated into your external consciousness and defined there in one way or another according to your education, your faith, your mental predisposition. There is only one truth, one reality; but the forms through which it may be expressed are many. 21 April 1929 ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
260:There I waited day and night for the voice of God within me, to know what He had to say to me, to learn what I had to do. In this seclusion the earliest realisation, the first lesson came to me. I remembered then that a month or more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all activity, to go in seclusion and to look into myself, so that I might enter into closer communion with Him. I was weak and could not accept the call. My work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I thought that unless I was there, it would suffer or even fail and cease; therefore I would not leave it. It seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said, The bonds you had not the strength to break, I have broken for you, because it is not my will nor was it ever my intention that that should continue. I have had another thing for you to do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach you what you could not learn for yourself and to train you for my work. Then He placed the Gita in my hands. His strength entered into me and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita. I was not only to understand intellectually but to realise what Sri Krishna demanded of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire to do His work, to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without the demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for high and low, friend and opponent, success andfailure, yet not to do His work negligently. I realised what the Hindu religion meant. We speak often of the Hindureligion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived. This is the Dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin,#KEYS
261:higher mind or late vision logic ::: Even more rare, found stably in less than 1% of the population and even more emergent is the turquoise altitude.
Cognition at Turquoise is called late vision-logic or cross-paradigmatic and features the ability to connect meta-systems or paradigms, with other meta-systems. This is the realm of coordinating principles. Which are unified systems of systems of abstraction to other principles. ... Aurobindo indian sage and philosopher offers a more first-person account of turquoise which he called higher-mind, a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamism capable of formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming of all of which a spontaneous inherient knowledge.
Self-sense at turquoise is called Construct-aware and is the first stage of Cook-Greuter's extension of Loveigers work on ego-development. The Construct-aware stage sees individuals for the first time as exploring more and more complex thought-structures with awareness of the automatic nature of human map making and absurdities which unbridaled complexity and logical argumentation can lead. Individuals at this stage begin to see their ego as a central point of reference and therefore a limit to growth. They also struggle to balance unique self-expressions and their concurrent sense of importance, the imperical and intuitive knowledge that there is no fundamental subject-object separation and the budding awareness of self-identity as temporary which leads to a decreased ego-desire to create a stable self-identity. Turquoise individuals are keenly aware of the interplay between awareness, thought, action and effects. They seek personal and spiritual transformation and hold a complex matrix of self-identifications, the adequecy of which they increasingly call into question. Much of this already points to Turquoise values which embrace holistic and intuitive thinking and alignment to universal order in a conscious fashion.
Faith at Turquoise is called Universalising and can generate faith compositions in which conceptions of Ultimate Reality start to include all beings. Individuals at Turquoise faith dedicate themselves to transformation of present reality in the direction of transcendent actuality. Both of these are preludes to the coming of Third Tier. ~ Essential Integral, L4.1-54, Higher Mind,#KEYS
262: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
263:meta-systemic operations ::: As the 1950's and 60s begin to roll around the last stage of first tier emerged as a cultural force. With the Green Altitude we see the emergence of Pluralistic, Multicultural, Post-Modern world-views.
Cognition is starting to move beyond formal-operations into the realm of co-ordinating systems of abstractions, in what is called Meta-systemic Cognition. While formal-operations acted upon the classes and relations between members of classes. Meta-systemic operations start at the level of relating systems to systems. The focus of these investigations is placed upon comparing, contrasting, transforming and synthesizing entire systems, rather than components of one system. This emergent faculty allows self-sense to focus around a heightened sense of individuality and an increased ability for emotional resonance. The recognition of individual differences, the ability to tolerate paradox and contradiction, and greater conceptual complexity all provide for an understanding of conflict as being both internally and externally caused. Context plays a major role in the creation of truth and individual perspective. With each being context dependent and open to subjective interpretation, meaning each perspective and truth are rendered relative and are not able to be judged as better or more true than any other. This fuels a value set that centers on softness over cold rationality. Sensitivity and preference over objectivity.
Along with a focus on community harmony and equality which drives the valuing of sensitivity to others, reconcilation, consensus, dialogue, relationship, human development, bonding, and a seeking of a peace with the inner-self. Moral decisions are based on rights, values, or principles that are agreeable to all individuals composing a society based on fair and beneficial practices. All of this leads to the Equality movements and multiculturalism. And to the extreme form of relativitism which we saw earlier as context dependant nature of all truth including objective facts.
Faith at the green altitude is called Conjunctive, and allows the self to integrate what was unrecognized by the previous stages self-certainty and cognitive and affective adaptation to reality. New features at this level of faith include the unification of symbolic power with conceptual meaning, an awareness of ones social unconscious, a reworking of ones past, and an opening to ones deeper self. ~ Essential Integral, 4.1-52, Meta-systemic Operations,#KEYS
264:As far as heaven, as near as thought and hope,
Glimmered the kingdom of a griefless life.
Above him in a new celestial vault
Other than the heavens beheld by mortal eyes,
As on a fretted ceiling of the gods,
An archipelago of laughter and fire,
Swam stars apart in a rippled sea of sky.
Towered spirals, magic rings of vivid hue
And gleaming spheres of strange felicity
Floated through distance like a symbol world.
On the trouble and the toil they could not share,
On the unhappiness they could not aid,
Impervious to life's suffering, struggle, grief,
Untarnished by its anger, gloom and hate,
Unmoved, untouched, looked down great visioned planes
Blissful for ever in their timeless right.
Absorbed in their own beauty and content,
Of their immortal gladness they live sure.
Apart in their self-glory plunged, remote
Burning they swam in a vague lucent haze,
An everlasting refuge of dream-light,
A nebula of the splendours of the gods
Made from the musings of eternity.
Almost unbelievable by human faith,
Hardly they seemed the stuff of things that are.
As through a magic television's glass
Outlined to some magnifying inner eye
They shone like images thrown from a far scene
Too high and glad for mortal lids to seize.
But near and real to the longing heart
And to the body's passionate thought and sense
Are the hidden kingdoms of beatitude.
In some close unattained realm which yet we feel,
Immune from the harsh clutch of Death and Time,
Escaping the search of sorrow and desire,
In bright enchanted safe peripheries
For ever wallowing in bliss they lie.
In dream and trance and muse before our eyes,
Across a subtle vision's inner field,
Wide rapturous landscapes fleeting from the sight,
The figures of the perfect kingdom pass
And behind them leave a shining memory's trail.
Imagined scenes or great eternal worlds,
Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our hearts with their depths;
Unreal-seeming, yet more real than life,
Happier than happiness, truer than things true,
If dreams these were or captured images,
Dream's truth made false earth's vain realities.
In a swift eternal moment fixed there live
Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes
Calm heavens of imperishable Light,
Illumined continents of violet peace,
Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God
And griefless countries under purple suns.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
265:Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an immediate solution. By that hunger mysticism profits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it was unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmic necessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate tangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out eventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother. It is better and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure intuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an instructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any higher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth which is now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with intermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional displays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then there also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity's ultimate resting-place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Human Aspiration, #KEYS
266:
"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
267:Worthy The Name Of Sir Knight
Sir Knight of the world's oldest order,
Sir Knight of the Army of God,
You have crossed the strange mystical border,
The ground floor of truth you have trod;
You have entered the sanctum sanctorum,
Which leads to the temple above,
Where you come as a stone, and a Christ-chosen one,
In the kingdom of Friendship and Love.
II
As you stand in this new realm of beauty,
Where each man you meet is your friend,
Think not that your promise of duty
In hall, or asylum, shall end;
Outside, in the great world of pleasure,
Beyond, in the clamor of trade,
In the battle of life and its coarse daily strife
Remember the vows you have made.
III
Your service, majestic and solemn,
Your symbols, suggestive and sweet,
Your uniformed phalanx in column
On gala days marching the street;
Your sword and your plume and your helmet,
Your 'secrets' hid from the world's sight;
These things are the small, lesser parts of the all
Which are needed to form the true Knight.
IV
The martyrs who perished rejoicing
In Templary's glorious laws,
Who died 'midst the fagots while voicing
The glory and worth of their cause-
935
They honored the title of 'Templar'
No more than the Knight of to-day
Who mars not the name with one blemish of shame,
But carries it clean through life's fray.
To live for a cause, to endeavor
To make your deeds grace it, to try
And uphold its precepts forever,
Is harder by far than to die.
For the battle of life is unending,
The enemy, Self, never tires,
And the true Knight must slay that sly foe every day
Ere he reaches the heights he desires.
VI
Sir Knight, have you pondered the meaning
Of all you have heard and been told?
Have you strengthened your heart for its weaning
From vices and faults loved of old?
Will you honor, in hours of temptation,
Your promises noble and grand?
Will your spirit be strong to do battle with wrong,
'And having done all, to stand?'
VII
Will you ever be true to a brother
In actions as well as in creed?
Will you stand by his side as no other
Could stand in the hour of his need?
Will you boldly defend him from peril,
And lift him from poverty's curseWill the promise of aid which you willingly made,
Reach down from your lips to your purse?
VIII
The world's battle field is before you!
Let Wisdom walk close by your side,
936
Let Faith spread her snowy wings o'er you,
Let Truth be your comrade and guide;
Let Fortitude, Justice and Mercy
Direct all your conduct aright,
And let each word and act tell to men the proud fact,
You are worthy the name of 'Sir Knight'.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#KEYS
268:What do we understand by the term "chance"? Chance can only be the opposite of order and harmony. There is only one true harmony and that is the supramental - the reign of Truth, the expression of the Divine Law. In the Supermind, therefore, chance has no place. But in the lower Nature the supreme Truth is obscured: hence there is an absence of that divine unity of purpose and action which alone can constitute order. Lacking this unity, the domain of lower Nature is governed by what we may call chance - that is to say, it is a field in which various conflicting forces intermix, having no single definite aim. Whatever arises out of such a rushing together of forces is a result of confusion, dissonance and falsehood - a product of chance. Chance is not merely a conception to cover our ignorance of the causes at work; it is a description of the uncertain mele ́e of the lower Nature which lacks the calm one-pointedness of the divine Truth. The world has forgotten its divine origin and become an arena of egoistic energies; but it is still possible for it to open to the Truth, call it down by its aspiration and bring about a change in the whirl of chance. What men regard as a mechanical sequence of events, owing to their own mental associations, experiences and generalisations, is really manipulated by subtle agencies each of which tries to get its own will done. The world has got so subjected to these undivine agencies that the victory of the Truth cannot be won except by fighting for it. It has no right to it: it has to gain it by disowning the falsehood and the perversion, an important part of which is the facile notion that, since all things owe their final origin to the Divine, all their immediate activities also proceed directly from it. The fact is that here in the lower Nature the Divine is veiled by a cosmic Ignorance and what takes place does not proceed directly from the divine knowledge. That everything is equally the will of God is a very convenient suggestion of the hostile influences which would have the creation stick as tightly as possible to the disorder and ugliness to which it has been reduced. So what is to be done, you ask? Well, call down the Light, open yourselves to the power of Transformation. Innumerable times the divine peace has been given to you and as often you have lost it - because something in you refuses to surrender its petty egoistic routine. If you are not always vigilant, your nature will return to its old unregenerate habits even after it has been filled with the descending Truth. It is the struggle between the old and the new that forms the crux of the Yoga; but if you are bent on being faithful to the supreme Law and Order revealed to you, the parts of your being belonging to the domain of chance will, however slowly, be converted and divinised. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #KEYS
269: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
270:The Mother once described the characteristics of the unity-body, of the future supramental body, to a young Ashramite: 'You know, if there is something on that window-sill and if I [in a supramental body] want to take it, I stretch out my hand and it becomes - wow! - long, and I have the thing in my hand without even having to get up from my chair ... Physically, I shall be able to be here and there at the same time. I shall be able to communicate with many people at the same time. To have something in my hand, I'll just have to wish for it. I think about something and I want it and it is already in my hand. With this transformed body I shall be free of the fetters of ignorance, pain, of mortality and unconsciousness. I shall be able to do many things at the same time. The transparent, luminous, strong, light, elastic body won't need any material things to subsist on ... The body can even be lengthened if one wants it to become tall, or shrunk when one wants it to be small, in any circumstances ... There will be all kinds of changes and there will be powers without limit. And it won't be something funny. Of course, I am giving you somewhat childish examples to tease you and to show the difference. 'It will be a true being, perfect in proportion, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or else transparent. It will have a supple and malleable body endowed with extraordinary capacities and able to do everything; a body without age, a creation of the New Consciousness or else a transformed body such as none has ever imagined ... All that is above man will be within its reach. It will be guided by the Truth alone and nothing less. That is what it is and more even than has ever been conceived.'895 This the Mother told in French to Mona Sarkar, who noted it down as faithfully as possible and read it out to her for verification. The supramental body will not only be omnipotent and omniscient, but also omnipresent. And immortal. Not condemned to a never ending monotonous immortality - which, again, is one of our human interpretations of immortality - but for ever existing in an ecstasy of inexhaustible delight in 'the Joy that surpasses all understanding.' Moment after moment, eternity after eternity. For in that state each moment is an eternity and eternity an ever present moment. If gross matter is not capable of being used as a permanent coating of the soul in the present phase of its evolution, then it certainly is not capable of being the covering of the supramental consciousness, to form the body that has, to some extent, been described above. This means that the crux of the process of supramental transformation lies in matter; the supramental world has to become possible in matter, which at present still is gross matter. - Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were supramentalized in their mental and vital, but their enormous problem was the supramentalization of the physical body, consisting of the gross matter of the Earth. As the Mother said: 'It is matter itself that must change so that the Supramental may manifest. A new kind of matter no longer corresponding with Mendeleyev's periodic table of the elements? Is that possible?
~ Georges Van Vrekhem,#KEYS
271: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 [83],#KEYS
272:In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration.
A certain kind of Agnosticism is the final truth of all knowledge. For when we come to the end of whatever path, the universe appears as only a symbol or an appearance of an unknowable Reality which translates itself here into different systems of values, physical values, vital and sensational values, intellectual, ideal and spiritual values. The more That becomes real to us, the more it is seen to be always beyond defining thought and beyond formulating expression. "Mind attains not there, nor speech."3 And yet as it is possible to exaggerate, with the Illusionists, the unreality of the appearance, so it is possible to exaggerate the unknowableness of the Unknowable. When we speak of It as unknowable, we mean, really, that It escapes the grasp of our thought and speech, instruments which proceed always by the sense of difference and express by the way of definition; but if not knowable by thought, It is attainable by a supreme effort of consciousness. There is even a kind of Knowledge which is one with Identity and by which, in a sense, It can be known. Certainly, that Knowledge cannot be reproduced successfully in the terms of thought and speech, but when we have attained to it, the result is a revaluation of That in the symbols of our cosmic consciousness, not only in one but in all the ranges of symbols, which results in a revolution of our internal being and, through the internal, of our external life. Moreover, there is also a kind of Knowledge through which That does reveal itself by all these names and forms of phenomenal existence which to the ordinary intelligence only conceal It. It is this higher but not highest process of Knowledge to which we can attain by passing the limits of the materialistic formula and scrutinising Life, Mind and Supermind in the phenomena that are characteristic of them and not merely in those subordinate movements by which they link themselves to Matter.
The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. When we have proved Matter and realised its secret capacities, the very knowledge which has found its convenience in that temporary limitation, must cry to us, like the Vedic Restrainers, 'Forth now and push forward also in other fields.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
273:
"The beings who were always appearing and speaking to Jeanne d'Arc would, if seen by an Indian, have quite a different appearance; for when one sees, one projects the forms of one's mind.... You have the vision of one in India whom you call the Divine Mother; the Catholics say it is the Virgin Mary, and the Japanese call it Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy; and others would give other names. It is the same force, the same power, but the images made of it are different in different faiths." Questions and Answers 1929 - 1931 (21 April 1929)
And then? You are not very talkative today! Is that all?
You say that "each person has his own world of dreamimagery peculiar to himself." Ibid.
Each individual has his own way of expressing, thinking, speaking, feeling, understanding. It is the combination of all these ways of being that makes the individual. That is why everyone can understand only according to his own nature. As long as you are shut up in your own nature, you can know only what is in your consciousness. All depends upon the height of the nature of your consciousness. Your world is limited to what you have in your consciousness. If you have a very small consciousness, you will understand only a few things. When your consciousness is very vast, universal, only then will you understand the world. If the consciousness is limited to your little ego, all the rest will escape you.... There are people whose brain and consciousness are smaller than a walnut. You know that a walnut resembles the brain; well these people look at things and don't understand them. They can understand nothing else except what is in direct contact with their senses. For them only what they taste, what they see, hear, touch has a reality, and all the rest simply does not exist, and they accuse us of speaking fancifully! "What I cannot touch does not exist", they say. But the only answer to give them is: "It does not exist for you, but there's no reason why it shouldn't exist for others." You must not insist with these people, and you must not forget that the smaller they are the greater is the audacity in their assertions.
One's cocksureness is in proportion to one's unconsciousness; the more unconscious one is, the more is one sure of oneself. The most foolish are always the most vain. Your stupidity is in proportion to your vanity. The more one knows... In fact, there is a time when one is quite convinced that one knows nothing at all. There's not a moment in the world which does not bring something new, for the world is perpetually growing. If one is conscious of that, one has always something new to learn. But one can become conscious of it only gradually. One's conviction that one knows is in direct proportion to one's ignorance and stupidity.
Mother, have the scientists, then, a very small consciousness?
Why? All scientists are not like that. If you meet a true scientist who has worked hard, he will tell you: "We know nothing. What we know today is nothing beside what we shall know tomorrow. This year's discoveries will be left behind next year." A real scientist knows very well that there are many more things he doesn't know than those he knows. And this is true of all branches of human activity. I have never met a scientist worthy of the name who was proud. I have never met a man of some worth who has told me: "I know everything." Those I have seen have always confessed: "In short, I know nothing." After having spoken of all that he has done, all that he has achieved, he tells you very quietly: "After all, I know nothing." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, [T8],#KEYS
274:Darkness
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went-and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings-the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought-and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails-men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress-he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died-
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge-
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the Universe.
~ George Gordon Byron,#KEYS
275:Allow the Lord to Do Everything :::
Now, when I start looking like this (Mother closes her eyes), two things are there at the same time: this smile, this joy, this laughter are there, and such peace! Such full, luminous, total peace, in which there are no more conflicts, no more contradictions. There are no more conflicts. It is one single luminous harmony - and yet everything we call error, suffering, misery, everything is there. It eliminates nothing. It is another way of seeing.
(long silence)
There can be no doubt that if you sincerely want to get out of it, it is not so difficult after all: you have nothing to do, you only have to allow the Lord to do everything. And He does everything. He does everything. It is so wonderful, so wonderful!
He takes anything, even what we call a very ordinary intelligence and he simply teaches you to put this intelligence aside, to rest: "There, be quiet, don't stir, don't bother me, I don't need you." Then a door opens - you don't even feel that you have to open it; it is wide open, you are tkane over to the other side. All that is done by Someone else, not you. And then the other way becomes impossible.
All this... oh, this tremendous labour of hte mind striving to understand, toiling and giving itself headaches!... It is absolutely useless, absolutely useless, no use at all, it merely increases the confusion.
You are faced with a so-called problem: what should you say, what should you do, how should you act? There is nothing to do, nothing, you only have to say to the Lord, "There, You see, it is like that" - that's all. And then you stay very quiet. And then quite spontaneously, without thinking about it, without reflection, without calculation, nothing, nothing, without the slightest effect - you do what has to be done. That is to say, the Lord does it, it is no longer you. He does it. He arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He puts the words into your mouth or your pen - He does everything, everything, everything, everything; you have nothing more to do but allow yourself to live blissfully.
I am more and more convinced that people do not really want it.
But clearing the ground is difficult, the work of clearing the ground before hand.
But you don't even need to do it! He does it for you.
But they are constantly breaking in: the old consciousness, the old thoughts....
Yes, they try to come in again, by habit. You only have to say, "Lord, You see, You see, You see, it is like that" - that's all. "Lord, You see, You see this, You see that, You see this fool" - and it is all over immediately. And it changes automatically, my child, without the slightest effort. Simply to be sincere, that is to say, to truly want everything to be right. You are perfectly conscious that you can do nothing about it, that you have no capacity.... But there is always something that wants to do it by itself; that's the trouble, otherwise...
No, you may be full of an excellent goodwill and then you want to do it. That's what complicated everything. Or else you don't have faith, you believe that the Lord will not be able to do it and that you must do it yourself, because He does not know! (Mother laughs.) This, this kind of stupidity is very common. "How can He see things? We live in a world of Falsehood, how can He see Falsehood and see..." But He sees the thing as it is! Exactly!
I am not speaking of people of no intelligence, I am speaking of people who are intelligent and try - there is a kind of conviction, like that, somewhere, even in people who know that we live in a world of Ignorance and Falsehood and that there is a Lord who is All-Truth. They say, "Precisely because He is All-Truth, He does not understand. (Mother laughs.) He does not understand our falsehood, I must deal with it myself." That is very strong, very common.
Ah! we make complications for nothing. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
276:I have never been able to share your constantly recurring doubts about your capacity or the despair that arises in you so violently when there are these attacks, nor is their persistent recurrence a valid ground for believing that they can never be overcome. Such a persistent recurrence has been a feature in the sadhana of many who have finally emerged and reached the goal; even the sadhana of very great Yogis has not been exempt from such violent and constant recurrences; they have sometimes been special objects of such persistent assaults, as I have indeed indicated in Savitri in more places than one - and that was indeed founded on my own experience. In the nature of these recurrences there is usually a constant return of the same adverse experiences, the same adverse resistance, thoughts destructive of all belief and faith and confidence in the future of the sadhana, frustrating doubts of what one has known as the truth, voices of despondency and despair, urgings to abandonment of the Yoga or to suicide or else other disastrous counsels of déchéance. The course taken by the attacks is not indeed the same for all, but still they have strong family resemblance. One can eventually overcome if one begins to realise the nature and source of these assaults and acquires the faculty of observing them, bearing, without being involved or absorbed into their gulf, finally becoming the witness of their phenomena and understanding them and refusing the mind's sanction even when the vital is still tossed in the whirl or the most outward physical mind still reflects the adverse suggestions. In the end these attacks lose their power and fall away from the nature; the recurrence becomes feeble or has no power to last: even, if the detachment is strong enough, they can be cut out very soon or at once. The strongest attitude to take is to regard these things as what they really are, incursions of dark forces from outside taking advantage of certain openings in the physical mind or the vital part, but not a real part of oneself or spontaneous creation in one's own nature. To create a confusion and darkness in the physical mind and throw into it or awake in it mistaken ideas, dark thoughts, false impressions is a favourite method of these assailants, and if they can get the support of this mind from over-confidence in its own correctness or the natural rightness of its impressions and inferences, then they can have a field day until the true mind reasserts itself and blows the clouds away. Another device of theirs is to awake some hurt or rankling sense of grievance in the lower vital parts and keep them hurt or rankling as long as possible. In that case one has to discover these openings in one's nature and learn to close them permanently to such attacks or else to throw out intruders at once or as soon as possible. The recurrence is no proof of a fundamental incapacity; if one takes the right inner attitude, it can and will be overcome. The idea of suicide ought never to be accepted; there is no real ground for it and in any case it cannot be a remedy or a real escape: at most it can only be postponement of difficulties and the necessity for their solution under no better circumstances in another life. One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time he conceals himself, and then in his own right time he will reveal his Presence.
I have tried to dispel all the misconceptions, explain things as they are and meet all the points at issue. It is not that you really cannot make progress or have not made any progress; on the contrary, you yourself have admitted that you have made a good advance in many directions and there is no reason why, if you persevere, the rest should not come. You have always believed in the Guruvada: I would ask you then to put your faith in the Guru and the guidance and rely on the Ishwara for the fulfilment, to have faith in my abiding love and affection, in the affection and divine goodwill and loving kindness of the Mother, stand firm against all attacks and go forward perseveringly towards the spiritual goal and the all-fulfilling and all-satisfying touch of the All-Blissful, the Ishwara.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
277:Death & Fame
When I die
I don't care what happens to my body throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But I want a big funeral St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister-in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters their grandchildren, companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--
Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche, there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting America, Satchitananda Swami Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche, Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau Roshis, Lama Tarchen --
Then, most important, lovers over half-century Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousandday retreat --"
"I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he loved me"
"I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone"
"We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly arms round each other"
"I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my skivvies would be on the floor"
"Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master"
"We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then sleep in his captain's bed."
"He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy"
"I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my stomach shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- "
"All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth & fingers along my waist"
"He gave great head"
So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin-gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997 and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!"
"I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me."
"I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head, my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick, tickled with his tongue my behind"
"I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a pillow --"
Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear
"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his walk-up flat, seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him again never wanted to... "
"He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made sure I came first"
This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--
Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con-ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum-peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto-harp pennywhistles & kazoos
Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India, Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massa-chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American provinces
Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio-philes, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex
"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved him anyway, true artist"
"Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me from suicide hospitals"
"Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my studio guest a week in Budapest"
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures
Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo-graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural historians come to witness the historic funeral Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph-hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers
Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive
February 22, 1997
~ Allen Ginsberg,#KEYS
278:[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
279:This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.
It is clear that a conception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three results that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being. Now these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an integral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice makes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of the very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there should emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this service. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always more intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born or in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms and creatures that are habitations of the Divine - not the brief restless grasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper vibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his adoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind can imagine.
Next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, and a constant active externalising of it in works comes in too to intensify the remembrance. In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a self-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into a profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness of that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate. For it compels a constant reference at each moment to the Origin of all being and will and action and there is at once an embracing and exceeding of all particular forms and appearances in That which is their cause and upholder. This way cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and vital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal Spirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking and willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent. Whatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are conscious, has to be known and felt by us as That which we worship and serve; all has to be turned into an image of the Divinity, perceived as a dwelling-place of his Godhead, enveloped with the eternal Omnipresence. In its close, if not long before it, this way of works turns by communion with the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete and integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the search of the intellect can discover.
Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for ourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours, friends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are connected with our personal life and thought and sentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In this way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic worship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast cosmic existence. Life becomes more and more the sacrifice of the eternal in the individual constantly self-offered to the eternal Transcendence. It is offered in the wide sacrificial ground of the field of the eternal cosmic Spirit; and the Force too that offers it is the eternal Force, the omnipresent Mother. Therefore is this way a way of union and communion by acts and by the spirit and knowledge in the act as complete and integral as any our Godward will can hope for or our soul's strength execute.
It has all the power of a way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of sacrifice and self-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by the whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all these three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by each other.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [111-114],#KEYS
280: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
281: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
282: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
283:When a man attains the Knowledge of Brahman he shows certain characteristics. The Bhagavata describes four of them: the state of a child, of an inert thing, of a madman, and of a ghoul. Sometimes the knower of Brahman acts like a five-year-old child. Sometimes he acts like a madman. Sometimes he remains like an inert thing. In this state he cannot work; he renounces all action. You may say that jnanis like Janaka were active. The truth is that people in olden times gave responsibility to their subordinate officers and thus freed themselves from worry. Further, at that time men possessed intense faith. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
284:It can be expected that the orthodox Christian will at first reject the theories about the Christ which occultism presents; at the same time, this same orthodox Christian will find it increasingly difficult to induce the intelligent masses of people to accept the impossible Deity and the feeble Christ, which historical Christianity has endorsed. A Christ Who is present and living, Who is known to those who follow Him, Who is a strong and able executive, and not a sweet and sentimental sufferer, Who has never left us but Who has worked for two thousand years through the medium of His disciples, the inspired men and women of all faiths, all religions, and all religious persuasions; Who has no use for fanaticism or hysterical devotion, but Who loves all men persistently, intelligently and optimistically, Who sees divinity in them all, and Who comprehends the techniques of the evolutionary development of the human consciousness (mental, emotional and physical, producing civilizations and cultures appropriate to a particular point in evolution) – these ideas the intelligent public can and will accept. p. 589/90 ~ Alice Bailey, in The Externalization of the Hierarchy (1957) #KEYS
285:"People have to start educating themselves more in the faith. It is not enough just to go to mass anymore. You can't do that... We don't live at a time in which one can spiritually survive and be intellectually not very good. Maybe a few older ladies who have the extraordinary graces can get away with it. But modernism is such a toxic heresy that [you need] a lot of educational background--which you should work on anyway, because everybody has an obligation to continue educating themselves according to their state in life... They need to be reading more. They can listen to interviews and podcasts, that's fine. But at some point you've got to encounter the books. You've got to start reading them and educating yourself and getting a deeper understanding of the faith so that when you hear the nonsense from the secular media, [and even] from members of the magisterium now, you can keep your focus. ~ Reverend Chad Ripperger, transcribed from interview with Taylor Marshall #KEYS
286:What would you say are your three truths? JP: I would say, stive to manifest the faith necessary to make things better rather than worse. Pray that you have enough terror to be frightened out of your own deceit. And stive to be grateful regardless. That would be, thats good enough. ~ Jordan Peterson, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylTHKT4HSBc&list=WL&index=8 #KEYS
287:Faith in its essence is a light in the soul which turns towards the truth even when the mind doubts or the vital revolts or the physical consciousness denies it. When this extends itself to the instruments, it becomes a fixed belief in the mind, a sort of inner knowledge which resists all apparent denial by circumstances or appearances, a complete confidence, trust, adhesion in the vital and in the physical consciousness, an invariable clinging to the truth in which one has faith even when all is dark around and no cause of hope seems to be there. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #KEYS
288:And He *said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. ~ Anon, The Bible, Matthew 17:20 #KEYS
289:If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ~ Anon, The Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:2 #KEYS
290:You say that you feel you have returned to your old life and that you have fallen from that state of spiritual consciousness in which you remained for some time. And you ask whether it comes from the fact that Sri Aurobindo and myself have withdrawn our protection and our help because you had been unable to fulfil your promise.
It is a mistake to think that anything at all has been withdrawn by us. Our help and our protection are with you as always, but it would be more correct to say that both your inability to feel our help and your inability to keep your promise are the simultaneous effects of the same cause.
Remember what I wrote to you when you went to Calcutta to fetch your family: do not let any influence come in between you and the Divine. You did not pay sufficient attention to this warning: you have allowed an influence to interfere strongly between you and your spiritual life; your devotion and your faith have been seriously shaken by this. As a consequence, you became afraid and you did not find the same joy in your offering to the Divine Cause; and also, quite naturally, you fell back into your ordinary consciousness and your old life.
You are quite right, nevertheless, not to let yourself be discouraged. Whatever the fall, it is always possible not only to get up again but also to rise higher and to reach the goal. Only a strong aspiration and a constant will are needed.
You have to take a firm resolution to let nothing interfere with your ascent towards the Divine Realisation. And then the success is certain.
Be assured of our unfailing help and protection. 3 February 1931 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I,#KEYS
291:If the doctor has a duty to relieve the suffering of his patients, he must have some idea where that suffering comes from, and this involves the retention of judgment, including moral judgment.And if, as far as he can tell in good faith, the misery of his patients derives from the way they live, he has a duty to tell them so—which often involves a more or less explicit condemnation of their way of life as completely incompatible with a satisfying existence. By avoiding the issue, the doctor is not being kind to his patients; he is being cowardly. Moreover, by refusing to place the onus on the patients to improve their lot, he is likely to mislead them into supposing that he has some purely technical or pharmacological answer to their problems, thus helping to perpetuate them. ~ Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom #KEYS
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:shut off the bike, ~ Faith Hunter
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2:top floor, helping ~ Faith Hunter
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3:Doubt is faith's shadow. ~ Jo Nesb
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4:Dang ninja vamp. Eli ~ Faith Hunter
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5:Faith is Individual ~ Martin Luther
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6:Faith is reasonable. ~ Benedict XVI
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7:God is faithful. ~ Jefferson Bethke
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8:Is he, really? ~ Marianne Faithfull
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9:God-Given Faith ~ Smith Wigglesworth
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10:I enjoy being a girl. ~ Paloma Faith
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11:My faith guides my life. ~ Kay Hagan
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12:Faith must be worked at. ~ James Cook
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13:Even fear afraid of faith. ~ Toba Beta
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14:Have a little faith. ~ Cassandra Clare
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15:Love is an act of faith. ~ Erich Fromm
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16:but embarrassment. ~ Marianne Faithfull
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17:Faith is a gift of God. ~ Blaise Pascal
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18:Holy Necrophilia, Batman ~ Faith Hunter
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19:I'm a serial monogamist. ~ Paloma Faith
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20:Life is an act of faith. ~ Paulo Coelho
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21:much older than you knew ~ Faith Martin
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22:We put our faith in love. ~ Lauren Kate
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23:Faith is important to me. ~ Vera Farmiga
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24:Faith is the fool's excuse. ~ James Frey
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25:Faith itself is a miracle, ~ John Irving
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26:Faith reveals the potential. ~ Toba Beta
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27:Have faith in yourself. ~ Nathan Parsons
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28:I have my shield of faith. ~ Joel Osteen
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29:I will always remember ~ Faith Ringgold
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30:Meet your fears with faith. ~ Max Lucado
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31:obedience comes from faith. ~ Beth Moore
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32:Pactum serva" - "Keep the faith ~ Horace
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33:pear and Camembert tarts, ~ Faith Martin
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34:RESTORATION OF FAITH - Takes ~ Anonymous
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35:Deep faith eliminates fear. ~ Lech Walesa
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36:Faith is the force of life. ~ Leo Tolstoy
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37:Fear is faithlessness. ~ George MacDonald
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38:My faith keeps me strong. ~ Cissy Houston
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39:One king, one law, one faith. ~ Louis XIV
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40:on the outside, and all of ~ Faith Martin
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41:sort of gal — she wouldn’t ~ Faith Martin
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42:You cannot schedule death. ~ Paloma Faith
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43:A little faith can do wonders. ~ Dan Brown
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44:God will honor our faith. ~ Dwight L Moody
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45:Have faith in yourself. ~ Richard Branson
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46:Have faith. We will do ~ Swami Vivekananda
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47:I'm a very independent woman. ~ Faith Hill
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48:Live by faith, not by sight. ~ Mastin Kipp
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49:memory is a faithless friend ~ Dan Gilbert
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50:Soul rotted before my eyes. ~ Faith Hunter
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51:You say you've lost your faith ~ Bob Dylan
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52:Faith. Trust. and Pixie Dust. ~ Walt Disney
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53:Peyote Made Everything Weird ~ Faith Hunter
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54:The antidote to fear is faith. ~ Wayne Dyer
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55:The fruit of faith is love. ~ Mother Teresa
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56:To me faith means not worrying ~ John Dewey
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57:We just need some faith. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon
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58:Awe precedes faith. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
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59:Big faith doesn't need big words. ~ Bob Goff
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60:Eternal Quest, Eternal Faith ~ S V Divvaakar
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61:Faith is a big thing we explore. ~ Uzo Aduba
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62:Fear is the absence of faith. ~ Paul Tillich
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63:Have faith in God. Stay focused. ~ DJ Khaled
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64:Her faith in you survives her, ~ Lauren Kate
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65:I have faith in nights. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
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66:I've lost my faith in science. ~ Bette Davis
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67:Our priorities is our faith. ~ George W Bush
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68:Some blind faithfully; some see. ~ T F Hodge
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69:strenght-faith-hope-love ~ Bruce Springsteen
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70:To me faith means not worrying. ~ John Dewey
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71:Don't lose faith in your stars. ~ Ian Fleming
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72:Don't say I'm lucky. Ever. ~ Faith Erin Hicks
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73:Faith is in the gaze of a soul. ~ Ann Voskamp
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74:Faith is taking God seriously. ~ Derek Prince
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75:Fear clogs; Faith liberates. ~ Elbert Hubbard
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76:Fear is always at war with faith. ~ Toba Beta
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77:Nature ever faithful is ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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78:Put faith in one who's had experience. ~ Ovid
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79:Reason is the enemy of faith. ~ Martin Luther
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80:The antidote to fear is faith. ~ Wayne W Dyer
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81:The silence killed your faith. ~ Barack Obama
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82:Am I acting on faith or feelings? ~ Lara Casey
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83:Faith Alone is what really matters. ~ Nichiren
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84:Faith is lived, not thought. ~ Terryl L Givens
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85:Faith is the enemy of discovery. ~ Simon Mawer
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86:Faith is the yes of the heart. ~ Martin Luther
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87:Faith without works is dead, ~ Scott Nicholson
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88:Fear is faith in reverse gear. ~ Napoleon Hill
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89:For me, my faith informs my life. ~ Mike Pence
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90:Have faith in your destiny ~ Swami Vivekananda
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91:I have faith in the jury system. ~ Nancy Grace
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92:I want faith; but I am faithless ~ Errol Flynn
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93:Making art is an act of faith. ~ Julia Cameron
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94:performance is an act of faith. ~ Marya Mannes
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95:She took a leap of faith and ~ David Brinkley
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96:We live by faith and not by sight. ~ Anonymous
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97:your faith and hope are in god. ~ Billy Graham
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98:Faith Alone is what really matters. ~ Nichiren,
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99:Faith first, knowledge afterwards. ~ The Mother
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100:Faith is learned through life. ~ Lysa TerKeurst
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101:Faith is the conqueror of dreams. ~ Suzy Kassem
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102:Faith is under the left nipple. ~ Martin Luther
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103:Faith is what we do between miracles. ~ Unknown
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104:Faith, not feelings, pleases God. ~ Rick Warren
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105:I have a lot of faith in people. ~ John Lithgow
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106:I have faith in my imperfections! ~ Dana Delany
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107:I just have an inability to lie. ~ Paloma Faith
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108:It's a blindness thing, faith. ~ Niall Williams
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109:marked more by the way the grass ~ Faith Hunter
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110:My Christian faith is my backbone ~ Bear Grylls
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111:Pride renders faith impossible. ~ Andrew Murray
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112:You are whatever your faith is. ~ Deepak Chopra
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113:A dog is faithful, a woman never. ~ Sophia Loren
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114:A library implies an act of faith. ~ Victor Hugo
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115:Always have Faith. Always have Hope. ~ DJ Khaled
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116:Belief clings, but faith lets go. ~ Alan W Watts
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117:Faith alone is the sun of life. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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118:Faith does not mean credulity... ~ Ronald Fisher
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119:Faith enables us to move past fear. ~ bell hooks
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120:Faith is necessary to victory. ~ William Hazlitt
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121:Faith is obedience, nothing else. ~ Emil Brunner
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122:Faith is the soul's adventure. ~ William Bridges
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123:Faith makes things possible, not easy. ~ Unknown
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124:Fear is faith that it won't work. ~ Mary Kay Ash
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125:grace in a silver-grey suit, dark ~ Faith Martin
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126:Have faith in all that you make. ~ Dahvie Vanity
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127:I had to put my faith in time. ~ Haruki Murakami
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128:I'm such a happy, easygoing person. ~ Faith Hill
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129:I wasn't a great background singer. ~ Faith Hill
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130:Love is the greatest act of faith. ~ Amber Kizer
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131:Never break faith with the truth. ~ George Tenet
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132:The faithful must not be misled ~ Ann Chamberlin
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133:The righteous shall live by faith.” ~ Anonymous
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134:The Thessalonians’ Faith and Example ~ Anonymous
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135:to enable true repentance and faith. ~ Anonymous
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136:We live by faith. We love by faith. ~ Beth Moore
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137:We walk by faith and not by sight. ~ Joel Osteen
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138:Authentic faith cannot help but act. ~ Beth Moore
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139:Be faithful in the little things. ~ Mother Teresa
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140:Curvy is something to be proud of. ~ Paloma Faith
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141:Faithful are the wounds of a friend ~ Gina Holmes
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142:Faithful found among the faithless. ~ John Milton
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143:Faith means walking on the waters. ~ Julien Green
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144:Faith, not facts, moves mountains. ~ Guy Kawasaki
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145:faith without doubt is addiction ~ Salman Rushdie
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146:For we walk by faith, not by sight. ~ S Jae Jones
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147:Have faith in your own thoughts. ~ Brooke Shields
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148:I'm a home girl. I like to stay home ~ Faith Hill
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149:I shall not repent of my faith. ~ Seth Adam Smith
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150:It takes a busload of faith to get by. ~ Lou Reed
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151:I was unfaithful even to Infidelity. ~ Robert Bly
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152:Lately I've been running on faith. ~ Eric Clapton
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153:They who have faith will go through. ~ The Mother
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154:Trust is the action of faith. ~ Gerard de Marigny
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155:Be thou faithful unto death. ~ Revelations III, 10
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156:Faith and optimism are contagious. ~ Thom S Rainer
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157:Faith assuages, guides, restores. ~ Arthur Rimbaud
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158:Faith changes hope into reality. ~ Kenneth E Hagin
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159:Faith did return in extremis ~ Megan Whalen Turner
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160:Faith is a fuel to the engine of soul. ~ Toba Beta
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161:Faith is a function of the heart. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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162:Faith is reason at rest in God. ~ Charles Spurgeon
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163:Faith is the ability to endure. ~ Michael R French
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164:faith is the evidence of non-evidence. ~ Anonymous
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165:Faith should be backed by reason. ~ Dalai Lama XIV
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166:FAITH triumphs in trial. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon
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167:Fear can be overcome by faith. ~ Grantly Dick Read
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168:Fight for faith, and hope will be born. ~ Nely Cab
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169:God is bigger than the Christian faith. ~ Rob Bell
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170:Have faith in your imaginel act. ~ Neville Goddard
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171:Holiness sincerity, and faith. ~ Swami Vivekananda
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172:If faith fails, prayer perishes. ~ Saint Augustine
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173:I try to act out of faith. ~ Marian Wright Edelman
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174:I’ve always been a woman of faith. ~ Lauren London
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175:I walk by faith, not by sight. ~ Denzel Washington
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176:Life Isn’t Fair, but God Is Faithful ~ Joyce Meyer
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177:Men are as faithful as their options. ~ Chris Rock
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178:prayer is faith become audible. ~ Timothy J Keller
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179:Prayer is helplessness plus faith. ~ Bill Thrasher
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180:Truth resides where there is faith. ~ Paulo Coelho
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181:union with God -- namely, faith. ~ Juan de la Cruz
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182:We are twice armed if we fight with faith. ~ Plato
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183:We walk by faith, not by sight. ~ Paul the Apostle
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184:With the gift of faith, we move on. ~ Irvine Welsh
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185:7 (for we walk by faith, not by sight:) ~ Anonymous
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186:Duty cannot exist without faith ~ Benjamin Disraeli
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187:Faith builds, cynicism destroys. ~ Lyndon B Johnson
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188:Faith has no power unless chosen freely ~ Ryk Brown
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189:Faith is a higher faculty than reason. ~ H C Bailey
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190:Faith is always about the Future. ~ Michael Pfleger
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191:Faith is a state of openness or trust. ~ Alan Watts
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192:Faith is intellectual laziness. ~ Robert A Heinlein
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193:Faith is not faith until it is tested! ~ Kay Arthur
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194:Faith is personal if it's to be real. ~ Bear Grylls
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195:Faith is the evidence of the unseen. ~ Maya Angelou
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196:Faith is the refusal to panic. ~ Martyn Lloyd Jones
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197:Faith lives in honest doubt. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
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198:Faith only grows through suffering. ~ Mark Driscoll
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199:Faith that denies fact is fanaticism, ~ Barb Hendee
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200:Faith with proof is no faith at all. ~ Patrick Ness
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201:Hope is never ill when faith is well. ~ John Bunyan
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202:Hope is the mother of faith. ~ Walter Savage Landor
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203:I am not faithful but I am attached. ~ Gunter Grass
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204:I have great faith in a seed. ~ Henry David Thoreau
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205:I think the future deserves our faith. ~ John Green
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206:Living with faith and courage is ~ Kathryn Kuhlman
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207:Mushy reviews are a breach of faith ~ Wilfrid Sheed
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208:No prayer fully expresses our faith. ~ Oscar Romero
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209:No, you shall be, my faith! Tartuffified. ~ Moli re
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210:Scepticism is the beginning of Faith. ~ Oscar Wilde
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211:The faith I was born into formed me. ~ Huston Smith
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212:The final mode is misplaced faith. ~ Timothy Snyder
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213:Time flies, dreams die, people lose faith, ~ Xzibit
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214:Twist Your Lil’ Bobblehead Right Off ~ Faith Hunter
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215:Without mystery, there was no faith. ~ Stacy Schiff
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216:You of little faith, why did you doubt? ~ Anonymous
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217:Your faith frames your world daily. ~ Charles Capps
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218:As far as possible, join faith to reason. ~ Boethius
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219:A word of the faith that never balks, ~ Walt Whitman
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220:Dogs wait for us faithfully. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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221:Faith and optimism come from love. ~ Maya Soetoro Ng
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222:Faith can turn the night to light. ~ Seth Adam Smith
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223:Faithfulness and sincerity first of all. ~ Confucius
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224:Faith idles when character shrivels. ~ Miroslav Volf
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225:Faith is active confidence in God. ~ James MacDonald
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226:Faith is in the eye of the beholder. ~ Tilda Swinton
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227:Faith is only a word, embroidered. ~ Margaret Atwood
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228:Faith is taking God at His Word. ~ Leonard Ravenhill
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229:Faith is the function of the heart. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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230:Faith thrives in holy discomfort. The ~ Louie Giglio
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231:Faith without challenge is nothing. ~ Iyanla Vanzant
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232:Have faith in the light you carry. ~ Seth Adam Smith
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233:He though does not always have faith. ~ Paulo Coelho
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234:If faith is your motivation, share that. ~ Tim Kaine
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235:Mutual perfect faith would be heaven! ~ Richard Rohr
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236:My faith protects me. My Kevlar helps. ~ Jim Butcher
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237:Prayer is the chief exercise of faith. ~ John Calvin
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238:Silly thing, kissing. Licking better. ~ Faith Hunter
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239:Sing, for faith and hope are high- ~ Rudyard Kipling
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240:'Tis my faith that every flower ~ William Wordsworth
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241:Trust is earned. Faith is given.” His ~ Emily Hemmer
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242:When has faith ever been about feelings? ~ Camy Tang
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243:You just have to have a simple faith. ~ Jimmy Carter
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244:A man is only as faithful as his options ~ Chris Rock
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245:But a dauntless faith believes ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas
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246:Faith is a passionate intuition. ~ William Wordsworth
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247:Faith is God's work within us. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas
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248:Faith is hard to achieve, easy to lose. ~ Zadie Smith
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249:Faith never makes a confession. ~ Henry David Thoreau
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250:Feed your faith, starve your doubts. ~ John C Maxwell
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251:Have a little faith, kick a little dirt. ~ Diane Ladd
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252:I have no faith in political arithmetic. ~ Adam Smith
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253:I like sparkles; I think I'm a magpie. ~ Paloma Faith
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254:Infidelity is an opium of unfaithfulness. ~ Toba Beta
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255:Martha had never trusted skinny cooks. ~ Faith Martin
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256:Obedience is the fruit of faith. ~ Christina Rossetti
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257:Our life must answer for our faith. ~ Thomas F Wilson
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258:seemed silly to Faith. And offensive ~ Danielle Steel
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259:There is a land that I can go to ~ Marianne Faithfull
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260:Thou shalt not take anything on faith ~ Penn Jillette
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261:True faith is ever connected with hope. ~ John Calvin
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262:You cannot insult the faith of others. ~ Pope Francis
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263:You had no faith to lose and you know it. ~ Bob Dylan
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264:You haven’t the brains God gave a cow, ~ Faith Hunter
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265:A man is only as faithful as his options. ~ Chris Rock
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266:An untested faith is an unreliable faith. ~ Kay Warren
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267:But faithfulness can feed on suffering, ~ George Eliot
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268:But the unfaithful priest, what tongue ~ Robert Pollok
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269:Difficult days demand decisions of faith. ~ Max Lucado
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270:Doubt is resistance, faith is surrender. ~ Jen Sincero
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271:Every moment in life is an act of faith ~ Paulo Coelho
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272:Faith becomes the foundation I'm built on. ~ T D Jakes
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273:Faith begins where reason leaves off. ~ Charlie Lovett
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274:Faith is not reason's labour, but repose. ~ Neil Young
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275:Faith is not the opposite of reason. ~ Richard Dawkins
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276:Faith is obedience, not compliance. ~ George MacDonald
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277:Faith is the flame that eliminates fear. ~ Suzy Kassem
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278:Faith is the head chemist of the mind. ~ Napoleon Hill
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279:focus and have faith in my own story. ~ Michelle Obama
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280:Great faith must have great trials. ~ Charles Spurgeon
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281:Have a little faith. Don't give up. ~ Fantasia Barrino
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282:Hope, love and faith are in the waiting. ~ Dean Koontz
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283:Hope, love, and faith are in the waiting ~ Dean Koontz
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284:I have a great faith in God and Jesus. ~ Ernie Harwell
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285:I think that at the core of faith is trust. ~ Rob Bell
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286:I think the Moslem faith teaches hate. ~ Jerry Falwell
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287:I try to be a person of faith. ~ Marian Wright Edelman
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288:Keep the faith, and keep going strong! ~ Doreen Virtue
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289:Non-violence is the article of faith. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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290:Obedience is the fruit of faith; ~ Christina Rossetti
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291:Once you lost your faith, it was gone. ~ Tarryn Fisher
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292:Optimism is a faith that leads to success. ~ Bruce Lee
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293:There can be no faith without doubt ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon
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294:The source of faith is the Word of God. ~ Phil Pringle
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295:Understanding is the wages of faith. ~ Saint Augustine
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296:All action is vicarious faith. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
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297:All is well, tho' faith and form ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
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298:Blind faith isn't always a good thing. ~ Heather Graham
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299:Everything starts with belief. With faith. ~ V E Schwab
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300:Faithful heart may have froward tongue. ~ J R R Tolkien
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301:Faith is believing what you know ain't so. ~ Mark Twain
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302:Faith isn't blind, it's visionary ~ Marianne Williamson
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303:Faith is the evidence of divine adoption. ~ John Calvin
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304:Faith is the summit of the Torah. ~ Solomon Ibn Gabirol
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305:Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies ~ Emily Dickinson
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306:Fear can be overcome only by Faith. ~ Grantly Dick Read
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307:He is cured by faith who is sick of fate. ~ James Joyce
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308:I don't know why 'happy' can't be a story. ~ Faith Hill
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309:If one has faith, one has everything. ~ Sri Ramakrishna
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310:Let your faith be bigger than your fear. ~ Francis Chan
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311:Love is an act of faith, not an exchange ~ Paulo Coelho
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312:One day the faithful will have it all! ~ Neal A Maxwell
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313:Only real risk passes the reality of faith. ~ C S Lewis
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314:That's the thing about faith. It works. ~ Lauren Oliver
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315:There can be no faith without risk. ~ Soren Kierkegaard
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316:There is no argument to be had with faith. ~ Meg Elison
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317:Understanding is the reward of faith. ~ Saint Augustine
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318:Art is the closest thing I have to faith. ~ Abigail Boyd
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319:Be courageous! Have faith! Go forward. ~ Thomas A Edison
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320:Doubt is but another element of faith. ~ Saint Augustine
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321:E'er since, by faith, I saw the stream ~ William Cowper
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322:Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted. ~ Albert Pike
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323:Faith involves an acceptance of absurdity. ~ Zadie Smith
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324:Faith is a passionate intuition.
~ William Wordsworth,
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325:Faith is a record of great risks taken. ~ Winkie Pratney
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326:Faith is a total attitude of the self. ~ John Macquarrie
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327:Faith is a vulnerable thing, not a battle. ~ David Bazan
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328:Faith is spiritualized imagination. ~ Henry Ward Beecher
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329:Faith is stronger than so-called reason. ~ Hermann Hesse
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330:for nothing is so faithless as wealth; ~ John Chrysostom
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331:I don't have faith, I have experience. ~ Joseph Campbell
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332:I don't need faith. I have experience. ~ Joseph Campbell
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333:I don't talk about my private life. ~ Marianne Faithfull
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334:I have to watch out for being lazy. ~ Marianne Faithfull
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335:I'm very competitive but in a very nice way ~ Faith Hill
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336:Is a faith without action a sincere faith? ~ Jean Racine
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337:It takes a God-fearing man to be led by faith. ~ E N Joy
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338:I will be patient, kind, faithful and true ~ India Arie
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339:Journalism is an act of faith in the future. ~ Ann Curry
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340:Love askes faith, and faith firmenesse. ~ George Herbert
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341:Love is an act of faith, not an exchange. ~ Paulo Coelho
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342:One percent doubt is zero percent faith. ~ Oprah Winfrey
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343:Sometimes you just have to have faith. ~ Mark T Sullivan
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344:The antidote to fear of man is faith in God. ~ Anonymous
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345:The poem is a confession of faith. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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346:To my fellow Crosses, keep the faith. ~ Malorie Blackman
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347:To sleep is an act of faith. ~ Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
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348:Training is principally an act of faith. ~ Franz Stampfl
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349:Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind. ~ Mason Cooley
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350:Understanding is the reward of faith. ~ Saint Augustine,
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351:We are coerced into faith by our suffering. ~ James Cook
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352:we put too much faith in G.D.P. as a metric. ~ Anonymous
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353:Alarm stole over me on little kitten feet. ~ Faith Hunter
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354:As a vamp killer for hire, I travel light. ~ Faith Hunter
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355:A simple and faithful heart is a great boon. ~ The Mother
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356:But the righteous one will live by his faith. ~ Anonymous
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357:Demons have faith, but they tremble. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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358:Doubt is part of searching. Same as faith. ~ Gayle Forman
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359:Faith doesn't make sense. It makes miracles. ~ Tony Evans
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360:Faith is believing things you know aint true ~ Mark Twain
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361:Faith is stronger than so-called reality. ~ Hermann Hesse
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362:Faith minus vulnerability is fundamentalism ~ Brene Brown
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363:Faith prefers the absurd to the plausible. ~ Mason Cooley
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364:Feed your faith and starve your doubts. ~ Kenneth E Hagin
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365:For faith with no effort is no faith at all. ~ Max Lucado
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366:George Michael Was Right - You Gotta Have Faith ~ Jim Bob
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367:Hard to have faith and fear at the same time. ~ Toba Beta
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368:Have a little faith in my magic fingers ~ Cassandra Clare
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369:Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other. ~ Novalis
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370:Men are only as unfaithful as their options. ~ Chris Rock
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371:My faith in God is such that I am not afraid. ~ Malcolm X
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372:Really sucked the red off of all my candy. ~ Faith Hunter
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373:Shall love be blamed for want of faith? ~ Alfred Tennyson
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374:The enormous faith of many made for one. ~ Alexander Pope
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375:The faith that acts not, is it truly faith? ~ Jean Racine
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376:There is likewise a reward for faithful silence. ~ Horace
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377:Those of little faith are of little hatred. ~ Eric Hoffer
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378:True faith does not depend on circumstances. ~ The Mother
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379:With faith, all things are possible. ~ Jeanette Winterson
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380:A little bit of stage fright, then I'm ready. ~ Faith Hill
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381:Deja Vu confirms a faithful path worth taking. ~ T F Hodge
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382:Dont just talk about your faith; practice it ~ C D Rencher
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383:Faith consists in believing what reason cannot. ~ Voltaire
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384:... FAITH: ... Full Assurance In The Heart. ~ Nick Vujicic
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385:Faith gives us living joy and dying rest. ~ Dwight L Moody
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386:Faith is nothing but obedience and piety. ~ Baruch Spinoza
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387:Faith is the flame that eliminates all fear. ~ Suzy Kassem
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388:Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God. ~ A W Tozer
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389:Faith is the highest passion in a man. ~ Soren Kierkegaard
#NFDB
390:Faith is the highest passion in a man. ~ S ren Kierkegaard
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391:Faith sir! She looks like the Old Course. ~ Old Tom Morris
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392:Fear exists because we do not have faith. ~ Shri Radhe Maa
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393:"Follow the stream, have faith in its course." ~ Sheng-yen
#NFDB
394:For most men friendship is a faithless harbor. ~ Sophocles
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395:God created Arrakis to train the faithful. ~ Frank Herbert
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396:Have faith in yourself and in the future. ~ Edward Kennedy
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397:I'm very affected by what I watch and read. ~ Paloma Faith
#NFDB
398:In love and faith
I just have to believe ~ Kevin Brooks
#NFDB
399:It is love, not faith, that moves mountains. ~ George Sand
#NFDB
400:I want my shows to be eerie and mysterious. ~ Paloma Faith
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401:Language lacks the power to describe Faith. ~ Mohsin Hamid
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402:People do not put their faith in phantoms. ~ Marissa Meyer
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403:Put your faith in what you most believe in. ~ Phil Collins
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404:Reason saw not, till Faith sprung the Light. ~ John Dryden
#NFDB
405:Sleep Red, I've got you." - Vaughn to Faith ~ Nalini Singh
#NFDB
406:The prayer that is faithless is fruitless. ~ Thomas Watson
#NFDB
407:There is joy guaranteed for the faithful. ~ Henry B Eyring
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408:There is no faith, without a critical mind ~ Tariq Ramadan
#NFDB
409:To have faith is to believe unconditionally. ~ Miguel Ruiz
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410:... true faith never comes without anguish. ~ R L LaFevers
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411:When we have faith in angels, they do deliver. ~ Kyle Gray
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412:Where there is faith, fear cannot exist. ~ Radhanath Swami
#NFDB
413:And to the faithful: death, the gate of life. ~ John Milton
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414:Bad faith makes the most of every ambiguity. ~ Mason Cooley
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415:By faith we know God without seeing Him. By ~ Thomas Merton
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416:Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood. ~ Arthur Miller
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417:Don’t hold to any faith. Even legends die. ~ Steven Erikson
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418:Every life is a profession of faith. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel
#NFDB
419:Faith in God includes faith in His timing. ~ Neal A Maxwell
#NFDB
420:Faith is acting like God is telling the truth. ~ Tony Evans
#NFDB
421:Faith is simply whatever is real to us. ~ Elizabeth Kostova
#NFDB
422:Faith is the surest guide in the darkest days. ~ The Mother
#NFDB
423:Faith keeps the person who keeps the faith. ~ Mother Teresa
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424:Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light. ~ Franz Kafka
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425:Fathers can find great inspiration in faith. ~ Bruce Feiler
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426:Have faith and go on. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,
#NFDB
427:Have faith in God but keep your powder dry. ~ Louis L Amour
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428:Have faith in God; God has faith in you. ~ Edwin Louis Cole
#NFDB
429:I don't write my own songs. I don't have time. ~ Faith Hill
#NFDB
430:I feel curious about every situation I'm in. ~ Paloma Faith
#NFDB
431:If you have no faith, you've lost your battle. ~ Bill Cosby
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432:I have no faith at all. I only hold convictions. ~ Ayn Rand
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433:I haven't chosen to make an issue of faith. ~ Peter Garrett
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434:I'm a Capricorn, and they flower late. ~ Marianne Faithfull
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435:I'm not walking by sight- I'm, walking by faith ~ T D Jakes
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436:It is faith that makes a lion of a man. ~ Swami Vivekananda
#NFDB
437:I will walk by faith, even when I cannot see. ~ Jeremy Camp
#NFDB
438:Keep the faith, keep the faith, keep working. ~ Deb Fischer
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439:Man suffers through lack of faith in God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna
#NFDB
440:My faith reminds me that we all are sinners. ~ Barack Obama
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441:Specific praying is the key to building faith ~ Leslie Ludy
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442:The principle part of faith is patience. ~ George MacDonald
#NFDB
443:There are many faiths, but the spirit is one. ~ Leo Tolstoy
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444:To the man of faith, there is always a future. ~ T B Joshua
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445:Trials are the soil in which faith flourishes. ~ T B Joshua
#NFDB
446:very small and it will disappear. This ~ Marianne Faithfull
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447:Without faith it is impossible to please God. ~ Rick Warren
#NFDB
448:you base your faith on experience, your faith is ~ Ram Dass
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449:Your voice is worthwhile. Have faith in it. ~ John Lasseter
#NFDB
450:Application of your faith will change your life ~ Glenn Beck
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451:Catholicism is an obsessive-compulsive faith. ~ Ann Patchett
#NFDB
452:Christian life consists of faith and charity ~ Martin Luther
#NFDB
453:Faith begins where religious pretension ends ~ Austin Farrer
#NFDB
454:Faith, I have been a truant in the law ~ William Shakespeare
#NFDB
455:Faith is a beam radiating from the face of God. ~ John Eudes
#NFDB
456:faith is acting as if God is telling the truth. ~ Tony Evans
#NFDB
457:Faith is a twenty-four hour a day commitment. ~ Mary Kay Ash
#NFDB
458:Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis. ~ William James
#NFDB
459:Faith is the path of least resistance. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
#NFDB
460:Faith is your guide in the absence of knowledge. ~ Toba Beta
#NFDB
461:God is faithful even when his children are not. ~ Max Lucado
#NFDB
462:Have faith in God; God has faith in you. ~ Edwin Louis Cole
#NFDB
463:I don't have enough faith to be an Atheist. ~ Norman Geisler
#NFDB
464:I have this strength that comes from knowledge. ~ Faith Hill
#NFDB
465:I'm not a downtrodden woman. I just won't be. ~ Paloma Faith
#NFDB
466:Let not your heart be troubled. Have faith ~ Mark T Sullivan
#NFDB
467:Man suffers through lack of faith in God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
#NFDB
468:Sometimes faith in something is all you have. ~ Terry Brooks
#NFDB
469:Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable. ~ Sam Harris
#NFDB
470:That every moment in life is an act of faith. ~ Paulo Coelho
#NFDB
471:The dream has sucked the sleeper of his faith ~ Dylan Thomas
#NFDB
472:The unifying theme is resilience and faith. ~ Cheryl Strayed
#NFDB
473:We are to be strong in faith, and soft in love. ~ John Stott
#NFDB
474:Who hath no faith to man, to God hath none. ~ George Chapman
#NFDB
475:With faith, you can change your destiny, ~ A P J Abdul Kalam
#NFDB
476:Without risk, faith is an impossibility. ~ Soren Kierkegaard
#NFDB
477:You have as much laughter as you have faith. ~ Martin Luther
#NFDB
478:You may not have faith in my friend fate, ~ Matthew Lillard
#NFDB
479:Your faith has saved you; go in peace. ~ Luke the Evangelist
#NFDB
480:A faithful dependent, I overlook his folly. ~ Charles Dickens
#NFDB
481:All I have to do is what's right for me. ~ Marianne Faithfull
#NFDB
482:A man is saved only by faith ... only by faith. ~ Paul Washer
#NFDB
483:A weak faith can lay hold on a strong Christ. ~ Thomas Watson
#NFDB
484:A woman who is unfaithful deserves to be shot. ~ Pancho Villa
#NFDB
485:Baptism is the initial step of a faithful heart. ~ Max Lucado
#NFDB
486:because life is not stable except by faith. Let ~ John Calvin
#NFDB
487:Be faithful to that which exists within yourself. ~ Andr Gide
#NFDB
488:Faith activates God - Fear activates the Enemy. ~ Joel Osteen
#NFDB
489:Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts. ~ Barack Obama
#NFDB
490:Faithfulness is a social not a biological law. ~ Jenny Holzer
#NFDB
491:Faith in God includes Faith in God's timing. ~ Neal A Maxwell
#NFDB
492:Faith is like a rock; feelings are like waves. ~ Peter Kreeft
#NFDB
493:FAITH is the only known antidote for FAILURE! ~ Napoleon Hill
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494:Faith lights us through the dark to Deity. ~ William Davenant
#NFDB
495:Faith of the bore: everything is worth saying. ~ Mason Cooley
#NFDB
496:Faith receives. Love gives. ~ Vladimir Aleksandrovich Antonov
#NFDB
497:Faith reminds us that change is always possible. ~ Jim Wallis
#NFDB
498:Faith rests not on ignorance, but on knowledge. ~ John Calvin
#NFDB
499:Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness ~ Robert A Heinlein
#NFDB
500:Faith transforms poison into crystalline water ~ Paulo Coelho
#NFDB
730 Integral Yoga
363 Poetry
96 Philosophy
87 Occultism
82 Christianity
60 Fiction
34 Psychology
23 Mysticism
22 Science
19 Yoga
12 Mythology
11 Philsophy
9 Sufism
6 Integral Theory
6 Hinduism
6 Education
4 Buddhism
2 Zen
2 Theosophy
1 Alchemy
414 Sri Aurobindo
306 The Mother
171 Satprem
112 Nolini Kanta Gupta
72 William Wordsworth
43 Walt Whitman
39 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
37 Carl Jung
34 Friedrich Nietzsche
33 Percy Bysshe Shelley
33 Aleister Crowley
31 Saint Augustine of Hippo
31 H P Lovecraft
26 James George Frazer
26 Friedrich Schiller
21 Aldous Huxley
21 A B Purani
18 Sri Ramakrishna
17 Robert Browning
14 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
13 William Butler Yeats
13 Jorge Luis Borges
12 Ovid
11 Saint John of Climacus
11 Ralph Waldo Emerson
11 Plotinus
11 Lucretius
10 Swami Vivekananda
9 Nirodbaran
8 George Van Vrekhem
7 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
7 Saint Teresa of Avila
7 Rudolf Steiner
6 Sri Ramana Maharshi
6 Rabindranath Tagore
6 Plato
6 John Keats
6 Ibn Arabi
6 Edgar Allan Poe
5 Jordan Peterson
4 Swami Krishnananda
4 Kabir
4 Hafiz
4 Farid ud-Din Attar
4 Bokar Rinpoche
3 Thubten Chodron
3 Franz Bardon
2 Yeshe Tsogyal
2 Saint John of the Cross
2 Saint Francis of Assisi
2 Rainer Maria Rilke
2 Mansur al-Hallaj
2 Hakim Sanai
2 Allama Muhammad Iqbal
178 Record of Yoga
72 Wordsworth - Poems
41 Whitman - Poems
40 Letters On Yoga IV
33 Shelley - Poems
31 Lovecraft - Poems
28 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
28 Letters On Yoga II
26 The Golden Bough
26 Schiller - Poems
25 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
22 Prayers And Meditations
21 The Perennial Philosophy
21 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
21 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
21 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
20 Magick Without Tears
20 City of God
19 The Synthesis Of Yoga
18 Agenda Vol 04
17 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
17 Browning - Poems
16 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
16 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
16 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
16 Agenda Vol 12
15 The Life Divine
15 Savitri
15 Questions And Answers 1953
15 Agenda Vol 11
15 Agenda Vol 08
15 Agenda Vol 05
14 The Future of Man
14 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
14 Liber ABA
14 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
13 Yeats - Poems
13 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
13 Agenda Vol 13
13 Agenda Vol 06
12 Words Of Long Ago
12 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
12 Metamorphoses
12 Letters On Yoga III
12 Essays On The Gita
12 Agenda Vol 10
11 Words Of The Mother II
11 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
11 The Human Cycle
11 Questions And Answers 1954
11 Of The Nature Of Things
11 Mysterium Coniunctionis
11 Hymn of the Universe
11 Emerson - Poems
11 Agenda Vol 09
10 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
10 Questions And Answers 1956
10 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
10 Labyrinths
10 Agenda Vol 02
9 Twilight of the Idols
9 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
9 The Practice of Psycho therapy
9 The Divine Comedy
9 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
9 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
9 Agenda Vol 01
8 Talks
8 Preparing for the Miraculous
8 Let Me Explain
8 Aion
8 Agenda Vol 07
7 The Bible
7 Some Answers From The Mother
7 Letters On Yoga I
7 Goethe - Poems
7 Faust
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
7 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
6 Words Of The Mother III
6 Vedic and Philological Studies
6 The Way of Perfection
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Phenomenon of Man
6 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
6 Tagore - Poems
6 Raja-Yoga
6 Poe - Poems
6 On Education
6 Kena and Other Upanishads
6 Keats - Poems
6 Essays Divine And Human
6 Collected Poems
5 Questions And Answers 1955
5 Maps of Meaning
5 Arabi - Poems
5 Amrita Gita
5 Agenda Vol 03
5 5.1.01 - Ilion
4 Words Of The Mother I
4 The Study and Practice of Yoga
4 Tara - The Feminine Divine
4 Songs of Kabir
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
4 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
3 Walden
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
3 Letters On Poetry And Art
3 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
3 Crowley - Poems
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
3 Bhakti-Yoga
2 Theosophy
2 The Integral Yoga
2 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
2 Talks With Sri Aurobindo
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Rilke - Poems
2 On the Way to Supermanhood
2 Isha Upanishad
2 Initiation Into Hermetics
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Dark Night of the Soul
2 Book of Certitude
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Kabbalah
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.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, it was to this godhead that Nachiketas turned and he wanted to know of it and find it, when Faith seized on his pure heart and he aspired for the higher spiritual life. The very opening hymn of the Rig Veda, too, is addressed to Agni, who is invoked as the vicar seated in the front of the sacrifice, the giver of the supreme gifts.
--
The Science of the Five Agnis (Fires), as propounded by Pravahan, explains and illustrates the process of the birth of the body, the passage of the soul into earth existence. It describes the advent of the child, the building of the physical form of the human being. The process is conceived of as a sacrifice, the usual symbol with the Vedic Rishis for the expression of their vision and perception of universal processes of Nature, physical and psychological. Here, the child IS said to be the final fruit of the sacrifice, the different stages in the process being: (i) Soma, (ii) Rain, (iii) Food, (iv) Semen, (v) Child. Soma means Rasaphysically the principle of water, psychologically the 'principle of delightand symbolises and constitutes the very soul and substance of life. Now it is said that these five principles the fundamental and constituent elementsare born out of the sacrifice, through the oblation or offering to the five Agnis. The first Agni is Heaven or the Sky-God, and by offering to it one's Faith and one's ardent desire, one calls into manifestation Soma or Rasa or Water, the basic principle of life. This water is next offered to the second Agni, the Rain-God, who sends down Rain. Rain, again, is offered to the third Agni, the Earth, who brings forth Food. Food is, in its turn, offered to the fourth Agni, the Father or Male, who elaborates in himself the generating fluid.
--
Man, however, is an epitome of creation. He embraces and incarnates the entire gamut of consciousness and comprises in him all beings from the highest Divinity to the lowest jinn or elf. And yet each human being in his true personality is a lineal descendant of one or other typal aspect or original Personality of the one supreme Reality; and his individual character is all the more pronounced and well-defined the more organised and developed is the being. The psychic being in man is thus a direct descent, an immediate emanation along a definite line of devolution of the supreme consciousness. We may now understand and explain easily why one chooses a particular Ishta, an ideal god, what is the drive that pushes one to become a worshipper of Siva or Vishnu or any other deity. It is not any rational understanding, a weighing of pros and cons and then a resultant conclusion that leads one to choose a path of religion or spirituality. It is the soul's natural call to the God, the type of being and consciousness of which it is a spark, from which it has descended, it is the secret affinity the spiritual blood-relation as it were that determines the choice and adherence. And it is this that we name Faith. And the exclusiveness and violence and bitterness which attend such adherence and which go "by the "name of partisanship, sectarianism, fanaticism etc., a;e a deformation in the ignorance on the physico-vital plane of the secret loyalty to one's source and origin. Of course, the pattern or law is not so simple and rigid, but it gives a token or typal pattern. For it must not be forgotten that the supreme source or the original is one and indivisible and in the highest integration consciousness is global and not exclusive. And the human being that attains such a status is not bound or wholly limited to one particular formation: its personality is based on the truth of impersonality. And yet the two can go together: an individual can be impersonal in consciousness and yet personal in becoming and true to type.
00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
'Kavi' is an invariable epithet of the gods. The Vedas mean by this attri bute to bring out a most fundamental character, an inalienable dharma of the heavenly host. All the gods are poets; and a human being can become a poet only in so far as he attains to the nature and status of a god. Who is then a kavi? The Poet is he who by his poetic power raises forms of beauty in heavenkavi kavitv divi rpam sajat.1Thus the essence of poetic power is to fashion divine Beauty, to reveal heavenly forms. What is this Heaven whose forms the Poet discovers and embodies? HeavenDyaushas a very definite connotation in the Veda. It means the luminous or divine Mind 2the mind purified of its obscurity and limitations, due to subjection to the external senses, thus opening to the higher Light, receiving and recording Faithfully the deeper and vaster movements and vibrations of the Truth, giving them a form, a perfect body of the right thought and the right word. Indra is the lord of this world and he can be approached only with an enkindled intelligence, ddhay man,3a faultless understanding, sumedh. He is the supreme Artisan of the poetic power,Tash, the maker of perfect forms, surpa ktnum.4 All the gods turn towards Indra and become gods and poets, attain their Great Names of Supreme Beauty.5 Indra is also the master of the senses, indriyas, who are his hosts. It is through this mind and the senses that the poetic creation has to be manifested. The mind spreads out wide the Poet's weaving;6 the poet is the priest who calls down and works out the right thinking in the sacrificial labour of creation.7 But that creation is made in and through the inner mind and the inner senses that are alive to the subtle formation of a vaster knowledge.8 The poet envisages the golden forms fashioned out of the very profundity of the consciousness.9 For the substance, the material on which the Poet works, is Truth. The seat of the Truth the poets guard, they uphold the supreme secret Names.10 The poet has the expressive utterance, the creative word; the poet is a poet by his poetic creation-the shape faultlessly wrought out that unveils and holds the Truth.11The form of beauty is the body of the Truth.
0.00 - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Some of the passages in the book force me today to emphasize that so far as the Qabalah is concerned, it could and should be employed without binding to it the partisan qualities of any one particular religious Faith. This goes as much for Judaism as it does for Christianity. Neither has much intrinsic usefulness where this scientific scheme is concerned. If some students feel hurt by this statement, that cannot be helped. The day of most contemporary Faiths is over; they have been more of a curse than a boon to mankind. Nothing that I say here, however, should reflect on the peoples concerned, those who accept these religions. They are merely unfortunate. The religion itself is worn out and indeed is dying.
The Qabalah has nothing to do with any of them. Attempts on the part of cultish-partisans to impart higher mystical meanings, through the Qabalah, etc., to their now sterile Faiths is futile, and will be seen as such by the younger generation. They, the flower and love children, will have none of this nonsense.
I felt this a long time ago, as I still do, but even more so. The only way to explain the partisan Jewish attitude demonstrated in some small sections of the book can readily be explained. I had been reading some writings of Arthur Edward Waite, and some of his pomposity and turgidity stuck to my mantle. I disliked his patronising Christian attitude, and so swung all the way over to the other side of the pendulum. Actually, neither Faith is particularly important in this day and age. I must be careful never to read Waite again before embarking upon literary work of my own.
0.00 - To the Reader, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Kabbalah
The reader is requested to note that Sri Aurobindo is not responsible for these records as he had no opportunity to see them. So, it is not as if Sri Aurobindo said exactly these things but that I remember him to have said them. All I can say is that I have tried to be as Faithful in recording them as I was humanly capable. That does not minimise my personal responsibility which I fully accept.
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The wrong attitude can be in the body consciousness itself (lack
of Faith or of receptivity) and then it is very difficult to detect
as it does not correspond to any wrong thought or feeling, the
--
*
We want to be Faithful workers for the Great Victory.
26 June 1933
--
You must be calm and concentrated, never utter an unnecessary
sentence and have Faith in the divine help.
12 December 1933
--
am obliged to part with a certain number of them (you give the
number), and since they have all been hardworking and Faithful,
I am at even more of a loss to make a selection. Therefore I
--
I aspire for the blessed day when the conflict, the
momentary lack of Faith, will cease forever and You will
use me even as You use Your feet, O Sweet Mother.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
completer — which you will come to know.
You must keep your aspiration intact and your will to conquer all obstacles; you must have an unshakable Faith in the
divine grace and the sure victory.
--
happiness.
Keep your confidence and your Faith, my little smile, and
everything will be all right.
--
rebellious, depressed, and now you have let your smile slip away,
and with it your Faith and confidence in me; in this condition, if
all the divine forces were to concentrate on you, it would be in
--
There is only one remedy, and you must lose no time in
accepting it: recover your smile, regain your Faith, become once
more the confident child you were, do not brood over your faults
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The characteristic energy of pure Mind is change, and the more our mentality acquires elevation and organisation, the more this law of Mind assumes the aspect of a continual enlargement, improvement and better arrangement of its gains and so of a continual passage from a smaller and simpler to a larger and more complex perfection. For Mind, unlike bodily life, is infinite in its field, elastic in its expansion, easily variable in its formations. Change, then, self-enlargement and selfimprovement are its proper instincts. Mind too moves in cycles, but these are ever-enlarging spirals. Its Faith is perfectibility, its watchword is progress.
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the repose that comes from concentrated energy.
Be sure that you will become strong and quiet, have Faith in
a perfect realisation and in the Divine’s omnipotence to achieve
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If, however, we leave aside, here also, the actual methods and practices and seek for the central principle, we find, first, that Tantra expressly differentiates itself from the Vedic methods of Yoga. In a sense, all the schools we have hitherto examined are Vedantic in their principle; their force is in knowledge, their method is knowledge, though it is not always discernment by the intellect, but may be, instead, the knowledge of the heart expressed in love and Faith or a knowledge in the will working out through action. In all of them the lord of the Yoga is the Purusha, the Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rather Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the
Will-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power, its method, its Tantra, that the Tantric Yogin pursued the aims of his discipline, - mastery, perfection, liberation, beatitude. Instead of drawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he confronted them, seized and conquered. But in the end, as is the general tendency of Prakriti, Tantric Yoga largely lost its principle in its machinery and became a thing of formulae and occult mechanism still powerful when rightly used but fallen from the clarity of their original intention.
--
Purusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceeding from an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all
Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of
Knowledge and a Faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation.
It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah. sa eva sah., "whatever is a man's Faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes."
We see, then, what from the psychological point of view,
--
But, for practical purposes, there is a real distinction. The lower
Nature, that which we know and are and must remain so long as the Faith in us is not changed, acts through limitation and division, is of the nature of Ignorance and culminates in the life of the ego; but the higher Nature, that to which we aspire, acts by unification and transcendence of limitation, is of the nature of Knowledge and culminates in the life divine. The passage from the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga; and this passage
--
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sadhana. It requires a colossal Faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine
Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for our weakness and supports us through all our failings of Faith, courage and patience. It "makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills." The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet, in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
where the soul may abandon discursive meditation and enter the contemplation
which belongs to loving and simple Faith.
Both these chapters have contri buted to the reputation of St. John of the
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Presence is one of the most important points of the sadhana.
Ask X, he will tell you that the Presence is not a matter of Faith
or of mental imagination, it is a fact, absolutely concrete and
--
draws near the Divine. One must always keep in one’s heart an
unshakable Faith and confidence and in one’s head the certitude
of victory. Drive away these shadows which come between you
--
*
Have Faith in the Divine Grace and the hour of liberation will
be hastened.
--
All my power is with you to help you; open yourself with a
calm confidence, have Faith in the Divine Grace, and you will
overcome all your difficulties.
--
times, especially when it is waged against the hostile forces.
That is why one must be armed with patience and keep Faith in
the final victory.
--
*
It is good to be confident and to have a living and steady Faith.
But in the matter of the adverse forces, it is good to be always
--
I rely on Your Will alone to rid me of this illness.
One must have an unshakable Faith to be able to do without
medicines.
*
One must never lose hope or Faith — there is nothing incurable,
and no limit can be set to the power of the Divine.
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On my last birthday, your parting words to me were:
“Keep your Faith.” I am still wondering what exactly
you meant, dear Mother. What kind of Faith would you
like me to aspire for?
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Which cannot die, yet cannot chuse but die,
Loe, Faithfull Virgin,.. . .
Whom thou conceiv'st, conceiv'd; yea thou art now
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.
--
There are many ways of opening to this Divine consciousness or entering into it. My way which I show to others is by a constant practice to go inward into oneself, to open by aspiration to the Divine and once one is conscious of it and its action to give oneself to It entirely. This self-giving means not to ask for anything but the constant contact or union with the Divine Consciousness, to aspire for its peace, power, light and felicity, but to ask nothing else and in life and action to be its instrument only for whatever work it gives one to do in the world. If one can once open and feel the Divine Force, the
Power of the Spirit working in the mind and heart and body, the rest is a matter of remaining Faithful to It, calling for it always, allowing it to do its work when it comes and rejecting every other and inferior Force that belongs to the lower consciousness and the lower nature.
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Obviously to seek the Divine only for what one can get out of
Him is not the proper attitude; but if it were absolutely forbidden to seek Him for these things, most people in the world would not turn towards Him at all. I suppose therefore it is allowed so that they may make a beginning - if they have Faith, they may get what they ask for and think it a good thing to go on and then one day they may suddenly stumble upon the idea that this is after all not quite the one thing to do and that there are better ways and a better spirit in which one can approach the
Divine. If they do not get what they want and still come to the
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That is to say, the change has been in the soul of man himself, the being has veered round and taken a new orientation. It is this which one must envisage, recognise and consciously possess, in order that one may best fulfil the call of the age. But what we are doing instead is to observe the mere external signs and symbols and symptoms, to fix upon the distant quiverings, the echoes on the outermost rim, which are not always Faithful representations, but very often distorted images of the truth and life at the centre and source and matrix. We must know that if there has been going on a redistri bution and new-marshalling of forces, it is because the fiat has come from the Etat Major.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Still, it must be noted that Coleridge is a rare example, for the recording apparatus is not usually so Faithful but puts up its own formations that disturb and alter the perfection of the original. The passivity or neutrality of the intermediary is relative, and there are infinite grades of it. Even when the larger waves that play in it in the normal waking state are quieted down, smaller ripples of unconscious or half-conscious habitual formations are thrown up and they are sufficient to cause the scattering and dispersal of the pure light from above.
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A breath of Godhead on her stone and mire.
A Faith she craves that can survive defeat,
The sweetness of a love that knows not death,
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A personal reminiscence. A young man in prison, accused of conspiracy and waging war against the British Empire. If convicted he might have to suffer the extreme penalty, at least, transportation to the Andamans. The case is dragging on for long months. And the young man is in a solitary cell. He cannot always keep up his spirits high. Moments of sadness and gloom and despair come and almost overwhelm him. Who was there to console and cheer him up? Vivekananda. Vivekananda's speeches, From Colombo to Almora, came, as a godsend, into the hands of the young man. Invariably, when the period of despondency came he used to open the book, read a few pages, read them over again, and the cloud was there no longer. Instead there was hope and courage and Faith and future and light and air.
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But the pressure upon his dynamic and heated brain the fiery zeal in his mindwas already proving too much and he was advised medically to take complete rest. Thereupon followed what was known as Pascal's mundane lifea period of distraction and dissipation; but this did not last long nor was it of a serious nature. The inner fire could brook no delay, it was eager and impatient to englobe other fields and domains. Indeed, it turned to its own field the heart. Pascal became initiated into the mystery of Faith and Grace. Still he had to pass through a terrible period of dejection and despair: the life of the world had given him no rest or relaxation, it served only to fill his cup of misery to the brim. But the hour of final relief was not long postponed: the Grace came to him, even as it came to Moses or St. Paul as a sudden flare of fire which burnt up the Dark Night and opened out the portals of Morning Glory.
Pascal's place in the evolution of European culture and consciousness is of considerable significance and importance. He came at a critical time, on the mounting tide of rationalism and scepticism, in an age when the tone and temper of human mentality were influenced and fashioned by Montaigne and Rochefoucauld, by Bacon and Hobbes. Pascal himself, born in such an atmosphere of doubt and disbelief and disillusionment, had sucked in a full dose of that poison; yet he survived and found the Rock of Ages, became the clarion of Faith against Denial. What a spectacle it was! This is what one wrote just a quarter of a century after the death of Pascal:
--
What characterises Pascal is the way in which he has bent his brainnot rejected it but truly bent and forced even the dry "geometrical brain" to the service of Faith.
In his inquiry into truth and certitude Pascal takes his stand upon what he calls the geometrical method, the only valid method, according to him, in the sphere of reason. The characteristic of this method is that it takes for granted certain fundamental principles and realitiescalled axioms and postulates or definitionsand proceeds to other truths that are infallibly and inevitably deduced from them, that are inherent and implied in them. There is no use or necessity in trying to demonstrate these fundamentals also; that will only land us into confusion and muddle. They have to be simply accepted, they do not require demonstration, it is they that demonstrate others. Such, for instance, are space, time, number, the reality of which it is foolishness and pedantry to I seek to prove. There is then an order of truths that do not i require to be proved. We are referring only to the order of I physical truths. But there is another order, Pascal says, equally I valid and veritable, the order of the Spirit. Here we have another set of fundamentals that have to be accepted and taken for granted, matrix of other truths and realities. It can also be called the order of the Heart. Reason posits physical fundamentals; it does not know of the fundamentals of the Heart which are beyond its reach; such are God, Soul, Immortality which are evident only to Faith.
But Faith and Reason, according to Pascal, are not contraries nor irreconcilables. Because the things of Faith are beyond reason, it is not that they are irrational. Here is what Pascal says about the function and limitation of reason:
--
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.
--
Pascal's Faith had not the calm, tranquil, serene, luminous and happy self-possession of an Indian Rishi. It was ardent and impatient, fiery and vehement. It had to be so perhaps, since it was to stand against his steely brain (and a gloomy vital or life force) as a counterpoise, even as an antidote. This tension and schism brought about, at least contri buted to his neuras thenia and physical infirmity. But whatever the effect upon his inner consciousness and spiritual achievement, his power of expression, his literary style acquired by that a special quality which is his great gift to the French language. If one speaks of Pascal, one has to speak of his language also; for he was one of the great masters who created the French prose. His prose was a wonderful blend of clarity, precision, serried logic and warmth, colour, life, movement, plasticity.
--
"The infinite distance of the body from the mind images the distance infinitely more infinite of the mind from Charity (Divine Grace, Faith)."9
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This spiritual march or progress can also be described as a growing into the likeness of the Lord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus nor of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled love in to thyself." This self-love is the mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, forgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a forbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with Faith the senses can do nothing better than have Faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a sort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
--
Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altoge ther abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the Faith of the Faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of a large number of human beings who think like them.
But the Communists and all those who have Faith in the
Communist ideal have the opposite opinion, not to mention
--
can practise yoga for that, but that is not believing. To believe is
to have the Faith that there cannot be a world without the Divine,
that the very existence of the world proves the existence of the
Divine. And not just a “belief”, not something one has thought
out or been taught, nothing like that: Faith. A Faith that is a living
knowledge, not an acquired one, that the existence of the world
--
individual acts independently, the protection acts only in the
measure of his Faith.
14 December 1966
--
Sincerity, courage, discipline, endurance, absolute Faith in the
Divine work and unshakable trust in the Divine Grace. All
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is another aspect of personality as viewed by Berdyaev which involves a bias of the more orthodox Christian Faith: the Christ is inseparable from the Cross. So he says: "There is no such thing as personality if there is no capacity for suffering. Suffering is inherent in God too, if he is a personality, and not merely an abstract idea. God shares in the sufferings of men. He yearns for responsive love. There are divine as well as human passions and therefore divine or creative personality must always suffer to the end of time. A condition of anguish and distress is inherent in it." The view is logically enforced upon the Christian, it is said, if he is to accept incarnation, God becoming flesh. Flesh cannot but be weak. This very weakness, so human, is and must be specially characteristic of God also, if he is one with man and his lover and saviour.
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Love and admiration for a mahapurusha is not enough, even Faith in his gospel is of little avail, nor can actual participation, consecrated work and labour in his cause save the situation; it is only when the principles, the bare realities for which the mahapurusha stands are in the open forum and men have the full and free opportunity of testing and assimilating them, it is only when individuals thus become living embodiments of those principles and realities that we do create a thing universal and permanent, as universal and permanent as earthly things may be. Principles only can embrace and unify the whole of humanity; a particular personality shall always create division and limitation. By placing the man in front, we erect a wall between the Principle and men at large. It is the principles, on the contrary, that should be given the place of honour: our attempt should be to keep back personalities and make as little use of them as possible. Let the principles work and create in their freedom and power, untrammelled by the limitations of any mere human vessel.
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It might be objected here however that actually in the history of humanity the conception of Duty has been no less pugnacious than that of Right. In certain ages and among certain peoples, for example, it was considered the imperative duty of the Faithful to kill or convert by force or otherwise as many as possible belonging to other Faiths: it was the mission of the good shepherd to burn the impious and the heretic. In recent times, it was a sense of high and solemn duty that perpetrated what has been termed "purges"brutalities undertaken, it appears, to purify and preserve the integrity of a particular ideological, social or racial aggregate. But the real name of such a spirit is not duty but fanaticism. And there is a considerable difference between the two. Fanaticism may be defined as duty running away with itself; but what we are concerned with here is not the aberration of duty, but duty proper self-poised.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet Faith
But the Faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
have driven all defeatism out of our consciousness.
It is by perfecting our Faith in the Divine Grace that we shall
be able to conquer the defeatism of the subconscient.
--
conscious of our possibilities, but also of our difficulties so that
we may overcome them in order to serve You Faithfully.”
The supreme happiness is to be true servitors of the Divine.
--
*
What is commonly called Faithfulness is a scrupulous compliance
with the promises one has made. But the only true and binding
Faithfulness is Faithfulness to the Divine — and that is the Faithfulness we all ought to acquire through sincere and sustained
effort.
--
“Whatever You will, whatever You will”,
then one is well on the way to the true Faithfulness.
17 February 1972
02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In this age we stand at some such critical juncture in Nature's evolutionary history. Its full implications, the exact degree of the immediate achievement, the form and manner of the Descent are things that remain veiled till the fact is accomplished. Something of it is revealed, however, to the eye of vision and the heart of Faith, something of it is seized by those to whom it chooses to disclose itself
02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Made from the musings of eternity.
Almost unbelievable by human Faith,
Hardly they seemed the stuff of things that are.
--
His nobility's coronet and privilege,
His Faith is a high nature's idiom,
His service a spiritual sovereignty.